Replacements
After completing the Freud series I was thinking a lot about how difficult it is for people to change, and I especially was thinking a lot about ‘The Wolfman,’ on his inability to move on and become an agent in his own life. One can be stuck in helplessness or in a victim mentality like he was for the rest of his life. Sergei Pankejeff in his later years talked about Freud’s suggestion that patients must make the choice to get better. One of the ways of doing that Freud hinted in his review of Serge was the value of concentration. So much of Positive Psychology confirms that Flow states don’t happen without persistent absorption. You basically have to string together one immersive task after another without too many long breaks between activities where depression and boredom can derail the momentum.
‘The Wolfman’ Pt. 3: https://rumble.com/v1gulsf-case-studies-the-wolfman-33-freud-and-beyond.html
Freud also talked about remorse and paying attention to desires where one can organize them based on priority. Some pleasures are poor replacements for greater desires that people find more satisfying and blameless in the long-term. Desire is a dangerous thing because if what it wants isn’t available, it immediately pushes for a short-term replacement, and they are often of lesser value. Also, if you desire something that hurts oneself and or others, pleasure quickly turns into pain. Another problem is having people openly talk about how people should behave. It can easily lead to hypocrisy since normal patterns of human behaviour show that people don’t follow their own rules. The mind can disagree with itself even while it’s being didactic about “shoulds.” It’s easier to give advice than follow it. Following “shoulds” can also be inauthentic because people are only motivated by getting praise and avoiding blame. In Freudian language, it’s to satisfy the Super-ego and to reinforce repression against Id desires and Ego targets for satisfaction. In other words, people behave differently only because they feel they are being watched. As soon as they are in a private life, which isn’t as private anymore, the old habits return.
The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html
Freud then naturally looked at desires and saw that excessive repression was very damaging and it could lead to all kinds of psychological problems like depression, and maladaptive defense mechanisms. The goal was to learn how to discharge pleasure in a way that is reciprocal and reduces remorse. Yet, it’s been decades since Freud died, but his questions are still important since COVID19 lockdowns disrupted the economy. Lost jobs and crushed dreams make people precisely look for replacements. Of course, this can happen during normal times, but especially so when there is a crisis and people are depressed. Twelve-step groups point out experiences of HALT, or Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired as typical precursors for an impulse to get something addictive as a replacement.
A brief search of DSM-5 addictions shows a wide variety of options: Alcohol, Tobacco, Opioids, Prescription drugs, Cocaine, Marijuana, Amphetamines, Hallucinogens, Inhalants, PCP, and many more. Addictions can also include behavioural ones: Gambling, Kleptomania, Pyromania, Food, Sex, Pornography, Playing video games, Surfing the net, and Shopping. There are also healthier types of addictions that can be rewarded in society: Workaholism, Excessive Exercise, and Spiritual Obsessions. Even pain itself can be addictive if the person is looking for the relief that happens after a behaviour like Cutting for example.
Lost Souls – Doves: https://youtu.be/dxAilm72Y4M
Many people go through one or more addictions in their lives and it creates a stigma where the person is essentially labeled based on their addiction. Much like how most names are based on some activity, work, or source of pleasure, one can be labeled permanently that way. It’s like your last name changed. It’s like being named Miranda Cokehead, or James Workaholic. People often don’t change precisely because they take in those external labels and continue on the same behaviour patterns, along with low self-esteem. Any compassionate methods of change have to help people find a way out of these labels. Part of the problem is that society requires people to be pure, yet if you’re pure, you don’t need development. In reality, nobody is pure. Learning from psychopaths and narcissists, especially in person, the purity game is what they are about and they know how to dress the part and manipulate leverage. This is why they end up shocking people when they become your boss, or they marry you. You finally see the other side. But then it’s too late and it takes years to extricate yourself from their sphere of influence.
