Running head: THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF BLISS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where Soul Meets Body:

“Right Exercise” and the Neurobiology of Bliss

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towards An Objective Idealism: Embodying Spirit

“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity.  Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together.  With these two means, man can attain perfection.” –Plato (Cited in Ratey, 2008, opening)

 

          I was fortunate recently to be invited to teach two different community classes at Berkeley’s Lululemon Athletica yoga clothing store.  In the first, which I chose to call “Martial Yoga,” I spoke briefly about the common source of martial arts, yoga, and meditation, allowing the attendees to experience inner stillness and then integrate that stillness into various levels of motion, each a greater disturbance to a relaxed inner alertness.  While yoga has become enormously popular in the last ten years, few people know that the term asana originally implied nothing more than the seat one would sit in for meditation.  Another lesser known fact is that, technically, the asanas of Hatha yoga come from martial arts, having evolved from the ancient Indian combat system, Kalari Payattu.  Based on traditional lore, both Buddhist meditation and martial arts were brought from India to China by Bodhidharma, who instructed the Shaolin monks in the martial movements that became the traditional kung fu that we know today – evolving from there across the Asian subcontinent and into Japan.  So, the history of meditation, martial arts and yoga are synonymous.  Body and soul originally formed an integrative practice, meditation allowing us to calm the mind and experience inner stillness – martial arts allowing us to act from that stillness, staying centered inside even whilst attacked.  Borrowing from the Chinese philosophy of the Dao, meaning the universal way, I spoke of martial arts as moving meditation or moving Zen – the way you meditated a simple metaphor for the way you moved with mindfulness on the mat, the way you moved on the mat a simple metaphor again for the way you moved in your life.  The second class, which was held in celebration of Lululemon’s one year anniversary was called “Cultivating Stillness,” and featured a short participative lecture and “meditation sampler” session.  In putting together my speaking points for the evening, I reviewed the history of meditation – this time aided by my knowledge of Ken Wilber’s Integral psychology – and was able to align one of his important theoretical distinctions with one that was practical in nature.  In the classical Indian Vedantic sense, meditation is a process of Self-realization, of inquiring into the nature of the self.  I initiated this process somewhat humorously in the workshop: “I have a BMW, therefore I am not my BMW…. I can move my body, therefore I am not my body… I have thoughts, therefore I am not my thoughts... I can feel my feelings, therefore I am not my feelings.  Who am I?”  This traditional self-inquiry process or “pointing out instructions” helps us to transcend the world in step-by step fashion to identify with the Self as the radical Subject that is aware of objects: a Transpersonal witness of all activity.  The goal of meditation is to still the mind so that we have the inner experience of this pure Consciousness, this transcendent Self.  Enlightenment is the realization that our individual self is actually Infinite, that Atman is Brahman.  Even as our mood changes from positive to negative, as good or bad things come and pass, the transcendent Self rests as the uninvolved witness to this play, contented in a place beyond the sway of duality, lending a sense of peace that has no opposite.  The nature of the Self, of Spirit, is wholeness, fulfillment, bliss. 

          While this general conception of spiritual practice is to be honored, the realization of Self as a Divine transcendent to the world can also be problematic.  Those who spend long hours in meditation, seeking a Self that is beyond the manifest realm often tend to deny the importance of the physical, including the wellness of their bodies.  Exercise is simply a strain that creates more of the stress you are trying to release through meditating.  This so called “subjective idealism” posits that only Unmanifest Spirit or Brahman is real and that manifest matter is Maya, illusion, a temporary and lifeless emanation of Spirit.  It only takes a brief reading of Vedantic literature such as Shankara’s “Crest Jewel of Discrimination” to get the sense of a basic message that permeates what otherwise is classic and brilliant writing: the Transcendent alone is Absolute and Real, the Relative world is mud, the body, sin.  This dualistic view of mind and body, Spirit and matter, east and west, explains why it was once believed that one had to retire from the world and become an ascetic to gain enlightenment.  Historically, the enlightenment where one realizes the Self beyond the world as the end goal marked the cleft between the Hinayana and Mahayana schools of Buddhism – the “lesser” vehicle and “great” vehicle.  The use of the term vehicle to imply traveling the path of spiritual enlightenment stems from a parable in the Lotus Sutra in which a father uses three carts or vehicles to lure his sons out of a burning building (Wikipedia 2008).  What makes the Hinayana a lesser vehicle is similar to the critique of subjective idealism: while those who had freed themselves from suffering by attaining enlightenment in the Hinayana were indeed perfected beings (or arhats), those in the Mahayana viewed this enlightenment not as the end of the road, but as a first step.  By taking the “Bodhisattva vow,” Mahayana Buddhists promised to reincarnate in the world until all sentient beings had reached enlightenment.  Taking such a vow marked not just a tolerance of the cycle of suffering in birth and death, it was symbolic of a deeper realization: while one had transcended one’s attachment to the world, one also had to transcend one’s aversion to being present in the world.  Developing the “skillful means” to compassionately lead others out of suffering, so called “engaged Buddhism,” meant that the body and the emotional world had to be fully developed and embraced as well.  Without this, the world was not transcended at all, it was repressed.  This is ideally the Advaita or non-dual realization: the Transcendent Divine is Immanent in the world; the imperfection is perfect as it is, the Maya is Brahman.  Wilber (1999) speaks of the integration of God and the Goddess – one ascending to reach the Transcendent heavens, one descending to embrace the Divine as Immanent in the earth:

“…the most comprehensive meaning of “God” and “Goddess” is simply as Ascent and Descent, Eros and Agape, wisdom and compassion, consciousness (purusha) and manifestation (prakriti), transcendence and immanence. Neither God nor Goddess is more important, higher, deeper, or better. Rather, each covers half of the eternal cycle of reflux and efflux, reaching higher in wisdom and reaching deeper in compassion, the Eros and Agape of Spirit's play in the world.” (Introduction)

 

The distinction between Eros and Agape, between a Love that evolves from matter to spirit and a Love that involves the world of spirit in matter (fatherly and motherly love if you like) also applies to the practical distinction of which I spoke earlier: that of meditation and mindfulness.  While we meditate to contact Transcendence or Being, we are mindful with Presence in the world.  In meditation we close our eyes and dive within, yoking our awareness (from yoga) to a focal point each time we find ourselves in thought or otherwise drawn out into the world by distraction, using a single thought in mind to transcend thought.  In Zazen mindfulness, you don’t even close your eyes – you keep them open downcast.  While you can practice mindfulness with your eyes closed as well, the idea is not to transcend the world but to be present to it as it is without reaction.  Everything is perfect as it is to a Self that rests beyond attachment and aversion.  This means that you hold your body completely still and use your breathing awareness as a focal point instead, which calls your awareness back to being emotionally present in the body (which is why I prefer the term “body-mindfulness”).  In addition, that focal point may shift so that you are mindful of various sensations: your foot hurting, a sad emotion, an itch, the dog licking your face – whatever – but the point is that instead of reacting or moving away from the experience, you relax into it becoming even more deeply present to it until it dissolves by itself.  A good metaphor for mindfulness is the conscious choice or “subtle effort” required to breathe and relax while a massage therapist works on a trigger point or ‘knot’ or while you breathe and relax into the tension created by the stretch of a yoga asana.  In summary, meditation ascends to reach a Transcendent Divine through the mind, and mindfulness descends to embrace the Immanent Divine in the world as it is with a non judgmental presence through the heart.

          What I would like to demonstrate with this paper is that rather than exercise and the body being seen as contrary to the subjective ideals of meditation, according to the research, they actually enable one to integrate and embody the objective signs of the bliss sought in Spirit.  As hinted by the original embededness of martial arts (yoga) and meditation, physical practice is not just a complementary aspect of spiritual practice – it is spiritual practice in and of itself.  By reviewing the brain anatomy associated with the fight or flight response, the latest research on the effect of aerobic and anaerobic exercise on anxiety, mood, and brain growth I hope to “reensoul” the body – painting a picture of “Right Exercise” as inherently providing the mindfulness necessary for our spiritual aspirations to be brought to life in our bodies.

The Neuroanatomy of Emotion and the “Amygdala Hijack”

          With all our talk of awareness and feeling, it seems fitting that the brain function of emotion is deeply tied to both core consciousness and the encoding of memories.  Neuropsychologist Jack Panskepp offers that emotion should really be termed “e-motion” for evolutionary motions in that they originally were designed to provide direct feedback on the status of the organism to the brain (Solms & Turnbull, 2002 p. 113).  Emotion, it is believed, appeared early on in phylogenetic history with the mammalian brain (our own limbic system) long before homosapiens evolved.  The limbic system differs from the lower, more primitive brain stem or reptilian cortex in that it involves the awareness of emotion, an internal perception of certain subjective feeling states, or qualia, that initiate conscious actions in response.  Emotions make us evaluate and choose consciously, prompting our most basic cerebral reactions, including fight, flight, and freeze.  The components of our brain responsible for these reactions include the thalamus, which is a sort of relay station directing incoming information to other brain processing areas; the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, which act as something of a thermostat, constantly adjusting the body to keep it in equilibrium with the environment; the hippocampus is essential for encoding long term memory and, as alluded to, rests closely behind the amygdala, the basis of emotion.  As the amygdala assigns a certain level of threat, the hippocampus is nearby to record the things that were perceived as dangerous (Carter, 1998 p. 16).  Another important structure for the generation of emotion is located directly in the brain stem, the periaqueductal gray (PAG).  Its vertical columns produce either pleasurable or unpleasurable sensations, with the different binary “color” combinations creating qualitatively differing shades of emotion.  It is interesting to note that the creation and psychological perception of emotional “unpleasure” is not necessarily synonymous with the somatic sense of physical pain, even though the PAG is responsible for both (Solms & Turnbull, 2002 p. 108).                 

          The most important thing in understanding the way the brain processes emotion is the distinction between the unconscious, survival based reactions of the brainstem and emotions that have been processed with conscious thought in the frontal lobe of the human brain, the cerebral cortex – the part concerned with conscious, rational, executive thought, speech and action.  In the first case, the feedback from a potential threat is perceived almost instantaneously, taking a “quick and dirty” (Joseph LeDoux cited in Solms and Turnbull, 2002 p. 135) route from the amygdala to the PAG that excludes cortical consciousness completely.  Thus, the survival mechanism needed – jumping back, lunging forward or freezing – can literally be enacted before we are conscious of what we are doing.  This also helps to explain anxieties and phobias that are triggered based on past exposure (even if only very brief) to something threatening that creates a seemingly sudden and unfounded sense of fear or anxiety in the present moment.  While some of our reactions have important survival value, others are maladaptive, persisting even to the detriment of the health of the organism.  In these cases, even though the unconscious link between the memory of a certain stimulus and its presence is indelible, its outward manifestations can be inhibited.  It is the work of behavioral psychologists to work with patients to provide graded exposure to the original noxious stimulus until a reaction is neutralized.  Interestingly, brain imaging shows that even when outward manifestations of fear-anxiety are inhibited e.g. through behavior modification in laboratory rats, the reptilian cortex continues to be highly activated, to almost the same extent as in animals displaying full-blown responses.  Neuropsychologists Marks Solms and Oliver Turnbull (2002) explain:

“What differs dramatically between the two groups (of rats) is that the frontal lobes are concurrently highly activated in the fear-inhibited group. …the extent of frontal-lobe development is what distinguishes us humans most from other mammals.  This is also what most distinguishes the brain of the adult human from that of the child.  The frontal lobes develop rapidly during the first few years of life and continue to do so until late adolescence.  These neuroanatomical facts explain the enormous differences with respect to flexibility and degree of emotional control that distinguish the human adult from the child and from other mammals.” (p. 136)   

While we may have the capacity for higher emotional flexibility, founder of Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explains how the “amygdala hijack,” or the reptilian fight or flight response, can still take over in an instant:

“Emotions make us pay attention right now – this is urgent – and give us an immediate action plan without having to think twice.  The emotional component evolved very early: Do I eat it, or does it eat me – you don’t sit around and Google it.” That emotional response “can take over the rest of the brain in a millisecond if threatened.  Today the threat is symbolic (‘he's not treating me fair’) but we respond with the same biological response” (Cited in Horowitz, 2008, emphasis added). 

Clear, calm, or otherwise rational behavior goes out the window as we are triggered and lose emotional control, reacting as if it were actually a matter of life or death.  On the other hand, the opposite of the amygdala hijack is Emotional Intelligence – “the integration of the emotional center with the executive center” (Ibid) implying, as we have seen, the mature frontal lobe capacity to inhibit or stay present with the otherwise automatic reactions of the emotional center.  Solms and Turnbull (2002) explain that the relationship between the emotional and executive centers are similar to that of Freudian “id” impulses and the “ego” or  “superego” defense mechanisms that inhibit them (p. 137).  Becoming conscious of unconscious reactions, perhaps at first by recognizing them in retrospect, allows us to take a step back and consider the source of such reactions and if they are really necessary – if not irrational altogether.  If we decide that they are actually a detriment (as well they may be since you can’t really run away or take a swing at your boss in the boardroom), we can work towards “catching ourselves in the act,” being mindful of our emotions as they arise in the moment, thus inhibiting and eventually neutralizing the reactive patterning of the past that tends to make up our personalities.  Rita Carter (1998) summarizes this process in terms of brain physiology:

“If good sense dictates that one of the three basic survival strategies is in fact appropriate, the bodily reaction already begun will be continued.  But if the rational decision is to respond verbally rather than physically, the cortex sends a ‘damp things down’ message to the hypothalamus, which in turn signals the body to halt or reverse the changes it has started to make.  This lowering of bodily arousal is in turn sensed by the hypothalamus via a loop-back system, and the hypothalamus then sends inhibitory messages to the amygdala calming activity there, too” (p. 90)

 

This is core to the process of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as well, which uncovers unconscious “scripts” or “irrational thoughts” as well as many psycho-spiritual practices that combine self awareness (i.e. mindfulness) with similar techniques that allow one to inquire into thoughts that have an emotional charge.  While emotional maturity is certainly the goal of psychological work, it is the role of executive coaches and consultants as well to support corporate managers in developing interpersonal and leadership skills.  In studying 500 companies, Goleman found that Emotional Intelligence, involving the capacity to interact and solve problems in calm, rational, and empathetic ways, was twice as important in all jobs in distinguishing the good from the great companies.  For top leaders it makes up 80-90% of the distinguishing competencies.  In observing videos of the best leaders, they got people to laugh three times more often.  “When you realize emotions are contagious, you understand a primal task as a leader,” Goleman says (Horowitz 2008).  Clearly those who are intimately familiar with their emotional center and can maintain perspective when others begin to react as if it were a matter of life or death are happier and more successful people.  Bringing presence to one’s body through mindfulness seems to parallel the integration of the higher executive and lower emotional centers and plays a key role in developing emotional maturity and heart.  We can now look at the value of exercise in providing a powerful and direct influence on the ability to ground our higher brain functioning and save the panic of primal, unconscious reaction for when it is actually needed.        

The Role of Exercise in Raising the Fight or Flight Threshold

          While meditation can deepen the stillness necessary to bring a steady presence to our emotional life, exercise plays an important non-cognitive role in actually raising the flight or flight threshold.  As we saw with the relationship between meditation and martial arts, the former deepens stillness and heightens awareness and the latter allows this relaxed alertness to be maintained in the face of irritation, thus inhibiting the brain’s otherwise irrational and largely unconscious defense mechanisms.  In order for this process to take place, spiritual practitioners must be willing to look at a more variegated meaning of the term “stress.”  While many meditators prefer the soft inner calm of meditation to the “strain” or “stress” of vigorous exercise, Dr. John J. Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (2008), explains that if balanced with rest, stress equals healthy stimulation:

“Exercise controls the emotional and physical feelings of stress, and it also works at the cellular level.  But how can that be, if exercise itself is a form of stress?  The brain activity caused by exercise generates molecular by-products that can damage cells, but under normal circumstances, repair mechanisms leave cells hardier for future challenges.  Neurons get broken down and built up just like muscles – stressing them makes them more resilient.  This is how exercise forces the body and mind to adapt….Stress and recovery.  It’s a fundamental paradigm of biology that has powerful and sometimes surprising results” (p. 60).     

            

It is a bit of a paradox, but as your coach will tell you, you get stronger when you rest not while you are working, yet without the mild stress, there is no growth.  During exercise, the increase of oxygen-rich blood flow supports the conversion of glucose to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) which cells need to fuel themselves.  But it is after aerobic activity and during the recovery process that several important proteins start to go to work to optimize brain functioning.  In particular, brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) acts as a kind of “Miracle-gro” for the brain actually producing neurogenesis (new brain cell growth) and increasing synaptic plasticity, helping neurons to form new connections.  Other similar proteins such as insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), fibroplast growth factor (FGF) and the related vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) support cell growth and prevent natural deterioration allowing neurons to meet fuel demands without gumming up from waste buildup.  The overall effect allows the brain to thrive and averts the detrimental effects of the stress response (fight or flight).  As the body learns to relax while stressed, the brain begins to receive a new message, inhibiting the feedback loop of the stress response from the body including the subjective experience of “unpleasure,” as we saw earlier.  If the body relaxes, the brain figures it can do so too.  In a 2004 research study, Joshua Broman-Fulks from the University of Southern Mississippi tested whether exercise would reduce anxiety sensitivity. 

“He found fifty-four college students with generalized anxiety disorder who had elevated anxiety sensitivity scores and who exercised less than once a week.  He randomly divided his sedentary subjects into two groups, both of which were assigned six tweny-minute exercise sessions over two weeks.  The first group ran on treadmills at an intensity level of 60 to 90 percent of their maximum heart rates.  The second group walked on treadmills at a pace of one mile per hour, roughly equal to 50 percent of their maximum heart rates.” (Ratey 2008 p. 91)

 

While we commonly think that doctors would tell those with generalized anxiety disorder not to exercise as it would surely exacerbate the issue, the study found both regimens tended to reduce anxiety sensitivity, but that only the high intensity group felt less afraid of the physical symptoms of anxiety.  This distinction between the two groups started to show up as immediately as the second session of exercise.  The idea is that when our heart rate and breathing increase as a result of exercising yet we choose to stay with it, we learn that these physical signs do not necessarily mean we have to freak out mentally.  “We become more comfortable with the feeling of our body being aroused, and we don’t automatically assume that the arousal is noxious” Ratey explains (Ibid).  The key finding then is that oftentimes anxiety is a cognitive misinterpretation, an irrational thought that starts the fight or flight response unnecessarily.  Because we are generally in control of the amount of stress we experience when we exercise, we can use it to slowly inhibit the symptoms of anxiety and stress, teaching our brain over time that the body is much more resilient than we believe.  As many of us experience, once you have become accustomed to a certain level of physical activation, it takes a higher level of intensity in daily life to trigger us emotionally.  When you have chosen consciously to stay present and relaxed, breathing through manageable yet increasing levels of stimulation over time, irritations that formerly would have triggered the amygdala hijack in daily life hardly show up as blips on our radar.  While the breathing and body awareness of mindfulness can be practiced at any time in order to send the conscious message to the amygdala to relax, exercise provides a kind of gradual yet concentrated practice time.  The more we exercise the sustained, subtle effort to rest in stillness as outer dynamism increases, to “breathe and relax,” the larger the muscle of mindfulness grows, allowing us to integrate in effect, the unphaseable equilibrium of Spirit into motion.  As we become more alive in our bodies, we learn to separate physical stress from mental “unpleasure,” providing an experiential answer to the Zen riddle that asks, “What is the difference between pain and suffering?”

          “Right exercise,” as Buddhists might call it, sees the intimate connection between practice and mindfulness, between exercise and self mastery.  You are not just working out your body, you are training your mind to stay present without reaction – and it is from here that caring and all other forms of Emotional Intelligence emerge as our frontal cortex can remain engaged in a thoughtful, sensitive and creative way.  However, the Dao of practice may be trickier to master than we think.  Tapping into this effortless way of being and moving requires a careful balancing act.  Too much striving and we actually do create more stress, hitting an early plateau in our development; not enough stress and we fail to change at all, nor feel the sensation of what it means to live alive at the leading edge of our growth potential.  It is the job of a coach or teacher to reinforce the positive habits of practice that lead to a healthy balance of rest and activity, the creativity and challenge that leads to continued progress, as well as the internal capacity to stay present with where we are in the moment.  Right exercise then cultivates both outer habits as well as an internal awareness of inner balance, a sense of “doing without doing” (wei-wu-wei in Daoist lingo) that leads to steady growth and more importantly transfers the practice of staying centered to daily life.  Get out of the moment by getting too attached to winning and losing or playing too fast and you create stress from striving and poor movement; fail to engage with what arises in the moment, to push yourself up to your edge, and you avert the opportunity to transcend fear and live life meaningfully with heart.  In running, finding this balance can be achieved with as simple a measure as monitoring your heart rate – by keeping at the same heart rate, you never work any harder, yet improvement is constant!  Other activities that involve greater cognitive complexity such as playing the piano, competitive sports, or martial arts involving the mastery of technique make greater demands on our ability to be mindful as we will see.  In these cases, the greatest teachers are also the ones who get us to slow down deeply and pay attention in the moment so that we can stay relaxed and play the right notes, hit the ball the correct way or respond calmly and thoughtfully as the case may be.  As we develop the habit to be present to each micro moment of action, we learn also to feel when we are rushing, creating the gaps of awareness that lead unwanted mistakes to be reinforced unconsciously.  However, over time and with right practice, we experience what it means to stay internally balanced as we move and the awareness of each moment begins to flow in one effortless stream of skill in action, a clear, stillpoint of silence in the midst of chaos.  Coaching with consciousness places the cultivation of Being on par with Doing, supporting each athlete to push or pull back where necessary to find the middle way beyond straining and fear, attachment and aversion, actualizing the capacity to increasingly access the zone state.

          Dr. John Douillard (2006), founder of “Invincible Athletics,” tells the story of Warren Wechsler (who I incidentally attended a meditation course with in ’96), a business man who had attempted to take up running in early-mid life, but had gotten discouraged due to injury.  Dr. Douillard explains the remarkable shifts that occurred for Warren after attending his “Body, Mind, Sport” workshop, which starts by first emphasizing inner balance over outer achievement with the principle of “Do less and accomplish more:”        

“Warren was so conditioned to expect strain and pain that he found it strange not to hurt during his workouts. At first he noticed that his heart rate would jump from 75 BPM (beats per minute) to 170 or 180 as soon as he started exercising with even moderate exertion. After three months of reconditioning his body to do less and accomplish more on his exercise bike, he found that he could pedal for over an hour with his heart rate around 120 and his breath rate even and comfortable at around 15 breaths per minute.  In January 1990, Warren felt ready to run and rejoined his health club, which featured an indoor track. At first, finding himself lapped by his old running partners, he had to struggle against his desire to keep up with them. Listening carefully to his body – not to the ambitions of his mind or to his sense of pride – he let them pass him. Gradually he picked up speed. Soon he surpassed his former running partners, only this time he did so without injury or pain…. He called me at my office eighteen months after starting the Invincible Athletics program and gave me this report: ‘John, I'm 38 years old. I've never been an athlete in my life. I took your course to give my running one last try. Since then, I've lost 30 pounds and 6 inches of girth without trying or dieting. I don't get sick or anxious anymore, and I've got more vitality than I've ever known….Yesterday, running on my indoor track, I ran 17 miles. I felt absolutely fantastic the whole way. I felt as good when I stopped as I did when I started. The amazing thing was that I ran a 6-minute-mile pace for the entire 17 miles. It was unbelievable. I was in the Zone. I felt like I was running on air. It was the easiest thing I've ever done….The most incredible thing was that my heart rate averaged about 120 BPM during the entire run. Sometimes it went even lower, but it never went over 130 BPM while I maintained the 6-minute pace. When I counted my breath rate, it was between 12 and 15 breaths per minute. [The average breath rate at rest is 18 breaths per minute.] At this rate, when I'm 40 I could be running marathons with the best runners in the world, having the runner's high experience the entire time’….For Warren, exercise had become a means of removing stress. The more he ran, the more rejuvenated he felt.”  

 

This story very clearly illustrates two distinct aspects of body-mindfulness or a consciousness centered approach to exercise: his choice to mindfully relax his effort and abandon the “no pain no gain” approach he was accustomed to in favor of keeping with consistent internal standards of breathing and heart rate and his choice to stay present with his emotions, surrendering the feelings of pride that tempted him to abandon his inner poise as friends passed him on the track.  Not only did exercising the subtle inner discipline to stay present in the moment pay off splendidly over the long term, he was healthier and happier inside too.  In finding success not just by chasing after it as a goal to be reached in the future but by settling into wherever he was on his path, he developed a deeper presence, realizing a sense of fulfillment beyond seeking or escaping – one that is Immanent, here and now.

The Neurobiology of Bliss: A Sustainable Good Mood with Exercise

          Spiritual aspirants define bliss as the special state of realization where one is contented from within – a steady sense of happiness that is beyond sway – part equilibrium, part overwhelming joy.  Again we find, through the body, these subjective ideals can be lived by exercising.  While many find it offensive to equate the ideal of bliss with “runner’s high,” or a chemical “endorphin rush,” which seems to involve some kind of addictive drug dump in the brain, neuroscience explains things differently.  Rather than providing a sharp spike in happiness, an artificially stimulated high followed by a low, exercise actually balances neurotransmitters, providing the steady sense of happiness that counteracts the effects of stress, prevents addiction and sustains a good mood.  Not so far off from bliss after all.  While indeed exercise can produce endorphins, the morphine like hormones that allow us to persevere when the body is pushed to its maximum and that provide the floaty feelings of calm and satisfaction, it also balances our mood by naturally regulating levels of the neurotransmitters that antidepressants target (Ratey, 2008 p. 121-2).  Norepinephrine (adrenaline) wakes up the brain and gets it moving and is also responsible for improving self esteem, which is related to depression.  Dopamine improves our mood and sense of wellness, and is directly related to motivation and attention.  Studies demonstrate that exercise leads to dopamine storage triggering enzymes that create dopamine receptors in the reward centers of the brain that lend the sense of satisfaction that comes from a job well done.  If the demand is steady, so is the regulation of these pathways, which is what actually contributes to the control of addictions.  Serotonin is also related to mood and self esteem, and is often referred to as the “policeman of the brain” in that it helps regulate impulses, putting a damper on overactive or out of control responses in a variety of brain systems.  Finding an exercise partner has been shown to automatically boost levels of serotonin, explaining why it seems more enjoyable when we have someone to workout with.

          How does exercise stand up against antidepressants?  In a 1999 landmark study appropriately called SMILE (Standard Medical Intervention and Long-term Exercise), researchers at Duke University concluded that exercise was as effective as medication in lowering depression (Ratey, 2008, p. 122).  In a 2006 study, Madhukar Trivedi, a clinical psychiatrist who is the director of the Mood Disorders Research Program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, showed that patients who were not responding to antidepressants lowered their scores on a common depression test by an impressive 10.4 points out of 17 (p. 125).  Study after study shows that exercise is equal to or better than drugs such as Zoloft or Prozac, providing relief from symptoms without the side effects.  In addition, BDNF supports neurogenesis and increases neuroplacity as we have seen, which, in tandem with the self discipline that exercise creates allows us to work towards actively creating new life habits – both a great support for breaking through the stuck, self defeating mental patterns of depression.  Even though there are those who still value their meditation practice as the sure way to bliss, given the overwhelming research on exercise, why not rise one more step out of suffering?  The DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) lists nine symptoms for depression that must be present throughout the day almost every day: depressed mood, markedly diminished interest or pleasure, weight loss or gain, insomnia, psychomotor agitation, fatigue or loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, diminished ability to think, concentrate – indecisiveness, recurrent thoughts of death (Schimelpfening, 2008).  As Ratey ponders,

“…you need to have six to receive a diagnosis of depression.  Say you can’t concentrate, can’t sleep, feel worthless, and aren’t interested in anything.  That’s four.  Technically, you aren’t depressed.  What are you then?  Just miserable?  My point is, with any degree of depression, you need to snuff in out completely.  And exercise is starting to be taken very seriously in this regard” (Ratey, 2008, p. 125).         

