Reverse Thinking

Escape from personal misery

This is the follow up article to Go mad with Dr Johnson. If you haven't read that one yet then best to read it here before returning to this page.

The core problem with Johnson was that he was dominated by his ego. I have written quite a bit about the ego before on this blog. The fundamental problem with the ego is that it is based on a sense that we are lacking in something (love, intelligence, security, success, approval, etc). So the ego is always driving us on to prove ourselves in some way - a never-ending search that is exhausting because the ego is never satisfied. The problem is compounded by the delusion that the ego - with its habitual thoughts, demands, duties, and obligations; its isolation and loneliness; its conviction that it alone knows the 'truth' - is the Self. But the ego is not who you are. You are the spirit that lives through Bodymind and is grounded in the now. Your ego was just something you set up on the rebound from other people.

In Johnson's case his ego was dominated by three ideas:

That he was a freak (from childhood he was hideously disfigured by facial scars and most likely he also had Tourette's syndrome). 

That he was an outcast (he was forced to leave Oxford University due to poverty)

That he had to be wiser than everybody else.

The result was that he spent his life secretly loathing himself and using his brilliant mind to dominate other people. But the net result was that he grew more and more lonely, more and more self-judgmental, and more and more depressed.

In Reverse Therapy I work every day with people who are trapped in personal misery. Sometimes that unhappiness is linked to external events: death, separation, illness, redundancy, abuse, conflict, etc. Even so, I try to teach my clients that you can remain positive, self-nurturing, outgoing and self-accepting even while you are dealing with adversity. Not to mention grounded, working with emotional intelligence, and striving to live in the now.

In my view the troubles of life are not the cause of personal misery. That is shown by the fact that many people have come through terrible circumstances but remain cheerful, optimistic and an inspiration to others (think Nelson Mandela).

The main cause of personal suffering is that we are trapped in the ego. If this is so then the solution is to escape from the ego. I have already described how people can achieve this in a previous article - Downsizing the ego but I will add a few more points to what I wrote there:

Try to see life as a game which you play for the pleasure of doing so, not to prove anything to others.

Don't take yourself too seriously. Laugh at yourself, often.

Whatever your bananas are - do the opposite.

Don't dwell on past experiences.

Keep your focus on other people, not on yourself.

Experiment with new personalities. Don't settle for one way of being.

Always tell the truth. Only the ego lies.

Nurture your Personal Genius - it is the antidote for small-mindedness.

Practice Awareness - always.

Go mad with Dr Johnson

Driving past his home town two weeks ago I was reminded of the article I was going to write on Dr Johnson (who was born in Lichfield 300 years ago last month) but put off. I venerate the man but didn't know what to say about him, without sounding disrespectful.

The reason I didn't want to write about Johnson was that he was an extremely morbid person. In fact he stands for everything I object to about Western culture: academic thinking and writing, traditional religion, Intellectualism, dogmatism, guilt, self-judgment, worries about the after-life, and despair. Johnson was probably insane and yet he is a figure whom the English consider a model of practical common-sense, wisdom and sanity!

My purpose here is to show up why Johnson was insane and what lessons we should draw from that.

Here are samples of his madness:

1. His appearance frightened people. He was seriously overweight with bad facial scars, talked to himself and  was constantly twitching, muttering and suddenly shouting out loud. It's probable that he had Tourette's syndrome.

2. He was an obssessive-compulsive. Meaning he walked along the street counting the paving stones. If he made a mistake he had to go back and do it all over again. On one occasion he was seen bouncing over a door-step like a kangaroo so as not to have to step over it the wrong way.

3. He had at least two nervous breakdowns - one at age 21 and the other at age 55. During the 2nd breakdown he was discovered crawling along the floor after a priest begging to be given back his sanity.

4. He was plagued by major depressions throughout his life, in which he imagined that he was damned and cast into hell-fire for all eternity.

5. His marriage - to a widow twenty years older than himself - was a failure. Partly due to the fact that he spent all her money and he was himself almost unemployable, earning very little money, she became an alcoholic and they lived apart.  After her death he again became morbidly depressed.

6. He was terrified of being left alone. It was for that reason he would talk until dawn with people he had just met rather than go home. That's one reason why the conversations recorded by Boswell take place at night.

