This TED Talk has been making the rounds on the internet lately. But it is so good - perhaps the best TED Talk ever - that I wanted to share it. Enjoy!
A year or so ago, I was working my way through Betty Edwards "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." If anyone is interested in how to make the switch between a left-brain observer and a right-brain observer, her work is one excellent place to start.
-Steve
This post is an addendum to The Witness and The Observer posted a few days ago. As with that post, those of you who don't have an interest in the boundaries between hermeneutic-phenomenology and spirituality might like to skip this.
Adding to what was already written ...
The Witness is the home of meaninglessness. The Observer is the home of meaningfulness.
The Observer exists in the domain of opposites, polarities, and paradoxes (e.g., good and bad, warm and cold, male and female, existing and not existing). The Witness never experiences opposites, polarities, and paradoxes.
The Witness has no structure or form and is outside of time in the eternal Now. The Observer has a narrative structure and is temporal, having a past, present, and future.
From the interpretation of The Observer we exist as an historical being - a self. From the experience of The Witness we are an ahistorical being - a Self.
As a self, we have concerns, emotional reactions, beliefs, intentions, goals and agendas, and conditioned tendencies (habits). As a Self, we have none of that. As a self we have choices. A quality of the Self is choicelessness.
The Self is the self's possibility for freedom and transformation.
It is within the dialectic between The Witness and The Observer that transformation of The Observer occurs.
This dialectic at once (partially) deconstructs The Observer through experiences of meaninglessness and reconstructs The Observer as meaning is construed and constructed.
The Self is the "nothingness" out of which declarations are created. Declarations always refer to the world of The Observer.
Transformation of The Observer changes the form of our existence to ourselves in the present. The Witness is never transformed for that which is formless cannot be re-formed.
Transformation of The Observer allows us to take greater responsibility for the historical being we are. In taking greater responsibility for our historical being, we can live into new future possibilities through declaration of new self-narratives.
This distinction of The Witness and The Observer is dualistic. This brings to mind the notion from the Heart Sutra "Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form." Form characterizes The Observer whereas emptiness characterizes The Witness. But as Hakuin says in his commentary on the Heart Sutra, "A nice hot kettle of stew. He ruins it by dropping a couple of rat turds in."
A couple of rat turds - form and emptiness, The Observer and The Witness. Perhaps we shouldn't ruin the stew.
I recall an instance when I was volunteering in the kitchen at Green Gulch Zen Farm with a friend of mine who is also a student of spirituality and philosophy. We were "talking shop" as we cooked and in the middle of our conversation he asked "But what or who experiences non-duality?" And without a moment's hesitation to think I said, "Non-duality 'experiences' non-duality." And within the distinctions I'm exploring here that means no Witness and no Observer can experience non-duality.
Hope you enjoyed this ...
-Steve
Lately, I've been working on building three different businesses. And at the center of all business-building is articulation of the business narrative.
The dramatic structure of the narrative follows the "plot mountain" that we all (supposedly) learned in grade school - exposition of conflict, rising action, climax or turning point, falling action, and resolution or denouement. Is it coming back? Not too nightmarish I hope.
A business narrative frames the conflict that the business addresses, how the it addresses the conflict, and what you'll get from buying the resolution from the business.
For some reason I had the weird idea to look at the world's major religions through the lens of business narratives.
One of the very first teachings Buddha gave after becoming enlightened was on The Four Noble Truths. They are:
This is Buddha's business narrative. The exposition of conflict is Noble Truth #1 - life is suffering. The rising action is Noble Truth #2 - recognition of the origin of suffering. In a way the second truth doesn't really get us anywhere because we can understand where suffering comes from but still not be free from suffering. But the second truth does give the Buddha some credibility. Perhaps this is leading somewhere helpful we might be thinking.
The climax or turning point is the Buddha's declaration in the third Noble Truth that the cessation of suffering is possible. What a radical departure from how we experience life. On the heals of the climax, he offers us the way - The Noble Eightfold Path. This is the falling action that leads to the implied denouement - no more suffering.
Wonder how much The Noble Eightfold Path costs? :-)
Unfortunately(?), it costs nothing less than giving up everything you take yourself to be, everything you take others to be, and everything you take the world to be. In spite of his crappy pricing strategy, he's doing pretty well with anywhere from 350 million to 1.7 billion customers worldwide, including me.
-Steve
If you aren't interested in the ontology of the observer you can skip this post. It is somewhat philosophical and will only be of interest to a few of you, I suspect.
