As this post was formulating in my mind over the past few days I have tried on many occasions to sit down and start to write. I had an idea that had sparked my intuition, and the contemplative joy that can come with free intuitively guided thought. I felt a glimmer of creative energy starting to burn within me and so I set towards my goal of writing a piece that might help me understand my own thinking, express, inspire, move and in the process potentially have some benefit to others. Yet on this occasion no matter how much I worked to externalise what was within me in some coherent and engaging way, nothing would come. I felt a block, I felt the energy in me stagnate, yet this did not dampen my attempts to force something onto the page, to create something wonderful. Yet the harder I tried the greater this stagnation became, the more energy and attention I poured into this well of effort the more wedged I felt between my goal, and that which I didn’t want.

So what did I do? I gave up, I stopped trying to write, I stopped trying to be creative and accepted the stuck-ness. I sat with this and allowed it to be just as it is, and in this process an amazing thing started to happen, when I allowed myself to be just as I was, and I stopped ‘trying’ that creative energy, which was only a glimmer inside me began to burn a little brighter. This creative impulse, and this impulse for change was something that my everyday ego seemed to have little control over, something else was starting to burn within me, something that people have many names for. Some of these names might be the light of the unconscious, nature, the creative flow of Tao; which is by its very nature change and creative energy. It seemed that nothing here was done other than paying attention to and being with what was, and it was this that paradoxically brought about the dissolution of the block.

This type of paradoxical experience is no doubt one that is ubiquitous throughout people's lives. Whether it is in a creative pursuit or in an attempt to make changes to one's internal experience, relationships or numerous other aspects of an individual’s life. It is also something that I have seen daily when working with clients who attend sessions with the intention of becoming someone or something different, to bring new experiences into their lives, and set about 'working' tirelessly to change themselves and their relationships.

Yet it seems often when one strives for transformation and change it recedes further into the distance

A more specific example might be a client who attends therapy wanting to rid themselves or an ongoing experience of anxiety. With them they bring a slew of highly developed ways of avoiding these experiences and changing their state, they are adept at drug use, alcohol abuse, they externalise this anxiety as anger and then if this doesn't work they will withdraw from the world in an attempt to change their state. This all with the intention of managing and transforming the experience of anxiety that they just can't 'tolerate' any longer.

I might sit with this client and develop some goals about how they would rather feel, the difference this might make, and what they will be doing differently when this was happening. We might explore what they can do to more effectivley manage their anxiety through breath, posture and concentration and learn to dispute and logically challenge various unhelpful thinking patterns. Yet even with these tecniques and the development of new skills the anxiety persists. It may be more manageable, they may have developed more functional ways of avoiding it and trying to change it, yet regardless of this effort and focus on change it still persists.

So what is this paradox and irony about? And what light can modern psychology, systems thinking and the worlds spiritual traditions shine on this paradox for us?......I'm glad you ask..... We will start this exploration by jumping to an idea about change that forms the foundation of gestalt therapy:

'Change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not. Change does not take place through a coercive attempt by the individual or by another person to change him, but it does take place if one takes the time and effort to be what he is — to be fully invested in his current positions.'

Arnold Beisser, M.D.

The Above quote outlines some interesting ideas around the concept of change and how it occurs. In many ways, this concept is counter-cultural and hence seems counter-intuitive as what we are taught throughout our lives and within our culture is often, that to make changes in our lives we need to identify what the problem is and solve it. This often involves distinct actions to solve the problematic behaviour or experience and some process of goal setting highlighting what the person isn't and what they would like to become. This way of approaching our experiences seduces us into the assumption that what we reject in ourselves and in our lives is somehow to be gotten rid of. That it needs to be sedated, drugged, or destroyed. That because it is uncomfortable or 'unproductive' we must remove it from our lives.

Yet Beisers quote invites us outside of this linear way of thinking about change, and rather engages us in a way of thinking about our 'problems' or concerns as part of greater wholes or 'gestalts'. In gestalt psychology the concept of wholeness and polarity are fundamental and problems or concerns are seen as one polarity. i.e. the figure or the object within a much larger field or ground. Hence it could be understood that an experience of depression, anxiety or relational conflict that might bring one to therapy is essentially part of a larger process i.e. it is something trying to emerge in us which we do not identify with. As such the sense of stuckness and stagnation that often brings a client to therapy, is seen to be essentially a function of not making 'contact' with either polarity and hence not being able to identify that our problem is really one side of an un-integrated whole.

