WHEN THE MERE ACT OF "NOTICING" CAN BE HEALING
For the past few weeks I have had people reach out to me after reading about my medical situation. I also had people who I have shared directly about what I have been going through reach out to me weeks after I messaged them. Most of the time their reason was not having the words to say. The old me will be so bothered and anxious about not having heard from these people. The me now embraces more space and grace when it comes to situations like this.
Yet I also know how silence or the lack of affirmation specially for someone who has words of affirmation as their love language (me!) as disheartening.
I have also been in circles lately where tension among collaborators have been brewing. The conflict is palpable when people are together in shared spaces both virtually and face to face. Yet, what is even more palpable is “the weight of silence”.
I personally have difficulty navigating silence when in a field of tension. Being the highly sensitive person that I am, silence travels to my body as a painful signal that is difficult to navigate. I feel insecure, tense, and even more dysregulated when I am faced in a situation where there is obviously an elephant in the room and nobody is addressing it.
I used to get so riled up about silence.
Nowadays I still do find it challenging to navigate yet I find myself having more wiggle room. When before, silence can be like a suffocating blanket wrapped around me, nowadays I can find myself able to breathe and take stock of what is going on.
What helped me navigate silence was understanding people’s way of dealing with situations vary.
They vary because of their cognitive processes, the way their brains are wired.
They vary because of lived experiences that include intergenerational and cultural influences.
They vary because of awareness and understanding.
We don’t know, what we don’t know. Tasha Eurich in a multiyear study on self-awareness discovered that although 95% of people think they’re self-aware, only 10 to 15% actually are. This lack of awareness can be deliberate, yet for the most part it is unintentional.
We grew up with our own sets of how to view the world, how to respond to situations, how to process our emotions, and how to advocate for our needs. We have patterns carried over from our histories. We have patterns that have developed through time, and we have patterns that we took in as part of our cultural experiences.
And we behave and act based on these patterns. Knowing how our brain likes shortcuts, we often do not even know that these patterns are playing or are happening. Not until we are faced with our mirrors.
Shawn Ginwright in his book The Four Pivots wrote one of the four pivots for more impactful activism and stronger healing-centered leadership is through Awareness. He advocates that we pivot from “lens” to “mirror”.
“When things don’t go the way we want them to in our workplace, or in our personal lives, our tendency is to put on our lenses. When we put on lenses, we immediately place the responsibility elsewhere, and anywhere except ourselves…. But taking the time for reflection isn’t expensive- it’s a matter of priority, not price…. using a mirror is really hard work, and it’s a process, not a quick fix. It’s easy to say, “ hey we all need to take time to do mirror work,” but it’s much harder to actually do it because it requires vulnerability and honesty, two things we just aren’t good at as a society… Mirror work, or self-reflection, is a commitment to a process and a way of seeing the world that is an interconnected whole, rather than individual cogs in a machine.” - Shawn Ginwright, PhD.
That last line really resonated with me.
Being a person who enjoys self-reflection, I find the clarity that self-reflection gives a deep blessing. When I can come out of a journaling session with a firmer stance on how I want to show up, who I want to connect with, which patterns I want to notice as I go about my daily life, I feel fulfilled in having more understanding of how I want to be in the world and with those around me.
Clarity is a gift we give to ourselves and others. The more I understand about my own tendencies, my own patterns, and my own obstruction spots, I can re-configure how to show up in ways that are meaningful and connecting.
Shawn Ginwright wrote:
“Maybe the real point of our mirror work is to reveal the truth of how we show up for others.”
Mirror work is taking the time, space, and energy to notice and self-reflect so that we don’t fall prey to our patterns. Oftentimes, we even do not realize that certain patterns become obstruction spots. They become hindrances on how we engage and interact with others and with ourselves.
When we fail to lift the lid underneath our behaviors, we do not look at what are driving those behaviors and how these behaviors are forming ways of seeing and showing up in the world. This sometimes lead to us thinking that our perspective and the way we do things are the one true way.
Building this muscle of self-awareness is not easy. It takes commitment. It takes deep care for one’s self and for others. Yet mirror work is crucial as it also brings out what Krista Tippett notes as “true sight” - the real ability to see that involves hindsight, foresight and insight.
What are these three?
From The Four Pivots, Dr. Shawn Ginwright defines them as: (excerpts from his book)
Hindsight is the culmination of lessons from key events, dilemmas, and situations from the past. It gives us the capacity to look back and create important lessons that propel us to better decision making, which can be used in the future.
Foresight is the capacity to imagine a possible future. It is tethered to hindsight as it propels us to embrace the lessons from the past in order to “reimagine, predict, and create what we want in our lives and in society.” It is emergent and creative as it combines lesson from the past with our passion to create a possible future.
Insight on the other hand is “the elixir of deep hindsight and powerful foresight.” It comes from developing the habit of sitting with uncertainty, building inner strength to walk with calmness in the midst of a shitstorm, and leaning into the discomfort of conflict.
