The Amiel Blog

Meeting-free week #2

During my year-end review in December, I asked myself: how to create more time and space in life for the important-but-not urgent activities like writing, reflecting, extended spiritual practice, play, and reading? One answer: declare one meeting-free week per month, starting with a pilot period from January to March. No client calls or F2Fs, no business development, etc.

Last week was the second one of the year. Several observations:

1. Not all important-but-not urgent activities fit into the "retreat-like" categories listed above. I spent quite a bit of time on finances, bathroom planning (not how to go, or even how to help Jacob go, but what the new one in our house will look like) and processing my inbox like a good GTD (Getting Things Done) practitioner.

2. Once aware of this, I found myself feeling frustrated, even angry. "I'm not doing anything I want to do!"

3. What was evoked was a familiar pattern of interpreting an event in a way that seeds self distrust. Ah, that familiar friend! Is it possible to give the superego the week off, too.

4. A second such seed: I backed Julie's car into a telephone pole, the first one I've hit in twenty years. I was alone in the car, and the bump exerted less force on my body than dumbbells do when I lower them to the ground behind my head. To honor my commitment, I didn't schedule my "meeting" with the body shop until the next Monday (today).

5. Now here lies the genius of the meeting-free week. I had and created (more than the usual amount of) time to feel my emotions, listen to the body sensations, and use meditation to unglue myself from the bodymind's constrictions.

6. Notably, I delved into Wilber, which reminded me of the developmental benefits of meditations other than the kath (my standard practice as part of being a Diamond Approach student) and of the distinction between "pathological" neurotic fear and the fear that all bodyminds have of death, of losing their sense of self. The latter insight relaxed me instantly by suggesting - yet again - that some of my everyday anxiety isn't "bad" but simply human and a subtle sign of Rocketship Amiel preparing to blast off into or beyond what Wilber calls vision-logic (which is transverbal but not transpersonal).

7. The week concluded last night with Julie and I doing inquiry (into our respective moment-to-moment experiences--another Diamond Approach practice). While listening, I did a third-eye meditation and felt more present to her and myself than usual. Remarkably few thoughts cluttered the mind. My inquiry ("monologue") that followed involved mostly exploring the meditative buzz and the visual and auditory sensations through which I felt its expression. Beautiful!

8. Guess what was the first email in my inbox this morning? Yes, a request from a client to schedule something during my meeting-free week in late March. Time for a counter-offer!

Weekly inquiry by phone

New life experiment that supports my commitments to Diamond Approach and to new friendships: weekly 60-minute inquiry calls with Cliff. I met Cliff at Enneagram training part II in upstate New York. He lives in Washington DC. 

The structure of today's call:

• 2 minutes of friendly banter
• 5 minutes of silent meditation
• Repeating questions, 10 minutes each
• Monologues, 10 minutes each

It's hard to describe repeating questions and monologues in the Diamond Approach tradition to those who haven't experienced. So let me summarize: it's about getting very curious about your immediate experience: body, heart, mind, you name it. What's true for me right now?

For example, today I asked Cliff to ask me the following repeating question: "What does your heart want to say?" If you answer this question twenty times in ten minutes, it can be very revealing, particularly if 2/3 of the time you speak in the first-person as the heart. Or so I learned today.

My monologue? Again, impossible to summarize, but I can say it was mostly about exploring what I have to "bring to the table" in life and the ways I have discounted or disregarded this in the past. Fascinating exploration. 

Experimenting with staying in one place

We're now a week into November, and I just realized what this month's experiment is about: imagining we'll live in Portland for the long term. And not just imagining it but living as if this were the case. A host of factors have led to this experiment:

• Deepening my Diamond Approach practice has helped me get in touch with--and see objectively--some distorted thinking to which I have been prone the past few years. In particular, I've seen the fallacies behind the narrative that "I'm meant to be in the Bay Area because that's where my community is, that's where four or five of my best friends are, that's where I developed a spiritual practice and learned Integral Coaching." It's an interesting story with some facts to support it and many that don't support it. The big "aha" was realized that the people I consider great friends in the Bay Area are not great friends by my own standard, one that includes frequent communication. In fact, the notion that they are great friends is a concept in my mind that, when poked even slightly, falls down rather quickly.
• Developing a whole set of deliberate somatic practices (nutrition, strength training, etc.) has helped me feel present in my body, in my home, and in this city. I actually feel like I'm here rather than thinking about being someplace else.
• We have made investments in our home over the last year, and I've enjoyed the process. These include waterproofing the basement, buying and sculpting a new screen door, getting the exterior window trim painted, putting a cap on the chimney, trimming bushes in the back yard...and the list goes on. Each investment we make, each time I talk to a contractor, and each time I see the physical results I experience myself as someone who owns this home, who inhabits this space.
• Recent reading about being self-sufficient as a family and neighborhood in the event of possible/probably energy and food shortages in the future due to peak oil and global climate weirdness--this reading points to many virtues of not just Portland but the neighborhood where we live. More on this below.
• Three 9-year-old girls in the neighborhood stopped by two weeks ago to offer their "practice babysitting" services. We accepted on the spot, and within minutes they were playing with Jacob in the living room while Julie cooked dinner and I lifted weights. 
• Twice in the past week, colleagues have referred possible clients to me, something that hasn't happened in a while. I suspect the timing is related to the publishing on my newsletter.
• A general feeling of contentedness and ease I feel, even when contemplating somewhat dismal scenarios for the economy and biosphere. This is the sign of a healthy (Enneagram) Six mind: highly alert to what's happening, particular dangers, yet relaxed, confident and trusting about the ability to respond.

