Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Human Beings -- Make Mistakes

That's Rule Number One:

Human beings make mistakes.

8 comments:

SlowZen said...

Rule number two: There are no mistakes.

Mike Cross said...

Rule number two is Marjory's Law:

"Being wrong, in this work, is the best friend we have got."

  said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
  said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Cross said...

Hi Will,

As the old saying goes, "To err is human, to forgive... the action of a well integrated human" -- or something like that.

It really does all come back to the vestibular.

Ernst Moro, who gave his name to the baby panic reflex, is said originally to have described it as a clasping reflex. Actually the Moro reflex has two parts, an opening up part and a closing/grasping part. The infant palmar grasp reflex is closely related to the clasping aspect of the Moro reflex.

The point is that the clinging/grasping as described in the old Sanskrit & Pali texts need not be understood as a purely psychological phenomenon. Clinging/grasping has its original roots in the vestibular system.

Mike Cross said...

P.S. I meant to clarify, but didn't, that clinging/grasping/holding on may be seen as the antithesis of allowing/forgiving & forgetting/letting go. And so, yes, forgiveness also can be seen as at root a vestibular problem.

  said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Cross said...

Will -- what people (including me in past lives) have called "right posture" or "proper posture" is just a vestibular tendency to clench.

From these last 14 years in which my sitting in lotus has been informed by Alexander's wisdom, what have I really understood?

I have got further and further away from the right seated posture. But the wrong tendency to clench, rooted in an imperfectly functioning vestibular system: that has become more and more my area of expertise.

Yes, to tend away from what we know, from our familiar habit, from our entrenched ways of thinking, can be very unnerving.

That unnerving process is itself, at root, at brainstem level, a vestibular problem. So sometimes we allow ourselves to fall back on what we know -- the familiarity of a football match on TV and a hot drink, the old routine of brushing the teeth, putting our head on a comfortable old pillow... zzzzz.