Many years ago, in a counselling situation with a client,
I listened to the explanation attempts of the woman who, on the one hand, believed herself to be safe in the assumption that she had been sexually abused in some way as a young child, but who, on the other hand, could not evoke any tangible memory of it. I noticed how she wrestled with this subject and how it seemed to be of great importance to her. But she came to the other sessions with again very important topics, which made the previous one seem like something completely meaningless. So we moved from meeting to meeting and in all of this I felt that the client was trying to pick out different pathologies that she gave meaning to and wanted to mix it with her personal life experiences. She listed various physical limitations and illnesses and yet she seemed to me far too healthy and mentally alert for that and I said to her at some point: "I think that you take care of all your shortcomings and illnesses like a loving nurse."
I felt a cheerful humour in this statement because it gave me a very funny inner image, almost like a drawing cartoon, which I might have seen at some point. We both laughed.
By Souter, David Henry, 1862-1935, artist - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID cph.3g12161. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4213601)
I did not express any direct doubt about her attempts at explanation,
since I do not know what concrete experiences this client had when she was a child; nor did she know. However, I did sense a doubt that these problems, usually negative or difficult or impossible to deal with, seemed to me to be a hindrance to achieving what the client said she was striving for. I asked questions like: "What even worse would it take for you not to be happy and healthy? And also: "What would happen if, by magic, from tomorrow onward, you were healthy and happy"? Since she said these things... But she had come for a completely different thing, which, because she had given herself a certain diagnosis - procrastination - would prevent her from doing the other thing.
I basically thought: "It seems to give her a certain joy and satisfaction to deal with her shortcomings so intensively ..." and I quested that instead of the reality she had assumed up to that point that one "has to suffer" from a certain diagnosis, could it not be otherwise? So I offered her to want to feel her reality, which she felt as "just so and so", also as "different".
I worked as an advocate of paradox:
"If distraction is so much more beautiful for you than the thing you supposedly want to work on, then choose distraction. Who is telling you it has to be otherwise?"
Probably one fundamental distinction - in terms of interrelationships - between the Buddhist worldview and the Western worldview is for me the following:
While the thirsty for knowledge seeks constant explanations for something that happened in the past and to which it tries to establish a causal relationship in the present, Buddhist teaching radically shortens this path.
This past can mean the recent past - just the last minute - up to the passed past - the moment you were born.
Another client, who gave me a very vivid and positively impressive account of her escape from Afghanistan at the age of 15, I asked her what she enjoyed most about her escape from this life-threatening situation when she finally arrived here safely. And she said: "a warm bed and good food."
Since I supported her about her professional intentions (she was 18 at the time) and I wanted to know if she was afraid of something before an upcoming job interview, she said "No. I am not afraid." I wasn't sure if she would give that answer, but I suspected she would because of her history. Why had I asked this question? I suppose it was because three years had passed since her successful escape and she might have had accepted a warm bed and good food as a matter of course and could now develop similar fears to those who no longer have cozy beds and good food as a subject of their considerations.
What I mean by this is not to diminish the traumatic experiences that everyone can imagine (and most, if not all of us, have had them), but rather, precisely because of these experiences, to bring to light the resources that helped them to see things in a different relationship, other than through the glasses of pain or inadequacy.
Any causal relationship that we consider as such is only significant because we lead it.
We could also use countless other causes for consideration, but we have chosen this particular one. Anyone who tries to accurately reflect a particular event that occurred in the past is likely to have experienced how difficult it is. Not only that, if one were to ask how others involved in the event might have seen the event from their perspective, one would come up with many different answers. For a disgruntlement between two people there is no unambiguousness in the cause, it can be completely unconscious, non-verbal and culturally conditioned physical signals that actually cause this disgruntlement and yet we often look for conscious answers.
Becoming lost in reasoning of the reasoning
The Buddhist teachings could be interpreted something like this:
The search for a concrete cause - through outward communication first - is futile, ...
