Whether I enter my kitchen from the north or the south door, perched above each door-frame is a 4 x 6 note card, with the word CHANGE. Trying to understand change has been a persistent occupation ever since I was a child. I always wanted to change something, whether it was trying to be a better kickball player or a cooler guy altogether (Pointier black shoes? Longer hair?). I would also note changes in confidence and attitude, like when I slipped from being a 1st section trumpet player to being a denizen of the third. I was blessed with a stable family life, but schools and their concomitant circles of friends kept changing, which kept my radar highly attuned to “What is this now? Who am I now?”
As I look at those questions posed as a 10-year-old, I see that they aren’t really so different from my adult concerns. There are many things I still desperately want to change and things I don’t want to change...so my conclusion is that I am obsessed with change. I’m not sure that this logic is true for everyone, but what is true is that most of us want more happiness, which, by and large, means that something has got to change.
While many of our thoughts about change tend to revolve around relationships and finances, our most secret thoughts are about change from within. With the popularization of self-help, meditation, and therapy, we’ve certainly become much more sophisticated and optimistic about our potential for change; after all, what was once the province of the weird has now become highly visible and well-substantiated through research. We may have previously intuited that yoga, meditation, qi gong, and eating whole foods would lead to positive changes, but now we have scientific proof! (Finally…the great meditation masters can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that science has now proven their favorite pastime isn’t pointless!)
One of the more popular vehicles for change in recent years is the practice of mindfulness. Since the practice of mindfulness was born from the meditative tradition, there have been a lot of questions about its value as a freestanding discipline versus its value as a practice to be embedded within a larger constellation of practice, study and motivation. There are still unanswered questions on both sides of the mindfulness debate, and more long-term studies are needed to raise it to “irrefutable” status in the scientific and educational community.
Because of the many points of view surrounding the mindfulness question, there are various ways it can be taught. It can be taught very simply – completely sanitized of all its Hindu and Buddhist trappings; it can also be taught very traditionally, as in Tibetan Buddhism where the word “meditation” is shorthand for the interwoven practices of learning, contemplating and meditating – a lengthy and multi-disciplined approach to personal and societal change.
Spokespersons from both sides of the debate can be critical of the approach of their colleagues on the opposite side, but in my teaching experience, I’ve seen both approaches taught skillfully, and I’ve seen the value and wisdom of both.
The only shortfall I see occurs when the more challenging and sometimes painful aspects of mindfulness practice are not addressed, because to be perfectly honest, change is directly coupled with mindfulness. Change runs parallel with increased mindfulness. Here’s the thing: the tricky part of mindfulness is that it makes you…well…mind-full. It sparks curiosity and awareness. Mindfulness practice is deep; it is not cosmetic. Yes it can make you look and feel better. Yes there are many positive benefits – reduced stress, reduced levels of cortisol, increased levels of serotonin, and greater appreciation, overall, of the world around you and your place in it. But when you practice mindfulness, you can’t help but be aware of that which undercuts your mindfulness. The more training we do, (spoiler alert!) the more mindful we become of our shortfalls – you know, the things that could use a little bit of change.
What we have here is the old Yin and Yang – two sides of a coin, each very powerful. On one side of the mind-full equation, we become mindful of our goodness and well-being. We might even notice that our mindfulness is inherent; it is already our gift, awaiting further exploration. On the other side, we can’t help but be mindful of what I refer to (with great empathy and humor) as our terrible badness. If we are truly mind-full, we can’t help but acknowledge both our positive and negative tendencies. Oddly enough, it is not just our negative attributes, shame or self-loathing that we avoid copping to; for many of us it is just as difficult to acknowledge our virtues, our gifts and our natural intelligence.
To see all of this – not just how we highlight the positive and downplay the negative – is our gift. When we are courageous enough to unwind our habits, by first seeing them and being mindful of their existence, these elements conspire to produce the very best, most curious questions. These questions are far more interesting and are far more fertile than any treasury of answers we hope to unearth.
The best questions turn out to be those we avoid looking at, and cover up with our most clever justifications – questions that can open up our self imposed limitations; questions about how we do what we do, and why we do them; questions about how we hold back or how we deflect mindfulness. These embryonic questions rate far higher and deeper than the simple shortcuts we call answers. These questions are the jeweled treasure of mindfulness – maybe a little rusty and covered with dust, but precious, once uncovered.
As we are awakened by these questions, we come upon the verge of change. These questions allow us to finally score with mindfulness practice. We’re not just trying to enjoy ourselves more; we’re trying to be more awake – the true expression of mindfulness.
It has been noted that, for centuries, in the Buddhist tradition, there might have been an over-emphasis on the suffering that change brings us. More recently, in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition there has been more emphasis on the good news, such as our own inherent wealth and goodness; but I think it’s okay to revisit to the darker side of human psychology that comes out of the mindfulness-meditation tradition. The darker side tells us that all the very best, most profound questions arise from our difficulties, our pain, and our cognitive dissonance that begs and hollers for an answer.
As a pre-requisite to the answer, we need to have good questions, high-quality questions that we can chew on. With mindfulness practice, we become aware of all that we have not been paying enough attention to. All our goodness and all our terrible badness has been crying out for change, or tugging at us gently, but we just haven’t given it our full attention.
For our own benefit and for the benefit of the world, we must be fully awake and ready to face our darker, more obscure side – our self-deception. We have to. We must. We look at Orlando, Sandy Hook, rapists on campus, child molesters on airplanes – and we can’t just wince and turn away. As they say, We Are Orlando: our inability to face ourselves, for good or for bad, is rooted in the same inability as any perpetrator, with the blackest heart, that we see in the evening news. When I look at the video on YouTube of the guy with 264 rounds of ammunition, an AR 15, and a Glock easily hidden behind his shirt pants and pocket, I know we need to look at that which we don’t want to look at – our fear, our pain, even our horror.
Change comes from fearlessly recognizing our innate, indestructible goodness; change comes from fearlessly recognizing our terrible badness. Hopefully, our pursuit of mindfulness will not lead us towards ignoring either of these.
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Blog #4 Every Name We Call, We Own
It is spring 2016, and here in America, we are deep into the season of passion and aggression. Earlier this week, close to 50 people were slaughtered at Pulse, the gay dance club in Orlando, Florida. That is certainly enough tragedy for one day…oh, except for the other 148 people that were killed by gunfire across America the very same day. Two hundred eighteen…that’s how many Americans were killed by gunfire that day.
And of course, it didn’t take long for the name-calling and finger-pointing to begin. But, that’s what we do, isn’t it? We assign blame. We want to identify who the enemy is, although the enemy is never “us,” it seems. Why is that? The vast majority of us are marked by passion; we are marked by aggression; we are marked by ignorance.
Our aggression may show up as nothing more than calling out “asshole” when someone cuts us off in traffic; it may show up as nothing more than pronouncing someone a “bigot” on Facebook; it may show up as nothing more than thinking, “Jerk!” when the guy across from us in the airport is talking way too loud on his cellphone while we are trying to read.
But wait...who are we directing our anger towards?
