My Experience of Fundamentalism

I started learning NVC in 2000. My experience of fundamentalism began in 2002 after I made a decision to adopt NVC as a spiritual practice. Here’s what happened in the years that followed:

When I adopted NVC as a spiritual practice, I also adopted a certain system as a guiding principle for my life: the system of beliefs, values, thought patterns, and language patterns that I’d been absorbing from the NVC community. After years of practice, I had developed new habits; I was using this system to guide my thoughts, speech, and actions. This was an achievement I’d been working toward for a long time—but it had some unintended consequences. In subtle ways, I was becoming dependent on this system for making sense of the world, for communicating with others, and for making choices in life. It was getting harder for me to think outside the box of the beliefs and values I’d adopted. And a subtle rigidity had crept into my speech and writing.

When conflicts arose, I fell into certain habits. Internally, I started doing certain processes—this helped me stay focused, but it also limited my capacity for being with others. I started viewing situations through the lens of certain models—this helped me stay centered, but it also limited my capacity to perceive all aspects of situations clearly. And I started filtering my speech through certain language patterns—this helped me avoid saying things I might regret, but it also limited my spontaneity and transparency. For instance, in conflict situations I felt comfortable telling others about my feelings but I rarely revealed my thoughts and perspectives.

My intimate partners were the first to point out my rigidity. Sometimes when I got frustrated, I would drop the system entirely and respond to them more transparently and spontaneously. What I said at these times was often more provocative—but to my surprise, they often appreciated my aliveness, transparency, and openness.

Occasionally the system would break down in the middle of a conflict. Sometimes I would get too angry to stay focused on my internal process, and sometimes the person I was in conflict with would interrupt my process by asking me to stop doing it. At these times, I felt as if a rug had been pulled out from under me.

What was going on? I had a problem: I was trying to use a single system to make sense of all the subtleties of life. I had become attached to that system, believing it could solve all my problems. And I had identified with it, viewing it as a part of me.

—from my book Tricksters in the Desert

This attachment and identification had formed over a period of years, and it took years of intentional work for me to undo them. At this point, I still have all the helpful skills I learned through my years of practicing NVC, but I experience more freedom to choose from a range of perspectives and approaches to life. Was my experience with fundamentalism an inevitable stage on my spiritual path? Perhaps—but perhaps not.

Fundamentalism and Our Stories

Fundamentalism can follow from the stories we hold about our spiritual practices. To show how this works, I’ll use NVC as an example—but keep in mind that these issues are not specific to NVC; I believe the same dynamics apply to any spiritual practice, in any spiritual community.

As I was learning NVC, I often heard various versions of the following story:

By living NVC in each moment and trusting the NVC process, we can embody NVC consciousness, model this consciousness for others, and facilitate social change—creating a more compassionate world.

This story offered a vision of transformation and social change that I found very appealing, and NVC was based on humanistic values that I appreciated. This contributed to my willingness—and in fact eagerness—to adopt NVC as the overarching approach to my life for a number of years.

What I know now (that I didn’t know then) is that a key understanding is missing from the above story: the understanding that every approach has its strengths, limitations, and blind spots. Like all approaches to spiritual practice, NVC is based on a model—that is, a simplified description of certain aspects of life. No model can reflect all the subtleties of life. Viewing life exclusively through the lens of one model limits our perception, because that model inevitably shines a light on certain aspects of life and casts a shadow on others.

For instance, from personal experience, I know that evaluating life based on the NVC model can reveal insights that can be transformative; I’ve also experienced how evaluating life based on other models can reveal different insights that can be equally helpful. Evaluating life based on a different model sometimes leads me in a different direction than NVC would lead me. That doesn’t mean that either model is invalid; it just means every model presents a partial view of life.

To help us avoid fundamentalism and perceive life more clearly, I believe it’s helpful to cultivate a diversity of complementary approaches to life and to spiritual practice (rather than focus exclusively on any one approach). In my experience, many progressive spiritual communities already hold strong values of diversity and acceptance of differences among people; I’m suggesting we go one step further and actively cultivate a diversity of approaches within our own spiritual life.

Translating Our Stories

Making space for other approaches may require us to translate the stories that we receive in our spiritual communities. For instance, consider the difference between the story above and this revised version:

By integrating NVC into our lives and trusting ourselves to discern how and when to apply it, we can embody a more compassionate consciousness, model this consciousness for others, and facilitate social change—creating a more compassionate world.

What has changed in this version? “Living NVC” has become “integrating NVC into our lives”, “trusting the NVC process” has become “trusting ourselves”, “NVC consciousness” has become “a more compassionate consciousness”, and “living NVC in each moment” has become “trusting ourselves to discern how and when to apply it”. I appreciate how this revised story more clearly affirms our autonomy and creates more space in our lives for other approaches. I believe a similar translation process can be applied to stories we receive in any spiritual community.

Doing this work by yourself requires effort, and at times it may feel like swimming upstream—but by developing your ability to translate spiritual stories internally and independently, you will be better equipped to enter any spiritual community and receive the gifts it has to offer without falling into fundamentalism.

Next Steps

If the ideas in this article have resonated for you, here are some possible next steps.

• To test your own level of fundamentalism in relation to your favorite approaches to life, try asking yourself what the strengths, limitations, and blind spots of each approach might be. In what types of situations is each approach more effective? In what types of situations does each approach break down? If you feel disinterested, irritated, or uneasy about asking yourself these questions, you may have an opportunity to do some inner work to support open-mindedness, awareness, and flexibility. Asking yourself these questions can be an effective approach to doing this work.
• For my views on how fundamentalism can arise in groups, and for more suggestions about what we can do to address it, see the epilogue of my book Tricksters in the Desert.
• To learn more about my work and my background, visit jacobgotwals.com/overview.

