NOTE – We have updated our 12 Practices. Please visit our main 12 Practices page to view latest practices.
What is the experience of being? I explored this inquiry in a two-part blog. In part one, I explored an interdependent understanding of being. In this blog, part two, I will introduce the 12 practices that support this new understanding of being.
This new dimension of being views humans as co-creators of our world. However, most psychological models relating to the self and human functioning imply that the self exists as a discrete, separate, and independent entity. Therefore, learning professionals, seldom appreciate this interdependent nature of being nor the generative capacity it reveals. They both impact learning and require unlearning.
To live between learning and unlearning entails a primary focus on intention, inquiry, imagination, and contemplation. We must clear our minds to sort out identities, penetrate distractions, prioritize concerns, disclose concealed impediments, and tune in to an intersubjective experience to co-create our existence.
If we can become open to this possibility, the question then becomes how to clear ourselves to reveal and tune into the vessel that we are?
Getting Closer to the Experience of Being
This journey requires much more than mere knowledge of theories and concepts.
We are not proposing practice in what we know or how we do things. We are proposing practice for differentiating being to clarify who we are.
This kind of practice requires becoming present to our humanness as a fluid, interdependent, interconnected being – to become aware of the felt experience of being. The practice of being opens up a dimension of our humanity that can increase performance without increasing the compulsion and wants that also increase anxiety.
Practice precedes performance. We become intentional to test our understanding of knowledge, to question our assumptions and to reveal the causes and conditions that intersect to create experiences.
These practices discovered through research and contemplative learning will expand our presence to reveal our interdependent being: our temporal nature, internal state, and our possibility as co-creators (as distinguished in part one).
Our 12 Practices
As we have grown to become Bhavana Learning Group, we have also codified our multi-year inquiry into the practices for developing an interdependent awareness.
Part of our shift involved exploring and examining rigorous practices that access our being to expand our presence: To weave together our past and future, reveal impediments, integrate lessons and realize possibility.
I have organized these 12 Practices in three vessels, each preparing learners to integrate wisdom into an interdependent awareness.
- Grounding Vessel– Practices 1 through 4 – develops a foundation for our view, speech, and actions.
- Fruition Vessel– Practices 5 through 8 – expands grounding to cultivate commitment and possibility.
- Fertile Vessel– Practices 9 through 12 – extends and deepens the previous learning to co-create.
The key for each practice below denotes how we exist with or without each practice. I have also linked some resources after each practice to support an inquiry.
= Item with PRACTICE
= Item without PRACTICE
1. Awareness
This practice cultivates my attention so that I observe my experience – the perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and other causes, conditions, and contexts that influence me.
I react to events and circumstances, and I allow deadlines and tasks to determine my actions.
KEY CAPACITIES: Being Spacious and Grounded supports developing Awareness.
2. Intention
The practice of bringing conscious thought to the present moment. Being deliberate and responsible for my motivation, attitude, and direction manifests as mindful choosing, speaking, and action.
My reactions rest on sentimental wishes, wishful thinking, “well-meaning,” and my casual aims and heartfelt desires.
KEY CAPACITIES: Thoughts/thinking and Motivation support developing Intention.
3. Integrity
This practice expands my capacity to create and enact agreements with myself and others from the context of being whole and complete. Aligning my values, intentions, speaking, and deeds enhances authenticity and deepens trust.
My fragmented attention and casual speaking create incongruences between my words and deeds, causing confusion, uncertainty, and distrust.
KEY CAPACITIES: Responsibility and Discipline support developing Integrity.
4. Reflection
Regular reflection focuses my awareness and deepens my concentration to discern events and patterns below the surface. I develop the discipline to discern direct experience and better understand my experiences, gaining insight beyond daily activities and tasks.
I automatically react to events and tasks, skimming and scanning events. I lack observational skills to manage distractions, prioritize tasks, or discriminate between similar items, and become oblivious to the quality of my output.
KEY CAPACITIES: Openness and Introspection support developing Reflection.
5. Unlearning
This practice involves questioning, examining, reflecting on, and distinguishing concealed assumptions that form my views. The unlearning process encourages letting go of outmoded beliefs and fixed views to cultivate an openness for wisdom to emerge.
I am self-assured in my abilities, knowledge, views, and understanding of myself and the world. While I am interested in learning, I do not see the need to reflect or question my beliefs and assumptions. I would rather spend time learning more to leverage my knowledge.
KEY CAPACITIES: Openness and Questioning/Thinking support developing Inquiry.
