The Gestalt of Meditation - article by Tom Butz
Abraham Maslow described a “hierarchy of human needs” ranging from basic survival needs to higher spiritual pursuits. Only recently in evolutionary time, perhaps the last six or eight thousand years, have we been in a position to look beyond basic survival needs, and turn our attention toward the “higher” pursuits of life… human relatedness, aesthetics, self actualization. Unlike survival needs, these higher pursuits are more likely the purview of consciousness than of technology. They probably require a different kind of evolution quite apart from the action-oriented striving that has helped build civilizations and evolve technologies. If the evolution of consciousness is to be our next great stride, it might benefit us to understand the nature and workings of the mind as the seat of awareness. For a preview of what may be next, let’s consider how the mind operates and the role of thinking and awareness in relation to consciousness.
The brain as rapid responder
The activity of the mind is largely about responding or reacting to circumstances rather than actually experiencing the conditions. The characteristic mental response to a need or an incomplete condition is to take action, often in the form of figuring something out, or rendering a judgment. It’s all about operating on things. If I become uncomfortable sitting at my desk, my automatic response is to shift my body, and thus end the discomfort. If I have an itch, I scratch, and the discomfort is gone temporarily. I’ve completed it. If I’m hungry, I eat. Over time, our awareness becomes little more than a continuous stream of patterned stimulus and response that demands our attention and prompts us to action.
The adept human mind is a rapid responder, a crisis mobilizer. As we grow, we construct complex mental frameworks that organize and overlay everything we perceive. We are able to respond with amazing effectiveness and efficiency. Yet in our rush to take action we become automatic and largely unconscious. We lose touch with what may be a more primitive, ancestral part of our self that knows the satisfaction of pausing and taking in the full experience of the moment. We forget how to live for the pleasure of experiencing, rather than for the purpose of responding. We become mental experts at reacting to conditions, but not so good at experiencing the fullness of the present moment.
Incomplete Gestalts: The Mind Doesn’t like Loose Ends
A Gestalt is a set of things regarded as a whole. Much like a jigsaw puzzle, a gestalt is complete only when all of the parts have come together in the proper way. Think of a bicycle. If someone gave you an expensive, custom bike, but without handlebars, you would either buy a set of handlebars, or get rid of the bike. Without handlebars the bike is useless. The incomplete status creates a hold on your awareness that demands completion. The unfinished gestalt feels fragmented, temporary and unstable. It drives us to make it whole. When there is something we don’t understand, we look for explanation. Where there is conflict, we want resolution. Desire seeks fulfillment, and pain wants relief. These incomplete states of mind demand our attention and won’t let go until the matter is resolved and the tension is gone.
The ‘incomplete gestalt’ principle appears just as true on the level of our personality and the persistent patterns of behavior that carry over from childhood. For example, when we defend against uncomfortable feelings or shy away from facing situations of conflict and pain, we are often left unable to face our problems directly and can’t find resolution or bring closure. However, if we embrace and bring awareness to those uncomfortable parts that we have denied and split off, we become more whole and authentic. We see the problem from all angles, and we are able to address issues head on. It’s what we are not willing to look at or experience fully that hangs us up. We must somehow embrace the fullness of the current experience, pain and all, and reach some understanding and integration of the pieces, if we are to let it go and be whole. To the extent we are unwilling to fully embrace our conflicted thoughts, and our unresolved feelings, then we fail to embody them freshly and fully, and they remain to some degree unconscious and un-integrated. They remain incomplete works in progress, the fragments of our lives that we struggle to bring together.
Another way to view this gestalt principle, is that unfinished tasks bind energy in the form of attending and efforting. When we successfully resolve an issue, the gestalt is completed, and the energy is suddenly freed. For a very brief moment there is a space, a kind of formlessness. If we are lucky, we catch a fleeting glimpse of the “in-between,” and there is an instant in time, a gap between tasks in which we can experience a shift in the quality of experience, a shift perhaps from ‘doing’ to ‘being.’ Each time we complete something, a very minute space opens up, and the mind lets go. We become more available, if only briefly, in the here and now. In these in-between moments we may enjoy a kind of relaxed, emptying out, a defocusing and letting down into the satisfaction of the present moment.
