About the "field" of the awareness game, and "changing-the-mix." Posted by John on November 09, 1999 at 18:01:33:
In Reply to: Re: A perfect procedure posted by suz on November 08, 1999 at 14:44:10:
Welcome to you, ninad! Well said! I think I get your points.
Beginning to practice mindfulness and come out of the ordinary realm of
"sleep" that humans usually walk around in, you're having the presence
of mind now to know where you put your keys the last time you put them
down. Yes! If I understand you correctly, that's one of the many
benefits that come from learning to wake up in mindfulness. By
intentional practice of mindfulness whenever you remember it, little by
little, you will start waking up more often during the day. And one
becomes gradually more aware of the things that are useful to remember
this way, like "where the keys are now." One has more presence of mind
of the whole "field" that lies around, and the things in the field.
In the awareness game, the "field" is the space that you are living in,
both around you and within your body, too. As your body is moving along
in this field of space, you bring new things, bodies, and sounds into
your space. When you go to the store, you bring the things, people, and
sounds that are there into your field. On the other hand, when you are
at rest, staying put where you are, other new things, bodies, and
sounds, come into the space of your field. Someone knocks on the door,
the phone rings, someone walks in from the other room and speaks, etc.,
etc. Whether you go out to bring them to you from the outside, or you
remain at rest and they come inward to you there on the inside, the
things, bodies, and sounds that you encounter in the space of the field
of the awareness game *have impact*.
They have impact on your body, and your body has certain observeable
reactions to the impacts of these things—emotional feelings, thinking,
wanting, and behaving. These reactions to the impacts of life are what
we are learning to see in the First Grade here. These impacts are what
gives rise to the activities of our personalities. How do we ordinary
humans react to the impacts of events that take place in our lives?
What can be seen of this? And with an objective diagnostic tool, like
the wheelbook that we are using here, very much can be seen and
understood, indeed.
>2. as soon as i came home i ON my tv set, and then wonder why & how i did it.
Yes! Bravo, ninad!!! (I'd be more comfortable with your first name, if
you don't mind, unless you prefer to have people call you by your last.)
This is a great observation, a real insight. It is an awareness of the
"automatic human condition"—the reality that this body that you go
around in is *conditioned* to do that habitual dance: coming in and
plopping down and turning on the television. It all happens *
automatically* when we are being in "sleep."
You have had an awareness of your automatic sleeping self there—a
glimpse of the automatic self that is usually in "the shadows,"
unobserved. This is something to "wonder" at! Suz spoke of her shock
at seeing this. And she encourages you bravely that this realization
can be handled, although at first it is a little unsettling to realize
that much of every day we go around in sleep doing things without
realizing what we are doing. But the good news is that we can learn,
little by little, to be awake more often, and to see.
And perhaps you can see that in this moment when you wake up and realize
you are about to plop down there and reach for the clicker like you
always do, this moment of being awake and mindful, and seeing your
automatic self in activity there . . . . . this is the one moment when
you really have a choice in what you do about it! When you wake up and
catch on, you don't have to do it the way you've always done it before.
Can you understand what I am saying here? When you wake up and see your
body about to go on through that totally automatic series of behaviors,
like a robot, like a wind-up doll, in that moment you can choose to do
something else . . . . *anything* else.
You can "change-the-mix" of your automatic life in this wakeful moment.
And it isn't even necessary to not watch tv to accomplish this change.
You can go ahead and watch tv! But you can watch it in a different way
than the way "that automatic robot" does it every day in sleep. You can
make some choices about it. You can watch it with the sound turned off.
You can watch it while exercising with hand-weights. You can watch it
to see if you can pick up on the personality types of the people who are
appearing on the tv screen. You can watch it while inwardly feeling
"the pain in your left knee," methodically "processing" the pain out of
the muscles there by the direct mindful application of your focused
awareness, while at the same time watching and enjoying "the news."
Or, you can watch something different than what you always *habitually*
watch. That might open up your life to something new, never discovered
before. On, and on, and on . . . when you wake up you have *many
choices*, instead of just *the one option* that is all that is available
to you when you are being asleep, that is doing the thing you are
conditioned to do in that moment in the same way that you have always
been doing it.
Yes, you can also choose to not watch tv for a change, too, if you'd
like to, and free-up your life for other things for a while that way.
The point here is that when you wake up out of your ongoing life in
sleep, when you are centered and focused in this way, you can take over
the direction of your life awarely, as a master can do. And you have
many choices instead of just the automatic conditioned one.
