Mmm

This morning I noticed I was tired, it could have been that the smoke alarm had a false alarm at 5am, presumably pollen and dust since the windows have been open  all summer... Or was it Monday's EMDR? It's possible that one of the biggest aspects of experience in those pre-coming out years was the shear exhaustion, gradually accumulated. Or perhaps not... It's all too easy to imagine connecting with some great fear, or other such powerful emotion. But maybe what is sitting there is too tired to feel much of anything. Or perhaps not... Nice lunch with a friend then off to a personal training session followed by a bit more working out in the gym. Certainly tired now! Tiredness is all too easily seen as insufficiency of available resource but in fact it is the in breath before and after the out breath. Back in those pre-coming out years with the mind so tightly wrapped around the body, I wonder... was it possible to fully breathe? Certain triggers in the present feel like little electric shocks, weights or tiny daggers at the chest... A breath is taken and slowly puffed out through pursed lips. The body's parasympathetic impulse. In a physical workout  it's important not to restrict the breath. It wasn't so clear back in the day that putting one foot in front of the other was a workout. And how often did I feel the alarm of hyper-vigilance go off? That's edgy. Tired and unknowing. In this process is anything loosened in the present or does the finger run around the rim scoring it deeper into the groove? It feels pathetic, what am I doing.  Is this the feel of then or now? Again, knowing is out of range. The future may show. All this is but shimmer through the day, a day mostly fine and enjoyable. Like those days putting one foot in front of the other...?

The sun had burnt away the clouds by mid-morning, just about the time the bin men followed by the window cleaner had been and gone and as I sat zazen. Then I folded my zabuton and put it aside with the zafu on top. It is good to be sitting more regularly again.  There was temptation to push, to look for something, insight from Monday's EMDR... or something in the itchy scratchy feeling. Things aren't as I'd like and I'm not getting them under control... or is it me? This is zazen, just sit, if it needs to arise it will, and then pass. The clouds of thought and pushing and looking moved through, the 30 minute timer elapsed. Mmm, itchy scratchy. Maybe I'll write something playful before going out to lunch. But it wasn't happening. Time to go... Walking in the shade as much as possible- really, in the UK? Hot, but wonderful cool air. Lunch, gym, home, writing... what?

Sitting patiently with not knowing. The shape of this shifts through so many forms, the simple and the complex, the short term and the chronic, the low level and the OCD level. The bright and the shade passing through. Zazen off the cushion, the zafu and zabuton support the empty mind which fills with not knowing.

Incongruence

I have found myself considering those developmental years of late adolescence and early adulthood when it was far from obvious that the world had a place for the kind of man I seemed to be. There's definitely still a charge around those memories. Unpacking the charge into the beliefs, ascribed meanings and fears generating emotional charges at the time and understanding the emotional residue in the present and the unresolved trauma which can be triggered is quite a complex business. Most gay men of my generation will say something along the lines of '...it was like trying to put together a jigsaw without the picture on the box lid'. And of course that's true to a greater or lesser extent for all young people. But there's a key difference for gay men of my generation, we had no public script. In my own case although I had arrived (as a result of an early normal fast tempo puberty) at my final height of 5'6" by 16, I remained slight and young looking right through my twenties. Throw in a non-sporty observant temperament, and (initially repressed) homosexuality and it seemed like I wasn't going to be able to fit the culturally limited image of manhood. Early responsibilities as a care giver had added to this and the result was a lack of social embeddedness. Nothing especially new here then, territory I explored back in the coming out days one way or another. But I came a cross what I find to be a useful term- incongruent masculinity. And in the days when one doesn't see a viable script, is not mirrored and has limited emotional support or buffering it is all too easy to add meaning to what might otherwise be neutral facts and misinterpret incongruence as insufficiency. And so incongruence, compartmentalisation, lack of social embeddedness and early responsibilities resulted in what psychologists call asynchronous development. Such development has its costs - mainly grief for the unlived life but also its benefits, awareness being one, or to put it figuratively - straight men (ie congruent men) they're like fish in the sea, they don't see the water. And another element in this is that for men of my generation part of the limited script which was available was a perverse denial that the script existed. So for example it was very clear that small youthful looking men were regarded as insufficient yet at the same time there was denial that this was being policed and an expectation that such a man should 'man up' about his insufficiency and bear the 'shame' in silence. And so this too was to be put in a compartment. Masculinity was tightly policed. Whilst homosexuality had, in the year of my birth been partly decriminalised it remained socially taboo and for most gay men required a tight compartment to ensure safety. In this regard coming out was a process as much about generating safety as it was about internal acceptance. Finding a script wasn't easy. The dominant scripts and hierarchies of hegemonic masculinity affect everyone and whilst the toxicity of this is now much better understood it still remains muddy water for many. Incongruence seems to me to be a useful way to see any deviation from the hegemonic norm, and it becomes clear that this extends beyond physicality, gender and sexuality. In the workplace it's observable in what DC and I have previously termed 'The family guy thing'. Basically overt and covert power systems operate to ostensibly (the overt power system) provide fairness and psychological safety whilst in practice real power is covert and restricted to the congruent, all too often this group aligns heavily with congruent masculinity. But it's important here to recognise that congruence is multi-dimensional (culture, gender, race, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, etc.) and there are intersections. The ways in which the (ostensibly) incongruent adapt to this and and become congruent, depend I suppose, much on the extent and the nature of the mismatch between forms of congruence. Authenticity and the limits of one's ability to enact or modify those forms of congruence place one inside or outside the boundary of covert power.

