#7: 70 years of dialogue

Good morning,

This week I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the bigger pictures of life. When I was a child, my mom often used to remind me not to “miss the forest for the trees,” which is something I’ve always been inclined to do. But ever since this pandemic began, I’ve found myself only able look at the forests.

I just finished reading the book Unlocking the Mysteries of Birth and Death by Daisaku Ikeda in a book club with two friends, and it is a beautiful, hopeful, profound look at the four universal sufferings and how to think about death, consciousness and karma from the perspective of Buddhism.

Here’s one of my favorite excerpts:

At any given time, we can be either engaged compassionately with or withdrawn from our environment. When open and engaged, we are experiencing the greater self. When closed off, we are putting forth our “lesser self.” The lesser self is a deluded condition, while the greater self is synonymous with the Buddha nature. To live for the greater self means to recognize the universal principle behind all things and, thus, awakened, rise above the suffering cause by awareness of impermanence. A belief in something eternal is needed to enhance our quality of existence. By believing this lifetime is the be-all and end-all of existence, we will miss out on living a truly profound life.

Of course, this idea is predicated on the belief that life is eternal and we sleep/wake up in existence after existence (much as we do day to day), where this human life is just one manifestation of our eternal existence. And things carry over from one to the next; namely, our Buddha nature (which is permanent) and our karma (which we can change in each lifetime based on the causes that we make).

Anyway, thinking about death in this way got me thinking about the time we spend alone versus with other people. Ultimately we are born alone and die alone.

From this perspective, I see my time in this life, of which I probably have about 50-70 years ahead of me (forest!), divided into two major practices: dialogue with self and dialogue with others. In 50-70 years, my inner dialogue practices like writing, reading, and chanting (Buddhist practice) will add up to hundreds of thousands hours. And these hours will inevitably impact how I dialogue (i.e.: work or interact) with others.

So in order to be truly respectful, curious, generative and appreciative in my “other” dialogues, I need to get a grip on my “self” ones.

Recently, for example, I’ve been trying out a form of inner dialogue inspired by the ideas behind Internal Family Systems. I learned about it through therapy a while ago and then read a bunch about it and kind of chose my own interpretation of it, so this is by no means expert advice.

A crude definition: I’m made up of a bunch of parts who are all trying to protect and care for me me in their own way. So far I have noticed: a child who likes to play and usually comes out when I’m feeling very homey and safe, a parent who likes to soothe, an angry part who likes to blame other people and fixate on negative occurrences, a planner who organize systems when I feel insecure about my future, a perfectionist who likes to get the job done well.

Usually, they do a pretty good job. But sometimes, one part overtakes the others and tries a little too hard (like if the perfectionist becomes obsessive to protect me from feelings of low self-worth) and this is often when I feel some version of anxiety, frustration or discomfort. In addition to connecting more with my body in such moments, I’ve started actively dialoging with the parts to bring them back into harmony. I’m the true self/narrator/meta-level me, sort of the matriarch of the parts, and the dialogue usually goes like:

Me: “Hello, I see you are trying to take care of me right now; thank you.”

Part: *Skeptically listening*

Me: “I think you might be trying to protect me from XYZ feeling and I appreciate it.”

Part: *Feels acknowledged and a bit proud, still skeptical, but less so.*

Me: “I just wanted to let you know that I actually don’t need protection from that right now because I’m (me/parent/true self/best self) here, and I can take care of all of us, so you are free to take a little rest! You must be so tired.”

Part: *Relaxes and retreats to its room*

Generally, after such a dialogue, I feel much more regulated. It’s a funny combination of trust, appreciation and patience that brings this about.

Interestingly, the founder of IFS, Richard Schwartz once wrote:

What most of us are less familiar with is that an essence exists within us that can embrace the full range of all our parts and help us achieve an inner harmony by recognizing the positive intentions of even the most critical and seemingly troublesome of these inner selves. This innate core within us is what some people call our Buddha nature, soul, atman, and so forth. The problem is that too often this essence—what I call the Self—has been obscured by the protective parts of us that try to keep our lives on track in the mistaken belief that they know best. Thus, the process of coming to a fuller experience of self-compassion typically begins with creating open space for this Self to come forward. 

This harmonizing inner dialogue is pretty much exactly what happens when I chant. In Buddhism, we see the purpose of chanting morning and evening as a means to manifest our inherent Buddha nature. The only difference is that I don’t think about it so analytically while I’m chanting. I just chant and it happens organically.

Much food for thought here.

One goal I have for my next 50-70 years is to create the conditions for my loner/writer part to feel more comfortable showing up in dialogue more often.

(I’m also going to think about a space/time/format to write this newsletter that allows me to be more consistent. For now, I’ll try to lean into Sunday night dialogues for a Monday morning letter.)

On that note, I hope everyone can have some meaningful rest and gentle dialogue today, wherever you are, safely and in good health.

Jihii