Principle of Principles
essay
Sometimes, it all just seems to collapse into a furious mess. Such a circumstance is an opportunity too. If we’re not advantaged by being adepts, we’re probably members of the group which is normal and beleaguered by the fatefulness of life. You know: where the center probably isn't going to hold.
As someone who has experimented with different approaches to these kinds of messy (!) opportunities, I find something worthy about them all. Yet, none is more than a tool, and, in the best case, has precise and powerful applications. This is true for what are the well known modes of therapy, coaching, and counseling, as it is true for applications of exploratory learning. Exploratory learning, on the other hand, is constructed out of assumptions that are not altogether different than those of, for example, therapeutic modes, or assumptions underlying those other modes, yet, it is somewhat different too.
It is, in many ways, a more direct mode because the model proposes that insight does not need to be hard won by a strenuous extertion via a model which builds in this ‘athletic’ presumption. Still, all such models are interpersonal and experiential, so there is much common ground.
On occasion, I am given to lay the skeleton of this direct approach out. This is a rare occasion. Normally, the idea is to explore the field in which a more personal and “custom-fit” skeleton may be living. Skeleton is an apt metaphor. The potentially transformative insight arises only through experientially fleshing it out and developing this skeleton’s organs.
On a rare occasion, then, I may present the general skeleton. This is indicated when the work cannot be done face-to-face, and, the presented situation suggests that a client’s reading of the skeleton may set them to a step or two of further exploration. The reading of what the facilitator proposes is itself an experiential process. This kind of process is dialogical and conversational. This conversational mode is itself one squareONE’s tools, and, because in all of the tools of the toolbox, dialogue is implicated, conversation is also a mode of exploration. In fact, it’s a very powerful mode.
I’d like to present this kind of “laying it all out” by clipping from a more personal collaboration the core of this skeleton. What follows was in response to the subject’s going through the travails of a twin collapse of a romantic relationship and a professional project. I’ve extracted from it personal details, but, in the form of advice or food for thought, the skeleton is, here, mostly intact.
Response to a friend I.
As it happens I have a steel trap memory. But it would mis-serve its purpose if it catalogued somebody else's mistakes, because, for the most part, it truly etches my own mistakes. I take the attitude and cut it one way only: those are the mistakes I needed.
If there is a deeper thing you should know it is completely simple. I have always been there for you. Always. We are brothers. You need not ever suffer alone. I love you. Be lonely if you must be, but know this, too.
You get it. I don't buy into people's identity, I invest in knowing who people are and little else than this. It is a spiritual commitment.
We have some catching up to do. All that matters is what's in your heart, kiddo.
How the heck either you or I will be able to live comfortably when our bodies really start to fall apart is a secondary question. But, I believe this secondary problem isn't going to yield "correctly" (as in the 'TAO') unless it is researched as a matter of the deepest principles of either your own, or my humanity. Trying to pry it open from some other vector is, to my way of looking at it, completely pointless.
Speaking for myself, and this is so despite any vaunted principles, I see much more clearly what is my problem. Years ago [a teacher], told me that a teacher of his told him, "bring me your projects not your problems."
A problem looks a bit different if it is really a project! Writ on the deep level of the personal, of the person, my project has always been quite simple. Some would say it is the project of growing up, but this isn't very helpful. Others would say it is the problem of self-fulfillment, but this isn't very rich.
And, richness, is the point! What's the richest way to experience one's own project? Where does this experience happen? Is it a problem of the core or the periphery? If it's on the periphery, how does it connect up with the core?
The core project, for me, is work. Not job, or livelihood, or career; no, it is about going out into the world and doing something. Anything. It can be about going out into the world of my crib and cleaning up the bathroom. This project is everything which isn't sitting here in my own lonely-making world thinking to myself that the world should know me better.
There's been a breakthrough. It took a few decades! It took every single mistake I made and others made, seemingly 'against me,' yet really on my behalf. And, there's not a moment I would extract from the whole affair. This is the law of contingency and connection and so concerns how the world makes one who they are and who they are really to be.
