Marcus T Anthony's new web site and blog can be found at www.mind-futures.com.
The human mind tends to work in binaries: good/bad, this/that, me/her, us/them, is/is not, and so on. Bart Kosko wrote a book quite some time ago called Fuzzy Logic, where he pointed out that this black and white thinking of the human mind creates distortions in the way we perceive the world. Being aware of the same problem, lateral thinking guru Edward de Bono invented a new word, “po”, to help move us beyond ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
The human mind tends to work in binaries: good/bad, this/that, me/her, us/them, is/is not, and so on. Bart Kosko wrote a book quite some time ago called Fuzzy Logic, where he pointed out that this black and white thinking of the human mind creates distortions in the way we perceive the world. Being aware of the same problem, lateral thinking guru Edward de Bono invented a new word, “po”, to help move us beyond ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
The older we get, the more we tend to label the world and life’s experiences according to pre-assigned rigid categories. The world then loses its novelty, and we also forgo the opportunity to see things anew, or from the perspective of another. I developed a process called Harmonic Circles to assist people in moving beyond these kinds of binaries.
However, today, I am going to provide you with a piece of wisdom that a spiritual teacher of mine, whom I refer to as Jessica, once told me. She said that when she sat in a circle or group of people, she always took careful note of the person sitting opposite her, because that person represented a polarity that she needed to acknowledge. Ironically, the very first time I ever met Jessica, she was sitting directly opposite me in a large circle of people (and, no, she didn’t mention this idea at that time, but much later). I mentioned the amazing synchronicity that occurred as a result of that meeting in a previous post. As soon as Jessica saw me, she related precisely the same image that I’d had in a dream just a few hours before, where I’d seen my hands covered in blood. That synchronicity helped me to come to terms with an issue I had, related to sexuality.
It is often the people that we push away at a personal or intellectual level that have the most to teach us. The simple process of allowing yourself to look at the person opposite you, and ask, “What is it about this person that I need to acknowledge?”, can produce a great deal of insight. You can also take this in a metaphorical sense and ask the same question about a person whom you see as an intellectual or spiritual rival. Many people who read this blog have a spiritual perspective. “We” (if I may allow myself to place us in a group) often feel threat and hostility from sceptics and those critical of spiritual discourses and mystical experience. You can probably think of one such person or group right now. Is there something that you can learn from them? Is it possible for you to receive them without emotional judgment?
Note here the distinction between ‘judgment’ and discernment’. Judgment is laden with emotionality, while discernment is a nonattached perspective. You can still discern a perceived error in another’s thinking without taking it personally, or needing to change or destroy it. Judgment typically contains an element of destruction – there is an often unconscious desire to annihilate the object of judgment.
I would like now to recount a significant event in my life which helped me to understand this issue at a deeper level. It occurred in 2005, when I attended a Futures Studies conference at Tamkang University in Taiwan. I wrote about this in an essay for The Journal of Futures Studies the following year. Here’s a part of what I wrote there. It involves an somewhat uncomfortable encounter with Michio Kaku, the well-known physicist and author of Visions.
