Rules Of The Game

RULES OF THE GAME From the Chicano Critical Review, March 25, 2006

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Emeritus Professor of English, Texas State University System–Sul Ross; Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in English, Texas A&M University– Kingsville.

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llis Cose may feel free to define his place in the world (Newsweek, January 28, 2002, 52) but that is not a reality for many others of color. However, Cose’s list of “things you must know to survive and thrive in America” is a list of things everyone ought to know to survive and thrive anywhere. Here’s Cose’s list: Don’t expect complaints about the raw deal you’ve gotten in life to get you anywhere. Do better than the world expects of you; live in a bigger world than the one you see. Don’t expect support from those who have not accomplished very much in their lives. Those who bring out your most self-destructive tendencies are not your friends. Don’t be too proud to ask for help, particularly from those who are wiser and older. Recognize that being true to yourself is not the same as being true to a stereotype. Don’t let glitter blind you. Don’t expect competence and hard work alone to get you the recognition or rewards you think you deserve. Seize the time, for it’s already later than you think. Lost time is hard to make up. Have faith in yourself, even if you fake it. Don’t force innocent others to bear the price of your pain.

I would add: With all its risks, life is to be lived not feared.

As a teacher in the public schools and later in colleges and universities, I have observed with considerable concern the motivational index of people of all ages. Like Par Lagerqvist’s panoramic hordes or Tolkien’s masses, I saw in those people the endless string of humanity struggling in what we call the human condition, most of them held in place by a fear of their own making, accepting the proposition that all of us have a specified place in the great chain of being, immovable, irrevocable. Jean Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century political philosopher, observed during his time that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

We tend to equate that remark with political oppression of the past, totalitarian regimes that actually put their subjects in chains. But the deeper meaning of Rousseau’s statement links up with William Blake’s “mind-forged manacles” which bind people to their own oppressive behaviors. A century later, Karl Marx, another political philosopher, proclaimed that “man” had to throw off those mind-forged manacles which shackled him before he could achieve self-fulfillment. In the 19th century struggle for Black emancipation, Frederick Douglas saw clearly that the limits of oppression are set not by the oppressors but by the oppressed.

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ortune often favors folly, even bravery, sometimes naiveté, seldom cowardice or fear because the essence of life is risk. I don’t agree with Samuel Johnson that life is to be endured. Life is what we make of it. Life need not be a hassle. That does not mean there are not obstacles to overcome, to surmount, to circumvent. However, the more one “struggles” against obstacles, the greater the resis-tance. In the martial arts “resistance” is an internal opponent. In Judo, for example (a martial art in which I earned a Black Belt) one does not resist the thrust of an opponent but, rather, one “flows” with those thrusts, using them against the opponent. This is turning opposition to one’s advantage In open societies people are not chained anymore, but many people are “enchained” nevertheless by par-ticular kinds of self-defeating notions and behavior, oppressive, internally controlled drives of their own making. Samuel J. Warner put it this way: “When people consider their failure to succeed in some aspect of life, they generally overlook completely the causal roles played by forces within themselves in the ultimate outcome of that failure.” Instead they blame external forces: the boss, the wife, the husband, the job, the system, the parents (oh yes, the parents) any-one except themselves. Paul Tournier summed it up as: “People who complain of being thwarted have nearly always their own weakness to blame.” We’ve read about gamblers, drunks, spenders

