Working on "The Resiliency Advantage". Al Siebert, the author, points out that Hans Selye, in the first half of the 20th century, pointed out a 3-step process for stress. First comes the "alarm reaction" (fight/flight). Second, the "Stage of Resistance" when our bodies try to moderate the stress. And lastly, the "Stage of Exhaustion" arrives when our body's ability to moderate the stress is depleted.
There are psychological correlates to these stages, obviously. In the first stage, we feel lots of energy and usually an intense emotion or emotions. In the second stage, we start trying to understand what's occurring, expect the immediate future, plan for that future, and justify our responses (at least to ourselves). When we are running out of physical energy and justifications, it becomes harder to plan and will any sustained actions, and we are sliding towards exhaustion. The stage of exhaustion brings mental burnout. Not only do we feel that our ideas no longer matter much, but our emotional energies feel spent, and we are ready to give in. We end up in a state of mental, emotional, and physical burnout or exhaustion.
The second stage is what interests me psychologically. Our brains use such a large amount of our oxygen and metabolic energy that most folks waste of lot of what they've got in all the mental cycling and backpedaling involved in the second stage. It's literally a waste of brain energy and mental focus that could be poured into will or rested if we were good at intentionally relaxing. It's interesting, though, that for most people to be able to actually relax mentally when they're stressed and trying to cope in any given moment, they've had to previously practice intentional relaxation. When most folks tell themselves to relax while they're stressed, it just feels to them like one more demand, draining more energy. Previous practice brings relaxation rather than one more demand.
This is part of why relaxation as an attentional ability comes before mindfulness (as a function). While we might find so-called "mindfulness" techniques relaxing, were we to feel in a stressful moment that we should be relaxed--if we hadn't already actually practiced intentional relaxation to the point of competence--we'd take the idea that we should be mindful in our stressful moment as one more draining demand on our focus and energy. Relaxation is more simplistic of an explicit goal or function of "meditation" techniques, which means, in an educational-developmental sense, relaxation should come first as a practiced function of meditative or concentrative techniques. The ability to relax intentionally allows us to conserve energy at the "stage of resistance" (or adaptation). The ability to relax means that we are much more likely to put our energy and attention towards reasonable problem-solving at this stage, perhaps even into a positive interpretation of some challenge and an enjoyable emotional tone.
Burnout blows chunks, but it is possible to learn the attentional abilities to most often change the "stage of resistance" into a stage of intentional agency and adaptation, perhaps allowing intelligent action and avoiding exhaustion/burnout altogether. At the very least, going through the second stage with even a minimum of intention allows us to separate the physical exhaustion from a negative feeling-tone and mental burnout.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Tantra
The following was originally a note to a friend, but I believe this material is important. It may help to understand my perspective on the fight/flight/freeze response, but the point here is that we can engage a great deal of energy directly when we are able to understand not only what our basic nature is but also how it functions and how we can improve the functioning we experience personally. (Essentially, my perspective on the fight/flight/freeze response is similar to how many meditators deal with an Abhidhamma perspective. By being aware earlier in the process of how awareness unfolds, we can engage more of the healthy potential with less habitual and unhealthy reactivity.)
This is not directly about tantra, but I believe it is a step towards a fairly generic grasp of tantra. One of my interests is in checking out how much supposedly non-enlightened folks can figure out in healthy groups that include strong communication and a degree of equanimity.
------------------
I've been working on a surplus model for an attention economy--focusing on attention and energy rather than money as a medium. With population expansion, there's always surplus, however we model an economy.
And I've been thinking a lot about that continuum from inclusion/exclusion to power/status to intimacy. Most people relate to their emotions (at least in public) as they are felt at that power/status level. It's not polite to relate by exclusion, if we bar a willingness to dehumanize and ignoring civility altogether. But so many of our emotional responses are instinctually connected to various sources of social power and sexual attraction. So the majority of our unthinking emotionally reactive responses to one another have to do with an emotional marketplace--the feelings aren't generous and free, intimate. From two directions, then, we end up lacking a connection to the actual power of emotions. We mostly deny the force involved in exclusion, but we also ignore that inclusion is potentially just as powerful. If we're unaware of our desire to include others, though, that power is lost or buried. The power in the obviousness about how we can relate, then, is submerged in courtesy. Problem is, if we don't consciously affirm that inclusion, we take inclusion for granted without actually moving into intimate relating. So we've narrowed the bandwidth of our emotional responses to a habitual reactivity around perceived power and status for the most part.
While that may be better in dense populations than out-and-out dehumanization, genocide, and rampant murder, it's a significant step in taking us away from our bodies and from the genuineness and potential for good connection with others (and their bodies). Primal screaming is not an adequate response, so we need a slightly increased awareness or a reprioritization and redirection of how we attend. In less dense, hierarchical, specialized societies, relationships can work out in the myriad of ways in which they have, but the density and civility and hierarchy have a huge impact (yeah, I know that part's obvious).
