Our subconscious ego has zillion of way to express itself non-stop.
The following attributes vary in frequency, prevalence and degree for each of us.
Severe narcissism, paranoid, sociopath and even psychopathic behaviors are among the extreme forms requesting therapy.
Here is the list in non-specific order. Few of them will sound familiar.
Having poor insight
Judging, accusing, gossiping and complaining.
Needing to be right, to appear important, wanted and indispensible.
Taking things, statements, and events personally.
Need have “enemies”.
Applying negative labels to people & situations
Making yourself right and the others wrong through futile mental or verbal complaints.
Expecting recognition for something you did and getting angry or upset if you don’t get it.
Trying to get attention in whatever situations.
Creating and maintaining a self-image made of: guilt, resentment, anger, blame and complain.
Feeling being the victim of this and that.
Giving your opinion when nobody is asking for.
Being always concerned with how people judge you.
Trying to always make a positive impression on others through various tools such as education,
possessions, good look, socio-professional status, achievements, etc…
Referring to “important people” for ego booster.
Triggering an ego storm through anger, jealousy, and threat against someone or something.
What to do?
Not much since our “ I, me, myself and mine” are vital to survive.
The key is to prevent its detrimental impacts.
The moment you become aware of your hidden ego and what he is doing negatively it is, strictly speaking, no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern and mind-set that you are observing in a mindful way.
Observing implies awareness and ego implies unawareness because hidden.
Therefore, awareness and ego cannot coexist.
Print this list and score each trait from N/A, 0 to 5.
/Canadian Here are the latest ADHD stats from the CDC & American Psychological Association.
1) Attention span:
Young: around 5 to 7min. (because, most of
the time they are under guided supervision).
Adult: around 3 to 4 min.
Adult dog :45 sec. (adult)
Goldfish:
7 sec.
Over the
last 15 years, attention span has dropped by around 30%, especially among
adults.
Reasons?:
multitasking, distractions, overthinking and search for instant results.
Talking
produces around 120 words/min. A 3min. speech has around 360 words.
After 3
min., the attention span of the audience drops by around 30% /min.
Therefore,
you will probably talk to yourself if your speech is more than 6min.
2) Hyperactivity:
Means doing many things at the same time or changing activity very quickly w/o significant outcome. Multitasking, a form of ASDHD is a growing cause of anxiety and burnout.
As far Zen is concerned, learning to pay attention in a mindful way is a vital skill to practice in order to achieve serenity.
The word attention, in Zen
teaching, has nothing to do with concentration or straining that we are trying
to do during our various activities at home or at work.
Attention, in its Zen meaning, means having the mental openness of a young child that is an open but still concentrated mind.
An open mind is paying attention with non-analytic, non-judgmental, non-decisional and without tension. This is mindfulness at its best.
Zen Master Suzuki calls it “Beginner mind” in his book with the
same title.
A young child mind is not yet
dominated by beliefs, ideas, opinion, expectations, judgment, analysis and decisions.
a Her/his mental openness is like a mirror reflecting things as they are, sort of simple pure concentrated awareness without a wandering mind. It is the opposite to the conceptual, dualistic, and gateway mind of an adult, trapping us in a constant fictional world full of ongoing thoughts.
Practicing mental openness is freeing us from this mental cage that our education, beliefs, and experiences are creating.
How to practice it?
We talk about it zillions of
time.
.Stop the schizophrenic space/times between body and mind
Bring your wandering mind to
the present moment, where your body is and what it is doing.
Is it boring? Probably yes
for most of the time, but just do it.
Your attention becomes 100%
and you are not anymore hyperactive nor multitasking.
Mental state associating relaxation focused attention, reduced peripheral sensorial awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to verbal suggestions or commands.
During hypnotherapy, the patient remains fully conscious, awake, cooperative, and cooperative.
Therefore, hypnosis is neither a mind control nor a brainwashing tool.
Around 20% of the
population is resistant to hypnosis.
Used for
centuries, it is a recognized and accepted therapy by the Canadian & American
Medical Association as long as it is under the control of a certified health professional.
Hypnotherapy is frequently recommended for anxiety, phobias, addictions, sexual dysfunctions, guilt prolonged grieving, procrastination, depression and poor self-image.
