Sunday, January 23, 2011

Back to school Week 1

This being my first post, I'd like to welcome  you to my first and only blog.

I thought there might be a lot of people out there going to College for the first time.  Whether you're 42 like myself, or just starting out from High School, it might be interesting to just share some daily lessons about school, school life, and primarily in this case, a daily thought or lesson I take away from school that sticks with me.  This will also reinforce the things that I have learned and I would consider it part of studying.

I am posting a single sentence regarding my lesson of the day on my Facebook, and possibly Twitter, but there I'll expound on the thought in question and explain where it came from and my thoughts on the lesson.  All of this of course is going to depend on my required study time and daily activities.

Since I missed starting this until after the first week of school, I'll just relate the one lesson that stuck with me on the two days I was able to attend class.  We only had a 3 day week, but one day was cancelled due to snow.  If you want the answer to the below one sentence lesson, skip on down past the dotted line, but all of what is written before helps you to understand the rest.  The stories are actual true stories with the names changed.

Ok, here goes:

The thought for the week is:

The dualistic thinking of the strive for perfection will cause the ruination of the enjoyment of life and the success that you achieve.

What does this mean?

You may have heard the term that some people look at the world through rose tinted glasses, or that person lives in their own little world.  The fact is that everyone does this.  In Psychology this is called a Paradigm.  Imagine yourself in a bubble.  Everything you see of the world outside is seen through that bubble.  Now imagine that bubble is made up of all of your unquestioned assumptions about the world as it is.

If you have an unquestioned assumption about the world, that means that you belive in it without considering other possibilities.  When you are a child and learn what the color brown is, you no longer question if that color is truly brown, you just have an unquestioned assumption that it is always going to be and always has been brown.  A better example to illustrate the meaning is someone who does not believe in a ghost.  If that is part of your paradigm and you do not question it.  If you saw a ghost you would ignore it as something else entirely.  If you see something that does not match your paradigm, you may not even be aware of it.

It is difficult to teach awareness because of that unquestioned assumption.  These unquestioned assumptions that create our paradigm come from many sources from what we are taught or our environment, perhaps even major events in our lives that change our paradigm.

Example: A very attractive man asked his friend; "Is there such a thing as love?"  His friend tried to assure him that love did exist.  The man said that he had never felt love.  Unfortunately for the man, his experience, due to his good looks was that women always sought him out and pursued him, and when they had him in their lives, they only lived to please him.  From his doting mother to girlfriends in college, to his own wife, they all had only one concern, to please this man.  When his friend suggested this idea, and also suggested to him that perhaps love is defined by your desire to do for others and please others, he could not concieve of such a thing, and because it was not part of his paradigm, his unquestioned assumptions, the concept was so foreign that he could not become aware of that which his friend was telling him. 

Disproving a Paradigm:

Rupert and Sally were married.  Two very intelligent people who were both surgeons, they had a child together.  Sally had been in two previous relationships.  Both men had left her, so she had an unavoidable paranoia that Rupert would leave her too.  Sally was so insecure that in counseling she revealed that she wanted to leave the marriage before it ended.  As part of trying to make things better, Rupert and Sally planned a very romantic evening on the Plaza and a very nice dinner at a fine restaurant.  As they were going into the restaurant toward the table, a waitress sort of bumped into Rupert and excused herself and moved on.  At that very moment, their marriage ended.  Sally had decided in that one split second that Rupert had decided to abandon her and pursue the waitress.  She left immediately.  The marriage ended and there was much suffereng and many reprecussions for them and their child.

From this example you can see that it would seem so easy to change.  If you are hitting your fist against a wall, just stop.  For most people it's very difficult to change.  If it is in you paradigm, then it will probably happen as you predict, it will be very difficult to change and be aware or change your point of view.

So when does change occur?

1. people rarely change their character, their paradigm
2. When you hit rock bottom it is proof that your current paradigm needs to change in order to survive.
3. A very small percentage of people decide to change before they hit rock bottom.

If you want to change, it only takes an instant to make the decision to change.  It may take years to implement changes, but it only takes that one instant to move toward making those tangible changes.

There are two main types of Paradigms; Linear and Qualitative.

Linear:
1. Steady Progress
     A. Strength of a body builder is increased over time.


Qualitative:
1. Oranges and Bananas
2. Two completely different things.

Think of a 1st year teacher, there are advantages and disadvantages, No schedule options, Still learning, Working hard, Still exciting.  In our Linear example we visit that same teacher some 10 years later. The teacher has more power, they can pick their schedule, the job is easier, very little prep or research time, but ... boredeom, and the routine nature, can actually make it seem miserable.

