by Brian Resnick on Vox
Why it’s so hard to see our own ignorance, and what to do about it.
Julia Rohrer wants to create a radical new culture for social scientists. A personality psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Rohrer is trying to get her peers to publicly, willingly admit it when they are wrong.
To do this, she, along with some colleagues, started up something called the Loss of Confidence Project. It’s designed to be an academic safe space for researchers to declare for all to see that they no longer believe in the accuracy of one of their previous findings. The effort recently yielded a paper that includes six admissions of no confidence. And it’s accepting submissions until January 31.
“I do think it’s a cultural issue that people are not willing to admit mistakes,” Rohrer says. “Our broader goal is to gently nudge the whole scientific system and psychology toward a different culture,” where it’s okay, normalized, and expected for researchers to admit past mistakes and not get penalized for it.
The project is timely because a large number of scientific findings have been disproven, or become more doubtful, in recent years. One high-profile effort to retest 100 psychological experiments found only 40 percent replicated with more rigorous methods. It’s been a painful period for social scientists, who’ve had to deal with failed replications of classic studies and realize their research practices are often weak.
It’s been fascinating to watch scientists struggle to make their institutions more humble. And I believe there’s an important and underappreciated virtue embedded in this process.
For the past few months, I’ve been talking to many scholars about intellectual humility, the characteristic that allows for admission of wrongness.
I’ve come to appreciate what a crucial tool it is for learning, especially in an increasingly interconnected and complicated world. As technology makes it easier to lie and spread false information incredibly quickly, we need intellectually humble, curious people.
I’ve also realized how difficult it is to foster intellectual humility. In my reporting on this, I’ve learned there are three main challenges on the path to humility:
1. In order for us to acquire more intellectual humility, we all, even the smartest among us, need to better appreciate our cognitive blind spots. Our minds are more imperfect and imprecise than we’d often like to admit. Our ignorance can be invisible.
2. Even when we overcome that immense challenge and figure out our errors, we need to remember we won’t necessarily be punished for saying, “I was wrong.” And we need to be braver about saying it. We need a culture that celebrates those words.
3. We’ll never achieve perfect intellectual humility. So we need to choose our convictions thoughtfully.
This is all to say: Intellectual humility isn’t easy. But damn, it’s a virtue worth striving for, and failing for, in this new year.
Intellectual humility is simply “the recognition that the things you believe in might in fact be wrong,” as Mark Leary, a social and personality psychologist at Duke University, tells me.
But don’t confuse it with overall humility or bashfulness. It’s not about being a pushover; it’s not about lacking confidence, or self-esteem. The intellectually humble don’t cave every time their thoughts are challenged.
Instead, it’s a method of thinking. It’s about entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong and being open to learning from the experience of others. Intellectual humility is about being actively curious about your blind spots. One illustration is in the ideal of the scientific method, where a scientist actively works against her own hypothesis, attempting to rule out any other alternative explanations for a phenomenon before settling on a conclusion. It’s about asking: What am I missing here?
It doesn’t require a high IQ or a particular skill set. It does, however, require making a habit of thinking about your limits, which can be painful. “It’s a process of monitoring your own confidence,” Leary says.
This idea is older than social psychology. Philosophers from the earliest days have grappled with the limits of human knowledge. Michel de Montaigne, the 16th-century French philosopher credited with inventing the essay, wrote that “the plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.”
Social psychologists have learned that humility is associated with other valuable character traits: People who score higher on intellectual humility questionnaires are more open to hearing opposing views. They more readily seek out information that conflicts with their worldview. They pay more attention to evidence and have a stronger self-awareness when they answer a question incorrectly.
When you ask the intellectually arrogant if they’ve heard of bogus historical events like “Hamrick’s Rebellion,” they’ll say, “Sure.” The intellectually humble are less likely to do so. Studies have found that cognitive reflection — i.e., analytic thinking — is correlated with being better able to discern fake news stories from real ones. These studies haven’t looked at intellectual humility per se, but it’s plausible there’s an overlap.
Most important of all, the intellectually humble are more likely to admit it when they are wrong. When we admit we’re wrong, we can grow closer to the truth.
