Break­ing the Cycle

Mon­sters in my closet, oh my!

We are all mas­ters of illusion

In order to under­stand the basis for liv­ing life in free­dom and clarity–let’s call this Wak­ing Up,–you have to choose to pay close atten­tion to the games you play. Most peo­ple find this task daunting.

A friend was describ­ing a box in her house–it con­tained her divorce papers and files. She thought this box was, well, “bad.” Then, she woke up:

You know … its all so weird when I think about it. I had all this attach­ment to the
“stuff” in the box — and the box itself took on this mean­ing (of what I’m not sure.)
Until one day — I decided not to have an attach­ment — then it becomes a sim­ple
box once again — with papers in it. Its like it is “so real” when you are in the moment
of attach­ing emo­tion to the “stuff” and then its so real when I decide not to attach
any­thing to the box and its belong­ings. Its so real …

I replied by talk­ing briefly about closet mon­sters. My point was sim­ple. Many kids scare them­selves over a pile of clothes in the closet, as they see it late at night. They are con­vinced that the mon­ster is both real and threat­en­ing. Adults see a pile of clothes.

How does this fit?

Well, my friend’s “bad” car­ton was never any­thing other than a box of papers. That she thought it was some­thing other did not, ever, make it so. As she woke up to this fact, she could drop the story she was telling her­self (the mon­ster in the closet!) and see box and papers.

Con­flict offers a choice. I can see the games I am play­ing, or I can demo­nize the other person.

Let’s explore this process.

In last week’s arti­cle, I wrote:

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?” 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.

Pretty much every ther­a­pist works off of the same Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Model, and we mod­ify it as it fits our needs. The model we use is equiv­a­lent to “The Haven Model” (click­ing the link gets you a pdf file of the key prin­ci­ples taught by The Haven.) Rather than do a “re-draw,” here’s the model they use.

The Haven Insti­tute (www.haven.ca). Author­ship of Mod­els 1992 Wong and McK­een. Per­mis­sion is granted by the The Haven Insti­tute
(the Owner) to repro­duce, adapt and present this work for any pri­vate use pro­vided always that any such repro­duc­tion, adap­ta­tion or pre­sen­ta­tion shall include this state­ment. All other rights reserved.

You’ll notice that this model is pre­sented as cir­cu­lar. This was done 10 years ago or so to indi­cate you can enter the pat­tern any­where. I actu­ally believe it’s a bit more lin­ear than that. I cat­e­go­rize stuff sim­i­larly to the above model, though.

Here’s my ver­sion, with notes!

Phase 1 — Data

Per­cep­tion — six senses (Buddhist)

I see, hear, touch, taste, smell,
AND cre­ate men­tal formations

This should be obvi­ous, but as an exper­i­ment, dredge up a sen­sual mem­ory involv­ing some­one you like or love. Make it a full and rich imag­in­ing, and mon­i­tor the reac­tion in your body. That was the per­cep­tion of a men­tal for­ma­tion.

Phase 2 — Bod­ily Feeling

Feel­ings are always and ONLY located in the body–
thus the word “FEELing”

Pos­i­tive: open, warm, attracted, move toward, relaxed, com­fort­able
Neg­a­tive: closed, cold, repulsed, move away, tight, uncomfortable

Notice that per­cep­tion leads to feel­ing. It CAN work the other way, too. For exam­ple, I mon­i­tor my neck and stom­ach for tight­ness. If I find it, I look out­side and inside for the DATA I was not notic­ing. Exam­ple: I might be focussed on a book at a doctor’s office, and sud­denly feel tight. I lis­ten, and head a baby cry­ing. My body “heard” what my my sense con­scious­ness was attempt­ing to “block.”

Wak­ing Up

“Who is per­ceiv­ing, who is feel­ing?“
This block is the essence of Zen

This block will con­tinue to appear–call it a “choice point.”

OK, here’s the good stuff. In Zen our goal is to Wake Up, or to notice what is going on. Pay­ing atten­tion allows us to bring the focus from drama to curiosity.

• Drama: blam­ing the other for some­thing going on inside of me.
• Curios­ity: “I see your eyes are red, (per­cep­tion) and I notice I am uncom­fort­able (feel­ing). I am curi­ous as to what is up for you.”
  Notice that this step has the poten­tial to bypass the next Phase.

Phase 3 — Interpretation

This is TOTALLY, ALWAYS about you!

I think, inter­pret, judge, assume, imag­ine,
“The story I am telling myself…“
Never: “I feel that…”

If you miss the oppor­tu­nity to “Wake Up,” this is what comes next. Now, admit­tedly, I actu­ally think we inter­pret all the time, even when we take the first “Wake Up” oppor­tu­nity, above. We sim­ply can’t help ourselves–our egos have been con­di­tioned to do this, since birth.

That being said, the key at this stage is to notice.

Notice what, you ask? Notice how your ego want to make what is hap­pen­ing exter­nal to you and your process. If you choose to notice what you are doing (your process of inter­pret­ing) you have, wait for it…a choice point!

Wak­ing Up

“Who is per­ceiv­ing, who is feel­ing, who is inter­pret­ing?”
This block is the essence of Zen

This block will con­tinue to appear–call it a “choice point.”

Drama: (see­ing red eyes and feel­ing dis­com­fort) “What the hell did I do now? You’re always mad at me and blam­ing me.”

Curios­ity: “I see your eyes are red, (per­cep­tion) I notice I am uncom­fort­able, (feel­ing) and the story I am telling myself is that you are angry at me. (inter­pre­ta­tion)

I am curi­ous as to what is up for you.”

The last 2 fol­low the Haven pattern:

Phase 4 — Intention

The Report­ing Stage

Here is what I will do, not do, etc.

Phase 5 — Action

The INTEGRITY Point

What I ACTUALLY do

If you say one thing and do another you are a LIAR!

No excuses here. Integrity is all about fol­low­ing through on what you say. If you are not sure what you are going to do, do not lie about it and promise some­thing just for the sake of promis­ing. Say what you will do, then do it.

OK. How does this play out?

Need­less to say, we are all about Wak­ing Up, and Wak­ing Up requires 100% accep­tance of one thing–what is hap­pen­ing inside of you, from head to toes, is you–is caused by you. (Nor­mal caveat: this pre­cludes vio­lence. The only way another can affect you is if they touch you.)

There are no excep­tions to this! No one “Makes you feel” any­thing. What comes up for you, your sto­ries, inter­pre­ta­tions, even your feel­ings (you make you tight, for exam­ple) are yours.

Blam­ing another for your expe­ri­ence is fool­ish and child­ish. It’s see­ing mon­sters in the closet.

The mon­ster was never in the closet. The mon­ster was in the head of the child, then pro­jected out­ward onto a pile of clothes.

Prac­tice Curios­ity and “I” language.

Next week, we’ll wrap this series up with a dis­cus­sion of using self dis­clo­sure, I lan­guage and curios­ity to

1. learn more of your partner
2. learn about your own pat­terns, fears and desires, and to con­front and ban­ish the mon­ster in your closet (those things your fear or dis­like about yourself.)