At the transition point between Understanding and Appreciation, the prominence of either expertise/intelligence or wisdom is extremely influential. It is quite possible to focus on some sort of expertise and achieve a sense of fairly consistent flow, perhaps even inspiration. Without a flexible grasp on expertise and intelligence, though, one's expertise remains domain-specific (limited to mostly the field in which one is expert) while intelligence remains somewhat separate from emotions and disconnected from a personal, experiential foundation.
If wisdom is valued, mindfulness cannot be disconnected from a sense of appreciation. In the stage of Appreciation, intelligence is integrated with emotion while one's sense of humanity and human potential begins to slide towards integration with lived reality. In other words, we personally "grasp" a sense of ease with process, with allowing things to continue unfolding. This ease is part of the general shift from mental effort (trying) to intentional grace. As one works into mindful appreciation, grace becomes less of a transcendent or rare thing, but--due to mindfulness--it does not lose its special quality.
As we move from thorough establishment of Appreciation to to a smooth embrace of care-ful Clarity, thorough mindfulness practice along with the integrations involved in Appreciation wrap care in clarity rather than submersing care in sentimentality. Without the quality of clarity, it is very difficult for people to distinguish emotion from a nostalgic sort of sentimentality. (Without this distinction, people often pull for histrionics of mushiness rather than actual compassion.) This care is opposed to a sense of high energy or adrenaline junkie/narcissistic inspiration that devalues or ignores one's body, emotions, social relationships, and overall environment.
Intelligence without wisdom easily supports technological advancements at the expense of bodies, integration of emotion, relationships, and environment. The integration of body, mind, emotion, relationships, and environment supports a consistent sense of interested exploration. In a sense, the feelings of beginner's luck and Christmas-morning-newness never need to be farther from us than the wink of an eye. The overall sense of wellbeing encourages one to simply address any particular "problems" rather than avoid or fear them.AT the stage of Clarity, we distinguish clearly between difficulty, effort, or energy, and the sense of something being problematic. With Nonconceptuality, we finish moving through and beyond the sense of anything being particularly problematic.
(Here's the part that stood out from working with high-school-age folks.) Because emergent processes cannot be planned and because we experience life as an emergent process rather than a design process ( a type of process that can be planned), realistic and applicable planning is often more about heuristics and qualities rather than specifics and quantities. (Heuristics and qualities fit more with mindful appreciation and wisdom while an emphasis on specifics and quantities fits with technology and intelligence.) Application of heuristics is a major contributor to wisdom and a focus on, or ability with, qualities is a major contributor to mindful appreciation. A pinpoint focus on internal qualities of awareness and experience along with the application of heuristics based on a critical mass of intentional experience get together to support a sense of agency and inspiration. (I found it odd working with high-schoolers because the critical mass of experience is not there while the intelligence is.) When we feel that pinpoint focus to be related directly to a sense of individual self--and when we can feel that focus with an openness to our individual feelings as well--we actually create the existential space to let go of the feelings of individuality and selfhood. While this is still felt to be fairly new, we are working on flow-states or the level of Clarity; there is still enough awareness of (and investment in) separated/separative selfhood that we really see flow-states (moments of no-self, openness, or anatta) as special, prized. As we become more familiar with this existential space, the sense of flow, the clarity, the absence of individual neediness we become more receptive, more capable of responding to situations in a wider variety of ways, because we fee less of a drive to demand things for ourselves. We feel less of a drive to be needy, less of a drive to being demanding in a petty manner.
The difference between the feeling of being driven or needing to push for intensity as opposed to a sense of familiarity and ease with harmony is one of the hallmarks of moving into Nonconceptuality. Nonconceptuality involves a significant qualitative shift that cannot be adequately felt and interpreted without a familiarity with openness and/or inspiration. If we are not aware of developing clarity while we move through that stage, we are much more likely to emphasize the sense of inspiration we feel through our own spontaneous experience or which we attribute to a particular tradition, method, path, or set of circumstances. In such a case, the high level of positive-feeling-energy is very convincing but ultimately deluding. In such a case, people get stuck in their own narcissism, ethnocentrism, or whatever form of this-but-not-that-ism they know and prefer. Harmony in this sort of case is impossible--as is justice. When we clutch to irredeemable preferences, we have no perspective from which to speak of and feel for justice, which leaves us little chance of acting in genuine harmony with ALL of those around us. Nonconceptuality does not present the demand that we abandon our in-groups; it is the demand that we put no one whosoever outside of our in-group.
People have said, "No justice, no peace." This made sense to me for quite some time. But without each of us bringing our sense of peace along with us, justice will never actually exist in our relationships. Whether or not this makes conceptual sense to everyone is largely irrelevant; most of us FEEL that we do not want to hate or dehumanize--to put other people outside of who we are with. But unless we take the steps necessary to move into an integrated sense of connection, we will simultaneously and in a fragmented way feel that we wish everyone could get with what we know to be true while also condemning some for not getting with the program.
The program is wide, open to all. But it includes justice, which means it includes punishment.
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz