Just found your pages. Courageous writing. Your central topic, amidst the engaging meandering, that of being fully present, does feel like THE lifelong dance project. Thanks for reminding me of that in a gentle and honest way. That’s my takeaway and with that I shall return to life ( well, now sleep) and look forward to your future essays.
Thank you Glen. Without being present, we are not truly able to engage in anything, only go through the motions, a thing that the Machine and our profoundly anti-human cultures actively encourage. Enjoy your rest. Also essential!
Hello Caroline, we met briefly after your talk with Dougald Hine in Glasgow. Your writing seems alive (best word I can think of) and being present in the writing must be a key factor. I’m really interested in the list of Classics you linked to, having read a handful of Taoist texts and related books. Where would you recommend starting with Thomas Cleary’s writing on Taoism?
It’s really interesting the way you describe the way some people seem to see you, in ways you may not welcome due to either not being ready for or because you don’t like (my words!) the messenger. Alastair MacIntosh often talks about truth and reality in sanskrit language (satya I think)being the same thing.
Thanks Martin, I remember you! I would start with the Thomas Cleary translations in the Shambala Classics Volume 1. There is also a very nice Penguin Classics version of the Chuang Tzu, translated by Martin Palmer with Elizabeth Breuilly, Penguin Classics, (1996). which is very good. Here is a reading list originally for my T'ai Chi students, scroll down to the Taoism bit... https://greatrivertaichi.com/2021/01/14/reading-list/
I am also enjoying very much the translations by https://immortalitystudy.substack.com/ although unless you are already familiar with Taoist practice / internal alchemy (Neidan) this may be a bit too soon. However, his clear words and focus on simplicity and sincerity are 100% orthodox (and in line with T'ai Chi I've been practicing for 25yrs.)
The way some people saw me, when I was still beside myself, was probably fairly accurate. I was indeed not ready to see my predicament, so it all felt terribly personal. Without armouring, the heart can take its place in the web of interconnection with the rest of the living cosmos. Not taking things personally (even when they are meant personally!) was probably the greatest boon to my mental health. However, it is not easy, as almost everything is lined up to keep us all atomised and defending our 'identities' while simultaneously deconstructing or diminishing all the myriad ways humans naturally love to work and group together for mutual aid and joy, (true anarchism - 'not ruling or being ruled', instead, creating mutual flourishing).
I have decided to trust in relationship and reality. I am aware it is an unpopular choice.
Thank you for this. It puts me in mind of - and I don't, byt this, mean to imply that it applies to you or anyone else in particular - something a female pal sent me a while back. That was an article on how being somewhat Aspergers-y is more common in women than is usually diagnosed. The reason for that underdiagnoisis, the study suggested, is that women are conditioned to be good at masking, and mimicking 'appropriate' behaviours and presentation from those around them in place of feeling the authentic emotions they 'ought' to be feeling. It included a set of indicators to look out for and I felt an immediate shock of recognition, though of course that itself could be self-delusion.
Authenticity, eh? Hmmph. To tolerate it, I think one has to be accepting of a certain separation from others, a self-othering, if that's what one's authentic self really is, and that's a challenge.
Thanks for this comment. Masking (for coping) is a part of what my ASD friends describe, and it is also part of many wider cultural situations in which a person protects themself, for instance, in abusive relationships, in hiding things about oneself that could attract trouble, in religious (or strictly atheist) communities when losing one's faith, or after conversion to another... Masking can be adaptive and protective in the short term and maladaptive in the longer term, in my experience. I think had I in those days undergone the kind of diagnostic tests my later-life female ASD pals had more recently, I may too have received that diagnosis. However, the profound depth of human neuroplasticity combined with the transformational psychological effects of long-term practice mean that my experience of life is now radically different. Thought patterns, emotions, my sense of my own body, etc, are all unlike (and far broader than) what I experienced as a young person. So my feeling is that the process in me was developmental, rather than 'pathological'.
