Hi there,

Just a cou­ple of notes, before we get into the article.

First, thanks for the com­ments re. the blog and the new sub­scrip­tion plan. A reader from GB let me know she liked read­ing each new arti­cle as e-mail, and that got the ball rolling. Never mind that, for the first sev­eral years of ITC, I sent the whole thing out…

The more things change…

Sec­ond, I don’t know about you, but Dar­bella and I have been get­ting ‘tons’ of fake e-mails say­ing some­thing to the effect that “You’ve received an e-card…” We use a pro­gram called Mail­Washer (free ver­sion) that lets us view our e-mails on our server, so we don’t down­load crap. If you look at the sender, it might say “Hallmark.com” or what­ever, but the last part of the e-mail address is always some­thing lame and over­seas. Need­less to say, if you click on one of these you are going to infect your com­puter. So dump ‘em, ya hear???!!!

Third, here’s a mini-review (I get paid to review sites some­times) of an excel­lent Health Edu­ca­tion infor­ma­tion site.

For those of you that have been read­ing Into the Cen­tre and brows­ing the web­site, you’ll not be sur­prised to see a series of arti­cles appear­ing over the next few weeks, con­cern­ing the ‘emp­ty­ing’ of body, mind and spirit.

Clear­ing the Gunk Out of Your Head

© Play­boy Magazine

Let’s have a look at two the­o­ries that are sim­i­lar regard­ing what’s going on in our heads. The illus­tra­tion, above, was taken from a longer series in “Play­boy” some decades ago, and I love it, as it’s so apt. I see this as our ‘fam­i­lies and tribes’ doing a simul­ta­ne­ous addi­tion and sub­trac­tion. What’s being added are cul­tural norms which fall into the ‘good / bad’ class, as well as expec­ta­tions and traditions.

What’s sub­tracted is any­thing the tribe does not value, or con­sid­ers life-threateningly bad. Now, remem­ber, the stuff can’t actu­ally be removed. It just goes under­ground, ever to reside, and pop up from, our subconscious.

I men­tioned, last arti­cle, the dual con­cepts of the authen­tic and the actual self.

This idea was devel­oped in the west by Carl Jung, who was fas­ci­nated with the con­tents of the sub­con­scious. He also coined the term ‘col­lec­tive uncon­scious’ to describe tribal knowl­edge, ancient taboos (i.e. against incest), food pro­hi­bi­tions, etc.

Size Really Matters

Boy, do you ever have a huge…authen­tic self.

Yup. Huge. There is a ton of mate­r­ial stuffed down there. Some of it is close to con­scious, other parts are blocked and repressed and need a ther­a­pist or Zen teacher to help you extract it.

Extract it You Must (sounds like Yoda, eh?)

Most peo­ple sense a lack in their lives—as if some­thing impor­tant is miss­ing. Mostly, it seems to be about power and anger and force and it seems a bit (or a lot) black. It seems that way (see first illus­tra­tion, above) because, since you were a kid, peo­ple have been stuff­ing you with fears, prej­u­dices, and airy-fairy ideas that being a good lit­tle boy or girl is the only accept­able state.

Why I Hate New Age Claptrap

I use those words a lot. Monothe­is­tic reli­gions (judaism, chris­tian­ity, islam) used to have a lock on this non­sense. The belief is that ‘god is good, and so am I!!’

Now, this is crap for sev­eral rea­sons, not the least of which is that we are cre­ated to be what we are—an amal­gam of all aspects of self. Fight­ing our true nature is silly.

Other reasons:

1. The world is iden­ti­cal to a yin/yang sym­bol: There is no black with­out white, light with­out dark, good with­out bad, love with­out fear. We know every­thing in com­par­i­son to its opposite.
2. The New Age and reli­gions try to blame ‘bad’ on either a mis­un­der­stand­ing, or ‘them.’ Look at the state of the world, and your role in it. Think about a war you are party to. I can guar­an­tee sev­eral things: you think your side is right. You are angry. You blame whomever you are fight­ing for ‘mak­ing you angry.’ (In other words, “I’d never be killing all these peo­ple if it wasn’t for them. They are mak­ing me kill them.”) Remem­ber, your ‘enemy’ thinks exactly the same of you. It’s what we said ear­lier in this series: it’s all about perspective.
3. If I can make oth­ers ‘wrong and bad,’ I can pre­tend to be ‘right and good,’ and any wrong/bad I do is some­one else’s fault. This, I repeat, is crap.

You are both good and bad—me too!

The east­ern approach is to sim­ply accept that I am ‘all of it.’ When I want to kill some­one, that’s me, want­ing. If I sit in a mall and want to have sex with every attrac­tive woman I see, that’s me, being horny. If I’m bored to tears, that’s me, bor­ing myself.

Mind­ful Observation

I could keep mak­ing this case for­ever, but rather than that, let’s get to how to look at this mate­r­ial. Look­ing requires learn­ing to peer into your shadow side, and you do this by watch­ing what emerges in your mind.

Exer­cise: a day of judge­ments

As I men­tioned above, I like to send clients to sit at beaches or malls, and to ‘just look.’ I want you to go and do this. Look at peo­ple of your pre­ferred gen­der, and notice who attracts you, who repels you. If you see a par­tic­u­larly attrac­tive per­son, fol­low your men­tal fan­tasy, in your imag­i­na­tion, and see where it leads.