Disclaimer: This article expresses my personal perspective; it does not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a process created by Marshall B. Rosenberg. This article is not intended as NVC training, and I am not currently certified by the Center for Nonviolent Communication as a NVC trainer. For more information about NVC—and to find local NVC trainers and organizations—visit www.cnvc.org.

This work by Jacob Gotwals is licensed under a
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© 2013 Jacob Gotwals

Having the willingness to feel your feelings is a good first step, but unfortunately it’s not enough. You also need capacity and know-how. In terms of capacity, you need enough strength of attention to experience your feelings without identifying with them or reacting to them. And your attention must be energized to a higher level of energy than the feelings you’re trying to feel—otherwise, when you try to feel your feelings, your attention will get overwhelmed, and you will get swept away into thinking or some other form of reaction. (This can actually reinforce your reactive patterns.)

To help build capacity, I recommend doing daily practices for strengthening and energizing your attention. Meditation is my favorite practice for this, and there are many others that can help as well.

A Practice for Feeling Your Feelings

I’ve found the following practice really helpful for feeling my feelings, especially when I’m triggered or distracted.

Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. (If you meditate, you can do this practice within a meditation session.) Start by stabilizing your attention, by resting it on the sensations of your breathing. Then start noticing your sensations, including sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and all other sensations related to the body. Expand your field of attention with the goal of including as many of these sensory modalities as possible—so you are simultaneously seeing your entire visual field, hearing all sounds, feeling all body sensations, and so forth. This energizes your attention.

Then expand your attention to include your field of emotions. If your emotions are not obvious, start by noticing feelings of like and dislike related to your body sensations. Like and dislike are the most basic emotions; once you recognize them, it becomes easier to notice other emotions.

Then expand your attention again to include your thoughts—that is, everything else you’re experiencing that’s not a sensation or emotion. Let your thoughts come and go, without following them. When you notice you’re caught up in thinking—that is, chasing your thoughts—start the whole process over again (stabilizing your attention by resting it on your breathing).

With this preparation, you may find you can rest your attention on your feelings—your emotions and body sensations—without getting caught up in thinking. If not, there is more energy in the pattern that’s triggered than in your attention. Try strengthening and energizing your attention, through practices like meditation.

Even if you’re not noticeably triggered, you’re likely to discover some feelings that are uncomfortable to feel. The challenge here is to allow yourself to simply feel these feelings without turning away from them, suppressing them, or reacting to them. To feel your feelings, do just that—don’t try to name them, change them, connect them to your needs, or do anything else with them. Let your thoughts come and go, without trying to analyze them, categorize them, or change them.

After feeling your feelings for a while, you may be surprised to discover you can feel any uncomfortable feelings that may be present—and be at peace at the same time. Soon after that, you may notice something starting to relax within yourself. Sometimes this is a shift from triggered to centered, and sometimes it’s a bigger shift from attachment to liberation (as reactive patterns dissolve).

(Thanks to Ken McLeod, whose work influenced this piece. For an introduction to Ken McLeod’s work, see his book Wake Up to Your Life.)

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© 2012 Jacob Gotwals

Describing Feelings and Emotions

For brevity, let’s call both body sensations and emotions feelings. Being able to identify, name, and describe feelings can help you connect with yourself and others. Identifying your feelings can help you identify your needs; and identifying other people’s feelings can help you identify their needs. In intimate relationships, identifying your feelings can help you describe them to others; this can help build trust and understanding. And when you’re empathizing with others, identifying their feelings can help you give verbal reflections of the feelings you’re sensing in them.

The first step in learning to name feelings is learning to notice them. Building your feelings vocabulary is also important—lists of feelings can be helpful for this. One way to get practice naming feelings is to seek out local or online communities based on Nonviolent Communication (also known as NVC).

Feeling Them

When we find a word or phrase that resonates with an aspect of how we feel, we may have an “a-ha moment” of seeing that aspect of our experience more clearly. But when we name feelings, something can also get lost. Putting words to feelings is a double-edged sword; it highlights some aspects of experience, and casts a shadow on others.

Emotions and body sensations are actually a subtle, constantly-shifting field of experience that encompasses the whole body. Learning to actually experience this field—that is, learning to feel your feelings—can give you a richer experience of life. And when you’re triggered, feeling your feelings can free you from the reactive patterns that are causing your triggered state.

Feeling your feelings is not a passive process. When you feel your feelings, you shine the light of awareness into the depths of your emotional world. Awareness is a force of love and healing that can transform you from deep within.

This work by Jacob Gotwals is licensed under a
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© 2012 Jacob Gotwals

Her next relationship started well, but soon the same thing began to happen. She often complimented her partner, but he rarely complimented her. She wanted things to be different this time, but she wasn’t sure what to do. One night in a dream, she met an old woman, and asked her for advice. The old woman said, “When you’re triggered, feel your feelings.” She didn’t quite understand what this meant, but she woke up before she could ask.

Clarifying Boundaries

In the next few months, she started learning about boundaries. She got more clear about what was important to her in a relationship. One day she spoke up. She told her partner, “I always compliment you, but you never compliment me. You’re taking me for granted, and I don’t like it!” They had a tense conversation.

