shifting experiential norms

Apprentice You mentioned, in relation to compassion, the concept of ‘shifting experiential norms’. Would you explain how that functions?

Lamas It concerns motivation. Motivation projects you in a certain direction. Whatever your motivation, you create a directional vector, a trajectory that leads you somewhere. If you exercise you get fitter; the more you exercise the fitter you get. The fitter you get, the more concepts arise around that. Initially you just want to lose some weight – but in losing weight and exercising you start to change in appearance. You notice muscles and maybe you consider weights so that you can develop the muscles. This new consideration with regard to weights only comes into being because of previous decisions and ideas about needing to lose weight. It may never have been an idea at the onset – but you can see what sometimes happens to people who follow that line. They can become obsessed and start looking carefully at their diet—buying certain products. This creates a line on which every step makes the next step possible. In terms of a shifting experiential norm – wherever you are at the moment, there is an ‘experiential circle’ around you. It is not a crisp circle – but a vague set of parameters. You occupy a circle of what is normal and possible for you. Within that circle you can be irritable, you can be happy, you can be kind and unkind.

Khandro Déchen You have a spectrum of what is normal for you. Other people do other things that you do not—either because you consider them immoral, dangerous, boring, or whatever: these lie outside your circle.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche: At any point on the perimeter of your circle lies a point of entry into any of these other areas—and it is also part of the norm of your circle occasionally to go to the border and look across when life circumstances seem to suggest it. Life circumstances sometimes take you to the perimeter and offer the possibility of it seeming necessary to step across. It is normal to step across. That is why the edge of the circle is vague.

Khandro Déchen It is not a rigid barrier, so you can find yourself having moved outside your circle without too much of a conscious decision—then you either become terrified and turn back, or find it interesting outside.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche: When you move outside the circle—and find it interesting or rewarding enough to repeat – it becomes included in what is within your circle of normalcy. It becomes part of your experiential norm. When something ‘different’ becomes normal, it acts as a directional reference point—and your experiential norm shifts to include it. It becomes normal where it was not normal before. From that position another step can be taken.

Khandro Déchen Any activity in which you engage that is not quite normal—but you will do it anyway—can eventually become normal. This new ‘normal’ would not have been possible to consider from the ‘normal’ of a few steps earlier—but it is normal now because your norm has drifted. Imagine this as a circle with a centre from which lines can be drawn. If you follow any line you will see the direction that one will eventually take you.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche You can end up anywhere.