The Dance of Mind and Body

The Dance of Mind and Body — The mind and body are one–indivisible. Both speak to us, and both convey great lessons we all benefit from learning

Taking the Leap

Many think that the Mind and the Body are sep­a­rate.

In the West, the horse and rid­er anal­o­gy is popular—the body is “there” to serve the mas­ter, the rid­er, the big brain locat­ed not too far above the horse’s ass…

We hold the view that there is no way to separate the two, if for no other reason than I’ve yet to see a body-less mind. 

So, what would a part­ner­ship of body and mind look like, giv­en the real­i­ty that there is a part­ner­ship, whether we like it or not…

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Meditation is identifying the Game

Med­i­ta­tion is a gate­way into “what already is.” As you sit, you begin to grasp the inter­play between out­side and inside, between Mind and Body, between thought and no-thought.

For most, much energy is wasted on ruminating, chewing, planning, and judging.

The mind, as it has been trained to do, seems to “think” that if only ‘it’ works hard enough, ‘it’ can solve every­thing. Plan every­thing. Con­trol every­thing. And when, with great frus­tra­tion, it real­izes it can’t, all hell breaks loose.

The mind blames the per­son — weird, eh? — for fail­ing at the impos­si­ble, and then turns up the juice. Try hard­er!
Think more!

Yet:

If you always do what you’ve always done,
and always think what you’ve always thought,
you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

This is one of those “truisms” that cause us to go, “Well, duh!” And yet, repetitive thinking and behaviour is likely the norm for us.

One client was a suc­cess­ful busi­ness per­son. He’d set as a goal hav­ing a cer­tain amount of mon­ey in invest­ments by the time he reached 50. 

He met his goal by age 47. And… his rela­tion­ship with his wife and teenage kids was in the dumper.

He’d say:

“I came home and my son was lying on the couch, watch­ing TV. I yelled at him and told him he was lazy. Then, my wife yelled at me for yelling at my son, and I got mad­der and yelled at her for yelling at me for yelling at my son, and she left the room, and I went for a walk.”

I’d then ask him what his inten­tion was for his rela­tion­ships. He’d reply,

“I want to have a good rela­tion­ship with my fam­i­ly, but they don’t cooperate.” 

I’d ask,

“Have you ever got­ten what you want by yelling at them?” 

He’d say,

“No, but I’d be shirk­ing my respon­si­bil­i­ty as a hus­band and father if I let this stuff slide.”

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to unpack this one. 

When we get lost in our heads, the first thing that hap­pens is that we assume that there is only one way of look­ing at each sit­u­a­tion.

Our assump­tion is that the way we are see­ing things is right, rather than just the way we are present­ly choos­ing to see it.

On the oth­er hand, wis­dom, maturity—waking up—requires that we under­stand, at a cel­lu­lar lev­el, that our per­spec­tives are noth­ing more than choic­es.

Once we tru­ly get this, we then might choose to eval­u­ate our choic­es only on the basis of results.

Let’s take a look at a couple of the themes from the above story. The first idea is the old saw that “money buys happiness.”

This guy made a com­mit­ment to him­self, when he was in his 20’s, to achieve a cer­tain lev­el of finan­cial secu­ri­ty by age 50. He set this as his all-con­sum­ing goal; he con­duct­ed his busi­ness to achieve this goal. 

Because of this decades-old pledge, he worked a ton of over­time, and expect­ed his fam­i­ly to under­stand that the goal he set is for their well-being too.

They just wanted their father, her husband, to be a part of their lives.

Lest you think it’s as sim­ply about mon­ey, he told me that his will stip­u­lates that his fam­i­ly gets to split the mon­ey even­ly when he dies. 

He said,

“Then they’ll know how much I loved them and how much I sac­ri­ficed for them.”

They wanted their father, her husband, to love them while he was alive.

We see here how think­ing can get skewed. The per­son­’s think­ing makes sense to the per­son to whom it makes sense. The fatal leap is that it also makes sense to every­one else.

Con­sid­er:

Instead, most repeat the flawed behav­iour by try­ing hard­er. They get more of what they don’t want, so they re-dou­ble their efforts, and get even more of what they don’t want.

Then they say, “Boy, is that per­son stu­pid. They just don’t get it.” (Sad­ly, they nev­er real­ize they are talk­ing to themselves!)

Behaviour is the manifestation of what we truly believe.

If I say, “I love you,” and then pro­ceed to yell at you, call you names, crit­i­cize you, it does­n’t mat­ter what I say. My actions con­vey what I tru­ly believe—you’re in need of a rem­e­dy only I can provide—I’ll make you change, and will up the vol­ume, the vio­lence, until you do. Then you’ll know how much I love you.

Yeah, right.

