You Are a Process in a Reality of Processes

We live in a paradigm in which we are trained to see ourselves as individual achievers who strategize and work towards the completion of objectives. This goal-oriented perspective is foundational to who we think we are.

Under the spell of the goal-oriented paradigm we think about ourselves inside the backdrop of time. We imagine ourselves existing now and working towards a future when our goals will be fulfilled. This time-bound orientation keeps us wrapped up in a sense of separation and isolation.

We see ourselves existing now and not then, here and not there. We live in a reality in which the past is seen as separate from the present, and both are experienced as separate from the future. We are isolated in this moment as if we are stranded on an island in an ocean of time.

This goal-oriented paradigm of individual achievement and isolated existence emerges in large part due to our materialistic assumptions about reality. We are trained to see reality as a physical place full of material objects that can be perceived using our five senses.

We see our physical bodies as the most fundamental element defining who we are and so we experience ourselves as a physical object separate from everything else. This leads to a reductionist tendency in which we see the body as a machine made up of working parts, with wellbeing then meaning maintaining the functioning of all the parts of the body.

In her book Stalking Wild Psoas, Liz Koch offers a different paradigm through which to relate to our embodied existence. My interpretation of this is that the body is not a physical organism, it is a process. There are material aspects involved in the process, but we are not those material aspects, we are the process that lives through them.

We are an energetic process that exists within other energetic processes, with still other energetic processes existing inside of us. All of reality is an interactive and interpenetrating configuration of energetic processes.

This process-view of reality is so different from what we have been taught that it takes a tremendous effort to shift into and stabilize in it. One of the reasons I want to participate in Susan Kullman’s program is because I know the somatic practices she teaches will support me to develop process oriented sensibilities.

To the extent that I have experienced this new sensibility I have seen my focus shift from the future goals I set for myself to the optimization of the processes that I am. My wellbeing is not a goal to be worked toward, it is a state of optimized living that occurs right now.

What makes this view most exciting for me is that the processes of the body are directly connected with all of the processes of the mind, and the spirit. All levels of being, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, are made up of interpenetrating processes. Each of the processes that converge to create our existence can be optimized, and the way they interact together can be optimized.

As I lean into this process-view of myself I feel my attention moving away from my future goals and toward the optimization of all of the processes that I am. Optimizing the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual process that I am, is more like maintaining harmony than achieving an objective. Wellbeing at every level of our being is maintained through optimization. I want to learn how to bring more fluidity and sensitivity to my body so that the processes that sustain my physical existence are fully optimized, and then discover how that optimization affects my wellbeing at every other level.