Steve Andreas

October 12, 2016

Dear Steve,

The first book from Real People Press which entered my life was Person to Person. I found it in a Nebraska used bookstore more than ten years ago. The distinctive voice of Barry Stevens left an impression on me. Later I read Notes to Myself, which I found more directly applicable to my life, as a man in my twenties with a young family. I discovered both as reissued editions, and I'm not certain that I realized your connection to them right away. Over the years, your name popped up in various books and online articles I read, and eventually I realized that Barry Stevens' son had become Steve Andreas. I ordered a copy of Heart of the Mind but never read it all the way through. Now here I am, several years later, inspired to write you a letter.

To provide some background, I married for the second time in 2015 and took my wife's surname — as I gather you did with your third wife. I have two children (ages 7½ and 6) who still carry my birth surname, as does my ex-wife. I have a troubled relationship with my father, who is currently undergoing radiation treatment for prostate cancer (and seems to be doing well.) Changing my name was partly motivated by a desire to disassociate myself from his legacy.

I apologize if this question seems inappropriate or prying, but did your relationship with your father have any bearing on your name change? Or did the Stevens name signify an emotional link to him? In the past few days, I learned from a video clip on your website that he committed suicide when you were nine.

A few points you made in the talk "Therapy Isn't Brain Science" leapt to my attention:

You need to make an unconscious change. People come to you complaining of unconscious problems.

Even someone who ruminates or intellectualizes can't stop doing it; they have no voluntary control over it.

So in order to make a change, rationalization and talk therapy as is usually used will not make any difference.

I've seen five different therapists since high school, spending many hours (and thousands of dollars) largely in talk therapy. Though it provided an environment where I could "vent" some of my inner turmoil, and has brought forth a few meaningful insights, at a more basic level it feels like the same old blockages persist.

I am that type of person you referred to — someone who ruminates, intellectualizes, and can't stop doing it. It's not a surprising revelation that my active mind protected me when I was young: with its reasoning and problem-solving ability, the power to create distance or abstraction between myself and a messy world, and vivid imagination which provided an escape. But my intellect has since over-compensated. Perhaps as my last therapist said, what saved me as a child is now threatening to destroy me.

Since watching your video, I've tried to rewind my memory to the time in my life around age 11 or 12, when it seemed that I really began to intellectualize and escape into another world of books and language. I remembered a few of the first times when I disengaged from my body and emotional surroundings. What will I do with these recollections? I'm not yet sure. I am trying to heed your words:

If you use your rational mind to do something different, then you have a chance of changing the unconscious experience.

Directly after that advice, you shared the insight "Most therapy is about description." Yes, I can also relate to that. I've spent about 15 years trying to describe me and the workings of my heart and mind to myself.

I'm not writing you this letter for consultation or therapeutic advice. This is intended to be more of a mutual conversation than that. I recently spent a few days reflecting on the advice of Hugh Prather, and attempted to have a "conversation" with him in my mind. In the course of my reading, Hugh mentioned you as "the most honest publisher with whom I have ever had dealings", and the one who first gave him a start. I took this as advice to write my next letter to you — the second of 1,000 such letters which I plan to write in the next decade. (Talk about an intellect running wild!) I've listed 500 people which comprise half this project in "The List".

While I gathered information about your lifework and prepared to write this letter, I learned of another book which Real People Press brought into being: Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain: The Essence of Tai Chi by Chungliang Al Huang (and to which you and your mother wrote the preface.) I'm taking that as my sign pointing out the next thinker to investigate. I'll read/skim that book over the next few days, see what else I can discover of Chungliang's work, and then sit down to write him a letter.

A page from Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain:

 
I'm dual publishing this letter on my blog Conversings.blogspot.com and also in my older wiki "Remuse", which is soon to be retired. If you visit www.Remuse.net, you will see this letter in the wider context of my reading, writing, and spiritual/artistic quest. It's organized in a way peculiar to my own life and mind.

If you have the interest or time to write back, please let me know if I may publish your response at One Thousand Conversations. I appreciate the messages you have already sent into my life (and the world at large), and I ask for nothing further. But, if you think of a person in addition to Al Huang who you recommend might follow in this series of letters, I'm open to all suggestions. (And if not a person, any experience or strategy you offer is very appreciated.)

My very best to you,

Andy