Fable

Serpents and Senses: Yoga in the Garden of Eden

Cole Bitting — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:22:06 +0000

Predicament: An Excerpt

“Predicament” is the second chapter in my digital Book - Feeling Stuck? From Stuck? to Move! In 10 words. (The book is free if you sign up for our mailing list.) Below is an excerpt.

One Damn Thing After Another

A high school friend once said, “Life is one damn thing after another.” Neuroscience and contemporary psychology reveal it’s worse than my friend imagined: it’s all damn things all the time. More accurately, experience is the soul of mental life, and predicaments give rise to each moment of experience. “Damn things” is just a colorful term for the run-on stream of predicaments which characterizes our daily life.

When we think of the word “predicament,” we imagine those occasional events which don’t necessarily end well, at least in part because of our actions. If we end up thinking about it frequently, we focus as much on what we did as we do on the distressing nature of the outcome. In fact, we have an easier time accepting the outcome than our role in causing it. Predicaments undoubtedly are “damn things.” It’s just a matter of size.

Most predicaments and their associated experiences happen so quickly, we have no time for conscious awareness. When we are aware, most predicaments are trivial and require little attention after the fact. It’s the bigger ones with awkward outcomes which we remember and think about, so naturally, when we use the word “predicament,” we use it to indicate the predicament which we think about.

Moving Towards Wisdom:
From The Sense Arose The Sense

When we look at how our more casual idea of predicament arises from the more general one, we see some fascinating aspects of human nature. Consider some of the standard dictionary definitions of predicament:

an unpleasantly difficult, perplexing, or dangerous situation.

a class or category of logical or philosophical predication.

Archaic. a particular state, condition or situation.

Archaic Philosophy. (in Aristotelian logic) each of ten “categories,” often listed as: substance or being, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, having or possession, action, and passion.

To paraphrase/interpret predicament’s derivation (from Latin): From the sense arose the sense. From the “categories” arose the “state of being.” From the circumstance, we become. In other words, predicaments evoke behavior. The “archaic” third definition is the one closest to my use, and describe a predicament’s central role in human experience.

The first definition is more valuable because it evokes many of the sentiments associated with feeling Stuck? (For more details, see my post on Stuck?)

A predicament isn’t just “difficult, perplexing, or dangerous," it’s unpleasantly “difficult, perplexing, or dangerous.” Why “unpleasantly?” Isn’t it enough for a predicament to simply be “difficult, perplexing, or dangerous?” What does “unpleasantly” signify?

From the sense arose the sense. From “difficult, perplexing, or dangerous” arose something unpleasant. A dictionary defines unpleasant as: “causing discomfort, unhappiness, or revulsion.” Discomfort is a physical sensation. Revulsion is the mental analog to disgust, a physical sensation. Unhappiness strongly suggests sadness, another physical sensation. Unpleasant is a general categorization of some of the physical sensations caused by the “difficult, perplexing, or dangerous” qualities of a predicament.

For example, hold your breathe while you read this paragraph. You chest constricts. Your heart pounds. You get dizzy. Your vision blurs. The growing lack of oxygen is a predicament. Your body takes the lack of oxygen as “difficult, perplexing, or dangerous.” It evokes increasingly obvious physical responses. It causes unpleasantness. Soon, you will breathe. Or you will pass out, then breathe. From the sense [of diminishing oxygen] arose the constricting chest, pounding heart, dizziness, blurry vision, gasping for air, passing out.

From the sense arose the sense. From the circumstances arose embodied sensibilities.

Basic predicaments give rise to basic, sensible behaviors. What arises from our sense of our most troublesome predicaments? What happens if we manage to encounter and resolve them? What happens if we shift from Stuck? to Move! From the sense arose the sense sounds like movement towards wisdom. And as we all know, gaining wisdom is unpleasant and often dangerous, arising as it does, from life’s most “unpleasantly difficult, perplexing, or dangerous” predicaments.

The Serpent and the Archetypal Predicament

If you show a snake to an infant who has never seen a snake before, he will recoil in fear. Humans instinctively fear snakes (and spiders, too). How do some people get to the point where they have large, scaly pythons as pets, or care for many strange, potentially deadly snakes at the zoo? How do people learn to hunt rattlesnakes and then dare to serve them for dinner? (Rattlesnake, in my opinion, is tasty.)

These people spend time with snakes. They spend time reading about and thinking about snakes. They gain a sense of snakes and from this sense arises a very different sense of what to do with them.

Because of our innate fear of snakes, snakes are a significant symbol in mythology. Consider the garden of Eden. Eve has quite a predicament, perhaps the most significant predicament of all time. The serpent is not Eve’s predicament. The apple is.

If someone handed you the apple from the tree of good and evil, an apple God forbade you from eating, you’d have quite a predicament. The apple is the archetypal predicament. The serpent promises you the apple is the gateway to wisdom, and by eating it, you would become like God. What would you do?

Eve ate. God cursed. God’s first act, after creation, was damnation! Talk about one damn thing after another. The serpent in Eden articulates the possibility of wisdom perhaps at the cost of damnation. In fact, here it seems damnation is the first necessary step to gain wisdom’s redemption.

Encourage. Encounter. Shift.

In the Hindu tradition, Kundalini is the embodiment of coiled energy and is seen as either a goddess or as a sleeping serpent. Sometimes, Kundalini is called “serpent power.” It lives at the root of our spine, and mingled with earth, gives rise to the human form.

Kundalini is constrained in human form by three knots which roughly align with our three archetypal wounds - failure (I am not able), condemnation (I am not worthy), and confusion (I don’t understand) - wounds caused by our predicaments.

Kundalini, as a serpent uncoiling up our spine, confronts each knot in turn, as it seeks to unbind itself from the human form. This concept is psychologically significant. It describes the rudimentary process of Stuck? - Encourage − Encounter - Move!

Each encounter with the knot, however unsought or unprepared for, is an encounter with the wounds that are the soul of every unresolved predicament and the heart of personal suffering. If unprepared for, Kundalini can be a destructive force and can transform the knots into significant trauma. If understood, prepared for and anticipated, Kundalini unbinds these knots, allowing us to unearth our divine wisdom (sometimes labeled self-knowledge).

Yoga, in one sense, is the preparation for these encounters. Encourage aptly describes the process of preparing for an Encounter. Encourage has many forms.

Witness. Damnation. Transformation.

From the sense arose the sense almost sounds like a snake rising from its coils to seek insight from the mundane. Kundalini rising is the promise of more enlightened ways of sensing. Kundalini, the serpent in Eden, and mythical snakes in general seem to gain full stature as they witness someone encountering a life-altering, potentially horrifying predicament. They gain fresh insight, in the form of from the sense arose the sense, when they witness archetypal moments of human nature and transformation. They learn so they may serve better.

The serpents of myth arise as witnesses, as a warnings of human imperfection. They guard temples and other places of transformation, granting permission and access only to those who are properly prepared. A serpent king once guarded Buddha, after all.

