Category: Philosophical

Posted on

Meditation

I’ve struggled for years trying to maintain a consistent zazen practice, and I’m not sure whether my resistance to it is a matter of laziness and ego assertion or simply that I really don’t buy it on some level. I mean, on the one hand, they all say “If you meditate in order to achieve something, then you’re not really meditating.” But then again, in Wilber’s system, meditation is THE thing to do if you want to evolve, be enlightened, transcend death, and save the freaking world. How the hell can you Wilberites be meditating without any intention to “do” something or “get somewhere,” given that kind of build up? I don’t know, these are just things I struggle with sometimes. Also, what IS meditation, really? If one is “not really meditating” when one is out to better oneself, then that cuts out about ninety percent of my practice right there. And if the heart of the meditative process is simply being present, then there’s a million and one activities that can bring about that experience, and it is pure arrogance to assume that people posturing in any particular way are really “doing it,” while someone else who say, goes to the gym every day, is “just working out.” The proof is in the pudding I guess, and only you can know for sure whether you’re growing or dying.

There is a way to live that opens me up and a way that shuts me down. For me, the whole process comes down to this: When I’m open (whether through luck, effort or grace), and I have the guts and faith needed to allow whatever form of self-expression that arises to unfold, then I open up more and feel more alive and connected. When I choose, consciously or unconsciously, to inhibit this movement in favor of a habitual, conditioned response, I feel more and more cut off, and I contract again back into an unfulfilling daze. I think there’s a fundamental attitude that is a prerequisite for spiritual growth. It’s simply maddening to try to cultivate such an attitude, since the desire to do so presupposes a contrary attitude. Deep down I know I can assume the appropriate attitude any time I want to, it’s just that I don’t always want it, because living from such a place leads me beyond the status quo, and I just don’t want to deal with that sometimes.

Posted on

Getting our bodies back

From Christine Caldwell’s “Getting our bodies back”:

“Feelings are intended to move us, and until they move us toward a higher level of organization, they will persist. So that which you keep feeling is that which you haven’t let yourself feel completely.” (p. 119)

“As long as someone else is responsible for our experience (either partly or wholly), then they have the power in the relationship. They have the power to make us feel good or bad. They own a piece of us. And we have to control them in order to get our needs met.” (p. 122)

“When we abandon active rest, when we focus narrowly on one activity for long periods of time, or when we feel consistently powerless in the face of repeated events, we compel ourselves to dissociate. We enter a state of need deprivation, at the same time creating a response that does nothing to fill our needs, but merely dampens our perception that we are in need.” (p. 26)

“Our bodies must tense, shut down, and provide distracting alternatives in order to accomplish control in our thoughts and behavior. Control is very costly; it takes a lot of energy to maintain. It uses many of our personal resources to monitor and select the experiences and feelings that are acceptable or unacceptable. The cost is our aliveness. Whenever we control our experience, we sacrifice a measure of vitality. Most of my clients come into therapy wanting to get rid of certain feelings and only experience certain other, better ones. While it makes sense to want to feel good, doing it through control ultimately fails. It takes a while for many clients to realize this: that the strain and fatigue of control is actually causing their suffering, not the feelings they were trying to select and discard.” (pp. 31-32)

Posted on

Beyond Psychology

From Reich’s “Beyond Psychology”:

“And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn’t the courage to express.” p. 70

“It is obvious that humans are the only living creatures who deny the natural law of pleasure. Therefore war must exist. Frenzied electrical machines attacking one another — the senselessness of life is only made possible through the denial of the biology of life. Sexuality equals life. But all this philosophy is worthless trash. We must rescue life!” p.71

Posted on

Watts and Feldenkrais

“The function of Taoism is to undo the inevitable damage of this discipline [the socially necessary task of forcing the original spontaneity of life into the rigid rules of convention], and not only to restore but also to develop the original spontaneity (…)” (p. 10) The way of zen, Alan Watts

“To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it. It is to be able to use it as an instrument instead of being used by it.” p.11

“It would be impossible, in their [the Taoist’s] view, to believe oneself innately evil without discrediting the very belief, since all the notions of a perverted mind would be perverted notions. (…) Reason cannot be trusted if the brain cannot be trusted, since the power of reason depends upon organs that were grown by ‘unconscious intelligence’.” (p.21-2)

