My Shadow at the In-formation Frontier

Hey friends,

 "Where am I resisting reality right now? That is my in-formation frontier. I listen as if my life depends on it."

That was the question posed in my tweet sent yesterday, and the reply on my Facebook thread from Natalie Lamb asked how I structure my practice to handle the "fight or flight" reaction that arises when I get really triggered by the answer.

For context, here is the tweet and the lead-up to my reply:

"Where am I resisting reality right now? That is my in-formation frontier. I listen as if my life depends on it."

In reply, Natalie Lamb and I then exchanged the following:

NL: And when you've heard?

RS:  Natalie, the very act of noticing/listening turns the subject-ive information into object-ive information, which in turn creates the transformative moment of in-formation. The practice then becomes repeating this, over and over and over. It ends up in a hacked version of a non-dual mantra: I and reality are one, I am the in-formation that reality is up to in this moment.

Of course when it taps into a deep seated well of previously rejected in-formation, aka shadow, than the conditioning is to resist, reject and fight or flight. Then I move into a practice that seeks to expand the boundary of the self while reintegrating what's been left behind.

Finally, often the result is that the in-formation is that there is a good reason for the resistance, that I have some significant objection to what's afoot. Then my practice is to become the evolutionary force that changes reality, but, importantly, not getting stuck in last moment's prescription. Always staying open to new in-formation. Hopefully laughing all the way.

NL: Robb - in your fight/flight/freeze what's your practice to expand the boundary, and the practice for embracing and integrating?

What follows is my reply to Natalie's last question.

I suspect for all of us this is among the trickiest territory of our lives, when we've been triggered and now we've dropped into the resist, reject or flight or fight mode.  It certainly is for me.  The practices that I engage are nothing new, just things that I find helpful.  I lay them out in order from the moment the state is coming on.

First, awareness.  The first thing that I do, and it's been a a constant practice to develop this skill, is to catch the state when it's coming on.  I don't try to stop it, I just notice when my body is enacting in-formation that is challenging.  (I like the image of my body literally being in formation to a new state that is trying to tell me something if I would just shut up and listen.  It is literally life saving information for reasons I outline next.)  The physiology is obvious if we weren't so conditioned to it: breathing gets shallow and quicker; the adrenal glands start pumping small injections of adrenaline to prepare the body for fight or flight; the mind starts to race; the limbic system takes over and strong emotions become the dominant mode of being (as opposed to stillness, contemplation, thoughtfulness etc.).  I also know that my cortisol levels are going up, which will increase long-term heart cardiovascular risks and propensity to obesity, and my oxytocin levels are going down, decreasing my biological capacity for compassion, empathy and ability to relate to others.

PRACTICE: I simply try to notice the state arriving and to be mindful of the breath.  I purposely try to slow and deepen the breath.  My mantra at this moment is: "Wow, what a fascinating reaction. What am I resisting about the future in this very moment?" I also purposely look around at my environment, which instantly forces me to widen my view of reality.  I notice my surroundings, perhaps look outside.  This draws my mind outward from the natural egocentricity of the state.

Next, openness.  After I've stabilized a modicum of equanimity within the turmoil (which by no means is gone at this point, I've merely blunted its razor sharp edge a bit), I work to open to the in-formation I'm being given.  Let me repeat from above: 

the very act of noticing/listening turns the subject-ive information into object-ive information, which in turn creates the transformative moment of in-formation. The practice then ... ends up in a hacked version of a non-dual mantra: I and reality are one, I am the in-formation that reality is up to in this moment.  

So I'm tweaked and my body is telling me so.  I now just remind myself that this pain is my friend and I welcome it.  This is not some new age tripe.  It is a fact that I either pay now or pay bigger later: my body doesn't like this present experience and I'm suffering because of it.  If it's due to undigested past experience (shadow) then I better not create more right now.  The things we get tweaked about compound over time, in my experience (they do seem to mellow as we forget about them, but then they pop up in even larger strange ways later).  As a financial investor I believe in the time value of money and compounding returns through the years; as an investor in my own well-being I believe the same.  So I welcome the fact that in my suffering right now is some information my body wants me to work on and that will benefit me over the coming years.

PRACTICE: The first practice at this point is to come back to the breath and identify where I'm feeling the pain.  For me it's often a clinching in the deep upper belly accompanied by adrenaline that continues to recur when I picture the triggering event.  I just sit with it for a moment and am grateful that I can be with this horrible feeling right now.  Yes, it sucks, and wow isn't it cool that I'm alive and can experience anything at all? 

