Mindfulness as a waking, walking meditation

According to Maxwell Maltz (1960) there are behaviors that contribute to a "success-type personality." He developed an acronym as a mnemonic or easy way of remembering the elements of the behaviors:

S = sense of direction
U = understanding
C = courage
E = esteem
S = self confidence
S = self-acceptance

He provides additional explanation on how each of these elements contributes to accomplishing or having a "successful" life. He states that "(t)he reason .... that a man does not simply 'find' success or 'come to' failure (is that) ....  (h)e carries their seeds around in his personality and character" (p.102)

This viewpoint is of the social construction variety. We create the social world we live in by our actions and attitudes.  Our actions contribute to what happens. Our attitudes contribute to how we feel about that happens. A basic element of his prescription for success is to focus on the process not the product. Being successful is differentiated from wanting to be a success. Maltz suggests that success is hidden in the process of becoming rather than embedded in the state of "being."

"S" or Sense of direction is related to the idea that we are happiest when we are attempting to do something or engaging in an experience. Maltz says that the human animal is a "goal-seeking mechanism." We are happiest when we are busiest working on a project or doing something which "means something." He gives a nod to concept of "flow" without ever mentioning the word when he suggests that "(w)hen you are not goal-striving, not looking forward, you're not really 'living' ."(p. 102) This immersion in goal seeking is what I am suggesting is akin to 'flow' where you are absorbed in what you are doing.

But I sat down today to peck out a hunk of what Maltz has to say about the second element of the success personality. "U" or understanding is listed second. I don't think he necessarily intended to list them in order of importance just providing meanings to correspond to the letters in the work 'success."

"U" is understainding. Maltz says that:(u)nderstanding depends upon good communication. Communication is vital to any guidance system or computer. You cannot react appropriately if the information you act upon is faulty or misunderstood. Many doctors believe that "confusion" is the basic element in neurosis To deal effectively with a problem, you must have some understanding of its true nature. Most of our failures in human relations are due to "misunderstandings." (p.105)

The idea of understanding is further explained to include the idea that (w)e expect people to react and respond and come to the same conclusions as we do from a given set of "facts" or 'circumstances.' " Maltz reminds us that he had mentioned earlier in the book that people don't react to things "as they are" but rather as we see them to be based on our own perspective, perceptions and conclusions. This is very similar to the concepts propounded in the Landmark Forum which some have characterized as a cult or commercial scam. However, counsels "there is what happened and then there is the story we tell about what happened." This is very similar to maxim shared by Maltz but also consistent with existential thought and social constructionism.

Other aspects of understanding include being able to differentiate fact from fiction. An example used is a husband who cracks his knuckles and his wife who concludes that he does it only to annoy her. The experience is explained as the wife is making the assumption that the husband is deliberately trying to annoy her  which are fiction. But her assumption affects her experience of the situation and results in her choosing to be annoyed by the imaginary intent of the husband. We make other assumptions about the intentions of others with similar results. Also, being willing to see the truth is another element of "understanding" is to "be willing to see the truth." This is meant that honesty with ourselves and with others is necessary for true understanding. It sort of suggests that if you have an incorrect (false) diagnosis of the problem it will result in a incorrect (false) prescription for the solution. A suggested attitude in this regard is "it doesn't matter who's right, but what's right."

These first two steps are preliminary but important. While we have been talking about these concepts applied on a personal basis they are also relevant when we look at collective behavior. There are behaviors that groups adopt that reflect these same problems or their corrective principles. Healing ourselves emotionally is the purpose and intent of these ideas. Change the frame and change the future.




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China - Human Rights and American delusions

While our fearless leader George Bush is settling in for his retirement as President of the United States he is going around lecturing people to do as he says and not as he has done. We hear this loudest as people talk about China and its sweatshop human rights abuses that include denying non-Han ethnicities the right to their cultural heritage and tradition. Imagine that!

First, in terms of sweat shop economics we have only to look in the mirror as a nation to recognize the capitalist ideology that says "Greed is good" and the only good worker is an exploited worker. Isn't that the ethos of capitalism? While the Chinese factory workers are being exploited for their labor American workers are unemployed and have no access to the paltry crumbs being tossed to the Chinese workers. In fact, while the Chinese are paid a pittance for their labor, American workers are denied the opportunity to work and forced into peonage as they borrow against future earnings that they won't have and run up a debt burden on credit cards and borrow against the equity in the one (or two) assets they have. Home refinancing to pull out what little equity remains or car title loans to trade the tools required for future earnings for a crust of bread today. It is a joke to talk about slave labor in Chinese factories when the majority of Americans are indebted to whoever will extend them credit. Help! American workers have fallen into debt and they can't get out!

The capitalist owners of the factors of production are looking for the cheapest deal. They fund the Chinese capitalist labor extraction camps and hide their hand. Cheap foreign labor means no jobs in the U.S. economy but cheaper imports of consumer goods. It is stupid to think that the American economy can keep chugging along as it did for the first 20 years after World War 2 when the conditions of workers at home have been degraded to the point where they can not afford basic living needs.

Then the baloney about the Chinese repressing the identity of different ethnicities in China. What a bunch of hogwash. For those of us who have been paying attention it is clear that the United States was a forerunner in the creation of "whiteness" due to the need for suppressing the enslaved African labor force who powered its early economy. In fact, it was the melting pot idea that cleverly disguised the American cultural identity excision process. This same approach was adopted by Europeans around the world. We hear reports of the boarding schools for Native Americans in Canada. The boarding schools for the aboriginal people of Australia. American society was structured to indoctrinate all who fell under its sway to the superiority of the "White" race and the corresponding inferiority of all others based on the level of melanin content in their skin. So there were schools where the Native American was taught, taunted and trained to not be Native American. There was all of society that damned and degraded the African ancestry of the formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants and everybody else fell into a continuum from bright white to damned Black. How does Bush and his fellow ideologues (yes, I am talking about you and all the others who have internalized the white supremacist ideations or its corresponding Black inferiority degradations of American social thought and political economy) so smugly wag their finger at those who would be White? The concept of whiteness is similar to the concept of Blackness where it is more than a phenotypical feature. It is a culture, an ideology, a worldview, a manifesto that is shouted from the printed page, the electronic screen and the melanin deficient posturing of the savage beasts who have left a trail of blood and cultural destruction in their wake.

I am not pointing fingers. Externalized white supremacy through the workings of European institutions. Internalized Black inferiority through the suppression of dignity and the degradation of pride. But come on, who needs to point fingers when you know who you are!




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