Zen perspective:
Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung ( student of Freud) knew Zen philosophy very well, was practicing meditation, and recommended it to his patients.
He realized very quickly the similitude between zazen that is Zen meditation and hypnosis. Indeed, mindfulness meditation is an induced mental state associating relaxation, focusing attention on breathing, and reduced peripheral sensorial awareness therefore very similar to hypnosis.
However, the only
difference is the absence of external from a therapist.
We estimate that our brain/mind produces around 100,000 thoughts every day.
A very tiny proportion of them is decisional, meaning useful in our day-to-day life.
But the immense
majority of them are just a constant background sound, sort of inner voice that I call
self-talk.
We are spending a
huge amount of time chatting to ourselves rather than talking to others.
This self-talk is,
in fact, a form of self-hypnosis focusing on past events, future expectations,
self-analysis, judgment, emotions, etc.
However and contrary
to hypnotherapy, our self-talk that is self-hypnosis has no therapeutic value
what so ever.
On the contrary,
it is often detrimental, inducing more negative feelings more than positives
ones.
Finally:
To awaken or enlightenment is to be free from this self-talk or self-hypnosis because its content, coming from our mind is, by definition, fictional and not necessarily true.
Of
all the Zen teachings and ideas, detachment is one of the hardest ones for me
to grasp.
Our daughter was born 3 weeks premature, came home weighing a little over 5lbs. As she could not get enough to eat, she cried constantly for the first three months of her life. We watched her grow, and become an independent woman with a keen talent for storytelling which serves her very well as a budding journalist. You are probably wondering where this is going. Well …. she called us on Friday in tears after breaking up with her boyfriend of two years, her heartbreaking in pieces, wanting someone to just listen and offer some reassurance. Reassurance – that someday, she would find someone who really loves her and treats her as she wants to be treated. ….A very reasonable expectation we thought.
Is
it truly possible to be detached at these events? To be an observer, a mirror,
…. and listen to her words, be a witness to pain without judgment or emotion?
To be more detached, to be emotionally aloof?
Now…….
is this what Detachment really means?
Eastern
philosophies look at detachment from slightly different angles, often calling
it non-attachment (which I prefer), but they all agree that it is a condition
in which a person overcomes their attachment to desire for things, people or concepts
of the world and thus attains a heightened perspective. Concepts of the world: such as
money, power, status, feelings of control, feelings of permanence, “the pursuit
of constant happiness” (or better – aversion to pain and sadness), a desire to
see things as we want them to be and not as they are.
Attachment to desire and things feeds the ego, many of us become attached to our work, and our sense of value is linked to our social status, to the clothing we wear, to having the latest i-phone and, let’s not forget about driving the latest ……. German-engineered SUV.
Attachment
also feeds the illusion we are in control, that if we stay on top of these
things – nothing bad will happen to us, instead of recognizing that we are in
fact a lot more fragile than we might want to believe. Some of these
attachments can lead to addictions of many types; we become workaholics,
narcissistic egomaniacs, controlling freaks, dependent on alcohol and drugs,
even totally self-absorbed and unaware of our impact on others and our planet.
I
think this is the type of attachment that Zen philosophy refers to. The
unhealthy type. The type that sooner or later leads to a lot more suffering, to
an empty, meaningless and lonely state.
In Hinduism, attachment is viewed as the main obstacle towards a serene and fulfilled life, leading to continuous worries and restlessness produced by desire and personal ambitions. The retired president of Uruguay was recently asked, what would you be doing if you had the billions that Bill Gates has, he replied: “I would be worried about who is trying to steal it from me”. The accumulation and value assigned to material things inevitably lead to perpetual worrying about losing them.
Another translation for detachment is “renunciation”, in this sense the meaning is directed to a sense of “giving up the world and leading a holy life” or “freedom from lust, craving, and desires”. In Zen detachment is also linked to the concept of no-thought, meaning that one must be separated (detached) from one’s own thoughts and opinions in detail as to not be harmed mentally and emotionally by them.
A
Buddhist writing states: “One who performs his duty without attachment,
surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action,
as the lotus is untouched by muddy water.”