... what counts is rather the perception of "disgruntlement". You can, without knowing the reason, hence without reasoning, influence this mood for your part by getting yourself to stop being disgruntled. But as long as you remain stuck in the research of causes, countless reasons and speculations will present themselves to you and you will want to check them for their correctness. Since you force it to compare one thesis after the other with the other person and he cannot confirm one thesis like the other, since the memory causing cause lies buried under the cloak of the unconscious of the two of you, this form of wanting to agree again is a superfluous act of "outside" communication.
You could shorten the path and say to yourself: "I am not sure where this sudden disagreement comes from and since I assume that the other person cannot say this with absolute certainty either, there is no need to want to establish this certainty absolutely. Instead, I can accept my sense of resentment." I say, "I feel discouraged. - Pause - All right. - Pause - That feeling shall pass."
What is achieved is that whoever you are with at that moment will notice/sense the change. But whether he, in turn, feels relief or insists on making the displeasure a subject of discussion needs not becoming your problem.
You can see now for yourself what you have been involved with before the distinct feeling of displeasure arose and start again from there. It is as if you were distracted while reading a book and now decide to just keep reading. You will find that it is very easy to regain concentration on what you are currently reading. In the vast majority of cases, your counterpart will also engage in this attitude of letting go of the disgruntlement and find himself in a similarly found attitude. If not, you can and will find a spontaneous way to ease the situation with your new found attitude. Usually without frantically looking for it.
There is no communal in communication
Agreement is therefore not an outward matter of persuasion, not of negotiation, not an open offer of peace, not a justification, not a strategy. It's not even communication but appears to be.
It is the (inward) act of agreement with oneself of a feeling of discomfort for which one takes full responsibility and therefore, as a natural consequence, does not try to get a response from the other. The perception of reality of a moment can be so different that the effort to come to a common coherent reality can be counterproductive rather than productive.
The example of Paul Watzlawik, which he cites in two of his books in this regard, is the diversity of people in terms of their cultural imprints, which occur unconsciously.
When the Americans were stationed in Great Britain in their role as allies after the Second World War, ...
... they began to make contact with English women. It was striking that the opposite sex was negatively accused of crossing certain sexual boundaries. The reason for this was that in American men the kiss in a fresh initiation happens quite early in the order of approaching each other, whereas in English women the kiss happens quite late and was therefore considered a very intimate affair. Now, if the man has kissed the woman and she has rejected him in indignation and horror, she must be regarded as hysterical. However, if she agreed to it, this meant allowing the complete sexual act, which in turn felt much too hasty for the American man and the woman therefore had to be classified as a nymphomaniac.
If these two, in their embarrassing situation - possibly suffering from quite confused and confusing reactions - were now to seek a conscious explanation for these unexpected reactions, it is quite conceivable that this would not have occurred to them as a possible cause. We all know such situations, in which we become rather insecure by rejecting sexual advances and therefore hardly keep a cool head.
This is where the individual as an artist of his or her feelings is called for - the art of suspecting the cause of a possible explanation in one's subjective life view and experience, without really knowing it in detail. When in doubt, not to commit oneself to anything. Allowing to follow the sense of "something doesn't feel right" with confidence in one's intuition.
By John H. Boyd - This image is available from the City of Toronto Archives, listed under the archival citation Fonds 1266, Item 96241., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5163399
No-Googling the brain
Since one does not find a conclusive answer so quickly in oneself - after all, you are not a library where you can simply look up within seconds what you are looking for - one commits the mistake of "asking" the other person for a conclusive explanation, which, however, is rarely expressed as a question, but rather as an irritating reaction, as an accusation through looks and gestures. We snap at each other. Yet we expect a response, and that is giving up the responsibility for the situation to the outside world.
Being responsible for your observations
What can that mean? All what you observe represents the picture of reality which you make of it.
One could describe it in exactly the opposite way to how we would commonly describe it.
