When doing the experiment of heading for the liquid state remember that it is the Box that goes into the liquid state, not you. You have a Box. You are not your Box. What you actually are cannot go into the liquid state.
If you include the liquid state in your concept of the experience of being human, of being in relationship, or of being in an organization like a family or a neighborhood or a company, then nothing is wrong or bad about the liquid state. The liquid state is the way of relationship. The purpose of relationship is evolution, so when authentic liquid state arises it is just a sign that you have an opportunity to evolve.
Liquid states can be authentic or inauthentic. How many times have you gone through what you hoped was a transformational learning process only to find that nothing changed? Perhaps the reason there was no sustained change is that the process did not take you through an authentic liquid state. Crying or rage, chaos or confusion, conflict or breakdown, these may or may not be signs of an authentic liquid state. On the surface, many signs of irresponsible interaction can look as if they are authentic liquid states, but they are not. Determining the authenticity of a liquid state requires looking at the total end results. If evolution has occurred after the interaction or the meeting and responsible changes resulted, then the liquid state was authentic. If nothing changed, if time and energy were wasted, or if the “liquid state” simply repeated itself at a later date, the liquid state was not authentic.
Knowing the distinction between authentic and inauthentic liquid states, the next time you are involved in a liquid state situation you can start sensing into the intention vector of the liquid state to determine instantly, at its beginning, if the liquid state is authentic or not. You can sense along the lines of peoples’ intention. You can feel out along the purpose of subtle actions and detect the responsibility in tones of voice, in feelings, and in the momentum of actions. These things are easy to sense. After awhile you can learn to detect the authenticity of a liquid state even before it starts. The ability to detect such authenticity grows out of becoming authentic yourself.
SECTION 6-G
Authenticity
The gateway from ordinary human relationship to extraordinary human relationship is through the Bright Principle of authenticity. “Authenticity” is one of those weighty words we might unknowingly avoid in our casual vocabulary, along with words like commitment, integrity, or accountability. There is no way to wrap our mind around authenticity. We are not trained to endure the intensity of authenticity in our relationships because with authenticity the edges of our Box are in our face. authentic experience is typically too raw. We feel embarrassed, or uncertain. We do not know what to say. Unmitigated presence is not our usual abode. So, we tend to let authenticity slide by when being together, just like we let time slide by when watching television.
The way we tolerate abandoning authenticity is by not cherishing the true value that authenticity creates. The difficulty arises when we observe that appreciating relational authenticity often involves experiencing what is commonly regarded as pain. In ordinary human relationship pain is problematical, but in extraordinary human relationship pain liberates the wisdom and power of feelings.
Authenticity can be explored by examining how we regard the actions of our partner. Some of our partner’s actions are acceptable to us. Others are not. We assume that we live out our relationship on the basis of accepting or not accepting the actions of our partner.
The truth of the matter may not be so simple. Most probably there is a third category of ways we regard our partner’s behavior. In the third category we act as if we accept our partner’s actions but in reality we do not. This new category is called “false acceptance.” In the area of false acceptance we are being inauthentic.
If you are not authentic about how things are for you, if you withhold your own truth, then you start to live a double life. One life you show. One life is secret, perhaps secret even from yourself.
I know a man who was inauthentic in his marriage for twenty-five years. Why would someone be inauthentic? Why would this man go along for a quarter-century pretending to accept things that in fact he did not accept? Such behavior is crazy. Such behavior would indicate a tendency toward pathological lying. What reasons would a man use to justify mis-representing himself to such a great degree? For that matter, why do some women stay with husbands who beat them or husbands who flirt with other women? Why do some men stay with wives who psychologically torment them?
MAP OF AUTHENTICITY
(This Map is in part derived from Thomas Gordon's Effectiveness Trainings. For more information see www.gordontraining.com.)
The answer is simple and also frighteningly common: We continue the patterns of our childhood. To endure the circumstances of our childhood we often became inauthentic by continuously accepting the unacceptable behaviors of our parents. Our inauthentic acceptance became deeply habitual, even unconscious. If we marry someone who is like our mother or father (and who doesn’t?), then it is likely that to some degree our partnership will invisibly include the same inauthentic acceptance that we have performed our whole life. Until we gain a bigger perspective about what we are doing, we may habitually continue our false acceptance of our partner’s behaviors. We may have, to some degree, hated how our parents related, but we may be duplicating that behavior ourselves.
SECTION 6-H
About Denial and Drivers
Obtaining a Ph.D. in psychology will not guarantee that you have a working relationship. Yet still, some clarity is revealed about how a person could accept unacceptable behaviors for twenty-five years when we investigate two particular Box mechanisms: denial and drivers.