I can expand this to consider the modern conflict averse workplace. Again overt and covert power systems and decision making play out both internally within the employer's business and in the external relationships with clients and subcontractors in my experience. The overt systems claim to aim for openness, collaboration, group and individual safety and seek to deescalate conflict. In practice this often delays decision making, 'takes things off-line' and feeds difficult problems and processes to a covert system. In this covert system power is held by the congruent and exercised over the incongruent who as a result have their safety reduced. In this way hegemonic power systems operate through covert systems.

Incongruency can generate better leadership and safety because it often creates conditions where awareness becomes essential, but the obstacles to manifesting such leadership are the added burden of managing the congruent and the displaced work in the covert system which should be handled in the overt system. Eventually in my experience as stated above, authenticity and the limits of one's ability to enact or modify forms of congruence place one inside or outside the boundary of covert power. Whilst the covet is still operational there is a limit on the leadership the incongruent can deliver. For me this becomes an inflection point for authenticity and ultimately defines how much I'm able to operate in any system. Competency in the field of required delivery is one of the the main antidotes to covert systems because they often form a hiding place for the incompetent, but to challenge the hegemony is not without risk and a constant balancing act is usually required. Competence is often a threat to those who benefit from the covert even if they try to deny it by withholding legitimacy, whilst still utilising it by appropriating the output of the incongruent. Further, because congruence generates ease, awareness can often be lacking (as the congruent seldom see the water). And so the congruent may not be fully aware of their subjugation of the incongruent, whereas, the incongruent often lack ease and have their awareness surreptitiously purloined.  

Returning to the costs of (social) incongruency, often, hypervigilance, asynchronous development and associated non-normative experience (these two form an ongoing loop for some time), lack of social embeddedness, etc., it should be clear that the model is relevant not just to psychological development but career development too because what is at stake is access to power systems and psychological safety. Or put another way - in the presence of covert systems, legitimacy is granted by the congruent and usually to the congruent. This stifles cultural responsiveness and is why it can take so long for the incongruent to gain legitimacy.

At a personal level I would say that authenticity remains an ongoing work to integrate identity as an unfolding process within the constraints of available safety and awareness not just of (in)congruence but any frame of reference.

The Koan

 The koan arises naturally they say, and this way of looking at life is I think, worthy of some consideration. My koan is certainly tied up with fear. Fear which is closely tied to an appreciation of emptiness. It was by study of Zen Buddhism that I gained some clarity into the spiritual significance of what had previously been only a psychologically informed appreciation of my experience. Buddhism brought a wider philosophical understanding and the prospect of a greater peace than had been hoped possible. And more than this it brought a much greater depth and level of meaning to my life. Zen, by cutting straight to the heart of things with its uncompromising attitude to reality made what had been dimly understood and greatly felt and feared into a purpose. My understanding that things are so transient and vulnerable, clarified by the language of Buddhism as dependent origination, emptiness, made access to non-duality in the everyday a positive prospect. Couching this as the koan if I remember to see it that way, makes everything fuel to the fire of enlightenment. Through meditation both on and off the cushion and trying to keep to the precepts my experience might widen and deepen leading to a more compassionate, enriching life.