 

If a perspective puts limitations on the way we are or are not to find bliss, then it seems there is an ideology at work preventing the individual from freely exploring what works best for them in lived experience.  If we are not happy, shouldn’t we try everything that seems healthy to change the situation?  Otherwise, the illusion we are trying to transcend through the ideology becomes the very illusion that keeps us from actually empowering ourselves to realize an objective sense of happiness.    

Martial Arts: Higher Intensity for a Second Raise?

As we approach our peak heart rate, anywhere between 75 and 90 percent of our maximum, the body enters into a “full-fledged state of emergency” and the body’s response reflects a commensurate state of heightened activation (Ratey, 2008 p. 255).  This marks the shift in metabolism between aerobic and anaerobic activity that causes our muscles to go into a state of hypoxia on account of the lack of oxygen in the bloodstream.  As a result, the body begins to burn creatine and glycogen that is stored directly within the muscle tissue, creating a buildup of lactic acid that lends the familiar burning sensation we feel in our bodies as we exercise (Ibid).  While physiologists have not established exactly the point at which this shift occurs, it seemed to correlate with subjective reports of when exertion becomes “somewhat hard.”  One of the amazing differences between moderate and high-intensity exercise is that as you begin to peak and move into your anaerobic range, the pituitary gland in your brain naturally releases human growth hormone (HGH) – the same hormone that Barry Bonds was caught injecting.  A kind of “fountain of youth,” HGH gives you that extra edge necessary to burn excess belly fat, improve muscle growth, and increase brain volume.  In the brain, HGH balances neurotransmitter levels and increases production of all of the aforementioned growth factors, IGF-1 in particular, the “evolutionary linchpin tying together activity, fuel, and learning” (Ibid p. 256).  In that the anaerobic threshold is where you confront yourself, pushing yourself beyond what you thought was possible, high intensity workouts toughen you up both physiologically and psychologically.  It is here that Martial arts may play a special role, especially in the latter respect – further raising the fight or flight threshold as one learns to confront the physical reality of actual fight or flight scenarios while remaining calm inside.  For those who are conscious of this underlying principle, even sports such as Muay Thai kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Boxing or Mixed Martial Arts become opportunities for spiritual integration.  To a point, the more reality based the martial art, the more the opportunity for integration.  This is what creates the added sense of calm confidence of a seasoned martial artist who has gradually learned through experience to stay centered inside even in the face of being physically struck.  In keeping with a “right exercise” approach to instruction, combat sports can provide the step by step exposure to physical conflict that allows the practice of mindfulness above all.  By keeping with a constant level of subjective intensity parallel to minding one’s heart and breath rate while running, one gradually transcends the stress response without a sense of the level of stress increasing – bringing inner awareness and composure into ever greater levels of outer turbulence.  This type of training can support the development of an almost unconditional fearless presence that if informed properly can lead to profound transformative effects in one’s emotional and interpersonal life.  It is unfortunate that there are not more meditative types who are willing to take up these more sportive martial arts in order to bring this kind of spiritual practice to what can otherwise be abruptly rough and unnecessarily callous training.  For those of us who would prefer not to fly overseas to climb mountains, attend weekend fitness bootcamps, or get punched, a study from the University of Bath, England, found that as little as adding a single 30 second burst of sprinting generated a sixfold increase in HGH, peaking two hours after the sprint (Ibid, p. 257).     

The Recommended “Dose”

In conclusion, I would like to share suggestions from Spark for the recommended daily intake of exercise.  While there is no firm answer on how much one should do, especially given various factors such as age, level of depression, medical history, body type, fitness level and so on, the basic idea is that some is better than none, but more is better (to a point).  One study that based their workout regimen on public health recommendations found that high intensity (eight calories per pound of body weight in three to five sessions per week) and low-intensity (three calories per pound per week) groups cut their depression scores in half and by a third respectively.  To approximate these weekly calorie burning prescriptions, simply multiply your body weight by eight to figure out how many calories you should be burning for a “high dose” week or by three for a lower “dosage.”  If you weigh 150 pounds, that means you should burn 1200 calories per week.  If you go to the gym and use a machine such as an elliptical, stair stepper, or exercise bike that tells you that you burned 200 calories in thirty minutes, that means you will want to schedule in six sessions to meet the high dose (Ratey, 2008, p. 138). 

Ratey personally proscribes six days of jogging per week – four longer, moderate days (forty-five minutes to an hour) and two shorter higher intensity days (as little as twenty minutes) during which you may also choose to lift weights or some other kind of resistance training:

“Today…there’s no (longer a) need to forage and hunt to survive.  Yet our genes are coded for this activity, and our brains are meant to direct it.  Take that activity away, and you’re disrupting a delicate biological balance that has been fine-tuned over half a million years.  Quite simply, we need to engage our endurance metabolism to keep our bodies and brains in optimum condition….In broad strokes, then, I think the best advice is to follow our ancestors’ routine: walk or jog every day, run a couple of times a week, and then go for the kill every now and then by sprinting” (Ratey, 2008, p. 248).

 

Wrist watches with strap on heart monitors are excellent supports in that they provide a constant reading of your heart rate so that you can stay at a desired pace and breath rate, whether low-intensity – 55 to 65 percent, moderate intensity – 65 to 75 percent or high intensity – 75 to 90 percent.  To find your theoretical maximum heart rate, use a basic formula of 220 minus your age.  So, if you are twenty-seven years old, your maximum heart rate would be 193, creating a target range between 125 and 145 beats per minute (BPM) for a moderate days workout.

           

References

(Azar B 200203 It's more than fun and games)Azar, B. (2002, March). It's more than fun and games. Retrieved May 25, 2008, from http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar02/morefun.html

(Carter R 1998 Mapping the Mind)Carter, R. (1998). Mapping the Mind. : University of California Press.

(Douillard J 2006 Living in the Zone: Body, Mind, and Sport: the Mind-Body Guide to Lifelong Health, Fitness, and Your Personal Best)Douillard, J. (2006). Living in the Zone – Body, Mind, and Sport: the Mind-Body Guide to Lifelong Health, Fitness, and Your Personal Best. Retrieved June 11, 2008, from http://www.enotalone.com/article/4609.html

(Hay Group  Amygdala Hijack: Why being clever isn't everything)Hay Group. (n.d.). Amygdala Hijack: Why being clever isn't everything. Retrieved June 11, 2008, from http://www.haygroup.com/tl/downloads/amygdala_hijack.pdf

(Horowitz S 2008 Emotional Intelligence - Stop Amygdala Hijackings)Horowitz, S. (2008). Emotional Intelligence - Stop Amygdala Hijackings. Retrieved June 11, 2008, from http://www.umass.edu/fambiz/articles/values_culture/primal_leadership.html

(Panskepp J 2007 Can PLAY Diminish ADHD and Facilitate the Construction of the Social Brain?)Panskepp, J. (2007). Can PLAY Diminish ADHD and Facilitate the Construction of the Social Brain? Retrieved May 25, 2008, from http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2242642

 (Ratey J 2008 Spark: the Revolutionary New Sceince of Exercise and the Brain)Ratey, J. (2008). Spark: the Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. : Little, Brown and Company.

(Schimelpfening N 2008117 Major Depressive Disorder - DSM-IV Criteria)Schimelpfening, N. (2008, January 17). Major Depressive Disorder - DSM-IV Criteria. Retrieved June 9, 2008, from http://depression.about.com/cs/diagnosis/a/mdd.htm

(Solms M Turnbull O 2002 Brain and the Inner World)Solms, M., & Turnbull, O. (2002). The Brain and the Inner World. : Other Press.

 (Wikipedia 2008525 Hinayana)Wikipedia. (2008, May 25). Hinayana. Retrieved June 11, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinayana

(Wilber K 1999 Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volume 2)Wilber, K. (Ed.). (1999). Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volume 2. : Shambhala.

Running head: INTEGRAL MARTIAL ARTS

 

 

 

 

 

Integral Martial Arts as Integral Spirituality:

A Startling New Role for Martial Arts in the Modern and Postmodern World

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nathanael Chawkin

John F. Kennedy University

Integral Theory B

Spring Quarter 2008

The Integral Embrace: Transcend and Include 

“…the Integral stages are the first stages that actually attempt to integrate all of the previous stages.  One of the definitions of these earlier stages of human development is that each of these stages thinks that their truth is the only truth that is actually correct.  And once you get to an Integral stage you realize that all of those truths are appropriate and correct in their own place and their own time and so there’s an attempt to integrate all of these worldviews and make room for them.”  Ken Wilber (2006 8:25)

            

          I remember the distinct feeling when I heard a friend of mine had given up his practice of my chosen martial art, Aikido, to pursue fighting in Muay Thai kickboxing competitions overseas.  Aikido teaches non-violence as a means to world peace.  It is a philosophy with physical form wherein one practices blending and non-resistance on and off the mat.  It didn’t make sense.  “But he’s such a nice guy….How could he do something so violent?”  This contradiction in my worldview, this glitch in my personal meaning matrix has stuck with me as one of the first moments I could look back on and see the assumptions I held unknowingly.  “Kickboxers are violent people.”  Is that true?  “All other martial arts are competitive and violent.”  Is that true?  “I am a peaceful, loving person, free from anger.”  Can I absolutely know that’s true?  Fear, it seems, comes from an unexamined sense of other, a “one right way” perspective, yet until you participate first hand in a community that you have made other and sought sincerely to listen for what is meaningful there, to feel what it is that captivates people there, then I would say you have not truly taken on that perspective nor tested the deeper integrity of your own.  Without actually participating with an open mind in the ways of others, “taking another’s perspective,” actually getting into another’s shoes so that “I see what you mean,” is reduced to a lot of unexamined “us vs. them” rhetoric: “He or she or they do such and such and isn’t that horrible?”  From this level of development should it be a surprise that there is so much projection, politics and in-fighting within martial and spiritual communities, even from people who claim to be promoting harmony, world peace and a spiritual path that leads in the direction of increasing awareness, wisdom and compassion? 

          My own martial path, starting with Aikido, has been a journey of ongoing inquiry, of questioning my own ideals in order that I might more fully embody them.  As such I have experienced first hand what it is like to move from thinking that my truth “is the only truth that is actually correct” to traversing a range of different martial perspectives that in retrospect follow a familiar pattern of development: from unskilled formlessness to the study of a particular pregiven form, to a rational inquiry into what form is functional, to ultimately transcending physical form.  It is my endeavor in this paper to transcend and include each of the important developmental movements I experienced along the way with the hopes of contributing to an embracing Integral perspective not only for my own art, but for martial arts as a whole.  This ideally will return the martial arts to the spiritual purpose they were originally meant to serve as well as advance them towards a fuller, more Integral embodiment of spirituality by incorporating important developments from the Modern and Postmodern eras.  What exactly would this look like?  Can there be a perspective that unifies the various martial arts?  What are the phases that need to be accounted for in order for our martial approach to create balanced, whole or otherwise Integral development in its practitioners?  How can we honor tradition and yet embrace recent developments?  While the first step towards exploring these questions is to tell the story of the originally embedded history of martial arts and spirituality, I would like first to introduce the very basics of Integral theory, the so called AQAL, “All Quadrants, All Levels” approach.  Understanding the Four Quadrant model allows us to take multiple perspectives on what martial arts really entail and understanding the basic concept of psychological stages of development or Levels will allow us to spot the similarity in evolution between the historical phases of martial arts and those of spirituality.  This will then allow me to similarly identify the role of an Integral Martial Arts with the role of Integral Spirituality, as discussed by founder of Integral Theory, Ken Wilber, in his (2006) book by this title, including the question of rationality vs. spirituality and the notion of the Great Conveyor belt.

          Just the terms martial and art seem already to imply body and mind and as such they are already quite inherently Integral – what is needed is simply a framework that allows each of its diverse branches, definitions and developments to be brought together in a coherent fashion.  The Integral model offers just such a framework – honoring the partial truths of each fundamental human perspective without exclusively privileging any one of them as the sole way to train or develop.  The Quadrants divide experience between interior and exterior on the left and right and individual and collective on the top and bottom.  The physical conflict that we normally think of as the focus of martial arts in the Upper Right (UR) Quadrant (the exterior of the individual i.e. the physical) is but a metaphor for other perspectives on conflict.  A martial artist learns ultimately to deal with victory and defeat in the inner domain of his own mind and heart in the Upper Left (UL) Quadrant (the interior experience of the individual) as the hero Arjuna (or any Zen master) learns in the famous Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita.  Not separate from this, conflict must be confronted and resolved in interpersonal relationships (thus “verbal Judo”) in the Lower Left (LL) Quadrant (the intersubjective or interior of the collective).  Finally, conflict manifests itself in the environment, requiring service within the Dojo among other structures of society and stewardship to nature in the Lower Right (LR) Quadrant (the interobjective or exterior of the collective).  It is also useful to refer to each respective quadrant as “I,” “We,” “It,” and “Its.”  Combining “It” and “Its,” we have three domains, “The Big Three” that correspond with classical philosophy’s the Beautiful that is in the subjective “I” of the beholder, the Good that “We” agree upon intersubjectively in social contract and the True that can be known by examining the “It” world objectively: Art, Morals and Science.  What is important to remember here is that the quadrants simultaneously arise: conflict within is inevitably mirrored without, conflict in the collective influences the individual and reciprocally so in both cases.  An Integral martial artist then is always forging himself in each of these areas, developing his capacity for self defense, ego awareness, skillful means in relationship with others, and engaged service to society – and uses each of these as a mirror and metaphor to work on every other. 

“Life is growth.  If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.  Aikido is a celebration of the bonding of heaven, earth, and humankind.  It is all that is true, good and beautiful.” Founder of Aikido, OSensei Morihei Ueshiba (Stevens, 1992)

 

          What is fascinating about the Levels portion of Integral Psychology is the principle of transcend and include.  Each new Level has important emergent capacities that define it as a Level – a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts (e.g. ‘wetness’ emerging from H²O).  In that each stage transcends and includes the capacities of earlier stages, development is also envelopment.  Freud summarizes this notion beautifully with his statement: “Where it was there I shall become.”  The understanding that each developmental Level has important attainments creates a more compassionate view of personal growth.  So, even though I made disparaging remarks above about those who are unable to take a 3^rd person perspective, that is, to inquire objectively into their “one right way” truth claims through direct observation and evidence, I might extol this same level in another context.  To someone who is essentially egocentric and impulsive, capable only of taking a 1^st person perspective (I, me, mine), learning to delay gratification and participate in the rules and roles of a given society on the basis of mutual reciprocity – a 2^nd person “Do unto others…” is a not just a first step, it is a major accomplishment in an of itself.  While there are many who may cringe when we hear that a former criminal has become a born again Christian fundamentalist, as a student of developmental psychology, we know better.  As much as we might wish, we know that it is impossible to skip stages – that growth is a step-by-step affair, and that every human being is born at square one and must be supported in making the journey through the basic Levels: egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric and beyond.  As such, I think the key feature of Integral (a key feature that separates the term from Holistic) is the inclusion not only of “horizontal” categories such as Body, Mind and Spirit or the Quadrants, but of “vertical” structure stages of development.  This lends the willingness to find the delicate balance between supporting whoever it is wherever they are and challenging them to reach out for the nearest handhold in their climb.

          The basic levels of egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric are expanded by most developmentalists to include a more descriptive number of Levels – normally seven or eight.  Each different theory looks at a specific Line of development e.g. one of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or Clare Graves’ cultural values (or value memes).  Other lines include cognitive (Piaget), moral (Kohlberg, Gilligan) ego (Loevinger), or spirituality (Folwer).  Each stage grows in increasing complexity and sophistication as we can see from the color coded stages of worldviews in Don Beck and Chris Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics Integral system (Beck & Cowan, 2005).  We can speak in terms of an Instinctive Beige value system that is concerned with basic survival needs; a Magical/Animistic Purple system with tribal chieftains and magical medicine men; an Impulsive/Egocentric Red culture marked by early empires and impulsive warlords; a Conservative-Traditional Blue society where self delays gratification to comply with a mythic order; a western, rational Orange achiever worldview that inquires scientifically; a sensitive Green holistic perspective that maintains the importance of diversity and universal rights; and finally, a Yellow integrated self that is the first level of a “second tier” in that it can allow and integrate each of the prior levels, supporting them just as they are, yet providing skillful developmental tugs where necessary to manage healthy growth up the spiral.  Integral theory also explains that this development occurs as an evolution of the human species through history (phylogeny) but also within each human (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) such that, assuming healthy development, we move through Red during the “terrible twos,” into Blue around six or seven as we learn to follow rules and roles, Orange as we learn to think critically and strive for personal achievement starting in our preteen years etc. 

          Now that we understand the basic Levels, I would like to explain how they have evolved through time in a martial “brief history of everything” in a way that we can generally associate certain groups of arts with each different colored stage as they evolved through the historical phases of Premodern, Modern and Postmodern.      

Traditional Martial Arts as Premodern Religion: Martial Yoga

          Legend tells of Bodhidharma, the Buddhist Monk and master of the Indian martial arts system Kalari Payattu who was responsible for bringing both Buddhism and martial arts to China.  After long hours in meditation, the monks of the Shaolin temple needed to strengthen their bodies and so Bodhidharma instructed them in the techniques of the Kalari system.  With time, this evolved into what we know today as the animal styles of traditional Kung Fu.  While the accuracy of the historic details are blurry at best, an important point is established with this legend: from Dhyan in India to Chan in China to Zen in Japan, Asian religion and Asian martial arts have always been carriers for one another, taking on different flavors as they evolved across the Asian subcontinent from Kalari Payattu, to Kung Fu to Karate and Jujitsu in their respective places.  While the term martial seems to imply military or combat tactics (and to be sure, every martial art is part martial, part art in this sense), the Traditional martial arts we know today have a deep history within the monastic Buddhist practices of Asia.  It is this spirit of silent, solemn inner awareness and self-discipline, shugyo, “tightening the slack,” that prevails in the strict codes of conduct and service to Sensei and Dojo of traditional martial paths, or Budo.  Rather than a means to fight, the first Chinese character, pronounced Bu in Japanese, means “to stop the spear,” implying the actual resolution of conflict, the role of the warrior as diligent servant, upholding the Blue values of order in society.  This brings to mind the familiar theme of the hero who sets aside self-interest to preserve justice – using his powers for good by protecting the weak and punishing the lawless.  The second character Do or Dao (Tao) in Chinese means the way – which conveniently lends itself in English to being interpreted both as a physical path or way and as the cultivation of the interior consciousness that is mindful of the way you move.  This brings to mind the image of the wise old master, speaking in metaphor, assigning menial tasks, ever guiding his young disciples in the principles of the way. 

          Long before the physical postures of Hatha Yoga were developed (also from Kalari movements), Yoga implied the practice of seated meditation – asana meaning simply the pose one would sit in to do so.  Yet since the development of martial arts (including Hatha Yoga), physical postures, breathing exercises and meditation have been practiced in union (as in the Ashtanga Yoga).  As such, I use the term Martial Yoga to describe the original, mutually embedded nature of spiritual and martial practice.  While meditation allows us to quiet the mind and experience deep inner stillness and pure awareness, martial arts allow us to integrate this stillness into motion, to act from this stillness as a kind of moving meditation.  As our interior stillness deepens, our capacity to maintain this inner equilibrium in the face of increasing outer disturbance increases as well until we become, as if, the eye of the hurricane.  Through the repeated practice of martial forms, the practitioner reaches a mastery of form, responding formlessly and effortlessly to what arises in the moment.  This peak state is generally referred to as the flow or zone state.  Properly conceived of then, martial arts are moving Zen, moving meditation – all the many outer, physical techniques merely an opportunity to practice one inner technique: learning to keep our inner balance, to stay centered inside as we are attacked with increasing intensity.  And spiritually, the more we mind the way we move and the inner space of stillness from which we move, the more we are moved – as stillness becomes the basis for action as we refine our ego through constant training and service, empty of self, attachment or aversion, what flows through us is the Universal Self.  “I am the Universe!” as the founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba exclaimed.  We are an instrument of the Divine Will, spontaneous right action flowing forth to support the evolution of all.  As it says in the Vedas, “Brahman is the charioteer of all action.” The inherent goal of training is self-mastery, Enlightenment, to become one with the Universe through the expansion of consciousness and compassion until it is unconditional – until it transcends all sense of other.  The path of development in Traditional martial arts, as it is inherently Buddhist, is right in line with the scope of the perennial Great Chain of Being, from body to mind to soul to Spirit.  Wilber, (2006) comments on this Traditional religious worldview as an important starting point on the way to Integral:

“As beautiful and brilliant as that interpretive scheme is, it is not without its problems.  It is not so much that the scheme itself is wrong, as that the modern and postmodern world has added several profound insights that need to be added or incorporated if we want a more integral or comprehensive view.” (p. 218)

 

          The terms martial and art also present a funny conundrum.  On the one hand you have a means of fighting, a claim to physical functionality and on the other hand you have a form, an art, a mental practice.  But to the extent that this is an inherent problem, it also provides an interesting physical metaphor for human development.  Clearly we have two different things going on here: martial and art or stage and State development as they apply to Integral theory.  We might suggest that Martial refers to functionality – one’s vertical stage (Level) of development or psychological maturity and that art refers to form – and one’s horizontal State of technical refinement and the spiritual experiences of flow that can result from high levels of performance.  The problem with Traditional arts is that before the development of Rational, scientific methodology, martial and art were not differentiated and so, as with the Great Chain of Being, the physical was thought to be only the bottom level of the rung (body, then mind, then spirit) and that any higher level of mastery was the result of metaphysical powers.  And herein lies the downfall of what we have come to recognize in Traditional martial arts and religion – old, archaic forms and rituals passed down that have little connection to practical, lived experience.  In other words, the problem from the Traditional worldview is that we identify with the concrete, crystallized physical form as real and everything beyond that is thought to be metaphysical. Without knowledge of the evolution of the physical, one got stuck in the magical beliefs, mystical stories, and the sometimes pompous, presumptive, and untested claims common to all Purple and Blue martial arts.  (“My style is too deadly for competition…”)  Based on these beliefs, practice focused around the repetition of concrete forms in order to cultivate the metaphysical Ki or Chi energy that would enable you to throw your opponent without touching them, or send energy balls at him.  This fundamentalist interpretation of reality is rampant to varying degrees in many traditional Dojos: “If I continue repeating my preset forms, eventually I will develop the Ki power necessary to be invulnerable and I will magically develop a formless mastery of all physical combat,” aka “If I merely say my prayers and accept these beliefs as the literal truth handed down by God, I will be saved and I will go to heaven.”  The eastern equivalent of this is “If I just keep meditating, I will perfect my personality.”  Ken Wilber (2006) suggests a solution to this problem when he says that the physical is not the lowest level, it is the exterior aspect of practice at every level – it is the Integral UR quadrant (p. 219).  In reality, subtle energy or transcendent skill where it actually exists in Martial Arts is not magical or beyond the physical (and thus imaginary or meta-physical) it is commensurate with the higher material complexity and the important emergent capacities at each different stage that goes with it as physical training methodologies evolve (p. 227).  Therefore the continued refinement of one's form or inner experience is necessary but not sufficient for the emergence of functionality.  As with meditation, continuing practice at our current level can create more awareness or lead to glimpses into what actual functional Stage development requires but does by no means presume that we will decide to transcend our identification with concrete forms and the sense of approval we get from our traditional community for mastering the “one right form.”  The paradigm shift wherein we adopt the higher order capacity to inquire rationally into what is true for our self at Orange represents the individuation process that every adolescent faces as s/he grows into a self-defining, self-responsible adult.  Without this, even the most profound inner experiences will only support us in going “narrower and deeper” as we advance with the State of our inner experience yet continue to interpret them through our traditional, “one right way” Blue value system: unless we endeavor to grow rationally, psychologically, we simply become more of who we already are. 

                Sportive Martial Arts: The Dignity and Disaster of Modernity

 “I do not believe in styles any more.  I do not believe there is such a thing as…a Chinese way of fighting or the Japanese way of fighting or whatever way of fighting because …basically humans have only two hands and two feet.  So “styles” tends to… separate man… because they have their own doctrines and their own doctrines became the gospel truth …that you cannot change…. But if you do not have styles, if you just say ‘Well here I am as a human being – how can I express myself totally and completely?’ now that way you won’t create a style because style is a crystallization….that way it’s a process of continuing growth.” 

-Bruce Lee (1971, 6:48)

 

          Not until a certain point in my own development as a martial artist, namely the shift from Blue traditional values to Orange worldcentric values could I begin to appreciate how riveting Bruce Lee’s words were, how revolutionary his approach, what a visionary he was as a forbearer of Modernity for martial arts.  In this one simple quote lies the problem of the Premodern approach not only to martial practice, but to spiritual practice as well – the crystallization of spirituality into static, dogmatic, hierarchical, ethnocentric religions.  And in the same quote, the dignity of Modernity: the onset of mature, multiplistic, formal operational thinking and the rise of rational, empirical science – the capacity to observe reality without superstitions, preconceived notions or beliefs.  Historically, Modernity, or the rational enlightenment, resulted in what Wilber calls the differentiation of the value spheres – Art, Morals and Science.  In the martial world, physical functionality could develop independently from an adherence to Traditional form, just as Art and Science could develop free from the constraints of religious Morality.  Instead of memorization and regurgitation of dead forms, one learned by experimentation and direct experience: trial and error, observation and debate with a scientific methodology that carried findings cumulatively forward.  Not that form disappeared, but an important body-mind integration ensued where form followed function: i.e. the forms you isolated and refined statically were chosen based on their “high percentage” effectiveness in alive competition and informed a living system, a dynamic mental game plan that was always being refined according to its results in lived bodily experience.  It is interesting to note that Boxing and Wrestling and their combination in freestyle fighting, Pankration, (the most popular Olympic event in its day) were developed in Ancient Greece, again, by virtue of the culture allowing objective reasoning to develop independent of religious dictates.  Some even say that it was the intermingling of these early martial arts with those of India during the occupation of the armies of Alexander the Great that gave rise to the eastern tradition in the first place.  (And indeed I have seen a Greco-Roman statue of Pankration fighters mimicking precisely one of the very distinct moves practiced hundreds of years later in Japan – first in Daito-Ryu Aikijujitsu which then passed it to Traditional Aikido where it is part of the basic curriculum today.)

