Meditation

I've started meditating every day when I am on the bus. Just for short, well-defined, periods of time when I am on the bus or on the train.

There is an account in the book Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg that made it easier to start doing this on a more regular basis. It talked about going to a 45 day retreat meant for monks. The person going and those he was with were the only laypeople in attendance. Each day involved getting up early in the morning and then meditating for 50 minutes out of every hour until it was time to go to sleep. There were two meals of rice and vegetables provided through the day, along with one bowl of miso before going to bed. It is a grueling period, and most of the monks will drop out before the end of the retreat.

After they got there, the laypeople found out that in the middle of the retreat there was an unadvertised "week of no sleep." Here they meditated in this pattern around the clock, with a monk walking around with a "stick of compassion" to keep your from dozing off in the middle of meditating. After a day of this the author was ready to go home and didn't see how one could do an entire week without sleeping.

He asked for a consultation with a very old and respected monk who lived at the monastery. The monk was infirm, in his nineties, and had to be moved around on a stretcher. He was not participating, but had participated many times before. The monk assured the author that yes, it was possible to do the week of no sleep, but that he was carrying two burdens.

The first burden was staying awake, the second burden was the thought of staying awake for the entire week. If he wanted to make it through, he needed to only be carrying the burden of staying awake--for each individual moment. Entirely in the present, without worrying about the remainder of the week. He made it through the week of no sleep--though he was hallucinating by the end of it--by just living in each individual moment.

Similarly, if you sit to meditate for 10 minutes--or an hour--it helps not to think of it wondering how much time is left, or worrying about whether you can make it. It also helps to have an audible (or visual, if you are using the Zen-like meditations where your eyes stay open) cue in your environment so that you don't feel the need to check the clock or worry the amount of time remaining.

This has further ramifications in our lives. When practicing kaizen this is essentially the ultimate goal, but one of the ways we practice kaizen is counterproductive to this goal. We set a goal for the week, or the month, and that is the thing we are going to work on. But unless we add the qualifier just for today or even just for this moment it is easy to fall under the trap of "do I have to keep up all of these other things I have done and then this as well for another week?" It becomes an extra burden, rather than a continual process.

Focus on the moment. The moment--that moment--is all that matters.

So it is with our relationship to ourselves and the world around us. You cannot change everything, but maybe you can change one thing, for just this moment.

"Always mindful, the meditator breathes in; mindful, the meditator breathes out."

Relief Organizations: Helping in Haiti

These organizations are well rated and will let you earmark donations for what is going on in Haiti.

• Direct Relief International
  
• Episcopal Relief and Development
  
• Heifer International (they will follow the first responders in to help rebuild)
  
• Doctors Without Borders
  

While I am not fond of their privacy policy or method for earmarks, you can also text 'Haiti' to 90999 to donate $10 off your phone bill to the Red Cross.

[Admin] Still Alive

I have been having some personal difficulties lately that have made it difficult to post regularly to this blog for the last few months. I am hoping to get those resolved and get more essays up soon ^_^

Groupthink

In his paper, Why I Do Not Attend Case Conferences Dr. Paul Meehl, psychotherapist and former APA president, pointed out that:

In one respect the clinical case conference is no different from other academic group phenomena such as committee meetings, in that many intelligent, educated, sane, rational persons seem to undergo a kind of intellectual deterioration when they gather around a table in one room.

He identified a groupthink process by which [t]he most inane remark is received with joy and open arms. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, this phenomena is not limited to psychiatric case conferences and appears to extend to any time a group of people get together, including in mailing lists, social functions, and professional get togethers. In many such groups a form of reinforcement occurs, negative opinions are not tolerated, and if the group leaned a certain way before getting together, they will lean more strongly in that direction after leaving the group.

According to Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling, based on Janis and Mann's A psychological analysis of conflict, choice, and commitment: Groups where groupthink is taking place have a tendency to pressure group members who dissent or challenge the groups collective beliefs; they will deny or dismiss or rationalize away evidence that is contrary to the way they already lean; and they will tend to develop a firm belief in their own ethical standing. Some members of the group may also take the role of mindguard--members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.

Application

Evidence of these and other problems is not difficult to find in Neopagan circles. In larger groups, statements such as don't rock the boat are very common and tolerance can--ironically--become a buzzword for putting down dissent or enforcing the group's own ethical standards to the exclusion of others. It is not uncommon to see groups cast out, shun, or ridicule those who make statements that might be perfectly acceptable--if perhaps disagreed with--by any individual member independent of the group dynamic.

This group reinforcement mechanism is one of the ways in which group mythology can come about. Where people organically grow a set of beliefs about themselves and their group, simply as a function of people reinforcing each other without any form of an outside sanity check. Combine with a little UPG which may or may not be valid, and some interesting consequences can fall out of this.

This can also lead to individuals developing very particular views about the nature of what they do that may not extend to others doing similar work, but who are not a member of that group. Even if none of the issues of groupthink exist, there is a strong possibility of selection bias.

As spirit workers who deal extensively with UPG and spirits on the behalf of others this poses a particular problem for us, since it affects our ability to validate our experiences. The concept of Peer Corroborated Personal Gnosis (PCPG) is particularly susceptible to this, since it is affected not only by cultural biases but by group dynamics of that particular group of spirit workers. A message from a deity or a spirit to an individual can take an entirely different timbre if there is a form of group reinforcement going on, and the potential for boundary violations goes up tremendously.

Guards

Combatting this is not easy, as groups serve numerous useful purposes. They form support networks, resources for ideas, and can provide sanity checks of their own. In a small community as Pagans or Spirit Workers, groups provide a great means of socialization, finding romantic partners, and finding clients.

How can one work with and exist within groups, while at the same time avoiding succumbing to groupthink? I do not have any solid answers here, but here are some possible things that can help, (adapted and influenced by Janis's work, but not taken directly from that):

• Encourage dissent and actively solicit people's objections and doubts. Allow them to air such thoughts without censure. Let people finish their thoughts before objecting to them.
  
• Keep conversation civil. People who disagree are not the enemy, they simply have a disagreement and may be operating from different, and still valid, premise.
  
• Engage in critical thinking and analysis of your own ethical structures. The specific ethics that you follow tend not to be as important as that you are actively considering them.
  
• Avoid generalizing statements such as "all" or even "most" without empirical evidence when talking about people (or spirits, for that matter).
  
• Don't assume you are right about anything.
  
• If asking for confirmation, don't tell the individual what you concluded.
  

The last point, in particular, is especially important. It is easy to introduce confirmation bias into a situation without intending to, simply by telling someone what you found before asking them to confirm it.

None of this can cure it, and the problem of groupthink is notoriously tricky in governments, businesses, and organizations all over the world. At the same time, it is something we need to be talking about, so that we can be better aware of it when it does come up.

Further Reading

• The Shaman and the Spirit Worker
  
• Amazon: Guys, Put the Torches Down
  
• Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling, by Kenneth S. Pope and Melba J. T. Vasquez
  

Stigmas on Mental Disorders

There is a huge stigma on mental illness and on mental health professionals in much of the western world, which gets in the way of honest discourse and helping people who are suffering from mental disorders. There is the attitude that psychology is an attempt to justify, rather than understand, and that mental disorders are a sign of an underlying character flaw, as opposed to a disorder or disease. Essay moved to Weaving Wyrd.