Flutterby™! : Touchy Feely Mumbo Jumbo 2005-02-14 03:50:07.217208+00

Touchy Feely Mumbo Jumbo

2005-02-14 03:50:07.217208+00 by meuon 6 comments

Spent the weekend with Nancy and Maureen and Zell and some other "couples", talking about the the State of Grace Document, The Work, and "Open Space" (link 1 - link 2). Although the real purpose was Nancy and I beginning working on a joint State of Grace Document together, I was intrigues by some of the things I learned, including the concept of a "Story" as how we understood how something (anything) is good or bad.. or even how we reference things that are neither. These were things that I "know" and "grok", but had not actually thought about in these ways. I can't take these thoughts to the absolute that the evangelists of these thoughts do, but they do make sense and help me understand why I think some of the things I know better. Question everything. Question reality. Create a new one based one what you find is 'True'. Done a lot of that over the years, but not encapsulated it the way they did and that was good for me. I wanted to specifically share the links to the State of Grace document, both for personal relationships, but for business and co-worker ones. It helped me think through many of the issues I am having where I am working, as well as the original personal goal of living "in a state of grace" with Nancy (who wrote the nicest things about me.. {blush}. There. That was my big touchy feely sharing moment.. Next: the group hug. [ H U G ].. and now back to working on techno-thingamabobs.

I found it useful as well. I wonder if your title 'touchy feely mumbo jumbo' is your over all description of the workshop, or the way you felt about a certain part? Or that sharing with flutterby that I wrote nice things about you is touchy-feely? In my mind, it gave it kind of a negative connotation overall and I'm pretty sure I'm not interpreting it (framing it) as you intended. My story tells me that mumbo-jumbo is bad!! LOL

The concept of Byron Katie's 'the work' got a tiny little bit uncomfortable for me, but overall I thought it was a good idea - upset the status quo a bit and open up your thinking to new view points, whether you end up accepting them or not. I think my discomfort stemmed from my feeling that 'the work' is Christian Science, but held within the boundary of matter and human thought as it relates to matter. Monitor your thinking, make the decision to determine what is real. "love what is" is how it was phrased; the overall concept. But it never quite reached it's full potential of the absolute - of perfect God and His perfect spiritual representative (aka man, but that term is easily misconstrued in this context), and YET, the outcomes some experienced certainly seemed to be a complete turnaround, a realization of a state of grace; a healing, in other words. So it worked. But it could do SO much more. I plan on investigating further and seeing how/if it links to my understanding of Christian Science.

And I loved having a forum to do our work on a state of grace document. It's something we've talked about since the end of April and it feels good to have made so much progress. The little bits of it we'd agreed on already helped so much along the way that I think having the entire document worked up will be really incredible for us.

Nancy: When I first read Meuon's post, I was a little surprised. Meuon was really opening himself up, especially in a forum not known to opennly address "touchy, feely" subject. I'm sure Meuon wanted to share his experience with people he hold dear - but at the same time had to put up some kind of shield. He might have done it unintentionally as well.

I applaud Mike for sharing and I wouldn't think that the title, in any way, summarizes his feelings about the workshop. If anything, it's his way of acknowledging that there are some Flutterby readers who would see it all as "mumbo-jumbo" and could help them avoid having to read the post.

I'm sorry if I sound a little disjointed, but I've know Meuon for a while, long enough to know that underneath that hard exterior of guns, knives, 4x4s and "mumbo-jumbo" is a really "touchy-feely" guy.

I've had at least one tremendously cool life-changing seminal experience from a workshop that could easily be characterized as "Touchy Feely Mumbo Jumbo", but my experiences with such things have run the gamut, some of them being downright destructive.

With the noting the birthday of Ayn Rand (even if I am two weeks late), it's also fairly clear that I've pursued the other path.

There's a whole long essay here, probably a book, that really needs a refined thesis, but my current reticence in pursuing such things stems around the realization that many of these rituals and structures are extremely powerful tools for working with my personality. But if I'm not really careful about what I'm adopting, they can also lead to changes that I don't want. One of my most favorite novels is The Magus

, by John Fowles

, in which the puppeteer says to the protagonist: "I'm not asking you to believe, I'm asking you to pretend to believe".

Over the years I've learned that over the short term the two are interchangeable. And if my personality were less strong, or I surrounded myself with more external support for a different belief system, that short term could become longer.

Which means that my behavior can be changed in some way that reinforces the pack nature of humans, and that by pretending to believe I can eventually make myself believe that doing things that aren't in my own best interest are.

So approaching these systems with a lot of skepticism has become my nature. And if I want to present them to someone else, and have them not immediately dismiss those ideas in the same way I would, I have to soft-peddle them, and acknowledge that the person I'm discussing them with may find many of the same flaws in them that I've discovered.

Thus I totally understand Meuon's characterization as "touchy feely mumbo jumbo", it says to me that this is ritual that can be powerful, but is going to trigger many of my warning bells, so I have to be extremely conscious of what portions of the system I pretend to believe, lest I feel burned later.

ahhh...it makes more sense to me now. Mike (Meuon), (as well as Eric, Dan, etc,) knows the flutterby community infinitely better than I do and yet I was interpreting what he said primarily though my knowledge of him rather than through the obvious - it's posted on flutterby!

I'm glad he shared. Imagine a world full of touch-feely geeks!! (now there's a discussion that would interest me!)

Touchy-feely geeks with guns and knives nonetheless!%A%AMy experience has been that most geeks, at the core, are touchy-feely, but they spend so much time in isolation that the walls become thicker and thicker. And a mistake someone who is partnered with a geek should never make: Just because we aren't showing emotion, doesn't mean it's not being felt!

Taking a work breather: - Nancy, it was a headline - And like any good headline it gets your attention.. but often has little to do with the posting. And it IS Touchy Feely Mumbo Jumbo.. Mumbo Jumbo being possibly defined as the Mandingo "magic that makes the troubled spirits go away" as well as a more modern: "gibberish obscuring what is really going on".

And the explaination that is was the online equivilent of two guys hugging.. and then punching each other in the arm or thumping the back very very hard to prove that we are still knuckle dragging apes works as well.