Good is Better than High

As a general rule, along the spectrum of development, good is better than high. This works out in more particular ways at each step. It's worth making this point since idealization seems to push for achieving an actualization of heights sometimes at the expense of overall health, happiness, and connection. In other words, you can have your cake and eat it too, but you have to learn to bake. This guideline particularly helps define practical wisdom: good is better than high.

Developmentally, there are three major problems. The first is reductionism or the Peter Pan complex--a refusal or inability to continue to grow. The second is stretching--trying too hard to be too high, too mature, too good, too something that without the "too" part is good on its own. The third problem is fragmentation or a lack of integration. This comes from being able to experience multiple levels of consciousness (being able to intentionally influence which states and levels one responds or acts from) but not feeling that and also how they are connected. The second and third problems often go hand in hand; if you're stretching too far, it may be hard to see how your roots are important for supporting where you're headed.

Overblown Purpose feels like the driven or compulsive need to "do something" or fanatically address some task. The problem here is an inability to feel playful or "loose" in one's efforts. Mentally, not being able to loosen up reduces our creativity while increasing the likelihood of fear, anxiety, irritation, and aggression. Creativity is the base, playfulness is one expression of it, and we cannot incorporate new information as well when we feel all uptight in our focus. This uptightness also lends itself to physical tension which creates mental strain in a self-catalyzing cycle. I'm a big fan of discipline, but we can take it too far. All things being equal, it's healthier to be playful and creative rather than compulsively driven even though playfulness and a diffuse creativity are actually more rudimentary than having an obvious purpose and sticking to it.

Overblown Understanding is summed up in the phrase, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." Teaching is great, study is great, philosophy is great, but we can overdo it. There are some of us who are better at memorizing the manual than fixing the toilet, but if you've got a broken toilet and only a textbook understanding of what to do with it, you'll eventually agree that "good is better than high" in certain regards. Piaget pointed out that the abstract learning is more developmentally advanced (we have to reach a certain age and apply a rich associational matrix) than concrete learning, but most people will recognize the value of a good plumber, mechanic, contractor, etc. Just think of the last time you had trouble with someone who thought they knew how to fix your car or put in windows that wouldn't leak during heavy rain.

Overblown mindfulness lacks accountability and consistency--roots. And, since you can't have ethics that are recognizable as ethics without some sort of consistency, mindfulness without principles may also lack ethics. (On that note, think of the gurus who consider themselves too enlightened and wonderful to be burdened by ethics.) Certain systems like laws and self-identities may be less subtle than mindfulness-per-se, but systems allow for the communication of meaning as well as a certain degree of predictability in relationship that allows for intentional collaboration. Many of the "I'm spiritual, not religious" folks like the escapism that mindfulness can allow. The screwy logic is that, if I'm always living in the moment, do I really have to be held responsible for past actions? (Sooo cumbersome.) Mindfulness without a foundation leads to all sorts of weirdnesses including an inability to connect--or at least communicate--with others. A few cosmic clowns, drifters, and saints may be fine, but without some social cohesion, we end up with very mindful parents not bringing home the bacon. If we are going to parse time into increasingly precise and finite moments, and if we want some of those moments and the relationships they hold to contain meaning, there needs to be some solid context. I'd rather have my children grow up around good neighbors who haven't necessarily achieved the majestic highs of human consciousness than "enlightened" a**holes who are not accountable for their real-life actions with their real-life consequences. For anyone selling, "But can we truly know what is really real?" I'm just not buying.

Overblown Clarity is all about me reaching my sense of inspiration, flow, etc. Without mindfulness of my own reactivity here, I may be a genuinely inspiring and beautiful yet also a fully-blown narcissistic prima dona. My mantra will be that the world just doesn't get my genius or something along the lines of demanding that someone bring me a bowl full of only green M&Ms because I deserve whatever I may want. Genuine expertise, artistry, and beauty end up being "tooled" and demeaned when mindfulness isn't present. This faulty perspective is willing to unquestioningly or hypocritically hold privilege over meritocracy as long as I am in the haves rather than the have-nots. Here we may have pride without an understanding or experience of dignity. This is the cult of personality. Better to be mindfully appreciative of life than made famous one minute just to be hated the next. Consistency in clarity and inspiration comes from practiced mindfulness.

