Destabilization and why it's something we try for in Dojo

Was on a Hang yesterday and when a friend of mine said something along the lines of, “Someone comes in all soft and cuddly and you throw something at them that they interpret as attacking and that could destabilize them.”

I’m like, “Absolutely.”

He gives a look that’s like, “WTF? Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to get someone out of a stableness of a yummy place and into being experiencing unstableness, of not being sure of what is going on?”

I get that.

It’s not that I have anything against being in a yummy place.

I quite enjoy being in a yummy place.

Just watch me eat good food sometime.

And it’s not that I have anything about being in the polar opposite place, plus or minus.

It’s Dojo.

The stated aim of Dojo is give you more of the life that you want to have.

The methodology is to increase your vocabulary and skills sets such that you can have that life that you are not having now.

To increase your vocabulary and skill sets, you challenge your beliefs/experiences that you are your Primal Character, as your Primal Character is evidently not capable of getting you the life that you want to have.

In challenging your experience/belief that you are your Primal Character, you get to challenge the “truths” that your Primal Character believes to be self-evident, particularly in those areas related to the part of your life that you want to have more of. When these truths are challenged, not only mentally but through embodiment of being/doing something different, it is highly likely that you will experience some form of destabilization. Your experience of the surety of the truths of your Primal Character is shaken.

The point when standing in those destabilized places is to realize that you are NOT your Primal Character. That what is being destabilized is NOT you. It is your belief systems, your values, your meaning-makings that are being shaken.

It is very easy to see that, “Oh, I should be destabilized from the values that are ‘wrong’. I should loosen the hold that racism/sexism/ageism/etc. have over me.” It’s much, much more difficult to take that POV about the values that bring you “value-positiveness”.

And there is absolutely no need to mess with the value systems that bring you experiences of value-positiveness. Unless they are standing in the way of you having the life that you want to have.

From my life, a few times that I experienced this kind of destabilization:

Becoming sexual aroused while slow dancing with a male transvestite.

When my gaydar completely missed that a person was gay.

How great it felt to cry with strangers for two whole days in a workshop.

Experiencing bilocation.

Becoming aware that my coping skill of eating a half-gallon of ice cream had vanished without me doing any specific work on it.

Almost losing my shit when some therapists at a professional meeting were considering whether joining the Armed Forces should be seen as a treatable disorder.

The WTF experience was me becoming aware that the truths that my Primal Character was trying to sell me as TRUTH were not. The evidence was right fucking there. How I constructed external reality and internal reality was NOT FUCKING REAL.

Yes, I have a personal preference for those kinds of experiences.

Some people don’t.

Part of the reason that Dojo is, is because I interpret those kinds of experiences as

value-positive.

So, if you are dancing in Dojo and want to go past White Belt, expect that ALL of your values are going to be shaken. Not just the ones you don’t like.

And it will absolutely suck when you engage with, “Is it just the yumminess or am I using the yumminess as an addiction?”

Or, as some Buddhists might query, “Do I grasp at my value-positives?”

It is a difficult differentiation between holding and grasping.