Levels as Energies or Textures

This whole tantra thing has really caught on in my thinking. It brings up the possibility of living with each circumstance either well in some way or not so well. I've thought of that (worse to better) fairly often in relationship to competence with the attentional abilities at each level, but it also fits for our experience of the "energy" of each level. Generally, as we move upwards through the stages, the energies or textures have a subtler feel (with inspiration being somewhat unique because it pulls together the lower levels quite convincingly--the clarity aspect of that level is obviously subtle, though).

Basically, mindfulness allows one to regularly consider where it is one is acting "from". For instance, if I'm acting from the first level of Play/Creativity, there are the positive types of feelings or experience--curiosity, playfulness, exuberance, comfort, etc.--and also the more negative feelings or experiences of feeling threatened or having my comfort attacked. This is less "subtle" than Purpose partially because this energy feels like it is everything, "I'll never feel differently," felt excitedly or discomforted.

At the level of Purpose, we can feel confident, competent, and motivated or we can feel aggressive/dominant, ashamed, or helpless. At this level, we begin identifying purposes with roles. At the level of Understanding, we can begin to become comfortable with not knowing, we really consider. On the other hand, we can keep the world at an intellectual distance or we can roll our dominance-drive into trying to know everything. The feeling of compulsion behind this knowing is different than an open and potentially playful curiosity.

The point with all of this is that we can eventually get a "sense" for which energy/energies we are feeling at the moment and try to "satisfy" them. This follows a very basic principle of motivation. It goes something like: no action potential can remain in potentia or as potential. In other words, when we have a certain type of energy, it will be expressed. (If you smoke the crack, you will feel amped!) We don't always choose what level or texture of energy we are experiencing, but we can affect the expression. While I'm not a big fan of chakra language because it tends to be too metaphorical or metaphysical for my taste, there is definitely something to this description of textures and our ability to notice and work with these textures.

I believe that one of the basic points of tantra and mahamudra is that lower energies, with the right technology and situation, can be invested in moving "up the scale" so to speak. The companion point is that each texture is just fine, wonderful, self-redeeming if you will. That is not to say that we should all be big, selfish babies or toddling tyrants, but that I can recognize the texture of feeling threatened to be the opposite and companion to feeling curious. The situation hasn't changed in the least, but I can affect whether I want to respond to the situation by feeling curious or by feeling threatened (like one is the yin to the other's yang). Certain types of training affect my ability to choose how to respond in different types of situations, depending on what sorts of instincts, emotional reactivity, and conceptual biases are triggered.

In my personal understanding, it makes more sense to me to think in terms of the fight/flight/freeze response (for example) in the brain rather than thinking and talking in terms of chakras, but one way or another, we end up with different textures of action potential. That action potential is basically human--we can all freak out, get angry, laugh, etc. How we respond with that potential, how we express it, is what we can improve with time. As we physically and socially mature, our brains and sometimes our social circles support that improvement.

We can, then, develop a recognition of the various qualities or textures of action potentials (energies) and decide which ways we want to respond. Depending on particular aspirations and weaknesses, different types of training are called for. Depending on different types of action potentials, different attempts to improve the situation may be either bound to fail or likely to succeed.

The same holds true for recognizing the steps in the process of paying attention and feeling motivated in that, if we recognize the steps involved, we can see which ones are lacking or incomplete. Of course, if we have an idea of progress, we can then fill in the blanks to the best of our ability. By looking at situations from two different angles (qualities or textures as well as the process of deploying attention and motivation), we can gain a certain degree of perspective. In other words, when I can't see how it works from one angle, I can usually see something from the other angle. The perspective that we develop in this manner is more analogous to pragmatic wisdom as opposed to the equanimity and ability to observe gained by mindfulness practice. While mindfulness and pragmatic wisdom support each other, some people will feel more of a preference for practicing one or the other. The world is our oyster.

Continuation

Continuation is an interesting stage in its own right, but it may have to be addressed in relationship to changes that are either intentional or unintentional. It seems that continuation is a good point to bring in the interaction between individuals and groups, institutions and bureaucracy, communications and expectations. Big subject. (To be continued.)

