Mystery of Others: Reading James Hollis The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other

      I am sometimes puzzled by the question: how does a person ever see past their mental projections, to know things as they really are? The question is tricky, because perhaps all a person can ever see are illusions and mental projections of what is liked or disliked. James Hollis, in his book The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other, maintains that many people in relationships project their illusory image of ideal mother or father onto significant others, not realizing that what they are seeing is just their own desire for a longed-for parental figure. This explains why, at least according to psychoanalysis, people sometimes marry a person similar to a parental figure in their life. But it also sheds light on why people feel disappointed or disenchanted with their partner, as they begin to realize that the person they married isn't matching with their original thought of that person. Writes Hollis: "All relationships..begin in projection." (p.36). But Hollis goes on to suggest that people can start to become more conscious of others as they are, once they start to give to themselves what they are looking for others to give to them. Hence, he writes: "It takes great courage to ask this fundamental question: 'What am I asking of this Other that I ought to be doing for myself?' (p.57)
     As I am reading Hollis' book, I begin to ask the question, what would truly motivate a person to take on the task of doing onto oneself what one expects of others? And, if it is unreasonable to demand others to be my benevolent, all-knowing parents, would it not also be unreasonable to demand it from 'myself'? Hollis operates from a kind of complementary notion of 'do unto yourself what you expect from others.' This may seem okay and making sense, but is it compassionate? I think that a more germane approach might be to challenge the content and nature of the projection itself, rather than trying to internalize the demands of the projected material. In other words, rather than demanding that I 'parent' myself in a perfect way that I would expect from an ideal parental figure, perhaps it is more useful to challenge the very notion of 'ideal' parent, or ideal provider. It might even be valuable to deconstruct the notion of what a provider is expected to provide, rather than giving myself the task of being such a provider. Otherwise, the failure of self to provide for itself might end up being 're-projected' onto the world and others, out of the despair of trying to attempt the impossible. Again, here is where I begin to wonder whether 'individuation' gets enmeshed with an untenable notion of personal autonomy that might not bear out in real situations.
     I think a more manageable motivation in one's friendships and relationships would be to consider being with another as an utter mystery that is always beginning and unfolding. I write almost incessantly about mystery and 'beginning' mind, but my point is to unpack the assumptions about both self and other, not just the other. Accepting my own and others' mystery is to know that there is something that is not reducible to an idea, an archetype or a form. I don't even think that a person can presume to know how or why one evolves as one does. This relativism gives me some latitude to stop taking on what is not humanly reasonable to take on, as well as to relax the requirement that I fulfill emotional demands that date back to early childhood that relate to an 'essential' Self. But having a beginner's approach also adds a freshness and vitality to each moment that cannot be duplicated. It acknowledges that self and other are always co-created and constructed, in a shared mental/heart space that is always in flux. Does anyone have the answers? Not really, perhaps not even Jung himself. But it' the not knowing that makes relationships so fresh, so interesting, and so lively. Without the element of mystery, it is hard to see how any relationship, including friendships, could survive for very long without people typecasting each other.
   I find peace of mind perhaps only when I can go beyond childhood conditioning. But trying to be one's own parent to one's child does prove to be a bit much. While Hollis' approach sounds pretty logical, I wonder how many people ever achieve 'individuation' by taking onto themselves all the things they expect from others? What would motivate anyone to perform such a torturous task of 'inverting' all the commandments or expectations one might have for others? Again, I think that one needs to be constantly on guard for untenable notions of care-giving, being mindful of what kinds of care are physically and emotionally within one's means, rather than transferring ideal care from others onto 'ideal self-care.
    On the other hand, Hollis does a very good job of revealing the ways in which people create their own suffering,  by projecting ideals onto the people around them, including loved ones. And he's a great writer with a wonderful taste for poetry. For this reason, I strongly recommend this book, even though I find the approach he takes toward personal responsibility and individuation to be a little problematic.

References

Hollis, James (1998), The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other. Toronto, ON: Inner City Books.

Peda-gogies of Summer Walking

                The sun burns when it is not hiding in the clouds. The tree tops protect the sidewalks below from the rain. The trails are deep and steep, narrow and long. The sun-bathers prepare to pound he boardwalks, in preparation for the final days of summer. Like seabirds, families congregate in front of the ponds, wanting to soak in the last details of the water and the sunshine.