This is a fundamentally inclusive way of approaching our experience and one which understands that a presentation of anxiety, depression, anger or conflict for example, are only one polarity of a greater whole which brings us in contact with our growing and changing edge, and hence provide doorways into the creative sea of the unconscious.

So simply it could be said that our approach in trying to change that which we don't identify with, i.e. our anger, our anxiety or difficulty in accessing creative flow, is often the thing that keeps it in place and creates stuckness. So then maybe it isn't effort itself that’s the concern but rather potentially the question becomes what is the 'right effort' in approaching ourselves, not trying to change ourselves but the effort to pay attention to what is present and emerging within you.

This concept of 'right effort' is similar to one of the central paradoxes in the Taoist tradition, known as wu wei which can be translated as 'effortless effort', this is effort that aligns with the flow of life or Tao:

'When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done.'

Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

Yet how do we go about trying to be effortless in the hope of change and creative spontaneity, isn't this in itself a paradox? Well in many ways it is, yet, one way to think about this is that when we come into contact with our present moment experience. When we stop trying to change it. When we stop trying to improve it or transform it. We make contact with the Tao, with nature, with non-conceptual and non-categorized experience which is inherently creative energy and change itself. It is this that is the driving force, not our ego driven efforts to change ourselves. Rather effortless effort is knowing that our change and transformation is inevitable, in the same way that any emotion no matter how painful or how much we see it as a problem, when we make contact with it and bring it into awareness inevitably changes. As Arnold Mindell, one of the founders of process oriented psychology states:

'Darkness, whether in mood or in night, is natural. So if we flow with the black bile of melancholia and endure the terrible darkness of depression, eventually we will break through into the light of joy. This is the Tao (the Way) of darkness or depression--this is the Mystery of its evolution.'

Yet this process, this being with and trusting that the change will occur, that creative inspiration will strike is in many ways, as stated earlier, counter intuitive. Again Arnold Mindell, in his book 'Riding The Horse Backwards' states:

'Caring for the absurd and impossible is like believing the world is flat. Following the unwanted, unintended message goes against collective belief, which says that if you follow the unknown, it will lead you off the edge of the known world. We all think that when we get to the edge of the known world, we will surely fall off. But process work shows the roundness of our universe. It shows that if we have the courage to follow unintentional signals to their edges, we do not fall off, but discover new worlds.'

Systems theory, strategic therapy and cybernetics also have some interesting light to shine on these ideas, especially when thinking about how we unintentionally get in our own, and nature’s way. One of the foundational concepts in strategic therapy is the premise that in systems, no matter what the scale or type, patterns that are often perceived as problems emerge as a result of circular interactions between parts, which mutually reinforce each other. More specifically they would state that

'The attempted solution is often the thing which is maintaining the problem'

This is based in the idea that a problem experience whether intra-psychic or relational needs to be maintained somehow, that there is a restraining factor that prevents it from being another way. A clear example of this is someone with depression, continually self berating for being depressed, or a drug addict that perpetually criticises and internally abuses themselves for using drugs. These while often well intentioned as possibly a road to change, are more often than not the pattern that keeps the problem in place, and hence lead to more of the same solution, i.e. a vicious cycle.

So what would strategic therapists do with this type of paradox? They would provide the client an action based task that acted as a counter paradox. This might include tasks such as 'don't change anything to quickly', 'don't change anything at all' or interventions such as prescribing the symptom, where a writer with writers block would be instructed to schedule writing sessions where he couldn't write anything. While this might sound crazy, and counter intuitive it often lead to dramatic shifts in the presenting concern. So what these ideas provide us is another body of knowledge that also engages with ideas regarding the paradox of acting to change ourselves and our experience, and as such can assist us to stay mindful of the idea that 'useful effort' in any particular situation may be not what we expect, that the absurd, which may be to do nothing is often a valuable course of action.

Now in saying this, it doesn't mean that we never set a goal again or put effort into becoming more than what we are today. Rather what it might be telling us is that when we are confronted with a 'problem', or an experience which we would rather avoid or push away, whether this is a headache, a writer’s block, or a depression, opening to it in a way that supports what is emerging could be a good place to start. Additionally trusting that there is intelligence in nature that is far more advanced than our conscious attempts change, and that following and trusting this

might be a more direct route to transformation than giving our problems a good flogging with an arsenal of change tools.

This leads us to the idea that maybe just maybe these experiences have something important for us, and if followed and listened to carefully enough we might, just might, at some stage become thankful for their presence, and recognise their unacknowledged role in taking us one step further along the path.

To finish with a quote from writer and Philosopher Allan Watts:

'To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.'

Alan Watts