Marks of a Windhorse Person
Introduction
In the spring of 2019, my wife and Windhorse co-founder Molly Fortuna and I visited the Windhorse centers in San Luis Obispo, California, and Portland, Oregon. We stayed several days in both centers for teaching and discussion. Both centers expressed special interest in the open question,
“What are the marks of a Windhorse person?”
This question grew out of these two communities wondering to what degree their work and their staff are “really Windhorse.” As these are both relatively new centers (less than a decade old), it is natural for them to wonder how they line up with the nearly forty-year development of the Windhorse Project, which borders on a tradition.
Molly and I studied, contemplated, and made presentations with in-depth discussions on this topic with both centers’ staff communities. This question also re-appeared at the Spring 2019 International Windhorse Conference. This paper grew out of those experiences. This is not the first time Windhorse people have discussed this question. From the beginning, we wondered what was unique about Windhorse work and the people doing it. This paper is intended to continue the exploration of the open question about what such marks may be, thus this is a discussion paper rather than any kind of authoritative position paper. This is an attempt to provide some guidelines and a way of thinking in response to such wondering.
It is well known that human beings’ perceptual/cognitive systems rely on “pattern recognition” to continue to make sense of and synchronize with their environment. Our mostly pre-conscious awareness constantly scans the environment for recognizable patterns that organize our world. We constantly take in new sense perceptions and match those up with our cognitive patterns to develop more understanding of what is happening and adapt to how things work. Our Homo sapien brains are highly evolved in this way, providing us tremendous survival power. We live and die by pattern recognition. So it makes sense that Windhorse people would curiously search for patterns in themselves and the people they work with to be measured against existing experience of and information about Windhorse. Objecting to someone asking about the marks of a Windhorse person is like asking a bird to stop singing. What we do with pattern recognition knowledge depends on our intention. We could use a system of “Windhorse marks” to judge, pigeon-hole, and control others, to create an in-group/out-group situation, wielding a kind of intellectual power over others. But marks do not need to serve primitive territorial imperatives. We can instead use a system of “Windhorse marks” to encourage ourselves and others to learn, grow, and mature as healers, to bring out the best qualities in ourselves in the service of others well-being. With this attitude, one is less likely to project one’s own version of health onto the client’s personal recovery process. I prefer the latter intention: to be of help to others. There is power in knowing patterns. Let us use that power to promote human health and goodness.
Early in the history of the Windhorse Project, in the mid-1980s, the founding group, which included Dr. Edward Podvoll, articulated the “Marks of a Windhorse Client,” which is attached to this paper as Appendix I. This early document suggests applying such an inquiry to Windhorse practitioners. One could also apply the question as: What are the marks of a Windhorse community? What are the marks of Windhorse therapy, or of a team? Perhaps even: What are the marks of islands of clarity? Related to this, I recall an intense moment with Dr. Podvoll early in 2003, just as he had returned to Windhorse Boulder from his twelve-year meditation retreat. A small group of us were describing our Windhorse community in detail and he said, “Everything seems in order, except where are your body/speech/mind supervision groups?” We looked at each other with some embarrassment as we had not yet put those into practice, which we did soon after. It was clear for Dr. Podvoll and for us that the b/s/m supervision groups were a mark of a Windhorse community … at least for us at that time.
The use of the term “marks” here implies relatively durable traits or characteristics than transient moods, insights, and other temporary experiences, perhaps called “signs” or “symptoms” or “appearances.” “Mark” is used in the terms “birth mark” and “landmark,” the latter term being used by Dr. Podvoll in his discussion of “landmarks of the history of sanity.” Marks are benchmark points of reference for recognizing recurring patterns embedded in the flow of experience. Here we are considering how one would recognize a Windhorse person, or how one could assess the personal qualities and behaviors of a Windhorse person. What might we have in common that together comprise patterns that we recognize as “Windhorse,” that would provide us a sense of belonging to our Windhorse communities? I sometimes hear of Windhorse people who “worry that I am not doing it the Windhorse way,” which can come from a primal fear of being outside the boundary of the group or “tribe.” Such feelings of alienation can be worked with: as entry points of exchange with persons in the recovery process; as pointing to one’s own deep loneliness; in realizing how much energy and time we devote to managing other people’s impressions of us; and even to wonder, “How secure am I in my own unique existence?”
There are reference points that employers and supervisors use to hire and cultivate employees. For example, a key quality of a valued clinician is if that person is “supervisable,” meaning the person can take in and make constructive use of feedback from a supervisor. It is possible that one could have some marks of a Windhorse person, yet not work out as an employee in a particular Windhorse service. Perhaps people are just unable to get along, due to personality conflicts or organizational politics. Or perhaps one does not have the stamina, resilience, and energy for the work. Or one is unable to manage workplace stress and burns out. Or one becomes averse to the inherent difficulty of the work. These kinds of issues are not being explored here.