          Within the Asian martial arts, the Modern sportive era began with the development of Judo in the early 1900s by Japanese Jujitsu master, Jigoro Kano.  Kano Sensei removed what were considered to be some of the more dangerous movements from Jujitsu, including some of the smaller joint and leg locking techniques, but this in turn allowed the competitors to go full boar.  The result was that sport was fully differentiated from art and a scientific system ensued wherein what was functional was refined based on repeated experimenting in competition just as the techniques of boxing and wrestling had developed.  This Orange methodology continued with the development of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu from pre World War II Judo, an art that majored in applying the submission and choke holds of Japanese Jujitsu to a unique system of positional ground fighting.  This lead to the apex of Orange in the early 90s, in what proved to be a revolutionary globalization of martial arts, the founders of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), the Gracie family, created the Ultimate Fighting Championship where styles from all the world’s martial arts were invited to compete together in no-holds-barred, “reality” fighting matches (initially BJJ defeated all comers without so much as a single punch).  For the next ten years, the UFC acted as an Orange scientific system, refining the techniques that worked when almost anything goes.  The result was what we now know today as the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), a unique, living combination of combat sports: BJJ, Muay Thai kickboxing, boxing, wrestling, Judo, Sambo et al.  MMA still evolves to this day and bears with it the union of form and functionality resulting in natural movements, realistic timing and resistance.   Instead of bowing to your sensei and copying him exactly, fitting your body into rigid, unnatural form that may or may not be functional, you have a coach who maximizes your potential with natural motions that work for your individual body and game plan.  MMA coach Matt Thorton calls the gift of modern functionality and its bright Orange spirituality, Aliveness:

“Aliveness is about the freedom to use whatever works in the moment. Right action at right time. Which is another name for true compassion.  A freedom that is only fully felt when one is completely immersed in the present moment of now, and free of the burden of beliefs, which manifest as thoughts. A clear mind fully aware of reality as it is now, and operating with absolute synchronicity within time and space, that is the real beginning of Aliveness.”  (Thorton, 2005)

  

          Modernity applied important critiques to the world of Traditional martial arts.  Just as we could no longer believe the immature claims of the Premodern religions, so too have we begun to question the wish fulfillment fantasies and arrogant claims of the Traditional martial arts, and rightly so.  In his video series, “Functional Jeet Kune Do” Thorton deals some heavy blows to the Traditional martial arts when he likens the practice of Kata or any choreographed forms with set patterns of attack and response to “pretending to play basketball” or choosing a sequence of chess moves and repeating them over and over again instead of actually playing a game in either case.  As MMA becomes increasingly popular, Traditional martial arts get increasingly trashed.  And here it is that in the dignity of Modernity, in the differentiation of scientific reasoning from the dictates of tradition, lies the disaster of Modernity: as with scientific materialism, everything is reduced to the physical.  It’s all about fighting.  Now spirituality in the UL, morality in the LL, and serving society in the LR are swallowed whole by the UR as the pendulum swings from religion to science.  As a result, a deeper, more rational subject concerns itself with a more superficial object.  Mistaking spiritual development as a whole for its immature expression in Premodern religion, Modernity threw the baby out with the bathwater.  Traditional self-development, self-discipline and service to the Dojo, including reserving instruction in fighting arts for applicants with upright, moral character all went the way of the dinosaur as the grand scheme of Martial Arts were completely reduced to the most narcissistic, surface value.  How tough a fighter are you?  Who can kick whose ass?  Leave it to the West to reduce martial arts to fighting or Yoga to physical postures that improve how you look.  Yet this is what seems inevitable when outer development is violently disproportionate to inner: you have self-centered, blood thirsty fighters at Red using high Orange, global-centered technologies.  This is a bit scary and presents an otherwise spiritually inclined modern youth, thanks to MMA, with an unfortunate dilemma: “Would I rather be an effective fighter or be ineffective but spiritual?”  Wilber similarly discusses this false duality between rationality and spirituality in the world of religion in context of what he titles “The brutal choice faced by college students around the world.”  (Note since Wilber uses a light spectrum for his stages, Blue=amber) From Integral Spirituality (2006): 

“…a recent poll conducted by UCLA showed that, in America, 79% of college juniors say spirituality is important or very important in their lives, and 3 out of 4 of them pray (!).  Yet they cannot discuss their faith with their professors, who are mostly orange to green, and who ridicule it; yet they are no longer really comfortable with the mythic and ethnocentric version of their amber beliefs and the fundamentalist version of religion held by many of their friends.  A typical Christian student, for example, is embarrassed to talk about his religion with his professors, and even more embarrassed by his Christian friends….

   College students are therefore faced with a brutal choice: continue to believe in the amber stage of spiritual development, OR renounce their faith.

   That is exactly their horrifying option – live with amber and embrace Christ, or move to orange and renounce Christ – and it is virtually the only option given to these college students.  In the development of their spiritual intelligence, they are frozen at an amber stage…and have no avenues where they can explore the orange or higher levels in the development of spiritual intelligence.” (p. 182)

 

Holistic Martial Arts as Postmodernity: Contextualizing Traditional and Modern

          The 1960s marked the flowering of a third movement in the great unfolding of human potential.  This brought the gifts of relativism, cultural diversity, liberal rights and the value of caring human relationships – the reintegration of sensitivity and the feminine.  The Postmodern era began as a great pendulum swing away from masculine authority, control, hierarchy, industrialization, and imperialism, leveling scathing critiques at both Premodern and Modern eras in the process.  As alluded to earlier, who cares if you develop inner detachment and have fantastic, flowing technique if you are unconscious of your rigid, ethnocentric value system, of the worldview from which you speak, of how you treat others?  Spirituality that gives rise to absolute religious truth claims is held as highly suspect for the same reasons as the absolute truth claims of science: who interprets the “truth,” what special interest is behind this and what power does this create?  The philosophy of the subject or the myth of the given explain that a pure consciousness free from unconscious cultural filters, ulterior motives, value structures, interpretations or judgments is really not possible.  Instead, Structuralism addressed how our knowledge of what is real to us (ontology) is structured in different Stages of development, each of which has a different way of knowing (epistemology).  Perception is not monological, the natural world awaiting our objective observation just as it is – it is co-constructive, contextual, based on automatic unconscious interpretation.  Perception is filtered through our paradigm: we don’t so much see the world as it is as we see the world as we are.  And here matured the notion of the Jungian shadow from the unconscious of Freudian psychotherapy: the repressed, disallowed parts of our self (both bright and dark) that we cannot see except as reflections of our projection onto others – and that seem to come along for the ride, no matter how much we meditate. 

          In the land of Martial Arts, both Traditional and Modern seem to have missed the message.  Yet, this is not a hard problem to remedy.  The way you move, that same mindfulness you apply on the mat can be applied off the mat – UR training can become a great metaphor as well for the way you live your life.  Use your breathing awareness to keep your emotional center and become conscious of your shadow in LL inter-subjective relationships.  Learn to flow.  Take martial arts and apply it to your superego!  Now that’s UL self defense!  Instead of getting stuck in “one right way,” open yourself to being inclusive of other martial styles, as well as the complementary offerings that the Holistic, body-mind practices have to offer: from health, bodywork, dance and somatics to loving-kindness meditation, self-inquiry, personality-type systems, and psycho-spiritual practice.  If physical cross training began the multiplistic evolution of functional martial arts, then the psychological and spiritual cross training marked the beginning of the pluralistic inclusiveness necessary for the move to Integral.  The message from Holistic practitioners to fighters is a bit more exacting: there is no ultimate fighting.  There are only different contexts with different rules.  What happens in the street?  What about modern weapons?  What happens if you maim or even kill someone in reality?  What are you fighting for anyways and what does this violence serve besides your self?  What does one-on-one cage fighting have to do with anything truly important in the world at large?  What is it all really about?  In deconstructing the masculine ego of Modernity in this sense, Postmodernity returns the Good – returns LL moral virtue to the picture as part of the larger context in which the physical must embed itself as the original meaning of ‘Bu’ implies.  Ultimately the physical must transcend the physical as metaphors for self-awareness, conflict resolution, human relationship, harmony, and non-violence for the development of inner strength.  As the founder of Aikido states:

“All life is a manifestation of the spirit, the manifestation of love. And the Art of Peace is the purest form of that principle. A warrior is charged with bringing a halt to all contention and strife. Universal love functions in many forms; each manifestation should be allowed free expression. The Art of Peace is true democracy.”  O’Sensei Morihei Ueshiba (Stevens, 1992)

 

From the perspective of a Green martial art such as Aikido, technique is a somatic metaphor, a mirror for the way we move energetically off the mat.  It is a philosophy with physical form teaching us first as martial artists to remove the enemy from the world and find him as shadow within.  “True victory is victory over one’s self,” as the founder also states, and becoming conscious of our otherwise unconscious ego reactions allows us to center ourselves and blend with the energy of an attack as it arises without resistance and ideally without injuring our opponent.  Indeed from this unitive perspective, to injure an opponent is to injure one’s self – literally the same attacks that the superego directs outwards it directs as well within.  In blending with what we make other in this sense, a powerful healing, a mutual transformation of self and other occurs, as we blend with and reclaim that part of our own psyche, unifying unconscious with consciousness.                     

The Integral Critique of Green

          Given our preferences and aversions we often appear to skip around in our development – someone at a Red level of development adopting the highly effective fighting techniques of Orange for purely violent purposes or someone at Blue preaching the concepts of new age Green spirituality with as much of a “one right way” fervor as a religious fundamentalist.  However, in order for Orange to be Orange, it must transcend yet include the important capacity to comply with rules and agreements that Blue entails.  Otherwise you have a den of thugs not a team of professional athletes.  And experientially, it is confusing to think that anyone we know at Green, for instance, has passed through and fully embraced Blue or Orange – considering that the sensitive Green meme is defined almost exclusively by its objection to them.  One simple way to understand how a later Level seems to transcend but not include its previous Levels is Wilber’s notion that “All you need is a passing grade [the basic, essential capacities of that stage] to get to the next stage” (cited in Marquis, 2008, p. 77).  Thus, we can get a ‘C’ grade in Orange because e.g. we were taught to think abstractly in school and to preach a universal acceptance of all cultures, but then turn around and argue for our own “one right way.”  This makes human development a messy affair as almost anyone who is developed enough to speak can cognitively identify with the rhetoric of any higher level, co-opting that level for its own purposes.  That being said, a truly healthy Green may be harder to spot than we think.  It is the task of the idealistic and introspective Green self to begin to engage in the process of body-mind integration, of uncovering its shadows so that it can embody its theories in practice.  This entails a continuous “spiraling” back around to revisit the unresolved issues from the past – a conscious “regression in service of the ego” wherein one turns those basic passing grades into best efforts to integrate undeveloped aspects of one’s own self.  The challenge at this point however is that Green talks a good talk.  It really is beautiful to identify with non-violence, unconditional positive regard, world peace and cultural equality – but unless Green’s principles are lived, it comes across as flakey or “new agey” to Blue and Orange and is ill-equipped when it comes to authentically connecting with other levels such that it can skillfully provide these populations with what they need to develop.  In demanding that its own values be the right values, Green comes across as a higher order Blue parental figure, and like everyone else, cannot see that its own set of values, even if “spiritual,” may not be “the only values that are actually correct.”  When this is the case, Green works really well for Green – isolating itself in the same manner as Blue prefers Blue or Orange sticks with Orange and so on.  Just stating that others should just be Green already, or worse, that they are already inherently Green and just need to be nourished as they are since we’re all really on the same level makes actual development to the Green level next to impossible.  Accepting seven year olds who have no boundaries just the way they are in theory is often tantamount to having them walk all over you in practice.  Integral requires striking a balance between healthy masculine values: authority, agency, hierarchy and healthy feminine values: care, communion, and equality.

          I might critique my own martial art, Aikido which, as commonly found, is Green to the point that it is content to strip itself almost entirely of its martialness and assume a form more akin to dancing than to combat.  But what happens to the validity claims of Aikido when this is case?  To what extent can it actually produce so called “peaceful warriors?”  If Aikido aims to be functionally non-violent or gentle in practice, what does this actually require from an Integral perspective?  Integral non-violence transcends and includes the capacity for violence.  Otherwise, pacifism or aggression, yin or yang alone invariably results in violence.  It’s not very non-violent to let yourself or others be hurt by an attacker (thus the difference between passive-resistance and Integral non-violence).  On a physical level, Green lacks the methodology to actually test its techniques in competition and thereby develop the functionality that will actually accomplish its goal of embodying a capacity for non-violence.  What does it mean to be non-violent only in the face of non-violence?  Without this integration of inner peace in the face of increasing chaos, the irony as I see it is that anger and violence are merely repressed: pacifists can be some of the most angry people (thus Wilber’s term mean Green), and that, speaking from personal experience, in the name of gentleness or non-violence many Aikidoka become rigid, angry, or competitive the instant someone realistically resists their technique.  What might this mean off the mat?  Integral, if it means anything at all, means integrated – it's easy to be peaceful while you're meditating alone in a room or looking great in yoga class, but being integrated means that in the face of greater and greater irritation you have the capacity to maintain your awareness, your peaceful spirit, your loving nature – or keep your center and blend as we say in Aikido.  And this doesn’t mean you suppress the fact that you’re emotionally irritated to keep a calm, “spiritual” exterior, it means you take a good look in the mirror and do the inner work necessary to “correct your own form,” evolving over time, much as a sportive martial art develops.  A Green without the well developed Orange capacity to deal directly with confrontation, criticism and correction without simply avoiding them is limited in its ability to walk its talk.  The power of positive thinking, the law of attraction, a mood of always being “loving” or “spiritual,” to the extent they are used to avoid that which is within, all serve to reinforce the ego persona through denial – it is then that spiritual practice becomes an obstacle to spiritual progress.  How else can people spend years in therapy, meditation, yoga – or martial arts classes for that matter – even while wishing for the positive, and never really change?  Without moving into what they repress, without seeing their judgments of masculine, yang energy, anger, competition, as reflections of that which is disallowed within (but nevertheless comes through unconsciously), the values that Green holds in such high esteem are left without integrity, and the self persists in its self indulgent narcissism and hypocrisy.  And Integral, if it implies anything, should imply integrity.  The deeper reality however, is that our darkest shadow is also our brightest – the thing we resist the most, the last thing we will integrate is the very thing that will assure that we embody our values.  Having the courage to be emotionally honest, to acknowledge and appropriately express our own dark, aggressive impulses may provide the unsuspected step towards being more peaceful in practice; and, for those at Orange, having the sensitivity to “sit around and talk about your feelings,” rather than falling in love with those who can, may be the key to finding a sense of strength that no longer compensates for insecurity.

The Integration of Body, Mind and Spirit: The Pre/Trans Fallacy

          Wilber explains that development from Premodern, to Modern/Postmodern to Integral is also the move from Prerational, to Rational to a Transrational level that, again, transcends yet includes the prior stages.  But what has been apparent in our “brief history” is that not a single one of the forgoing stages transcends and includes the other stages and it seems we find ourselves back where we started, each believing that “their truth is the only truth that is actually correct.”  To the Traditional worldview, the Modern and Postmodern lack true spirituality, service or self discipline.  The Premodern looks superstitious and immature to the Modern who throws away its seemingly immature spirituality out of hand.  The Postmodern, critical of an approach that is all physical fighting, yet no more keen on Traditional masculine hierarchy, is satisfied to abandon martial rationality and regresses to using diluted Prerational martial forms as a kind of psychosomatic “energy work.”  Wilber explains these failures to fully integrate, i.e. transcend and include, with one of his most important contributions to developmental psychology, the Pre/Trans fallacy.  The mistake that people make, the fallacy, is that because both the Prerational and Transrational are essentially non-rational, they get mistaken for each other.  To restate the basic concepts: having evolved from the Prerational dark ages into a rational scientific Modernity, the feminine, the body and nature all become deeply repressed.  As we are faced with the horrors of the Rational, we seek what is yet beyond the mind and non-rational, but make the mistake of going back to the Prerational fearing that any further emphasis on rationality or the mind will only take us further from the paradise from which we fell.  This is the so called Postmodern “retro-romantic agenda” – back to the body, back to the way it was before technology, before the Cartesian body-mind split, before western civilization.  In this case the fallacy is that Pre is elevated to Trans.  However, the mental ego has developed to provide us with maturity, an objective perspective that dispels the irrational, ethnocentric thinking that held humanity in the grips of darkness, disease, superstition and suffering to that point.  This creates a very different view of the role of rational thought as the step between early magical and later spiritual reality, one which I would suggest plays a crucial role in the martial world as well.  Wilber (2005) explains:

“If indeed rationality is the great divide between subconscient magic and myth and superconscient subtle and causal, then its major purpose in the overall scheme of evolution might be to strip Spirit of its infantile and childish associations, parental fixations, wish fulfillments, dependency yearnings, and symbiotic gratifications.  When Spirit is thus de-mythologized, it can be approach as Spirit, in its Absolute Suchness, and not as a Cosmic Parent.

   When asked to explain the religious world view that rationalization is supposedly “destroying,” such scholars almost always point to magic or mythic symbologies, thereby elevating pre-rational structures to a trans-rational status.  Since development does move from pre-rational myth to rational discourse to trans-rational epiphany, then if one confuses authentic religion with myth, naturally rationalization appears anti-religious.  If, however, authentic religion is seen to be trans-rational, then the phase-specific moment of rational-individuation is not only a step in the right direction, it is an absolutely necessary prerequisite.” (p. 79).

          The second problem is that having reached the Rational, we think that’s all there is.  All Trans phenomena, all higher spiritual experiences beyond the understanding of mind e.g. the flow state, intuition, synchronicity – actually spirit, Consciousness or anything at all that science cannot explain empirically are reduced to Prerational phenomena – primitive, magical, belief based fantasies and inner experiences that are the result of nothing more than temporary brain chemistry.  Frank Visser in his (2003) review of Wilber’s work skillfully summarizes the two extremes of science and religion and a third, middle way:

“In A Sociable God Wilber depicts the current status of religion in Western culture in the following way: (1) The established religions are on the wane as a result of the increasing impact of the secularization process.  Many are disoriented by this and are currently seeking refuge in prerational, dogmatic forms of religion, which include both orthodox Christian groups as well as sect-like Eastern movements.  (2) Others, such as the intelligentsia who dominate the media and the universities, will continue to pursue the process of rational development and will be satisfied with a humanitarian/secular worldview. (3) A small minority will set out in search of transrational forms of spirituality by following a certain spiritual discipline, which can take place within the context of Christian spirituality as well as within the context of Eastern spirituality.  As far as Wilber is concerned, at this stage very few people are ready for this.  By combining the sociology of religion with a developmental model, Wilber is able to explain why people find the traditional religious message less and less credible.  They have essentially outgrown this kind of religiosity and are now looking for forms of religion that match the stage of religious development that they as individuals have reached.” (p. 138-9) 

 

I hope by this point the reader can identify the parallel between martial arts and religion in the previous quotes.  We might depict the current status of martial arts in Western culture in the following way: (1) The established martial arts are on the wane as a result of the increasing impact of Modern Mixed Martial Arts.  Many are disoriented by this and are currently seeking refuge in highly dogmatic Prerational forms of martial arts.  (2) Others will continue to pursue the process of Rational development and will be satisfied with a humanitarian/secular worldview.  (3)  A small minority will set out in search of Transrational forms of martial arts by following a certain martial discipline, which can take place within the context of a Traditional approach.  Even though it seems that “Few people are ready for this” I get the sense in my own interactions with people that there is a growing desire for a certain martial discipline that preserves Traditional philosophy while embracing Modern and Postmodern methodology.  Such an approach provides the Traditional context of martial arts as spiritual practice while allowing for the “rational-individuation” that is the “necessary prerequisite” for a truly Transrational Level of martial-spiritual realization.  This inclusive third way sees every stage of development as an opportunity for therapy, for spiritual practice – each a different expression of the same mindfulness training (whether Tai Chi, boxing or martial principles in daily life).  As the saying goes, “The further you progress, the fewer teachings there are.”  Indeed, from this Transrational perspective, what is not Spirit?  On the mat, off the mat, what is not an opportunity for practice?  We bow onto the mat, but we never bow off.  Surely this was glimpsed by the early masters who spoke of a mysterious way that permeated all things and with an Integral view we can actually structure the step by step progression towards this realization: from egocentric formlessness to ethnocentric Traditional form to Bruce Lee’s worldcentric self expression to multicultural Postmodern inclusiveness to the ultimate realization of that which transcends form as the Spirit within all sentient beings.  Having arrived to this point, we can now discuss what it means to be an Integrally informed martial artist who embraces each of the prior Levels in order to manage growth up the spiral of development. 

Integral Martial Arts as Integral Spirituality: The Great Conveyor Belt

          Based on an AQAL approach, we might suggest that the Integral Life Practice (ILP) of an Integral martial artist exercises body, mind and spirit with Premodern, Modern and Postmodern theory and practice.  In the UR we develop through Levels of physical technique with Traditional, Sportive and Somatic training practices.  Training in the UL is marked by spiritual practice and study progressing from Traditional meditation and philosophy to Modern cognitive/psychotherapy and science to Holistic psycho-spiritual practice/self-inquiry and new age literature to Integral Life Practice and Integral theory.  Adopting stage specific theory and practice allows each practitioner to experience the feel of a corresponding cultural worldspace in the LL, thus developing the memetic depth, or horizontal capacity necessary to master the curriculum of each vertical stage.  In this sense, each stage is a particular Line of development in and of itself (call it a ‘Stageline’ if you like), helping us to “make the grade” in each case with different kinds of social conditioning.  The Traditional worldspace has a flavor all its own, providing the strict etiquette, rules and roles necessary to well establish the capacity for compliant self surrender and service at Blue.  The Modern worldspace is distinct from the Traditional, emphasizing the personal achievement, competition, peak physical fitness, toughness and determination necessary to feel at home in Orange.  The Holistic perspective is a separate worldspace again, culturing the values of sensitivity, community, and wellness in body, mind, and spirit necessary to mature emotionally.  Experiencing the kind of spirit in each type of class and spending time with the kind of people who choose to train there allows us to understand and integrate important aspects of our own self.  This in turn contributes to our capacity to be authentically present with many different types of people and to apply skillful means on the basis of this wisdom and compassion.  In the LR, the Integral Academy – part Dojo, part Gym, part Holistic center, holds a time slot for each of these developmental worldspaces in order to assure the growth of its students up the spiral of development.  Like a Holistic center, Integral brings together many diverse offerings and practices as desired, but unlike a Holistic approach, it “flex-flows” i.e. includes or excludes practices within the bigger picture of what is needed in each unique case to promote growth up the spiral. 

          This brings us to “the Great Conveyor Belt” approach of Wilber (2006) who explains that since 70% of the world’s population is still part of a Traditional religion, they are the ones who can take the responsibility of encouraging growth towards more rational, introspective and embracing forms of spirituality.  This parallels the surprising fact that 85% of martial arts practitioners are under the age of thirteen (Martial Arts Museum n.d.) and seems also to reflect the lack of value that educated adults place in Traditional martial arts as a path of development beyond the childhood shift into Blue.  If a martial art or a religion can actually include the study and practice from Orange and Green levels of development necessary to encourage continued personal growth then the Dojo might live up to its name as “place of the way” in a more Integral sense.  Instead of martial arts or religion being for children, or those who think like them, spiritual practice is deepened through a continued course of training that is developmentally appropriate.  By including what Wilber calls the 3 Ss: State, Stage, and Shadow, we contribute to a fuller definition of Enlightenment that includes both psychological and spiritual growth.  Meditation practice provides growth in the inner experience of spiritual states of consciousness.  This creates the greater spaciousness and self awareness necessary to advance psychologically through inner work, study and training within worldspaces that contribute to confronting the specific developmental challenges of each successive stage.  This ideally provides a smooth course of growth preventing the need to revisit the shadows of each stage in later life: e.g. a “problem with authority” at Red, “one right way thinking” of Blue, the insensitivity of Orange or the hypersensitivity of Green.  In addition, this also provides multiple “entry points” to the Conveyor Belt as each person resonates different practices based on their developmental center of gravity.  An Integral approach welcomes a student base with a diverse range of initial motivations all the way from “kicking ass” to physical fitness to inner peace.  To this ends, the Academy might comprise a team of Integrally informed teachers, each with a different area of expertise, or simply invite the appropriate people in at certain times to hold classes, lectures or workshops.  For example, many Traditional Karate schools now bring in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructors; many BJJ Academies offer Yoga.  Keeping an AQAL approach in mind, the first step is simply a matter of supplementing where needed – a modular approach as in ILP wherein we choose something from each Quadrant and Level.  Traditional schools might e.g. offer space and time for meditation, Yoga and massage, host a Muay Thai or BJJ instructor a few times a week, and invite someone to give a workshop on shadow work, ILP, the Enneagram, Life coaching, somatics, or create a Martial arts and “The Power of Now” discussion group.  Sportive schools may find benefits from taking up the more structured, disciplined approach to learning that Traditional schools excel in and can enlist their senior students to promote a more service oriented attitude in the gym.  They too can offer meditation and Yoga, and even think about sitting around and talking about ideas and feelings a little bit with one of the Green offerings listed above.  As for those with Green practices such as Yoga, Tai Chi, or some of the more flowing styles of Aikido – give yourself the chance to confront and transcend your fear or anger in small steps through the kind of psychophysiotherapy that a more combative martial art can provide.  Also, psychospiritual practices that support emotional body-mindfulness and shadow work in addition to cultivating “positive” feel good experiences will support Green’s inner work.  Overall, you may find moving more intensely into your body in both cases to be quite agreeable – even invigorating and empowering when all is said and done.

An Integral Aikido is an Alive Aikido

          In conclusion I would like to briefly discuss my ongoing project to create an Integral Aikido, one which has as its fundamental context the notion of spiritual practice, of stillness in motion – moving Zen, which sees the body on the mat as a somatic metaphor for the way we live off the mat in daily life, but is also willing to continue to evolve and transcend its Traditional definition of form through the incorporation of Modern, alive training – boxing gloves and all.  In this case, anything that can effectively secure the goal of Aikido – to control one’s opponent without hurting him – and can be used with the spirit of Aikido becomes Aikido.  Aikido, for me, has transcended form, and is a spirit – a way of treating your training partner and a way of being.  As I've grown, I've been increasingly surprised to find this spirit all over – not just in my style of Aikido, not just in Aikido, not just in other complementary martial arts, but in all martial arts, and in all people.  This is the second step in addition to the parallel offering of these practices within the same Academy: the evolution of a wholly new integration of these practices.  “If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead” implies the freedom to constantly inquire and refine, to make amendments based on the leading edge of growth within a “community of the adequate.”  In allowing the boundaries to begin to blur and each of the stages to intermingle, their can be a martial creative birth of a new Aiki form that more clearly reflects our highest self, simultaneously serving as functional spiritual practice, self defense, and way of life.  I look forward to pioneering this approach with the hopes that it will satisfy those who seek more sincerely to open up to spiritual experiences, to embody their practice in daily life, as well as those who would like the technique informing this process to feel intuitive and real.  Those with gentle hearts have only to claim their power.  If the meek shall inherit the earth, then in a spirit of love and gratitude to O’Sensei for the unimaginable gifts that Aikido has presented me with so far, I offer a new approach to lend confidence, prowess, and power to those who deserve them most.