6. Intentional Speaking
This practice focuses awareness on weaving thought and meaning, bridging my intentions with reality. With this practice, I become a co-creator responsible for language that shapes meaning, action, and outcomes.
I react with habitual patterns such as gossip, idle speaking, hyperbole, or magical thinking to make myself feel better or impress others.
KEY CAPACITIES: Discipline and Motivation support developing Intentional Speaking.
7. Completion
I practice seeing things as they are. I recreate situations, receive concerns, and acknowledge situations from a background of possibilities.
My split attention leads to withholding, stepping over items, ignoring details, inaction, and taking shortcuts. I tolerate unnecessary missteps that require more time and energy.
KEY CAPACITIES: Surrender/Acceptance and Spaciousness/Openness support developing Completion.
8. Deep Listening
My practice of bare attention and receptive awareness allows things to be revealed — for me to be with others as they are and to receive their concerns fully.
I listen only for the information I need to manage my tasks and solve my problems.
KEY CAPACITIES: Discipline and Generosity support developing Deep Listening.
9. Commitment
With my practice of devotional resolve – cognitively, emotionally, and volitionally – I find serene direction in surrendering to something larger than myself.
My life consists of obligations and perpetual, monotonous tasks that find me aimlessly drifting without direction.
KEY CAPACITIES: Motivation and Patience/Resolve support developing Commitment.
10. Inquiry
This practice encourages living in the question. I discern situations critically with ontological humility to cultivate openness that suspends certainty. I remain open to others’ perspectives and understand that any view is only part of a larger picture.
I reflexively seek out answers and solutions and stop questioning once I discover them.
KEY CAPACITIES: Openness and Questioning/Observing support developing Inquiry.
11. Possibility
This practice develops a context, a capacity for a vast, open awareness free of fixed meaning or previous frames. Potentiality arises from the freedom of spaciousness. With possibility, I cultivate a beginner’s mind, venturing into the unknown and uncertainty to be with what arises.
I am skilled at anticipating, predicting, and controlling situations. I have become attached to this level of certainty and comforted by fixed expectations, which causes disappointment, diminishes my freedom, and denies my potential.
KEY CAPACITIES: Surrender/Acceptance and Spaciousness/Openness support developing Possibility.
12. Community as Service
This practice reveals what it is to be an interdependent person, naturally connected to others and called to contribute to the greater good. Serving others in community fosters fulfillment, equanimity, and connection through acts of generosity, compassion, and wisdom, positively impacting society and the world.
I believe I am an independent, fixed, and separate self, an individual identity to protect and defend. I do not depend on anyone.
KEY CAPACITIES: Generosity and Responsibility support developing Community as Service.
Practice Cultivates Wisdom
The experience of practice is quite different from behaviors, knowledge or “tools.”
- Each of these 12 Practices expands our view to cultivating the experience of being as interdependent.
- Each is connected through a progressive sequence: the first vessel (Practices 1 – 4) is fundamental, and the subsequent vessels (Practices 5 – 8, and Practices 9 – 12) expand on previous vessels.
- Each lives beyond conceptual understanding to include experience (not simply knowledge) for deeper understanding.
- Each also opens a new perspective and framework with techniques and trainings that establish routines and rituals to cultivate wisdom.
- And finally, each includes resources to begin an ongoing practice.
The practice of practice leads to greater clarity and wisdom by 1) applying new understanding 2) internalizing our learning, and 3) embodying our experience of learning on the way to 4) expanding to an integrated being.
Many programs promise these same results, but such promises stem from a mistaken conclusion about learning, unlearning, and wisdom: to know the content (about the thing) is not living the context (felt experience of being).
“We are not proposing practice in what we know or how we do things. We are proposing practice for differentiating being to clarify who we are.”
I’ll leave the larger implications for another blog. Suffice it to say that only greater clarity of causes and conditions reveals the beliefs that lead to our consumption and desires that impede the experience of greater satisfaction that already exists.
Our (dis)satisfaction is rooted more in unexamined assumptions rather than one more “missing” thing to consume, acquire, or leverage. As the Buddha taught, “Those who act with few desires are calm, without worry or fear.”
With this deeper awareness of being, we view concerns about performance as mutually dependent on the wisdom found at the source of our freedom.
And that begins with practice.
Reading Time: 8 min. Digest Time: 15 min
View our related blogs:
- View Part One of this blog.
- View our blog, “Discover Self through Practice.”
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