Present Perfect January/February 2012

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"Wisdom is the testing out, refinement and maturation of insight"

Michael Stone

IN THIS ISSUE

1.      Dear Present Perfect readers: Life affirming vs life-depleting

2.      Me-stories

3.      Falling down on following up

4.      Keeping vs hoarding

5.      Food for Thought: On compassion

 

LIFE AFFIRMING VS LIFE-DEPLETING

Dear Present Perfect readers,

Happy New Year! May 2012 bring you lots of good things. I hope inspirational people cross your path and you are blest with just the right mix of challenges and opportunities.

In that no-man's-land week between Christmas and New Year, we all got used to hearing that ubiquitous question: 'How was your Christmas?' Two of the replies I heard made a special impact. The first in fact I overheard, which was impossible not to having stopped off in an inviting pub for a coffee on a Boxing Day walk and finding ourselves next to a lively group of canoeists chatting merrily.

'How was your outlaws Christmas?' one was asked. Outlaws? Oh yes, they were talking about his in-laws. 'It was good', he said, nodding approvingly. 'My wife and her three brothers, all grown ups', he added in case there should be any doubt. 'They have this tradition with song sheets'. Every year, he explained, the four of them lead a sing-song, starting with some of the early Beatles, belting out song after song at the top of their voices. 'Everybody joins in, well you can because you've got a song sheet'. He'd thoroughly enjoyed it and so did I, imagining this family singing their hearts out.

A few days after Christmas I had a visit from, well let's just say for the sake of privacy someone who does some work for me periodically. 'How was your Christmas?' I asked somewhat surprised he was working between Christmas and New Year. He made a face. 'Boring. I don't really like Christmas.' As he reported it, the family had gathered with other relatives at his in-laws, his wife's father and step-mother. 'They just have these boring conversations, gossiping about everyone, trying to outdo each other.' He described himself as 'sitting at the edge', waiting to be released. 'I hate those kinds of conversations', he said with real distaste.

Affirm vs deplete

Both these stories stayed with me and I tried to see why. Then it occurred to me that the 'outlaws Christmas' was life-affirming. Singing together, observing traditions, being inclusive, getting everyone to join in sustains life. Even if a family sing-song is not your idea of fun you can still feel the life-affirming energy generated by the 'together' feeling.

In contrast, sitting around exchanging negative views of other people (He did what? He didn’t, did he? She did that? I don't believe it. She's like that isn't she, always was) feels life-depleting. Yes, an occasional bit of gossip can be harmless but once it really takes hold the effect is to exclude both those whose reputations are being torn to shreds and those who, present in body but not in heart and mind, 'sit at the edge'.

Suppose we look at our lives in terms of life-affirming vs life-depleting activities. What do we do that boosts our energy and increases our joie de vivre? And what does the opposite, draining our energy and lowering our spirits? To feel truly alive, our life-affirming activities need to exceed life-depleting ones. How is the balance for you?

Very best wishes for a life-affirming year

Chris Carling

ME-STORIES

For me, one of the life-affirming morning activities I thoroughly enjoy when on holiday is to be brought a nice cup of tea in bed (thank you, Terry) and to drink it in a leisurely fashion reading a book, currently Michael Stone's excellent 'The Inner Tradition of Yoga'. In one of the early chapters he writes about the five 'klesas' or causes of the suffering and discontent we often feel.

Two of these are aversion (dversa) or leaning away from experience and attachment (raga) or leaning towards experience. 'Most of our psychological and physical energy is spent flip-flopping back and forth, moment to moment, between attachment and aversion,' Stone suggests. As we flip-flop back and forth we create stories about ourselves. A pain is not just a pain, it's a sensation happening to me. I create a 'me-story' (don't like it, shouldn't have walked that far, why me? I won't do that exercise again) that can feed a habit (I can do x but I can't do y) that can become entrenched and unquestioned. This kind of story-making is another 'klesa': 'asmita'.

With my cup of tea one morning I'd been reading about 'asmita', these stories of 'I-me-mine' that can contribute to leading a conditioned existence stuck in repeated patterns of reaction and habit. Then I got up and did some yoga practice including a position ('supta virasana', sitting knees together buttocks on the floor then lying back so your head and shoulders are on the floor, thereby creating quite a pull on your thigh muscles). Usually I hesitate before lying back knowing it will be uncomfortable: telling myself without really being aware of it the 'me-story' that I am going to suffer. This morning, however, I decided consciously to throw out the 'story' and just do the posture.

And so I leant back. As I reached the floor, my thigh muscles still pulled as they stretched so I had some physical endurance to get through but I was surprised at how much easier this was to bear without the accompanying mental 'story'. I tried the same strategy later with the headstand in a yoga class (we have to stay up for 5 minutes and my 'story' is usually around this being hard work and maybe I wouldn't be able to sustain it). Again the physical effort was remarkably easier without the 'me-story' baggage. Through these experiences I saw in a very simple way that if we lessen the hold of the stories we tell ourselves we suffer less and are able to do more.