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(Wilber K 200604 Spirituality of Tomorrow)Wilber, K. (2006, April). The Spirituality of Tomorrow. Retrieved May 21, 2008, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUNlpyfT2LU

 

What is Donnie Darko about?  My personal interpretation follows...  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Persona and Shadow in Donnie Darko

 

 

 

 

 

 

John F. Kennedy University

 

 

 

 

Nathanael Chawkin

Enneagram Assessment

Winter Quarter 2008

 

Via Negativa – The Minor Mode

               The first time I saw Donnie Darko, a 2001 cult classic from first time director Richard Kelly, I was deeply moved.  I was also deeply bewildered, although smiling simultaneously like someone who knows a secret he can’t speak.  I think something in my personality resonated with the dark, somber, subtle, beautiful depths of the mystery, the same feeling that had me transfixed at the end of American Beauty, deeply absorbed in a place beyond thought yet filled with the resonance of meaning.  I think this is what made the movie so personal for me – it takes a certain kind of person who can sit with the darkness, who can feel the melancholy in a sad piece of music without recoiling or running away from the introspection it inspires.  This is a person who can contemplate his death and let it teach him how to live – let it strip him down to the bare bones of his soul in a search for what is real.  I guess this kind of humility, this willingness to be opened from the inside to something beyond is what it means to be spiritual, although, to Donnie and those like him, this is not a religious belief – in fact this process starts with an existential resignation of belief all together. 

                                     DR. THURMAN

                         Do you feel alone right now?

 

               He looks at her for a moment.

 

                                     DONNIE

                         I'd like to believe that I'm not...

                         but I've just never seen any proof.

                         So I just choose not to bother with

                         it. It's, like, I could spend my

                         whole life thinking about it...

                         debating it in my head. Weighing the

                         pros and cons. And in the end, I

                         still wouldn't have any proof. So...

                         I don't even debate it any more. 

                         Because it's absurd.

                              (beat)

                         I don't want to be alone.

                              (beat)

                         So, does that make me, like, an

                         atheist?

 

                                     DR. THURMAN

                         No. That makes you keep searching.

 

I think it is this soul searching – the inner strength to walk ahead alone and into the darkness that best defines this phase of the spiritual path.  The idea of death, that “Every living creature on this earth dies alone,” that we're all wearing "stupid man suits" on loan to us till we die, can either throw us into despair, into denial or initiate this search for meaning.   

               It wasn’t until my second viewing of Donnie Darko and a third viewing some years later of the Director’s Cut that things started to fall into place.  In the time between viewings, I had begun my education in Integral Psychology, a psychology which contains all of the psychologies developed thus far – from Behavioral and Freudian to Cognitive to Jungian and Humanistic/Existential to Transpersonal– integrating the best of eastern and western approaches to human development in the process.  In particular, my recent study of the Enneagram personality type system lead me to a deeper understanding of how and why we develop certain ego personae and the meaning of psycho-spiritual growth in this context.  Sparked with a new curiosity I began to explore the internet, searching for a general consensus as to what Donnie Darko meant to people (including the director).  What ensued was a small journey of self-discovery that allowed me to clarify and strengthen my own theory about the movie and, in true Integral fashion, match up themes from various fields of study: Freud’s unconscious, Jung’s shadow, Yoga philosophy, Christian mysticism, mythology, the existential thought of Nietzsche, Zen Buddhism and self awareness, self-inquiry, and personal transformation in general.  If I found a consensus in the interpretations I read, it was more in the lack of their ability to look beyond a literal interpretation of the film – especially the ending – to one of archetype and metaphor, much in the way Joseph Campbell might look at universal symbols in religion, or in modern movie myths such as Star Wars.  This frees the film to embody the meaning we feel in our gut, to inform our life in a meaningful way with the message we intuit but can’t quite put our finger on.  It is my best intention here to explain the basics of ego psychology, shadow work and individuation to provide the reader with a simple framework for understanding the core metaphors of the film.  Rather than discussing specific points from the Enneagram, I wish to take a more in depth look at the transformation of persona and shadow in general.  In short, I hope this paper will serve as an injunction for spiritual practice, namely shadow work – sleepwalking our way to an awareness of that which is within us that can save us. 

The Formation of the Ego: Persona and Shadow

                              TITLE CARD:

 

                                     OCTOBER 13 1988

 

               INT. ENGLISH CLASS - MORNING (THURSDAY, 8 A.M.)

 

               Donnie stands in front of the class. Ms. Pomeroy sits behind

               her desk. On the chalkboard is "Poetry Day".

 

                                     DONNIE

                         "A storm is coming, Frank says. A

                         storm that will swallow the

                         children... and I will deliver them

                         from the kingdom of pain."

                              (beat)

                         "I will deliver the children to their

                         doorsteps. I will send the monsters

                         back to the underground. I will send

                         them back to a place where no one

                         can see them... except for me. Because

                         I am Donnie Darko."

 

            The formation of our particular personality traits start with the conditioning of our very early childhood.  Since a small child is entirely dependent upon the caregivers for survival, any behavior that upsets the parent in some way, even if only subtly, and results in some kind of punishment – a grimace, or even setting the baby down – is suppressed and any behavior that is rewarded is reinforced.  The behaviors that are selected as “good” remain in consciousness and others that are deemed “bad,” if selected out for long enough, become repressed i.e. unavailable to consciousness.  The part of the psyche that does the suppressing as a mechanism of defense according to Freud is called the ego (Almaas, 1992 p2).  In other words, the ego originally helped us dissociate from being present to things that caused us suffering so we wouldn’t have to experience them.  It is like tensing our body and wincing with our eyes shut in anticipation of being struck, so that we don’t have to be conscious to the pain as it happens.  In addition to this, the Enneagram recounts that rather than the formation of our personality being the simple result of our extrinsic conditioning (the nurture aspect of the nature/nurture equation), it is also our inherent reaction to what is happening to us from the inside that defines who we are.  You can have the same parents in a family and, of course, each child will form their own reactions differently, with different coping mechanisms, based on their own inner nature.  Each forms a slightly different scab, in a manner of speaking, over a slightly different wound, resulting in a slightly different personality.  Ego then is a scab, a hard surface, a mask or persona in Greek – who we are or intend to be consciously (what Freud called the ego ideal) – that compensates for or covers our shadow – who we are not, or are not allowed to be.  Ego = Persona + Shadow; the dividing line between the conscious and unconscious parts of our psyche.  In the Enneagram, they speak of each personality type having a basic Desire – what we value or attempt to be consciously which, I would suggest, arises in conjunction with a basic Fear – what we don’t value and try to avoid being at all costs. 

Freud used the term ‘ego ideal’ interchangeably with the more familiar term superego for our inner critic, the internalized voice of our parents encouraging us to be a certain way, while shaming us for being others.  Whereas in the beginning we are born with the potential for an array of personal capacities, a whole pie in a sense, the ego draws the line between what is safe to exhibit and what is unsafe, “send(ing) the monsters back to the underground” that threaten the survival of the organism.  This line, this split between what is flexed consciously at the expense of what is repressed into the unconscious – between what is acceptable and unacceptable is then enforced by our increasingly rational and sophisticated superego.  It makes sure that we maintain a certain façade based on what is appropriate to the superego of our particular family or society as well (which has its own familial or cultural shadow).  Of course this creates a kind of inner battle between our unexpressed, unconscious bodily (or libidinal from Freud’s Id) impulses which want to leak through and the efforts of the Superego to repress them in favor of what is proper.  It is the classic war between body and mind, feeling and thinking, feminine and masculine, Yin and Yang.  The Superego will do anything to keep the supposed monster from surfacing from the depths of the archetypal water.  Almaas (1992) explains:

“For this repression to be done effectively, the whole operation becomes unconscious; i.e., both the ego defense mechanism and the corresponding coercive parts of the superego become unconscious…. Especially for the well-developed and integrated ego, the moment that there is the likelihood that part of the unconscious is going to surface to consciousness, the ego starts experiencing anxiety.  This anxiety is a response to the anticipation of danger.  In the past, libidinal impulses and accompanying actions…became perceived as dangerous to the person because of the reactions encountered in the environment to them (especially from the parents) such as disgust, rejection, punishment, abandonment, belittlement, humiliation, judgment, criticism, invalidation, being threatened, doubted, ridiculed, made to feel guilty or shameful, etc.”  (p 3) 

                       

The important thing to remember here is that the Superego is part of the scab too – the rational aspect of the ego defense mechanism designed to keep the behaviors that threatened our survival from surfacing into consciousness.  Even though as a grown adult, we are no longer physically dependent on our parents for survival, the actual primal fear of death remains: to experience these fragmented parts of our self is to face the fear of death, and to reintegrate them in a healthy way feels like dying in that we have to let go of our need to protect ourselves – a potentially traumatic endeavor to be sure (Ibid p 2).  This integration of the conscious with the unconscious, this healing – a word which comes from the Latin holos, to make whole – is the purpose of most psychotherapy.  And as we cease to repress, we cease to overcompensate and vice versa – the hard scab and the soft wound it covers melt away simultaneously.   

Defense Mechanisms: “I know you are, but what am I?”

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.  And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”   – Nietzsche

 

Let’s step back for a minute and look at an example to illustrate just what we’re talking about here: let’s say you were yelled at when you were little by your father (who was probably yelled at for the same reason when he was little and so on) for not paying attention when someone was talking.  As a result you develop the superego message that it is selfish, bad and wrong not to pay attention to someone and failing to do so will result in a withholding of love, or worse.  You try your best consciously to be a good boy/girl, but unconsciously there is a part of you the leaks through, perhaps after you’ve become too tired to listen any more, perhaps as an unconscious act of rebellion on account of the repression of your own natural need to be heard.  All around, you find “poor listeners” who you take very personally, reprimanding them for not listening to you properly.  (Of course, they only reflect the part of you that wants a break from its constant overcompensating).  On the surface, you feel like you are helping them – after all not listening got you very hurt!  In one of the rare moments that someone points out to you that you might not be listening to them, you vehemently deny it, telling a story about how the opposite is true and that really they are the one not listening to you!  So the interesting point is not that we don’t display these behaviors, we do, it’s just that when we do we dissociate from the fact that we are as a defense mechanism so we don’t have to own or experience the thing that triggers our fear of rejection – a rejection which early on, it was sensed, would mean death.  Naturally, there are huge assumptions, huge webs of irrational beliefs forming many stories that underlie our projections, e.g. “If I don’t listen to people, I won’t be loved.”  Part of cognitive behavior therapy is to surface and examine these unconscious “scripts,” to see how they match up or rather how they often fail to match up with reality – a kind of shadow work in its own right. 

Shadow Work – “Warning: Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear”

“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.”  - Carl Jung

 

            That which is unconscious within us is called our shadow.  It is important in shadow work to understand that all shadows are unconscious, but not everything in the unconscious is shadow – or dark shadow at least.  The Yin-Yang helps describe how a dot of unconscious dark shadow can come through consciousness unseen e.g. as projection, just as a dot of what is called our “bright” or “golden” shadow is repressed in the unconscious waiting to be awakened (those parts of ourselves we selected out of in order to survive or fit in).  But what we fail to become conscious of happens outside as fate, over and over again.  Until we bring the shadow into the light of consciousness, we will continue to polarize with others, projecting our dark shadow when our enemies mirror what we secretly embody and projecting our bright shadow, the disowned and repressed parts of our own beauty or power onto others whom we envy, seek approval from or fall in love with.  This process of making the unconscious, conscious, of bringing conscious awareness to our ego reactions is the essence of shadow work.  While, as Jung thought, the persona is identical to the ego at first, defining how we ought to behave to be accepted by our parents and later by society, it is by no means the same thing as our true individuality.  Only once we have integrated the repressed fragments of our self through a process of conscious self-actualization (or individuation as Jung called it) will we know what our self looks like when it is wholly itself, in full bloom without impairment.  A helpful metaphor here is the process off self-mastery in a sport or art.  Through the training process, we become conscious of our unconscious habits and choose consciously how we would like to craft every move, every note, so we are expressing our self intentionally.  A master of his craft is constantly looking in the mirror, competing, and testing himself in order to reveal the holes in his game, the gaps of consciousness in his understanding or expression, the mistakes in his form so that he can constantly refine his technique until it is as he wants it to be. 

This journey as it applies to our psychological maturation or self-mastery is described by Joseph Campbell as the archetypal hero’s quest:

The hero...discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed.... He must...submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh. (Campbell 1973)

The hero’s quest is at first the quest for adulthood and mature individuality, the quest to confront and integrate what we have forgotten within to create who we would like to become.  This growth process elevates us to a place of autonomy, of self-authorship and integrity as we take responsibility for ourselves rather than continue to project onto others the good or evil that we embody unconsciously within.  Waking up to the slumbering parts of our self, and above all, being true to the idea that “when you point the finger, there are three fingers pointing back” is a personal journey of self dis-covery, around which the many patterns of our life that we thought existed randomly outside ourselves are suddenly revealed to repeat and cohere with certain themes, certain synchronous meanings that lead us deeper and deeper within, until we are fully conscious of what it is our shadow is unconsciously creating.  Why do we always date the same kind of person, end up with the same kind of boss, or find ourselves in the same situations over and over again?  Are we even conscious of these patterns and the general subconscious mood they create?  “When people run in circles, it’s a very, very mad world.”

            The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali (Hartranft 2003) describe in short aphorisms this very process of bringing pure awareness to the past conditioning of our mind.  The opening sutras explain: “Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness.  Then the self abides in its very nature” – present to what is without the emotional reactions of our past conditioning – “Otherwise awareness takes itself to be the patterns of consciousness” (Ibid p2).  These patterns of the mind are built on the attachments and aversions, the residues of past “positive” and “negative” experiences from our early conditioning.  Each residue, called a samskara, lies dormant in the unconscious waiting to be triggered as karma – which simply means action (more properly reaction for our purposes).  Each time we react unconsciously, clinging to what is “good” or averting what is “bad,” we paradoxically reinforce the latent ego impressions that have given rise to our reactions in the first place.  Unconsciousness is therefore determinism – what is latent is determined to be triggered eventually – in this life or the next – as it is put ominously (Ibid p25).  This is why, contrary to popular belief, the metaphor of the wheel of karma describes not just reincarnation, or “what goes around comes around” – the good or bad luck that comes back to us, but rather the suffering that results in our reactions to what happens to us based on our past conditioning.  What we fail to become conscious of repeats in unconscious cycles, karma reinforcing samskara reinforcing karma…like a gerbil wheel that keeps us trapped on an increasingly determined-to-be merry-go-round, “going nowhere.”  “But suffering which has not yet arisen can be prevented” and shadow work is this daily practice of dying to ourselves by bringing consciousness to what is unconscious and in so doing avoiding the potential future suffering we may cause ourselves and others (Ibid). 

What does shadow work look like in everyday life?  How can we work on instead of box with our shadows?  Many suggest that meditation and mindfulness practice (what Yoga means inherently) are an integral part of this kind of psychological work, since they allow us to still our mind and develop our capacity to be steadily aware of what is without reaction.  Again, this allows us in the same stroke to disidentify from the unconscious and automatic mechanisms of our personalities and find healthy expression for what has been repressed.  The Enneagram suggests getting familiar with our basic personality traits so that we can “catch ourselves in the act” of our repetitive, unconscious behaviors.  In a sense, “Know Thyself” and “Know Thy Enemy” becomes the same thing here.  To be clear however, self-awareness is different from self-judgment.  Riso and Hudson (1999) explain:

One of the most important skills we must acquire as we embark on the inward journey is the ability to “observe and let go” of the habits and mechanisms of our personality that have trapped us…..Our maxim is deceptively simple.  What it means is that we must learn to observe ourselves, seeing what arises in us from moment to moment, as well as seeing what calls us away from the here and now.  Whatever we find, whether pleasant or unpleasant, we simply observe it.  We do not try to change it, nor do we criticize ourselves for what we uncover.  To the extent we are fully present …the constrictions of our personality begin to relax, and our Essence begins to manifest more fully.”  (p40)

 

The Enneagram also uses the lines of stress and integration to help explain the simultaneous dissolution and actualization of our dark and bright shadows respectively.  Each personality type under stress will become an unhealthy version of another type (our dark shadow).  As we cease to act out the aggressions of our particular superego on others, we naturally cease to perpetrate these things on our self as well.  This results in the release of the healthy qualities that we have been repressing (our bright shadow) and as such, our natural integration towards yet another personality type.  Another way of looking at the Enneagram then is as a map of an integrated psyche – really, we contain all 9 different ways of constructing the world and with continued personal growth work we skate around the lines of stress and integration until we have done shadow work at each stop.  What is suggested in general is that we offer support to those areas within us that are underdeveloped or of which we are ashamed or self-conscious and challenge the other more selfish behaviors that we may flex when threatened or under stress – a generally sound formula for growth.  This relates as well to Jung’s idea of the Anima and Animus, the feminine and masculine aspects of the soul, one of which we inhibit unconsciously as shadow while the other we more consciously assert as persona.  When we learn to empower what is weak and surrender what is tough by learning to set boundaries around what is healthy or unhealthy in  self or in others, we allow our bright shadow through and transcend our dark shadow in the same stroke.  Like leveling the sides of a scale – start on either side and mutually both sides come into balance sympathetically.  Many would say this unifying power that makes us whole within and simultaneously reconciles self and other is called love.

Given the heroic effort this can take, Jung thought that acknowledging one’s shadow marked “the first act of courage” (Pettifor 1995).  Luckily, tools like the Enneagram help us get to know ourselves in a helpful and non-threatening way by allowing us to become more familiar with our everyday habits.  The first challenge consists simply in bringing consciousness to what is unconscious – the willingness to acknowledge our shadow, to just noticing when we’re being triggered.  Since projection always means that a piece of the unconscious is surfacing and producing inner emotional anxiety, it is simply about connecting the mind with the body – acknowledging the thoughts, words, actions or observations that make us feel attraction or repulsion in our bodies.  This is why many humanistic/existential psychologies speak about their work in terms of integrating mind (conscious) and body (unconscious emotional impulses) with spirit (awareness).  Almaas well describes this important attitude when he says that “Anxiety…can be seen as a prelude to self knowledge” (Almaas 1992, p 4).  Truly, as it is said, the body never lies.  Just becoming conscious of our emotional state in our body without reaction can be curative in that it allows our past conditioning to dissolve rather than be reinforced through reaction.  We slowly begin to learn to differentiate, as Jung did, between feeling (which is a way of evaluating) and emotion (a term which actually means disturbance) (Pettifor 1995).  If something is not personal, it probably will not disturb us, and we will be able to evaluate a situation objectively or impartially.  When we are “upset” or made to be emotional by something however, it is likely we are reacting defensively and we may want to ask ourselves why, using any judgments that come up as possible mirror reflections for what we enable or disenable within.  How am I like that?  How do I do that?  Or, how could I be more like that?  Maybe we can’t stand someone, or tell a story about how they have “bad energy,” or maybe we cling to people for “protection.”  Whatever the case, until we’ve inquired deeply and made certain changes within, what we don’t like about someone will always uncomfortably mirror something we don’t like about ourselves.

Adopting the faith that everything that triggers us emotionally, everything we judge outside ourselves is a projection of that which is good or bad within leads us to the second challenge of shadow work – dying to our selfish ego, to all of its immature needs and preferences.  There can be no childish, egocentric victim mind any longer – no one to save us and no authority to blame.  Our reactions are our own, all heroes and villains within.  This is what it means to face the end of the world as we know it, which requires a tremendous leap of faith on our part – the faith that we won’t be hurt again if we give up our old defense mechanisms.  As the heroine learns to die to herself, she learns that even the feelings of deep grief and emptiness that arise as she contemplates her own death and the meaninglessness of all things are selfish too.  In dying to even these last attempts to hang on to her ego identity, she creates a new, more poignant meaning within even where there seems to be none without – that of living for others.  Transcending an existential crisis in this way entails what Nietzsche called Amor Fati – love of fate.  In other words, it is the understanding of the kind of non-duality we have been speaking about, a maturation process that happens when you begin to take responsibility for your self.  As Shakespeare is quoted: “there is neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so,” or as cited in Byron Katie’s (Katie, 2003) book (which restates Nietzsche’s love of fate) Loving What Is, “We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens” (p 2)  This is not to say we don’t set boundaries, enter into agreements, make decisions about what is right and wrong, or even display righteous anger in the face of injustice – it simply means we cease to attribute our internal suffering to what happens in the environment – that much is our choice.  This is the apocalypse: “revelation” or “to uncover” – in the sense of “to remove the veil” – not the end of the physical world, but the end of the world as we have known it based on our previous illusions.  It is the end of our psychological world, our worldview, uncovering the mask of our false persona – a moment of truth as we remove the veil of ignorance and become conscious of what is real (Campbell 2001). 

Donnie Darko – Myth and Metaphor

“The hero's main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. The coming of consciousness was probably the most tremendous experience of primeval times, for with it a world came into being whose existence no one had suspected before.”  (Jung 1940)

 

I hope by now that the reader can see some of the intentional foreshadowing in my descriptions of the conscious and the unconscious, the persona and shadow and the process of shadow work up to this point.  (Please see Addendum B if you would like a plot refresher.)  The metaphors in the film are based around what I feel are three important core meanings.  First, when you judge, you draw a line between what is good and bad, and repress everything that is bad into your unconscious.  Unaware our shadow side, it repeats itself over and over again in the endless karmic cycles of our lives.  As Jung states:

“It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious…to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail.”  (Levy, 2005)

 

However, secondly, “suffering which has not yet arisen (as a potential future or ‘tangent universe’) can be prevented.”  The hero’s task is to become conscious: to confront his enemy as his own inner shadow.  In the process, he simultaneously follows his destiny, a meaningful quest of inner self-realization that results in the individuation of his own unique potentials – his bright shadow.  In the end (of the world) he ultimately becomes fully conscious of that which is within him (removing the veil or false persona), choosing consciously to die to the karmic cycle that will otherwise repeat itself unconsciously.  Finally, the movie offers commentary throughout on an analogous cultural shadow – what happens when society as a whole is dissociated from reality and wears a mask to cover and control what it is afraid to confront within.  I will discuss briefly these ideas in context of the film.

The Shadow as Anti-Hero

“And Jesus said, ‘If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you fail to bring forth that which is within you, what you fail to bring forth will destroy you.’”

                                                                                The Gospel of Thomas, verse 70 (Mabry, 2007)                                                                                         

            The first words that Frank whispers are “Wake up” – a spiritual wake up call similar to the injunction at Delphi to “Know Thyself.”  He then announces to Donnie that the end of the world is coming.  Frank is the personification of our shadow – an unconscious potential future, not yet arisen from within, yet determined to be if left as such.  In order to awaken to what is beneath our thickly formed persona, it becomes necessary “That…destruction is a kind of creation” as Donnie puts it.  Rather than take things at face value, the world as he has known it according to his personal paradigm, Donnie adopts a certain faith, trusting what is unconscious within him to be his guide to a larger perspective.  Curiously, it is while he is sleepwalking that he is conscious of and follows the dictates of (read: integrates) his shadow, Frank.  St. John of the Cross perfectly defines this metaphor: “If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark” (Merton, 2004) Differentiating this kind of faith in what is, Amor Fati, an inner act of self-surrender as opposed to the holding of certain concrete religious beliefs, is crucial.  This is where the psychological begins to intersect with the spiritual and as Byron Katie (2003) suggests, “God, as I use the word, is another name for what is. I always know God’s intention: It’s exactly what is in every moment.”  In other words, what is is God’s will –and “If you argue with reality, you lose (suffer), but only one hundred percent of the time (p xx).”  We can find so many cross-cultural instances of this practical kind of faith.  This quote from a Vietnam POW inspired what author Jim Collins calls “The Stockdale Paradox:”

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” 

                                                                                                                                (Collins, 2001)

Or from the third Zen Patriarch, Seng T’san in the Absolute Faith Mind: 

“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail. The Way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.”  (Dowling, 2003)

 

The picture that begins to be painted here transcends mere psychology.  Being conscious of our shadow seems to imply an inner equilibrium, a capacity to be present without judgment to what is – a pure awareness that results in inner wisdom and compassion.  Donnie experiences what it is like somatically to be present to his shadow and you’ll notice him holding his stomach and wincing at the nausea he experiences each time he is about to see Frank.  He has chosen to awaken and face what is within himself with the faith that the truth will set him free.  In actualizing his (bright) shadow he becomes uninhibited and heroic, gaining “special powers” as Frank leads him to commit what appear to be dark criminal acts.  As time goes on however, we learn that these events guide Donnie along the path of his personal destiny, each act of destruction or indignation tearing opening a false persona to reveal what is hidden within others and ultimately, within himself.  The horrific character of Frank is not evil then, he is the antihero.    

American “Beauty” –The Mask of Modernity

 “I had a dream and because I did not live my dream, my dream was making me sick.”  - From Black Elk Speaks

 

In her book, “Getting our Bodies Back,” somatic psychotherapist Christine Caldwell (1996) explains that we actually become addicted to our defense mechanisms since they prevent us from experiencing pain much like we might get addicted to pain killers.  In other words, we get addicted to staying unconscious, to the feeling of being “comfortably numb.”  Like Donnie, waking up to reality and catching a glimpse of what we are repressing is likely to make us feel as though we are on some kind of medication.  (In the director’s cut, Donnie’s psychiatrist actually explains that his medication has been placebos all along.)  Just as the development of the superego meant the repression of certain unconscious bodily impulses, Modernity in history marked the rise of the mental ego of society, the scientific era, and industrialization.  This was taken so far however that it too resulted in the dissociation from and repression of the body, the feminine, religion and nature.  For many, modern life is marked by dissociation from how our familiar, daily races and daily routines make us feel in our bodies.  We repeat the same dole drudgery, day in day out, preferring “familiar faces, worn out places,” even though we are never really seen or heard – racing ahead even though we feel dead inside.  Somehow we supplement a genuine need for emotional connection or authentic self-expression with the consumption of perfect, sterile, material products (As Fight Club attests to), destroying and isolating ourselves from natural life in the process.  It is no wonder that having taken the blue pill and awoken from the Matrix to the horrors of reality that the despair is too great and we want only to be reinserted.  The burden of becoming conscious of the damage the rational has caused – our inner emotional wounding or the symptomatic wounding done to nature – makes our addiction to numbness too painful to live outside of (see Shawshank Redemption).  This is when an existential crisis can ensue, a dark night of the soul, and for some, it is too much to cope with.  Rather than continue ahead a place where mind and body are integrated, healed, we choose instead to retreat back to the body, back to nature, back to a place prior to mature rationality (the so called “retro romantic agenda.”)  The rise of the mental ego from our animal nature, (or historically of science from the dark ages) is represented in the early myths where a knight slays a dragon or serpent.  Having slain the monster, however, the hero must return home to share the knowledge of his journey (Campbell 1973).  A failure of the hero to return home (like Odysseus) marks the inability to become conscious of and integrate our shadow.  Rather than returning to an infantile paradise or garden of Eden, we must finish the circle by moving ahead on our path, allowing the reemergence of the sacred feminine as part of a harmonization with the masculine, a regression to the body in service of body-mind integration, a mutual embrace honoring feel and thinking, nature and technology, grandfather time and “grandma death.”

