Classroom Talk
Fall 2001 Archive
Listen for *the music* of it! Posted by John on December 06, 2001 at 15:26:35:
I suppose it's high time that I try to get re-grouped and pick up with the work that I was doing earlier, trying to demonstrate to all of you class-
members how to factor out a person's types in the wheelbook.
This is a trial-and-error process, and I'd like to show you a bit of how I can dialogue with a student, in attempting to help them to home-in on
recognizing—by their own direct observations—and with a sense of certainty—the three types that have the greatest conditioned effect on their daily
lives.
It wouldn't matter which of you students I was doing this work with, of course, but as Bruce has stepped up for this exercise, I'm glad to have this
opportunity to work this on through with him. And I hope the rest of you, if you care to follow along, will get as much out of this exercise as he will.
In addition to showing how to identify a person's set of personality types, I'd also like to begin helping you students start *feeling*, *sensing* the way
you can recognize "the music" of these different personality types when they are in the field.
And two other things: I'd like to illuminate, if possible, how each of these types, each in their characteristic ways, "get in our way" in life, cheating us
of peace, harmony, happiness, and accomplishments that we would otherwise have coming to us in our lives. And I'd also like to show how these
types, in their excesses, make us into our own worst enemies, bringing pain and suffering into our own lives *unnecessarily* by rubbing other people
the wrong way.
During the last week, Bruce and I have had several brief conversations by e-mail—in the Coach's Office, that is. I remain as committed as ever to our
school tradition that conversations in the Coach's Office are private and confidential. As many of you will remember, times have come up in the past
when I've asked your permission to post excerpts of these private conversations in Classroom Talk, in order to coach off of them. Usually, I've gotten
the okay. If I don't, I don't hold it against you, of course, because having a place for privacy is so important in the context of our school. I am grateful
to Bruce for giving me his permission to pick up with "the jigsaw puzzle" exercise by jamming off of his recent emails to me.
Before we get started, I'd like to point out something that I'd like to have all you students be watching out for as we go along. The mantra we use in
attempting to recognize a person's personality types in this approach is "What is the person doing here?"
And my sense of it, in reviewing these e-mail tapes, is that the person is trying to get me to finish up with the jigsaw puzzle exercise that I had started.
That's simple enough. In a very fundamental way, that's what Bruce seems to me to be doing here. My observations are not infallible, so see what
your own sense of it is, as we go along. But I think this will become more and more obvious and apparent as we continue with the text.
And Bruce, *please feel free* to dialogue with me at any point along the way about this, agree or disagree!—for instance, whether these observations
seem to be "right on" to you, in your own experience of you, of whether they seem to be vague, or even "out in left field!"
Okay, the next question we ought to keep in mind (if what the person is doing is trying to get me to finish up with the jigsaw puzzle exercise that I had
started), is . . . . . *How?* — How is the person doing it? What behaviorisms does he bring into play in attempting to accomplish this? What means
does he use to get what he wants here? How is he going about trying to get me to finish up with the jigsaw puzzle exercise that I had started." When
we look into the "Hows" of it, that is what will show us the several personality types that are involved.
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Wednesday, November 28th.
>John,
>I've read and reread the wheelbook and I can't identify my chief feature and main three types. Doormat, Believer....are definites?? The third---I don't have a clear cut clue: I see Judge, Con Artist
>Anyway, I've been patient...Could you at least give me a preliminary diagnosis of what you guess is my chief feature? and my three principle? I have the foundation to handle it.
>Hopefully,
>Bruce
>I'm really interested to see how these traits become my own worst enemy.
So, what about this? Is there "an edginess" to it for me here? How would you receive this letter if you were me? Try to look at it from my positition,
if you can. Is there a *tone* to it? Do you hear "a certain kind of music" here?
If there's a tone to it, is that tone:
1. tough, pushy?
2. aloof, superior?
3. sarcastic, judging?
4. bitter, rejecting?
5. tired, giving up?
6. speedy, impatient?
7. hurt, treated badly?
8. worried, helping?
Let me share with you my own impressions as I read this letter—right or wrong, yet my impressions. The music of this came across to me as "hurrying
me up," so to speak. "...read and re-read the wheelbook." That sounds like speed to me, right off the bat. It doesn't, in fact, come across to me as
"patient." And I wondered if I could hear some notes of "self-righteous" judging of me in it. And yes, there may be a little bit of "hurt, treated badly"
in it? What do your instincts tell you of this?
Now, be cool bruddah Bruce. I've heard these same sounds of music from many of your brothers and sisters in this gathering before. So it doesn't
make you special, or different. It just makes you out to be . . . human.
Before I go any farther I ought to really cop to something that's important. Bruce is not the villain in this story of our conversation together. I am the
villain. Along the way of contemplating all this, I have uncovered what I think has been *my greatest fault* in coaching this class, possibly the most
important way that I have been getting in my own way with you students, and being my own worst enemy in the efforts I am putting forth around
here, and specifically, getting in my own way in my relationship with Bruce. This is a *big* insight for me, that's come through our relating—thank you,
Bruce. ;-) (Maybe, vis-a-vis the question just raised in Jeff's last posting, knowing this about me, transparently, may help some of you to fore-give me
for the obvious tensions that I've impacted into all of your lives over this *blatant* ego issue of mine . . . Bruce's and all of your lives, except perhaps
Jeff.)
I'll get to this later, but now I'd like to emphasize that there is "nothing wrong with" Bruce's hustling me to hurry up with the things he's wanting me to
coach about. That's normal, natural, a *good student* even, in a hurry to learn. But the thing I'd like for you all to catch on to here is that the troubles
don't come up because we go for the things we are interested in with energy. The troubles come up because of *the ways that we go after* the things
that we like. By that I mean the conditioned personality ways.