One reason I’ve been thinking about the virtue of humility recently is because our president, Donald Trump, is one of the least humble people on the planet.
It was Trump who said on the night of his nomination, “I alone can fix it,” with the “it” being our entire political system. It was Trump who once said, “I have one of the great memories of all time.” More recently, Trump told the Associated Press, “I have a natural instinct for science,” in dodging a question on climate change.
A frustration I feel about Trump and the era of history he represents is that his pride and his success — he is among the most powerful people on earth — seem to be related. He exemplifies how our society rewards confidence and bluster, not truthfulness.
Yet we’ve also seen some very high-profile examples lately of how overconfident leadership can be ruinous for companies. Look at what happened to Theranos, a company that promised to change the way blood samples are drawn. It was all hype, all bluster, and it collapsed. Or consider Enron’s overconfident executives, who were often hailed for their intellectual brilliance — they ran the company into the ground with risky, suspect financial decisions.
The problem with arrogance is that the truth always catches up. Trump may be president and confident in his denials of climate change, but the changes to our environment will still ruin so many things in the future.
Why it’s so hard to see our blind spots: “Our ignorance is invisible to us”
As I’ve been reading the psychological research on intellectual humility and the character traits it correlates with, I can’t help but fume: Why can’t more people be like this?
We need more intellectual humility for two reasons. One is that our culture promotes and rewards overconfidence and arrogance (think Trump and Theranos, or the advice your career counselor gave you when going into job interviews). At the same time, when we are wrong — out of ignorance or error — and realize it, our culture doesn’t make it easy to admit it. Humbling moments too easily can turn into moments of humiliation.
So how can we promote intellectual humility for both of these conditions?
In asking that question of researchers and scholars, I’ve learned to appreciate how hard a challenge it is to foster intellectual humility.
First off, I think it’s helpful to remember how flawed the human brain can be and how prone we all are to intellectual blind spots. When you learn about how the brain actually works, how it actually perceives the world, it’s hard not to be a bit horrified, and a bit humbled.
We often can’t see — or even sense — what we don’t know. It helps to realize that it’s normal and human to be wrong.
It’s rare that a viral meme also provides a surprisingly deep lesson on the imperfect nature of the human mind. But believe it or not, the great “Yanny or Laurel” debate of 2018 fits the bill.
For the very few of you who didn’t catch it — I hope you’re recovering nicely from that coma — here’s what happened.
An audio clip says the name “Laurel” in a robotic voice. Or does it? Some people hear the clip and immediately hear “Yanny.” And both sets of people — Team Yanny and Team Laurel — are indeed hearing the same thing.
Hearing, the perception of sound, ought to be a simple thing for our brains to do. That so many people can listen to the same clip and hear such different things should give us humbling pause. Hearing “Yanny” or “Laurel” in any given moment ultimately depends on a whole host of factors: the quality of the speakers you’re using, whether you have hearing loss, your expectations.
Here’s the deep lesson to draw from all of this: Much as we might tell ourselves our experience of the world is the truth, our reality will always be an interpretation. Light enters our eyes, sound waves enter our ears, chemicals waft into our noses, and it’s up to our brains to make a guess about what it all is.
Perceptual tricks like this (“the dress” is another one) reveal that our perceptions are not the absolute truth, that the physical phenomena of the universe are indifferent to whether our feeble sensory organs can perceive them correctly. We’re just guessing. Yet these phenomena leave us indignant: How could it be that our perception of the world isn’t the only one?
That sense of indignation is called naive realism: the feeling that our perception of the world is the truth. “I think we sometimes confuse effortlessness with accuracy,” Chris Chabris, a psychological researcher who co-authored a book on the challenges of human perception, tells me. When something is so immediate and effortless to us — hearing the sound of “Yanny” — it just feels true. (Similarly, psychologists find when a lie is repeated, it’s more likely to be misremembered as being true, and for a similar reason: When you’re hearing something for the second or third time, your brain becomes faster to respond to it. And that fluency is confused with truth.)
Our interpretations of reality are often arbitrary, but we’re still stubborn about them. Nonetheless, the same observations can lead to wildly different conclusions.
For every sense and every component of human judgment, there are illusions and ambiguities we interpret arbitrarily.
Some are gravely serious. White people often perceive black men to be bigger, taller, and more muscular (and therefore more threatening) than they really are. That’s racial bias — but it’s also a socially constructed illusion. When we’re taught or learn to fear other people, our brains distort their potential threat. They seem more menacing, and we want to build walls around them. When we learn or are taught that other people are less than human, we’re less likely to look upon them kindly and more likely to be okay when violence is committed against them.
Not only are our interpretations of the world often arbitrary, but we’re often overconfident in them. “Our ignorance is invisible to us,” David Dunning, an expert on human blind spots, says.
You might recognize his name as half of the psychological phenomenon that bears his name: the Dunning-Kruger effect. That’s where people of low ability — let’s say, those who fail to understand logic puzzles — tend to unduly overestimate their abilities. Inexperience masquerades as expertise.
An irony of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that so many people misinterpret it, are overconfident in their understanding of it, and get it wrong.
When people talk or write about the Dunning-Kruger effect, it’s almost always in reference to other people. “The fact is this is a phenomenon that visits all of us sooner or later,” Dunning says. We’re all overconfident in our ignorance from time to time. (Perhaps related: Some 65 percent of Americans believe they’re more intelligent than average, which is wishful thinking.)
Similarly, we’re overconfident in our ability to remember. Human memory is extremely malleable, prone to small changes. When we remember, we don’t wind back our minds to a certain time and relive that exact moment, yet many of us think our memories work like a videotape.
Dunning hopes his work helps people understand that “not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition,” he says. “But the problem with it is we see it in other people, and we don’t see it in ourselves. The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.”
In 2012, psychologist Will Gervais scored an honor any PhD science student would covet: a co-authored paper in the journal Science, one of the top interdisciplinary scientific journals in the world. Publishing in Science doesn’t just help a researcher rise up in academic circles; it often gets them a lot of media attention too.
One of the experiments in the paper tried to see if getting people to think more rationally would make them less willing to report religious beliefs. They had people look at a picture of Rodin’s The Thinker or another statue. They thought The Thinker would nudge people to think harder, more analytically. In this more rational frame of mind, then, the participants would be less likely to endorse believing in something as faith-based and invisible as religion, and that’s what the study found. It was catnip for science journalists: one small trick to change the way we think.
But it was a tiny, small-sample study, the exact type that is prone to yielding false positives. Several years later, another lab attempted to replicate the findings with a much larger sample size, and failed to find any evidence for the effect.
And while Gervais knew that the original study wasn’t rigorous, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of discomfort.
“Intellectually, I could say the original data weren’t strong,” he says. “That’s very different from the human, personal reaction to it. Which is like, ‘Oh, shit, there’s going to be a published failure to replicate my most cited finding that’s gotten the most media attention.’ You start worrying about stuff like, ‘Are there going to be career repercussions? Are people going to think less of my other work and stuff I’ve done?’”
Gervais’s story is familiar: Many of us fear we’ll be seen as less competent, less trustworthy, if we admit wrongness. Even when we can see our own errors — which, as outlined above, is not easy to do — we’re hesitant to admit it.
But turns out this assumption is false. As Adam Fetterman, a social psychologist at the University of Texas El Paso, has found in a few studies, wrongness admission isn’t usually judged harshly. “When we do see someone admit that they are wrong, the wrongness admitter is seen as more communal, more friendly,” he says. It’s almost never the case, in his studies, “that when you admit you’re wrong, people think you are less competent.”
Sure, there might be some people who will troll you for your mistakes. There might be a mob on Twitter that converges in order to shame you. Some moments of humility could be humiliating. But this fear must be vanquished if we are to become less intellectually arrogant and more intellectually humble.
But even if you’re motivated to be more intellectually humble, our culture doesn’t always reward it.
The field of psychology, overall, has been reckoning with a “replication crisis” where many classic findings in the science don’t hold up under rigorous scrutiny. Incredibly influential textbook findings in psychology — like the “ego depletion” theory of willpower or the “marshmallow test” — have been bending or breaking.