7. His mood swings were extreme to say the least. In the course of one evening he might get melancholy and withdrawn, then jolly, then, verbally assault a fellow guest, then obsessional, then depressed.

8. He was plagued by fantasies of sado-masochism, in which he was soundly whipped by one of his closest female friends. This friend (Esther Thrale) was asked to keep handcuffs, chains and other 'restraints' in her home in a locked drawer should he require  'chastisement'.

For the sake of balance it could be mentioned that he wrote some good poems, a few good essays, a half-good novel and some witty biographies of the English poets. He was also that first to produce a dictionary of English and was himself the subject of the greatest biography in the English language (written by James Boswell - a friend who was both a sex addict and an alcoholic whom Johnson -characteristically - both loved and despised).

In the next article I will explain what drove Johnson insane and what people with similar problems can do about it,

What you can learn from Gurdjieff

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff died on the 29th October 1949 in the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. Although I have little respect for Gurus (as, neither, did the man himself) and would have found Gurdjieff repellent had I actually met him, he changed my life.

I would not be alive now had I not accidentally discovered Gurdjieff's teachings. When I was going through a bad, depressed, suicidal patch in my 20s, I came across one of Maurice Nicol's Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky in a bookstore on the Charing Cross Road. In there, I read that all negative states were delusions. A light-bulb went off in my head. Could I actually be creating my own misery rather than being a victim of life itself?

I read on further. Not only were negative ideas fantasies but they were based on wrong work of the intellect. That the correct way out was to restore right work of the mind, the heart, the body, and the sexual instinct. That the way out from despair was to repair the intelligences in those centres and to do work on oneself in order to become a complete, fully-functioning, human being using each of those centres. That only the ego, and its relentless self-pity, could possibly get in the  way.

30 years later I am struck by just how much I had borrowed from Gurdjieff when I developed the ideas that led to Reverse Therapy. Here are a few examples:

1. That personal growth relies on hard work and humility.

2. Headmind, or the Intellect - is not necessarily the most important organ you possess. Your personal genius and your passion is equally important.

3. Headmind chatter - gossip, internal self-talk, journalism, academic writing, television - is the enemy of self-development.

4. It's important for your health to separately pursue satisfaction for all your vital centres - emotional, physical, sexual and intellectual, on an equal basis.

5. If you rely too much on one centre you can will experience disatisfaction according to the centre you are fixated on: intellect (anxiety), emotion (sentimentality), sex (lust), or body (greed).

6. Most human beings are slaves of conditioning - out-of-date customs, insincerity, empty rituals, received ideas - which keep them asleep.

7. The task that God (Gurdjieff refers to him as 'His Endlessness') sets us is to wake up and serve his purpose: to wake up other people and live a more intensive life.

8. That the word Sin (in ancient Greek) means merely 'missing the point'. No human being is born evil in the Christian sense. Our only 'sin' is to fall asleep again.

9. All living creatures are 'idiots' which (in Greek) means they try to go their own way regardless of others. Even God, in this sense, is an idiot. Realising that you, too, are an idiot, provides humor as well as compassion for others.

10. The purpose of life is self-development to the point at which you can appreciate God's purpose. Which is love. But love is not a matter or words or fine feelings. It relates to empathy - your deep appreciation of the idiot who exists beside you. And who needs your appreciation (and humor) as much as you do hers.

Think like Charlie Chaplin

I have never been that thrilled by Charlie Chaplin. I get that lots of people admire his films but the little tramp and his amazing adventures leave me cold.

But here are some absolutely brilliant thoughts on life written by the man himself, apparently for his 70th birthday celebrations in 1959.

Thanks to Stephan Langguth for sending this to me.

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY“.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody as I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT“.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it “MATURITY“.

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at the exactly right moment, so I could be calm. Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE“.

As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness; things I love to do and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it “SIMPLICITY“.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health - food, people, things, situations, and everything the drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude egoism. Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF“.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since I have been wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “MODESTY“.

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worry about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILMENT“.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But As I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART“.

We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born. Today I know THAT IS “LIFE“!

Image by mansionwb

12 ways to get rid of an addiction

In my last post - What Everybody ought to know about Addictions - I explained how addictions work. In this article I am going to describe how you can get rid of your addictions (if you really want to).