Some of us have closely read core Windhorse materials such as Dr. Podvoll’s Recovering Sanity and Chogyam Trungpa’s Creating An Environment of Sanity from the perspective of marks of a Windhorse person. For example, Dr. Podvoll writes about the personal path of doing basic attendance in skill #10, or “Learning,” as the means of “becoming a more responsive person.” And Chogyam Trungpa writes that “as psychologists, we have to feel a fundamental connection with others. We have to be a people-loving person to begin with.” In this sense, they propose that being able to genuinely respond with loving kindness to another person would be a mark of a Windhorse person. Another example is described by Dr. Podvoll in his 1985 paper “Protecting Recovery From Psychosis in Home Environments”:
“The psychological health and development of the therapist is, as always, a crucial aspect of the patient/therapist relationship. The warmth, gentleness, courage, and basic cheerfulness, which are required to attend someone through the phases of repair and recovery, can be continually developed. The therapist can cultivate these necessary attributes through the practice of ‘mind training,’ to be described later.”
Basic Reference Points
Regard these marks as facets of a dynamic way of being and of helping others. Such qualities come into the foreground and dissolve into the background depending on the relationship of the Windhorse person with the situation. The Windhorse person develops flexible mind and responsiveness to others. That mind has a certain toughness to turn away from addiction to habitual patterns.
Thinking about this topic could lead to self-aggression by applying lofty ideals to oneself that are unattainable. This could arouse the impulse to transform out of a degraded sense of self to a seemingly higher state. One could create mindless practices that cut doubt and identify with powerful others to fuel the transformation. Such schemes of self-improvement can cause mental illness. Loving kindness to oneself balanced with the same for others is a true mark of a sane person. One can then develop more discernment about what to encourage in oneself and others, to bring out clarity and health. Such gentle, insightful clarity is a far cry from the harsh judgmental approach that would impose a rigid moral order on to others, which in Windhorse we refer to as “asylum mentality.” We do not need to force others to submit to our version of sanity and recovery through change-strategies of humiliation enacted with professional authority. Such aggression toward others is most often based in fear of one’s own insanity, of losing control of one’s mind and situation. In Windhorse, we have developed the practice of “asylum awareness” to work with these mostly-unconscious tendencies in ourselves (see Recovering Sanity, 2003, p. 61–68).
The following reference points describe an attitude and a way to practice so that one can discover such marks.
◈ Process of Reflection
Continually ask the question: “On the path of understanding, I wonder who am I in this situation.” Self-reflection and self-awareness can be gained through mindfulness-awareness practice.
Genuine compassion for others can be gained through tonglen practice.
Clarity of environmental awareness can be gained through space awareness practice.
Overall, honesty with oneself overcomes self-deception. One then earns the trust of others.
◈ Recognize and Relax
Notice sudden shifts of awareness from dream to direct experience.
When recognizing such positive marks in others, one appreciates them.
When recognizing such positive marks in oneself, one disowns them with relaxation.
Let them go. Let them be as they are.
One does not need to take credit for basic goodness. One is basic goodness.
“Although pride may reach its heaviest and most disastrous result in the variety of egomanias and megalomanias, they all stem from the same subtle and quick origin. Just a microsecond’s flicker of physical or mental well-being deteriorates—as soon as one tries to hold on to it, take comfort in it, embellish it—into a sense of superiority.”
Marks of a Windhorse Person (there are others)
The Windhorse person is a practitioner of the mystic arts of exchanging self for other.
◈ One develops the habit of returning to Being Present and Letting In … always comes back.
◈ One cares more about health and sanity than being right.
◈ One is content with the simple joys of mindful sitting.
◈ One has the courage to forsake comfort zone and extend toward environmental awareness.
◈ One is steady through the storms of psychosis, as a trusted friend. One tries to remain grounded when in the realms of the great mental speeds.
◈ One comes to know that resourcefulness is the key skill in any situation. One realizes that everything and everyone one needs is near at hand.
◈ One overcomes all of the negative attitudes and trappings of the professional. Retain the best of decorum in providing service. One overcomes the pride of knowing what is best for others who seem less than oneself. One protects the health of others. One gives the gift of fearlessness.
◈ One balances the view of the history of neurosis with the history of sanity.
◈ One aspires to maitri, to loving kindness to oneself and others. One can then feel this from others.
◈ One tames self-deception by being honest with oneself and others.