As guardians, they threaten the damnation of failed transformation. If a snake stares you in the eye, you are paralyzed by vexation. If a snake poisons you, you despise your polluted body. We must risk being paralyzed and poisoned to discover wisdom. Doesn’t paralyzed and poisoned sound like an extreme version of Stuck? And isn’t new perspective and wisdom part of shifting to Move!?

Coldplay's Fix You: And I What?

Cole Bitting — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:47:30 +0000

Fable2

I’ve been writing about behavior again. In this case, “behavior” is one of the words in my eBook - Feeling Stuck? From Stuck? to Move! In 10 words - and based on my work at EncourageEncounter. (The book is free if you sign up for our mailing list.) I’m at the point where I want to write about “copula,” one of my favorite words, and a compelling, very unique word for writing about the nature of human experience.

I also listen to music as I write. Coldplay’s song Fix You came on as I was working through the below text. It’s a song about being Stuck? It’s a song about the power of insight, and it’s ability to get us to Move!

The character in the song is Stuck? It’s the narrator who discovers great insight. What happen to the two? The whole drama centers around the question: “And I what?” It’s the question which matters, rather than the compulsive, needy urge urge to “fix you.”

This question ties copula to Coldplay. First lets start with copula.

In The Beginning: Copula

One of the most essential sentences ever conceived is “I am.” It’s the recognition of the self. One of the first things which happens when we talk out loud about our horrible predicaments is that we hear about “I” and the things which happened. We hear perspective on the events involving the self.

If we say, “My asshole boss yelled at me during the meeting,” we hear, “I was yelled at by my asshole boss.” After we hear or state “I am…” (or “I was…”), we want to know: “What is it that I am?” or perhaps “And I what? I did what?”

There is the what which I am. There is both the separation of what from I and the unification of what and I. However much we incorporate what into I, the what is its own, separate thing. The verb to be, in this case, sits in the middle. I and what must be separate for us to find perspective. Wholeness is the absence of the thing in the between what and I.

The name for this thing in between is “copula” - a fun word open to many innuendos. Crudely put, a copula f&^ks up wholeness, a feeling most people yearn for. Pieces are united, but wholeness is not union. When we don’t feel whole, when we feel somehow unable, unworthy or confused, we are “copula”-ed.

What we yearn to do is to “un-copula” ourselves. We want to fix ourselves somehow. If we project this urge, we want to fix you. The interplay created by “copula” suggests a comic duo: f&^k and fix.

Fix Me. No, no, fix you!

Fix You, by Coldplay, opens with the gentle sway of church organs. This song is undoubtedly spiritual, like a hymn. It’s in praise of what? What does it celebrate?

There are four characters in Coldplay’s Fix You, “you,” “it,” “lights” and “I.” "You" failed. You didn’t get what you need. You can’t sleep. A devastating loss crushed your heart. You suffer from “it.”

You are Stuck? because of “it.” “I” let you know “Lights” will guide you home and light your bones. Sounds like the source of the needed healing.

If this was what the song was about, it would be a sappy, anthem-like get-well card. It would be great music, not a great song. But this song isn’t about fixing you. It’s a song about “I.”

“I” what? “I” want to fix “you.” F&^k the lights. I will “fix you?!?”

Do you see the copula now? During the song, the answer to “I what?” starts with “fix you.” The answer changes though. This change creates a giant moment of celebration (because Fix You is hymn after all).

What of the fixing you which “I” want to do? How needy, crass, co-dependent does that sound? If you suffer from “it,” I suffer from it too. I cannot manage my empathy for your suffering. I am in pain and must control and compel you healing regardless of the “lights.” I don’t trust the lights.

“I” what? I suffer and want to fix you.

Somehow, because the “lights” are involved, they help me see before I can make matters worse. In fact, the lights show me your bones, as if I have x-ray vision which enables me to recognize your wounds. I gain the light’s illuminated insight. “You,” on the other hand, suffer too much to see them at all.

And I What…?

Given the presence of lights, I what? What is it I do to try to fix you? I counsel you to “let it go.” I promise a reward: “if you never try, you never know just what your worth.” The lights illuminate your problem so that I might give valuable counsel.

And “I” what? What is it I do with this counsel? I let it go: specifically, I let your suffering go. I am shocked by the end of my suffering. I am in awe (as I must be because this song is a hymn). But do I have perspective yet?

Right after I give my valuable counsel, the song celebrates “I“‘s transformation and changes into a soaring anthem. The guitars strum. The drums bang. In the video, lights explode for concert’s giant audience (the hymn’s congregation). The chorus sings as if the heavens open. The change in the song is sudden, as if to signify the revelation promised to us with the first opening chord of the church organ.

Have I “fixed you?” It that what’s revealed? What happens to “you?” “You” what? You are still crying. You become what? You do what? You lost something you cannot replace and cannot let it go. You still suffer, which sucks.

“And I….” The song gets stuck when I sing “And I….” And I what? I do what? The song begs these questions. They are the center if its drama. “And I….” I sing with passion, but I am still searching for perspective. “And I….”

And I find the answer. “I” what? I Move!: I promise to learn from your mistakes; I learn to let it go; and I remember what I’m worth. I find new capacity, self-worth and insight. “Lights” illuminate, and I transform.

At the end, the song calms down with the quality of genuine resolution. Highly personal, intimate piano replaces the lofty church organ which opened the song, as if to prove “I” accept and understand the light’s divine insight.

With fresh perspective, “I” sing a sincere promise, rather than needy compulsion, to “fix you.” Because I can let go of “I“‘s suffering, I can act with compassion. Our spirit heard the chorus’s revelation, our heart hears “I“‘s commitment to service.

Failed Fixing

The song which immediately followed on my iPod was the tragic version of Fix You: Drive By Truckers played Wednesday. Doesn’t the name Drive By Truckers sound intimately related to getting “copula”-ed, as if it were a nature part of life?

Stuck?

Cole Bitting — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:04:04 +0000

Prolog: Putting the Fresh in Fresh Start

Feeling Stuck? It’s a common question and theme on goodfables.com. My posting has been so dormant lately, it would be fair to wonder if I was projecting every time I asked, “Feeling Stuck?” Had I gone stale somehow?

I have reworked and extended much of my material for the benefit of EncourageEncounter, the company Connie and I created to work with people who feel Stuck? and coach professionals who support people who feel Stuck? It’s a new, more vital purpose for familiar ideas. It’s a fresh start.

The concept of Stuck? begins so much of this work. It’s the uncomfortable starting point which can begin the discovery of personal wisdom. Below is a fresh take on a familiar idea. This post is an excerpt from the first chapter of my eBook, Feeling Stuck? From Stuck? to Move! in 10 Words (click on the link for a free copy).

What is Stuck?