Change

Change is unavoidable. Change is part of life. We can't avoid actual change. But the stage of change is somewhat of a luxury and a strength. Alligators don't really change. Sharks and alligators have survived for a very long time because they are efficient at living. They have basically one method and it works. In comparison, dogs can change some--they have a rudimentary ability to change. Viruses can change quickly, but this is not considered, intentional change, so it is different than what we do as humans. We have the luxury and strength of making intentional, creative, considered changes.

Very few people are actually interested in random changes. Sometimes we're so bored that it seems any change would be better than a continuation of the status quo. That's what we think because we aren't really considering changes such as getting gonorrhea, breaking my neck, having a retina or two detach--changes that affect people every day. The point is simple: people want progress. So when I talk about the stage of change, I'm talking about trying for progress.

As I've outlined the process, there are a few spots that people are particularly poor at changing in a positive way that supports a feeling of healthy continuity. Each of us is good at certain ways of changing, but we all have a great deal of unfulfilled potential. As a group, we have common blind spots. The stage of change involves recognizing those blind spots and addressing them. This is why I've said that you can't avoid your way into happiness. Happiness isn't something we can usually get by trying to be happy, but it is something we can improve by looking for progress and creating progress. In fact, it is amazing what hardships people will willingly put up with if they believe those hardships are faced in the service of worthy progress.

The single biggest change that I believe could improve our global culture is an increase in equanimity. But people rarely wake up with the thought, "I hope to be more equanimous today." For those that do, they often also have the feeling of, "I should be more equanimous today." That feeling of should, which goes along with the judgment and feeling that things are not good enough, does not fit with acceptance and equanimity. In other words, it doesn't work to tell myself or others, "We should encourage equanimity; we'll be better for it."

But everyone wants to feel inspired. Many of us feel, "I should feel inspired in this life." And I think there is some truth to that feeling. I think it is our birthright as humans to feel and enact that drive towards living inspired lives. To relate this to the stages I've just outlined, that means we want to change in the direction of being more inspired by what we do. Progress is progress towards inspiration (and perhaps beyond). Now, whether or not we agree on the large-scale importance of equanimity, I have yet to meet someone who wants to be uninspired. Equanimity by itself, then, is not the goal. But equanimity is one of the tools that helps us to achieve the goal.

In order to achieve this goal, it doesn't work to simply win the lottery. Inspiration that only happens to passive people tends not to last. In order to "own" a sense of resilient inspiration, we have to 1) work for it, and 2) deserve it. We work towards it by developing emotional resilience and applying equanimity training in the service of progress. We deserve it by pursuing it ethically.

All that may sound somewhat circular, but I'll point out the major blind spots in the process. The first major blind spot is not recognizing priming and change as unique stages with unique functions. When we don't work with these stages, we try to force (rush) change or we wait for it. The solution to this problem is to learn about these stages, their functions, and to practice being aware of when they're mostly absent or ignored in our lives.

The second major blind spot lies in the interaction between engagement and affirmation. When we see and experience these stages as too far from one another or as conflicting, we lack a feeling of continuity and act as if there is simply no way to address problems which have that feeling of drive or lack of drive. The solution here is more complex and depends upon how exactly one experiences this problem. Essentially, though, struggling here means we need to integrate the two types of processing, top-down and bottom-up.

The third major blind spot lies in our ignorance concerning how to recognize and deal with shock and overwhelm. Again, there is no solution I can sum up in a sentence or two, but we already have much information and wisdom concerning this problem. Research and continued attention will help us progress in this area.

The fourth major problem lies in the stage of affirmation: ambiguity. Ambiguity is like the opposite of equanimity, like retarded equanimity. Ambiguity occurs when we want to avoid something unpleasant that we simply must do, when we are confused and do not want to explore further in order to move beyond confusion, and when the situation is simply too complex to gain any solid grip on. The solutions, then, are to do what needs to be done, explore in order to understand and overcome, or train in equanimity. Mindfulness training makes a significant difference in all these solutions. When facing procrastination, holding oneself accountable and facing what we want to avoid must be included. This involves some degree of intelligence and courage.

