Field Notes
by Dr. Avraham Cohen, PhD, RCC-ACS, CCC

Disappointment is so pervasive that we might as well equate life, as experienced by humans, with disappointment. At least, that’s a tempting impulse, and I confess that I feel it intensely every now and then. We all hope that the degree of disappointment is not so devastating as to hollow out and crush us with a catastrophic implosion or explosion. Read Field Note

As you may be aware, Heesoon reviews the Field Notes before they are published and contributes editing and ideas. Upon reading some of her comments for my initial draft of this Field Note, I felt inspired, thought that this would be a good opportunity for a dialogue between her and me, which is what follows here. And you, too, are invited to participate in this dialogue. So, feel free to pick up at any point and share with us your comments, thoughts, ideas, experiences, and questions. Read Field Note

This Field Note is really about getting to know in a much more detailed and intimate way your sub-identities, and their great potentials. I recommend two approaches to this ‘getting to know’ project: 1) by observing with your consciousness; namely using your awareness in ways that are increasingly skilful; 2) by identifying with the identity: that is, knowing it by getting inside of it. In common language, owning it. Read Field Note

Many of you have requested something more specific on the practice of inner work. So, my intention with the last Note, this one, and the next one is to provide a more specific introduction to the process. In the last Field Note, I addressed what I would consider the core of Inner Work practice and personal growth: awareness. In this field note, I am going to outline a method for addressing the next step; what happens when you run into various events that are reflected in your consciousness and what you creatively might do with these, which may require more explanation than I can reasonably include in this Note. Read Field Note

This field note will highlight the centrality of our ability to be self-aware and to reflect on our own experience. Cultivation and development of reflective self-awareness would, I believe, foster the best chance for the future of human beings and all other living things on the earth. I will address the cultivation and development of moment to moment awareness, our capacity and ability to be fully present in life. In this field note, I will address some ideas about consciousness and its development through inner work, based in the development of awareness. Read Field Note

Although what some would term the spiritual life has been in focus for me for many decades, I can share with you that this is increasingly so at this time in my life. I can relate this to aging to some extent, but perhaps most centrally to my lifelong quest for knowledge of reality: a reality that is beyond the ordinary experience of life. I do, as I imagine many of you do, distinguish ‘spiritual,’ from ‘religious.’ Read Field Note

Learning from nature, the ancient Taoists perceived two complementary impulses in the psyche, called yin and yang. The polar tension and interplay between these two impulses drives the cyclic process of creating, destroying and re-creating. 1 I have added this small paragraph after the initial posting as the events in the US took place after I had already uploaded the July Field Note (I won’t be adding this to the audio file as it would require me to re-do the whole file): I want to say something about the extreme experience of othering, namely, racism, that is very understandably provoking immense unrest in the US, and elsewhere. The death of George Floyd, a black man, by suffocation that was inflicted by a police person in Minneapolis is certainly an immense event of othering. Read Field Note

We are still in the midst of COVID isolation time. With the exception of folks who are essential workers, we are all advised, or in some places told, to stay home. I am “seeing” my counselling clients by phone, I go out for daily walks, and go to shops once in a while. Other than that, I am in semi-isolation with my wife, perched on the 11th floor of our apartment building. Read Field Note

The title of the field note that I had in mind for April was Process Engagement in the Relational Field, which would have had very different content from what I’m writing now. However, I think it’s fair to say that, in this field note, we are still looking at process engagement in the relational field: during this time, of the relationship between Covid-19 and us. I really didn’t want to write about the current pandemic, Covid-19, as there seems to be absolutely no shortage of information and advice. However, it occurred to me that what we are facing might well be construed as World War III (WWIII). Read Field Note

In this Field Note, I propose to reflect on love relationships: a challenge for most of us. My materials for this reflection come from five decades of working with clients in my psychotherapy practice, and my own life experiences. I will foreground this reflection with a theory that I have been developing about relationship. My Theory of Time and Distance in Relationship. Read Field Note