We are stuck when we repeat the same (or a similar) unproductive behavior to the same (or a similar) predicament: We are stuck when we continually refuse to do the important tasks on our ToDo list, when we refuse to seek help for our anxieties, when we repeatedly avow faith in damaging, self-limiting beliefs…

We are stuck when we repeat the same unproductive behavior to the same predicament: Imagine an 18-month child looking at a pile of M&Ms. You ask him to pick up one M&M. Does he pick up one or many?

He picks up many. You empty his hands before he stuffs his drooling face. Again, you ask him to pick up one M&M. He picks up many.

The infant is stuck. You won’t let him eat M&Ms if he picks up more than one. How do you think he feels?

What does he need to do to get unstuck? He needs to learn about the concept of “one.”

Once he learns the behavior of “one,” he can crunch on candy. He learned a more productive behavior and can Move! (Read: eat chocolate!)

We have known the behavior “one” almost all our lives (although I still struggle when I see chocolate chip cookies). If we hold up one finger when someone asks, we behave “one” automatically, intuitively. Fairly said, we too are stuck, but in this case with the most productive “one” behavior available.

The Necessity of Stuck?

Stuck? is a very vital human quality. It’s the core our all our learned behaviors. It’s the means to adopt our innate instincts and knowledges to the world we live in.

Stuck? creates the nurture to match our nature. Don’t condemn stuck, even if at times, it feels tormenting.

We want the best of our “nurture” behaviors to be as intuitive as our instinctive behaviors are automatic. We also want to have to learn new behaviors when the ones we rely on become unproductive.

Indeed, with each story of a word (each chapter of this book), I hope to unstick your learned behavior associated with the word, cause a shift which bring in a deeper understanding of our human nature, and then help you practice the new behavior so the richer meaning of the word becomes, one again, stuck.

As we practice this process of reexamining what we already know, I hope we learn what most authors know: Words, like ideas, beliefs and truths, don’t have fixed meanings, but are malleable in the hands of craftsmen. So are the experiences of our lives.

Stuck? gives us so much of our nurture - the accumulated lessons of our lives - the sense of efficient action, calm vitality, and ready understanding. But what of the Stuck? which causes distress? What of our nurture which isn’t so nurturing?

Introducing EncourageEncounter - Get On With Living

Cole Bitting — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:33:03 +0000

Between Stuck? and Move! is EncourageEncounter

Connie Jones and I want to introduce our company - EncourageEncounter. You can get an early look at a chunk of my latest writing at its website. Here’s a link to an example - Feeling Stuck? You have skills. It’s also an example of a short piece, written for EncourageEncounter, which I hope to elaborate on, and post as fresh content here.

Connie and I have spent much of our professional time helping people in their tough moments and teaching them how use and improve their innate skills to resolve matters, get unstuck, and Move! We have built our company around our experience and practice helping others shift from Stuck? to Move!

How does this process work? How do we recover our lost mobility? How do we regain a sense of productivity, vitality and wholeness?

The process of creating resolution and provoking movement requires we encounter our challenging predicaments and the wounds they touch. We fear these encounters. We may lack skills, energy or insight needed to face the distress. Our fears are appropriate if an encounter is likely to make our wounds worse.

To get to the moment when we are willing to encounter our challenging predicaments, we might need to enhance our innate skills, practice them so we gain confidence and find a way to remain centered and engaged. In so doing, we gather courage. We also can seek the support and guidance of others. Once encouraged, we can face our challenges.

In other, better words, between Stuck? and Move! is EncourageEncounter.

"Enlightening, spiritual, and inspirational"

“I believe in, and have personally experienced the good that comes from this work. EncourageEncounter work is enlightening, spiritual, and inspirational.”

Jennifer Skiff, Best-selling Author of God Stories: Inspiring Encounters with the Divine

Get On With Living

Stuck? destroys productivity, corrupts vitality and makes us feel clueless. EncourageEncounter has decoded our innate resilience and created a program to enhance our natural talent to shift from Stuck? To Move!

Move! is three short steps from Stuck? We can learn about, practice and give conscious direction to each step. We can shift from Stuck? to Move! and get on with living.

Stuck? The One Word Solution!

Cole Bitting — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:04:16 +0000

Stuck In A Moment We Wish Would End

If you ask my business partner, Connie, what she does, she would say, “I help people get unstuck.” She’s a therapist who works with clients with all sorts of challenges. For her, her answer is both complete and appropriate.

What is being stuck? We all know, yet the answer is illusive. It can be an unfinished item on a ToDo list, a postponed decision for no apparent reason, an inappropriate reaction to a momentary thought, or the abrupt interruption of feelings of incompetence, unworthiness or foolishness. It often is far worse.

The assault of these moments can stop us in our tracks. However happy we are or seek to be, their distress pollutes the atmosphere of our days. And the days with the orange air-quality warnings? We feel edgy, vigilant, and aggravated, polluted rather than pristine, confined. Stuck can be such a bad mood.

Inside each of these moments is a recurring, usually painful experience which does not change. Often, we cannot identify what it may be. We hide from the moments we wish would end.

Getting unstuck is a variation on the age-old idea that we use experience to modify experience. As we practice getting unstuck, our on-going experience is less polluted. Peak moments produce headier flow. More mundane moments sparkle and put energy in our step. Unstuck clears the air.

Grasp Experience

Connie helps clients get unstuck. She encourages clients, helps them encounter their particular troubling experience, and somehow, they become unstuck.

I’m the one who explains the particulars. So you might then ask me, “How does a client get unstuck? How do I get unstuck?”

I’d love to ask this question to therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual guides, and so on. It’s like asking a centipede to explain how it walks. Connie and I speculated the typical answer would be five minutes long. She admitted it would take her 10 minutes.

“How do you get unstuck?” I’m asking you. How long is your answer?

After a lengthy discussion, Connie and I can answer the question with one word.

Stuck? Move!

Move? Before we can change an old experience, we must grasp it as if it were a malleable thing. And when we hold experience, what is it we do to it? We descend into it, we ascend out of it, we transcend it. We move.

Stuck? Move!

Bruce Lee taught me how.

What Would Bruce Lee Do?

Please do not be concerned with soft versus firm, kicking versus striking, grappling versus hitting and kicking, long-range fighting versus in-fighting. There is no such thing as “this” is better than “that”. Should there be one thing we must guard against, let it be partiality that robs us of our pristine wholeness and make us lose unity in the midst of duality.

- Bruce Lee

If Bruce Lee was stuck, what would he do?

He would guard against partiality. He says so in the above quote. He would remain, or at least become, impartial. In other words, he would be without prejudice or favor. He would not feel attracted or repulsed.

What could that possibly mean? If we are somehow impartial, do we automatically become unstuck and take effective action to resolve distress? What is partial, anyway?

We are partial in each moment we behave: We favor one action over all others. In a fight, we kick or strike, grapple or hit, attack or defend. Each moment we behave is a moment of experience.

As he contemplates partiality, Bruce Lee details a long list of possible behaviors. For him, impartiality is not an effort to judge all the possible fighting behaviors as worthy. He does not want to lose ‘fighting’ for his concern with ‘kicking,’ ‘striking,’ etc.

