The Conclusion: How Do I Get Out of My Own Way? Part5 (iteration 1)

How do I get out of my own way?

So I have mapped the origin of the defensive patterns that my mind uses to get in my way in the development of consciousness, the fantasy of false power and the false hope of avoiding my fear of rejection that could trigger the primal pain of the shadow conviction as well as the spectrum of responses, resistance and attachment, that my behaviour is influenced by that pain. To reassert the fundamental is the reality gap. Nearly everyone of the more spiritual or esoteric writers I have explored came back to the way the mind has a tendency to want things to be different from the way they actually are. While the why’s are relatively clear, the responses to that still seem diverse.

Solutions

I find clarity in the intersections of Deep Democracy by Jitske Kramer and the work of Yvonne Agazarian, developer of System Centered Therapy. They both emphasize the way boundaries and minds tend to close for differences, for energy and information contradicting with what the I identifies with as "my own." There is a strong case to be made that this propensity is the origin of the reality gap itself. The shadow conviction, false hope and false power are all reactions to the first difference, where first there was one, now there are two. That means they are ways to close the boundaries to the reality, to the input of others, to the content of my mind. Close the boundaries to the sensations that arise in response to all of the above.

Closed boundaries for all the reasons in the world, so how do I get out of my own way? The answer is open them. In the context of all of the above neuro/psycho programming, how is that effectively accomplished with any hope to consistency? I believe in the two paths, process driven and direct, that of the bhakti and jnani .

Practice

For the process, I have come to rely on is the Reaction Choice Moment. A reliable path to the contact position, an open orientation, it is a practice. Like music, yoga, meditation, or topsport, one which there is always room for development and where competency is determined by one singular factor: how much I practice. I describe it as a skill consisting of other skills. To grab one simile, if the RCM is like playing the piano, each of its steps is like a scale, rhythm, finger speed and understanding the music. There are other practices that can be adopted to address and improve that particular facet of the skillset.

1. Something happens inside or outside yourself.

Catch sight, notice, see. Step one is the most challenging as it is the prerequisite for everything that will come. Some amount of awareness needs to be out of the identification, observing the self as an object rather than the subject. The abilities to direct attention, differentiate, selective/voluntary identification, self observation, all support this capacity. I often experience it as a sense of “WTF is going on?” Bodywork, scanning, and developing recognition for my physical state enable the use of the biological sensor in the effort of activating the recognition that something, often distressing, stress inducing, or triggering is happening.

2. “Open yourself to receive it.”

Open, unbar, free. My partner Sarah is frequent to remind me that the sensation I want to avoid is already there, in my awareness, as part of my experience. Opening the cognitive space to contain that current reality helps me stay present rather than get swept away by trying to resist the emotions. The practices that help me train this step are often related to breathing, the release of judgement, compassion, and the identification of emotions. Resilience and the relaxation that comes from a larger perspective play an enormous role in making space for what would often rather ignore. This step is where the crossroads live, triggering curiosity to observe what is possible is a powerful way to accomplish this task of openness

3. “Make a choice”

Resolve, select, pick. There is no best choice, the question what should I do is only possible to answer way after the fact. It is an insurmountable burden when compared to what do I want to do in this context? Someone recently said to me, “you can’t change the people, but you can change the party.” Even the absence of action is an input for the environment, so I use the limited information that is available to do what I want. This is more an issue of recognition rather than cognition. Any practice/intervention that helps me to recognize, deconstruct or integrate limiting beliefs and the activation of my shadow conviction will help me. The specific orientation/question of “what wants to be lived through me?” is personally very helpful.

4. “Apply it with appreciation”

Esteem, value, give room. Bring my entire self into the relationship, with respect for the entire context, respect for my state (triggered or otherwise), respect for the current reality and it’s right to exist as yet another part of life that offers itself to be accepted (whether I like it or not). The practices that can reinforce this step relate to confronting the desire to: withhold information and manipulate others, be right, heard, and approved of. The abilities to identify voluntarily with emotions with one leg in and one leg out, neutral attention, and the release of judgement all help me maintain the contact position during the final step.