But does this experience last? Before we know it, the mind has hijacked us once again and we are off on the next issue to be solved. It’s that jigsaw puzzle with the one piece missing that captures our attention and compels us to action, again and again. In reality, the endless trek of completing gestalts, allows us to experience only isolated moments of “presence”, with little room for the sustained sense of inner connectedness that we long for at the deepest levels.
Beyond Thought: Being Present
Is there something more to the mind than our repetitious attempts to understand, resolve or complete things? If left to its own devices, does our thinking ever bring us to a place of deeper comprehension, of harmony or lasting contentment?
The mind as problem solver is core to our sense of self. To a large extent, our personality is a reflection of the accumulated thoughts, perceptions, and feelings of a lifetime. Not only the content of our thoughts, but the very act of thinking itself gives us a sense of personal definition and identity. “I’m good at this … I see things that way … this is who I am.” As long as our mind can take hold, there is a sense of purpose, something to do. Our individual style of problem solving and decision making actually provides us with character and definition much like a jar provides shape for the water within. We live as though our core purpose is to get something done, to accomplish more. We are “doers”, and we stake our very identity and sense of self on what we do and how we do it.
From a clinical perspective, the thinking mind appears to have a kind of obsessive-compulsive nature, an addiction to taking on anything and everything unfinished in its path. Every desire, every longing sets our mind to work on getting more of what we think we need. Likewise, any pain or distress quickly redirects our attention toward avoiding or escaping the difficulty. Whether it is the attractive future to which we attach, or negative possibilities we work to avoid, it is still the same mental compulsion. We are ever poised to hyper-focus on fixing whatever is incomplete or lacking in the moment. We accept the mind’s faulty premise that if we address this one last thing, then we can relax and just “be”. There is a logic, yet where is the peace in all this activity? Why are we so busy, and why is contentment is so difficult to sustain day to day? It is certainly not for lack of trying.
In meditation, the deep undertow of our observing awareness draws us ever closer to the possibility of fully encountering a complete moment in time. By bringing our attention to rest on a simple thought or perception, we begin to build a quality of awareness in the moment that is by nature the one true completed gestalt that the mind has been seeking. By training our attention to fully witness a single thought, perception or sensation, we supply the mind a place to come to rest. In so doing, there can be a profound sense of expansion and openness as we encounter the full spectrum of qualities associated with a deepening look into the here and now.
In meditation practice, the same thoughts and perceptions arise as usual, but the meditation affords a choice to stand apart from the mind’s content and to more directly witness and experience the act of thinking itself. With each observation, we delve deeper into the richness and immediacy of our experience, rather than being yanked along unconsciously, lost in identification with the mind’s endless stream of thoughts and perceptions. In meditation, we slow down what would otherwise have taken only seconds, and extend the reach of our observing in order to obtain a far more complete and holistic encounter with exactly what is happening here and now in us… the very act of thinking, sensing and perceiving. We may find ourselves coming more into present time and space by experiencing a shift in consciousness that we refer to as presence or being. In meditation practice, the content of our thought has no particular importance one way or another. Thoughts are merely vehicles for traveling to the present moment. They are opportunities for experiencing the pleasure and freedom of thinking completely and consciously.
Wholeness and Completion
The experience of completion and wholeness that is so coveted by the mind, in reality lies more in the domain of stillness and observation than in the business of thinking and doing. In the choice to meditate and be still, we can more perfectly observe and evoke the full richness of our present experience and thereby allow the various layers and nuances to come into complete awareness. We are able to form a wholeness, a true completion or gestalt in and through our observing awareness. It is a paradox that we can experience qualities of completion more through inaction and waiting than through strategy and effort. The mind at rest is the true agent of transformation, while the mind at work is the mover and shaker in our active, creative lives. We discover the greatest moments of peace and inner contentment in the deep, still waters of careful, inward looking and observation. Not surprisingly, the coveted sense of completion that our mind so doggedly pursues is perhaps more available to us in moments of non-doing, when our attention has relaxed the hold on striving and forward movement.