For Bruce Lee, impartiality is to step back from the specifics of a particular and see the nature of the whole. Stepping back, his focus would be on the experience of fighting, not on the individual kicks and punches.

Stepping back, he experiences his experience. (See: How More Experience Creates Better Experience)

What Is Experience Of Experience?

Predicaments cause behavior, and feelings about behavior.

See: If Experience Is Who We Are, How Do We Change Experience

Predicaments cause behavior. For example, they cause anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and joy. Emotions are behavior (at least in a biological context).

When we reflect on a behavior-causing predicament, we experience our experience. We feel. For example, we feel mad, revulsion, worry, sorrow, amazement and pleasure.

We feel emotion. We experience (feel) our experience (emotion).

We can experience our experience of experience. We know we feel emotion: We know the pleasure of joy. Of course, we can know emotions. Knowing is a feeling, too.

The feeling of emotion is a very sensory, almost sensual experience. And what is it when we know, we know, we know … we know we feel emotions? It’s intuition. It’s unconscious understanding without concern. It’s the golf swing when you aren’t worried about your golf swing. It’s a very contextual experience, the sense of mastery found in philosophy and wisdom.

How do we get from emotion to mastery? We move.

We can get stuck with each step. Zen monks even use koans to provoke stuckness. Sadists!

Step Back And Stop Beating Me

I attack you. You kick me. I give up. You feel triumph. You are proud of your kicking ability. You may even look forward to your next fight.

What happens when you step back from beating me up, and look at the general experience of fighting? What happens when you step back from a unique moment and look at experience in general?

When we step back, we move outside the range or limit of a specific experience and create a new one. We grasp specifics and context so we might create a broader perspective - and another thing to grasp.

We don’t kick, we fight. We don’t fight, we live. Fairly said, we transcend. The better we grasp, the farther we might transcend.

What are words we might use when we describe our experience of experience?

We descend into an experience. We ascend out of an experience. We transcend when we move across the boundaries of many individual moments of specific experience, as if to summarize or understand their collective meaning.

Bruce Lee would move from the experience of kicking, to striking, to grappling. He would move from soft to firm. He would move from defending to attacking. He would summarize his deep intution of these experiences as ‘fighting,’ or more generally, as the personal martial arts philosophy he dubbed Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist).

Stuck? Move!

Is it any wonder we use the word “flow” to describe peak experiences? Doesn’t flow somehow express intuition?

Stuck? Move! “But I Can’t”

Why might Bruce Lee attack? Take his food and learn for yourself.

What if a thief tried to steal our food? What if our only recourse is to attack?

Imagine we attack the thief, and he beats us senseless. We become partial against attacking, unwilling to suffer another beating. We are so concerned, we vow to never attack again.

We refuse to attack when it’s our only recourse. Doesn’t that sound like being stuck?

Stuck? Move! “But I can’t.”

What are we unable to do here? We cannot step back. What is it we fail to experience?

Perception is a sensory response to an object outside our body. Perspective is a sensory response to a mental object within our minds. Perspective objectifies experience just as writing objectifies thought. It creates a thing of it, as in:

The thing. With the dude. My god!

We do things to this thing. We acknowledge it. We study it. We are in awe of it. We are disgusted by it. We tell someone about it. We grasp it. We move around it. When we cannot step back, we cannot do these things.

Perception/perspective is half what happens when we hold an experience in our mind. The other half is a contextual response, just as words contextualize thought. (A more precise description: If perspective is a sensory response, understanding is a contextual response. Understanding, in this context, is much more about the whole of our understanding, most of which is outside the scope of conscious thought.)

We might find we have little context. We might find we have little sensation. We might find the experience hard to grasp, as if we cannot hold a physical object (perspective). We might find the experience hard to grasp as if we cannot understand a concept (context).

Without either perspective or context, we struggle to grasp it. We have limited means to descend, ascend, transcend. We cannot move.

We move when we grasp. We grasp when we move. Two halves of the same coin.

Scend: In Motion
Found: In Place

The root ‘-scend’ means ‘to climb.’ ‘Descend,’ ‘ascend’ and ‘transcend’ describe motion relative to something significant, in this case, the experience at hand (or perhaps in hand). Our grasp enables us to climb into, out of, and across an experience.

The word ‘scend’ means the push or surge created by a wave. If the root ‘-scend’ is what we do around an experience, then the word ‘scend’ describes the sensations of movement within.

When we are outside experience, the experience itself is the significant thing we move around. When we are within experience, what is it we move around? What is the counterpart to ‘scend’?

‘Found.’ Past tense of ‘to find,’ to take hold of one specific thing (often looked for) out of an environment composed of many things. A foundry fixes metal into a specific shape, giving purpose to unformed metal.

When we respond to a predicament, we step into an experience. Our partial behavior fixes a moment of living into a specific experience. Our metal because a tool.

On the one hand, foundation; on the other, foundering. To founder a ship is to fill it with water and sink it. ‘To founder’ also describes the experience (and its negative affect) after the figurative ship sank.

If ‘to scend’ is motion around a foundation, then ‘to founder’ is ‘to scend’ without a foundation. For example, after the ship sank, I foundered in the waves.

Where do we founder? Within the experience. We lack the foundation to push ourselves outside it. To move requires building a foundation. How? Encourage and encounter, two processes which fairly describe the techniques Connie uses and I explain. (See: If Stress Is Fear, Where Do We Find Courage?)

The Bind Of The Narrow Truth

We encounter a thief stealing our food. Our only recourse is to attack. To attack, we invoke past experiences of attacking. How else might we attack?

We are left, in that moment, with our past experiences. If we find we were always beaten senselessly (however real or remembered), what will we do?

The direct path to grasping experience begins with recall. If in each recall, our behavior is the same and the outcome unchanged, the recurring experience proves itself ‘the truth.’ Because we always were beaten, we assume we always will be beaten.

If Bruce Lee said, “Sometimes you are triumphant when you attack,” you would respond with your narrow truth. “No. I always get beaten.”

Only as we grasp this experience can we (in-) validate the narrow truth of this particular moment against a broader aspiration and a larger context. Some experiences limit the ability to grasp them. Maybe the experience is too painful. Maybe the threat of pain from an invalidated truth is too frightening.

We retreat from the pain of our senseless beating rather than examine our attack of the food thief. We cannot see our attack as part of fighting or even as an extension of our life philosophy.

Our narrow truth makes no sense because it lacks context. Truths can be both true and senseless.

A point to reflect on: When we cannot see past an experience, the narrow truth, proven by the experience, is the truth. Have you even wondered why arguments about “The Truth” get nasty and violent? Fights about “The Truth” are powerful examples of being stuck!

We can use the narrow truth to deny broader ones. We make statements such as:

It’s reality that’s crazy, not us. Reality is the way it is and there is nothing we can do about it.