What is denial? Denial is a Box-generated defense strategy for refusing to acknowledge the existence or the severity of unpleasant external realities, conflicting thoughts, or disturbing feelings.
Denial can continue indefinitely because we have no idea at all what we are in denial about until we suddenly come out of denial about it. Like a dream, we may have no idea that, in fact, we are dreaming, until we awaken from the dream. Like with dreams, the awakening from denial can be sudden and rude.
The wide variety of ways our Box goes into denial exhibit the Box’s vast resources of creativity. Mechanisms for creating denial are rich and dynamic. One typical mechanism for entering and staying in denial was described by Dr. Eric Berne as a “driver.”
Drivers are behavior engines. The Box’s idea is that if we fulfill the imperative of the driver then we will survive. Berne labeled five drivers: Be perfect! Please authorities! Try hard! Be strong! And hurry up! These are “positive” drivers that deliver the appearance of “responsibility.” Berne neglected to name the equal number of frequently used “negative” or “irresponsible” drivers: Make a mess! Attack authorities! Don’t try at all! Fail! And be late! Contemplate these drivers for a moment. Which three drivers motivate you the most in your life?
Drivers are not actually responsible or irresponsible. They are simply our Box’s preferred survival mechanisms. (“Merely surviving” is in itself irresponsible. Being responsible involves “really living.” There is a big difference between merely surviving and really living.)
The behaviors produced by our particular drivers are automatically driven. It is the mechanicality that makes our behaviors in-authentic. We are unable to not do what our driver is telling us to do. That is why it is called a driver. If we cannot disobey the driver then we are inauthentic slaves to a psychological machine.
You just found the key to starting a very important series of experiments for yourself. Select one each of the “responsible” and “irresponsible” drivers that your Box uses and stop doing them. For example, select “Be perfect!” and “Attack authorities!” and no matter what happens to you, fulfill neither of them. Period. This will keep you busy for a couple of years.
The responsible drivers are the more difficult to unravel. First of all, the responsible drivers are not truly responsible because
they lack consciousness. Drivers are automatic Box responses to circumstances. For example, being perfect is not responsible if we are unable to be imperfect. In this same way, the irresponsible drivers are not actually irresponsible either, because they too are mechanical, unconscious Box responses to circumstances. Following the impulses of responsible drivers can make you the CEO of a company or the mayor of a town. Following the impulses of irresponsible drivers can land you behind bars with a life sentence. That is because we live in a responsible universe, where irresponsibility is an illusion. In this universe it is impossible to avoid responsibility.
The responsible drivers are also difficult to unravel because they are associated with being good: a good person, a good man, a good woman, a good boy, a good girl, a good father, a good mother, a good wife, a good husband, a good employee, a good citizen, a good leader, and so on. In our dichotomized mind, being good is the equivalent of being right. Being right can justify our particular position or decision, but being right still keeps us in denial and inauthenticity.
It is possible to suffer decades of inauthenticity under the guise of “being good” or thinking “I am right.” The opposite of being good is not being bad; it is rather being yourself.
Strategically playing the role of being good can show up in a multitude of variations. Instead of being authentic, the man in our example above elected to tough things out and be a hero. This man made it more important to be a hero and a nice guy than to be himself. Without awareness he could well have been thinking, “I don’t want to cause a problem. I don’t want to stand out and be visible. I don’t want to look like a failure. I don’t want to break society’s rules. I want to keep my promises. I don’t want to abandon or betray my children. I don’t want to upset anyone. I don’t see anyone else in a better relationship than me anyway, so why should I bother trying to make mine better? I have other things to do besides trying to fix my relationship. I don’t want to go to some therapist. I want to be normal and happy, like everyone else. I want everything to be fine. I don’t want to cause myself or my partner to have bad feelings. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. If I leave her or she leaves me I will be alone and I don’t want to be alone. And if we start in on all this, what will my parents think?”
Deciding to be a hero or a nice guy is a formatory decision that can, contrary to what you might have expected, support a relationship full of emotional, psychological, physical or sexual abuse. It is not necessarily a smooth road from being good to being authentic.
SECTION 6-I
Take Possession of Your Attention
To stop being a slave of denial and unconscious drivers you will need to take possession of your attention. We do not normally think much about our attention. Perhaps this is because our attention is so close to us. Like glasses on our nose, we sometimes forget that our attention is there. But our attention is there. And neither our culture nor our education inform us about how extremely important our attention is in our daily life, and in particular, how extremely important our attention is in the quality of the relationships that we create.
Relationship is about “being” together. “Being” has two components: our attention and our presence. A person’s presence grows in direct proportion to the growth of the matrix structure upon which consciousness can grow. Since matrix only grows slowly and under certain conditions, presence also grows slowly over time. Watching presence grow would be like trying to watch hair grow. Rather uninteresting. We cannot really do anything with our presence.