with compulsive behaviors , unable to curb them for their own good; of men and women married to alcoholics, divorce them, and keep on marrying alcoholics. Psychologically such behavior has been explain-ed as one which seeks punishment for whatever rea-sons are embedded in the mind—a codependency chaining them to impulses that are anathema to themselves and the public weal. We are controlled by feelings , not by logic or reason. In the Epistle to the Romans (7:19), St. Paul discloses: “For the good that I should, I do not; but the evil which I should not, that I do.” Paradoxical as that may sound, behavior is, unfortunately, often motivated by forces inimical to the best interests of the individual. Death wishes are manifestations of those forces. Warner calls people driven by those forces “gargoyles of their genotype,” exhibiting behavior assuring their defeat and failure, oftentimes a manifestation of immaturity, petulance, dependency, and naiveté. This behavior “helps” them avoid coming to grips with truths about themselves or looking squarely at their lives, examining them close-ly. Gargoyles are grotesque human or animal figures. In ancient—and down to fairly modern times —gar-goyles adorned tops and corners of buildings to ward off evil spirits. Later, architects used gargoyles as gut-ter spouts to throw rain water clear of buildings. Gar-goyles are not fashionable in architecture these days, but here and there one can still see on old buildings gargoyles protruding from roofs. The gargoyles of Notre Dame cathedral are still there. Mind-forged manacles of behavior make gargoyles of people, sit-ing atop edifices of doubt, of their own design and construction, waiting for imagined evils and obsta-cles. Shakespeare remarked that “there is nothing but thinking makes it so.” Indeed, if we think we are “powerless” with little hope of getting ahead then we are powerless with little hope of getting ahead. The mind becomes the servant of that thought and, in turn, the self also becomes a servant of that thought. The tail now wags the dog. The English poet Milton conceptualized “the mind” as “a little world made cunning” for it could “make of heaven a hell, and a hell of heaven.” Indeed the mind can be the enemy within, a sort of fifth column destroying hopes and dreams by making us think we are less than what we are, planting seeds of doubt, cynicism, and skepticism in all we do. The

mind can be a formidable opponent, but not invincible.

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lato opined that “the unexamined life is not worth the living” yet countless numbers of people go through life without examining their lives, unaware of the underpinnings of their existence. The first step in creating a fulfilling life is to assume responsibility for one’s own behavior, what is going on in one’s life in the here and now. We have first to see “what” is going on in our lives, then ask “why” it’s going on. The ancient Greeks believed reason was the lamp of life. The world could be organized (and changed) by reason. Thus, if we can reason that “attitude for-mation” is an acquired process, then we can reason that attitude can be “re-formed.” William James, the eminent American psychologist, posited that “human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” He was talking about “transformation—the metamorphosis of self.” Resistance to inner change prevents self-knowledge, perpetuating self-defeating behavior. To begin the process of personal renewal we need first to acknowledge resistance, examine “reactive” and “avoidance” behavior, look for “unconscious” resistance in our interactions with people. For example, to live one’s life predominantly in relation to one’s parents, seeking always to please them is to prolong “the little world of childhood” and to prolong one’s transit to adulthood. To be in constant conflict with one’s parents is to thwart one’s self-realization. Seeking their approval long past the time when such approval is appropriate is simply an extension— though it may not appear to be that—of the parentchild mode. To renew the human spirit we must strive towards creative self-fulfillment; towards self-direc-ted independence, propelling us towards true auto-nomy. This is accomplished by creating strong, open relationships based on realistic perspectives of how life works, not the way we think it ought to work. This means being willing to listen with the inner ear, to see with the inner eye. It means moving from being self-centered to being centered on self. The difference is profound.

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ought to deal with things as they are, not as they are not. Since the “real Tao” is “inexpressible” then anything expressed as the real Tao must be false. So, too, if we deal with things the way they are not, then that is not transfor-mation. When Master Shin-t’ou was asked about ultimate revelation in Buddhism, he pointed out that no account could explain it. “Until one has it, one does not understand it. But once one has it, there is no need of an explanation.” Werner Erhard said something close to this when he spoke of being unable to change what we know, explaining that what we can change is the way we know something. It’s out of that response—the way we know something—that mean-ingful change can occur for us. For example, in the great Western Renaissance of the 13th century, a whole new spirit of the age, a zeitgeist, emerged from looking at the values of Greek and Roman antiquity in a way different from the way they had been viewed. That produced a whole new wave of creativity—bringing forth the new out of what was already there. Creative energy flows out of our willingness to hold something differently. By “hold” I mean the way an attitude or belief is part of us. Consider the following: If we hold a bird too tightly, for example, it cannot fly. And held too tightly, once freed, more than likely it will not return to our hand. That’s how change, creativity, and transformation work. Holding them too tightly doesn’t give them a chance to take wing. That’s why the great Western Renaissance worked, why it produced such great luminaries as Galileo, Bacon, Michelangelo, DaVinci, et al. They let go of the view of how things were—fixed notions about life—for the vision of how things could be: the bird in flight, the dynamic for the static, the examined life. The rigidity of ideas had held the Western world hostage in a thousand years of “immobility”—the Dark Ages.

n describing the life and travels of Mingliaotse, Tu Lung, the Buddhist philosopher, explains that

He who has attained the Tao can go into water without becoming wet, jump into fire without being burned, walk upon reality as if it were a void and travel on a void as if it were reality. One who has attained the Tao is master of himself. Throw him in the company of the soiled, and he will be like a lotus flower growing from muddy water, touched by it, yet unstained.

Tu Lung goes on to explain that many of us are like the willow tree, following the wind—when the wind is quiet, we are quiet; when the wind moves, we move—like sand in water, as clean or as muddy as the water flowing over us and around us. That’s not transformation. That’s being at the effect of life, not at cause, nor at choice. Buddhist philosophy does not create meaning for any particular object in relation/distinction to something else. In Buddhist philosophy everything has a meaning of its own; things point to no reality other than themselves. A woman is not a flower—a wo-man is a woman; and a flower is a flower. Werner Erhard, the founder of EST, once explained, “Water’s wet, rocks are hard, and mother is mother.” In Buddhist reality things are what they are, not what they are not, what we want them to be. That’s an im-portant part of transformation but the most difficult to grasp. To become transformed we must start with things the way they are, not the way they are not. That means we have to start with a clear vision of what is and work from there. We must be clear about where to start. For if we start with false premises and false expectations, that way disappointment lies. Many of us are looking for the Way (the Tao), believing that its discovery will shed some light on who we are and what we ought to do in life. But the Way, like the Tao, points to no discovery or purpose other than its own. Its reality is its own, pointing to no other reality. That’s the point of transformation: dealing with things as they are, not the way they are not. What often confuses people about Buddhist philosophy is its paradoxical nature, its way of speaking to the point and, yet, beyond it. For example, “the Tao that can be expressed is not the real Tao,” according to Lao Tzu, writing some 2,500 years ago. That paradox is like saying we

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he way we know something is called consciousness. And the way to consciousness be-gins with awareness . . . awareness that rigidity of mind leaves us in a maze out of which there is no exit. Change is what gives free rein to the infrastructure of ideas resident in all of us. When I completed EST training in the early 70's “I ‘got’ that everything I thought I needed to know I already knew.” I already had the 3

infrastructure of ideas within me which when given free rein provides us with the knowledge we need at our fingertips. All of us have access to the wisdom. Unfortunately some of us are “shut down” internally, and the infrastructure of ideas within us is dormant, thus keeping us from wisdom. It doesn’t matter how we came to be “shut down.” What’s important is to know we’re “shut down” and to admit it. That first step— admission—is what opens the door to awareness and lets the luminosity of creativity into our interior selves, giving us full view to the infrastructure of ideas, waiting there, as it has been, for us “to play” with, to be creative with. Who knows how many Galileos, Bacons, Michelangelos or DaVincis are within us? But changing old habits, no matter how liberating that change, is not easy despite the fact that change is part of the inexorable process of life in all its manifestations. A span of time goes from light to dark, then back to light again. Plants, shrubs and trees change from one season to the next. Over the span of millennia, organized societies changed from primal village cultures to contemporary urban cultures. Change takes place all around us. Even within our bodies, without our consent. We are born, grow older, and die, returning to the “chaos” of creation out of which God first brought forth light and heaven and earth. Change is in the nature of existence, yet humans, unlike other beings of earth, seem to resist it, preferring the comfortable to the controversial, the familiar to the new. People become creatures of habit, going through well-worn routines day after day. Not all people, to be sure. Indeed, one would be hard put to say just how many people we’re talking about. Suffice to say, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” as Henry David Thoreau exclaimed. Or following “foolish consistencies”—the hobgoblin of little minds —that Ralph Waldo Emerson described. Resistance has become the principal impediment to achieving the transformed life. Stuck! That’s another word for resistance. We get stuck in our lives, with all our “stuff”—the script we need, according to Werner Erhard—to keep the soap opera of our lives going day after day. No one can change another person; no one can transform another human being—unless we do so as Dr. Frankenstein did with his creation. In the