 Recently DC was talking about transcendence and perhaps having my koan in mind to some extent, I responded that those with an understanding of the spiritual significance of this are generally reluctant to speak of it for fear of doing harm, and he concurred. Altered states of consciousness, whether through meditation, music, dance, sex, alcohol or other drugs seem to have been a part of human experience for a very long time across many cultures. The harm or good any of this may cause depends upon intention, degree of awareness, precise details of the activity and energy expended. User beware! Let's consider that list a little: meditation, music, dance, sex, alcohol and other drugs. The first four have a history of links with spiritual practice, alcohol is a suppressant which blunts awareness and other than in small quantities to 'take the edge off' and promote a relaxed social mood is off very little benefit and can do a lot of harm. Drugs are numerous and dangerous. Some have a history of links to spiritual practice but generally not that held by established sanghas. Interestingly, there are current medical trials of psychedelics to help with anxiety and depression although they are not available as treatment options at this time. Aldus Huxley wrote of the 'reducing valve of the mind' and whilst I think we need take care with this notion there's something in it. Altered states of consciousness and transcendence have their place and if approached with the intention to surrender the self to the reality of the universe without craving experience can lead one to realise Buddha nature understanding that it's not an individual one but One that is. And then we return to the koan in daily life. Chop wood and carry water. These two aspects of life, form and emptiness, the mundane and the profound might be seen as an axis upon which I sit and struggle with fear, confusion and failing to keep the precepts, enjoy the vibrancy of life and its sensuality, play out past and create further karma... The koan unfolding. Unless any of these musings or the practices to which they refer result in greater compassion and ability to live happily causing minimal harm then they are at best useless but perhaps amusing and at worst harmful. Thankfully, the Buddha's recommendation to follow the 'middle way', steering us to the 'heart mind', does I believe, make the koan as indicated above, everything fuel to the fire of enlightenment. Which, when held by and holding the everyday struggles is an awfully magnificent prospect. The hour by hour experience is far less lofty.

I'm reading The Wild White Goose, the diaries of Roshi Jiyu Kennett during her time in Japan. There's a section in which the koan is discussed. Jiyu comments that people receive their koan at different times. This idea (of their koan) probably needs some 'unpacking' but the diaries don't go there and I don't feel confident to say much more than that the basic idea seems to match my experience. Jiyu goes on to point to the relationship of the size of the koan, the time one's had it and their degree of spiritual development. (The words used here aren't exactly hers, I'm aware that this sentence is fraught with possible confusion and it's difficult to be clear about the nature of temporality.) In this way of looking at things I think I may have received my koan at birth. I was induced, it was a difficult labour and I was cot nursed for the first couple of days. I imagine this was a stressful entry to the world. But who knows? I developed into a sensitive, cautious child. The koan was given further complexities as I developed OCD at about 9 years of age and realised I was gay at about 13 or 14. So, an interesting 'grab bag' of karma which by placing me in some respects outside the 'norm' has I think, given me or forced me to gain insight. These days I'm hard pressed to say where the size of my koan and the level of insight and/or spiritual development (that's not the right word) and the unfolding karma leave me. But such is the nature of koans.

Terrier Truth

I started writing this post a few days ago and wrote this:

I acknowledge that I have a 'fast energy' and an irritable and / yet tenacious tenancy.  All summed up quite well by the nickname terrier. I find it difficult to be slow, relaxed, gentle, graceful. And yet some part of me probably wants to be more like that. And an other part just can't stand it! [And] Because I am not really working at the pace required of most modern work places some part of me drives me on against the fear of slowing down and never being able to 'cut the mustard' again. Or maybe deep down I feel it's too late anyway; I've been away from it too long and can't work like I once could. Or maybe it's just frustration at not being involved in a demanding project and part of a team of professionals. Anyway, the feedback from people in the community here is often that I should be more soft and feminine. Now I know that even in the construction industry people have found me abrasive, but I just can't stand this so called feminine softness. And I can think of a few feminists who would take you to task over the whole thing anyway! But there is something here. How much of this is adapted, defensive, limited and limiting ego and how much is just the basic flavor of the undefended self? Hard to say.

But the muse was not with me and I couldn't find the pith of the post.

Earlier today at lunch and again whilst out for a walk with a friend the subject of my terrier nature came up again. I'd forgotten that I'd started a post on this and during this afternoon's walk took some pictures of a wonderful pink-red sunset. As I suspected the phone-camera could not quite capture the scene. I tried with three different settings:

Just which is the truest image?

And this question of seeing 'the truth' is a tricky one. It requires a great deal of wisdom. So, returning to that question How much of this is adapted, defensive, limited and limiting ego and how much is just the basic flavor of the undefended self? Again, Hard to say. On the one hand there is as they say, no smoke without fire and I acknowledge that the fast, driven, tetchy stuff is connected to contraction in the body-mind. And it is no doubt that contraction which is visible in my deportment, especially my gait. Yet on the other, there is the feedback 'oh but you are a mover and a shaker; you make things happen, you keep the show on the road'.