Not so with attention. Our attention is mobile and flutters about like a butterfly in a daisy field. When we turn on the television, our attention flutters about like a butterfly in a tornado (the tornado being the television). Attention is our main tool in relationship. We can actually work with our attention.
Learning to possess your attention is as crucial to extraordinary human relationship as learning to turn the steering wheel is to driving.
Mostly, during the day our attention is not our own. Mostly, during the day our attention is owned by the biggest sound, the strongest urge, the brightest flash, or the most dangerous threat in our environment. If there is any passing billboard that shows skin from a half-naked woman our attention is gone. Gone.
Taking possession of your attention is not easy. For one thing, you face cutthroat competition from professional attention predators. Huge corporations spend billions every year in order to get your attention. Corporate marketing departments receive immense budgets for hijacking your attention for two reasons. The first reason is because it works – they can hijack your attention. Your untrained attention is easy to get. The second reason is because getting your attention more than pays for itself. If they have your attention, they have your wallet.
The reason to learn to work with your attention is because where your attention goes, your energy flows. If you do not know where your attention is at any moment, then that is where your energy goes – into the unknown. If you are not consciously placing your attention somewhere, then you are unconsciously placing your attention somewhere else. And that is where your energy is disappearing.
Each person wakes up in the morning with the same amount of energy as everybody else. The difference between the results that one person or another person creates is precisely what they do with their attention. Do you think that Mother Teresa had special solar bio-energy collectors that gave her the inspiration to create and manage a worldwide service program? No, she did not. She succeeded because she learned to discipline her attention. Do you think Nelson Mandela stayed sane in prison for twenty-seven years by luck? No. He paid careful attention to his attention.
You can learn to pay attention to your attention by consciously practicing to move your attention from one thing to another. You can place your attention on an object, an image, a sensation or an idea. You can move your attention from one object to another. You can lose your attention. You can give your attention away. You can steal someone’s attention. You can split your attention, paying attention to more than one thing at a time. For example, you can drive a car, chew gum, listen to the radio, watch interesting people on the sidewalk, scratch your nose and make plans for your day all.
Experiment. Start to notice what you do with your attention minute by minute during the day. Where is your attention right now, for example? The instructions are simple:
• Pay attention to your attention.
• Be aware of what you are aware of.
• Think about what you are thinking with.
• Perceive the perceiver.
• Look at what you are looking with.
• Role-play yourself.
• Notice what you are noticing.
• Be conscious of what you are conscious of.
• Sense the way you are sensing.
• Observe the observer, and so on.
You can adjust the focus of your attention from narrow to broad. Narrow focus is called “point attention” and is useful for reading, sawing wood along a marked line, threading a needle, adding numbers, and listening to what someone is saying. A broad focus of attention is called “field attention” and is good for scanning, for “navigating” (that is, guiding or steering) meetings to hold to a certain purpose, for managing meaning during a conversation, for planning, multitasking, and so on. Learning to use your attention is like learning to ride a bike. At first it feels strange; after awhile you get the knack of it. No one else can manage your attention for you. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t happen. The instructions for developing conscious attention may seem simple, but carrying them out can take effort. Becoming aware of what you are aware of has a side effect: it builds matrix, and it can allow you to discover and enter the waking state.
SECTION 6-J
Heal Yourself of Beliefs
Beliefs act with powerful force in ordinary human relationship because in ordinary human relationship beliefs are regarded as having validity. The usual, although often unspoken, justificat
ion for beliefs is that they can serve as a crutch to supply “weak” minds with at least something to hold onto. But beliefs do not actually provide anything to hold onto because any person can believe anything about anything!
For instance, villagers on one side of a mountain can believe that the most sacred and holy thing in the world is a hotdog, and that the proper way to pay respects to this most holy of objects is to sing daily prayers of praise to it. For them, the greatest sin is to eat a hotdog. The villagers on the other side of the mountain might believe that the most sacred and holy thing in the world is also a hotdog, but that the true and righteous way to honor the sacred hotdog is to eat it, in the company of friends, with relish. The greatest sin is to waste the hotdog by not eating it. Which belief is true? How could one belief be true if a contradictory belief is also true? This is the insanity of beliefs. Beliefs justify their irrationality by including in the fine print the following stipulation: “And any contradictory belief is wrong.” Each belief guards its own validity by disenfranchising all other beliefs. This is all fine and dandy as long as the two kinds of villagers stay away from each other. But when villagers who consider their beliefs to be the “one true way” encounter villagers of a different persuasion, they must regard the others as infidels, blasphemers and enemies of the faith! The almost unavoidable result of a meeting between villagers who regard their beliefs as reality is war. Look at human history.
Radiant Joy Brilliant Love Page 21