The
Zen symbol of detachment is the lotus flower rising above the muddy waters.
I think it is impossible not to be attached to your children or your aging mother or your Zen Master, but be mindful of why you are doing it, question whether the act is selfless or if you are trying to control or escape some aspect of your life. Moreover, one must accept the realities of life and to recognize that, with attachment, always comes some level of suffering, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.
How do we let go of attachment? We cannot. Don’t even try.
Attachment to things may drop away by itself when we no longer seek to find ourselves in them.
A cynical said that, by far, the first cause
of death is Life since Life has, by definition, an100% mortality rate in which
unexpected events such as accidents+ illnesses+ war+ disasters represent only a
very, very tiny proportion.
#1 So:
Maybe finding the secret of Life is to
die** before death in order to realize that there is, in fact, no death per se
since no one can die twice.
#2 Then:
If there is no death, then life is eternal.
#3 But:
If Life is eternal, how can one find its secret by dying?
When Arnaud
mentioned that it takes him under 10 seconds to know if someone will quit
meditation, I felt for people who find this idea of focusing their mind so
daunting. I am sharing my learnings to motivate all of us to not give up and
try a little harder.
1. It is what
it is – as cliché as it sounds this really is the crux. I realize now that it
is neither half-full nor half-empty – it is just half-a-glass-of-water. I have
understood (not realized) the definition of enlightenment – it is to see
everything for what it is without being analytical or judgmental…to take life
as it is. Each time I tried to control the outcomes or people it caused me and
those around me tremendous pain. Meditation has allowed me to focus on what I
can control.
2. Religion is
a coping mechanism and perhaps a theory – there is a difference between being
religious and spiritual. I grew up as a Hindu, but I was always confused about
the idea of religion. Because I was so physically, emotionally and mentally
fragile I needed something to hold on to. Over time I began to identify myself
with this notion of religion and became one with it. I now understand that
meditation elevates us spiritually while religion enslaves us with dogmas and
false beliefs.
3. Identifying
myself with my thoughts or senses seriously messed me up – I understand now
that the main reason of epidemics is that we don’t do a good job with washing
our hands…why? Because we are busy watching ourselves in the mirror not
focusing on washing our hands! I let my senses feed my mind uncontrollably and
I was reacting to every random thought that popped up in my head. As I started
meditating, I have become more aware of my thoughts. I can predict and better
control my reactions. It feels as though Meditation is putting me in touch with
my consciousness. Although Science hasn’t been able to determine how mind
generates consciousness…I am just going with the belief.
4. While I
cannot erase memories or experiences from my mind, I must find a way to deal
with them – The feeling of guilt is probably the worst feeling that I have had
to deal with but Meditation has given me the ability to become aware of what my
mind is up to and learn to forgive myself.
5. ‘I’ is an
interesting but unreal concept – what this entity called ‘I’ really means I
have no idea. I continue to struggle with the question that which one of the
trillions of cells that make up my physical existence constitutes me? As
Nisargadatta Maharaj says you need to rule out what you are not to get to what
you really are. This practically takes out everything I see or experience.
Learning and
Realization are fundamentally different so I truly believe meditation will
eventually help me realize who I really am.
A few years ago, my first meditation teacher spoke of the Parable of the
Second Arrow, and it was the first time I saw how the skills I was developing
during meditation practice could translate into everyday life.
The parable of the Second Arrow goes like this:
The Buddha once asked a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is
it painful?” The student replied, “It is.” The Buddha then asked, “If the
person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?” The student
replied again, “It is.” The Buddha then explained, “In life, we cannot always
control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the
first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice.”
So while we can’t always control the situations life throws at us, this
parable helps us understand how emotional reactions can make matters worse.
When I first heard this story I was taking an MBSR class to help me cope
with chronic pain. Hearing this parable helped me to connect the dots between
how the physical pain I experienced was being impacted my thoughts. I noticed
that when the pain was bad, I would get emotional and have anxious and fearful
thoughts about the pain, which then made the pain worse, which then caused more
fear and anxiety. And I would end up in a cycle of where the pain would get
worse and worse and I would get more and more freaked out and anxious. Once I
heard the parable, it dawned on me that I was in fact continuously shooting
myself with the second arrow. Now, this realization didn’t magically solve the
pain, but once I was aware of the second arrow, I started to understand how my
reactive thoughts affected me.
