Gary Hawke

It's 10 years to the day that I at last managed to get Roy Bhaskar in front of a computer and share the first of three lectures. It was a project that I cared deeply about and wanted to demonstrate to Roy that people outside the university wanted to understand his ideas and also wanted to connect with him.

Introduction to Critical Realism: Part One - Transcendental Realism The first part of: An Introduction to Critical Realism, recorded during a live session at the Institute for Education, hosted by Gary Hawke of Alethic Coachi...

This day 9 years ago, I lost my job.

Rather than find a new employer, I decided to become self- employed. My aim was help others discover insights and be inspired to change. I am so grateful that not only have people shared how important it is for everyone to have a Gary in their lives, but years on from working with me the insights and inspiration discovered have become a life took kit for change.

Is it time for you to have a Gary in your life?

The printed copy of the South Korean translation of The Order of Natural Necessity arrived in the post. It's a really wonderful print. First proposed in 2017, it's great to have five copies of the book in hand. I plan to keep a copy but not sure what I am planning to do with the other four copies.

In 2015, I began working on a transcription based on 6 hours of Roy Bhaskar talking about the three main stages of his philosophy during an on-line event that I organised and persuaded Roy to do, which took place over the Summer of 2014 at the IOE.

Due to the limits of the IOE on-line system, the recording was not great, and I began to persuade Roy to run the event again. Which he was much more enthusiastic to do. However, with his death in late 2014 I decided to create a transcription of the audio, which became the book - The Order of Natural Necessity, published in 2016, on the anniversary of Roy's death

As I wanted to keep the cost of the book low, I did all the work from editing, to over 100 footnotes, to the graphic design, and I published the book through CreateSpace.

In 2017 I worked on the Kindle version and published on the 2017 anniversary of Roy's death. It was with the publication of the eBook that I was contacted by a South Korean publisher who wanted to undertake a translation of the book. There were a number of hurdles in getting the translation, false starts, delays and changers in translator. which have all been overcome. Some three years later, I received the cover image of the book.

All being well the book should be launched around February.

Remember, it is only by diving deep into the heart of your entitlement as intransitive Soul, that you can confront the vibrational dis-unity of your Shadow. Understanding, what lay in the heart of you through the interconnectedness of Love as the growth of connection, will lead you to the awakened realisation that in each moment of your awareness, there are yet multiple possibilities of you. Let the subjective become enthused with the objective, allow yourself to come to know yourself as an authentic moment, in which you meet yourself and the other as alive, changing, and free. Liberate the absolute understanding as yourself both within yourself and within the other, then you will truly come to the reason of who you are: the ever-present moment of subjective Spirit holding within itself all that is objective.

With therapeutic support now having to move online, I through I would share a post I made on my website in 2012, when I first started offering online therapy sessions.

An Investigation into Telephone Therapeutic Support For Growth and Change An Investigation into Telephone Therapeutic Support For Growth and Change Posted by on An Investigation into Telephone Therapeutic Support For Growth and Change. In this post, I intend to explore how effective Telephone/Skype is as a medium to support personal growth and change. As a Health and Care...

I am reposting this as it says something important about resilience.

In the past resilience was thought of as a personal characteristic, but this is really not the case. Resilience is not something we are born or not born with or a development of our character; this way of thinking about resilience is reductionistic, imperialist, and ever so slightly neoliberal.

Resilience is a category term given to a collection of strategies and practices that inculcate well being when we find ourselves within a toxic environment.

This make resilience not a character of being but a embodied activity of being. An example is: we can all enact the resilience strategy of personal distancing to ensure that we can manage the present toxic environment.

Seeing resilience this way, means that we can be resilient if we follow the resilient category strategies and practices that ensure our individual and collective well being.

This, of course means, that there will be people for which the resilience strategies will not work, but this does not mean that they were not resilient, it means that there are factors that effect strategies affect.

That we can be overwhelmed by a toxic environment, points to the fact that resilience is not inherent within people: it is not a characteristic.

Sadly sometimes, a toxic environment is just too toxic.

If you are looking for something to take your mind off the virus, and you want to read more about Critical Realism, I have made The Order Of Natural Necessity: A kind of Introduction to Critical Realism ebook free from the 1st April to the 5th April across all Amazon stores worldwide.

I have been seeing quite a number of people posting about the new rise in consciousness that will come about due to the virus.

Although I can see a reason for this, it would seem to me that the important thing is not to plan for the future rise but to ensure that we are globally okay now.

