The Problem of Being Delusional

If we take a moment to truly examine our lives accurately, we will find that nearly all of our worries and stresses are actually unnecessary. In fact, we will discover that compared to most of humanity, we get to experience an incredible quality of life that is filled with both opportunity and leisure. We have abundant resources such as food, clothing, electricity, education, healthcare, and running water in our own home. Most of the world’s population do not have access to these resources that we take for granted. We have an incredible amount of leisure time to pursue activities we enjoy, while most other people in the world are simply trying to survive. Yet with all of these resources, time and opportunity, we suffer with increasing levels of stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, high blood pressure, and high degrees of overall dissatisfaction. We have an incredible amount of technology to make our life easier, yet we find it difficult to relax, to be calm, or find contentment and well-being in our own life. Even with deluxe beds that we can customize to just the proper level of firmness, climate control in our own homes to make our environment as comfortable as possible and a myriad of resources to entertain us, it is difficult to find true comfort and inner peace. In our quest for the good life, we wind up needing whole industries dedicated to reducing our stress and mental suffering – the pharmaceutical industry, the mental health industry, massage and relaxation therapies, as well as a growing healthcare industry that deals with the physical symptoms resulting from our stress and poor coping strategies.

How is this possible? We are intelligent people with education, opportunity, and resources and yet we find it difficult to be content, at ease and present in our own lives. The root of the problem is clearly described by Alan Wallace when he explains that we suffer from a mind that is obsessive, compulsive and delusional. Instead of us directing our attention where we like and responding to life with reflective and healthy choices, our mind constantly is dragging our attention from one thought or feeling to another and, all too often, we are simply reacting rather than responding to life. Our mind is obsessive in the sense that it is constantly producing thoughts. We are unable to stop thinking even for a minute. So even when we try to calm our mind and relax, we notice that the mind continues to produce thought after thought over and over again. It’s one thing to be obsessive, but it is also compulsive. The mind does not merely produce thoughts, it compulsively draws our attention away from what we are doing and directs it to the referent of the thoughts. It tells us what to worry about, what to desire, what to be irritated about, etc. Even when we know we have nothing to worry about, the mind will insist there is! We can tell ourselves, “Oh no, that’s not a problem”, and the mind will say, “Oh yes it is”. We can see the difficulty of having a mind that is obsessively thinking and compulsively directing our attention to the thoughts and the stories it’s creating. Unfortunately, it gets worse, our mind is overwhelmed with delusion. The thoughts and stories, worries and fears the mind is obsessively and compulsively telling us is rarely based in reality. Essentially this is the crux of the problem, we have a very distracted mind and it spends most of its time in a world that doesn’t correspond with reality.

Our mind lives in a world that believes that if we exercise and eat right we will be healthy and live long, if we maintain our car it won’t break down, that if we get just the right job we will have it made, and that if meet the right person, we will live happily ever after and find lasting happiness. While these are admirable goals and a valuable way to participate in life, unfortunately that world does not exist. Because we have such unrealistic expectations we are often ill-prepared for the realities of life.

In truth, life is messy. People get sick even if they exercise and eat healthy, cars break down, relationships are not perfect, they require effort and compromise, and no matter how good they are, at some point they will end. In the real world, fatal diseases are common, jobs come and go, accidents happen, injuries happen, traffic happens, recessions happen, and even the government shuts down from time to time. The amazing thing is that even though we see this every day, for some reason our mind believes that it should not happen to us. There is a whole industry built on the principle of cars breaking down. It is called the automotive repair industry. Yet we are constantly surprised and frustrated when our car breaks down. We see hospitals, medical clinics and cancer centers, but we surprised and often devastated when we, or our loved ones, get sick. This same phenomenon applies to getting stuck in traffic, a flight getting delayed, luggage getting lost, laid off from a job, canceled vacation, loss of a relationship, our children not getting good grades or getting in trouble. We know they happen but still don’t expect them to happen to us, causing a reaction that adds to our suffering. These are just a few examples, but you can see how this phenomenon applies to nearly every facet of our lives.