I didn't make up these examples. I have done all these things. I have that experience. I am an expert. I have been frustrated; I have been angry; I have been a bigot; I have been inconsiderate; I have been manipulative; I have been aggressive; I have been ignorant. And yes, I have much goodness in me also – I'm not just beating up on myself, but I am not blind to my own negative actions. I am unhappy with myself when I do thoughtless things.
When someone else does these same things, I get annoyed and think their actions are so much more unacceptable than mine. I dislike them with even more negative energy than I direct towards myself in similar circumstances. Why do I temper my own anger towards myself? Because I know that in the end, I have to take care of myself and minimize whatever damage I inflict. The question is, why am I not as aware of that need for self-care in others? I am not completely sure, and I need to remind myself to be more aware of my actions of body, speech and mind. What I am sure of, is that the reason I so clearly and precisely identify others' aggression, is because I have experienced that aggression in myself. It turns out that I am my own research model in my experiment to understand aggression.
A favorite saying from one of my favorite meditation teachers, Fleet Maull, goes like this:
"One of the greatest psychological insights that human beings have ever come up with is that the stuff that bothers us in other people is the most accurate and direct window into our own stuff that we can ever possibly want. So when somebody else is irritating us or doing something that we think is untoward, there's a good chance that if we turn the mirror and look at it the other way, that it's actually our stuff, or at least it's a strong correlate. Otherwise it probably wouldn't bug us very much. At any rate, that's where the juice is, that's where the learning is."
His and my teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, tells us that when we are brave enough to look at our own foibles, we won't find answers, but what is far better is that we allow ourselves to meet the questions we need to understand ourselves and to better interact with the world around us. What are those questions? Who am I? What are these strange things that I do? Why do I do them, and what compels me to keep doing them?
These questions soften us up so that wisdom can enter our beings. As my friend, Melissa, suggested, they break up our addiction to certainty, because if there is one thing that drives our aggression, it is certainty. Extreme religious zealots are overflowing with certainty. I wish Omar Mateen could have lived with less certainty.
If we follow Fleet's lead, we might notice the parallel world of aggression: We might recognize that Rush Limbaugh’s vitriol undoubtedly starts with himself. We might recognize that Omar Mateen didn’t just hate gays, he hated himself for being gay-curious and then cranked that up into horrific violence. And then of course, there are are the Christian pastors who condone the killing of gays while citing scripture…and we all know what is in their hearts – yes; aggression and self-hatred. We know that because we know our aggression and self-hatred – hopefully not as extreme – but we know what it’s like, because none of us are wholly free from aggression.
We know quite well that we can’t fix others’ aggression; we can only work on our own. That is not terrible news, because it means that we are fully capable of opening up our own intelligence. We can allow the necessary questions to arise. We can see who we are. With the help of friends, acquaintances, therapists and/or meditation instructors, we can learn to absorb genuine feedback and take ownership of our own thoughts, words and actions.
We can grow the seed of our intelligence. According to Trungpa, we can take that seed of aggression and all the intelligence required to maintain it, and expand it outwards. That small dot of intelligence that labors so diligently at self-protection, can expand like a nuclear chain reaction.
A quick story.
A week ago, I was in a school gymnasium trying to exert some measure of control over the class I was about to perform with, and a huge, nonstop-talking, ninth-grader started to imitate me and make fun of me. As much as I wanted to make a wisecrack to put him in his place, I acted with decorum (even though I was rattled emotionally). I thought, “Well done!”
But that's simply not enough. As I thought about Trungpa and Fleet, I thought about the amazing intelligence that young ninth-grader possessed. He was extremely skillful at being noncompliant, as well as putting me down. One could say that he was masterful at what he sought to achieve. (And I should add that I have seen that same mastery in a third grader!) None of us welcomes or appreciates that kind of disrespect, but man! – it is crafty and it is intelligent!
My take away on that occasion? Instead of adding aggression to aggression, I need to recognize and acknowledge the fertile soil of intelligence in each individual, regardless of how it shows out. Rather than expressing anger, I could help others recognize the energetic brilliance that fuels their self-protection—even when it shows up as dullness or passive-aggressiveness. The bottom line is that aggression and ignorance is misspent intelligence. It is trapped intelligence, but it can be freed if we can learn to become more comfortable with uncertainty.
Truly dynamic intelligence is rooted in goodness, and self-acceptance. When not recognized and nurtured, it can cause us to die inside – and can potentially cost many innocent lives, as we saw in Orlando and across the USA last Sunday. When we, as a society, are unable to own up to our own aggression, we foment further aggression. And when that aggression is extreme and goes out of control, we need the resources to treat it professionally lest we create further suffering. Sadly, it's not likely to change, here, in this unending season of passion and aggression.
I am so sad for the victims and families in Orlando. I am so sad for us when our ignorance and aggression won’t allow us an opening to see ourselves, and we do and say mean things towards each other. Every name I call, I own. To remind me, I listen to Stevie Wonder sing Sting’s tune, How Fragile We Are.
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
And of course, it didn’t take long for the name-calling and finger-pointing to begin. But, that’s what we do, isn’t it? We assign blame. We want to identify who the enemy is, although the enemy is never “us,” it seems. Why is that? The vast majority of us are marked by passion; we are marked by aggression; we are marked by ignorance.
Our aggression may show up as nothing more than calling out “asshole” when someone cuts us off in traffic; it may show up as nothing more than pronouncing someone a “bigot” on Facebook; it may show up as nothing more than thinking, “Jerk!” when the guy across from us in the airport is talking way too loud on his cellphone while we are trying to read.
But wait...who are we directing our anger towards?
I didn't make up these examples. I have done all these things. I have that experience. I am an expert. I have been frustrated; I have been angry; I have been a bigot; I have been inconsiderate; I have been manipulative; I have been aggressive; I have been ignorant. And yes, I have much goodness in me also – I'm not just beating up on myself, but I am not blind to my own negative actions. I am unhappy with myself when I do thoughtless things.
When someone else does these same things, I get annoyed and think their actions are so much more unacceptable than mine. I dislike them with even more negative energy than I direct towards myself in similar circumstances. Why do I temper my own anger towards myself? Because I know that in the end, I have to take care of myself and minimize whatever damage I inflict. The question is, why am I not as aware of that need for self-care in others? I am not completely sure, and I need to remind myself to be more aware of my actions of body, speech and mind. What I am sure of, is that the reason I so clearly and precisely identify others' aggression, is because I have experienced that aggression in myself. It turns out that I am my own research model in my experiment to understand aggression.
A favorite saying from one of my favorite meditation teachers, Fleet Maull, goes like this:
"One of the greatest psychological insights that human beings have ever come up with is that the stuff that bothers us in other people is the most accurate and direct window into our own stuff that we can ever possibly want. So when somebody else is irritating us or doing something that we think is untoward, there's a good chance that if we turn the mirror and look at it the other way, that it's actually our stuff, or at least it's a strong correlate. Otherwise it probably wouldn't bug us very much. At any rate, that's where the juice is, that's where the learning is."
