Today was my full day of clients and I usually take some time after the
last one to look back and see what the common philosophical threads
were and how it applies to my life.
What might be a tad unusual, as compared against a "normal" practice,
is that none of my clients have an identifiable diagnosis, there's no
mental disease giving rise to the things that they want to work on.
Overall, there is stuff in their lives that they feel they should be
doing "better" (lots of definitions/qualifiers of that term). It's like
they all have a concern about a specific part of their musculature and
they want to find some way to make it better. So they go to a gym to
get some advice about how to work with this part of their lives.
What gets a little bit strange, at least from my perspective, is that
while they can do a bit of the exercises there, the real work is
outside of the gym. Which makes sense, in a weird sort of way. It's not
how you handle your self in the dojo that is the significant measure,
it's what you do with your life outside the dojo. Same with meditation.
Easy to meditate on a cushion in an environment that is set up to
facilitate meditation. Quite another matter to cultivate that place
while out in the world.
So, I've been sitting with clients most of the day, we do our bit of
talking, we gain bits and pieces of insight, we turn things over and
around to look at them from a new perspective. But that's all dojo
work. How to take the insight and turn it into something to use out
there? How to take the new perspective and use in when that event, or
one very much like it, comes up again.
That's where the idea of homework comes up. And once that comes up, it's, "How do I create the space to do the homework?"
It's like you go to the gym to get the idea of the exercise. To
practice it without a lot of distraction. But practicing that move
repeatedly in the gym isn't going to give you much payback. It's too
controlled, too un-out-there-like.
So, what to do?
Well, you can do your practice in the wild, as it were. Just go out
there, get involved in the day-to-day shenanigans, and try to remember
what exactly it is that you're trying to do.
Or you can find teammates. Clue them in to what you are trying to do
and enlist them is being "practice dummies". Well, maybe "practice
smarties". If they know what you are trying to do, they can help you
stay on track. Plus, they know that what you are doing is an exercise
and will be more readily able to shake off a solid blow to the
privates. They will be better able to not take it personally.
I believe that a bit of mental analyzing is helpful to get some
distance from whatever it is, you can spend way too much time trying to
suss it out. Your truth of whatever it is, is most readily found when
it is up and in your face. And it's really, really good practice to
have the beejezees triggered out of you and be able to ask the
triggered part, "Now, what is this all about? I am not going to do a
damn thing until you and I have a little chat."
If you really want to know why this thing-a-ma-bob triggers you, get
off your ass, find a teammate, explain what you think it is all about,
script what you would like them to do to get the ball rolling, AND what
you would like them to do when it's rolling.
Then try it out.
What have you got to loosen but your chains?
