Self and Other

©2008 Wayne C. Allen

The Dance of Curiosity

Con­flict is not real

In the past, I’ve said that emo­tions are like ther­mostats. They let us know that some­thing is “up” for us (metaphor­i­cally, that “our tem­per­a­ture is ris­ing.”) So, really, no mat­ter what arises, the point of the feel­ing is to get us to pay attention.

Where we go off the rails is that we look for the cause of the feel­ing. Typ­i­cally, it’s “Hmm. I’m angry… I won­der why? Oh! It’s YOU again! You MADE me angry!”

The rea­son we do this is that we make our­selves uncom­fort­able over cer­tain of our emo­tions. Per­versely, we often, for exam­ple, hate our anger, and feel quite bad about express­ing it. But if we can find some­one to blame, it becomes ‘jus­ti­fi­able anger,’ and then we feel all hot and both­ered, and con­vince our­selves that we are tak­ing the right path.

Con­flict indi­cates a disconnect

All we really ever talk about here is pay­ing atten­tion. Some­one recently was explain­ing his emo­tions, and how they were get­ting in his way. He was quite artic­u­late about which emo­tions, and what they felt like, and how they inter­fered with his life. He said he could trace them back to his childhood.

I sug­gested that there is no child­hood in this present moment, and that what he feels is always what he feels now. It’s a phys­i­cal sig­nal that some­thing is up. In Bud­dhism, there are three loca­tions: 1) self, 2) other, and 3) our def­i­n­i­tions. So, an emo­tion is a sig­nal that some­thing is ‘wrong’–out of alignment–in one or more of the loci. How­ever, it is always out of align­ment in your self–otherwise, you wouldn’t be feel­ing anything.

Con­flict is an issue of definition

There are no ‘nat­ural’ con­flicts. A con­flict is always the after­math of judg­ing. A sit­u­a­tion hap­pens, and a feel­ing arises. If we do not notice the feel­ing, the mind races in to bring it to our atten­tion, by assign­ing blame. The feel­ing moves from “tight­ness in my stom­ach” to an inter­pre­ta­tion / judge­ment– “You made me angry!” Had I noticed the feel­ing as it occurred, I could have made another choice.

Yup, it’s all about choice.

Clients tell me that they do not notice what’s going on until the feel­ing has esca­lated into a judge­ment, and their mouths are already mov­ing. Or, they are tor­tur­ing the hell out of them­selves. And all I can rec­om­mend is that they get bet­ter at noticing.

Dar­bella and I have been work­ing on this for 26 years, and occa­sion­ally we get caught. I can only let you in on what hap­pens for me. I sus­pect I almost always get hooked (when I get hooked) by some­thing Dar says. Clearly, when this hap­pens, I have already decided what she ‘should’ say, and her words are not match­ing my pre-conceived notions.

If you think about it, this is arro­gance 101, and most peo­ple are quite guilty of it. There’s the assump­tion that those we love “should,” a) know the right (read:my) answer, and b) should want to do what I want them to, out of love, respect, etc.

My phys­i­cal reac­tion is tight­ness in my chest and throat. Our feel­ings are always physical–in this case, tight­ness. Most of the time, as I feel this, I have a big, big breath, and shut up, as I listen.

Lis­ten­ing is key

Now, at the same time I make the con­scious deci­sion to lis­ten, my ego is involved, and is nat­ter­ing in my head: “She should do it your way, agree with you, be who you want her to be. She must not love you!” Here’s the impor­tant part: If I did not notice the warn­ing from the feel­ing (tight­ness) my ego gets a head start on me, and I might even be tricked into believ­ing it.

If that hap­pens, (and it has, 2 or 3 times in 26 years–we’re good at this…) I start say­ing really stu­pid, hurt­ful things. In an unaware way, I am defend­ing my ego’s fear of being unloved and disrespected.

I think most of you can relate to this path, as you trod it reg­u­larly. It’s pre­cisely the way you get into fight­ing, argu­ing, and feel­ing hard done by.

Pay atten­tion!

