I am talking to a friend with whom I have been struggling for a while. We have not been in conflict as such, but there has been some kind of unpleasant tension between us. In myself I have noticed there is a mix of fear and resentment arising when we haven’t talked for a while. It is particularly unpleasant as we have been talking about doing a big project together and our dynamic seems to be standing in the way of that. At least I feel blocked.
We go for a walk and he tells me that he has been angry and that he’s told me that he wants to talk about it, but that I haven’t responded. I tell him that I am available now.
Later, as we are sitting on his couch in a small and cozy apartment in Stockholm, he tells me, gently but firmly, that the invitation I have given him – that I want to work with him to not be in competition with him – is a pretty crappy invitation. It’s obviously true. As I take it in, he goes on to model a better invitation, by telling me what he appreciates about me and my work.
It is like something shifts in me. I get in touch with the part of me that really struggles when I am around people, who are competent in the same fields as I am. It is suddenly more available to feel and show the fear clearly. I ask him to acknowledge that it is real for me. That I am not consciously trying to harm him, but rather that there is something that I actually really don’t know how to navigate when it comes to collaborating with peers. I feel shaky, but there is also more space for love between us.
Paradoxically, meeting the part in me that really is struggling when it comes to collaboration and allowing it to be “real”, is also what liberates me from it, by opening an alternative pathway in my mind. When I am willing to be really seen in my challenges and fears around collaboration, I can start the work of trying something new. It is by no means easy, but it is possible.
In Gestalt therapy, the “paradox of change” points to how real change occurs when a person accepts who they are, not when they try to become someone they are not. I have seen this happening live again and again while leading Circling & Surrendered Leadership workshops or when I am giving Body Therapy treatments. When the truth comes through it stops having a stranglehold on the person and it stops being true. The identification loses its grip.
We all seem to be trapped in one way or another, in a world of our own. We create reality for ourselves through interpreting our perceptions and then live in that world of interpretations as if it is real.
“Awareness precedes change” says Peter Ralston, one of my great martial arts inspirations. I have met Peter a couple of times at workshops in Copenhagen and some 15 years ago, if life hadn’t happened, I would have gone to study under him in his dojo in Texas. He is a mix of crazy-wisdom Zen guru and fierce, lightning speed martial arts mentor. I have read several of his books (and bought even more without reading them) and feel inspired by his mix of deep reflection and practical application.
A core teaching in Tai Chi is about not getting stuck. We practice never getting your mind stuck in the place of your body where you are grabbed or pushed. If your mind gets stuck you will tense up and will be easy to move. This happens immediately if you go into fight or flight. You perceive a problem and you react in the attempt to try to change it. However, if you are not tensing up by focusing on that one place, it is possible to stay mobile and responsive. There is no problem that needs solving. You are in relationship with reality and can respond appropriately.
It is not as easy as it sounds though.
We can get our mind stuck on a problem or a state in a way where we have a hard time getting out of it again. We ruminate, go into “moods” or even start becoming identified with the experience in a way where it becomes a core part of our personality. With a word from design theory the experience becomes “blackboxed”, It becomes the only viable pathway to take and we don’t experience it as if we are doing anything – it is just who we are.
This is how I understand Karma. Simply as a pointer to how our own unconscious doing is getting in the way of leading an effortless life without too much suffering for ourselves and others. We make up or internalize rules about what it is like to be human, that don’t serve ourselves or the people we love.
The wondrous thing is that it doesn’t have to be that way. When we start becoming more aware of our doing, we have the opportunity to open the blackbox and see alternate courses of action. The simple gift of becoming aware makes it possible to notice that choice is available.
In the words of Robert Kegan it opens for a Subject/Object shift. The move from being subject to something, being identified with it and seeing it as “me”, to noticing that it is something I have or do and that it is possible to do something differently. The gift of awareness is the potential to step out of the habitual. To “see your karma” and choose to move in a different way.
Instead of immediately moving with the habitual conclusion, we can slow down, notice what is happening in our bodies, our emotions and our thoughts. We open the blackbox to see the perceptions and the reasoning that form our habitual way of being and doing. This is some of what we do in awakening practices such as sitting meditation and in martial arts practices such as Tai Chi. We build sensitivity and awareness around our own experience.
Even better, we can name and test our perceptions and reasoning system in connection with others. In practices such as Circling & Surrendered Leadership we let others into our immediate present moment experience, and in a slowed down space we get feedback on the impact of what we bring. This allows us to see our own doing in action and often opens up for, if not different action, than the awareness that different action is possible.