Linear isn't necessarily better than Qualitative, but a healthy mix of the two can work.  All paradigms are different as there are so many different people in the world.

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So now we come to my sentence.  Most of us in the US and what the world refers to as "The West" believe in a strive for perfection, a Western Paradigm that has driven industrialists and the athletic ideal. 

The people who subscribe and believe with an Eastern philosophy have a difficult time understanding us here in the west.  From their point of view, we need to stop dualistic thinking which consists of judging everything as degrees of good or bad, or as item A is better than item B, they don't even consider one type of relationship to be better than another.  It is very difficult to understand the eastern way of thinking because words honestly get in the way of the concepts they try to teach in their paradigm.  Have you ever heard of Yin and Yang? 

To explain, think of  the sets of the following words.  I'll list two word sets, the first word will be Yang, and the second word will be Yin.  By the time you read the list, you will have an understanding of Yin and Yang:

Thunder / Soft Rain
Speaking / Listening
Lion / Deer
Power / Grace
Knowledge / Questioning
Big / Deep
Bright Colors / Pastels
Running / Sleeping

In the eastern Paradigm, these are two forces in the universe.  They see these Mountains and Valleys like a wave that flows through life.  We are limited in our ability to think and live in this way because we have dualistic thinking in the west.  We look for perfection.  From their point of view, if perfection is your aim, then you are ignorant because you ignore these waves, these universal Yin and Yang concepts.

If you don't know the rules in life, you will likely fail.  Take gravity for instance.  If you are on top of a building and someone tells you to meet them at the bottom of the building outside, and you are ignorant of the rules of gravity, you might think the quickest (most perfect) way to look at it, and get there quickly, would be to jump off the top of the building to reach the bottom.  Our Yang.  The Yin would be to take the stairs or a lift.

So here is the prescription for understanding and opening your paradigm to a new point of view, to expand or change your own paradigm.  Empty your mind from time to time, no thought.  No act, make no act to make Yang happen.  It is hard to fill a vessel that is already full.  A good western time that is so out of date now is "stop and smell the roses"  Enjoy everything in that moment with you rmind empty of everything else.  You will lose joy if you are Yang all the time.

Example: In a group of friends, Ted is the one friend that is stronger, faster, and more athletic than the other friends.  Every time he got together with his friends to play tennis he enjoyed the game, but he usually won.  He thought to himself as one Summer wore on how he had won every game so far, and how great it would be to win every single game all Summer.   A full Summer without a loss.  Toward the end of Summer, Ted was playing against his friend Bill, and Bill was actually doing really well.  Bill was enjoying it, but Ted was very tense, not enjoying the game, and his muscles were rigid and he lost his temper and barely won the game.  He had lost the joy of winning.  A couple of weeks later, Bill won.  Ted lost and he could not handle it, he had lost the joy of even playing the game.  Ted quit and never picked up a racket again.

A few other quick examples:

If you seek out the perfect bombs bursting in air sex, you will lose intimacy, the most important thing in a relationship.
If you seek the perfect look, you will harm your health, this has been done for centuries.
If you strive for that perfect grade every single time, you will live with extreme tension and will not learn.

Imagine a still and beautiful pond.  If a leaf falls in and makes waves, you cannot smooth the waves out with your hand, you will cause more, causing more can cause tension, then frustration.  You may even end up hitting the water out of frustration.

Try to think of things with Relativity.

Sometimes good things come out of things that seem bad at the time.

Example: A farmer's horse ran away.  His neighbor came over and said; "sorry to hear about the horse missing, that's really bad."  The farmer said; "Maybe".  The horse came back and had met a mare, so he had two horses then.  His neighbor came over and said; "Wow, your horse brought back another one, that's really good!"  The farmer said; "Maybe". The farmer told his son to go out and break the horse so they could ride it or hook it up to the wagon, but in the process, was thrown from the horse and broke his leg.  The farmer's neighbor came over again and said; "I heard about your son's leg, and I know that makes it harder on you, that's really bad." The farmer said "Maybe". Two days later a local Warlord came by pressing young men into service to fight in a war.  Because the son's leg was broken he was unfit for war, and the family was left alone.

So here is the Knowledge with which we are left:

If you are living in the flow of life, then you will be in the flow of all things.  Embrace the highs equally with the lows.  Don't lose the enjoyment that life has to offer.  Keep in mind that there may be things outside your paradigm.  Welcome change if it can help bring you into a place of better balance.

Thanks for reading.

Joe

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