               

                The smell of barbecue hearkens to earlier times: the days when the kids would stay out all day, while parents didn’t have to worry over their whereabouts. Seeing kids splashing through Lake Ontario restores my faith that the water is not as polluted as rumours say that it is. And the loving fathers kiss their daughters as they return with scraped knees and mud-caked hands, needing just the care to know that their bodies are safe and resilient. And the cycle of the day goes by, with the whirring hums of the nearby airshow to enthrall everyone. It seems a beautiful day to finish the summer.

                

                Walking seems like such an innocent thing to do, but what does it teach me? What do I learn from this simple movement? One thing that I learn about is that the flesh and blood body has its strengths and its limits. One doesn’t really test the limits of how far one can walk unless one actually walks. There is even metaphor, “walk the talk”, which suggests that walking embodies the real distances that talk only imagines. I can say that I am capable of travelling so much of a distance, but only through real distance can I really know what my body is capable of. Walking also becomes a contemplative relationship with the body, the sounds, and the environment. Walking stirs up memories, sensations, and resistance as well. But it can be meditative. When I am tired or sore from walking, my temptation might be to rest or to quit altogether, but what happens when I stay with it? It goes away, and eventually leads to joy again. In this way, I learn about the body’s capacity for cycling and endless renewal, instead of treating the body as one upward progression.   

              

              Walking is also an exercise in learning interconnection, through witnessing it in the things around me. The social role of the walker is unique, in the sense that it is transient, and never stays in one place at any given time. Walking long distance can displace identities from their comfortable, familiar ‘psycho-geographies’, and re-orient them to unfamiliar psychic spaces. It can also disorient a person from the familiar, static social roles that keep a person fixed to a few routine locations, such as the office, home and the supermarket. The discomfort of dislocation might yield to a sense of wonder, or wondering (or wandering) as to who one really is, and this might lead one to expand the familiar roles of lifestyles of one’s habitual sense of location. At the same time as being a transient identity, the walker is free to stop anywhere and connect with nature and people. In a sense, walking embodies the value of the wandering soul, in search of ways to endlessly re-approach the same pathways, using new perspectives, lenses and connections to invigorate the journey. But walking in the city adds the notion that wandering does not isolate people from communities, but actually allows people to reconnect with the unknown parts of the city and discover new acquaintances. Walking can be an act of transgressing, crossing invisible boundaries between neighbourhoods that are not connected to each other.

The Boy in the Ferris Wheel

Somewhere in the world, on a Ferris Wheel, a boy is afraid of falling. He suddenly realizes, or remembers, how much he is afraid of heights. He didn’t know how he got here or how he even got pushed into being in this place. But here he is, dangling on a very loose chair, with no seat-belts, and not much in the way of security. He is bound by the sky, the sounds below him, and the sights of tall buildings around him. He might even be wondering, how did I choose to do this? Why is this not what I expected? And, in spite of the calm reassurance of his sister beside him, the boy starts to feel afraid of that very high place, where he hangs suspended, waiting for the Ferris wheel to lower him downward. Nothing can erase the boy’s fear, because it is etched in the primordial, karmic circuitry of his veins and the emotional sides of his brain. And nothing can quite reason with him. And there it is, a free-floating space where anything can happen, and there is neither safety nor lack of secure hands to attempt to reassure the boy.

Adults might laugh at this experience, but do they ever remember times when they felt this vulnerable, not having the layers of inner experience or ‘scaffolding’ to tell them that indeed things are going to be okay? Do you ever remember times when your parents or an older person seemed ‘magical’ to you, because they seemed to exude this miraculous confidence in the face of the greatest fears and dangers? Does anyone remember such an experience?

I think that most fears end up being explained away, and spiritual practitioners can overcome a lot of fear through their practice. At the very least, I found that listening to talks from monastic teachers have given me a way of contextualizing experiences so that they are less frightening. But there is also a kind of wisdom in the fear that this boy shows. It is, I think, the raw and vulnerable ‘knowing’ that, indeed, many things are possible, much more than what people imagine. And I think the biggest fear might be the realization that our ego, or our sense of self, is not that much in control to begin with. The way experiences unfold and the kind of situations that arise often stymie the ego. In retrospect, it almost appears that the nature of life and the universe itself is somehow designed to stump the efforts to create a protected sense of self in the world. Not only that, but in many cases, people actually choose to get into these situations precisely due to desires: the desire for exhilaration, or fun, or connection, or what have you. So the self goes into these experiences fully desiring for something to happen. But like the boy in the Ferris Wheel,  I often find myself in situations where my heart wants what it cannot yet handle, or longs for something that it is not fully capable of understanding or appreciating . All desirable situations have a thorny part to them, and perhaps it is the repercussion of trying to rush into something with full eagerness and a lack of caution.

