Awakeness Mentoring

A theoretical basis of the service being provided, based on Consructivism as a way of understanding our inner workings.

Constructivism as a way of understanding the meaning-making process.

Originally through the work of George Kelly (1905-1967) constructivism began to take the place of objectivism in modern thought, and in our meaning-making processes.  Objectivist thought maintained that reality was something that was outside of the knower, and mind was used to comprehend and reflect this objective reality.  Meaning derived was then external to the knower and knowledge was a passive reflection of this external objective reality.  Constructivism replaced this understanding with the view that knowledge is actively built up by the knower, actively and uniquely construed (given meaning) by each person through an interpretive process which provides a way for the person to organize their experience, and make the world more predictable.   Kelly states (1955) that, “Man looks at his world through transparent templets which he creates and then attempts to fit over the realities of which the world is composed.” (Personal Construct Psychology p.8-9)

To accept this view of reality is to see that we create the world we live in as we adapt our constructed realities to control and survive, and moving towards internal coherence with our other constructions, and by consensus with the constructions of those people around us in our family, culture, peer group, etc.  An ability to see ourselves while in this constructive process, and observe the constructions that we bring from our histories, frees us from those histories, and gives us room to be creative within the process.  Seeing how we actively construct our world opens the way for us to intervene creatively in our own interpretive process and it also improves problem solving because it helps people see or construe problems in different ways.  Alternative perspectives allow people to consider new possibilities for both internal and external conflicts, and also offer the ability to move to new constructs or the release of constructs entirely .  With these kind of deep level thinking changes, entirely new paradigms can emerge for understanding life, and then previously noticed problems sometimes no longer exist at all.  Taken another step, one becomes able to see the constructs that they built as young children actually constructing who they are as people.  This can be so seemingly arbitrary, how these most basic constructs underlie our personalities, based on things that were said to the child, or ways they interpreted events with their immature and innocent viewpoints.  Being able to view this self-production process from the stance of adulthood, and to see the mind-made identity, from which they have previously functioned, as not inherently true and as self-constructed, gives a freedom to step out of that reality if one is ready.

The ability to be aware of the way one has constructed one’s reality offers freedom from the constructs which hinder an ability to see alternative ways of responding to whatever experience the world may come up with.  This ability is of particular importance for today’s world for two major reasons.  One is that because our world is now becoming increasingly interconnected and diverse, and therefore a close mix of people using different constructs.  The ability to tolerate these differences is of great importance in avoiding conflict, war and destruction that tends to occur when such fundamental differences are not able to be tolerated through thinking that one construct is right and the others wrong.  Second is that we have come to a point in human evolution when ordinary people are now more and more able to find their way to a source of identity beyond the constructs of the mind.  Once this is seen, there then needs to follow, a reversal of the constructive process, whereby we unwind what has previously been the basis of our identity, so that the underlying identity can assert itself.

The De-Constructive Process
This mentor notices that there is a de-constructive process that is occurring within humans at this time, and that process has been spoken about clearly in both the teachings of Eckhart Tolle and Adyashanti, and need not be outlined at length here.  It can be said quickly however, that this is a process where those constructs that we learn as children in order to survive, are being seen through as unreal, and are being abandoned as the source from which we draw our identity.  This is a uniquely different process in each person, for the same reason that the constructive process is also unique.  It is the process which allows us to discover who and what we really are, which is quite outside of those mental constructs.  This process continues until we are able to live our lives with freedom and joyous acceptance of the minute to minute miracle of simply being here.  It is essentially a process that moves without our intentionally doing it in any way.  In fact the one who would do anything, is the one who does not survive the process.  As human beings, all we can do is allow the process to move within us, and to get out of its way whenever we see ourselves interfering.  Hence the main focus of this practice is the making of space for the awakeness to be present, and for the deconstructive process to work, not by the will or the skill of either the mentor or the mentee as human beings.  If anything significant happens in this “practice”, it would simply be because of the natural movement of the awakeness itself, responding to having been given space to be and to move without interference.

"The idea that we have a self that controls, arbitrates, or is the doer behind our actions is absurd. The individual self is nothing but an idea of who we are. Ideas are ideas - and nothing more. An idea can never be the doer or creator of anything; it can only be what it is - an idea.
Suzanne Segal, "Collision with the Infinite"

“Most people are focused on the foreground and what their five senses bring them, but the Self is discovered in the background.  The Self is the source from which the phenomena spring and the ground in which this display of phenomena is happening…”

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