Regarding authenticity, I do not personally believe in a fixed 'true self', having spent a long time looking for it and finding it to be insubstantial, (as Buddha pointed out 3000 years ago). So there is no authentic self for me to worry about expressing, which is a relief. Authenticity is in action, a Way, if you like, for an organism to move about in the world. To live 'according to one's nature' is an attempt to harmonise with the Tao. Mostly this requires yielding to one's conditioning - recognising all the ways one has been moulded and formed, for good or ill, and then finally putting it all down, and diving in. As it is in connection where all the juice of life is! I feel there is no need for self-othering, just space and quiet time (prayer, meditation, etc) between being in the thick of things, so one can reflect, see what went well and what needs work, talk to dear ones and mentors, consult wisdom, and then dive back into life again. (We cannot only breathe out). I love that we humans can find out by doing!
Female's 'masking' is explained by the subject of the young woman in this episode of Chris Packham's new BBC series on autism: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bbnjvx
Thanks. It is a strategy common in several so-called neurodivergent conditions, and is a coping method in various life situations by many kinds of so-called neuro-typical people.
This piece blew me away. I really resonate with the feeling of often being beside myself, not present and ruled by lists. Something to work on! I love the idea of making friends with our dreaming selves. Thank you for sharing that.
All of my early training -- in family, school, among peers, etc. -- was an outrageous miseducation ... about the body (soma -- the body as experienced from within), about feeling, sensing, intuiting and imagining in relation to thinking and knowing. It was an education in dis-association -- thus dissociation (not being truly present). I've always known this. The knowing was in the bones ... and in the shimmering sensations in the skin, the tightness in the belly and breath....
I always knew, and yet I did not know ... and could not know as "knowing" was explained and taught to me by the dominant / mainstream / western / modern culture ("civilization"). There was never an option to remain whole within myself (other than dis-associated, dissociated), as I had no guides or teachers, no support such a herculean task.
I'm now 57 years of age, and all of my life I've been following the profound tacit knowing teacher dwelling in my skin, bones and breath. I never imagined it would be so difficult and take so long!
The key is the tacit, which remembers all which we've been trained to forget. It hasn't ever forgotten what we know but know not how to speak -- even to ourselves (!).
I'm writing about this now ... a book. Slowly. Folks need to know that we've all been in training ... dis-association training (dissociation) ... fragmentation training, splitting, breaking apart. It's not just in some of our families, but it's habit is woven into the fabric of our culture -- whether we live in the USA, the UK, Australia, ... most anywhere modern and western.
We have to really understand, in a whole and rounded way, what went wrong before we can put it right. And that's not just a personal problem but a collective one, and we're all in this together.
(Yes, your friend Iain McGilchrist is among my many guides in this process.)
I'm here for you in it. And you are here for me in it. And we are blessed.
Another book mention that came to mind, perhaps because a certain kind of meta-awareness (direct awareness of awareness itself by awareness itself) FEELS so core to the meta-cognitive aspect of my unfolding research, inquiry, journey home ....
The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness, by Diana Winston. ( https://www.soundstrue.com/products/the-little-book-of-being ) It's a book about how to be directly aware of our own awareness -- which I FEEL is necessary toward knowing in a whole and rounded way and breaking the dissociative spells.
Thank you for all these great links, James. I guess that's my evening sorted then, (once I have done the last hour of admin that may no longer be avoided...) I am glad every week of the excellent people I am meeting on here and the great work they are up to, it is very heartening. All good wishes to you, Caro.
Attending to the links I provided is not as daunting as you may think. There's no need to set aside a whole evening! Two of the links simply introduce books to you -- books which I feel nearly certain you will appreciate. And the remaining link is to a short essay I wrote about poetry-writing and the role of the body (soma) in that (as I experience it). It's not a terribly long essay. It's rather short, actually -- as essays go.
