Hungry rats 1, Overthinking Students 0

I found the following quote in Learning How to Think by Nocholas D. Kristof. The editorial is about how predictions by expert pundits were often wrong. It seems that the more famous you are, then the more likely you are to be wrong, and that expertise is not a good indicator for making accurate predictions. He wrote:

In another, a white rat in a maze repeatedly beat groups of Yale undergraduates in understanding the optimal way to get food dropped in the maze. The students overanalyzed and saw patterns that didn’t exist, so they were beaten by the rodent.

I think this is a vote for viewing the world as it is, not as we want it to be. As I wrote in an earlier post, it's important to accurately describe what's going on while limiting, as much as possible, any diagnosis. If one can use neutral words to describe the sensations or experiences then one will be led to a more accurate account of the experience, which will then help one to be more in touch with one's soul.

Of course, my overly analytical mind wants to know if it's important that it's a white rat in the study? Why not a gray rat? Or a brown one?

How you describe yourself determines who you are

I used to be an auto mechanic and every once and a while a friend had a car question for me. This morning, I helped acquaint a friend with her new car. She had never owned a car before and was interested in what was under the hood.

We popped the hood and as I pointed out each of the mechanical systems. She asked questions and wanted to know what kind of maintenance each needed. Mostly she was worried about how often she will need to check her oil and top off her fluids.

At one point, I think it was when I was describing the cooling system, she said something to the effect of: "So if there's a problem there, I'll go in to my mechanic and tell him my radiator's broken and he needs to replace this part?" I stopped her right there. "Don't tell your mechanic what's wrong with the car," I said, "tell him what you are hearing or experiencing in the car, and let him determine what's wrong. You are not the expert, he is." It's something I've told patients before: don't arrive with a diagnosis, come in with a set of problems, tell your healer how you make sense of things and understand them, but always start with what you are feeling before you try to make sense of it.

What I realized today is that this is another way to get in touch with your soul. Who we think we are often prevents us from seeing who we really are, but if we get in the habit of accurately describing ourselves, we can avoid that pit-fall.

Tommy Thompson part II

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending two seminars taught by Tommy Thompson. He teaches Alexander Technique and is a true healer. The first seminar was just for Alexander teachers and I wrote about in an earlier post. The second was for the general public, and I was one of the few who took both. His approach is relatively unique (I’m told) in the Alexander world, and I found a lot of wisdom in his approach and his style. What follows in this post are some of his teachings which particularly impressed me.

He taught that our responses to the world are often shaped by who we think we are as opposed to who we actually are. When one responds to something, one reaches for who one thinks one is, which may not be who one actually is. We need to be open to what is really going on, not what we think or expect to be happening. His model is the physical body, but this is very true for all of our interactions in the world. It’s very true, I would add, in shamanic or spiritual experience. We have “peak” spiritual experiences and then seek to repeat those experiences, often expecting the next shamanic experience to be the same as the last. But it never seems to work that way. Sometimes there are similarities, but usually the expectations prevent us from perceiving what’s actually happening and make it harder to have shamanic experiences.

Tommy talked about this as “Faulty sensory appreciation”. He explained it to mean that where you are is not where you think you are. Alexander technique is about retraining and activating ones proprioceptors so that our perception of where we are and how our body is acting matches what our body really is actually doing. (A proprioceptor is defined as a sensory receptor that receives stimuli from within the body, esp. one that responds to position and movement.)

He continued that we need to have the experience, not react to the experience we’re having. We can change the quality of our experience by saying to ourselves “This is me having the experience of…”. And in this way, we focus our attention on what we are doing instead of reacting to it. My understanding of this was that by verbalizing what we are doing, we distract the conscious mind much in the same was as the Piazetzner meditation works (I'll write about this in another post). His description was to “become part of the experiences you are already having.”

In discussing his Alexander work, he gave a lesson in how to teach in general. If you try to get a person to conform to what you expect, the person will get an idea of what to do, but it won’t be the awareness that they need. It won’t be the internal awareness that generates the change. We need to meet the person where they are and offer alternatives, not try to force the person to change in the manner in which I think is best.

If one acts on an expectation, one’s own or another persons, or what experience has taught you from unreliable sensory perception and diminished kinesthetic cues, then one is not relating to reality, one is relating to one’s expectations. An example is when you reach down to pick up a suitcase, expecting it to be heavy, only to realize it is empty. You need to divest yourself from being who you think you need to be and you can be yourself.

I would add that it's important to always know that our perceptions of the world are always changing. If we react to things according to our experience, we may be reacting in a way appropriate for who we used to be but not who we are now. And if we continue to react in the same ways, then we actually prevent ourselves from growing and lock ourselves into one way of being. The experience of "dying" is very common in shamanic experience, and it can be understood here as reaching a point where we need to spiritually die and be reborn in order to let go of our old way of relating to the world in order to move forward.

A less dramatic way to approach this problem in to experience our emotions and not react to them in our usual way. In parenting, I find that often it’s best if I am non-reactive to my child and let them work through their emotions without influence from my emotional reactions. My sense from Tommy was that he felt that we should approach ourselves in this way so that we experience ourselves without judgment which allows us to experience ourselves without the weight of our own expectations.