Life will always throw first arrows our way: a major life event happens,
or someone says something upsetting to you, or you get a parking ticket. First
arrows can also be more mundane like waiting in a grocery store line up that
just isn’t moving, or coming home to a sink full of dirty dishes. Often
our reactions to first arrows play a large role in how we interpret and
experience the event. We like to point the finger, lay blame, complain, condemn
ourselves and over analyze.
What if, instead of shooting ourselves with the second arrow, we
recognize that those thoughts, feelings and emotions are there, but they aren’t
inherently a part of us and don’t necessarily define us. We can stand back from
our thoughts and emotions, observe them, but not get carried away in them. And
if we no longer identify with our reactive thoughts and feelings we can start
to see that life events are what they are, and our reactions to these events
are just experiences that are passing through.
So next time that first arrow hits you, watch out for the second arrow
right around the corner, don’t just react but instead respond to the situation.
Going from reacting to responding is not easy to do, but once we start to
recognize our own patterns of reactive thoughts and emotions, we can try to
start to change them.
The “Two Arrows” is not about denying our initial reaction to pain. It
is about being self-aware enough to realize that we have a choice, and we don’t
necessarily have to turn our pain into suffering.
Worries, anxiety and fear are, at different
degrees, the mind-mad anticipation of a negative or positive future scenario.
They can be imminent or anytime after.
Everyday anxiety is a fact of life and
can actually be helpful “How we use it
makes all the difference,”
As the world gets faster and more
uncertain, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by anxiety.
We are hijacked by anxiety coming from our
reptilian brain, source of fear and excitement.
Denying or running away from anxiety
make it worse.”
We
view anxiety through a negative lens, something to fear and avoid. That
thinking is self-defeating. We need to
accept it as a natural part of our emotional spectrum.
Another
cause of anxiety is our faulty thinking around change.
For
centuries, change was viewed as dangerous.. But stability and permanence are total
illusion, and uncertainty of life is reality. It makes us anxious and
vulnerable, and leads us to worry or run
away because we realize that we are not in control of life. This is anxiogenic.
People
often move back and forth between too much, just enough, and too little
anxiety.
Anxiety
is contagious. We communicate our level of anxiety to others because we’re far
more connected to each other than we think.
Anxiety is energy, and we must strike
the right balance if you know what to look for:
Too Much Anxiety:
The
most frequent form. It
is a burden but it is also an advantage: by doing so, they are not badly surprised
when a negative scenario happens.
Too
much anxiety is created when we are telling yourself about a positive or
negative outcome which does not exist. For example, “If I don’t do a good job I’ll get fired.” It is not the current scenario
that causes anxiety, it is its potential outcome that we creating in our mind.
Severe
forms of anxiety require medical treatment.
Too Little Anxiety:
Too little anxiety isn’t good either. Those
people value status quo and live in a rosy bubble.
It is nice to be optimistic but it is
also a curse when we are badly surprised when negative scenarios happen.
Good Anxiety:
Living with the right amount of anxiety
provides enough tension to drive us
forward without causing we to resist, give up, or try to control what happens.
“It’s a productive energy,”
The
first step is to accept being uncomfortable. A lot of people think the goal of
life is to be happy, but the goal is to experience life with its good and bad
moments.
Listen
to your body; it is the proxy of your mental state. We talked already about the
physical symptoms of anxiety.
Ask
yourself why you’re anxious. Is it because you’re excited or fearful?
Is
your anxiety: good or bad. If you’re about to give a speech, anxiety is good. If
you’re not anxious, you’re probably not going to give a great speech. And if
you’re too anxious, that won’t be a great speech, either.”
All
change happens in the gap that the mind is creating between current reality and
desired or fearful future scenarios. We create a problem we want to solve or
have a goal we want to accomplish.
In this gap sits our motivation, our engagement, and our anxiety. Anxiety becomes a positive energy needed to cross the gap. No other way. Meditation brings body and mind together, the first step to analyze both of them and reduce this gap between reality and future scenarios.
