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So, last week we started a bit of a dis­cus­sion about com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I made a stab at describ­ing the West­ern approach to com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which almost always involves using some form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion model. I men­tioned that Dar­bella and I use what’s called the “Haven Model,” and I would also say that their model pretty well matches the orig­i­nal Cou­ples Com­mu­ni­ca­tion model I learned as a baby ther­a­pist in train­ing, back in 1982.

Here’s the model, since you asked!

I think that the two “hard­est parts” of any com­mu­ni­ca­tion model are,

1. real­iz­ing the dif­fer­ence between a feel­ing and an inter­pre­ta­tion (thought) , and
2. doing what you say you will do. (action)

As to the first one, I was talk­ing with a client recently who said, “Yes­ter­day was a really anx­ious day.” I replied, “Days aren’t anx­ious, so that would be bet­ter put, “I made myself anx­ious yesterday.””

As she was lying face down on the body­work table at the time, she rapidly pushed her­self up into what would be called, in yoga, the Cobra Pose, her face filled with disbelief.

She said, “All my life, I’ve believed that there are good days and bad days—that exter­nals cause feel­ings. You’re say­ing I caused my anx­i­ety!”

I replied, “Not quite. You felt some­thing in your body, and inter­preted it as anx­i­ety. Declar­ing your­self (or the day!) anx­ious is a thought. What were you actu­ally feel­ing in your body?”

She said, “My mus­cles were really tight, and I wasn’t breath­ing much… holy crap, that fits! I almost never breathe very much!”

I then said, “Right. The feel­ing is tight and breath­less. That feel­ing leads to the thought, “I am anx­ious.” In actu­al­ity, you could call the tight and breath­less feel­ing in your body any­thing you chose. It’s just a label.”

So what’s the point here?

Well, often peo­ple use their feel­ings as blud­geons — they sug­gest, and none too sub­tly, that oth­ers are the cause—are to blame—for their poor lit­tle piti­ful feel­ings. So, we work really hard to get peo­ple to own their bod­ily sen­sa­tions, while also own­ing the sto­ries they tell them­selves about those sen­sa­tions. This is what we mean by self-responsibility (among other things.) If I say, “Here is the story I’m invent­ing regard­ing the tight feel­ing in my stom­ach,” I have ceased to blame “you” for either the feel­ing or the thought.

This whole thing is very Zen.

East­ern Per­spec­tives — clouds in the sky, mir­rors in the mind

Today, I want to add to the dis­cus­sion by men­tion­ing two twisty, turny lit­tle ideas.

The first idea is this: we know things by their oppo­site, and all cou­plets are an essen­tial unity.

The sec­ond idea is this: thoughts are not real — they are, in a sense, like clouds drift­ing along on a blue sky day. You could say that the clouds are there, but they have absolutely no effect on the sky. Or they are reflec­tions in a mir­ror—seem­ingly real, but only there until they are gone.

Oppo­sites

I’ve likely men­tioned this before, but it is impos­si­ble to know any­thing unless we have some­thing to com­pare it to. So, for example,

We know that water is hot com­pared to water that is cooler.

We know that some­thing is tall, com­pared to some­thing that is shorter.

We know plea­sure as it is com­pared to pain.

And,( here’s where it gets sticky) we know hap­pi­ness because there is sad­ness to com­pare it to.

Which flies totally in the face of all the peo­ple out there who want to lead a “happy life,” and can’t com­pre­hend why hap­pi­ness doesn’t exist 24/7.

Here’s the twisty-turny part. You think that you are inside of you. That you live “in there.” You might even think that inside includes your out­side —your skin. But it is impos­si­ble for there to be an inside by itself. Or an out­side. There­fore, if some­thing can­not exist with­out it’s oppo­site, the “oppo­sites” are, in real­ity, one thing. So, you are not only your inside, but are also essen­tially every­thing out­side of you, and the whole thing is one unity! Insides and out­side are sim­ply two aspects of the same thing. (Two sides of one coin.)

Many peo­ple are caught in the dream­land of think­ing that every­thing should work out fine— and that all peo­ple should be healthy, happy, wealthy, and wise.

And yet, these terms are rel­a­tive, in that they have to, by def­i­n­i­tion, relate to some­thing else— sick­ness, unhap­pi­ness, poverty, and dumb­ness. Every­one is some­where on a con­tin­uüm — some­where rel­a­tive to some­thing or some­one else. Thus, for exam­ple, per­fect hap­pi­ness can­not exist, because it begs the ques­tion, “Com­pared to what?”