As individuals, we can face these challenges by developing the major attentional abilities I have outlined elsewhere: responsiveness, concentration, intentional relaxation, mindful appreciation, inspiration, harmony, and serenity. As a species and global village, the solutions are similar, but at a cultural level rather than a personal/personality level. It is generally recognized that we humans are the greatest danger facing humanity right now. Dangers are engaging, enlivening, redeeming when we do not support avoidance of our potential--when we engage, live, redeem. The most significant human characteristic is the ability to change; progress occurs when we turn difficulty into inspiration.

Engagement and Affirmation

The order or primacy of these two steps determines which of the two processes is dominant in a given situation. While we feel these two processes to be different, they are not absolutely distinct. That's why I talk about which is primary or dominant rather than speaking as if they are completely separate.

Engagement

Engagement is a stage with characteristic feelings. If motivation is a car, engagement is like the engine--it's where the feeling of power comes from. At times, we feel that we are in control of where that power is pushing, but at other times we feel we are at the mercy of this power. This power can feel like reasonable pride or it can push into hubris. This can be a feeling of strength and balance in one's body and can also feed into dominance and oppression. It can feel like a healthy attraction or an obsession. It is the feeling of a driving force.

When something becomes noticeable enough to us as relevant to me, we engage it. We have instinctual and emotional reactions that engage, and we also are able to engage with our thinking and a sense of contemplation in many instances. While we sometimes feel like we are looking for whatever, that we are active in going out and engaging, it also happens that we might feel that particular things engage us. If you're out for a walk and some big dog rushes at you, you will probably feel that it is engaging you. By walking near it's territory, you will be engaging its instinctual or trained reactions. However you see it, though, you will soon begin to feel like you must react to that dog actively--you will engage this particular situation. (Much involving traumatic responses comes from a feeling of passivity in this brief attentional moment. Compulsions and habitual emotional reactions are also found here.) Whether you respond to that dog by screaming, fighting, running, whatever, this type of situation has energy. That energy is drive or "engagement".

Affirmation

Affirmation is the point where we decide that our methods of engagement and the situation are good enough or lacking. This stage of the attentional process can include acceptance or affirmation (good enough to excellent), ambiguity (don't know), negation (not good enough), and overwhelm (aaaaahhh!) which might include shock. If you already know that there is an aggressive dog in your neighborhood, when you go for your walk, you may be prepared. Preparation makes it more likely that our engagement responses will be felt as at least good enough. This can be as simple as remembering that there is a chain-link fence that will keep the dog from biting you. You might walk by, listen to the dog barking and snarling, and laugh at your response yesterday when you froze and almost shit your pants. Ah, it feels good to be competent.

Since we know that preparation can be helpful, we plan, we expect. Some people try to plan more than others. If our love of planning encourages discretion to the exclusion of valor, we can find ourselves living like academic weenies. It's possible to spend almost all of our time in expectations and memories. At the other extreme, to the extent that we discourage thinking or contemplation because we want only the feeling of engagement, we can live mostly like animals.

It does not so much matter in each instance whether engagement or affirmation comes first in our experience; it matters that we can align our actions and our judgments. When we feel a sense of continuity and rightness from priming through affirmation and into engagement (or vice versa: priming then affirmation then engagement), we feel healthy and right. When that doesn't occur, we can look at whether we need to change our thinking and expectations, our actions, or whether we need to pay attention to something we have possibly been ignoring. That occurs in the stage I call change.

Priming

Priming is the first stage, when we are starting to become aware of something or when we are starting to become aware that something is relevant to ourselves. This can happen in a few different ways.