To me—bless your heart, bruddah—the way that Bruce is going about his efforts here rub me the wrong way—make me feel pressured. And there is
an *argument* that goes with it—as we shall see—an argument as elaborate as a lawyer's argument, that Bruce has come up with in seeking my
collaboration with him.
Now here is a very interesting point. A secret. What Bruce doesn't know is that I am very eager to collaborate with him in every appropriate way
that I can. I am *already* disposed that way. He doesn't need to manipulate me about it. I am sincerely doing the very best I can.
And he also doesn't know and understand that I am a coach with a carefully thought out *plan* . . . a "lesson plan," if you will. So he tries his best to
persuade me to teach the course *his way*, thinking that his plan is a more reasonable way to go about it than mine is . . . . . from his point of view, of
course. I think I'm hearing a Judge, "reasoning with me," accompanied by an impatient Believer. The music is barely audible so far, but my senses tell
me at this point that that's most of the faint music I'm hearing. And yes, maybe half-a-measure of faint Martyr.
The starting buzzer has rung. I see score on my scoreboard, tension in my space. I realize I've been rubbed the wrong way.
So . . . don't need to make anything out of it. See what the future brings. I responded to Bruce. I felt I had this to say:
>. . . You've stood up very well in class on your own. But you shouldn't have to submit to being treated badly any more, for the sake of getting the answer to the question you seek, "your third type."
>Let me point out (ever the coach) that your email is a good example of the way your personality gets in your way. It's not really in your best interests that I give you that answer now. You think you have the foundation to make the best use of it when you discover it, but you don't. . . . If the foundation is *real* you can't just get it by a mental decisision like that. But you're suffering over this with impatience. And I'll give you the best answer I can, anyway.
>. . . I think it's between the Con Artist and the Judge for your other type.
>You came in sounding like a Judge to me, rearranging. Yet you have persistently shown the attitude that you know more about how to teach my training than I do (Con Artist).
>The story that it *came to you* to share about the angry episode in your office, was "the most intense" sharing you'd made up to then. I pay a lot of attention to the relative intensity of sharings. I thought you must have been really angry there for that nightmare to have happened! That stood out for me. I suspected more and more that the Judge was your other type.
>. . . It seems to me that when you are being an intellectual you are coming from your Student. Students actually make the best grades in school, no doubt because they are perfectionistic and so dependent on being approved of. The Con Artists are really the highbrow intellectuals, but the Students learn the most and get the most out of it.
>If you were a Con Artist, you might have just made up all that Doormat stuff, and slyly presented it as truth, just to see what the coach would make of it (for whatever covert satisfaction or advantage you might get in seeing you could jack me around and fool me.). I don't think so. I don't think that's you. But I'll bet you dollars to donuts that Sally and Suz don't believe that you really have suffered Doormatism throughout your life (that is, you may have come across as a Con Artist to them).
>The way I'd have handled the jigsaw puzzle in class, I wouldn't have given you the answer to your third type, but I'd have dialogued with you (I wished to demonstrate the technique of it). I'd have discussed various considerations with you, and still left a space for you to find the answer on your own. This was what would be best for you, smart guy, if your anxiety about not ever getting that answer from me (i.e. from another person that you are depending on for answers), wasn't getting in your way here, and making you suffer.
>"What if I wanna get out of this place? What if the class folds? What if the coach never gets around to it? I'm depending on that advice! What would I DO if I don't get that answer from somebody else?"
>Whereas, as a conscientious coach, I am attempting to teach you to be *free* of habitual dependence on other people for the answers, unattached to the advice and approval game . . . so you can go it on your own, *free*, with *all the greatness that you've got*.
>. . . It occurred to me that you might have the Judge as your third type, but would find it less conspicious, less obvious, after reading the wheelbook, because the judgments and punishments that you do most frequently are not directed at other people (as with most Judges). So you might read the Judge in the wheelbook and say, "No, that's not me." But *maybe* if you are a Judge, most of the Judge music that comes out of you is directed *inward* at you! I'm not sure if this is so. I'd have liked to dialogue with you to find out methodically. But if it's accurate, with all the perfectionism and desires to please and be accepted of your Believer, your Judge might really, really punish you hard, and potentiate your Doormat, making Doormatism an even tougher habit than it is for other Doormats (like, for instance, me).
>Could you follow that? In other words, if you are a Judge, too, that may account for how very hard you punish yourself, with the already highly self-punishing Doormat around. This potentiation might explain why there is *so much* disparity between your apparent outward potential, and your inner self-limiting evaluation of you. Judges *with-hold* giving approval (lest they lose their rightful status to judge and disapprove). An unconscious habitual pattern like this might mean it was especially difficult for you to *give approval to your own Being*!
>Well, I still leave the answer up to you. See if these ideas help you to home in on the existential truth of it on your own.
>The real answers always lie within, in experiential knowing, and not in the things that I teach. My job is not really to give the answers so much as to coach people to be able to be in a position where they can see the answers on their own.
>It would have been better to have done this in class, from my point of view, so the others could have seen it, too. But what the hell, you've earned it by the rough knocks you've taken on the field. So you have my answers here:
>Believer, Doormat, and Judge.
>Remember, it's just my guess. You have to stalk your own behavior with awareness to know what the real truth is.
>You've done wonders in your class work on the Doormat. I don't hear the music of that in you any more—even during this prototypically anthropological hazing you've been going through. We are just "a tribe of monkees" is what it is. I think work on the Believer is the next best step for you to place a concentrated focus on in your work.
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More of this to come!
Coach
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