Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-Nine

Nov. 6, 2006

Q&A Part Twenty-Nine

A. Gina/FireAngel asks:

The process of being in service to the other in relationship seems to be a slippery slope and one that I hear used as a more complete and progressive way of Being in relationship.

My understanding of it is that one is to always be simultaneously in service to the other while being clear about one's own needs and desires. Where does the line between selfless and selfull begin? And in the shadows... does one become the giver in order to receive and vice versa? How does this level of giving to the other really stay in its highest form?

Will this work?


Robert answers:

The notion -- or worse, ideal -- of “being in service to another” or “serving another” in relational contexts very easily becomes a trying-to-be-good “should” that burdens rather than deepens us. We need to ask, and sincerely ask, what our actual motivation is for wanting to “serve” another.

Do we hope that such “serving” will bring us more love, connection, security, approval, or attention? Does our “serving” the other frame us in a way that we desire? Are we really there to serve the other’s best interests, or are we there to mostly just benefit and further ourselves, if only in the chambers of moral and/or spiritual correctness? When we’re busy “being of service,” what is actually being served? Does our giving reinforce our sense of ourselves as a somebody who serves others, or does it become a giving without a giver, a giving unpolluted by self-serving agendas?

And what does it really mean to serve another? Our finest actions may have little impact on another, whereas our far-from-caring actions may, however unwittingly, actually have a hugely positive impact on the very same person. This of course does not justify or legitimize such far-from-caring actions, but simply points out that almost anything can under the right conditions sooner or later serve another’s well-being, however indirectly. Sometimes we are of greatest service to another when we refuse to be of service to them. Given all this, what perhaps matters most here is where we are coming from when we are giving to another.

I don’t think that we can fully serve another’s well-being until we recognize, right to our core, that what we do to another we do to ourselves. The actions that emerge from such recognition are not trying to be compassionate, but are naturally compassionate. Compassion then is not something we do, but are.

I’ve seen many relationships in which one partner -- usually the woman -- is busy trying to serve the other (perhaps confusing this with being caring or feminine), confusing making the other’s needs a priority with actually being truly intimate with that one. Such apparent sacrifice -- which could be called idiot consideration -- may seem to be racking up a stack of spiritual brownie points, but in fact is more often than not just old-fashioned submissiveness in contemporary clothing.

In mature relationships, relationships that are primarily being-centered, partners are not trying to be of service to each other. Yes, they are of service to each other, but there’s no self-consciousness about it, no sense of being a somebody who is serving another’s well-being. They give as though no one’s watching. No big deal. For them, serving the other is not a practice (those who make it a practice are usually covering up an entirely different sort of desire through their immersion in such practice), but rather a natural, spontaneous act, all but inseparable from the rest of their life.

Those who are in mature relationships, relationships in which freedom is found through intimacy, recognize (to varying degrees) that everything can serve their awakening. They don’t love and live in integrity with their partner in order to be of service, but rather because to do otherwise is no longer natural for them. Instead of trying to help, they are help; instead of trying to be caring, they are care incarnate, even when angry or upset. They don’t so much serve their partner, as they serve Being; and they serve Being by allowing all things to serve their awakening.

In serving without being a server, we become an optimal environment for our beloved other. And if they are doing the same for us, our intimacy can only deepen, expanding far beyond our relationship...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

B. Betsy/Jacinda asks:

Thank you for posting RAM's Taking Care of Our Opposition....

I am also very intrigued by the invitation to ask RAM a relationship question....

just letting clarity emerge in flow....

fear of loss or death, the alluring power of domination and control...

leaves the little ones very vulnerable.

I have learned a lot from being in abusive relationships...the loss of a voice(always a choice)...

It is humbling to reflect on how I relate to children from social/parental conditioning.

Many dynamics are present in my own integrating family...4 children...3 step-children to my husband.

Integrating a relationship between a step-child and a step-parent requires a friendship and trust to develop.

A step-parent usually has a tough time assuming the "normal" authoritative parental role.

...to befriend the child a step-parent will need to keep an openness when relating to the child.

I once heard someone say.....all parents should act like step-parents....dialoging to create understanding, a willingness to be open for the child to get to know you....etc..

I am curious what Robert would expand on to illuminate the balance necessary for a harmonious parent/child relationship......especially because in my own experience this has been the crux of being response able in a hierarchy of body/mind/soul care and guidance.

Betsy

Robert answers:

I’m not sure what exactly you are asking, so I’m going to respond to part of what I sense you questioning.

Better than a harmonious parent/child relationship is an authentic one, one that is lived in a way that seeks and finds as much value from disharmony as from harmony. Harmony as a goal may sound great, but is not, in most cases, very realistic. Beyond the dreamy flatlands and gently rolling hills of harmony is a peace that does not mind disturbance any more than the sky minds its clouds, a peace that does not disappear, but instead becomes a kind of stable background, when states like anger and hurt arise and find expression.

Parents who lack intimacy with their own child-side -- which includes their vulnerability, playfulness, innocence, and unself-conscious creativity -- will not have a deep enough resonance with their children (and stepchildren) to be truly close and connected. They may be loving, but it won’t be a fully open loving, a loving that runs deep not only through nurturing times, but also through challenging times.

In rejecting or marginalizing our own child-side, we reject or marginalize our children, having only adult-erated love to give to them. In turning away from, ostracizing, or otherwise neglecting the wounds of our own child-side, we numb ourselves to our children’s hurt, adopting an approach that is unnecessarily distant, an approach that keeps us “safely” removed from our own unresolved pain.

In openly and fully connecting with our child-side, and feeling not only our deep love for it, but also our natural protectiveness of it, we become sanctuaries for our children’s maturation. Even when they break away from this, as they need to, to varying degrees, when their teen years kick in, that sense of sanctuary remains, however much it may be pushed into the background, so that they know they can turn to us when things get rough or difficult -- unless of course we are trying to keep them at a stage that they have mostly outgrown.

Taking good care of the child within us -- loving, protecting, and bringing fitting perspective to that one -- empowers us to take good care of the children who have been entrusted to us, whether they are our blood-children or not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-Eight

October 15, 2006

A. Arthur/adastra asks:

Robert, recently I've become interested in Jung's concept of an "anima woman" who, as I understand it, in some way takes on or reflects a man's projection of the feminine aspect of his own soul (or who perhaps is unwittingly a good hook for such projections). One person said if you are in a relationship with this type of woman then you feel like you are falling into her soul, but you are really falling into a reflection of your own (in its feminine manifestation). (As an aside, I've been told that the woman in the movie LEGENDS OF THE FALL is an excellent example of such a woman, but I haven't seen that movie yet.)

1. Do you think this concept has validity, and if so, could you elaborate on this? What do you think is going on here? Would she be evoking this consciously or unconsciously? How does a woman get this way? How does this process operate? What kinds of projections are involved?

2. Would other (heterosexual) women project on her as well, and if so how would that work?

3. How can this personality/soul characteristic be lived in a positive way? What talents or gifts are inherent in this mode of being? How could such a woman best approach her existential situation?

4. What difficulties would the anima woman face in relationships (with family, friends, lovers, partner) or in following her life path? What kind of shadow elements would tend to be present? How can she overcome these problems? Is there anything others can do to help?

5. What is the best way for others - as family, friend, lover, or partner - to relate to her? Especially, how do you ensure that you are relating to the real woman underneath whatever you may be projecting? (This question could also apply to less extreme cases of projection, obviously.)

6. How does such an existential mode relate to one's spirituality?

Robert answers:

1. Does the concept of the “anima woman” have validity? Yes, but no more so than any other psychological construct with receptor sites for incoming projections. We could have an anima woman who is unaware of her anima magnetism, which might make her even more of a draw to men whose own anima energy is charged with undiscerning innocence. And we could also have an anima woman who is relatively conscious of her anima magnetism, and who lets men project their anima (and its attending dramatics, wet-dreamish and otherwise) onto her for her own advantage. In such cases, their infatuation with her empowers her. She has them by the balls and the imagination, operating all toll booths along the highway connecting male genitalia and brain.

Such a woman may not be very willing to give up whatever advantage she might get from taking on a man’s anima projection. She does this for much the same reasons as anyone who is benefitting from being at the receiving end of others’ projections. Consider a teacher upon whom students are projecting their need to be associated with someone who really “knows” -- their uncritical attitude toward him and his work and writings keeps him “safely” removed from any truly telling examination of his less healthy traits (which, if they are actually examined at all by the aforementioned students, are then reframed in an unrelentingly positive light, so as to, for example, demonstrate his humanity).

How does a woman come to be an anima woman? In all kinds of ways. Maybe she got extra attention as a girl for being seductively superfeminine. Or maybe she resorted to such a mode to survive an abusive father. And so on.

2. Could other women project on to her? Sure. I don’t think that sexual orientation matters much here. Projection is not some occasional occurrence (consider, among other things, our dreams, as convincingly populated as they are by our costumed projections). If we’ve got something within that we’re disowning or are unaware of, and that particular something has considerable importance (positive or negative) for us, then we’re going to project it onto a fitting someone (or something). A woman in doubt of her own femininity may project what she wishes she was onto an apparently more feminine woman, even if that woman is simply an airbrushed face on a magazine cover.

3. By making it conscious. Talents or gifts? Exceptional receptivity and flow, animated in order to generate a rapport that serves the well-being of all involved.

4. Her difficulties would parallel her misuse of her situation; her suffering would be a measure of the degree to which she used her anima energy to manipulate or otherwise abuse others. Her shadow elements -- lust to be in control, denial of her real motives, etcetera -- would diminish as she outgrew her me-centered leanings. What could others do? Love her enough to cease tolerating her misuse of her abilities.

5. Get intimate with your own projections and projection-reception tendencies. Don’t make projection wrong; instead, simply do what you have to do to see through it. Begin with yourself. You won’t be much help to her in dealing with her anima forces if you can’t do the same for yourself.

Projection is to separation as identification is to connection.

As we stop separating from our projections, neither disowning nor identifying with them, we cease disconnecting from ourselves, entering what we never truly left but only dreamt we did.

6. It, like any other mode of being, is part of the face of spirituality, however homely, dense, or unrepentantly stuck.

Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-Seven

October 8th, 2006:

A. IAMisHome asks:

"I imagine The 3-2-1 Process is something relatively easy to adapt in relationships" is a comment I had in the Integral Relationships thread. What Robert think of that? 1. Does he think it is appropriate to have The 3-2-1 Process applied to intimate relationships? 2. If yes, how does he suggest to apply it? 3. If no, what does he recommend in place of? 4. And if the question is appropriate to the subject, what could (or should) be the differences in the process applying between an intimate relationship(with a lover) and a less intimate relationship, for example with a friend. Thank you Robert.

Robert answers:

The 3-2-1 shadow-work process can be a useful way of starting to deal with our shadow elements. There’s no reason that it cannot be beneficially incorporated in an intimate relationship. It could be used as an individual practice, shared afterward with your partner, and it could also be done in the presence of your partner, as a verbal rather than written practice, which would allow your partner to witness/feel firsthand your passage through the practice. This might also allow deeper, more complete emotional expression as well as a fuller surfacing of various contributing factors to whatever you are facing, including those that might have been overlooked if the 3-2-1 process had remained a solitary writing exercise.

It’s useful here to remember not to overvalue nor to overrely on practices in intimate relationship. Sometimes we might use a particular practice to avoid dealing (or dealing more fully) with some difficulty we’re having with our partner, all the while informing ourselves that we’re doing such a practice for the sake of the relationship. Or we may assume that our having done a certain practice has brought us further along than is actually the case. And so on. What’s essential here is to allow whatever’s happening in our relationship to awaken us, while recognizing that our resistance to doing so is not just some neocortical pipsqueak, but rather a powerful force that needs to be fully met, until it is simply reclaimed us. Premature claims to having arrived here simply undermine intimacy.

Bring, and keep bringing, a discerning eye to whatever practices you are doing. Look inside your looking. Develop more intimacy with what is beyond all practice, even as you honor and employ practices that serve you and your relationships. There are practices that can help establish and deepen intimacy, but intimacy itself is not a practice. We don’t do it, but simply live it.

Every practice has its shadowside; all you need do is open yourself to seeing it (without, however, using such insight to negate or prematurely discard the practice). And the shadow of 3-2-1 shadow-work? It might include: (1) the tendency to assume that a fuller integration has occurred than actually has; (2) the tendency to settle for less emotional opening, expression, and depth than is really needed; (3) the tendency not to put enough attention into seeing, feeling, and working with the origins and evolution of particular shadow elements; and (4) the tendency to underestimate the need for more in-depth shadow-work, such as is possible through integral psychotherapy.

