Tag Archives: practice

soft power for introverts

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Ben Howard, author of One Time, One Meeting, wrote this lovely piece on introverts and how to engage in a world that is driven, loud, and often self-promoting.  I particularly liked the ideas of “quiet persistence” and “soft power.”  Ben references a book about introverts by Susan Cain - Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking – and then in his inimitable way takes it deep into the dharma, weaving together patience and diligence.

Watching the window installers, I was struck by the steady, unrelenting way they approached the task.  And it is a formidable task, this tearing out wood frames of a friable old farm-house without taking out chunks of the (wood) wall.  Hour by hour, window after window was pried away from almost a hundred years of clinging to the frame; the opening was cleared of debris and the new window inserted.  They cleaned the floor and outdoor surfaces of splinters and nails, methodically moving from section to section.  There wasn’t a moment of wasted or mis-directed energy; conversation was light yet never broke the rhythmic dance between deconstruction and reconstruction.

In a quiet moment’s conversation at the conference last week, a friend and I shared the frustrations we feel when we want immediate results and have them come in a particular form beyond what the situation can grant us.  We reflected on the years we’ve put into our work and eventually gazed astonished at what had emerged from our own quiet persistence.  I spoke with someone else of wanting a more “intimate relationship” between our organizations and later through a different interaction with her came to a painful realization of what that intimacy would cost.  I wondered what diligent persistence in that direction would bring me.  In another conversation with a friend, I garnered from her wisdom that the true circle of impact is much closer to the heart and it’s easy to disperse our energy when we get caught by the wanting-creatures.

Kabir’s warnings against the wanting-creature notwithstanding, it’s difficult to “stand firm in that which you are.”  This is especially so in a world that loudly proclaims it knows us better than we could know ourselves.  It’s easy to doubt our senses and to lose them.  It’s a short tumble into the rabbit hole of crippling grandiosity and inadequacy.  To persist with diligence requires reducing our reactivity to the voices that decry our strengths, our commitment, and our willingness to begin again moment after moment.  It means honestly appraising our deepest intentions, willingly acknowledging our deepest fears, and proceeding with attentive awareness of the impact of our actions.

I’m not sure if this is what is meant by “soft power” but it does seem softer than the sledgehammer and crowbar approach and more powerful than strong-arming a connection.

an unknowable purpose

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There is this chaotic moment in renovations where the content of rooms begin to infiltrate each others space.  That’s what happens when we instigate change: barriers drop and boundaries blur.  As a masked introvert (that’s someone who is an introvert but can play the role of an extrovert), I shy away from large gatherings, especially ones that can trigger my insecurities as a professional.  Yes, I still hold a membership in the Group for Impostors and Miscellaneous Posers (GIMPs).  So this mindfulness conference was a challenge at many levels and my only recourse was to find a sofa somewhere out of the scrum and curl up with sufficient determination to drive away all the other introverts.

The problem however is that deciding to go to a conference (after avoiding it successfully for 8 years) AND agreeing to present at it effectively precludes all the introvert’s strategies I’ve cultivated over the years.  More than that, having cultivated a practice of being aware of the never-ceasing flow of sensations meant I couldn’t even lie to myself.  Saying yes to engaging in the marketplace is by definition opting for change, being open to change, and being vulnerable to what havoc that change can wreak on the fragile self-system.

At the same time and thankfully, it opens us to confirming what is important and necessary to continue to be who we are.  Who we truly are, not the clinging fearful self who emerges when threatened with loss.

This was the space I eventually entered as the myths and misperceptions of who I am as this or that flowed around me.  These projections were the real impostors and posers yet it was disconcerting to see the constructed imaginings that had grown in the minds of others during my absence from the gatherings.  And of course, despite recognizing them as delusions, I caught myself hopping into the minds of others trying to find that rewind and erase button.  I know you’re not surprised that I was an abject failure at re-directing even one misaligned neuron.

This is the uncomfortable and crucial truth about engaging in the marketplace.  Only you will know who you are.  All else is constructed to serve an unknowable purpose.

collateral effects

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It occurred to us one day that single-paned windows may not be the best thing to have in an already-leaky old farm-house.  That didn’t astound us as much as the fact that it took 30 years of living here to suddenly have the light bulb go on or the light shine in on this fact.  I wonder – and then ruminated – on what we had done with all the money that could have gone into changing the windows decades ago.  And then I anguished about the possibility that we might have made a bit of a dent on saving the environment had we not squandered our earnings on food, clothing, paying loans, and sending the kid to university.

The truth is I couldn’t imagine how I would prepare the rooms (15 windows!) so that there was access to the windows.  And then there was the worry about how much damage there would be to the existing frames and how much would it cost to fix the collateral damage!  I rarely seem to worry about the task itself as I do about collateral damage; an approach that, my friends and mentors point out, keeps me from actually engaging in potentially life changing events.

Well, as it turned out – and yes, it often turns out this way – the ball got put into play unexpectedly when a company called to say they would be in the area to put in windows and would I like a quote.  Impulsively I said, Sure!  Who knows if they were really in the neighbourhood but the timing seemed right.  And this time, I thought to myself, perhaps I could capitalize on what might be the collateral effects; how’s that for a positive outlook!  There are three rooms in the house that are good candidates for an episode of Hoarders and this would be a good time to do some Radical De-cluttering.

So there we were on the holiday weekend, packing, tossing, and trucking to charity bins what could be re-used from 30 years of clinging.  And I learned something about how to meet collateral effects.

practice is what you can’t imagine

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CAN YOU IMAGINE?

by Mary Oliver

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now – whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit — surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.

from Long Life: Essays and other writings

practice is trust

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There’s a book of variations of kanji script that is the calligrapher’s Bible.  Every kanji character is reproduced in dozens of versions, some by ancient masters of shodo, some by unknown clerical scribes.  Because I don’t actually read Japanese, it takes hours to find the kanji character I want and then to track down the variations.  Then it’s about practicing the strokes, hour after painstaking hour.  The deeper practice in working with the variations is that they don’t tend to look like the original script.  It requires a level of understanding of the stroke sequence to grasp (or even read) the variation.  But more, it requires trust that all the lines are present in the final variation even if you can’t see them.

I’ve started to understand this process as one of transformation not unlike what happens when we commit to spiritual practice.  We start with the traditional ways of doing things, focusing on form.  Slowly as we begin to understand the unfolding of breath and body, we can play with variations.  I think benefits from that phase of practice only accrue when we acquire  a level of trust in our ability to represent the whole with only the hint of a part.

Last week was my personal deadline to finish editing my Chaplaincy thesis and putting together the portfolio.  I’ve felt somewhat ambivalent about whether I actually accomplished anything in the last two years.  Sure, there were tons of papers on wide-ranging topics and reams of reflections and oodles of analyzed data.  But I wondered if there had there been any real transformation?  I think I saw a hint of it as the portfolio took shape – a shift in adaptability, an openness to new perspectives, an accommodation of concepts that didn’t assimilate well initially, a willingness to be vulnerable in black-and-white (which is an improvement over being black-and-white to avoid vulnerability).

No, I’m going to be more self-supportive than that.  I was astonished by the shifts in my perspective, my connection with the work, the training, the way of being as a Chaplain.  If you asked me if I noticed any change, I’d have said I didn’t.  But there it was in folder after folder, neatly slipped between transparent sleeves and falling nicely into the spiritual journey of the 10 Ox Herding pictures.  While I truly cannot point to it as I sit here, I have to trust in the variation of my life script that is contained in that package flying south thanks to UPS.

Practice is patience, endurance – as trust forms.