Reverse Thinking

Your body knows best

This is the third in the series on Bodymind wisdom - or Emotional Intelligence, if you prefer that description.

In this article I want to teach you how you can use cellular memories to make emotionally intelligent decisions for yourself.

In my last article on Cellular memories I wrote that the brain stores emotionally-charged information on every significant event that has ever happened to you. Each and every one of those experiences comes with an emotional tag so that - if a similar experience comes around again -  Bodymind can signal to you what kind of experience it might turn out to be. Your Body also sends you one of these signals when you are making a decision about whether to go for it or not. Using its database of experiences from the past it might flag up:

1. That it will most likely be a boring, frustrating waste of time.
2. That it could be worthwhile, but also scary, as you are plunging into the unknown
3. That it will be an exciting opportunity.

Each emotional tag flags up an action you should follow next.

For example:

1. Find something better to do
2. Do it - but get advice from experienced people before you start
3. Get going - now!

Generally, you are either going to get a Go-Ahead signal (situation No 3), a No-Go signal (situation 1), or a mixed signal (2).

• Go-Ahead signals are, as a rule, pleasant, arousing, and exciting.
• No-Go signals are uncomfortable, flat, and discouraging.
• Mixed signals are a combination of the two.

You can use these signals to make decisions.

Like this:

1. Attune to your body
2. Imagine yourself going ahead and doing what you plan to do. Be sure to imagine being in your body with the new experience happening all around you.
3. Check whether you get the Go-Ahead signal or some other signal.
4. Now imagine that you have chosen NOT to do it and are doing something else (e.g. staying in same job, same relationship, same home, etc). Once again, be sure to imagine that you are in your body.
5. Check the signal again.

Notes:

1. You may get mixed signals (e.g. scary-exciting) that say 'Go Ahead' but exercise caution
2. You may get no signal at all. This tells you either that you don't yet have enough information to make a decision or that, deep down, you know the opportunity is never going to  happen.

Good hunting!

Image by Leonard Low

 

Cellular memories

This is the second in the series on Bodymind wisdom.

The first was Your body remembers.

Today I want to write about cellular memories. - your body's intelligence system.

A cellular memory can be stored in brain cells, in the glands, in the blood, the gut, the muscles - in fact anywhere in the body. In the Immune system, for example, T-cells  'remember' previous encounters with infectious cells which they recognise from their structure. If they meet up with them again, they attack them.

Cellular memories that relate to your prior learning about life are stored in the brain in the Hippocampus. Packets of information from the senses are relayed on to there, so that it can compare them to its memory bank of past events. Each of these experiences is tagged with an emotion. Some of these emotions are simple, hot, basic (i.e. anger). Some are complex, subtle and haunting (i.e. the nostalgic mood that comes over you when you revisit your old school). When it has found a match it signals a release of emotion to tell you, in emotional code, what kind of experience it is, and what you need to do about it. I have written before about this emotional coding here.

For example, the data sent to your Hippocampus might contain the information that your partner has just said 'so what?' for the 5th time in 7 minutes, with a flat voice tone, a bored expression and body language that suggests that s/he wants you to just shut up. Depending on the type of relationship you have (and the Hippocampus will have that information too) you might be sent an anger signal (time to start asking for more respect), frustration (time to change the subject), or sadness (your relationship is breaking up and you need to get together with other people).

The same mechanism can work in a more proactive way. So if a new opportunity comes along, Bodymind (working through the Hippocampus) will create neurochemical releases that signal whether you have the thumbs up to go ahead (because similar risk experiences in the past proved rewarding) or whether you should run in the other direction. I will write more about this mechanism - and how you can utilize it to make decisions - in my next article.

One interesting thing about the Hippocampus is that it shrinks in size if people give up on life. That's because it constantly needs new work to do. It gets that from new experiences: excitement, risk, challenge, growth. Retired, depressed, traumatised, imprisoned, disabled, or rigidly conformist people often show signs of neural degeneration in this respect.

In other words, if you don't - or can't - grow, you die. 

 

The body remembers

This is the start of a new series on Bodymind.

I want to write about how your body remembers the experiences that weren't good for you, recalls the emotions associated with them, and reminds you what you need to do if they happen again.

I will also be writing about how you can use cellular memories to recall the experiences that have been useful for you in the past.

Let's start with a story from the history of Psychology. Specifically with the work of Claparede, a Swiss Psychologist, who worked with patients suffering from brain damage in the Salpetriere, an asylum in Paris.

One of his patients suffered from a type of amnesia that left her incapable of forming new memories. 

