GRATITUDE
It was a precious moment of life which I deeply be with myself. Many stories, people in my memory were alive again. Working with Early Childhood Dream, beginning like I was trying to un-box a mystery. Finally it is a great gift box which lets me root and reconnect with my deep self again. Thank you for bringing myself to do this.
Thank you to DDI faculties, all of you are contributing/sharing yourself a lot on your own beautiful way to the DDI community. Many times you bring awareness and share the beauty which you see in others. I bow to you. And all members and friends in this community around the world. This community impacts me alot in many aspects of my life. Friendship from many people here. I totally see myself and the world differently. All challenges, opportunities and great resilience in this community help me little by little to feel belonging/connected to the world as I have never before. It is so precious to my life.
Thank you Julia Wolfson for your so much support and really helping me see more clearly on the way in this work. It does really help me. Love to you. Special Thanks for your guidance my Coach/teacher, Max Schubpach. I remember he mentioned it in the Paris DDI Intensive 2022. About when he hears what people told him Process work helps their life this and that. He said If he is able to use other words instead ProcessWork. The word will be “be human”. It’s so touching. You have taught me how it is like to be humans to each other for many years that I know you. Thanks for wisdom, awareness, support, respect, being seen, joy, challenges and everything which you have shared with me.
PART 1: DETACHMENT IN MY LIFE MYTH
How my life myth helped me discover my spiritual path of detachment in real life situations, as I grow into my full self: dropping out of consensus reality and living from that detached space, relating from that detached space and using that detached space as a gift for everyone.
MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD DREAM
I was running in a running race in my school sports days. I consider myself to be a tall person who has long legs when compared with other runners. But every runner passed me, even a runner who was shorter than me. Finally I was left behind. Then I try to run harder by forcing my legs to step faster. But no matter how much I try to force my legs it turns out to not go faster as I wish. It looks like it moves slower even though I put in so much effort. After I force more my legs feel heavier but move slower; even float a little from the ground. I feel frustrated and worry about not being able to run and follow others. In my mind, I have little hope – maybe to be the last one but not too far from the second last. Then I put more effort but I feel heavy and fatigued with my legs and heart beating faster and exhausted with slow motion running. I keep going until it is like moving in one place and I am so exhausted. Then I woke up.
My dream shows me two aspects of my detachment path
Detachment aspect: Easier experience
I know when to yield
I mean, I know when to stop and give up from something, like an idea or people that I have been carrying with me. I know a little bit about that. To explain more, it is like I had been doing or getting into something, like a plan, a project or ideas. Suddenly I dropped everything. It feels like inside I want to drop and don’t think about how much effort I have been putting in. On the other hand, not dropping seems harder to do than dropping from inside.
I also found that I can easily change from side to side in group work. Or when I am in a group of people who have a tendency to be occupied by the atmosphere of a group they are in at the moment, I find myself able to get away from that atmosphere which influences people at that time.
This is a story which just pops up. In an early memory, I had a fight with grandma when I was young. She is almost 90 years old and I was 16 or something at that moment. I can’t remember the whole context, but I remember she held something in her hand and I knew it did not belong to her. Then I tried to take it from her hand. After I was trying to take it back, for a while we started yelling angrily at each other. Then out of the blue, my grandma laughed out loud and dropped her hand and smiled back at me. And she said something like: “ What a stupid thing we are doing”. I still remember until this day. The sense of humour that helps to lose up and allow to be a witness of a situation instead, and detach from it.
The above memories relate to my childhood dream in the area about when my leg and body stop moving and I wake up from a thought/idea/expectation/identity and I wake up in the present moment.
Detachment also resonates with me about X energy. Before you unfold it, X energy will trigger you in a relationship. After unfolding you are able to be more in the present moment.
Detachment aspect: Deeper experience
When I feel free and can be myself totally.
I mean, having no thought and clear mind and feel myself totally in my body and I become who is there and be there for what is needed in a given situation. This connects with my childhood dream about being totally in the present moment and being free from any thoughts or concepts which I’m supposed to have. Free from my past and any future plan. No need to compete for anything. Only wake up and be with myself.
Something which is still in my mind that I heard from Bardo Crouse in Nepal last year at Tergar Osel Ling Monastery with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche:
“Just say in the situation you are in – This is a dream”
I really like the sense of liberation and detachment from this simple sentence.
The bardo teachings of Tibetan Buddhism are profound and precious teachings that address both how to approach the transitory experience of this life and how to use this wisdom to skillfully navigate the process of our own dying and rebirth. At its heart, the bardo teachings are concerned with the core teaching of impermanence, and with the liberation that comes with recognizing the true nature of the mind.
From The Six Bardo With Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche – https://www.tergarasia.org/
There is another story from last year when one of my close family members had depression. I was there in the very first week of this thing happening. I deny the truth at the beginning.
Because it was sudden. Not easy to believe. I keep denying it. One day I had a chance to ask Max my coach and teacher:
“How could I live with a depressed person who I also care about? I don’t know how to deal with it. Will he be ok? How will other people think of close people who were around him? I freak out a bit”.
Max suggested to me that I should talk with strangers about my situation living with someone who has depression, and wait for a reaction. Many strangers and friends who I shared with also had experience, or know and are close to somebody who had depression too. I feel free and can open more about depression.
All the burden and misconception about this disappeared. I also crossed my edge about accepting this after I started to talk about it with strangers, friends and family. And it’s getting better. I feel more free from the perception of being accused and guilty. Also I am able to engage and fully accept a painful heart in me from the situation and this helps me to see this kind of soft-tenderness heart in this feeling in others. I felt not alone in this.
This event is really an open tenderness part for me. In every hurtful or painful or falling apart experience, if you can be with or recognise it totally, and you look around in the street you will feel it in others too. This helps me. It felt like being alone with other warriors who are also alone with you too. To share pain with others also allows me to get away from my situation and have space for myself and be able to look back with a new perspective and have a gentle approach to everyone.
I also found deeper experience from the following contexts:
- After meditation retreat.
- When I have to make a big decision in my life.
- After some deep Process Work sessions.
- Sometimes in a group process.
- I am among people who have great awareness, which really helps me to be myself.
- Sometime in nature.
PART 2: DETACHMENT IN AN EARLY MEMORY
How an early childhood memory helped me find my way to see clearly because of the inner distance to what is happening, in terms of relating to my own difficulties, and also the world around me.
Summer camp and first grade memories: We are going to die!
When I was young, there was a special summer camp for children from the last year of kindergarten to first grade. I don’t want to go to this special summer camp because none of my siblings have to go. I like to play, not study. So I cried so hard and my mom doesn’t know how to deal with me. She told me many things but it didn’t work. So she told me that I needed extra studying and this camp is for slow-learning children. My mom lies to me in order to make me be peaceful and obey. I think she didn’t do this to lower my self esteem.
She just didn’t know how to deal with her daughter in a situation like this. She was exhausted from financial problems and family life. But it worked. I went to summer camp with a broken heart. I kept silent and did not talk to any new friends in that two week summer camp. I thought:
“Who wants to be friends with a stupid girl like me!”
I believed I was a stupid.
After summer camp, in the first few months of new school, my mom told me to be a good kid and obey the Catholic nuns in school. I like all nuns because my mother admires nuns and they look so kind.
One day a Catholic nun came into my class and started to talk about the world going to end in the year of 2000 from Nostradamus prophecies and many things. At that time, I thought that I was a stupid kid. As a stupid kid, I won’t go to a good university after finishing high school. And life will not be good. But this nun told me that we all are going to die in the next 12 years. And I believed her. I remember I was in a corner in the school library where I was counting the years with my little finger many times and figured out it would be the year that I would finish high school and go to university.
“Bingo! My worries are solved!
To go to university and adult life is meaningless.
Studying in school is also meaningless”
This is what that seven year old me was thinking at that time. Studying sucks except for my two favorite subjects, Math and Art. I only learn just enough to pass in other subjects. I didn’t succeed in school much. But it is ok. I don’t really care much actually.
I played a lot when I was young. I cried if I couldn’t go play for a day. Even literally I had non-stop playing almost everyday. This also causes me not to plan anything much because we are going to die soon anyway. I was a girl who had no future plans in my mind. Also no ambition either. Only approaching things by direction from feeling inside.
PART 3: NON DOING/PHASE 4 DETACHMENT
How I recognised my detachment path in my culture, in Process Work and from my mother’s example: non-doing in Tao and Buddhism and detachment in Process Work’s phase 4 moments.
Non-doing detachment in Taoism
Tao Te Ching Chapter 3
If you overesteem great man,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.
The master leads
by emptying people’s minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
She/He helps people lose everything
They know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know
Practise not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.
Tao Te Ching Chapter 48
In the pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
Until finally you arrive at non action.
When nothing is done
Nothing is left undone
True mastery can be gained
By letting things go their own way.
It can’t be gained by interfering.
Here in this thesis, I chose only Chapter 3rd, 48th from 81 chapter in “Tao Te Ching English Version by Stephen Mitchell”
Non-doing detachment in Buddhism
Meaning of the detachment in Buddhism comes from that the Buddhism concept of everything is impermanence, suffering and non-self. This is a concept to acknowledge these realities and be able to release from the situation that you are in.