Okay then! Let me pile on a little more. Please look into Focusing / the philosophy of the implicit / thinking at the edge -- all developed by Eugene T. Gendlin. ("google" it.) You'll immediately see the relevance of these to the notion of tacit knowledge and the work of Iain McGilchrist.
My work right now is to write something about philosophy which comments on how feeling, sensing, intuition and imagination are necessary to knowing -- which is sort of like lobbing a grenade into academic philosophy (for which I have little 'taste'). But it's clear to me that when our thinking is integrated with these 'faculties' of knowing that it becomes a whole different kind of thinking than the one most philosophers (& scientists, and ordinary people) in modernity and the west are familiar with.
This is all stuff you know, I know. But my intuition tells me you're going to be one of the folks who help this profound insight emerge into the world through collaborative learning which literally embodies this understanding.
Of course, I have this same intuition about your friend, Dougald Hine, who you brought to meet Iain McGilchrist on his magical island. Between us all we're doing an archeological dig into the palimpsest of knowing as an integrated practice which includes all of our capacities and which shuns none of them.
Aah. Thank you. Your writing is helpful... I have been thinking about my lifelong yearning for a sense of presence/connection in communications with other humans, but then when the opportunity comes, my mind almost always veers away. So natural and easy for me to be present when no humans are around. But humans scare me/overstimulate/ frustrate/ annoy- I literally shy away. I felt a sense of recognition when you shared about the father figure , and I know there is trauma there that informs patterns of mine, but then I look at photos of me as a 2 year old, hyper-focusing on what is in front of me and not connecting with the other humans in the photo, and know that there is this way in which my mind just doesn't want to be so present with people (self-diagnosed on the spectrum of ADHD here.) Yet! Yet I am always wanting connection. Practice in safe spaces helps. Your missive reminds me to go back to some practices.
Hey there, Shinehah, so great to see your words here.
Learning to safely do the difficult, necessary thing/s for our growth, so that we will one day no longer need labels, is work of the highest calibre, because it will make possible all kinds of future connections, and meanwhile reconnect so many parts within ourselves. What I keep returning to, and was discussing much with Dougald Hine on our trip recently, was the need to mend our parts, build webs and then test them under not too stressful circumstances, and with low stakes. Then, over time, increase the realness and difficulty of the tests, whether to ourselves or our networks. This is preparation for safety and community in unknown times ahead. Without knowing it at first, T'ai Chi partner work taught me how to do all this. Right now I am attempting to design a way to share this in some kind of in-person teaching situation, where people don't have to spend 10 years doing it to get the gist! I am writing my way into it at the moment. Perhaps something will surface. Hope with Dougald and Anna one day. We shall see.
Thank you Caro! So much of what your write here resonates - being called out by teachers and not understanding why, just feeling dissociated... and the thing about about the dissonance growing up amidst unsafety and denial. Something in me is breathing more deeply having read your words.
There's no way of saying so which does not lead through grief and grieving. What the modern western 'self' ultimately "is" appears to be a self-image. Not the actual or real self, but merely an image of self. And modern western psychology is all caught up in this image and its stories, framings, patterns of being.... Modernity, as a "project" (Think here the strand of the Enlightenment in which 'man' is master and world is slave) had certainty as its principal aim and goal. With certainty, we could ostensibly stave off the literally unthinkable risks of the living body, the soma -- to make the world finally, finally, finally (oh, gawed!) safe one day -- by being "in charge," by being dominant, by being "human" in a distinctly modern and western sense centered on the image of oneself as "master".
The result of this pursuit of certainty and mastery is isolation, loneliness, alienation, fragmentation -- being utterly alone and apart. To be a master one must be apart, not integrated, not participant -- but alone. A sovereign. Above and apart, looking down on -- but not participating in -- one's own experience and relations.
What appears to be happening now is that the Myth of Mastery is failing us all. It is now fully obsolete. And so, then, is the very modern image of 'self'.
