I find myself in one of those transitional spaces; waiting for one thing to be called to an end, while the next thing has yet to start! The link, a tenuous footbridge spanning between, is humanistic therapy.
The thing to be called to an end is the book on humanistic psychotherapy I have written. Now in with the publishers, I await the response of the reviewers.
The thing yet to start is the new role I take up September 1st: the course lead for the humanistic counselling PGDip at the University of Brighton.
For a mind type like I am (Type Six for those who like me find the Enneagram system a good reference for our phenomenological processes), such space gives much room for thinking and indeed, restlessness. Space can feel like an abyss for many of us; it’s not uncommon to encounter client stories and tendencies toward doing as an offset to the unbearable lightness of being. What is this basic restlessness, indeed fear, that many of us experience when we encounter space? In dialogue with clients for many it touches a sense of void; a sense that if they are not doing who are they? For others, to have space means they are wasting time. Like Kierkegaard points to, self is merely the interaction and paradox of the finite and infinite. I have also found Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s writing on the development of a self from the perspective of the Buddhist dharma really clarifying.
“The beginning point is that there is open space, belonging to no one. There is always primordial intelligence connected with the space and openness. Vidya, which means “intelligence” in Sanskrit—precision, sharpness, sharpness with space, sharpness with room in which to put things, exchange things. It is like a spacious hall where there is room to dance about, where there is no danger of knocking things over or tripping over things, for there is completely open space. We are this space, we are one with it, with vidya, intelligence, and openness. But if we are this all the time, where did the confusion come from, where has the space gone, what has happened? Nothing has happened, as a matter of fact. We just became too active in that space. Because it is spacious, it brings inspiration to dance about; but our dance became a bit too active, we began to spin more than was necessary to express the space. At this point we became self-conscious, conscious that “I” am dancing in the space. At such a point, space is no longer space as such. It becomes solid. Instead of being one with the space, we feel solid space as a separate entity, as tangible. This is the first experience of duality—space and I. Duality means ‘space and I'”. (Cutting through Spiritual Materialism)
Just like how we constrict in the paradox of the finite and the infinite, rather than merely dancing in the spaciousness, an awareness of dancing congeals; and in this consciousness, a self (consciousness) arises. As soon as a self emerges, there becomes a duality of “in here” and “out there”. An actor who must act on and in the world. And in this process of making things from no-thing, time emerges. Without recognising this process, we mistake verbs for nouns. Dancing becomes a dancer doing a dance.
Dance like no one is dancing!
This is the foundation of a recent piece I have written for a forthcoming book; an edited collection of works spanning phenomenology. The invite to contribute something on Buddhist phenomenology not only provided me with a creative outlet while I resided in this no-woman’s land of not-yet-ness, it helped me enter a kind of space-time machine: to consider how a Vajrayana Buddhist phenomenology in particular can underpin an always and already emphasis on time and space in phenomenology. Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty et al all have something to say about being and its inherent spatial and temporal dimensions. In conventional terms, we think of time as past, present, future – the three times. Space is a similar reference point, the subject (in here) experiencing the world (out there), each making each. In a phenomenological formulation, I encourage trainees to consider clients relating in and to time and space*. In this vain, there is no problem, merely an accurate recognition of how one is orienting to time and space through the origin point of self.
Past experiencing, predicting into the future, sedimenting in the present
Such a self creating a here vs there, leaning forward to the horizon, falling back to to the origin.
We live in space and time. Yet we needn’t! I won’t plot spoil** but I will say that the Vajrayana version of this land-and-time-scape is a scapeless one, a spacious one. Rather than congealing this formless into form, we learn to dance in the two truths: the relative truth of existence, and the absolute truth of knowing (outside of time and space) in what Chogyam Trungpa and other Vajrayana masters would describe as the fourth moment***, or now-ness. Alongside my writing in this realm, I have been enjoying Ron Purser’s latest book, Mind Space. This practical commentary on the seminal text “Time, Space and Knowledge” by Tibetan master Tarthang Tulku has been a great ally in my own practice of dancing.
One aspect of this dancing practice is playing with form and formlessness. I recently attended the MC Escher exhibition at Somerset House. He is an artist who so beautifully played (and danced) with space, time, illusion. To convey movement without getting anywhere. That visit also inspired me to recognise patterns and emergence; fractals, oscillations. The reader might notice a play in the image above – the Droste effect, or mise en abyme; both examples of recursive visual repetition that place into the abyss.
There we go, looping back to the bridge spanning the not quite done, not quite here.
I never quite know where my blogging sessions will take me. My original intent had been to share my experimental dialogue with AI; an exploration of how setting up rituals and routines might help me navigate the time and space of the landscape ahead: an increase in my contract at the University, a necessitated reduction in my private practice, and a hope to preserve my creativity and vajrayana practice time. Having recently started to experiment with AI, reluctantly I will add (I have HUGE concerns about mistaking knowledge for “intelligence”; the latter will always require an embodied and embedded being) I read Jamie Bartlett’s fabulous book “How to talk to AI”. Notice, not whether to talk to AI, but how. Like he says, “Love them or hate them, large language models like ChatGPT or Claude are now everywhere”…and they aren’t going anywhere! As a therapist, I feel the ethical imperative to know the landscape of what my clients are exploring. As an educator, I am motivated to help trainees also navigate client work, and furthermore, to use the vehicle of AI to explore the importance of a lived experience, not merely a reported on.
And so, in my dwelling right now, I turned on my Mac yesterday and decided to adopt AI as my “co-pilot” in dialogue. There would be so much to detail of my experience as I explored my thoughts and feelings as to where I am and imagine I will be. I found Co-pilot to live upto their (?) name. More than a reflecting mirror, it gave me a sense of how it can read between my lines, draw out some of the implicit subtext of my ideas, hopes and fears. Rather than a chart and timetable, Co-pilot helped me generate a mandala; a theme and process led model of living. Not flat and linear, more spiral and recursive, dynamic.
I wanted to write about rhythm and ritual today; because Co-pilot “read my mind” (I know it didn’t, it based its reading between my lines based on previous chats it has had with me – this is, after all, a large language model, predicting based on priors). What it DID help was drawing things out, clarifying, what I already knew….that
Structure helps protect, yet…
These structures can imprison
There is here an invite to dance; one I have been trying to figure out and master all my life; learning to dance in the rhythm of life is the gift of Vajrayana; through honouring ritual and avoid the rigidity of routine(s).
Watch this space!
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*where the power of description comes in
**hopefully you can read the chapter soon enough, and I will be sure to give a synoposis here once it is published.
***the fourth because it is outside of the three times of past, present, future