The problem with labels is that they are usually misleading and don’t predict future behaviour changes. Labels are only accurate if behaviour continues, but are detrimental and can trigger relapses when people have made strides towards improvement only to be shamed for past behaviour again. For example, a stigmatized person feels lonely, like part of the acronym HALT, and then looks for addictive replacements: a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Some people even want these patterns to continue because they make money off of them. If you look at the list above, a lot of our economy depends on these addictions, especially consumerism. Moderation with some of the above activities, especially behavioural ones aren’t attacked by psychologists as much, but when a person’s life is devoured by a single activity, then it’s considered an addiction. Certainly working and exercising are healthier choices and it won’t be noticed that something’s wrong until a person realizes they don’t know their kids, or that their excessive exercise has caused an injury.
What all these substances or activities have in common is a need to regulate emotions. How we are typically conditioned in our society is to take any bad feelings, especially stress and boredom, and to find some substance or activity that relieves anxiety, even if only there are temporary results. The problem of course is that the mind requires ever more intense substances or activities to create a reward large enough to stave off boredom, which is called tolerance. Also painful withdrawal symptoms, a biological response to the lack of the substance, propels people to keep on the addiction treadmill.
Being shameless is good for you – Marisa Peer: https://youtu.be/PBg7iSdDZBM
Healthy nihilism
Naturally, people turn to things like meditation because of all the talk of Letting Go, and all the promises of change. But even in meditation practice, the mind quickly co-opts the practice and continues in the same direction of habits and people often don’t approach that tipping point of change. With Psychoanalysis, one can piece together a developmental past and there is some relief in knowing one’s influences, causes, and effects. “I am this way because of these past events…I felt like garbage so I looked for replacements.” Grieving about past mistakes, or missed opportunities can discharge affect by allowing oneself to feel remorse completely. When the grieving is exhausted the emotions are free to exercise more choice. Deep meditation can also banish that sense of lack for periods at a time.
All these psychological modalities help to deal with self-stigma at a basic level so that the person can still enjoy their addictions with less self-attacking, and hopefully, they may moderate their consumption, but maybe not. It’s commonly called a Nihilism phase that people find very common in a person’s meditation practice. There are many beautiful experiences that one can attain with Jhanas, and as the Super-ego judging begins to recede from consciousness, one can be free to enjoy conventional life without caring what people think and also what one thinks of oneself.
Concentration and mindfulness can also enhance common pleasures in life. For example, mindfulness helps to eliminate distractions when one is trying to enjoy something. The book Savoring by Bryant and Veroff talks about this benefit of being able to eliminate “Killjoy thinking.” Many of us have been there where we create our own unhappiness with mental talk. Mental talk is really important because most of it is not exactly pleasant. Most mental chatter is actually one form or another of judging or complaining. Judgment releases stress, so endless judging means endless stress, and it’s self-inflicted. Some good examples of negative talk the book provides involve ruining a vacation.
- I was so homesick.
- I worried that I would run out of money.
- I took too many drugs.
- The trip wasn’t as good as I thought it would be.
- I drank too much.
Collapse – Aphex Twin: https://youtu.be/SqayDnQ2wmw
The Big Lebowski – The Dude meets Bunny: https://youtu.be/upUjNZRAapQ
On the positive side of nihilism, and when circumstances and the environment are cooperating, one can enjoy activities with a quiet mind and no distractions. Like in my Heraclitus video, being one with the environment and learning to appreciate can make mundane experiences become filled with a sense wonder. This comes from comparing what exists to non-existence. We didn’t have to be born, and opportunities like these don’t have to exist right now. In the book, they called this comparison pleasure Marveling. Some other verbs they list include basking, which is reflecting on accomplishments, and luxuriating which is enjoying physical pleasure. Luxuriating is a reminder that we do get pleasure from pleasant thoughts, but we don’t want concepts to crowd out the actual experiences themselves. It’s so hard to enjoy things as adults precisely because we are habitually thinking about experiences instead of actually experiencing them. It’s nice to just engage in the activity and let psychological rewards happen naturally.
Heraclitus – https://youtu.be/15JZXiHsD6A
- I talked about the vacation with my friends.
- I took a lot of photos.
- I bought gifts to bring back for other people.
- I thought about how much better it was than just sitting at home.
- I just went along with what was happening one day at a time.
- I replayed the highlights in my mind over and over again.
Savoring was such a nice book in that you could turn to any page and find something useful. Positive Psychology books often need more examples and fewer reminders that we should try to be happy. We already know that, so what are some recommendations?
- Choose experiences where there’s a lower chance of failure.
- Reduce distractions.
- Focus your attention more on what is excellent.
- Learn a skill well enough so that fear of failure decreases when using it.
- Recount positive stories.
- Add variety to experiences.
- Add gaps in pleasure to avoid spoiling and psychological tolerance.
- Share experiences with others which creates bonding and shared memories.
- Enjoy pleasurable activities after going through stressful experiences.
- Rehearse or journal highlights so they can be recalled later.
- Compare poor experiences to even poorer ones. “Things could’ve been worse.”
- Plan experiences to reduce obstacles. Planning has a side benefit in that it also creates a pleasure in anticipating.
- Celebrate important events.
- Become engrossed in activities with mindfulness.
- Count your blessings.
- Chain positive experiences with each other. Eg. A good vacation, but an even better romance.
- Planning activities that all participants can enjoy.
- Remind oneself of impermanence and the limited time we all have.
- Find meaningful associations. Eg. Learning something meaningful while attending a museum. Learning spiritual insights that you can take home with you.
- Don’t force savoring experiences with those negative judgmental thoughts. Let flavours and sensations happen and pass away naturally. Not all experiences are 100% intense and excellent. Glide with the ebb and flow by relaxing any psychological pushing or pulling. Slowing down to pay attention helps, but trying to make the sensations and flavours last longer is just another judgmental stress release that pollutes the experience. The self controls with pushing and pulling. Reminding oneself that pushing and pulling won’t make flavours last longer also helps one to enjoy letting go. It’s an inverse pleasure of an absence of stress. “I don’t have to make it last longer.”
Ibiza Spliff – Aphex Twin: https://youtu.be/NoRB6zN3ZbY
As one begins to learn about Positive Psychology and get some wisdom about how it works, there’s a natural tendency to want to control life so that it conforms with happiness more. The book suggests that the social aspect can’t be ignored, and negative social experiences can mar your pleasure.
- Find people where enjoying pleasure around them isn’t a problem.
- Free yourself from activities that involve social and esteem concerns.
- Give priority to close relationships.
There are also individual preconditions for savoring.
- Focus on the present.
- Enhance attentional focus on a positive experience.
- Take control of your time.
- Seek activities that engage your skills.
- Become more physically active.
- Get an adequate amount of sleep.
- Include humor.
- Journal your experiences.
What isn’t highlighted in the book, or in any Buddhism that I have been taught, is that the general public has a common sense understanding that when people have many experiences as described above, it’s hard for people in old age to say that they haven’t lived when their life story has so many highlights. One can’t do everything, but if one has done a lot, a natural thankfulness can emerge. No matter what anyone says, or is too jealous to admit, a life full of savoring is very good.
[Slo]w early morning clissold sunrise – Aphex Twin: https://youtu.be/eCFn4c1QpTM
Letting go
Where spirituality can have some points against the above pleasures is the clinging and addiction we can encounter when life gets out of balance. This is especially true when only one pleasure is emphasized over all others. It can be a problem that was long-standing for a yogi and has to be faced. Even if we enjoy alcohol, cigars, food or whatever else we like, there can be a problem with the advice above to focus on positive experience and to ignore negative experiences. You can even see a hint of it in some of the suggestions to plan to reduce the chances of negative experiences interfering with activities. You couldn’t achieve that without some perception of negativity. In Buddhism, imagination and anticipation can actually be used to help practitioners gain some counterintuitive pleasures related to letting go. It’s the desire for peace beyond sensual pleasure.
The late Rob Burbea had some great suggestions, and certainly, my prior video on Jhanas is a good place to start for many. We emotionally feed, and as Freud described, there is constant pressure from the Id to feed. This is partially the reason for hypocrisy because any principles people make for themselves will be subject to that libido/craving pressure. The pleasure experienced in meditation is a form of emotional feeding, except you didn’t ingest any substances or engaged in any process addictions that constantly want setups and payoffs. One could use the acronym HALT and see if consistent attention to the breath with few gaps, lots of scanning the body for tension, and relaxing it, can regulate the emotions enough so that substances and process activities aren’t needed. Meditation of course can take longer than a substance, but persistence here for a few minutes is often enough. Self-retreats for an hour or more can replace TV and other scatterbrained internet activities so that the brain achieves success in draining tension. When the brain is emotionally satisfied, letting go happens naturally. It’s kind of like making sure you eat a meal before going shopping where food cravings would lead to restaurants, maybe alcohol, and bigger bills.
There is also the benefit of reduced conflict. If I don’t have to compete for pleasure against other people, because the breath is inherently mine, and I’m going to breathe anyways, then the A part of HALT is also taken care of. Like most pleasures, we want to defend against someone else getting them, but instead, we can protect our concentration from conditioned thoughts that chip away at the benefits.
“When we talk about samadhi, that’s almost by definition a nourishing state: I’m just going to hang out in this field, in this bubble, and make it nice and warm and just as comfortable as can be, and just dwell in that, let myself rest in that and be nourished by it. Often we grasp at things and we can’t let go because our level of nourishment, the reservoir is too low… Even if it feels completely futile, over time that muscle gets – we get better at just dropping and returning. So to have faith in that. It’s kind of very, very simple.”
The Jhanas: https://rumble.com/v1gqznl-the-jhanas.html
Emotional Feeding: https://rumble.com/v1gqvl1-emotional-feeding-thanissaro-bhikkhu.html
The Ego and the Id: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html
Rob also liked to use timelines. You’re going to return to that normal state no matter what you get or achieve in the future. It’s already here. Just make the trip in your mind. “We get caught in wanting this thing or that thing or this thing to unfold or that person or whatever it is, and how many times have we been through this before? How many times has it really satisfied us? So sometimes a little bit of reflection: what is this thing, what is getting this thing really going to give me? Am I really going to be fulfilled getting it? Sometimes it’s a matter of going deeper into what I want: is this thing what I really want? Do I even really want it? I’m so caught up there, but is that really what I want? What I deeply want? And recognizing it’s not what I really deeply want, there can be more ease in letting go. Sometimes it’s remembering how often in the past we’ve got what we wanted but…it ended up not being quite what we had imagined it might be before we got it. Almost always, things turn out differently than what we think. So it’s like, just bring that wisdom at the starting instead of at the end.”
Many of us already have life experiences we can turn to when joining a practice like this, so it’s a good reminder that we tend to return to old habits many times before a perceivable change occurs. Realistically, many people will still act on their wanting, depending on how strong their habits are, and how weak their practice is. Each individual brain is different. To move further for many people, it requires that they add more negative detail that no one wants to look at. It’s a practice that many in the west try to avoid, which is to actually look for disgust and downsides to our pleasures. In Pure and Simple, Upasika Kee Nanayon makes it pure and simple indeed.
“The first requirement when you come to practice is that you need to be the sort of person who loves the truth and you need to have endurance to do what’s true. Only then will your practice get anywhere. Otherwise, it all turns into failure and you go back to being a slave to your defilements and cravings just as before. When you don’t contemplate yourself, how much suffering do you cause for yourself? And how much do you cause for others? These are things we should contemplate as much as we can. If we don’t, we keep trying to get, get, get. We don’t try to let go, to put things aside, to make any sacrifices at all. We just keep trying to get, for the more we get, the more we want…If you’re going to let go of anything, you first have to see its drawbacks. If you just tell yourself to let go, let go, the mind won’t easily obey. You really have to see the drawbacks of the thing you’re holding onto, and then the mind will let go, of its own accord. It’s like grabbing hold of fire: When you feel the heat, you let go of your own accord and will never dare grasp it again.”
Stop eating roadkill – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2020/200806_Stop_Eating_Roadkill.mp3
Adjust the flame – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2020/200916_Adjust_the_Flame.mp3
Where your mind gravitates – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2020/201019_Where_Your_Mind_Gravitates.mp3
Spiritual Bypassing: https://rumble.com/v1gpm57-spiritual-bypassing-and-inner-bonding.html
It’s better to welcome the impulse, but instead of acting, only act in the imagination. The mind swirls around pleasurable details, and as expected, it ignores negative details. The swirling creates pressure to act. To move the imagery towards realistic details of costs, health consequences, and potential conflicts can turn off the craving. When the internal conflict ends, the dualism ironically allows one to regain mental peace and relax in Oneness again.
The great thing about disenchantment is that it’s an authentic feeling. Instead of mimicking someone else’s judgment in a Super-ego, you are following the imagery of yourself going through the pleasure-procedures and feeling the pain as if it happened to you in concrete reality. We react to fake movies, why not make realistic documentaries in your mind instead? This time you’re changing not because someone told you to. People are not readily going to give you validation and a pat on the back, which is ultimately not a stable reward. Deep down the wishes and desires are trying to take out of the environment what it wants to, regardless of whether reality has enough to support those wishes. The mind can push and pull against reality, building up a sense of self in the background. “It’s hard to see the drawbacks of sensual passion, but even harder to see the drawbacks of more subtle things, like your sense of self.”
One of the great explainers of how to see through the sense of self is Adyashanti. One of his tests is to let go of being for or against anything and watch the mental noise decrease with equanimity. It’s like a radio where the volume control can turn up or down depending on how much resistance there is. This clinging, the sense of self, is also a sensation and has to be accounted for in the cause and effect of sensations that we note in our mindfulness practice. “Somehow we’ve came to this conclusion, that where there is a sense of self, a sense of me, that there actually is a Me.” Seeing the self as a sensation disidentifies from it because it’s seen by the same awareness that notices other sensations, though albeit with more complexity that needs to be deconstructed for the different ways the self arises in thoughts and feelings. Instead of a self here noting an experience over there, all experiences can be noticed, including the Ego play-acting as a meditator. Cause and effect involve what we include as self which pushes/pulls/resists/is for, or is against, what is. The pushing and pulling, against what is very difficult or impossible to control, is what makes the intense solid sense of self. Controlling makes the sense of a Controller, but this sense of solidity is in fact a moving target that increases in tension as it resists what’s here, or recedes into the background when it surrenders. Instead of a self manipulating a marionette body, the efforting, strategizing, planning, and controlling part of the mind is a natural part of the cause and effect of the Universe. The sense of separation comes from the thought construct of ME, self-measurement, and a projected self through time.
“It would almost be like…somebody spraying perfume without you even knowing it…Let’s say you smell…roses…and almost immediately your first conclusion [would be] ‘where are the roses?’ You look around and you expect to find a dozen roses…and then you don’t find [them] and then relatively quickly you realize, there are no actual roses, there’s just the scent of roses.” Noticing the self-belief instead as a sensation dissipates the illusion of a solid controller, which relaxes over-efforting that has always been connected with that old belief. The irony is that when you let go of the sense of a separate self, it allows you to be yourself more fully. Self-sensations are finally included with all other sensations that awareness is aware of. With letting go, human emotions are allowed, including humility, without a sense that one has to be a pure person.
Cornish Spreek5b [St. Nectan S Glen Waterfalls Mix] – Aphex Twin: https://youtu.be/H6yPLpfaGQI
Resources:
Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience – Bryant and Veroff: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780805851205/
Of Hermits and Lovers: The Alchemy of Desire – Rob Burbea and Catherine McGee: https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/3383/
Pure and Simple – Upasika Kee Nanyon: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780861717514/
Tracy, N. (2012, January 12). Types of Addiction: List of Addictions, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2020, September 5 from https://www.healthyplace.com/addictions/addictions-information/types-of-addiction-list-of-addictions
Adyashanti – August 26, 2020 – https://youtu.be/heW7w3cQtDk
Contemplative Practice: https://psychreviews.org/category/contemplativepractice/