I also have a feeling that some of the future rise in consciousness posting could be a repositioning of the biblical message. In uncertainty there is always a place for the biblical made a new. It can also be a way in which we distance ourselves from the present moment by making the other moment a better moment.

I would offer that right now there is an opportunity to engage with anxiety, to meet it head on, accepts it, not fight it, see that as humans we live in anxiety all the time. I am not taking away the pain, discomfort or fear that comes with anxiety.

But sometimes the only way to deal with anxiety is to move through it. Talk about it, not keep it in, share it with others.

I am all for the rise in consciousness but before we get there let's support each other in being with our pain, our anxiety, and our fear.

Because when we get to the "new eden" there will still be pain, anxiety, and fear, and why would we want rid of them; they are part of what it means to be human.

If after reading this you would like to talk through your own anxiety around life today, please get in touch and I would be happy to offer you a free consultation hour.

Gary

This from a BBC report -Social psychologists say that shaming plays a significant role in enforcing social norms - especially at a time when norms are rapidly changing as a result of coronavirus.
I have spent quite some time reading about shame as having positive and negative valance.

The concern with using shame as a mass behaviour enforcement is to ensure that it is not motivated by shadow envy or anger. We may shame as a way of dealing with our own lack of power to enact something that we want, would like to do, or would like to happen.

Meaning that the person or group I am shaming also becomes the object of my anger. Shaming then becomes a tactic I can use to reinforce my own self agency, particularly as at the moment we have very little expression of self agency.

Just as there is a virus curve, there will be a social curve; right now we are all feeling the love, coming together, but there will come a time when we start the shaming, videoing people moving about, which go viral, and which can become the object of anger.
We might all be feeling the love right now, but we also need to find an positive valance outlet for anger, otherwise anger will transmute into shaming as an act of making ourselves feel better.

And when that happens we will start to breakdown as a society.
I know it's an unpleasant thing to say, but we all need to find a positive valance agency object for our anger; that means when we release our anger, we do not hurt another sentinel being.

I have read the "you can disagree with me but be kind" type of quotes. 

But this is a quote about ideas, which are fluid and changing. 

It seems to me that the first thing we need to do is not link ideas to the personhood of mine, in that I own these ideas.
If we unhook ownership from ideas, then you and I are in disagreement about something between us.

My ideas are not fundamental to the notion of who I am and therefore I am not trigged by the attack on my ideas.
In this way I avoid the fundamentalist position I can take on my ideas. This means that there is no need to be kind; as to disagree with me is not to attack me.

We only need to be reminded to initiate Kindness when we live in an alienated work and alienate ourselves from the other, so that just as we see ideas as object, we see each other as objects, something to value only within relationship to what I want or need, or how I want the other to see me.

or kindness as a meme, is not something I can agree with. 

When I encounter an idea that I feel is fundamentally flawed I am going to call it out, let the argument point out my own blind sight in my argument, I am going to get angry, frustrated, I will do violence to a fundamental idea that breeds intolerance and alienation. I will hold people accountable for their ideas.

Kindness is not a safe state; it is a state in which we see the other, enable the other to grow by challenging their ideas. Not to allow them to become fixated, to if needed push them, to yes, do violence the their ideas. Break them open, interrogate them, see if the valance the idea has is authentic and liberation.

I will see the other as a reflection on the unity of self, with their own unique perspective expressed in their ideas. As I hold compassion and love for myself, I will hold it for them. 



My local gym has postit notes on every machine reminding “Be Kind”. Please don’t let kindness become a commodity; it’s a basic human principle, a natural necessity. When we start telling each other that we need to be kind to each other, we really need to ask why have we forgotten to ensure the flourishing of kindness. Why do we need a postit note or a movement to remind us of a basic sentient drive?

If the new kind of “be kind” means be nice, let the other person feel secure and safe, womb like then I cannot offer such a kindness because that kind of kindness does not allow for tolerance, resilience, growth and transformation, it lead to alienation, child-centric adults and censorship.

It's not that I will "be kind", it's that as a sentient being in relationship to other sentient beings I am fundamentally driven by the mechanism of Kindness, I have no choice.

If you need to be reminded to be kind, then you have lost connection to the other that is like you. If you are so driven by your own greed and alienation that someone has to tell you to "be ', then shame on you.

When working with my clients I encourage them to radically go to their edge. But it's not just my clients I radically encourage, I also go to my edge. 6/10/2019 - 13/1/2020 = 100 5 minute (Wim Hof) consecutive cold showers.

But why stop there 15/01/2020 day 102.