Am I contracted or expanded?
The “move” is in some ways ridiculously simple. To identify less with the immediate experience of contraction and instead hold that experience as a part to recognise within a bigger field of awareness. This simple shift can be key to understanding myself in any situation. Beautifully, noticing that I am contracted is already widening my awareness.
However, in our attempt to not be identified with the contraction, we can start identifying with the expansion instead. We bypass our lived experience by leaving the contraction because the widened state feels better and in the process we again disconnect from a dimension of reality. In the attempt to not be “wrong” (by for example experiencing oneself as judgemental), we can abandon a part of ourselves, while the identification stays the same.
The alternative seems to be to “widen” and become the space that can hold the contraction with love and kindness. I am judgemental, but I am also the space that recognizes that I am.
The process for me is connected to “emptying out”. Bringing forth what is inside to become less and less identified with a separate self.
This move also points to the difference between flow states and triggered states. At a first glance these might seem quite similar. Whether triggered or in flow you are completely immersed in the experience you are having – but in a flow state I am still “wide”, while I dont have the sense of width when I am immersed in a contracted state.
How to change your mind
In “How minds change”, a book about how to talk to people you disagree with, David McRaney describes how you can’t change someone’s mind by giving them your facts because the way they make sense of and interpret those facts (he talks about the different ways we “disambiguate”) will be different to yours. He argues for a different approach, which is to be with the other while they are exploring their epistemology. By being curious and openly investigating how someone makes sense of the world you allow them to see that their firmly held beliefs might actually be based on a relatively shaky foundation.
The risk is that you might discover that your own thinking is similarly flawed. The willingness to be in open exploration and to potentially change your own mind seems to be the key to changing the mind of someone else.
Similarly in Circling & Surrendered Leadership it is clear that I cannot tell someone to change their identifications. What I can do is to be present with them while they explore the ways in which they are identified with particular ways of being – and through that possibly notice that they can do something else.
The traps of becoming more aware
The risk (or one risk at least) in this process, is that becoming aware that something could be different, can lead to self shaming, making oneself wrong and collapsing. The idea that I should already be able to do the thing that I am now discovering can be a powerful barrier for growth.
We can start spiraling and become identified with our wrongness, rather than seeing the widened awareness as an opportunity for transformation.
We become over-invested in our own suffering and begin to believe that it unique to us, which in itself is a source of more contraction. At least in my experience I seem to “fall into myself” when this happens. I loose connection with the world. Usually what it takes to get out of this state is to start noticing that someone else (Or rather: everyone else – it is the human condition) is also in trouble.
Another way this shows up for me is that I can find myself being incredibly loyal to my past self. I won’t allow myself to be in a new way, that from a rational perspective would lead to more love and connection in my life, because that would mean that I would have to acknowledge that I have done it wrong for the last 30 something years. It seems to work something like this. I have suffered for this belief and I am not going to let all of that suffering be wasted by leaving it behind. I stay identified with a destructive pattern to avoid the shame of having done something that now starts to seem silly or wrong.
Yet another trap I can see for myself has the form of not letting myself grow (be the better person) if the other doesn’t want to show up vulnerably with me. I can find myself being surprisingly unwilling and stubborn if the other is not willing to admit that they are also flawed. The hangup seems to be that I won’t be the “weaker” part in the relationship.
This is pretty stupid. Limiting my own possibility for growth based on someone else’s (possible) unwillingness.
In Tai Chi we talk about “investment in loss”, which implies allowing yourself to be the yielding part of the relationship, following the direction of the other, while staying grounded. If I translate this “investment in loss” into a heuristic for day-to-day relating it would mean welcoming widened awareness when it is available.
Turning towards the longing
Last week I had a coaching call with someone who had participated in a training a while back. We were talking about the challenge of welcoming aliveness, joy and lifeforce, all the stuff we want in life, and how easy it is to focus on the challenges and the anxiety of doing something new.
At some point during the call I became aware that it was available for me to make a subtle inner move – simply turning towards the longing, allowing myself to experience the potential richness of the unknown while also welcoming the scared part of me. It felt wonderfully soft and like such a powerful thing to do for myself. Trusting the beauty of the new, while honouring the old.
During a Circling & Surrendered Leadership weekend I led recently I had a beautiful image coming up. I noticed that how I, when I become aware of a sense of something frozen in me (which happens alot these days), it has become more available for me to look at the beauty of the thawing process, than to go into the freeze.
This is what I want to practice.