Eventually he did start complimenting her more—but his compliments didn’t always seem heartfelt. In a dream one night, the old woman appeared again and told her, “Getting clear about your boundaries is a good start. But you can go deeper. When you’re triggered, feel your feelings.”

Connecting

Years passed. She started a new relationship—and she noticed the same pattern developing. She often complimented her partner, but he rarely complimented her. And she was starting to feel resentful about it.

Remembering how things had turned out last time, she decided to try something different. She started doing practices that helped her cultivate self-awareness, autonomy, and authenticity. Let’s say one of those practices was Nonviolent Communication (or NVC). She learned about observations, feelings, needs, and requests, as well as empathy and honesty. She got connected with her needs, through self-empathy and empathy. As she did, she experienced a shift—an enemy image she had been holding of her partner was being released, and her resentment was dissipating. She started getting curious about her partner’s feelings and needs—wondering what was alive in him.

One day she expressed some scary honesty: “I’m noticing I’ve been complimenting you almost every day, and it’s probably been a week since the last time you complimented me. I’m hurting and sad; I’m needing need more love and support. Would you tell me what you heard me say?” In the conversation that followed, he heard her feelings and needs, and she heard his. Their anger and resentment soon shifted to compassion—and as it did, strategies emerged that they both felt good about. Her partner agreed to set an intention to start complimenting her more often—and he followed through on that intention.

This time the compliments were heartfelt, and when she received them regularly, she felt relaxed and loving. But sometimes, when her partner was busy with other things, he forgot. Sometimes several days went by without any compliments. At times like these, she noticed her hurt feelings returning. In a dream one night, the old woman appeared again and said, “Getting clear about your observations, feelings, needs, and requests is an important step. Talking about them with your partner—honestly and vulnerably—is another big step. But you can go deeper. When you’re triggered, feel your feelings.”

Feeling the Feelings

Over the following months and years, she started doing something different. Perhaps it was meditation, yoga, Qigong, or focusing. Perhaps it was ecstatic movement. Perhaps it was a devotional practice—opening to something more significant than herself—like the ecology of Earth, or the energy of needs. Perhaps it was all of the above, or something completely different. Whatever it was, it gradually strengthened her attention and raised her level of energy.

One day, she found herself triggered, once again, by a lack of compliments. She remembered what the old woman had said in her dreams: “When you’re triggered, feel your feelings.” From the inner work she had been doing, she knew it would require some preparation to feel these feelings without getting caught up in them. She would have to stabilize her attention first.

She found a quiet place where no one would disturb her. She started by experiencing her sensations: an ever-changing field of colors, sounds, tastes, smells, and feelings in her body. She gradually expanded her field of attention until she could experience all these sensations at the same time. Then she expanded her attention further to include her emotions—including simple feelings of like and dislike, as well as more complex emotions. Finally she expanded her attention further to include her thoughts: her memories, ideas, beliefs, and plans, and an inner voice providing commentary.

Now she found that she could rest her attention in the subtle, visceral, churning field of her emotions and body sensations, without reacting to them. She allowed her thoughts to come and go, without chasing them. She didn’t get distracted, she didn’t try to control her experience, and she didn’t try to work at anything. She didn’t try to name her feelings or interpret them. She didn’t try to connect them to her needs. She didn’t get overwhelmed by them or become them. She just looked to see what feelings were there, and she allowed herself to feel them—that is, to experience them.

At first this was very uncomfortable. These were exactly the feelings she had been trying to avoid all these years by asking her partners to compliment her. But eventually something started shifting. Her feelings had not changed—they were still uncomfortable—but she found, to her surprise, that she could feel them and be at peace at the same time.

Liberation

As she continued feeling these feelings, something within her started unwinding and relaxing. She was letting go of a tension she had not even noticed she was carrying. As this tension released, she found she could see her attachment to compliments more clearly. She could see how this attachment had developed when she was young, and how it had played out over her whole life—affecting many of her relationships. She had a new sense of freedom around the whole topic.

This shift felt different from the one she had experienced earlier, when she had let go of the resentment she felt toward her partner. That shift was from triggered to centered; this shift was from attachment to liberation. That time, an enemy image was dissolving; this time, a reactive pattern was dissolving—the pattern that had been creating her recurring enemy images of her partners.

In the following months, she noticed a change in her relationship with her partner. She still enjoyed receiving compliments, but she didn’t get triggered when a stretch of time went by without them. And it was easier for her to notice and appreciate the many other ways that he expressed his love and care for her.

Over the years, she had many opportunities to practice feeling her feelings when she was triggered. Each time, she got a bit more free of attachment and reactivity. Time passed, and she grew older, day by day. Then one night in a dream, a young woman appeared before her, asking for advice.

(This story is fictional, but I hope it rings true for you.)

This work by Jacob Gotwals is licensed under a
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© 2012 Jacob Gotwals

Making Observations: Describing Experience Without Evaluating It

Describing something means putting it into words, and evaluating something means assessing its value—its goodness, beauty, or truth. In Nonviolent Communication (or NVC), an observation is a description of experience—an description that’s free of evaluation. Observations describe experiences, without assessing the value of those experiences.

You can use observations in conflict situations, to help the other person understand what’s stimulating your feelings (that is, what’s happening that you like or dislike). You can also use observations for self-connection and personal growth—for instance, as part of a journaling process—to get more clear yourself about what’s stimulating your feelings. Evaluations tend to be provocative; by leaving them out of your observations, you help everyone stay more centered.