If I ask you to be radical and live life from the roots up, and clear away the weeds, be assured that I am also radically living life from the roots up, weeding the garden of my soul.

I know this has been up for a while but given the content I am pleased that over 800 people have view the video. I am thinking about up dating the video with the up dated presentation I recently gave.

A Brief Introduction to The Philosophy of metaReality Part One In April 2016, I was invited to give a presentation on Roy Bhaskar’s philosophy of metaReality (PMR) at the UCL/IOE Critical Realism Reading Group. PMR is pe...

For the past 20 days I have been having 5 minute cold showers. As I get to day 20 I thought I would share my experience.

Although I am not follow any set Wim Hof method programme, I have been using the Hof's breathing method, which really is also how I use the breath when running.

As a psychotherapist in private practice I am able to access a gym at "quite times" during the day, which I use 7 days a week or on days when I do not run outdoors.

I aim to workout for 1000 intensity minutes a week, which means each 60 to 90 minutes workout I have to keep my heart rate at 150bpm.

My workout includes both cardio and weights.

I have noticed that the breath work has enabled me to keep the higher intensity of the workout longer, and I also think that the mind body link, has helped with managing the emotional body during the endurance work.

And there is the added benefit of improved recovery because of the cold showers.

I did however, notice a higher expression of fatigue. My thought is that I am using my sympathetic nervous system, during the workout, by using the fight to keep me in the workout. With the cold shower I am drawing into my parasympathetic nervous system to relax me, which enables me to stay in the cold.

This movement between fight-flight-and relax I think takes a large amount of energy. And this might be leading to the fatigue.

I also notice that I am experiencing a sense of depression, which again I think may be due to an over active PSN, and the higher fatigue, that means that I do not have energy to maintain ego control, which is allowing more emotions to come to the surface.

Although the depression is active, I see it as a consequence of my emergence into the cold and as such something that has to be accepted and be with.

I also wonder if after the cold the brain attempts to heal pain and inflammation could it also be that the brain and CNS are also attempting to heal psychological trauma, which could also be seen as an inflammation and pain, this might account for the deep level almost pre-person, amygdala based emotions I am experiencing.

So overall the 20 days have been interesting and rewarding. I was thinking of ending the 5 minute showers at day 20, but am thinking about working towards 30 days.

But I shall see.

Gary Hawke updated their business hours.

In creating The Order of Natural Necessity, I wanted to take an unfinished project Roy Bhaskar and I were working on before his death in 2014, and bring to light in the most accessible way I could Roy's Critical Realism.

It took me two years, apart from the transcription of the audio, I did everything. I published the book through Create Space, I was the editor, the designer. I created all the graphics, I even designed and built the website for the book. And I researched over a 100 foot notes to ensure that the book, not only covered Roy's work, but included how others were using Roy's ideas.

Three years on I am still no nearer covering my costs on the book.

It's not a book that the critical realism community have particularly embraced, as I took a distinctly anti-publishing route for the book. I did not send the manuscript off and get a publisher to do the work. So, it will never show up as an official Bhaskar work, but then it does not cost over £100 to purchase, it's just a £10 note.

And every word in the book is Roy's, sometime moved around by me for clarity.

Every word is Roy's attempting to offer the clearest exposition on the three main stages of Critical Realism. In making the book accessible, I also wanted to included the price of the book.

Roy was very unwell during the six months he and I worked on the video stream that became the book, and yet he did not let his unwell state get in the way of his desire to share his ideas.

It was a great struggle for him to complete the series of videos, and as such, I was motived to complete the book as my mark of a great man.

The Order of Natural Necessity: A Kind of Introduction to Critical Realism The Order of Natural Necessity: A Kind of Introduction to Critical Realism

Gary Hawke Send a message to learn more

Perceptual Engineer Donald Clark, offered this comment about how he and I through my work have have been exploring in the Gap.

"Gary pointed out the Gap to me, we all have Gap and right now I try to cultivate more and more Gap so that I might not rub up against myself in such a harsh way anymore . Have a read and a listen and if you like consider contacting Gary so he can help you point out your own Gap"

Working in and exploring the nature of the Gap is an important explanatory notion within my work. Exploring the Gap under-labours for all of the psycho-spiritual therapeutic work I offer, be that in group, one to one, or at Retreat.

The post Minding The Gap on my website offers a lyrical explanation both of working in the Gap, and the Radially Real silent revolution of Self-Realisation.

http://www.garyhawke.org/minding-the-gap/

Minding The Gap You must not fear the unknown

Thank you Donald Clark for showing how my work can support the emergence of wisdom for the 21st Century.