When we really take a moment to reflect, we will see that nearly all of our mental sufferings such as anger, resentment, jealousy, depression, stress, low self-esteem, etc., have no other source but our own mind. As Venerable Pema Chodron states, “It isn’t the things that happen to us in our lives that make us suffer, it’s how we relate to the things that happen to us that makes us suffer.” Unfortunately, we usually relate to people and events in our life in unrealistic ways. Let’s look at two ways of relating to finding out that our car won’t start:

Delusional and reactive – We think our car should not break down. We become angry, upset or panicked, quickly calling to mind our bad luck and asking why now? Our mind presents us with how terrible this is, possibly looking for who to blame such as our mechanic, our partner or the car company, how inconvenient this is, how much money this could cost and what a bad day this has turned out to be. Eventually, we do make an alternative plan to get where were going and have the car fixed. However, we carry our frustration and perceived bad luck throughout our day, sharing it with our friends.

Realistic and responsive – Understanding that it is natural that cars sometimes don’t start, after a moment of surprise, we accept and assess the situation and move into solution mode. We get a jumpstart or other needed help and make an alternate plan to get where we are going. We then make a plan to get the car fixed. Instead of asking, “Why me?” and thinking of our bad luck, we find that it is more realistic to be grateful that we have a car when so many don’t and a place to go when so many do not. Instead of letting this ruin our day, it reminds us of our resources and friends that can help us.

In both of the above cases, the event is the same but the outcomes and level of suffering are very different based upon the attitude one brings to the situation. It is a very common practice and complete misunderstanding to blame the source of our mental and emotional suffering on other people, events or things. However, the true source is our own mind that lives in an unrealistic world and wants things to be different than they are. When we investigate the root of our sufferings it is inevitable that we will discover at least one of three primary delusional activities at work; our mind is constantly trying to find lasting happiness in things and people that cannot provide it, trying to find permanence in things that are constantly changing, and grasping on to a misperception of self and others.

The good news is that we can tame our unruly mind, cultivate wisdom and learn to cultivate genuine happiness as we live in the real world. We do this by learning to live mindfully.

Mindfulness is much more than present moment awareness, mindfulness includes and facilitates the cultivation of concentration, wisdom, and the ability to make healthy choices that foster genuine happiness and a meaningful life.

The tools of mindfulness empower us to be aware of our thoughts, feelings and the environment with clarity and discernment. It enables us to recognize healthy tendencies from unhealthy tendencies, harmful habits from beneficial habits, delusional grasping from clear understanding, and be able to make choices that are in alignment with our values, healthy, beneficial and meaningful. In doing so, we cultivate inner peace, genuine happiness and a meaningful life.

© 2015 Mindful Life Program Inc

Episode 8 – Mindful Moments in Daily Life

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Can People Change?

By Matthieu Ricard | August 25, 2015 | 0 Comments

Posted on the Greater Good website – www.greatergood.berkeley.edu

In an adaptation from his new book Altruism, Buddhist monk and bestselling author Matthieu Ricard takes on the notion that humans have a fixed nature.  

One day, after a talk I had given on altruism, a person in the audience got up and said in an irritated tone: “What are you hoping for by encouraging us to cultivate altruism? Look at the history of humanity! It’s always the same thing! An uninterrupted succession of wars and suffering. That’s human nature, you can’t change anything about that!”

This essay was adapted from Matthieu Ricard’s new book, <a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316208248/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0316208248&linkCode=as2&tag=gregooscicen-20&linkId=GEMFAPVHF7LQU54Z”><p class=Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World (Little, Brown, 2015).” width=”170″ height=”255″> This essay was adapted from Matthieu Ricard’s new book,Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World (Little, Brown, 2015).

But is this truly the case? We have seen that cultures can evolve. For example, we have gone from regarding torture as an entirely acceptable public spectacle and war as noble and glorious, to tolerating violence less and less, and increasingly regarding war as immoral and barbaric. But can the individual change? And if he can, does this change have an influence on society and on succeeding generations?

True, our character traits change little, so long as we do nothing to improve them. But they are not frozen in place. Our basic traits, which result from the combined contributions of our genetic heritage and the environment in which we grew up, make up only the foundation of our identity. Scientific research in the field of neuroplasticity shows that any form of training leads to a reconfiguring in the brain, on both the functional and structural levels.

Society and its institutions influence and condition individuals, but individuals can in turn make society evolve and change its institutions. As this interaction continues over the course of generations, culture and individuals mutually shape each other.