Which is the answer, always. Being who one is. Not identity, not one's story, not some deception somebody else might find agreeable, charming, lovely, attractive, funny, creative, artistic, smart, precocious, etc.
As it has come about, I had to walk through hell quite a few times, to hell and back. I -no doubt- will go there again too. I had to turn myself inside out, finally, and this has made of me a fine psychologist of my own heart and of my own project. So: one does have to love and lose many times. And, lose much more until one is naked to their own principles.
Then, there one is: standing in the rubble as it were. The most daring insight is: life is short. There is no alternative to consider. You get rubbed up against it so profoundly, the only question is, is: how to live life’s imposition and question truthfully, fully, with daring.
The world comes to you to exquisitely portray to you, you! It is, as you know, a heart-rending portrayal, an academy award-winning performance!
From the psychological point of view, or, better, from the perspective of soul, thus your own soul, this project of self-recognition is a spiritual drama. There's nothing left over - in your pain and suffering the only thing left is who you really are.
But, we don't just have ourselves. We, each, express the cosmological principles that are nothing less than an ineffable truth uniquely writ at the cellular level, thus writ creatively and completely in every moment, and throughout our being.
What, then, does the world look like, in light of this? What is this location or that location? If you take it beyond the praxis (engagement and relationship,) of self-involvement, to "being," in other words, then, at least it is a daily opportunity many never take advantage of, except by accident. To take advantage of this opportunity is not to become involved in the world, but to be the world being you. As the sages put it, “all is accident except for the Heart”. The time honored suggestion: "in it, not of it" means, not ever aside from the deepest level of all, to be yourself in the world that expresses you.
This is a natural for artists! The problem is that we turn it around and upside down. So, we think that the world is there to respond to our wish for involvement, rather than being there to express through us its knowledge, wisdom.
If this seems abstract, then what one can do about such ideas being veiled to some extent, is to go out tin the world and do an experiment based in what little one knows in sympathy with this abstract idea. ...so as to, test one's own principles.
If you are worried about anything, there's the answer in abstract form and in the form of what one can do right now.
I feel the common experiment you do is to trust 'that it will all, this time, work out'. I recognize there is a great sense of daring in doing this. That's the constructive and essential aspect. Sometimes it does work out. Yet, it's an uncertain experiment too. This doesn't have anything to do with not knowing for sure, beforehand, if anything will work out. All life is risking one's own artistry in the crucible of indifference!
On a deeper level, the question of self-recognition concerns what the cosmos itself is unable to be indifferent to. This is a very hard question. What is worse than indifference to the willingness to love, (for example)?
At the same time, we can assess what has actually been risked and why. Now this is a difficult inquiry to make of one's self! In a romance, a drama plays out and one, when the affair has been dashed, might reflect and wonder about how it was one was seduced, taken prisoner, tortured by both the muse and the furies, and, left on the rocks.
This is a great mythological theme. As with all such themes, it is also concerned with the paradox of it being necessarily the case, (thus how 'love' works,) and about the kernalized insight any affair of the heart, be it done with, or, in its midst, or, betwixt, offers about who one really is.
As devastating as the pain is, we know -experientially- that there is some great secret concealed by the breaking heart. It fills your chest! This sensation is overwhelming. The cosmos intends to overwhelm one!
I've suffered -consciously- three great broken hearts in my life. And, unconsciously, three other ones. Also, essentially: I've suffered the facts of my own heart, and that is the greatest brokenness of all.
Yet, this last breaking is also the greatest healing experience; I've learned that you suffer your own healing past the breaking point to joy. Suffer it all the way past the obvious indifference of the world right through the to the essence of one's self. Consider this too: any criticism which comes your way from unprincipled sources might contain a grain of truth, but, in 'cosmological' terms, they express always: indifference. Why? Because discernment can only be principled, all else is unprincipled, and indifferent due to the abject, as a [teacher] put it, "hidden agenda".
