August 27, 2009

Peter, you have given generously of your time, providing advice to the Dalai Lama Center, and working with Connecting for Change twice now.  Why?

I think that creating opportunities for extraordinary people like this group to come together, to build a larger and deeper sense of community amongst those who are doing systems change work. I also see this as a powerful experiment in learning what it means to be fully present to learn with and from each other, across sectors, and with people like His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I see Connecting for Change as a powerful learning field, or perhaps an ongoing learning journey, and am here to support it.

You have done many projects in which you use the “learning journey”, could you say more about that?

Learning journeys are both a metaphor and a practice. As the former, the image evokes the elements of the hero’s journey: the call, the venturing out and encountering great challenges externally and internally, and returning and seeing things with fresh eyes. As a practice, learning journeys take people out of their everyday context to immerse themselves first-hand in aspects of larger systems to which they are connected but which they do not see directly – like when people who sell food spend time in farming communities or people in energy companies see first hand the effects of climate change in the polar regions. Seeing a gathering like C4C as a learning journey invites all of us to explore our own thinking and that of others in fresh and new ways, to allow ourselves to be open to a connection to the world around us that has not been made before.

What have you found helps people accept this invitation for a different kind of conversation?

People and place. Throughout history we have had elders who invite people into deeper reflection, people like the Dalai Lama, and places with powerful energy to which people have gone to awaken themselves. We need a lot of guidance and we need to learn anew about how to work with this kind of guidance and energy, but there is certainly a greater acceptance and desire to do so. In fact, you have talked about Connecting for Change being a “scared possibility space.”

What you are suggesting is not easy….

No, both because of the external and internal dynamics we face.  My sense is that we all have to learn to keep our heads about us in a world that is and probably will become increasingly turbulent. To let things come and to let things go. When you working with big issues like climate change or poverty the world does not need our personal suffering added to what is there. What people like about His Holiness the Delai Lama is his lightness and his humor– he seems determined to have a good time no matter what. We all need to learn to be that way, to be light and to be present. It is too easy to get thrown off balance and to loose our bearings very quickly by the challenges and cross currents. I am fascinated by the paradox of being committed and engaged and yet detached –  at the same time.

Might we come to understand this paradox more fully by discerning the difference between our intentions and our visions or goals?

Yes, - if we consider the nature of true or deeper intention. What I mean by this is that if you ask people to state an intention, they will usually describe a particular goal.  

There is a trap here I believe.  I think it is possible to have what you regard as a very strong vision, but yet not be clear about your deeper intention or what it means to align with that.  And then you can get very attached to that vision. Your mind is locked in on a particular objective. There is nothing wrong with this; it's a natural state of affairs, but it can make you rigid to what is actually emerging around you.

By contrast, consider the premise that it is not possible to become attached to your intention. You can get attached to a goal. If you suddenly start to think, “this might not happen”, fear arises and, with it, a tendency to manipulate things to get what you want. This manipulation is an automatic by-product of the attachment.

You cannot get attached to a pure intention because you can’t be attached to who you are. You can only become attached to an ideal of who you are, such as a way I think I should look. It is pretty easy to get attached to that. But who I am is who I could not not be. How do you become attached to something that you could not not be?  If your deeper intention is an inseparable part of who you are, it is not capable of attachment.  

I don’t think you can seek to accomplish your intention. You live out of your intention; it is like the wind, the life force from which your energy and determination arises, whereas your vision is a particular destination you really want to reach.

So, as best I can understand, the heart of the dynamic of being truly committed and nonattached is to anchor in your deeper intention and focus your energies on realizing your vision while at the same time l knowing that the vision is at best a reflection of your deeper intention.

So, you are saying that that it is possible to be truly committed and not attached?

Yes. Indeed it is essential to developing our mastery in the creative process.

For years we have expressed this basic idea as the principle, “It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does.” In other words, rather than obsess about realizing my vision, consider it as a force for change, a way of aligning my actions with nature’s unfolding. When you operate this way, what happens may not be exactly as you imagined it in your vision, but what happens would otherwise not have happened if I did not hold the vision. To take a personal example – I could hold a vision of genuine perfection in some domain, and although I might never realize that vision I might achieve things that I would have never achieved otherwise. It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does.

In this spirit, pursuing a vision is a way to live in harmony with your deeper ineffable intention. In this sense, vision is a tool for orienting our energies and effort around who we really are.  But when we obsess about whether or not our vision is being achieved, we confuse the animating force behind our being with an idea created by our mind.

This idea that we confuse vision with deeper intention is in line with the common view of many spiritual disciplines, including Buddhism, that we live mostly in a confused and deluded state. We confuse our body with our Self.  We confuse our self-identity or self-ideal with who we really are. We confuse the content of our thought or awareness with the capacity to have awareness.  It is this state that led Robert Frost to characterize enlightenment, as “a momentary stay of confusion.”  Naturally, in this confused state, attachment is a big problem.

But knowing that a deeper intention animates my life and out of that I create images of the future I truly seek to see realized, helps move through this confusion. In this way you can be committed and non-attached – fully engaged in realizing your vision yet at peace with whatever happens.  It is a paradoxical state but one that arises from a deep inner alignment and devoting one’s life to “cultivating” oneself as they say in many spiritual traditions, to life as a learning journey of becoming a true human being. Without this commitment to cultivating oneself, the inner force or qi as they say in Taoism and the spiritual energy is weak, and there is no inner alignment and consequently no difference between commitment and attachment. We then inevitably intermingle our own inner struggles and suffering with our aims to improve the world. This is the lesson I take from being around genuine teachers like His Holiness the Dalai Lama who are both profoundly committed and radiate a lightness of being that touches so many of us.