Anne Morrow Lindbergh: “If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others…”

anne morrow lindbergh

Lindbergh’s comment reminds me that being fully aware of others involves awareness of oneself. There’s nothing particularly mystical about this — it’s just a question of psychology and neurophysiology. And without this awareness of oneself, friendship is simply impossible.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh said, “If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others…”

On a psychological level, next time you’re interacting with someone, pay attention to what’s happening on a gut level. You’ll notice that there are sensations in the body, mostly focused on the abdomen, that arise in response to the other person. In Buddhist terminology these are vedanas, which are often translated as “feelings.” Vedanas are not emotions, but are a basic response to perceptions. These responses are traditionally categorized as pleasurable, uncomfortable, or neutral.

Have you ever had an intuition about another person? Perhaps you’ve suspected they’re not telling the truth, although you can’t quite say why. Or perhaps you’ve had a sense that there’s something wrong, even though the other person hasn’t said anything overtly to indicate that. What’s happening is that you’re noticing, although perhaps not very consciously, vedanas that are arising in response to your contact with that other person.

I dreamed that I went to visit him in hospital, and as I got close to his bedside he turned into a demon…

At one time I was running a retreat center which was short-staffed. While I was on retreat elsewhere, I had a conversation with a very charming man who not only had all the qualifications and experience we needed, but who really wanted to move to a retreat center. I was really thrilled to have had such a chance encounter. That night, though, I dreamed that I went to visit him in hospital, and as I got close to his bedside he turned into a demon who grabbed hold of me and started twisting my limbs in all directions — much further than they could move in real life. I was completely helpless and worried that I was going to be severely injured. Needless to say, I woke up in a panic.

Unfortunately I ignored my instincts and we hired him. And my dream turned out to be remarkably prescient. He turned out to be a former drug addict with something of a split personality. Some days he was charming, kind, and thoughtful. Other days he was brooding, unreasonable, and cynical. You never knew whether you were going to meet Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. And life with him (or them) felt just like being grabbed by a demon who was twisting me around.

I’d ignored my intuition. Looking back I realize that I’d had a sense of unease right from the start. He’d been too charming. Something was a bit unreal about the way he interacted. I’d known that, but I’d ignored it. I’d ignored it because we we so desperate for staff. My subconscious had decided to step things up a gear and to make the message very clear in the form of a dream image — but then on retreat you can often have odd dreams, and a lot of my dream life featured demons at that time in my life.

Being out of touch with myself was a big mistake. Had I paid attention to my initial unacknowledged vedanas, which were whispering “there’s something wrong here — look deeper” I’d have saved myself, and others, from a lot of suffering.

In any given situation the mind is busy evaluating, on an unconscious level, what’s going on.

In any given situation the mind is busy evaluating, on an unconscious level, what’s going on. When you’re with another person you’re picking up on cues such as their tone of voice, the things they say (and don’t say), their posture, and even their breathing rate and the bloodflow to their facial skin. Research by Paul Ekman has also shown that we can pick up on what he calls “micro-expressions” — brief movements in the muscles on the face that reveal what’s going on inside, even if the other person is trying to disguise their true emotional state, and possibly even if they’re unaware of some of their emotions.

We can train ourselves to notice such things on a conscious level (and therapists and law-enforcement officers often do), but mostly we process all of this below the level of consciousness. While we’re busy concentrating on the actual content of a conversation there’s a whole world of activity going on below. It’s as if the conscious mind is the office of the CEO, up on the 20th floor, while down below there are another 19 floors of workers, busy collecting and processing information, having meetings to decide what’s important, and — where necessary — sending memos to the boss. Those memos are our vedanas, which might manifest as a feeling of unease, or discomfort, or frustration, or anxiety, or a feeling of pleasure, or a warm glow, or boredom.

And we may or may not pay attention to those feelings. Sometimes we’re so caught up in rational thought that we don’t pay attention to the messages from below. Sometimes we’ve even developed a habit of ignoring the body and its feelings.