Overblown Nonconceptuality is about subtlety without connection to the rest of the world. It is like someone who has known the worthlessness of the prima dona's fame and moved away from society instead of decreasing the false distance from others. Subtlety or any sort of religiosity has less joy when it has less communion. Here we can look at what Trungpa talked about as spiritual materialism taking precedence over ethically and joyfully connecting. Some meditators miss the foundational aspect of mindfulness practice and appreciation or try to rush through or bypass the stage of Clarity in order to experience spiritual highs, subtlety, or oneness. The highs themselves are fine unless they cause disruption in one's connections--which tends to happen without an adequate foundation. When spirituality doesn't connect to one's actions, you can also have the sort of problem that St. Theresa of Calcutta had in feeling that she was doing what she was called to do...but...she seriously questioned her faith in and connection to God. The personal inspiration of the previous stage is an important part of spiritual life. If one opts for subtle spirituality over that inspiration, it leads us away from our own humanity.

Overblown Abiding involves too much of a focus on oneness while diminishing or dismissing joy and the rubbing of elbows with Creation that comes into full bloom at the stage of Nonconceptuality. We can't support a truly nondual standpoint if we value peace over joy (that's duality). Feel free to disagree, but that's how it is. Siddartha Gautama talked about false views, and a preference towards peace or joy is a false view. Dogen spoke of "buddhas together with buddhas". Shams and Rumi had their thing going. Christians mention "communion of the saints". While we need time away from the bustle of the everyday in order to cultivate peace, we also feel most full--abundant as well as serene--when we can embrace the peace and the bustle with clarity, finding inspiration in our own joy and also in shared vitality.

Oneness states are great, but so is throwing the old pigskin around at the end of the summer. When we're willing to drop our weight as far down the scale as necessary, the Weeble people may wobble but they don't fall down.

Segmentation in Mindful Appreciation

As moments, characteristics, and options keep coming faster and faster, many lose their individual gravitas and meaning. This most often happens to degrees--not all at once. But there is certainly the possibility in meditation for depersonalization and derealization. Even without that feeling of a little too much limbo, you can practice moment-to-moment mindfulness and look around at some point as if you're standing in the middle of a field somewhere, wondering how you got there and where to go. You can get a similar effect sitting in a small apartment and spending lots of time online: searching, browsing, chatting, moving on. It's happening in "real time" but eventually doesn't feel all that real because it isn't apparently rooted. Mindfulness should actually bring us in closer touch with our roots while allowing us to be less defined and delimited by them.

The same sort of thing happens in a different context with hierarchy. It's how accountability disappears from big government and big corporations. If, say, the job of massacring Jews is broken down so that everyone in the chain is a specialist with some separation from the previous and subsequent steps, most of them will simply do their jobs and stop thinking about the overall result. "I just drive trains." Never mind that those trains are carrying cars full of people to death camps. You get cheating accountants and investors and Michael Vick saying stuff like, "It didn't seem real," until they end up in jail, and, "That's when it hit me." Aren't those Jews, those dollars, those mortgages just numbers on papers or a monitor?

So when we deal in hierarchy and segmentation, we want to look at integration and rootedness. We want to keep some awareness of the foundation that our space shuttle mover is built upon; we want to know that if we're going to spend a gazillion dollars that someone is sure of how one part made by one manufacturer fits with the parts around it made by all other manufacturers involved with creating a huge crawler. As we climb higher in most endeavors, we have to consider how the center of gravity also tends to move upwards, making the entire structure a little less stable unless we plan for that shift at the core. In constructing a skyscraper, the first step after design and planning for materials is to dig--dig it deep.

The flipside is that, when you're deep into your stupidly righteous anger (if you happen to be somewhat like me) or affected by an addiction or OCD or whatever, it can be really helpful to segment time--to take one step at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time, one breath at a time. Overall, it's good when a feeling of being rooted or centered is accessible and it's good when a feeling of openness is accessible. So along with having some aspiration for growth, it's great to have an appreciation for the way that things already are and have been. Zimbardo did some interesting work on time perspectives.

One of the strangest things that can happen with meditation groups is that they take up the idea of being only in the present. Being lost in the present is similar to being lost anywhere else. If you only look at the present--or "be" in the present--then, in the present, you're intentionally ignoring a lot of your potential, intentionally ignoring. If you're in a monastery or it works for you otherwise, congratulations, but it won't work for most people. Aesop said so, and I think he was right. It's good to plan for winter.