In working with shadow material in an intimate relationship, the first step is to actually see what’s going on, and to acknowledge and name it. For example, we’re pissed off at our partner for speaking unkindly to us earlier in the day, and are busy flaying that one with righteous invective, letting our anger mutate into aggression. We’re raising our fist and pointing our finger, not seeing that there are three of our fingers pointing back at us. As soon as we allow ourselves to see this, there’s a mini-interruption of our neurotic ritual; if we go a step further, and name what we’re doing -- reacting, being aggressive, and so on -- we further our braking, and widen our view.

The next step is to directly communicate what’s going on, confessing our inner whereabouts, and doing so non-defensively. Vulnerability and transparency are essential, but even if they are not particularly present, we can still communicate that. Such self-generated whistleblowing may, however, be very difficult to put into action if we’re easily shamed around not doing things better. We may in fact so quickly convert our shame into other emotions or states -- like anger (directed at the other or at ourselves) and shutting down -- that we render ourselves almost incapable of speaking up with any clarity or conviction. But we can nonetheless still communicate that, if only through a pre-agreed-upon signal of some sort. The point is to not give ourselves an out; instead of our partner backing us into a corner, we do it ourselves. Yes, this is tough -- and may bruise our egoity -- but it is doable, and necessary if our relationship is to truly mature.

It is important not to let our recognition and acknowledgment of our projections onto our partner obscure the possibility that what is bothering us about them may still need to be addressed. For example, their mean-spirited criticalness may put us in touch with our tendency to do likewise (however subtly), but it also needs to be challenged and explored. When our investigation of our relational trouble spots is mutual, and remains mutual, our relationship can only deepen.

In a me-centered relationship (two cults of one in coalition), shadow-work doesn’t get very far, for there’s too much investment in being right. Projection runs rampant, much like it did between America and Russia during the Cold War. The me-centered couple has so much unexamined shadow material going on that their relationship is not much more than a no-one’s-land where both skirmish for control, or one runs roughshod over the other, flag held high.

Things are less extreme in a we-centered relationship (a cult of two). The battlefield becomes more of an arena of diplomacy and negotiation. Some shadow elements are identified, but usually are not worked with very deeply. Mild (and not-so-mild) suppression and relocation of our apparently undesirable elements tends to take precedence over open expression and breakthrough. We may dream of a large scary animal that’s pursuing us, and we may later recognize that it is the embodiment of something we’re scared of in ourselves -- like our power or raw animality -- but we’re not likely to really get into exploring it, settling for a mostly intellectual understanding of it, with little or no protest from our partner. Our relationship may be afloat upon a stagnant sea, but at least it’s afloat.

In a being-centered relationship, adversarial and diplomatic stances toward shadow elements in each other are replaced by a mutually compassionate, full-blooded, side-by-side facing of what is disowned, marginalized, rejected, endarkened or neurotic in both partners. Now a real intimacy -- not just exposure and expression, but intimacy -- can be developed with the shadow elements of both partners . Here we not only face what’s been disowned in us, but also get close enough to it -- letting ourselves feel it so deeply that we know it from the deep inside -- to free up its energies without, however taking on its viewpoint, until it is no longer an it, but only reclaimed us. This is true integration, organic and real and felt right to the core.

The deeper we dive, the less we mind upsetting waves, finding in intimate relationship an increasingly compelling invitation to find freedom through our shared heart, our shared body, our shared limitations, our shared shadow, our shared mortality, our shared being, our shared yes...

Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-Six

Sept. 12, 2006

A. Liz/Tamgoddess asks:

Here's a question that came up in conversation last night.

I just read yet another story about a guy who killed his whole family and then himself.

Often, the scenario is that the woman is leaving him, and he decides he can't live with that. I have personal knowledge of this scenario, as this happened with someone who worked at a place where I ended up working later. His wife was leaving, and he was just this regular guy, seemingly. He seemed to be coming to grips with it, and then he just shot everyone in his family and then himself. From what my coworkers told me, he'd been in to work the day before, and seemed not at all different, except having accepted the situation, as often happens with suicidal people who have made the decision and are "at peace" with it. He had no history of domestic violence, as far as anyone knew. I found this so disturbing, that it could happen seemingly to anyone.

This seems to be something that men do and not women, though of course there are exceptions. When a man does it, it barely even makes the news anymore. Do you understand why this happens? Why do these men feel the need to take everyone with them?

Also, this seems to happen much more frequently now. Do you think there is some social reason that it's become more acceptable in these men's minds to do this than, say, 50 years ago? Is it just that they've seen it happen with other men, and they get the idea that it's the best way out?

I do have some ideas about this, but I wanted to see what you think before I comment on it. Thanks.

Liz

Robert answers:

I don’t have any kind of conclusive answer to the questions you raise, since each such murder-plus-suicide situation has its own unique formative elements, but I do think that there are some factors worth considering:

(1) Increasingly pervasive cultural stress, in deadly combo with an overwhelming level of personal stress. Those who don’t handle this so well usually find “solutions” that, sooner or later, simply compound their distress. A breaking point is reached, which may manifest in all kinds of ways, including, at the extreme, murder and/or suicide. I’m not saying that stress causes a man to kill his family and himself, but that there’s a positive correlation between extreme stress and “out-of-character” acts. Put just about any of us under extreme pressure for long enough, and who knows what will be uncorked?

(2) Twisted logic, coupled with heavy stress levels and emotional overload. The father in question may have thought along these lines: “I don’t want my family to have to live with the pain of having a father who’s committed suicide, so I’ll spare them that pain by ending their lives before I take my own.” An irrational rationalization for sure, but a rationalization nonetheless. Or he may have thought something like: “I don’t want to separate my family.” This is not an uncommon thought, especially amongst those who are in a situation that may be leaning toward unwanted separation.

So keeping the family together by killing them all at the same time may become an appealing notion for one who is at an extreme edge. Enough distress may fuel the kind of thinking that concludes that the family is better off dead. (This may be made all the more palatable if we hold religious beliefs along the lines that we’ll all literally be together again, pretty much as we are, in some kind of heaven-world -- so what real difference does it make how we get there?)

(3) Violence remains a common “solution” to certain difficulties, especially among men. And the greater the stress, the greater the aggression, whether it’s turned toward others, or toward oneself, or both. Even the “nicest” guy may turn into a stalker (whose self-loathing only further fuels his ultra-possessive behavior) when his wife leaves him, submitting to the most primitive of territorial imperatives. Or he may enter the uglier dimensions of aggression because of extreme shame -- think of how we, at least in a cinematic sense, almost expect the shamed hero to revenge himself on those who have put him down. Revengeisus.com.

I mention shame because of how intensely it can arise in those who are being left, or are about to be left, by their partner. In women, this shame often manifests as toxic self-deprecation, an aggression turned inward, but in men it more often manifests as as an equally toxic putting down of the woman, a blaming of and aggression against her. Hostility plus.

Also, a man who is about to be left by his wife may be so opposed to her being with another man, not to mention their children also being with a new dad, that he’d rather kill them all than endure such a situation; he might not have considered suicide before killing them, but once he has, suicide may seem to him to be the only way out of the horror he has brought about.

(4) An extremely compelling sense of no-exit despair, no way out, no alternative. When someone has reached this point, suicidal thoughts are common. If significant others are being considered at such a time, it likely won’t be with any real clarity. Those who are seriously considering suicide are, with few exceptions, in immense pain, stumbling through a darkness beyond darkness. At this point our psychophysiological default will assert itself with great force: We might shut down our vital signs (as we probably first did when under unbearable stress) and sink into the “safety” of depression; we might get overly absorbed in obsessive thought-loops, finding some distance from our emotional pain through doing so; or we might try to simply disappear (which may have been part of how we survived our childhood), going in the direction of extreme dissociation or in a more overtly physical direction, like suicide.

If a man’s family is central to his sense of identity, and he is totally opposed to having it come apart (as through the departure of one member, including him), even as he simultaneously feels certain that he is going to leave via suicide, then his backed-into-a-corner solution may be to take his family members with him into death. Such may be his answer -- however bizarre it may seem to less troubled others -- to keeping his family together, brushing him, however fleetingly or ambiguously, with a trace of moral triumph in his last desperate moments.

Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-Five

August 21,2006

A. MichaelD asks:

Reasons for making reasons (within a healing context):

Making or finding reasons for why we are as we are can possibly suggest useful strategies for making changes.

Reasons provide meaning which in turn satisfies a desire…the desire to understand…to solve a puzzle, to satisfy curiosity, provide solace to the ego etc.

Provide the illusion of control (the mind likes to think it runs the show, and meaning is mind-fodder).

Provide story and explanation to reinforce and bolster continuity of identity.

Reasons can serve to reinforce ‘the problem’.

Reasons can provide plenty of materials for purposes of complaining.

Based on the above, it would seem that the negatives outweigh the positives of making & finding reasons. Yet to my often amazed mind, I still continue to look for and create reasons, and frankly, I'm tired of it.

There is the need for investigation and processing that simply doesn’t go away no matter how much I wish it away.

I investigate what is happening within and to me because to not do so is painful. A sense of Wholeness and Understanding that is beyond mere reasoning calls me ever forward, even as the pain of looping over and over again in cycles of one sort or another insist that I bring awareness into dark areas of self via an investigative mode of inquiry.

So I do so. Part of what happens then - is simple witnessing, and another part is analysis. (actually, I think that there are multiple layers of inquiry, and rational analysis is just one of them, but tends to dominate).

And what does the analyzing mind do? Makes and finds reasons and patterns and stories of course.

Reasons tend to go on and on in ever widening circles of self-justification.

What are your thoughts Robert on the question of interpretations and meaning-making within healing?


Robert answers:

What are my thoughts on the question of interpretations and meaning-making within healing? First of all, remember that an interpretation, however useful or fitting, is just that, an interpretation, and don’t stop remembering it. Second, be aware of whatever value is being placed upon a particular interpretation, both by yourself and by others. Third, keep an eye on the interpreter. Fourth, allow your interpretations to retain enough of an unfinished quality so that they have room for further shaping and evolution. Fifth, keep in touch as much as possible with that which eludes all interpretation. And last, but not least, stay in compassionate relationship with the you who needs what meaning-making provides.

When we, in a healing context, do some work and start connecting the dots, it’s quite natural to interpret our experience, to somehow make some sense out of it. There’s a reason, or reasons, for why we are the way we are, or so we think, perhaps finding a needed comfort in such explanation. We may settle for reasons that are mundane, and we may settle for reasons that are more metaphysical, like those employing notions like “karma” to explain -- and perhaps also justify -- just about anything. But Life is not so neatly ordered or mappable, regardless of our conceptualizations of it. We don’t necessarily always have to interpret or make meaning out of what’s going on; we can sometimes simply be with it, letting it make unexplainable sense; or we can allow our interpreting and meaning-making to remain functionally peripheral to our simply being with whatever’s arising.

I know I’m skimming over some deep waters here. Rather than continuing to scan the territory, I’m going to plunge into the notion of meaning itself, examining along the way the “why?” that more often than not fuels our meaning-making enterprises. Though my approach to meaning is not exactly gentle, I do not intend to diminish anyone for whatever relationship they might have with meaning, or for whatever comfort they might derive from meaning and meaning-making. And once again what started as a relatively concise response has morphed, with no real resistance from me, into something essayish...

OURS NOT TO REASON WHY
An Inside Look at Meaning

Life is too real to have (or to need) meaning.

And just what does that mean?

Read on...

Given the actual condition in which we find ourselves, it is quite understandable that we’d look, and keep looking for -- and at times require -- some sort of comfort or reassurance in the explanatory dimensions of consciousness, even though our attempts to find or extract or assign meaning ultimately only distract us from the raw contingency and absolute mystery of our existence.

We act as if we need a reason to go on (plus a reason to keep on needing reasons), but, as James Hillman points out, “A significant life does not have to find meaning because significance is given directly with reality.”

Significance, unlike meaning, does not explain, but reveals.

Many of us believe that everything happens for a reason. But it actually happens simply because various factors have, in their mutual intersecting and coming together, made such manifestation inevitable. Each of these factors has its factors, and so on, back and back and back, in cartography-eluding, surpassingly complex contingency. This, all put together, constitutes something far more real than “a reason.”

