just be it Just Be It is a practice of presence that recognizes the limits of language. When aware of silence there is a state of inner still alertness. You are wholeheartedly present.

We seldom get training in cultivating the open mind. We cognitively like to fill in the blanks, ‘thinking’ we know what’s going on. In General Semantics, we call this the creation of our map and recognize we’ll never know the complete territory. In Buddhism, we call this the cultivation of the ‘I don’t know mind’. There’s always a curiosity to what’s being presented in the moment, filled with a respect to the Mystery of the territory. Some estimate we go through the day with about 60,000 thoughts, over 95% of them being repeating storyline thoughts. With today’s multiplicity of media outlets, it’s pretty easy to hone in on those stations that reinforce these repeating thoughts. We eventually come out with the thought that ‘we’re right’ and those who don’t agree are wrong. We do this with politics, religion, diet, legal battles, and any number of activities in human life that try to persuade another to our view. Yet, we know we can always go deeper in our understanding with the skills honed from an open mind and curiosity. We know these skills don’t just happen. So why don’t we teach this in our schools? Why don’t we look at our failures in listening skills as a pathology? As a former Speech and Language Pathologist, I’m somewhat amazed that we haven’t put Listening Pathologies into our curriculum. The current trend of narcissistic monologue that sets the norm should be studied and presented as a communication abnormality rather than the norm. The dominance of persuasion in our cultural communications could be called out for its failure to open communication that seeks deeper understanding. Just as the flexibility and curiosity of the water works its way through rock, we know the skillful listener can eventually work its way through the fixed, rigid, dogmatic mind of ‘I know that’ to ‘Maybe, maybe not. Let’s educate ourselves and go deeper.’

We should all do ourselves well by recounting all those moments when we should have died or been killed, but we didn’t.  These are those events where through no cleverness of our small selves, we survived.  I’m not saying that we can’t train ourselves to get out of the way.  I can think of many instances where people have panicked, freaked out, and stress resisted an event out of their control, only to really mess it up.  We can ‘think’ we’re prepared for uncertainty, that we’ve trained well, have the skills for the action at hand, yet surprise always has a way of coming up.  That’s the real work.  When the earthquake happens, can we hold our center.  Keeping ourselves in balance, aligned to the moment, we’re less likely to get in God’s way.  So what do I mean by that?

There’s no question about the fact that you didn’t make you.  The mystery is huge and we never will know everything, or even come close to knowing everything.  It’s a stupid question.  All we can do is humble ourselves, hold a curious mind, steward/take care of those people, animals, plants, environments we’re participating in, and give thanks for the tremendous opportunities to participate in this brief period of time where we inhabit our bodies.  A big part of taking care is found in training ourselves to hold stillness between stimulus and response.  This is a highly trained skill.  When uncertainty emerges, can we pause to find our presence, and then act more skillfully?  We seem to be in an age where people are more and more reactive, almost instantly responding to events from a reactive, non balanced response.  All too often, this reactive response causes harm.  So how do we train for the pause between stimulus and response?

Perhaps the greatest practice for developing this skill is found in meditation.  The yogic word ‘asana’ stands for balanced posture and that’s what we’re practicing for.  Many spiritual traditions list ‘equanimity’ as one of the highest virtues.  A meditation practice, focusing on the breath, in silence, helps us grow awareness.  As we settle the reactive mind down we dismantle our notions of ego, the illusion that we’re somehow separate.  As with many things, the more attention we put to our practice the stronger our capacity to hold equanimity in the face of chaos and uncertainty.  Dedication to this practice takes great resolve.  The more we practice stillness, witness mind, and balanced posture, the more proficient we are at honing that space between stimulus and response.  Developing this skill leads us to more skillful means in the responses we make to what comes up before us.  It’s not about force or control.  It’s about witnessing and knowing how to move, breaking the illusion of division.  It’s what the Eastern martial arts are about, finding the path of least resistance for the most efficient response that aims to ‘no harm’.