The interesting thing about planning and experience, though, is that they can take the form of heuristics, general ideas about how to go with the flow in such a way as to set yourself up for success without being rigid. Precise mindfulness and the ability to be in the present complements that experience, those heuristics, and any planning that we can actually follow through with based on experience and the ability to plan.

One of the most fascinating things that occurs in how our brains and minds work is the corner we turn at about 10,000 hours of experience with some particular field or endeavor. When I talk about an associational matrix, I'm leaning towards this qualitative change that comes with expert experience because even though you may not realize it, you want an associational matrix of experience to draw from. When we intend to learn and improve, it sometimes takes time, but we can usually do it. If we stick with that intention and practice for long enough, we get to a point where the effort pays off mentally. Things just start coming more easily. The book THE WISDOM PARADOX gets into it a little bit. A common example is driving. When you start learning how to drive, you're always thinking about checking mirrors, the gas gauge, other drivers, wondering whether you're going to get the clutch right on your next shift, etc. But at some point, over a period of time, you ease into driving. You do most of those same things but not all the time and with less effort and less stress. Driving begins to seem pretty easy and natural for most of us. Like riding a bike. And then we conveniently forget how difficult it was to learn. Same thing happens when talented high school athletes think they know a sport, only to find that it is faster, harder, and more complex at the college level...and then there are the pros.

So actually, there are at least two major corners that we turn. With driving, most of us get to where we are competent but not expert. Competence brings that sense of ease and most of us are relatively safe drivers. But we aren't professional stunt drivers or Nascar-quality competitors. Those folks get familiar with performing at a high level, an expert level, whereas the rest of us tend to get comfortable with competence. No longer newbies, but no Mario Andretti.

Keeping one foot in the present, so to speak, can become as practiced as shifting gears. We get used to looking at various mirrors, other cars, pedestrians, street signs, etc. We can similarly get used to looking at memories, impulses, expectations, creative plans, feeling disciplined, being present, etc. As the moments "shorten" and experience with intentionally shifting attention accrues, the moments and circumstance can blend together. Some people talk about this blending and flow as "process". Once we have a rich enough associational matrix and enough practice with the contents, we can shift our focus from comparatively slow-footed emphasis on content to a comparatively fluid awareness of process. But when we start practicing this shift, we have to put the effortful and incompetent practice into following briefer and smaller aspects of content. In the same way that our brains and minds turn a corner at about 10,000 practice hours, we eventually can become familiar and easier in our mindful attention of the present. It's 10,000 hours to get to the expert level, but we can usually achieve a journeyman's competence long before that. So we're looking for a fluid process that is connected to the present but also something other than a segmentation of time that leaves us rudderless, lost, and without meaning (solid reference points as context). Even in the midst of a fast-flowing mountain river, we can know where the banks and the river bottom are.

CT from M2G

I think I've finally come to a point where it's possible to make solid sense of my blog's name: cultural technology from meditation to globalization. Essentially, my topic today is about bringing together an Abhidhamma approach to time and consciousness with Marshall McLuhan's point that the medium is the message.

One of the functional aspects of Abhidhamma descriptions and practices of how time and consciousness unfold is a certain precision in how one pays attention to moments and the flow of moments. For a gross oversimplification, we can think of Abhidhamma meditation as focused on increasing the precision of one's ability to take in details and to notice increasingly minute instances. One effect of many types of meditation is that one moves from emphasizing thoughts in one's attentional field to noticing the progression of thoughts. If one does not identify with the thoughts themselves or their meanings, one familiarizes with the flow of that progression. Let me expand the same basic structural movement to cultural change on a global scale.

People in all societies are aware of the direction of cultural change. Those who like that direction tend to think of change as progressive and they also tend to think of themselves as progressive. People who challenge that the change is good usually think of themselves as traditionalists or cultural conservatives. Progressives and traditionalists in our society similarly experience what we call a generation gap. Generation gaps happen with types of technology as well as with people. In proto-human prehistory, when technological generations turned over more slowly than humanity's ancestors' generations did, there was no need to notice the speed of technological advancements. Societies formed relatively stable cultures with solid assumptions and circular myths about how the world is, and kids' generations could basically agree with their parents' generation on how it is.