Interpreting: Assessing the Meaning of Experience

Interpreting something means assessing its meaning. Like evaluations, interpretations can also be provocative, when we interpret things in different ways. Unfortunately, there’s no way to describe experience without also interpreting it. In putting words to experience, we interpret it. Facts are just interpretations we agree are true. So you can forget about making observations that are completely free of interpretation. What you can do when making observations is keep them factual (that is, non-controversial); you can leave out extra layers of meaning that others may not agree with.

Every experience has many possible interpretations—so don’t mistake your interpretations for indisputable facts. Think of a time when you were absolutely convinced that something was true, and later you learned something that totally changed your perspective. You had an experience that you were interpreting one way—then you found a better way of interpreting it. Letting go of our attachment to interpretations can improve our relationships and support personal growth, giving us more mental flexibility. It can allow us to acknowledge the validity of other people’s perspectives, even when those perspectives differ from our own (as they often do in conflict situations).

Experiencing: Observing Without Interpreting

Observing means noticing your experience. There’s a big difference between making observations and observing. Making observations about an experience requires putting it into words. But observing an experience doesn’t require putting it into words; you can observe an experience without interpreting it.
Experiencing means observing without interpreting—that is, noticing your experience without trying to put it into words or analyze it intellectually. What’s experiencing good for? A lot, it turns out. Experiencing life makes it vibrant and juicy. When all we do is interpret life, we miss the joy of experiencing it; then life gets dry and dull. When we’re triggered, experiencing our feelings (that is, allowing ourselves to feel them) can free us from reactive patterns—this can help us stay more centered in conflict situations, and can support our personal growth. And looking closely at experiencing itself can foster insight and spiritual awakening—this is the basis for many insight practices.

Here’s a side note for fans of the Pathways to Liberation Matrix. In version 1.2 of the Matrix, it seems to me that the row on observing packs several skills into one. To unpack and clarify these skills (in future versions of the Matrix), I’d start by replacing observation with experience and observations with experiences, everywhere they appear in this row. Then I’d add two new rows, for the skills making observations (free of evaluation) and experiencing (without interpreting). I have not discussed these ideas with the other Matrix co-authors yet.

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© 2012 Jacob Gotwals

One of those ways will be to contribute posts to this blog on a regular basis. To start with, I plan to go through the Matrix from top to bottom and write posts about each skill. (If you’ve subscribed to the Pathways to Liberation email list, you can choose whether to get updates on these posts weekly, monthly, or not at all—just click “update subscription preferences” at the bottom of your email.)

One thing to be aware of: my posts reflect my own views. These are not necessarily the views of my co-authors, and I don’t claim to represent any model or perspective other than my own.

Let’s Make it a Conversation

I hope my posts might spark some community dialogue. It’s easy to add your voice to the conversation—each post has a comments section below it on the website. (If you’re reading this by email, you can click “View and respond” at the top of any post to get to the website—then go to the bottom of the page where it says “add a comment”.) I like getting feedback on my posts, so please do post your comments. Also—please help spread the word about these posts through Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

I’m looking forward to our conversation—how about you?

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For me, if there is one skill underlying all of the others presented in these pathways to liberation, it is presence.  Without presence, we can not deliberately engage the other skills because we lack real-time awareness; similarly, the practice of the other skills support the cultivation of presence.  Presence is the foundational skill of maintaining moment by moment awareness of our unique personal human experience.   With insufficient presence, our “aliveness” falters and suffering results.

For me, presence is an ever-increasing openness to the immediacy of  experience, (i. e. what I see, hear, smell, taste, touch; from both external and internal sources).  It is also an ever-growing capacity to cultivate choice about where I place my attention.  Attention is the brush we use to “paint” our lives.  Presence is the cultivated skill of consistently directing our attention in ways that create a life of beauty in the world around us.

The state of presence is characterized by a consciousness that is tuned in to what is actually happening, focusing clearly on the ever-changing flow of life.  When presence is practiced with the other skills of personal liberation, the result is a natural opening of the heart and mind allowing access to the abundance of resources supporting our well-being.  From presence, actions intuitively emerge that harmonize with our integrity, naturally expressing our deepest vision and mission.  This growing consciousness supports a deepening awareness of our mutual interdependence with other people and expands our sense of belonging within the larger  community and the ecosystem of life.

Sometimes, we can clarify our understanding of a concept or experience by noticing its opposite. The opposite of presence is absence. We become absent when our mind drifts away from the present moment into thinking about the past or the future.  We become distracted from what is actually happening and instead get caught up in habitual patterns of thought often characterized by moralistic judgments, comparisons and fears.  These patterns hijack our experience of the present moment and isolate us from our source of aliveness.

A first step in cultivating increased presence consists of training yourself to notice absence.  As you have read these words, it is likely your mind has drifted at least once or twice, distracted by something else competing for your attention. Did you notice that?

Noticing absence stimulates presence. Simply by focusing one’s attention on whatever is distracting you has the paradoxical effect of fostering an awareness of what is actually happening. This shift in awareness opens up more choice about where you center your attention and how you can more fully open to the experience of the present moment.

Let me share a very personal account of this struggle.  We’ve recently made a major life transition, moving from a city that we lived in for almost thirty years. We arrived in our new location to find that the home we had purchased would not become available to us until things beyond our control were accomplished by others. We entered an untethered phase, with no secure place to call home and no clear timeline in place.

