Chained to Approval

Let’s say that after months of unemployment I finally landed a nice job. You are my new boss, and you just bought a new car.  You ask me: “What do you think?  Like it?”  Not wanting to get on your bad side, I say yes.  You like my response.  You decide to mentor me.  I tolerate that.

Over time, however, I lose myself.   I get conditioned or programmed to look at the world as you do, to value what you value.  I become dependent on the subjectivity of your approval.  What started out as adaptive approval-seeking led to a partial loss of self.  In seeking your approval, I got carried away by the currents of your subjectivity.

Lesson learned: to seek approval is to seek dependence; to seek dependence is to lose your sense of self. 

We often seek identity in our circumstance.  The word circumstance stems from Latin proposition word circum, which means “around,” and the verb stare, which means “to stand.”  A circumstance is that which stands around you, your surroundings, your context.

Look around you for a moment.  Notice what’s around you.  Perhaps you’re at home with a laptop on your knees, a cup of tea at your side.  Or maybe you are at work, looking at a computer screen with this very text on it.  Or maybe you’re in a subway car reading this post on your smart phone…

No matter where you are, remember that you are not this physical context—you are that which it surrounds.  That’s obvious.  What’s less obvious is that you are not your cultural, ethnic, sociological, or racial circumstance either.  Whatever your situational context, you are not your situation.

Been “playing” with Eastern concepts for ten or so years  – passively and academically (through reading and writing), and actively and experientially (through meditative practice and day-to-day application).  I feel I am finally (!) at a place to make the following mini-pronouncement: Nirvana is Meta-cognition (rigpa). That’s right: not a heaven-type place (to go to when you die), not a parallel reality, just a state of consciousness.

Ta-da!  Self-evident in fewer ways than one…

But don’t just take my word for it.  Here’s Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, one of the greatest Tibetan masters:

“Enlightenment, or nirvana, is nothing other than the state beyond all obstacle […] Nirvana is not a paradise or some special place of happiness, but is in fact the condition beyond all dualistic concepts, including those of happiness and suffering.” (Dzogchen: the Self-Perfected State, 1994, p.73).

Nirvana, thus, is not a geographical coordinate or a spiritual destination but a psychological state – a state of non-judgment, a state of passive awareness of whatever is, a meta-cognitive distance from the transient and fleeting mind-forms, – i.e. a state of consciousness.

When I tell my clients that “thoughts are fleeting, transient events that come and go” and that “there’s never been a thought that didn’t go away,” they initially really like the idea, but they invariably ask: “If these thoughts are so impermanent, then why do I keep thinking some of them?  Why, for example, do I keep having same thoughts about myself?”

Let’s see if I can explain.  I’m sure you’ve had the experience of having a song stuck in your head. “There it is,” you think to yourself, noting the intrusion into your consciousness.  Author David Harp’s concept of “recycled” consciousness can help make sense of these repetitive thought patterns (1996). 

Mindfulness meditations show that the mind moves, just like the body.  Rodolfo Llinas, a neuroscientist and author of I of the Vortex: from Neurons to Self offers a framework that helps make sense of this movement (2002).  Llinas proposes that mind is a kind of glorified movement system that has evolved to assist a multicellular organism with motricity (evasive action).

The mind—for all intents and purposes—is the body, and thinking is action.

The gerundive word “being” says it all: life is motion; it’s always in process, always in formation.  Not coincidentally, the word “emotion,” for example, is related to the word “motion.”  Indeed, we experience emotions as some kind of inner motion: first, you feel one way; then, all of a sudden, you are moved in another affective direction. 

Self is a memory of what you were.  As such, self, with all its accomplishments and their implications, is a bygone.  Let bygones be bygones.

The informational self is a train of a wedding dress of a wedding that is already over.  You kissed the reality.  It kissed you back.  Now, forget this glorious highlight of an accomplishment.

Yes, you had your shining moment or two.  Maybe hundreds.  What now?  It’s time to plug back in to the reality that’s still awaiting your attention, time to cut the anchor of accomplishments.  Out of the long shadows of the past, it’s time to bask in the sun that still shines.

If you’re like most people, you will spend about a third of your adult life working for somebody.  Employment is most likely a huge part of your identity and a source of meaning in your life.  The loss of work identity that comes with being laid off, being fired, or even retiring can feel crushing.  A good way to defend against that is to begin to dis-identify from your work identity while you still have it.

Naturally, this is a private process.  I’m not calling on you to demonstratively burn your company’s name tag in front of the main building. I am inviting you to take your name tag off psychologically. 

The question of “What am I?” may lead to self-objectification or to self-liberation.  Which path would you take?  How would you answer it?  By saying something along the lines of “I am this” or “I am that” or “I am such and such”?  I hope not.

Understand the self-limiting meaning of the verb “to define:”

to define, according to OED, means: “to specify; to end,” from O.Fr. defenir “to end, terminate, determine,” and directly from L. definire “to limit, determine, explain,” from de- “completely” (see de-) + finire “to bound, limit,” from finis “boundary.

Recognize:

Eugen Herrigel, the author of a 1948 classic, Zen in the Art of Archery, offers a thought of dis-identification from the outcome of one’s performance:

“The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull’s-eye that confronts him.”

Indeed:

The Arrow is the Extension of your Arm.

The Arm is the Extension of your Body.

The Body is the Extension of your Mind.

Your Mind is the Extension of [the arrow of] your Consciousness.

Generally, however, recognize:

When you release the bowstring of your performance and when the arrow of your behavior hits or misses the target (objective/goal), you are still standing where you were standing, you are still you, regardless of the outcome.

Impossible to open your mouth without stepping on the toes of the paradox! 

Mind’s footprints are everywhere as mind follows its own tracks, leading, following, misleading, rebelling, seeking ever new doors only to linger in the doorway… 

Conclude: you are not your mind; you are not the cognitive-affective-sensory mindprints in the sands of your consciousness; you are not your own footprints; you are that which leads, which breathes, which motivates, which animates…

But what is that?! 

Good question (answers itself)!