Now that cultural exchange has become relatively speedy and commonplace, the generation gap is not only noticeable but unavoidable. As the speed of technological change blows by the rate of human reproduction and maturation, societies are having to face innovation itself as one of the solid assumptions about how our world is. One way of thinking about this is to talk about technology and innovation as the common global "language". Although we all come from somewhat distinct societies, we have in common an ability to adapt. That ability to adapt, especially when paired with the rate of technological advance, is creating a new sort of homogenization. From my perspective, from a structural viewpoint, the way this is happening is much more influential than any type of particularist cultural input (although I will not deny the importance of inputs from our relatively distinct cultures). Because there are so many cultures to draw from, no one of them will dominate. It is the structure that predominates, and that structure is roughly analogous to what happens when people stop identifying with thoughts, begin watching how thoughts and moments tend to unfold, and familiarize themselves with the progression of thoughts. Familiarity with this progression trains one to follow directions and qualities instead of looking primarily at stable structures and assumptions and competing "sides". Where you are from and where you are now take their place alongside the importance of where you're headed.

The basic laws don't really change, but the state of the union might. It seems roughly analogous, again, to the state change between solids and liquids. We can still rely on the laws that govern physics, but we cannot continue to rely on the properties that define solids when we are dealing with liquids. The basics that govern how people function are the same when dealing with meditation or globalization, but the experience of what determines what in our lives may be as different as standing on a frozen lake ("stable" ancient cultures) or swimming in the spring thaw (present). Progressives and kids will tend to say that spring is good, while traditionalists will tend to point out that it is nice to have somewhere solid to stand. Most times they argue, they argue ostensibly about issues that are actually secondary to the fact that one tends to choose stability of or return to a golden past (which never existed as it is sentimentally portrayed) while the other favors embracing a golden future (which will be more detailed and nuanced than is usually idealistically portrayed). Both the past and future unavoidably accept without difficulty solids and liquids. That is suchness in any timeframe.

As innovation, technological change, and cultural change become increasingly obvious and unavoidable, we will tend to focus less on relatively stable assumptions while relying more on our ability to move, interact, and coordinate (which, since it is consistent, can feel "stable"). This will not in the least change that some things are solid, but we will become increasingly accustomed to giving up fictions that once seemed solid because we will be increasingly driven to give up many realities that once seemed so important; newspapers and radio and universal, institutionalized education were once breakthrough products, and newspapers are fading into obscurity. Just as the press has become less hierarchical, less professional, and less edited, education is becoming less institutionalized. That which does not grow in our culture(s), dies. It happens at a fast enough pace now that our grandparents saw it in less than a lifetime and we see it within less than a generation. Just as this affects individuals noticeably, it affects groups, companies, institutions. And just as Abhidhamma meditation can bring increased vitality and awareness and appreciation to one's life, creating and playing with this process is both the fundamental aspect of humanity and also our future.

Lalita: the Dance

At first, most people are impressed with the open spaces involved with clarity. With experience and familiarity, some people begin to identify more with the space than with any limited sense of self. Mahamudra philosophy expresses this stage really well, speaking of the union between openness and the blissful awareness that it allows. The self and world can take on a very consistently bright quality that "enlightens" so-called negative emotions and experiences just as clarity can make ordinary situations seem fascinating and important.

Chogyam Trungpa said that we go up the mountain for ourselves but we come down the mountain for others. We strive for the peak experiences partially because they are simply worth experiencing, but then there is the further step of making the two one or bringing about the perspective where we are able to experience peak and ordinary or "negative" experiences as similarly vital and unique. When we can consistently bring the awareness that ordinary is good and extraordinary is good, we're looking at moving beyond good and bad and into a way of living in which we do not feel apart from the people around us and the moments we are in right now. In this sense, in bringing this awareness and sharing the vitality, we end up living for others and with others. As we exhibit grace in the presence of adversity and abundance, we become the example we would choose while living in an unadulterated communion with those people and circumstances which surround and enrich us. In John Daido Loori's words (commenting on the Bodhisattva vows): you cannot save all sentient beings without being saved by all sentient beings. In more Christian language, we speak of service to others, stewardship of God's Creation, that everything was originally created through the divine Word which is also Messiah, and we recognize that the Holy Spirit is everywhere-existent while being inseparable from the Father and Son.

Here, rather than having some clear purpose like a well-oiled machine, we sometimes seem to have purpose and sometimes seem to have no purpose in the particular dance steps we are taking right here and now. Before this step, we have not taken the full measure of joy that is possible in this universe. This step is complete harmony and joy. If there is a further step, the experience of it may be influenced by one's ideas and experience up through this point, but there will be no need to explain how openness, communion, and reality-as-is have never been separate from any beginning.

