Church of the Churchless

Reactivity amplifies our suffering in the moment

I'm an admirer of Jeff Warren's guided meditations on my iPhone's Calm app. Here's how a recent offering from Warren starts out. I liked it a lot.

His tar metaphor is great. When I react to a problem in my life with a strong negative emotion, it does indeed feel like I'm covered in a black sticky substance that makes it difficult to see what's going on with any sort of clarity. 

But notice that Warren says we shouldn't fight what's happening. Rather, we need to accept everything both inside and outside of us. 

The less we fight, and simply deal with the situation as calmly as possible, the less tar we get on ourselves.

What is acceptance?

Hi, I'm Jeff.

So, acceptance is a technical term in meditation, similar to equanimity. When we meditate, we notice a sensation, or a sound, or a feeling, and then we accept that it's present.

We don't do what most of us do reflexively, all the time. Which is, we subtly interfere with sounds, and feelings, and sensations.

 We block what we don't like, and we grab on to what we do. Doing both of these feeds a pattern of reactivity that actually amplifies our suffering in the moment.  

It's a bit like wrestling with a blob of tar. The more we fight, the more tar we get on ourselves. All of a sudden we're running through life in a flailing tar-covered freakout. 

We can't get a clear view of any situation because we're flopping tar everywhere. 

Plus, we're wearing tar-smeared sunglasses. Our friends are like, "Hey buddy, what do you think of this?" And we're like, "Tar, tar, tar, tar, tar." We only speak tar.

I say this, by the way, as someone who has spent a lot of my life flailing around in a tar-covered freakout. We all have. So fixated on our thing, that we miss all the cues happening around us. 

What's the alternative? 

The alternative is taking a breath, finding our poise, and allowing everything to be there. Then, from that place, we act. No tar.

That's acceptance. It deserves the hype. 

Be born again through science

Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004, has written a compelling book about the universe: Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.

Here's a passage from his Afterword chapter that I like a lot. It is indeed strange that we make such a division between internal and external worlds, when in truth there is only one thing going on.

The child of our introduction, now an adult, may come to understand the fundamental conclusions that science, following its radically conservative method, reaches about the physical world. 

Then she is prepared to revisit the starting point of her adventure with reality, and to view it afresh, in the light of her knowledge. 

She can choose, in this sense, to be born again.

It is not a trouble-free choice. It is disruptive. But the choice is unavoidable, as a matter of integrity. You've seen in this book a small sampling of the evidence for the scientific fundamentals. That evidence is overwhelming and indisputable. 

To deny it is dishonest. To ignore it is foolish.

And so our heroine comes to reconsider the division of experience into internal and external worlds. The fundamentals of science have taught her a lot about what matter is. She knows that matter is built up from a few kinds of building blocks, whose properties and behavior we understand in detail.

And she knows, from direct experience, that scientists and engineers can use such knowledge to make impressive creations. 

Her iPhone allows her to communicate instantly with friends around the globe, to tap into humanity's accumulated knowledge at will, and, though pictures and recordings, to snatch her sensory world from time's devouring flow.

She has learned, too, that the special objects she recognizes as other people, and herself, are made from the same sort of matter as the rest of the world 

Many once-mysterious aspects of living things such as how they derive their energy (metabolism), how they reproduce (heredity), and how they sense their environment (perception), she can now understand from the bottom up.

For we now understand, in considerable detail, how molecules -- and ultimately, quarks, gluons, electrons, and photons -- manage to accomplish those feats. They are complicated things that matter can do, by following the laws of physics. No more, and no less.

These understandings do not subtract from the glory of life. Rather, they magnify the glory of matter. 

In light of all this, it is radically conservative to adopt what the great biologist Francis Crick has called "the astonishing hypothesis": that mind in all its aspects, is "no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

Indeed, this amounts to extending Newton's method of analysis and synthesis to brains. Experiments in neurobiology have been following that strategy aggressively.

And although our understanding of how minds work is still incomplete, so far, in thousands of sensitive experiments, the strategy has never failed. No one has ever stumbled upon a power of mind in biological organisms that is separate from conventional physical events in their bodies and brains.

Even in their most delicate experiments, physicists and biologists never had to make allowances fo what people nearby were thinking. By now, any failure of Crick's "astonishing hypothesis" would be astonishing. 

Upon that realization, the division of experience into internal and external worlds comes to seem superficial. For babies, that division is a useful discovery, and for adults, it is a convenient rule of thumb. But our best understanding suggests that there is just one world, after all.

Matter, deeply understood, has ample room for minds. And so, also, it can be home to the internal worlds that minds house. 

There is both majestic simplicity and strange beauty in this unified view of the world. Within it, we must consider ourselves not as unique objects ("souls"), outside of the physical world, but rather as coherent, dynamic patterns in matter. It is an unfamiliar perspective.