The whole story of the modern self is being flung repeatedly against a wall it cannot pass through. And so we are in this passage, this liminal space -- all of us together -- in which an image of who and what we are is in the ruins. Life among and amid the ruins. Hallelujah! At last!
Thank you for sharing! This was just what I needed in this moment. I've been feeling rather beside myself lately. Probably, in part, because I haven't been making time for practice. Whenever I see a new post from you come up it brings me a little joy. They always have such gems of wisdom.
I'm watching a documentary (taking a break for a moment) about the life of Joan Didion, which is odd, because I've never read any of her books. But when Joan said (in her book, The White Album) "I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition, but one I found troubling," I got the impression, from the context of the film's story, that this was really at the heart of her experience of this time in her life. That, and I thought of Dougald, and his masterful way of revealing, with gentleness and kindness, that all of us sensitive ones are experiencing this now, that this is the undertone and undercurrent of the ever-emerging zeitgeist of the world's dominant culture now. And how could it be otherwise? "The center cannot hold." That is, the thematic center of 'modernity'.
What a marvelous quote to use as an epigraph for a book (the one from Didion), I thought. After all, clearly I'm always narrating a story -- and the story is always plummeting and dissolving because it changes with each strange new passage in the journey of disbelieving my own narrative. And yet the story must go on, and it does, like turning the dial on a kaleidoscope or pulling the thread that is the one which holds the signature binding of my own tale.
Dougald has so much to do with how I'm able to make any kind of sense now. It doesn't matter much that the pages of my story blow in the wind, so long as I have real friends. And Dougald's way of being a friend to his friends keeps his pages from blowing in the wind too wildly. Or that's how it feels to me to witness his extraordinary way of being a friend. But we mustn't make him too reflective about all of this. It would be like asking him to show us his way of striking the tennis ball with his racket. That's really none of his business, right? It would throw off his game. Which is a lousy metaphor precisely because it's not a game.
Dougald is living on a wild edge in the ruins. And so am I. But he's doing it more gracefully than I, I think. He has the benefit of so many beautiful friendships!
This rang quite a few bells... One specific story brought to mind a friend who suffered abuse early in life and as a consequence lived literally beside herself: when she first came to her teacher, he said almost exactly the same thing: "Your body's here but you're over there."
The first principle of a certain Sufi path is "awareness of the breath", and that's entirely about being here, now. I know the breath is enormously important to many traditions for this same reason.
I appreciate the vulnerability of writing something so personal, and that's important too. I'm meant to cultivate that but hmm.
I thought long before sharing this, and edited hard. You are right about breath, and about being. So many kinds of things can disrupt a young life, directly or systemically, so it is important for me to bear witness to the many times I have seen people come back to ourselves, from the profound displacement of soul that we'd suffered. If this is not hopeful, I don't know what is. What great luck we found our wisdom paths, eh? And were stubborn enough women to stay on them!
Luck or maybe good karma, for lack of a better word... Yes and to know better than to get off as soon as they got uncomfortable.
Humorously, I have used dissociation consciously (though I couldn't tell you how I knew how to do it) when I started giving courses, because otherwise the stage fright was unmanageable. So I started leaving myself at the door so I could get on with it! I don't need to do that anymore, I'm a lot more cavalier about the whole thing...
Just found your pages. Courageous writing. Your central topic, amidst the engaging meandering, that of being fully present, does feel like THE lifelong dance project. Thanks for reminding me of that in a gentle and honest way. That’s my takeaway and with that I shall return to life ( well, now sleep) and look forward to your future essays.
Thank you Glen. Without being present, we are not truly able to engage in anything, only go through the motions, a thing that the Machine and our profoundly anti-human cultures actively encourage. Enjoy your rest. Also essential!
Hello Caroline, we met briefly after your talk with Dougald Hine in Glasgow. Your writing seems alive (best word I can think of) and being present in the writing must be a key factor. I’m really interested in the list of Classics you linked to, having read a handful of Taoist texts and related books. Where would you recommend starting with Thomas Cleary’s writing on Taoism?