I’ve found it fascinating to watch the field of psychology deal with this. For some researchers, the reckoning has been personally unsettling. “I’m in a dark place,” Michael Inzlicht, a University of Toronto psychologist, wrote in a 2016 blog post after seeing the theory of ego depletion crumble before his eyes. “Have I been chasing puffs of smoke for all these years?”
What I’ve learned from reporting on the “replication crisis” is that intellectual humility requires support from peers and institutions. And that environment is hard to build.
“What we teach undergrads is that scientists want to prove themselves wrong,” says Simine Vazire, a psychologist and journal editor who often writes and speaks about replication issues. “But, ‘How would I know if I was wrong?’ is actually a really, really hard question to answer. It involves things like having critics yell at you and telling you that you did things wrong and reanalyze your data.”
And that’s not fun. Again: Even among scientists — people who ought to question everything — intellectual humility is hard. In some cases, researchers have refused to concede their original conclusions despite the unveiling of new evidence. (One famous psychologist under fire recently told me angrily, “I will stand by that conclusion for the rest of my life, no matter what anyone says.”)
Psychologists are human. When they reach a conclusion, it becomes hard to see things another way. Plus, the incentives for a successful career in science push researchers to publish as many positive findings as possible.
There are two solutions — among many — to make psychological science more humble, and I think we can learn from them.
One is that humility needs to be built into the standard practices of the science. And that happens through transparency. It’s becoming more commonplace for scientists to preregister — i.e., commit to — a study design before even embarking on an experiment. That way, it’s harder for them to deviate from the plan and cherry-pick results. It also makes sure all data is open and accessible to anyone who wants to conduct a reanalysis.
That “sort of builds humility into the structure of the scientific enterprise,” Chabris says. “We’re not all-knowing and all-seeing and perfect at our jobs, so we put [the data] out there for other people to check out, to improve upon it, come up with new ideas from and so on.” To be more intellectually humble, we need to be more transparent about our knowledge. We need to show others what we know and what we don’t.
And two, there needs to be more celebration of failure, and a culture that accepts it. That includes building safe places for people to admit they were wrong, like the Loss of Confidence Project.
But it’s clear this cultural change won’t come easily.
“In the end,” Rohrer says, after getting a lot of positive feedback on the project, “we ended up with just a handful of statements.”
There’s a personal cost to an intellectually humble outlook. For me, at least, it’s anxiety.
When I open myself up to the vastness of my own ignorance, I can’t help but feel a sudden suffocating feeling. I have just one small mind, a tiny, leaky boat upon which to go exploring knowledge in a vast and knotty sea of which I carry no clear map.
Why is it that some people never seem to wrestle with those waters? That they stand on the shore, squint their eyes, and transform that sea into a puddle in their minds and then get awarded for their false certainty? “I don’t know if I can tell you that humility will get you farther than arrogance,” says Tenelle Porter, a University of California Davis psychologist who has studied intellectual humility.
Of course, following humility to an extreme end isn’t enough. You don’t need to be humble about your belief that the world is round. I just think more humility, sprinkled here and there, would be quite nice.
“It’s bad to think of problems like this like a Rubik’s cube: a puzzle that has a neat and satisfying solution that you can put on your desk,” says Michael Lynch, a University of Connecticut philosophy professor. Instead, it’s a problem “you can make progress at a moment in time, and make things better. And that we can do — that we can definitely do.”
For a democracy to flourish, Lynch argues, we need a balance between convictions — our firmly held beliefs — and humility. We need convictions, because “an apathetic electorate is no electorate at all,” he says. And we need humility because we need to listen to one another. Those two things will always be in tension.
The Trump presidency suggests there’s too much conviction and not enough humility in our current culture.
“The personal question, the existential question that faces you and I and every thinking human being, is, ‘How do you maintain an open mind toward others and yet, at the same time, keep your strong moral convictions?’” Lynch says. “That’s an issue for all of us.”
To be intellectually humble doesn’t mean giving up on the ideas we love and believe in. It just means we need to be thoughtful in choosing our convictions, be open to adjusting them, seek out their flaws, and never stop being curious about why we believe what we believe. Again, that’s not easy.