The point of the quote, obvi­ous­ly, works both ways. 

What we’re try­ing to get to here is the idea that what’s hap­pen­ing in your life, in your rela­tion­ships, and of course in how you deal with your­self, is a direct result of what you think and do. 

While it is eas­i­er to blame oth­ers for not coop­er­at­ing, the truth of the mat­ter is that the only dra­ma you have any chance of deal­ing with authen­ti­cal­ly is your own.

Here’s a way to play this out

Go out of your mind and come to your sens­es — Fritz Perls

Infants are “undifferentiated”–they need to cre­ate a “self”, or they are going to be com­plete­ly autistic.

But creating a self comes with a price. (Have you noticed that everything comes with a price?)

The price is the exis­ten­tial realization—I am an iso­lat­ed human being, with no ties to anyone. 

I was born alone and will die alone. 

The infant begins to real­ize this as soon as his eyes begin to focus—he learns that moth­er goes away, and he has no con­fi­dence she will ever return.

The first con­scious feel­ing, after the com­fort of the womb, is the cold­ness and tight­ness of aban­don­ment and alone-ness.

Adults are all too aware of this, although we generally don’t want to talk very deeply about it.

Often, clients will say, “There is this great, emp­ty void in me.” They will then go on to describe how they have attempt­ed to fill the void. Ordi­nar­i­ly, the fill­ing process hap­pens by deny­ing the void, by latch­ing on to some­one who will “fill the void,” or by play­ing a role.

A client said, “I filled the void in my life with my hus­band. When he left, I filled it with drink­ing and drugs. Now, I’d like to stop try­ing to fill it with stuff.” A wise woman, this.

Roles—mother, father, spouse, employee—whatever—are con­coct­ed to give our­selves an “impor­tant” task to occu­py our­selves with. What we’re occu­py­ing is our mind. We are so busy up there, we have no time—because if we had time we might actu­al­ly allow our­selves to sink into our bod­ies and begin to real­ly feel.

We scare our­selves about this, because con­nect­ed to real­ly feel­ing is real­ly feel­ing every­thing—our pas­sion, our plea­sure, our joy and our pain, and espe­cial­ly the Void within.

The void is the Shadow. It’s right there, but it’s not the only story. Getting this, getting the “inventing shadows where there are none” nature of the void, is enlightenment. 

Most set­tle for scar­ing themselves.

I’m incom­plete, so I’ll mar­ry some­one, and they’ll take away the incom­plete­ness. Well, that didn’t work, so I’ll have a kid. Or I’ll go off and save the world by get­ting a job. Noth­ing like a drag­on to slay …

And in the end, the void remains.

Perls sug­gest­ed some­thing rad­i­cal. He sug­gest­ed mov­ing past the end­less men­tal chat­ter and end­less busy­ness of the mind. He sug­gest­ed that we sink down into our bod­ies and find our­selves in our sens­es. Our feel­ings. And in our iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the source of our fear, the void.

It is the ulti­mate of con­ceit to think that we have for­ev­er to make things better. 

At every lev­el, all we have is now. When I final­ly embrace that I am exact­ly one breath, one heart­beat from death, I can choose to run in ter­ror, to numb myself, or choose to live this moment to the fullest.

We real­ly do need to rec­og­nize the pover­ty of the games we play.

We real­ly do need to let go of believ­ing that our heads are where we are and who we are—that our bod­ies are dumb beasts to get our heads from point ‘a’ to point ‘b.’ If we are ever going to have a mean­ing-filled life, we have to move beyond this kind of, well, thinking.

We are not just our thoughts. We are equally our senses and our feelings.

When I reflect upon my life, I rec­og­nize how pas­sion­ate I am for the peo­ple I care about, the work I engage in, the writ­ing that flows from me. I am grate­ful for Dar­bel­la, for the skill set I have been giv­en, for the peo­ple I chance to meet.

I find myself look­ing for new­er and deep­er ways of enter­ing into my life, into me, feel­ing what I feel, sens­ing what I sense, and I even have humour for what I often think.

And part of me would love to be here for­ev­er, and part of me fears death.

I choose not to deny my fear. I choose not to dis­tract myself with end­less busy­ness, end­less rounds of par­ties, end­less attempts to get oth­ers to make me feel better. 

Like­wise, I’m here, I’m alive, I’m in rela­tion­ship, and I am me.

The trip I’m on can’t be run by oth­ers, nor can I be saved by oth­ers. In actu­al­i­ty, there is no “oth­er,” there are only my thoughts about others.

I’m in this alone.

The home­work for this week is to look at the results you are get­ting. If the things you say and do are get­ting you results you don’t want, stop. Re-think what you are say­ing and doing, as opposed to won­der­ing why the peo­ple around you are so thick.

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