I’ve had several close calls with potential death.  Yesterday I had another.  I was windsurfing Lake Superior in some pretty extreme conditions (25-35mph winds and 6-9’ waves).  I’ve done this many times, have a deep practice with this, and felt confident for my session.  Everything was going beautifully as I aimed to sneak past a peninsula for a better heading to smoother winds in the more open waters.  Foiling has my board at 2-3’ above the water and I need less wind to plane at 15-20mph in those seas.  As I got closer to the peninsula the wind lessoned and eventually the board dropped off plane.  The water was more turbulent from bouncing off the nearby cliffs.  The wind was lifting over my sail as it met the obstruction of the cliffs, and I could not stay standing on my board.  The waves were biggest as they crashed onto the ledges of the peninsula, the currents were strong and I was being pushed toward the rock ledges.  I was not in a safe situation, knowing I’d be thrown on or against the rocks in a matter of seconds.  I could have panicked, froze, resisted, and made reactive attempts to resist the situation or beat myself up for getting into such a dangerous situation.  Yet, just prior to the first of three massive wave rolls I pushed my gear away from me.  My mind was stilled as I took the first roll.  Thank you God, no rock smash.  The second wave, same thing.  Rolling like in a washing machine, fully surrendered to the moment.  The third wave was bigger than the others as it picked me up and slammed me over the ledge and onto the rock base.  There was enough water to cushion my impact with the rock and I was elated to be in without serious injury.  My rig was bouncing like a small toy in the crashing waves when another massive wave threw it up over the ledge to a place where I could grab it before the backwash started pulling us in.  A lack of awareness to the dangers of sailing too close to the peninsula could have ended my time in this body.  I apologized to the body for all it does for me, how I jeopardized its health, and then committed to further growing my awareness practice.  I was elated with the gift of the given, the Divine participation in my continued gift of presence in this body.  There’s a huge chemical release of all the energy hormones (endorphins/dopamines/adrenalin/serotonin/oxytocin),  after a close call with death.  There’s something much more special about each breath.  The colors are more rich, the sounds more harmonic, and the taste of life is on supercharge.  The temptation is to somehow credit myself for getting out of this situation.  Nothing is further from the truth.  I was gifted the experience of ‘no harm’, both to my body and my equipment.  Humbled to the earth, my prayer was one of deep gratitude for a positive outcome from a stimulus that had rare odds of non injury.  This gift is called grace.  There was deep allowing rather than forceful resistance.  I’m still experiencing a deep sense of fullness following this event, what can be called ‘great fullness’, a deep sense of well being that feeds the body/mind/soul in further zest for life.

I can honestly say that I doubt I’d still be in my body today if it weren’t for a dedicated meditation practice.  The reactive mind can be extremely dangerous as negative momentum builds, pulling us off center.  Holding our center, smashing the illusion of our separateness (yoga), engaging the moment from a deeper sense of awareness and presence, we dramatically reduce the risk for making a mess of things.  I have found it helpful to meditate on the following insights about silence:

The light of silence destroys the belief of me.

Silence is freedom.

Action of silence is entirely different from action born from words.

In the light of silence, all problems are resolved.

Can you imagine how much we’d improve our relations within family, community, state, nation, globe, and planet, if we just sat in silence before speaking?  Do we have the collective discipline to just shut up for a bit and recognize we don’t know everything?  Can we commit to being our best in approaching a collaborative effort to stewarding the health of our bodies, minds, spirits, all beings, the planet, etc.?  Can we get bigger when the problems seem so big?  This is what we’re here for, to take care, to aim to ‘no harm’, and to trust the support of the Divine as we do.  When we can sit in silence, destroying our narcissistic belief in ‘me’, better and bigger solutions are presented.  This is what Divine providence is about, not some exclusionary ‘thought’ of separateness and specialness.  I’m so glad to just be, aiming to kindness, in gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the next arising breath.

How we approach change determines our politics.  Some of us embrace those things of tradition which we are willing to die for before accepting.  Some of us will refuse to accept change when it’s staring us squarely on our doorstep.  We have certain political leaders today that lead populist movements claiming they can stop change.  There are many religious leaders claiming they can promise a permanence that meets our liking.  There are several health practitioners claiming they can stop the aging process.  Yet, to this date, no one has been able to stop change.  No matter how much money one makes or how much power one accumulates, the body ages, we surrender the body and we say goodbye to all those things we so desperately tried to hold onto.  An education aimed to foster the curious mind helps us face inevitable change.  A spiritual practice strong enough to embrace uncertainty helps us live more carefully, causing less harm along our way.  Education, curiosity, humility, gratitude and a sense of stewardship help us move along the evolutionary/adaptive path with least harm.  On the other hand, when we close our minds and refuse to explore approaches to inevitable change we seem to accelerate the very change we’re trying to hold back.

Those that deny change or believe they can stop it may be called “change deniers”.  They have demonized those who are responsible to meeting change with stewardship as “progressives”, “liberals”, “left wing”, “elite”, etc.  Yet, these labels are not helpful.  We all have qualities of the traditionalist and a curiosity to explore best actions that harm least.  While we are all tempted to think we know, we don’t.  We’re trapped into ‘thinking we’re right’, when the most important thing we can do is to loosen our fixed minds and seek understanding.  Today’s politics no longer work.  We’re caught in the illusion that we can persuade another to think like us.  The Law of Nature shows that the harder we push one way, the more push back we get.  Yet, adults willing to seek best action with least harm recognize that debate is futile.  People will only further entrench in their fixed beliefs as we try to change them, fix them, or get them to agree with us.  