We may not want (or be prepared) to fully acknowledge the contingent nature of whatever arises -- including us (especially in our wanting to be special, to stand out against the rest of existence) -- trying instead to assign some kind of meaning to it, but such explanatory strategies do not even remotely approach what is really occurring.

The assumption that anything possesses — or can truly claim — intrinsic meaning is important to cut through, but only when we are ready to do so. Whatever its value developmentally (as part of formal reasoning’s unfolding) and under certain conditions (psychotherapeutic, for example), meaning remains an interpretive process designed, however automatically, to distract us — and, more often than not, protect our separative self-sense — from that which has spawned us and paradoxically also is, as always, literally making an appearance as us.

We make meaning, and it makes us, and on and on this goes in Möbius loopity-loops, more often than not leaving us eventually circling ourselves so tightly that there’s not much more to breathe than just more data. “Just when I found the meaning of life, they changed it” (George Carlin). And we is they.

So is Life meaningless? Coiled deep within-and-beyond this question is the “answer,” existing not as a facile yes or no, but rather in the transconceptual illumination of what is really motivating the question. Identifying who — or, more to the point, what — is formulating it is far, far more important than just attempting to reply to its content. Whatever is generating the question needs to be fully exposed and acknowledged, not only intellectually, but with our entirety. Then, and only then, can the actual relevancy of the question be viewed in its nakedness, so that it might spark a truly fitting response.

That is, when the question becomes primal inquiry, its investigation leads beyond the cognitive associations of the conventional mind into firsthand participation in deeper dimensions of Being. Something more real than answers — or what we “normally” think of as answers — is sought, intuited, taken in.

Life makes sense only when we stop trying to make it make sense.

Put another way, when we cease projecting meaning onto Life (an undertaking that should not be engaged in prematurely) — thereby giving Life more breathing room, more space to be — then Life’s natural significance begins revealing itself to us.

The entire issue of meaning and meaninglessness, if explored with sufficient depth, provides an opportunity to become more aware not only of the functioning of our mind, but also of our attachment to knowledge and its various framings. Stephen Levine speaks of how “no ‘meaning’ can hold it all.... There is an odd way the mind, particularly when threatened, attempts to find ‘meaning’ in life, to make some intellectual bargain with the unknown.” We forget that that which seeks to explain the Mystery is just part of the Mystery, as ultimately unfathomable as anything else.

However, the point is not to make existential real estate out of meaninglessness (which is where existentialism has floundered). When our mind is quiet and our heart open and our belly relaxed, Life can be before us in its horizonless, nameless, naked, ultravivid reality and absolute mystery, and we have room for it all to be just as it is, not minding that it carries no intrinsic meaning. Its bare existence and seeming paradoxicalness — a neverending perishing that is never other than Eternal Being — draws us to it, beyond the reach of our mind, until our relationship with it becomes, at least to some degree, identification with it.

Nevertheless, the usual “I” is but a thought away.

So easy it is to shift from Be-ing to me-ing.

To reiterate: Life has no inherent meaning, both including and transcending whatever seeks to explain, conceptualize, frame, or contain it.

Meaning provides a relatively secure (and, at times, necessary) sense of certainty, a psychosemantic hedge against the Wild Mystery of Being, a comfortingly shared or personalized flag to hold up and wave in the midst of Infinity, a neatly-bricked bastion of explanatory facticity (and corresponding values) in which to dwell when emissaries of primordial Being — like death and nondual stirrings — come knocking.

As important as meaning is at times — as when it provides needed bridges over stormy or confusing waters — it nonetheless remains little more than a mental strategy. It may take us to the very edge of the personal, but to proceed further, we must cease hanging onto it.

And we must also cease hanging onto meaninglessness. Where meaning seduces us with hope — nostalgia for the future — meaninglessness seduces us with despair — angst for the future. Beyond (and yet also simultaneously prior to) both hope and despair is the Now in which we are always already Home.

Meaninglessness is a grave problem to most, a burdened sea with no habitable coast, the suffocating yet reassuringly familiar shadow of a brooding existential ghost. Meaninglessness — which is not equivalent to purposelessness — is the glum and sometimes intellectually smug companion and angst-crowned legitimizer of despair, elevating to pseudo-priesthood those who claim to be able to restore meaningfulness.

Nevertheless, the issue of meaning and meaninglessness isn’t really that much of a core concern, being peripheral to issues like purpose. In brief, purpose involves the uncovering and fitting-as-possible embodiment of a kind of psychospiritual blueprint, simultaneously simple and complex, already written yet invitingly blank, rich with improvisational possibility. Purposefulness may seem to share some overlap with meaningfulness, but it is much more than a cognitive construction. Purpose is more organismic than meaning, rooted not just in mind, but also in body, emotion, psyche, and spirit.

In such totality, there is a naturally felt sense of significance. Significance transcends meaning. Meaning is rooted in dualistic apperceiving, but significance, in the crunch, is not nearly so dualistically rooted or framed or limited, signaling the impact of direct contact with What-Really-Matters, whatever the level.

Significance doesn’t ask “Why?” (because it has no need to), but meaning does, and in fact is an attempt to meet “Why?” with answers/explanations/beliefs that will silence it. But “Why” is asking for something very different, if we will but really listen to it...

When we are suffering, we may find ourselves asking: “Why?” There is, however, no genuinely satisfying answer at the level at which our suffering is the prevailing reality for us. And nor are the metaphysical and “spiritual” reasons and beliefs spewed out by our intellect truly satisfying.

The understanding we seek is not in our everyday mind. But it exists. It is often first sensed when we cease turning away from the pain that centers our suffering. And it is found when we — in the form of awakened attentiveness — penetrate that pain so deeply that we connect, intimately, with its essence. Then suffering’s “Why?” ceases being a conventional question, and simply becomes one more catalyst for opening the book of our life to the most fitting pages.

Philosophically, we may rebut suffering’s “Why?” with “Why not?” or with cosmic smooth talk. But when we move beyond these and other such strategies, our sense of identity shifts from everyday selfhood — which both centers and animates that dramatization of pain which we call suffering — to the selfhood that knows itself to be but Being making an appearance. Pain may still exist here, but not suffering.

So when you, in your suffering, ask “Why?”, shift your attention — your undivided attention — to whatever it is that you are feeling. Thoughts may be campaigning for your attention, but shift, and keep shifting, your attention from thought to sensation and feeling. Don’t try to silence your mind; simply let it be as you focus in on the feeling dimension of your suffering. Enter it. Explore and illuminate its geography from within, touching all of it with care. See it without eyes, hear it without ears, know it without thinking. Don’t stop short; enter it fully.

Permit yourself intimacy with detail — detail of location, shape, texture, pressure, temperature, speed, color, directionality, imagery. Don’t wait for a seemingly more auspicious moment; go, go this very moment, now. Enter it deeply, passing through it until you reach the place where pain is but fierce grace. Then observe who or what it is that is asking “Why?” -- is it really you, or is it just a habit that has been given permission to refer to itself as you? Looking for meaning here is just a detour.

Check out the billboards lining your journey into and through the feelings that are central to your suffering. Notice which ones grab you, seduce you, hook you. Maybe ones like “Life’s not fair” or “I don’t deserve this” or “Why me?” snare you. Don’t, however, get focused on the dramatics at this point — it’s enough to simply recognize that you’re caught. All the places, faces, and embraces that hook us weave the net of our suffering.

Suffering can be one hell of a drag, but it also gives us an identity — I suffer, therefore I am. We tend to be reluctant to give up our suffering. What would we then blame for our failures? And who would we be (and who would we be responsible for being) if our suffering were to cease?

The end of suffering — which does not mean the end of pain — means, among other things, ceasing to adopt a problematic orientation to Life. Then every feeling and thought and state, however dark or tight or dense, becomes a portal into Being, the open sky of which effortlessly renders transparent suffering’s “Why?”.

As Presence — the self-illuminating, effortlessly sentient imprint of Being — becomes primary, and perception secondary, we find ourselves reassembled as motivelessly awakened openness, as at home with the ouch as with the aahhh!

The answer to suffering’s “Why?” is not really an answer, but rather an openness ablaze with a recognition before which the mind gets so quiet, so unburdened by meaning, so dynamically empty, that the arising of a single thought is thunderously apparent.

Instead of trying to get rid of suffering’s “Why?”, we could treat it as a kind of divine appetizer, signaling a feast not so far away, to which one and all are invited. The main course includes the self that turns pain into suffering, cooked to perfection. Not exactly tenderloin, but quite edible, nevertheless, and easily digested when not allowed to become food for thought.

Suffering is but pain that’s gone to mind. Instead of minding pain — thereby letting it overfuel thinking and thinker — be with it, breathe it, feel it, inch closer and closer to it. The more intimate we are with our pain, the less we suffer.

Ours not to reason why, ours but to come alive.

Perhaps later on we will understand what is not ours to understand now, but that is not the point — what matters is the degree of intimacy that we cultivate with our not-knowing.

Allow suffering’s “Why?” to be like a roll of newspaper used to stir a fire; soon, it becomes food for the flames, its transformation its gift to us, the ever so brief calligraphy of its ashes eloquently traced across Big Sky.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-Four

August 14,2006

A. Liz/Tamgoddess asks:

Robert-this month's newsletter was great, as usual. Loved the essay on doubt. Here are two questions for you. I thought seriously about posting them anonymously, but then, last time I did that, I ended up having to reconstruct my questions and it was a pain. What the hell, here goes.

1. I've been examining my feelings about my marriage ending and my ex's girlfriend. I've come to a point where I'm comfortable with the situation for the most part, and my ex and I are getting along very well. At this point, much of my negative feelings are just tapes playing in my head, not deeply felt emotions. They're mostly empty. I've also accepted my part in the end of our marriage.

My difficulty is in stopping these tapes from playing. Is it premature to expect that, or is there a way I can actively stop this repetitive resentment? I feel like it is coloring my new relationship in that I have fears that I'm indulging in, and I don't want to keep repeating a cycle of fear and closing myself off.

2. Also, do you have a better word for my "ex"? It sounds horrible to me, and he's much more than that. He's my best friend and my children's father. We plan on having a relationship for a long time. I would prefer a more friendly term.

3. Also, the physical distance in this new relationship is really hard for me. How does one who is not a great meditator and has trouble staying in the here and now live with the loneliness that comes with a long-distance relationship? Is there some sort of structured meditation or something that will help?

Love to you and Diane,

Liz

B. Robert Answers:

1. How to stop the tapes from playing? If they truly are just mental loops devoid of emotion, then simply becoming aware of them as they arise, and then shifting your attention to something noncognitive (like the abdominal sensations generated by your breathing) ought to be enough. But I suspect that there may be some emotion fueling the tapes, if only because you do refer to their playing as a “repetitive resentment” that you’d like to stop. I recommend that you give yourself permission to openly feel and express whatever hurt and anger may still be there, regardless of any thoughts you might have that you shouldn’t be feeling such feelings anymore.

If there is any denial whatsoever of such feelings, they will energetically migrate to your head, finding a kind of pseudo-release through the kind of thinking in which you are caught up. I suggest that when you become aware of the tapes starting to play that you immediately identify what you are feeling, and shift your attention to that, whatever it may be, and keep your attention there as best you can. Sometimes doing so will not require any overt emotional expression, and other times it will. In addition to this, I suggest that each morning you do a minimum of 15 minutes of focused meditation, followed by visualizing your ex and wishing him well for a few minutes.

2. As horrible as “ex” might sound to you, it’s important that you honor and fully accept what it signifies; you could think of him as your “ex” and still feel warmly toward him as your “ex” without bringing in whatever negative associations you might have with the term. If “ex” still doesn’t work for you, you could try extending it to “ex-partner” or try some similar labels, like “former partner” or “past partner”. You could also shorten “former partner” to “f-p” (“past partner” doesn’t shorten so well); when you mention “my f-p” to someone, you’d of course have to explain what it meant, which would give you an opportunity to say a bit more about him and your current relationship with him.

3. First of all, there’s no alternative to practicing being present; simply saying to yourself, “Now I’m aware of...” and immediately finishing the sentence is something you can do at all kinds of times. One of the benefits of this new relationship is that it is going to force you (assuming you remain committed to it) to become more skilled at being present.

I recommend that you date your loneliness.

