A New Series—On Cling­ing

“Who gave you the right to your own opin­ion??”
(Photo by Alaskan Dude ^[11])

As we end our series on cling­ing, we turn to ideologies.

First, a definition:

Ide­ol­ogy: Most sim­ply an ide­ol­ogy is a set of beliefs. In order to dis­tin­guish an ide­ol­ogy from other kinds of belief we can add a few extra fea­tures. First, ide­olo­gies tend to be very ambi­tious in scope, in many cases claim­ing to offer sweep­ing insights into the nature of life, spir­i­tu­al­ity, real­ity, etc. Sec­ondly, ide­olo­gies usu­ally have a strongly pre­scrip­tive ele­ment, which means that they lay down strict rules of thought and behav­iour designed to improve upon what they see as a defi­cient state of the world. Finally, ide­olo­gies tend to be dog­matic, which means that they do not allow for ques­tion­ing or alter­na­tive view­points. If a per­son holds a belief which they sim­ply will not allow to be ques­tioned, or if they seem gen­uinely unable to imag­ine how that belief could be wrong, then it is likely that this belief is part of an ide­ol­ogy. (from Car­leton Univ. ^[12])

Now, you might rightly think that this entire series has been about let­ting go of ide­ol­ogy.

As we con­tinue to point out,
it’s not that ide­olo­gies are hard to spot in oth­ers —
it’s that they are hard to notice in our­selves.

Dar­bella and I just got back from a Sat­ur­day Zen Med­i­ta­tion work­shop. We stayed over, and sat some more this morn­ing. Much of the morn­ing Member’s Ser­vice (apart from the sit­ting, of course) is in Pali, San­skrit, or Korean. We don’t speak any of those lan­guages. The chant­ing is Bud­dhist, and we are not (yet…) Bud­dhists. The chant­ing and pros­tra­tions seem for­eign to West­ern­ers like us (of course…)

And yet, I can remem­ber, back in my Chris­t­ian days, chant­ing in Latin at Taise ser­vices (occa­sion­ally…) not under­stand­ing a word, and not see­ing this as unusual. Some­how, my for­mer WASP ide­ol­ogy could expand to include a for­eign tongue. Hmm.

Swim­ming in the sea of humanity…

All of us are awash in a per­sonal belief sys­tem, and because we ‘swim’ in it, we can­not see it. (Like fish are unaware of water… until you take them out.)

A goal of this blog is to con­tin­u­ally poke and prod you to look at your assump­tions, your beliefs, and espe­cially your ‘graven in stone’ ideologies.

At one level, I think of ide­olo­gies as being cre­ated and owned by groups—kind of a “group-think” thing. With a bit of study, you can see where groups fall on a “flexibility-rigidity” scale. We tend to equate terms like “lib­eral” and “Lib­er­tar­ian” to the flex­i­ble side, and fun­da­men­tal­ist or doc­tri­naire, or closed to the rigid side.

The far­ther you are toward the rigid­ity end of the scale, the harder it is for you to see (or dare to ques­tion…) the “rules” that gov­ern the ideology.

Becom­ing self and life aware requires that we find the ways and means to ques­tion every­thing.

The ques­tion­ing is two sided, but one pointed.

• We need to look both at the groups we belong to, (what they believe,) as well as what we believe and choose to be a part of.
• And then (the sin­gle pointed part) we need to rec­og­nize that the only part we have any con­trol over is our­selves.

I can choose to see what I ascribe to, and where I choose to belong, and I can ques­tion how well my beliefs and mem­ber­ships accu­rately reflect who I am, and who I am becoming.

Another con­ver­sa­tion between Dar­bella and I, on the way home, vis­ited the idea of our “sit­ting” prac­tice, and whether (in this case…) Dar was ready to “sign on” as a Bud­dhist. She said some­thing to the effect that she has seen incred­i­ble changes in her life from her morn­ing “sit,” and is not sure whether she needs go any fur­ther down the ide­o­log­i­cal path. I con­curred, although I’m a bit closer to choos­ing to “sign­ing up.”

The fur­ther explo­ration of this ques­tion will be as is typ­i­cal for us. Not whether the ide­ol­ogy is right, or cor­rect, or best, but “What am I look­ing ^[13] for?”

A highly per­sonal ques­tion of intent often allows us to see places where we are get­ting caught in ide­o­log­i­cal mumbo-jumbo.

A few hints:

Watch Your­self

I spend tons of time get­ting clients to watch their bod­ies and words. I’ll split the two (see below…).

“Of course I’m notic­ing what I’m not noticing!”

Your body reacts to every­thing—good and bad, safe and scary.

I was hang­ing out with a guy the other day, just yack­ing, and noticed he was favour­ing a por­tion of his back that we think has to do with self-esteem ^[14]. As I pushed, he said, “My fam­ily mem­bers do not respect me, and do not respect what I believe.”