Then, look at body types. Watch fat peo­ple and skinny peo­ple, peo­ple of dif­fer­ent races. See what story emerges in your mind, as you crit­i­cize and judge each stranger accord­ing to your inner (mostly sub­con­scious) prejudices.

In other words, con­sciously watch your mind tell you sto­ries about peo­ple you do not know. Remind yourself—these are my sto­ries, and have absolutely noth­ing to do with these people.

This is what hap­pens all the time. The only dif­fer­ence is that you are pay­ing atten­tion, as opposed to hav­ing these sto­ries in the back­ground, and sim­ply act­ing as if you are attracted, repelled, or indif­fer­ent. Pay­ing atten­tion helps you to see that you are cre­at­ing these feel­ings, and none of this has any­thing to do with the per­son (or object) you are observing.

R.A.I.N.

In Mind­ful­ness teach­ings, this acronym is used to describe the process of learn­ing to observe and own your sub­con­scious. It stands for Recog­ni­tion, Accep­tance, Inves­ti­ga­tion, and Non-Identification.

Recog­ni­tion—
Notice your reluc­tance to accept the idea that your authen­tic self holds all kinds of ‘juicy’ stuff—lust, hate, bore­dom, rage, sad­ness, fear, plus all of the skills you are afraid to try.

The first step is to notice what you are feel­ing and think­ing, and how your judge­ments cloud what you observe. At the same time, notice that the part of you that is observ­ing is neu­tral, and is not feel­ing what you are feel­ing. it’s sim­ply observ­ing. Notice how you iden­tify with your roles and upbring­ing, and how these are just ideas—they are not you.

For exam­ple: a client says, “I want a good rela­tion­ship.” I reply: “Great, bring your rela­tion­ship in next week and I’ll tell it to be good.” The point? There is no rela­tion­ship sep­a­rate from my client(s). My client needs to behave dif­fer­ently and be what she wants.

This is recog­ni­tion: I am the only actor in the play of my life. I make the rules, I judge the events, and I choose (or refuse) to act.

Accep­tance—
This is such an impor­tant point. I must accept that ‘the way it is, is the way it is.” Life is pre­cisely as it appears to me, and play­ing the “It’s not fair!” card changes noth­ing. I am pre­cisely the illus­tra­tion above, (the con­scious / uncon­scious pyra­mid.) I am all of me. All my thoughts, desires, hopes, stu­pidi­ties. When I get this, I can own it.

Accep­tance is scary. We’ve been trained from birth to deny, deny, deny. When a ‘bad’ thought arises, we want to push it away. In truth, “I’m hav­ing a bad thought” and “I am a bad per­son” are not the same.

We all have amaz­ing dra­mas going on inside of us. There’s noth­ing we can do about this! Med­i­ta­tion, ther­apy, Zen—nothing takes this stuff away. What I am sug­gest­ing to you here is that you accept the real­ity of you—all of you, and that you learn the Zen truth of it.

This is Accep­tance: Noth­ing means any­thing (every­thing is empty of mean­ing) so just let it be, own it, and let it go.

Inves­ti­ga­tion—
Once we accept that what is hap­pen­ing is totally about “me,” I can then dig fur­ther to see what is going on. None of this is denial. Ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tions hap­pen all the time.
The ques­tion is not, again, “Why is this hap­pen­ing to me?” The ques­tion is, “Given this sit­u­a­tion what do I do?”

This is only pos­si­ble after the first two steps. If you are still busily deny­ing your sit­u­a­tion, reac­tion, emo­tions, etc. or are blam­ing them on oth­ers, you are well and truly screwed. The goal, then,
is to accept and inves­ti­gate. This is me, my life, and I have choice. Given that, where am I stuck?

This is Inves­ti­ga­tion: I look at all of it. The sto­ries I am telling myself (mind), my feel­ings, where I am tight in my body, and what I know that will give me direc­tion. Again, none of this is pos­si­ble if I am busily try­ing to escape respon­si­bil­ity for my life.

Non-Identification—
Here come the Zen! Here come the Zen! I men­tioned this briefly above, but non-attachment is the key to both active an pas­sive med­i­ta­tion, and is cru­cial for liv­ing a real life. I must remem­ber that I am the observer. I am hav­ing expe­ri­ences, but am not my experience.

This is tricky. I will say “I am anger­ing myself right now.” This is a pure, Zen state­ment. It’s like “I choose to wear a black shirt.” I am not a black shirt. it is what I ‘put on.’ I ‘put on’ feel­ings, tight­ness, prej­u­dice. I am not these things. I am (in my case) he who puts these things on.

Once you get this, free­dom comes.

This is Non-Identification: You watch your thought, feel­ings and states come and go, attach­ing to none of it. You can feel and express anger with­out judg­ing your­self an angry per­son. You can be present with any sit­u­a­tion, and then let it go.

Next arti­cle will give you exam­ples and tech­niques. But here is a secret for you: ful­fill­ment comes from simul­ta­ne­ously embrac­ing all that you are, while explod­ing your attach­ment to who you pre­tend do be. It begins with breath, and it starts here: