musings of a braided stream

I've been staring at the screen here for a few minutes now. What to write about?

One of the books I'm reading right now is The New Larousse Encyclopedia of the Earth. I've finished the chapter on "Running Water" and have started the chapter on "Oceans and Lakes". In his discussion of running water, Bertin describes the different kinds of streams--for there is a great variety of types of river. In Buddhism, the mind is sometimes likened to a river, the stream of which shows many different manifestations, from rushing gorge to placid pool, without changing its essential nature.

Right now I feel that my own mind is like a "braided stream": a river that, having dropped a great deal of sediment on a comparatively flat ground, has broken into multiple intersecting channels, weaving across the landscape. There doesn't seem to be a "mainstream", just lots of parallel channels moving along together. My mind lacks its usual focus; it feels dispersed and unenergetic.

Astrologically this corresponds with a major transit of the planet Neptune, which is running over my natal Venus and square to my natal Mars. Neptune is a boundary-dissolver; it represents the yearning for perfection and bliss, which cannot usually be attained in the limited frame of an individual body and mind. Therefore Neptune symbolizes the desire to merge with something greater, to lose one's burdensome identity, to recover the lost bliss of the womb, before separation was discovered.

The transit of Neptune to Mars is always difficult, since Neptune represents the urge to give up and transcend ego, while Mars represents our selfish side: how we seek to assert our individuality and satisfy our personal wants. A common Neptune theme is sacrifice, giving up something we value without getting any obvious personal benefit in return. Our Mars nature generally finds this idea most unsatisfactory.

To a great extent, life is about giving things up. For one thing, being born means that death inevitably awaits us; we will all have to surrender our lives at some point. But along the way, other things have to be surrendered. Scott Peck talks about this process in his famous book, The Road Less Traveled. What we surrender in the process of maturing are the beliefs and goals of our youth. He provides a list of six or eight typical ones. One is the adolescent belief in omnipotentiality--the idea that I can do or be anything I want. As time goes on, we make decisions and close off avenues. When I was 10 years old, for instance, it may have been possible to aspire to be a professional athlete or a chess champion. Now, even if I wanted those things, I couldn't have them.

Omnipotentiality is not a reality in any case, I don't think. It was probably never an option for me to be either an athlete or a chess champion, not just because of lack of native talent, but even more importantly because of lack of desire. I didn't want those things. Fantasizing about them is like a giraffe fantasizing about being a cheetah. If you're a giraffe, you've got to go with that--there's no choice.

Surrendering such beliefs or fantasies is, I suppose, technically, disillusionment. We use the term in a negative way, usually--but what's so bad about losing your illusions? What do we have against reality? Isn't that just a drug-addict's view of life?

In Buddhism, disillusionment is seen as a good thing. Chogyan Trungpa Rinpoche, in teaching the practice of meditation, never made any promises to his students, except perhaps two: boredom and disappointment. Every student could look forward to those. We generally avoid those experiences like the plague, but Trungpa Rinpoche was enthusiastic about them both. Why? Because they're anti-ego. They're exactly what ego is continually seeking to evade and prevent.

But this is also the message of Neptune. If you identify with your ego and its desires, you're going to suffer anyway. If you can see your ego and its wants as not a big deal, then you suffer much less.

Easier said than done. Like many people, I tend to take my desires and hopes seriously, and feel about surrendering them the way Charlton Heston felt about surrendering his gun: you'll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands...

the psychology of health

I continue to read Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow. I find it fascinating, provocative.

One of his points is that he believes that Western psychology has missed a huge dimension of human nature in focusing on "motivated" behavior. He says that psychology takes it for granted that all behavior is motivated, in the sense of being done in order to attain some aim--to fulfill some need. But Maslow disagrees.

He says that motivated behavior (in this sense) occurs only to fulfill what he calls deficiency needs (or "D-needs"). This behavior is driven by a sense of lack: we lack physiological necessities, or safety, or love, or esteem, and do things to achieve these ends. But when all these needs are met (and for many of us, they seldom are), we don't stop doing things. We don't just like back on a couch waiting for another D-need to surface. Rather, at that point, we shift into the spontaneous expression of our nature. We follow our interests and curiosity, and our experience becomes deeper, more aesthetic, and less instrumental, less "means-to-an-end".

These self-expressive behaviors arise from what Maslow called our Being needs (or "B-needs"). When we're not driven by lack, our life becomes joyful and more fully human. We tend to do things for their own sake, and relate with others in a more total way--appreciating the individuality and totality of other people, rather than trying to use them as means to secure our own needs.

This is what Maslow means by a "psychology of Being": a psychology that looks at and comprehends this vast field of normal, healthy, fulfilled functioning. It's natural that psychology has focused on psychopathology: how to recognize and treat mental illness. But this focus has subtly enshrined the notion of "normal" (that is, not ill) as a mere lack of symptoms. And, to be sure, when you're ill, a lack of symptoms sounds great: you'll take it.

But the psychology of health is a field in its own right. And this was the field that interested Maslow, at least toward the end of his career (he died in 1970). What are the features of mental health? What are its aspects and behaviors?

As I read, I find many things that remind me of what I've learned from Buddhism and Shambhala Training. For example, when Maslow talks about how the experience of a person living according to his or her B-needs becomes more aesthetic--they appreciate experiences for their own sake--I remember reading in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam Trungpa that the "warrior" (that is, one practicing the path of spiritual fearlessness) experiences the world as an artist does: in his sensitivity to his world, he finds the sound of raindrops hitting his coat to be almost unbearably loud.

When we're engaged with our B-needs, we hear the raindrops hitting our coat. When we're engaged with our D-needs, we're too busy worrying about making it to the presentation on time and making a good impression on the client. The rain is a threatening nuisance, wrecking our hair and damaging our chances of "success". We do hear the raindrops, for they trigger our worries and preoccupation with what we lack. But we don't tune in to them as an aesthetic experience. Instead, they're mere signals or alarm-bells alerting us to problems in our quest to fulfill our needs.

All of this is good news. First, Maslow is saying (and for that matter so is Chogyam Trungpa) that the "normal", fully human estate is one of joy and presence to life. And second, that you don't have to be completely fulfilled deficiency-wise in order to experience your Being nature.

I know this. For I myself have neurotic traits and behaviors, no doubt brought on by problems in dealing with my D-needs. And yet, nonetheless, I feel I have enjoyed a great deal of Being in life: in important ways I have done what I wanted, and enjoyed the ride.

But I'm eager to learn more about the psychology of health. Among other things, I suspect that this will be one direction in which East and West can fruitfully merge their outlooks.

It's raining out there. I must remember to listen to those raindrops hitting my coat.