Simple Steps
“Simple
Steps” is a technique, where we move from the easily known,
through stages, into the edge of the unknown.
We
can say, when establishing our intentions:
“
Step by step,
I
slowly approach the unknown”.
Here’s
an example of taking Simple Steps:
When
you like something, how do you know how much
you like it ?
We
might hear these statements :
“I
just detest that”
“I
hate that”
“I
don’t like that”
“I’m
not sure I like that”
“I
like that a bit”
“I
quite like that”
“I
do like that”
“I
love that”
“I’m
passionate about that”
“I
am obsessed by that”
“That
is driving me mad”
We
all sometimes use words differently but the above statements could
be seen as one way of expressing a continuum, starting from strong
hate, through to mild dislike, to small liking, on to love, strong
love and obsession and ending where that obsession may be negative,
( perhaps uncomfortable enough to resemble a ‘dislike’).
There
may be “grey areas”, eg, where we talk of “loving to hate”.
This might be where we “love” a character in a book, or
on film or TV but recognise that they are bad and we would hate them
in “real life” if they treated us that way.
We understand that such grey areas can become more
complicated, eg, in masochism where pleasure and pain are reversed
and therefore the associations of like and dislike are different.
Where associations become fragmented in states we label
insanity, the continuum of like to dislike may be impossible for
another to understand.
Whether
we agree or disagree on descriptions and meanings, each of us will
navigate through likes and dislikes.
This means (with the exception of those we might label insane
because we cannot understand their navigation’s), we can say:
“I
know what I like”.
And
we are still on steady ground if we were to ask :
“Why
do I like that” ? We
might answer:
“It
makes me feel good”
“It
makes me look good”
“It
tastes good”
“It keeps me
alive” .
. . . . . . and
so on.
But
if we explore a little deeper we come to areas where things are a
lot less clear. For
example :
“Why
do I like this music” ?
One
answer is our standard : “It makes me feel good”. Yet sometimes music makes us sad, we still like it,
even though it does not make us feel good.
This is also true of watching a drama or reading a story. The more feelings that are stirred up, the more we “like”
the experience. On
reflection, this can seem strange, because we experience strong
feelings for something that is “not real”
- we have a real
feeling triggered by an event that is not
real. It follows
that, we value having our feelings evoked, or, put more simply
:
It
feels good to feel something
. . . . . . . .
This axiom is
not just for stories or music.
We know of times when life may be stale and colourless and
then we experience a period of intense emotion and it is as if we
have “come alive”. These
periods are often painful but many value these experiences more than
any other in life. (
Indeed, a whole segment of entertainment, “pop”ular music, talks
of little else concerning one of these periods -
falling in and out of love ).
Everything so
far in our Steps, can come under the banner of “common sense”,
we may not agree with all of it but there is nothing stated here
which is wildly surprising.
We have seen that we like things, that we value feelings and
we even value feelings where we do not know why we like them.
We are coming close to the edge of the known when we start to
look at feelings we cannot understand, especially, strong feelings
we cannot comprehend.
Most
people would admit to having feelings they do not understand. Even
those who perhaps do not experience this situation very often,
recognise it when seen in a drama on TV or film.
This situation can involve three well-known explanations that
we need to look at before we can take the next Step.
If
someone has a feeling or suite of feelings that they cannot
understand, they, or another, might say:
“He
does not know himself very well”.
I
don’t want to go into this now (as we explore it more later) but
this raises the whole notion of there being “levels of knowing
yourself”. It also
raises the notion that we might proceed from states of not knowing
about some feelings to understanding them, partially or wholly.
Our understanding is therefore not fixed; indeed, it is
fluid.
The
second of our three well know explanations involves a concept
largely accepted now but still very little is known about it
- the
unconscious or subconscious mind.
We have brains we can see in an x-ray.
We have minds in our brains we cannot see but we do see the
results of a mind at work. We
are aware of the mind doing things, (thinking, assessing, dreaming
etc). The conscious
mind is partially controlled by us; we choose to carry out an
activity, say adding up. We
perform the calculation and produce an answer, the conscious mind
has worked. But I might
feel sudden dread at the appearance of a black dog; (white, brown or
ginger dogs causes me no problem) but a black dog produces a severe
onset of disabling fear. Why?
The unconscious mind is at work.
The unconscious mind then becomes a catch-all in which we can
lump together anything we can see the affect of, but cannot clearly
explain the workings of.
The
third of our three well know explanations for feelings we cannot
explain, is instinct. We
observe that the behaviour of animals is controlled by forces we
call instinct and most of us accept that we too have these; (though
their expression through the complicated world of human culture is
far from clear). We
might not like someone, yet, we fall in love with them.
Why? We might
say, perhaps there is something “biological” going on.
We
have these three (and other) explanations as to why we might have a
feeling we do not understand but for the purposes of our Simple
Steps, we do not need to unpack them any further.
They can hang around for the mind to play with but we are
going to press on. We
are not giving up on the “why”, we are just approaching from a
different direction.
Pressing
on then, for our next Step, we find a feeling or suite of feelings
that cannot be explained. It
is best to choose something we feel strongly about; (this process
will work with anything but is less effective with trivial or
mundane feelings). When found, we let our minds have some fun by thinking of an
explanation or adding to one we have, (perhaps trying all three
above). The mind will
want to control regularly, just let it do its best but try not to
get caught up in developing the explanation.
What we do next needs a bit of explaining before we dive in
to the exploring.
We
are going to constantly “watch” the chosen feeling in rather an
intense way. Feelings
do not come and go at our convenience so this watching involves
looking at the feeling itself when it is happening and the memory of
it, when it is not around. This
technique is a kind of “Holding”, and more about it can be found
here:
http://www.praxispath.co.uk/prax16.htm
Whilst
we do our watching, our
Holding, we focus on the feeling and the memory of it and watch to
see what happens. This
kind of activity can be different for everyone but these are common
occurrences :
1.
at first, nothing much happens
2.
then it becomes hard to focus on it
3.
distractions keep getting in the way
4.
sometimes so many thoughts and feelings rush all over the
place
5.
at other times, back to the boring nothing happening place
6.
thoughts and feelings arise that are nothing to do with the
feeling
7.
something a bit different happens, are we supposed to note
it?
8.
feelings emerge that are nothing to do with the watched
feeling
9.
the feelings get stronger and more uncomfortable
10.
they get out of hand and can be upsetting
11.
. . . . . . .
then something different happens
. . . . . . .
This is only a
rapid general tour through that which can be a huge and complicated
process. This technique
is not for everyone; many give up at stage 5.
This works for those who persist .
It is worth stressing that what happens at stage 11 is rarely
the result of thinking something, of some new thought or
calculation. After it
has happened, you will use thought to try and describe it, but the
experience itself is unlikely to be a thought.
It will be a feeling. Language
can be tricky and even misleading but I use the following thoughts
to describe the experience : it is a deeper feeling, emerging from
“underneath” the first feeling you chose to watch.
You now have
the feeling you chose to watch and a new deeper feeling (or memory
of it) firmly associated. So you watch both, until another deeper feeling emerges and
another after that. By
doing all this, you take firm and very real Steps into the unknown. You keep this process going, for as long as it takes,
until you know all you need to know about the original feeling. Sometimes, the deeper feelings that emerge take you on a
different route to the one you expected and the original feeling you
chose to watch, can be let go.
Over time,
this technique gets faster and faster.
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