               Donnie sees right through the hypocrisy of the adults in his world who are unable to be true to what is within them – who bully or shame people who are afraid but cannot acknowledge their own fear.  In response to the “lifeline exercise” in which Kitty Farmer has the class divide life situations into “fear” and “love,” Donnie exclaims, “You're just lumping everything into these two categories... and, like, denying everything else.”  And he senses there is something insidious, something terribly wrong with Jim Cunningham too – all is a bit too pretty on the surface.  “Controlling fear” only builds a larger scab over a deeper wound, denying our capacity to be honest or vulnerable to what we are truly feeling, which further perpetuates the fear we were attempting to transcend.  The callousness of the public school system, the religious conservatism and the few teachers who comment on how the children can smell the BS of the adults a mile away and are “better off saving themselves these days” all illustrate the film’s commentary on the insensitive cultural shadow of Modernity and the very few people attempting to deal with this reality.  The scene in the movie theatre when Frank explains that he is called Frank because that was his father’s name and his father’s before him hints at the karmic patterns that repeat themselves throughout history in our specific families, in society or even in the world at large.  Shadow work involving our immediate family can be some of the most challenging, yet powerful work we can do, as those nearest to us are often responsible for our deepest wounds, and simultaneously the strongest mirror into the parts of our self we’ve disowned as a result.  How many people swear they’ll never be like their parents, only to witness themselves “pulling the trigger” in exactly the same way as their mother or father did? 

Time Travel, Vector Spears and the Wheel of Karma: The Predestination Paradox

“Ancient myth tells us of the Mayan Warrior killed by an Arrowhead that had fallen from a cliff, where there was no Army, no enemy to be found.  We are told of the Medieval Knight mysteriously impaled by the sword he had not yet built.  We are told that these things occur for a reason.”

(Addendum C Philosophy of Time Travel Chapter 12)

 

            Part way into the film, Donnie begins to see silvery tubes of liquid projecting from people’s solar plexuses – a visual indication of their unconscious intention extending several feet in front of them.  An important conversation about time travel and the nature of free will vs. determinism ensues between Donnie and his science teacher, Dr. Monnitoff.

                                   DONNIE

                         If God controls time... then all

                         time is pre-decided. Then every living

                         thing travels along a set path.

 

                                     DR. MONNITOFF

                         I'm not following you.

 

                                     DONNIE

                         If you could see your path or channel

                         growing out of your stomach, you

                         could see into the future. And that's

                         a form of time travel, right?

 

                                     DR. MONNITOFF

                         You are contradicting yourself,

                         Donnie. If we could see our destinies

                         manifest themselves visually... then

                         we would be given the choice to betray

                         our chosen destinies. The very fact

                         that this choice exists... would

                         mean that all pre-formed destiny

                         would end.

 

                                     DONNIE

                         Not if you chose to stay within God’s channel…
    

The vector spears lead us deterministically on a trajectory towards our inevitable destinies to the extent we are unconscious of our choices.  Unless we awaken, we are already dead, like Frank, killed by the sword we have “not yet built.”  The whole movie, whether you think of it as a dream or premonition (ala Mulholland Drive) or literally as a sci-fi tangent universe, represents the awareness of a trajectory, a possible future.  The fact that Donnie eventually becomes aware of this shadow future in Frank means he can consciously choose to avert what is as yet unmanifest – otherwise, there is an inescapable paradox in that the jet engine falling from the future creates the events that deterministically lead to the jet engine falling back in time from the future in the first place!  (A metaphor for the paradox of karma: our pain reinforces our numbness or unconsciousness which perpetuates our pain and so on.)  Awareness gives Donnie the chance to break this self-fulfilling cycle.  There is an important truth in Dr. Monnitoff’s view that an awareness of our destiny would mean we would be free to choose our future differently – there would be no higher destiny.  But Donnie rejects this reductionist view and aims for what I believe is a middle way (again, a higher integration) between pre-rational religious pre-destination and the empty and meaningless randomness of rational scientific materialism.  If we have the faith (sleepwalking) to die to our ego preferences and integrate our shadow, then we empty ourselves out for God’s channel, become transparent to God’s will.  This becomes a metaphor for the individuation process – the capacity to consciously co-create our own unique destiny, to find a purpose beyond our individual needs in selfless acts of service (see Maslow’s Deficiency needs vs. Being needs).  This is the mastery of form that takes us to a place beyond form: the flow state – after much practice and study we enter the performance, start the game, and the music plays us, the dance dances us, the move chooses us in a free, creative act of higher self expression.  The raw unrefined ego persona is not the same thing as our individuality, whole and consciously developed.  Whether the religious languaging works for you or you prefer conscious self-actualization, the movie gives the feeling throughout that there is something larger at work, something mystical beyond, some Kosmic purpose (Dharma in Sanskrit) lying hidden for each of us just as there is for Donnie.   

Existential Crisis – Agnostic, Not Atheist

Donnie painfully feels the weight of his existential cross to bear, the apparent curse of his awareness of what is false in the world, of his knowledge of good and evil and of his ultimate aloneness in death.  And for a time, he regresses, denying the world any goodness or meaning as he argues with Gretchen in class about how “there’s no point in crying for a dead rabbit… who never feared death to begin with.”  In an important scene with his psychiatrist, Donnie comes to the realization in the midst of his darkest moment that the midpoint between a religious belief in God and nihilistic atheism is agnosticism: the willingness to persevere in the face of an inability to comprehend why there is so much that is wrong in the world, to find meaning in the midst of emptiness.  Just as there can be no proof of the existence of God, neither can we deny the possibility that God exists.  This leads to the faith and inner meaning, as we described before, that initiates a shift from an adolescent lamenting and self-pity to the heroic adult capacity to sacrifice self for other – the commitment to make things better in whatever way we can, an act of service to humanity for its own sake.  Indicative of this shift for Donnie is the scene in the movie where he says to Cherita Chen, “I promise that some day things will get better for you.”   Symbolically, he is later seen wearing her earmuffs. 

“Dea Ex Machina…Our Savior.” 

“And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”  -John 8:32

In the final scene, everything is revealed to have conspired in a deterministic chain of events that leads in the end to Donnie witnessing himself killing Frank, creating another predestination paradox.  It seems that, having taken the journey, Donnie ends up right back in the place he would have been if he hadn’t been called by Frank to take the journey!  And yet there is subtly a difference… he knows what it all means now.  He has become fully conscious of the shadow that was unconscious within him.  So, there is no paradox – he travels back in time retaining the consciousness of what was within him.  He chooses to die willingly, consciously, knowing that reverting back to his previous unconscious state will result deterministically in the events we saw unfold in the movie.  Time travel is then another metaphor for ego death.  When we can embrace our shadow we simultaneously revisit and heal the wounds of the past and avert suffering which has not yet arisen – we potentially “see into the future.  And that’s a form of time travel,” as Donnie ponders.   In bringing presence to healing the past, we die to old ego mechanisms and instead of unconsciously living out the past over and over again, we are reborn to the new possibilities of the eternal Now.  We travel back in time to travel beyond time – back to the past to transcend the past.  We can wake up to what is going on in any moment.  All this is the Dea Ex Machina – “god(dess) from the machine” – originally the device by which gods were suspended over the stage in Greek theatre.  It is also a literary device wherein a divine savior appears suddenly to rescue the protagonists or resolve a stuck situation.  The Dea Ex Machina in Donnie Darko is the consciousness of our shadow: paradoxically, the consciousness that means our death; the death which means our life – our resurrection or transformation.  It is the end of the world, the apocalypse, the revelation: that moment of truth in which we remove the false persona, destroying that which allows us to become conscious of what is within.  And symbolically, as the climax of the final scene when Donnie exclaims “Dea Ex Machina…Our Savior” to the bully who sits on top of him with a knife, he also wrestles with him and removes the face mask from his head, revealing his identity.  Ultimately for Donnie it is in catching himself in the act of killing Frank that he becomes fully conscious of what has been within himself all along.  If we are unwilling or incapable of acknowledging what it is within us that makes us suffer, then that which makes us suffer remains within.  What we fail to bring forth destroys us.  Kind of funny how we think we’ll die if we look within when that is precisely what sets us free; kind of sad that we seem unable to wake up and are left to suffer unknowingly.  This is the mystery of human development.  What gives rise to the moment in which we become aware of what here-to-fore has been on automatic pilot, cycling unconsciously, creating only a more deeply ingrained habit with each recurrence?  Why for some does suffering beget more suffering, while for others, it prompts their resurrection and rebirth?  What prompts us to wake up?  Dea Ex Machina – from lies, truth, from death, life, from sleep, consciousness, from determinism, freewill, from the conditioning of the past, the life of the eternal moment, from insentient particles to sentient life, from predictable reactions, a “cellar door” of creative emergence.      

People speak of Donnie in the DVD extras and on the internet as a messiah and in the film Gretchen remarks that Donnie Darko sounds like the name of a superhero.  And he is Christ-like – he dies to save the girlfriend he will never know and to save Frank and his mother and sister whose jet engine falls into the wormhole, which sets the events in motion in the first place.  It is the ultimate act of heroism and self-sacrifice in that no one will ever know it has occurred.  And yet, at the end of the film, there is a faint remembrance – a subconscious knowing that the sacrifice has made a difference.  Maybe we are all heroes to the extent we have the courage to awaken within.  In the agnostic’s view, we can’t know that becoming more conscious of our shadow makes a difference in the world – but we can’t know for sure that it doesn’t.  Bringing awareness, healing and compassion to life is an act of sacrifice for its own sake that allows us to change ourselves, and in forgiving ourselves, naturally we forgive others; in ceasing to hate others, naturally we experience the relief of ceasing to hate ourselves.  In the familiar Christian koan: "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will save it.”  And so he lies there, back where he started, laughing the laugh of someone who knows a secret but can’t speak it – the laughter of one who has awoken from a dream – a dream in which he’s dying.  It’s the great Zen paradox of enlightenment – riding around on an ox looking for an ox, the gateless gate.  We seek that which in seeking we lose sight of.  We seek what is doing the seeking – the divinity that is the nature of our own higher Self.  This is the ultimate “unveiling.”  It never went anywhere to begin with and is with us even as we seek – it is both immanent and transcendent at once.  We have only to Wake Up to what already is, to realize the Self we already are.  With each awakening, we laugh at the fact that’s it’s all been a dream, and laugh too at the fact that what we thought was our greatest fear becomes our greatest relief.  Dea Ex Machina… Our Savior.  We can step off the cycles of suffering in our life whenever we want; we have only wake up to that which is within us. 

Dear Roberta Sparrow,

I have reached the end of your book and... there are so many things that I need to ask you. Sometimes I'm afraid of what you might tell me. Sometimes I'm afraid that you'll tell me that this is not a work of fiction. I can only hope that the answers will come to me in my sleep. I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to.

References and Resources

 

Almaas, A.H. (1992) Work on the Superego.  Diamond Books.

 

Caldwell, C. (1996) Getting Our Bodies Back.  Shambhala.  

 

Campbell, J. (1973) The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton UP

 

Campbell, J. (2001) Thou Art That - Transforming Religious Metaphor.  New World Library.

 

Collins, J. (2001) Good to Great.  Collins.

 

Hartranft, C. (2003) The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali.   Shambhala Classics.    

 

Katie, B.  (2003) Loving What Is.  Three Rivers Press.

 

Mabry, J. (2007) The Way of Thomas.  O Books.

 

Merton, T. (2004) The Way of Chuang Tzu.  Shambhala.

 

Neihardt, J. (2004) Black Elk Speaks. Bison Books.

 

Reps, P. (1994) Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.  Shambhala.

 

Riso, D. & Hudson, R. (1999) The Wisdom of the Enneagram.  Bantam Books.

 

Internet Resources

 

Abraham Maslow.  Received from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow on March

16th, 2008

 

Barry, A. (2008) Levels of the Shadow.  Received from http://www.shadowwork.com/levels.html on March 13th, 2008.

 

Dea ex machina Received from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_dea_ex_machina_mean on March 6th, 2008

 

Deus ex machina  Received from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=deus+ex+machina on March 6th, 2008

 

Dowling, P. (2003) Hsin Hsin Ming.  Received from

http://home.att.net/~paul.dowling/archive/zen/hsin.htm on March 14th, 2008.

 

Gospel of Mark 8:34.  Received from http://www.rc.net/wcc/readings/mark8v34.htm

 

C.G. Jung Quotes. The Shadow.  Received from http://psikoloji.fisek.com.tr/jung/shadow.htm

 

Kelly, R. (2000) Donnie Darko.  Script received from

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Donnie-Darko.html on February 20th, 2008.

 

Levy, P. (2005) Christ Would Not Support Bush.  Received from

http://www.awakeninthedream.com/bushchrist.html on March 16th, 2008.

 

Nietzsche Quotes. Received from http://thenietzschechannel.fws1.com/popular.htm on March 13th, 2008.

 

Pettifor, E. (1995) Major Archetypes and the Process of Individuation.  Received from

http://pandc.ca/?cat=car_jung&page=major_archetypes_and_individuation on March 15^th, 2008.

 

Addendum A: “Mad World” by Gary Jules (originally Tears for Fears)

All around me are familiar faces

Worn out places worn out faces

Bright and early for their daily races

Going nowhere, going nowhere

Their tears are filling up their glasses

No expression, no expression

Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow

No tomorrow, no tomorrow

 

And I find it kind of funny

I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take

When people run in circles it’s a very, very

Mad World

Children waiting for the day they feel good

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

And I feel the way that every child should

Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous

No one knew me, no one knew me

Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson

Look right through me, look right through me

 

And I find it kind of funny

I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take

When people run in circles it’s a very, very

Mad World

Mad World

Enlarging your world

Mad World

 

Addendum B: Wikipedia Plot Summary

 

The story takes place in 1988 in the town of Middlesex, Virginia, during the time of the United States presidential election. Donnie Darko is an intelligent though emotionally troubled teenager who sleepwalks, and is in the medical care of a psychiatrist with whom he discusses his deepest thoughts. One night, a mysterious jet engine from a commercial aircraft falls into Donnie's bedroom; he avoids death by obeying a voice in his head causing him to sleepwalk outside from his room, corrupting space and time. The voice is that of Frank, an (arguably) imaginary friend dressed in a ghastly man-sized rabbit/skull costume. At midnight on October 2nd, Frank prophesizes to Donnie that the end of the world will occur in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds.

Frank instructs Donnie to perform further acts, provoking a certain chain of events allowing the finale to occur: he floods his high school, giving him the opportunity to court a new classmate and potential love Gretchen Ross; he pursues time travel, leading to a conversation with his science teacher, who gives him the book The Philosophy of Time Travel, by Roberta Sparrow, an aged town resident known as "Grandma Death" among the neighborhood youth.

Donnie begins seeing ripples in space-time, depicted as a water-like tentacle flowing out from people's chests, brought on by the corruption of the current timeline. The tentacles indicate where the person will travel in the near future (the next thirty seconds or so): he sees one tentacle snake into the room, followed by his younger sister skipping through the room. These singularities are described in Roberta Sparrow's book. Another tentacle leads Donnie to a pistol in his parents' closet, which he takes and keeps.

He and Gretchen go to the cinema to watch a double feature, The Evil Dead and The Last Temptation of Christ, she falls asleep, Frank appears and shows him a wormhole portal in the cinema screen, where Frank reveals himself as a teenager of the same age as Donnie, with a wound in his right eye. Frank incites Donnie to burn down the house of a motivational speaker he ridiculed at a school function, thereby exposing a secret "kiddie porn dungeon". The motivational speaker's arrest begins a chain of events that results in Donnie's mother chaperoning his younger sister and her dance group on a flight to the talent hunt program Star Search in Los Angeles, as the coach is a passionate supporter of Cunningham and wants to defend him in court. This gets Donnie's mother out of the house so Donnie and his sister, Elizabeth can do what they want.

On the night of October 29th, with Donnie's parents out of town, Donnie and Elizabeth have a party to celebrate her being accepted to Harvard. Gretchen turns up scared, because her mother has disappeared and she is worried her stepfather, who had stabbed her mother a few years back, has come back to finish the job. Donnie and Gretchen go up to his mother's room to have sex. While Donnie and Gretchen are having sex, Elizabeth's boyfriend, Frank disappears. Donnie and Gretchen and two other friends go for advice from Roberta Sparrow when they are ambushed by two school bullies, who happen to be robbing the house that night. In the struggle, Donnie is held down with a knife to his neck by one of the bullies. The bully then says: "Why the fuck are you here?" Donnie then proclaims "Deus ex Machina" (literally "god out of a machine"). The bully is confused, and says: "What the fuck did you just say?" Donnie then simply says: "Our Saviour". Gretchen; having been pushed to the ground by a burglar, is run over and killed by a car swerving to miss "Grandma Death", who is (as usual) checking the mailbox (and is holding Donnie’s letter to her). The bullies flee; (it then is past midnight, so it is October 30th). The car that killed Gretchen stops, and Donnie sees the driver. After seeing that the driver is Elizabeth's boyfriend Frank in a Halloween rabbit costume, Donnie shoots him in the eye, killing him; (earlier foreshadowed when Donnie talked to Frank in his bathroom and he raised a knife, making stabbing motions to the right eye of Frank's visage as well as during the scene in the movie theater when Frank removes his mask to reveal a gaping wound in his right eye).

Donnie carries Gretchen's body home where he places it in a car. He spots a wormhole portal opening directly over his home and he drives to a hillside overlooking Middlesex, while police vehicles come screeching to a halt in front of his home. From the hilltop he can see in the distance the portal in the shape of a tornado with an airplane flying directly over it. Donnie's mother and sister experience turbulence on their return flight home; one of the airplane's jet engines detaches and falls. The engine travels through the time portal to 28 days earlier, crashes into Donnie's bedroom, causing a time travel predestination paradox; on that occasion, Donnie chooses to stay in bed (arguably to save the girlfriend he will never meet, along with his mother and sister who would've died due to the missing engine on their plane).

The story ends on the morning after the original jet engine accident. Donnie is dead and his body is removed from the house as his family mourns. As all the people upon whom Donnie's actions had an impact (or rather, would have had an impact upon) sit stunned, Frank, with a prototype bunny Halloween mask, subconsciously touches his right eye. Gretchen is alive and rides by on her bicycle. Never having met Donnie, she talks with a neighborhood child about the sad accident. She waves to Donnie's mother; there is a sense of recognition between them.

 

Addendum C: The Philosophy of Time Travel Chapter 12

 

Chapter Twelve

Dreams

When the Manipulated awakens from their Journey into the Tangent Universe, they are often haunted by the experience in their dreams. Many of them will not remember. ....

 

Those who do remember the Journey are often over-come with profound remorse for the regretful actions buried within their Dreams, the only physical evidence buried within the Artifact itself, all that remains from the lost world.

 

Ancient myth tells us of the Mayan Warrior killed by an Arrowhead that had fallen from a cliff, where there was no Army, no enemy to be found.

 

We are told of the Medieval Knight mysteriously impaled by the sword he had not yet built.  

 

We are told that these things occur for a reason.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything

“At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path.”

-George Leonard

 

Most people would look at my routine and, puzzled, ask me, “So when do you get your days off?”  It’s Thursday and I’ve just finished meditating for about an hour and am heading down to practice the piano.  I’m working on etudes by Chopin and the Russian composer, Scriabin, a beautiful piece by Ravel called “Ondine” and the first movement of the well known A-major Mozart piano concerto.  I played for three years in college and have decided recently I’d like to keep it up better than I have been.  I sit down to practice, and within a few minutes, I can sense my entire state of being – like looking into a mirror but feeling the reflection of your self coming back instead of seeing it.  I haven’t played in weeks, but something is different.  I’ve been training regularly in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and my customary Aikido practice has been steady, although less frequent.  I notice I’m not rushing the notes, I feel as though, after several years of practice, I’ve finally understood what my teacher Paul meant when he said “It doesn’t matter how fast you play but it should feel slow,” a kind of experiential Zen koan, a puzzle you have to figure out in your body.  Actually, it doesn’t really feel like I’m using much effort at all – like I’m not doing anything.  It’s almost too easy.  I’m finally going slowly enough that I can be deeply present, focused – I’m not so consumed with playing the notes so I’m able to pour myself more intentionally into playing the music.  When a hard part comes up, instead of tensing and rushing as I normally would, I slow down and hold back the tempo in a subtle act of self-restraint so that I stay relaxed and can hit the right notes.  I try different ways of practicing – exploring what it feels like inside to go very slowly, to push the tempo; I try legato, staccato, pianissimo, forte, bursts of notes with two second gaps of rest in between and various combinations of the preceding.  And at the end of the practice, I walk out feeling more relaxed, more in the moment – like there’s nowhere else to be but here, now.  Where did this sudden peak of progress come from?  How have I reached this new level of capacity now and not before?  Something about my Jiu Jitsu training this week, my meditation, or the particular persona I chose to put on for the day as I substitute taught at San Leandro High school?  Or was it just getting some space and a fresh perspective?  I would like to think it was all of these – and more.  What changes with each thing I practice is The Way I move, The Way I practice.  The self I see in the mirror with each of these exercises is the same and is what develops the same across each different discipline.  This Way or the Path is called the Tao in Chinese, a philosophy of internal yielding, and external non-resistance and flow implying both The Way you move and the path to mastery.  And what influences The Way you practice, The Way you move, the quality of your attention?  Consciousness, stillness, awareness - my capacity to be present in my body, to breathe and stay emotionally centered so that I can move from that stillness without losing it – can move consciously, intentionally, with correct technique.  This metaphor applies to everything.  Otherwise, if I cease to be mindful, I react, I get tense, I stop my breath, I rush, I get in my head, I regress into old habits… for all intensive purposes I get better at playing the wrong notes – and this metaphor applies to everything too.  In the end, I am almost sure that it was my acquisition of a certain level of mastery in Aikido over the past four years (fourteen years in total) that would I attribute to my ability to approach the piano differently as well.  I guess I considerably wore out my ego need for speed on the mat over the years and by the time I got to the piano, I was more accustomed to taking things slowly – I enjoyed being more present and it worked better too.  Without learning the wrong notes or learning to be tense, I could do less and accomplish more.  What a relief!  That’s the mystery of the Tao – in letting go of our need to get it right away, we actually start to get it.  Go slow to go fast.         

Of course, I can’t be sure I’m sure about any of this – it’s more than often been the case that the day following a peak of progress, I find myself worse off than I was the day before – a lower plateau (or so it seems) than the one I had been stuck on for the past several months.  It is in these cases that the quest for mastery begins – in the boredom, the routine, the same thing over and over, can you find it within your self to become even more intently present?  You have to pull on an even deeper capacity to dive in and work with what is with a freshness as if it was your first day of practice.  This is what it means to sing with soul, to be totally involved in every moment with your entire being – in the moments of quiet as much as in the dynamism.  As it is said in Japanese: Tada Ima – there’s only Now.  Practice is only ever Now, awareness, choice are only ever Now.  Why not slow down and pay attention to what you’re doing and who you are being!  What are we rushing towards?      

From a Culture of Consumption to a Culture of Mastery

“I know what I want and I want it now.”  -Early 90s pop edict.

          You’ve heard of generation X and generation Y.  Welcome to generation A.D.D.: post-consumer, post-modern, instant gratification nation.  Instead of the patience, determination and practice it requires to attain something sweet, something worthwhile in the end that gives you a real sense of self-esteem, now every part of your day can be an instantly sweet experience.  You don’t have to face the “negative” experiences of criticism and “failure” by learning to play tennis the hard way – you can just play tennis on your Nintendo Wii.  But maybe you’re not into video games – you’re focused, ambitious.  George Leonard (1992), an Aikido master and author of Mastery offers his thoughts:

“Early in life, we are urged to study, hard, so that we’ll get good grades.  We are told to get good grades so that we’ll graduate from high school and get into college.  We are told to graduate …from college so that we’ll get a good job.  We are told to get a good job so that we can buy a house and a car.  Again and again we are told to do one thing only so that we can get something else.  We spend our lives stretched on an iron rack of contingencies.”  (p39)

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things – except the extent to which they prevent us from enjoying the only moment we’re ever alive – Now – or in that they compensate for something deeper, the shadows of an unconscious or “unexamined life” as Socrates put it.  It is fine to do something that you enjoy, or to pursue goals, but, is the treat or the treatment, the spice or the whole meal?  Is your sense of self exclusively identified with what you achieve, what you own, or simply having a superficial but good time?  What happens to you if these things don’t go well?  The extent to which a culture is achievement obsessed, materially identified, seeking instant gratification, is the extent to which it is a culture of addiction.  So many recent movies serve as metaphors for the dissociation of the mind, the rational ego from our bodies, from how we actually feel, and symptomatically, from what we are doing to nature.  These metaphors reveal our addiction to the things that make us numb to the reality of our pain, which in turn leads us to cover it up by consuming more of what keeps us numb, which only perpetuates our pain.  For some, seeing past the ego and waking up to reality is like tearing open a scab.  The character in The Matrix who makes a deal to be reinserted, the character who commits suicide in Shawshank Redemption because he couldn’t live outside of the prison, or the exchange of a meaningful life or authentic human interaction for perfect, sterile products in Fight Club all speak to the disembodied and silent shadow of Modernity.  The willingness to slow down, be present in our bodies to what is causing us pain, to actually look in the mirror and acknowledge what we are feeling right Now and the habits that are responsible, is the deeper purpose of practice.  Practice is body-mindfulness – not the retro-romantic abandon of cognitive awareness, but cognitive awareness in service of healing, of body-mind integration – the process of conscious, creative self-actualization: crafting every unconscious choice so that it is intentional, musical – inspired with meaning.  It is the mastery of the work of art that is your life.  This is the role of the rational ego of society, of Modernity: we’ve slayed the Minotaur, the monster of the dark ages, of our primitive ignorance and brutality, fundamentalism, superstition and disease – now we must find our way out of the labyrinth.  Anti-intellectual rhetoric is irrelevant – we are in the middle of the labyrinth and the only way out is through.  If going back to the body, to feeling, to nature, means avoiding responsibility for the status quo, throwing out the mind, rationality, and running away from society to live in nature like the lead character of Into the Wild, then you’re actually participating in the materialism you claim to oppose: same dissociation, different drug; same addiction, different numbing agent.  (Although he is certainly to be commended for engaging in some kind of search and not just playing his Nintendo, and in the end (literally) I think he found what he needed to find)  As long as we are avoiding taking responsibility, an embodiment of what we find lacking in those we complain about, it is ego avoidance by any name.  Our task is to develop and integrate the capacity for feeling and thinking, sensitivity and rationality, science and religion else, like the Yin-Yang symbol, one’s opposite lies secretly beneath, keeping us from fulfillment.  How can we truly be sensitive without being rational?  How can we call it rational (or progress) if we are not sensitive to the effects of our actions?  Ken Wilber, (2000) further explains:

“…clearly, we cannot have an integral view of the levels of consciousness if modernity and modern science denies the existence of most of them. “Integral” means, if it means anything, the integration of all that is given to humanity; and if modernity insists instead on trashing everything that came before it, then the integral enterprise is derailed from the start. At the same time, it will do no good, as Romantics wish, to attempt a return to yesteryear, an attempt to "resurrect" the past with a "resurgence of the real," for modernity brought its own important truths and profound insights, which need to be harmonized as well; and yesteryear, full truth be told, just wasn't all that swell."  (p56)

 

          For the purpose of practice, cognitive means conscious attention – intentionality.  And when you give conscious attention to something, you are mindful of The Way you are doing it – there is a technique that can be refined, a form, a Way to practice and a way not to.  As Jung states:

"The persona is a functional complex that comes into existence for reasons of
adaptation or personal convenience, but is by no means identical with the
individuality." (CW vol 6 p465 para 801)

 

"Although ego consciousness is at first identical with the persona - that
compromised role in which we parade before the community - yet the
unconscious self can never be repressed to the point of extinction. Its influence
is chiefly manifest in the special nature of the contrasting and compensating
contents of the unconscious..... and these......contain the seeds of individual
development." (CW vol 7 p 156 para 247)    

 

So, if you prefer, you don’t have to think about it, but you do have to give it your conscious attention and feel your way forward with intention – to be engaged in a “rational” process of experimentation.  You can’t solve the problem by not putting your attention on it.  In that case you become part of it.  (literally – to be unconscious of it is to be fused with it).  So let’s discover who we truly are – based on who we want to be once we’ve held ourselves up to the light and have healed the splits in our psyche.  We already exist by a process of conditioning anyways – let’s just do it consciously this time.  Untrained expression (in a martial art for instance) may be formless and free, but in an entirely different way than the artist who express himself creatively having attained a complete mastery of form.  You cannot compare the kind of self the novice is expressing (or rather spewing) with the kind of self the master expresses.  Even though both are inherently non-rational, without form, one is narcissistic while the other is self-actualized; one reacts unconsciously, the other responds creatively.  And yet both Yin and Yang, spontaneity and technique must be kept in careful balance – oftentimes the non-thinking street fighter is more in touch with the reality of physical conflict than the person who spends too much time working set forms.  But, in any case, if one is too rigid, too unrealistically technical in his motions, or wild and unrefined, the way to improve is not to remain in what you prefer unconsciously, but with conscious attention to integrate your opposite, to push towards your edge.  Pre-rational must develop to rational, ideally without losing its spontaneity; rational must regress to pre-rational yet without losing its technique.  Each contains a partial truth that must be transcended and included.  This is the purpose of practice.