             

            Is it bad to want something and then be challenged by what we desire? I don’t think it’s bad at all. I begin to think that it is exactly these kinds of ‘knotty’ experiences that might be needed to recognize the contradictions of the ego, and to go beyond those contradictions. Of course the ego (or self) ‘wants’ what it pleasant or ‘positive’ and tries to avoid what is unpleasant, only to find that even the most ‘positive’ experiences can contain moments of deep fear, complexity, and confusion. But if one is somehow able to stay with that complexity and contradiction, moments arise when there is no longer a struggle inside, and there is stillness to appreciate the way things are, and to really be silent inside, to be one’s true self, and not to struggle with these complexes. And these are true moments of silence and of just being, that can happen when one is not really looking for it.

The Intentions of Experience

           I finished reading Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Chapter Seven in Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self called “Parapsychological Pieces of the Synchronicity Puzzle” (p.72-83). I have never had much experience with the paranormal, but one interesting point that Shinoda Bolen makes is that psychic abilities often depend on a prior openness, an ability to accept its possibility. She remarks, paraphrasing John Lilly, that “We must transcend our own limiting beliefs in order to grow beyond them, or in order to have the experiences which allow us to grow.” (p.76). I am curious to know what might account for Shinoda Bolen’s observation (apparently backed by evidence) that psychic experiences tend to increase among those who are ‘open’ to it. Just what does it mean to be ‘open’ to these kinds of experiences, and how is this different from blindly following a belief or a desire to believe in something?

            I suppose the closest thing I have had to understanding this is my very crude and basic stage of meditation. Observing the mind, I can often see the fine line between expecting and ‘wanting to prove’ something as real or not, and simply cultivating an open intention to allow possibilities to happen. And how easy it is to slide from one mode to the next. If, for example, I am doing a guided relaxation and then hope to relax, that hope creates a sense of time and causality. It anticipates a future result, and even sets up the present experience to flow into its predicted result. It reminds me of this article I once read about a fashion trend for kale. Kale was and still is seen as this super-healthy vegetable which has the ability to prevent disease. At one time, people were so determined to realize the nutritional and medicinal benefits of kale that they started having kale ‘parties’ and exchanging kale recipes over the internet. Sooner or later, a few skeptical doctors started to warn the kale movement that too much of anything is not going to work out. And along comes the good old adage of ‘everything in moderation.’ It’s hard to say who is right in this situation, the kale lovers who set up a great faith in the nutrients in kale, or the skeptical doctors who advocate the Back to Usual. But both movements seem to slide back to duality, back to the reaction to causality. And all this seems to do is create a great debate.

            I think that as soon as people start to talk about curative benefits, they set up a duality around something that ends up becoming a bit adversarial. Anything we expect to happen carries the risk of failed expectation and thus more tension. So when I go back to openness, I start to realize that the open attitude has to go beyond wanting something to have a direct benefit on something else. Perhaps Shinoda Bolen is suggesting that one can move beyond expectation with a shattering of the ego. But this too is not quite enough. There needs to be a symbolic rebirth that involves a surrender to the greater community of being and energy of mind, rather than trying to rely on simplistic and often opportunistic bids to influence the world in a specific desired way. From a Jungian perspective, Shinoda Bolen again evokes the notion of surrender to ‘higher’ being when she remarks:

 “The hopeful expectancy that there is ‘something’ beyond the ego is based on that              individual’s or humanity’s experience of ‘something’ greater than itself. This is the experience of the collective unconscious or of the power of the archetypal level, in which that ‘something greater’ is directly experiences in an intuitively felt way.” (p.80)

 If anything, I think the best way to understand this is to take on a more playful perspective on experience, to tease out deeper meanings, rather than tensely awaiting for results that I expect to control or influence. This playful view waits receptively to understand and be fully with its desires and sufferings, rather than trying to neatly resolve them. In this way, the desire can be within me, beheld and even entertained, but always with the waiting for a deeper meaning to be reached, rather than trying to quickly fix the desire or satiate it.

            A metaphor that might be useful here is that the body is meant to receive energies from the universe, rather than having to accumulate knowledge or solutions to perfect itself or its experiences. In this way, I can be gently curious toward even painful situations, wondering what the universe in its loving ways wishes to impart to me: what kind of strength or understanding, what kind of compassion or wisdom I might learn from it. But embedded in this view is the strong belief that experience always has a good intention.