It’s really interesting the way you describe the way some people seem to see you, in ways you may not welcome due to either not being ready for or because you don’t like (my words!) the messenger. Alastair MacIntosh often talks about truth and reality in sanskrit language (satya I think)being the same thing.
Thanks Martin, I remember you! I would start with the Thomas Cleary translations in the Shambala Classics Volume 1. There is also a very nice Penguin Classics version of the Chuang Tzu, translated by Martin Palmer with Elizabeth Breuilly, Penguin Classics, (1996). which is very good. Here is a reading list originally for my T'ai Chi students, scroll down to the Taoism bit... https://greatrivertaichi.com/2021/01/14/reading-list/
I am also enjoying very much the translations by https://immortalitystudy.substack.com/ although unless you are already familiar with Taoist practice / internal alchemy (Neidan) this may be a bit too soon. However, his clear words and focus on simplicity and sincerity are 100% orthodox (and in line with T'ai Chi I've been practicing for 25yrs.)
The way some people saw me, when I was still beside myself, was probably fairly accurate. I was indeed not ready to see my predicament, so it all felt terribly personal. Without armouring, the heart can take its place in the web of interconnection with the rest of the living cosmos. Not taking things personally (even when they are meant personally!) was probably the greatest boon to my mental health. However, it is not easy, as almost everything is lined up to keep us all atomised and defending our 'identities' while simultaneously deconstructing or diminishing all the myriad ways humans naturally love to work and group together for mutual aid and joy, (true anarchism - 'not ruling or being ruled', instead, creating mutual flourishing).
I have decided to trust in relationship and reality. I am aware it is an unpopular choice.
Thank you very much! I shall investigate your reading list. Your description of the dreaming part is lovely too. So many people dismiss it.
Thank you for this. It puts me in mind of - and I don't, byt this, mean to imply that it applies to you or anyone else in particular - something a female pal sent me a while back. That was an article on how being somewhat Aspergers-y is more common in women than is usually diagnosed. The reason for that underdiagnoisis, the study suggested, is that women are conditioned to be good at masking, and mimicking 'appropriate' behaviours and presentation from those around them in place of feeling the authentic emotions they 'ought' to be feeling. It included a set of indicators to look out for and I felt an immediate shock of recognition, though of course that itself could be self-delusion.
Authenticity, eh? Hmmph. To tolerate it, I think one has to be accepting of a certain separation from others, a self-othering, if that's what one's authentic self really is, and that's a challenge.
Thanks for this comment. Masking (for coping) is a part of what my ASD friends describe, and it is also part of many wider cultural situations in which a person protects themself, for instance, in abusive relationships, in hiding things about oneself that could attract trouble, in religious (or strictly atheist) communities when losing one's faith, or after conversion to another... Masking can be adaptive and protective in the short term and maladaptive in the longer term, in my experience. I think had I in those days undergone the kind of diagnostic tests my later-life female ASD pals had more recently, I may too have received that diagnosis. However, the profound depth of human neuroplasticity combined with the transformational psychological effects of long-term practice mean that my experience of life is now radically different. Thought patterns, emotions, my sense of my own body, etc, are all unlike (and far broader than) what I experienced as a young person. So my feeling is that the process in me was developmental, rather than 'pathological'.
Regarding authenticity, I do not personally believe in a fixed 'true self', having spent a long time looking for it and finding it to be insubstantial, (as Buddha pointed out 3000 years ago). So there is no authentic self for me to worry about expressing, which is a relief. Authenticity is in action, a Way, if you like, for an organism to move about in the world. To live 'according to one's nature' is an attempt to harmonise with the Tao. Mostly this requires yielding to one's conditioning - recognising all the ways one has been moulded and formed, for good or ill, and then finally putting it all down, and diving in. As it is in connection where all the juice of life is! I feel there is no need for self-othering, just space and quiet time (prayer, meditation, etc) between being in the thick of things, so one can reflect, see what went well and what needs work, talk to dear ones and mentors, consult wisdom, and then dive back into life again. (We cannot only breathe out). I love that we humans can find out by doing!