1. Break your slavery to the Dragon.

The Dragon is a creature who works like an Internal Control Freak. It tells you when to use, how to use, where to use, who to use with and why you should never stop. Some Addictions can seem overwhelming but they are only so because we secretly feed them our own power. Like I said in the last article, Attention is your Dragon's fertiliser; while Inattention is its weedkiller.

The simplest way out of an Addiction is to live as if you never had one (this is easier than you might think so long as you ignore the Inner Voice - see below).

2. Reduce the power of the Inner Voice

The Dragon (i.e. your Addiction) works through a seductive Inner Voice that appears to know all the answers. Many people who hear the advice given in No. 1. (above) say things like 'I wish I knew how!' or 'I wish it were that easy!' The reason they find addictions difficult to break is due to the power of the Addictive Voice. Here are some ways to break free from it:

a) Doing something that is the polar opposite of the craving the Inner Voice counsels you to obey

I have described this technique before. You can find it here.

b) Change the Inner Voice over to the Voice of an Idiot.

Listen to the Voice but this time use the accents and tone of someone you consider to be an Idiot. I described how to do this in a previous article on expelling worries.

c) Associate the Voice with someone (or something) very boring

There are endless ways in which you can mess around with the Addictive Voice. Using a voice that puts you to sleep has worked for quite a few of my clients.

3 Reduce opportunities for gratification

Like I said in No. 1 (above) the Dragon feeds on attention. The less you go along with the craving the weaker it gets. Here are some ways to do that:

a) Increase the amount of time between one indulgence and the next. If you consume every day then make it every other day. If you consume every hour then make it every other hour. If you drink alchohol continuously (for example) then have a soft drink between each consumption.

b) Delay consumption. For example, if you think you need a gamble, then go for a walk/talk to a good friend/carry on working for the next 15 minutes or so (you can do this again and again and again...).

c) Avoid situations where temptation could kick in.

Most addictions are tediously predictable. They involve the same substances, in the same quantities, with the same people, in the same places, at the same time of day. If you avoid those places, people and times then you are less likely to use. Period.

d) Stay busy. 

Put it the other way around: if you have time to indulge then you are not busy enough. Or maybe you haven't found something better to do (see No. 7 - below).

4 Go to the extreme.

This is the one I would recommend least. One of the few wrong statements William Blake ever made was that 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." It doesn't. The road of excess leads to degradation. But it has become something of a truism that drug addicts and alcholics only turn around and give up when they reach the gutter and there is something in that. But do you need to lose your health, your job, your money, your relationship and your self-respect before you make that decision?

5 Associate gratification with something disgusting.

This is a less dangerous version of No. 4 and is based on reconditioning. For example, a teenager can give up drinking after one bad hangover; someone who is sexually promiscuous can reform quickly after getting a dose of the clap.

But you don't have to go in for misfortunes in order to reform. Instead, dwell insistently on the way you look to others when you self-indulge. Moments when you were degrading, juvenile, bloated, repulsive, ill, contemptible, etc. Or real-life experiences: in jail, in the gutter, in bed with someone you didn't want to be with, getting fired, etc.

6. Rediscover your passion.

In a famous quote Gregory Bateson, the Anthropologist, once said:

'The alcoholic's problem is not alchohol but sobriety.'

What he was referring to was a variation on my theme that people who become addicts are frequently bored. They get bored because they have too much time on their hands. And they have too much time on their hands because they have given up on their Personal Genius. Meaning they aren't doing enough to engage their energy, their passion, their mission in life.

In the long run addictions are a substitute for the life you were meant to live. 

Don't let it happen to you.

What everybody ought to know about Addictions

This is the first in two articles about Addictions. The next one - 10 ways to remove Addictions - will appear next week.

In order to eliminate an Addiction you first need to understand how it works. When you see how an Addiction controls you then you are in a position to exercise Awareness over it. From that position you can start to sabotage it.

Human beings can get addicted to almost anything: sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, alcohol, food, weight loss, gambling, therapy, attention-seeking, shopping, stealing, wrist-slashing, surgery (think Michael Jackson), relationships and the internet. Most of what follows applies to Alcohol addiction but most of my observations equally well apply to other bananas.

The first thing to realise is that Addictions are actually obsessions. Obsessions work through tunnel vision, making the problem more important than it actually is. The key to breaking addictions is to break out of the inertia, habit and routine that comes with the addiction and connect back to Bodymind and the wider world.