Life Coach: Sustaining the Change

          The following is a form of Integral awareness practice I use in my own coaching practice.  Coaching is coming to be well accepted in that it provides a structure and support for those who would like to engage in this process of “making the unconscious conscious” – of being more intentional about The Way they would like to live their lives and what it is within that holds them back from actualizing their potential in this sense.  Above all it doesn’t provide a quick fix, pop a pill, instant result.  It is a way of supporting others to commit to their own process of action and inquiry – self-discovery through practice.  Coaches give you the time to reflect and become conscious of your unconscious habits so that you can improve your form and above all commit to actions that will allow you to apply what you have practiced in training.  Ultimately, you must constantly be engaged in manifesting the life you want to be living.  It’s not about reaching a state of being it’s about being in a state of becoming.

The Integral 4 Quadrant Model

          The Integral Four Quadrant model looks at reality from four, irreducible perspectives, all of which always and only coexist – like inside and outside, they are mutually (or in the vernacular, ‘tetra’) arising.  The top and bottom halves of the quadrants represent individual and collective and the left and right halves of the quadrant represent the internal and external.  This gives you the Upper Left (UL), the interior of the individual – “I” (thoughts, feelings, experience, what an experience feels like); the Upper Right (UR), the exterior of the individual “It” (the body, brain chemistry, behavior, what an experience looks like from the outside); the Lower Left (LL), the inter-subjective “We” or interior of the collective (relationship, culture, religion); and the Lower Right(LR), the inter-objective “Its” (Nature, the environment, socio-polito-economic systems ).   Taking them as what Ken Wilber calls “The Big Three” (the entire right half becoming “It”), we get “I” “We” and “It” – Art, Morals, and Science and the Beautiful, the Good and the True – what “I” subjectively feel is Beautiful (beauty is in the “I” of the beholder), we “We” agree is Good in social contract, and what “It” appears is True according to observable, objective science.  Each has an entirely valid, yet partial perspective on truth that for the health of the Integral whole cannot be reduced to the others.  Reduce all three domains to the UR and you have familiar scientific reductionism, “Flatland” – there is no interior subjective depth in the universe, no mind, soul or spirit, because everything can be reduced to physical particles.  Reduce all three to the UL and you have subjective idealism, “It’s all a dream, an illusion, all spirit, all in my mind – if I just believe differently, everything will change.”  Reduce things to the LL and you have Postmodern or linguistic deconstruction, “There is no absolute truth, no “meta narrative” – everything can be reduced to cultural conditioning and from there to language.  And reduce everything to the LR and everything becomes an interdependent living system: systems holism, unified fields of matter, networks of life, which, in that they are physical, still results in a “subtle reductionism” – another scientific negation of interiority and consciousness – of everything but matter. 

          For our purposes, it is a bit simpler than all of this – you might put a rotatable Yin-Yang symbol over the quadrants to make the point that is important here, which is, rotate the Yin-Yang any direction and you can see how each really is contained within the others – not only in the sense e.g. that inner feelings have corresponding brain chemicals (but cannot be reduced merely to those chemicals), but that when you put conscious attention on developing the physical, you influence the intellectual and vice versa.  Put attention on clearing up a messy room and maybe you can think more clearly, or feel more disciplined in other areas of your life.  This is the basic point – Integral psychology implies integration: the quadrants are four facets of the same self and like the four legs of a chair, when you move one of them, you move them all. 

          So what type of things might we choose to focus on in a “Practice?”  This is easy to co-create with a client one quadrant at a time.  Or, have them list the things they’d like to give conscious attention to in their lives first, and then put them in the quadrants.  This can be illuminating in that it reveals the client’s biases and in some cases, one or more of the quadrants are left our completely.  (This same approach can be used for goals, 10 year plans etc.)  UR practices might include fitness, diet, training in a sport or art, cultivating or dissuading certain behaviors, as well as the somatic portion of their Practice which deals with posture, breathing, relaxation and alignment.  UL practices include meditation, mindfulness, self-inquiry, script analysis etc.  LL practices include communication, conflict resolution, giving and receiving feedback, integrity, leadership, relationships etc. And LR practices include awareness or organization of nature or the environment, creating and managing systems, work related dynamics, and so on.       

Yin and Yang: Ever Approaching the Razors Edge between Two Extremes

          I use the Yin-Yang as a symbol for balance and integration, as well as imbalance and unhealthy cycles.  The Yin-Yang’s swirling represents how every extreme eventually becomes its opposite.  The dots explain how even when we are comfortably in our bias, we unconsciously repress the opposite extreme underneath.  Practice involves becoming conscious of and integrating into our opposite – internally and inter-subjectively – really in all four quadrants.  Otherwise we ride the Yin-Yang merry-go-round, as our persona becomes that shadow that it casts: passivity becomes aggression (or vice versa), we indulge then deny, express then repress, like a balloon filling up and popping.  Healthy integration involves swinging the pendulum consciously: walking a tight rope and catching our balance on either side, rather than falling over into extremes.  With practice, this results in the higher level Yin and Yang: we start to notice the integral relationship between gentleness and strength, thinking and feeling, doing and being. 

The Capacity Principle

          The leads me to what I call “The Capacity Principle.”  Since people feel uncomfortable and sometimes extremely self-conscious moving into new territory, embodying new behaviors through their practice, I put it in terms of capacity.  You don’t always have to act or be this way, but what changes when you have the capacity?  This makes things less personal in terms of something being wrong and reframes the question: “What capacity would you like to develop?”  Just like training in an art, it takes a while to get used to receiving feedback without taking it personally.  Almaas (1992), founder of the Diamond Approach talks about the importance of starting by teaching people to protect themselves against their superegos (a kind of self defense in itself!):

   Many therapeutic and growth disciplines can be seen as different ways of getting through the ego resistances to unconscious material….The classical approaches see ego resistances as defense against the id impulses; while in our work…we see them as defenses against the superego.  The superego…is the first coercive agency that we encounter in working on ourselves, which we find to be invested in keeping the unconscious unconscious and which accomplishes this by disapproving of the unconscious material.  So, our approach is to help the ego consciously defend itself against the attacks of the superego, and hence to eliminate this important part of the need for unconscious ego defense mechanisms.  (p6)

 

By developing an unfamiliar capacity, the client becomes more open to relinquishing their usual, unconscious ego mechanisms and in fact, they tend to find that their new capacity has an integral relationship with their originally preferred mode of being.  The awareness of the assumptions we have regarding our fears and projections around what might happen if we exercise new ways of being and acting are revealed to be just that – assumptions: what may or may not be true.

Steps and Stages of Practice

“Self awareness is the first step towards acknowledging the things we would like to change in our lives.  Once you are able to be self aware, you begin to be conscious of what it is you truly want and that you have a choice about the kind of life you want to create and the kind of person you want to be.  This empowers you to become more intentional with your actions, allowing you to orient yourself towards your perfect form – your ideal – and reorient yourself each time old habits and resistance kick in, attempting to pull you back into old, familiar ways of thinking, feeling or acting.  Yet each time we return to consciously practicing how we want to be, it becomes reinforced and more deeply integrated as a spontaneous way of being.  Self Victory (the name of my business from a quote by the founder of Aikido) is specifically this transformative capacity through practice to give up who you are for who you would become – to give up old, unconscious ways of functioning for those we choose consciously.” (Chawkin 2007)

 

          Stages of practice are stages of self-actualization or individuation as Jung called it.  They follow the format of Wilber’s basic pre-rational, rational, trans-rational hierarchy, but have varying amounts of levels.  The first progresses from Unconscious Bad, Conscious Bad, Conscious Good, to Unconscious (Integrated) Good.  Another, restates the same as it applies to “catching our self in the act” of unconscious reactions or habits: Unconscious of unconscious reaction, conscious of past reaction (in retrospect), conscious of reaction (but we do it anyways), conscious of non-reaction (this is where practice begins), conscious of practice (giving up the inclination for the old habit for a conscious choice, our ideal form), conscious of intuition (making subtle adjustments) and finally unconscious of practice (spontaneous action).        

Creating “The Practice” in 4 Easy Steps

1.      What is your practice (A declarative Statement describing the practice) “I want to practice listening more sincerely to others.”

2.      What are the signs that your old habit is present?  Where else in your life does this habit show up?  (When I notice I am…I will get centered by…)  “When I notice I am uninterested in what others are saying, interrupting them or speaking quickly, and feel tension in my solar plexus, I will stop and breathe deeply…”        

3.      What is your ideal form?  (And instead choose consciously to…) “… and listen consciously with care until I feel centered, giving a two second gap after the other person finishes speaking or asking a question.”

4.      Who will you become through this practice and what will the influence be?  “Through this practice I will develop my leadership presence, my inner calm, becoming the kind of person who not only listens, but allows people to feel heard.”

 

Integral Awareness Practice with Integral Support by Quadrant

          UR: what are the somatic signs of your unconscious reaction/old habit?  How is your posture, where is the tension in your body?  (If the client is not sure, I generally have them build a self observation practice, which can coincide with journaling or listing observations.  The important thing is not to try to change anything at first.)  What practice will you employ to get conscious and centered?  (Three deep breaths, stretching, tense and release etc.)  Where else in your life does the need for this practice show up in this quadrant?  (This is the somatic connection e.g. “I notice I don’t listen to others’ bodies in my Aikido practice and as such I have trouble taking their balance.”)  What other activities in this quadrant support your practice?  (Weight training, jogging, yoga etc.)  UL:  What mantra, affirmation, metaphor or image will you keep in your head to align yourself to your ideal form?  (This can be an insightful, simple or humorous reminder: “Mind the gap” “We have two ears and one mouth…” “Stop – collaborate and listen!” an affirmation: “I am a caring, supportive listener;” or a metaphor: From being a fire hose to an eye dropper, or in other examples, from servant to queen, athlete to artist, director to actor, guest to host, etc.  What image reminds you of this practice?  (A lanky fire hose, a crown, a paintbrush etc.)  What practices in this quadrant can support you in general?  (Meditation, journaling, reading, self-inquiry)  LL: Who do you need to practice this with most?  Who do you trust to support you in your practice?  (To remind you or point out to you when you are in your old habit.)   Who can you ask for feedback around this practice?  (Sometimes things aren’t as bad as we think).  What experiences in this quadrant can support you in general (group activities, an improv class, sangha, friends etc.)  LR: What in your environment can support your practice?  (Cell phone reminders, yellow stickies, music, posters, creating a certain space for a certain practice)  When and where this week will you need to apply your practice the most?  What experiences in the environment best support your practice (Hikes in nature, corporate training events, cleaning your room, chopping wood carrying water, walking in the dark, stalking a deer, asking someone on a date, meditation retreats, cooking rice and being mindful of every grain – who knows!) 

          The idea is to be creative and see how the quadrants match up via somatics or other mutual influences – can you sit like a queen instead of grovel like a servant?  How does a queen interact with others?  What tone of voice does she use?  How does a queen think (or not think) of herself?  What types of activities or environments would you find a queen in?  Remember, we’re just developing a capacity – we don’t want to fall into the extreme of being condescending, or bossy or be the queen all the time.  It’s a persona we can put on or take off.  How do you know the difference between being royal and being pompous?   How can you be mindful of this difference?

Various Types of Awareness Practice

          A great resource for UR somatic awareness practices is Peter Ralston’s “Zen Body Being.”  Rather than only being conscious of our physical and emotional body while we’re in reaction, Ralston’s book provides practical exercises for developing centering and mindful awareness in context of the activities of daily life.  This leads to the integrative idea of “theory in practice.”  You can build a practice out of the knowledge in any book as relevant to any quadrant.  Byron Katie’s “The Work,” Eckhart Tolle’s “Power of Now,” Kegan’s “7 Languages for Transformation,” Susan Scott’s principles of “Fierce Conversation,” Jim Collin’s qualities of “Level 5 Leadership,” or something from Integral theory.  Other variants of practice include what I call an “Integrity Practice.”  This involves pairing two practices together.  After noting what capacity you want to develop yourself e.g. “Disappointing another to be true to myself,” you also develop a practice to make sure you are extending to others what you ask for yourself.  The idea is that the shadow side of one’s incapacity to express one’s self is the incapacity to allow other people to do the same.  Thus, by giving permission to others you give permission to yourself – and as you cease to cut people off, you cease to cut yourself off.  The dark shadow is challenged, the bright shadow supported and both are released.   We treat others how we want to be treated; we set boundaries while making sure we honor the same boundaries in others.  A “Shadow Practice” involves combining practices as well e.g. simultaneously inhibiting the aggressive defense mechanisms of our persona while nurturing the sensitive ‘bright shadow’ that is released when we do in other areas of life (or vice versa: feeling the fear of our consciously passive persona and inhibiting our inhibition: releasing the bright shadow of our hidden power by empowering ourselves to be more assertive etc.)

          It is all about practice – the capacity to give up who we are for who we would become.  Instead of being entertained, or stimulated or acquiring more, we have to be able to sit still and look within and refine what we see, often without any noticeable results.  Practice must become a habit for its own sake, the spirit of the beginners mind – not only a comfort with the mundane plateau, but the courage to confront our shadow and integrate what is unconscious.  As much as we acquire new levels of competency, we also attain new levels of self-insight and depth.  In the end, we find it is what we do for its own sake that put us in a place of constant learning, challenge and refinement that brings us the most freshness, energy and bliss and synergetically make us the most useful in the world in the same stroke.  Do be do be do!  Work and play.  Integrity, mastery, is what is left in a living system after it has been submitted to constant, chaotic change.  From the ending of Mastery:

“When Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, was quite old and close to death, the story goes, he called his students around him and told them he wanted to be buried in his white belt.  What a touching story; how humble of the world’s highest-ranking judoist in his last days to ask for the emblem of the beginner!  But Kano’s request…was less humility than realism.  At the moment of death, the ultimate transformation, we are all white belts.  And if death makes beginners of us, so does life – again and again.  In the master’s secret mirror…there is an image of the newest student in class, eager for knowledge, willing to play the fool….And for all who walk the path of mastery, however far that journey has progressed, Kano’s request becomes a lingering question, an ever-new challenge: Are you willing to wear your white belt?”  (Leonard 1992, pg 175-6)

 

References and Resources

(Almaas A H 1992 Work on the Superego)Almaas, A. H. (1992). Work on the Superego. : Diamond Books.

(Chawkin N  Self-Victory Life Coaching)Chawkin, N. (2007). Self-Victory Life Coaching. Retrieved March 18, 2008, from http://self-victory.com/lc.html

(Collins J 2001 Good to Great)Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. : Collins.

(Katie B 2003 Loving What Is)Katie, B. (2003). Loving What Is. : Three Rivers Press.

(Kegan R 1998 IN Over Our Heads: the Mental Demands of Modern Life)\(Kegan R Lahey L L 2002 HOW the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work)Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2002). How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work. : Jossey-Bass.

(Leonard G 1992 MASTERY: the Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment)Leonard, G. (1992). Mastery. : Plume.

(Ralston P Ralston L 2006 Zen Body Being: An Enlightened Approach to Physical Skill, Grace, and Power)Ralston, P., & Ralston, L. (2006). Zen Body Being. : Frog Books.

(Scott S 2004 Fierce Conversations)Scott, S. (2004). Fierce Conversations. : Berkley Trade.

(Tolle E 2004)Tolle, E. (2004). The Power of Now. : New World Library.

(Whitworth L Kimsey-House H Sandahl P 1998 Co-Active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People toward Success in Life and Work)Whitworth, L., Kimsey-House, H., & Sandahl, P. (1998). Co-Active Coaching (1st ed.). : Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.

(Wilber K 2000 Integral Psychology)Wilber, K. (2000). Integral Psychology. : Shambhala Publications, Inc.

 

Why understanding paradigms is important to my studies: A little perspective...

The word ‘perspective' brings to mind several different phrases, each with a slightly different meaning. What's your perspective? Have you seen it from their perspective? What's another perspective? Maybe you need a little perspective? No matter the context, perspective seems to be something we feel at home with when we rest in own, or something we feel uncomfortable with until we awaken to a felt sense of ‘aha!' when we finally see in a new way, perhaps from a new angle or higher vantage point. The etymology of the term paradigm, paradeigma, that which is para - "beyond" or "beside" deigma, "example" or "showing," helps to explain this dual meaning of mind. On the one hand, our paradigm is the model or structure of our thinking, that which goes alongside our thinking, our assumptions, beliefs, opinions, truths - the basic framework upon which we hang our understanding of the world - what is and what is possible. While paradigms are our inevitable conceptual frameworks - how we think about, process and categorize our experience, they are also that which is literally beyond example or showing: the unconscious lens through which we look, judge, assume and project: our own mental patterning and the story that goes along with it. There is then a significant difference between mental patterning that has been examined consciously and holds up with what is, and that which creates (or limits) our reality unconsciously. This discrimination or awareness between the thinking we have consciously and can be conscious of and that which unconsciously has us is called Viveka in Sanskrit - discrimination - not between objective things horizontally but vertically between conscious and unconscious subjects - our conscious and unconscious selves. Am I reacting unconsciously, interpreting reality as I hold fast to my perspective, my paradigm, setting up self against other as I rationalize my way away, or am I conscious of all this, that I am telling a story, aware that what I project outwards as other may well be a reflection - a shadow within that I feel as a cognitive and somatic dissonance? Whether the spiritual imperative to transcend self, to Know Thyself - to make the unconscious conscious - Robert Kegan's subject-object theory, or mastery through training, getting a little perspective - self-development - always includes this one thing: the capacity to see beyond our current self from the perspective of a larger Self which transcends, yet includes and integrates our previous, partial and to varying degrees, self-centered viewpoint. The more perspectives we can take - can really see, not just think about, the more conscious we become. The more conscious we become, the more we can see through our own thinking - find the glitch in our personal matrix, the edge of our own consciousness, the wool pulled over our eyes through which we see and take as the truth that which in reality keeps us enslaved to our own thinking. And the more we can see through our own mental patterning, the more we are liberated from ourselves, the more we awaken from our own illusions, and become present to the reality of what is (here the meaning of maya or matrix as illusion in the sense of ego, self-delusion, denial or ignorance: avidya - not seeing what is).

In short, to study paradigms is to study that which is beyond study, beyond sight: the subject, the seer, our own mind: that which in becoming conscious of, we are already situated in a higher sense of self. For me, knowing thy self in two ways - as the Self, the Consciousness or awareness beyond the mind in meditation so that I can be more conscious of my own individual self, my own unconscious thinking, my own paradigm through the practice of mindfulness/self-awareness are the inner and outer phases of spiritual growth: transcending ego while simultaneously developing an increasingly inclusive and unifying sense of self - what better a thing to take up in a course of intellectual study than that which is the basis of all study, all thinking and to which all learning aims?

According to Covey, why is it important to be aware of paradigms? How are paradigms formed, how are they changed?

Covey uses two powerful examples to explain the importance of being aware of our paradigms. In the first, he likens our personal paradigm to a "mental map," one which, to be sure, is not the territory i.e. how we think we see the world does not necessarily equal what we are seeing. He then adds a twist asking us to consider what would happen if we were in Chicago but by some printing error happened to possess a map of Detroit. No amount of shifting our attitude - of being positive, or of modifying our behavior - working harder or faster will help in this situation. At best, we make a mood of being happy where we are and at worst, we move faster and with more energy in the wrong direction. In either case, as Covey says, we're still lost, and without a shift in the map of the traveler so that it corresponds more definitely with reality, no amount of thinking, feeling or acting is going to make much of a difference.

The second example he gives involves what he calls an "intellectual and emotional experience" involving perspective. A picture of a woman is presented that can be viewed in two ways, one in which the woman is young and beautiful and the other in which the woman appears old and unattractive. While we automatically assume that one is true - after all we're right here looking at it - both are equally true if you can look from both perspectives, yet simultaneously entirely different. He gives us this experience to help us understand the power of our own paradigms, how they color what we see, provide the framework for how we unconsciously classify, interpret, judge and select what we perceive. Since these paradigms are the source of our attitudes and behaviors, the importance of understanding them, of being conscious of them, is the very basis of our integrity - if our thoughts, words and actions do not line up with a perception of what is true, then we are bound to be functioning to some degree on the basis of misperception, hypocrisy, self-deception, ignorance, not seeing (āvidya) or illusion (maya). This is the fundamental mistake of the intellect (pragyāparadh) - to assume that we see things objectively the way they are without judgment, when in reality we see things the way we are, how we have been conditioned to see them specifically in accordance with our judgments. While it may seem that being present to the reality of what truly is is an unending path of development wherein we must acquire more and more perspectives in hopes of one day finally seeing things as they are, it seems equally true, as in eastern philosophy, that the conditioning of the mind must be unconditioned, undone and that the new perspective we seem to acquire is really the reemergence of a perspective we have selected out of as a result of past conditioning - a simpler way of seeing and being. As Covey explains, this conditioning, this fashioning of our personal paradigm can happen gradually over time or rapidly as the result of a traumatic, ten second experience. Either way, certain meanings are internalized that, until we become aware of them, shape the way we see the world, the assumptions we make and the reactions we have unconsciously (karma) - the projections of both good and bad that give rise to ego wanting and aversion - all based on our past experience or conditioning. The way forward then is one of self-realization in a sense, an "inside-out" approach as Covey calls it wherein we seek the cause of what is "wrong" outside ourselves as a projection of that which is within our self as our own limited paradigm, character, motivations, judgments. Be the change you wish to see in the world, embody what you want to see in others - when you can shift your perspective, seeing and being, thinking and feeling, understanding and compassion form the basis of a great integration, a great integrity. The world is not out there, awaiting our judgment; there is no "me" and "you," "us" and "them," there is only the self and our incremental awakening to the limitations of our own perception - limitations which once glimpsed, vanish like shadows from the light.

Modes of Our Own Mind:
Integral Spirituality for an Integral World










Nathanael Chawkin
Christian Mysticism
Summer Quarter 2007
John F. Kennedy University














"OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!"
-Rudyard Kipling


In the last one hundred years East and West have indeed met and we teeter precariously between utopia and oblivion awaiting presently God's great judgment. We have for the first time within our power the capacity to destroy the earth on the one hand and feed, clothe and house all its inhabitants on the other. It is truly a remarkable time to be alive. Never before in human history have we been capable of studying all the world's cultures and all the world's religions side by side. Never before have we been able to compare human bodies, human minds, human social values or human environments with such an inclusive range and depth. And what has become possible as well is a view not only of the disparities, but more, the commonalities which coalesce to form a global perspective, the first integral perspective of its kind whereby we as the people of the earth can consider our selves as such. This encompassing view has uncovered certain inherent structures of human consciousness and human development, revealing that the religious teachings of the world stand not just side by side, but arm in arm. Within the teachings and stories of each great wisdom tradition, the inner experience of its prophets, the visions of its seers lies a perrenial philosophy describing the way from darkness to light, suffering to liberation, each bearing the same archetypal imprint of the universal human quest for God realization. And within each different religion, a mystical core the same in each, whether Gnosticism in Christianity, Kabbalah in Judaism, Sufism in Islam, Vedanta in Hinduism or Zen in Buddhism. What is unique about mysticism is that starts with your own experience as the basis. Rather than have you take their word for it, mystics invite you to experience the spark of the Divine within as they have - to walk the path they have walked, inquire with the same questions they have asked and practice the same way as they have practiced, “ to Know Thy Self for thy self. This gnosis or knowing based on direct inner experience occurs as we inquire into what the Self is usually through some form of meditation, what the Self is not through ego awareness or mindfulness practices and through codes of conduct chosen to help liberate us from our own suffering. We find a fine example of this in Ashtanga Yoga, the Eight limbs of Yoga, which involve external disciplines (Yamas) involving general virtues such as non-violence, truthfulness or not stealing, inner disciplines (Niyamas) such as austerity, self-study and orientation towards God, the physical postures of Yoga (Asana), breathing awareness practices (Pranayama), how to turn the attention from outside the self to within the self (Pratyahara) and the practice of stilling the mind in meditation (Dharana, Dhyan and Samadhi). Again, the emphasis here is not to force someone into a way of life or set of beliefs or techniques from the outside and judge them when they fall short, but to offer them a pathway of inner experience and development that if followed with dedication will result in spiritual liberation and enlightenment.

What comparative religious studies have shown us then is not so much that we need to abandon our respective faiths and seek anew, but that as interfaith exploration has become possible, the spark at the heart of our own practice might be fanned into flame based on what arises in the interchange - “ namely an alignment of the values and practices of inner experience that transcend religion yet to which all religions point. As the world is developing, becoming global, people and traditions merging ideally into a greater, more integral whole, our own internal development might support such growth by allowing our own individual practice to become more global, to merge with other people and other traditions so that we might become more integrally whole ourselves. If we are to live in harmony with God, if nations are to live in harmony with nations then individuals must live in harmony with each other, learning not only by accepting each other for their differences and not only by what they hold in common, but in what they share and teach each other each in an intergration that makes each other more whole. An integral world therefore requires integral development: an integral view of the various aspects of the self that inner spiritual practice can address based on comparative study, and a developmental aim that offers support for the growth of consciousness from self-centered to culture centered to world-centered. What are these inner elements of the self? In Mark 12:30-31 Jesus says: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these." These two statements describe both the various horizontal dimensions of human consciousness and the pathway of vertical development of the self as it becomes decreasingly self-centered and increasingly inclusive. What was fascinating for me to learn was that the four qualities Jesus talks about in the first commandment are the same that Jung assigns to human perception: feeling, intuiting, thinking and sensing. And to tie things to the East, these four qualities are also the four general paths to God realization in the Yogic tradition: Bhakti Yoga or the path of devotion, Raja Yoga or the path of transcendence, Gyana Yoga or the path of knowledge and self inquiry and Karma Yoga, the path of action – heart, soul, mind, and strength. Here you have the open hearted spiritual devotee who sings songs to God or guru, the monk who spends long hours in meditation having left behind all attachments, the scholarly intellectual whose pursuit of truth leads to a nobler life, and the activist who serves a righteous cause ever engaged in action.

