Being here (1)…. Everyday moments of pure choice

Being here (1)…. Everyday moments of pure choice
Torrey Orton
April 30, 2010


As so often, out of sleep came a new theme – being here. This is not new in world history or local practice, but it is new for me to notice moments of everyday life that may be what the proponents of presence are referring to. Here's the first.

 

To wake or not…

These days I sleep with increasing lightness, a movement encouraged by my growing awareness that sleep's end is coming each new day. I often wake 30-40 minutes ahead of the alarm, which itself is inconstant, having different settings from day to day. My therapist would tell me therein lies my own inconstancy of sleep and be right but irrelevant to my emerging points now.


Two points
These points are: one, should I rise, or not, so much in advance of the alarm? And worse, two, should I rise at the moment of the alarm's bzzz, bzzz if I have slept up to the alarm's sounding? These two moments have the same challenge under different conditions. The first has more time than the second. Its space for thinking is bigger and so, strangely, more confusing. I can consider more options. The more space the more attraction for awareness to fill it, to populate it. I often do not seem to have a choice not to populate it.


Once the populating begins - often about subjects like this post - thoughts arise out of the upper depths of consciousness. These usually are structured thinkings about currently occurring work issues. And more strange, the material that populates it is often a comfortable fit with my overall low level of general arousal – I can contemplate a very precise thing for some minutes; an argument (an account) about it flows naturally. They follow their own path to an appropriate, usually transferable, conclusion. I make notes about them for use later. In the process I have decided for less sleep and more awake for the day.


An everyday moment of pure choice?
The second condition's time is 5 to 8 seconds I think. The boundaries are the distance between the bzzz, bzzz initiated conscious awakeness and turning the alarm off. This opens the door on a very slight possibility- that I will not get up just then – in which exists for some seconds a suspended state, a present but not engaged state that may be being here. I have to be quick or else I'll sink into blogthought diversions.


My day's rhythm is set in this moment since the underlying question is 'how pressing is my day?' arising in the dome of my awareness of the total substance of it – a global forecast of stressors without distinctions among them. I imagine this dome as a mini-me version of a lava dome (see Mt St Helens, USA) in an active volcano.


A pressing day…
This moment is a critical one for my taking control of the new day, or more likely for my being taken control of by it!! With a moment's being here comes the position, space or location in which to interrupt the naturally occurring flow of my whole system. At high stress times this matters, since automatic stress response habits engage to reduce potential stress before it is felt consciously…and so blocking me from certain realities altogether.


My first try seldom reaches the intended target
In the reflection created by the above excursion, I am aware that even trying to capture such a moment of apparent being here is a fraught enterprise. The word formation and deployment processes drive the experience out of range…making it impossible to capture the thing. Maybe I will get better at this with practice?? We'll see I hope. Getting better at it would mean my being able to use clearly, for example, 'position', 'location' or 'space' to characterise a "here".

Appreciation (24) … An older man's beard, after burning
Torrey Orton
April 19, 2010

Some fires are too fierce…

 

On the last day of a weekend in Falls Creek, 7 years after the alpine fires which burned for two months in early 2003, a verbal image for the sight we had seen from a dozen perspectives and lights over three days assembled itself out of a hundred glances – an older man's beard, grizzled, shaped by the number 2 razor cut now popular among young and old (I get this look after about two weeks not shaving). This impression is startlingly present in the light of early morn or evening, slanting in to reveal things against their backgrounds almost rising anew after the directness of full light which submerges differences of distance and colour. That full light is its own subject, not the lighted!


This is the look of the snow gums on the highest peaks of the ranges around the ski village which itself escaped a fiery fate by a hundred meters on the day the surroundings were vaporised back then. The fire was so fierce that nothing it touched regrew around many trunks for years, in contrast with my "woolly" story from last year's Black Saturday fires. Even the leaves were burned off most trees, not merely browned or shrivelled as often happens.


So 7 years later the ridges up to the tree line are bordered with lifeless, bleached white branches, much below which a slight tinge of new growth arises from the still vital roots of the nearly dead. They were mature trees so the height is quite constant, noting outstanding about above the surrounding remnants as does with higher alpine ash forests. An impression can be found here. Some predict it will take 50+ years for their next maturity to be reached again.


