Heart

                                                          Heart

The language of the heart is very different than the head. Western culture, and now more and more of the world, worship rationality, there is a long history of these origins from Greece, the Enlightenment, industrial, information, and attentional revolutions. It is summed up in Decartes phrase “I think therefore I am.” This has influenced us in a way in which we have identified who/what/how we are through thought. In psychology this is the realm of cognitive behavioral therapists, rational emotive therapy, and a whole host of others.

The heart is infinitely more powerful than the head (50x's if you're measuring bio-electrical energy), but the heart is more than our physical organ, just as our mind/consciousness is more than our physical brain.

The language of the heart is through feelings, intuitions, metaphors, symbols, dreams, art, sensuality, eroticism, and the wisdom of the body. Poetry is part of this language, take the opening of Sharon Old's poem “The Knowing;”

Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise-

comaed, and woken, we lie a long time

looking at each other.

She's using words in a different way, with a different energetic frequency. It affects us beyond our brains, we can see, feel, smell this scene. She continues;

I do not know what he sees, but I see

eyes of surpassing tenderness

and calm, a calm like the dignity of matter.

She continues about seeing, but this is a sight of the heart feeling tenderness and calm. She brings out the intermingling of soul with matter that creates dignity.

Continuing with sight and sensuality, she writes;

I love the open ocean Bluegrey-green of his iris,

I love the curve of it against the white,

that curve the sight of what has caused me to come,

when he's quite still, deep inside me.

She connects this seeing into his instrument of sight, his iris, and how seeing this deep leads to orgasm and a deep stillness. It is important for us to learn, speak, and “think” with the language of the heart, pure rationality has caused the world a lot of suffering. Make sure you look up and read (from the heart) the rest of Sharon's beautiful poem! I've left it incomplete on purpose!

Synchronicity

                                                               Synchronicity

                     

“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic -- the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we're alone.”

                                
Charles de Lint

C.G. Jung described synchronicity as meaningful coincidents, I have extended that idea to include “Awareness of one integral whole.” This is a concept that I am never far away from both in my personal and professional life. I find this concept and practice immensely useful. Let's unpack this idea.

Everything begins with awareness, I will often describe my approach as a personal trainer of awareness. Building awareness is the way to building power, freedom, and fulfillment in our human life. Because we are organisms that have adapted the ability to reflect, interpret and observe ourselves in our many endeavors and processes, we have access to a meta awareness that other organisms don't have. This meta awareness is attentional currency that builds upon itself when exercised and becomes a storage of potent psychic fuel.

The way that awareness is inflected is crucial, as predators in the animal kingdom we have an “orienting response,” which is an evolved capacity of attentional awareness to respond to novelty. This means that when something comes across our radar screen of awareness that is new and unexpected, there will be a part of our attention that “checks it out”, just like if you wave a twig in front of a cat. All the technology companies know about this and are mining our attention treating us as if we were cats compulsively following a moving piece of yarn. But if we practice focusing and maintaining our attention, which the practice of meditation is all about, we can inflect our attention where we want it to go.

One of the best places to inflect your awareness is on the unity of reality, the oneness of all creation. You can reference this experience by the oneness you've felt in nature, making love, getting lost in music, art, a movie, playing with a child, or communing with your dog. This unitive state of mind is a hallmark of enlightened beings such as the Dali Lama, but is becoming more and more the purview of quantum physicists that know, from a scientific perspective, about the oneness of reality. When you start looking for unitive reality you will begin to experience and see it at every turn.

When a client comes for a session, I “know” that whatever they bring up for discussion will connect to their whole life. I help them connect the dots, and this brings about greater awareness and relationship of the parts of their life to the whole. When we are thinking of someone we haven't seen in a long time and out of the blue they call, we see and feel a connection to these seemingly unrelated events. What we generally miss is that these connections/synchronicites are happening all the time, we just aren't aware enough to make out any particular connection, but I assure you it's there! Carlos Castaneda said; “Everything is an Omen!”

Begin to play with the idea of ultimate connectivity and the oneness of all creation, not merely as a concept, but as a felt experience and a process of awareness. Look at events, circumstances, and encounters as unfolding unity through the guise of diverse and “accidental” cause and effect. Know that you are playing your part perfectly in the drama of existence and you are always at choice as to how you want the next scene to go.

Summary

                                                              Summary

                                        



It's time to summarize, consolidate, and integrate what we've covered so far, I will do this periodically as I do for client's to whom I have been a kind of historian of their therapeutic process. As I've mentioned before, it is a very healthy practice to check in with yourself, your spouse, your dog, etc. and ask; “How's our relationship going?,” “Are we on track here?”, and “What's working/not working?” This is a good way to check your navigational equipment so to speak and see if you're having a good time on the journey!