PRACTICE: The next practice I engage at this point may only make sense to me, but it really helps to settle my mind.  I call this my "Simple Feeling of Wholeness" practice.  I remind myself that I am suffering right now because in my mind-projection I am not feeling whole. I am feeling incomplete.  I remind myself of something that at other times I know and is my normal state of being: that in this moment and all moments I am whole. It is a simple statement that I say to myself:

"Nothing I can do now or ever will make me more whole."  

I don't precisely know why, but this always calms my mind.  I believe it has something to do with the way our practice life has to be custom-fitted, like a great pair of ski boots or a knee brace or a tailored suit, to our particular AQAL Constellation and personal history.  To some degree I believe we have to tailor our mantras and practices to those unique triggers that for whatever reason just have a unique effect on us.  I'll get into the A/C in a bit.

(Technically, I might increase the scope of the whole over time, that is increase the scope of reality with which I can identify, but never can I become more whole.  Of course, if someone has not had a realization then this is not "true" from their reference frame as they haven't awakened to their innate wholeness.)

Finally, integration. OK, so now I'm aware of the state, and I've identified its place in my body and welcomed it.  That whole process took about 1 minute so far.  It was really just the ante to be in the game of processing what's really going on, which is where we integrate the experience.

I should start here by saying that there are dozens of practices people can use to actually make sense of and integrate painful experience.  People use journaling, body work, fitness and exercise, creative endeavors, therapy and many other domains of practice to get at this part.  What I do is perhaps sort of a feeble process compared to most of these, and again I am only sharing what I do.  (I'd suggest that a good use of the comments field on this post is a discussion of what your favorite methods are.)

When it comes to integrating my in-formation state, I have to come to a nuanced but important conclusion before I can proceed: is my reaction, say to fight or flee, based on 1) a real harm that has befallen me or 2) on undigested past in-formation (shadow)?  And in what ways is my unique AQAL Constellation coloring that conclusion and the dynamic?  I say more about each of these below.

1. Let me start with whether I'm encountering real harm.  

Real harm, short of actual physical injury and pain, is always simply boundary violation.  Now it's popular to remind ourselves that an ego-less way of being doesn't have boundaries to violate and therefore we should work to do away with the ego, but that's something that Ken Wilber and others have pretty well demolished.  We all have egos and I think the work is to make the boundary both really subtle and really so expansive that we are able to identify with and beyond most transgressions.  H.H. Dalai Lama's position on Tibet is really about as profound as it gets on this point, from what I can tell.  And as Krishnamurti summarized: "I don't mind what happens." (I'm not equating the two views, by the way.)  Due to many years of practicing the way I'm outlining in this post, I have become capable of forgiving people for a huge amount of boundary violation.  

PRACTICE: The practice for me here is the one from part 2: I remind myself that I am not less whole when people act out because they haven't realized their own and act out of their perceived sense of isolation.  

This is all about compassion. All people feel some version of lack, loneliness, scared, isolation, confusion, terror and impermanence.  Through a life of practice we can grow out of most of these to the point where they are virtually gone, and certainly where they don't dictate our behavior, but most people have not.  Reality is terrifying.  In its overwhelming majesty, in its incalculable mystery.  Yeah, compassion is good.

AND, some people are consistently problematic.  Their particular game to play out is that they will crash through boundaries of civility, convention, agency, personal space, etc.  They need and deserve compassion.  But they may also need isolation, rejection from the community, hard and direct communication, behavior modification, and many other prescriptions.  So the discernment that has to be exercised in thinking about the harm I'm going through is to what extent it is being caused by another person's willful boundary violations.  If they are willful and harmful, I may still do the work on expanding my own ego boundary but I have no problem with moving into a very firm mode of conflict resolution. (That's really a whole new topic that I'll leave to another day but gets at the heart of the problem of integral leadership in a post-conventional worldspace, where convention by definition means boundary.)

2. Next I proceed to my shadow.  

I know what my shadow is and have remembered feeling it since I was 6 years old.  Or, perhaps more accurately, I know what it has been.  And yet I am always discovering the more and more subtle ways it manifests next even as I bring yesterday's version into the light.  It's a lifelong relationship, and I've learned to love the ways my shadow helps to cultivates my uniqueness.  This doesn't mean I'm always proud of it, pretty much never so, but I appreciate what it's doing in the real texture of my life and my contribution to the world. 

PRACTICE: The practice I engage in to discover how my shadow may be showing up in my fight or flee reaction is a hacked version of voice dialogue grafted on a lifeline archaeology.  Because I have identified where in my body the reaction resides, I quickly check-in with what voice is dominant around that pain.  It may be the voice of envy, the voice of lack, the voice of loneliness etc.  Mine is almost always the voice of lack. (I'll come back to my AQAL Constellation, which bears on this, in a moment.)  So I do a quick archaeology of my personal history and check-in with the experiences where I have also felt that voice strongly.  I sit in the space of those prior events and really feel where that voice has gotten its validation throughout my life.  I go back as far as I can and try to "look as" my younger self caught in that voice.  I really sit with the pain and frustration of those experiences.