Were it not so strongly supported by the fundamentals of science, it would seem far-fetched. But it has the virtue of truth. And once embraced, it can come to seem liberating. Albert Einstein spoke to this, in a kind of credo:

A human being is a part of a whole, called the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us.

Radical embrace of reality

I like the sound of it: radical embrace of reality. 

I'm not entirely sure what those words mean to me. They just popped into my head recently, and I've given them a home in my cranium until they decide to pop out and head somewhere else.

As long as this notion is rumbling around in my mind, I figure I might as well try to describe why I find it so appealing. 

Reality is a close relative of truth. I admire both -- reality and truth. When I used to give talks to fellow devotees of the Eastern form of spirituality I was a member of for thirty-five years, "ultimate reality" was an oft-repeated concept.

Now I'm not so enamored of ultimate. It conjures up an image of something so far off, it's really hard to get there. 

Which isn't the case with reality. At least, not the everyday sort of reality that I'm speaking of in radical embrace of reality. I'm not talking about discovering the essence of quantum phenomena or how the big bang brought our universe into being.

The reality I want to embrace is right here, right now. 

It's the Zen sort of chop wood, carry water reality, minus any esoteric B.S. that often comes along with Zen teachings. I simply want to be in touch with what really is to the fullest extent possible. 

At my age, 72, might be, could be, and maybe, though fine ideas, aren't as appealing as the inescapable reality that I'm living moment to moment.

So if I want to radically embrace something, it's not a possibility around a bend in the road of life but the scenery clearly visible from my current vantage point.

Why, then, do I view this as a radical embrace of reality? What's radical about being aware of what's right in front of me?

In one sense, nothing. In another sense, everything. I speak this way as someone who has meditated every day for over fifty years.

No matter how I've meditated, and I've experimented with quite a few approaches, it's devilishly difficult to keep my focus on what is actually happening in the present moment, rather than what was or could be. 

Now that I've centered my meditation on mindfulness practices, I'm getting better at simply being aware of my breathing, the feeling of sitting in a chair, sounds of the washer or dryer in an adjoining laundry room.

However, I'm continually amazed -- yet not surprised -- at how my mind would prefer to recall the past or imagine the future instead of embracing the here-and-now present. 

Or... comment on how the present moment would be oh-so-much-better if ______ was happening rather than ______. (My mind is adept at filling in the blanks)

So it really is radical to want to embrace reality. 

We humans are highly skilled at weaving layers of mental coverings, such as beliefs and desires, that we toss over the reality in which we find ourselves because we think this will be more fulfilling than plain naked reality.

And often it seems like those coverings really do make us feel better about our circumstances.

I'm not saying that fantasies about what could have been or might be should be discarded from our psyche entirely. Life is difficult. Whatever makes it less difficult is hard for me to argue against. 

Yet in the end, reality always has the last word.

Why? Because our best efforts to deny reality are almost certainly going to fail at some point. We can disguise reality with the mental coverings we're so fond of placing over it, but eventually reality will burst out and yell, "I'm back! Did you miss me?"

I guess I like the idea of welcoming reality since it going to be my companion regardless.

Pushing it away may seem like a good idea, especially when reality appears in the form of pain, suffering, anxiety, worries, and all the other nasty stuff that life brings along in addition to the good stuff.

However, we can do our best to improve our situation, along with that of others, while also pursuing a radical embrace of reality. In fact, being clear-eyed about what is probably is the best foundation for fashioning a desired will be.

Wear your identity lightly if you value truth

This morning I finished reading Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of three previous posts (here, here, and here).

Her final chapters were great. Two had to do with how we sometimes hold on to beliefs so tightly, they become part of our identity. This is especially true of religious and political beliefs. Here's an excerpt  from the "How Beliefs Become Identities" chapter.

The problem with our tendency to turn beliefs into identities isn't that it pits us against each other. At least, that's not the problem I'm concerned with here. (Getting along with each other is important, too -- it's just outside the scope of this book.)

The problem with identity is that it wrecks your ability to think clearly. Identifying with a belief makes you feel like you have to be ready to defend it, which motivates you to focus your attention on collecting evidence in its favor. Identity makes you reflexively reject arguments that feel like attacks on you or the status of your group.

So the best thing to do is to hold our identity lightly.

Holding an identity lightly means thinking of it in a matter-of-fact way, rather than as a central source of pride and meaning in your life. It's a description, not a flag to be waved proudly.

...Holding an identity lightly means treating that identity as contingent, saying to yourself, "I'm a liberal, for as long as it continues to seem to me that liberalism is just." Or "I'm a feminist, but I would abandon the movement if for some reason I came to believe it was causing net harm."

It means maintaining a sense of your own beliefs and values, independent of the tribe's beliefs and values, and acknowledging -- at least in the privacy of your own head -- the places where those two things diverge.

Nicely said. 

But it can be difficult to let go of a religious or political identity that's been an important part of our life. I experienced this when, after 35 years of being an active member of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), I realized that the RSSB teachings no longer made sense to me.

That realization wasn't a big blow to my identity because I valued truth more than my connections to RSSB. Thus I felt good about myself because I knew that the reason I left RSSB was that the teachings I'd followed for so long didn't strike me as being true any more.

This commitment to truth is the key to embracing a scout mindset aimed at knowing reality as it is rather than as we'd like it to be -- which leads to a soldier mindset aimed at defending our beliefs at all costs. Here's how Galef ends her "A Scout Identity" chapter.

I found the concluding anecdote very appealing.

Personally, I find all those facets of scout mindset inspiring -- the willingness to prioritize impact over identity; the confidence to be unconfident; the courage to face reality. 

But if I were to name one single facet I find most inspiring, it's the idea of being intellectually honorable: wanting the truth to win out, and putting that principle above your own ego.

The example of intellectual honor I find myself thinking about most often is a story related by Richard Dawkins from his years as a student in the geology department at Oxford. At the time, there was a major controversy in biology over a cellular structure called the Golgi apparatus -- was it real or an illusion created by our observational methods?

One day, a young visiting scholar from the United States came to the department and gave a talk in which he presented new and compelling evidence that the Golgi apparatus was, in fact, real. 

Sitting in the audience of that talk was one of Oxford's most respected zoologists, an elderly professor who was known for his position that the Golgi apparatus was illusory. So of course, throughout the talk, everyone was stealing glances at the professor, wondering: How's he taking this? What's he going to say?

At the end of the talk, the elderly Oxford professor rose from his seat, walked up to the front of the lecture hall, and reached out to shake hands with the visiting scholar, saying, "My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years."

The lecture hall burst into applause.

Dawkins says, "The memory of this incident still brings a lump to my throat." It brings a lump to my throat, too, every time I retell that story. That's the kind of person I want to be -- and that's often enough to inspire me to choose scout mindset, even when the temptations of solider mindset are strong.

Update your beliefs often as new information comes in

Every morning I read another chapter of Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of two previous posts (here and here).

I really liked her "How to Be Wrong" chapter.

Along with most people, I don't enjoy finding out I was wrong about something. But it's a heck of a lot better than continuing on in my wrongness, which keeps me from learning a more complete truth about that thing.

Below you can read excerpts from that chapter.

They're in three sections, dealing with changing your mind frequently, the ease of saying "I was wrong," and viewing beliefs as needing updating rather than being proven wrong or right.

After each section I'll provide an example of how I changed from being a firm believer in an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), to becoming an open-minded atheist.

(1) Changing your mind frequently.
Changing your mind frequently, especially about important beliefs, might sound mentally and emotionally taxing. But, in a way, it's less stressful than the alternative.

If you see the world in binary black-and-white terms, then what happens when you encounter evidence against one of your beliefs? 

The stakes are high: you have to find a way to dismiss the evidence, because if you can't, your entire belief is in jeopardy.

If instead you see the world in shades of gray, and you think of "changing your mind" as an incremental shift, then the experience of encountering evidence against one of your beliefs is very different.

If you're 80% sure that immigration is good for the economy, and a study comes out showing that immigration lowers wages, you can adjust your confidence in your belief down to 70 percent.

It may later turn out that study was flawed, or further evidence may come out showing that immigration boosts the economy in other ways, and your confidence in your belief may go back up to 80 percent or even higher.

Or you may find additional evidence about the downsides of immigration, which could gradually lower your confidence even further below 70 percent. Either way, each adjustment is comparatively low stakes.

This is pretty much how I gradually came to have increasing doubts about whether the teachings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas were true.

I always had taken a scientific approach to meditation and spirituality. I liked how RSSB also was termed the "science of the soul." So I never considered that this religion was absolutely, positively, 100% true because scientific truths always are open to being modified or proven wrong.

I viewed the RSSB teachings as a hypothesis, an experiment to be conducted within the laboratory of my consciousness. As years, and then decades, went by, I revised my estimate of how likely it was that the RSSB teachings were true.

Because I hadn't started at 100%, but more like 90%, it felt comfortable to reduce that probability downward as I learned more and more about RSSB and had meditation experiences that failed to confirm the science of the soul hypothesis. 

(2) The ease of saying "I was wrong."
A friend of mine named Andrew was surprised when one of his colleagues accused him of never admitting he was wrong. In response, Andrew pointed out two recent occasions on which he had been wrong and readily acknowledged it -- in the company of that very same colleague.

The colleague, whom I'll call Mark, was surprised in turn. He replied, "I guess that's right. Why did I have the opposite impression?" Mark was silent for a minute, reflecting.

Then he said, "You know... I think it's because you never seem embarrassed about it. You're so matter-of-fact, it almost doesn't register to me that you're admitting you were wrong."

It's true. I've seen Andrew acknowledge he was wrong many times, and it usually sounds something like this: "Ah, yup, you're correct. Scratch what I said earlier. I don't believe it anymore." It's cheerful, straightforward, nonchalant.

Mark's implicit assumption was that changing your mind is humbling. That saying "I was wrong" is equivalent to saying "I screwed up" -- something you confess with contrition or sheepishness. Indeed, that's the standard way of thinking about being wrong.

...Scouts reject that premise. You've learned new information and come to a new conclusion, but that doesn't mean you were wrong to believe differently in the past.

I can't say that my shift from embracing RSSB teachings to viewing them as likely being wrong went as smoothly as Andrew's nonchalant manner of acknowledging being wrong.

However, I've never viewed this change as being anything to be ashamed or regretful about. As I've pointed out on this blog many times since I started it in 2004, I've experienced many other shifts in my beliefs.

To offer an example, for eighteen years I was married to a woman who I loved a lot at first, and then not so much. After our divorce, I remarried. Now I've been married for thirty-one years to a woman I loved soon after I met her, and continue to love now.

Similarly, I worked as a health services researcher and planner for quite a few years. Then I realized that I just didn't care anymore about the field that once was so important to me, and moved in a different direction.

Changing our beliefs isn't always easy. But it's less difficult if we hold on to those beliefs lightly enough that we aren't devastated when our beliefs change.

(3) Updating beliefs.
Even the language scouts use to describe being wrong reflects this attitude. Instead of "admitting a mistake" scouts will sometimes talk about "updating." 

That's a reference to Bayesian updating, a technical term from probability theory for the correct way to revise a probability after learning new information.

The way people use the word updating colloquially isn't nearly so precise, but it still gestures at the spirit of revising one's beliefs in response to new evidence and arguments.

...If you at least start to think in terms of "updating" instead of "admitting you were wrong," you may find that it takes a lot of friction out of the process.

An update is routine. Low-key. It's the opposite of an overwrought  confession of sin. An update makes something better or more current without implying that its previous form was a failure. 

This is a nice way of looking upon mistakes. Rather than thinking "I was wrong," we can say to ourselves "I've updated how I look upon this."

Over the years I've been asked by many RSSB devotees how I could possibly have been so wrong about the religion that meant so much to me for such a long tine. I don't understand this perspective.

As noted above, it wasn't that I went from 100% certainty to 100% doubt. I started at maybe 90% certainty that the RSSB teachings were true and steadily updated that probability, mostly downward. So I feel no need to admit "I was wrong" because I never considered myself to be absolutely right.

My iPhone has lots of apps. Almost every day one or more of them get an update. I don't view the maker of the app as having screwed-up when they release an update. Rather, I appreciate that now the app should work better than before.

In much the same way, every day I learn something. I assume this is true for you also. My wife and I enjoy our Apple TV device. We stream a show with it most evenings. 

Until today I was pleased with the device, which I bought five or so years ago, can't remember exactly when. Then I read a review of the updated Apple TV device with an improved remote.

That made me better realize the drawbacks of the device we have now. So this afternoon I ordered the new Apple TV.

I wasn't wrong to have bought the one we have now. I just updated my belief about how good that one was.

You have options. In religions. In everything else.

I'm continuing to enjoy my reading of Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of my previous post. 

Her core idea is that motivated reasoning, where we ignore what's true because our motivation is to preserve our current belief structure, leads to a soldier mindset aimed at defending our beliefs from that unwelcome intruder, reality. 

By contrast, a scout mindset values truth-seeking through accuracy motivated reasoning. Our goal is know what is really there, not what we hope is there, what we'd like to be there, or what others want us to believe is there.

One of the appealing things about a scout mindset is how it provides us with way more options than a defensive, protect-my-beliefs at all costs soldier mindset. 

In her "Why Truth is More Valuable Than We Realize" chapter, Galef speaks of tradeoffs.

We trade off between judgement and belonging. If you live in a tight-knit community, it might be easier to fit in if you use soldier mindset to fight off any doubts you have about your community's core beliefs and values.

On the other hand, if you do allow yourself to entertain those doubts, you might realize you're better off rejecting your community's views on morality, religion, or gender roles, and deciding to live a less traditional life.

Easy to say. Often not so easy to do. 

I regularly get emails from people who are encountering resistance from their family when they express doubts about the religion they were brought up in.

For example, the organization I was a member of for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a guru-centered religious group headquartered in India. Traditional Indian families tend to be close-knit and hierarchical.

If a child decides to head off in a different religious direction after becoming an adult, they can be made to feel guilty, like they're doing something wrong and letting down their parents. 

This is unfortunate.

Family bonds are important, but not if it means someone has to live a lie, pretending to believe in something that no longer appeals to them. Wise loving parents understand that their children, along with everyone else, have to find their own way in life.

Feeling like you have no options is an indication that you've fallen into a soldier mindset dominated by motivated reasoning.

It's difficult to imagine doing something different when you're encased behind a high thick wall of firmly held beliefs. Questioning their validity would entail peering over that wall and trying to determine how true those beliefs really are.

If they're found to be deficient in truth, you might need to find a way to get over the wall of your beliefs and explore new territory that reflects reality more fully. 

There's no reason why you can't remain close to family and friends who choose to remain within the belief structure you've left behind. But sometimes there's a price to be paid for being independent: ostracism, criticism, shunning.

Everybody has to decide whether truth is more important than getting along.

But the way I see it, if someone is willing to ditch you for going your own way, they were never really your friend. Genuine friendships, genuine family relationships -- they're based on something much deeper than shallow beliefs. 

Notably, love. 

Embrace the Scout mindset, not the Soldier mindset

My new favorite book -- the latest in a countless (almost) series of favorites -- is Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't.

Galef's key concept is the distinction between a Solider and Scout mindset. This chart shows basic differences between them.

In an initial chapter, Galef talks about motivated reasoning, the basis for a Soldier mindset.

The tricky thing about motivated reasoning is that even though it's easy to spot in other people, it doesn't feel like motivated reasoning from the inside. When we reason, it feels like we're being objective. Fair-minded. Dispassionately evaluating the facts.

Beneath the surface of our conscious awareness, however, it's as if we're soldiers, defending our beliefs against threatening evidence. 

In fact, the metaphor of of reasoning as a kind of defensive combat is baked right into the English language, so much so that it's difficult to speak about reasoning at all without using militaristic language.

We talk about our beliefs as if they're military positions, or even fortresses, built to resist attack. Beliefs can be deep-rooted, well-grounded, built on fact, and backed up by arguments. They rest on solid foundations. 

We might hold a firm conviction or a strong opinion, be secure in our beliefs or have unshakeable faith in something. 

Arguments are either forms of attack or forms of defense. If we're not careful, someone might poke holes in our logic or shoot down our ideas. We might encounter a knock-down argument against something we believe.

...And if we do change our minds? That's surrender. If a fact is inescapable, we might admit, grant, or allow it, as if we're letting it inside our walls. 

If we realize our position is indefensible, we might abandon it, give it up, or concede a point, as if we're ceding ground in a battle.

The Scout mindset is much more appealing to those who value truth.

If directionally motivated reasoning is like being a soldier fighting off threatening evidence, accuracy motivated reasoning is like being a scout forming a map of the strategic landscape. 

What's beyond that next hill? Is that a bridge over the river or are my eyes deceiving me? Where are the dangers, the shortcuts, the opportunities? What areas do I need more information about? How reliable is my intel?

The scout isn't indifferent. A scout might hope to learn that the path is safe, that the other side is weak, or that there's a bridge conveniently located where his forces need to cross the river.

But above all, he wants to learn what's really there, not fool himself into drawing a bridge on his map where there isn't one in real life. Being in scout mindset means wanting your "map" -- your perception of yourself and the world -- to be as accurate as possible.

Of course, all maps are imperfect simplifications of reality, as a scout well knows. Striving for an accurate map means being aware of the limits of your understanding, keeping track of the regions of your map that are especially sketchy or possibly wrong.

And it means always being open to changing your mind in response to new information. In scout mindset, there's no such thing as a "threat" to your beliefs. 

If you find out you were wrong about something, great -- you've improved your map, and that can only help you.

Obviously we here at the Church of the Churchless (OK, me, since I'm the only one writing this) favor the Scout mindset.

Changing your mind about religion or spirituality is a great thing to do. Being skeptical of beliefs lacking demonstrable evidence is the way to go. Choosing the solitary way of truth over communal falsehoods is what should be done.

Here's a video of Julia Galef delivering a TEDx talk on this subject. 

Regret is a form of mental time travel

Regret is one of the more interesting emotions. Assuming that is what it is, an emotion. 

I find that regret isn't like happiness, sadness, anger, love, or any of the other emotions with an obvious feeling component. 

Regret is more subtle.

It's like a raw ingredient for other emotions such as sadness or anxiety. Cooked in a certain way, regret can turn into an unpleasant emotional stew, though by itself regret often is rather cerebral.

The foundation of regret is feeling that I should have done something differently, even though at the time I did that thing, it seemed like the right thing to do.

That's a complex sentence. 

I'm pretty sure only humans feel regret. Other animals probably lack the ability to mentally time travel that regret requires. 