Here's a winter view which captures some of the effect, but overdone because the non-winter look is more branchy (as in the previous view). If it were a beard it would have some hairs articulated amongst the general brush of the cover. Or, taking the image another way, it would show some skin beneath the fuzz. In forester lingo these are called "stags" – freestanding, blanched, dead remnants of fierce fires, reminiscent of stag horns. These snow gums look especially antler-like.


As we drove out the last morning of this Easter weekend, we recalled the morning 7 years and three months before when we drove out through the smoke of the fires started by 87 lightning strikes, some of which we had seen from the top of Mt Nelse three days before, noting the rising columns of smoke all around us at 50 to 100 Ks distance… and a couple at 20! They closed the Nelse track the next day as the columns were still rising, more or less vertical. The wind which carried all before rose two days later and the fires burned for another six weeks.


"This is Australia…."

Learning to act right (6)…. Learning to be accountable.

Learning to act right (6)…. Learning to be accountable.
Torrey Orton
April 16, 2010

"It was my fault …"

… said James, an executive coach, as he worked over a recent incident in his practice. He has in hand a rising CEO, Tom, with a commitment to developing interpersonal and group sensitivities and competences, especially under pressure and/or in conflict. Half way into a six month coaching process James began thinking some structured group work would be useful as a complement to and extension of their one-to-one work.
James's thinking had been prompted by a professional colleague's (Anne) mention of a new relationship skills program she had designed. She was building on her extensive experience with a variety of group-work formats and focuses. She was ready to run a trial group and was networking for potential participants. Fees would be nominal.

James agreed to nominate a client after a few further chats with A. This was Tom, who J. encouraged to attend on the grounds he was ready for and could use the enlarged growth opportunities of group work. T. signed up, paid up (6 sessions in advance) for a two hour evening session a week with 8 other exec's in training.

"I want my $ back…"
J stayed in touch with T's experience, but it was not the main focus of their work. Not, that is, until T. reported having walked out of the final session with A. in a stir of disappointment at the process. He felt it had not really been what it was claimed to be in the pre-work documents, or J.'s description of it, or the facilitator's (A.) work style. "I want my $ back" T. said at the next meeting with J. he had also made the same request of A. and her organisation.

It became clear to J. that T. had not been an appropriate candidate for A's program – an impression confirmed when he suggested T. go back to A. to see if he could clarify his perception of what the program was supposed to be. This perception was the basis of T's sense of betrayal by the program, and by A. and, implicitly, by J. T. agreed but was not able to follow it through.

J. realised that the responsibility for T's experience and its resolution was his. He had over-rated T's development at the time and under-rated the shortcomings of A's design. He had for a number of understandable, but, it turned out, inappropriate reasons misjudged this opportunity for everyone. He entered it under some time pressure to nominate someone, had wanted to help A. get her new program up and, indirectly, to support A.'s organisation in its business development efforts. This combination, along with J.'s tendency to over-estimate client development on the basis of development achieved in coaching, produced the mismatch, and he sat at the centre of it.

So, rectification was his to achieve, including financial aspects. The highest possible refund was <$500, so dollars were not the issue, though differently for T. and A. They were the currency of their relationship.
For J., the basic framework for taking up his responsibility was the concurrent and continuing coaching process with Tom. One of its core themes at the time of this disappointment was how to negotiate perceived performance failures, and that's where J started – with his own misjudgement of both T and A. He explicitly took charge of the follow-up individually with T., Anne, and the head of her organisation (who offered to cover any refund if it was eventually agreed; J. refused).


Finales
J. met with T. in an unpaid consultation to explore the experience, with a focus on how T. had been disappointed to the point of not being able to raise it with A. until too late, both emotionally and temporally. J. also participated in a debrief with A. and her organisation, seeking to understand what actually happened and how it might be approached differently. This included review of how the program was promoted and conducted to reduce future prospects of such misunderstandings and or mis-fits. In both events major growth occurred for all participants, including J.

Appreciation (23) … A little byplay thanks to Mark

Appreciation (23) … A little byplay thanks to Mark
Torrey Orton April 11, 2010

Catch this…

From Mark in Hudson, NY

"I heard about this play on NPR this morning. After looking at the video, especially the slo-mo replay ,,,,, i thought I had better pass it along to a few fans who might otherwise have missed it."