The scene that I observe "doesn't happen to me", but "I'm happening to the scene". A game on the beach that I watch from the viewers' perspective is not the same game that other viewers watch. It is "a game that reminds me of another game". The noise that my neighbour makes does not happen to me (is forced upon me), but I happen to the noise.
If I were to ask you, what you think your mother thinks about your father's recent behavior (?), I would, of course, not expect a precise, one hundred percent correct answer that is exactly what she thinks.
This question is much more interesting when asked in the context of family therapy. Imagine the gathered family. The son or daughter, not expecting this question, would intuitively invent an answer, because she does not want to look stupid, so she answers. Of course, the easier it is for her to answer, the more interested she is in solving a conflict in the family.
Inventing reality as a self organizing system
And it is basically this interest and not the correct answer that makes a speculative dialogue in the family come about and gives you the hope that you can solve a problem. In this question and answer setting, the family invents its reality and is creative. When the question is then also asked how the brother answers this question, everyone involved becomes more or less aware that it is they who invent their family reality and either become directors who make a horror film, a tearjerker, a never-ending story, a comedy, a drama and so on.
You are happening to your family.
The Adams Family - ABC Television - eBay itemphoto frontphoto back, commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19464844
Now, to turn this around and say that your family is happening to you, would not be wrong, but it would shift the responsibility for a reality you perceive from you to them. But how is this supposed to work, if - as I have described above - you can know the reality of others even less than your own? For, if they start from a different premise, which they themselves do not even know they do, you can hardly ask them about it as long as you are stuck in your own premise. You can ask, of course, but this questioning can only be taken as a serious interest if you do not pretend to be an inquisitor. Instead, you will be seized by a light-hearted form of curiosity that makes no effort to anticipate the answer.
The art of Asking
Basically, from my point of view it is much easier to ask a question anyway, if I do not already anticipate the answer inwardly. But as long as I ask a question only supposedly and already have an answer all ready which I think is correct, it is a pseudo-question. Not the creation of an openness of result. Insofar as I do not want to let go of the conviction that my speculation about my counterpart's answer is correct and he gives me an explanation that differs from it, I will want to persuade him to pick my answer which I consider to be more valid. These are the moments when we speak of disagreement.
The radical thing about this attitude is that one could say that any explanation for the emergence of a particular emotion or thought is obsolete in the living experience with another (or the world).
What is important is that the moment arises, but not that the explanation for the emotion or thought in such a moment is significant. It is rather that it is about a spontaneous and artistic way of being in contact with a situation and a person, which is called "presence".
The difference
The desire to urgently analyse a disturbance in this contact in this moment basically prevents the moment from staying alive - the living experience then becomes annoyance and misunderstanding. Ir results in suffering.
It is like trying to get out of a fast moving car and want to look under it because you heard something unpleasantly rattling. Or like trying to turn back from jumping off the diving board of a swimming pool in the middle of the jumping movement and wanting to have a look to see if the board was not too slippery.
I see similarities in scientific attempts to explain reality, especially in what is known as constructivism:
Radical constructivism is particularly so
because it breaks with convention and develops an epistemology in which realization no longer concerns an "objective" ontological reality, but exclusively the ordering and organization of experiences in the world of our experience.
Seen in this light, I can say: there is no problem of misunderstanding at all. I think (construct) it is only a problem because I habitually try to bring the view and experience of another person (or the world) into absolute unison with mine.
Unification becomes then the problem, ...
not difference.
I turn the view around again and say for example "My husband and I argue because we can't get rid of the idea of unification."
We usually say that we are fighting because we "cannot unify". In German, it is a little easier because the word 'Einverstandensein' is used more often (it literally means: "one understanding being" but is used as a single noun). In English, from my experience, the word "disagreement" is not quite as accurate in transporting what I want to emphasize.
But what would be necessary to achieve "absolute unification" when two people are in dispute?