His and my teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, tells us that when we are brave enough to look at our own foibles, we won't find answers, but what is far better is that we allow ourselves to meet the questions we need to understand ourselves and to better interact with the world around us. What are those questions? Who am I? What are these strange things that I do? Why do I do them, and what compels me to keep doing them?
These questions soften us up so that wisdom can enter our beings. As my friend, Melissa, suggested, they break up our addiction to certainty, because if there is one thing that drives our aggression, it is certainty. Extreme religious zealots are overflowing with certainty. I wish Omar Mateen could have lived with less certainty.
If we follow Fleet's lead, we might notice the parallel world of aggression: We might recognize that Rush Limbaugh’s vitriol undoubtedly starts with himself. We might recognize that Omar Mateen didn’t just hate gays, he hated himself for being gay-curious and then cranked that up into horrific violence. And then of course, there are are the Christian pastors who condone the killing of gays while citing scripture…and we all know what is in their hearts – yes; aggression and self-hatred. We know that because we know our aggression and self-hatred – hopefully not as extreme – but we know what it’s like, because none of us are wholly free from aggression.
We know quite well that we can’t fix others’ aggression; we can only work on our own. That is not terrible news, because it means that we are fully capable of opening up our own intelligence. We can allow the necessary questions to arise. We can see who we are. With the help of friends, acquaintances, therapists and/or meditation instructors, we can learn to absorb genuine feedback and take ownership of our own thoughts, words and actions.
We can grow the seed of our intelligence. According to Trungpa, we can take that seed of aggression and all the intelligence required to maintain it, and expand it outwards. That small dot of intelligence that labors so diligently at self-protection, can expand like a nuclear chain reaction.
A quick story.
A week ago, I was in a school gymnasium trying to exert some measure of control over the class I was about to perform with, and a huge, nonstop-talking, ninth-grader started to imitate me and make fun of me. As much as I wanted to make a wisecrack to put him in his place, I acted with decorum (even though I was rattled emotionally). I thought, “Well done!”
But that's simply not enough. As I thought about Trungpa and Fleet, I thought about the amazing intelligence that young ninth-grader possessed. He was extremely skillful at being noncompliant, as well as putting me down. One could say that he was masterful at what he sought to achieve. (And I should add that I have seen that same mastery in a third grader!) None of us welcomes or appreciates that kind of disrespect, but man! – it is crafty and it is intelligent!
My take away on that occasion? Instead of adding aggression to aggression, I need to recognize and acknowledge the fertile soil of intelligence in each individual, regardless of how it shows out. Rather than expressing anger, I could help others recognize the energetic brilliance that fuels their self-protection—even when it shows up as dullness or passive-aggressiveness. The bottom line is that aggression and ignorance is misspent intelligence. It is trapped intelligence, but it can be freed if we can learn to become more comfortable with uncertainty.
Truly dynamic intelligence is rooted in goodness, and self-acceptance. When not recognized and nurtured, it can cause us to die inside – and can potentially cost many innocent lives, as we saw in Orlando and across the USA last Sunday. When we, as a society, are unable to own up to our own aggression, we foment further aggression. And when that aggression is extreme and goes out of control, we need the resources to treat it professionally lest we create further suffering. Sadly, it's not likely to change, here, in this unending season of passion and aggression.
I am so sad for the victims and families in Orlando. I am so sad for us when our ignorance and aggression won’t allow us an opening to see ourselves, and we do and say mean things towards each other. Every name I call, I own. To remind me, I listen to Stevie Wonder sing Sting’s tune, How Fragile We Are.
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Blog #3 Beyond the Dimming Fog
At this moment, I am in New York City, house-sitting for a family vacationing in Italy. I love coming to NYC to work because I find it easy to write when I am in unfamiliar environs. For instance, I have an unfamiliar refrigerator and pantry, which forces me to eat more simply; because I am travelling, I receive fewer calls and texts which reduces my activity; I don’t have my stereo, TV, car, musical instruments, etc., so hell…I might as well work.
I wrote my book, When Bad Lands, under similar circumstances. Two years ago, I was in NYC for five weeks, writing in a friend’s studio on the 11th floor on the upper west side. I worked hard on my writing, but when I needed to change the channel for my amusement (and for a quick energy fix), I would hit the elevator button, and in one minute, I would be walking down Broadway, where the world was jumping.
Two nights ago, I closed my laptop, descended onto Broadway and took the subway downtown to the Blue Note, to hear the legendary McCoy Tyner and to visit with my friend, Hope Martin. After the set, she and I discussed my recently completed webpage. I expected to sit back and rest on my laurels for having completed such a project, but she gave me some pushback. As she made comments about my work, I couldn’t help notice my mind drifting. I much preferred to plant my feet in the secure ground of what I had understood and unearthed, and I didn’t particularly want to listen to her observations, because her acute observations reminded me that I hadn’t really fully examined my own…in other words, there was still more I needed to investigate.
Hope provided me a mental sketch of what was coming into view for her, bringing together her experience as a long-time Alexander Technique teacher and a meditation instructor. Through her work, The Shape of Awake, she has observed the way people lock out awareness of the world around them, and how this shows up in their body and posture. When people hold attitudes, judgments, hopes and fears about how things are supposed to be, or how they are not measuring up, this all gets sublimated and transferred into the body. We’ve all learned that the mind and body are not separate, but it usually takes a build-up of stress for us to link these two.
Basically, when the mind’s experience runs contrary to the cocoon of habits we surround ourselves with, there is body tension. We go on lock-down. We busy ourselves trying to maintain and project an idealized version of ourselves or try to hold back our negative attributes, and by doing so, we limit our awareness and hold back on the world, as well. What is the result? We are not really in the world that surrounds us; we are trapped inside ourselves.
We’re probably quite familiar with this phenomena: the body tightens, the chest and throat tighten, the shoulders get tense, etc. As we know, these are signs of stress – signs of our hoping that things are otherwise, even when they are not. So we start feeling uncomfortable; maybe even angry. We feel a little off-balance; maybe even panicky.
As Hope explained this concept, a self-generated fog started to gather around me. Deeply shrouded in that fog, messages dimly reverberated in my brain, trying to be heard: “Hey Alan, look – you’re being combative. You are being litigious. You’re trying to be right.” (Of course, it is annoying to recognize this; but as I mentioned in Blog #1, the bane and blessing of my current existence is that I now admit to everything! I don’t want to, but I let myself admit to it. I let myself laugh, and I humble myself. I try to not be afraid of being a fool.)
Out of the mist, I begin to identify this schema I’ve concocted. I definitely hear Hope speaking, but my mind is struggling to sort out this confusion—which is that I am doing exactly what she has been describing! And yes, I am talking to myself in order to cut through my dullness…“Alan, not only is it true, what she’s saying, it’s happening right now, and it’s happening to you!” I feel my body tightening; I notice that I am not really listening; I’m preparing my rebuttal; I feel my body hunkering down...and here it is—my body is doing exactly what my mind is doing; it’s disengaging from the world.