This means spending quality time with it, becoming more sensitive to it, moving toward its pain, its craving for release from itself. Notice the intensity of your pull to get away from those sensations that characterize your loneliness. What if you were to just sit there, sit with your loneliness, not doing a damn thing other than giving it your undivided attention? What if you were to simply let it settle and rest in your presence, listening to it with an opening heart and curious mind, noticing its shape and breath, its bodily terminals, its tones, its textures, its shifts?

And shift it will, if you continue to give it undivided, compassionate attention. You can thus hold your loneliness, holding it close but not so close that it cannot breathe freely.
Then your loneliness is not just a painfulness, but a vulnerable fullness warming you, a tender ticket to your depths, a far from dysfunctional catalyst for remembering What-Really-Matters.

In letting your loneliness transmute into aloneness, you may still be physically alone, but you’ll be palpably connected, especially at the heart, with many others, realizing that only when you are truly capable of enjoying being alone are you capable of really being in relationship.

Of course, none of this means that you won’t miss your new relationship. What’s important is not to make a problem out of missing him. Stay with the ache of it, the hurt and longing of it, and use that pain to deepen your connection to the Real. Also realize the benefits of being apart: You have space to truly work through whatever’s left unfinished with your f-p; you have space to digest and integrate whatever’s happening between you and your new man; you get to deepen and refine your speaking and listening skills (via phone intimacy) with him; you are forced to gradually settle into the relationship, building a solid and true friendship, without the chemistry between the two of you getting in the way.

When it is truly time to be together full-time, the key sign will be that your separation will no longer be serving your mutual growth. Until then, be grateful for your bond, and grateful for what it stirs up in you, neither speeding nor braking the ripening of your connection.

I’m not speaking theoretically here, for my wife Diane and I spent close to a year not living together, despite feeling remarkably close and bonded early on, because we lived a thousand miles apart. We missed each other terribly during our times apart, but were okay with it until a half year or so had passed (during which time we let the depth of our bond pervade the rest of our lives), after which it began to feel, and consistently feel, unnatural not to be fully together. Then, and only then, did we begin seriously talking about living together. Your new relationship is still ripening; all you and your man need do is provide the necessary conditions for that ripening to continue. Along the way you will become much more intimate with states like loneliness, patience, doubt, and faith, not to mention your own depths. Along the way meditate, pray, weep, rage, laugh, letting go of how you think it all should be. Trust, and a deeper trust...

I’ll close this with a poem I wrote to Diane after one of our L.A. airport partings (roughly 4 months after we met):

AIRPORT BLUES II

So we parted once again
Letting the pain sweep through
Knowing it was coming
Didn’t make it any easier
Only in dying, living
I leave but am not leaving

Blazing sea of clouds below
Clear superblue skies up here
And I’m raining, raining inside
Your goodbye tears ripping me wide
Only in dying, living
I leave but am not leaving

We found a little corner
Airport crowds streaming past
Forgetting them was easy
Letting you go was not
Only in dying, living
I leave but am not leaving

We stood tenderly trembling
In our little concrete corner
Wrapped in our shared heart
Knowing we’d soon be apart
Only in dying, living
I leave but am not leaving

I carry our parting kiss
Up the bustling stairs
Leaning into the buzzing hustle
Looking back at the space between us
Only in dying, living
I leave but am not leaving

Beloved, take my hand
Let’s pass through every land
Until separation cannot keep us apart
And we are what beats our heart

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robert Augustus Masters Interview Part Twenty-Three

April 16, 2006

A. Arthur/adastra asks:


1. Is Diane going to record a CD of all the beautiful songs she sings at the end of workshops she does with you? I know that a CD of some of her songs will be included with your next book - the poetry compilation. Much as I've come to like your poetry, it's the CD I'm really looking forward to. Will the CD included with that book have all of those workshop songs? Or only the ones that are based on your poetry?

2. You've spoken somewhere of how most intimate relationships are (or become) a cult of two. Could you elaborate a bit on what this means? How can this be avoided, and what are some warning signs?

Robert answers:

1. Diane will be recording (this Fall, we hope!) a CD of 7 or 8 poems of mine that she has set to music. At the end of our groups, she usually sings several of these, plus a couple of her own songs. Once she has finished with the CD of our collaboration (my words, her music), she’s planning to record a CD or two of her own music, which includes not only her original songs, but also healing affirmations and chants. We are currently looking for funding for the initial CD project, and are trusting that it’ll manifest soon.

2. “A cult of two” is a pretty strong term, loaded with an abundance of not-so-nice connotations, but in a low-grade, far-from-dramatic sense I think it does apply to most couples who are practicing -- or, better, mired in -- what I have previously termed immature monogamy.

Here’s what I mean by “cult”: A tightly bounded enclosure or system that’s rigidly overattached to its core beliefs and practices, and that’s no more than microscopically receptive to critical “outside” feedback (such feedback from within usually getting even less of a welcome). Cults are not just the media-hyped enclaves of entranced followers; ego is a cult of one, most marriage a cult of two, and religion (along with most political parties) a cult of many.

Cultism overseparates. It is a self-obsessed us, with the rest of existence an overly distant them. Whatever caring exists within cultism — and it, however misguided, can be a deep caring — is eventually impoverished by its isolation from the rest of Life. Initially, cults protect what is inside their walls, but sooner or later they become guards rather than guardians. As such, they cut off the very life which they’re claiming to be enhancing.

In a relationship, this manifests either as romantic delusion or as a deadening process. Growth may have occurred in the early stages of the relationship, but before long it all but ceases. In the cult of two, mutual (and often tacit) agreements are made not to rock the boat, to appear to the outside world as happier and more together than is the case, to stay together even when the damage being done to one or both is apparent, to either not go to therapy or go to it without really exposing and working with the rotten foundations of the relationship. and so on.

Superficiality is given exaggerated importance in the cult of two. So is security. If others see them as an ideal couple or a happy couple, this is considered a good thing, even if the truth is quite different. Any in-depth uncovering of what’s really happening is avoided, as is whatever might threaten the actual cult or relational bubble. Others are denied any meaningful access to the inner workings of the relationship. And even though both members of the cult may be miserable with each other, they will nonetheless usually defend their relationship to those who dare to question it at all.

In a mature or significantly awakened relationship, the two may be profoundly bonded and even spend the majority of their time together, but their togetherness is not cultic. Yes, we don’t directly participate in their intimacy, but we are touched, opened, and furthered by their unusual closeness, the inner workings of which are openly radiated and communicated. This kind of relationship is not isolated, whatever its privacy, from the rest of Life; it is connected, and willingly connected, to the community-at-large, while maintaining its integrity.

When we’re in the presence of such a relationship, such a sanctuary of deep intimacy, we tend to feel more open, looser, happier, safer to do deeper work. The agreements made by the partners in a mature relationship are sufficiently life-giving so as to positively impact those with whom they come in contact, however indirectly.

How to avoid becoming part of a cult of two? Work on yourself; blow the whistle on what’s not working in the relationship; don’t pretend that it’s better than it is; get professional help when things start slipping; rock the relation-ship, and keep rocking it; get comfortable with your discomfort; expand the container of the relationship by relieving it of any deadening or otherwise life-negating practices that have crept into the relationship; don’t stop working on yourself, and don’t let your partner avoid doing his or her work; be committed to leaving if things get bad and stay bad no matter what you do.

Make truth more important than security, and connection more important than being right, allowing whatever arises in your relationship to serve your awakening.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


B. Julie/UnrulyJulie asks:


Brain chemistry and awakening...do anti-depressants ultimately help or impede the awakening process?

Recent studies seem to suggest that SSRIs like Prozac function as neurogenic agents rather than via just causing increased serotonin levels per se.

I've been on anti-depressants for years. Many years ago, I began taking Prozac after a significant period of competent therapy that had a great effect on cognition, but little on actual mood. I was in a very stressful living situation at the time; and the drug kicking in after a few weeks was like someone finally opening the curtains in a darkened room. So THIS is what other people's lives are like!??!!! It really did seem unfair...depression is a failure of the imagination--the inability to imagine that life can be any different than the way it is. I could not have imagined the transformation.

Going off seemed to trigger mood relapses, however.

I had no meditation or other spiritual program to work with these emotions until the last year. What I have found now, however, is that to a certain extent, the drug prevents my exploration of shadow in an experiential sense. I've found myself walking around my closed room of a mind looking for voids that I'm afraid to dive into...and they just aren't there. I've recently cut my dosage in half, and that does seem to make my heart a bit more open to both pain and joy. I'm holding it there for the time being. The particular drug I'm taking will trigger anxiety unless I taper slowly.

And yes, I have found that there is a rabbit-hole around the potential that my mind will wander into an anxiety-ridden hell that no drug can rescue 'me' from. Done some work with that one.

Any insight you may have on the role (or lack thereof) of anti-depressants while working the profound spiritual path would be most welcome. Thank you for your time.


Robert answers:

First, a few words about depression....My take is that depression is not so much a feeling as a suppression or pressing down of feeling, a deadening weightiness infused with a nastily pervasive sense of helplessness. Depression is primarily characterized by a resigned, self-dulling disempowerment; this can be a relatively short-lived mood, and it can also be a long-term condition. Also, depression is not just a personal condition; much of contemporary culture is depressed (collective psychoemotional numbing being but one symptom) and getting more and more depressed, while being simultaneously addicted to a great variety of uppers -- anything to take a break from depression’s bleak, energy-sucking domain.

Depression could be said to be the sensation of partially-successful repression, minus any satisfying compensatory lift. As such, it is a pain that walls away a deeper pain, serving as the drugged yet still wretchedly insomniac gatekeeper of incarcerated trauma or deep suffering.

Where anxiety wires us, depression flattens us, leaving us amorphously and greyly embodied, stuck in a flaccid rigor mortis. In depression, cognition is employed as an immune system of sorts, barring full entry to the bare reality of certain feelings — with all of their attending imperatives and intuitions — and whatever else is organismically recognized as a threat. That is, depression keep us “safe” from having to openly and fully feel what we’ve spent much of our life avoiding feeling. As such, it is a kind of solution -- a botched solution, but still a solution -- to unresolved pain. The longer it has been left intact, the more it will feel like a part of us, unpleasant for sure, but at least familiar. Not surprisingly, we tend to prefer the burdened beasts of depression to the monsters of the deep.


You ask: “Do antidepressants ultimately help or impede the awakening process?” I’d say both. What follows will hopefully clarify this.

Antidepressants have their place, but tend to be overused and overrelied on. They can be a Godsend, lifting the curtains of depression (as you describe), providing a necessary crutch for difficult times; and they can also be a crippler, keeping us resigned about our depression, stuck in a pervasive sense of lifelong chemical dependency.

Antidepressants are helpful in getting us into a place where we can function, feel some lightness and ease, and start doing some real work on ourselves. They can give us some stability, without which we might be too messed-up to be able to make necessary changes in our life. They give us a break from depression’s sunken territories, so that we can truly imagine and consider other possibilities. So antidepressants, used in moderation, can help us get started in working on ourselves, if only by freeing up enough energy so we can get going.

Antidepressants impede the awakening process by removing us from the deeper, more primal elements of our depressiveness, keeping our encounters with those elements relatively shallow. There may a sense of safety or security in remaining removed from the black pits of depression -- and for a while, it may be necessary to keep our distance from such zones -- but there’s also a huge loss, the loss of being cut off from so much of ourselves. Antidepressants lift the lid of depression enough so we feel better, but not enough to really expose what’s below.

So what to do? First of all, if you’re not already thus involved, do some high-quality psychotherapy that includes emotional work (exploring and releasing anger, and so on), and do it on a regular basis for a while. Combine this with some spiritual practice and meditation -- whatever form or forms you feel drawn to -- and do it daily, no matter how bad you feel. Also do some sort of exercise every day -- aerobic work (really work up a sweat), conscious stretching, weights, long walks -- and do it with total, fully embodied attention. And eat well. All of this can, of course, be done while you are on antidepressants.

Stay on your half dosage of antidepressants until you feel a bit stronger and more stable, then -- with your physician’s okay -- cut back to a lower dosage, not a lot lower, but low enough to feel a difference. You may feel shakier, less stable, a bit more fearful; it comes with the weaning process on which you’re embarking. Stay with the psychotherapy, meditation, and exercise. After a week or so, you should start feeling more stable and less fearful. Stay with your lower dosage a while longer, until you feel ready to drop it some more. Again -- and with your physician’s approval -- lower the dosage a touch more. During this process, take your time; it’s better to spend a year weaning yourself and have it work, than to rush it and have to go back to a heavier dosage. At the same time, if things get really rough, don’t hesitate to go back on a slightly higher dosage. Hopefully, at a certain point you won’t need antidepressants any more, and even if you do, the dosage will probably be small enough so as to not significantly interfere with your awakening work.