Last week I was reflecting on the notion that you can only observe that which you have language for in light of experiences I frequently have that I don't have language for.
An insight ... there is a distinction between witnessing and observing even though we usually consider these as synonyms in our everyday usage of the words.
Indeed you can only observe what you have language (distinctions) for. As a result, observations can be shared with others. What you can observe determines what exists for you - not what is real - just what exists for you. What can be observed is determined by our structure of interpretation. The observer is an interpreter.
From observations we get narratives and, perhaps most importantly, self-narratives. That is our notion of ourselves - who we are to ourselves - comes from observations.
As an illustration of this refer to Helen Keller's account of learning her first word "water" and how that brought into existence for her the meaning of meaning, temporal narrative (past, present, and future) and her sense of being a self. Yes, all of that requires the distinction of language itself.
The witness can experience experiences for which there is no language. That is, the witness can witness what can't be observed.
Of course, the obvious question is what is being witnessed? Is it reality? All I can say is that what is witnessed cannot be described by any distinction and, in particular, cannot be described as existing or not existing.
This calls to mind Lao Tzu's claim that "The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao." And just to cut off a road commonly taken he goes on to say you can't say the Tao is Nothingness or Beingness for those are distinctions too.
Of course, all I'm doing here is merely observing the witness. What of witnessing the witness?
This points to the answer to so many Zen koans ... "What is your original face?" for example ...
-Steve
Today's inspiration ...
Given the choice between suffering and bliss we always choose bliss ... this is why we suffer.
Perhaps the "choice" is between choosing and not choosing.
What if not choosing is actually what leads to bliss?
-Steve
Last week I took a 7 mile hike with my friend Ken Homer. Among other things we discussed the observation our most powerful "technologies" for transformation focus on transformation of the individual because they are founded on individual ontologies - answers to the question "What is a human being?"
For example, one approach to answering the question "what is a human being?" that comes from hermeneutic phenomenology follows.
A human being is interpretive (and self-interpretive). That is our
experience is shaped by our interpretations and, as individuals, the
interpretations we make can and do differ. And this applies to our
experience of ourselves as well as our experience of others and our
environment.
A human being is product of the interaction of biology, biography, and culture (especially language). That is that how we interpret the everything is shaped our bodies, our personal histories, and the family and cultures we grow up in.
A human being has concerns and takes action to care for them. That is, as individuals, our experience is grounded in "care" and we have agency.
This leads to "transformational technologies" for individuals that amount to shifting how we interpret the world and how we act to take care of our concerns. This is the heart of coaching.
But the significant environmental, social, and spiritual crises of our present day also seem to call for transformation on a collective level. However, we don't seem to have good collective ontologies - answers to the question "What are human beings?" or, said more colloquially, "What are people?" Of course, here we are asking about human beings as a collective phenomenon. And, of course, we aren't proposing abandoning individual ontologies only augmenting them.
Ken has a neat idea - that we could look to indigenous peoples who seem to exist more as a "people" than as modern "individuals." I think this is a great idea. To me it makes perfect sense.
Perhaps the best individual ontology we have is from the work of Heidegger. The above picture is of an Achuar man. The Achuar people are indigenous to the forests of Ecuador and Peru. What we need is the "Heidegger of the Achuar." Any suggestions?
My best lead so far on this inquiry is to read "The Walking People" by Paula Underwood.
Take care,
-Steve
I've made it a regular habit over the last 15 years to read widely in the spiritual literature of many traditions. And recently I've been reflecting about what is essential in spirituality. And it seems to me that what is essential focuses on a central spiritual dilemma.
We take ourselves to be separate. Separate from each other, separate from nature, and even separate from our bodies. Some of the eastern traditions call this sense of separation "the self-contraction." In the west we often call this sense of separation "ego."
From this egoic self-contraction we live in fear for our survival. And this fear leads to all sorts of reactivity including avoidance of relationships, emotional reactivity, and object relations.
And this sense of separation creates competition, social inequality, slavery, ownership of property, positionality, wars, casting ourselves as righteous while demonizing others, and so many other social issues.
Yet this sense of separation is self-created. This is the dilemma or apparent dilemma.
And every spiritual tradition has a way of responding to this by saying that we are all One, that we are all God's children, that we all have the same Original Face. But saying it doesn't help us to live it. In a way it is too impersonal and flies in the face of the personalness of our experience and the threats to our survival that we fear.