If I simply did something that turned out badly, I'd just be disappointed. 

Like when I played competitive club tennis. I'd know that I lost the match because of too many double-faults when I was serving. OK, you can't win them all. No big deal.

But adding in the time travel of regret changes my disappointment into something more disturbing 

Brian, you fool, if you hadn't double-faulted at game point when it was 5-5 in the second set, you would have won the match.

Now I've both gone back in time to remember that screw-up, and also gone forward in time to an alternative reality where my double faults didn't exist, and maybe even turn into aces.

My regret is that I'm stuck with what actually happened, instead of the imagined better happening if I hadn't done what I did -- double-fault too much.

Of course, there's no guarantee that I would have won the match even with zero double faults. 

My opponent might have won regardless. So it's difficult to see the positive side of regret. I can learn from my mistakes without feeling that if I hadn't made them, everything would have turned out fine. 

I don't know that. 

And even if somehow I could know that, I didn't know at the time I was making a mistake. If I had, I wouldn't have done what I did, because who likes mistakes?

So regret rears its ugly head when I envision myself in the present doing what I didn't actually do in the past, even though back then I had no idea I should have been doing something differently.

Laying out the logic (or illogic) of regret in this way makes it seem like a crazy way for my mind to act. 

Which is why I'm writing a blog post about regret. I know that I don't like the sensation of regret, but it's been difficult for me to figure out how to stop feeling regretful. 

Regret is kind of like pressing on a sore spot. I realize that this isn't a wise thing to do, but the painful sensation has a certain pleasure to it. 

What I just said doesn't make a lot of sense, even to me, though it seems true.

Rather than trying to explain how something painful can be pleasurable, I'll head off in a different direction for my final paragraphs.

I was baptized as a Catholic.

For a few years in elementary school my mother had me go to a lunchtime catechism with black clad nuns while my Protestant schoolmates got to frolic in the playground.

I made it as far as first communion before flaming out on confirmation. Going to confession was, I believe, a requirement for the first communion. 

Being in first or second grade, I didn't have much to confess. I recall the priest asking, "Have you been going to mass every Sunday?" No, I told him. Ah... a sin! 

"Say three Our Father's and two Hail Mary's," I was told, the exact number being lost to my memory. 

I did just that, in what, in retrospect, was a form of regret. I wasn't able to take myself to Sunday Mass, so there was no way I could have done anything different than what my mother had me do.

Yet I still had to confess to a failing even though prior to confession I had no idea that I'd done something wrong. 

I can't say that repeating the prayers was pleasurable. However, I can see how confession could become a way of coping with regret. 

The confessor tells the priest something that, in retrospect, wasn't a good thing to do.

Ordinarily regret would ensue, but since the priest forgives the sin in exchange for, in my case, a few prayers, the pain of regret is lessened or eliminated by the pleasure of scratching the sore of sin through confession.

Maybe writing this blog post is something vaguely similar --  a way to come to grips with the nature of regret by delving into it more deeply than I've ever done before.

Equanimity is like a 360 degree openness

Most mornings I listen to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my iPhone's Calm app. Fairly frequently Warren talks about equanimity.

One way he describes equanimity is as a 360 degree openness. 

I like that image. I picture myself sitting in a chair that rotates in a full circle so I can see everything through the panoramic window of my mind.

The stuff I like. The stuff I don't like. Worries. Problems. Joys. Challenges. Pleasantness. Irritations. Whatever. 

To alter the metaphor a bit, I picture my mind's panoramic 360 degree window as not being made of glass, but having a screen that allows a free flow of mental circulation. 

If there's too much pressure on the inside of my mind, the flow goes outward through the screen until the pressure is equalized, equal inside and outside.

If there's too much pressure on the outside of my mind, the flow goes inward through the screen until the pressure is equalized, equal outside and inside.

That's equanimity.

Calm. Smoothness. Accepting everything as it is, whether good, bad, or indifferent. I found a quote from Jeff Warren about this.

Of course, that inner smoothness is easy to talk about yet difficult to attain.

Still, we can become more smooth, more frictionless, even if there are still lumps in our mind that prevent a total feeling of equanimity.

On a somewhat related note, recently I read an interesting article in the New Yorker, "The Repressive Politics of Emotional Intelligence." 

This is a review of the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the well-known book by Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence. It presents persuasive arguments why, to put it crudely, the whole notion of emotional intelligence as promulgated by Goleman is a bunch of crap.

I see this as related to Jeff Warren's equanimity because Goleman puts forward an idealized view of how people should act.

The introduction to the anniversary edition is the only significant update to “Emotional Intelligence.” To read the book today is to unearth a time capsule, polished to a fine gleam, and to recall an era when a journalist like Goleman could still speak with untroubled optimism about the power of self-control and compassion to overcome “an onslaught of mean-spirited impulse running amok.”

...Goleman promises to show his readers how to free themselves from the “emotional hijacking” of the brain by biochemical surges, the body’s unwitting tendency to set off its own “neural tripwire.” This language, with its hints of terrorism and home invasion, encourages readers to stay alert, continually monitoring their reactions in order to bring them in line with accepted rituals of emotional expression.

It is a vision of personal freedom achieved, paradoxically, through constant self-regulation. “Emotional Intelligence” imagines a world constituted of little more than a series of civil interactions between employer and employee, husband and wife, friend and neighbor. People are linked by nothing more than, as Foucault summarized, the “instinct, sentiment, and sympathy” that underwrite their mutual success and their shared “repugnance for the misfortune of individuals” who cannot get a grip on their inner lives.

Well, I don't like the idea of constant self-regulation. I don't want to feel required to get a grip on my inner life.

That way entails, as the book reviewer notes, a continual monitoring of our reactions to ensure they are emotionally acceptable.

I much prefer the Jeff Daniels approach to equanimity.

Remain open to what is happening inside and outside of you. Acknowledge all that. Don't push any of it away. Allow yourself to flow as smoothly as possible with whatever you are thinking, feeling, experiencing.

Don't worry about being emotionally intelligent. Just be yourself. 

Open Thread 38 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread. 

If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread.

As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks on someone are an exception, as is hate speech. Argue with ideas, not insults.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

Mother's Day blog post points to fuzzy nature of "self"

Hey, I didn't set out to write a philosophical Mother's Day blog post, but what emerged has enough philosophy in it to justify sharing here.

In "My mother lives on in the back of my books" I talk about how we don't really need to think or feel our way toward being close to our deceased parents, for they live on as us in large part. 

This is possible because the boundaries of our "self" are decidedly fuzzy.

There isn't a firm boundary between us and everyone else, since who we are depends on our genetic heritage and experiences, both of which involve contributions from many other people.

Another guest churchless post from John

Here's another guest post that I fashioned out of an email from John, a guy I regularly communicate with. I always enjoy his thoughtful responses to stuff that I've written about. I believe TNH stands for Thich Nhat Hanh.

Hey Brian, how are you and yours doing? Hopefully as well as you can be.

As always, I’ve been enjoying your posts. Especially the two about what we can learn from the internal arts.

It is funny when I tell people that tai chi has legitimate martial applications for self-defense. They look at me like, right…. Like you, I trained in external styles for 20 plus years. I do think that gives guys like you and me who learn tai chi some advantage over people who have not practiced karate or boxing or something like that.

But, we also have the disadvantage of having to un-learn all kinds of shit. LOL I’m teaching my daughter’s best friend self-defense using tai chi. She is 24 years old, around 5’6” and maybe 140 lbs. She probably has never been hit or kicked.

Realistically, against an average dude like me, 5’11”, about 240 lbs, in a combat situation, she probably has no chance.

But, I can teach her how to evade and get away from someone using tai chi. I’ve actually been pretty amazed at how effective it is! LOL You and I know how effective it can be after being effortlessly tossed around by our instructors! She is picking things up very quickly. So that’s cool.

I saw a link to an article that I thought was interesting, and kind of fits in with some of your writings about “enlightenment”.

https://sameoldzen.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-enlightenment-scam.html#comments

Your post on ending the spiritual search really resonated with me. Early on in my leaving Christianity, I went through phases of authors. There was TNH, Tolle, Walsch, Watts, ND Tyson, and several books that you have written about.

In those earlier days, it seems like I had regular “ah ha!” moments or mind blowing realizations. I think that went on for a while.

Now, I don’t really have many of those moments, at all. It’s not that I’ve learned all I can learn or anything like that. I think it’s more like, I’ve settled into a place where the practices that I used to have to think about doing, I don’t have to think about it so much anymore.

I have to admit, it seems boring in comparison. But it’s also kind of comforting or maybe restful…? I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. But I don’t feel like I’m chasing after so much anymore. You said it very well in your post. This really stood out along the lines I’ve just been talking about:

Always looking for more from life than what life already is giving me is beginning to seem unwise. (Yes! And it’s a bit tiring to look for more.)

More meaning. More happiness. More purpose. More depth. All that more, more, more seems to lead to a hamster-wheel sort of existence. (Again, yes!)

Spiritual seeking can become such a habit, the seeker doesn't realize that they're going around and around without really getting anywhere. (And yes, again!)

I still very much enjoy reading and listening to talks by Watts and Sam Harris and TNH and the likes. But my motive for reading or listening has shifted a bit.

I don’t feel the “need” to have to be reading all the time. Now I feel more relaxed in my reading. I read when I feel like it and focus more on enjoying what I’m reading instead of trying to get something out of it to make me… better, more aware, more peaceful, etc.