One last thing: Don’t overlook or only superficially approach your anger. In your psychotherapy sessions (and elsewhere, under fitting conditions), give yourself permission to be unruly; sometimes anger needs a relatively messy start to really get going. If you’ve turned anger in on yourself, reverse the process. You may find that when your anger is truly flowing and alive, it catalyzes a releasing of tears far deeper than the tears of depression.

It is no secret that most of those who come to psychotherapy with symptoms of depression are female. Why is this? Part of the answer lies in the fact that female anger is generally more negatively viewed in our culture than is male anger. An angry woman easily gets stuck with labels like “bitch” or “nag,” but an angry man generally receives less unfavorable labels. Those who have been historically most disempowered culturally are likely to be the most suppressed in their anger — and what is more depressing or crushing than feeling, over and over and over, helpless because of a powerful sense of disempowerment? Getting openly and uninhibitedly angry is not necessarily the cure for depression, but doing so may lift “the weight” enough for more movement to occur, for deeper, more healing tears to emerge, for aliveness to flow more freely.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


C. Bryan/integralschism asks:


I wonder if Robert would speak to the distinction between "seduction" and "creating attraction." I think it will be easier if I first say more about what I myself mean about those terms.

"Seduction" I see as a generally negative term. It implies that I'm causing someone to do something that they would not consciously choose to do if I were not manipulating them.

"Creating attraction" is different, in my mind. It is about changing myself so that qualities arise in me that are inherently attractive to women (e.g., confidence).

Now, remembering back to things RAM has said in previous answers, I think one thing he would say is, "first back up and examine why you would want someone to be attracted to you in the first place; what are the underlying motives to wanting to have sex with such and such a woman, or with any woman for that matter? Are you acting out erotic fantasies based on blocks within your own psyche?"

To the last question I would answer with a resounding "possibly" (and in truth I'm sure the answer is yes).

However, my GUESS is that if I worked on those blocks and psychological issues with great intensity over many years, that even though my inner state would change, as would my perspective towards women-in-a-sexual-manner, I still believe that I would feel naturally arising sexual desire when in the presence of a woman whom I feel attracted towards. And I also PREDICT that, after all that work, I would still be interested in SOMEHOW FINDING mutual attraction with her that may or may not lead to sex.

So, back to the creating attraction thing. IF we agree that WANTING mutual attraction is OK, and IF we agree that "changing our inner state for the better with the conscious understanding that this makes us more attractive to potential lovers" is OK.... .

Lost my train of thought, but I do think it's important to get agreement on the above two things first.

So, confidence. Creating more confidence in myself. I think this is across the board a good thing.

But here's where some grey area comes in. Some of the "dating guru" literature I have run into recommends gaining confidence (or at least acting confident). But it also recommends things like playful teasing. Also things like "not giving too much too soon." For example, this theory postulates that women are (metaphorically or literally) being offered sex by men all the time. And that most men kind of give themselves away by metaphorically saying, "I'd do anything for sex with you. I'll buy you what you want, I'll give you compliments, I'll be a little puppy at your feet. Whatever it takes." The theory goes on to say that this is inherently UNATTRACTIVE to women. So it recommends being a little teasing, a "leaning back" posture (physically and emotionally), etc. And as a caveat, it is quite clear about not being an asshole. These things are done with a little smile on the face.

So, can I re-wrap this question? If it's okay for me to want women to be attracted to me, and it's okay for me to build confidence in myself (partially) for that purpose, then is it also okay for me to CHANGE myself into a MORE TEASING, RASCALLY guy?

Because sometimes it feels forced. But other times it feels like the most delicious thing I could be doing, especially when it gets the kind of response from a woman that "acting like a puppy" never did.

Thanks in advance Robert. I hope you have fun with this one.


Robert answers:

Instead of “being interested in finding [my italics] mutual attraction with her,” how about allowing it? How about dropping the calculatedness, reentering your depths (masculine and otherwise), and aligning yourself with whatever instincts that then arise? Scary, yes, but also exciting, because you’re then no longer on the sidelines trying to send in a play to your quarterback. The ball is in your hands; you have two seconds maximum to make a play, no matter how sweaty your touch is -- no time to think, but time enough to act. No rehearsal. But what passion! What deep coil and thrust, what decisiveness, what out-in-the-open power, what confidence!

If you want real confidence, don’t bother putting juice into its surrogates. Instead, get in touch with your psychoemotional core, relocate yourself in your guts, reclaim your balls. Keep your sensitivity, but not at the expense of your masculine rawness. Access that rawness, get intimate with it, give it a voice, exult in it, making sure that you also keep what’s between it and your heart wide open. When you stand in your true masculinity, letting it exude from you, and you do so with integrity, women will naturally be more open to you, including sexually. The confidence you need is not just an intellectual confidence, but an organismic confidence sure enough of itself to not have to put on a show.

At one point in your question/concern, you say that you lost your train of thought. That may be a good thing: Too much thinking about what you want to do with women just keeps you stranded in your head, “safely” removed from the thing you apparently want. I suggest that you let your longing for juicy female company derail your train of thought -- not all the time, but more often than not -- so that you are left immersed in your feeling (and not just your sexual feeling); go into that longing, that deep ache, and go in with the lights on, and you will be guided into what’s needed next, even if it’s to spend more quality time dating your loneliness or self-consciousness.

You talk about wondering if it’s okay to change yourself into a “more teasing, rascally guy.” Whose permission do you need? And what if such a change is not natural to you? You could do really deep work on yourself and still not be that kind of guy, except maybe every now and then. Maybe you hope that becoming a “more teasing, rascally guy” would bring you more “success” with women, in which case you are just seducing yourself with hope. Present yourself as you are, in a way that fits with whomever you are with, and at least then if a spark arises between you and a woman, it will be grounded in something more natural than dating strategies.

To make yourself more attractive with the least karmic hassle, settle into a Being-centered perspective as much as possible, attune to your need for fitting female company, and align yourself with the resulting intuitions as to how to best arrange your exterior. This is not manipulation, but simply dressing for the occasion.

There’s no need to closet or gag your egoity and insecurity, so long as you keep them functionally peripheral to your depths. This may sound a bit cumbersome, but it’s really just an invitation to maintain some intimacy with the deep end of the pool as you play in the shallows. It’s crucial not to get caught up in trying to do it right. Bottom line is: It simply feels better to do what you do from that place in you where you cannot help but care for the other, no matter how much she arouses you.

If flirting is natural for you -- and it may not be -- keep your heart in it. Flirting is teasing spiked, however subtly, with sexual innuendo, serving as a kind of self-advertising -- your job is to use it well. Don’t, for example, come on to a woman in a way that’s disrespectful of her, and then excuse yourself by saying that you were just joking. Pay attention to boundaries. Some women may go along with your flirting, and act as if they’re fine with it, when in fact they feel trapped or even paralyzed by it, but don’t (because of past associations) feel at all safe making an issue out of what’s going on, let alone actually confront you.

Notice what it is about women that turns you on the most, and find out what part of that, if any, is generated by your unresolved issues; approaching a woman because she fits your conditioning (i.e., “I want her to want me and I’ll be a good boy -- or docile supersensitive guy -- to get that”) is quite different than approaching a woman because she resonates with your essentialness and does so with a dynamite mixture of camaraderie and chemistry.

The more deeply you work on yourself, the more prepared you’ll be for a truly great relationship, and the more adeptly you’ll handle and learn from more casual relationships.

Don’t rehearse. Be appropriately transparent. Don’t try to be deep; make room for being superficial, without, however, being shallow. You might even find yourself being deeply superficial.

And how much to reveal? Don’t undress too quickly, but do let some layers show, so that she has more to engage with than just self-conscious testosterone or horny hopes. Make connection more important than your fear of rejection, and I mean connection not just with her, but also with yourself; the more whole you are when you are with her, the more whole you will be giving her space to be.

If you’re not already doing so, I recommend bodywork-including psychotherapy (to help cut through your investment in being nice and to really get you into your guts) and men’s groupwork (to augment the preceding). The Deep Masculine awaits you. Trust it. Once you start to embody it, the Deep Feminine will start showing up in your life.


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Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-Two

April 16, 2006

A. MichaelD asks:

To put this into RAMspeak - I'm doubting my doubts.

I am plagued by doubts these days, and feel that they tend to get in the way of healing more often than not. It's generally quite easy for me to see the value of doubting, and harder to see the value of belief. I gravitate towards the modality of reality testing, dismantling beliefs and systems, and testing the underlying assumptions etc. But in the matter of healing, where intention, trust, love and faith prevail, doubts can be like a cancer?

I wonder if you Robert can speak to the subject of doubts within a healing context?

Robert answers:

First of all, thank you for giving me an excuse to write about doubt! What started as a relatively short answer very quickly mutated into a much longer piece...

Let’s start by taking an overview of doubt, then dig a bit deeper into everyday doubt and “good” doubt, considering along the way how to best work with doubt.

Doubt is an inner questioning infused with uncertainty and enough agitation to make it a relatively unpleasant state. Doubt, in an everyday sense, is what happens when we find ourselves stranded in ambiguity’s carrels, trying to think our way out, stuck in cognitive traffic jams that catch us in their treads and flatten us as much as they fragment us. Trying to make a meal of the grey fare laid out by the fractured realism of such doubt simply enervates and depresses us.

Typical doubt is skepticism that has lost its clarity and confidence, bound up in worrisome shades of uncertainty. Anxiety may be lurking nearby, bringing more of an edge to doubt. Although doubt is not dread, it can become dread if sufficiently fed.

Doubt can manifest as moral impotence, existential fence-sitting, fear of making a decision, indulgence in ambiguity, avoidance of taking a stand, cognitive obsessing, and so on; and it can also, albeit far more rarely, manifest as a necessary questioning, a courageous inquiry that can both tolerate and investigate uncertainty. Doubt is no more “bad” than “certainty” is good.

There’s everyday, mostly neurotic doubt, a self-contracted questioning injected with constricted, unpleasantly turbulent feeling, moving with myopic desperation through the presenting layers of uncertainty; and there’s another doubt, a questioning that carries us beyond facile certainties and automated beliefs deep into the inherent insecurity and uncertainty of Life, inviting us to adopt a nonproblematic orientation toward it.

But before getting into the latter sort of doubt -- which it takes real faith to have -- let’s get more into everyday doubt: It’s important to be able to work well with such doubt before going for the deeper, more awakened kind of doubt. And working well with it means knowing it well, even becoming intimate with it.

Doubt is a collapse of heart that’s gone to mind, an unhappy, unillumined inquiry that’s interested not in discovery or revelation, but only in persisting in repetitively touring its culs-de-sac. It puts a lot of energy into going nowhere, spinning its wheels until it’s exhausted, leaving us asleep at the wheel.

Doubt is the contracted and divided mind doing time in uncertainty’s mental mazes, providing apparent justification for worry.

Whereas skepticism is a healthy, incisive, often robust questioning, doubt is an unhealthy, indecisive, often anemic questioning, a dead-end inquiry, a bottled-up questioning terrified of being uncorked.

When the energy of doubt is allowed to mushroom in our headquarters, it invades and colors whatever content is handy, immediately framing it in a darkly questionable light.

While immersed in doubt, we often inject fearfulness or negative anticipation into various intentions, plans, doings, and so on, obsessing about possible outcomes, chaining ourselves to chronic worry.

Doubt is what the mind tends to do both when it is cut off from the vitality and openness and primal intentions of our depths, and when rationality itself just does not satisfy. And doubt presumes to have an overview, but in fact has none -- it cannot even see itself, let alone accurately assess its environment.

Nevertheless, doubt is not an enemy. What matters is what we do with it. Do we identify with it? Do we give our power away to it? Do we allow it to enlarge? Do we believe in it? Do we make decisions based on it? Or do we illuminate it, outbreathe and outdance it, crashing its slumber-party with such resolute focus that it cannot help but dissolve into a more Life-giving form?

In its unchallenged arranging and cementings of key thoughts, doubt is closely related to belief, being a blue collar frequenter of some of belief’s sleazier hangouts.