I'm sure 'asmita' is much more philosophically complex than my simple sketch. But what it reminded me was how important it is to be aware of our own, individual moment to moment reactions. To know ourselves. To observe our stories and the resulting patterns and thereby lessen their hold.

PS: Action precedes motivation

These thoughts also reminded me of the adage 'action precedes motivation', the recognition that when something has to be done, dropping the 'me-story' of 'don't feel like it' and just getting started can often bring the energy that seemed to be lacking.

FALLING DOWN ON FOLLOWING UP

Saturday is often a life-affirming day for me when I have more time to reflect, to read the papers and get enthusiastic about this idea or tip or that campaigning cause. Often I cut out snippets or whole articles to remind me of these causes that I fully intend to follow up.

A few days after Christmas I had that end of year urge to clear the undergrowth from my life in time to make a clean 2012 start. With a surge of energy I attacked my 'things of interest' box tucked away at the side of my newspaper reading chair. And discovered a miscellaneous crop of cuttings some dating back as far as 2007. Life-affirming intentions had slowly matured into a life-depleting muddle of stuff, untouched for years.

Tips for hoarders

Cutting out an article you intend to take action on isn't an obvious symptom of hoarding when you do it. But adding more rather than acting on the ones you already have: that's more like hoarding. And accumulating so many piles or wardrobes full or cupboards full or email inboxes full of 'stuff' definitely suggests that hoarding is at work.

Many of us are hoarders in one way or another whether it's emails, money, papers, clothes, books, things we never or rarely use or consult yet hang on to all the same. In the end hoarding is life-depleting. So what can we do?

KEEPING VS HOARDING

A long time ago a man who later became a time management guru, Mark Forster, told me of a task his coach had set him. Or at least this is how I remember it. Go through your filing cabinet, she had said (maybe she'd also added 'and anywhere else you keep papers'). Take out and look at every single paper in there and ask yourself if you really need it. If you don't, get rid of it. If you do, make sure you know what you need it for. If you don’t know, get rid of it.

At the time I thought it was a very bold idea that I'd like to put into practice but didn't. And I've remembered it since in the same spirit. Because what it illustrates neatly is a distinction between keeping and hoarding. Keeping is hanging on to things you need, and knowing why you need them, what you need them for. Hoarding is hanging on to things without quite knowing why, hanging on to them just in case you may need them. Or because you are afraid to throw them away.

Are you a keeper or a hoarder?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

ON COMPASSION

Paradoxically, being open to reflecting on death can be life-affirming, more so than the avoidance and denial many of us find more manageable. Recently I read 'The Wheel of Life', the autobiography of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who became well-known for her work on death and dying. I was very moved by her story of how she started on this path, and yet I hesitated as to whether I should tell it here in case the topic should seem too gloomy, so ingrained is our reluctance to talk about death.

Swiss-born, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross married an American, moved to Denver and worked as a psychiatrist. Asked to take over the lectures of a dynamic, unorthodox Professor at the hospital who was going away for a few weeks, she eventually hit on death as her first topic. 'Many doctors', she had already noticed, 'routinely avoided anything to do with death. Dying patients were shunned and abused. No-one was honest with them.'

She found little library material to help her prepare but one day, on her ward rounds, she sat with a sixteen year old girl, Linda, who was dying of leukaemia. Linda was comfortable talking about her situation and very angry at her family who were not coping well with her dying and would not talk honestly with her. She readily agreed to participate in Elisabeth's lecture.

On the day the lecture started badly, the medical students not really paying attention to this new lecturer with her imperfect English. But they gradually quietened down and were clearly nervous as they took their seats after the break when Linda was to join them. Elisabeth introduced her and explained how she had generously volunteered to answer their questions on what it was like to be terminally ill. But the students were uncomfortable and restricted their questions to blood count, liver size and other 'safe' topics.

Linda lost patience. 'Fixing her unimpressed brown eyes on them, she posed and answered the questions she had always wanted her physician and team of specialists to ask her. What was it like to be sixteen and given only a few weeks to live? What was it like not to be able to dream about a high school prom? Or go on a date? What helps you make it through each day? Why won't people tell you the truth?'

When Linda left, tired out, the students sat in a stunned, emotional, almost reverential silence.' 'Most admitted that Linda had moved them to tears. Finally I suggested that their reactions, while instigated by the dying girl, were in fact due to an admission of their own fragile mortality. They couldn't help but think what it would be like if they were in Linda's shoes.

'Now you are reacting like human beings instead of scientists,' I offered.

Silence.

'Maybe now you'll not only know how a dying patient feels, but you'll also be able to treat them with compassion, the same compassion that you'd want for yourself.'

 

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