Being in touch with our feelings can be a way of connecting more deeply with others, however, and not just a way of avoiding getting into painful situations! Sometimes when talking with others there will be a pang at a gut level — something akin to a feeling of pain. And if we pay attention to this we may be impelled to ask the other person if there’s something wrong. An opportunity for compassion has arisen. It’s this sensitivity to our responsiveness to others that makes friendship possible. Awareness of self — at least in a certain way — is awareness of the other. Awareness of the other is awareness of oneself.

Sometimes we’re so caught up in rational thought that we don’t pay attention to the messages from below.

On a neurophysiological level, what’s happening is that our mirror neurons are providing us with information about the other person. Mirror neurons are what allow us to connect with others — without them we’d effectively be autistic. I watch with amazement as my 19-month-old daughter sees and hears me saying a word and is able to reproduce it for the first time. How does she do this? How is she able to have a visual and auditory impression of me speaking and translate that into a physical pattern of movements in the diaphragm, larynx, tongue, lips, etc — all beautifully coordinated. It’s her mirror neurons that allow her to do this. And it’s my mirror neurons that allow me to share her joy at mastering a new word, or to empathize with her when she’s scared. Mirror neurons, it seems, are what allow us to connect with each other. I have no doubt whatsoever that they are involved in generating vedanas.

One last word of caution, however. Vedanas may be messages from the intel agents, analysts, number crunchers and committees that inhabit floors 1 to 19. But the memos they send up to the executive suit on the 20th floor are often cryptic: “sadness,” or “hurt,” or “this is fun!” Our executive levels have first of all to notice those messages and then to interpret them. Why do I feel uncomfortable at a given moment in a situation? If it because the other person has said something I have doubts about? Perhaps they’re making an assumption I disagree with? Or perhaps they’ve hit on an uncomfortable truth, something I’d rather not hear? The inarticulate speech from the lower floors needs careful interpretation. And this is something best done in dialog: “There’s something I feel a bit uncomfortable with here — can you say a bit more about what you mean?”

This too brings us closer to others. In noticing our vedanas and expressing them skillfully, we learn to look deeper, and come to know others more deeply. Awareness of self is awareness of the other. Awareness of the other is awareness of oneself.

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12 Comments. Leave new

  • there is an interesting conversation between paul ekman and daniel goleman in regards to mirror neurons and reading emotion. it’s available at http://www.morethansound.net

    Reply
  • Hi David,

    I follow Goleman and Ekman’s work with interest, and I’m grateful for the link.

    All the best,
    Bodhipaksa

    Reply
  • Hi Bodhipaksa,
    thankyou for this- I appreciated the imagery of the many floors too!
    Could you give the reference for the quote from Lindbergh- have read one of her books.
    Many thanks

    Reply
  • Hi Cleo,

    This is from “Gift from the Sea” — page 44 in the Pantheon Books edition.

    I’d love to read more of her writings. It seems that her diaries and letters have all been published, and I’m sure they’d make fascinating reading. She had a very interesting and controversial life — not just because of the kidnapping but also because of her and her husband’s flirtation with Nazism.

    Coincidentally, I met a couple of the Lindbergh family when I lived in Montana. One of Anne’s children owned a house that I led some retreats in, and a younger Lindbergh lived just down the road.

    Take care,
    Bodhipaksa

    Reply
  • L.D. Rafey (Avi)
    November 1, 2009 6:15 pm

    I have come to believe that art (be it writing, drawing, etc) is a reflection of an unconscious evaluation
    of our environment. It is this factor that makes artistic behavior appear so eratic and often incomprehensible,
    even to the artist. It is also, I believe, what makes artistic effort so difficult and often uncontrollable.

    Reply
  • I had a similar experience recently meeting a girl… I felt that I just didn’t like being around her. I didn’t want her to look at me, touch me, or talk to me. I thought I was being ridiculous and tried to see her in a positive light but it turned out that she was an inappropriately clingy person who would be late for her own classes to follow me around…. It was scary. I wish I’d listen to myself but I didn’t want to be mean to her, she was trying so hard to strike up a conversation with me and I knew she would feel rejected if I was unresponsive or I’d feel like I was ignoring her… Which I probably would have been, because she was really in my space and kept touching me (On the shoulder or forehead to “check if I was okay because I looked like I wasn’t feeling well”) even though we’d just met!