And it's all an aspect of 'the truth'. 

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, Act IIrish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

And yes, I do from time to time see gentle people who (still) have a liveliness to them and it is quite wonderful.

Love And Will 3

Just finished reading Love and Will. Well, what a book! And searching for Rollo May's details on the net I see that this book is referred to as influential. I am not surprised, I suspect it pulls together a lot of man's thinking from diverse cultures, times and locations in pursuit of an explanation of May's approach to psychology. And whilst the word 'spiritual' is used in the book (as I recall) only once or twice, this is clearly the implication. And perhaps the word was avoided since it defies definition.


The later chapters prompted me to make the following jottings for this post:

• We re-enact the (original) fall - however much we might work towards and attain union we must return back to our individual experience of life. We move in and out of the garden (of Eden).

(recalled WOODSTOCK
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
by Joni Mitchel-

We are stardust, we are golden
We are 2 billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden)

We attempt this getting back to the garden when we (re)connect with our self and when we connect with others. At a deep level beyond the psychological is the direct realisation of our true nature.

• May on care notes 'Heidegger quotes the ancient parable of care, which Goethe also used at the end of Faust:' Care crossing a river fashioned some clay into a form, Jupiter came by and she asked him to give it spirit, which he did but he would not let her name be bestowed upon it. Earth arose and desired her name be conferred upon the creature since it was part of her body. They asked Saturn to arbitrate and his decision was as follows: 'Since you, Jupiter gave it spirit, you shall receive that spirit at its death; and since you Earth have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since 'Care' first shaped this creature, she shall posses it as long as it lives. And because there is now a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called 'homo', for it is made out of humus (earth)'

Nice parable, I'd not come across it before. And May goes on to make the point that care is so often missing in our day. Even more true I suspect in 2011 than 1969. He also notes the protests of young people who demonstrate that they do care. Again we should take note in 2011! And care is important with respect to love for it sets apart ongoing relationship from that 'Hippie love' referred to in the previous post.

• May touches on the Hellenistic period and refers to the Stoics, Epicureans, Hedonists etc. and I note from his descriptions that the search for meaning at the realisation in one way or an other of the void has indeed been going on within various cultural ways of seeing for a very long time over the globe. The danger of nihilism in the appreciation of emptiness being wrestled with I guess.

I can't recall what prompted me to note this section and what I wanted to expand but I guess it is that this territory, for me is nicely navigated in the Buddhist and Taoist way. May continues: we only ever have some myth, never truth. And also notes that we don't (as often believed by so many) have fully rational thoughts and decisions. Indeed! A bit of anxious depression can make that all too clear in my own experience. We make tiny little turns of thought and decisions all day long assuming we have assessed the facts. In my experience it is a feeling that is being juggled.

• In the closing pages of the his book May returns to love between man and woman.

I find his assumption that the flow of yin and yang energies in sex requires a heterosexual couple tedious. But I guess his writing reflects the date of the book. His point about care and active receiving is however, well made. Giving is to receive and receiving (actively) is giving. This is so evident in sexual acts. It is fitting I think that at the end of the book having come to talk of giving and receiving that 'Communion of Conciousness' is the title of the final chapter. In this chapter May talks of climax in sexual intercourse and notes union with nature when 'the awareness of separateness lost, blotted out'. Interestingly though he does not expand on this. And the point he might have made is that we loose not just our separateness but our lover and the connection as we disappear into our own orgasm. From my post Everything and Love:

'But in love as apposed to lust, we see the desire for unity, to return to the void. In lust the head long chase for the abandonment to be found in the little death of orgasm. In making love the partial death of self as each flows into the other, heart to heart and only then the temporary slip in to the almost selfless abandonment of orgasm. Yet we do not die, we pull back from our connection with our lover and into our own experience of orgasm, however much we desire to unite. Then gradually we return to the world.'

• May goes on to remind us that Cezanne and Van Gogh have left works which indicate that they saw the world in what seems to be a very direct way. And I guess that this is Tennyson seeing the wild flower in the crannied wall and that these are ways of seeing I do not directly know but that they may well be those spiritual  awakenings referred to by others in other terms.

However we see the world (and there are as many as there are beings) we are left with daily reality. 'Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.' It seems to me that May drawing from the ancients asks us to engage in authentic communion with life, with each other. But I am rolling a few ideas up together here... It's late and I am tired!

