One of my teachers at one of my programs, James Flaherty, asked me an intense question once.  He asked, have you noticed how many people in our world are doing out of the ordinary things, just for the sake of being seen?  His examples were about recent Olympians who had felt like if they didn’t win gold, all would be for not.  And, I extended this notion, what about people who misbehave?  For example, sometimes criminals seem to me to be just acting out for the attention they perhaps did not receive as a child.  What about the loud, obnoxious person in a restaurant, about which we always say, “Oh, ignore him, he just wants attention.”  Yes!  That’s exactly what he wants, and perhaps a question we could ask ourselves is why someone needs attention so badly that they must act in uncomfortable or inappropriate ways to receive it.

I’m still reading Chögyam Trungpa’s Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, and in it Trungpa states, “A great deal of chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves.  Having never developed sympathy or gentleness towards themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is also inharmonious and confused.”

In my opinion, Trungpa is talking about the ability to “see” ourselves.  If we can see our own successes and pains, we have the ability to appreciate and be gentle with ourselves, and then we can give this loving gift to others.

I travel to big cities often, which I enjoy immensely.  However, I have a hard time when I am approached by someone begging for money.  Perhaps no where was this harder for me than one time when I was in France.  Being approached by someone asking for a hand-out in another language is rather interesting because you think you won’t know what they are asking of you, but there is a universal nature that one cannot miss to this sad question.  A woman with distant eyes and disheveled hair approached me.  I remember being haunted by the fact that her eyes would not meet mine, even though I was intently searching her gaze for some connection.  She was young and frail, and I was concerned for her safety on the streets.  She had a way of addressing me that suggested she was entitled to my handout.  I remember being frustrated by this, and even more so because I gave her something (I think it was my leftover food, but I can’t remember), and she moved on quickly past me to ask another passerby the same question.  Later, I happened to be walking down the street, likely out of a different shop, and she approached me as she had before.  I looked at her again for recognition, and I started to explain that I had already given her something.  My French however, is not that good on the fly, and I was afraid I would state “I give” instead of that I already had, so I kept silent.  Again, I searched her gaze for some recognition, I was naively even hoping for a thank you, and at a minimum an acknowledgement that I didn’t need to be asked again.  But, she gave neither and this time realizing I was not worth her time, pushed past me to get to someone else.  It was awful, I felt used.  I felt sad that I wanted to see her so badly, and yet she did look back to see me trying to do so.

A few years have passed and as I was reading Trungpa’s quote it occurred to me that that moment wasn’t about me.  In other words, she did not intentionally dismiss me.  Instead she likely could not see me, because she could not see herself.  I don’t know anything about this woman beyond what I wrote above, and still I hurt for her.  To me her pain was so palpable it was in the air, like a taste.  I thought that with my one glance I could give her some dignity in my acknowledgement, my seeing of her as a fellow human, if even for a brief moment.  In some ways that is a noble intention on my part, however it is also embarrassingly arrogant.  Why did I think I could give her what she needed, when she was not able to take my gift?  And why did I think I knew what she needed?  I’m looking inside for those answers…

Have you had experiences of being seen, either being seen by yourself, or by another?  What are the elements necessary to make it a loving exchange, do you think?

Note:  I originally published this post on www.depthpsychologytoday.com on March 1, 2009.

Likely, most of us aspire to be more like real, living tigers rather than paper ones, so why all the focus on not clinging to habitual patterns?

Thinking about what a habitual pattern is, I realized there is a neurological aspect occurring simultaneous to the display of the habit.  In our brains, after we pass the age of three, we are mature enough to start making neural connections based on experience.  Up to that point, our Limbic System is primarily driving our behavior.  The Limbic System encompasses the functions we share with the animal kingdom, including such things as our “fight or flight” responses, our capacity for infatuation, as well as our process to store memories as pictures (as we mature we include narrative with memory).

The Limbic System is active our entire lifetime, however as we mature we start building neural connections that help us understand and, as possible, predict our environment.  For example, we start to verbalize our needs and desires, say for food, and when reinforced by the acquisition of a meal, we quickly make a connection in our brain (a neural connection) about the steps required to receive food the next time we are hungry.

Over a lifetime, the web of neural connections is immense.  There are millions of neurons in the brain, each one capable of making thousands of connections.  And herein lies the physical representation of what is described above.  Our habitual patterns aren’t just quirky ways we live in the world, they are also physical neural connections within the brain.  In other words, inside each habitual pattern that we find ourselves, there is a corresponding map of connections across neurons in our brains.

This web of neural connections can start to feel oppressive.  The term “breaking a habit” now takes on additional meaning, because we can see this as “breaking” the neural connection within our brain that is related to the habit.

However, when we break open a connection, we are vulnerable.  There is a waiting space while some new connection is made.  And I believe the goal that Trungpa is describing is to always allow this openness and vulnerableness, that is, to ALWAYS make a new neural connection when we take an action, and this means not having an expectation of the outcome.

As an example, what if your experience is that when you share your opinion, you are dismissed?  Either growing up or in your adult life doesn’t really matter, but somehow you have a neural connection that suggests that sharing your opinion will lead to a dismissal which will lead to pain.  So, your habitual pattern is that you are mainly a quiet person, sharing only socially acceptable opinions, if asked.

Each time you feel the urge to speak that neural connection is firing for you, and you have a choice of whether to speak.  Let’s say choosing not to speak is your “habitual pattern.”  Being able to find that moment to pause and not follow your habitual pattern is the waiting space referred to above.  Being able to wait in the moment, and allowing your brain to break its neural connection (or expectation of the future outcome) and waiting to see what happens after you speak is the goal.

In the waiting, you are breaking the habitual pattern and its corresponding neural connection.  However, in waiting for the outcome (and not simply creating a new habitual pattern by expecting to people to listen well to you) is what is being asked.

And so I ask you to comment, are you a paper tiger or closer to a real tiger?  Does it enliven your thoughts about habits to know they have a corresponding structure in your brain?

Note:  I originally published this post on www.depthpsychologytoday.com on February 14, 2009.