Belief is static, abstract, perfectly reproducible, far too stiff to be Truth, hyperfocused on its own replication and confirmation, driven to see its flag raised everywhere and everywhen (“Belief is when someone else does the thinking,” said Buckminster Fuller). Doubt is its less popular cousin, a grimy plebeian, just as mentally constipated as belief (even in its chronic changing of teams), but not so glossy or chrome-plated or mass-legitimized, being more musty, dingy, and decentralized, huddled up in less tidy corners of mind, except when shaved, bathed, dressed up, and brought into the antiseptic chambers of Science, where it, now more hardnosed skepticism than mere doubt, breathes life into scientific methodology.

Doubt usually reinforces our sense of separation. Doubt tends to empower our unhappiness -- however miserable doubt may make us feel, it is familiar, so densely familiar that it generates a sense of identity: I doubt, therefore I am.

Not many of us can stand being in doubt for extended periods of time. We crave breaks from it, but the breaks we ordinarily take from it do not undo it, but only remove us from it for a time. Doubt easily becomes the core of our alibi for holding back; we use our doubt to talk ourselves out of stretching to make the necessary leap.

Those who are mired in doubt have great difficulty in telling what is false from what is true. They get stuck in between, lost in the tales told and retold by their doubt.

Trying to work with doubt through mental means only doesn’t really work. The self-suppression that catalyzes and animates doubt must be seen, felt, known from the deep inside. The whole being must be eased, expanded, given permission to come alive. The torso must be loosened, the limbs unfrozen, the heart entered, the reach made both powerful and vulnerable, the entire anatomy brought into supportive resonance with our core of Being.

Doubt must be seen for what it is, as it is, without getting lost or absorbed in its point of view; only then will it unfist itself, only then will our endarkened familiarity with it come unstrung, only then will our indecisiveness be unequivocally undone, flung into the raw Truth of what we are.

When doubt infects you, don’t give it a thought. Neither avoid it nor let it recruit your mind.

Doubt your doubt, and then pour your full attention into the noncognitive openings generated by doing so. Go into its feeling dimensions, breathing them more alive, giving fitting expression to them; if this is overly difficult, consider going to a therapist who’s skilled in working with such things.

When doubt does manage to infiltrate your mind, read its contents once-through as though they belonged to a supermarket tabloid, taking careful note of which headlines most easily snare your attention. Then immediately shift your attention, and shift it completely, to the physical and physiological correlates of your doubt, resisting the temptation to scoot back into your thinking mind.

No matter how tempting it is to immerse yourself in what your doubt is telling you, shift your attention from whatever it is that you’re doubting to the actual phenomenon of doubt itself. Feel into and through its tensions, its downbeat textures, its contracted tones, its positioning, its emotional qualities, its bodily ramifications and anatomical peculiarities; feel what it is doing to you, feel what it is doing to others near you, feel how it’s staining your speech, vision, hearing, perception, posture, your very being...

And do this without trying to change or trash your doubt. Sometimes simply keeping your attention on your doubt as an energetic phenomenon, as opposed to focusing on its content, will cause it to dissolve. Other times, deliberately doubting your doubt will make it dissipate. Doubt may also sometimes be defused by taking a risk of Being, such as a not-so-easy but much needed movement toward someone or a timely expressing of something painful that needs to be said, especially if these are done not in order to get rid of doubt, but because they are imperatives of Being, arising from something deeper than our everyday mind and conditioning.

Doubt is, among other things, a kind of low-grade fear. As we expand our energy, the contraction at the heart of doubt starts to loosen up, until we’re not fearful, but simply excited.

Through attending closely, caringly, and carefully to the particulars of our doubt, we decentralize it, so that its viewpoint is no longer in a position to govern us.

When the light goes on in the slums of doubt, then doubt is little more than skepticism having a bad day.

The key is to actively and decisively disidentify with our doubt, while also allowing the surfacing and fitting expression of whatever feeling states are associated with it -- fear, sadness, anger, shame, disgust, longing, and so on.

Do not make doubt wrong. Simply realize that when you lose yourself in doubt, you are shortcircuiting a deeper song.

Now toward the healthier zones of doubting! Even in the most deadening doubt there sometimes can be gems of insight, bits of intuitive savvy mixed in with all the mental debris. These often get overlooked in our trying to get away from our doubting mind.

Doubt tends to be a big baby, and there’s not much bathwater (having been displaced by doubt’s multi-armed flailing), but even the little that there is is worth keeping; as it settles, and some clarity emerges, what’s valuable in our doubting becomes more obvious. Various intuitions, for example, may now be accessible. (It’s interesting to note that intuition sometimes masquerades as doubt, mostly when we don’t want to hear it.) Growth-stunting beliefs, beliefs that we no longer need, may lose their grip on us. For a belief to be dismantled, doubt about it is needed. Doubt is a wonderfully deadly virus for belief systems that have outlived their usefulness.

When we give ourselves permission to doubt certain things -- like “expert” pronouncements, self-proclaimed “higher” structures, religious and political certainties, impermeable belief systems (including our own!), and so on -- and we do so without losing touch with our core of Being, we are a little freer, a little less seducible by others’ promises of security. Then doubt does not entrap or flatten us, but rather brings us closer to what is really happening, making us more at home with the Zen saying: “Great doubt, great awakening; little doubt, little awakening; no doubt, no awakening.”

Spending quality time with doubt makes us capable of what John Keats (in 1817!) called “negative capability” -- or the ability “of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

Hanging out with doubt can be a drag, and it can also be a portal into the matrix and essence of Existence. It all depends on how we handle it. Initially, it’s usually wise to work with doubt as an energetic phenomenon (noticing its characteristic sensations, staying mindful of breathing and intentions, keeping grounded, allowing emotional release, etcetera), only secondarily paying any attention to its content -- we need to be able to be near it without getting sucked into its viewpoint.

This requires not only meditative practice, but also the ability to know and appropriately express what we’re feeling. Later, we can move in closer to our doubt, entering not only its physical and emotional dimensions, but also its mental dimensions, and start mining it for its valuables. Still later, we can allow our doubt regarding the Big Questions to carry us -- and not just intellectually! -- into the mysteries of the Unknowable, beyond both certainty and uncertainty...

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B. Arthur/Adastra asks:

1. In the essay "The Dream's Petals Cradle Many a Viewfinder" you say, "What we refuse to face festers and multiplies within us and also around us, as if magnetically drawn to us until it literally takes our place, looking through our eyes and harnessing our energies to its own ends. This isn't necessarily the possession of horror films or voodooistic rites, but it is still possession."

I feel possessed by shadow sometimes. In the long term I'm sure you'd advise doing shadow-work with a qualified integral therapist (luckily I happen to know one). But in the times that it's happening, what would you advise me to do when I find myself looking at the world and everybody in it with flinty, hate-filled eyes? Or if I feel strongly triggered by a close friend to a totally unreasonable degree? I can't always remove myself from the situation. Obviously I don't want to act out (more than I have already - e.g. biting heads off coworkers etc.)

The undifferentiated/omnidirectional anger/rage disturbs me but is something I'm fairly used to - although thankfully it's become a lot more rare for me these days. The situation with my friend is more bothersome. She's been incredibly loving and kind to me, but when I am "possessed" by shadow material, I can't see that at all - only the ways I feel hurt, betrayed or mislead by her. When the shadows clear I see again all the things I love and appreciate about her, all the good times we've had together, how helpful she's been to me; then I feel appalled by what's been in my mind and heart earlier. I do feel like I have or had legitimate issues with her, but all that happened during a confused phase of my life and our friendship, so it's hard to sort out. In my past life when this kind of emotional dynamic played out for me, almost always I walked away from the situation and in many cases regretted ending a close friendship. I do NOT want that to happen this time. I don't know if I should try to process this with her or by myself. When it comes up for me my perspective is totally fucked, which makes it difficult.

This is very disturbing and uncomfortable for me. Any advice you can offer on this would be greatly appreciated.

2. On a related note, I notice that when I feel enraged, the sensation occupies my entire upper body from about my mid-chest up (including my arms), but not below that. I suspect this has something to do with a bioenergetic block or lack of integration of the lower parts of my bodymind. What do you think this is all about, and how should I work with this? In the past (before I started working with you) what I noticed most about the physical correlates of my anger was that if someone "triggered" me, almost instantly I'd get a sensation in my head like a little energetic bomb going off, and I would feel very destabilized and freakishly edgy. At that time I did not notice how the sensations were distributed in the rest of my body. Not uncommonly when the anger clears, under that is sadness, grief and/or despair. This morning I noticed those sensations seemed to be occurring somewhat lower in my body, but I need to observe that more times to be sure.

3. I find your books to be full of insight, and a great adjunct to doing therapy and workshops with you. However, I notice that you never have specific "exercises" that the reader can do - except occasionally you will give some meditation instruction for example, embedded in the text. I'm wondering if you ever consider having exercises (for individuals or couples) or if it is counter to your philosophical approach - in other words if you prefer not give specific instruction to people outside of workshops and therapy where you can intuit what they specifically need. You have mentioned elsewhere in the Q&A thread that you may do audio material in the future - if so, might there be some exercises on those?

Robert answers:

1. A couple of things: First, you cannot just work with your hate/anger/distress cognitively; the more you think about what’s transpired between you and your friend, the more agitated you’ll probably find yourself getting. Yes, pay attention to your hate and anger and distress, get inside them, explore and illuminate them as best you can, but also allow them fittingly full expression: Find ways and places to really cut loose (either by yourself or with others whom you trust), until your heart is blown open and your feet are on solid ground (see my answer to your next question).

Second, don’t let your friend off the hook; make sure that you and she look not only at your part in what’s happened between you, but also at her part. Making it all about you, as you seem to be doing, will only amplify your frustration. If she’s open to it, I suggest that you tell her what’s going on for you regarding her. Let her know what you are actually feeling, without any apology. If you are going to express any anger to her, make sure that you create a context for doing so, that you have her okay to go ahead, that you express it cleanly, and that you are vulnerable.

2. Bring more awareness to your belly, pelvis, legs, and feet. Breathe into your belly more deeply, let it loosen more, practice making sounds that come from your guts, put on some rocking music and stomp your feet to it while letting your voice out, and so on -- whatever brings your attention into your body from the diaphragm down. Don’t be nice. Make room for your power to emerge. Get out of your head. Get into working out not only regularly, but hard now and then, connecting your exertion to the specifics of whatever you’re angry about (this will, for example, not only put more juice into your bench pressing, but will also allow it to be a catalyst and arena for in-context anger-release, even if you’re in a setting where emotional noisiness is a no-no). Needless to say, body-including psychotherapy would be very useful here.

3. I prefer giving specific instructions based on what I sense from directly working in-depth with clients. These are not just practices arising from my general sense of what is needed under particular conditions for, say, men who lack spine, but practices arising from my intuitive, detail-rich, idiosyncrasy-honoring encounter with clients. At the same time, I am open to creating exercises and practices for certain conditions; when I’ll get around to actually getting these in book or audio form, I don’t know.

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Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-One

April 16, 2006

A. Jana/Plasmafly asks:

Robert you appear to be the most nondual of teachers around in your "embrace" or facing into the darkness, as I am sure you have an intuition as that being the way to liberate the light, and those in your sphere are perhaps more alive than the average human because of it. I suspect that this talent for acceptance was something you were born with and then cognitively/heartly developed overtime...and especially with your Darkness Shining Wild experience.

I imagine that your acceptance is probably one of the main factors in the success of the healing work you do, and the "rapidity" of shifts in aliveness/awareness in your clients and that it must be grounded on a radical acceptance for yourself first.

Whereas it seems like a lot of teachers/gurus/spiritual leaders are still actually afraid of shadow/thanatos...perhaps because they are still power driven..so they must still be non-accepting of themselves, still dualistic and this in turn would keep followers triggered into punishment/reward--parent/child dynamics which would hinder both nondual realization, health, wholeness and sovereignty...and hence they forfeit their contribution to evolving society itself and are locked hopelessly into personal preoccupation...nurturing and fortifying the shell instead of the Spirit.

Also do you find people in your sphere to be artistically inspired by your open elan? Showing a more perfect marriage between the imagination and cognition...right and left brain.

Robert answers:

The more authority and power we have, the more important it is that we work, and work deeply, with our shadow elements. Paying lip service to such work just does not cut it. Real shadow-work is not some cut-and-dried intellectual process, but rather a viscerally compelling, emotionally raw journey into territories that more often than not elude any neat cartography.