I was very impressed with Tommy’s teachings and with his approach to healing. So much so that I had a very interesting response. I wondering what would have happened had I met Tommy earlier in life, before I went to acupuncture school. Would I have then studied Alexander technique first? Or is it the experiences I’ve had as a result of going through acupuncture school that allowed me to recognize what we was teaching? My own approach to these thoughts is usually to have faith that I am supposed to be an acupuncturist and if I was supposed to be an Alexander teacher, I would have met Tommy before I started studying Chinese Medicine.

I also wondered if I should start to study Alexander technique with Tommy (if that becomes geographically feasible at some point)? I realized that I don't need to study an entirely new system to be able to use his teachings to find wisdom in what I do already.

I left their wondering if there is a way to do Alexander technique on the soul? Is there a way to activate the proprioceptors of the soul, making us more in tune with our soul and inner being. To know when we are in touch with our soul and to know when we are basing our actions on experiences rooted in faulty spiritual sensory perception. I think Tommy’s answer would be that as there is no difference between the body, mind, and soul, that when we do that on the body, then we are becoming more in tune with our souls. Though I’ll have to ask him.

Energy mirrors

Something interesting happened today during a treatment. Often, I am able to feel, physically, what my patient is feeling. Today, as I felt it, I tried to work on it within myself. I could feel two things happening at once, my energy was shifting within myself and the energy was shifting within my client. There were times when I needed to nudge a little on one side or the other, but the two were changing together.

The sensation of feeling two things at the same time was also noteworthy. I’ve felt it before, though usually it’s when I’m trying to work on myself and using someone else as a mirror. I connect with the other person and then try to connect with myself through them. That allows me to see myself from another perspective and then work on myself. Today, I was using myself as a mirror for the other person to work on them through me.

Giving the Material Snake Power

In a teaching from the R. Moshe Cordovera (Ramak), I found the following passage from the Zohar (Part II, Shemot, 17b)

R. Yossi went out to the road, and R. Acha ben Ya'acov went with him. As they were walking, R. Yossi lapsed into silence and his thoughts turned to matters of the world, but R. Acha continued to think about matters regarding the Torah (as they walked). R. Yossi turned and saw a snake coming after him. R. Yossi said to R. Acha, Do you see the snake running after me? R. Acha said that he did not see the snake. R. Yossi started to run and the snake ran after him. R. Yossi fell down and blood flowed from his nose. He heard it being said "Only you I knew from all the families of the earth, thus I call you to account for all of your sins." (Amos 3:2) R. Yossi said, If this is how it is for a moment, then how much more so would you despair from one hour thus.

Cordovero uses these verses as a proof text for his argument. He states that when a person does a mitzvah, they draw down "shefa" into the world. So we learn from the above passage that it's important for all Jews to constantly do mitzvot so as to continue to draw down shefa from God. If we were to stop doing so, there would be problems in the world from the lack of shefa.

He also uses it for a later argument that tzaddikim draw down a greater share of shefa as they are at a higher level. If they stop doing their work, then there is a greater deficiency in the world, so it is more signifigant.

My reading of the source text is slightly different. My reading of the text is that R. Yossi began to think of concerns in this world until they began to consume him and have power over him. For someone at his spiritual level, it makes sense that the fears would externalize and take the form of a snake only visible to him, which chased him until he fell and hurt himself. When he fell, he received a teaching from the angels. We never learn what happened to the snake, though presumably it disappeared when he fell.

In this reading, the sin of R. Yossi was getting too caught up in worldly matters such that they held power over him. Jews live in the world. There is no tradition of monastic ascetisism within Judaism. It is considered a commandment to get married and have children, which, as all parents know, firmly grounds one in the world and gives one lots of worldly things to think about. R. Yossi's mistake was to let the worldly matters control and drive him.

Living in the modern world, there are many times when I see clients who are being driven by the need for money and their busy schedules. Their "snakes" are their date books and emails. The fears drive them forward faster and faster until they eventually develope health problems which lead them into my office. Those problems often stop them in their tracks and force them to reflect and consider, which can open them to the spiritual world.

In the Zohar passage, the message R. Yossi heard was that Jews are punished more for their sins because they are the chosen people. He understood it to mean that if he was caught up in the physical world for just a few moments and had such a strong reaction, then what could he expect if he spent an hour controlled by his material fears? Or days? Or months?

There is clearly a place in the Jewish world to think about our worldly needs, but one needs to be careful that they don't control us or have power over us. Otherwise they will drive us to self-destruction. But when we do fall down, we need to take that opportunity to grow.

The value of Silence

I heard a wonderful piece of advice recently that came from a friend in Boston:

"You should wait to speak until you are unable to prevent yourself from speaking."

She explained it as meaning you shouldn't say the first thing that comes to mind, but listen to the conversation very carefully, engage fully in what's happening around you, and then speak when you really have something to say.

My take on it is always be aware of our motivations when speaking. Are we saying something because we genuinely want to help the other person? Are we speaking to create connection between ourselves and others? Are we speaking to gratify our own egos? Are we speaking to dominate another person? Are we using what we say to hide ourselves from others and deflect the conversation away from ourselves? Are we speaking because the souls are speaking through us and guiding our voices? All of these, and many more, are possibilities when we speak.

The sages often talk about nullification of one's ego as a part of spiritual work, and I think one of the easiest tools to that end is to listen carefully to what we say. Every word that comes our of our mouths has the potential to create or destroy relationships and worlds. Examining the words we use will let us know if we are speaking for our own benefit, or the benefit of the world and God.