Mark Epstein's Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective was a companion on the trip. There was no time to read.
But the title was a constant reminder of a series of unsettling questions about myself.
Of course I'm clear that there is no fixed and determined sense of self. I'm not stupid. I am a constellation of selves over whom I have only a modest amount of control. In my previous language there are child and parent ego states (visible when I become sulky, bossy, aggressively critical, seductive, ashamed, etc.). These frequently get the better of me and, when they arrive, it can be difficult to remember that I can do anything about them. Joyful and Candy, for example, who have worked with my sulking self for a number of years, have developed skillful ways of checking whether I want to carry on sitting in the corner of the room, achingly trying to draw attention to myself and trying to be ignored at the same time.
Until they say something, I can still be unaware that I have been occupied by sulking self. Once I realise that I have, I can still forget that I have any choicing/choosing in the matter. Like the Bulgarians, who were occupied by the Turks for 400 years and attribute their general incapacity to do anything much as a nation to the legacy of "The Turkish Yoke", I tend to feel helpless. Persecuted. A powerless victim.
So far, so good. The problem, of course, is with the "I" in all these sentences. I say that I've grasped the ifdea of no fixed and determined sense of self, but my language doesn't reflect that. Though I don't apparently "believe" in it, I talk always as if there were some authentic self in the background.
When I say that it sometimes feels as if I'm sitting in the back seat of a car and I suddenly realise that the person driving is a baby, it presumes that the "me" in the back seat is qualitatively different from the version of me in the driving seat. Rather than just a different manifestation of my fantasy of myself. (But there we go again; who is the me having the fantasy of myself?).
Mark Epstein is a help here. The point, he says, is to try not to get caught up either with the notion of self or with the notion of non-self. Both are a distraction from the middle way. Both lead one to lurch from idealising grandiosity (sense of I, me, self) to emptiness and despair (sense of I, me, self as false). This, he reminds me tuttingly, is the narcissistic dilemma.
I think that moving is also helpful. The camera clearly shows that there is someone moving. Though I'm still as surprised by the sight of myself moving (why am I leaning forward like that? why have I always got that expression on that face? where is the spontaneity?) as I am by the sound of my voice on the answering machine. Heaven knows what I would make of my smell or taste. But I am familiar with my touch and with my words on the page.
Anyway, the camera shows that there is someone moving. And I long ago realised that that's about as much as one can say. (Moving in a beech wood in Dorset and experimenting with taking very slow and deliberate footsteps, I discovered that there is no guarantee that my foot will go exactly where I tell it to go. It may hesitate unexpectedly, wobble and land an inch or two away from where I had intended.
This shouldn't surprise me. Neuroscience tells me that:
Epstein reports a client exclaiming "I am a gerund" on realising that she was not a fixed object of any sort "that no substantive agent worked in her being", but constantly in the process of becoming something that never actually became anything because it was always becoming something else. 'Being' is a very good word, if we take it literally. So is 'moving'.
When I stop moving, I shall stop becoming and I shall stop being.
So moving is the perfect Buddhist metaphor and the perfect demonstration of this point. I can move or I can let the moving move me. I can follow my movement with my eyes or my movement can follow the looking of my eyes. I can drive or I can be driven. And I can do both with various degrees of attentiveness. But if I can give my movement my full attention and if I can minimise my reactions and responses to my movement, minimise the opinions and judgements that I form about it, the all sorts of interesting things can reveal themselves (but precious little spontaneity yet).
But I'm still not sure about self-soothing. How's that going to work now?
But the title was a constant reminder of a series of unsettling questions about myself.
Of course I'm clear that there is no fixed and determined sense of self. I'm not stupid. I am a constellation of selves over whom I have only a modest amount of control. In my previous language there are child and parent ego states (visible when I become sulky, bossy, aggressively critical, seductive, ashamed, etc.). These frequently get the better of me and, when they arrive, it can be difficult to remember that I can do anything about them. Joyful and Candy, for example, who have worked with my sulking self for a number of years, have developed skillful ways of checking whether I want to carry on sitting in the corner of the room, achingly trying to draw attention to myself and trying to be ignored at the same time.
Until they say something, I can still be unaware that I have been occupied by sulking self. Once I realise that I have, I can still forget that I have any choicing/choosing in the matter. Like the Bulgarians, who were occupied by the Turks for 400 years and attribute their general incapacity to do anything much as a nation to the legacy of "The Turkish Yoke", I tend to feel helpless. Persecuted. A powerless victim.
So far, so good. The problem, of course, is with the "I" in all these sentences. I say that I've grasped the ifdea of no fixed and determined sense of self, but my language doesn't reflect that. Though I don't apparently "believe" in it, I talk always as if there were some authentic self in the background.
When I say that it sometimes feels as if I'm sitting in the back seat of a car and I suddenly realise that the person driving is a baby, it presumes that the "me" in the back seat is qualitatively different from the version of me in the driving seat. Rather than just a different manifestation of my fantasy of myself. (But there we go again; who is the me having the fantasy of myself?).
Mark Epstein is a help here. The point, he says, is to try not to get caught up either with the notion of self or with the notion of non-self. Both are a distraction from the middle way. Both lead one to lurch from idealising grandiosity (sense of I, me, self) to emptiness and despair (sense of I, me, self as false). This, he reminds me tuttingly, is the narcissistic dilemma.
I think that moving is also helpful. The camera clearly shows that there is someone moving. Though I'm still as surprised by the sight of myself moving (why am I leaning forward like that? why have I always got that expression on that face? where is the spontaneity?) as I am by the sound of my voice on the answering machine. Heaven knows what I would make of my smell or taste. But I am familiar with my touch and with my words on the page.
Anyway, the camera shows that there is someone moving. And I long ago realised that that's about as much as one can say. (Moving in a beech wood in Dorset and experimenting with taking very slow and deliberate footsteps, I discovered that there is no guarantee that my foot will go exactly where I tell it to go. It may hesitate unexpectedly, wobble and land an inch or two away from where I had intended.
This shouldn't surprise me. Neuroscience tells me that:
- actions are frequently set in motion some time (tenths of a second up to several seconds before I consciously decide upon those actions
- electrical patterns in my brain frequently show when I'm going to make a mistake in a routine task (clumsiness, stumbling, fumbling) several seconds before it occurs - and easily long enough in adavance for me to make a correction, if I were only aware of the presentient signals.
Epstein reports a client exclaiming "I am a gerund" on realising that she was not a fixed object of any sort "that no substantive agent worked in her being", but constantly in the process of becoming something that never actually became anything because it was always becoming something else. 'Being' is a very good word, if we take it literally. So is 'moving'.
When I stop moving, I shall stop becoming and I shall stop being.
So moving is the perfect Buddhist metaphor and the perfect demonstration of this point. I can move or I can let the moving move me. I can follow my movement with my eyes or my movement can follow the looking of my eyes. I can drive or I can be driven. And I can do both with various degrees of attentiveness. But if I can give my movement my full attention and if I can minimise my reactions and responses to my movement, minimise the opinions and judgements that I form about it, the all sorts of interesting things can reveal themselves (but precious little spontaneity yet).
But I'm still not sure about self-soothing. How's that going to work now?
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