Taoism is a way of liberation. “It is a liberation from convention and of the creative power of te.” (p.28)

Joseph Needham, in Science and Civilization in China, “draws attention to the essential differences between Hebrew-Christian and Chinese views of natural law, the former deriving from the ‘word’ of a lawgiver, God, and the latter from a relationship of spontaneous processes working in an organismic pattern.” (p.17)

From Body and Mature Behaviour, by Moshe Feldenkrais: “Every method of psychotherapy is correct on one point or another. The problems involved have so many facets that this is possible. They are all wrong in pretending to have solved the whole problem.” (p.3)

“While expecting hopefully that the environment will be changed by our collective efforts, we must also make sure that everything amenable to human influence in each individual is used to facilitate adaptation. This will not only eliminate much misery in the present generation but will also give a better chance to the next.” (p.8)

“We do tolerate certain limitations, physical and mental, just because we do not know that they are amenable to our influence. The results of faulty habits are called character or chronic diseases which, as their name suggests, are incurable. And improper use of oneself is explained as unfortunate inheritance or permanent deformation.” (p.8)

“The whole nervous system is found to be composed of hierarchical entities, each overriding its immediate subordinate, each in its own turn being subject to a similar influence from its superior.” (p. 17)

From The way of zen: “Furthermore, the function of negative knowledge is not unlike the uses of space–the empty page upon which words can be written, the empty jar into which liquid can be poured, the empty window through which light can be admitted, and the empty pipe through which water can flow. Obviously the value of emptiness lies in the movements it permits or in the substance which it mediates and contains. But the emptiness must come first. This is why Indian philosophy concentrates on negation, on liberating the mind from concepts of Truth. It proposes no idea, no description, of what is to fill the mind’s void because the idea would exclude the fact–somewhat as a picture of the sun on the windowpane would shut out the true sun’s light.” (p.37)

Posted on

Anxiety and Elephants, Part Four

I think the reason it’s so hard to discern the difference between biologically and environmentally caused diseases is partly because of the way we think about causality. What does it mean to acknowledge that “stress” can cause or contribute to heart disease? When a gang member has a bullet removed from his brain, what was the “cause” of his death? The bullet? Bad parenting? Social policy?

There are people for whom the physiological and neuromuscular stress responses have become so repeatedly triggered and habituated that their lives are on the line. How best to treat these diseases of stress? The question is no different for heart disease than for depression. We take meds and have surgeries only to return back to the same stressful job. The paravertebral muscles in the back can be so chronically tensed that discs bulge. One person is shown the x-ray and encouraged to have surgery to correct the problem. This helps a lot with the pain. But there’s no insight, no improved awareness, so right back to the same stressful situation and more back surgery five years later. Another person is taught how to regain control of the paravertebral muscles. As a result of this learning process, the person can now relax these muscles; the spine is no longer bent; the disk no longer bulges; no more pain. Improved self-awareness, improved functioning, improved insight. Person gets a new job.

How we understand the cause of a problem will determine what we decide to do about it. If your eye doctor tells you your nearsightedness is caused by a refractive, structural problem in your eye, you will probably get eye-glasses. If you listen to Aldous Huxley or Dr. William Bates, you might be persuaded that your myopia is primarily a matter of poor seeing habits, and that you might regain perfect vision by replacing these habits with better ones. The bottom line is this: Glasses are fine. They help you see better immediately, and with no effort on your part. The Bates Method is a lot like meditation. It takes time, effort, and commitment. Glasses are an UR intervention that masks symptoms, and people’s vision continues to get worse and worse (anyone’s prescriptions going the other way?) Back surgery will help your back feel better; but it doesn’t address the problem integrally (no engagement of awareness). It’s the same for psychiatric problems, in my opinion. Awareness heals. But we don’t want to hear it! It may be true that the status quo, by its very nature, suppresses the integral truth of health and disease. But WE ARE THE STATUS QUO! We would rather wear glasses, have back surgery, take the heart meds and the psych meds. We want to be enlightened, but not if it might mean quitting that job of ours. Without the job we’d have no way to afford the glasses, Prozac, and back surgeries! Insanity!

