THE NATURE of ABILITY

What is ability? What are the requirements or fundamental components for creating ability? What does it take to learn something?

In my years of teaching, one thing has become clear: if the student does not take on the study, the pursuit, the task of learning and transformation, as his/her own, then nothing can further his/her progress, no matter what is said or done. Therefore, responsibility in the matter appears to be one of the fundamental requirements or components for developing ability. This cannot be overemphasized. In a quest such as discovering the nature of ability, we must adopt an intimate and personal sense of responsibility for the investigation. We must be “at the source” of discovery, and experience for ourselves what is true and what is not.

The first principal to discover is one that usually goes unnoticed. It is that our actions are determined by our experience. In other words, out of our experience of an event or interaction, whatever action that we think is called for, that is what we will do. The intention to act relates to the perceived condition or circumstance. How we assess what we experience determines what will arise as a feeling-impulse in our body. Without experience, what action would be take? Without awareness, thinking, feeling, or perception, how could we direct action, movement, or process?

As we take action in relationship to something or some event to accomplish a particular result, we look for feedback about the action’s effectiveness. Is it working? There are many places we can look for improvement if and when our actions are not producing the results that we want. We can try harder with the same actions, or we can try different actions. Perhaps we might attempt a new strategy. Yet these impulses and actions are simply reactions to what has already presented itself to us as our options, given what we experience to be so.

We change our actions if, in our experience, the feedback we get is that our actions are not working out. Yet this feedback is only a modification of our experience, and so our actions will also only be a modification of what we were doing before. Often we fell incapable of obtaining skill easily and naturally, and so we proceed to work hard at becoming skilful. Or we try to make something occur over time, with the hope that our repetition alone will make it work out. This approach is generally slow and painstaking since we are trapped within the very framework and limitations that designed the ineffective relationship in the first place.

What we don’t notice is that our actions are determined by and are commensurate with our experience. We take this for granted. So it doesn’t occur to us that if we change our experience we would change our actions. The possibility of changing of changing our experience is not one that makes lots of sense, because we hold that our experience is a reflection of what is actually occurring. However, as we look into this we find that it is simply not so.

If we change the way we experience, what we experience, how we experience, or make any other shift in our experience, our actions will be different. Yet different is not necessarily effective or skillful. We need a shift in our experience that directs our forthcoming actions to be appropriate to accomplishing the task that they are charged with accomplishing. We need to shift our actions from merely being merely commensurate to what is occurring. This leaves us with the question: How ca we transform our experience so that it is immediately related to what is actually occurring such that our actions are always appropriate? This is a good question. It should be asked – not superficially, but contemplated and considered deeply, and in the place where it will do some good – in our experience.

First we need to know that what determines “appropriate” is the purpose for interaction. The purpose determines the objective for the interaction, and the action will be appropriate if it is effectively and efficiently accomplishing this objective.

Second, we need to move our experience in the direction of receiving what is actually and presently occurring. We must distinguish what “is” from what “has been,” or from anything added to or subtracted from the truth of the matter. We need to know what is the thing itself. This is not as simple as it might seem at first. Our experience of anything is mostly an interpretation, and the interpretation we make depends on the framework for the task at hand in which to interpret the event.

We also need to make all the necessary distinctions in our experience that will allow for effective interaction within the field in which we are working. In the case of psycho-physical interaction, we must make clear objective and non-objective distinctions. It is out of these distinctions that any strategy or course of action can be designed to be effective and appropriate.

So, far I have asserted that ability in an individual can only occur if that individual is responsible for taking on a personal transformation of his experience – his/her thinking, feeling, perception, interpretations, impulses, and actions are determined by our experience, and so our level of effectiveness is also determined by our experience. I asserted that our experience is stuck in our interpretations and is not an accurate representation of what is occurring.

This brings up the need to transform our experience. Experience shows itself as thought, feeling, emotion, attitudes, moods, interpretations, reactions, sensation, body impulse, perceptions of any kind, or anything else that occurs within the field of our awareness. It is our experience of the circumstances and people with which we are interacting that determines what actions w will take. In order to be effective with these conditions, we need to be able to perceive the others and events as they are occurring without bias or distortion. Furthermore, we need at our disposal the means by which can determine appropriate interaction in which we realize our objective for the interaction.

In summary, to further our pursuit of ability we need to develop the following:

1. Interaction aligned with the principals inherent in being appropriate (appropriate is determined by the purpose of interaction).

2. A fundamental understanding of perception and interpretation (what they are, how they come to pass, and are they appropriate to the purpose of the occurring relationship?).

3. Functional working distinctions to direct our pursuit and actions (distinctions which allow us to determine what is and what is not influential or effective).

4. A newly created context in which learning, correction, appropriate interpretations, and new possibilities can arise.

Randy Martin, Sensei