It is, of course, tempting to remain in the shallows of such work, feeling a bit of strange or unpleasant feeling perhaps (but nothing strong enough to truly shake us), gathering a little insight into our darker inner workings and desires, but at some point we need to take the plunge, and really get into working with what’s submerged, ostracized, disowned, numbed, and just plain fucked-up in us, and this is an inherently messy undertaking, given that we’re allowing the surfacing of what we’ve spent most of our lives keeping down.

For a while, we may -- especially if we’re in denial about our own shortcomings -- trot out our good points (and have those who are “loyal” to us do the same for us), obscuring what is not working in our lives with what is working, but sooner or later we’ve got to cut through the bullshit and do our work, whether we initiate the process or not. Especially if we’ve got others looking up to us, or looking to us for guidance!

The good news is that the more deeply we work with our shadow elements, the more liberated energy we’ll have, energy that can be put into serving our well-being and that of others. We don’t have to announce to others that we’ve done some really deep and thorough shadow-work; our having done so is enough, making us a conducive presence and safe place for others to deeply encounter and work with their own shadow stuff.

We’d love to get to the treasure without having to face its dragons, but face them we must. And thank God for them, because they -- through what they demand of us -- make sure, and really make sure, that we are ready for what they are guarding. Our task is get intimate with our dragons, so intimate that we not only can look through their eyes and feel their pulse as our own, but also pass by them without any fuss. Although this is far from easy, it must eventually be done if we are to truly access the deepest treasure of all.

The dragon is not the problem. Our distorted connection to it is. Must we armor ourselves to face it? Must we literalize our adversarial link to it? Must we treat the dragon as a mere obstruction, a lower-brain roadblock in need of dynamite, cognitive rehabilitation, or spiritual remedies? The dragon is not in the way; our lack of healthy relationship to it is. We make it into such a solidly alien “other” that we feel justified in conceiving of it as something to flee, attack, or treat as imaginary. We turn it into an enemy, and it behaves accordingly. Keep something in the dark long enough and it’ll get warped.

If we condemn or flee anything in ourselves, it will multiply and fester and eventually occupy every exit, enlarging itself so as to seize our attention, encoding its outcast will throughout the apparently healthier regions of ourselves.

When we cut others close to us too much slack in working with their shadow elements (perhaps because we’ve got a tacit deal with them that we won’t rock their boat if they don’t rock ours), we’re simply creating the conditions that will eventually rock us (and them) so strongly that we’ll have to deal with what we’d rather avoid.

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B. Liz/Tamgoddess asks:

A friend of mine is having a secret affair. She's the mother of two young children, and married to a man she loves a lot, though she's had a problem with what I would call an addiction to men and the attention she gets from them.

She's aware of this addiction, and doesn't know what to do about it. She is like a junkie, unable to stay away from dangerous activities because of the high she gets from it. She has gotten to the point where she can't even be alone in the same room with men she doesn't even find attractive. She gets giggly and blushes and flirts, yet it seems almost involuntary, and clearly uncomfortable for her. I had to accompany her to a friend's house to pick up a projector for a presentation, and I saw how out of control it's gotten.

She's always been seriously into making sure she gets men to respond to her in a sexual way. She says she used to feel safer when she was fatter, because she felt there was a bit of a barrier between her and the men she flirted with. But the frequency and intensity of it has gotten unbearable since she lost weight. And now she's even having an affair, which she feels powerless to stop.

She has always had self-esteem issues. She acts like it's all her fault that she's having this affair, in spite of the fact that this man is certainly capable of controlling himself as well, and she's asked him to stay away and he hasn't. It's actually kind of sickening how she defends him and denigrates herself. This is an extremely bright and accomplished, deeply spiritual, loving woman calling herself bad and evil and all sorts of things nobody who knows her (except me) would ever suspect she could think of herself.

She has a crazy, toxic mother who has said things to her all her life like "No man will ever find you attractive." So it's pretty clear where this is rooted, and doesn't seem to me to be about sex at all, but a need for unconditional love. Her father, with whom she had a very close and loving relationship, died many years ago.

How can she reclaim her strength and end this affair? How can she restore her relationships with the men in her life to their proper place? How is it that a person can learn to find that love they need without self-destructing in the process?

Oh, and she's married to a man she loves a great deal, as I've said, but none of her women friends can stand him. He's arrogant and condescending, though he's mellowed in recent years. I don't know what that has to do with this behavior. She does all the work of the relationship, in my opinion.

My efforts have been centered around telling her she isn't horrible and that it takes two people to have an affair-this guy isn't blameless. And of course, trying to shore up her self-image, though nobody can really do that for her.

Thanks in advance, Robert.

Robert answers:

Sounds like you have a good understanding of the dynamics underlying your friend’s behavior. What she’s basically doing is acting-out some unresolved stuff in a highly irresponsible way. Sexualizing one’s need for attention is not uncommon, but she seems to be caught up in it more than most. She needs to step back, strip away the erotic component of her behavior, and take a good look at what’s left. More than likely, she’ll see a little girl aching for attention, and behind that, aching for love. That little girl, that place of aching need and hurt and raw vulnerability, needs not to sexualized, but instead taken into her heart and fully embraced. Put another way, the woman/mother in her needs to totally embrace and love and protect the little girl in her.

This, of course, requires that she really see what is going on, and do what she has to do to adopt a responsible stance toward it. Since she doesn’t sound capable of this, she needs to work with a suitably skilled psychotherapist as soon as possible. More than insight is necessary; decisive intervention is needed. I recommend that you directly direct her toward psychotherapy. I also recommend that she stop the affair right away -- cold-turkey it -- and put her energy into healing herself.

Much of the energy she’s channeling into sexuality could go toward forming and maintaining healthy boundaries. She could begin by telling the guy she’s having the affair with to stay away -- not asking him, but telling him; if he refuses, then she’s going to have to get heavy, underlining her demand with enough anger to make a real impact on him. This is something that she could get great support for and practice in by going to psychotherapy.

I’m curious about her relationship with her father: What exactly happened between them; how did he die, and when; how did he relate to her mother; and so on. Perhaps her hypersexualizing of her need for attention is but the presenting layer of her need to have control over men, for when she has such control (through “making” them want her), she can, so it seems, keep them from leaving her (like her father did). Or perhaps not....but it’s all worth exploring in depth.

It would also be very useful for her and her husband to do some couples counselling, perhaps a month or so after she’s begun her individual psychotherapy.


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C. Maryw asks:

First of all, Robert, I wanted to thank you and Diane again for your wonderful therapeutic work. Since 2001, I had been to 3 local therapists to address my dysthymic disorder [long-term mild depression], and I experienced more catharsis and healing in my individual session with you and during that June 10 IN group workshop than during all those other months of therapy!

I had intended to ask you this while I was in Vancouver and I simply forgot. One of the body-work techniques that you used with me and with several others was a deep massage of the upper abdominal/solar plexus area. You had me lie on my back on a foam pad and take very deep breaths while you massaged my upper abdomen. You also had me do some "sentence completion" exercises during the massage and the deep breathing.

I know very little about therapeutic methods so I was wondering if you wouldn't mind discussing this a little. What happens during the solar plexus massage? Does it help to release held-in energies or to contact pre-verbal wounds? Is it in some way a "diagnostic" technique for you?

I do recall that I felt quite different at the end of that individual session with you -- more embodied and deeply present!

Peace to you,
Mary

Robert answers:

(What I say below is not meant to necessarily apply to you specifically, but to my clients in general.)

Bodywork as I practice it is an intuitive art, so I don’t have a preset way of doing it. Nevertheless, there are certain areas of the body to which I pay special attention, such as the solar plexus and diaphragm. Probing the solar plexus area quickly provides me with an abundance of information about my client: degree of tension, breathing restrictions, sensitivity, degree of embodiment, possible numbness, emotional openness and depth, connection or lack of connection between the upper and lower torso, and so on.

I usually do this in conjunction with working manually for a bit with the diaphragm, sensing how tight or constricted it may be, both in close to the solar plexus and further out toward the sides of the body. As I do this, I often have my clients breathe more deeply, and let some sound out. How they do this tells me a lot. During this, I may also have them finish some incomplete sentences, so as to help them connect what they’re feeling with what’s going on and/or has gone on in their life. If they speak in general terms, I have them get more specific. This usually doesn’t take more than a few minutes, helping to shift the session into a deeper, more openly feeling place.

Those who are physically and energetically restricted across the diaphragm and solar plexus usually have poor communication (nonverbal of course!) between their heart area and abdomen. They may have a lot of heart, but it’s not infused with much energy from below the diaphragm, so that their voice and overall presence is loving, but lacks “guts”. Or they have plenty of gut-level power, but the constriction of their diaphragm keeps the energy of that power from having the heart it needs to be truly effective. When they are feeling or being sexual, the energy of their sexuality may rise to their upper belly, but won’t infuse their heart to any significant extent. But once the arc of the diaphragm is stretched and loosened up, so that energy can flow back and forth across and through it, we feel everything more deeply.

Our sexuality then, for example, will start not only to flow more easily, but will feel much better; a relatively open-hearted man who previously felt drained after coming will now be able to feel rejuvenated after it, because his orgasmic energies can rise up into his chest and heart, passing through his diaphragmatic area easily.

Put your fingers under your ribcage just above your abdomen and press in a bit; if your fingers don’t easily penetrate under your ribcage, you’ve got a tight diaphragm. On your own, you can loosen it some, but for some real loosening, go to a massage practitioner who is adept at deep tissue work, or, if you’re into some really deep structural work, go to a rolfer.

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C. Denis/elconwords asks:

Robert, I wonder if you could speak a little about anger. The more I try and work through this thing the more befuddled I am becoming. I thought I had made great strides in recognizing the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger and the difference between it's use(manipulative I mean) and it's healthy expression but just when I think I can express it to make clear that some boundaries were not being respected, indicate that I am here and back off please, boom I get called an emotional fatty and I am back to square one in the sense that I am left wondering if I am totally oblivious to what is obvious to others.
What is this anger thing. Is it a pathology, something to be healed and then cast away completely? Can one recognize the pathology in oneself or is it only through others that we become aware of it ? Is there any use for it?
I know that if and when I am angry with myself it serves to spur me on often. I feel when I am angry at myself that it is like turning a brighter light on and saying take a closer look or peeling back the folds and looking directly into the wound, no more niceties it's down to brass tacks!
Can any of that apply outside oneself?

Thanks for your continued efforts and participation on this forum Robert and I look forward to seeing you again in July.

Signed: Pissed off!
Denis

Robert answers:

There’s so much I could say about anger here...Some psychotherapeutic exploration of anger would be useful for you. I also suggest that you read my book THE ANATOMY & EVOLUTION OF ANGER. Among other things, it will help you to clarify the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger, as well as to illuminate different ways to work with anger. Following are some excerpts from the Introduction:

DEVELOPING INTIMACY WITH ANGER

Not only is anger perhaps our most misunderstood and misused emotion, but it may also be (with the possible exception of fear) the emotion for which we have the most aversion. Given the frequently harmful consequences of acted-out anger — epitomized by violent behavior — as well as the often unpleasant, hotly compelling quality of the sensations of anger, it is not surprising that we might want to distance ourselves from anger, or at least from the actual feeling of anger.

We may find such distancing not only through mental strategies — like calm-inducing reinterpretations of inflammatory situations — and spiritual exercises — like equanimity-inducing meditative practices — but also through anger-releasing approaches (such as all-out woodchopping, pillow-pounding, full-throttle yelling, hard-stomping dancing, or aggressive play).

These practices do not always necessarily distance us from our anger, but their usual intent is to reduce, defuse, or discharge anger, as though it were little more than just some sort of noxious or otherwise undesirable substance for which there was no other suitable remedy — or use — than domestication, muzzling, neutering, or outright elimination.

Even the practice of trying to be mindful of our anger, neither suppressing nor openly expressing it — as is recommended in particular by many teachers in the Buddhist tradition — may just indicate a subtler aversion to anger, particularly in the sharing or expressing of its more fiery or confrontative energies.

In fact, many spiritual seekers may be largely drawn to anger-negating practices simply because these practices make a spiritual virtue out of avoiding what such seekers would already (perhaps because of past negative or traumatic associations with anger) like to avoid. Or seekers may misconstrue “mindfulness of anger” — which in of itself is not an anger-negating practice — to mean little more than a rejection of anger, especially in its overt expression.

