Collaboration as Auxiliarizing

My colleague Seth Kehan asked me for a few words about collaboration; a great topic! Life itself is collaboration, because we in fact don’t exist except in relation to everything else. I don’t mean only physically, with our dependence on oxygen, wheat, gravity, etc. Although we have that somatic self, as well as a part that is a conduit of the spontaneity that lies at the heart of things, what we think of as our human existence is social; who you are to yourself is based on the mirrors around you. We are all a collection of roles, starting early in life with somatic roles like The Eater, but moving on to social roles like The Daughter, The Student, etc. Some roles are latent within us and haven’t yet been fully realized or acted out on the stage of life. To emerge, these roles require other people, or auxiliaries. To me, this is the foundation of collaboration. Beyond cooperating and mingling ideas, we need other people to “auxiliarize” the emerging role that spontaneity wants to express.

Let me explain what I mean by collaboration as auxiliarizing. It applies not only to “reciprocal roles” (you can’t be a teacher without being auxiliarized by at least one student, for example), but also to friends or mentors who see your possibilities as already extant. Are you brilliant or beautiful, for example, if no one thinks so? You may say that your own belief in your beauty and brilliance is enough, but if you truly believe it, it is because you had an auxiliary at some point. This is why it is so important to mirror to children, with verbal and nonverbal delight, how great they are.

Take a moment to think of the last time you took on something new and succeeded, or perhaps realized that you had reached a new threshold in your personal growth – of self-acceptance, or patience, etc. Can you identify an auxiliary somewhere in that picture? Who was it that collaborated with you in the sense of seeing or responding to your emerging role? Are you aware, in your collaborations with others, of your power to auxiliarize, or stifle, their emerging roles?

People who annoy us can also be auxiliaries. The invasive friend who pushes your boundaries, for example, is taking a role that helps you in your process of learning to stand your ground. (Imagine actually having a thankful heart about that person!) An auxiliary can also be unseen, which we experience as spiritual guidance.

In this swirl of matter and energy we are all dancing in, collaboration is not so much an effort, as it is a fact. When you do things “alone,” you are still collaborating, albeit with an old set of auxiliaries. These same stories in your head might still be adequate, or it might be time to broaden the conversation.

I picture the self as an empty circle in space and time through which pass different forms of energy/information: your cells, the force of spontaneity, various emotions, and thoughts or conversations among accumulated stories that tell us who we are, starting with the unspoken words in the loving eyes of our mother and going until this very moment, when I just told you you are an empty circle! There is another part, when we remember to have it, which watches all this. Becoming conscious of the entity that can pick the right auxiliaries will make you able to seek other voices, weed out the stories that stifle you, and provide stories to others that nurture the roles in them that want to emerge.