◈ One maintains one’s personal household as the cornerstone of Windhorse community; reduces the harm of private addictions (See Appendix II).
◈ One has energy for the discipline of personal scheduling. One knows when to relax and when to spring into action.
◈ One knows one is far from perfect and welcomes feedback from others. One is willing to face personal shortcomings rather than blame others and knows how to learn, both in relation with others and with oneself.
◈ One appreciates that recovery is non-linear and is patient with the myriad ups and downs of situations. One smiles and laugh with good humor, but not at the expense of others. Take it easy, we have a long way to go.
◈ One intends to be awake during transitions, even the small ones, of mind and environment. One knows there is a tendency to blank out in the gaps between things.
◈ One finds disturbed persons enigmatic and interesting. One does not try to put people in diagnostic pigeonholes, rather prefers to leave each person free of well-meaning but confining projections. One is awestruck by the power of mind to project entire worlds, especially when separated from body and environment. Having studied the Windhorse psychology of psychosis as outlined in Dr. Podvoll’s Recovering Sanity, one restrains one’s urge to transform, to be other than who and where one actually is. One constantly synchronizes body, mind, and environment in the present moment. One is content to see, hear, and feel other persons just as they are.
◈ One has the fearlessness to use every aspect of one’s own mind in the service of the therapeutic process.
◈ One is willing to relate with one’s own aloneness and may engage in solitary retreat practice. Dr. Podvoll writes, “The alchemy of transforming the suffering of loneliness into the confidence of aloneness is one of the basic tasks of becoming a full human being” (Recovering Sanity, 2003, p. 346). One does not live and die for the approval of others. One develops some awareness of how much energy we put into managing other people’s impressions of us. One develops one’s own genuine presence.
Conclusion
During the group discussion with the Portland Windhorse staff, one person, who was new to Windhorse, “confessed” to not following the mark of maintaining his personal household, which in his mind was in complete disarray. The person said how vulnerable he felt sharing this with the group, which roused our gentleness toward him. As the discussion unfolded, we seemed to swing between the extremes of compulsive neatness (discipline as prison) vs. anything-goes (acceptance as freedom). I imagined aloud what might happen if Dr. Podvoll visited this vulnerable person at home. Dr. Podvoll felt that perhaps his greatest contribution was his articulation of the “history of sanity” and how “islands of clarity” spontaneously occur as moments of sanity. I personally witnessed how he could enter a person’s life or household and directly see the health and sanity there. He could see this in the way the person’s precision and accuracy were expressed in the actual details, no matter how obscured, and how the person could then positively build on that. For example, Dr. Podvoll might observe this person’s clothes strewn in apparent random disarray, and then he would pause. He then might see the person’s instinct of nest-building at play in the way the strewn clothes actually looked like a weaving, to provide secure comfort for much-needed rest. Dr. Podvoll had this ability to see what was already right and good in any situation, rather than being quick to judge what was wrong or deficient, and to criticize. He always followed his own advice:
“Never, say the ancient hallucinogenic healers, never scold someone who is struggling to maintain control of his mind.”
This collection of marks is not presented in any particular order. They are not sorted by meta-logics such as ground/path/fruition, or inner/outer, or body/speech/mind. We don’t always have to create layers of logic. Perhaps each mark can be allowed to move in and out of the foreground of awareness as needed. We can each do our own reflection and research and come to our own conclusions on this open question of the marks of a Windhorse person. We all already have a highly-honed pattern recognition system which we apply to whatever we are interested in or whatever commands our attention. How are we already applying that to our Windhorse friends? Odds are, this is already happening—we may as well become aware of what is already on our mind.
Afterthought
I have been given to understand a person as a living field of resonance, as a more or less integrated meta-pattern of rhythmic fields. Everything about life is vibrational. Dr. Podvoll writes:
“Just how the neurotransmitters affect the mind itself is unknown. But everything indicates that they affect the rhythms of the brain and the rest of the body. There are thousands of different nerve firing patterns within the brain and elsewhere. Everywhere there are patterns and rhythms of activity. There are menstrual cycles, breathing rhythms, heartbeats, and cellular oscillations. Every particle of human life is involved in the “musical” activity of producing rhythmic waves of energy. ”
Dr. Podvoll goes on to explore how the mind and its patterns of thinking and feeling also affect the brain/body energy waves. The brain and mind are in constant feedback cycles shaping our forms and functions. Brain-wave research on experienced meditators reveals a distinctive pattern of relaxed alertness, and generating compassion creates its own wave patterns. These patterns appear as integrated, flowing wave-forms like deep ocean waves, rather than chaotic jumbles like overlapping waves in a swimming pool. How do our personal rhythmic patterns affect those people and spaces around us? We can tell if someone is in a steady, alert, grounded place, or is agitated and distracted in hyperarousal. We can “read” a person’s general radiance … is it depressed? Is it uplifted?
