CHAPTER 17

The Shift In Context—Not-Doing

The intention of the Work is to produce freedom in us. There’s only one way that freedom can be produced in us and that is to choose Work mind over neurotic mind. It has to be a conscious choice, and the only way that we’ll ever make a choice that’s conscious, fully conscious, is to see neurotic mind in its totality, in its death. To see it for what it is—empty of all substance, empty of all possibility, empty of all creativity, empty of all genuine, human feeling, empty of heart, empty of mind, empty of everything except its own mechanical survival impetus. That’s it. Until we see it that way, until we see our lives, our love for our parents, our drive for sexual fulfillment, our taste for fine food, our love of good music—until we see all of it as nothing, absolutely nothing but totally mechanical, dead slavery to neurotic mind— we’ll never choose the Work.

(Lee Lozowick. In: Young, 157)

. . . The mind of the child . . . made certain decisions about his or her world or about reality based on a child’s intelligence, a child’s understanding, a child’s expectations and projections. That mind grows up to be, as we all know, absolutely consuming. That mind possesses us. We identify with it as if that mind were us. Sooner or later in this Work we’ve got to break with that mind, cleanly and finally . . . —all its elements, all its identifications, its hopes, its dreams, its wishes, and its morality . . . every single element of that mind has to be severed. We have to literally stop functioning out of the context of that mind. (155)

The dominance of the intellectual-emotional-complex depends upon continuity of thought. Break that continuity and its dominance ceases because judgment ceases. What is produced when this continuity is broken is a “shift in context.” I no longer operate from an agreed-upon definition of reality, but from reality itself. I operate from what is, exactly as it is, not from meaning supplied by the intellectual-emotional-complex. This entails an acceptance of reality without desire to change anything. It entails non-interference with what is. I take my cues from direct experience of reality in the moment, not from memory which is the past, or the past projected forward, as what it calls the future. I live in the unknown, in organic ignorance, which is intelligent because it is in direct contact with the source of wisdom, without the interference of memory.

Memory is useful for remembering, solving technical problems, and communicating with others. Thus, it is not abandoned. It simply finds its lawful place. It ceases to be the master and becomes what it was designed to be: a faithful servant directed by a force other than its own contents. That force is being. Being emerges as the active principle only when it ceases its identification with the intellectual-emotional-complex. At that point, when the memory thinks, there is not inner movement towards or away from the thought; this movement towards or away from thought is identification. Instead there is steady equilibrium, stillness, absence of movement when the thought arises. In the shamanic tradition this cessation of movement towards or away from thought is called “not doing.”

The cessation of movement sends a direct signal to the Creator. It is called in ancient traditions “The Invitation.” What enters only upon invitation is a flow of information from higher centers which are the source of wisdom. Some say these centers exist outside of, but directly connected to, the human biological instrument, but I am unsure of this. What does seem clear is that the direct link to these centers is conscience. Conscience is the emotional center transformed into feeling center. Conscience receives direct information from these centers in the form of intuition and inspiration. Intuition is a fundamentally different form of thinking from higher intellectual center; it sees everything at once, the whole of a situation, its past, present, and future. Thus it is able to inform in a way which includes the unknown, whereas memory can always and only act from the known. It cannot know what has not already happened, thus it always operates from the past and is the past. That is the limitation of thought.

Intuition operates on a different scale and from a different context. So does inspiration. Inspiration is a fundamentally different form of feeling; in fact it is feeling and not emotion. The distinction is important to understand—see if you can intuit the difference without thinking about it. Emotions are limited because their function is limited to measuring danger in the environment. They consist of anger, sadness, happiness, and fear, and they are housed in the emotional center. Anger and fear are not the same as rage and terror, which are housed in the instinctive center and make up what is called the survival-instinct. Anger and fear are the shadows of these two primal emotions.

When the emotional center is transformed, it becomes feeling center and is the seat of conscience. Then it is a conduit for higher emotional center. Inspiration is from higher emotional center, or as I prefer to call it, higher feeling center. That makes the distinction clearer. Unlike thought from memory which operates linearly and step by step, inspiration gives me the whole picture in its entirety all at once, not separated and divided into pieces and steps. It operates as an entire circle, not a straight line.

