Who am I choosing to be?
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Hello hello everyone,
It has been a long long while. I hope you are all doing well wherever in the world you are.
I am in Ubud, Bali right now.
(incredible sunset, totally unfiltered)
I've been sucked in with writing essays for the last few weeks while wrapping up a long work trip, and now I'm here for an intensive dance & performing arts program. It was somewhat of an unexpected invitation, and I'm glad to have jumped in after a bit of discernment.
What makes it hard is that I have yet been too comfortable with the identity of a dancer or performing artist. As such, I'm using this as a chance to explore the process of identity formation itself. How does that come about, experientially? How is an identity a sum of all conscious decision "I do this, therefore I am that?" What influences our choices?
On a more social note, I am with a group of friends all somehow interested in a holistic exploration of body-mind-heart and their coming together. It has been so wonderful and nourishing to dance out and deepen my lifelong practice of contact improvisation.
What's becoming clear in those dances though is that I miss writing with you all.
My teacher and friend Helena said at the dance floor the other night that
"When you touch someone's feet with attunement, you can almost experience where they have walked on".
Similarly, when you read someone's words with attunement, you'll also know where they have gone to in the mental space.
It's such a joy to share with you where I have been going to on my feet and in my mind.
Khuyen
(this geek is learning to move)
Announcement
I am writing a book with my co-author Steven D'Souza. It will be a continuing exploration of all of what I have been writing here.
**What is it like to live and inquire into process, nuances, aches and bliss of being & becoming ourselves, together, in this modern world, in this 2020 time?**
We will weave the personal, practical and philosophical into this inquiry. Personal as in the subjective dimension of our life, our inner world. Practical as in the objective dimension, the being-in-the-world, getting-thing-done. Philosophical as in the nuanced, poetic yet specific link between the two.
What if, as Mark Nepo said, "every inner crack is also an outer opening"? That the inner work of knowing oneself is not only inherently rewarding but also immensely practical for our outer life of success and achievement?
On a practical note, I'm experimenting with a new format for this newsletter in order to shift my focus on writing the book.
- Weekly short reading & sharing: I'll do in-depth commenting of one or two beautiful readings I found that you may enjoy reading too.
- Monthly essay: I'll write more completed essays on the above themes and you'll get a sneak peak into the book writing process.
I am excited for this change, and I am looking forward to hearing from those of you who have been following and supporting me with your generous attention. 🙏
Who do you choose to be?
This week's post is an exploration of the practice of setting intention, a topic that I've been pregnant with for a few months. It's particularly at this holiday season as we review and set the next intentions for the year.
Who am I choosing to be?
How am I choosing to show up today?
These are prompts for the practice of intention. It's not so much of a specific action but a state of being, a priming of oneself into readiness. As you reflect on this year and begin the process of intending for next year, it's worth understanding what is happening here, so that you can give this powerful practice enough attention.
Indeed, the essence of this practice is to recognize that you do have a choice. The external weather will not always be favorable. Worse yet, the internal weather isn't pleasant either. Foggy confusion, stormy angst, insistent anxiety... what can keep us sane with all of those?
The answer is our choice of our attitude.
As an analogy, if you notice it's rainy outside, you can choose to stay indoor, to go out anyway with umbrella or to go dance in the rain (okay, not everyone does that, but the point is that you have a choice) Similarly, if you notice full of rainy sadness inside, you can choose to shut down, to ignore it and go on as usual or to let yourself fully soak in such sadness.
Sometimes it makes sense to shut down to protect ourselves from the overwhelming emotions. Sometimes it makes sense to go on first to deal with more urgent matters. Yet if you are also growth-oriented and aspires to live a more fulfilling life, sooner or later you will have to dive into the rain inside. What matters more is that you are recognizing that choice.
In order to do that, you will need to free up a bit of space for yourself.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
Steven Covey, attributed to Victor Frankl.
The practice itself is meant to create that space for us.