What Claparede experienced when he met with her was this:

Each day Claparede would say 'hello' to her and introduce her to his colleagues. Fifteen minutes later she would forget who he was. So he would have to go through the same round of introductions over and over.

Now, Claparede noticed that this woman always 'remembered' how to get to the breakfast room in the morning, even though she couldn't tell other patients how to get there. In short, her Bodymind remembered what to do when Headmind didn't.

So Claparade tried an experiment.

When he greeted her next he concealed a pin in his palm and shook her hand.

The next day, his patient greeted him with the usual blank welcome— no memory of yesterday's meeting, no memory of yesterday at all— until Claparède extended his hand. Without being able to explain why, the woman refused to shake. She could not recall Claparede's name or his face but, unconsciously, she recalled the pain.

Nowadays, we call this type of remembering implicit memory. And implicit memories are stored in the cells, some in the brain, some in the immune system, some, even, in the muscles. Next up I will write about what these have to do with emotional states.

The philosophy of the bleedin' obvious

This is the third and final article in the series on religion.

The first one was Why Religion Doesn't Work For Me.

The second one was A God of Passion.

But let me start this one with a story about one of my spiritual heroes.

When Krishnamurti was 14 it was 'discovered' that he was a kind of 'Messiah' (despite the fact that his new worshippers thought he had 'a slightly moronic look'). He was brought up by the Theosophists and prepared for his future career as the New World Teacher. He became the centre of a cult.

But when he was 34 he gave it all up. Telling his followers that he was not a teacher, not a guru, and that there was not even such a thing as religion. In fact he told them a story about the Devil:

"The devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw a man pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of the truth,' said the devil. 'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend. 'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to help him organize it [into a new religion]."

For Krishnamurti 'truth is a pathless land.' No one can guide another towards the truth, it has to be earned for yourself. He said:

"I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies."

Now Krishnamurti spent the next 56 years of his life (he died in 1986) as a sort of anti-guru teaching only one thing: Awareness.

That's it: nothing else. Just Awareness. Like I wrote once before: Life is so ridiculously simple that a child of 5 could get it. And its right there in the teachings of Buddha and Christ: just sit on your bum and train your awareness on what's going on right now.

Here are some of the things I have learned about Awareness.

• It is not detachment. You are still involved in experience but you are also aware of how and what you do when you are in it.
• Awareness is not thinking. Awareness notices thoughts come up and waits for them to process and then go away.
• It does not require meditation (in fact, some types of meditation - the ones that try to 'empty the mind' just get in the way).
• Awareness means witnessing everything that happens to you, without interfering in the flow of events. You observe how you move, how you walk, how you eat, how you talk.
• Practicing Awareness makes you intensely aware of your living in the moment - now.
• You also become more emotional, not less.
• States of joy, peace and serenity, become more and more 'normal'.
• Worry becomes hard to do.
• As you develop Awareness you cease to live in the past and in the future.
• You become more and more grounded, centred in your body,
• You also become increasingly averse to words like 'God', 'Love', 'Human existence', 'Fate', 'Heaven', etc.
• Suffering becomes more bearable - you are aware that that experience, too, will pass.
• Because the practice of Awareness makes you less intolerant, and less judgmental, you become more and loving and compassionate towards others.
• Once in a while this state of Awareness opens up and expands - and for a split-second you go into a God-like state of consciousness (sorry, I can't really explain it better than that - the whole thing is beyond words). It is utterly blissful.

         

"Do not try to become anything.
            Do not make yourself into anything.
            Do not be a meditator.
            Do not become enlightened.
            When you sit, let it be.
            When you walk, let it be.
            Grasp at nothing.
            Resist nothing.
And if you haven't wept deeply, you haven't even begun to meditate." 

Ajhan Chah
         

A God of passion

Wow! Yesterday's blog - 'Why Religion Doesn't Work For Me' - drew the biggest postbag I have ever received for any of my articles. Some were shocked by the picture, some liked the way I tried to show how religion can be anti-life, others disliked my criticisms of (some) religious people, others appreciated that, while I was not insulting Christ, Buddha or Mohammed, I was drawing attention to the mystery that surrounds what they actually taught. One reader said she would reserve judgment on my 'provocative' comments until she had read what I had to say about my suggested alternative to the religious life saying, ominously, that 'it had better be good...'

So here goes.

The divine would not exist if there were no human beings

Start with the assumption that whatever is holy, sacred or God-like needs human beings to make it so. In other words - we are the channels for the divine. Whatever God is (and I believe she is just energy) she needs human beings to work her magic. So it is human beings that have created great spiritual teachings, works of art, just and compassionate societies, the cultivation of nature, works of art, science, and so on. The divine cannot exist without the human. You could even argue that that is what we humans are for.