Many of our limiting beliefs are the consequence of being stuck with narrow truths. We are partial in a way which doesn’t allow impartiality. Our partiality defines our reality, and to Bruce Lee at least, it robs us of our pristine wholeness.

It’s The Truth Because We Believe?
We Believe Because It’s True?

Much of psychology would claim: We are stuck because we believe we cannot move. Our belief creates this truth.

Given this claim, we might conclude: Change the belief, get unstuck. Effective therapy, therefore, guides this cognitive operation.

We cannot change these beliefs as if we are changing our mind. Truths are experiences. Beliefs are consequences.

We believe we are stuck, because we do not move.

Change a belief? Or get moving? Which seems the more natural response of our body?

Why the body? The body is center stage for experience.

If we focus on treating beliefs, it’s like taking cold medicine to cure a cold. Cold medicine only masks the symptoms until our body rids it’s of the virus.

We need not operate on a belief as if it were malignant. We need to provoke movement. We need to grasp an experience.

Grasping? Moving? These are innate skills, part of our biology. If you want to get better, practice (the sensory work) and learn (the context work). Connie guides practice. I explain experience.

One Too Many Thoughts

I decided against the final embellishment. Grasp. Move. Groove.

Stuck? Groove!

And in truth, don’t we all groove to our own beat? That sounds like a life worth living.

References:

If Stress Is Fear, Where Do We Find Courage?
If Experience Is Who We Are, How Do We Change Experience
How More Experience Creates Better Experience

Un-Copula Yourself: What We Yearn For

Cole Bitting — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:00:44 +0000

Master Bruce Lee Says…

Please do not be concerned with soft versus firm, kicking versus striking, grappling versus hitting and kicking, long-range fighting versus in-fighting. There is no such thing as “this” is better than “that”. Should there be one thing we must guard against, let it be partiality that robs us of our pristine wholeness and make us lose unity in the midst of duality.

- Bruce Lee

My partner in our soon-to-be announced company gave me a Zen Koan. She didn’t know she did. She has mad skills!

I’ve spent at least a week of hard work on it. I researched the challenge. I reflected on it. I am stuck.

My partner one of the best in the country helping someone get unstuck. She charges wild rates and works with crazy famous people.

She is a ‘stuckness’ master. I just never thought her mastery extended to creating ‘stuckness.’ I think she stored up all the ‘stuckness’ she pulled out of her clients and transferred it to me.

What did she do?

Writing Out Loud

Our business is built around the grounded idea that we use experience to modify experience. This idea is both as old as time and the center of so much contemporary neuroscience and psychology. There is a sophistication to this practice, which is found in every mystic tradition and extends all the way to how specialized therapists treat PTSD.

This grounded, yet sophisticated, approach is valuable when deal with tormenting memories. It is extremely potent when used for routine distress. It is like getting an hour of massage because your foot feels a little tired. Not only does the foot feel better, but everything seems to tingle afterwords.

My partner and I are experts at stuck and getting unstuck. Right now, I’m trying out every tool in my tool box. Writing out loud is one of them - a desperate one. It’s why I posted this post.

What did she do?

Downside Torment,
Eliminate Personal Growth

In a couple of my previous posts - If Experience Is Who We Are, How Do We Change Experience and How More Experience Creates Better Experience - I downsized the concept of “torment.” Sure, if we feel torment, we want relief. But really, we want relief from all the minor and no-so-minor hassles as well. “Torment” is, at best, illustrative, but at worse, it is both melodramatic and misleading. Consider the way I use it:

Some memories enrich our life experience. Some torment us. Personal growth calms the distress and mines past hardship for wisdom and insight.

“Torment” is attention grabbing, but distracting. To really catch the insight of age-old tradition and contemporary science, we focus on the small doses of momentary distress, not stressors so big they cause “torment.”

My partner, bless her soul but damn the predicament she caused, pointed out “Personal Growth” is a more sloppy a term as “torment.” We don’t personally grow after all.

What is “Personal Growth?” As an outcome, “Personal Growth” is meaningless.

Her questions, “What is it we mean when we say ‘personal growth?’ What is a simple, understandable term for ‘personal growth?’ What is it that happens when we help a client get unstuck?”

She doesn’t worry too much about the answers. She helps clients do it, whatever it is. I am the one who needs the answer.

Let’s consider a sequence of synonyms:

Succeed, prosper, thrive, flourish.

Is this what we did to get unstuck? Is this the benefit when we are unstuck? “Thrive” and “flourish” are words which best describe plants and gardens and suggest both a peak and an inevitable decline. Fall and then winter follow summer after all.

How about these sequences of synonyms:

Adapt, adjust, accommodate, conform, reconcile.
Improve, recover, recuperate, convalesce, gain.
Join, conjoin, combine, unite, connect, link, associate, relate.

Nothing here for me. I’m stuck.

It All: What We Want
and
Want To Be Rid Of

“Personal Growth” is a dysfunctional concept: we might grow as a person, but do we personally grow? We don’t grow as plants might, with inevitable over-growing and dormancy. What is it when we feel when we have somehow “personally grown?”

If we seek “Personal Growth,” what does that mean exactly?

My iPod tried to help. It has mystical powers.

It reminded me of an awesome song - Afterall by William Fitzsimmons. Download it, but know I enjoy the melodrama. Remember the unasked question: after all what? Afterall evokes, builds up, and celebrates a passionate sense of yearning. Yearning for what?

Lets imagine we are separated from it all. No ToDo list, bills, or car trouble, no chronic pain, heart-ache, disgruntled boss, distracted spouse, or crazy kids, no worries about what someone said, meant, did, or seemed to threaten to do, no disillusionment, cynicism, world-weariness, or wonder what it all is about. How do we feel?

Personally, I love Bruce Lee’s term: Pristine Wholeness. To which partiality, the breaking of things into judged parts, is a devastating threat.

Pristine Wholeness is 98% mystical and 2% grounded. Bruce Lee said it so that counts for something. There is something which connects mastery - Bruce Lee was an exemplary master - and pristine wholeness.

Mastery bridges mystical to practical. My partner has this type of mastery. It’s why she doesn’t worry how to describe what her clients do. “They get unstuck,” is good enough for her - because it is a complete, simple answer.

“Get unstuck” is a mystical process for most of us. What is the practical thing we do to develop or own mastery and our own practical competence?

Bruce Lee understood something about the practicality of Pristine Wholeness. I cannot find practical words to describe what he understood. I’m stuck.

iPods Gone Wild: Into The Mystic

I believe our most primal, necessary behaviors are reflected in everyday simple language. Nothing about Pristine Wholeness is simple or everyday. Where are those words?

My iPod offered more help. Michael Snipe of R.E.M sang:

I come to you, defenses down, with the trust of a child

- Peter Gabriel, Red Rain (Snipe’s version is haunting)

This was important if for no other reason than my partner has, in a way, worked with Peter Gabriel. She has this thing with crazy famous people, after all.