Then it pops. It pops and I am grounded. I come back to my senses. I’m no longer lost in my body that is currently attempting to padlock my mind.
Hope showed me that the body creates a great deal of resistance when the mind is fearful or feels threatened. As the mind and body collude to resist the truth of things as they are – thinking that perhaps we are not good enough, or we are being unjustly challenged – we block our world. We try to manage this cognitive dissonance between the world-as-we-would-like-it, and the world-as-it-is. We generate unnecessary interference so we can remain comfortably ensconced in our habitual patterns. Why? Because, we really don’t want to wake up. It’s too unpredictable out there, so we dismiss the possibility of engaging with the vibrant, pulsating, unpredictable world, and it passes by unnoticed.
Hope recommends that we become extremely friendly with this strange diversionary behavior, because it is actually quite precious to us—these are the activities that have helped us survive. At least, we think they do. We want to be in this world of our own making, because we think that’s how we have always survived and have moved forward. We allow the body/mind to lock down, and close the gate to protect this private space, this comfort zone.
An alternate strategy is to get close to our own misapprehensions, work with them as they are, and own them. As the very astute sociologist, Brené Brown says, “How can we expect someone to give up a way of seeing and understanding the world that has physically, cognitively, or emotionally kept them alive? None of us is ever able to part with our survival strategies without significant support and the cultivation of replacement strategies.” In other words, we can’t simply extract our confused habits and toss them aside. As is said, nature abhors a vacuum, so those things that have sustained us all these years can’t simply be dismissed. We cannot reject who we are and who we have been, because the more we chastise ourselves, the more confused we become and we harden ourselves even more than we already have.
When we own our habits and own who we have been—when we don’t fight that—we soften. We might even begin to relax. When we relax our body and mind, that is the best wakefulness—as good as that of any saint or sage.
How we move to this zone, is to pay more attention to ourselves. We can practice being on the dot…being spot on. Perhaps we could take up mindfulness meditation, which helps us to be kind to ourselves and fearlessly pay attention to our ever-shifting states of mind. In this way, we learn to stay with ourselves and our discomfort over longer periods of time. When we see ourselves as we truly are, without rejecting any part of it, we relax and become friendlier to ourselves over time. Not to be too blunt, but when we feel kinder to ourselves, we stop feeling we’re such fuck-ups.
I am grateful to Hope to be reminded that this journey is never done. I’ve only just scratched the surface of trying to adjust my own screen – trying to adjust my moment-by-moment outlook—so my path forward will bear fruit through kindness and gentleness to myself. As a great teacher of mine, Sakyong Mipham says, it takes wave upon wave of gentleness for us to make lasting changes in ourselves.
Does the mind, alone, change the channel on our ever-morphing psychological state? Definitely not...and the body is its marker. The body is proof. It provides us with definite clues as to whether we are being receptive to this brilliant world or we are trying to shut it down. We discover that we can’t hide the body’s message from ourselves, and we don’t need a dimmer switch to help us survive discomfort.
Can we free ourselves from our body’s lockdown? How about daring to take an even further leap and be willing to admit this not only to ourselves, but to the rest of the world—or at least to our close allies? My guess is that the world will love it.
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
I wrote my book, When Bad Lands, under similar circumstances. Two years ago, I was in NYC for five weeks, writing in a friend’s studio on the 11th floor on the upper west side. I worked hard on my writing, but when I needed to change the channel for my amusement (and for a quick energy fix), I would hit the elevator button, and in one minute, I would be walking down Broadway, where the world was jumping.
Two nights ago, I closed my laptop, descended onto Broadway and took the subway downtown to the Blue Note, to hear the legendary McCoy Tyner and to visit with my friend, Hope Martin. After the set, she and I discussed my recently completed webpage. I expected to sit back and rest on my laurels for having completed such a project, but she gave me some pushback. As she made comments about my work, I couldn’t help notice my mind drifting. I much preferred to plant my feet in the secure ground of what I had understood and unearthed, and I didn’t particularly want to listen to her observations, because her acute observations reminded me that I hadn’t really fully examined my own…in other words, there was still more I needed to investigate.
Hope provided me a mental sketch of what was coming into view for her, bringing together her experience as a long-time Alexander Technique teacher and a meditation instructor. Through her work, The Shape of Awake, she has observed the way people lock out awareness of the world around them, and how this shows up in their body and posture. When people hold attitudes, judgments, hopes and fears about how things are supposed to be, or how they are not measuring up, this all gets sublimated and transferred into the body. We’ve all learned that the mind and body are not separate, but it usually takes a build-up of stress for us to link these two.
Basically, when the mind’s experience runs contrary to the cocoon of habits we surround ourselves with, there is body tension. We go on lock-down. We busy ourselves trying to maintain and project an idealized version of ourselves or try to hold back our negative attributes, and by doing so, we limit our awareness and hold back on the world, as well. What is the result? We are not really in the world that surrounds us; we are trapped inside ourselves.
We’re probably quite familiar with this phenomena: the body tightens, the chest and throat tighten, the shoulders get tense, etc. As we know, these are signs of stress – signs of our hoping that things are otherwise, even when they are not. So we start feeling uncomfortable; maybe even angry. We feel a little off-balance; maybe even panicky.
As Hope explained this concept, a self-generated fog started to gather around me. Deeply shrouded in that fog, messages dimly reverberated in my brain, trying to be heard: “Hey Alan, look – you’re being combative. You are being litigious. You’re trying to be right.” (Of course, it is annoying to recognize this; but as I mentioned in Blog #1, the bane and blessing of my current existence is that I now admit to everything! I don’t want to, but I let myself admit to it. I let myself laugh, and I humble myself. I try to not be afraid of being a fool.)
Out of the mist, I begin to identify this schema I’ve concocted. I definitely hear Hope speaking, but my mind is struggling to sort out this confusion—which is that I am doing exactly what she has been describing! And yes, I am talking to myself in order to cut through my dullness…“Alan, not only is it true, what she’s saying, it’s happening right now, and it’s happening to you!” I feel my body tightening; I notice that I am not really listening; I’m preparing my rebuttal; I feel my body hunkering down...and here it is—my body is doing exactly what my mind is doing; it’s disengaging from the world.
Then it pops. It pops and I am grounded. I come back to my senses. I’m no longer lost in my body that is currently attempting to padlock my mind.
Hope showed me that the body creates a great deal of resistance when the mind is fearful or feels threatened. As the mind and body collude to resist the truth of things as they are – thinking that perhaps we are not good enough, or we are being unjustly challenged – we block our world. We try to manage this cognitive dissonance between the world-as-we-would-like-it, and the world-as-it-is. We generate unnecessary interference so we can remain comfortably ensconced in our habitual patterns. Why? Because, we really don’t want to wake up. It’s too unpredictable out there, so we dismiss the possibility of engaging with the vibrant, pulsating, unpredictable world, and it passes by unnoticed.
Hope recommends that we become extremely friendly with this strange diversionary behavior, because it is actually quite precious to us—these are the activities that have helped us survive. At least, we think they do. We want to be in this world of our own making, because we think that’s how we have always survived and have moved forward. We allow the body/mind to lock down, and close the gate to protect this private space, this comfort zone.