During this period of floating from one friend’s house to another, I began noticing that I forgot appointments and the location of important things more often than usual. I noticed my mind easily slipping into anxious patterns: alternately “gnawing” on the feeling of loss caused by missing past comforts and then slipping into the anxiety of wondering “what will be?”, “when will it be…?”, and “how will I get there?”  As I heightened my awareness of this mental drifting, each episode became an opportunity to awaken once again to what was actually happening. I trained myself to notice the slips, then to get curious about them – “…what are these anxious thoughts telling me about what is important to me right now? “

For example, when I remembered an appointment, I would reflexively activate a negative inner monologue characterized by judging myself severely for blowing it yet again.  However, noticing this old pattern of self blame awakened me to the opportunity of centering on my present experience and so opened my mind to the possibility of other ways to handle the situation; constructive ways that allowed me to reconnect with the person I had the appointment with and avoid doing mindless damage to myself during a personally challenging time.  So, for me, even slips out of presence have become opportunities for choosing once again to engage the present moment, and so increase the depth of my presence.

This gentle nudge to presence often awakened in me an appreciation for what was actually happening in my life, even as I mourned the lack of home or temporary access to the memory of the location of my lost car keys. By refocusing my mind and heart on my present experience, I engaged once again more fully with my life, often awakening to new options.

Here are the elements of a practice you can use to cultivate more presence for yourself:

1. Set an intention to become more present. Contemplate why presence is important to you.
2. Focus your attention on something specific. For example, you could use your breath or watch the second hand moving around the clock face or the seconds changing on a digital watch.
3. Notice that in spite of your intention, your attention is likely to wander. Simply notice that your attention wanders, and gently refocus on the object of your attention.
4. Become aware of the clues of absence. How can you notice your mind has wandered?  Noticing the wandering mind can become a gentle reminder to return to presence.
5. Continue this exercise for 5 to 20 minutes.
6. Complete the exercise by  considering what you learned through your practice.

As you develop your presence “muscle”, you can try this exercise in almost any context. For example, you can try it while watching TV, attending a movie, in the midst of conversation, or  any other common activity.

• Presence (Part 1): What are Reactive Patterns?
• Presence (Part 2): Dissolving Reactive Patterns With Attention
• Presence (Part 3): Uprooting Reactive Patterns Through Insight
• Presence (Part 4): What is Presence?

I can’t describe presence without describing reactivity first—so let’s start by talking about reactivity. Reactive patterns are habits that affect everyone. They’re driven by our attachments—our internal demands that things be a certain way. When we notice a threat or an opportunity related to our attachments, our patterns can get triggered—they can start influencing our perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and behavior. The term reactivity refers to the entire process: our attachments, the perceptions and feelings that arise because of those attachments, and the behaviors we engage in as we react to those perceptions and feelings.

In the culture of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), when our patterns are triggered, we might say we are “triggered”, we “need empathy”, and we are “disconnected from our needs”. We may be communicating with “demand energy”, and our thoughts may be like a “jackal show”. In terms of psychology, there’s an overlap between reactive patterns and concepts like core beliefs, defense mechanisms, and subpersonalities. And in terms of Buddhism, freedom from reactive patterns can be viewed as the goal of meditation practice.

A Personal Example

One of my own reactive patterns has been driven by my attachment to clarity. I feel safer and more in control when I understand things. When I don’t understand something (or when others understand something differently), a pattern can get triggered. When it does, I start perceiving things that support clarity as especially pleasant, and things that interfere with clarity as especially unpleasant. I become indifferent to everything else—I lose touch with my other needs (and the needs of others).

At these times, I may feel irritation toward whatever seems to be interfering with clarity, as well as eagerness and confidence—I know that with some persistence, I can clear things up. (We tend to equate being triggered with being angry, but this example shows that a whole range of emotions can arise when our patterns get triggered. Anger and its cousins may not even enter the picture.)

What happens next is not pretty. Sometimes my intellect has run over other people’s needs like a bulldozer on a single-minded quest for clarity. I’m sure this pattern has had a negative impact on my relationships—more so in the past and less so recently, as I’ve started to recognize this pattern and free myself from it.

We all have many layers of reactive patterns. The ones that are more coarse can show up as the forms of addiction we are all familiar with (such as substance abuse). As we free ourselves from these coarse patterns, more subtle patterns can show up—then we get a chance to work on them. This is a lifelong process; I doubt it ever comes to an end.

What reactive patterns have you noticed within yourself?

Next: Presence (Part 2): Dissolving Reactive Patterns With Attention

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© 2012 Jacob Gotwals

• Presence (Part 1): What are Reactive Patterns?
• Presence (Part 2): Dissolving Reactive Patterns With Attention
• Presence (Part 3): Uprooting Reactive Patterns Through Insight
• Presence (Part 4): What is Presence?

What frees you from reactive patterns? Attention—that is, your own awareness, directed toward your patterns. Attention dissolves patterns like heat melts ice—like love heals hurt. This process takes time; how much time varies with the pattern and the person. Some patterns dissolve almost instantly as soon as you recognize them. Others may take days, weeks, years, or lifetimes of attention to dissolve.

In order to dissolve a pattern, your attention must be strong enough that you can observe the pattern—when it’s triggered—without allowing yourself to get sucked into it. You must keep your attention grounded in the present. One way to do this is to maintain awareness of sensory experiences (like body sensations). If you don’t stay grounded in the present—if you get lost in reactive thinking—the pattern will be reinforced (not dissolved).

This is not an intellectual process. Your intellect can help you recognize a pattern, but what frees you from it is feeling the feelings that arise when the pattern is triggered—without acting on them, identifying with them, or allowing your attention to collapse into them. This is always an uncomfortable process. The reason we usually react to these feelings is that we find them uncomfortable and we want to avoid feeling them. Allowing ourselves to feel them (without reacting) is exactly the opposite of what we are used to doing.