Sometimes I wonder if a Windhorse person would have a signature resonance, a recognizable rhythmic pattern that radiates the long, slow waves of compassion. It may be that each of us has a signature resonance unique to us that develops over the course of long Windhorse experience. Perhaps members of a Windhorse team entrain each others’ rhythms and come into synchrony over time. Such relational synchrony can be seen on basic attendance shifts when counselor and client fall into a shared pace of walking together. Perhaps the client learns new resonance patterns that radiate health. It may be that there is a distinct resonance pattern that is transmitted from elder Windhorse people to younger ones that is unique to our lineage of healing. If there is such a pattern, it may have the mark of the “wisdom of space”: slow down, keep it simple, stay close to the earth. With this feeling we can walk together through shared fields of sympathetic resonance.
Appendix I: Marks of a Windhorse Client
October 17, 2000
Jeffrey Fortuna
This is a loose recollection of early discussions of the Windhorse team leaders with Dr. Podvoll in the early 1980s.
“Not carrying a gun.” Not dangerous to self, other, environment … do a risk assessment (see risk assessment document).
Urge to discipline, with some history of “spiritual sensitivity” … refer to other categories of the history of sanity (*see below).
History of body-mind synchronization activity such as swimming, skiing, etc.
Spark of mutual interest and resultant dialogue among client and interviewers/potential team members.
Person is functional enough to manage household living … can safely spend time alone. Not acutely psychotic … some clarity, understanding, and ability to relate with the simplest details of daily life
Financial ground is solid enough.
Committed and involved family members who are willing to engage in family process work and grow themselves … within 2 hours travel time is optimal (i.e., can make a daytrip)
Person is “well-medicated enough” … sufficient measure of “compliance” or ability to collaborate.
Person can communicate verbally … e.g., not so withdrawn that communication seems impossible.
*categories of the history of sanity, from The Seduction of Madness, pp. 274–75:
revulsion when he feels estranged from life and the way he is living;
longs to transcend her stifling and constant self-centeredness;
urge for discipline, to gain some control over his mind and body;
longing for compassionate action;
capable of great precision in the past, to control her wildly wandering mind;
courage to face loss, desolation, and fear … if well supported becomes the platform for confidence and sense of humor.
Appendix II
A paragraph from a transcript of a meeting the Legacy Group had with Dzigar Kontrul Rinpoche on July 5, 2016. This is related to the marks of a Windhorse Person more on the community level.
The last of what would be really helpful is some kind of emphasis being in the organization between the clients, with the therapy and team members. But just as an organization, just as a community, you may want a list of things that you want anyone joining the community has to embrace those qualities. Like being polite, being open, being warm hearted, kind to each other and patient with one another, and try to communicate with a sense of no blame, you could without making it overwhelming, what every human being should have as qualities. You could write up, we don’t force that people should practice these but these are things we want, everyone in the community to manifest and embody for one’s own sanity and also offer to others and then also for the environment of working with others. When an organization is oblivious as to how work in the community—how community members should behave, people behave normally as they do and in there is a lot of friction and lot of unnecessary disharmony and conflicts, personality clashes and things like that can come. If you make some list that all the community of Windhorse must really try to cherish and practice for the good of their own self as well as also to be a part of the Windhorse community to be effective in their work and work with others. They will read it and they will have some sense of respect and responsibility to manifest in that way, just a slight emphasis can go a very long way. Everybody is not going to be perfect, but in that way it will create a good, warm environment, warm community, warm, respectful, light hearted and polite community. I think that’s going to consistently grow and then it will be very attractive and helpful for everyone to interact with one another and as a group to interact. It takes a little bit of, first in the beginning, authority to say this is what we expect, but many companies are doing that these days, even conventional companies are doing that, like we expect you to have certain qualities to work in the company. I think it would be helpful to think about those things. So it sets a standard and people can scream in their own homes but they won’t scream when they come to Windhorse. People can be rude in other places but they can’t be rude in the Windhorse space. So I think people can be withdrawn and sarcastic in other places. I think it will help the individual who maybe is prone to be this way, it will help them to create a container so they know they have to manifest this way to overcome whatever they are prone to. So I would really highly recommend that. I think it should move on as a business—as an organization—as a great means to help patients and help the society of that group that really needs help and as many who are graduates of, for example, programs of contemplative psychology or Buddhist psychology.