An alternate strategy is to get close to our own misapprehensions, work with them as they are, and own them. As the very astute sociologist, Brené Brown says, “How can we expect someone to give up a way of seeing and understanding the world that has physically, cognitively, or emotionally kept them alive? None of us is ever able to part with our survival strategies without significant support and the cultivation of replacement strategies.” In other words, we can’t simply extract our confused habits and toss them aside. As is said, nature abhors a vacuum, so those things that have sustained us all these years can’t simply be dismissed. We cannot reject who we are and who we have been, because the more we chastise ourselves, the more confused we become and we harden ourselves even more than we already have.
When we own our habits and own who we have been—when we don’t fight that—we soften. We might even begin to relax. When we relax our body and mind, that is the best wakefulness—as good as that of any saint or sage.
How we move to this zone, is to pay more attention to ourselves. We can practice being on the dot…being spot on. Perhaps we could take up mindfulness meditation, which helps us to be kind to ourselves and fearlessly pay attention to our ever-shifting states of mind. In this way, we learn to stay with ourselves and our discomfort over longer periods of time. When we see ourselves as we truly are, without rejecting any part of it, we relax and become friendlier to ourselves over time. Not to be too blunt, but when we feel kinder to ourselves, we stop feeling we’re such fuck-ups.
I am grateful to Hope to be reminded that this journey is never done. I’ve only just scratched the surface of trying to adjust my own screen – trying to adjust my moment-by-moment outlook—so my path forward will bear fruit through kindness and gentleness to myself. As a great teacher of mine, Sakyong Mipham says, it takes wave upon wave of gentleness for us to make lasting changes in ourselves.
Does the mind, alone, change the channel on our ever-morphing psychological state? Definitely not...and the body is its marker. The body is proof. It provides us with definite clues as to whether we are being receptive to this brilliant world or we are trying to shut it down. We discover that we can’t hide the body’s message from ourselves, and we don’t need a dimmer switch to help us survive discomfort.
Can we free ourselves from our body’s lockdown? How about daring to take an even further leap and be willing to admit this not only to ourselves, but to the rest of the world—or at least to our close allies? My guess is that the world will love it.
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Blog #2 The Overlooked Dharma
Ask any self-respecting spiritual type what “The Dharma” is, and you will be told that it is the teaching of the Buddha. Well that’s partially true. Dharma is not just the teachings of the Buddha; it is also a class of phenomena that the Buddha observed. And what is that classification? Things that are actually true; not imagined. Dharma means truth, law, norm, and what it directly points to is how things really are in our world, free of spin, e.g., the earth orbits around the sun; you were born of your mother’s womb; you will suffer in this life; your body will age; at some point you will die. These are indisputable truths. They are equally true for Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, conspiracy theorists, emperors and salamanders.
What the Buddha pointed us towards was the irrefutable truth of dharma; he made no claim to know all the dharmas—he couldn’t possibly—he didn’t live in every time, and he didn’t experience every individual’s life. He didn’t know the dharma of building Trump Towers—although he certainly knew the dharma of manifesting as a Trump. Dharmas can be mundane observations or cosmic principles—the dharma of an iPhone or the dharma of forgiveness. For sophisticated 21st century beings who believe truth is just a relativistic term, the possibility that there can be a dharma—a truth that is free of culture, race, time and prejudice—is a gift to the world…and a very provocative one.
The Dharma of Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, also serves as a template for the remaining dharmas. For example, we can see that his Dharma wasn’t based on personal bias—it had to be unequivocally true. For instance, the Dharma does not include statements such as, “That guy down at the end of the bar—that one right there…he is a dick head.” Or, “Your attitude is entirely unacceptable and I don’t have time for you.” Or, “Some people are real downers…you’ve got to stay away from their negative energy.” These are not dharmas; they are our cherished opinions masquerading as non-negotiable truths.
If the Buddha ever made such statements, we would not have respect for him. He didn’t give opinions; he wasn’t ideological; he didn’t offer salvation for believers, nor did he offer eternal damnation for nonbelievers. He simply spoke of the Dharma of how-things-are; untainted by projection or exaggeration.
So what is this Overlooked Dharma? It is dharma that we mortals can experience—dharmas born of the wisdom, experience and clear seeing of our own inherent wakefulness. After all, wakefulness did not only happen in ancient times; there is much modern and ancient Dharma that was not disclosed by the Buddha. There is the Dharma that Jesus taught; the Dharma that Mohammed taught—there is even Dharma on Oprah.
I watched Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday and saw Brené Brown give an outstanding Dharma talk on the subject of trust. I was already familiar with her dharma teachings on shame, so I looked forward to her research and observations on this equally woolly subject. She unpacked the term, trust, and described its seven qualities. You can examine these for yourself if you’d like to do a search on the Internet; but the point is that she was teaching Dharma. She was teaching based on keen observations, not on speculation or opinion.
Another mother-lode of dharma was often expounded by my friend Tom. Tom was an Irishman who loved to tell stories—which always required some embellishing or BS, so he didn’t always speak the Dharma. But when he did, it came out like a sharp sword—inarguable and undeniable. Tom was a streetwise Dharma King. For Tom, who grew up poor and gang-afflicted in Brooklyn, being observant was an essential survival tool. Although Tom was unable to figure himself out at times, he could definitely figure out other people in a New York minute. He couldn’t always discriminate his own bullshit from the truth, but he could see through mine instantaneously—and to my great consternation and benefit, he was unable to keep it to himself.
Here are a couple of my favorite street-wise dharma observations from Tom: “If you are trying to figure out what to do in a difficult situation; first, look at the best thing that could happen, and then look at the worst thing that could happen. Now, make your decision based on that.” Or, “Everyone has positive attributes and everyone has negative attributes. You have more positive attributes than you have negative attributes; that’s why you're a friend.” Because I was willing to ride the angles of refraction off Tom’s insights, I absorbed many great insights and dharmas from him. When I went through my darkest times, I was always amazed that his street-smart observations were as valuable as those of therapists and buddhas.
Because students of the Buddha have such a brilliant example of someone who knew how to discern a dharma, and communicate it clearly, they can err and consider only the Buddha’s Dharma to be sacred. Because the Buddha was a dharma star, it is easy to forget that we, too, are supposed to learn how to discern a dharma for ourselves—not simply adhere to one sacrosanct set of dharmas. When we don’t understand that the spiritual journey is one of learning to discern the truth, we miss a lot of dharmas. We miss a lot of plain truths. We get hemmed in by our sectarian leanings and instead, stop doing the most important thing required of a so-called spiritual person, which is getting to know oneself fully, without recoiling from any uncomfortable truths that may arise.
What benefit is there when we gently and fearlessly know ourselves, and own what we do? We develop genuine compassion—the hallmark of all the world’s great religions and all enlightened human activity. Compassion is born of understanding ourselves, because without it, we cannot truly understand others.
