The art of not-doing Being in sync with what wants to happen

By Flemming Funch

Zen in the art of archery

“The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him.

This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill…”

Consciousness of Abstraction

• Something happens - “Reality”• It leaves traces - light, sound, etc• It is perceived through a nervous system - seeing, hearing• It is interpreted into a picture, a sound, etc• We make interpolations, extrapolations, guesses, to fill in the blanks• We invent or select words that describe our experience• We have a semantic or emotional reaction to what we think happened• We make mental models of how things work and what to expect• We communicate with language, exchanging ideas about ideas• We construct bodies of knowledge, beliefs, systems, e.g. science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semanticshttp://www.xenodochy.org/gs/abstractions.html

Are you sub-conscious?

• How do you construct speech?

• How do you breathe?

• Where do ideas come from?

• Where are your memories?

• How do you know when to take action?

Who are you?

Who are you?

A separate ego in a bag of skin?

The hallucination of who we are

”The sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination. What we really are is, first of all, the whole of our body. And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment. Obviously a body requires air, and the air must be within a certain temperature range. The body also requires certain kinds of nutrition. So in order to occur the body must be on a mild and nutritive planet with just enough oxygen in the atmosphere spinning regularly around in a harmonious and rhythmical way near a certain kind of warm star.

That arrangement is just as essential to the existence of my body as my heart, my lungs, and my brain. So to describe myself in a scientific way, I must also describe my surroundings, which is a clumsy way getting around to the realization that you are the entire universe. However we do not normally feel that way because we have constructed in thought an abstract idea of our self.”

- Alan Watts

The Implicate Order

David Bohm: beyond the visible, tangible world there lies a deeper, implicate order of undivided wholeness in flowing movement

The explicate order or apparently separate objects, entities, structures and events is “projected” from the deeper multi-dimensional order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholeness_and_the_Implicate_Order

Human Thought“Man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.”

“The attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. “

-David Bohm

Mind

"The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you."

"all the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind”

- Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now

Mindfulness

Calm nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness_(psychology)

The Unknown

Emergence

• What wants to happen?• What happens by itself?• How do you help evolution?• What do you feel?• Where is your passion?• What do you see that nobody else sees?

The inner music

“We rarely hear the inward music, but we're all dancing to it nevertheless.”

-Rumi

Not-doing

• To not do what you know how to do

• A more direct experience of the world

• The body more than the mind

• Suspending your world construct

• Transcending the familiar

• Acting without belief

Then how does stuff get done?

• Be in sync with what (already) wants to happen

• Gravity wants to pull things down

• Winds want to blow

• Water wants to flows

• Don’t argue with waves. Surf them!

Congruence

• Agreeing with oneself at multiple levels

• Agreeing with the universe about what is going to happen

• Harmony between parts and levels of a system

Dialogue

• David Bohm: it is proposed that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated."

• Rules: There are no rules. Examine and describe what is there, within you or in the center of the group. Be aware of your assumptions. Don’t judge yourself or others. Be ready for what might emerge.

http://www.david-bohm.net/dialogue/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

-Rumi

Flemming Funch

• http://ming.tv• ffunch on twitter, jaiku, skype, etc• ffunch@cr8.com• Toulouse, France