Maybe we come to pristine wholeness “defenses down, with the trust of a child.” Maybe pristine wholeness allows us world-weary adults to drop our defenses and to again feel acceptance and surrender. How else might we get close to Bruce Lee’s pristine wholeness?

My iPod helped again. Like Bruce Lee, and my partner, my iPod is a master. It reaches into the mystic and creates something practical and useful, specifically context and subtext. It amazes me how music contextualizes life experience. It’s why movie soundtracks are so important.

My iPod played What Light by Wilco. In this song, Light is Jeff Tweedy’s analog to Pristine Wholeness.

I could write 3,000 words about the brilliance of Jeff Tweedy without taking a breath. At the end of the song, he doesn’t ask the inevitable question, “What light?” He knows of the light and there is none. To him, and indeed many, Pristine Wholeness is nothing.

Being all reflecting and mystical got me nowhere. I’m stuck afterall.

I’m Copula-ed

What about a hard-core analytical approach?

It’s amazing how grammar describes the most fundamental qualities of humanity. Ready for a second, brief grammar lesson?

Consider the sentence: I am. This sentence implies the question: what is it that I am?

There is the what which I am. There is both seperateness of what from I and unification of what and I.

However much we incorporate what into I am, the what is still a part which describes something we are partial to. For Bruce Lee, partiality destroys his pristine wholeness.

Wholeness is the absence of the thing in the between what and I.

The name for this thing in between is “copula” - a fun word open to many innuendos (that seventeen people besides me would be interested in).

Pieces are united, but wholeness is not union. Bruce Lee’s pristine wholeness is devoid of copulas although we must use copulas to describe either the mystical or practical aspects of pristine wholeness.

More to the point, we want a life without being “copula-ed.” That sounds like the most practical thing I have said this whole ramble.

My partner didn’t make me stuck. She “copula-ed” me. Sounds about right.

What we yearn to do is to “un-copula” ourselves. Maybe “dis-copula” is a better word. This description is practical, but very obtuse.

Would Bruce Lee ever let himself be “copula-ed?”

Monks: Master “Un-Copula-ers”

I will finish with another mystical quote from verse. It’s from the famous Ten Ox-Herding Pictures. The qualities of this line describe the concept of “Personal Growth” far better than the words “personal” and “growth.”

He causes withered trees to bloom.

The monk in the verse is a master “un-copula-er.” My partner is such a master!

Maybe master monks are not only celibate, but they can bring celibacy to others. We experience, for a moment, the graceful trust of a child. We feel pristine and are whole. Many of my partner’s clients would say they feel this way after a session or two.

What do we do with our celibacy?

We go out into the world, get accosted by some random predicament and f* it all up again. This is the it all we want and want relief from afterall.

One last thought: These days, what monk would enter a marketplace without an iPod?

One more last thought: It’s not “Personal Growth” we are after. Rather, it’s as Bruce Lee describes: We want to feel pure and be whole. The words feel and be are a copulas. The un-copula-ed version is pure and whole. It is what we yearn for.

Yet another last thought: What is it we do to get from distressed to feeling pure and being whole? And where is the neuroscience and biology in all this? If “Personal Growth” refers to a process, it is this process. What is a practical description of this basic process?

I’m still stuck.

How More Experience Creates Better Experience

Cole Bitting — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:18:28 +0000

Is A Never-Ending Predicament Torment Or Bliss?

Some memories enrich our life experience. Some torment us. Personal growth calms the distress and mines past hardship for wisdom and insight.

I’ve made a lot out of torment so far, perhaps because we often feel like life is one damn thing after another. Reality is actually better than that: It’s all damn things all the time; it’s just and issue of size.

Life crises, the kind which cause relentless torment, are a very small class of predicaments. Most are so incidental, we never notice. When we downsize torments, we get predicaments.

Predicaments cause experience. We have the ability to create and manipulate them. In other words, we can have specific experiences on purpose. We do this often..

How often do we say, “I can do this!”

When someone is sad, don’t we try to remind them of happier times?

We create predicaments which evoke uplifting feelings. These aren’t just memories, but rather, efforts to encourage someone. Like every part of personal growth, we do it all naturally to some extent.

So why torment?

I use “torment,” to focus on how the distress of harsh experiences scare us and how sometimes we need to find our courage. Without “torment,” the idea of finding courage is silly and naive.

Courage, like distress, is a specific set of feelings. If minor predicaments cause minor distress, then we use a minor amount of courage to resolve them.

To “find courage,” we create predicaments. We can go farther and use this skill to modify distress experience with new, purposefully create ones.

When we match courage to distress - however minor both feelings - our experience becomes less about the subjective version of our weird or distressing predicaments. It becomes more about the natural version of experience itself.

Experiencing our own experience creates intimate moments of understanding and resolution. In other words, more experience creates better experience.

What if we experience a predicament which never changes? It could sound like unending torment, but it is actually more like meditation (or bliss)…

Predicaments, Predicates and Grammar

We use language to tell stories about our predicaments. These stories reflect our personal version of experience.

A simple sentence, the shortest possible story, has two parts - subject and predicate. A predicate describes what the subject is doing. For example, in the sentence I flee the snake, “I” is the subject and “flee the snake” is the predicate.

For language geeks, predicate is derived from Latin and means thing said of a subject. It describes what the subject does. We predicate our actions on the predicaments we encounter: What we do is based on what’s going on.

In other words, a simple sentence can be broken into a different set of two parts - the predicament and its consequence. “The snake” is the predicament and its consequence is “I flee.”

What about the simpler sentence I flee? Where is the predicament? It is implied. What about the sentence I cower? Don’t you want to know what exactly causes me to cower? You want to know what the predicament is!

Predicaments cause. We predicate. Predicaments cause experience. What happens when we predicate?

The predicate is the story of our actions, feelings, emotions. It describes what we did. I fled the snake because it scared me.

Why do we care more about the stories than the experience itself? Stories are an important tool to make sense of what happened. Sense-making is the discovery of something useful (which is altogether different than something truthful). In evolutionary terms, if we couldn’t make sense of what’s going on, humanity would be extinct.

When we focus too much on our stories, we bypass the opportunity to focus on the experience itself. The capacity to focus on both, particularly at will, is a valuable skill.

The Cause of Experience? Those Damn Things!

Each moment of experience is the consequence of some predicament. This description is leavened with an appropriate sense of drama and implied distress. “Damn things” is saved for particularly distressing predicaments. Only our worst experiences cause us torment.

What about the quiet moments of life? What is the predicament in those? What is the predicament when we meditate?

A predicament is anything which causes the body to change. Predicaments happen to us in every moment of experience.

Predicaments can range from being abandoned by our partner to the tiniest hint of thirst. A snake is a predicament and so it the notion of snakes on a plane. Predicaments are the things which grab our attention and provoke some kind of response, even if it is only a slight jump in heart rate or brain activity.

We also create predicaments for ourselves. When we plan our day, we are scheduling predicaments. When we decide what are the necessary action to finish a project, we are dealing with one predicament, the project, and creating more predicaments as a consequence.

