PROCESS, NOT ENDS AND MEANS

I was fortunate to discover the concept of process, as taught by wise men in literature, when I was a young adult. Process became my bedrock when I became a developer and facilitator of a group counseling program for LGBT clients when I was 28 years old. Irvin D. Yalom's The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (1970) was recommended to me by a social worker at the job I held prior to taking my new position with the gay counseling center in Boston. Yalom's explanation of using process in groups to illuminate individual process of participants clicked with me.

Increasing the group program at the counseling center was my goal when I started. I had been mentored in my previous job at a psychiatric institution by a talented Tavistock-trained psychiatrist. The small group program of two small groups at my gay counseling center increased to ten or more groups at any given time. Gay men were hungry for group counseling in 1978 as Gay Liberation peaked here in the Northeast. It was the transition from an isolating cruising culture to what some called "community".

I left my job as clinical director of the counseling center in 1982, on the eve of the AIDS epidemic. I carried away with me the concepts of building my individual process and honing my awareness of group process in my environments. I formed several men's groups in my home over a period of several years. It was my way of continuing to contribute to the healthy development of an out gay society.  It was also a way of continuing my education about my own process. 

So, what the heck is this process I am going on about?

Well, most of us are trained from childhood to think in terms of means and ends, based in wants. It starts with that first bicycle, for example. You wanted it. Your parents coached you perhaps with the means by which you could achieve the end of buying it or getting it as a gift. If your parents were decent folk, they taught you the means of hard work or good behavior to get to the end of receiving the bike. If your parents were not decent folk, they may have told you the means of getting the end was to steal the bike. Your parents' conscious part in this is a teaching process. If your parents just gave you a bike because everyone else had one, their process had nothing to do with teaching you anything. 

Process is how the means and the ends are eventually reconciled. As individuals, we develop a process in our adjustment to society. I dare say most people are relatively unaware of their individual process in relation to society. They are more likely to be able to rattle off the means of getting to where they have ended up, but this is not their process.  And, when people convene in a group, the group develops its own process. An obvious example is the extended family which convenes every year for Thanksgiving only to descend into ritualistic shouting matches over grudges, religion and politics. The feast is perhaps considered a means to a desired end of belonging to a supportive group, but the process is at odds with both means and desired ends since it is allowing to remain stagnant and not conscientiously creative. 

I have found that understanding my process has allowed me to more effectively develop proper means to achieve the ends I desire in various aspects of my life. Like most people, I do often motivate myself with some desirable end I contrive in my mind. For example, I am currently fixing up a home I acquired last year (means) with the end in mind of maintaining its market value, since it is my major investment. The end of avoiding financial insecurity has led me to the means of maintaining a decent property. My process, however, is the way I have gone about both choosing the ends (property) and actualizing the means (maintenance). 

The foundation stones of my process are self-education, interpersonal communication and research. The psychological component of my process is an obsessive-compulsive character by which I gather, organize and apply information, intuition and experience. The added physiological components of my process are daily meditation, proper nutrition and exercise. These elements are not simply means. They are not conjured for just specific ends. These elements comprise a way of being which also leads to a way of becoming. That way of being or becoming in all things is the process.

Yes. This stuff gets heady. But I have found a great alternative method of discovering process. I began reading Dharmapadda, the traditional sayings of Gautama Buddha, about 30 yrs ago. These are verses which have come through time first as oral transmissions and then through various literary means. Yet their essence is easily perceived, despite variances in translation. The Buddha was all about process. Sadly, many in The West superficially summarize him as sitting down and meditating as a means to reach Enlightenment. This is an example of the limited means-end paradigm many of us live within. 

In my opinion, daily meditation, practiced with commitment, is an extraordinary gateway to understanding personal and group process. I have come to understand that The Way of many spiritual and philosophical geniuses over time is really a description of personal process made conscious and taken in hand for conscious betterment. The nitty-gritty of life's mundane means and ends becomes much less significant when a life is lived in touch with its dynamic process, which can lead to a form of significant liberation from suffering.