I’d rather write about what works. My atten­tion is on me–on what I am feel­ing, pri­mar­ily, because my ego sto­ries are sel­dom help­ful. I’ve learned to pay atten­tion to my stom­ach and neck, for tight­ness and dis­com­fort. If I feel some­thing, I have learned to screech to a halt, stop talk­ing, and lis­ten harder.

Curios­ity

Most of the time, if you can hold back on jump­ing in with both guns blaz­ing, you’ll find that you are jump­ing to con­clu­sions. So, you can ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, for your partner’s perspective–for a win­dow into your partner’s world and mind. No one thinks like you, no one has had your life expe­ri­ence, and no one has noth­ing bet­ter to do than put you first. Once you get this, you’ll see that the feel­ing arose as a reac­tion to not imme­di­ately get­ting your way.

Curios­ity gets you two things 1) a bet­ter per­spec­tive on your partner’s world (fil­tered by you, of course!) and 2) breath­ing room to start think­ing as opposed to reacting.

Drop­ping the need to be right

No one is right, no one is wrong. What there always is, is a dif­fer­ence of per­spec­tive. Things, for you, are always and pre­cisely as you see them. And that same thing is also how your part­ner sees it. The “Who’s right?” ques­tion is irrel­e­vant and unan­swer­able. Peace of mind and ele­gant relat­ing requires shift­ing to: “Given our dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, how shall we choose to resolve this?”

Lis­ten­ing to your part­ner with respect and curios­ity, gets you more infor­ma­tion, and a chance to slow the game down.

Get­ting mad accom­plishes nothing

Emo­tions arise out of your inter­pre­ta­tion of a feel­ing. The emo­tion is not right or true. It’s just what you picked after hear­ing what your ego had to say about how hard done by you are. Now, once we get, for exam­ple, to the point of anger, you may need to go pound a mat­tress, or go scream in the car, in order to ‘clear the emo­tion.’ But the emo­tion was not caused by the other per­son, nor by the sit­u­a­tion. You cre­ated it, you’re pro­vid­ing its fuel, and you need to deal with it safely and expeditiously.

Now, about you

The more inter­est­ing ques­tion, for me, is “Why am I set­ting myself off over this, and what about me am I not accept­ing?” I think I’ll devote next week’s col­umn to this, but here’s the short version.

You are not set off by things. I hope this is obvi­ous to you by now, even if part of you still wants to blame some­one. I see clients let their part­ners off the hook, then blame mom and dad for “Not teach­ing me this stuff,” or “For being a bad exam­ple.” It’s not their fault either. They did the best they could given what they knew. This is a hard les­son for you, read­ing this, and was hard for them, too.

Notic­ing is about self-discipline and courage.

The courage part is your will­ing­ness to look at your­self and see what you are doing–how you are play­ing the game. It’s notic­ing all of your bod­ily sen­sa­tions, how and where they arise, with­out crit­i­cism. If you refuse to notice, it’s impos­si­ble to break the cycle of being blocked and act­ing stupidly.

To notice is to feel and own your feel­ings, and then to own and accept your ego-interpretations. Your ego is there until you die, so no point get­ting mad at it. It’s just try­ing to keep you safe by mak­ing you one big hard-done-by vic­tim. It’s scared, and work­ing out of fear.

To notice is to watch your phys­i­cal feel­ings be inter­preted by the ego into “the story you tell your­self.” “My part­ner is a jerk! My father was abu­sive. I’m a vic­tim. I’m not sex­ual! Or only in the right way!” On and on. The judge­ment leads to the emo­tion you’ve assigned to it: sad­ness, grief, anger, whatever.

To notice is to see the emo­tion arise out of the noth­ing­ness of your ego and it’s sto­ries, and to, as I said above, deal with them as they arise, directly, phys­i­cally, and safely. The emo­tion is NEVER directed at another per­son. It can be directed at a pil­low, or into the air.

To notice is to own all of you–your feel­ings (all of them!) your judge­ments (all of them!) and your emo­tional reac­tions (all of them!) At each level, we can own who we are, right now, and make choices as to how to work through what we are creating.

And we can share all of this with our partners.

Does this make sense to you? Do any of you have issues or emo­tions that you think are exter­nal to you? Feel free to share any­thing you choose to.