Over the last couple of months I have been given a wonderful opportunity to explore and acid-test my newly-discovered integration potential in uniquely apropos fashion. Before I can begin work learning about American belly dancers and their understanding of ‘self’ for my dissertation research project, I have to do two comprehensive exam-papers reviewing the literature, and methodological considerations relevant to my proposed research project. The first of these was a paper in which I needed to trace the developing notions of the ‘self’ from pre-Renaissance times to the different theoretical paradigms currently used in the social sciences and humanities.
Because of my resistance to the yoga ‘form’ of researching and writing the paper, I ended-up having to start this 50-page monolith from scratch three different times. Each time, I tackled the task the same way I have every other task in my academic career – with initial interest which quickly degrades into impatience, struggle, anger, and eventual dissatisfaction with myself. Nevertheless, after buckets of tears, cigarettes, and coffee, I completed each draft, thinking I had done my best – then was blindsided by my long-term advisor’s absolute rejection of my paper.
This cycle of complete disintegration, as I said, happened several times over the course of January and February. I maniacally tried to schedule blocks of time to hole-up with my stacks of books, but was constantly torn away by my scholarship/job obligations; by family members and friends needing time or help in various ways; and by my yoga practice, classes, homework, and processing all the ‘ah-ha’ moments. And then, every time I would get into my book-cave to work for a whole afternoon or even a day, all I could do was curl-up and stare at the computer screen. Again, complete disintegration.
This tension continued to build until I sat down to begin the paper again from scratch. I couldn’t handle all the weight, and darted from one escape route to another, looking for anything that could relieve the pressure. I couldn’t take it – the whole system cracked.
First I tried to quit my job/scholarship, which is, in essence, an unnatural amount of money for a part-time teaching assistant gig. I told my advisor of my decision, and received an, well, unexpected response. He was pissed-off, to say the least. And he proceeded to give me a talkin-to any guilt-tripping-matriarch would be proud of. However, in this, I felt that he truly became my professional Dad. If I hadn’t come to this desperation and flipped-out, I would never have known how much has gone on behind the scenes for me to be where I am – how many people have gone to bat for me based only on their faith in my abilities, and how strong a net of support I have in my professors. Damn-it!
I next darted to another escape latch, and I tried to quit the yoga teacher training program. Again I was blocked (doh!), this time by my yogi Eric. I found through this experience that the messages taught through yoga are very much reflected by him and the rest of the staff in the program. I learned that the program, like a yoga posture, is not supposed to look the same for everyone, and that I don’t need to worry about not being able to devote the ‘appropriate’ amount of time to it, and concern myself about not getting ‘what I’m supposed to’ out of the program – this, of course, happens on its own. He also cut me some slack in turning-in my homework.
So, thwarted again, I returned to my paper, resigned to the conditions of my experience. I begin to relax the resentment toward the research and writing. The fear attached to the future, with its bigger, scarier tasks, and the judgments of my research, also started to lessen. I was able to begin to ‘open-up’ into the form of the writing itself – to give myself over to the process, and start listening to the cues that would lead me into one or another philosophical connection, and down another path of reasoning. In brief, the writing process became light and fun! I kept thinking, “I get it! I get the theory game!”
What makes the yoga form of writing the paper so curiously appropriate to my experience in the yoga teacher training program involves the subject of my exam paper: the self. By relaxing into the cyclical process of reading, writing, and making connections, I was rewarded with an amazing journey from the first, Renaissance-inspired notions of a self (challenging previous notions of a self that did not exist apart from ancestry, historical, and religious processes), through the positivistic Enlightenment notions of the completely-knowable self which established a firm mind/body divide. I felt the shift that came with industrialization and the resulting modernist notions of a self rooted primarily in one’s relationship to the social world through its access to, or alienation from, the fruits of its labor due to power-infused relations of social class, race, gender, culture, and nation-state dynamics. More stimulating were the ‘dialectic’ notions of the self which were also developing in response to the Enlightenment models. In the dialectic models, the mind/body duality was replaced with a processual development of an internally-oppositional self.