There is a predictable problem with practices that my mind becomes identified with them. I become "the practicer." My mind has this tendency of always wanting, growing, demanding, hungering for better, faster, stronger, more. This is the lateral movement of the reality gap, where every step forward coincides with an equivalent movement, another shift forward of the finishing line. Regardless of how far I travel my position relative the future remains the same, it continues to be out there, a distant tomorrow. With each increment of improvement in skill, the mind demands more. This could be the the very movement that causes me to continuously ask myself the question: how do I get out of my own way?

The trouble I have with process, and the identification with practice, is that even though it is objectively successful, I become a better more functional/competent/mature version of myself, it puts getting out of my own way as a function of time. It is an incredibly slippery slope for me personally. Before I know it my mind is telling me that "if only I get better" then I will be..." which is itself another path to the dark side.

Direct

The direct route is what I describe as the trick of the eye, a change hack, a shift of perspective that allows me to drop my story of myself and see from another perspective. The essence of what I describe as mindset management, is a simple question:

How does the way I am looking at things help me deal them?

Answering this question does require a willingness to go beyond anything I have learned, to both accept relativity and embrace the absolute, only going with what is present. A clear mind is helpful as well as resolved/integrated trauma. This direct route is done only by expressing what wants to be lived through me, in this moment and taking the responsibility to bring it into being, regardless of my mind’s judgement of that unfolding.

It must be experienced to be understood, but the state of Flow by ?Mihaly Csikszenthihalyi  comes close. What I have noticed helps me to expand my awareness beyond the scope of the mind is mostly doing nothing in particular, but what helps me to find the space to do that are:

Sub grouping, as developed by Yvonne Agazarian for System Centered Therapy, is a practice of role fluidity, where the individual parts of systems can learn to relate to the broader context, as it were outside/beyond the sense of individual identification. This ability to see the self as not just a part of something bigger, but as an expression of that larger something, has proved helpful. What I have learnt through this practice is not to take what arises within the container of my consciousness so personally as this always happens in relation to a broader system.

Inquiry, a structured and sometimes repetitive exploration, can be also effective in reminding me to actively look for the paradox of the self. The the search for the thing that searches, can help me to step outside the mind, and escape the hamster wheel it finds itself on. The possibility does exist however that the mind fuses itself with the search, hiding in the diffuse space of the absolute. This is mostly fine with the exception that the mind remains the mind and maintains the ability to, at any moment, spring into solid identification and resume suffering. This is a pattern I am all to familiar with.

The Core of the direct route is to Do Nothing. Tao Te Ching verse 37, Do Nothing; Leave Nothing Undone. The principle of Wu Wei, effortless movement, is already unfolding. It requires no method. Tapping into the direct immediacy of the underlying sensorial experience of reality that is the never ending now. Manifesting the maturity to recognize that the mind is just a part of that environment, and let it do whatever it does, while I do whatever I do. I'm already doing it, I've always been doing it, I can only be doing it. The totality of life is always being expressed and is continuously available. Every concept I can possibly hold is eclipsed by than the awareness that contains and perceives the totality of life.

This very question of "How do I get out of my own way?" IS a reflection of the problem. As my dude Steven Harrison writes in Doing Nothing, "There is nothing to do, any doing/action/movement to change the self, becomes more of the self... Any attempt to alter the mind becomes a part of the problem of the mind."

What if in response to this question, "How do I get out of my own way?" I have no response? What if I get out of even that thoughts way, what happens, what becomes possible? Without inserting or believing in any fixed answer, I explore the mystery of life.

"The expression of this takes place in each life inherently innately and free of any thought, any idea, any philosophy, including what I am saying."

Conclusion

I have many different diverse ways to get in my way. This gives me a hands on experience with nearly every way a person can get in their own way. I have collected many maps for the journey and can get back to reality from most ways of being deeply lost in fantasy. This enables me to contain enough discomfort to help others through the same routes, to get back to the truth of the current reality, the here and now of the contact position. However, the trouble is that this information remains quite disorganized. It is in my system but the search and recall is painstaking. I am often filled with much internal uncertainty of what to do, which diminishes my bandwidth to just be there with the other, since I prioritize my own process of containing discomfort in those moments.

I remain, still in my own way. Perhaps this is the way of things, perhaps we are always in our own way and am here to help make that fact more bearable for myself and others. To live that there is nothing to know. To live on the edge of the unknown. To live the best I can and allow that to be good enough.

Thank you for reading