13 Four Exercises for Deconstructing Deceptive Appearances

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Exercise 12: Visualizing Life's Changes

The first exercise for deconstructing deceptive appearances helps us to dissolve faulty impressions we might have of situations or persons as permanent. We need to deconstruct our feelings that people's appearance, mode of behavior, or our response to them is fixed. We begin by looking at a photograph or by simply thinking of someone with whom we have a close daily relationship, for example a relative. We notice how the person appears to exist permanently as one age, either the present one or an outdated one, and how we treat the person insensitively because of this. For example, our parents may seem always to have been old and our children may seem always to be kids.

To deconstruct this deceptive appearance, we try to visualize portraits of our relative spanning each year of life from birth to death, projecting what he or she will look like in the future. Picturing these images in a vertical stack, like a deck of playing cards, we imagine those from infancy to the present standing on one side of the person. Those extending to old age and death stand on the other. Flipping through the stack, we try to see the present image as just one in a series.

Despite the truth of our deconstructed vision, we need to keep sight of our relative's present stage in life in order to relate meaningfully. Therefore, we try to alternate focusing on the person through two "lenses." Through the first, we see only his or her accurate current appearance. Through the other, we view his or her changing image spanning a lifetime. After switching back and forth between our restricted and expanded perspectives, we try to perceive the two simultaneously, like seeing Venetian blinds and the view of a busy street behind them. We may do this by looking at the photo while projecting life's changes onto it or by visualizing the two images superimposed. Lastly, we let the feeling sink in that our relative's appearance as concretely one age does not represent his or her lasting identity. When advanced in this practice, we may repeat the procedure, extending the visualization to include images of hypothetical past and future lives, or at least a feeling for their existence.

The same method can help us to deconstruct the deceptive feeling of someone having a permanent, singular identity based on an upsetting incident. For example, when a relative yells at us in anger, we often regard the person for days exclusively in this light. We lose sight of our other interactions with the person. Here, however, we work only with our conception of our relative. We may use a photo as a reference point to help us return to the exercise if our mind wanders. However, a photograph often locks us into the scene in which it was taken and is not conducive for representing how we regard the person now.

First, we focus on our conception of our relative based on the incident and note how fixed it feels. Our conception may take the form of a mental image or a vaguer impression of the person yelling in anger, or it may take the form of a pejorative term for the person. In each case, we usually accompany our fixed conception with a strong emotion. Then, we recall other encounters in which the person acted differently. Often, he or she was affectionate, humorous, astute, and so on. Representing these scenes also with mental images or vague impressions, we imagine them and a variety of possible future scenes, in which the person may act differently, like stacked slides on either side of our fixed conception. We then follow the rest of the procedure as before.

In the end, we let the realization sink in that our relative's seemingly fixed appearance as an upsetting person is a limited and deceptive view. From the perspective of an entire life, any difficult emotional scene wanes in importance. Even if upsetting behavior is a recurrent pattern in the person's life, other modes of behavior also comprise it. Nevertheless, we need to deal appropriately with what has happened now.

To deconstruct our seemingly set feelings toward the relative who upset us, we may follow the same approach, by using a mental image or a vaguer impression of the person as a focal point for representing each feeling. As before, we may use a photo as a point of reference. When our feelings seem fixed, they may cause us to forget other emotions we have felt toward the person over our history together. They may also obscure the fact that we may feel differently in the future. We need to see what we presently feel in a larger context. Yet, at the same time, we need to respect what we feel and not repress it. When we deconstruct annoyance, for example, it no longer seems like our only feeling toward someone. Still, we need to deal with it until even its residual traces are gone.

We practice the second phase of the exercise while sitting in a circle of men and women from as wide a variety of ages and backgrounds as possible. Looking at each in turn and following the procedure as before, we first deconstruct their deceptive appearance as people who have always been and will always be their current age or weight. Then, to deconstruct their appearance as having a seemingly permanent, singular identity, we look away and work with our impression of each. To help maintain our point of reference, we may occasionally look back at the person. Practicing while facing a partner is not conducive for deconstruction. The force of looking in each other's eyes is too compelling.

For persons we do not know, we try to work with the superficial impression we gain by merely looking at them. Either a positive or a negative one will do. Having a positive impression of someone, for example as a pleasant person having no problems, can render us as insensitive to his or her reality as having a negative one. When such a person tells us about some difficulties in his or her life, we often trivialize them or do not take them seriously. They do not fit in with our image of the person. If we learn of hidden dark sides of his or her behavior, especially if we believed the person to be spiritually advanced, we may overreact and lose all faith.

During this part of the exercise, we picture each person in the circle within a cluster of images of other known or hypothetical aspects of his or her personality and behavior. Traditional Buddhist meditations for gaining equanimity similarly enable us to see everyone potentially as a friend or an enemy. When properly practiced, such training does not lead to a loss of trust in everyone. It brings, instead, a realistic attitude and emotional balance. We conclude this phase of the exercise by similarly deconstructing any seemingly permanent feelings toward each person, including indifference, also while looking away and only glancing back for reference.

The third phase of the exercise follows the same procedure. We skip, however, working with the mirror for the same reason as not practicing while facing a partner. First, we focus on our current self-image. To deconstruct its deceptive appearance as our permanent, singular identity, we try to see it in the context of other aspects of our personality and behavior, both in the past and hypothetically in the future. Then, we repeat the procedure to deconstruct any seemingly fixed emotions we might feel toward ourselves as we are now.

Next, to deconstruct our identification with our present physical appearance or with how we looked at one stage in our life, we follow the same procedure by working with a series of past and present photos of ourselves. We add to them projected images of how we might look in the future. Lastly, using the photos merely as a reference, we deconstruct any fixed conceptions and feelings we might have of ourselves at particularly difficult periods in our life. Since we base such conceptions and feelings on selective memories, we need to view ourselves then in the perspective of a wider range of recollections.

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