References 

Bolen, Jean Shinoda, (1979) The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self. San Francisco: Harper

Coming Home

During the meditation practice, I had a feeling that a lot of conflicts in mind just seemed to stop. It wasn’t that the conflicts disappeared, but that these conflicts were just seen as coming from the same source, and not really disturbing to the sense of mind itself. Even when I felt the usual pains in the low back, I was able to see that the pain is not so important. What is important is to know in the heart where the mind is. And I also felt a kind of trust in the mind that I have not really felt before. In fact, most of the time, I am simply afraid of falling through some crack, not realizing that the real ‘I’ doesn’t really go anywhere. It only seems to go somewhere because of fluctuating conditions. I felt the power of loneliness itself when I started to see ‘why’ I behave the way I do, and the kind of losses to which I am prone to fear.

                I think that underneath the struggles I have with competition and staying afloat have to do with this fear of being left behind, or a kind of social death. But who leaves who behind? It’s important to linger on that idea for a while. What really happens is that “I” lose the wholeness of mind to the thieving, wandering thoughts. What these thoughts do is divide awareness into so many parts: pursuer and pursued; abandoner and abandoned; interrogator and interrogated. Then I am like a dog chasing after my own tail. Who is really the judge in my experiences? Who can alienate the mind from itself? I have to keep coming home to know that only I can do this.

                I begin to feel that a radical trust in mind is the only way to cope when I get fooled by my own deluded thinking, which separates me into an “I” and an overall environment. I think it means having a determination to trace all the thoughts and conflicts back to their source. Otherwise, one only creates unnecessary suffering, clinging to what was never really permanent in the first place. And far from being an irresponsible position, this turns out to be perhaps the only creative way to handle responsibilities when the overall climate of things continually shifts.

Between One Life and The Next...

After the meditation today, a very accomplished practitioner and friend had shared with me about her coming retirement, and the mixed feelings that it evokes for her to go from a state of having work to doing other things, including spiritual and teaching-related projects. She compared this experience with the practice of letting go, and preparing even for one’s own death. I was quite touched by her example, and I wanted to share my own feelings about this ‘art’ of letting go.

              

            I think that it is very common to assume that letting go of something is easy. I am sure that I am hearkening back to movies I have seen, such as Last Chance Charlie, where the protagonist lets go of his routine life in order to embrace love in his mid-life. These kinds of movies often glamorize a spontaneous decision to take a risk or change, without showing too much mental preparation that a person goes through to make that leap. But I am reminded that when Master Sheng Yen talks about the four steps in handling a problem (face it, accept it, deal with it, let it go), letting go is always the last step. But I also think that letting go is a prerequisite to the other steps as well. Without an attitude of let go,  a person would not likely even be able to face a problem. What one has to let go of is the habitual, protective self that wants to smooth over difficulties. For sure, letting go does not mean to let go of problems. This would be refusing to face those problems. It is letting go of that special attachment one has to the self and its roles.

                

           In my own life, I think that the most addictive and perhaps difficult thing to let go of is the comfort and security that comes from a relative feeling of success and mastery in one’s role. Once I have mastered a certain role at work or in a subject area, I am then inclined to think that my learning is finished, and I can coast on what I have learned. In doing so, I get stuck in a role that feels secure and comfortable. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because secure roles are necessary to the fabric of work and even family life. But it starts to become problematic when I think that I am that role, or that I could not survive without that role. But is there any role that anybody has had since birth? Unless one is a Prince or born into royalty, perhaps not. Even these latter roles are continually changing. It’s sometimes important to realize that no role we have ever adopted stays the  same; it is subject to change and sometimes loss, even when one has the best intentions to uphold that role to the best of their abilities. Again, is this abnormal? In these situations, does one fret over what one has lost and then bemoan what they could have done better? While the latter is sometimes educative, more often it becomes a form of brow-beating, and it lowers one’s courage and self-esteem to go forward.

               

          Another assumption that under-girds attachment to roles is our sense that we are a well-oiled, high maintenance machine that absolutely requires certain specific comforts, and forms of respect, in order to function or thrive. I think this, again, comes from the privilege of having a role that is socially accepted and relatively stable, particularly in difficult or unstable times. But it overlooks the fact that we can also become resilient when times call for fewer things or a simpler life.  A philosophy and spiritual practice that emphasizes simplicity can help to see through the illusion that we need so many things to cope. What we actually need is a grounded sense that one is okay without too many things, and these ‘things’ are only the wandering thoughts of mind.