Fast to Slow

There are some very quick neural processes that can be involved in priming. For example, if we see words like, "criminal", "dangerous", "evil" flashed in front of us very quickly, we will be faster and more likely to make negative observations about ambiguous persons we see soon afterwards. (Most of us are familiar with the idea of subliminal advertising.) The same is true for topics such as sexual arousal, relaxation, people we know, etc. This process also influences "triggering" for issues such as addictions, obsessions, etc. We can learn to speed up our attention to notice things at a quick rate, and we can also learn how to slow down most things in order to think about them. (But many of our responses occur faster than thought.)

Small to Big

Besides things which enter awareness briefly or quickly, there are other things that we may be completely unaware of because they are too small for us to register. An apprentice begins learning a craft but often cannot imagine what distinguishes his work from a master craftsman's. (Even a trained apprentice will be better than I am at many jobs, getting the main steps right.) The master's expert experience lends to paying attention to very minute details that the apprentice has not yet learned to notice. In this type of situation, our brains can actually grow towards being able to recognize smaller and more complex details. This process will happen over months to years. Experts may have trouble putting their expertise into words, feeling more that they simply have the right "touch".

Ambiguous to Obvious

Other things are always there or have been around for a long time, but we simply don't notice them for various reasons. When we begin to notice them, they start off as ambiguous or vague. So when we are trying to learn something like a new language, the meanings are often ambiguous or vague, and we slowly learn how to make sense of large amounts of information. Or, say that you see obvious signs your neighbor doesn't. His marriage is on the fritz, his wife is unhappy, but he doesn't know it yet. Eventually, he will start to notice that there are strange moments where he can't understand why his wife is acting the way she is. He will feel somewhat confused, knowing that something is happening but not knowing what. We also enjoy watching this process with our pets. Have you ever laughed at a dog for that quizzical look they give something they don't understand--say a remote controlled electric car? In that type of instance, the car is obvious to the dog, but it is not at all obvious to the dog WHAT that thing is.

Each of these types of priming can happen with enjoyable things or actions and also with uncomfortable things or actions. As material moves from the unknown to an area of liminal or peripheral awareness, we feel that we are getting glimpses or hints of something but we don't necessarily know what. Since first impressions count, we can prime for success and enjoyment involving many of these things--and if that doesn't happen, people will often feel as if they have a small voice warning them away from these things; in such a case, they have been primed towards a negative experience.

For teaching meditation to beginners, I like to begin with deep breathing. When people breathe deeply, it tends to engage certain physical processes that relax the body. When the body relaxes, the mind tends to relax. Herbert Benson called this the "relaxation response". You can feel it and notice it. Since awareness of breath is a good tool for many types of meditation, a good first experience that feels "successful" primes people for a feeling of competence and positive results, which lends itself to maintaining engagement.

(Obviously, I'm using the word "priming" in a few different ways here. I often move from a general or mushy usage to increasing precision.)

Priming, Engagement, Affirmation, Continuation, Change: Differentiating the Two Main Processes

People are usually conscious of only three major steps out of five concerning what we do with our attention. Then, they often feel like there are gaps in their understanding along with contradictions between what they feel should happen and what does happen. Well, those gaps are real, but they don't need to continue. There are two different processes (generally speaking) concerning how we are aware of being motivated and staying motivated. These processes involve the same five steps but two of the steps change their order, depending on which process is stronger at the moment. My title lists these five steps in the basic order.

We move through a process of noticing and then reacting or being intentionally responsive. When emotions and instincts are primary in this process, the steps follow in this order: priming, engagement, affirmation, continuation, and change. This is following what neurologists talk about as bottom-up processing (the evolutionary "bottom" being instincts and emotions while the "top"--concerning the brain's processing and activity--has more to do with the primate and homo sapien aspects of consciousness [thinking, planning, certain types of training and creativity, etc.]). I'll explain the separate steps in a minute, but I want to point out the two main processes first.