His solu­tion was to get sad, tense, and to hurt his back, all with­out know­ing, or notic­ing, what he was doing to him­self. But he did not hurt his lower back ^[15], which has to do with rela­tion­ships. He hurt his solar plexus back area (mid-back.) His issue, which was con­firmed as he talked, was this: it was about how he saw him­self—his self love and self respect. How oth­ers saw him was not the issue.

I didn’t give him any hints. He came up with what was up, all by him­self. (This is, of course, not the same as being ready to deal with his self-esteem issues.)

So, when you feel pain in your body, ask your­self what is going on. Where are your stick­ing points? What sit­u­a­tion, or which per­son, pops into mind? What do you believe about that per­son or sit­u­a­tion? Now, stop, and ask your­self, “If I drop the belief that the other per­son is doing some­thing to me, what am I doing to myself?

Lis­ten to Your­self

The other way stuff comes out is through speech—through what you say. Freudian slips are real. Often, when I point one out to a client, they want to take it back—“I didn’t mean to say that!” In a sense, they are right. They didn’t mean for the words to come out.

The words, how­ever, are dead on.

“My mom is so cool,
she wins prizes!”

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One of the strongest ide­olo­gies is the rela­tional one. In other words, we have strong beliefs about what “moth­ers, fathers, kids, spouses (or any other role-name) ” should do or be. (More on should in a moment.)

Exam­ple: I rec­og­nize that about the only time I call Dar­bella “my wife” is if I am intro­duc­ing her to some­one. I then call her Dar. I choose, con­sciously, to see her as a per­son, not a role. Most toss in the role, and behind the role is a long, long list of expected behaviours.

Lis­ten to see how often you’re putting peo­ple into boxes (racial, reli­gious, polit­i­cal, role, etc.) and as you notice, ask your­self why you’re doing that. How does it help you to box indi­vid­u­als into groups, and to have global beliefs about those groups? Can you see how such an approach pre­cludes thinking?

Cor­rect your­self. “My wife” becomes Dar­bella. 100% of the time.

Mon­i­tor Your Absolutes

Mon­i­tor how often you say or think “should.” Or “always.” Or “never.”

“ALL my friends think just like me!!!”

Any form of absolute is absolutely ide­ol­ogy based. It falls under the cat­e­gory of “Every­one knows…” The every­one is the poster boy or girl for the ide­ol­ogy being expressed.

The begin­ning of free­dom is to sim­ply notice this usage.

As soon as you say, “Every­one…” stop your­self and say “I.”

When you say, “You never…” stop and say, “It seems to me…”

When you say, You always…, stop and say “The story I am telling myself…”

If you uni­ver­sal­ize and claim the author­ity of “every­one,” you are wimp­ing out, mak­ing your­self one of the crowd, and absolv­ing your­self from the respon­si­bil­ity for choos­ing your beliefs.

Notice that the more dra­matic the ide­ol­ogy, the harder it is to own it.Ques­tion every­thing, and when you decide (as opposed to swal­low whole) any­thing, own it, using the pro­noun “I.”

Notice your trig­gers

This one can be dif­fi­cult. We’re back to mon­i­tor­ing… body and mouth, usu­ally, and also your inte­rior talk.

The first les­son is the dif­fer­ence between descrip­tors and judg­ments.

“Split per­son­al­ity”

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Mod­ern Art is a descrip­tor. Ugly, mean­ing­less art is an ide­o­log­i­cal judg­ment. The first is a sim­ple cat­e­gory. The sec­ond is not true! It is a per­sonal opin­ion, likely based upon an ideology.

As you begin to notice your use of judg­men­tal lan­guage, dis­guised as a descrip­tor, you’ll iden­tify the ide­olo­gies you hold dear.

This is not to get you to change (although that likely would be good…) but to break your addicted con­nec­tion to mind­less ide­o­log­i­cal belief mongering.

Own who you are, again, using “I language.”

Cling­ing is always about jus­ti­fy­ing a present way of think­ing and being.

If you re-read this series, you’ll see that cling­ing is sel­dom a good thing.

It’s why the Bud­dha said that cling­ing was the cause of dukkha—suffering, or the unsat­is­fac­tori­ness of life.

The way out is through ruth­less self exam­i­na­tion and self respon­si­bil­ity, cou­pled with adap­tive and flex­i­ble change.

This is expressed in how we live out our lives.
In other words, if you are stuck and mis­er­able, look in the mir­ror ^[16] for the source of your dis­com­fort, exam­ine your cling­ing, dis­sect your beliefs, and drop, repeat­edly, your faulty think­ing and behav­ing.
The work of a life­time, and the only mean­ing­ful way to be.

Or so it seems to me.