However, instead of getting beyond anger or removing ourselves from it, we could become more intimate with it — but how can we do this if we will only examine our anger from a distance, or insist on emptying ourselves of its energies (i.e., getting it “out of our system”) when it arises? Developing intimacy with our anger enhances self-knowledge, integrity, relational depth, and spiritual maturation, providing both heat and light for what needs to be done, helping us to embody a passion as potently alive as it is responsible.

There is nothing inherently wrong with anger. Anger is not necessarily a problem, a hindrance, a sign of negativity or spiritual slippage, an avoidance of something “deeper,” nor a demonstration of unlove. It is our use of our anger that is the real issue.

Do we blame our anger for clouding or befuddling our reason — playing victim to our passions being one of our oldest alibis — or do we assume responsibility for what we do with it? Do we turn our anger into a weapon, hiding our hurt behind its righteous, fiery, “pumped-up” front, fueling and legitimizing our defensiveness with it, or do we instead keep it as transparent and permeable as possible, remaining non-blaming and vulnerable even as we allow it as full or penetrating a passion as fits the situation? Do we use our anger to get even, to score points, to overpower or outdebate, or do we use it to deepen or resuscitate intimacy, to compassionately underline or flame through pretense, emotional deadwood, and life-negating investments?

It’s so easy to trash anger. It is so easy, in the name of angerphobia, to reject, crush, nicely incarcerate, bad-mouth or otherwise violate our anger, allowing it so few life-enhancing outlets that it, like an animal kept too long in a cage, usually behaves badly when finally released, thereby confirming our suspicions that it is indeed in need of much the same treatment as a savage beast that has somehow found its way into our house.

It is also easy, though far less common, to glorify anger, with equally harmful results. Exhorting the inhibited to “get into their anger” may just lead to a forced anger, an anger of performance, an anger that leads not to healing insight, but rather to an overreliance on simplistic (and possibly aggression-reinforcing) cathartic procedures.

It is, however, not so easy to cultivate intimacy with our anger; getting close to its heat, its flames, its redly engorged intensity, without losing touch with our basic sanity, asks much of us. But if we do not ask — and ultimately demand — this of ourselves, we will surely miss knowing not only the heat of anger’s fire, but also its light. As much as anger can injuriously burn, it can also illuminate — it all depends on what kind of relationship with anger we choose to cultivate.

Violence and aggression remain the subject of heated debate regarding their reduction and cause. Seeming solutions abound — more love, more understanding and tolerance, better social programs, stricter controls, stronger deterrents, and so on — yet the problem persists. The idealism of solutions aside, there is a potentially very valuable step to take: Becoming more intimate with — rather than moving away from or rising above or acting out — our own violence, our own aggression and hatred, our own mean-spiritedness and hardheartedness, not just intellectually, not just in therapy chambers, but fully. And the very intention to take this step begins with investigating our own anger.

THE NATURE OF ANGER

As an emotion, anger is an aroused, often heated state in which are combined (1) a compellingly felt sense of being wronged (hence the moral quality of anger), and (2) a counteracting, potentially energizing feeling of power, both of which are interconnected biologically, psychologically, and culturally.

Can we identify anger — which is not a single emotion, but instead a family of related emotions, ranging from annoyance to rage — through the observed presence of particular behaviors? Not necessarily. I can display none of the behaviors supposedly characteristic of anger, and still be angry. Instead of banging the table, shouting, or cursing the idiot who has dared to impede my automotive progress, I may instead in my anger try even harder to please you, or I may calmly and smilingly withhold a piece of information that I know would help you. Can we recognize our anger through observing our behavior? Not necessarily.

Similarly, can we identify anger through the observed presence of particular sensations or feelings? Two emotions — like envy and resentment — may feel very similar, having much the same physiological characteristics, yet they do differ. This difference is rooted in subjectivity (and intersubjectivity), both cognitively and contextually. We discriminate between emotions by attuning, however unknowingly, to the context of the situation.

Because bodily sensations are usually so obviously involved in emotion, we may confuse them with emotion. There is, however, more to emotion than just the feeling of it. Anger is an attitude, not just a feeling. We evaluate emotion, but not feeling — we may speak of our anger as “justified” or “unjustified,” but would we speak of our feeling like vomiting as “justified” or “unjustified”?

Also, we can cease being angry, and yet still feel the very same feelings that a moment ago we identified as anger. For example, I am angry at you, raging angry, for breaking my prized drinking mug, and suddenly I find out that you are completely innocent of doing so, and I am no longer angry at you. My evaluation of the situation has radically and instantaneously changed, yet the feelings I was experiencing just a moment ago — pounding heart, facial flushing, adrenaline-charged torso, shoulder muscles knotting — are still present, albeit diminishing slightly. Can I now call these angry feelings? No, because their evaluative framework — or emotional basis — has changed.

ANGER VERSUS AGGRESSION

Anger, contrary to popular opinion, is not necessarily the same as aggression. Aggression involves some form of attack, whereas anger may or may not. Aggression is devoid of compassion and vulnerability, but anger, however fiery its delivery might be or might have to be, can be part of an act of caring and vulnerability. Nevertheless, anger in general remains all but synonymous with aggression.

Aggression is not so much an outcome of anger, as an avoidance of it and its frequently interpersonal nature and underlying feelings of woundedness and vulnerability.

Viewing anger as aggression — or as the cause of aggression — gives us an excuse to classify it is a “lower” or “primitive” emotion. Or something far from spiritual. But anger is far from “primitive,” though what we do with it may be far from civilized. Rejected anger very easily mutates into aggression, whether active or passive, other-directed or inner-directed. Thus does a means of communication become a means of weaponry.

Anger assigned to do injury, however subtly, is not really anger, but hostility. Anger that masks its own hurt and vulnerability is not really anger, but hardheartedness or hatred in the making, seeking not power with, but power over. But there is a potential healing here: to reverse the equation, to convert aggression, hostility, hatred, and every other diseased offspring of mishandled anger back into anger.

This conversion, however, does not mean eviscerating or drugging the energy of such negative states, but rather liberating it from its life-negating viewpoints, so that its intensity and passion can coexist with a caring, significantly awakened attention. In this sense, the world needs not less anger, but more. Especially anger coming from the heart.

Violence — the brass knuckles of neglected or abused wounds — tramples or dynamites boundaries, but anger in many cases protects or guards boundaries, at best resolutely exposing and illuminating (or perhaps even flaming through) barriers to intimacy or integrity, without abusing those who are maintaining such barriers. As such, anger is moral fire. Anger that burns cleanly leaves no smoldering pockets of resentment or ill-will. Violence is not a result of anger, but rather is an abuse — or violation — of anger.

ANGER AND “I”

To study anger in real depth is to study more than anger.

The very “I” that is busy being angry, or that appears to be “behind” anger, has such an impact on the formation and delivery of anger that it cannot be left out of any serious consideration of anger.

Like anger, “I” is not an entity or thing, but rather a process. (However, “I”, as egoity in action, can still be usefully conceptualized as an entity — for example, a “cult of one” — at least with regard to its usual behavior.) Therefore, to investigate anger’s anatomy and evolution is to, among other things, also investigate the anatomy and evolution of “I.” As untidy or complex as this may be, it cannot be bypassed without stranding the understanding of anger in explanatory shallows or reductionist ruts.

When I “have” an emotion (or when an emotion “has” me), who am I? What then is my sense of self? Mainstream developmental psychology speaks about the evolution of the sense of self, but it does not consider, or even acknowledge, the transpersonal dimensions of that self-sense, as if the only dimensions of it that exist are prepersonal and personal. Nonetheless, emotions, including anger, arise in transpersonal realms. So who then is busy being emotional? What is the nature of the “I” (if any) that is apparently feeling sad or happy or angry?

“I” may get angry, and may feel a very solid sense of self in doing so, but who am I busy being then? And who am I when it’s not just “my” anger, but “the” anger (or anger that is more collective than individual)? What differences, if any, are there between the “I” who is angry, and the “I” who is seeking to reroute or bypass that anger?

WORKING WITH ANGER: FOUR APPROACHES

The four approaches to working with anger introduced below provide a framework not only capable of making sense out of the diverse, complex, and enormous amount of material concerning anger, but also sufficiently inclusive to cover both personal and transpersonal considerations of anger.

(1) ANGER-IN refers to strategies that favor the restraining and redirection of the energies characteristic of raw anger. Not surprisingly, advocates of this approach emphasize the importance of not directly expressing our anger. Self-control, subduing and recontextualizing our anger — these are the cornerstones of anger-in. Anger-in “experts” tend to equate the expressing of anger with “venting,” a lack of self-control, violence, and aggression. Anger-in therapies teach one not only to identify those perceptions and interpretations that catalyze anger, but also new habits and skills, such as relaxation and cooling-off techniques — hence the “cognitive-behavioral” label for therapeutic anger-in strategies. Reinterpreting supposed provocations is essential to anger-in; such reappraisal reduces the probability of anger being openly expressed by removing or at least shrinking the perception of being under attack.

Though anger-in may make too much of a virtue out of controlling, managing, and non-angrily “expressing” anger, it does make a strong case for learning to step back from anger so that its more extreme or irrational impulses can be reconsidered or given more contextual space. Nevertheless, anger-in has a difficult question before it: How successful can a way of working with anger be that does not include openly expressing the actual feelings of anger? Would we, by analogy, consider a grief therapy to be successful that did not include the actual expression of grief?

(2) ANGER-OUT refers to approaches that emphasize the importance of directly and fully expressing the energies and intentions of anger. At the very core of anger-out theory and work is the notion of catharsis, which remains a controversial topic in therapeutic practice, despite evidence that incorporating catharsis in anger-management work makes it more effective. Skillfully facilitated catharsis is an essential element of various cutting-edge psychotherapeutic approaches.

Advocates of anger-out say that suppressed anger is not healthy — better to bring it to the surface (or “dig it up”) and release-express it, they claim. As appealing and apparently medically sound as such “down-to-earth” logic may be — and it provides an easy target for anger-in supporters — it can tend to overemphasize a merely physical approach to anger, as if it was just something to discharge or eliminate from the body. The emotional-release work that characterizes anger-out practices can range from mere licence to “run amok” (or irresponsibly “act out” anger) to profoundly healing, integration-promoting release and illumination.

(3) MINDFULLY-HELD ANGER refers to practices in which anger is consciously contained, not emotionally expressed, and meditatively attended to, with a key intention being neither to suppress anger nor act it out. This approach, not surprisingly, is strongly linked with Buddhism and its “Middle Path” philosophy. In its emphasis on neither repressing nor acting out emotion, this pathway appears to offer a solution to the anger-in/anger-out dichotomy. In being wakefully present with our anger, thereby closely witnessing the actual process of it (in its feeling, cognitive, perceptual, and social dimensions), we also bear witness, at least to some degree, to the very “I” who is busy being angry. That is, our perspective shifts from how angry we feel to who it is who feels it.

At its best, the mindful holding of anger is not so much a containment of anger as a deliberately intimate embracing and investigation of it, a willingness to stay with our anger without expressing it. Through such loving alertness, anger can be transformed into the energy of understanding and compassion. However, this practice carries its own dangers (as suggested by the more negative connotations of the term “holding”), especially when it is engaged in prematurely or in order to flee or suppress anger, as when we are not so much sitting with our anger as on it.

(4) HEART-ANGER refers to approaches in which openly expressed anger and compassion consciously and beneficially coexist. Put together the virtues of anger-in, anger-out, and mindfully held anger — healthy rationality and restraint, emotional openness and authenticity, meditative openness and compassion — and minimize the difficulties associated with each, and heart-anger emerges.

Heart-anger is rooted both in full-blooded aliveness and in genuine caring for the other. It can be life-enhancingly shared in its rawness.

As fierce as heart-anger sometimes can be, it is but the essence of wrathful compassion — a potent, often fiery caring. Here, the expression of anger is not necessarily rethought or kept to oneself, nor always given free rein, but rather is deliberately infused with wakeful, investigative attention, without any requisite dilution or non-expression of its passion. It is “clean” anger, incisive, non-blaming, mindful, contextually sensitive, heated yet illuminating — rooted in both the personal and the transpersonal.

As such, it could be called soul-centered anger (by soul, I mean that depth of individuality in which egoity is clearly and functionally peripheral to Being). Such anger has a broad enough sense of human suffering to embrace a radically inclusive morality; it possesses sufficient faith in Existence to persist in its fierce caring; and it has the guts to carry this all out. If all that was necessary was that it shine, it surely would, but it knows that it often must also burn. And, because of this, it knows that it must also weep.