This morning, while conversing with my best friend, we laughed at tales of my dear and wonderful dad who passed away a number of years ago. While being one of the finest people I’ve ever known, he—like the rest of us—had quirks and foibles that sprung loose at the oddest times. I recalled how he, like so many men of his generation, never really got to recognize or acknowledge how much work his spouse did to keep the household running. It wasn’t until my mom passed away that he finally had to come face-to-face with the dharma of how to to operate a wash machine. I remember how sweetly he expressed his long-overdue appreciation for her work, and how very humbling this was for him. I also recalled how my younger sister once had to teach him to actually look at his servers in a restaurant and speak to them like they were regular human beings.
Still, he was a very aware person, and I learned from him that we could reveal our seething irritations and blunders and laugh about how ridiculous we can be at times…like the time he purposely and repeatedly flopped his New York Times on the head of the airline passenger directly in front of him because the man tilted his seat back into my dad’s purported space…or the time we were at a drive-in restaurant, and upon receiving his handful of change, he put it in his mouth rather than putting the ice cream cone there.
We all have our moments where the dharma-of-what-is runs in high contrast to how we’d rather things were. We prefer not to acknowledge our actions at those times when we feel embarrassed about them or their unwanted consequences. (That we hide our embarrassing actions out of fear—that’s an overlooked dharma, too.) But to err is human—we've all had a foot or two in this boat of self-consciousness, trying to protect ourselves from being seen in an unforgiving light. We needn’t pretend things are otherwise.
A dharma occurs when we see the world as it is, free from projections, defensiveness and prejudice. One of the most potent repositories of Dharma is located in the back stacks of our personal library. There, the truth about ourselves is our passkey if we aspire to be fearless and own up to who we are. If we can’t embrace that aspiration, forget about religion, forget about your spiritual quest—none of it is going to flower until we really get to know ourselves.
None of it is going to happen until we fully appreciate our positive attributes, and stop ignoring our negative ones. Yes, it goes both ways—some of us hide from our goodness; some of us hide from our terrible badness. The key to become a genuine spiritual person is to stop lying to yourself about yourself. That’s the first Dharma…the primary Dharma. Without that, our Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Scientology, or secular humanism is just a screen-saver—a glossy and hypnotic diversion while our program rests on pause.
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
What the Buddha pointed us towards was the irrefutable truth of dharma; he made no claim to know all the dharmas—he couldn’t possibly—he didn’t live in every time, and he didn’t experience every individual’s life. He didn’t know the dharma of building Trump Towers—although he certainly knew the dharma of manifesting as a Trump. Dharmas can be mundane observations or cosmic principles—the dharma of an iPhone or the dharma of forgiveness. For sophisticated 21st century beings who believe truth is just a relativistic term, the possibility that there can be a dharma—a truth that is free of culture, race, time and prejudice—is a gift to the world…and a very provocative one.
The Dharma of Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, also serves as a template for the remaining dharmas. For example, we can see that his Dharma wasn’t based on personal bias—it had to be unequivocally true. For instance, the Dharma does not include statements such as, “That guy down at the end of the bar—that one right there…he is a dick head.” Or, “Your attitude is entirely unacceptable and I don’t have time for you.” Or, “Some people are real downers…you’ve got to stay away from their negative energy.” These are not dharmas; they are our cherished opinions masquerading as non-negotiable truths.
If the Buddha ever made such statements, we would not have respect for him. He didn’t give opinions; he wasn’t ideological; he didn’t offer salvation for believers, nor did he offer eternal damnation for nonbelievers. He simply spoke of the Dharma of how-things-are; untainted by projection or exaggeration.
So what is this Overlooked Dharma? It is dharma that we mortals can experience—dharmas born of the wisdom, experience and clear seeing of our own inherent wakefulness. After all, wakefulness did not only happen in ancient times; there is much modern and ancient Dharma that was not disclosed by the Buddha. There is the Dharma that Jesus taught; the Dharma that Mohammed taught—there is even Dharma on Oprah.
I watched Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday and saw Brené Brown give an outstanding Dharma talk on the subject of trust. I was already familiar with her dharma teachings on shame, so I looked forward to her research and observations on this equally woolly subject. She unpacked the term, trust, and described its seven qualities. You can examine these for yourself if you’d like to do a search on the Internet; but the point is that she was teaching Dharma. She was teaching based on keen observations, not on speculation or opinion.
Another mother-lode of dharma was often expounded by my friend Tom. Tom was an Irishman who loved to tell stories—which always required some embellishing or BS, so he didn’t always speak the Dharma. But when he did, it came out like a sharp sword—inarguable and undeniable. Tom was a streetwise Dharma King. For Tom, who grew up poor and gang-afflicted in Brooklyn, being observant was an essential survival tool. Although Tom was unable to figure himself out at times, he could definitely figure out other people in a New York minute. He couldn’t always discriminate his own bullshit from the truth, but he could see through mine instantaneously—and to my great consternation and benefit, he was unable to keep it to himself.
Here are a couple of my favorite street-wise dharma observations from Tom: “If you are trying to figure out what to do in a difficult situation; first, look at the best thing that could happen, and then look at the worst thing that could happen. Now, make your decision based on that.” Or, “Everyone has positive attributes and everyone has negative attributes. You have more positive attributes than you have negative attributes; that’s why you're a friend.” Because I was willing to ride the angles of refraction off Tom’s insights, I absorbed many great insights and dharmas from him. When I went through my darkest times, I was always amazed that his street-smart observations were as valuable as those of therapists and buddhas.
Because students of the Buddha have such a brilliant example of someone who knew how to discern a dharma, and communicate it clearly, they can err and consider only the Buddha’s Dharma to be sacred. Because the Buddha was a dharma star, it is easy to forget that we, too, are supposed to learn how to discern a dharma for ourselves—not simply adhere to one sacrosanct set of dharmas. When we don’t understand that the spiritual journey is one of learning to discern the truth, we miss a lot of dharmas. We miss a lot of plain truths. We get hemmed in by our sectarian leanings and instead, stop doing the most important thing required of a so-called spiritual person, which is getting to know oneself fully, without recoiling from any uncomfortable truths that may arise.
What benefit is there when we gently and fearlessly know ourselves, and own what we do? We develop genuine compassion—the hallmark of all the world’s great religions and all enlightened human activity. Compassion is born of understanding ourselves, because without it, we cannot truly understand others.
This morning, while conversing with my best friend, we laughed at tales of my dear and wonderful dad who passed away a number of years ago. While being one of the finest people I’ve ever known, he—like the rest of us—had quirks and foibles that sprung loose at the oddest times. I recalled how he, like so many men of his generation, never really got to recognize or acknowledge how much work his spouse did to keep the household running. It wasn’t until my mom passed away that he finally had to come face-to-face with the dharma of how to to operate a wash machine. I remember how sweetly he expressed his long-overdue appreciation for her work, and how very humbling this was for him. I also recalled how my younger sister once had to teach him to actually look at his servers in a restaurant and speak to them like they were regular human beings.