You can intentionally shift from habitual patterns to intelligent and
useful choices in the here and now. This is precisely what a classical
warrior does. This is "transformative work." This is shifting out of
the automatic patterns of your ego-driven personality types, and
becoming truly *competent*, as masters are competent, in the here-and-
now, in relating with ongoing life with the simple, natural, direct
powers that you have been born with, the strengths and qualities of your
"essence" that is.
If you can wake up in mindfulness at the point where you are about to
plop down and turn on the tv (or on the verge of any other such habitual
pattern), then, in that moment, you are *free*! You are free of the
grips of your habitual self, and free to do anything else that you
choose. But you have to *exercise* that freedom—then and there, on the
spot!— in order to have it! (This is an important point to remember.)
>3. dialing a different tel.no (2-3 times till now)
I don't get what you mean here.
>4. driving the bike on my regular path (way to college) evewhen i want to go somewhere else*****BUT evenafter knowing about what i did many times, i am able to improve it a very little
Go on practicing mindfulness and you will get better at this! Again,
what you are looking at here is your "conditioned self." The "self" has
become conditioned over the years by force of habits in your make-up.
Doing things over and over again builds up a kind of magnetic energy (an
electric coil with wire wrapped around and around is analagous to this,
I think) that leads to these conditioned tendancies that our bodies have
to go on and on doing things in the same old ways over and over again.
Any of you students in this class can look over your lives and find
many, many patterns of common things that you do, that are always done
in precisely the same ways. This is your conditioning, in high relief.
Every one of us can make a long list of these! There *is* a great
mindfulness exercise (or "procedure," as you put it, ninad) for
practicing with this in your life. It is called "CHANGING-THE-MIX."
The way this works is to pick out any clear habitual patterns that you
can identify in your life, and start in doing them differently. I gave
an example of that with watching television above. Go ahead and watch
tv, but change the mix: do it, *awarely* in another way than the way
your sleeping body has always done it before. Or, go ahead to the same
grocery store, but make changes in the way you rove through the store.
You will probably find, if you go there often, that your body has
already adopted a whole fixed pattern for roving through the store that
you didn't even know that you had. See if isn't true that you have
already "acquired" a whole step-by-step program for shopping in that
store. It's all laid out for you to follow automatically "like a robot"
as you walk on through the entrance of the store.
So . . . . start in at the other end of the store for a change, or go
through the store more at random than you usually do, seeing what your
experiences are in doing this. And maybe see if you can find some new
interesting product to buy that looks like you might enjoy it, finding
it "by accident," by practicing awareness and changing-the-mix there
that way. You may find it is a little awkward to do this at first,
because you are "shaking your life up" a little bit this way, you are
freeing up your life a little more than it was before. It may be a
little disorienting at first, but you can get used to this, and learn to
be much freer.
In the same way, you probably have pretty much fixed routes to get to
the places that you go to most often. This is what you are referring to
here, ninad. When a person is driving or riding a bike, once they have
recognized that they have "acquired" a habitual route to follow to any
given place, they can start changing the mix, going by other routes,
taking some different turns for a change, practicing being awake while
they are doing this . . . and again, see what you may discover "by
accident," whom you may meet, by changing your routes in these ways.
And of course, walking from building to building, class to class, on a
college campus, one can practice changing-the-mix in the same ways and
observing one's experiences mindfully along new paths. Taking a new
seat in the class than the one you are conditioned to sit in is a way of
doing this. (I maintain there are clues to a person's personality types
in the location where they usually sit in classrooms.)
What do you get out of such practice as this? For one thing you gain
time when you are free of the constraints of your ego, and you can be
aware of this reality that you *can be* free of the constraints of your
ego! It is your ego that contols all the paths that you follow in the
same ways, all patterns that you repeat over and over again in your
sleep. This is the principle mechanical function of the ego (as we
describe the ego in detail here in our classes). It governs all of your
habits for doing things over and over again in the same old ways—ways
that are pre-determined, of course, by the nature of your own ego itself
(see the wheelbook in the Playground for examples of this ego in the
eight distinct types). And the other thing that you gain is having a
life that is broadened and opened up to new things that are beyond the
constraints of where your ego has been letting you go, beyond what your
ego has been letting you see and enjoy of life as a whole.
The same change-the-mix can be practiced with other people that you
visit with, too. If you can identify that you always do "a., b., c.,
d., etc." when you visit with "your mother-in-law," try out "g., i., w.,
z." instead.