It's not that we don't have an intention coming into an experience. It's that most of the time we are not aware of it and thus are controlled by all sorts of conditioning, from biological one like "my tummy is yelling and wants me to get out of here" to psychological baggage like "I used to yell back when my mom yelled at me a long time ago so I will be repeating that same pattern today.“
That's like running a decades-old mental software on a super powerful hardware like our physical body. It's time for an upgrade.
What you can choose
So, what qualities would you to choose to be?
When I first heard of this practice, I was so skeptical. "You say I can choose my attitude? But how? How can I just choose to be happy when everything is going awry?“
I'm not advocating for keep choosing positivity like the the prevalent "don't worry, be happy" good vibe. There is such a thing called "toxic positivity" that denies the so-called bad emotions or ignore the current state of the body.
This is why it's worth to always check in with our internal weather first. Otherwise, this intention practice can seem like a purely mental thinking exercise of "Let's come up with a nice sounding wishful statement".
How well we can choose to be depends on how much we are aware of what is. As an example, if you are feeling tense and overwhelmed inside, the choices you make won't be as good.
As such,
If you are feeling tired, you can choose to be at ease and not pushing hard.
If you are feeling down, you can choose to be grateful.
If you are feeling stuck, you can choose to be present and attentive to what is.
Or none of the above.
These are suggestions, and you will have to explore what works best for you. Setting the appropriate intention does some practice of being aware of what's going on inside and around.
One important aspect of this practice is to make that conscious choice to align our whole self with what is good and true. Imagine what's possible when our thinking, feeling, sensing and being, our practical doing and our idealistic visioning can all line up towards the same direction?
It's not always that rosy though. There will be resistance whenever an intention is set. Some parts of you will not believe this magical woo woo practice. Some parts of you will want to rest while others want to keep on pushing because of the looming deadline.
These are signs of misalignment.
Instead of trying to crank those parts up back into the straight line, listen to them.
Know what they are saying, and bring it back to the intention.
Keep coming back
Here is the secret. **What your intention is doesn't matter as much as the fact that you are choosing it**.
It is the choice of continuously bringing back to the intention that will slowly and profoundly change us for the better. It's definitely not an instant silver bullet, and at times you find this practice uninspiring.
Yet more and more I am convinced that it will help when we need it the most. Here is a short story to illustrate that.
During my four-hour flight last week, I caught myself ruminating over a silly forgetfulness that costs me a hundred dollar. I tried to focus on my breathing, but the voice of "Silly me, I could have done that" and the replaying of all the "what could have been" scenarios kept running inside.
Thrown into that hocus pocus of my mind was also all the rationalization, from "it's okay, I didn't know better" to "That's still a cheap lesson to learn" or "Cheers up, otherwise I am making the mistake costs even more".
True, but still..I was suffering.
As you know, it's often not the mistake but the rumination over it that pained us.
Then I recalled that my intention for this trip is to be in touch with my own inner guidance.
I wish I could tell you a fairy tale version of "I then tune into myself and hear a voice saying "it's all going to be alright". Suddenly a sense of lightness and relief swept over me".
Nah.
I tried to calm down by taking deep breaths, and I struggled with sifting through the cacophony inside. After a long while, it all finally subsides and a slight moment of stillness emerged. In its inexpressible wordlessness was a sense of "This is it. This is life.“
I knew that was my inner guidance, not because after that all those yelling voices stopped. They still continued for a little longer, but somehow they have lost much of their haunting grips on me. It felt as if I touched an imperturbable crystal inside on which no muddy thought can stick.
The inner guidance didn't tell me what to do. Rather, it showed me what it is like to be in its presence. It showed me how to be.
In retrospect, the simple act of recalling the intention opened me up to that possibility and also gave me energy to persevere toward that direction. It's both inviting and pursuing, yin and yang.
More importantly, it came so helpful when I least expected.
That's the power of the regular practice. Bit by bit, slow and steady, you are rewiring the neurological & physical pathway to better realign yourself whenever you are out in the tricky currents of life.
Intention as anchor
Indeed, one of the most powerful question to ask someone who is feeling lost in his own life is "Tell me, what was your intention here?“
Almost all the time, there will be a moment of delightful shock "Ah. I forgot".