Love And Will 2

It was in reading the chapters from part I of Rollo May's Love And Will titled as follows;

Paradoxes of Sex and Love,
Eros in Conflict with Sex,
Love and Death,
Love and the Daimonic,


that I recalled my post Everything and Love, in which in my own way I was trying to express some of the themes which I feel come through in those chapters. And I had intended to explore those themes in greater detail here. However, as the days have gone past I find the matrix of thoughts and feelings which held the vestige of a post has slipped by, passed into that which was. Perhaps in holding the chapter titles in mind and reading the post referred to readers might glimpse something of their own truth.

In part II of the book May looks at the will and explores wish, will and intentionality. For me his thesis brings to mind interdependent origination, the question of to what extent we ever choose and exercise 'free will' and aspects of desire; that leading to growth (Eros) and that leading to enslavement (lust in all its forms). And out of that little pot; vitality. And when I look around I see a great number of people who seem to be asleep; their vitality gone. May seems to be saying something similar and as ever the root of it goes back to fear.

Discussing intentionality in therapy, May under the heading From Wish to Will makes the point that the raw experience of a beautiful day and the fact that one can increase the pleasure by sharing it with a friend 'has profound implications for life, love, death and the ultimate problem of human existence'. He refers to Tennyson looking at the flower in the crannied wall; '...I could understand what God and man is.' I can't claim to have had that experience of God (Buddha nature, the Source...) although I have experienced beauty and the feeling that it is but only half a thing when not shared. But I do feel this need for the awake vital raw experience of authentic living. Might it be stated as Eros the divine life force seeing its own expression?

May goes on to make a point about indiscriminate love or 'Hippie love' as he terms it. It is important here I think to remember the date of the book; 1969. And I would agree with him that a here today gone tomorrow in the moment love lacks commitment and begs the question just how deep such feelings run. I think it important to hold in mind non-attachment, acceptance and that an enlightened being loves all. But this love is outside the scope of everyone I know. Aspects of it are present but we are human and preference always creeps in; the resonance when like parts of the unity come close. Something bigger comes out of giving over time and choosing to keep giving requires selection of who to give to and accept from.

Opening the third part of the book is a chapter titled The Relation of Love and Will and it opens with a quote from Schopenhauer;

'Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious, and the aim of the jest, the inexhaustible source of wit, the key to all allusions, and the meaning of all mysterious hints... just because the profoundest seriousness lies at its foundation.... But all this agrees with the fact that the sexual passion is the kernal of the will to live, and consequently the concentration of all desire; therefore in the text I have called the genital organs the focus of will.'

Yep, 'The Red thread koan'! And how often we talk of people having guts and/or balls. Having, being had, making and bonding; the desire to create and the desire to merge. I'll post later on subsequent chapters.

Love And Will 1

I have been reading Love And Will by the psychoanalyst Rollo May. It was published in 1969 although I have a 1989 edition. In some parts it is dated and rather heterocentric but generally I find it rather 'good stuff' and along the lines of my own thoughts about the nature of the human condition. I have been thinking of writing about some of the ideas in this book related to Eros, the life force which drives everything on to express ever new and changing forms and in so doing shows the void's pregnant possibility. And also the whole question of apparent separateness and the desire for unity. Many of the concepts in the first few chapters of the book are explored with the aid of classical mythology and I think that it is fair to say that what are being perceived are Jungian Archetypes. Anyway, when I feel so inclined, for whilst the excitement of juggling ideas and seeing connections and possible 'truths' might stir the muse, the distillation of the flavours in my mind into some coherent blog post requires her full charm, I will post on all that. But for now, what stirred me to post as well as just getting going with the ideas to be posted, was a paragraph of William James' on getting out of bed! I laughed at this and in so doing had the thought 'ah yes, what is the tension between which incompatible elements (in the mind) which gives rise to the need for its release through the shuddering in the body and the attendant light in the bodymind?' Although the words in my head weren't quite so articulated as that when the basic idea first popped in. James describes lying in bed on a cold morning knowing that one must get up and get on with 'the duties of the day'  yet being disinclined due to the contrast between the warmth and comfort of bed and the cold of the room and goes on;

'Now how do we ever get up under such circumstances? If I may generalise from my own experience, we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. We suddenly find that we have got up. A fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs; we forget both the warmth and the cold and; we fall into some revery connected with the day's life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us, 'Hollo! I must lie here no longer'- an idea which at that lucky instant awakens no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions, and consequently produces immediately its appropriate motor effects.

I am sure we have all been there.