Rob McNeilly
MBBS
Gabrielle Peacock
MBBS FRACGP
Start as you Mean to Finish
Start as you mean to finish was one of my mothers favourite precepts.When I first heard about Erickson I was intrigued but by what? When I saw the Artistry video I was enchanted but by what? For someone who was almost totally limited physically, he was amazingly light on his feet. He invited a dance which I see as an invitation to soften any unhelpful rigidities; he seemed to attend more to the movement of the clients mood and thinking than to the content of what they said. It was this attention to the clients experience, their dance, which he observed and joined in, always encouraging anything useful and messing with anything unhelpful which has disturbed many critics, who, in looking for the dance techniques, miss the movement, the music
Ericksons invitation to accept what the client brings and utilise it is delightfully seductive, and when he speaks of taking what life dishes up to you and make the best of it can add to our settlement, but when he suggests to trust your unconscious mind he is perhaps being most evocative. To trust what we are not conscious of that requires trust indeed and highlights the mood of distrust which is so deep and transparent in our present culture, and is always a pivotal concern in transforming problems into solutions.
When I heard Lao Tzus two and a half thousand year old declaration that Knowing nothing needs to be done is the place we begin to move from [#64] I felt comforted and at the same time perturbed is this an invitation to be lazy, apathetic, and join The Lotus Eaters?
I came across one of Oshos numerous books in which he quotes Chuang Tzu Easy is right. Begin right and you are easy. Continue easy and you are right, The right way to go easy is to forget the right way and forget that the going is easy., and asked myself if it is acceptable to look for the easy way. When I peel a boiled egg, I look for the easy way. When I park my car, I look for the easy way. When I shop or pay my bills, I look for the easy way. I do these and numerous other activities, looking for and appreciating the enlivening experience of the easy way but in our important activities our relationships, our work, our lives even surely this might be a cop out!
Maturana wrote some beautiful words on page 72 in his paper on intimacy: Human beingness is a work of aesthetics as a life lived in loving easy coherence with the cosmos which makes such a life possible., and reading this reminded me of Heideggers notion of The Clearing where we are so connected with all that is around us that we lose ourselves, our individual identities including our petty prejudices and small personal attachments as we connect and expand our experience in this spiritual connection.
When Pearls said to lose your mind and come to your senses, was he pre-empting Flores and Solomon:- This book, then, is attempting to develop sensitivities, not knowledge. Once one has a sensitivity to something such as food, decency, certain kinds of beauty, or even the pleasure of hiking, one is already on the path of refining and developing that sensitivity. One sees food, decent behaviour, beauty, and hiking trails in a new light. They draw one to them in a way they did not before. As one is drawn, time and time again, one then continuously develops ones skills for dealing with what one is sensitive to. Disclosing New Worlds [p39]?
The expansive freedom I experience when I remember to be present, connected with myself and with my surroundings, is the easiest and most satisfying way for me to lose myself in my surroundings and be grateful.
Perhaps when Werner Erhard [from EST and Landmark Forum] claimed that every moment is an opportunity to transform your life, he may have been hinting at this
Erickson said that the important skills for us to learn are To observe, to observe, and to observe, and we can explore the joy of observing, being connected through our senses, learning sensitivities through recurrent activities, so we can learn the loving easy coherences and any time we are in trouble, we can explore what loving easy coherences we may be overlooking, and by reconnecting with these, to return to our full and natural participation in a cosmos which makes such a life possible..
or is this too easy? or is this so obvious?
I like the story of the man whose luck seemed to increase when a horse came into his farm; and then to diminish when his son fell from the horse and broke his leg, and increased again when the injured boy was not fit to fight in the kings army. Any of the events may be good, may be bad.
One of my mothers favourite precepts was Start as you mean to finish.
Rob McNeilly