Two (of many) dimensions that describe our actions are 1) our level of awareness (or mindfulness, or consciousness) and 2) our degree of spontaneity at a given moment. Mapping these dimensions across each other results in four distinct ways of being, four "modes," although the boundaries are arbitrary and highly fluid. There's no implied hierarchy—no one mode is "best"—but a given mode may be best suited to our needs at a given moment. What characterizes each mode for you? Are certain modes easy or difficult? Are you able to identify and use the mode that best fits the moment?
This is obviously a highly reductive way of characterizing all our potential "ways of being," and I offer it cautiously. But it occurred to me today as I was wrestling with some strong emotions stirred up by a troubling experience, and it helped me make some sense of what had happened.
I realized that I'd been operating instinctively--reacting very quickly, with a low level of self-awareness--when that mode really wasn't called for, and it gave my actions a driven, robotic quality (which got me into trouble.) I needed to slow down, take a breath, be more reflective--to be deliberate.
(Here's a one-slide PowerPoint version [58 KB] of this post.)
Thanks to my colleagues Carole Robin, Hugh Keelan, Inbal Demri, Marcus Abundis, Stephanie Soler, and Yifat Sharabi-Levine for helping me think and feel my way through this, and thanks particularly to Hugh for helping me to see that my original language conveyed a hierarchical sense of "where I should be" that's neither accurate nor feasible :-)
