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_semantics
http://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
