The term [manipulation] is generally and nonevaluatively defined here as the process of influencing behavior. This process is pervasive: whether we are aware of it or not, our behavior always affects others. In this real sense, all behavior is manipulation.

- Stephen Gilligan, Therapeutic Trances: The Cooperation Principle in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy

The last post, on dealing with and influencing people, has links to the concepts of personal magnetism and personal atmosphere, as discussed in occult and success literature in the early 20th century. From The Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, by Theron Q. Dumont, aka William Walter Atkinson:

The fact is that every person generates and throws off a certain degree (varying among different individuals) of personal magnetism, which affects the minds of other persons coming within the field of its influence. Not only does each person emanate and project a certain amount or degree of personal magnetism, additionally, each person is also constantly surrounded by a field of personal magnetic influence – a personal atmosphere, so to speak. This personal atmosphere affects to a greater or lesser degree other persons coming within its field of influence.

Which gives another angle from which to see people interacting at a party, and another reason why I failed at that during the solstice.

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It started at a neighborhood solstice party.

My wife and I are new to the neighborhood, and we were sort of looking forward to meeting some people in the community. But mostly, we were tired.

We arrived early enough so that there were few people there, and we were personally greeted by the hosts. Their house had a deceptively small front yard; I say deceptively because the backyard was huge. They had several buffet tables set up under a tent for people to put their potluck items. They had a big tree with swings. They had even set up a small stage with speakers and everything; people were going to be playing music there later.

People started showing up, things got lively. There were kids, teenagers, adults of all ages. It was looking to be a friendly evening.

We left after only an hour. The music hadn’t even started yet.

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Fitness, the “fit” between organism and environment, is ostensibly about the physical body, physical health, and the organism’s ability to survive physically in the natural environment. But modern humans no longer have to adapt their bodies to survive physically in the natural environment; instead, they adapt the environment to fit them. Thus the survival and evolutionary pressures are eased, and cultural pressures take greater precedence. High heels rather than sensible footwear. Thin bellies rather than a good layer of fat to insulate against freezing temperatures. Huge biceps rather than functional strength.

It’s artificial, of course, a graft onto the natural. It could be argued that this is only an extension of what’s been done in indigenous cultures — after all, natives pierced and tattooed themselves, wore jewelry, rubbed themselves with oil, wore face and body paint, had outrageous hairstyles — just like modern humans. But they still had to answer to survival pressures. We don’t.

So here’s the dilemma. If fitness is “blending with what is,” but “what is” is not what has been or what should be, and moreover, “what is” does not practically lead somewhere useful, then what do we do? How do I find a context, a reason, a motivation for doing things with my body that does not need to be done? How, in other words, do I avoid the trap of modern fitness, which is to train for purposes that have been invented?

I don’t believe it’s possible.

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If one thing is becoming clear to me in the discussion of fitness as a matter of orienting organism to environment, it’s that the better the organism is at adapting to its environment, the higher the chances of survival. Of course this is not a homogeneous thing; there are many different ways to thrive in the same environment. The crow and the sparrow do different things. But even though fitness is not homogeneous, the general principle of adaptability stands.

This is consistent with the philosophy of the uber-nature-watchers, ancient Daoists and internal martial artists who advocated being like water, being soft, blending with conflict and aggression in order to achieve victory. If the myriad natural forces that affect biological survival could be conglomerated into a singular “evolutionary force” (shades of the Tyrant here), that force could be thought of as a combat opponent that organisms must then negotiate. Like a game with a chess master, it’s not a matter of winning, it’s a matter of surviving as long as you can in the face of certain defeat. (Okay, that’s a bit bleak, but you get the idea.) And in order to do that, you adopt various strategies designed not to claim manly victory like Conan, but to survive. You adapt. You’re the Mafia, not Rambo.

To survive, adapt.

So there’s the theme. Seems simple enough. So why do I feel such resistance to it?

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A few different streams, running together.