Still, he was a very aware person, and I learned from him that we could reveal our seething irritations and blunders and laugh about how ridiculous we can be at times…like the time he purposely and repeatedly flopped his New York Times on the head of the airline passenger directly in front of him because the man tilted his seat back into my dad’s purported space…or the time we were at a drive-in restaurant, and upon receiving his handful of change, he put it in his mouth rather than putting the ice cream cone there.
We all have our moments where the dharma-of-what-is runs in high contrast to how we’d rather things were. We prefer not to acknowledge our actions at those times when we feel embarrassed about them or their unwanted consequences. (That we hide our embarrassing actions out of fear—that’s an overlooked dharma, too.) But to err is human—we've all had a foot or two in this boat of self-consciousness, trying to protect ourselves from being seen in an unforgiving light. We needn’t pretend things are otherwise.
A dharma occurs when we see the world as it is, free from projections, defensiveness and prejudice. One of the most potent repositories of Dharma is located in the back stacks of our personal library. There, the truth about ourselves is our passkey if we aspire to be fearless and own up to who we are. If we can’t embrace that aspiration, forget about religion, forget about your spiritual quest—none of it is going to flower until we really get to know ourselves.
None of it is going to happen until we fully appreciate our positive attributes, and stop ignoring our negative ones. Yes, it goes both ways—some of us hide from our goodness; some of us hide from our terrible badness. The key to become a genuine spiritual person is to stop lying to yourself about yourself. That’s the first Dharma…the primary Dharma. Without that, our Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Scientology, or secular humanism is just a screen-saver—a glossy and hypnotic diversion while our program rests on pause.
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Blog #1 I Admit to Everything
It is 4 AM. I am awake and disturbed. I imagine I am not the only one going through this – there must be thousands of people in the world, who at this very moment are thinking, “How did I get to this place?” “Why am I such a mess?” or “Please let me get back to sleep!” to no one in particular. Our disturbances lie in the brain…everybody’s brain. If you don’t want to be disturbed, don’t look at the brain.
My brain, your brain…all our brains are intensely driven. They are also brilliant; they are astounding. The brain can execute even the most flawed psychological coding with extraordinary precision. We can update or re-program ourselves with the worst software if we so choose—and our brain will make it work. That can be problematic as our brain can quite easily hide mistakes in the background; it can distort our strengths and weaknesses so we don’t have to disrupt our programming; it can re-write our histories, and it can soothe all manner of contradictions so that we can justify any and all missteps. It can fly us too close to the sun, where we catch fire and burn.
What does this have to do with anything? On to the back-story:
Having taken well over a year to weather a painful but necessary breakdown, I decided to write a book about it. It was originally entitled, Buddhist Wisdom for When You Feel Broken. When I asked Michael Carroll, author of Awake at Work and many other titles, what he thought about my writing, he said I had a unique voice and story, “…but the title—it sounds like Pema*; but with tears.” (Michael’s a funny guy.) To pinpoint the book’s message more precisely, he suggested changing the title to, “Stop Fucking Lying to Yourself.” (Like I said…funny.) He also suggested I start right away on a second book.
His expletive-rich title stuck with me. He nailed it. It clearly identified the essential point I was trying to make—that we are so often trapped in our own story that we not only try to convince the world of it, we have the balls to try and convince our self. And we succeed. Why I find this fascinating is its applicability to self-identified “spiritual people” (like me) who feel they are essentially immune to self-deception by virtue of their spiritual practice.
I rewrote the book, entitling it, When Bad Lands. In it, I focused more keenly on the culture of lies and distortions we swim in, and what it would take to reverse that. The main diagnosis and antidotes were drawn from a number of sources, most notably my personal experience falling apart; some extraordinarily spot-on Buddhist teachings, and the work of social scientist, Brené Brown.
That seems to be a reasonable enough overview, right? Man loses self; Man finds self; Man writes a book about it. Up until this time, the driving force for me was to learn to overcome self-deception, and to hopefully reboot my spiritual pursuits and my meditation practice. It seemed to me that this was the obvious conclusion. I would start again with a fresh slate…a blank slate. Book written! Clean slate! Back to square one!
Go!
No.
It turns out that overcoming self-deception doesn’t mean that something is over; it means that something has just begun. As we know, nature abhors a vacuum; so in the budding absence of self-deception, I now find myself with a tsunami of self-perception. Surprise! It’s not peace and tranquility – it’s Perception! Lots of perception! Lots of self-perception! Didn’t see that coming.
On the surface, that might sound quite good; but it’s actually a mixed bag. Without a doubt, self-deception takes up way too much RAM, so if you can free yourself from that, the world can really open up. “Lots of Perception” is a definite plus and it can become increasingly stabilized through meditation practice. So it’s not something to acquire; it’s not something you strive for. It is something that shows up when your attention is not caught up in the past and the future. It’s a gift; that’s why they call it the present!
So here is the remainder in the mixed bag: I find myself now immersed in this new raw experience of witnessing all of my mistakes and confusion as they manifest. It’s like the genie in the lamp said, “Okay, you said you wanted to overcome your avoidance issues…and your self-deception? Alright, Here Comes Everything! Knock yourself out!”
So here it is…aggression, doubt, mistake after every mistake, irritation upon irritation—and there’s nowhere to hide it. I see that I interfere, interrupt, micromanage; I say irresponsible things and then I have to back it down to somehow regain the peace that I have shattered. So, I’m curious, audience—is everyone like this? Do we all slog through this parade of moving violations? As I look out, it doesn’t appear so. So let’s say, I’m a bit concerned. (I’m reluctant to use a smiley face, but :-)
Actually, I don’t feel terrible about this. I don’t mind admitting it at all, because I don’t feel it’s who I am; it’s just what I do. I have learned from teacher Fleet Maull that these habits are largely due to our unacknowledged core wound that we carry from childhood. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry; but for me, owning all this is a great gift that often causes much laughter between me and whoever is around to share in my circus. Mostly, I find it all very curious. I find myself amazed that as a long-time meditator, I have not discovered that legendary oneness or inner peace. I have discovered my inherent goodness, but I have also discovered my terrible badness. (He says lovingly!)
In following my own advice from the book, I really have done a pretty good job of stopping fucking lying to myself. I am confident that I have written a genuine Dharma book, and I feel my advice is good, but while in heavy pursuit of overcoming self-deception, I failed to consider that a clean slate would not be the likely or only outcome. Traditionally, the spiritual path allows us to really see what is there. So it is all there…for good and bad…and as in the title of this blog, I now have to admit to everything!
There are so many ways to talk about our goodness and our aspirations. But I think it is important that we talk about our goodness as well as our so-called “badness,” because what is spirituality if it doesn’t help us to know ourselves inside out and backwards as a prerequisite to whatever journey we are about to undertake?
So, it’s not pretty; it’s just necessary.
Am I the only one thinking thoughts like this at 4 in the morning? Probably not – people are feeling disturbed everywhere, at all times. At this very moment, I’m sure there are millions of people wondering how in the world their life turned upside down, and how they ended up where they are.