So we don't really need to think about God to become divine and we don't need religion for that purpose either.

All we need to do is follow our personal genius and make the most of the gifts we have. Living by the truth, contributing to the community, and nurturing others are also vital if we want to become truly human, and thus divine.

There is no ONE God or one way to God

Next it follows that, if we are to become all that we can be, we need to explore the often contradictory aspects of what it means to be human. That may mean engaging in practices that some religious people dismiss as 'evil' - experimenting with sex, creating wealth, fighting the Pharisees, exercising aggression, being a Good Samaritan, taking mind-expanding drugs (that does not mean misusing them), and making/enjoying art. Sometimes, too, we need to be 'selfish' in pursuing what is right for us when others try to stop us. It was partly for that reason that Buddha, Christ and Mohammed all went into exile for a time.

The body is sacred

The third observation I want to make is that spiritual people are passionate, emotional, often angry people. They work through Bodymind rather than trying to deny it. Many Buddhists, Christians and Muslims are ascetics who claim that God wants us to suppress our desires. I don't agree with that. If you read the sayings of the Buddha, the Gospels and the Koran, they all say that we need to channel the passions, not deny them. Without them we can do nothing god-like.

God is a tease

The last attitude I want to recommend works like this: there is no final perfection or salvation, there is only endless becoming. The divine energy expresses itself through change, surprise, creativity, playfulness and joy. The Bisexual Hindu Goddess Shiva is always shown dancing. S/he also has many arms - two are held in prayer, one conjoins silence, another encourages singing, one points upward (heaven), one downward (hell), and so on (the picture shows a dance to Shiva). The Hindu images of Shiva imply that God-in-Man (or Son of Man if you prefer the Hebrew version) is constantly expressing the dance of life - playfully, comically, teasingly, comically. Knowing that there is no final truth and finding it amusing when people think there is.

Shiva gives us some clues for deciding whether we are living in the divine or not:

• We accept that we are contradictory
• We express all contradictions
• We are playful
• We have a wonderful inner joy
• We know that there is no final truth
• We take nothing really seriously
• We toy with experiences, as does God
• We approach everything we do as a kind of game
• We dance, laugh, cry - often

In my next post I will provide the final - and most important - thing that we have do if we want to become god-like. And that is to practice Awareness.

    "Jesus' ministry was clearly defined, and the alternatives to the illusion and temptations of the desert were spelled out. A choice was made - life abundant, full, and free for all. Make no mistake about it, the day that choice was made, Jesus became suspect. That day in the temple he sealed the fate already prepared for him. How was the world to understand one who rejected an offer of power and control?"

    Joan Campbell

Image of Shiva dancing by sprungli

Why religion doesn't work for me

I have wasted most of my life trying to be religious. Here's what it got me:

Worrying about the life to come rather than the one I have right here.

Despising my body, my emotions, and my mistakes, for being human-all-too-human.

Thinking that going to a temple discharged me from working on myself.

Obsessing that if I prayed or meditated hard enough I would eventually 'get it'.

Giving away my power to priests, psychics and gurus.

Falling in with the judgment that anger, sex, ambition and pleasure are evil.

Thinking that being moral and being spiritual are the same thing.

Wasting time trying to work out what Buddha, Krishna, Christ and Mohammed really meant (if their immediate hearers didn't get it then how can we?).

Ignoring the fact that many religious are smug, elitist, judgmental, intolerant.......

Looking the other way when evil was at work and explaining it away with ideas like 'karma', 'sin', 'God's will', 'heresy', 'holy martyrs'.

Missing the the fact that superstitions are obsessive-compulsive disorders. The anxiety-averting idea that, if you repeat the rosary, the chant, the sacrifice, enough times then you will stave off misfortune and become worthy of salvation.

Excusing the fact that many people acclaimed as divinely inspired are in fact egomaniacs.

Riding over the fact that most psychic predictions and prophecies are either wrong or so vague that they could mean anything.

Trying to be a 'good' person and ending up being a nonentity.

Torturing myself that I never seemed to be any nearer to God.

Next up I will be writing about the alternative spiritual life I recommend. But please don't read it if you are looking for the meaning of life. Seems to me that the religious sickness depends precisely on asking yourself unanswerable questions.

      "Once people find God they cease to be human beings".

       Erich Maria Remarque.

Image By † Jimmy MacDonald †

Good and faithful slaves

On Friday I wrote about how obedience can kill. I should really have used the word 'slavery' as there is nothing wrong with obedience in itself (as people in hospital who broke the Highway code will tell you).