The brain as rapid responder
The activity of the mind is largely about responding or reacting to circumstances rather than actually experiencing the conditions. The characteristic mental response to a need or an incomplete condition is to take action, often in the form of figuring something out, or rendering a judgment. It’s all about operating on things. If I become uncomfortable sitting at my desk, my automatic response is to shift my body, and thus end the discomfort. If I have an itch, I scratch, and the discomfort is gone temporarily. I’ve completed it. If I’m hungry, I eat. Over time, our awareness becomes little more than a continuous stream of patterned stimulus and response that demands our attention and prompts us to action.
The adept human mind is a rapid responder, a crisis mobilizer. As we grow, we construct complex mental frameworks that organize and overlay everything we perceive. We are able to respond with amazing effectiveness and efficiency. Yet in our rush to take action we become automatic and largely unconscious. We lose touch with what may be a more primitive, ancestral part of our self that knows the satisfaction of pausing and taking in the full experience of the moment. We forget how to live for the pleasure of experiencing, rather than for the purpose of responding. We become mental experts at reacting to conditions, but not so good at experiencing the fullness of the present moment.
Incomplete Gestalts: The Mind Doesn’t like Loose Ends
A Gestalt is a set of things regarded as a whole. Much like a jigsaw puzzle, a gestalt is complete only when all of the parts have come together in the proper way. Think of a bicycle. If someone gave you an expensive, custom bike, but without handlebars, you would either buy a set of handlebars, or get rid of the bike. Without handlebars the bike is useless. The incomplete status creates a hold on your awareness that demands completion. The unfinished gestalt feels fragmented, temporary and unstable. It drives us to make it whole. When there is something we don’t understand, we look for explanation. Where there is conflict, we want resolution. Desire seeks fulfillment, and pain wants relief. These incomplete states of mind demand our attention and won’t let go until the matter is resolved and the tension is gone.
The ‘incomplete gestalt’ principle appears just as true on the level of our personality and the persistent patterns of behavior that carry over from childhood. For example, when we defend against uncomfortable feelings or shy away from facing situations of conflict and pain, we are often left unable to face our problems directly and can’t find resolution or bring closure. However, if we embrace and bring awareness to those uncomfortable parts that we have denied and split off, we become more whole and authentic. We see the problem from all angles, and we are able to address issues head on. It’s what we are not willing to look at or experience fully that hangs us up. We must somehow embrace the fullness of the current experience, pain and all, and reach some understanding and integration of the pieces, if we are to let it go and be whole. To the extent we are unwilling to fully embrace our conflicted thoughts, and our unresolved feelings, then we fail to embody them freshly and fully, and they remain to some degree unconscious and un-integrated. They remain incomplete works in progress, the fragments of our lives that we struggle to bring together.
Another way to view this gestalt principle, is that unfinished tasks bind energy in the form of attending and efforting. When we successfully resolve an issue, the gestalt is completed, and the energy is suddenly freed. For a very brief moment there is a space, a kind of formlessness. If we are lucky, we catch a fleeting glimpse of the “in-between,” and there is an instant in time, a gap between tasks in which we can experience a shift in the quality of experience, a shift perhaps from ‘doing’ to ‘being.’ Each time we complete something, a very minute space opens up, and the mind lets go. We become more available, if only briefly, in the here and now. In these in-between moments we may enjoy a kind of relaxed, emptying out, a defocusing and letting down into the satisfaction of the present moment.