As you allow yourself to feel your feelings when a pattern is triggered, sooner or later you may be surprised to notice a shift. Your feelings haven’t changed, but suddenly you can feel them without resistance—you can feel them and be at peace at the same time. Your relationship to the pattern has changed; it no longer has the same grip on you as it did before. The pattern has begun to dissolve, and the energy that was locked up in it is starting to be released. You find you have more energy available for living and experiencing life, and you’re a bit more free than you were before.

Practices for Dissolving Reactive Patterns

There are many practices that can help you dissolve your patterns. You can do “calm abiding” meditation—a process for gradually strengthening your attention. (This is the form of meditation that is familiar to many of us; it starts with learning to rest your attention on the sensations of breathing.) You can work on your patterns as a daily “purification” practice: recalling situations that tend to trigger you, and working with the feelings that arise. You might do this as a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) self-empathy process, or as part of a sitting meditation practice. You can journal; journaling temporarily weakens and slows the operation of patterns, and it provides an external mirror of what’s going on internally. Reactivity affects all aspects of our being, including the body; so practices that work directly with the body and its energy—like massage, yoga, and Qigong—can be helpful.

There are many ways to enlist the support of others, drawing on the strength of their presence and attention to help you dissolve your patterns. Getting support from others can help you be present to reactive feelings you might not have the capacity to work with on your own. For instance, you can get empathy (or therapy) from someone else, and you can attend groups, workshops, retreats, and other gatherings focused on personal growth. A risk here is that you may encounter not only other people’s presence (which can support you in dissolving your patterns), but also their own reactivity.

What practices have you found helpful for freeing yourself from patterns, and for shifting out of triggered states?

Next: Presence (Part 3): Uprooting Reactive Patterns Through Insight

This work by Jacob Gotwals is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
© 2012 Jacob Gotwals

• Presence (Part 1): What are Reactive Patterns?
• Presence (Part 2): Dissolving Reactive Patterns With Attention
• Presence (Part 3): Uprooting Reactive Patterns Through Insight
• Presence (Part 4): What is Presence?

I learned about insight practices through my work with Tibetan Buddhism. If you practice Nonviolent Communication (or NVC) and you want to keep your inner work focused there, you might want to skip this post for now. Insight practice is pretty far removed from NVC practice.

The Problem with Dualistic Perception

Developmental psychology has shown that as we grow, what we perceive ourselves to be (that is, what we identify with) grows, too. At different stages of life, we may identify with different things: our body, our intimate relationships, the groups we belong to, the systems of thought we subscribe to, even the process of evolution itself. This is how the self evolves. As it does, what stays the same is that it always identifies with some kind of thing. Dualistic perception is a fancy name for perceiving ourselves to be things. It’s called dualistic because things are by nature distinct from other things; so perceiving ourselves dualistically automatically divides experience in two: there’s me, and there’s everything else.

Perceiving ourselves to be things automatically brings up some strong instinctive fears and cravings. The fears arise because we know from experience that things can go away, and instinctively, we’re afraid of not existing. The cravings arise because when we see ourselves as things, instinctively, we want to become better, stronger, more beautiful, more powerful things. As we grow, what we identify with shifts—and the related fears and cravings shift as well. We may be afraid of dying and want to live forever; we may be afraid of losing emotional connection with others and want to maintain it; we may be afraid of being nobody and want to be respected; and so forth.

What we identify with gives rise to a special set of needs; these needs tend to have an especially big impact on our feelings. When we perceive a threat (or opportunity) related to what we identify with, it’s not just an ordinary situation—it’s a crisis. For instance, if I identify with my relationships, then any threat to those relationships automatically becomes a crisis. When we react to this type of crisis in a way that resolves it, we remember this, and we tend to use a similar behavior to handle similar crises in the future. You can see how these behaviors can quickly become habitual; this is how reactive patterns are born. Notice how dualistic perception (our perception of ourselves as things) is the root of the whole process.

Insight and Nondual Perception

Fortunately, there is an alternative to dualistic perception. That alternative is not obvious, but it is accessible—through a family of practices known as insight practices. What insight practices reveal is perceptual, not conceptual. This kind of insight is not about understanding something or believing something. It’s not the understanding or belief that all things are related and interdependent, or that all things are one. (Of course, all things are related and interdependent—but insight reveals something else.) As far as insight goes, it doesn’t matter what you understand or believe—if you are perceiving yourself as a separate thing, then you are perceiving dualistically. (A quick test for dualistic perception is to ask yourself where your awareness seems to be located now. If it seems to be somewhere in your body—perhaps in your head behind your eyes—then you are perceiving dualistically.)

Insight practices reveal what I call nondual perception: a way of perceiving life where you stop perceiving yourself as a thing—you don’t see yourself as a physical thing, an energetic thing, or any other type of thing. In fact, you perceive yourself as nothing whatsoever. When you perceive yourself as nothing (no thing), you understand that in a certain sense, there is no way you can be harmed or helped. Then the fears and cravings connected with seeing yourself as a thing start to subside. Even though you perceive yourself as nothing, experience keeps arising, you still seem to have a physical body, and you still suspect that your body will still die at some point. (Trying to understand all this intellectually will likely get you nowhere—it’s better to just start doing insight practices, when you’re ready.)