I saw the excitement in the first psychological ‘decenterings’ of the self (which contend that the self is inaccessibly contained within the unconscious, and continually suppressed by the manipulations of the ego). Existentialists developed an even more radical denial of the self by vehemently asserting that ‘existence precedes essence’ – in other words, the self exits only as a result of its moment-to-moment experiences.
Around the same time, phenomenologists contrasted this existential view by focusing on a self/consciousness that precedes the sensory experiences, and is separate from them. The only way of accessing the self, is then by examining the sensory experiences, and the self in relation to them. So, in essence, phenomenology is a study of the self’s lived experience of the world (hmmm, this is beginning to sound a lot like yoga). In Elizabeth Grosz’s words, “Merleau-Ponty locates experience at the midpoint between mind (in this context she means ‘self’) and body. He links the question of experience not only to the privileged locus of consciousness, but demonstrates that experience is always, necessarily embodied, corporeally constituted, located in and as the subject’s incarnation” (Grosz 1999: 149).
When I got to phenomenology and its descendents, the light bulbs began to brighten then burst. I realized that I’ve been guided into the absolutely perfect way to approach my research from a place of integration! And it’s what my advisor has been directing me toward for months – and I just wasn’t hearing (“you should really check-out phenomenology, Ramsi,” “Why isn’t there any phenomenology in this draft?” “Insert Merleau-Ponty HERE!!!!!” and so on…).
According to Vedic literature, “(t)he individual is the passenger in the car of the material body, and intelligence is the driver. Mind is the driving instrument, and the senses are the horses. The self is thus the enjoyer or sufferer in the association of the mind and the senses. So it is understood by great thinkers” (Katha Upanisad 1.3.3-4 in A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, 1986). I was flipping-through a used copy of the Bhagavad-gita As It is, I picked-up yesterday – of course going straight to the section of weird, colorful pictures in the middle – and came across a plate illustrating this passage. I realized that by letting my mind and body run away with the suffocating experience of this life and its work, I was being dragged over the precipice of the nearest canyon by those rabid equine. Integration has become, in this instance, compulsory for the understanding of my research philosophy and methodologies. At the same time, if I apply this philosophy to researching the self via the mind’s understanding of the sensory experiences of the physical/social world, I am simultaneously seeking that moment of integration with my belly dancers by presenting their communicated understandings of their experience of self in the world.
It is then clear that I can’t even ask the questions until I have this understanding of integration – and integration is impossible if I keep running away from the form, the process, the discipline. The research process is completely dependent upon this yogic discipline. I’ve found, for me at least, understanding eludes me until I can discipline myself to continually return to the moment, to melt into the process of reading, writing, processing, observing, drawing-out narratives, engaging informants, connecting, synthesizing, generalizing, and so on. Unfortunately, this damn discipline (a.k.a. escape-from-disintegration-and-misery-and-road-to-academic-success-yada-yada) is the lynchpin I’ve avoided my whole 28 years of half-assing and rule-breaking. The process is so beautifully clean and complete.
Text 36: For one whose mind is unbridled, self-realization is difficult work. But he whose mind is controlled and who strives by appropriate means is assured of success. That is My opinion. (A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, 1986).
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A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. 1986. Bhagavad-gita As It Is: Complete Edition. Los Angeles: International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1999. “Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the flesh.” pp 145-166 in Merleau-Ponty, Interiority and Exteriority, Psychic Life and The World.” Edited by D. Olkowski, and J. Morley. New York: SUNY.
—–Original Message—–
To: Ramsi
Subject: CLASS
Hello Ramsi,
My name is ——– and your my TA for ——- (freshman level class). I turned in my paper and wanted to know what the next exam will cover? Is it the Picchi book or the CC book? Anything in particular I should know/look out for to be extra pre-paired for this?
thanks, I need a lot of help!!!!
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Subject: RE: CLASS
Hi ——,
I’ll be posting a study guide like the one for the first test on course website the week before the test. It will cover everything since the last exam, including the lecture, and ALL the assigned readings.
Ramsi
p.s. it’s ‘prepared’ not pre-paired.
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Subject: RE: RE: CLASS
WOW thanks for the correctoin…I didnt realize that you were a TA for english class also.
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