The problem of living in autopilot “A wandering mind is an bored and unhappy mind.” Z.M. Suzuki
When we are on autopilot- doing things
automatically- the mind takes over and escapes.
The routine of the
day triggers the autopilot mode —making unconscious, automatic actions and decisions
. At this point, our mind is in full control.
A study from UCLA
on 5000 people shows that over 85% of them admitted living on autopilot.
In autopilot there
is a split between body acting like a robot and mind being a monkey
We make about 100,000
though and gestures each day. Our brain can’t possibly take the time to
consider every single thing we do. Imagine if you had to remember everything
you do and think in the day.
So, whenever it
can, your brain will kick into an automatic decision-making gear to save
energy, freeing up your conscious mind to escape and wander in different
spaces/times. Our ability to think about what’s not happening at the routine
present moment makes life easier. It is a gateway.
However, This
automatic mode creates all kind of thoughts and emotions not necessarily
useful.
They can be also
detrimental.
A study done by two Harvard University psychologists
revealed that the average person spends about 85% of their waking hours doing
what they call “mind wandering.”
Mind
wandering is when you do something somewhere while the mind is
elsewhere doing something else. When
people let their minds wander, whether it’s thinking about events from the
past, present or future, it makes them unhappy.
The problem with living on autopilot is that it can leave us
“day sleepwalking “as Zen says making it difficult to make intentional and rational decisions.
So what exactly does living on autopilot look like I can describe it with the following
examples:
You’ve just driven
home and stepped out of your car, you don’t remember stopping at any lights, switching
any lanes, making that right-hand turn or even our thoughts. The drive was a
blur, yet you arrived home safe.
As you wake up, we are bored already of the day ahead because your daily routine is
predictable.
Your decisions and actions have become so automatic
that they take little if not no thought at all.
You are holding your cell phone with 2 hands most of the day checking
useless stuff.
You’re not fully
present in the moment we don’t remember details of our routine activities
If most of these
signs resonate with you, there’s a probability that you are, most of the time, living
on autopilot like most
of us.
What Zen is telling
us?
You just have to turn
off the cruise control and bring back your mind back with your body’s current
activities.
Paying attention to
what you are doing results in better conscious decision-making.
Interestingly
enough, psychometric research has shown that we are happier when our thoughts
and activities are synchronized and not in dualistic mode.
Zen found this evidence more than 2,000 years ago while teaching to bring the mind where the body is and what it is doing, hat is a mindfulness moment and this is what meditation is based on and teaching us.
There are few symptoms of Awakening/Enlightenment, indicating that a transformation is taking place within you towards the highest level of consciousness helping you to experience your true self and concrete reality of life. You are starting to control your mind-made illusions and negative emotions. Here are few cues in a not specific order. You may be familiar with some of them.
You become less worried about things, people and events.
You encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life .
Your mind is not travelling all the time in the past stuck with nostalgia,
and regret or in the future full
of unknown events which do not exist.
You are more mindful to the present moment where your body is and what
he is doing.
That
means that your mind and body are one entity rather then having the mind
somewhere else
In
other words, you are no any more on autopilot doing things automatically while
your mind
is
running around here and there. When you eat, put your mind with your month and
taste the food.
You pay more attention to your thoughts, negative emotions, judgments when
they come up. Then
you accept them and let go. They are just
mind noise.
You realize that everything is transient that you like it or not.
You look at things, people ad events as they are and not as you want
them to be.
You are conscious that you have no control of them.. It give you peace
and
serenity.
Forgiveness and controlling anger become
easier.
You appreciate interacting with Nature such as talking with trees.
You feel deeper empathy and compassion toward yourself as key to do the
same to others.
You meditate daily and use mindfulness to freeze your boiling mind as
often as possible.
You pay attention to your desires, aversions and illusions. They are attachments, main source of our unhappiness ,suffering and restless mind.
Loneliness and silence do not bother you, yet, you appreciate solitude
once a while.
Once a while doing nothing is OK.
You
are watching watch the rat race and appreciate that you are not one of them
anymore.
Your ego is your friend but also your worse enemy. Let go what he wants, what he is grasping and what he does not want.