Unlike memory, which can only operate or “think” from the known, intuition and inspiration operate in, and are functions of, the unknown. Thus they are capable of supplying information totally inaccessible to thought, impossible for thought to access. It is a common story throughout human history that great inventions, insights, and discoveries happened “in a flash of inspiration.” At such moments, women and men were able to see the whole picture clearly. And it usually comes in the form of an image or picture. Thus Crick saw two snakes intertwined and intuited the double-helix of DNA. Einstein saw himself traveling on a rocket ship at the speed of, alongside of, light and he intuited the General Theory of Relativity.

Now here is the beauty of the intellectual-emotional-complex, which is not the enemy or at fault but is merely performing the functions it was programmed to perform, the way any computer does. Once there is a shift in context within, the function of this complex is to translate what is received from intuition and inspiration into language and images which can then be shared with others: communication. The writers of the Gospels, the Dhammapada, The Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching were communicating received wisdom from intuition and inspiration and translating it into a language which could be understood and shared by others. But it is clear that these writers understood the limitations of language in this regard. Lao Tsu warns us immediately, in the opening lines of the Tao:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

(Tao Te Ching. Sutra 1)

Lao Tsu is describing the shift in context, and at the same time is warning against being seduced by words. Each is pointing to the primacy of direct experience over knowledge gained by words. Thus, although their wise counsel is useful and precious, it does not absolve me in any way from finding the truth for myself. I must verify what I am told by my direct experience. The simplest and most direct experience comes from self observation. This practice will lead me, lawfully, to the shift in context because it will gradually and patiently reveal to me the contamination programmed into the intellectual-emotional-complex. All contamination is, is simply unnecessary thought and inappropriate emotion accompanied by tension in the body, following habitual patterns down the same well-worn neural (brain) and nerve (central nervous system) pathways and always arriving at the same useless and unworkable solutions = insanity. Why react to that? What’s the point? Simply recognize, understand, allow, and return to the task at hand with attention refocused on the body.

When I have reached the point of exhaustion, breakdown, and hopeless despair, only then will I consider a shift in the context from which I view my life and the world. This shift leads directly to a piercing of one’s contamination. Finally, my attention must return to its home: in and on the body. Then the attention has found its true place and proper function. Then the practice of not-doing arises.

We are all operating damaged instruments, damaged by our childhoods, our life experiences, and the way our primary caregivers programmed the intellectual-emotional-complex. I am trained to view the world only through those programs, so my context for viewing the world is their contents. This is an extremely limited and fear-based world view. What is required for me to live a fuller, more complete, and more satisfying life is that the context from which I view myself and this life shifts.

This shift can only occur through understanding and knowing myself in a more conscious way: not habit-driven, mechanical, on automatic pilot, but with compassion and objectivity. Objectivity means that I see myself honestly, I know and understand myself clearly, and I am willing to take full and mature responsibility for what I see and feel. Self observation provides the vital information with which I can do this. In its absence any changes I try to make are just shooting in the dark, confusing the part with the whole, and are doomed to fail. If I see it and feel it, I don’t have to be it. If I’m not willing to see it, I don’t have any choice.

Self observation with compassion simply means that I stop judging myself and just see and feel whatever arises. Judgment is a trap I fall for every time and is not productive, useful, or compassionate. It is harsh, rigid, and keeps me trapped in an unending cycle of action and reaction. Unless a third force enters into that action-reaction cycle, no substantive change is ever possible. That third force is self observation and its very existence is substantive change. Everything else accrues to it like metal filings to a magnet. Self observation attracts help; it is a fundamental attractive force in the universe. It allows me to operate more efficiently and more objectively in the field of the intellectual-emotional-complex. It is the savior. It is consciousness coming to know itself, learning how to learn and create, while doing the least amount of harm. It is objective love in the process of becoming.

Often the Greatest Help Is Not-Doing

After blowing several obvious chances

to help my Guru, once by His direct request,

finally my prayer was to be of some use to Him,

no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.

Like nearly everything my mind imagines, nothing

unfolds in the way i had it figured.

Because i loved her sweet voice and

the way she bled out the tunes which

Mister Lee wrote for her, i was inspired

to write some torch songs, some blues

for her, which i did.

None of them amounted to much, but

i took them to Mister Lee and told Him

what i was up to. He said,

Writing the songs is one of the few things

which gives me real pleasure.

That is all He said. He

did not ask me not to do it, did not say

that to do so would rob Him

of one of His few pleasures;

no plea, no justification, no excuse, but

in that moment i saw my opportunity,

the thing i had prayed for.

Without regret or self pity,

i never wrote another song.

(Red Hawk)