Addictions are created and maintained in Headmind through a dominating Inner Voice. This Inner Control Freak can be incredibly powerful as well as seductive. It says things like:

'Go on. You deserve it...'

'Just the one won't harm you...'

'No one will know...'

'The alternative is just too boring...'

'You can't make it through the night without a drink...'

'It's no use resisting you know you're going to have one...'

The more you listen to the voice and follow its commands the stronger it gets. I call this 'feeding the dragon'. The Dragon started off as a worm but grew and grew until it had you in its tentacles. Attention is its fertiliser. Disobeying it (or laughing at it/ignoring it) is its weedkiller.

If you do allow the Dragon to get a hold on you then your original liking will first turn into a habit. I have worked with many addicts over the past 20 years and it's just weird how predictable they are. They will use the same beverages, in the same quantities, with the same people, at the same places, at the same times, every day of their lives. But it is easy to break a habit: provided you have something better to replace it with (see next article).

Once a habit turns into an Addiction (meaning that the Dragon has started to control you instead of you controlling it) at that point the problem becomes part of your Personality. Meaning that you start to define yourself as a person who is a slave to something else. This process is helped along by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 'experts' who use labels like 'Alcoholic', 'Drug Addict', 'Sex Addict', 'Kleptomaniac', 'Bulimic', 'Narcissist', 'Wacko Jacko', etc. Readers with long memories may recall my blog article on the Danger of Words in which I explained how labels can induce pathology and keep you in a bad place you no longer wish to be in. Drop the labels and change your personality and you will be free again.

The next thing to understand about an Addiction is that it's not all in the mind. That there is a biological basis for the craving which is relatively easy to understand. So here goes.

When Bodymind notices that you are drinking in large quantities on a regular basis it also notices that the alcohol is depleting the brain of GABA - a neurotransmitter which regulates alertness. And when that happens it seeks to compensate by increasing GABA production. The net result will leave you feeling restless, agitated and uncomfortable. And Headmind - via your Inner Dragon - will interpret that problem as a cue for another drink....which means that, once again, you are feeding that Inner Dragon.

After a while even Headmind starts to realise that the Addiction is creating fresh problems. Like social exclusion, failed relationships, unemployment, crime, financial disaster, sexually transmitted disease, and persistent unhappiness. So it will start to worry about what happens next. But worry won't solve anything - it just confirms your slavery. But more on that in my next article.

30 annoying thoughts

The universe is too complicated to make final conclusions possible

Self-pity is the worst sin

Your perceptions are based on your biography

The illusion of free will is based on vanity

You are only innocent when you live in the now

Neither Buddha or Christ believed in Religion

Serial killers are extremely boring people

Much of what happens to you is down to chance

Anger and disgust protect you

Alienation produces psychotics, revolutionaries and fundamentalists

Evil people don't understand what they do

Life is so simple that a child of five could get it

Who and what you are is reflected in your behavior

Sex differences are bigger than we imagine

Most people would rather be right than happy

The Self is just a label - perhaps no more than your name

History reveals no progress at all

Moralising is for the small-minded

Democracy is tyrannical

Chemicals have a bigger influence on people than many of us realise

Mind doesn't exist in the Head - it's something you were born into

Your past is a made-up story

Medical science prolongs life but doesn't improve it

Religion is for people who like happy endings

There is something divine in you but its outside your control

Your inner self is genetically coded

Madness is another word for defeat

'Success' and 'failure' are a matter of dates, places and opinions

Your body knows more about you than you do

Your life journey is not determined. If it were you would have been told what to do and where to go.

Image by Tumitu Design

The secret of making great movies II

I received a great response to my last article - The secret of making great movies - with many of you recommending movies and sharing experiences. Thanks to all of you who wrote in.

This response is from my friend Stephan Langguth who is also a German film director, as well as a practitioner of Reverse Therapy. If offers a professional viewpoint as well as making some great observations about emotions and film-making.

Film making can appeal to Headmind as it imagines that there is a place it can control others. "I project my ideas onto the big screen and everyone in the audience will cry. And I sit in the little projection booth laughing." That's the Ego fantasy.

Then one begins to realize that nothing involves viewers unless there is some truly alive thing in everything that happens on set while the camera is recording.