To many, climate change, globalization and technology are accelerating at unprecedented rates.  Those who want to deny change often refer to those who want to face change as evil.  Those who want to face change often refer to the deniers as uneducated.  In my experience, both references are inaccurate and damaging to the health of our society.  Our spiritual traditions have promoted the understanding that we’re all in the same boat.  We all know, deep in our hearts, that we all wish to live a happy, healthy life.  The difficulty comes in knowing and practicing this, aware that our harmful or neglectful actions and thoughts ultimately hurt us.  We can’t build walls to polluted air, nuclear radiation, to refugees fleeing certain death from failed, chaotic states, to ever increasing advances in technology, to an open world market, etc.  There are leaders today pushing the patriarchal notion that they will fix everything.  They claim they can stop change and frequently practice the art of denial.  Those leaning strongest to denying change or stop it are vulnerable to these claims.  They’ve invested in this line of belief much like the people who refused to believe the tonic they bought from a medicine man is worthless given an analysis of its contents.

The label “conservative” has been falsely given to those change deniers.  They promote fear to those who would otherwise seek understanding to inevitable change.  For me, a true conservative is one who wishes to slow entropy through responsible actions.  It’s far from holding rigid beliefs and practices to outdated thinking.  It’s making a human, kind response to rapid change.  It’s calling out greed and gluttony as actions causing great harm to humanity today.  A true conservative has a deep sense of stewardship to a culture’s people, placing a primary emphasis upon food, shelter, safety and sense of belonging to all peoples.  Today’s “conservatives” seemed to be locked into a solid “No” response to change and it threatens our future.  For me, I’m looking for strong leaders who recognize the need to face change with a strong “Yes” combined with willingness and ability to collaborate for actions best aimed to slow entropy.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics speaks to the inevitable entropy of all things.  We can say “Yes” to slowing this entropy, to collaboration for the common good, to participation in an educated democracy of and for the people.  Or we can continue to fight, to disengage, to complain, to let the “No” response dominate our approach to inevitable change.

Going Deeper

Are you interested in going deeper in your conversations with friends and family?  Are you tired of just talking about the weather, sports, and gossip about other people?  Would you like to engage others in the rich exploration of how we know what we think we know without being attacked?

I’ve studied communication and its disorders for almost fifty years and have found the following system to be the most effective.  It’s been called circle process, conversational cafe and council, just to name a few.  Essentially, the group agrees on certain rules, just like we do for most of the games we play.  It’s no longer about the loudest voice in the room.  It’s about a sincere desire to understand rather than the typical push to persuade.  It’s not about trying to come to a consensus or agreement.  It’s about respect for each other and a deeper willingness to come to an empathetic position of understanding with one another.  So how does it work?

Think of it like agreement to play a sports game.  There are rules that need to be followed, and when it comes to communication success we have very few examples.  Our media, politics and religion are usually fixed in beliefs, in a lack of willingness to surrender a sense of ‘being right’ for the open curiosity found in deeper exploratory conversation.  For dialog to happen we need the following rules to follow:

1. Calm the mind’s chatter with a few moments of silence, just putting attention to the breath. This sets a common intention to hold a sense of equanimity through the game.
2. Listen for understanding and surrender any notions of rehearsing a response when another is speaking.
3. Agree to only speak when holding a talking piece, and agree to speak from the heart, from what comes up at the moment.
4. Put some attention to ‘what you mean’, ‘how you came to know what you think you know’, and determine whether it’s worth saying or not.  It’s ok to hold the talking piece in silence.  There’s no need to persuade, perform, or fix.
5. Agree to abstain from persuasion, attempts to fix, advice, judgment, etc.
6. When speaking, speak, but not on and on.  Agree that each person has an allotted time to speak and a referee (guardian) will ring the bell if a participant’s behavior is straying from the agreed upon rules.  Usually, after a topic has been agreed upon, each participant will begin with a one to three minute expression that doesn’t reference anything any of the other participants have said.  On the second round there can be reference and after two rounds, at a deeper level, conversation can ensue without the need for a talking piece.  However, if the referee believes the rules are not being followed, they can institute the talking piece once again.

7.   Agree to hold the contents of the circle confidential with the intention to cause no harm.

One of the more difficult rules is to abstain from persuasion and attempts at fixing or giving advice. Surrendering our notions of thinking we are right creates a huge challenge.  To get to empathy, we agree to fully listen for the other’s experience, to do what we can to understand.  We’re aiming to hear what they’re communicating without coming to judgment or conclusion.

I’ve done a number of these communication labs and welcome anyone who’s interested in this process to contact me.  In today’s polarized society where we seem to either stop communicating or we just yell at each other, it’s crucial to our very survival as a species to start applying some human rules to how we communicate with one another.