Karen Horney and Mindfulness-into-Clarity

Karen Horney focused a good deal of her psychdynamic theory on interpersonal motivations. She broke things down to three major motivations in relation to others--the movement away from (withdrawal), the movement against (aggression), and the movement towards (compliance). In Buddhism, the trinity is: aversion, attachment/grasping, and ignorance. In more modern, psychological terms, we focus a lot on the dance between approach and withdrawal where the more neutral space can be seen as immobility of some sort--either something along the lines of apathy or, alternately, equanimity.

I'm learning a lot from working with Shinzen. One of the central stages I've listed is Mindful Appreciation. To some extent, I've tried to delineate attentional techniques or practices that are supportive of the particular developmental qualities and opportunities at each stage. Some of the benefits of mindfulness practice include: sensory clarity that comes from experiencing (seeing, hearing, or feeling)"through" the permeability of perceptions and conceptions; increased equanimity; increased strength of concentration; greater chances of recognizing "openings" for gratitude or appreciation in our lives; and an increasingly consistent turn from emotional reactivity to being in touch with our own and others' genuine emotions. Different styles or types of mindfulness practice will have a greater influence on different benefits.

One of the most significant benefits that stands out is that we create a space or fulcrum from which we do not have to unquestioningly or unintentionally "go with" these semi-conscious or semi-intentional psychological movements that Horney mentioned. In other words, we can separate the initial impulse towards withdrawal, aggression, or compliance from the continuation of that impulse which turns impulse into a full-blown and self-sustaining process that we can describe as habitual reactions. We can feel and witness the impulse without allowing it to move us. This becomes a sort of "fourth" psychological movement option--remaining. Remaining with the initial impulse rather than running through a usual process. In Shinzen's phraseology, he describes equanimity as the ability to allow sensory experience to come and go without push (aversion) or pull (grasping).

Beyond the deeper, quicker, or more spiritual aspects of what mindfulness like this can lead to, it allows us to check the previously unquestioned unfolding of the processes by which we have come to know and create a limited sense of self. We could also call this self an "incomplete" self because this self--as primarily a collection of temperament and habits--does not primarily move from the ground of being or a sense of the simultaneity of abundance of/in the universe and ever-spontaneous vitality. Part of the development from Mindful Appreciation involves getting more in touch with the vitality through practicing nonidentification with habitual reactions. It is difficult or impossible to distinguish a sense of self from habitual reactions if we cannot see our habitual reactions and see them for what they are. Without bringing some clarity and equanimity to these reactions, we will tend to identify with those we like and attempt to suppress those we do not. That very movement (identify/suppress or grasping/aversion) feeds the ignorance, allowing that personal, neutral psychological space to remain as apathy or ignorance.

If we can "see through" the habitual psychological processing, we have the option of relating to the world around us through new ways, through unique or spontaneous responses that allow us to "feel" the vitality of each moment. That ends up being a decent description of the inspiration that can be seen as an intentional attentional practice corresponding to the following stage of Clarity. Inspiration can be described as moving from the moment of clear seeing into vitality, appreciation, or spontaneity (including "nurture positive" in Basic Mindfulness terms)--basically, a simple, positive jolt following the moment of equanimity. It looks like we can move from an understanding and experience of these brief sequential movements (or moments) into more consistently noticing this vitality and positivity as flow.