-Steve
I hold that an authentic stance in the world is fundamental to the practice of Integral Leadership (and Integral Coaching too). Authenticity is a rich topic of inquiry. Today I'd like to explore authenticity as a calling - the ultimate calling.
I've been reading Michael Gelven's commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time. In commenting on Heidegger's analysis of authenticity, Gelven notes that there are four aspects that are true of any calling. There must be:
In Heidegger's analysis, all four aspects of the calling to authenticity involve the self.
However, each of these reflects a different aspect of the self.
This analysis reveals the path from inauthenticity to authenticity. And the surprise, at least to me, is that the inauthentic self initiates the call to authenticity out of its own sense of anxiety, dread, and discomfort at not feeling at home in the world. This is the good news because it means that we can never be permanently trapped in inauthenticity because inauthenticity holds within it the call to authenticity.
The other observation here is that we can get lost in the "outer" world of social game-playing, this is inauthentic, and leads to dread and not feeling at home. And the resolution of inauthenticity as authenticity is an inward turning towards what is unique, authentic, and true of ourselves.
Lastly, what does it take to hear this call? Being silent. We must be silent enough to hear the call and not be wrapped up in the loudness of our social game-playing.
The appropriate response to feelings of anxiety and dread is to be silent, to sit with them, and to feel them. For within such feelings, the inauthentic self will call for authenticity.
And even if we aren't feeling anxiety and dread, when we become silent as we do in meditation, we will start to feel the anxiety that is always already there lurking at the edges of our experience. For the beginning meditator, this is the first major challenges to continued meditation.
What supports this silence, and therefore our calling to authenticity, is meditation, body work (e.g., massage) and body practices (e.g., yoga), being in nature, and participating in a community that recognizes and calls for authenticity (e.g., a sangha) which is not the norm in society.
I hope this has been thought provoking. I'd love to hear what you make of this.
Take care,
-Steve
It's been about a month or so since I last posted. I've been on sabbatical between jobs and while I hadn't intended to stop posting, as I relaxed into my sabbatical it sort of happened. So with this new year, I start my new job and with it posting to this blog.
In fact, my first day at work was supposed to be Tuesday. But, as the fates would have it, I'm sick at home and my first day has been delayed until (hopefully) tomorrow. Life is definitely not turning out as planned.
I've spent the month in a bardo of sorts - a place in between places - filled with uncertainty. And facing into the uncertainty about my new job (and new career) has generated happiness and freedom without resolving the uncertainty.
Yesterday, in my sickly stupor, I was drawn to a book I once read called Bring Me the Rhinoceros. I have learned over the years to follow these subtle feelings that I need to read something or talk to someone. This is a book about working with koans written by a Zen teacher named John Tarrant. I started to re-read the book and forgot how much I had enjoyed it the first time.
Koans offer a method of undoing us and opening us into the uncertainty that is life. They have been around in the Zen tradition going back to its roots in China more than a thousand years ago. Tarrant opens the book by pointing to seven things to notice about koans:
This is a radically different kind of education than what we get exposed to in our schools. And yet, in the midst of big life transitions - as I'm going through now - what koans reveal is so much more helpful than the feeling that the uncertainty that I feel dooms me to failure.
What if uncertainty really is a path toward happiness? Is there something trustable about our true nature? Undying creativity? Endless kindness?
Take care,
-Steve
As a coach I sometimes invite my clients to take up the practice of creating a never-ending list. Here is the start of a never-ending list of what wakes us up from the haze of unconsciousness to ourselves, others, and our life that we often live in:
What else wakes us up?
With love,
-Steve
Adam Kahane: Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities
Daniel Goleman: Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
David Whyte: The Heart Aroused : Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America
Geshe Michael Roach: The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life
Humberto R. Maturana: From Being to Doing. The Origins of the Biology of Cognition
Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco Varela: Tree of Knowledge
Jalal al-Din Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks): The Essential Rumi (Essential (Booksales))
John Daido Loori: The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life
Ken McLeod: Wake Up To Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention
Peter M. Senge: Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
Richard Strozzi Heckler: Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion
Robert E. Quinn: Change the World : How Ordinary People Can Achieve Extraordinary Results
Robert Kegan: How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation
Twyla Tharp: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
Vaclav Havel: The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice
Wendy Palmer: The Intuitive Body: Aikido as a Clairsentient Practice
William McDonough: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Wislawa Szymborska: Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska
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