Female's 'masking' is explained by the subject of the young woman in this episode of Chris Packham's new BBC series on autism: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bbnjvx
Thanks. It is a strategy common in several so-called neurodivergent conditions, and is a coping method in various life situations by many kinds of so-called neuro-typical people.
This piece blew me away. I really resonate with the feeling of often being beside myself, not present and ruled by lists. Something to work on! I love the idea of making friends with our dreaming selves. Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you Alice. In a month or so I am going to post about how to reconnect to dreaming specifically, so that may be of help.
Looking forward to reading it!
' I have yet again written myself back into the moment.'
Your words and what Dreaming Pip left in my pocket this morning are a relationship and reality of their own!
Powerful. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing all of that, Caro. It is a courageous gift from the heart (Latin cor "heart").
Have you read IN THE BODY OF THE WORLD ?
https://www.eveensler.org/pf/book-in-the-body-of-the-world/
All of my early training -- in family, school, among peers, etc. -- was an outrageous miseducation ... about the body (soma -- the body as experienced from within), about feeling, sensing, intuiting and imagining in relation to thinking and knowing. It was an education in dis-association -- thus dissociation (not being truly present). I've always known this. The knowing was in the bones ... and in the shimmering sensations in the skin, the tightness in the belly and breath....
I always knew, and yet I did not know ... and could not know as "knowing" was explained and taught to me by the dominant / mainstream / western / modern culture ("civilization"). There was never an option to remain whole within myself (other than dis-associated, dissociated), as I had no guides or teachers, no support such a herculean task.
I'm now 57 years of age, and all of my life I've been following the profound tacit knowing teacher dwelling in my skin, bones and breath. I never imagined it would be so difficult and take so long!
The instrument of dowsing
https://theheronhouse.substack.com/p/the-instrument-of-dowsing
The key is the tacit, which remembers all which we've been trained to forget. It hasn't ever forgotten what we know but know not how to speak -- even to ourselves (!).
I'm writing about this now ... a book. Slowly. Folks need to know that we've all been in training ... dis-association training (dissociation) ... fragmentation training, splitting, breaking apart. It's not just in some of our families, but it's habit is woven into the fabric of our culture -- whether we live in the USA, the UK, Australia, ... most anywhere modern and western.
We have to really understand, in a whole and rounded way, what went wrong before we can put it right. And that's not just a personal problem but a collective one, and we're all in this together.
(Yes, your friend Iain McGilchrist is among my many guides in this process.)
I'm here for you in it. And you are here for me in it. And we are blessed.
Another book mention that came to mind, perhaps because a certain kind of meta-awareness (direct awareness of awareness itself by awareness itself) FEELS so core to the meta-cognitive aspect of my unfolding research, inquiry, journey home ....
The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness, by Diana Winston. ( https://www.soundstrue.com/products/the-little-book-of-being ) It's a book about how to be directly aware of our own awareness -- which I FEEL is necessary toward knowing in a whole and rounded way and breaking the dissociative spells.
Warmly,
James
Thank you for all these great links, James. I guess that's my evening sorted then, (once I have done the last hour of admin that may no longer be avoided...) I am glad every week of the excellent people I am meeting on here and the great work they are up to, it is very heartening. All good wishes to you, Caro.
Attending to the links I provided is not as daunting as you may think. There's no need to set aside a whole evening! Two of the links simply introduce books to you -- books which I feel nearly certain you will appreciate. And the remaining link is to a short essay I wrote about poetry-writing and the role of the body (soma) in that (as I experience it). It's not a terribly long essay. It's rather short, actually -- as essays go.
