the Seat of Passion

The other day I had occa­sion to write to a friend about Integrity:

Now, integrity has a few mean­ings, two of which are,

While my com­ment to my friend reflected the sec­ond, I also meant the first.

The first def­i­n­i­tion has a lot to do with why I add body­work and med­i­ta­tion to coun­selling with most of my clients. Coun­selling in gen­eral, and things in the West, are quite frac­tured. We seem to be quite will­ing to engage the world only through our minds. We get caught in dis­tinc­tions and judgements.

We get lost up there.

No way out if you trap your­self in.

Now, the joke is that the first def­i­n­i­tion could also be applied to our our minds. Imag­ine a mind that was “undi­vided or unbro­ken com­plete­ness or total­ity with noth­ing want­ing.â€

Wow. How Zen.

The prob­lem we have is not our minds. The prob­lem comes with how we use our minds. Minds are meant for data stor­age and prob­lem solv­ing. They are use­less for remem­ber­ing the past and for­tune telling about the future, as that’s noth­ing but the fic­tion we cre­ate to jus­tify what we already believe.

Using Your Mind Completely

Dar­bella is teach­ing geom­e­try to her stu­dents at this point in the term. She and I were talk­ing one day, and she said, “I think I’ll ask a bonus ques­tion: ‘Think of three ways to divide an angle in half.’†She was think­ing of mechan­i­cal meth­ods, i.e. with a compass.

I closed my eyes, cre­ated an acute angle in my mind, and over­laid a 30–60-90 tri­an­gle. I then flipped the tri­an­gle onto the other leg of the angle. I real­ized that where the oppo­site sides of the tri­an­gle inter­sected, divided the angle. I tried it, in my mind, with an obtuse angle, with the same result, and also with a right angle.

I told Dar, and drew it. It worked.

She asked why. I didn’t know. (I sup­pose I could devise a proof…)

Any­way, that’s an ele­gant use for a mind.

Decid­ing if my approach was the best, smartest, clever­est approach is not a good use.

Yet, 90% of the time that’s what we do, and we break the integrity of our minds in the process. I often sug­gest to clients that they notice what’s going on up there—roles, char­ac­ters, par­ents, teach­ers, all nat­ter­ing away, all with opin­ions. And here’s the joke—they are all ‘you,’ frac­tured you, lec­tur­ing you, all seem­ingly “in there,†for no appar­ent rea­son.

The rip­ples of the whole self

With undi­vided or unbro­ken com­plete­ness or total­ity with noth­ing want­ing, the mind becomes still and focused, and able to ‘see.’ It can see the still water, the peb­ble, the splash and the rip­ples, as they occur. Desir­ing noth­ing, want­ing noth­ing, the mind rests in what is.

So, you may say, “Yeah, but if no one wanted any­thing, “progress†would stop.†Nope.

Progress, art, design, liv­ing fully—these are part of what I call the ‘pas­sion sys­tem.’ Pas­sion is an energy, a chi. Per­haps bet­ter put, it is energy, it is chi.

In Chi­nese think­ing, Pas­sion resides in the pelvis, along with that other famous pas­sion, sex. Thus the lead image—referencing the seat of pas­sion—pas­sion for life is at home in the back pelvis.

Pas­sion is called “a burn­ing desire,†“intu­ition,†“imagination.â€

My desire to come up with a solu­tion to the angle prob­lem led me to use my mind to do so.

Ein­stein said, variously,

And,

And one from one of my heroes, Anaïs Nin,

Def­i­n­i­tion #2 is essential,

and that’s what is cap­tured in the Nin quote. I typ­i­cally use integrity in this sense—that what I say I do matches what I actu­ally do. This requires that I stop mak­ing judge­ments and excuses.

The only way we can move out of integrity is by com­ing up with either an excuse or an excep­tion.

Excuses are point­ers to “things out of my con­trol.†Like genet­ics, polit­i­cal pres­sure, and the infa­mous “every­one knows.â€

Excep­tions are accom­plished by mak­ing the present cir­cum­stance some­thing spe­cial, as in,

“I know I said I would not yell at my kids, but this time she was so bad I just had to.â€

“I know I said I wouldn’t drink when I had a bad day, but this day was so bad I just had to drink.â€

And on and on.

Integrity based liv­ing is doing what you say, with no excuses, while mak­ing full use of all of you.

Pas­sion must be freed for any of this to work. Pas­sion dri­ves us to cre­ate, to invent, to dance, to sing, to engage with abandon.

A client the other day, in body­work, kept using the word “fluid†as the feel­ing that was aris­ing. Metaphor­i­cally and actu­ally. Another client, a long time ago, was an actor. She said, “When I act I feel all flowy.†I kind of liked that word.

Moist. Damp. Heated. Dri­ven. Enam­oured. Impas­sioned. Entwined. Intense. Flowy and fluid. The words and con­cepts of pas­sion­ate engage­ment in wholeness.

Stop mak­ing excuses and excep­tions. Plunge fully into the stream of your pas­sion, engage your mind, and cre­ate your masterpiece.

Now.

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