Notes On Dissolving Our Assumptions in Practice

These days we’ve been doing group retreats. They are deeply inspired by Zen, especially the energetic transformation process that I went through in Japan under Shodo Harada Roshi. I think this energetic transformation process under him is unique in some ways in the Zen world. I am also, in my own way, presenting the energetic process without the label or much of the form of Zen.

There are a couple of different backgrounds people have who come to work with me. Generally, it is the Zen practitioners and the Non Zen Practitioners, with some wild cards thrown in! This post is about how we explore working with these different flavors.

Zen Folks Group

I see a lot of Zen practitioners and teachers. In some ways, these retreats, for those people, are an opportunity to begin to touch this true transformation process beyond the form, as it is common for people to think the form and the essence are entwined and the same.

Also, so many of the lineages of Zen have not brought this energetic essence aspect of true realization as they have spread from the East. Many of the people I work with are even teachers in their own lineages, but lack the essence, have found something lacking in their process, and so they come to do that type of deep homework. To feast further into the mystery, do the internal cooking, touch this source of what they are, knowing that is what will truly help others.

So, many of the people who work with me have come from a Zen background. I am teasing them out of their assumptions, attempting to free them from the constraints, the baggage they have taken on about how practice must be done. I get that primordial huge energy to open up in them, get them cooking, and they begin to realize something beyond Zen, which of course is what Zen is truly about.

Often with these people, I am drawing out the wild wholesale aspect they have locked down in their process. I am getting them to wake the dragon in their experience which they’ve often used the structure and form to control. I am getting the horses all running free. This is an amazing rebirth to witness. These people often know how to profoundly focus. They know how to be still. They know how to do the Zen grind. They have often done deep meditation. But they sense something lacking, something essential and primal missing in the manifesting of their process. I give them the opportunity to find something there when the form has been dropped. When we are interacting with our experience without controlling it. To find something there no matter if the form is supporting them.

Often with Zen practitioners, they have used the form to help them to dissociate or to help them to demand reality be a certain way. Or as a perfect formula to abide by that they think if they do it perfectly and by the book it will allow them to get from point A to point B. In these retreats, I am pushing them to honestly look at this. Teasing people away from the love affair with the form, the aesthetic bias, the culture, the heroic stories, the permission for obsession and power games, etc, is no small task.

Often in the form, Zen practitioners find a medium to finally channel their intensity into. But instead of becoming free in their actions (as is the point), the form can become a medium to bind and control their intensity, reinforcing it in a kind of self affirming container they can’t see out of.

People take on all kinds of baggage in training, along with the wonderful aspects they drop.

The Other Side

The other side of who I work with, and I am so happy to do this, is to work with people who are not Zen practitioners. Some have real meditation backgrounds. But many have not. They may be dancers, Sufi practitioners, Yogis, martial artists, embodiment teachers, various Buddhist practitioners like Vajrayana or Vipassana, eclectic spiritual interests, Twitter Posters, plant medicine explorers, artists, emotional and trauma release therapists, Jhana enthusiasts, etc.

These folks often are coming in from a different mindset. Some have real practice under their belt, and they can plug in very well. But others have dabbled here and there, but have mostly just read a lot and window shopped around, curating their own ideas of awakening from various puzzle pieces. Many come in with their own assumptions about practice, retreats, healing, awakening, etc. So that’s quite a mix of people at these retreats!

Many times with the people in the second group, the structure of the retreat, the quiet, the stillness, the demanded honesty, the spartan aspect, the disinterest in their story, their compensations, the disinterest in their identity masks or resume of practices they have done, is a bit bewildering. No one is there affirming the spiritual avatar they have created about themselves or their awakening story. We just tell them to stand there, sit, and see what is truly happening. Don’t talk. I don’t care about all that you are demanding I acknowledge. I don’t care about the contract about yourself you are demanding I sign… This is quite shocking.

I am giving them a chance to zero in more deeply into their experience, prior to the noise they live in, to find something burning below their radar, which will transform them. This is so incredibly radical. There is usually some protest, some mutiny. Some inability to be quiet or some performative rehearsed speeches, some posturing, some tantrums, attempted alpha practitioner coup d’état, painted into a corner, at wits end.

But something begins to move through them. Something which cannot be explained or rationalized, something beyond explanation. They begin to feel they are animated by something beyond their understanding, their entire being is being pulled into something beyond them, and this is revolutionary to them. They might not be conscious of it at first, but feel different. They begin to get quiet. They stop chasing me around asking me questions. They stop blaming everyone around them. It stops them in their tracks. They get more real. All of that noisiness, bouncing around, finally has some gravity to it which magnetizes them into their process. This cannot be figured out.

Everyone is a mix of both types above. We are all discovering this deep process beyond understanding. Something so beautiful.

I have had the huge learning curve of learning to slowly work with people in retreats from both polarities, with wildly different perspectives and needs. I am learning to manage it! LOL! Herding the cats is a wild process!

The work we are doing is important, I think. For people to discover the essence of what we truly are, in creative ways, breaking our assumptions, in this very body, in our normal clothes, beyond religion, touching this Great Life Energy and bringing that to the world in their own unique way.

For the Zen folks, maybe they choose to continue to deepen within the Zen form and become great teachers, giving lectures about koans or shikantaza, etc. The world definitely needs it, if they’ve done the real homework. That wasn’t my karma, but I respect it. Or they may end up working at Trader Joes or being stay at home moms, connecting with each person they meet from a profoundly interesting place, giving people hope about life, covertly cleaning the gunk from the world’s eyes.

And the folks who are not Zen practitioners, well, I hope we start a process within them that continues, matures, cooks down, and comes to a beautiful fruition. The world needs it so much, in all of its flavors.

From our recent Chute-à-Bull Retreat in Canada