Although the storyboard needs to make some sort of sense in order to maintain the viewer's interest, Headmind does not really enjoy powerful, gripping, intense experiences because then its own importance gets diminished. People forget who they are if they are engrossed in a movie and that means they forget their own cherished obsessions and bananas. So Headmind really wants to put an end to cinematic experiences as soon as possible.

Headmind will often try to reassert its dominance after the movie is over. It does this with unfair comparisons ("not as good as this or that"), nit-picking details ("the director could have done that better") or dismissing emotion ("that 'sentimental' scene spoilt it for me").

So what makes a movie move us?

All the aspects you mention in your first article move the audience only if they are felt in Bodymind by the film-makers while they are making the film. That includes writers, directors and actors as well as the camera operators, film editors and sound producers.

For example, a red interior sometimes feels right yet at other times feels wrong. A close-up sometimes works and sometimes does not work. Gifted film-makers use Bodymind to lead them through the very subtle decisions necessary. These decisions are far too complex for Headmind to make.

One of the most important factors in a great movie is to have actors who stop 'acting' and instead express the character from within. That is because one major part of the cinematic experience is the empathy the audience feels as the mirror neurons in the brain pick up the emotional state of the character.

If the actor is in a false state, just acting out what they assume the character should look like, then the movie will become lifeless, cliched, 'hammy'.

Headmind focused directors like to think they can control the audience with false performances. They end up doing daytime TV ads! I've been on such shoots. If the director talks to the actors at all it mostly consists of a repetitive command like "Look happy, happy happy..." or "act confused now...".

In contrast if the actor forgets herself in favor of being (the character), a great and deeply involving performance becomes possible. This "being" is nothing else than fully connecting to Bodymind. And once the actor is in Bodymind viewers connect to their own Bodymind (an additional benefit for this is that they can spend the next couple of hours without being pestered by their internal control freak).

Makes me feel like getting my camera out again...

Stephan Langguth

The secret of making great movies

My good friend James Carter (who is himself an up-and-coming feature film editor), has been studying Reverse Therapy and tells me that he has identified an important fact about classic movies. And that is that they work on two different levels - the intellectual (or Headmind) level and the emotional/ sensory (Bodymind) level.

He cites Blade Runner as a great movie that many viewers did not understand when it first came out (it bombed at the box office), partly because the plot is complex but, more importantly because each shot seeks to evoke an emotion in us. For that reason the narrative can be hard to follow. Yet it is a film of great, strange, tragic, power. Who can forget the scene in which the android, Rachel, bursts into tears when she discovers that she is in fact a robot and that her memories of a happy childhood are implants. Or the near final scene (above) in which the android played by Rutger Hauer says goodbye to life:

"I've...seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...Time to die."

James tells me that talented film-makers use a variety of means to convey emotion:

• Close-up shots of the Actors
• The intonation of words
• Landscape and scenery
• Music
• Lighting, shade, color

Looking through lists of 100 best movies it is hard to disagree with James' conclusions. To take some random examples:

• Casablanca. Bogart sitting alone after midnight in his night club mourning over what might have been with Ingrid Bergman and telling Sam to play 'As Time Goes By' again.
• Godfather II. The close up of Michael Corleone's face when he realises that his own brother tried to have him killed. In the background are the still waters of Lake Tahoe.
• On the Waterfront. Marlon Brando's battered face as they ride through a bleak Brooklyn landscape and he tells his corrupt brother that he too 'could have been a contender'. The film is shot in a grainy black-white-and grey.

Interestingly, it seems that a movie can be great even if it only seems to works on the emotional level. Quite a few Spielberg movies fall into this category (example: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial), as does Blade Runner itself. But its hard to think of a great movie that only works on an intellectual level (ultra-boring art-house movies fit here).

What do you think?

Do you have a favorite movie that works on both levels?

Can you name a scene from that movie that does just that?

The secret of personal genius

For those who have been following my articles on Genius and who are interested in finding out more about their own Personal Genius, and how it works, then I am running a 1-day seminar about this in London on October 31st.

The idea is to help you identify and act upon the dictates of this most mysterious of guardians.

The seminar is open to all and places are limited to 20.

If you would like to see the brochure then you can Download BrochurePersonalGenius here.

Hope to see you there. John.

Image of Mozart by Samu73