Posted on

Anxiety and Elephants, Part Two

I’ve worked with many, many people with psychological problems in the extreme, and it’s impossible not to think that some of these folks are primarily the victims of some kind of brain disorder. I don’t deny that genetics can be a factor, and that some people can inherit a dysfunctional brain or a tendency to have certain problems. Anyone who’s ever worked with developmentally disabled people or people whose brains have been affected by injury or disease can attest to the reality and effects of brain dysfunction. There are also some very interesting twin studies on schizophrenia that must be taken into account in any integral approach to understanding these issues. In my experience, however, these kinds of conditions are exceedingly rare, and certainly do not account for the “one of every four” phenomenon that we see in our society today. So, to be clear, I do think problems in functioning can be due primarily to structural problems in the brain, inherited or not.

My main point is that it is dangerous and flat-out wrong to think of “psychological” problems or subjective experience in general as being “caused by” objective or upper right quadrant realities. My examples of the tiger and elephant were a little over the top, I admit, but in general I do see people being seduced (by The Man as well as by their own understandable desire for relief) into making the upper right primary when, in fact, an emphasis on other quadrants is in order. In some cases, such as grief over the death of a loved one, or the psychological abuse of a child, we can see how simplistic and reductionistic it is to think in terms of “causes.” Someone in a prolonged state of grief or a child exposed to the stress of continued confusion and terror will change on a physiological level in ways that can be measured. But to say their subjective feelings are caused by the physiological changes is no more or less true than saying their feelings are caused by the death of the loved one or by the abuse. The way we respond to death is partly a matter of how death is viewed in our culture, and the child abuse might partly be influenced by cultural and economic factors. Human health has to looked at integrally, in my opinion, to effectively deal with problems. Even the language here makes things difficult. Calling something a psychological problem sounds like a denial of the upper right quadrant, while calling it a medical problem denies the other quadrants. “Problems of living” are always a four quadrant affair, although when it comes down to helping a real person having a problem, the main concern is “what works.” Even if the problems of a schizophrenic man stem from some sort of child abuse or whatever, still the most helpful thing to do for him may be to prescribe him some risperdal. A health care professional cannot fix all the problems in society, culture, and in the mind of the patient in three days. But they can prescribe risperdal, and that does help ease the suffering of many, many patients.

Posted on

Anxiety and Elephants

“Do you suffer from sleeplessness, anxious feelings, obsessive worrying about the future that makes it hard to function? If you find yourself saying Yes, than you may be suffering from generalized anxiety disorder and a chemical imbalance may be to blame.” — Paxil commercial

I mean no disrespect to any of you who have or are suffering from anxiety, depression, or any other mental health problem, but the notion that the so-called mental illnesses we see all around (and within) us are predominantly upper-right quadrant pathologies (i.e. brain disorders) is, to my mind, a striking example of ignorance and non-integral thinking. I say this with genuine compassion, having spent the last ten years of my life working with people diagnosed with mental illnesses.

