Art of Doing Nothing: How Self-Observation Transforms you!
2nd Weekend of the Lockdown: A Redux and Part 2 of the Series.
Art of Doing Nothing: Practical Personal Exploration of the Secret Powers of the East.
In INDIA, it’s the 2nd weekend of the lockdown due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. This being a weekend again, most of us don’t have to work from home either. Just like last weekend, what do we do then? We do nothing. YES. Let’s explore the immense power of Doing Nothing. As stated in our last weekend blog, Doing nothing starts with
- Reflection and
- Observation.
In Part I, of art-of-doing-nothing, we gained familiarity, to the grossly misunderstood practice of Reflection. However, we learnt how, Reflection actually is the process of seeing anything without memory. This weekend in Part II, we will look at Observation, Self-Observation to be specific. Another topic which is grossly misunderstood, in my opinion. Let me explain.
Self-Observation, the secret power that transforms you!
As stated in my previous post on Reflection, I will stick to the mirror analogy, as the instrument or apparatus for better explanation. While reflecting is like looking at the mirror, seeing the objects in the mirror, which is by nature without any memory, Observation is looking inside-the-lens of the observer’s eyes itself. Observation therefore, is applying the technique of Reflection, and observing our own Self. So its called Self-observation, not just Observation. To observe the observer, is to specifically notice, the meta-physical taints and colorations, within the lens-in-our-own-eye. It’s not just looking at the psychological distortions of the image, or tinted-glass of the mirror itself. For the sake of this blog article hence, Self-Observation is turning the ability to see things precisely the way they are, in that specific moment, on to our own Self. But, why does self-observation have secret powers? And how can it transform you? Well, its pure physics. It’s popularly called the Observer effect. Observer effect is the process where the observer affects the observed, and changes the entire phenomena. YES, so as you observe your self, it will affect and influence changes within you! Let me give more details.
Observer Effect on Self-Observation and its scientific super powers.
Observer Effect’s influence, as per Quantum physics is not limited to just active observation with instruments, where the instruments might impact the observation, but scientific experiments in Quantum mechanics have shown that even passive observation, affects the observed. In self-observation, the instrument of observation is our own inner-faculty of perception, and the observed is also our own self. So, we can end up affecting and changing our entire inner-processes by just passive observation. Is that not a super-power? In practical terms, have you noticed that when you are angry and you just observe yourself, the intensity of your anger will change almost instantaneously, is it not? Yep, that is the scientific power of the observer effect in play. Whoever said change is difficult, probably never did any Self-observation. If you really want to transform yourself, all that you hence need, is the super-power of self-observation. But if you want to change or transform the world, by just observation, especially external observation, it will have an infinitesimally small impact. However, bigger magic can happen, if you can observe both yourself and the phenomena of anger itself, simultaneously. It can help you discover many universal phenomena, that plagues human psychological conditions, as well as your own personal responses to it. That is a discussion for another day.
Applying Self-Observation to practically Self-regulate our own Inner Asymmetries.
2 years ago, I did a Self-observation study with a group from Auroville, Puducherry in INDIA. As part of that I learnt many things, which I have uploaded on Slideshare here. The verbose version is here. One of the biggest learning during that course was how lopsided and one-sided my understanding of my own self and the world around me was. In my previous blogpost, I have articulated the dangers of lopsided mindsets and how they can create Whiteouts. We are fragile, if we have asymmetric understanding of ourselves. This is extremely well articulated by Nassim Taleb in most of his books. But to become Antifragile, we have to put our own skin, in our own game first. Scientific and effective way to achieve this is with Self-Observation. Self Observation helps us self-regulate and fix our asymmetries, thus making us antifragile.
Further Exploration: Applying Self-Observation to simultaneously co-hold ourselves and our relationships in our Business, Career and Life.
Self Observation is a critical aspect of the Art of Doing Nothing.
The critical components of the art of doing-nothing, is to first Self-reflect and then to Self-observe. We are in the middle of a very challenging pandemic, where both our conscious or compulsive responses, to the calls of a lockdown or slowdown, will determine the course of human future itself.
There are no great men. There are only great challenges which ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet. ~Admiral W.F. “Bull” Halsey. USN.
As ordinary people, each one of us, can meet this Covid-19 challenge of our lifetime. Yes, and it can be accomplished by Doing nothing.
‘Don’t do anything,’ he kept saying. ‘Don’t try to control the breath or to breathe in any particular way. Just observe the reality of the present moment, whatever it may be. ~Excerpt From: Yuval Noah Harari. “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.”
Yuval Noah Harari, has written an entire chapter called Just Observe in the above book, in a Chapter titled Meditation, where he highlights how Vipassana is his life-practice now, and how his guru Mr. Goenka tutored him.
For most people Doing Nothing is not easy, even though it is a super-power. These testing times of the Pandemic is when we are asked to co-hold ourselves (Lock-down at homes) and our relationships (Social Distancing). But this is currently, enforced on us. However, we can voluntarily, consciously and deliberately co-hold ourselves and our relationships at all times through Self-Observation. It’s not easy, it takes practice. Steve Jobs, who practiced daily self-observation through Zen meditation, had this to say
“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.”
— Steve Jobs” — from Walter Isaacson’s book Steve Jobs.
Maker’s Practice: Discipline of Deliberate Do-Nothing practices to co-hold ourselves and our relationships.
Embracing Self-Observation and unlearning our dependency to always act-on the external-world, is a very good Do-Nothing Practice. Just passively observing our own inner-selves, has clearly worked for great personalities like Steve Jobs and Yuval Noah Harari. Do you have deliberate Do-nothing practices, for co-holding your inner-self as well as your external relationships? Have you heard of such practices? If you have not, you should know about Maker’s Practice.
Maker’s practice is framework of practices, composed of eclectic sets of self-observation practices for your inner-work as well as socio-emotional practices for your relationships. Maker’s Practice is also a community where fellows help each other. Don’t wait, be a fellow at Maker’s Practice. Leave a comment, write an email (manjunath at catalystor dot com) or call us.