No, I want to spend an evening doing this! I wasn't being ironic :)
Okay then! Let me pile on a little more. Please look into Focusing / the philosophy of the implicit / thinking at the edge -- all developed by Eugene T. Gendlin. ("google" it.) You'll immediately see the relevance of these to the notion of tacit knowledge and the work of Iain McGilchrist.
My work right now is to write something about philosophy which comments on how feeling, sensing, intuition and imagination are necessary to knowing -- which is sort of like lobbing a grenade into academic philosophy (for which I have little 'taste'). But it's clear to me that when our thinking is integrated with these 'faculties' of knowing that it becomes a whole different kind of thinking than the one most philosophers (& scientists, and ordinary people) in modernity and the west are familiar with.
This is all stuff you know, I know. But my intuition tells me you're going to be one of the folks who help this profound insight emerge into the world through collaborative learning which literally embodies this understanding.
Of course, I have this same intuition about your friend, Dougald Hine, who you brought to meet Iain McGilchrist on his magical island. Between us all we're doing an archeological dig into the palimpsest of knowing as an integrated practice which includes all of our capacities and which shuns none of them.
Aah. Thank you. Your writing is helpful... I have been thinking about my lifelong yearning for a sense of presence/connection in communications with other humans, but then when the opportunity comes, my mind almost always veers away. So natural and easy for me to be present when no humans are around. But humans scare me/overstimulate/ frustrate/ annoy- I literally shy away. I felt a sense of recognition when you shared about the father figure , and I know there is trauma there that informs patterns of mine, but then I look at photos of me as a 2 year old, hyper-focusing on what is in front of me and not connecting with the other humans in the photo, and know that there is this way in which my mind just doesn't want to be so present with people (self-diagnosed on the spectrum of ADHD here.) Yet! Yet I am always wanting connection. Practice in safe spaces helps. Your missive reminds me to go back to some practices.
Hey there, Shinehah, so great to see your words here.
Learning to safely do the difficult, necessary thing/s for our growth, so that we will one day no longer need labels, is work of the highest calibre, because it will make possible all kinds of future connections, and meanwhile reconnect so many parts within ourselves. What I keep returning to, and was discussing much with Dougald Hine on our trip recently, was the need to mend our parts, build webs and then test them under not too stressful circumstances, and with low stakes. Then, over time, increase the realness and difficulty of the tests, whether to ourselves or our networks. This is preparation for safety and community in unknown times ahead. Without knowing it at first, T'ai Chi partner work taught me how to do all this. Right now I am attempting to design a way to share this in some kind of in-person teaching situation, where people don't have to spend 10 years doing it to get the gist! I am writing my way into it at the moment. Perhaps something will surface. Hope with Dougald and Anna one day. We shall see.
Love to you over there out west cx
Looking forward to seeing this develop!
Thank you Caro! So much of what your write here resonates - being called out by teachers and not understanding why, just feeling dissociated... and the thing about about the dissonance growing up amidst unsafety and denial. Something in me is breathing more deeply having read your words.
Yes! You breathing more deeply is great news.
There's no way of saying so which does not lead through grief and grieving. What the modern western 'self' ultimately "is" appears to be a self-image. Not the actual or real self, but merely an image of self. And modern western psychology is all caught up in this image and its stories, framings, patterns of being.... Modernity, as a "project" (Think here the strand of the Enlightenment in which 'man' is master and world is slave) had certainty as its principal aim and goal. With certainty, we could ostensibly stave off the literally unthinkable risks of the living body, the soma -- to make the world finally, finally, finally (oh, gawed!) safe one day -- by being "in charge," by being dominant, by being "human" in a distinctly modern and western sense centered on the image of oneself as "master".
The result of this pursuit of certainty and mastery is isolation, loneliness, alienation, fragmentation -- being utterly alone and apart. To be a master one must be apart, not integrated, not participant -- but alone. A sovereign. Above and apart, looking down on -- but not participating in -- one's own experience and relations.
What appears to be happening now is that the Myth of Mastery is failing us all. It is now fully obsolete. And so, then, is the very modern image of 'self'.
The whole story of the modern self is being flung repeatedly against a wall it cannot pass through. And so we are in this passage, this liminal space -- all of us together -- in which an image of who and what we are is in the ruins. Life among and amid the ruins. Hallelujah! At last!
Thank you for sharing! This was just what I needed in this moment. I've been feeling rather beside myself lately. Probably, in part, because I haven't been making time for practice. Whenever I see a new post from you come up it brings me a little joy. They always have such gems of wisdom.
I...feel seen. Not sure I like it.
Get used to the 'icky' feeling, it's where all the juice is :)
Hi Caro -
Surely you've already heard this, but I'm listening to it for the first time now. It's your friend, Dougald, talking. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hermitix/episodes/Climate-Change--Collapse--and-Modernity-with-Dougald-Hine-e1tne77 He says that if by some miracle any three people, living or dead, could be brought together in a room to talk, he'd like it to be yourself, Ivan Illich and John Berger.
He didn't mention me, but that's only because he could only choose three, of course! (wink, sly smile, looking away now shamefaced)
What?! Hmm. I better go listen.
I'm watching a documentary (taking a break for a moment) about the life of Joan Didion, which is odd, because I've never read any of her books. But when Joan said (in her book, The White Album) "I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition, but one I found troubling," I got the impression, from the context of the film's story, that this was really at the heart of her experience of this time in her life. That, and I thought of Dougald, and his masterful way of revealing, with gentleness and kindness, that all of us sensitive ones are experiencing this now, that this is the undertone and undercurrent of the ever-emerging zeitgeist of the world's dominant culture now. And how could it be otherwise? "The center cannot hold." That is, the thematic center of 'modernity'.
What a marvelous quote to use as an epigraph for a book (the one from Didion), I thought. After all, clearly I'm always narrating a story -- and the story is always plummeting and dissolving because it changes with each strange new passage in the journey of disbelieving my own narrative. And yet the story must go on, and it does, like turning the dial on a kaleidoscope or pulling the thread that is the one which holds the signature binding of my own tale.
Dougald has so much to do with how I'm able to make any kind of sense now. It doesn't matter much that the pages of my story blow in the wind, so long as I have real friends. And Dougald's way of being a friend to his friends keeps his pages from blowing in the wind too wildly. Or that's how it feels to me to witness his extraordinary way of being a friend. But we mustn't make him too reflective about all of this. It would be like asking him to show us his way of striking the tennis ball with his racket. That's really none of his business, right? It would throw off his game. Which is a lousy metaphor precisely because it's not a game.
Dougald is living on a wild edge in the ruins. And so am I. But he's doing it more gracefully than I, I think. He has the benefit of so many beautiful friendships!
This rang quite a few bells... One specific story brought to mind a friend who suffered abuse early in life and as a consequence lived literally beside herself: when she first came to her teacher, he said almost exactly the same thing: "Your body's here but you're over there."
The first principle of a certain Sufi path is "awareness of the breath", and that's entirely about being here, now. I know the breath is enormously important to many traditions for this same reason.
I appreciate the vulnerability of writing something so personal, and that's important too. I'm meant to cultivate that but hmm.
I thought long before sharing this, and edited hard. You are right about breath, and about being. So many kinds of things can disrupt a young life, directly or systemically, so it is important for me to bear witness to the many times I have seen people come back to ourselves, from the profound displacement of soul that we'd suffered. If this is not hopeful, I don't know what is. What great luck we found our wisdom paths, eh? And were stubborn enough women to stay on them!
Luck or maybe good karma, for lack of a better word... Yes and to know better than to get off as soon as they got uncomfortable.
Humorously, I have used dissociation consciously (though I couldn't tell you how I knew how to do it) when I started giving courses, because otherwise the stage fright was unmanageable. So I started leaving myself at the door so I could get on with it! I don't need to do that anymore, I'm a lot more cavalier about the whole thing...