An overarching theme of our journey together is the name of the Blog-Rude Awakening. I explained in the beginning that it is a somewhat painful, uncomfortable shock to the system when one does begin to awaken from a previously stuporous state. Awakening jars the system that was previously complacent, in denial, and avoidant of facing the reality of something. Taking the time and energy to invest in what it is for you to live fully as a human being will be unsettling in some ways as well as richly rewarding, without this investigation we will continue to live in the illusion that we are free.

The good news is that there is hope and that humans are basically good if we're given the chance and have sufficient help and resources. Instilling hope is something we all need, and need to give to others. It is useful to assess where you are on the map of your journey and accept this so you can take the next step, this builds hope. There is also the need to have human-to-human relationships that are based on equality, this is healthy and therapeutic and helps each person figure out in their own way what they need and how they feel vs. someone telling them. This helps people to become a full/whole person.

Ironically letting go of compulsive control issues is a way to gain more power and freedom. When there is enough safety and resources, people relax and let down their defenses and need for control, this frees up one's system and the energy can be used more consciously. While this freedom from control is happening, be cautious of polarity within the mind and psyche. We are conditioned to always be in a judgmental vigilance of good/bad, right/wrong, black/white thinking and this creates conflict and stress both within and outside of us. There is a state of non-duality in which both polarities live and breath without being conflicted.

Themes that I've found useful for myself and others include; 

 

1) We are all One

2) There is unity in diversity

3) The Universe is entertaining, informative, and absurd

4) We are players on a stage

5) Because there is only One, synchronicities abound revealing infinite interconnection and space/time warping

6) Life is mysterious and paradoxical-embrace it!

7) Change is the only constant.

8) Don't assume you know what being human is-ask lots of questions!

9) Everyone has gifts for you and you have gifts for them

10) Creating contexts to give your gifts is most fulfilling

Adolescents are cool and need our help desperately! They are lacking elders and mentors to initiate them into the mysteries of life, they need to know they have; Mastery, Belonging, Freedom, and something to contribute by Giving. Adolescents represent one of many modes of consciousness. Robert Bly's book “The Sibling Society,” states that the U.S. is a society of adolescents. Higher consciousness includes the capacity to take multiple perspectives in life, learning for its own sake, an orientation towards integration of complex systems, change seen as a welcome part of the process in organizations and life, characterized by systems thinking, and an orientation to how parts interact to create a greater whole.

Being an “epically normal” human being is a good place to set the bar for life, claiming and focusing your attention in this manner will produce profound results and others will recognize that there's something “different about you.”

This will lead toward greater empowerment and freedom which is a quality given a lot of lip service in our culture.

                                

Freedom

                                                               Freedom

         

“Let me warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party...It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles animosity of one part against another.”

                             George Washington (in his farewell address)

In celebration of the 4^th of July, let's take pause to consider some of our history and the nature of freedom. Freedom has come to have a connotation of me, my team, my views, and my company getting our way, winning, crushing the opposition, getting a million 'likes', getting elected, etc. There is a long running history of this warped and pathological perspective of freedom.

George Washington's prophetic words hold true to this day, they are a commentary on the enslavement of polarity and the limits that we place upon ourselves in the name of freedom. Real freedom is a solidarity of mind, body, spirit and community. In the Buddhist tradition happiness and freedom are independent of circumstances and perspective, freedom and fulfillment lay in the recognition of oneness and a skillful response to the present moment...chop wood, carry water, when hungry eat, when tired sleep.

The election of 1800 was a turning point in American history and set the stage for political parties and ideology to become the contentious, self-interested polarities that they are today. In republican ideology, political parties were dangerous and undesirable, and by their very nature they purposely promoted discord. This is because a party, or any party line by a group is self-interested at the expense of the greater good, it does not bode well with opposition, critique, and questioning. By necessity the party must incite rancor and discord to rally their supporters.

In 1800 the election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson represented a level of enmity that makes modern mudslinging mild in comparison. The Federalists, which Adams represented, believed in a strong centralized federal government: Republicans, represented by Jefferson, argued that such a government endangerd republican liberty. They both are right! But according to the rules of party politics, you can't both be right, and you must have an enemy. Talk about a danger to democratic freedom!

One of the many sychronicities of the very frail beginning of our republic and what's happening today is that Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien Act raised the residency requirement for immigrants to become citizens from 5 to 14 years, and empowered the president to expel aliens deemed dangerous (think President Trump). The sedition act empowered the government to fine or imprison anyone who opposed “any measures of the government, aided any insurrection, riot, unlawful assemble, or combination and wrote, printed, uttered or published...any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” that disparaged the government (think Julian Assange).

All violent revolutions eventuate in civil war; America, France, Russia, to name a view. This is because the pendulum of polarity will always swing the other way, due to the force of social gravity. What is demonized today will become popular down the road, what is considered oppressive in one faction will be the very essence of liberty in another, in the 60's Ram Dass wrote "Hippies create police, police create hippies."