I think tantra involves getting in touch with the potency of inclusion/exclusion responses...but in the light of awareness rather than in the darkness of instinctual spasming. Rather than being a retreat from civility to a grosser, clumsy but strong ape-like set of responses, I think that the brightness involved in being aware/mindful of these responses allows us to become much more subtle and able in how we relate with our own responses and one another. The one psychologist talks about most of our personal and interpersonal pathologies as a "failed gift of love". I agree to a great extent, and I think that rather than trying to let our inner children out, it is helpful to let them grow up.
I've been thinking about just how important one-up, one-down relationships are. We seem to politically prefer equal relationships, but that preference doesn't fit with much of our evolutionary software. So many emotional responses involve being more or less powerful, and we have largely gotten away from an appreciation of being able to enjoy being one-down in healthy ways. It's like no one feels they can allow themselves to be cared for while everyone wants to be cared for. By disallowing that feeling to simply be as it is, we politicize all the subsequent desires and subsequent frustrations without being taken care of like we would like to be. It also leaves us incapacitated when caring for others is called for because we have become too disconnected from the actual expressions of that natural caring. It's like we've trained one another to be critical of anyone taking a one-up position but we're also trained to feel either false charity or mild contempt for anyone showing vulnerability (or the desires for intimacy we misperceive as vulnerability).
It's possible that psychologists have had a hard time defining resilience because they don't quite grasp all this together. To actually feel a strong sense of agency, we want to feel uninhibited in our responses as well as competent by our self-judgments. Courtesy and expected modesty gets in the way, though. So what if we can train ourselves to relate to our emotional reactions by being willing and able to be aware of multiple positions offered by any given emotion? When we respond with anger for example, there is the possibility of responding as an angry victim, as an aggressor, as a strong individual, and as an equal to anyone else involved in the situation. Do you think that, given mindful awareness early enough in the process of reacting, we can be aware of at least these four potential positions? I believe every emotion offers even more potential than these four positions, but that "more" can be moved towards, or brought closer to awareness, by thinking about these reactive potentials and actually trying to practice awareness of these potentials in various situations.
A further step in training, then, is to be able to recognize that one can respond from any of these positions without giving up the basic desire for inclusiveness. Perhaps the best examples of this are warriors who stop in the middle of a fight when they are called to attention of the other's humanity and their own love or righteousness. Although these stories are supposed to concern special moments, it seems possible to prime ourselves for specialness. It works in the same way that angry guys learn to mitigate their behavioral responses, their habitual interpretations of persecution, and this can eventually prime them for different, non-angry responses. As we become increasingly familiar with the breadth of potential responses, we learn to identify more and more with the energy of inclusion and potential than with habitual reactivity. But we need to cognitively model this possibility, otherwise we will take our clues from personal history and expect an emotional marketplace understanding from others and of ourselves. Eventually, the brightness of remaining aware begins to move closer and closer to the brightness of the basic energy until they are indistinguishable.
While I have described the stage of Clarity as involving a relatively external focus on engaging flow states and the feeling of inspiration, I think we can also take this relatively internal focus on brightness and potentiality. I believe this is clearly a qualitative step before a Nonconceptual (quite realized) grace and ability to engage harmoniously. I think the effort that goes into this process is based in mindfulness and adequate cognitive structuring of human nature. It progresses, then, when that mindfulness is fed by emotions and awareness of relating.
The Cognitive Therapy-type aspects of this process involve being willing to look at the situation and not simply prefer with a one-up or one-down or equal or separate position but to think out good responses from all of these positions. So, in the as-if space, I ask myself, "If Wade has more power and status than me here, and I feel attacked and defensive, what is a good, high quality response? If my reactivity makes me portray myself as a victim here, and I actually have more power or status than Wade, how can a act well--what does my anger/aggression/defensiveness tell US (not just me)? Am I strong enough or clear enough to own my feelings without trying to put them on Wade or needing to analyze what I want and choose to do right now? And lastly, if we are equals and Wade is strong/clear enough to handle my responses well, what is the best way of us relating between equals right now?"
So there is actually a pretty complex process, but if we actually are producing a surplus of awareness (and I'd argue we are when 1-2% of the population produces more than enough food for us), what better way to spend our attention, time, and energy with one another than improving the quality of our lives, awareness, and relationships?
This is not directly about tantra, but I believe it is a step towards a fairly generic grasp of tantra. One of my interests is in checking out how much supposedly non-enlightened folks can figure out in healthy groups that include strong communication and a degree of equanimity.
------------------
I've been working on a surplus model for an attention economy--focusing on attention and energy rather than money as a medium. With population expansion, there's always surplus, however we model an economy.
And I've been thinking a lot about that continuum from inclusion/exclusion to power/status to intimacy. Most people relate to their emotions (at least in public) as they are felt at that power/status level. It's not polite to relate by exclusion, if we bar a willingness to dehumanize and ignoring civility altogether. But so many of our emotional responses are instinctually connected to various sources of social power and sexual attraction. So the majority of our unthinking emotionally reactive responses to one another have to do with an emotional marketplace--the feelings aren't generous and free, intimate. From two directions, then, we end up lacking a connection to the actual power of emotions. We mostly deny the force involved in exclusion, but we also ignore that inclusion is potentially just as powerful. If we're unaware of our desire to include others, though, that power is lost or buried. The power in the obviousness about how we can relate, then, is submerged in courtesy. Problem is, if we don't consciously affirm that inclusion, we take inclusion for granted without actually moving into intimate relating. So we've narrowed the bandwidth of our emotional responses to a habitual reactivity around perceived power and status for the most part.
