August Newsletter:
CEC #126 – How to bow
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.”
-Viktor Frankl
We are born with few tools, but there are some. Our eyes register light. We can cry. We even have a few reflexes. These responses to stimuli are so automatic and reliable in every human, that should we not reproduce them, it can signal something wrong with our ability to interact with the world.
Touch an infant’s cheek, and her mouth twitches to that side, prepared to latch. Startle her, or simulate a brief fall, and her arms open wide, then close, and often, she cries. There are a few others. In most children, with time, these early ones fade, though in some rare people, traces remain. If you stroke Jeff’s cheek, for instance, his leg beats up and down like a rabbit’s and he weeps. Try it.
Others appear. Before an infant has even stood, the parachute reflex emerges, her arms automatically extending as if to catch a fall. Teenagers across the world, at the precise age of 14, reflexively roll their eyes as soon as their parent’s utter a word in public.
Maybe we’re talking about habit now, an action not riven into a neural pathway as part of a nervous system’s normal development, but one for which, over time, with practice, the turnaround has become so fast, it can nearly seem the same.
Nearly. As Frankl says above, there is often a space, even if disappearingly small. For reflexes, not as much. The distance is proportional smaller. Many of them, like the one a doctor taps from the tendon of your knee, do not even travel to your brain, just loop from stimulus to response right in your spinal cord. Most other complex inputs, though,the ones to which our response leads to the patterns of behaviour that form a life, there is processing in our awareness, even if subtle, even if lightning quick.
There was a time, once, when such stimuli lead to longer consideration. Should I try this cigarette? Wow. It made me cough. Should I try another? Oh, I’ve received a message on my phone. Is now the right time to check it? How does this thing work again? With time, and practice, smokesmokesmoke. Checkcheckcheck.
Thinkthinkthink.
I work in the emergency department. As soon as I open the curtain, I receive many inputs. Does this person’s clothes tell me they sleep on the street? That’s a great risk for many things. Is that a facial droop? My mind races with questions, I can almost fail to recognize properly the worried soul shivering in the hospital sheets.
So I try to slow down. It’s hard, and I often don’t, but it’s best when I do. If I can, sit down. I try, at least once, to put my pen away, and not write. And nearly every time, I take their wrist, feel their pulse.
Bump. Bump. Bump.
Wow.
It pays to slow down. If I’m not careful, I can be hurried along then frenetic then overwhelmed, frenetic, hurried along. The space disappears.
We can claim it. That’s what this month is about. Slowing down, making ritual from habit. We’ll do it sitting. We’ll do it noticing the subtle tug of a stimulus, the twitch of our response. Perhaps, we’ll even notice the space, get a glimmer that if we pay attention it grows, and to the freedom it holds, to ourselves and to others, we will learn how to bow.
Dr J.
Director of Science and Special Events
The Consciousness Explorers Club
Monday Night Explorations for Aug 2016
Start time 7:25pm; address is 967 College, just past Dovercourt at Octopus Garden Yoga.
CEC_Meditate
DATE: Aug 1
TEACHER: Dr James
THEME: From habit to ritual
MEDITATION: Hold it now…..hit it
INTERACTIVE: Slow and low, that is the tempo.
Everybody catch the boogaloo flu. Actually, don’t. It’s incurable. Before you know it, you’ll be up and down the avenue, breathless af. During this non-Beastie Boy themed session, we are going to tune into automaticity, not the easy response that comes from a natural place, but it’s evil cousin, the habit, the entrained neural pattern that activates our behavior before we have had time to decide whether it serves us. For the sit, we focus on subtle activations, for the interactive, we identify a space in our life where habit has crept in over intention, and next week, see what space ritual has in slowing us down, making us alive to our power.
CEC_Meditate
DATE : Aug 8
TEACHER: Avi Craimer
THEME: Meaning and symbol
MEDITATION: Ritual intention setting
INTERACTIVE: Transform your life with symbolic action
We automatically respond to the meanings of things on both a conscious and an unconscious level. Ritual is a way to take control of and leverage this innate meaning responsiveness. In tonight’s meditation we’ll use a simple opening ritual to enhance our meditative concentration. In the second half, Avi will lead us in a creative process to discover and design symbolic actions to transform stuck patterns in our lives.
CEC_Meditate
DATE: Aug 15
TEACHER: Dr James
THEME: How to bow
MEDITATION: Full surrender.
INTERACTIVE: How low can you go
The world is a beautiful place, but it is a hard one too. Despite our attempts to know it, it outpaces both our hopes and imaginations. The search can leave us feeling alone, irritated, confused. A question emerges, as possible antidote: are you bowing deeply enough? To the mystery, to the person passing you in the subway turnstile fighting the same big questions, to yourself, as jewelled as any other facet of this net. This week, we sit, and let go. And let go. And let go. Perhaps we find, even with all that letting go, somehow, we are still, somehow held. Then, we bow.
CEC_MeditateDATE: Aug 22
TEACHER: Jeff Warren
THEME: The Practice of Perspective
MEDITATION: Layers of Our Discontent
INTERACTIVE: The Art of Moving Out
This week, we explore perspective from two directions: in sitting practice, where we’ll tease out some of the understated and not-so understated ways we find our moments lacking (and in the seeing, a subtle freeing), and, for part two, a wonderful art practice designed to take us out of ourselves into some of the insightful and often healing perspectives that surround us.
CEC_MeditateDATE: August 29
TEACHER: Erin Oke
THEME: Liminality
MEDITATION: Opening to possibilities
INTERACTIVE: Labyrinth walking
The middle stage of ritual, begun but not yet complete, is called liminality. Rife with ambiguity, confusion and possibilities, it’s a rich time for discovery. We’ll meditate in that middle space, opening to the compelling nature of our ever-changing experience. Then we’ll take our interactive practice on the road to a local park and walk a labyrinth, a contemplative journey embodying those liminal twists and turns. How we’ll emerge from these rituals – transformed, solidified or something else entirely – is anyone’s guess. We can go for ice cream afterwards and discuss!