The liberties and freedoms we are privileged to engage and express in our country should be embraced and skillfully used for the greatest good. The diversity that exists in opposition to any particular view is a good thing, and our freedom is not dependent on rallying a campaign of hate (even if what we're campaigning against is hate). There is a dialectical process that brings truth to the surface if it is engaged without attachment to the outcome, this is the nature of a democratic dialogue. Trying to understand first before you are understood is the hallmark of compassion and enlightenment. This is all a tall order to live and practice, but I believe it is the true cost of freedom.

Epically Normal

                                                            Epically Normal


                           

A client recently told me I was “epically normal,” I take this as a very high compliment. To be normal on an epic scale is what I'm going for both personally and in my professional helping of people to be fully human. As bizarre as this sounds, it is becoming somewhat foreign to be a normal human being, our world is so dramatically hyperbolized that everything is bigger than life, to such an extent that real life is becoming more and more abstract. Simple human encounters such as going for a walk, eating a meal, having coffee with someone, driving, etc. are becoming productions that include texting, being distracted, instigraming, Facebooking what you're eating, and being enraged at the idiot driver in front of you!

The recent Argentine-Spanish black comedy film “Wild Tales,” written and directed by Damián Szifron takes simple modern day experiences like road rage, getting a parking ticket, getting married, being a waitress, carrying a grudge with your ex, etc to the level of Greek tragedy. The film is certainly a commentary on modern life and the feelings that are just below the surface of contemporary “normal” everyday life.

We are living in a cultural crisis that is strongly challenging our humanity at every turn. We live in an attentional economy, an economy built upon getting people's attention, a system presenting the world to us through representations and images. Life is becoming an imitation of the theories that govern a market economy, and driven by technologic devices that garner attention, because attention these days equals revenue. Very different than an information age, we are living in an attentional age, our human experience is highly engineered and manipulated much like a good movie, and one in which we are having a virtual, vicarious experience of our own life.

Being normal has taken on negative connotations these days, because everything is about intensity, extreme, upgraded, cutting edge, etc., being just regular, average, normal guy/girl doesn't cut it. We certainly see this with kids who are the targets of much advertising and manipulated attention that results in their not feeling good enough or on par with the images being broadcast to them 24/7.

The remedy for all this is of course the most obvious, the least popular, and the most radical, which is to be the “square” that is relearning how to just be a normal human being doing normal human things like walking the dog, having coffee with a friend, and eating a meal without staging it to broadcast on Facebook. Try not to try being more than human or less than human, and to find people that you would say “That's a real nice normal person!” and hang out with them. Depending on the degree and time that your attention has been hijacked and co-opted you will have to go through some de-tox/withdrawl of how jacked up your nervous system has been, this is not unlike recovery from addiction, in fact it is recovery from addiction.

Levels Of Consciousness

                                                            Levels of Consciousness


                                  

The other day my friend facilitated an international conference Skype call with 14 people, all of whom, had fairly conflicted agendas, opinions, perspectives, and ego personalities. She was able, not without some blood, sweat, and tears to bring about a group consensus that was 'good enough.'

My friend has always demonstrated a high degree of empathy, compassion and tolerance for others that is indicative of the work of Dr. Clare Graves who formulated a model known as Spiral Dynamics. “The psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man’s existential problems change,” according to Graves.

To be consciously tolerant is to understand that every person and group is exactly where they need to be depending on their life conditions and the evolution of their consciousness. The first 6 levels of human consciousness are subsistence levels. Spiral Dynamics is similar, but much more sophisticated than Maslow's hierarchy of needs which is a static closed system. Spiral Dynamics states that the levels of consciousness are always with us and are activated by life conditions. These levels of consciousness show up in individuals and groups, and there is a vast array of spectral colors that blend and overlap like a rainbow.

In our world today there is high degree of what Spiral Dynamics calls Beige/Purple/Red: homelessness, third world poverty, desperation, Power Gods, tribalism, blood oaths, magical ethnic beliefs, Kinship and lineage of established political/religious authority, good/bad/right/wrong/us/them beliefs. The “terrible twos” is an example of this in developmental psychology. (Terrible Twos, feudal kingdoms, soldiers of fortune, many rock stars, Power Rangers, rebellious youth, 20% of world population, 5% of power)

The Blue: Mythic Order maintains a belief in a righteous order with absolutist unvarying principles of “right” and “wrong.” This is concrete-literal fundamentalist thinking. (Boy and Girl Scouts, Billy Graham, Puritan American, Confucian China, Islamic fundamentalism, 40% of world population, 30% of power)