Like a Well-oiled Machine

What does it take to move beyond customs and interactions based on mindful appreciation--and what is that like anyway? Mindfulness gives people a real, genuine taste of emptiness, spaciousness, like that old cowboy song, "Don't fence me in." If you can imagine spending your whole life on horseback out in the truly wilderness-wild of the old American west, tending barbed wire fences that stretched almost farther than you could ride in a month, moving cattle with a few quiet ol' boys during the summer and wintering pretty much alone on the high plains of Wyoming--if you can get that feeling of a dry wind off the plains that smells of sage and blows on through your soul, then you get some sense of what emptiness can feel like. If you take the social aspect out of mindful appreciation, the applied aspect, mindfulness can introduce that feeling of cleanliness which is right up there next to godliness. And over time, you become familiar with the existential certainty that there is no bucket, no type of fence, no prison that can really contain that in our souls which is the ether of the universe.

If you're more of a THE BIG LEBOWSKI type than a fan of Sam Elliot's earlier movies and handlebar mustache, the feel or accoutrements may be different, but the thing itself is the same. Gautama Buddha said that mindful awareness itself would get you there, and it will.

Mindfulness practice allows us to actually turn away from--in Buddhist literature, to stop "feeding the fires" of--the things we do to create unhappiness and distaste in our own lives. That's the therapeutic side. But it also brings that openness into big and small aspects of what we do, and that is what I see as the real value of it, the sati of sati.

When we're free of disturbances and distractions enough to really focus with gentle intensity on something as un-extraordinary as tying our shoes, at that point, we're really sinking into something that is sinking into us. We get beyond the boundaries of a concretely definable ego and into something spiritual-without-pretense. The ego itself isn't necessarily good or bad--like the habit of wearing shoes--but it works the way it works and we bring our presence right there. When we turn mindfulness inwards, we begin moving into responding to how our own egos work with spaciousness and equanimity. Over time, mindfulness becomes commonplace--like getting used to Big Sky in Montana--but it becomes no less valuable for being there. It is foundational, hard to imagine after a time, how anyone could or could want to live without it. Rather than being something to be feared or worked at, it is like the feeling of taking a hot leather hat off your head and taking in the breeze.

I call this clarity. Beyond mindful, effortful concentration and somewhere before grace, we incorporate this openness into who we are. Taking openness with you into big situations and small allows a certain personal balance and clarity, an easygoing way even with difficult people and work. Well, it lends to being easygoing if you also believe in the intentional relaxation I talk about elsewhere; it also lends to being intensely focused and determined when that is called for.

In order for people to bring that to a group, the group will need to feel in some ways like a well-oiled machine. Think about this as a comparison. Cognitive psychologists talk about the difference between experts at some field--say chess, it's something I know a little--and amateurs. They have found that, across the board, something significant changes once people reach a point where they have put in 10,000 quality hours of practice in their chosen field. In my language, the associational matrix at that point is so familiar (like the back of my hand) and so rich (after somewhere around 8 years of near-fanatical practice) that things "just come together". Without extraneous effort, things "click". Michael Jordan blows by defenders, jet fighter aces feel like there is no one else even in the sky with them--just the goal, and this is genuinely a "peak" experience like stepping to the top of Everest and feeling that the only higher elevation is more space.

There are few groups, if any I've seen, that perform at this level. It goes beyond good customs and being supportive of one another's mindful appreciation. More often, there may be one or a few stars that bring openness, flow, and superior performance into a group situation. The other people in their group say of them, "He/she's on another level." How can it be when experts take enough time working together to get to a point where their team functions like their individual expertise does? Whatever else that would be, it would be inspiring. If you create this in a group, you won't want to leave.

The individuals who are capable of consistently operating at such a high level still often irritate others with their behavior and are irritated in turn by others' comparatively poor performance. While clarity is still new, it's like a favorite Christmas present that we are somewhat jealous of. We can get distracted by or frustrated with anyone who screws up our mojo. It's also possible to have one "well-oiled machine" fighting with a similarly well-oiled machine over which is best. The next step can seem somewhat modest in comparison with the potential star power of this stage, but it is impressive in its own right. (Here we will have to extrapolate almost completely from the behavior of a few rare individuals.)