While that may be better in dense populations than out-and-out dehumanization, genocide, and rampant murder, it's a significant step in taking us away from our bodies and from the genuineness and potential for good connection with others (and their bodies). Primal screaming is not an adequate response, so we need a slightly increased awareness or a reprioritization and redirection of how we attend. In less dense, hierarchical, specialized societies, relationships can work out in the myriad of ways in which they have, but the density and civility and hierarchy have a huge impact (yeah, I know that part's obvious).
I think tantra involves getting in touch with the potency of inclusion/exclusion responses...but in the light of awareness rather than in the darkness of instinctual spasming. Rather than being a retreat from civility to a grosser, clumsy but strong ape-like set of responses, I think that the brightness involved in being aware/mindful of these responses allows us to become much more subtle and able in how we relate with our own responses and one another. The one psychologist talks about most of our personal and interpersonal pathologies as a "failed gift of love". I agree to a great extent, and I think that rather than trying to let our inner children out, it is helpful to let them grow up.
I've been thinking about just how important one-up, one-down relationships are. We seem to politically prefer equal relationships, but that preference doesn't fit with much of our evolutionary software. So many emotional responses involve being more or less powerful, and we have largely gotten away from an appreciation of being able to enjoy being one-down in healthy ways. It's like no one feels they can allow themselves to be cared for while everyone wants to be cared for. By disallowing that feeling to simply be as it is, we politicize all the subsequent desires and subsequent frustrations without being taken care of like we would like to be. It also leaves us incapacitated when caring for others is called for because we have become too disconnected from the actual expressions of that natural caring. It's like we've trained one another to be critical of anyone taking a one-up position but we're also trained to feel either false charity or mild contempt for anyone showing vulnerability (or the desires for intimacy we misperceive as vulnerability).
It's possible that psychologists have had a hard time defining resilience because they don't quite grasp all this together. To actually feel a strong sense of agency, we want to feel uninhibited in our responses as well as competent by our self-judgments. Courtesy and expected modesty gets in the way, though. So what if we can train ourselves to relate to our emotional reactions by being willing and able to be aware of multiple positions offered by any given emotion? When we respond with anger for example, there is the possibility of responding as an angry victim, as an aggressor, as a strong individual, and as an equal to anyone else involved in the situation. Do you think that, given mindful awareness early enough in the process of reacting, we can be aware of at least these four potential positions? I believe every emotion offers even more potential than these four positions, but that "more" can be moved towards, or brought closer to awareness, by thinking about these reactive potentials and actually trying to practice awareness of these potentials in various situations.
A further step in training, then, is to be able to recognize that one can respond from any of these positions without giving up the basic desire for inclusiveness. Perhaps the best examples of this are warriors who stop in the middle of a fight when they are called to attention of the other's humanity and their own love or righteousness. Although these stories are supposed to concern special moments, it seems possible to prime ourselves for specialness. It works in the same way that angry guys learn to mitigate their behavioral responses, their habitual interpretations of persecution, and this can eventually prime them for different, non-angry responses. As we become increasingly familiar with the breadth of potential responses, we learn to identify more and more with the energy of inclusion and potential than with habitual reactivity. But we need to cognitively model this possibility, otherwise we will take our clues from personal history and expect an emotional marketplace understanding from others and of ourselves. Eventually, the brightness of remaining aware begins to move closer and closer to the brightness of the basic energy until they are indistinguishable.
While I have described the stage of Clarity as involving a relatively external focus on engaging flow states and the feeling of inspiration, I think we can also take this relatively internal focus on brightness and potentiality. I believe this is clearly a qualitative step before a Nonconceptual (quite realized) grace and ability to engage harmoniously. I think the effort that goes into this process is based in mindfulness and adequate cognitive structuring of human nature. It progresses, then, when that mindfulness is fed by emotions and awareness of relating.
The Cognitive Therapy-type aspects of this process involve being willing to look at the situation and not simply prefer with a one-up or one-down or equal or separate position but to think out good responses from all of these positions. So, in the as-if space, I ask myself, "If Wade has more power and status than me here, and I feel attacked and defensive, what is a good, high quality response? If my reactivity makes me portray myself as a victim here, and I actually have more power or status than Wade, how can a act well--what does my anger/aggression/defensiveness tell US (not just me)? Am I strong enough or clear enough to own my feelings without trying to put them on Wade or needing to analyze what I want and choose to do right now? And lastly, if we are equals and Wade is strong/clear enough to handle my responses well, what is the best way of us relating between equals right now?"
So there is actually a pretty complex process, but if we actually are producing a surplus of awareness (and I'd argue we are when 1-2% of the population produces more than enough food for us), what better way to spend our attention, time, and energy with one another than improving the quality of our lives, awareness, and relationships?
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