Anyhow, I wrote a book about this. I wrote a book how I fell sharply and precipitously into a hell of my own making. And then, through the help of an extraordinary group of teachers, I found a way to work with the situation. The results? Well it’s definitely a work in progress, but the result is that I’m having a really hard time being as ignorant as I used to be. Ignorance is bliss – it really is. But we can own it and challenge ourselves to take a leap in another direction.
I wrote the book, When Bad Lands, to give encouragement to people whose ignorance has caused them to malfunction—people who are spinning out, crashing and burning, all at once. I also wrote it for people who have concern or agreement about their spiritual practice perhaps being too biased towards peace or over-achievement. I hope you enjoy reading excerpts from When Bad Lands, (today I will post the first excerpt from the Preface.)
I write this because what I’ve described has been so painful, but so rewarding; therefore I thought it was worth sharing. I hope that you will feel moved to comment on the excerpts or on this blog. If it’s not your cup of tea, thank you anyhow, for dropping by!
*Pema Chodron, well-known American-born Tibetan-Buddhist monastic.
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
My brain, your brain…all our brains are intensely driven. They are also brilliant; they are astounding. The brain can execute even the most flawed psychological coding with extraordinary precision. We can update or re-program ourselves with the worst software if we so choose—and our brain will make it work. That can be problematic as our brain can quite easily hide mistakes in the background; it can distort our strengths and weaknesses so we don’t have to disrupt our programming; it can re-write our histories, and it can soothe all manner of contradictions so that we can justify any and all missteps. It can fly us too close to the sun, where we catch fire and burn.
What does this have to do with anything? On to the back-story:
Having taken well over a year to weather a painful but necessary breakdown, I decided to write a book about it. It was originally entitled, Buddhist Wisdom for When You Feel Broken. When I asked Michael Carroll, author of Awake at Work and many other titles, what he thought about my writing, he said I had a unique voice and story, “…but the title—it sounds like Pema*; but with tears.” (Michael’s a funny guy.) To pinpoint the book’s message more precisely, he suggested changing the title to, “Stop Fucking Lying to Yourself.” (Like I said…funny.) He also suggested I start right away on a second book.
His expletive-rich title stuck with me. He nailed it. It clearly identified the essential point I was trying to make—that we are so often trapped in our own story that we not only try to convince the world of it, we have the balls to try and convince our self. And we succeed. Why I find this fascinating is its applicability to self-identified “spiritual people” (like me) who feel they are essentially immune to self-deception by virtue of their spiritual practice.
I rewrote the book, entitling it, When Bad Lands. In it, I focused more keenly on the culture of lies and distortions we swim in, and what it would take to reverse that. The main diagnosis and antidotes were drawn from a number of sources, most notably my personal experience falling apart; some extraordinarily spot-on Buddhist teachings, and the work of social scientist, Brené Brown.
That seems to be a reasonable enough overview, right? Man loses self; Man finds self; Man writes a book about it. Up until this time, the driving force for me was to learn to overcome self-deception, and to hopefully reboot my spiritual pursuits and my meditation practice. It seemed to me that this was the obvious conclusion. I would start again with a fresh slate…a blank slate. Book written! Clean slate! Back to square one!
Go!
No.
It turns out that overcoming self-deception doesn’t mean that something is over; it means that something has just begun. As we know, nature abhors a vacuum; so in the budding absence of self-deception, I now find myself with a tsunami of self-perception. Surprise! It’s not peace and tranquility – it’s Perception! Lots of perception! Lots of self-perception! Didn’t see that coming.
On the surface, that might sound quite good; but it’s actually a mixed bag. Without a doubt, self-deception takes up way too much RAM, so if you can free yourself from that, the world can really open up. “Lots of Perception” is a definite plus and it can become increasingly stabilized through meditation practice. So it’s not something to acquire; it’s not something you strive for. It is something that shows up when your attention is not caught up in the past and the future. It’s a gift; that’s why they call it the present!
So here is the remainder in the mixed bag: I find myself now immersed in this new raw experience of witnessing all of my mistakes and confusion as they manifest. It’s like the genie in the lamp said, “Okay, you said you wanted to overcome your avoidance issues…and your self-deception? Alright, Here Comes Everything! Knock yourself out!”
So here it is…aggression, doubt, mistake after every mistake, irritation upon irritation—and there’s nowhere to hide it. I see that I interfere, interrupt, micromanage; I say irresponsible things and then I have to back it down to somehow regain the peace that I have shattered. So, I’m curious, audience—is everyone like this? Do we all slog through this parade of moving violations? As I look out, it doesn’t appear so. So let’s say, I’m a bit concerned. (I’m reluctant to use a smiley face, but :-)
Actually, I don’t feel terrible about this. I don’t mind admitting it at all, because I don’t feel it’s who I am; it’s just what I do. I have learned from teacher Fleet Maull that these habits are largely due to our unacknowledged core wound that we carry from childhood. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry; but for me, owning all this is a great gift that often causes much laughter between me and whoever is around to share in my circus. Mostly, I find it all very curious. I find myself amazed that as a long-time meditator, I have not discovered that legendary oneness or inner peace. I have discovered my inherent goodness, but I have also discovered my terrible badness. (He says lovingly!)
In following my own advice from the book, I really have done a pretty good job of stopping fucking lying to myself. I am confident that I have written a genuine Dharma book, and I feel my advice is good, but while in heavy pursuit of overcoming self-deception, I failed to consider that a clean slate would not be the likely or only outcome. Traditionally, the spiritual path allows us to really see what is there. So it is all there…for good and bad…and as in the title of this blog, I now have to admit to everything!
There are so many ways to talk about our goodness and our aspirations. But I think it is important that we talk about our goodness as well as our so-called “badness,” because what is spirituality if it doesn’t help us to know ourselves inside out and backwards as a prerequisite to whatever journey we are about to undertake?
So, it’s not pretty; it’s just necessary.
Am I the only one thinking thoughts like this at 4 in the morning? Probably not – people are feeling disturbed everywhere, at all times. At this very moment, I’m sure there are millions of people wondering how in the world their life turned upside down, and how they ended up where they are.
Anyhow, I wrote a book about this. I wrote a book how I fell sharply and precipitously into a hell of my own making. And then, through the help of an extraordinary group of teachers, I found a way to work with the situation. The results? Well it’s definitely a work in progress, but the result is that I’m having a really hard time being as ignorant as I used to be. Ignorance is bliss – it really is. But we can own it and challenge ourselves to take a leap in another direction.
I wrote the book, When Bad Lands, to give encouragement to people whose ignorance has caused them to malfunction—people who are spinning out, crashing and burning, all at once. I also wrote it for people who have concern or agreement about their spiritual practice perhaps being too biased towards peace or over-achievement. I hope you enjoy reading excerpts from When Bad Lands, (today I will post the first excerpt from the Preface.)
I write this because what I’ve described has been so painful, but so rewarding; therefore I thought it was worth sharing. I hope that you will feel moved to comment on the excerpts or on this blog. If it’s not your cup of tea, thank you anyhow, for dropping by!
*Pema Chodron, well-known American-born Tibetan-Buddhist monastic.
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
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