If we want to encourage a more altruistic society to develop, it is important to evaluate the respective capacities for change of both individuals and society. The scientific discoveries of recent decades show that our genetic heritage, influential as it is, represents only a starting point that predisposes us to showing certain dispositions. This potential—and this is a crucial point—can then come to expression in multiple ways under the influence of our environment and by what we acquire through the efforts we make to train our minds or physical abilities. Thus, it is more appropriate to compare our genetic heritage to an architectural drawing that might be modified as the construction progresses, or else to a musical theme on which a performer improvises.

How the brain and body evolve

The plasticity of the brain plays a large role in our capacity for individual transformation. For a long time, an almost universally accepted dogma in the neuroscience field stated that once formed and structured, the adult brain doesn’t produce any more neurons and changes only through decline with age.

Today we know this doctrine was completely wrong. One of the major discoveries of the last thirty years concerns neuroplasticity, a term that takes into account the fact that the brain changes constantly when an individual is exposed to new situations. The adult brain in fact remains extraordinarily malleable. It has the ability to produce new neurons, to reinforce or diminish the activity of existing neurons, and even to attribute a new function to an area of the brain that usually carries out a completely different function.

There is a second mechanism that allows individuals to change: epigenetics. In order for a gene, which we have inherited from our parents, to be active, it must be “expressed,” that is it must be “transcribed” in the form of a specific protein acting on the organism bearing this gene. But if a gene is not expressed, if it remains “silent,” it’s as if it were absent.

Matthieu Ricard

Venerable Matthieu Ricard

Recent advances in genetics have revealed that environment can considerably modify the expression of genes by a process called epigenetics. This expression of genes can be activated or deactivated under the influence not just of external conditions, but also of our mental states.

Two monozygotic twins, for instance, who have exactly the same genes, can acquire different physiological and mental characteristics if they are separated and exposed to dissimilar living conditions. In scientific terms, one would say they are genetically identical but phenotypically different. Similarly, a caterpillar and a butterfly have exactly the same genes, but they are not expressed in the same way, depending on the times of the insect’s life.

These modifications in the expression of genes are more or less lasting, and in certain cases can even be transmitted from one generation to another, even though there are no changes in the DNA sequence of the genes themselves. These discoveries have truly revolutionized the field of genetics, since hitherto the very notion of transmission of acquired traits was regarded as heresy. The influence of external conditions is thus considerable, and we know today that this influence has repercussions all the way down to our genes.

Could training the mind to cultivate positive emotions lead to epigenetic changes? Studies undertaken at Richard Davidson’s laboratory in Wisconsin, in collaboration with the Spanish geneticist Perla Kaliman, show that within a day, meditating for eight hours on mindfulness, altruistic love, and compassion already induces major epigenetic modifications. We can glimpse here the possibility of an epigenetic transformation of an individual that is due not just to the influence of the environment, but also to a voluntary training in cultivating basic human qualities.

Becoming different beings

It seems that a simultaneous transformation of cultures and individuals is possible. Children who grow up in a culture where altruistic values prevail and where society encourages cooperation will change no only in momentary behavior but also in their general attitude and mental dispositions. They will be different, not just because they will conform to new cultural norms and new rules set by institutions, but because their brains will have beens shaped differently and because their genes will be expressed differently. Thus, a dynamic process of mutual influences will continue over the course of generations.

In the final analysis, it is individuals who put totalitarian regimes in place, and other individuals who overthrow them to establish democracy. It is individuals who have perpetrated genocides when they dehumanized their fellows, and it is other individuals, sometimes the contemporaries of the former, who promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Despite immense progress in the fields of democracy, women’s rights, human rights in general, justice, solidarity, and the eradication of poverty and epidemics, much remains to be done. It would be regrettable to neglect the role of personal transformation in facilitating further changes.

One of the tragedies of our time seems to be considerably underestimating the ability for transformation of the human mind, given that our character traits are perceived as relatively stable. It is not so common for angry people to become patient, tormented people to find inner peace, or pretentious people to become humble. It is undeniable, however, that some individuals do change, and the change that takes place in them shows that it is not at all an impossible thing. Our character traits last as long as we do nothing to improve them and we leave our attitudes and automatisms alone, or else let them be reinforced with time. But is is a mistake to believe they are fixed in place permanently.

 

Adapted from Altruism. Copyright ©2015 by Matthieu Ricard. Translation copyright ©2015 by Little, Brown and Company.