Slavery means doing what you are told without courage, without emotion and without reflection. If you are a slave you have become an automaton.

• Work-slaves stay in jobs they hate
• Timid slaves stay in relationships they have outgrown
• Grown-up slaves do what their parents tell them
• Success slaves bully their children
• Drug slaves do it because they can't imagine a life without it
• Intellectual slaves believe what scientists, lawyers,    politicians, academics and newspaper editors tell them to think
• Fashion slaves want to be one of the crowd
• Murderous slaves do it because they have their orders in writing

Wilhelm Reich - one of the grandfathers of Reverse Therapy - explains how humans become slaves in Listen Little Man. Because they are afraid of their own passion, of life itself. They would rather remain small because it's safer in crowds. But secretly they envy people who have broken free. And when that happens, Reich tells us, slavery can become spiteful, cynical, vindictive.

Now would you rather be a slave or would you rather be Spartacus?

If you want to be Spartacus then take a risk right now! Say it! Do it. Try it!

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we’re liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson

First image by dailyinvention

Murderous obedience

In the 1960s Stanley Milgram was reading about the trial of Adolf Eichmann - the SS Colonel who participated in The Final Solution during World War II. He was struck by the fact that, like many war criminals, Eichmann relied repeatedly on the defence that he was 'only obeying orders' and that he did not have a choice on whether or not to sign the orders that transported Jews to the death camps.

So what, thought Milgram, if Eichmann was telling the truth? That would mean that anyone would do what Eichmann did if they were given an order to do it. Even if that meant sending someone to their death.

So Milgram designed an experiment to test whether that could happen. It turned into the most famous experiment in the entire history of Psychology. The experiment would be banned now - which is why most Psychological experiments nowadays are so boring.

Here's what he set up:

People were recruited from newspaper ads and paid large fees for participating in what they were told was an important scientific experiment on human learning. They were paired up with a 'student' (in fact an actor who pretended to be a poor learner) who was strapped in a chair with (false) electrodes strapped to his arms (see picture below).

The 'teacher' was taken to a room next door and handed over to a 'Psychologist' in a white coat and clip-board who gave them their orders. They were told that the student had to learn a list of words. Each time he got one wrong the teacher was to deliver an electric shock, starting at 15 volts and going all the way up to 450 volts. As each shock was delivered the actor-student would groan, cry, plead, yell, beg for mercy. As his sufferings went on a minority of 'teachers' would question whether it was right to deliver heavier shocks and were given the stock answer - that they had no choice but to keep going.

Before you read on - ask yourself how what percentage of people do you think would go all the way on to to 300 volts - enough to inflict severe pain (at which point the teacher could hear the 'student' pounding on the wall begging them to stop)? 

The actual figure was 100%.  And - still more disturbing - 65% of all people tested went all the way up to 450 volts - enough to kill some people even though the 'student' was unconscious and no longer answering questions.

Meaning that people (that's you and me) are capable of injuring or killing their fellow human beings because they are paid to do so, told to do so and because they think they are doing it all in the cause of 'progress'. Exactly like Eichmann.

Unless you are a Psychopath you will not be indifferent to suffering. You will, in most circumstances, be unwilling to inflict it. That is because you have built-in empathy - the ability to feel other peoples' pain. You also come ready-made with emotions that drive you towards compassion.

The fact that Bodymind connections to our fellow human beings can be over-ridden by blind obedience tells a lot about why we become dysfunctional.

In my next post on Monday I will be writing about how the habit of obedience can make you trapped, unhappy, depressed and ill. How it can damage your work and the relationship you have with yourself and those you love. And how you can reverse that.

First Image By Ed_45

Why releasing anger is better than controlling it

The myth about anger

A while ago the BBC carried an item about the effects of anger on health.

The argument runs that people who control their anger rather than expressing it are healthier.

This is a common myth and I want to explain why it is wrong. And why expressing your anger is actually better for you in the long run, provided you do it in the right way.

Bodymind creates anger for a purpose

The human body is designed to produce anger and it uses a very sophisticated circuitry to do that - running from the thalamus, through the amygdala and then on through the adrenal glands and the sympathetic nervous system. So we know anger must have an important purpose. Dismissing an emotion like that as harmful or 'bad for your health' is just disrespectful.

The purpose of anger is to ensure that you are treated with respect, protected against exploitation, have your wishes taken seriously, or to cue you towards self-defence.