Then I switch perspectives to a much older and wiser version of me, right here and now, and "look at" those same moments.  I breathe all the compassion and love and wisdom of my present self into my memories of a younger self until the gap between my "looking as" self and "looking at" self begins to close.  My younger self gets wholer, wiser, and less hurt.  The painful voice diminishes in volume and intensity, even sincerity. Present state wholeness begins to infuse my former stage partialness.  Healing is underway.

There are a lot variations on this practice but it always comes back to bringing my present power to a past partiality and re-full-filling my past.

META-PRACTICE: A deep inner-sangha is also critical for working with my shadow.  I have a trusted group of friends and advisers who I can share anything with who will give me honest and very informed perspectives on what I'm seeing, what I'm missing, and where my responsibility lies.  Even though they each have their own their shadow, I know and they know enough about their own shadow that it doesn't color or prejudice the feedback they give me.  Therefore, there are no interpersonal games of power and a precious foundation of trust is deepened over time.  This is my community of the adequate, and it includes 4 people who are all turquoise or indigo in their stabilized self-construction.  This is also important in my experience in creating an inner sangha: having people who are peers in terms of meaning-making structure as well as a person or two who can see and enact beyond where I am now.

3. Finally, I'll finish with how my AQAL Constellation might color my prejudices and reactions to all of the above.  

I think knowledge of one's AQAL Constellation is critical to being to able to "look at" one's own current unique way of being.  It sheds a lot of light on what I will be naturally inclined to see or miss and what actions and reactions will come instinctually to me in any given situation.  I have discovered mine over time by working with the Integral Life team, our Certified Integral Coaches and by working with developmental testing support services (like Theo Dawson's DTS or Bill Torbert's Harthill Consulting).  Please understand that this is meant just to be a very brief snapshot, as a full treatment could be a book-length project.

Native perspective: My "home base" perspective: Lower-right "systems" view as primary, and upper-left "subjective" view as secondary.  I am aware that I have a natural facility to see the big picture quickly.  But when big picture combines with a subjective bias I am also aware that I have a blind spot in considering how my own actions (UR) might have promulgated the situation I'm in and also the views and experience of others in the process (LL).
 

PRACTICE: Because of these natural blindspots my practice tends to be to consciously remind myself to take broader responsibility for when I get triggered.  Not responsibility for the mere fact of being triggered, but responsibility for how I may have blindly created the conditions for the situation in the first place by not analyzing thoroughly enough the impact of my actions on the perspectives and action-logics of others.

States: I have a strong bias towards cognitive thinking states and also observer witness states.  Like Huy Lam pointed out here about himself, I can always hang out in empty awareness if the going gets rough.

PRACTICE: Because of these natural tendencies my practice tends to try to come forward emotionally and take deeper responsibility for the emotional space I'm helping to create.  This can be as simple, and as frequent, as me taking responsibility (in a fun way) for trying to brighten the space of the Starbuck's barista who serves me my vanilla-soy chai tea misto (yes, I am that lame). 

Typology: I am an Enneagram 8 with a 7 wing.  I have a powerful throw weight in terms of setting the emotional climate of a room (something I really had no idea about until the past few years when people pointed this out to me) and am able to set and maintain very powerful boundaries.  I have a love for variety and need a high degree of stimulation in my life.  I also believe that DNA must have something to it, because as a descendant of Martin Luther, I am also naturally inclined to creating and leading personal and social disruption. (This doesn't mean I'm good at it, just that I don't really notice some of the things that other types might find fearful.)  Referencing the above, I am not inclined to take personal offense when people break through my boundaries, in part because I've learned to hold my boundaries as very flexible.  As an 8, the only way one can grow is to learn to relax boundaries, otherwise you end up as either an asshole or arrogant (mine was arrogance).

PRACTICE: Because of these natural tendencies my practice has emphasized letting others take the lead role in projects and trying to play more of a background role myself.

(Levels and lines: Perhaps one of the juicier parts of the A/C for this community, I will leave this to another day.)

I'll conclude where I started:

"Where am I resisting reality right now? That is my in-formation frontier. I listen as if my life depends on it." 

I do take the process I've outlined above very seriously, because it is my belief that the total quality of my life does in fact depend directly on it.  I hope you can find something useful or stimulating in this brief walkthrough, and hopefully we'll hear about your most effective practices in the discussion thread to this post.

Warm regards,
Robb