Five Things Pixar’s “Inside Out” Teaches Us About Emotions

Posted on www.mindful.org by

Inside Out revolves around the life an 11-year old girl named Riley, who is moving across the country with her family. At such an impressionable age, a move is a huge transition, and she experiences an outpour of emotions as she leaves her home, friends, and hockey league behind. Enter the main characters, Riley’s feelings: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust, who provide a glimpse into the workings of Riley’s mind as she navigates this life-changing experience.

From the moment it started, I couldn’t contain my excitement. The nerd in me was blown away by the extraordinary way in which many of the movie’s messages “measured up” to reality from a neuro-scientific perspective. For example, the way a day full of short-term/working memories is then consolidated during sleep.

While the film gave up some scientific integrity for the sake of storytelling, its poetic license didn’t drive too far away from the reality that we are, essentially, made up of personality traits that wax and wane during different points in our life.

Beyond the intricate science of it all, what Inside Out did do so well was to provide the empowering message that we should learn how to understand, connect to, and accept our feelings and memories in a way that is conducive to thriving.

Five ways Inside Out taught us about the importance of emotions:

1. All of our emotions exist for a purpose

Emotions are neither inherently good or bad, and to think of them in such dichotomous terms is to do yourself a disservice. Every emotion tells us something about our inner experience that might be informing our outer experience.

In fact, Rumi, the Sufi poet, waxed poetic in “The Guest House” a long time ago about how we should treat every emotion as a visitor, without looking to get rid of any of them, and instead work to understand their message and purpose.

What Rumi alluded to in his writing was also recently confirmed by research that indicates that well-being is actually predicated on having a wider range of emotions. The more you can feel—in all of feeling’s iterations—the better off you are.

2. To have emotions is to have a compass

At one point in the film, Joy tries to keep Sadness away from Riley. Although she felt other emotions, the inability to feel sadness, coupled with her mother’s request for Riley to stay happy, ultimately lead to a cold and numb existence. This state only generated poor judgment and unhealthy choices. It wasn’t until she felt sadness that Riley was able to see more clearly and reach out for support. Acknowledging and understanding emotions is much healthier, productive, and adaptive than ignoring their importance.

3. Our realities and memories are filtered through our emotional lens

Just like our present reality is seen through the framework of our past experience, the memories we look back on are colored by our present-moment experience. In Riley’s case, she recalled a championship hockey game several different times during the movie. At one point, she remembers missing the winning shot and feeling sad about it. At another point, she literally remembers the same moment, but this time, she recalls smiling as she is championed by her teammates who pick her up onto their shoulders to let her know how valuable she is to the team. Same memory, the only difference being that it was recalled through a sad lens, and then through a joyful lens.

This is a very powerful idea. What we really “need” to remember is that our memories are a part of our personal narrative, and that in many ways, we construct the narrative we believe. Because we create the narrative, we can change our story at any time. We can’t delete certain paragraphs that contain with negative facts and daunting realities. We can’t cut out chapters that we would rather not have had—they will always be there, and that’s okay. Research suggests that the actual experiences we have are less impactful than the story we tell ourselves about them.

4. Having the language to talk about emotions is empowering

Probably the most remarkable part of the movie is its existence as a film that focuses on emotions. As long as more than a modicum of scientific integrity exists, what’s important is that an illustration of the concept of emotion can now impact the dialogue we have with our children.

If children learn earlier on to embrace the way they feel, and that it’s crucial to feel all of their emotions, we can hope to see more adjusted adolescents and adults. Really, though, animation aside, this movie’s target audience is feasibly all of humanity. Why? Because to have the language to talk about our emotions, in all of their iterations, is to be empowered with an ability to learn from them, to respond to them with the utmost of compassion, and approach them with less judgment.

5. Feeling our emotions is a universal human experience

Pixar knew what it was doing when it used 5 scientifically validated universal emotions, stemming from Dr. Paul Eckman’s work (the 6th universal emotion is surprise). Through Eckman’s research, he showed that certain emotions are felt and expressed through universal facial expressions across cultures around the world. And so, the movie reminds us of our intrinsic humanity, how similar we all actually are despite our differences.

This is a very powerful idea, especially in the wake of discriminations based on skin color and/or gender/sexual identity. At the end of the day, no matter who you are, you experience the capacity for the same range of emotions. Therefore, if we can realize that we are all just fighting our own hard battles, we might experience this world with more compassion and less judgment.

This post is adapted from BrainCurves.