When top-down processing is predominant, the affirmation stage comes before the engagement stage: priming, affirmation, engagement, continuation, and then change. This happens when we think to ourselves that we want to do something and then we try to do it. That process tends to be weaker than the emotionally-driven process where engagement comes before affirmation. But this second process is very powerful across extended periods of time because it can be more consistent (in a certain way) than the instinctual-emotional process. As an example, think about Jonezing for a cigarette, beer, lay, doughnut, whatever. When it's something you don't think you should really go after, the two general motivational processes are in conflict. Your (weaker) top-down, thinking mind says, "Don't do it--one more doughnut isn't what you need." But your (stronger and usually faster) bottom-up process doesn't say much. It pushes the geeky weenie out of it's way and rips through a whole box of doughnuts.

Hopefully, as we mature, we learn how to improve the strength and accuracy of the top-down processing, and that geeky weenie studies up on how to get bigger and stronger. Eventually, that geeky middle school kid can become Tony Robbins and the high school jock (bottom-up processing) either stays the same or just gets fat and lazy. (Not to go too "Breakfast Club" on you, but it's pretty simple.)

Two types.
Bottom-up: priming, engagement, affirmation, continuation, change.
Top-down: priming, affirmation, engagement, continuation, change.

Usually, people are only aware of and somewhat knowledgeable about engagement, affirmation, and change. If we learn about how all five steps fit together, and how the two different processes interact, quite a lot becomes possible.

Priming, Engagement, Affirmation, Continuation, Change

I've benefited greatly from studying the Buddhist Abhidhamma to some extent. The Ahidhamma canon basically presents something like a psychological equivalent of the periodic table of elements. With Abhidhamma-based vipassana (analytic or insight meditation), one can become quicker and more thorough at recognizing the nature of various moments or experiences. Essentially, by learning to deal with experience at a rate faster than the speed of thoughts, one becomes very honest and clear about one's world--especially about one's immediate, pinpoint experience. This can become a very thorough process, a very precise way of experiencing. By becoming quick, precise, and clear with one's attention, we can stop instigating and feeding the normal emotional problems, ambiguities, and delusions that tend to create the usual suffering within human life. (That's a simple version of the basic story.)

Just reading this story in the right amount of detail (which would be the fitting amount of detail for me to become clearer--"right") has helped me recognize the potential in the method and within myself. It's a good method, but the texts strike me as too detailed for everyday application that isn't reductionistic or doctrinal. In other words, there is so much in the texts that one could spend a lifetime or eight trying to study well enough to understand. And we all know academics' tendency to get caught up in studying their topics and then not really getting into doing those things. Luckily, good things are often very simple and clear, so we can often grasp things or have a genuine feel for them without understanding them thoroughly; if we couldn't do that to some extent, relationships would be impossible.

To draw from another body of work, I want to add in that Stages of Change theory and motivational interviewing outline a similar process to Abhidhamma meditation, but at the speed of conscious thinking, the speed at which we formulate our ideas for conversations. This is much slower and less precise than the Abhidhamma stuff, but it works for thinking about all of it in the beginning and then being able to talk about it. (Many traditions talk about the quickening of one's soul or attention, so Abhidhamma isn't unique in that--it's just impressive for being so detailed and systematic.)

Okay, one more angle and I'll be able to lay out my points. Stages of Change has been most often utilized to help addicts and anyone trying to help addicts to get a grip on what happens in the decision-making process and how addictions often run rough-shod over one's decisions. So the stages of change laid out in this theory are most often thought of in the sense of time that it takes to overcome an addiction (months to years).

My question has been: how can we take this phenomenally productive sort of approach and apply it at the speed of conversation? Or, in other words, how can we think and talk about walking through the entire decision-making/motivational process at everyday speeds? How can I apply this stuff right now to anything I am experiencing? The meditators have their answers in Abhidhamma and other sutras, the folks working to overcome addiction have an understanding and way of communicating laid out in Stages of Change theory and motivational interviewing, so what about everybody else in everyday situations?

Simply put, there are two different processes involved--speaking in general terms and about everyday speeds. The order of these two processes is different, but the steps or parts are the same. What's more, recognizing how they are different yet also the same can clear up a ubiquitous misunderstanding about how people motivate themselves and others. This process is not technical and doesn't need to be seen as complex or hard to understand. Each person's experience of their own mind is enough to begin with.