I do still have the occasional “ah ha!” moment, or something like that. But it is pretty rare. I no longer seek those moments, but I still enjoy them when it happens.

Take care and as always, thanks for the great blog posts.

John

If there's a universal happiness method, this might be it

Time for some grandiose thinking, an activity I excel at. Not that my grandiosity leads to grand ideas or wisdom, but, hey, it's the grandiose effort that counts.

Tonight's Big Ponder is centered on the question, is there a universal method for being happy? 

My first reaction was absolutely not. For if there was, seemingly we wouldn't have such a plethora of ways people seek happiness.

The "self-help" category on Amazon would shrink to just a small number of books, each advising pretty much the same approach to being happy.

Complicating my pondering was another issue. 

Is happiness really what we should be after? Maybe meaning is. Maybe contentment is. Maybe not seeking anything is. 

However, I find it difficult to get emotionally excited about a memory of a deeply meaningful moment, a deeply contented moment, or a deeply not seeking anything moment.

But a deeply happy moment? Ah, those come to mind easily. 

(I'm focused on moments rather than a longer time period, because moments are where we actually live our lives -- moment by moment. A bunch of happy moments can lead to a happy week, month, or year, yet take away the moments and there's no happiness left in any span of time.)

My suspicion is that if there really is a universal, or quasi-universal, approach to being happy, it has a lot to do with some strangely happy moments I had back in college. 

Or rather, a summer in between my freshman and sophomore years, if I recall correctly.

Summer jobs were scarce in the San Jose area. I was lucky to get a job at a cannery for the swing shift, something like midnight to 8 am. Being new, I got one of the crappier jobs at the cannery.

Which was, me dressing in waterproof clothing, crawling under the structure that supported a conveyor belt carrying fruit that women sorted, picking out the bad fruit, and hosing the fruit debris into channels that carried the pulp and water away.

I distinctly remember how different this job felt in two states of mind: (1) my normal "this job sucks" attitude, and (2) my benzedrine-fueled "so much fun!" attitude.

The same thing happened when I used benzedrine, an amphetamine that was popular for several decades among all kinds of people, including creative types, to study a subject that usually bored me, like statistics.

A bennie or two could convert any activity into a series of deeply happy moments.

I'm sure there are complex explanations for how benzedrine changes one's mood. For me, it seemed to come down to focus.

Instead of resisting whatever I was doing, benzedrine would cause me to concentrate fully on that one thing with almost no mental leakage of "I wish I were doing something different." And when I think of other deeply happy moments, the same seems to be true.

I was immersed in something to such an extent, hardly anything else in the world existed for me at that moment. I wasn't torn between this and something else. Only this was present in my awareness.

This is, of course, pretty much what mindfulness is all about: being acutely aware of what is actually present, instead of getting behind or ahead of ourselves by leaning toward the past of future.

Well, having just written these five hundred or so words, right now I'm acutely aware that what I've said in this post may strike many people as being either so obvious or so off-base as to be worthless. And I can't disagree with that assessment.

However, i also know that one reason I almost always write a post for one of my three blogs every day is this:

When I'm writing, the world shrinks to my computer screen and the thoughts inside my head that end up being converted to words, sentences, paragraphs, and eventually, an entire blog post. 

This shrinking doesn't feel like a loss. It feels like a gain. A happy gain. 

Marvelous putdown of supernatural nonsense

I really like this comment by Appreciative Reader. 

To make the comment easier to read, I've italicized the quotes from a comment by someone else and left Appreciative Reader's responses in regular type.

Being wordy myself, I admire succinctness in philosophizing, even though I'm rarely capable of it. Nice going, Appreciative Reader.

"Empirical science is only concerned with the origins and evolution of the material universe"

There is evidence for no other.

"Our five senses which allow our minds to compare, contrast and analyze material forms are aimed outwards, toward the material universe."

There is evidence for no other.

"The tangible, tactile world is all that physicists are desiring to understand and describe, reveling in a never-ending presentation of changing theories."

That is the nature of the scientific method. New evidence gives rise to new theories, in a virtuous cycle of expanding (collective) awareness and knowledge.

"No one knows which came first: Consciousness or Matter."

There is no evidence of consciousness other than in and from matter.

"To be seated anxiously at the edge of one's seat, awaiting science to supply anything of concrete value regarding the secret of life, is a waste of precious time and energy."

To each their own. We are free to use our time and energy as we please. We each define for ourselves what is a worthwhile use of our time and energy.

"You came first...matter followed as a necessary accretion for experiences with resistance, pleasures, pain, suffering, desires, deterioration and death...a very long saga, indeed."

There is no evidence that this kind of a worldview is anything other than fancy and wishful thinking.