Drug companies drive much of the current research in psychiatry these days, and the medical establishment (i.e. the people that prescribe Paxil) has produced an abundance of evidence to support their viewpoint: the brain scans, the analysis of neurotransmitter levels, etc. That the entire culture is unbalanced chemically is not the issue–this is, in fact, an obvious state of affairs, which the “evidence” nicely illustrates. What really frosts my balls is the cleverly marketed misunderstanding that an imbalance in our chemical structure necessarily indicates a chemical intervention, and furthermore, is a state of affairs which relieves us of the responsibility for our own state of being. If we took a brain scan and did a chemical analysis of a person who just stuck his head in an elephant’s asshole, we would surely note, when we compare the results to a scan and analysis of the same person a week later (head still in ass), many differences. The long term exposure to the elevated temperature of the elephant’s bunghole, along with the lack of breathable air, would undoubtedly have profound physiological effects. The Paxil pushers of the world would like us to believe that our subject’s chemical imbalance should be “treated” by giving him some pill (it would have to come in suppository form of course, as our subject’s head, and therefore mouth, is unavailable as a medication route) that will directly act on his physiological structure in a way that facilitates a change toward the closest possible approximation of his initial state of relative chemical balance. Well, that’s one approach I guess. The common sense alternative of simply having the subject remove his head from the elephant’s ass would seem a little simpler, and would undoubtedly achieve more satisfactory results. Clearly, pulling head from ass is the more appropriate response in this situation, but imagine if every time we tried to point this out we were encouraged to ignore the fact that the guy’s head was in the elephant’s ass, that every time we even glanced in the direction of the elephant’s ass, our attention was redirected to the brain scan and physiological data. Well, you get the point. Anything can be considered in terms of its chemical properties and physical structure, and any change in subjective experience has a correlative change on an objective, observable level. It simply does not follow that depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness is “caused by” a chemical imbalance, or should necessarily be treated by a chemical intervention. If a tiger were to walk onto my front porch, my physiology would change measurably, but I would consider it insane for someone to suggest that my resultant anxiety was “caused by” the physiological changes or that I should swallow some paxil. I am thankful that many of the folks I work with, such as those tormented by voices in their head or those depressed to the point of attempted suicide, find relief in medication. In fact, I’m all for the use of chemicals for any and all psychological problems, even having a few beers after a tough day at work. Anything that helps is good, so long as you understand (as much as possible) what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The person who takes the paxil and stays on the front porch with the tiger might get eaten alive. The problems we face in life are complicated beasts, and they cannot be understood or effectively addressed with anything less than an integral approach.

But the paxil pushers of the world are only telling us what we want to hear. We want to keep our gaze fixed on those brainscans and hormone level print outs; we’re more than willing to spend however much it costs for those little pink pills.

It’s such a small price to pay for the warmth and security of that big, pillowy ass. It’s as cozy as mama’s womb, by golly, and once you get used to the smell, you don’t even realize where your head’s buried.

Posted on

Beyond Theology

Some food for thought from Watt’s (Beyond Theology):

“Spirituality needs a beer and a loud burp, just as sensuality needs a bed on the hard ground, a rough blanket, and a long look at the utterly improbable stars.” (p. 162)

“Material pleasure, even of the most refined order, is never enough, if “enough” is what you are seeking. If there is that strange, deep longing in the heart for something that is “the answer”–the gorgeous, golden glory you have always wanted but have never been able to find or define, the thing that is finally for real and for keeps, the eternal home–then anything in the physical or intellectual universe that is asked to be that will collapse. […] The answer, the eternal home, will never, never be found so long as you are seeking it, for the simple reason that it is yourself–not the self that you are aware of and that you can love or hate, but the one that always vanishes when you look for it. As soon as you realize that you are the Center, you have no further need to see it, to try to make it an object or an experience. This is why the mystics call the highest knowledge unknowing.” (p. 162)

“[A] superior religion goes beyond theology. It turns toward the center; it investigates and feels out the inmost depths of man himself, since it is here that we are in most intimate contact, or rather, in identity with existence itself. Dependence on theological ideas and symbols is replaced by direct, non-conceptual touch with a level of being which is simultaneously one’s own and the being of all others. For at the point where I am most myself I am most beyond myself. At root I am one with all the other branches. Yet this level of being is not something to be grasped and categorized, to be inspected, analyzed or made an object of knowledge–not because it is taboo or sacrosanct, but because it is the point from which one radiates, the light not before but within the eyes.” (p.225)

“[T]he way in which we interpret mystical experience must be plausible. That is to say, it must fit in with and/or throw light upon the best available knowledge about life and the universe.” (p. 225)

[Pages 226-229 kick ass and should be re-read. They discuss the connection of modern scientific understanding with the feeling of mystical experience.]

“[U]ltimate faith is not in or upon anything at all. It is complete letting go. Not only is it beyond theology; it is also beyond atheism and nihilism. Such letting go cannot be attained. It cannot be acquired or developed through perseverance and exercises, except insofar as such efforts prove the impossibility of acquiring it. Letting go comes only through desperation. When you know that it is beyond you–beyond your powers of action as beyond your powers of relaxation. When you give up every last trick and device for getting it, including this “giving up” as something that one might do, say, at ten o’clock tonight. That you cannot by any means do it–that IS it! That is the mighty self-abandonment which gives birth to the stars.” (p.229)