This is just the way it is. Rail­ing against it changes noth­ing. Indeed, we can take any one of these cou­plets, and rec­og­nize in them the Yin/Yang sym­bol. Or, visu­al­ized another way, if hap­pi­ness is one side of the coin, unhap­pi­ness is the other. In the words of the song lyric, “You can’t have one with­out the other.” No mat­ter how much you wish it were otherwise.

This fits into good com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the fol­low­ing way.

Most peo­ple go through their lives one day out of sync. In other words, rather than liv­ing in the here and now, their focus is on tomor­row. Always tomor­row. The judg­ment is, “Things really suck today, but tomor­row my Prince will come every­thing will be perfect!”

The same thing applies to how they deal with their part­ner. There’s the thought that, “He really screwed up today, but if I keep nag­ging at him, maybe he’ll be bet­ter tomorrow.”

This, as opposed to, “This is how it is right now, and here is what I will do to shift things in another direction.”

In other words, we really do need to stop judg­ing our lives on the basis of how we imag­ine they ought to be and begin accept­ing them as they are. Accept­ing doesn’t mean accept­ing for­ever. It means accept­ing how things are right now as how things are right now. In this way, we stop play­ing men­tal games with our­selves, and then blam­ing the world. We stop pre­tend­ing that we can force the world to behave itself accord­ing to our stan­dards — that our indig­na­tion can elim­i­nate the Yin/Yang-ness of life. And the rea­son we want to learn to do this is it’s sim­ply a waste of time to think otherwise.

Clouds and Mirrors

I know. That one was pretty obscure. Rather than try­ing to pin it fur­ther to the ground, what I’m really try­ing to say is this.

Thoughts are like clouds in the sky. We see them, and we think, “Wow! Those clouds are huge! They are so big they could knock down a house!” Except, no they aren’t, and no they can’t. They may have some sub­stance — they do exist — but they don’t amount to much.

Just like our thoughts.

Or, think of your mind as a mir­ror, and your thoughts as reflec­tions. Mir­rors have noth­ing to do with what they reflect. An object comes into view and the (nor­mal) mir­ror reflects back the image, while tak­ing noth­ing of the thing reflected into itself. The image is unreal, ephemeral.

And no, I’m not really talk­ing about ana­lyt­i­cal thought. I’m sure Ein­stein devel­oped the The­ory of Rel­a­tiv­ity par­tially in his head. That might have been a use­ful thought. I’m think­ing about the kind of thoughts that lead pre­cisely nowhere.

For exam­ple, many peo­ple in cou­ples will say stuff like, “I know exactly what he’s think­ing.” And I won­der aloud if she’s asked him, and she assures me that she doesn’t need to—she just knows. Well, phooey.

What­ever is going on in your head is just your story

What you believe about how you were par­ented, what you believe about your rela­tion­ships, what you believe about your child rear­ing skills, what you believe about your employ­ment — it’s all just you talk­ing to your­self —and it’s all just as rel­e­vant as clouds in the sky. In fact, if you’re try­ing to fig­ure out what Zen is all about, it’s not really about the sit­ting. It’s about watch­ing your thoughts while sit­ting, and notic­ing how fleet­ing and unsub­stan­tial they are. They arise, they drift by, they go — so long as we don’t grab hold of them.

It’s the “grab­bing hold of” that gets peo­ple in trouble.

They get an idea about a sit­u­a­tion, or an ill­ness, or a per­son, and they not only believe that idea is true, they demand that oth­ers believe it too. They ascribe all kinds of mean­ing to what other peo­ple are doing, with no data other than the sto­ries they’ve invented in their heads, and then they expect the other per­son to agree with their story. They have all kinds of rea­sons and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for stay­ing stuck, and get quite incensed when some­one sug­gests they drop the non­sense and do some­thing different.

Mir­rors do not grab hold of what they reflect.

Dia­log becomes a hold­ing up of a mirror—“Here is what I see and hear, and here is the story I am telling myself.” There is no attempt to change the other person—there is just mind­ful feedback.

In Zen, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and in life, what mat­ters is not the sto­ries we tell our­selves inside our pointy lit­tle heads, but rather what we do when con­fronted with a dilemma. Rather than judge it, rather than fer­vently wish for its oppo­site, rather than hop­ing end­lessly for res­cue, we do some­thing different.

We speak respon­si­bly, own­ing our sto­ries, describ­ing our feel­ings and tak­ing full respon­si­bil­ity for all of it. And then we sim­ply con­coct an alter­na­tive behav­ior and enact it. If it works, we do more of it — if it doesn’t, we drop it and attempt some­thing else.

What you think doesn’t mat­ter, the exter­nal world is as it is, and the only thing you have a mod­icum of con­trol over is what you do next.

Choose, and enact, well.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

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