You might be thinking: “All the social science cited here about how intellectual humility is correlated with open-minded thinking — what if that’s all bunk?” To that, I’d say the research isn’t perfect. Those studies are based on self-reports, where it can be hard to trust that people really do know themselves or that they’re being totally honest. And we know that social science findings are often upended.
But I’m going to take it as a point of conviction that intellectual humility is a virtue. I’ll draw that line for myself. It’s my conviction.
Could I be wrong? Maybe. Just try to convince me otherwise.
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Existentialist Psychologist Viktor Frankl Explains How to Find Meaning in Life, No Matter What Challenges You Face
Free will often seems like nothing more than a cruel illusion. We don’t get to choose the times, places, and circumstances of our birth, nor do we have much control over the state of our states, regions, or nations. Even the few who can design conditions such that they are always secure and comfortable find themselves unavoidably subject to what Buddhists call the “divine messengers” of sickness, aging, and death. Biology may not be destiny, but it is a force more powerful than many of our best intentions. And though most of us in the West have the privilege of living far away from war zones, millions across the world face extremities we can only imagine, and to which we are not immune by any stretch
Among all of the psychologists, philosophers, and religious figures who have wrestled with these universal truths about the human condition, perhaps none has been put to the test quite like neurologist and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, but lost his mother, father, brother, and first wife to the camps. While imprisoned, he faced what he described as “an unrelenting struggle for daily bread and for life itself.” After his camp was liberated in 1945, Frankl published an extraordinary book about his experiences: Man’s Search for Meaning, “a strangely hopeful book,” writes Matthew Scully at First Things, “still a staple on the self-help shelves” though it is “inescapably a book about death.” The book has seen dozens of editions in dozens of languages and ranks 9th on a list of most influential books.
Frankl’s thesis echoes those of many sages, from Buddhists to Stoics to his 20th century Existentialist contemporaries: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Not only did he find hope and meaning in the midst of terrible suffering, but after his unimaginable loss, he “remarried, wrote another twenty-five books, founded a school of psychotherapy, built an institute bearing his name in Vienna,” and generally lived a long, happy life. How? The interview above will give you some idea. Frankl maintains that we always have some freedom of choice, “in spite of the worst conditions,” and therefore always have the ability to seek for meaning. “People are free,” says Frankl, no matter their level of oppression, and are responsible “for making someone or something out of themselves.”
Frankl’s primary achievement as a psychotherapist was to found the school of “logotherapy,” a successor to Freudian psychoanalysis and Adlerian individual psychology. Drawing on Existentialist philosophy (Frankl’s book was published in Germany with the alternate title From Concentration Camp to Existentialism)—but turning away from an obsession with the Absurd—his approach, writes his institute, “is based on three philosophical and psychological concepts… Freedom of Will, Will to Meaning, and Meaning in Life.”
You can hear how Frankl works these principles into his philosophy in the fascinating interview, as well as in the short clip above from an earlier lecture, in which he rails against a crude and ultimately unfulfilling form of meaning-making: the pursuit of wealth. Even us materialistic Americans, renowned for our greed, Frankl notes with good humor, respond to surveys in overwhelming numbers saying our greatest desire is to find meaning and purpose in life. Like no other secular voice, Frankl was confident that we could do so, in spite of life’s seeming chaos, through—as he explains above—a kind of idealism that brings us closer to reality.
Monday, November 9, 2015
The Science of Happiness: Why complaining is literally killing you
via curious apes
Sometimes in life, all the experience and knowledge simmering around in that ol’ consciousness of ours combines itself in a way that suddenly causes the cerebral clockwork to click into place, and in this fluid flow of thought we find an epiphany rising to the surface.
One such point for me came in my junior year at University. It changed the way I viewed the world forever as it catapulted me out of the last of my angsty, melancholic youth and onto a path of ever-increasing bliss. Sounds like I’m verging on feeding you some new-agey, mumbo-jumbo, doesn’t it? Well, bear with me, because I assure you the point here is to add some logical evidence to the ol’ cliches, to give you what I would consider my Science of Happiness.
