“How About Them Apples? ”

Clas­si­cal Confusion

The Dilemma of Fore­ground / Background

If you took Psy­chol­ogy 101, you’ll remem­ber the per­cep­tion illus­tra­tions like the one to the left. As you look at the illus­tra­tion, either the smirk­ing guy or the plead­ing woman will pop out at you—to the fore­ground. Ini­tially, the fore­ground image will so pre­dom­i­nate, that you might not be able to “make out” the other image.

Once you see it’s oppo­site, there’s a switch, and for a moment, that’s all you see. How­ever, since your mind knows that the other view is there, soon you are able to see both, or one, or the other, by choice.

Another way to view it—do I see the woman in the top pic­ture, or do I see her apples? What is it I bring the to the fore­front of my con­scious­ness, and why? What­ever is in the fore­ground of my con­scious­ness is what I notice. If I sim­ply leave it at that, much of what is going on behind the scenes is cov­ered up by the obvious.

A cou­ple of decades ago, Magic Eye began to pro­duce posters that looked like visual noise, or look like this:

© Magic Eye 2007 Magic Eye Inc.
Have a look here, if you don’t know how to “see” this!

Click­ing on the above image takes you to Sarah Susanka’s book site for “Not So Big Life.” This book is an essen­tial read. But I digress.

Any­way, I remem­ber when those posters first came out—crowds, noses pressed up to store win­dows, all star­ing ahead, cross-eyed, try­ing to see the ‘magic.’ Once you got past the learn­ing curve, see­ing the 3D image takes seconds.

So, What’s my Point?

Our minds, as I said last week, in the arti­cle on Zen Mind, are hard wired in terms of ways of ‘doing’ real­ity. I men­tioned this in terms of the old 28 days to change a habit idea. The rea­son is sim­ple: neu­ronal path­ways actu­ally exist for every­thing that goes on in our brains, and the older a con­nec­tion, the more deeply entrenched it is. Learn­ing some­thing new requires first of all real­iz­ing the valid­ity of the new thing, and then prac­tic­ing it for 28 days, as the brand new neural links build.

Think­ing Isn’t Enough—Ever!

Remem­ber, it’s 28 days of imple­men­ta­tion!

I’m going to do a client mash-up as an illus­tra­tion. A client told me about work­ing on her “Core Strength,” some­thing pretty typ­i­cal these days. Pilates, as well as mar­tial arts, and yoga, have all stressed devel­op­ing the core mus­cles, both for sta­bil­ity and for power.

The Core — sta­bil­ity, relat­ing, self-esteem

Well, that’s a good thing to work on, but here’s the thing. Many peo­ple feel weak in the high­lighted zone to the left. Our inter­nal wiring, how­ever, does not see or under­stand that most have weak per­sonal cores too!

We are pro­grammed to sep­a­rate phys­i­cal train­ing from our per­sonal development.

Zen Mind is no-mind, in that it is a re-alignment of our under­stand­ing about the inter-relatedness of “us.”

In the West, we sep­a­rate mind, body, emo­tions & feel­ings, and spirit.

I sug­gested to my client that her instincts were right on—she feels weak in her Core, and this is more than a mus­cu­lar weak­ness. The issue is not only phys­i­cal, but emo­tional, and “personal.”

What I mean is that just strength­en­ing the core mus­cles, while good in and of itself, will not auto­mat­i­cally shift over into her hav­ing a strong “core” of being.

The three core zones

The pic­ture to the side is of the Chakras, and I’ve high­lighted the first three, or “Core” Chakras.

There’s an old thought that most peo­ple spend their lives work­ing on Chakras 1 through 3—what are called the phys­i­cal Chakras, and never get to 4–7—the ones that actu­ally allow the per­son to engage their deeper self, so as to make a dif­fer­ence in the real world.

What hap­pens in my office is interesting.

Body­work leads to an emotional/physical real­iza­tion (an actual expe­ri­ence) of what we talked about in ther­apy (an intel­lec­tual understanding.)

The body­work opens things up, so that other ways of liv­ing and being become clear. Once the energy chan­nels open and energy begins to flow, you have a real expe­ri­ence of what being alive and “full of energy” is like.

Many of my clients have actual phys­i­cal things hap­pen in the days fol­low­ing a ses­sion —long-time pain goes away, or inten­si­fies. Some have fre­quent bath­room trips, oth­ers are sud­denly over­whelmed with emotion.

For oth­ers, the entire expe­ri­ence hap­pens in the office, and life as usual hap­pens at home, as they shut down the feel­ings as they close my front door.

But the inter­est­ing part is what hap­pens if you take this
Core Work seriously.

• Each day, you set aside time to sit, to breathe, to open your­self to your own inse­cu­ri­ties and imbalances.
• You allow your­self to feel the full extent of both the rela­tion­ships you’ve had in the past, and the ones you’re in right now.
• You can fully and com­pletely expe­ri­ence what you are feel­ing, and accept all aspects of your inner expe­ri­ence as “who you are.”

Fig­ure and Ground Shift

In order to ‘wake up,’ you have to bring your atten­tion to the larger pic­ture. To use the top photo as an illus­tra­tion, it’s see­ing both the apples and what lies behind the apples.

Emo­tions often tend to be back­ground. Let’s use sad­ness as an exam­ple. The feel­ing, “sad­ness” arises into con­scious­ness, and instantly, the mind snaps away from it, to the fore­ground of “ques­tion­ing.” Rather than fully engage with (feel) the sad­ness, you say, “I won­der what it is in my past that has caused me to feel sad?” Your mind has taken con­trol, and you dis­cuss with your­self and oth­ers the causes of the feel­ing. Rather than fully and com­pletely feel­ing the feeling.

In other words, in order to ‘wake up,’ you must broaden your perception—the fear­ful­ness of bring fully your­self is accepted.You choose not to shut down, avoid, or “paint over” the back­ground data—as you allow your­self to fully and truly feel. You notice how you block your­self, and how you keep your­self from feel­ing your own energy—how you keep your­self from fully and com­pletely releas­ing your­self from the resis­tances, fears, and chains you imprison your­self with.

The shift is this: I am not who I think I am

Your mind is stuck in old views and habits. If you are per­fectly con­tent with your­self and your life, you’ve got this sorted out. If not, the prob­lem is that you keep repeat­ing ways of bering and doing that sup­port what does not work, and indeed, keeps you stuck.

Instead, allow your­self to shift your focus, for a while, from think­ing old thoughts to feel­ing your feel­ings and allow­ing in new experiences—at the core level. Find bal­ance, open your­self to deeper and more inti­mate relat­ing, and accept your­self, fully and com­pletely. Then, move from there.

I’ll make some sug­ges­tions about this in the remain­ing arti­cles for 2008!