    Reply
  • I wonder though, when these vedanas occur, how we differ if its trigger is internal or external? When we define it as a response to the person whom we’re interacting with, its trigger is external. So when we try to interpret these vedanas, we focus on the person we’re interacting with(is he lying?). The trigger may well be internal though, maybe it’s only our own fears. A wife seeing her husband cheating on her in her dream can also mean she’s delusional. I may have intimacy problems; so whenever I get close to someone, I feel uncomfortable, but do I feel uncomtortable because there is in fact an alert-inducing quality with the person or because of my own troubles? Looking for other clues to check if it’s external (for example if I feel uncomfortable because he’s a liar, it is possible to observe other clues to confirm if he’s lying) may not be possible every time.

    Reply
  • That’s an interesting question. We have vedanas in response to external phenomena as well as to purely internal experiences (such as our thoughts and emotions). And vedanas about external perceptions like an other person can be more to do with them or with us. The thing is that we can’t trust vedanas in and of themselves to give us accurate information about anything except (obviously) whether we’re comfortable or uncomfortable in any given situation. All they can do is provide us cues that we can follow up. So if you have a “bad vibe” about someone that may be because we’re subconsciously picking up that they’re a scammer, or it could be because they’re actually a very positive person and this threatens us. But either way, the vedana is a starting point for greater knowledge (or our own mental processes or of other people) if we don’t react to them in the usual way by letting automated thought/emotional processes kick in.

    Reply
  • maybe it’s not directly related to what has been told in the article, but can I ask a question still? Does buddhism have anything to offer to clinical pyschosis given that consciousness and insight are not completely lost?

    Reply
  • I’m not really qualified to answer your question, but I’m told that meditation isn’t helpful for people who are suffering from psychosis, because it tends to take them more into the realm of subjectivity and to encourage delusional thinking. However, there’s more to Buddhism than meditation. Right now several of us in our sangha are rallying around someone who appears to be having psychotic episodes. This practice of kalyana mitrata (spiritual friendship) is an important part of Buddhist practice. It’s not that we think we can “cure” this person, but we can provide support, encouragement to avoid things that might exacerbate the condition (drugs and, ironically, meditation), and we’re in touch with the family so that they can bring about some psychiatric intervention. So, yes, I think Buddhism has something to offer, although really what I’m talking about is just what compassionate human beings of any faith (or none) will do for each other. I’m afraid I can’t think of anything more specific than that at this moment.

    Reply
  • Hi Bodhipaksha,

    Whatever happened to the individual that you hired? From what you wrote it sounds like a mental illness.

    I guess it comes back to what you and aporia were discussing above as well: if it were a mental illness then possibly assistance as a kalyana mitrata would be more beneficial as opposed to meditating or things like this?

    I don’t mean to imply you mistreated him: knowing you through your articles here I don’t doubt you would have acted sincerely and compassionately: would love to know how you handled that situation and what became of him.

    Thanks, Bodhipaksha

    P.s. in my downtime at work between tasks at work I love just typing random words into the search bar on this site and discovering a new article to read! Of course the more time I spend here the fewer unread articles I’m finding… Yours and Dr Hansen’s are my favourites!

    Manju

    Reply
    • Hi, Manju.

      He moved on and as far as I’m aware is doing fine, although I haven’t heard anything about him in detail. I didn’t think of his personality quirk as being a mental illness, but more an exaggerated form of moodiness. It certainly made him difficult to live with. We weren’t in a therapeutic situation, so whether or not meditation was good for him was something that was out of my hands. He had his practice, and we couldn’t very well tell him to stop!

      That’s really funny about you typing in random words! Thanks for telling me!

      All the best,
      Bodhipaksa

      Reply

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