              

            I think one last thing to bear in mind is that failures are not devastating to a human being’s wellness. To ‘fail’ in some area or to overlook something that could have been done better is educative, but it doesn’t need to be humiliating to the point of feeling guilt or regret over it. Most of the time, failures cannot be attributed to any one single thing, and there are many layers of interpretation behind why one fails, or succeeds for that matter. It can be frightening to realize that one is not as ‘in control’ as life sometimes lulls one into believing. One somehow needs to realize that failure does not disable, it does not paralyze a person, and sometimes it can be transformative, even though it may seem incapacitating in a short term period.

                

           All of these principles seem to come from a meditative practice, because meditation pushes me to question what is ‘me’, and asks that I stop identifying this body as ‘me’. If I am not meditating, my consciousness is trying to find ways to defend and comfort my body, which I think is the end of me. Meditation helps me realize that I am more than my body, and I hope that this experience can help me when I sustain major losses in life.

Narrow Spaces, Wide Windows

           A typical office is busy and hectic, full of chatter and laughter, toil and tears. Frequent interruptions can punctuate the working space. Clear the papers from the desk and start to see the space anew. Is this space a sacred one, or is it just an expedient one? Is it only a space where people compete for scarce resources, or is there some other reason for it? If I identify myself with only one function, then it can start to look that way. But if I see a wider purpose to everyone being in this space, then it takes on a new meaning.

            The broader I think, the less I narrow myself to what appears to be the goal of an organization. Is any organization only meant to maintain this temporary existence? Does it all end with either a pay-cheque or a pink slip? Rudolf Steiner has this to say about the learning path of individuals:

Modern people are still shocked that, to obtain a complete understanding of humanity, it is necessary to consider all that humans endure before birth and after death along with what presently lives in people. This is necessary if we are to achieve an integration of humans into the whole, including into the temporal world. If we do not include that, if we consider people the way modern anthropology considers them---only in their existence between birth and death—then we do not consider the complete person, but only a portion. (p.22)

If I reflect that existence is not limited to the few years (or decades) that I am on this planet, how does this affect how I might see the world of work? For one, I think it forces me to go beneath the surface of what organizations are designed to do. On the surface, it seems that organizations are only meant to sustain human survival in its present forms. Most companies sell products, and these products are mainly intended to sustain the limited physical body I have in this life. But Steiner forces his audience to rethink that paradigm. While the ostensive purpose of ‘coming together’ is individual survival, what are the deeper spiritual meanings of human survival in the first place? What kinds of lessons are human beings meant to learn from their temporary body existence?

            
               Another way this mind-set could broaden me, is that it forces me to look beyond identifying myself with this body, and even these memories that I have. I often assume that memories are fixed contents with which I fill my brain, but memories are often only related to what is unfolding now. Even memories themselves are subject to change, so I can’t even say that ‘who I am’ or how I narrate my life is going to the same from one situation to the next. What part of all these impermanent memories can I ‘keep for myself’? Maybe no part at all. But if I let go a bit and start to identify less with this idea that I am ‘protecting my investment’, I can start to align my actions with what is needed right now.  It is like magnetic filings. The filings may not be permanent, but they continually align themselves according to the general direction of what is needed. And this creates harmony and a beautiful tableau of life. It is not about having to even create a center for one’s self, but it is the art of letting go and yielding to the present situation.

           
              I think another significant benefit of Steiner’s approach is that it allows me to honor the mystery of my being in a workplace or a community, where there is much to potentially learn from all people. Personal growth is possible at any time, even if what I do could be improved or I fail to live up to certain expectations from others. If it is true that there are countless lifetimes, it seems an honor to be able to experience people as the legacy of many lifetimes, rather than viewing human life as limited to the body. And it is also an opportunity to practice the psychic space that is necessary for self-compassion. Rather than fixing on narrow ideas of my value in an organization, I can start to see that all beings have priceless vistas of experiences which shape the current life. But in order to appreciate that, one must have a mental space to imagine that.

             It seems to take great love, courage and practice to be able to re-conceptualize who I am when I am in a community that seems only focused on a single goal. I think that a spiritual curiosity is needed to ensure that people don’t become so attached to organizational goals that they lose the bigger picture of what human life is for. In particular, it seems important to honor the spiritual learning and wisdom that continues over many lifetimes.

 Steiner,Rudolph (1995), The Spiritof the Waldorf School. Hudson,NY: Anthroposophic Press