Getting a brief glimpse of nondual perception is not that hard. But perceiving life dualistically is a deeply ingrained habit, and it takes a lot of practice to learn to rest in nondual perception. What’s left to do when you’re resting there? Relax and live your life. This isn’t the relaxation of not caring; it’s the relaxation of compassion. You care deeply about the whole, and you’re able to act on that caring with great effectiveness—because your attention is less wrapped up in the recurring crises that inevitably arise when you see yourself as a separate thing.

I hope this post has given you a taste of what insight practice is about. But actual instructions for insight practice are beyond the scope of this post. I plan to publish more about insight in the future. Until then, if you want to explore more, you can visit the resources section of my website under the tag “insight”. (To view a resource, click its green URL link.) You might also consider getting meditation instruction from me or another teacher.

Next: Presence (Part 4): What is Presence?

This work by Jacob Gotwals is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
© 2012 Jacob Gotwals

• Presence (Part 1): What are Reactive Patterns?
• Presence (Part 2): Dissolving Reactive Patterns With Attention
• Presence (Part 3): Uprooting Reactive Patterns Through Insight
• Presence (Part 4): What is Presence?

Finally, I’m ready to talk about presence itself. Presence is not about speaking or behaving in any particular way. It’s not a feeling or emotion. Presence is a state of mind in which there is a clear knowing of what arises in experience—without distraction, and without the need to control experience. Presence is not something you can do. It’s not a practice—it’s the result of other practices. It’s what’s left after reactive patterns dissolve—so the best way to develop presence is to do practices that free you from reactivity. The more you free yourself from reactivity, the more present you become. (And the more your reactive patterns reassert themselves, the less present you become.) So presence isn’t black-and-white; there are many shades of gray.

In presence, a spontaneous knowing of what to do next arises in each moment; so presence serves the present situation, without reactivity or compulsiveness. In presence, you’re not compelled to protect yourself, to preserve relationships, to look good, to be somebody, to follow the rules, to live the process, or to do anything else in particular. At the same time, there is a natural compassion that arises with presence—a care for the well-being of all. This compassion is what motivates the actions that arise through presence.

Presence is a big part of what attracted me to Nonviolent Communication (or NVC)—then later, to meditation. When I started practicing NVC, I started running into people who were clearly more present than me. I didn’t have a word for the special quality I sensed in them, but I knew I liked it. I wanted to cultivate it within myself. My encounter with presence kicked off a decade of spiritual practice that turned my life inside out. As you can see, it’s hard to predict how presence will transform your life.

What has your relationship with presence been like?

This work by Jacob Gotwals is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
© 2012 Jacob Gotwals

At the age of 16 looking for a way out of my home environment as well as some answers to “what’s it all about…” and willing to take a step down the road to becoming a religious brother, I entered Marist Prep.  Three years later I took my first vows, concealing the fact that I had become an agnostic and had radically different ideas about the true nature of the vows.  For me, the vow of chastity, for example, had nothing to do with sexual abstinence or celibacy.  It had to do with unconditional love; the only kind of love I recognized then and which still makes sense to me now.

My 3 years in Europe scratched my productivity itch.   I took a Masters in Philosophy at the Sorbonne, most of another in French Lit. at NYU in Paris, I trained in Karate, became fluent in French, conversational in Italian.  I spent the next 10 years in Asia where I had some significant realizations.  The most important happened in Daramsala, where I was taking teachings at the Tibetan Library.  I read J Krishnamurti and realized that my fundamental modus operandi in life, which was based on physical and intellectual domination, would never get me where I wanted to go.  In fact, most of my thinking was actually a form of suffering.  That blew my mind.  The way out of this suffering is the process of choiceless observation, which has been my main practice since that time in ’74.

Living in Rajneesh’s commune in Poona, India, and later in Oregon, afforded me a place to test out this model of inquiry and make many other experiments.  In those years I learned about the interface of meditation and sexuality, about power, jealousy, conflict, how to celebrate everything including death, and had my deepest experiences of letting go and unconditional love, not to mention punching cows and riding horses!

I moved to Santa Fe, NM in ’85 and spent a lot of time in what I could call men’s work which was essentially reclaiming parts of myself that I had pushed back into the shadow, things like fear, shame and grief.  Anger was a kind of cap on the well of these deep painful emotions and beliefs.  Sitting in men’s circles helped me get more clarity about how I was holding all this together and at what price.

I went back to school again in ’94 for an MA in counseling psychology.  I wanted more meaning in my life and saw psychotherapy as a way to contribute to others in the context of right livelihood.  In ’95 I listened to a cassette of Marshall Rosenberg on anger, which again blew my mind.  He taught me that I alone am the cause of my anger, and everything else I feel.  This insight helped me integrate my default emotion, which had been eating my lunch for over 50 years.  NVC has also given me a very succinct way of playing/working with myself and my clients on the path to getting free of conditioning and a way that interfaces so harmoniously with the other practices I had explored and continue to explore, like Byron Katie’s work.   It has also been a gateway for collaborating and co-creating with other trainers like my co-writers Jim, Jori and Jake!  May the horse be with you!

I feel blessed to have parents who never hit me, although fighting with peers was an integral part of daily life throughout much of my childhood. Wrestling matches and rock battles determined the pecking order in our local domination hierarchy.

My Dad worked for Lockheed Aircraft (an integral part of the Military-Industrial Complex) and created creative wood-working projects to salve his psyche. My Mom supported me in so many ways, to numerous to count, and loved to play games, read, contemplate and discuss spiritual matters.  She was my first Spiritual Teacher.  They both seemed dedicated to nurturing me and making sure that I would have a successful life.

