Enabling constraints

Ever since I was young, I noticed that it was quite hard for me to follow a structure provided by a teacher, curriculum or area of discipline. I found myself questioning why we were supposed to learn something, how everything was delicately interconnected but approached as grossly independent, whether the underlying motivations and questions were being covered by the proposed structure, what (kind of world view) was beneath the overlaying structure we needed to adhere to, whether learning this or that was actually what I or the world needed, why a teacher was not always, or even often, an embodiment of what he or she was teaching, …

Recently, I am going through a couple of challenges resonating with these experiences, even though I am not a young child anymore and the current contexts do not fully reflect those I experienced back then. Allowing myself to learn in a student-teacher relationship, and diving into the challenge of collaboration, I find myself in situations where it appears that I have a hard time adjusting to some structure or format. It is confronting, because the structure I find myself in is really speaking to my heart, it resonates with my passions and interests, with the structure of my ‘self’! A deep longing to connect with others and share intimate emotional and intellectual processes is projected upon my participation in the proposed structures.

But, again and again, something inside seems to resist certain structures, because it feels inauthentic to push my own processes into a particular form. As if we are not doing what we claim to be doing. And this is usually the moment where I started to doubt myself up to the point of total self-rejection or questioned authority, and then - without any other learned or provided option as an adolescent - my ego found it appealing to flee into a superiority complex. I don’t feel this is the right way to go now, particularly so because this time around, I feel a space of possibilities inside of myself, I trust the teachers and I am an adult who is threatened by a situation in which I do not seem to have my own authority to leave. But, at the same time, I don’t want to harm myself, like I did in the past, by pressing myself back into the structure, depending on intensive control over my impulses and thought patterns.

Maybe I haven’t learned yet fully how to ‘positively maladjust’ in these situations, to include someone’s else’s structure and at the same time be in sink with my own processes and findings. Maybe this isn’t possible in specific contexts, but I am sure it is possible this time and within the places I find myself in right now.

It is not by coincidence that I have my own company and have been working alone a lot for over 13 years now. Then again, I really want to learn to collaborate intensely this time; in the deepest sense I am convinced that we will reach further when we stand together and put both of our shoulders to the wheel to realize a shared vision and mission. To work together, my participation in the trainings offers a solid ground to stand on and to root the collaboration.

Looking honestly at the situation is difficult – some part inside of myself is up and ready to defend ‘freedom’ and the way I was conditioned to believe what this freedom is. If I want to adhere to a structure, that part feels like I must slow down A LOT (and you can see why this leads to identification patterns ). This slowing down demands a lot of my attention and focus, or: inhibition, and somehow that seems to be difficult for me, I associate it with a form of violence. Here, I have a couple of justifications ready to avoid adjusting to the structure. Such as: one question raises 100 other questions and I can’t possibly stop my thinking here, there is a deep seeking towards the depth ‘of the cause’ which is not allowed within the format, I do not have any time to sit and work this out precisely the way I want…. All these thoughts are untrue. I know that once I look honestly at them, then I see that I am fighting reality here and it is a battle I cannot (and essentially do not want to) win, however vivid my imagination may be. They are conditioned thoughts, and they imprison my own possibilities for learning. Here, an identification with giftedness, even though these dynamics can clearly be related to literature and anecdotes about gifted people, at times justifies myself not taking responsibility to face reality and see how reality and I can work together, can expand together within boundaries intrinsically and fluidly part of reality.

Working together and participating in a training also implies a form of alignment. So, really wanting to collaborate means I must find a third way, some way other than over-controlling myself or rejecting the structure all together.

What is it that the other might need to understand what I am sharing in the training in a way that is also understandable, enriching and nourishing for me? How can there be a dialogue?

I have been working with these questions so much, that in a certain way, my whole working life (and many private interactions) have been focused on this. My professional focus on emotional development and creativity is also because these are the areas where I seem to easily connect with others. This is where I can ‘handle’ my thinking in such a way, that it seems to create felt connections and adjustment, where I feel that I can be loving, feel free and speak truth at the same time. Furthermore, what I offer in this realm can be an intense form of inspiration. Ever since I was a young child, I was the first to raise my hand when we were asked to do a public speech. I loved to gather all the information and create an inspirational structure out of it, even if eclectic, passionate, offbeat complex and what more. I have also been a teacher that seems to ‘demand’ students to try to understand me (sometimes leading to slight forms of maladjustment from my part towards the student), even if I am eager also to mirror students emotionally. As a teacher, I feel that I am also a student. But that does not imply I shouldn’t try to understand what my role as a teacher may imply, what kind of structures come along with this role.

My thinking patterns feel very fluid to me, there are many associations, I can’t control them easily. I can do it with my body, by focusing on the emotional patterns since I sense that emotions are the connections between the associations; this way I can orchestrate an intellectual concert out of the associations. I can do it while writing, because then I manipulate linearity out of the free associations, and gratefully, I have had the possibility to study literature and practice writing a lot. I can do it while speaking in front of an audience, because then I have both a well-prepared story in mind, and the freedom to tell it in the immediacy of the moment however I want it, without clearly checking whether everybody has “understood” it – understanding isn’t even my intention, I guess, however uncomfortable this may feel for me to say out loud. Now that I really would like to work together, the challenge of reciprocity is rising. The structure that is proposed in the trainings that I am following feels very familiar to me. It feels logical, emotionally relevant, and artistically free. Perfect! I would say. And in this open space, two things happen: within the openness, conflicts (conditionings) arise. I want to flee because I can’t stand over-controlling myself anymore. But then again, I do not want to flee because I feel at home, and there does not seem to be any invitation to overcontrol myself other than coming from the inside, from some old story inside of myself. At this point, my mind starts to feel enlivened, free and ….. very silent. As if there is nothing left to say about myself – an invitation that is there though, warm heartedly. As if there is no self left if everything feels interconnected and flowy, and I feel at home. But then, there is no reference point, and it is hard to connect with the others, or to conceptualize my process and adhere to the provided structure, leading to the possibility of a deeper learning process. How can I go beyond what I need (freedom and trust) and work together?

Now is the time to feel into the freedom and flowyness, and from that place, trust that if I adjust to the structure, this won’t mean I am being violent towards myself, and anything I identify with (and even this, whatever I name "violent" may turn out to be a fruitful use of distinctions and constraints, leading to new degrees of freedom). Now is the time to trust the teachers, and surrender to their guidance, to decondition the experience of being ‘too much’ (the number one feedback I got as a young child, was that I talked too much), the experience of being threatening (whenever I felt and at times communicated that a teacher wasn’t trustful to me in his or her demeanor), the experience of being impossible to understand (whenever I would connect many different dots around a topic and others, like was written in one of my school reports, ‘did not understand anything Lotte was talking about’).

Now is the time to be softly bold, sit with the complexity, and search spaciously for the forms that suit both me and the format of the training. It is a tough path of deconditioning, but I know it will bring me closer towards a shared vision while at the same time emphasizing that I am okay just the way certain parts of "me" are, free-spirited and in love with connections, both human and otherwise. This time around, teacher-me is also learning how to modestly embody what I am talking and preaching about. And this is made possible also because the teachers in the trainings are more like mentors and are willing both to understand what is happening when I run into one of those old conditionings, and to be in dialogue about this, to co-create reciprocity while remaining intellectually sharp and engaging. I feel very grateful and wish for every young child - also within every still eagerly learning adult - to experience such an enlivening encounter on their path of development.