The Real Dojo Muscle Building

Damn but I am really loving this, what I would call a weird duality of relationshipping from a POV of “providing answers” and another POV of “invitation to dance”. I don’t think that there is anything like a “natural duality”. All dualities are “made up”, they don’t exist in the wild. It just seems like a strange pairing.

Anyhow.

It seems that the culture, in general, is set up to be value-positive about finding and providing answers. Which means that it is value-positive about having questions.

You can see it in the schools. 

You can see it in the media. 

You can see how it structures our commerce. 

Absolutely nothing the matter with setting up a culture/society with that as a primary flavor.

Absolutely nothing the matter with setting up a life with that as a primary flavor.

From a relationshipping orientation, that kind of POV would mean that there is a value-positive around questions and answers. 

Or, value-positive around “problems/solutions”. 

“I will be of value if I am a solution to a problem they are having.”

“I will be of relational value if I am a solution to a relational problem that they are having.”
“I will be of relational value if I am an answer to a relational question they are having.”

Fascinating. 

Hang with me as I try to make a metaphor that works for this philosophizing.

If you go to a place where you engage with dancing as part of a relational engagement, the point of the dancing could be about showing that you are an answer/solution to a relational question/problem the other is having. 

How you dance is the demonstration of your “answeredness”, what kind of question/problem you answer/solve.

If you go to a dance studio where you are learning to do a particular kind of dance, the dancing is about exploring/learning the dance. Not that you are the relational answer to a relational question. You can always skew it that way. It’s a cartoon metaphor. Broad strokes. Will not cover all possibilities. 

Overtly, in a dance studio, the focus is to expand into the dance.

What the hell might that mean, in the context of relationshipping?

One, I think it’s too disruptive to take out into muggle land.
Can you see how the culture of a place of dancing (disco isn’t term any more, eh?) would interpret it if you came in and practiced a deep tango?

And then, at the end, you dusted yourself off and said, “Thanks very much for the dance.” and left?

What do you think the meaning-making of your dance partners would have been pointed at?

Don’t do it. 

Engaging with a culture’s “holy” items as if they were mundane… that was a burning at the stake lies.
And it’s the same caution around dancing with an individual’s “holy” items as if they are mundane.

My intention for Dojo is just that, to create a “human relationshipping studio”, in which we can deepen our understanding and practice and experience of the dances of human relationshipping are.

Without them being “relational answers/solutions to relational questions/problems”.

Laughing ruefully at the complexity of this.

Person walks into Dojo.
Dojo is billed as a relational practice.

Person has the non-Dojo culture of “I have relational questions/problems. Maybe Dojo can help. Practice can make things easier or more manageable leading to greater chance of finding answers/solutions.”

Person has the non-Dojo culture of “If this shows up, that is an answer/solution to my relational question/problem.”

Dojo maitre d pairs them up with one of the instructors.

Person has an experience, that to their Primal Character’s meaning-making, points to, “THIS IS A SOLUTION/ANSWER!!!!!!”

Instructor is like, “Thank you very much for the dance.” 

And leaves.

Going to take a lot for the person to create new meaning-making around “that” kind of engagement, eh?

And that’s just the change of meaning-making if it goes “well”.

According to Dojo philosophy, the “real Dojo muscle building” is when it doesn’t go “well”, where the desired answer doesn’t show up. 

“What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is….”