Qualities of noticing: building a personal self

Following a great talk from Gil Fronsdel on how self is constructed, I had a nice insight yesterday about personal identity.

Fronsdel says that when something happens, there are three things going on:

1. There is the reality
2. There is what we think about the reality
3. There is the “I” that is thinking.

These are conditional, that is, they depend on and arise from each other.   When I see something, I think something about it and my self in strengthened.   For example:

1. It’s raining today
2. I hate rainy days.
3. I’m not suited to living in a rainforest!

In Buddhism, we get locked into suffering when we think ABOUT something and then believe that thought.   Who we are, our core identity, is in fact a set of stories we believe about our preferences about reality.

As a facilitator, this simple construction is a very important tool to use to reach clarity before working with a group.   Imagine this construction:

1. People are yelling at each other.
2. They are in conflict and I hate conflict.
3. I am a peacemaker.

So yes, but in the moment, you are going to suffer some when the meeting you are running counters your experience of yourself.     You will think that you are failing if you are “a peacemaker” and yet your participants ar eyelling at each other.   As a facilitator, when I get caught in that kind of thinking, I notice that I immediately become quite useless to the group.   Why?   Because I have left reality and I am spinning around in my thinking about reality, suffering and self-involved as my identity and ego get challenged.

People who have no thoughts about conflict are incredibly resourceful when yelling arises.   They simply see yelling, they are able to listen and observe and notice what is happening.   But those of us that are still working on our comfort with conflict might shy away from it, shrink away in fear, try to paper over differences or deny the reality of the moment in favour of a temporary comfort.

This is why it’s always good to work with people, especially with people who are afraid of different things than you are.

Working on this stuff is a key personal practice for me.   I do it with meditation as well as working with Byron Katie’s method, called “The Work” to inquire into the thoughts and beliefs that are causing me suffering.   My partner Caitlin Frost uses The Work as a cornerstone to her coaching practice, and it’s a real gift to have that available in our little firm.   It lets me do much more than I ever could on my own.   I’m curious wht your experiences are and what your practices are to challenge the constructions of mind that limit your own work in certain situations.

Tomorrow, a post on what this process looks like at the collective level.