If fits are automatic, how can we become aware of them?
In which I consider the first step in understanding relationships
If you want to see fits, you have to get in your body. And stay there for a bit.
Which isn’t necessarily pleasant. Especially at first. Especially when there are so many delicious distractions that occupy our attention and, well, snatch us out of our bodies.
Problem is if you want to see fits, if you want to figure out how your relationships are working (or not), if you want to be a better person, you have to embrace your feelings. All of them. Good and bad. Because what happens in your body is incredibly valuable data about relationships.
So. Step One in seeing relational fits is getting in your body. And surviving what’s in there.
One amazing way to do this, of course, is mindfulness meditation. Sitting. Breathing. Watching. Letting go. Beginning again.
Another amazing way is called making the turn. This approach emerged from investigations made by three diverse people — Natalie Depraz, a philosopher; Francisco Varela, a cognitive neuroscientist; and Pierre Vermersch, a research psychologist — who wanted to honor and codify the (it turns out sophisticated) skill of introspection, of turning our attention inward.
Here’s how they recommend we make the turn:
Suspend the “natural attitude”
Redirect attention from the external to the internal
Let go and accept what comes
Suspend the “natural attitude.” The “natural attitude” is the automatic assumption that what I perceive is true. Emphasis on I — that is, what I perceive is true. Suspending that attitude means making room for other perceptions, other information, other truths. It means being willing to not-know. To suspend judgment. To release assumptions. To open up.
This suspension, this not-knowing, continues throughout this “basic cycle” of making the turn. It is crucial. Sine qua non.
Redirect attention from the external to the internal. If your attention is a spotlight, redirecting it means shining it on your insides. Not on your fleshy parts, obviously. But on your feelings. Your physical sensations. Your emotions. Your experience. What is happening in here? you get to ask. With curiosity and, frankly, faith that what emerges is important.
Note that shining a light on your insides is not the same as assuming that what you see is true. Redirecting attention does not return you to the “natural attitude.” Rather, it focuses you on data. Emotional and relational data. It opens you to a whole world of information that attending to the outside hides from you. And this world of internal data, my friends, is weirdly much more accurate than anything you’re going to pick up on out here.
Let go and accept what comes. I am going to quote from a book Depraz, Varela, and Vermersch wrote together because I think their description of this part of the basic cycle of making the turn is so beautiful:
Once you’ve focused your attention inward, you have to start
simply accepting and listening. In other words,…you go from “looking for something” to “letting something come to you,” to “letting something be revealed.” What is difficult here is that you have to get through an empty time, a time of silence, and not grab onto whatever data is immediately available, for that’s already been rendered conscious, and what you’re after is what is still unconscious at the start. (p. 31)
You’ve got to stick with your body and let it speak. Ultimately, it knows what’s up.
Just to be clear: Making the turn means examining your subjective experience. It does not mean suspending your right to be yourself. It means embracing what you know at your most organismic level — which is, it turns out, an incredibly informative level. (More on that in future posts.)
Making the turn also means recognizing that you can’t know this stuff about anybody else. If you’re a befogged but magnificent mystery, so is every other human being on the planet. Fitting with them means, first and foremost, looking for what is driving you, what is motivating you, where your prongs and outlets are, what buttons you have that other people can push. It means swatting away as much fog as you can so you can see and feel yourself clearly.
Which is what this first step is all about.
In long (which is the opposite of “in short”): You’re always living your own personal “truth.” Making the turn gives you a chance to see ever more deeply what that truth is — while also refraining from imposing your truth, your subjective experience, on others. If you can stay open to your own truth, you’ll be better at staying open to others’, which is essential to understanding them and how they fit with you and how you fit with them. (Which is the next step in seeing relational fits — stay tuned.)
I love this practice of making the turn. Not just because I know from experience that it works, that it provides a reliable foundation for understanding and being better, but also because Depraz et al.’s description captures how difficult the move is. I mean:
Agreeing to suspend my certainty about the supremacy of my own perceptions?!?
And its complement: Agreeing that other people’s perceptions and realities might have merit even when they’re totally different from mine?!?
Voluntarily taking a not-knowing stance?!?
Being still?!?
Embracing what arises?!? Even if it’s scary or crazy or unexpected or utterly nonsensical?!?
Sticking with these experiences while the unconscious rumbles upwards in images or memories or words or more feelings or blinding flashes of insight?!?
Yes.