Your righteous anger

Without anger we would be defenceless against attacks on ourselves or the people we love, against exploitation, cruelty and injustice. What keeps Aung San Suu Kyi fighting against the military in Burma? Her desire to keep her father's dreams for Burma alive are important, to be sure. But I suspect that her passion is what keeps her going when others would just give up.

Even Christ was furious when he noticed the wide boys outside the Temple degrading the holy places. All prophets, all heroes, all crusaders against injustice (think Martin Luther King) have possessed that righteous anger. But they also knew how to channel it in the right direction.

Misusing anger

In Reverse Therapy I notice that people who don't do anger well make three common mistakes:

1. They bottle up anger and later on, once the pot is filled to boiling point, they explode in uncontrollable rage (which creates stress and damages your health)
2. They express anger but don't follow up and ensure that they get what they need (for example, you yell at your daughter for not keeping her room tidy but you don't enforce the rule - so it happens all over again).
3. When they express anger they shout, swear, call names, blame, scream and try to make the other person feel as bad as possible.

The reason for these mistakes is simply lack of education in emotional intelligence. We are told as children that anger is 'bad', 'destructive', 'self-indulgent', etc. So we aren't given permission to explore the emotion in more depth. At the same time we watch the adults around us having tantrums and so we conclude that anger must, indeed, be an evil thing.

Anger is a hot emotion

Anger is a 'hot' emotion. Meaning that most people feel it very powerfully in Bodymind, rising up and demanding fast expression. But that doesn't mean your body wants you to go into a rage. What it means instead is that your body is warning you that something deeply important to you or the people you love is at stake and you need to speak up quickly.

Releasing anger

You can use the Reverse Assertiveness process to channel your anger into words that get people listening to you and ensure that you actually get what you want. Instead of just blowing off.

Just as important as using a formula like this is to practice expressing your disatisfaction every day. No matter how trivial your complaint is, make your likes and dislikes known. If you get them out at an early stage then they you can stay calm and you won't get angry. Nor will you explode in rage. Or get stressed. Or unwell.

One more point. Anger can be divine. Especially when you speak up for the defenceless, the innocent, for those who live in hunger, terror, torture and exile.

If you agree with me that Aung San Suu Kyi's cause is just then please sign the petition calling for her release here.

        "It is wise to direct your anger towards problems - not people. To focus your energies on answers - not excuses."

        W. A. Ward.

Jealous? Get over it.

How jealousy works

In my last blog - Suspicious minds - we looked at what jealousy actually is. It's not an emotion but an obsession that's created by ineffective thinking. Now we want to know how to reverse out of it.

Reverse thinking teaches us that the first step is to recognise that your mind is in fact playing tricks on you. It's doing that because it doesn't believe you are worthy of being loved.

It may be that this is your first serious love affair so your personal Headmind doesn't have any experience of love. It thinks that it is too good to last and must be a delusion.

Or maybe your Head thinks that no one could possibly love a geek like you. So it tries to protect you by finding 'evidence' that your partner is unreliable.

Another possibility is that Headmind sees other men/women as more powerful, attractive, confident than you are - so every person who talks to your partner is bound to take him/her away from you.

But the worse thing your jealous head does to you is to make up movies of your partner being ravished by someone else. Those movies can feel so horrific that you assume they must be true.

Reversing out of jealousy

Now, I am assuming that you know, at some level, that your partner is trustworthy. The s/he has told you often enough that s/he is interested only in being with you. That s/he gets exasperated when you keep bringing up your suspicions over and over again. You may even have been told that you need to get a grip or your relationship will soon be over. If that is NOT the case you are probably not jealous but scared because your partner has let you down in the past. If that is so then this advice will not apply to you.

Once you accept that Headmind has got it all wrong then you can use the worry treatment on your jealous thoughts.

When you use that process one of the things you are asked to do is to switch out of Headmind and connect instead to the emotional intelligence of Bodymind. Go into your body and recall a moment when you and your partner were sharing love (it helps to pick an intimate moment when you were both sexed up). Register the emotions you are reliving. Sense them in each part of your body and register how that feels for you. Do this often so that you can get the same state back automatically (an upcoming article will describe how you can do this in more depth).

Each time you catch yourself going into the jealous mind-state and listening to the 'script' that Headmind has prepared for you then you press 'stop' on the head-tape recorder and go back into the state you created in the previous paragraph. Stay there for a moment and then immediately get on with a more worthwhile activity that occupies your full attention. It is vital that you don't give any head-room to jealousy. Once Headmind realises that you are not listening any more it will get bored and give up.

If this doesn't work then there is another technique you can use which utilises Bodymind learning states. I will describe that in my next article.

            'In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.'

            La Rochefoucauld