Wisdom for the 21st Century Wisdom will be the new superpower in the 21st century.

Thank you Donald Clark for this deep acknowledgment of how my work enables the cultivation of wisdom.

Yuval Noah Harari has said that in the 21st century the challenge for the individual is to simply know yourself. Harari implies that in a an age where algorithms are increasingly more aware of our intentions and motivations it would be wise to look at our own biological algorithms and work on ways of making them better

In short the 21st century demands that we cultivate our own wisdom, it becomes clearer that knowledge and especially information is no longer the driving force that dictate and governs the flow of power, the ability to make wise choices, know the intentionality behind our choices and actions and learn how we might understand the patterns that govern the flows of knowledge that impact our lives in every moment is now as crucial as ever.

Harari is essentially saying a narrative understanding of the world is still not an understanding of the reality that governs the narrative. Unfortunately Harari does not provide a clear solution to the cultivation of wisdom preferring instead to simply tell us to meditate more. The observation of the narrative does not account for the embodied pattern that might be under labouring for the narrative and so Harari gets it wrong here.

What solutions then might be on offer? What can help us to cultivate this wisdom?

Here we must enter Gary Hawke.

Gary’s therapeutic approach begins with a question, what is real? This question assumes that we can actually work out what is real from what is not real; this question also assumes that we as humans have access to the real. Gary approaches this inquiry with great seriousness and rigour; he cares about what is real for you the client and how together you might uncover that. I’ve noticed that while working with him I have come not only to understand the patterns that prevent growth and change but the change that happens to me just being immersed in this process, it is developmental and shines a light not only on our depth but the emergence of new and possible depths within us. Gary does not stay at the level of the narrative he goes much deeper, he genuinely cares about your growth and sits in what I can only call an embodied compassion while undergoing the therapeutic process.

Gary has been one of the greatest alleys mentors and aides in my life and I feel that the challenges that present themselves in the 21st century for the modern person are met with greater clarity and more understanding through his work.

Wisdom will be the new superpower in the 21st century and believe this process is a way of cultivating wisdom.

Insight - Inspiration - Change Enabling Real Change To Emerge.

Radical Reality - here is the background or theory of Radical Reality - it brings together my work over the past 15 years into a clear process of liberation, and yet remains fluid enough to allow for the emergence of a deeper expression of my work.

Radical Reality - Living Reality From The Roots Up The radical reality natural necessity of being human is to be free, to be unchained from the belief that we are separate, to awaken to the re-enchantment of reality that we are not apart from reality we are radically part of reality.

Radical Reality - here is the background or theory of Radical Reality - it brings together my work over the past 15 years into a clear process of liberation, and yet remains fluid enough to allow for the emergence of deeper expression of my work.



http://www.garyhawke.org/radical-reality/

Radical Reality - Living Reality From The Roots Up The radical reality natural necessity of being human is to be free, to be unchained from the belief that we are separate, to awaken to the re-enchantment of reality that we are not apart from reality we are radically part of reality.

Here is the next stage of my work, it's a very personal integration into practice of all the investigation I have done over the past 15 years on human and social liberation. It's radical because it challenges our beliefs about what is real from the roots up.

http://www.garyhawke.org/retreat/

Radical Reality Radical Reality Retreats support you as you take on the challenge of ridding yourself of the traditional demi-real beliefs about what is real.

So pleased that the work I offer is able to support growth, liberation and well being.

Insight - Inspiration - Change "For anyone in business, wanting to harness their personal power and leverage their full potential in work or private matters, Gary has disarming and subtle techniques to do this".

German details of the retreat I am running in October. There are still place available.

MetaReal Integral Praxis Retreat-DIA Veranstaltungen

2018, 25th - 28th October. A chance to retreat at the beautiful Jigme Kunsangling Meditation Centre in the Waldhaus Göhrde with Gary Hawke and engage with metaReal Integral Practice: a meeting of Critical Realism and Integral Theory.

Four-Day Retreat led by Gary Hawke Critical Realism and Integral Theory meet in a metaReal Integral Practice.

If you would like to read a basic introduction to Critical Realism. The Order of Natural Necessity, which I edited from 6 hours of audio Roy Bhaskar and I created, is currently reduced on both Amazon.com and .co.uk

The Order of Natural Necessity: A Kind of Introduction to Critical Realism The Order of Natural Necessity: A Kind of Introduction to Critical Realism