At the age of 12, we moved to Marietta, GA and I transferred to a junior high school. Only 10 miles, but it may as well have been the moon. I’m still recovering!  I suffered at the hands of bullies for being small, smart, and eager to please Authority.  I developed habits of shyness and subtle and hidden patterns of self-loathing.  As I passed through puberty I found my Inner Rebel, the kind that found a way to live within Consensus Reality while doubting and subtly challenging it.  I became a “mystic” by age 15 delving into radical spiritual ideas, psychic powers and UFOs.

I “woke up” again and began enjoying life while at the University of Georgia where I majored in Journalism, Psychology and Fun.  I created an alter-ego, radio personality Ernest Lee Pyus, a star of Friday night Alternative Wave Radio at WUOG.  Once at a party (UGA was the number one party school in the country back in the day), a girl remarked after being introduced to me, “Wow, I thought you were tall and Black!”  I also discovered the importance of a Spiritual Path, exploring several and settling in to studying deeply with my first meditation teacher, Roy Eugene Davis.

My post-graduate adventures took me to Cornucopia, an intentional spiritual community based on Ken Keyes’ Handbook to Higher Consciousness. There I met many life long friends, including my wife of 31+ years, Jori.  We embarked on a Spiritual Journey of relationship based on the aspirations of unconditional love, deep honesty, and cooperative mutuality.

At Cornucopia, I began learning and integrating spiritual principles and methods that have contributed to my remarkably fulfilling and adventurous life, including Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

The birth of our first child, in 1981, coincided with the completion of the Workbook of A Course in Miracles.  Our second child arrived only 17 months later, and raising two children while running a retail business became “Spiritual Graduate School”!

I am blessed now with two adult children, Jiva and Jaya who share my passion for compassion.

I’m living my dream, sharing Radical Compassion and Compassionate Leadership. The great adventure of life has now brought me to the North Shore of Maui, where Jori and I have begun establishing a new base to continue our contributions to an awakening planet.

Nothing brings me more joy than sharing my experience of engaged spirituality with others!

I was born 2 years after the end of WWII.  My Jewish grandparents and many in their families had fortunately emigrated from Europe and had thus survived the war and thus made this story possible.  I grew up in a loving extended family hearing several languages.  Mostly English was spoken directly to me.  During my pre-teen and teen years I read many European accounts of the holocaust trying to understand how such a thing could happen and what I could do to “make a difference,” both in my own life and in the lives of others, if anything like the holocaust happened again.  This lead to social activism starting in the 60’s as well as a degree and work in Social Work and counselling.

The death of my first husband when I was 27, just weeks after my father’s death, led me to a very conscious question in my grief:  “Shall I live or die?”  I made a clear choice to not only survive this experience but to live fully.  I had a profound experience of commitment and the power of appreciating “what is” to enable me to engage in life, even within painful conditions.  What followed was a deepening spiritual quest, continuing with my practices of meditation and yoga.  I focused on the gifts of my life.  I met a Jain master, Chitrabanuji with whom I studied for several years as a Jain nun with a focus on the reverence for life and self-discovery, and from whom I learned to trust my intrinsic awareness.  One example of this was one evening  just  before his talk, when he invited me to go again with him on his yearly pilgrimage to India.  I treasured my time traveling with him and his family, and being in India.  It made no sense to me that I could not even hear his talk that evening as my inner voice loudly expressed “I do not want to go”.  I had no clarity about why that would be, as it ran counter to what I saw as my mission at the time.  I sought him out after his lecture and shared my experience, hoping he could help me to make sense of this.  His message to me was clear:  follow the voice from within as the master.  As the ancient lojong teachings of Shantideva reflect:  “Of the two witnesses, trust the first.”  I had no idea how much my life would soon change.

During this time my mother and I had a school and bookstore where I taught astrology, meditation, and yoga.  I was completing my second book, traveling, and lecturing.  Within a few weeks after my “strange” inner message not to go to India, a student recommended a book, the Handbook to Higher Consciousness by Ken Keyes, for our bookstore.  I read the copy given to me and learned there was a group of trainers coming from Kentucky to New York a few weeks later.  I attended and was inspired to go to Kentucky to attend a 3-month series of retreats at Cornucopia, the training institute based on this work.  This was 1978 and in the second month, I met Jim.  Although I was not looking for a relationship at that time, my life path changed dramatically.  We were married within months with a shared understanding that our relationship was a vehicle for our spiritual growth, an important principle that continues to guide our lives.  With 3 vows that began with “In the spirit of love and oneness, in the eternal now moment…”, we set our intentions to – with ever increasing ability – be open and honest, honor and accept each other, and cooperate in the great adventure of life.  This adventure also includes our children, Jiva Shanti and Jaya Deva, who have been two of my greatest teachers of the heart as I have stretch my capacity to love unconditionally beyond what I had ever imagined.  Together our family circumnavigated the globe, as well as the practical and emotional landscapes of life.  I revel in the gifts they bring to those whose lives they touch – including me!!

Jim and I enjoy mediating, facilitating, consulting, and training together through  Peaceworks that we began in 1993.  We also enjoy meditating, walking, snorkeling, playing, and traveling.  We are gifted with many opportunities to nurture cooperative and creative communities and organizations, and to support joyful growth for many in the world.  One of my favorite projects is Compassionate Leadership, a yearly program that brings people together from around the world by teleconference and in retreats, co-creating a supportive community focused on supporting each of us to lead our own lives and contribute to a world where we all thrive.