Let us invent the following small scenario:
In such a case we would have to achieve a fusion, namely that the spirit of one person flies into the other, i.e. drives itself into the brain, if you like. From there into the whole organism, and then the person who is thus driven into the other one experiences in a matter of seconds the complete past life, i.e. birth, childhood and so on up to the present moment. He also experiences all sensory and psychic sensations as the original experienced and interpreted them. Then the disputants swap back again, so that both drive into their original body. After that one would not really need to say anything more: Everything would be clarified, no?
But it is exactly this fantasy and idea that one can shorten a bit more trivially by saying that one could put oneself in the shoes of the other one. The idea I have just described should suffice to lead to the insight that there is a very high probability of misunderstanding the other person.
Killing the moment
Having perceived a disruption of the moment and - as a reaction - disturb the moment even further does kill the moment in its attempt to stay fluid. Two people speaking, receiving a disruption of the moment and - as a reaction - disturb their togetherness by immediately trying to analyze the causes - actually kill the lively moment.
So that raises the question: In order not to be unfoundedly at the mercy of the unconscious, not to automatically impulsively take the bait of every psychological or physical trauma suffered in previous encounters, the only thing that remains is to be present every second (of the present situation) in such a way that an emotion in its emergence requires awareness. One could also ask differently, that is, how can one be able to perceive what one does not perceive?
The logical answer to this seems to me to be that we have a knowledge of this not-knowing. This in itself is an astonishing achievement, because after all we invented a language that expresses such things.
As it appears, we cannot perceive what we do not perceive, ...
but we can assume that a blind spot blocks our view whenever there emerges a disturbance of the living moment - as a result of the unconscious.
This is why Buddhism talks about the difficulty of forcing something past or something future into the present moment, because in this simultaneity it disturbs the flow of the situation. If we force the past (trauma) into the present moment, we grieve or are angry, if we force the future into the present moment, we feel fear and uncertainty. Since we understand our human life as a temporal sequence, one could say that this is always only the moment of the second in which we decide to allow the flow to flow.
Good bye to two value logic
Furthermore, one could say that it is not necessary to decide between disturbance and flow, because such a problem does not exist within this observation!
Also the disturbance, because it is unavoidable, can then be integrated back into the flow, because it expresses human vitality and therefore does not need to be fought. It is therefore also possible to welcome the disturbance whenever it happens, as it always happens anyway. So in this way a disturbance serves as a directional sign and is again a good opportunity to perceive the flow as such, because if everything is just flowing, how could we even recognize a flow, how its disturbance?
Does this mean that we shall no longer analyze, reflect, contemplate, investigate?
No, of course not. After all, what I am saying here will not come to be suddenly practiced by everyone - not even by myself - chop-chop.
The failed attempts of this practice will tempt us to think about it afterwards - and in private. Not to act it out in the moment of the failed attempt at the other, not even to discuss it with the other person, because that is where the seduction lives, to know that the responsibility for the disturbance is caused by the other person. Since, as we have read above, nobody really knows exactly who and why this disturbance was caused. It's rather conditioned through the involved.
The difficult thing is to find out with oneself. But since one is confronted with one's own questions in this privacy, the question arises: Who can I talk to afterwards? Who offers this form of community, where it is not a matter of being right, but rather of dealing with the practical questions of everyday life.
I think that this could be placed under the concept of ethical or spiritual practice, without it being attached to a mythical or extravagant character.
Generally speaking, our knowledge is useful, relevant, viable (or whatever we want to call the positive side of the rating scale) if it stands up to the world of experience and enables us to make predictions and to carry out or prevent certain phenomena (i.e. occurrences, experiences). If it does not do this service, it becomes questionable, unreliable, useless and finally devalued as superstition.
Paul Watzlawik
Warren McCulloch
The paradoxical task, and thus an anchor, could be: "Postpone an impulsive attempt to explain the "why" of a current discontent until later".
Here, I'll give you a glass marble that you swear in with this paradox and then always carry it in your pocket. Whenever you disagree with a moment, let your hand slide into the pocket and feel the marble.
(let this gag run:)
The first headline of this text is a book title from Heinz von Förster.