First, the general perennial theme of “living in the world” is something I continue to strive for, and struggle to do.

Posts I made in March on the experience of being an animal, Animal Nature and Joy in Being Animal, were important for me, since they were at the tail end of some deep introspection of some of my major deficiencies. The lack of the full experience of myself as an animal is the best way I can describe the void in my life.

This void then enables and is capitalized on and exploited by the experience of the world as a Tyrant oppressing me, as I discussed in posts in May, The Petty Tyrant and The Tyrant of Life.

Finally, in completing my recent series of posts, My Spiritual Autobiography, it’s become increasingly clear to me that, in developing an inherent strength and passion, what I’ve also done is allowed a relatively minor weakness to become a major one. Like the Tyrannosaurus Rex and his tiny arms. That is, in exploring so much of what’s fascinated me about the spiritual and mental and emotional, I’ve let my childhood belief in my body as weak and unathletic calcify into an adult’s body that’s weak and out of shape, and, moreover, an identity that subconsciously relies on and embraces that identity. This informs everything, from my inability to experience myself as an animal as well as my inability to handle the Tyrant.

Then there’s this:

After finishing massage school, Abigail had to go back to college to finish her coursework and internship, and I tagged along. In the course of events we got married, but that’s another story.

I wasn’t really looking for anything new. I felt that I was content with what I’d gotten. But in retrospect I had not been able to sink my teeth in a rich and deep method of self-awakening.

I first found mention of Franz Bardon’s Initiation Into Hermetics on Robert Bruce’s forum. I had, of course, from time to time heard mention of various Western traditions of magic or “magick,” and had dismissed them out of hand, considering them nothing more than debased versions of Eastern wisdom. I’m not sure where I got that from, but certainly there was no little plundering by Westerners of non-Western knowledge, whether it was Eastern or Native American, and this was clearly due to a deep deficiency in Western spirituality. So why pursue Western spirituality when there were systems closer to the root, I wondered?

But I was intrigued by the intensity with which people endorsed Bardon’s works, so I ordered the book and began work on it.

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When I was little, I had a kid’s book on magic tricks. One of the tricks was more of an amaze-yourself brain trick: Stand in the middle of a doorway and press the backs of your wrists against the door for thirty seconds. Then step away from the door and relax. Voila, your arms will still push outward! The reasoning was something like the brain still thought it was doing something so it continued the motion.

A few years after I first tried that, I did it again. The sensation was cool and I was curious about it. I started experimenting to see exactly how long I needed to press against the door before the effect would begin. Lo and behold, I soon got to the point where I didn’t need to press at all. That is, all I needed to do was think about it and my arms would begin to rise of their own volition.

That was qi, of course. But I didn’t make the connection for a long time.

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I’ve finished my last clinic day here, and several things have happened that have confirmed my conclusions about this program. They fall pretty easily into two categories.

First, my experiences actually treating patients have been, by and large, quite positive and affirming. Patients with their eyes closed report feeling things that accurately reflect what I’m doing. A patient with diabetic neuropathy in the feet, having very little sensation, reported feeling a “light touch” on his foot when I was working on it — but I wasn’t touching it at all, physically. A patient with an energetic blockage or cord covering the left lower abdomen later confirmed that her left side and leg tended to be stagnant, with pain and cysts, which fits the energetic diagnosis.

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Concurrently with the beginning of my association with Teaching Drum, I discovered the Toltecs.

Carlos Castaneda became famous in the 1960’s for writing books, and writing a Ph.D. thesis for UCLA, about bumming around the Sonoran desert with a crazy Yaqui Indian named don Juan Matus, who taught him about hallucinogenic plants, but also about deeper ways of being and walking in the world. He became wildly popular, and eventually others elaborated on his work or even claimed to have met don Juan, while still others debunked him and his stories and claimed that he had made don Juan up.

I didn’t know any of this. The first book I picked up was actually Traveling With Power by Ken Eagle Feather, one of the people who claimed to have met and learned from don Juan.

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