While in the past it has been sufficient to follow but one of these paths, to identify with one's inherent strength, one's personality type or cultural bias based on one has been taught by tradition, the reality, according to Jung is that each path without has been identified within as a mode of our own mind, and it is through the integration of these four functions within that a person develops into a fully differentiated, balanced, and integrated personality (although, as Jung observed, this goal is rarely if ever achieved except by someone like Jesus or Buddha). Framed even more basically, while in the past it has been sufficient only to know thy self in the narrow sense that East is East and West is West and that's just the way things are, the way I am, a global world demands that we accept people who walk paths other than our own, so that we might discover how such paths are actually a part of our own. Truly, when a view of the globe can be taken as a whole, where does East end and West begin? Only where we mark a boundary line. When does hot become cold, slow become fast? It is relative only to the bias of our own individual self, our own pace or temperature. Similarly when we find our self dividing things into opposites, even if only sutbly on the basis of the slightest threat or irritation – for and against, right and wrong, good or bad, do we know that there is a fearful ego self at work setting apart self (I, me, mine!) from other - what I am versus what I am not - unconscious of the irony that the line it marks to protect itself only separates itself from the reality of a greater unity. When something has been made other, we strip it of its humanity and what is more, since what we make other we also repress into our own unconscious, we ultimately deny ourselves access to a part of our own humanity, our own healing or wholenss. Just like a Yin Yang symbol - when we divide things into black and white, each extreme contains a dot of its opposite hidden within. As such we must treat every meeting in which we feel difference or make judgments as an opportunity to meet a hidden part of ourself - to look in the mirror at our own shadow. Therefore to injure another is to injure our self – the notion of other cannot be stripped away; it can either be repressed or integrated into a larger sense of self. If repressed, the result is hypocrisy, wherein we blame an other for what we do unconsciously ourseves. In drawing the line between self and other we tell a lie in which the other is judged as entirely evil and the self as entirely good. So it was when Jesus drew a line in the sand and declared: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," "Judge others lest ye be judged" not so much an admonition as a statement of fact - that we also judge our neighbor as our self. With every finger we point, there are three fingers pointing back within. When I look to the West and its leaders with scorn, I see the part of my own ego that is angry and aggressive, that becomes attached to the pursuit of worldly means without conscience to create a separate, superior sense of self; when I look judgingly to the East at its failure to develop, its penchance for non-change, I see the part of my own ego that avoids engaging with the world, that prefers to deny, to remove itself by setting boundaries to create a separate, superior sense of self. And where I scorn the devotee for lacking intelligence I remember the part of my own heart that needs to open and how stupid I have been to forget this; where I laugh at the monk who has run away from the world, I remember a part of myself that is afraid to stop or settle down, to let go, to trust, to really truly be alone; the next time I berade someone for being too in their head, I will ask myself the last time I truly inquired deeply into what is, the last time I thought for myself in pursuit of the truth; and when I disregard the social worker who works so hard for so little money, I will take a moment to stop and wonder if all this doing for myself is really making me happy. To be true to thine own self is to tell the truth about self and other. Here it is that in truth is the unifying power of love: in choosing to look within, to own our own projections, to see the other as a part of myself, we love our neighbor as our self: if we can bring love to what we cannot accept in another, we will be enlightened with the insight of where we might bring love to what we have been unable to accept within ourself; and in welcoming difference, challenge, hard times or enemies as a mirror to check our own integrity, we die simultaneously to our own sin and the sin of others, self and other at-oned for as one.

Oh Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love,
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born
To eternal life.
- St. Francis of Assisi

While many resent the notion of development itself, lamenting the loss of a simpler time before we were aware of the globe as a whole, a time of innocence and purity, of culture undisturbed by colonialism, the time has long since passed where we can crawl back into our prior undifferentiated state of oneness. (That moment was precisely the moment we were born "dispelled" by the feminine from the garden) Like it or not, development is upon the world - development is the manifest world - and with the awareness that this is so, we have the choice either to remain attached to how we were and deny the reality or to stand up and take responsibility for ourselves and others in search of a greater level of maturity, one in which we see that it is no longer viable to renounce the world nor to appropriate it for our own means as one extreme will surely destroy the earth while the other stands idly by while others do the damage. As in Buddhism, to transcend both wanting and aversion is not just to adopt the Eastern way of renunciation or the Western way of worldly life but to integrate them within so that we can be "in the world but not of the world." The more we are able to give up the selfish belief that we are the exclusive possessors of the truth, the more we will be able simultaneously to hold fast to the universal realities that remain in common when we stand aligned - to what the quest for global unity requires on a functional level by any name: an increasing awareness and compassion for self, culture and nature all together or to the loss of all. In the moment we understand that everyone seeks the same happiness with the same heart, the same peace with the same soul, the same meaning with the same mind, the same success with the same strength, all for the ideal of the same kind of self, the same kind of family, the same kind of world, so many other things at that point seem superficial and irrelevant. In finding place and preference, self and other within, all as modes of our own minds: as heart, soul, mind and strength, we can take up a well balanced approach to spiritual practice that allows us to become integrated and whole. In using what is outside to remind us of what is within, we begin to transcend self-centeredness and the illusion of separateness. Think of all the various types of people that someone like Jesus or Buddha could sit with and feel at home, and how they could always find a kernel of truth, goodness and beauty in what a person valued or sought. How integrated are you? How many different people can you sit down to dinner with, enter into conversation with unselfconsciously? Who can you be with without feeling uncomfortable? How many races, how many religions? From how many walks of life? How do you feel amongst the wealthy? The poor? How about the highly educated vs. people who are basic and work with their bodies? Can you find a part of you in the liberal, in the conservative? The introvert? The extrovert? Can you be sensitive, caring, comfortable with self expression yet not fail to see value in the strength of the warrior, in being capable of boxing and wrestling with the fighters? To quote Kipling one more time: "If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch."  In your ability to connect with people wherever they are is to find a great balance and integrity within yourself; it is your ability to guide with love. What is important then is not just the color of a person's skin, nor the claims they make in their minds, but more, that they practice what they preach in principle towards the realization that the spirit in everyone is radiant, worthy of honor in and of itself unconditionally. For truly there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!




Addendum
Revenge (The Fighting Spirit)
There is no such thing as revenge
You will not give as good as you got
There is no such thing as an eye for an eye
If you think you're the giver, you're not

There is no such thing as regret
There is no point in placing the blame
Hate destroys the one who hates
And everyone suffers the same

What you see
Is not necessarily what you get
Eyes are the window to the soul
Take your judgments
And let them go

There is only love and respect
To thine own self be true
When you point the finger,
There are three fingers pointing back at you

What you see
Is not necessarily what you get
Eyes are the window to the soul
Take your judgments
And let them go

Recognize that God is alive in everyone
Recognize that love lives in us all <BR>
-Madonna

 

 

Grappling With the Eco-Crisis:

Can Martial Arts Bring us Closer to Nature?  

 

John F. Kennedy University

 

 

 

 

Nathanael Chawkin

Planetary Psychology

Summer 2006

Self-defense: Defense of the Self in All

            As I head out the door I grab the large, grey bag resting in the corner that looks like it might have fishing poles in it.  In reality it contains my bokken and my jo - the wooden sword and wooden staff we use in traditional Aikido training.  In good spirits, I hop in my friend's car and we begin the ascent of Mt. Tamalpais, unsure of our destination, free to explore the forest, catch some sun at the beach or take in the breathtaking view from the summit.  For us, the trip across the Richmond Bridge and into Marin County marks a turning point and for several weekends in a row, we take in our weekly dose of what we call "soul food" as we go in search of new places to train.  If I look back on these and other such ventures, it seems that my martial arts training has been almost the sole motivator for me to get out into nature.  Far more than just an excuse to train, or be away from the public eye, there was something that was nourishing on a much deeper level, a presence and a stillness that imbibed our training spirit.  Whether shirts-off on the beach, holding our weapons like samurai facing off in absolute silence, the wind in our hair, the sand squeezing between our toes, or atop the mountain overlooking Bolinas valley, the clack of the weapons echoing far off into the distance, something felt right about being out of the dojo.  Outside, we were students in nature's dojo, its rich diversity, rugged earthiness and elemental metaphors of power and grace our welcome teachers.  After a sunny afternoon of training, of swinging sticks and grappling on the beach, we stop off at the Good Earth natural foods market for a snack and a cup of chai.  I peruse the wall of posters outside the store, my eyes naturally pausing on a local Aikido advertisement.  On it is a quote from the founder, O'Sensei, or "great teacher" as he is respectfully called:   

            "Those who practice the Art of Peace (Aikido) must protect the domain of Mother    Nature, the divine reflection of creation, and keep it lovely and fresh. Warriorship         gives    birth to natural beauty. The subtle techniques of a warrior arise as naturally as the           appearance of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Warriorship is none other than        the vitality that sustains all life." (Stevens 12).

            Ecopsychology discusses the distinction between a psychology that is human centered as opposed to one that is life centered.  When I think about the martial arts, I think of a similarly limiting definition of self-defense.  A naturalistic psychology looks to fuse the split between that which is human and that which is nature, between inner and outer, so that the natural world is again infused with psyche and given life (Fisher 8).  With a similar view, self-defense becomes not only the narrowly defined defense of one's own life, but of the life in everything - the defense of self in one's enemy, the defense of self in all life.  With the knowledge of how to harm comes the responsibility to protect.  The Japanese character "Bu," which we use in the term Budo or martial way, is comprised of two smaller characters, one meaning to stop and the other depicting a spear: to stop the spear implying the actual resolution of conflict, of securing peace rather than the waging of war.  The original role of the warrior was to uphold righteousness - the loving protection of all things.  The term samurai means one who serves "Ai" - harmony or love.  In reflecting on my experience as a martial artist for over twelve years, I think of how it has been a path of integration for me, of embodiment and grounding.  It has taught me to respect all things, that an enemy outside myself is merely a reflection of my own pain, my own weakness, that violent behavior directed outwards is also directed within.  I recall a similarity to Ecopsychology in my first few attempts to explain just what our class was about:  "Well, it's about becoming aware of the inner psychology behind the damage we're causing to the natural world," I might explain.  Both look towards an inclusion of self and other, and that healing or resolution on one level has intimate ties with every other level.  Based on this similarity, I have come up with several specific points that I would like to make in this paper: how martial arts have always had a very close connection to nature, how training, just as it is, brings us closer to nature, and how today's dojo communities might more consciously address the eco-crisis.

Tiger Style

            "Those who are enlightened never stop forging themselves. The realizations of such             masters            cannot be expressed well in words or by theories. The most perfect actions   echo the patterns found in nature."  O'Sensei (Stevens)

            From the very beginning, warriors have had a close connection with nature.  During times of peace, Samurai worked the land as farmers, preferring the hard work so they would stay strong, grounded in their bodies and in touch with the earth (www.artelino.com).  In this way the responsibility of the warrior, to sustain all life, was enacted physically as they provided basic needs, safety, food and shelter.  It was this ethic of hard work, service and self-sacrifice more than one's ability to most effectively maim an opponent that most defined a warrior.  In addition, the evolution of the martial arts starting in Southeast Asia paralleled that of Buddhism, the one often a carrier for the other.  Bodhidharma, the famous monk of Kung-Fu legend, brought not only the practice of Dhyan or meditation (and thus Cha'n in Chinese, Zen in Japanese) from his homeland of India, but the movements of its martial art, Kalari Payatt (www.tibetankungfu.com).  To provide physical exercise for the monks who otherwise spent long hours in meditation, he taught them the Kalari movements that would become Shaolin Temple Kung-Fu.  The monks trained often outside and as such, animals became the inspiration for the styles found in Kung-Fu, each one inspiring a different quality of movement and teaching a different lesson from nature.  As Buddhism spread throughout China and Korea to Japan, it melded with the local culture, each offering a unique take on spiritual practice, on martial arts and on their embedded relationship in training.  Rather than just being about fighting, the movements of martial arts aimed to integrate body and mind with spirit, a use of the physical to transcend the physical.  Balance, flow, and self-reflection all became a gateway for harmony: harmony between self and its source, between self and other and between self and nature.

            There is something about the physical, about being grounded in one's body and one's appreciation of the earth.  If the Cartesian body-mind split results in the disembodiment and numbness that enables us to destroy life without regard, then perhaps becoming more bodily aware through training can help us naturally to mend.  "The move away from dualism is the move towards embodying experience." (Fisher 35).  Martial arts training is specifically this path of becoming integrated in one's body and aware of one's surroundings.  The benefits transcend the physical as well.  In the grappling arts especially, there is a certain sensibility that the training experience provides, a physicality that unconsciously fulfills our strong need for human contact and attention (Goodman).  (The primacy of this need is so strong that babies who are not touched for long periods of time will actually die).  This connection is enhanced by a strong sense of community and brother/sister-hood that develops through enduring hard training together, working for the dojo, serving the Sensei, all in a spirit of mutual support, challenge and cooperation.  As people are becoming increasingly isolated from each other with television and the internet (though they claim to connect us), the dojo community can become a unifying educational center, providing a context for human interaction - for martial arts training, cultural activities, eastern spiritual practice, kids programs and other types of learning and development.  In bringing people together for a constructive purpose and in developing our bodies and minds through service and training, we ideally become more embodied, more present and more connected in everything we do.

            The Recollective Task of Ecopsychology means to bring people back into actually participating in wild nature so that they have a felt-sense of what is being lost and a felt-sense simultaneously of what has been lost within (Fisher 14).  This experience of the outdoors literally grounds us in the same way that human contact does - after all it is meaningful contact with life, aliveness itself that may be what we are missing.  Martial arts schools also often provide opportunities for retreats, for camping and training in nature, or for trips overseas to train in the mountains, in temples or the dojos built originally by a particular founder.  It is on these ventures abroad that individuals are put into direct contact with nature and inspired, like myself, to remember the value of exploring in the woods, hiking in the mountains and the random unexpected encounters with wildlife that occur en route.  Long before the walls of a dojo or training hall were ever built, nature provided its own earth as the training ground.  Like the monks of the Shaolin Temple, many masters to this day train outside whenever possible.  In Iwama, Japan, the birthplace of Aikido, we would jog up the road, across the rice patties and into the bamboo forest for morning weapons training.  Following training and a period of rest, there might be more cleaning, food prep, or garden and yard work.  In our free time, we might hike up Otago-san and perform misogi (ritual purification) under the waterfall where O'Sensei himself used to journey.  Looking at the panorama from the top, it occurred to me just how seeped in nature O'Sensei had preferred to be, and how it must have been even less settled fifty years before.  As I ring the bell at the Shinto shrine before commencing my misogi practice, I recall O'Sensei's deep religious nature, his desire for world peace, his deep reverence for heaven and earth.  His gift to the martial world was his radical notion of non-resistance, the protection of one's enemy - that true victory was victory over one's self.  As I step under the waterfall, hands raised over my head ritualistically, the cool clean refreshing water crashes down over the back of my neck, the roar of the water all that is audible.     

Martial Arts Today: A Brief Critique

            As east meets west, we are beginning to realize that these two cultural extremes represent not only place, but are actually subtle aspects of our own mind.  Each approach contains a core of partial truth and a shadow side, an opportunity for growth yet a risk to be misled.  In the east, you learn by observing silently without questioning, the etiquette is very strict, and there is a sense obligation and reverence to one's teacher and one's dojo.  Technique is sometimes archaic, the refinement of form more important than functionality.  In the west, we strive for progress, we always question and we are used to equality.  Here you have coaches who enhance your performance, not a Sensei who you serve obediently and model yourself after.  As consumers, we expect to be served, to be instructed in a clear, step-by-step manner, we expect technique to be functional and we expect to have fun.  Whether eastern respect and tradition or western functionality and fun, each martial arts approach and each martial art shares the same problem: the martial artist.  While the martial arts are deeply rooted in the spiritual traditions of Asia, it would be romantic to assume that all I implied in the foregoing pages about the purpose of training and of dojo communities is held true to at all times - or at all in some cases.  While self-victory and the spirit of loving protection may be in the minds of a few mature dojos, many people in the martial arts world remain overshadowed instead by a very base, tough-guy attitude that gains pleasure in violence and domination.  No matter the style of the place, the same kind of ego takes different forms.  In traditional schools problems may arise in terms of ranking politics or which style is more authentic.  In schools with less sportive methods, the Sensei takes on a fear inspiring air of invulnerability and infallibility.  This leads to highly authoritarian control and hierarchical, dogmatic thinking that oftentimes lays the grounds for abuse, both physical and psychological, not only from the Sensei, but from any who is senior to you.  Though hierarchy can help you learn to set your ego aside, there becomes a point at which such a one-way feedback system is abused.  (The expression, "The crap flows downstream," is apropos unfortunately and I've heard it said many times).  Does pedestalizing an angry, over-demanding Sensei really serve anything besides one person's ego? 

            In less traditional, more sportive schools, it is often war, an aggressive ego looking at others as enemies to dominate by any means in competition.  Here too, ranking and style politics arise, but this time in context of tournaments, which can often involve people manipulating rules or fight cards in their favor.  Bullying and hazing are also common in such academies, the goal being to see who can tough it out, and take everyone else out in the process.  This kind of violent, egocentric behavior does nothing to serve the original purpose of the martial arts, instead acting out the very aggression the notion of Bu means to prevent.  A martial artist learns far more about someone in five minutes of training with them than five minutes of conversation.  A person who is masochistic, who seeks to harm, feels rough and out of control in their movements.  This mentality is spoken out loud, the body's roughly applied technique a compensation for an underlying low self-esteem.  If the only purpose of training is to become an ultimate fighter, in spending all that time on technique and conditioning without regard for a deeper purpose, what else stands to benefit besides one person's ego? 

            The main issues here are first, that as with nature, there has been a drastic materialization of that which originally had life, and second, that once this has occurred, we become addicted to ways to cover up our disconnectedness, to compensate for our fear and insecurity, to avoid our shame.  In some modern schools, the martial path has been filtered, the tradition sucked from it so that all that remains is a sterile, marketable version of its former self.  Now, if you sign up for a two year contract, you can get you black-belt in even less time!  Like all capitalist enterprises, the martial arts industry plays upon our insecurities, filling us with quick, superficial ego-boosters (can YOU break four boards yet?) so we keep coming around to pay more.  This elevation of the physical, by which a deeper spirit is removed, is discussed in the martial arts world in terms of the difference between what is merely Jutsu, meaning technique, and Do, pronounced Dao in Chinese (often spelled Tao), implying a mystical way of life or spiritual path.  So, linguistically, the difference between Aiki-jutsu and Aiki-do, for instance, is significant.  While one can never tell the full extent to which a school actually holds true to its name (I've seen very modern, mixed martial arts gyms that are more harmonious than some Aikido dojos), it is important to be able to identify the difference in feel, irrespective of the label.  Interestingly, jutsu means technique and implies the same kind of disconnection we experience when we over-identify with technology.  Detached from serving a more holistic purpose, technology or technique becomes a means to instant ego-gratification, rather than a tool that assists us along a spiritual way.  Instead of technique or technology being used as a means to dominate that which is "outside" us, it becomes a means by which we interface with it in an artful way - maintaining the original meaning of techne as art. 

Looking to the Future

            The second character in Budo is the first character in the Japanese name for the training hall: dojo or place of the way.  If martial arts training is going to bring us to a deeper awareness and respect for life, then dojo communities would do well to root themselves in the original way of the warrior.  To do so implies first a return to the land.  Unfortunately, the more sportive or modern martial arts become, the more they seem to stick to the ring.  Inside, there is no other life but one's opponent, creating a false sense of opposition.  Outside, one feels aliveness in the air and in the earth, in the sensual diversity all around, and one's own practice becomes centered in an awareness of a larger sense of life.  Sending students into the garden for hard work broadens one's awareness beyond the scope of one's physical ability and into an increasing capacity for organizing power, for now moment action, for service and responsibility.  Many dojos have space to develop organic gardens, and can become more active by using their community space to invite speakers of all kinds.  Camps also provide a great opportunity to open one's minds to other arts, to train outside, and to absorb lessons from nature.  Regularly scheduling outside training days, encouraging in-residence retreats, community service, and opportunities to work with children, the warrior spirit can be cultivated and put towards the protection of home.  

            Second, a martial artist must return to an awareness of his martial practice as originally embedded in spiritual practice.  Meditation, calming the mind, expanding consciousness and dissolving the ego were originally of greater importance than technique, the physical used as a means to integrate that inner calm into motion: technique was meditation in motion as in Tai Chi.  The physical exercises of Hatha Yoga were developed from Kalari Payatt, also as a means to physically integrate the experience of seated meditation - the original meaning of Yoga (Richards).  In turning one's awareness within a process of settling occurs by which the very roots of materialism and disembodiment - grasping for ever more to avoid the emptiness and turmoil within - begin to be released.  Dojo communities can hold time slots for meditation, for lecture-discussion nights on spiritual practice, tying together one's experience in training with everyday life.  Other body-mind practice that cultivate presence, promote inner balance, health, and rejuvenation such as Hatha Yoga and body work can be incorporated as well.  Martial arts originally had a close relationship with the healing arts, the very way you might cause damage to someone with certain joint manipulation and pressure points often the very movements and trigger points used in body work and massage to restore balance.  Japanese Judo players or Karate practitioners often learn restorative Shiatsu massage to help keep their bodies healthy.  In becoming multifaceted, today's dojos can become venue for the rich exchange of various spiritual disciplines.               

Conclusion     

            The word harmonia means literally to join together, related to harmos meaning joint or shoulder (www.etymonline.com).  The top part of the character "Ai," harmony or love, incidentally is a pictograph of just such a joint.  All this time learning to protect myself physically, though I have never been in a fight has made me wonder why.  A realization came to me one day that conflict resolution, restoring harmony between people or within one's own self is precisely what it means to heal - to make whole, sound or well.  In the martial arts, as with nature, it is in the dynamic relationship between, the feeling between bodies on the training mat, between inner and outer life - a joining together to make whole on all levels.  All this time seeking confidence, strength, approval, to be initiated as a man a cover for my deeper desire to become whole.  At what point do you become secure enough in your strength that you can begin to honor the sensitive side of your nature?  If mother earth is to be healed, then we must begin to allow the sacred feminine to find expression.  The stronger we become in our technique the more we find that what enables our strength is sensitivity, a refined attunement based on flexibility rather than force.  The more we train to be strong, the more we look within at our desire to be tough, the more we will find that right at the heart of this desire is a nature that is infinitely delicate, a spirit of loving protection - the vitality that sustains all life.  Training in the way is this very enlightenment. 

 

 

 

References

Bu, Mu.  Received from http://www.budodojo.com/BU.htm on September 5^th, 2006.

Goodman, R. (1999) Rickson Gracie: Choke.  Manga Video.

Japanese Samurai. Received from  http://www.artelino.com/articles/samurai.asp on September        3^rd,       2006.

Richards, S. (2002) Kalari Payatt Martial Art of India.  Received from:              http://www.tibetankungfu.com/indian_kalari.htm on September 5^th, 2006.

Stevens, J. (1987) Abundant Peace The Biography of Morihei Ueshiba Founder of Aikido.  Shambhala Press.

Stevens, J. (1992) The Art of Peace.  Shambhala Press.  Online book received from

            http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/users/paloma/Aikido/artpeace.html on September 1^st, 2006.

World Grappling Styles.  Received from:        http://www.kobukaijujitsu.com/grapplingstyles.html on September 3^rd, 2006.

Running Head: RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mental Demands of Conflict Resolution and Robert Kegan's Orders of Consciousness

 

John F. Kennedy University

 

 

 

 

Nathanael Chawkin

Human Development

Fall Quarter 2006

 

 

 

What's the Difference?  A Question of Consciousness

            John checks his ticket, turns the corner into the stadium and looks up the long flight of stairs that leads up into the bleachers.  "Great, all the way up in the boonies!" he remarks and begins the climb.  On his way up he smiles as he spots an attractive looking girl and seeing that there is plenty of space, sits down nearby.  A few minutes into chatting with her, her cell phone rings.  "Oh that's probably the guy I came with," she says casually.  "Not my boyfriend or anything...."  But before John has any time to ask why this guy would be sitting somewhere else, he spots a broad-chested guy about his age - early mid twenties - heading up the stairs towards them.  In the time it takes the fellow to reach them, John has little time to process the situation except to wonder, "What is going on?"  As he arrives, he looks at the two of them and then locks his gaze on John.  "What do you think you're doing man?" he says angrily, his muscular arms folded across his chest.  "You better find somewhere else to sit!" 

Let's pause for just a moment.  Envision yourself in this scenario if you can.  Remember how you have felt in a similar situation in the past when you have been confronted or attacked by someone intimidating.  Does your heart race, do you feel nervous or begin to panic?  Or do you become angry and lose control?  With this in mind - what would you do in this situation?   How would you respond?  Let's consider a few different possibilities: John lowers his gaze.  "Hey sorry man.  My mistake!"  he responds, throwing up his hands.  "Didn't realize she was taken.  I don't have any problem moving.  Plenty of seats."  Or how about another version of the story:  John stands up out of his seat and meets his gaze.  "Man, I don't even know you!  How you gonna try to tell me what to do?  You're not even sitting with her and she's not even your girlfriend!" he counters indignantly.  What happens next may vary as well.  Does the bully back down?  Or does this start a process of escalation that peaks in a physical conflict that has them swinging punches and tumbling in a ball down the stadium stairs?  Let's consider one last, slightly different option: John looks up from his seat and meets his gaze.  "You know, I'm sorry you're upset, but I don't think this has anything to do with me.  I think this is between you and her.  He pauses for a second as if to gather himself and then continues, "And I don't really appreciate you coming up here giving me a bad attitude - I don't even know you."  To which the other answers sarcastically, "Oh sorry, sir," but nevertheless seems to have calmed down.  John get's up.  "I'm gonna go grab a drink and let the two of you sort it out in the meantime."

            So what is the difference?  Looking from the outside in at the first two examples, we can summarize fairly simply.  In terms of conflict, it is the classic case of the fight or flight response.  The first example is a passive reaction to conflict, the second an aggressive reaction.  So what is it that makes the third example different?  In the last scenario, it seems as though John is more balanced - he stands his ground, yet still manages to be understanding and give space.  In the conflict resolution literature, this is referred to as responding versus reacting, and in martial arts as fight or flight versus flow (Dobson 1993).  But is this higher capacity of responding really so simple to call upon, especially given the realities of confrontation?  Can we simply choose not to take something personally or not to be scared of someone?  I think fear is perhaps always a reality, but when we are functioning from the level of fight or flight, where one is driven largely by fear and concerned with surviving, it will be very challenging to balance one's inner psycho-physiological state, let alone consider consciously how to respond to another person.  Such a response is not only highly unlikely, it is also highly unreasonable to expect given the circumstances.  If one is unsure of one's own safety and security, you can hardly expect them to take responsibility for the safety or security of others.  While the first two examples of conflict in our story dealt with a fear-based response to conflict, ones which, fight or flight, permit or act out violence, the third exemplified non-violence.  This is a noble ideal, but one of which fewer people may actually be capable.  In order to protect or serve the best interests of someone else, you must first be able to protect and have a mature sense of what your own best interests are.     

