Get Out of Your Own Way. Chapter 6 – Part 1
Chapter 6 – Who Are You?
In the previous chapter, an explanation for the origins of the feelings of fear and anxiety that afflict many golfers was posited.
In summary, we have forgotten who we really are. We have become primarily identified with our physical and material form and overlooked our true, essentially spiritual nature. We have come to believe that happiness and fulfilment depend on achievements and attainment in the material world.
Consequently, our base-level survival systems respond to denial of our ambitions as if it were an existential danger, by triggering a physical response felt in the body.
Most performance coaching techniques and strategies acknowledge this faulty feedback loop. But rather than address the fundamental issue, a variety of complex and illogical solutions that ignore the true cause of the feelings are suggested.
If you believe that subjective experience (awareness, thoughts, feelings perceptions etc) arises in the brain and needs to be controlled and manipulated, reframing the threat, or developing coping strategies to deal with the symptoms seem to be the only viable options.
The single question that would enable a suffering golfer to escape the trap is ignored.
‘Who or what is under threat here?’
Or ‘to whom does this matter?’
When the question ‘What does this mean to me?’ arises and the golfer feels anxious, to whom or what does the word ‘me’ refer?
Without understanding who or what you essentially are, how can you even begin to consider what golf, or anything else in your life really means?
The Paradox of Awareness
When writing The Three Principles of Outstanding Golf back in 2016, it seemed to me, (as I’m sure it does for most people), that awareness was personal. Something I was doing. Something that came and went. Something that could be directed and focused. Lost and found.
Seeing the true nature of awareness was life changing. Challenges that needed overcoming suddenly weren’t there anymore. The meanings I had arbitrarily imposed on the game changed. Understanding who I really am is the most important lesson I have learned.
I can look back now and see that all the struggles, all the hours on the range, all the thousands of miles travelled around the world – it was about something much more than golf.
In many spiritual traditions, the experience of knowing, or being aware, is referred to as ‘consciousness’. Consciousness is the awareness by which all experience is known.
Ask yourself the question: ‘Have I ever experienced anything outside of awareness?’
The answer should be obvious.
But like many things that are familiar to us, awareness is taken for granted. Consciousness is overlooked in the same way that the screen gets overlooked when you watch golf on television. The screen is always present. But you don’t notice it when the coverage starts. It disappears into the background as your attention gets captured by the story playing out upon it.
In similar fashion, we are obsessed by the content of our thoughts, our feelings, sensations, and perceptions. The story of ‘me’. Rarely, if ever, do we consider what makes experiencing those thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions possible.
As mentioned in Chapter 5, for centuries, philosophers and scientists have been contemplating the question:
‘What is the nature of consciousness?’
(For those interested in this enquiry, I suggest following the line of philosophical thought that runs from Plato to Descartes; Bishop Berkeley, Kant and Schopenhauer; through to modern thinkers such as Carl Jung and Bernardo Kastrup.)
The question contains a paradox. Consciousness itself has no objective qualities. It has no dimensions. It cannot be seen, felt, measured, or described with words. It is possible to infer what consciousness does, but not to say exactly what it is.
Our languages have evolved to describe duality. There are subjects and objects, verbs, and nouns. The difficulty in finding words to describe the ultimate context in which all experience – including language, takes place means inevitably that more emphasis is placed on the content of our experience than on the nature of it. It is easier to describe the contents of perception than to explain how the perception came to be.
Unsurprisingly, the consequences of this paradox show up in the way we play, learn and talk about golf. The tangible, material elements are emphasised over the more subtle ones. Far more attention is paid to what the swing should look like and to relevant measurement parameters such as ball speed and angle of attack than to understanding how golfers feel what we feel and what the game means to the people who play it.
Most golfers devote more attention to the outer game (the swing, putting stroke, fitness, equipment, etc.) than they do learning about the inner game (thinking, feeling, decision-making, etc.).
If your entire ontology, your worldview – the way you understand reality and, therefore, the context in which the game of golf is played – is founded on a misunderstanding, it shouldn’t be a surprise that you might be having trouble realising your potential or maintaining your enthusiasm for the game.
The Nature of Experience
In Chapter 3, I suggested that we have two alternatives to guide the way we live and relate to the world. We can either choose our beliefs or accept the evidence of our direct experience. Please re-read that chapter if a reminder of the implications of choosing one over the other would be useful.
If we decide that truth is more likely to be found down the road of experience rather than belief, would it not make sense for us to better understand the nature of that experience? Rather than subscribe to the belief of a reality based on a yet to be verified substance called ‘matter’, let’s explore the evidence for an alternative. Evidence provided by our direct experience, qualified, and confirmed using logic and reason.
Our human experience has two aspects. That which is perceived and that which perceives. That which perceives must be at least as real as what it perceives.
Everything that is perceived or known, is known through awareness, or consciousness.
Consciousness is the ultimate constant, the most consistent element of our lives. The content of experience – thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions – is always changing. That which perceives or knows experience (awareness) is always the same.
Every day you play is different. Every round of golf is different. Every shot is different. Every swing feels different. Hole locations change, tee positions change, weather conditions change. But the awareness of all those elements has never changed. It is always and has always been the same.
So, whatever is known, whatever you accept as ‘reality’ is only understood in the terms of your understanding of consciousness. If the sunglasses you wear on the golf course are made from a material that is tinted or distorted in some way, the colours you see through it will not a be true representation of the grass, the trees, the sky – what is really out there.
If you don’t understand the nature of awareness by which your life is known, can you really understand the content of your life experience?
If you don’t understand the awareness by which you know your ‘self’, do you really know who you are?
Consciousness is the context within which experience is created for us via thought and perception. This creative process can only happen within awareness, within consciousness. If it happened outside of awareness, you wouldn’t know about it. There wouldn’t be an experience.
On the blank screen of awareness, thought creates a perception of the world informed by the data brought to us by the senses. This is happening constantly. Even when you are sleeping, consciousness is present. Sleep is the awareness of absence, not the absence of awareness. How could a noise or an event in a dream wake you up if awareness wasn’t aware?
Consciousness is eternal, unchanging. It is the most fundamental, the most basic element of the human experience. It is the arena in which your experience of life unfolds.