Who was talking about this recently? Douglas. Home-comings, family
visits with parents, etc., etc. Yes, it is terribly difficult at these
times. Every person is there doing their same old "a., b., c., d." by
rote, just the way they did it last Christmas, just the way they did it
five Christmasses ago. But you, if you are an awareness practitioner,
can change-the-mix of your own participation in this. An awakened
warrior is a person who can have the presence of mind to make many of
these kinds of changes in his or her self. Just do it differently than
you always do. And then see what happens! You may see many interesting
things in this way—especially if you can lay off of some of your own
habitual personality manipulations for a change, and play-in elements of
your essence instead.
Amazing things can happen in this way that change the whole mix of the
whole event. But do not be counting on other people changing in the
ways that you have always wanted them to change. (That's only your own
ego wanting that, anyway.) Just make the changes that you can have the
presence of mind to make on your own, inwardly, and just see what
changes happen around you then, spontaneously.
>can you tell / suggest a procedure for having mindfulness how much time ot will take to improve up to desired level ??
The changing-the-mix exercise is one procedure I suggest trying out.
Have you done the experiential exercises in the five basic classes in
the Kindergarten? These are what I would suggest first of all. As for
how long it takes . . . If you give it a year, would that be "too
much?" If, by the end of 2000 you could be a highly-experienced
mindfulness practitioner by learning along with the rest of us here in
this class, if you would be prepared from then on to be a mindfulness
practitioner on into the next century, would that year have taken you
"too long?" The speed with which mindfulness is learned and mastered
will be different with each and every student. It will be proportional
to how interested a student is in learning mindfulness, and how much
daily practicing they actually do with it outside of our classes here.
That doesn't mean that a person should become "gung ho," as they say.
Attempting to "over-achieve" and go too far with it in too short a
period of time may result in a student becoming discouraged and finally
losing interest and dropping out. On the other hand, if a student isn't
interested enough to try out some of the exercises and ideas for
practice that are found all over this on-line campus, enough so that
they begin practicing mindfulness a few times, at least, every day, then
it is unlikely that the practice of mindfulness is going to proliferate
in their life.
I'm sorry to have to say so, but that's one of the reasons that
mindfulness is so rare in the human populace. Most people, by far, have
never even heard of it. Some who have heard of mindfulness think they
wouldn't like it, or wouldn't want it. They'd prefer to stick with
ordinary consciousness alone. Some who know they would like it would
only like it if it were handed to them on a silver platter, with all the
work on it complete! And only a few who have heard of it, and who like
it, will simply accept that practice is the only way to really have it,
and they will go ahead and start practicing it more and more every day,
as they feel an inclination to do so . . . . . when they feel like it,
out of natural enthusiasm for it. That's the way.
If you're not being as awake as you feel like being, practice a little *
right then*! Whenever you remember that there is such a thing as
mindfulness, practice a little right then! Pick out a few things you
always do every day, like chores that you do, and make a decision that
when they are going on you will practice a little right then! With the
awareness game that I am coaching here, I have tried to develop a way
for students to get in this daily practice that is as much fun, as
interesting, and as practical in everyday life as I can make it. Each
one of you, then, must take it from there, and run with it as you do.
Beginners should be modest in what they attempt. As you go along, and
you gain more confidence, and you find, perhaps, that it's more and more
fun to practice mindfulness, that it is a true enhancement to the beauty
of your life, and interesting in the insights you get to see, then flow
along with it in practicing more and more, as you find that you like to
do it. The "watch-words" for this semester are "steady" and "casual."
If you will continue with your daily practice of mindfulness in a way
that is both steady and casual, then you will begin to see "results"
within weeks, and some major changes in your life over the months. You
will see that you are waking up more often during the days, and that you
are able to stay awake a little longer when you wish to do so. If not,
then get in a little more practice. And you may begin to see that "life
is conforming around you" in a more peaceful and harmonious way than you
used to see before.
Any questions that beginners have along the way are certainly welcome
here in Classroom Talk. And you are welcome here, ninad. Thanks for
your excellent first posting, sharing your experiences with mindfulness.
Even though I found it a little hard to understand you *conceptually* at
first—I don't know why—that is, to catch-on to exactly what you are
meaning specifically . . . your sharing your experiences the way that
you have done it here *is* the really important "key" in *communicating*
, and you DID "get through." And I do feel I have a very keen sense of
you as a person who is approaching this kind of training. I don't know,
but I wonder if you may be an artist by profession, perhaps, or maybe
more accustomed to speaking a different language than English. No
offense intended. I'd just like to get to know you.
Coach
Continue with Winter 1999/2000 Classroom Talk or
Post a new discussion in the current Classroom Talk
Archived February 13, 2000