As for love, nothing compares in my experience, with the love for the teacher who has come to one to directly help them with the problem of “reality”.
The reenchantments of romance, and, later, (should it develop,) real relationship between two hearts, is no less a shocking loss should either expire, quickly, or through tortuous breaking up and apart.
The essence of this kind of loss is what?
Response to a friend II.
[A teacher] told me to study martial arts. At least, study it enough to have experience of the right attitude. I didn't take his suggestion, but, nonetheless, I obtained something like this attitude after several sojourns in the fire. I would call this attitude simply what is required to dance on the razor's edge between hope and hazard, between imagination and fact, between seductive appearance and heart-rending reality.
As I'm want to know beforehand while, at the same time, I gently hold the process of self-recognition on behalf of my clients, they already know what is necessary and what they need to know to unlock the challenge any project thrusts front and center. The question would remain: will they get down into it and find a veil or two to cast off. Practically: what experiment shall test the insight uncovered as a matter of going down and into it.
I tell you this, because I feel, now, the project is right in front of you. The directive is not to cry and get over it. The directive is to be those tears.
My suggestion to [another client]: "don't let anyone in anyway, tell you how to do your project". A spiritual project doesn't have a 'proper format' nor is it supposed to be in a pleasing from for somebody else’s sake, nor is it supposed to be made into a ‘product’ aimed at gaining approval. I told the client to enjoy their creative project, because, later, they will remember fondly the initial stage where it needn’t please anyone else.
***
As for the question of trust?
Consider a simple martial arts principle. You walk away from any and all enemies who do not understand themselves. They are the most dangerous combatants of all.
The martial artist only fights other martial artists.
Thought problem. I want you to put into a single room everyone you know out there who has proven beyond any doubt that they are trustworthy to a greater extent and not a lesser extent. I'm not saying this is a room of persons who have perfected their integrity, I'm qualifying only that integrity for such persons is for them proven to be a principle they cannot easily set aside.
I have no idea, then, if this is a large group or not. It doesn't matter.
What this group would be, however, is generalizable. They would be persons who have walked through fires and come out with some principles. They would have to be people who mostly can step outside of themselves to the extent that they can assess what the facts of trust are in a given situation. There is no doubt that this group would be made up of people who had made lots of mistakes, and, also, gained lots of insight.
So, if you took an afternoon, and explored with such persons what trust is and is not, and you then took this as far as it goes into practical matters, (be they personal or 'professional,') what might result from getting these principled experts together?
It's funny to note some business fields, for example, are fundamentally unprincipled. But, the shame is that it eats alive principled persons and turns them into able navigators of the abyss. The hallmark of such persons is that they are too trusting! This is different than being a trusting person and knowing what a martial arts approach would be. Do you see this?
***
You want a tip for making a living? Find and live with foolish daring your deepest principles, (be clear about them too, every day; don't compromise,) and surround yourself with only persons who are principled.
I don't doubt for a second that who you are, is the absolute core of embodying what it is you will soon do. That's the cosmological principle. If you can imagine yourself being creative and helping others explore their own creativity, for example, helping children or college students or adults, that would be just one way to put yourself to the test.
Many times I have suggested to people that they should throw a party with only their principled friends and have the party be about generating ideas about their prospective professional projects. I would imagine four or five of your closest friends could generate together dozens of ridiculous and worthy ideas.
By definition, those would be principled ideas too. Which is, of course, the point.
Forgive me if I've not been constructive enough here. I, to some extent, intuit your principles and know very well you've tried to make them count under very trying circumstances.
It's like the Wizard of Oz, well, the end of the Wizard of Oz. Where Oz symbolizes what the needs of the 'supplicants' already are. His point, of course, is that they already possess what it is they want.
As do you. It's just a matter of martial arts and taking it to the next level, the next level "back" and *inside*.
As for women? Well, the only women who you may first trust is inside you. Everything else possible in relationship follows from loving and trusting her. You can ask her what she wants or needs, any day of the week. She'll tell you!
(October 2003)