My mothers story and Theravada Buddhism
When I was a teenager around 14 years old, there was an adult homeless man temporarily sheltering himself in an abandoned land with a small shelter close to my house. He looked like he never had a shower for a while. As a teenage girl, I was so scared of him and felt insecure in his presence. One day I saw my mother carrying a bucket full of rain water.
I asked her what she was doing because she carried a heavy bucket in the direction toward the shelter. First she thought I was going to help her. But I tried to convince her to stop doing it as I realised she would give it to the guy. My heart is beat up, I feel fear and confusion.
I thought my Mother was going crazy. I remember she told me to move away If I won’t help. I stopped arguing because the weight of the bucket which she held looked very heavy.
And her voice was strong too. She was on her way to the man. I only keep my distance from them enough to still be able to hear the conversation between them. I heard my mother use a neutral voice and she said something very simple like:
“This is water and soap you can use for showering”
I also heard the guy’s voice. His voice was gentle and did not match with my imagination. His slightly happy surprise voice said thank you. And my mom also gave the guy a new cloth which she got from not using cloth in our house. All the actions were so simple and clean.
I mean no feeling of this was a good or bad or virtue. Only me and my confusion were left. No explanation to her confused daughter.
“Work is dharma practice – Live with empty mind”
Buddhadas, 1906-1993 – Well known Thai monk in Theravada Buddhism
My mother’s favourite Monk
When I was young and still even now I alway argued with my mom about why you give us so much homework. My mother alway told me I should work with an empty mind. From long experience with my mom, I think she meant:
“Don’t think too much about why I have to do this or not think too much about yourself. Don’t be angry with the task you have. Let’s find a joyful side in it and organise and find a way to make it faster”.
Detachment in Process Work’s phase 4
“Phase 4 Detachment is sensing how the universe moves you. Inevitably through relaxation, some detachment often occurs. At such times, our minds open up and we become more accepting of life”.
Arnold Mindell: Conflict Phases, Forums, and Solutions, 2017. Page 5.
Phase 4, ‘The Tao that cannot be said’ is the ineffable atmosphere, the deep sense of the universe that can be left but not easily expressed. Phase 4 is an experience of your deepest self. Or what I have called the “processmind” This essence level ‘mind’ might appear in dreamland dream images, in the first vision of an organisation, and is often behind the guiding myth or pattern for individuals and groups.
Arnold Mindell: Conflict Phases, Forums, and Solutions, 2017: Page 13
“Not-doing” occurs in phase 4. This means you are being dreamed; the power of universe in from of dreaming is moving you”.
Arnold Mindell: Conflict Phases, Forums, and Solutions, 2017: Page 113
My Memory in a DDI Workshop in Bangkok
One of the workshops in Bangkok many years ago, a young Thai woman and I paired up to do exercise together. At that time my exercise partner had an issue about suicide thought. She was sick and worried about how to take care of herself and was angry with her mother for what her mother had done to her in the past.
I asked Max our teacher, to help me out. He told the young woman suicide thought is normal. Everyone has this. Maybe it comes to mind that you don’t want to be here. Or you want to disappear. Or you imagine you run a red light. The young woman said she had many imagined ideas about how she would die. She imagined she would jump from the cliff many times.
Max asked her if she would like to explore more about this and try to die in a psychological way now. She agreed and wanted to try.Then Max told her to find a way to relax herself.
Young woman lay down and closed her eyes. Max asks if she wants to sink or float. She said her body was sinking now. Then Max told her to listen to what he would tell her.
He said:
“Let’s imagine if you were no longer bound with physical and any physical problem, pain. Cut it out and leave it and you can sink more. It does not hold you from here anymore. Imagine all longing, emotions, all relationships, painful past experiences, financial problems, incomplete conflicts, incomplete things with someone, anything you are still clinging to. Cut those things off and let it not hold you anymore from sinking”.
I saw her face was more relaxed than before. She still lay down and closed her eyes and told that now she was in the dark but she was ok and not afraid. Then she said something like she was able to forgive everything. Her face and body looked relaxed and fresh up.
PART 4: DIPLOMA THESIS DETACHMENT
How I found detachment from my thesis diploma in a conversation with my teacher and coach Max Schupbach.
I received this touching insight/part from a conversation with Max Schupbach. I heard myself saying to him:
“I now like to be alone. I was like everyone’s friend but I am alone and I will die alone.”
Because not all of me wants to get a diploma. But I want a diploma. There is a relationship issue. I like to be a diplomat with my friends. I really want to be a good Process Worker. I want to try to be a Process Worker. But not all parts of me are interested in this, that is why I am here.
This is my Thesis and here I am dropping out!