At the time of this personal discovery, I was pursuing a double-major in Computer Science and Psychology. Aside from these declared interest, I also had an affinity for (Eastern) Philosophy and Neuroscience. This led to semester course load comprising of two 300-level psychology courses, one 300-level philosophy course, and a graduate-level artificial intelligence course for both biology and computer science majors. This amalgamation of studies quickly tore my brain into a dozen directions, and when I put the pieces back together, I found myself resolute with rational reasons for optimism and for removing from my life the people who liked to complain.
1. “Synapses that fire together wire together.”
This was the first phrase my AI professor told the classroom, and to this day it is still one of the most profound bits of logic I hold onto in order to dictate the decisions of my life. The principle is simple: Throughout your brain there is a collection of synapses separated by empty space called the synaptic cleft. Whenever you have a thought, one synapse shoots a chemical across the cleft to another synapse, thus building a bridge over which an electric signal can cross, carrying along its charge the relevant information you’re thinking about. It’s very similar to how nerves carry electric from the sensation in your toe all the way up to your brain where it’s actually “felt”.
Here’s the kicker: Every time this electrical charge is triggered, the synapses grow closer together in order to decrease the distance the electrical charge has to cross. This is a microcosmic example of evolution, of adaptation. The brain is rewiring its own circuitry, physically changing itself, to make it easier and more likely that the proper synapses will share the chemical link and thus spark together–in essence, making it easier for the thought to trigger. Therefore, your first mystical scientific evidence: your thoughts reshape your brain, and thus are changing a physical construct of reality. Let that sink in for a moment before you continue, because that’s a seriously profound logic-bomb right there.
Your thoughts reshape your brain, and thus are changing a physical construct of reality.
Okay, pull yourself together, cause we’re not done yet.
2. Shortest Path Wins the Race.
Beyond the absolutely incredible fact that your brain is always doing this, consistently shifting and morphing with every thought, even more exciting is the fact that the synapses you’ve most strongly bonded together (by thinking about more frequently) come to represent your default personality: your intelligence, skills, aptitudes, and most easily accessible thoughts(which are more-or-less the source of your conversation skills).
Let’s dig deeper into the logic behind that. Consider you have two pairs of people throwing a ball back and forth. One pair stands ten feet apart, the other at a distance of 100 feet. One partner from each team throws their ball to their respective partners at the exact same moment with the exact same speed. The first team that catches the ball gets to dictate your personal decision and mental state of mind.
So which team will get the ball first? Basic physics of distance, time, velocity tell us that it will always be the pair standing 10 feet apart. Well this is basically how your thoughts work. Through repetition of thought, you’ve brought the pair of synapses that represent your proclivities closer and closer together, and when the moment arises for you to form a thought ( and thus throw our metaphorical ball of electric energy), the thought that wins is the one that has less distance to travel, the one that will create a bridge between synapses fastest.
3. Acceptance vs Regret, Drift vs Desire, Love Vs Fear.
In the time of my scholastic renaissance, this is where Eastern Philosophy came in and handed me a sort of Occam’s Razor of simplicity that I could use to strengthen my forming ideology.
It was simple, every time a moment came my way and brought with it a chance for reactive thought, my two choices were simple, regardless of the flavor you put on them: Love or Fear; Acceptance or Regret; Drift or Desire; Optimism or Pessimism.
And now, my friends, we have our two pairs playing catch.
Naturally, for my own well-being, I realized that all I wanted to do was move the pair of lovers closer together so they would always beat the fearful, pessimistic pair. And so I began to implement a practice into my life of loving everything that came my way, accepting it while relinquishing the need for control. The Buddhists say that the universe is suffering, and I believe this is because the universe is chaos, and thus by its very nature out of our control. When we try to force desires, we are bound to find innumerable occasions where the universe will not comply. And so I decided to stop desiring to the point of attachment. I started to practice the acceptance that Buddhists speak upon, to Drift in the Tao, to accept the natural flow with an optimistic love, to say to every moment that came my way, good or bad, “thank you for the experience and the lesson, and now bring on the next moment so I can give it the same love.” Over and over I did this, moving those synapses closer and closer together, to the point where any synapses in my brain associated with sadness, regret, pessimism, fear, desire, melancholy, depression, etc had a smaller and smaller chance of triggering before the synapses of love gave me my reaction, my thoughts, my personality. And so my default state become one of optimism and appreciation, and the illusory burdens I attached to this existence lessened.