When we cultivate insight, we gain the ability to go wide and deep, understand the past and envision the future, work on the inside and the outside, and dance between individual change and social transformation. Insight gives us the third eye to see things that are not easily visible, like things that trigger us or knowledge of our vulnerabilities and strengths. Insight gives us the capacity to identify our own patterns of behavior and their connection to our collective trauma and potential for social transformation.
From all these, if you haven’t guessed how much I have learned from The Four Pivots, I am explicitly recommending it now. It is a game changer. There are further prompts and questions in the book to explore hindsight, foresight and insight.
Now going back to silence.
I started this piece with an intention in mind that I would like to bring in more awareness on what silence can be for people and how silence can be received.
Growing this muscle of noticing and self-reflection, mirror work on this tendency to be silent can be exploring questions like:
what is my own relationship with silence specially in the midst of tension?
where do I feel it in my body? And what sensations does it give me?
what feelings, words, cliches, narratives, and memories do I have around silence? (It might be stories like “keeping silent is better than saying something wrong” or “silence pierces through more so I will use that instead”. In Filipino we even have the slang “dedma” meaning the act of ignoring; feigning unawareness; short for "dead malice")
when do I use silence in my relationships or when I engage with others?
And the last questions are extending this practice of mirror work to others:
how do others receive my silence?
what messages, information, judgments did they tell me about how they felt my silence to be?
how did they feel? what sensations came up?
what narratives, perceptions, thoughts or judgments came up for them in this space of silence?
how am I bridging my need for silence with the other person’s needs? what might be a middle ground?
This last question is pivotal. It goes from the realm of self-awareness to action. It also brings in the importance of practicing the “Platinum rule” of “do unto others, how they would want to be treated.” When we bridge our own needs for silence with other people’s needs we get to be creative in articulating our needs and finding ways were we can meet each others’ needs.
When we start noticing our own patterns and tendencies, we start giving words to experiences. We also start tuning into and articulating our needs around these behaviors. The deep sensing that follows our noticing can be healing. In most cases, one insight about our behavior leads to another, and then the next. It’s like peeling layers. Which true enough it is, as we are layered selves.
We are an amalgamation not only of our current experiences but also of our past.
We are products of the choices and the patterns that our ancestors have cultivated for themselves.
We are also products of our histories both the ones we have experienced firsthand and those that have been unhealed across time.
And I love the words in the poem below from Ando Kineret Yardena that reminds me of why it’s important that I stay true to my commitment to noticing, to self-awareness, to understanding. For these are commitments not only for myself, but also for my ancestors past, present, and future. It helps me be keen on the true sight of why my awareness of myself, how I show up, and how I engage with others is interconnected to the vastness of time and space. These words help me to reconcile with my past, and to show up as the dreams of my ancestors.
You Are the Answer To the Dreams of Your Ancestors
(by Ando Kineret Yardena Dedicated to Bernie Glassman)
This poem was written during the 2018 Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau Bearing Witness Retreat.
You are the answer
To the dreams of your ancestors.
When they were lovemaking
under canopies of shame
and love and the fear of what would come,
they dreamed of you.
They dreamed of you
that you would come and redeem them.
Redeem all they had been and done,
and hadn’t,
one generation, ten thousand years, later
when everyone else had forgotten
what it smelled like
as they gave themselves to the Earth
to the only One who could save them—
You did not forget.
Take back your ancestors and take back your hearts.
Look around you, take care of this land.
For this
is Eden.
You are the answer
To your ancestor’s prayers:
To make this world remember Peace,
to make this world again know Love;
for the world they wished they could have seen,
but which they never ceased believing
you couldn’t help but make happen.
You are the answer
To your ancestor’s prayers:
That someone would come who would care
for all the places and all the hearts of the
air and earth, water and sky beings,
Past and today and future –
of all the beloved ones and
all the ones who generation after generation
are the most unseen
forgotten.
You are the answer to your ancestor’s prayers:
Don’t think you don’t belong Here.
No need to question it.
Don’t try to make it make sense.
Rest instead in that great, beloved knowing:
You are a chosen one.
They needed you here,
Prayed for you to be here—
Knowing you were the One who
could finally carry their bones home
to bury them
in the fertile field
of your great heart,
to dream of them and pray to them and pray for them to come
again and guide you,
with what you needed to do:
To close the affairs
they weren’t able to close,
to bring the healing
they couldn’t yet bring;
to be free in a way
they could never have dreamed of,
but did;
To come home again,
and coming home, make whole
all the way forward,
all the way back,
for all the ones
across space and time
still out wandering the deserts
of their great hearts
looking for Love everywhere except in their own hearts.
Please, granddaughters,
grandchildren,
look inside your own hearts.
I can’t be anywhere else.
I can only be here.
I can only be here.
Do not doubt you have a place here
Something that only you can do:
Sing a song for us
Make love to the ocean for us
Love a child on this earth for us
Light a great wild sky fire for us
so the smoke can burn through the layers of space and time
that seem to separate us,
But don’t.
We are here
And we are watching you pray
for the next ones to come
as we once prayed for you.