end, even that proved impossible. Each of us guards a gate of change within us, a gate which only we can open. Thus, the only person we can transform is our self. But that’s the real beginning of social transformation. It begins with our own transformation. Resistance to change prevents self-knowledge, perpetuating self-defeating behaviors. Out of this resistance human beings live out their destinies like ants, instead of shaping those destinies like transformed human beings. “Man alone is the architect of his destiny,” William James concluded, but everywhere man is still chained to the powers of pessimism, negativism and defeat, sitting in Plato’s cave, eyes fixed on shadows of a reality that is not theirs. “Mind forged manacles” as William Bake called them.

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n the electrical sciences, a “transformer” is a device that receives one type of energy (direct current) and changes it to another (alternating current). The lexical meaning of the word “transform” is (1) to change in composition or structure, (2) to change the outward form of appearance, (3) to change in character or condition. Ice, for example, is a transformation of water, just as steam is another transformation of water. Clouds are another transformation of water via condensation. All around us transformation happens. A Water > B Transform> Ice/Steam In the above illustration, B is always potential in A; and A is always inherent in B. “Change” is at the heart of transformation. We can see that transformation involves a manifestation of the “original” in another form. In humans, outward form or appearance may involve a change in hairstyles or sartorial choices. Or a change in character, the latter being the most dramatic, as in the case of Ebenezer Scrooge who was “transformed” from a miserly anti-Christmas curmudgeon to a warm and festive-loving person who learned how to keep Christmas in his heart. Changes in hair styles or dress can be short-lived. So can changes in character or behavior, but the likelihood of permanent, more lasting change, comes from change within, from what Tantric philosophy calls Samahdi—the internal experience of luminosity— 4

growing out of a change in attitude towards those around us, the world, and the things in it. Tantric philosophy, for example, asserts that the divine may be discovered through the human body, touching the spirit of God within it. Like other philosophies, Tantric philosophy believes that the spirit of God, as the creator of all things, resides in all of God’s creations. Tantric philosophy focuses on “Shiwa”—the doc-trine of positive thought—an ancient form of mind control. Shiwa requires discipline, perseverance, ba-lance, and a centered self. In Tantra, our “self-image” does not depend upon what others say or think about us, rather, our self-image depends upon what “we think” about ourselves, who we think we are. Unfor-tunately, as Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher, put it: “We strive continually to adorn and preserve out imaginary self, negating the true one.” We are who we think we are. Cartesian philosophers expressed it as cogito ergo sum—I think, there-fore I am. This doesn’t mean if we think we’re Tom Cruise or Michelle Pfeiffer we are Tom Cruise or Michelle Pfeiffer. It means, perhaps convolutedly, that since we are thinking creatures we are who we think we are. We can’t transsubstantiate ourselves into another person, but we can transform ourselves into who we can be. We can transform the negative energy within us into positive energy.

“inten-tion” translated into action—praxis, suiting the action to the word. The transformed life is living one’s intention, touching the power within us to make a difference in the world. The first step toward trans-formation is starting where you are— no matter where you are. It matters not how small the beginning may seem. In time you will find that your whole life is a life of intention. This means not giving up if you don’t realize your intentions. It means, simply, renewing your intentions and going on from there.

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ecome who you can be. Start with the faith that you can become the person you can be and soon you will see that you have become that person. I often tell people that I have become the person I have always wanted to be. The argument that “I am who I am and that’s how people must accept me” cuts off possibilities for growth and development of the person. With that attitude we proffer to those around us a “static” picture of ourselves, stuck in an unchangeable eiconic image of who we think we are, expecting people to validate our self-limiting perspec-ives and behaviors. And for the most part they do, helping us to add more links to the chains that already bind us. We become, thus, our own jailers and war-dens, oblivious of the fact that the prison we are in is but a figment of our imagination, a prison whose walls are invisible but will not come down until we tear them down ourselves. Some of this commentary is drawn from Transformation: The Metamorphosis of Self by the author (Caravel Press, 1988).

To become the person we can be, we must work on the capacity to “see” our faults and to change them accordingly. The transformed life is the life of

Copyright © 2006 by the author. All rights reserved.

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