But does this experience last? Before we know it, the mind has hijacked us once again and we are off on the next issue to be solved. It’s that jigsaw puzzle with the one piece missing that captures our attention and compels us to action, again and again. In reality, the endless trek of completing gestalts, allows us to experience only isolated moments of “presence”, with little room for the sustained sense of inner connectedness that we long for at the deepest levels.
Beyond Thought: Being Present
Is there something more to the mind than our repetitious attempts to understand, resolve or complete things? If left to its own devices, does our thinking ever bring us to a place of deeper comprehension, of harmony or lasting contentment?
The mind as problem solver is core to our sense of self. To a large extent, our personality is a reflection of the accumulated thoughts, perceptions, and feelings of a lifetime. Not only the content of our thoughts, but the very act of thinking itself gives us a sense of personal definition and identity. “I’m good at this … I see things that way … this is who I am.” As long as our mind can take hold, there is a sense of purpose, something to do. Our individual style of problem solving and decision making actually provides us with character and definition much like a jar provides shape for the water within. We live as though our core purpose is to get something done, to accomplish more. We are “doers”, and we stake our very identity and sense of self on what we do and how we do it.
From a clinical perspective, the thinking mind appears to have a kind of obsessive-compulsive nature, an addiction to taking on anything and everything unfinished in its path. Every desire, every longing sets our mind to work on getting more of what we think we need. Likewise, any pain or distress quickly redirects our attention toward avoiding or escaping the difficulty. Whether it is the attractive future to which we attach, or negative possibilities we work to avoid, it is still the same mental compulsion. We are ever poised to hyper-focus on fixing whatever is incomplete or lacking in the moment. We accept the mind’s faulty premise that if we address this one last thing, then we can relax and just “be”. There is a logic, yet where is the peace in all this activity? Why are we so busy, and why is contentment is so difficult to sustain day to day? It is certainly not for lack of trying.
In meditation, the deep undertow of our observing awareness draws us ever closer to the possibility of fully encountering a complete moment in time. By bringing our attention to rest on a simple thought or perception, we begin to build a quality of awareness in the moment that is by nature the one true completed gestalt that the mind has been seeking. By training our attention to fully witness a single thought, perception or sensation, we supply the mind a place to come to rest. In so doing, there can be a profound sense of expansion and openness as we encounter the full spectrum of qualities associated with a deepening look into the here and now.
In meditation practice, the same thoughts and perceptions arise as usual, but the meditation affords a choice to stand apart from the mind’s content and to more directly witness and experience the act of thinking itself. With each observation, we delve deeper into the richness and immediacy of our experience, rather than being yanked along unconsciously, lost in identification with the mind’s endless stream of thoughts and perceptions. In meditation, we slow down what would otherwise have taken only seconds, and extend the reach of our observing in order to obtain a far more complete and holistic encounter with exactly what is happening here and now in us… the very act of thinking, sensing and perceiving. We may find ourselves coming more into present time and space by experiencing a shift in consciousness that we refer to as presence or being. In meditation practice, the content of our thought has no particular importance one way or another. Thoughts are merely vehicles for traveling to the present moment. They are opportunities for experiencing the pleasure and freedom of thinking completely and consciously.
Wholeness and Completion
The experience of completion and wholeness that is so coveted by the mind, in reality lies more in the domain of stillness and observation than in the business of thinking and doing. In the choice to meditate and be still, we can more perfectly observe and evoke the full richness of our present experience and thereby allow the various layers and nuances to come into complete awareness. We are able to form a wholeness, a true completion or gestalt in and through our observing awareness. It is a paradox that we can experience qualities of completion more through inaction and waiting than through strategy and effort. The mind at rest is the true agent of transformation, while the mind at work is the mover and shaker in our active, creative lives. We discover the greatest moments of peace and inner contentment in the deep, still waters of careful, inward looking and observation. Not surprisingly, the coveted sense of completion that our mind so doggedly pursues is perhaps more available to us in moments of non-doing, when our attention has relaxed the hold on striving and forward movement.