The list above is not just what prompted this monthly experiment but also a descripton of how that experiment is unfolding.

Now, let me return to the question of what makes Portland a great place to be in the face of possible food and energy shortages sometime in the coming years? To answer this question, I'd like to quote the most important factors in choosing a place to live from the book Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front by Sharon Astyk:

• A place that would be good to live not just in five years but in 50 or 100 years
• Water--and lots of it--both for drinking and farming. This rules out places like Arizona and Las Vegas, which may see a mass exodus when U.S. water supplies  decline. Fortunately, never wanted to move there. In contrast, Portland and the Northwest as a whole has plenty of water, not just rainfall but reservoirs and the Columbia River.
• Not sitting on top of major energy resources (e.g. oil, gas). No problem here with that.
• Local food security, i.e. the region can mostly feed itself rather than requiring on imports which in turn depend on intact transport networks and low fuel prices. The Willamette Valley is a great place for growing food.
• Near the people you love. This is where Portland falls shortest. We are lucky Wendy, Bill, Phoebe and Will are just two hours away, but the rest of our families are spread out all over. I'm sad to write this, but the broad spread of our families makes no region any better than any other, unless it is one likely to attract other family members to move there. Perhaps Portland can be one such place, particularly once our country starts to feel the impacts of peak oil.

Portland actually matches up better on most of these criteria than the Bay Area. 

Let me mention a few other dimensions of the experiment happening this month:

• We are starting to explore ways to grow vegetables in our back yard (and possibly in the front yard). My father has agreed to help me do some research during their trip here this weekend
• I had a solar installation company come out to talk about putting PV cells on our roof for either solar electric or solar hot water. Solar electric is practically free, but it requires building a bigger dormer, i.e. one that would be part of a second bathroom project
• I've made connections with two men in the neighborhood who are thinking about home and neighborhood preparedness. 
• I've become more willing to do coaching work that pays less than my standard fees but is local in order to be of service and further embed myself in the community

 

Loosening the ego's defenses

After seven years as a student of the Diamond Approach, I'm finally starting to get a hang of it. The spiritual practices and the teachings behind them are intriguing me, and my assessment of them is both more positive and more grounded. Let me explain...

Imagine listening to what you consider a boring talk for 45 minutes, then engaging in an experiential exercise that is wonderfully revealing, then taking a break and listening to another boring talk. This is, more or less, what my experience has been going to DAS (Diamond Approach Seattle) large group weekends for the past three years. A month ago, I felt so perturbed at the end of a weekend that I said to myself, "I'm going to finally quit." Then, three minutes later, something unusual happened. I said to Julie, "I want to quit but before I do, I want to plunge myself fully into this work rather than be halfway in. Then decide whether to continue or stop." This plunging in I have termed "doubling down." (Gambling is always the best source of metaphors for spiritual practice).

This declaration shifted me from the language of complaint to the language of commitment. It also involved an awareness of a way of being that, to put things kindly, was not so helpful. The way of being shows up in thoughts like this: "I'm doing my part showing up. They're not holding up their end of the bargain. So screw them." But that's not all. Also thoughts like this: "I'm so sick of this, but I need to be loyal here and stick with the program." But that's not all. The way of being also expressed itself as furrowed eyebrows, tight belly, and a global somatic contraction. Proof, in other words, that my personality structure was alive and well.

The genius of the Diamond Approach is that it provides a simple and practical way to work with this personality structure. Rather than ignoring it or trying to transcend it, it challenges me to inquiry into this structure as it shows up moment to moment. 

So once I "doubled down" on the Diamond Approach--by practicing the "kath" meditation every day, doing inquiry with Julie a few times a week, beginning to do weekly phone inquiry with a new friend, listening to Hameed Ali on mp3, and reading his books--suddenly I began to discover the fascinating ways this personality arises. I'll give more examples of these in another post. Suffice it to say that the experience of staying with my present experience and peering into the personality has on numerous occasions allowed it to release its grip on me, opening to a more spacious awareness.

Doubling down on spiritual practice

When you try something and it doesn't appear to be working, you have a few options: stop doing it, do it differently, or do more of it.

I've been at such a decision point with the Diamond Approach, a spiritual practice I've been doing for five of the past seven years. In short, it involves inquiring into my present experience to unfold different qualities of being a human being. Combines eastern spiritual traditions with western depth psychology.

After nearly leaving "the work," I decided to double-down, i.e. do more. In practice, this means:

• Increasing the kath meditation practice from a few times a month to daily. The kath is the point just below the belly half way in between the front and back of the body. The meditation involves focusing attention there.
• Reading more writings by A.H. Almaas (founder of the Diamond Approach)
• Listening to Hameed (A.H. is his pen name) on the ipod
• Doing more regular inquiry practice with Julie and others

I'm doing this for the spiritual practice. If you wondering about practical benefit, here is what I anticipate over a period of 6-12 months:

• Greater contact with my own power center and ability to act from it
• Greater capacity to feel an open heart
• Quieting of my overactive mind, in particular the repetitive "what could go wrong" or "how I screwed up" thoughts
• Asking my individual teacher to help me draw connections between what we discover in our work together and the brilliant array of distinctions that Hameed has made in his writing and teaching, a.k.a. connecting my experience with the theory

As I write these words, I feel excited about recommitting to this practice and a sense of inner guidance that it is a direction worth pursuing.