Complex habits

Thinking in movement does not come easy, it takes quite some work to undo old habits. Our (western) culture promotes many ideas that seem to contradict FM's ideas - for example, being 'right'.

Everyone wants to be right, but no one stops to consider if their idea of right is right.

I want to start with a little criticism of the master himself, setting a dubious example in using universal quantifiers like 'everybody' and 'no one'. Let's develop this statement, even if this process might take away the ease and poignancy of FM's words.
'People wanting to be right (which there are many of) rarely stop to consider if their idea of right is right.'

For me, this is just another quote warning about end gaining. If we just 'do it right', victory is ours as well, that's one of the promises of the training to be an endgainer (also known as education system). Wanting to be right produces in social interaction quite typical strategies, mainly based on violence, aggression and emotional game play. The twin sister, not wanting to be wrong, deploys more passive strategies like defense and withdrawal. Their father, Aristotelian logic, has died long ago, yet its ghost still haunts many. Thinking about right and wrong often leads to the fallacy of categorizing nearly everything into this mutual exclusive terms, ignoring anything that fails to fit definetely into one of those boxes.

The opposite of wrong is in many cases just as wrong. We certainly gain new experiences when we push our shoulders forward instead of pulling them back, our overall use most likely doesn't improve. Too easy, one might think, AT is all about changing habits, I relocated my discomfort from one area to another. Strike!

Maybe it helps to assume that we never do it right. If we stop doing the wrong thing, the right thing can happen. Doing one thing to 'counteract' another produces a change of habit, and if we stay clear from thinking that this was the 'right' change, we slowly improve our use as well. As long as we view the world through the black and white filter of right and wrong the view of details remains obstructed.

But isn't there something 'right' to 'do' in life? The mystical answers to this question founded religions, I wouldn't yet dare to answer this for anyone else but myself. Life is self-propagating and self-aware (at least in the human form). The 'right' thing as such is survival of the individual and the species. From this evolutionary perspective we did nothing gravely wrong - otherwise I couldn't carve these words with electronic ink into the global memepool.

Although I spend quite some time finding the right way to get in and out of a chair, when I undid this tense idea I gained much more information out of it. Once the inner judge became more quiet, I had a better chance to integrate the somatic knowledge I received. Good judgement is a desirable skill, but many situations in life work out easier without it.

Especially when observing oneself the right-wrong filter prevents (or delays) accepting undesirable habits. Just accepting that right and wrong have no relevance for the here and now seems to contradict the tenets of our culture. The skill for life changes oneself radically, unless one clings too much on specific symbol sets.

Observations

Self-awareness includes self-observation, a very complex and interesting process. Not every 'voice in your head' belongs to an impartial observer, most of the time other parts of yourself play conductor of re-activity. I started reintegrating my reptilian 'voice', listening more closely especially to the need of food. Low blood sugar levels activate a lot of unwanted 'emergency circuits', and give the pre-frontal cortex not too much energy to be heard in the chatterbox brain.

It's not too healthy to spend much time in the 4f domains of the reptilian brain. Fight, flight, food and fornication can integrate with our behaviour without allowing them to be the 'decider'. A friend of mine compared his collection of inner voices with the parliament, commited to follow the Prime Minister's decisions. He shared with me his way of organising his inner struggle between his wants, needs and social norms, an insight into his private decision making process, based on an advanced form of self-reflection and inner dialogue. Thanks, Dave.

I prefer other mapping models to improve the quality of my self-observation. The triune brain models offers a good start, or Leary's 8 circuit model of consciousness. The map is not the territory. With one of my maps I can name the reptile, monkey, man and sentinel in myself.

Monkey oversimplifies the mammalian brain, mammals developed emotions to organise their communities. Nevertheless, even in 21st century successful emotional game strategies, found in many other mammals as well, still dominate the political arena of humanity.

The 'reasonable' or 'rational' or 'conceptualising' part of our being happens mainly from the cortical areas of the brain. We might ruminate here why something appears beautiful to us, and find the labels to verbalise our experience. It's easy to place the 'observer' here, as we might already have the habit to conceptualise and contextualise our experience, listening to the 'voice of reason' in our head.

In as much we can mistakingly feel torn apart between body and mind, we can mistakingly feel an inner fight of reason and emotion. The 'voice of reason' happily claims to be impartial observer, which leaves the 'voice of the heart' quite sulky, being left out of the game. But the voice of reason is not the sentinel.

Our emotions allow us to connect to other people, and our reason helps us to find meaningful ways to share this connection. Okay, that's prophecy or even gibberish. Or just an example for the challenge. As soon as we phrase observations in a way that assumes some objective reality we have 'diagnosed'. The perception of isness leads to a host of undesirable side effects, and prevents acceptance and the potential for change.

No matter how many voices talk to you, which map or concept you use, don't fight yourself. The voices get so much easier to understand when they communicate non-violently. The trying ends with the fighting, surrendering allows the sentinel to observe, direct, act and re-act.

Of course, I dare to be totally wrong here.

Bucky

Fulleresque

Don't you think that body and mind
are really two of a kind.
With some body-mind connection
you can expand in any direction.

One and one adds up to four,
don't let that knock you to the floor,
Up, wide, forward and now
let's you ride the holy cow.

The path is long, it never ends,
it has so many twists and bends.
You stumble and you fall,
So do we all.

Don't look ahead, don't look back,
just be here and you're on track.