Our experience of life might not be damn things, all the time, but it is predicaments, all the time.

The Predicament Of Meditation

And what if we practice on the predicament of nothing? First it’s hard to get rid of the other predicaments. As we develop that skill, we then experience the predicament of nothing, rather than we experience nothing. But if we leave the predicament unchanged, our body responds with smaller and smaller changes. It grows desensitized to the predicament (Notice the word sense in desensitized.). Without body change, nothing evokes our sense of our self. Sounds like the idealized meditative experience, doesn’t it?

For a zen parable, you could do worse than:

Nothing evokes our sense of our self.

References:

Why Do I Care About Personal Growth
If Stress Is Fear, Where Do We Find Courage?
If Experience Is Who We Are, How Do We Change?

If Experience Is Who We Are, How Do We Change Experience?

Cole Bitting — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:41:38 +0000

Experience Creates Our Sense Of Self;
So It’s Kinda Important

Personal growth is a set of innate skills, a response to our experience and is also part of our experience. We improve these skills as our we develop an understanding of personal growth (please see Three Essential Steps To Personal Growth). This understanding requires that we learn about the nature of experience.

Experience begins when some thing’s behavior grabs our attention. It ends with our own behavior. In between, we go mental. We…

Inhibit a primed behavior,
Re-evaluate other possible behaviors,
Choose the best-possible behavior, and finally
Activate the chosen behavior.

Behavior begets behavior. If personal growth calms the distress of a particular memory, it changes how we behave when we recall it.

Why is the nature of experience so important? Our sense of self is a consequence of our experiences. It’s that important.

Understanding experience enables us to shift our focus to what really going on, behave in a more attuned manner and create a bigger window of tolerance for stressful circumstances.

Our experience becomes less about weird or distressing predicaments and more about our own responses. Imagine what that will do for our sense of self!

First, Some Questions

If I whack your knee, you leg kicks, and there is nothing you can do about it. If I throw a rock at your head, you duck. Only under extreme circumstances would you let the rock smack your face.

What happens before we react? How do we know what action is best? How did we come to that understanding? How might we change it?

If a tormenting memory makes us panic, what we know best to do when we reexperience the memory, is panic. It’s like ducking rocks. How do we change our response?

If after time, our panic-inducing memory no longer induces panic, but rather sadness, what changed our panic response? What is the most effective way to change our responses and behaviors?

The basic answer:

Experience modifies beliefs created by old experience.

The Personal Version Of Experience

How would you describe the nature of experience? We know what it is, but its hard to explain. Intuition can be that way.

What about the stories about experience? We focus on describing what happened, how we responded and how we felt about it all. For example, after I yelled “Boo!” at one of my kids, he said, “Your scared me! I almost hit you!”

My action created quite a predicament for my son. He feared the sudden threat, felt scared, stopped himself from striking me and probably felt pissed off at the end.

The personal version of experience is:

Predicaments cause behavior, and feelings about behavior.

When we describe an experience, we focus on what happened (predicaments), how we responded (behavior) and our feelings about it all. This is not the only version of experience. It’s not even the definitive one.

The Natural Version of Experience

When does my son’s experience begin? Right before I yell “Boo!” He then encounters a sudden threat. An encounter is the second piece of experience.

What happened after I yelled “Boo!”? My son defended himself against an unknown assailant. He stepped back, made a fist and cocked his arm - all significant changes to his body and all without conscious thought. My son’s actions completed this event.

The starting point of experience is the activity of our body immediately before the predicament begins. The ending point is the body change caused by our behavior during the predicament.

The natural view of experience is:

Body-as-was, object, body-as-is.

I often refer to this formal sentence as the primal first sentence of experience. We encounter an object, which causes an event of body-change.

This second version shows us our experience. To be clever, we experience experience. In other words, we create perspective (even if we don’t know anything about the nature of experience).

Experience Predicaments, And Experience

The personal and natural versions of experience:

Predicaments cause behavior, and feelings about behavior.

And,

Body-as-was, object, body-as-is.

How do we put them together? We typically feel like we have too many stories (the personal version) and too little perspective (the natural version). In fact, the more distressful an experience, the less perspective we have.

As we learn about the nature of experience, we will more readily see this second version. We will grow to trust it and the perspective it gives us.

When we hold both versions together, our experience becomes less about weird or distressing predicaments. It becomes more about experience itself. We will come to understand how our sense of self emerges from each moment and how the flow of these moments builds our unquestionable belief in this self.

Experience defines who we believe we are. If we change how we experience predicaments, we change all of that because

Experience modifies beliefs created by old experience.

Three Essential Steps To Personal Growth

Cole Bitting — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:24:54 +0000

Can We Resolve Distress Better?

Personal growth is a set of innate skills. It happens continuously without effort or conscious thought. We can improve these skills and give conscious direction to our growth. How?

The first step is to develop a deep intuition about the essence of personal growth. As we internalize this knowledge, the our nonconscious growth process happens more effectively. Understanding is a great prescription for day-to-day distress.

The second step is to practice. Practice develops the ability to control and direct our skills with purpose. It is an essential piece of converting knowledge to intuitive understanding. Practicing personal growth is personal growth.

The third step is to apply our skills to our most difficult moments. We challenge ourselves to the hard work transforming our life’s harshest experiences.

Both the process and outcome are rich with reward. It embellishes and gives rich experience to our personal sense of courage:

I am able.
I am worthy.
I understand.

The skills of personal growth enable us to create a sense of self built upon the enduring feelings of mastery, self-respect and an unshakeable understanding of who we are. As with great masters, there is humility in those feelings.

Intuition Saves Lives!

It might seem that learning about personal growth is the easiest - just some reading and studying - which would be true if our goal was knowledge. We seek something more valuable and more useful - intuition.

Intuitions are collections of deeply held beliefs about the essential nature of a subject. Many intuitions are innate. They are the foundation of how we live.

We possess innate physics which gives us intuitions about the nature of physical objects. We’d die quickly if we had to develop the instinct that a falling tree could crush us.

We possess innate biology which gives us intuitions about plants and animals. We would die quickly if had to develop the instinct to flee predators.

We possess innate psychology which gives us intuitions about other people. During human evolution, the largest cause of death was murder and tribal warfare. Without the instinctive ability to detect hostility or deception, we would die quickly.

Without intuitions about the nature of personal growth, our sense of self would be at risk of “death.” The first step to improving our personal growth skills is to develop this intuition.

Experience Practice, Practice Experience

Personal growth is an experiential process. It modifies one experience with another. We might stage an event where this process happens, but it is a nonconscious process.

Knowledge without mystery is inert and cannot become the basis for intuition. For example, we continue to develop our intuitive psychology as long as we wonder if someone might be deceiving us. What mysteries drive us to build our intuitive understand of personal growth?