               This all begs a deeper questions - not only how to transcend fear so that it is something we have, not that has us, but the way of knowing - the level of maturity that makes such a feat possible in the first place.  For this I will be drawing largely upon Robert Kegan's subject-object or constructive-developmental "orders of consciousness" model.  I would like to explore these orders and how they give rise to various capacities for conflict resolution.  It will be largely to question whether the capacity for the actual resolution of conflict is something that is within our capacity, or whether it in fact requires a higher order of consciousness, a fundamentally different way of knowing the self and its relationship to other.  I will keep an integral framework in mind, the domains of 'I,' 'We' and 'It,' or in the literature, Anger Management, Conflict Resolution and Self Defense to briefly examine just what demands each is making and how to modify such demands so that they are in fact accessible to their audiences.

Robert Kegan's Orders of Consciousness

            In his book, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, Dr. Kegan has dedicated considerable depth of vision and impressive intellectual effort to explaining what he calls "orders of consciousness."  While I can hardly hope to do justice to his work here, I would like to summarize his basic premise and use it throughout this paper: there is a "curriculum" in modern life that remains constant through each of its areas or "disciplines."  When viewed side by side, each of these different disciplines can be examined for the demands they hold in common.  What remains consistent is the way one knows the world, one's level of psychological maturity.  Yet as one grows through life, its curriculum continues to make greater and greater demands on us, ones which require greater mental complexity and emotional capacity - not just more intelligence or experience, but a qualitatively higher order of consciousness or way of knowing.  What he establishes in the process is that many people, in fact more than half of adults, may be "in over their heads" when it comes to the demands of modern life, whether it be in parenting, intimate relationships, work, education, or higher learning and psychotherapy.  That is to say, half of adults may still be striving to actually be adults - independent, self-authoring individuals.  To ask not just what we know as we grow, but how we know epistemologically is to ask what we identify with as defining of our self, what we depend on as reality as well as what we are able to stand apart from in independence and maturity.  He calls this subject-object psychology in that psychological maturation involves turning subject into object, ceasing to identify with how we were in favor of a transcendent yet more inclusive sense of self.

            While this sounds fairly abstract, when examined in light of our real-life experience of maturing as individuals, from being an adolescent to an adult for instance, it becomes instantly recognizable and intuitively accurate.  We can all identify moments in which we have to stand up to an authority figure to whom we previously relied on for approval and find approval instead within ourselves.  This feeling of co-dependency, the insecurity that goes along with immaturity is quite distinct.  I think Joseph Campbell captures this feeling very well in words when he describes it as the state of "seeking approval while simultaneously fearing disapproval" (Campbell 1994).  This quest for individuation, for self-approval and self-authorship involves disidentifying from a self that is psychologically dependent upon the approval of others, to a higher order of development where such approval or disapproval is instead treated as feedback to a self which is independent and whole, which has its own equally valid perspective.  It is not just making a rebellious mood of not needing approval, but the actual capacity or larger sense of self that in the face of great disapproval can maintain a larger perspective and not take things so personally.  Negative input is merely an object to a self that is larger than and serves a purpose larger than just what others think of it.  One can still interact with the context to which one was previously bound and see what is of value there, but one is no longer dependent on that old context for one's entire sense of value.  Growing up as a young adult and distinguishing oneself from one's family's values is precisely this process.  Another example might be a teenager who invests his or her sense of self on how others think they look.  When they receive negative feedback it feels as if they as a person, their whole self, are being rejected: "I almost died when she said that!" describes the feeling of one's self being rejected and it is perhaps this same feeling of death that we confront when we are asked to transform who we are. 

This is all not to say however that an earlier, more dependent order of consciousness is somehow deficient or damaged.  This is what is important about a constructive-developmental approach.  Each order of consciousness is a significant achievement, a triumph beyond that which preceded it.  Just several years before, a child was incapable of even considering the perspectives or opinions of others altogether, so that one may become self-conscious when one becomes capable of considering them is only natural.  When we can see both the emergent capacities and limitations inherent in each order of development, we can be compassionate when we consider how to "coach the curriculum" we find someone attempting to master as Kegan puts it, and, more importantly, make sure that what we are demanding of people is not beyond their current capacity.  The bridge must be anchored well at both sides, i.e. we must make sure we meet the learner at their level, a theme as we will see which is pivotal in conflict resolution as well.  Failing to do so is as inconsiderate and ineffective as a college professor who "wonders how his students fail to learn what he teaches so well" (Kegan 1997).

Orders of Consciousness and Conflict Resolution Capacity

            I would like to briefly go over the capacities that relate to conflict resolution at each of Kegan's orders of consciousness.  To the extent he has accomplished this already in his book, I would like to highlight those points as well.  This will allow us to begin to examine the mental demands of the current conflict resolution literature as well as to further explain what each order actually looks like in a more step-by-step fashion. 

2^nd Order - The Typhon: Emerging From the Reptile Mind

            For the purpose of explaining what developmental levels of conflict resolution capacity might look like, I will borrow from Ken Wilber's terminology.  The Typhon is a mythical creature that is half human, half serpent (Wilber 1996).  I think this creates a helpful image in our minds for what Kegan's second order of consciousness is about.  It is fitting that the higher functioning part of the brain actually emerges from the lower "reptilian" cortex, just as the human torso emerges from the serpent in the image of the Typhon (Caine & Caine 1994).  That the human portion is still fused with its lower animal instincts represents that the higher rational capacity is just beginning to emerge, and the self is still very basic and concerned with its own survival.  At the second order, one has not yet developed the mental complexity to consider the perspectives of others.  One has just become capable of perceiving one's self as an individual, separate from its prior dependency and identification with its immediate origin - parental or other family figures.  As such, exercising one's basic ability to "do it yourself" is important in affirming a newly budding self, and you will often hear young children at this stage insist emphatically on doing things on their own.  Conflict at this level is highly competitive and self-absorbed and lacking higher reasoning or perspective taking capacity can easily descend into hitting, shoving or other kinds of fighting.  A basic awareness of rules, with an emphasis on simple reciprocity - namely the punishments that will result if rules are broken is the main motivator for delaying one's impulses (Crain 1985).  At this level, one is consumed with one's self-interest and so there can be notion of conflict resolution, which would require considering an other with whom to consciously resolve differences.                    

3^rd Order - Horse and Rider: Body-Mind Duality (Who's Riding Who?)

As the self matures towards becoming psychologically distinct, it develops as well the mental complexity to infer the distinctness of others.  In this moment, one's whole self becomes a part in a greater whole - what was subject alone becomes object to a greater sense of subjectivity - a subject in society.  When one comes to realize that others' have their own perspectives and may be looking at them, it naturally makes one highly self-conscious.  Now one's own self is seen in contrast to the needs, perspectives and motives of others - to what 'they' think.  The challenge of becoming an individual remains, but now in the greater, more challenging context of what 'they' - peers, society, or authorities demand of us.  This is, again, Campbell's notion of "seeking approval, while fearing disapproval," of seeking a sense of belonging in a larger community at the same time, paradoxically, as one also seeks to become an independent individual.  The image of rider and horse represents the main balancing act at the third order to establish a sense of personal authority.  With the newfound sense of self-consciousness and insecurity, one compensates one of two ways: one attempts to affirm one's self either by asserting it or by seeking the approval of others.  It is, simply put, a variation on the theme of fight or flight - rebellion versus compliance - and although the fear of annihilation is psychological and not directly physical, it is nonetheless every bit as real as we considered before.  This struggle of the third order self was exemplified in the first two versions of our story about John, who lacking a strong sense of self, was unable to reconcile the needs of self and other - the predominate tendency was either to submit to or attempt to dominate the other.

This is not to be entirely disparaging of the third order, as there are many important emergent capacities that come along with self-consciousness.  Now that one can consider both self and other, one can also work in terms of actual conflict resolution.  The ability for abstract thought, which peaks at this stage, enables basic perspective taking, cooperation, rational discussion in terms of fairness, rules and roles, control of one's anger, expression of needs and the ability to resolve differences in light of what generally constitutes good relationships (Crain 1985).  At this point however, the relationship of self and other is quite basic, and so thinking is still largely in the concrete, dualistic terms of good and bad, right or wrong, us or them, win and lose.  And although the self is capable of cooperation at this level, it is still on a quest for its own authority, and so its mode of behavior is bound to be based in insecurity or deficit motivated, and therefore still overly competitive (Kohn 1993).  For this reason as well, the third order self thinks largely in terms of a victim mindset: an injured self that takes revenge against an enemy.  Even though one has a basic ability to take another's perspective and even experience basic empathy, this is most likely possible when one is on the outside looking in at someone with whom one identifies versus the much higher capacity to actually have empathy for one's own enemy.

4^th Order: Rider and Horse: The Rational Rider

The image of a rider in control of his horse, steering it in a self-determined direction is the notion of a mature, self-authoring adult.  Instead of an insecure self-consciousness, one is instead conscientious, capable of considering other yet without the former sense of obligation.  To a larger, independent sense of self, one is not ruled by the views of others but has the capacity to consider them with receptivity; one does not need to aggressively assert one's views but has the capacity to express them with self-confidence.  What was subject has become object - what was limitation has been transcended yet included as capacity.  Now we can begin to speak of conflict reconciliation - since one has developed a secure sense of self, one is now freed to assume responsibility for the limitations of others - to meet them at their own level rather than vie with them for superiority.  It is this responsibility, vision and direction that largely defines the fourth order of consciousness.  Couched in terms of martial arts, one must be able to control or protect one's self first before one is able to control or protect others.  As a self-responsible individual, one is capable of self-awareness - not of just controlling anger, of counting to ten for instance, but of inquiring into and operating upon the unconscious thoughts and judgments that are its triggers.  Rather than reacting based on one's purely selfish impulses, one can seek to respond in a way that supports not just co-operation, which may be based on an agreement merely for the sake of convenience or expediency, but collaboration - mutually benefiting, win-win scenarios.  One takes conflict one step less personally at this level as in the third version of our story about John who is able to see that the conflict may not be about him at all.  One begins to regard more compassionately the real motivations behind aggressive or violent behavior in one's self and in others, although not yet at the level of complexity where one's enemy is within (one's enemy is a mirror of one's own unconscious).  The self has also made an important step from body-mind duality to integration - in being able to stand apart from our emotional reactions - albeit sometimes in the moment, sometimes in retrospect - we have gained control over the animal upon which we ride. 

Just as we have accomplished establishing a sense of authority and personal power on our own terms, we are asked to question its validity.  This is the shift from modernity to postmodernity, from an authority that is absolute and opaque to one which is relative and translucent.  Again, a sense of ego must be built before it can be transcended yet as soon as it is built, a new paradox arises, a new dialectic challenge, in this case to transcend the limited, pathological aspect of one's authority yet include what is good in the context of a larger, more mature sense of reality.

5^th Order - The Centaur: Integration of Body and Mind, Self and Other

            The image of the Centaur is a wonderful reminder of what the fifth order represents.  Rather than a rider who is tossed about by the impulses of the emotive body-ego or a rational rider who represses these impulses, the two are fused into one (Wilber 2001).  This body-mind integration implies that thinking in the mind is rooted in emotional equilibrium in the body.  This kind of emotional centeredness is dependent upon a self that is ego aware - that can stand apart from and question its own authority, its own motivation.  Doing so is the basis not only of being integrated in body and mind, but of being literally in integrity in relation to other.  This is a transcendent sense of authority that has can now consciously employ the self-doubting capacity of the third order on the one hand and the assertive authority of fourth on the other without being limited by either.  This balance is represented in the eastern yin-yang symbol where the black is integrated with a dot of the white and vice versa - an integration of opposites into a larger, more balanced sense of self as in Kegan's subject-object theory.  At the fifth order, authority does not just demand of others, it demands as well the translucency of its own authority, the capacity to embody and mutually reciprocate that which it enforces.  If we attempt to disparage the perspective of another but cannot acknowledge the partiality of our own, then we embody not integrity, but hypocrisy - the basic ego tendency to project onto others what we fail recognize within ourselves.  As Kegan states so well:

"...conflict is a likely consequence of one or both of us making prior, true, distinct, and whole our partial position.  The conflict is potentially a reminder of our tendency to pretend to completeness when we are in fact incomplete.  We may have this conflict because we need it to recover our truer complexity."

Recognizing this pattern within ourselves is exactly what is meant by ego awareness - to locate the situations in which one fails to practice what one preaches and to ask not just if I have been able to maintain my ideals amidst outside pressure, but if I am able to transform myself based on such pressure.  To take as partial one's own authority such that we can acknowledge the source of our own projections is what allows us to root thinking in a place of selflessness and emotional calm beyond ego. 

Ken Wilber calls this kind of spiritually-integrated thinking vision logic in that it reveals a highly complex interrelationship:  that body and mind, self and other are actually not two.  This is yet another interpretation of the yin-yang symbol - the white contains a dot of the black and vice versa.  This implies not just the golden rule of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," a basic kind of integrity that one is capable of following at the fourth order, but the inter-subjective realization that as I do unto others I unconsciously do unto myself - what I perpetrate on others I also perpetrate on myself, that which I hate in my enemy is an embodiment of something I hate within myself.  This requires a great deal of maturity, a higher order of integrity and a person at the fifth order is calm at the center of the storm as a result of this deep level of self-knowledge and vision.  Such wisdom about self and other is naturally complimented with compassion, the sense of empathy on this basis that can give rise to great healing: in bringing love to what I cannot accept in another, I bring love to what I cannot accept within myself and further, when I am able to forgive someone for their transgressions, I allow us each to forgive ourselves.  Conflict at this level is not taken personally or not personally, it is taken transpersonally - it is conceived in terms of an enlightened self-interest, of an altruistic regard for others whereby one can respond to a conflict not based on one's own ego, but with an intuition towards the true motivation underlying one's opponent.  Really, there is no sense of even having an opponent and if one begins to make this judgment, it is used as a mirror towards working on one's own authoritative ego - one only goes about changing someone else by first changing one's self (Katie 2003).  This results not in resolution where self and other remain fundamentally unaltered, but where, empty of self-interest, self becomes a gateway for the mutual transformation of self.   While victory over one's self became possible at fourth order, the fully empathic experience of locating the enemy within becomes mature at fifth order.  Each person serves one part in a two-way mirror, and though there are two people in reflection there is only one image - that of the self projecting onto itself.  Here to truly understand is to truly feel - one can understand and feel compassion for the hatred of others because one has the vision that more than anything, this hatred is directed unconsciously at their own self and is a framework that creates their whole reality.  Paradoxically, if one inquires deeply enough with one's heart, one perceives that what is truly right for self is right for other; what injures an other secretly injures the self.  This is the triumph of the fifth order.    

Anger Management and Conflict Resolution: Coaching the Curriculum

Now that we have established what conflict resolution might look like at each of Kegan's orders of consciousness, I'd like to take a brief look into the popular literature and see exactly what is required to coach the curriculum as at each level.  In my review, I looked for common themes and techniques and given that most people are working on the shift from the third to the fourth order, I kept a sharp eye for any material that might make unreasonable demands at this level and consequently put people in over their heads.  Some books, like one from New Harbinger publications talks about "designing your own treatment plan" immediately throw up fourth order flags.  Another, incidentally from the same publisher, which has a title that includes the term "dialectical," and within the first few pages talks about what should be assumed of the reader "before taking up this book" has the same effect.  Other titles however, like Terry Dobson's Aikido in Everyday Life: Giving in to Get Your Way, seem to be making efforts at bridging third and fourth orders together.  Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life was particularly striking in that, unknowingly or not, it seemed to evolve from third to fourth to fifth order as it moved through its chapters.  As such, it captured the basic structure for what was being required in the literature in general at each order: observing vs. judging, identifying and expressing feelings, taking responsibility for feelings (our own), making requests vs. demands, listening for feelings and needs, empathy that heals, connecting compassionately with ourselves, expressing our anger, protective use of force, liberating ourselves and counseling others, expressing appreciation.  One starts by affirming one's own needs, then moves slowly towards connecting with and listening to others, then to self-introspection, authority, the deeper relationship of self and other and lastly to appreciation and love.

The basic point here is that at the third order, having the integrity to "make your enemies your greatest teachers," to do what's right for the other person or the capacity to inquire into why someone feels angry or behaves a certain way are all really unfair requests as the self is still attempting to affirm its own self-worth.  Since the basic underlying mode at third order is insecurity, whether unconscious or highly-self conscious, it is best to reinforce the self at this level.  Focusing instead on asking people to express their own emotions, and acknowledge their own needs by learning to make requests is bound to be a more developmentally appropriate expectation as it affirms a healthy sense of self and helps in settling out the expression versus suppression double-bind.  Empowering them towards calm, clear self-expression allows them voice their anger or fear without fearing disapproval.  After all, no one can argue with the way you feel.  This in turn lays the grounds for the fourth order challenge of owning or taking responsibility for one's feelings.  As awareness of self and other is a focus as well, separating observations from judgments and basic reciprocation of requests versus demands is a good way to "coach the curriculum" towards deeper empathy and perspective taking capacity.  Kegan explains in terms of making "I" statements as well as an exercise in which a teacher has students in debate class repeat another's point of view to the other's satisfaction before they can proceed with their own point of view.  Another very skillful example of "bridging" that I came across in anger management discussed forgiving others not primarily for the other person's sake, but for to free yourself from all the stress and negativity that comes along with an inability to let go (Ingram 2006). 

At the fourth order, people are emotionally independent enough not to take things quite so personally.  Instead of aggressive behavior being taken as an affront to one's self, one can think more dispassionately in terms of what is really causing the conflict and what can be done to solve it.  Being consciously proactive versus emotionally reactive, acknowledging the validity an attack without losing control or needing to "save face," noticing one's trigger points, and seeing more to the roots of violent behavior means that we are now actually capable of "taking responsibility for our feelings."  As I said in the outset, the capacity of the fourth order to take responsibility is unfair in those terms for someone at the third order.  Such a demand in those words is bound to be perceived as insensitive and make someone think that you don't care about them or their perspective - that you're not on their side - even though what you're actually wanting for them is the positive resolution that results when one can take responsibility for their feelings.  This is often the limitation of the fourth order, that lacking the deeper compassion of the fifth order, there is a certain authoritative arrogance that asks, why can't they just do it, just take responsibility for themselves, just be intrinsically motivated?  Since I have gone to the trouble of doing this, everyone else ought to be able to reciprocate; it's just a matter of choice.  The reality is that if we really are at a higher order of complexity we should need no such reciprocation - we should be able implicitly and unconditionally be able to understand and sympathize with the other person's way of making sense of the conflict or difference between us having one time viewed the world from that lens ourselves.  This, however, may be then again too unfair a demand to make of someone at fourth order, yet it is still interesting to notice the subtle hypocrisy at this level.  You can't very well resolve a conflict by making demands of your enemy.  This is about as useful telling someone who is upset that they shouldn't be angry.  One has to be careful of assumptions so as not to misuse some of what is found in the literature at the fourth order. 

However, since most of the literature is available to individuals at the fourth order, they should be well up to the challenge of books that recommend deeper self-inquiry and self-awareness, that utilize techniques for emotional centering or conflict resolution and emphasize how we can take responsibility for ourselves.  Books like the ones from New Harbinger as well as self-improvement books from the popular or new age literature e.g. Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Dale Carnegie, Wayne Dyer, the Dalai Lama, or whomever your preference are all very accessible.  Focusing on how to competently manage one's self in relation to others, on how to take responsibility for others as well in this sense, affirms a purpose in terms that the fourth order identifies with (self-responsibility, self-authorship), yet starts to serve a higher purpose as well.  Learning to resolve conflicts and trying to help others to do the same eventually leads to the integrity that comes from acknowledging what this really requires, not just in terms of the relativity of different approaches and learning styles, but the relativity of one's own authority.  This understanding goes hand in hand with the feeling of empathy for the state in which others find themselves and as such a natural compassion for the emotions and frustration that arises along with their perspectives.

Self-Defense: On Using the Physical to Transcend the Physical

            I would like to conclude with a short discussion of how the physical dimension of conflict resolution, namely martial arts training, offers a natural bridge from the third to the fourth order.  Martial arts which involve grappling such as Aikido, Judo or Jiu-Jitsu all offer support for the non-violent resolution of conflict, of controlling one's opponent ideally without inflicting injury.  Aikido in particular offers this philosophy expressly through its notion of blending with an opponent's force without fighting, yet all the above arts involve using techniques that utilize leverage, redirecting the opponent's energy, and other great metaphors for conflict resolution.  As one learns about these physical qualities through feeling and experiencing them in their bodies, they naturally begin to make sense in context of one's everyday life - the physical transcends the physical.  Dojo communities offer a great opportunity for developing self-confidence, commitment, competence, role-modeling, and service.  All of these qualities support secure growth from the third to fourth orders, and that these qualities are developed largely through physical training and bodily experience provides the bridge over which this growth proceeds.  As well as martial arts training, stress-management techniques such as meditation, breathing, mindfulness-awareness practices are also based in practice instead of theory and can provide support for conflict resolution so long as they are made to be developmentally appropriate as well.  A curriculum which utilizes physical practices in order to teach more abstract principles of conflict resolution could be a highly effective, integral approach that helps address the problem of stress and violence in today's schools.  It is my hope to use this paper as a developmental step of my own towards appropriately and considerately building such a curriculum.      

References and Resources

Caine, R. & Caine, G. (1994).  Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain.  Dale             Seymour Publications.

Campbell, J. (1994) The Way of Myth.  Shambhala Press.

Chawkin, N. (2006) The Embodied Mind as a Metaphor for Spiritual Integration.  Private Transcript.

Crain, W. (1985) Theories of Development. Prentice-Hall. pp. 118-136.  (Kohlberg)

Cornfield, J. (1999).   "Another Way."  Chicken Soup for the Soul: Living Your Dreams.  HCI.

Dobson, T. (1993).  Aikido in Everyday Life: Giving in to Get Your Way.  North Atlantic Books.

Gentry, W. (2007) Anger Management for Dummies.  Wiley Publishing.

Ingram, L. (2006) Anger Management Tool Kit - Proven Techniques.  Received from

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%">http://www.angermgmt.com/techniques.asp on December 8th, 2006.

Katie, B. (2003).  Loving What is.  Three Rivers Press.

Kegan, R.  (1998)  In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.  Harvard University Press.

Kohn, A. (1993) No Contest: The Case Against Competition. 

McKay, M. Davis, M. Fanning, P. (1997) Thoughts & Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your

Life.  New Harbinger Publications. 

NVC (Non-violent communication) Research.

Retrieved November 14^th, 2006 from http://www.cnvc.org/nvc-research.htm

Online Etymology Dictionary.  Attitude. Empathy.  Spirit. Temper. 

Retrieved November 13^th, 2006 from http://www.etymonline.com/

Rosenburg M. (2005) Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. (2^nd Edition)  Puddle Dancer

Press.

Rosenburg, M. (2002) Getting Past the Pain Between Us: Healing and Reconciliation Without

Compromise.  A presentation of Nonviolent Communication ideas and their use.  Puddle Dancer Press.

Rosenburg M. Key Facts About the Non-Violent Communication Process

    Received November 14^th, 2006 from http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/aboutnvc/keyfacts.htm

Spradlin, S. (2002) Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life: How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Can Put

You in Control. New Harbinger Publications. (disclaimer)

Stevens, J. (2002) The Art of Peace.  Shambhala Press.

Thompson, G. & Jenkins, J. (1993) Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion.

Tolle, E. (2004).  The Power of Now.  New World Library.

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Wilber, K. (2001).  No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth.      Shambhala Press.

Addendum: Another Way

From Chicken Soup for the Soul

The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty - a few housewives with their kids in tow, some old folks going shopping. I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty hedgerows.

At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the afternoon quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore laborer's clothing and was big, drunk and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that the baby was unharmed.

Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the other end of the car. The laborer aimed a kick at the reatreating back of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its stanchion. I could see that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with fear. I stood up.

I was young, then, some 20 years ago, and in pretty good shape. I'd been putting in a solid eight hours of Aikido training nearly every day for the past three years. I liked to throw and grapple. I thought I was tough. The trouble was, my martial skill was untested in actual combat. As student of Aikido, we were not allowed to fight.

"Aikido," my teacher had said again and again, "is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people, you're already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it."

I listened to his words. I tried hard. I even went so far as to cross the street to avoid the "chimpira," the pinball punks who lounged around the train stations. My forbearance exalted me. I felt both tough and holy. In my heart, however, I wanted an absolute legitimate opportunity whereby I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty.

"This is it!" I said to myself as I go to my feet. "People are in danger. If I don't do something fast, somebody will probably get hurt."

Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage. "Aha!" he roared. "A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!"

I held on lighly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this turkey apart, but he had to make the first move. I wanted him mad, so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss.

"All right!" he hollered." Your gonna get a lesson!" He gathered himself for a rush at me.

A fraction of a second before he could move, someone shouted "Hey!" It was earsplitting. I remember the strangely joyous, lilting quality of it - as though you and a friend had been searching, diligently for something and he had suddenly stumbled upon it. "Hey!"

I wheeled to my left; the drunk spun to to his right. We both stared down at a little old Japanese man. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me, but beamed delightedly at the laborer, as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share.

"C'mere," the old said in an easy vernacular, beckoning to the drunk, "C'mere and talk with me." He waved his hands lightly.

The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman and roared above the clacking wheels, "Why the hell should I talk to you?" The drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow moved so much as a millimeter, I'd drop him in his socks.

The old man continued to beam at the laborer. "Whatcha been drinkin?" he asked, his eyes sparkling with interest. "I been drinkin' sake," the laborer bellowed back," and it's none of your business!" Flecks of spittle spattered the old man.

"Oh, that's wonderful," the old man said, "absolutely wonderful! You see, I love sake too. Every night, me and my wife (she's 76 you know) we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench. We watch the sun go down, and we look to see how our persimmon tree is doing. My great-grandfather planted that tree, and we worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter. Our tree has done better than I expected, though, especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It is gratifying to watch when we take our sake and go out to enjoy the evening - even when it rains!" He looked up at the laborer, eyes twinkling.

As he struggled to follow the old man, his face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched, "yeah," he said "I love persimmons, too....." His voice trailed off.

"Yes," said the old man, smiling," and I'm sure you have a wonderful wife."

"No," replied the laborer. "My wife died." Very gently; swaying with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob. "I don't got no wife, I don't go no home, I don't go no job. I'm so ashamed of myself." Tears rolled down his cheeks, a spasm of despair rippled though his body.

As I stood there in my well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my make-this-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness, I felt dirtier than he was.

Then the train arrived at my stop. As the doors opened, I heard the old man cluck sympathetically. "My, my" he said, "that is a difficult predicament indeed. Sit down here and tell me about it."

I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat with his head in the old man's lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.

As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench in the station. What I had wanted to do with muscled had been accomplished with kind words. I had just seen Aikido in action, and the essence of it was love. I would have to practice the art with an entirely different spirit. It would be a long time before I could speak about the resolution of conflict.

• - Terry Dobson

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