I commend the video to your attention. Watch it through because the best view of the event is about the last in the series. Strange they didn't put it first.
To which I replied, after watching the video -
I would have missed it, and having seen it, won't miss it BUT am glad I saw it..if you know what I mean!?


A reflection: things like this didn't happen before because:

1) they did but we weren't there;

2) they didn't because no one would have thought of something so silly; they wouldn't have allowed themselves to be so silly;

3) whoever the first tennis pro was who did the same on global telly hadn't arrived yet?? Since then at least one Agassi (was it Henri who perfected the blind between the legs return from the baseline?) a game seems to be required in pro circles. And it's a more guys than gals thing it seems.

4) smallball players have always unconsciously lusted after the largeball grand moves of basketball and the various footballs?

5) smallball players have always underestimated the superiority of their skills over largeball ones – anyone can catch a basketball / football; kicking's a bit harder, but getting a ball to the right place by using a wing extension (racket, bat, stick) clearly geometrically multiplies the difficulty doesn't it?…

6) So, they, the 'silly' effective ballgame antics, are a triumph of fashion, not capacity?

Thanks for the exercise!!
T.

http://ballhype.com/video/mark-buehrle-amazing-play/

Appreciations (22) … Snake in the path!

Appreciations (22) … Snake in the path!
Torrey Orton
April 8, 2010


Mistaking a snake for a stick? …you might wonder?


Appreciating a snake in the path is a bit odd unless you've done something like this: wandering down a dirt fire track 1 kilometre from our parked car on an early Sunday afternoon three weeks ago talking with Jane about something important we thought and suddenly detecting a fat black tree branch with a strange tip - the head of a snake I eventually realised - only a foot away from my next step…. Not your common garden variety but one of Australia's contributions to the troops of really dangerous fanged foragers…at about 1.3 meters, a well developed specimen...and, it was out in the open in clear light and we had missed it as we walked up onto it from 100 metres away with a clear view all the way until stumbling into the preceding events.


"Aaaah…" I gasped with arms thrown back and drawing myself up from the shoes in retracting my next step, as it was a slight lift into execution, before it fell on the snake's tail emerging into my vision and realising that Jane was a half step in front of me heading for the biter's mid-flank, and also not seeing it, I started saying "Back, back" which stopped her just before she would have been too close not to land a foot on its back…and so it glided off the road and into the edging forest without a backwards glance.


On reflection a few minutes later I noticed that my entire response had been without any palpable rise in heart rate, or tensing of muscles apart from those involved in the rising "Aaaah". Strange ways the body/mind.


Not mistaken, just missed
Or like this: 15 years ago, wandering down an old 1.5 meter deep by 2 meter wide grassy, overarched by light brush and trees, loggers' tramway cutting some K's from another car park in the second or third growth forested outer reaches of Melbourne (60+ K's from the GPO), Jane in front and me two meters behind hearing a stick crunch lightly under boot and sensing, barely seeing, something dark and ropey rise into the air a few feet to my right rear, and responding soundlessly but automatically with a jump myself which got me up to a height equal to the ropey thing, which turned out to be a large black snake, or close enough to scare the whatevers out of me, giving my heart rate a serious lift at the same time!
…a story I'd have told a dozen times, mostly to impressionable foreigners like myself who did not grow up with tiger snakes or their peers in the backyard, as many inhabitants of Australian cities do. I'd never seen a poisonous snake until coming here, though I knew (I thought) they inhabited the woods of Massachusetts (timber rattlers), not that I or anyone I knew or heard of had ever seen one in 1950 or '60!! But then in those days I didn't see racoons, wolves or bears in the woods either. They weren't there to see maybe, but they certainly are now a reliable source has been telling me for years since then.


Outdone, again…
However, someone else always has a better snake story, like this: a friend's wife found herself eyeing a large black snake in their backyard, shouting quietly that the thing was a danger and trying to shoo it away while holding it tightly in place with her left foot which was firmly planted on its tail. She hadn't noticed the tail and so her fear mounted as the snake stayed put and reared up with vengeful non-verbals. Her husband intervened with a strong right hand and pulled her of the offended tail, allowing all to move on into peaceful distances from each other.