Every time one experience modifies another, something mysterious happens. When that something is noticeable, it feels like an epiphany, like we discovered new insight or a deeper understanding of our core values or find resolution. Just as we fear distress, we crave these elevated experiences. We want to know what happened?

We can practice this experiential process. Practice develops our skills for creating and manipulating experience. We build specific experiences which have the capacity to modify the ones which cause distress. Even if we don’t apply the experiences we create, when practice personal growth, we grow.

Challenging Ourselves To The Hard Work

The final step is the application of these skills to specific memories. We challenge ourselves to the hard work of transforming our life’s harshest experiences.

We can develop great athletic skill without competing. But without competition, can we be an athlete?

The best feedback comes when we challenge the ability of our skills against circumstances we have limited ability to control. These efforts are necessary to build mastery and convert our understanding of personal growth into true intuition.

If Stress Is Fear, Where Do We Find Courage?

Cole Bitting — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:52:18 +0000

We Fear Awful Memories. What Can We Do?

The following three sentences set the stage for further description of personal growth:

Some memories enrich our life experience. Some torment us. Personal growth calms the distress and mines past hardship for wisdom and insight.

(Because ‘torment’ is a potent emotion, I evoke it to help illustrate my points.)

Tormenting memories show us how we fail, or deserve condemnation, or are lost in despair. We fear these awful moments and feel terror.

What do we need to face what we fear? Courage. Without courage, we defend against these memories. With courage, we process them.

Courage is the experience of three core beliefs even as specific memories seek to undermine or invalidate them. These beliefs are:

I am able.
I am worthy.
I understand.

We feel torment when distressing memories contaminate these beliefs. We wither when we lose faith in them.

For example, if we cannot face the distress of failure, we lose faith in our own ability. In response, personal growth develops the belief I am able. Similarly, if we cannot face the distress of condemnation, personal growth develops the belief I am worthy; and for despair, I understand.

Personal growth embellishes and gives rich experience to our personal sense of courage.

As we develop courage, we will feel the affirmation of growing beliefs in our own ability, worthiness and insightfulness. We build an enduring collection of core values - commitments to ourselves which can withstand the ravages of torment. In this way, personal growth brings us closer to who we are.

How Does Courage Make Torment Go Away?

In the midst of an abandonment crisis, we abandon our belief in our own worthiness. We lack the necessary courage - I-am-worthy courage - to process this awful experience. Without it, we cannot make this torment go away. We are stuck with it.

(For more detail on the nature of an abandonment crisis, please see What Calms Distress And Causes Growth.)

What are we supposed to do then?

We might try to effort and will away the recurring memories of betrayal. We might try to talk our way into believing we are worthy. These efforts evoke our higher-order cognitive skills. Cognitive skills are no match for experience.

Encourage Before Encounter

If we have abandoned our own worthiness (or failed our own ability or despaired of our understanding), we lack the very resource we need to face our experience of betrayal. In fact, recurring exposure to these memories can make matters worse since the experience overwhelms and pollutes what self-worth remains.

If our attempts to find courage causes us to encounter our abandonment experience, we are stuck. Or worse, we wither.

Are We Stuck, Or Can We Do Something?

What can we do?

We need someone else’s courage. We need encouragement since we cannot provide it to ourselves. We need help evoking a specific class of experience, the ones which embellish and give rich experience to the belief I am worthy.

Sometimes, we are encouraged when someone gives us a pep-talk. We might seek out our friends, just to hang out. Friends see our worthiness when we cannot.

Maybe we read a book or watch a movie where someone has to earn respect. For example, we might watch The Last Samurai, a Tom Cruise movie about his rediscovery of honor and self-respect, but we probably should avoid Jerry Maguire, a Tom Cruise movie about a lost relationship regained. Active experience of additional betrayal are discouraging (to say the least).

Sometimes, we seek the help of a therapist or counselor. Not only can they encourage us directly, they can help us remember, discover or create moments when we experience our own courage. They help us practice courage.

We try to cultivate experiences which evoke I am worthy without triggering a flood of abandonment memories. If the belief in our own worthiness is badly damaged, it takes time to find it again.

Only after we have regained and strengthen our courage, are we ready to encounter our abandonment experiences. Courage is necessary for the encounter, but building courage is a separate activity. Courage must come first.

This process, being with renewing beliefs and ending with resolving troubling experience, is the essence of personal growth. In this manner, we create who we are - the person we are proud of, have respect for and feel uplifted by.

Fable

Serpents and Senses: Yoga in the Garden of Eden

Predicament: An Excerpt

One Damn Thing After Another

Moving Towards Wisdom: From The Sense Arose The Sense

The Serpent and the Archetypal Predicament

Encourage. Encounter. Shift.

Witness. Damnation. Transformation.

Coldplay's Fix You: And I What?

In The Beginning: Copula

Fix Me. No, no, fix you!

And I What…?

Failed Fixing

Stuck?

Prolog: Putting the Fresh in Fresh Start

What is Stuck?

The Necessity of Stuck?

Introducing EncourageEncounter - Get On With Living

Between Stuck? and Move! is EncourageEncounter

"Enlightening, spiritual, and inspirational"

Get On With Living

Stuck? The One Word Solution!

Stuck In A Moment We Wish Would End

Grasp Experience

What Would Bruce Lee Do?

What Is Experience Of Experience?

Step Back And Stop Beating Me

Stuck? Move! “But I Can’t”

Scend: In Motion Found: In Place

The Bind Of The Narrow Truth

It’s The Truth Because We Believe? We Believe Because It’s True?

One Too Many Thoughts

Un-Copula Yourself: What We Yearn For

Master Bruce Lee Says…

Writing Out Loud

Downside Torment, Eliminate Personal Growth

It All: What We Want and Want To Be Rid Of

iPods Gone Wild: Into The Mystic

I’m Copula-ed

Monks: Master “Un-Copula-ers”

How More Experience Creates Better Experience

Is A Never-Ending Predicament Torment Or Bliss?

Predicaments, Predicates and Grammar

The Cause of Experience? Those Damn Things!

The Predicament Of Meditation

If Experience Is Who We Are, How Do We Change Experience?

Experience Creates Our Sense Of Self; So It’s Kinda Important

First, Some Questions

The Personal Version Of Experience

The Natural Version of Experience

Experience Predicaments, And Experience

Three Essential Steps To Personal Growth

Can We Resolve Distress Better?

Intuition Saves Lives!

Experience Practice, Practice Experience

Challenging Ourselves To The Hard Work

If Stress Is Fear, Where Do We Find Courage?

We Fear Awful Memories. What Can We Do?

How Does Courage Make Torment Go Away?

Encourage Before Encounter

Are We Stuck, Or Can We Do Something?

Moving Towards Wisdom:
From The Sense Arose The Sense

Scend: In Motion
Found: In Place

It’s The Truth Because We Believe?
We Believe Because It’s True?

Downside Torment,
Eliminate Personal Growth

It All: What We Want
and
Want To Be Rid Of

Experience Creates Our Sense Of Self;
So It’s Kinda Important