Like the diver who found an anchor in the deep unknown sea, that moment of conscious remembering is a profound opening to receive what has always been true. It is often accompanied by a distinct sense of relief "Ah, I am turning back towards home".
I remember a time in college when I was feeling lost and discouraged with everything in my life (the infamous "sophomore slump"). Frustrated, sad and mostly confused, I shared my utter lostness with a mentor. "I don't know what to do!“
He looked at me in silence and asked that very question "Tell me, what was your intention coming here?“
That felt like a sword that cut through all the layers of confusion inside me, jolting me back into something I always already knew.
I heard myself saying "I'm here to be open, to learn about myself and about the world".
In that moment, I knew I found the anchor. There was an immediate and unmistakable clarity, a stillness in the midst of the storm.
There was a slight gap, the "space between a stimulus and response" before the other conflicting voices tried to drown me again. "But what I want to learn has no job prospect. But this doesn't seem to fit with my current trajectory. But I have to complete my requirements.“
In that gap before all of those Buts lies the door to freedom.
My mentor continued "Beautiful. How is that going? Where are you most learning about yourself and about the world?“
Once the intention was clear again, the process of patiently addressing each of those Buts is a simple, smooth and rather enjoyable problem solving exercise.
It's one of the most delicious experience of being human: to remember what we have chosen to be here for. It makes sometimes wonder: does God created our forgetfulness so that we can experience the pleasure of remembering?
In our time of rapid change and constant distraction, our intention is the compass in our pocket that will help us navigate through the layers of shiny objects. The more unpredictable the territory is, the more often we need to pull that compass out and check in with it.
As a practice, it means taking a quiet moment to set an intention at the beginning of the day, before a meeting or a work session. Then we use some pockets of stillness during the day to recall so that we can go far but never feel lost.
Mary Oliver said this best in her poem "The Journey".
[...]
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
When in doubt, come back to the intention.
------------------------------------------
Read the full post here on Medium.
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Quotes
"Thinking that you can shut off the nagging voice in your head by forcing it is like believing that you can cure headache by chopping your head off." - Jerry Colona.
What an analogy! What to do then with our inner critics? To live with it, be friend with that nagging voice, knowing that it's there to keep us safe from the humiliation of making a mistake.
"Money knows that if you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you too." - Naval Ravikant
Good reminder to check in with our attitude about money.
Reading
Lesson to Unlearn by Paul Graham.
An insightful essay that explains the danger of "meeting expectation". Particularly poignant to those of us who have been trying to "hack" our way through life as well as through all the expectations others.
Here are some of my favorite highlights.
Anyone who cares about getting good grades has to play this game, or they'll be surpassed by those who do. And at elite universities, that means nearly everyone, since someone who didn't care about getting good grades probably wouldn't be there in the first place. The result is that students compete to maximize the difference between learning and getting good grades.
=> Sadly many people, myself included, leaned on the latter. For once in my college life I tried the opposite and got a D. I learned a tons though and wrote about it here. Learning by not doing.
Paul Graham ends the essay on a optimistic note though, which I'm really excited about. The possibility of making life better by making better lives.
In the mid-twentieth century, when the economy was composed of oligopolies, the only way to the top was by playing their game. But it's not true now. There are now ways to get rich by doing good work, and that's part of the reason people are so much more excited about getting rich than they used to be. When I was a kid, you could either become an engineer and make cool things, or make lots of money by becoming an "executive." Now you can make lots of money by making cool things.
Listening
Thanks to Ubud Bali hippie-ness, I discovered this new album combining spiritual teaching & dope beats. If you are even slightly interested in either, you'll enjoy it.
Put aside your judgments ("bastardizing spiritual teaching with dancy music?" "another mass spreading of Western influences?") and let your neck & head and shoulder move a bit.
If you have been touched by Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching, this is a great song, Present Moment.
Lastly..
One question as we enter the end of the year
What can I be more wholehearted about?
Have a great week everyone,
Khuyen
p/s: Do reach out general conversations about life. I'd love to be helpful.