The Orange: Scientific/Achievement level is entrepreneurial, individualistic, materialistic, and success-driven (Think Donald Trump, The Enlightenment, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged , Wall Street, emerging middle classes around the world, cosmetics industry, trophy hunting, colonialism, the Cold War, fashion industry, materialism, secular humanism, liberal self-interest. 30% of the population, 50% of the power).. The Green: Sensitive Self is communal, socialistic, democratic, ecological, and post modern. The focus with green is community and personal growth, equality, attention to environmental concerns. Work is motivated by human contact and contribution, learning from others. Being liked is more important than competitive advantage, value openness and trust, fear rejection and disapproval. Leaders become facilitators, less autocratic. This is where most of my generation became stuck from the 60's ideology. The Green move towards egalitarianism with a resulting tendency towards inefficiency and stagnation, can become bogged down and ineffectual due to trying too hard to reach consensus and have everyone 'share.' This is where consensus can become toxic. (Facebook, Rogerian counseling, Esalen, GreenPeace, Jacques Costeau, Jimmy Carter, John Lennon's music, Doctors without Borders, ACLU, Ben & Jerry's, animal rights, deep ecology, 10% of population, 15% of power)

These first 6 stages Graves calls 'first-tier' consciousness, and it is where the vast majority of humanity is stuck. In order to solve world problems we must move to 'second-tier' thinking which is a quantum leap from first-tier. Second Tier is the capacity to take multiple perspectives in life. YELLOW is motivated by learning for its own sake and is oriented towards integration of complex systems. Change is a welcome part of the process in organizations and life; YELLOW likes the challenges. It is characterized by systems thinking, an orientation to how parts interact to create a greater whole. Unique talents and dispositions are honored as contributing something valuable to the whole. YELLOW likes engineering complex systems and dealing with ideas. It is also ecologically oriented, but in a more subdued, behind the scenes way. YELLOW thinkers often work on the periphery of organizations, quietly fine-tuning situations and procedures, much to the bafflement of the first tier memes. (Hawking's Brief History of Time, chaos theory, eco-industrial parks, Wired magazine, 1% of world population, 5% of power)

Adolescence

                                                Adolescence

What is an adolescent? Certainly some kind of sub-group, if not an entirely different species of homo sapiens! But we have actually created this stage, phase and psycho-social no mans land that is supposedly a bridge passing from childhood into being a responsible adult. The industrial revolution set in motion a series of events that eventuated in teens rapidly becoming isolated/alienated from adults and increasingly unhappy about their peculiar place in society.

The extension of dependency both psychological and economic for adolescents is increasing as is a younger puberty age for girls. In our modern world adolescence is in some ways a psychological diagnostic criteria, it certainly warrants much care and attention to understand and intervene.

I have worked with adolescents all my professional life, and I actually was one (God bless my parents!). I love their raw, unformed yet quickly forming personality, beliefs, dreams, and angst about trying to grow into an adult. Biologically, adolescents are wired to take risks, experiment, rebel, challenge, and be over or underconfident in their appraisal of who they are and what they are capable of. This has been nature's way of having a front line group of youth who forge ahead of the status quo and push the limits that the older conservatism seeks. The adolescent forebrain is still forming and thinking about consequenses is not as accessable as it will be around age 23, so this lends itself to risk taking and impulsivity.

The adolescent is working very hard to fit in and belong to a peer group, they are exploring and feeling into some kind of sexual identity with fantasies of potential mates, they have very strong aggression and competition drives, as well as a ton of insecurities they are over or under compensating for.

In primal, tribal societies before there was the modern equivalent of adolescence, youth were mentored by elders and initiated through rites of passage into adulthood. There were clear boundaries and demarcation of when a boy or girl was ready for initiation and once they were initiated, they were clearly recognized as an adult. So there was no adolescence per se.

Today we have very few rites of passage and initiations by elders, there are pseudo passages like joining a gang, getting a drivers license, joining the Army, having your first sexual experience, but these do not turn one into an adult. As a result we have a lot of grown ups that are still uninitiated adolescent (maybe you know one), they lack the integrity and sense of self that long term mentoring and initiation bring.

As a society, we are only paying lip service to helping adolescents. They are truly hurting, confused, angry, disillusioned, and many are desperate. We need to take the notion seriously that our children are the future and it is the utmost investment to bring all our resources to bear to help guide these young people into their adult lives.

Native American traditions have a four quadrated model of helping adolescents which includes; 1) Mastery-Helping a young person recognize what they're good at and to cultivate higher and higher levels of Mastery in their skills, 2) Belonging-Paying attention to making sure that youth feel like they are part of a group, team, community, etc. Making sure they really feel like they fit in and have an important place, 3) Freedom-Helping youth to have a sense of autonomy, and the ability to make choices, use resources, and take chances in order to grow, 4) Giving-Helping youth give their gifts and contribute to the well being of others.