Now, as I pointed out, nature appreciates chaos, and our brain is no different. And so it’s important that I point out that this obviously is not a fool proof practice that will completely eradicate negativity from your consciousness; sometimes emotion weighs too heavy and sometimes the pair that catches the chemical charge will be the negative one; but, like any muscle, if you exercise those loving synapses enough, you will find yourself in possession of a new innate strength that will make the world shine more beautifully far more frequently. You will also find yourself being far more happy because of better health–which I’ll get to in just a moment, but hold on, because we’ve got one more point to discuss beforehand.
4. Mirror-Neurons.
So if your mind hadn’t already exploded when you learned you could alter reality with your thoughts, you may want to get ready for it. Because guess what? It’s not just your thoughts that can alter your brain and shift those synapses; the thoughts of those around you can do it as well.
If there’s any ability that truly separates us from our primate ancestors, it’s that of imagination. It’s the root of all art and architecture, of the (fictional) stories that formed religions that now control the lives of billions—even to the point of war over which fairytale is the “right one.”
That human failing aside, imagination lets us live in the past and in the future, and by escaping the present moment we can use our memories of the past to predict what will happen in the future; ie: I know from past experience that fire burns skin, so I know inside my minds-eye that if I stick my hand into a fire I will lose my flesh. This is so instinctual we don’t even recognize it’s constantly happening with every symbol that we’re perceiving in our day-to-day moments. But it is this ability that allows us to navigate the complexity of our society. Even more exciting is the fact that this skill also works with emotions, not just situations.
The premise, again, is quite simple: When we see someone experiencing an emotion ( be it anger, sadness, happiness, etc), our brain “tries out” that same emotion to imagine what the other person is going through. And it does this by attempting to fire the same synapses in your own brain so that you can attempt to relate to the emotion you’re observing. This is basically empathy. It is how we get the mob mentality, where a calm person can suddenly find themselves picking up a pitchfork against a common enemy once they’re influenced by dozens of angry minds. It is our shared bliss at music festivals, or our solidarity in sadness during tragedies.
But it is also your night at the bar with your friends who love love love to constantly bitch, whether it’s about their job, the man, the government, or about their other so-called friend’s short-comings, or whatever little thing they can pick apart in order to lift themselves up and give themselves some holier-than-thou sense of validation when you nod your head in acquiescence, agreeing like a robot afraid of free-thought : “Totally, man. It’s bullshit.”
But it’s not bullshit. It’s life, it’s chaos, and as you continually surround yourself with this attitude, you are continually trying out this attitude by firing the synapses in your brain. And as I explained above, every time you fire these synapses, you’re reshaping your brain. This is why it is so important to spend time with people who lift you up, because your friends are moving those fearful, cynical, pessimistic synapses closer together, making your default, short-path-personality as jaded and bitter as your peers. Want to be happy? Surround yourself with happy people who rewire your brain towards love, not towards fear of being invalidated. [[EDIT 11/8/15 : I’m NOT saying don’t be there for friends who are having a hard time and need an ear or who need to work through a difficult situation. Nor am I saying you can’t be critical about the failings and injustices in the world. Positive change usually requires critical thought.]]
5. Stress will kill you.
You see, the thing about all this negativity, of regretting, of attachment to desires, of pointless complaining about impermanent things that will always continue to pass in an existence where time moves forward—the thing is: it all causes stress. When your brain is firing off these synapses of anger, you’re weakening your immune system; you’re raising your blood pressure, increasing your risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, and a plethora of other negative ailments–as psychologytoday points out below.
"The stress hormone, cortisol, is public health enemy number one. Scientists have known for years that elevated cortisol levels: interfere with learning and memory, lower immune function and bone density, increase weight gain, blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease… The list goes on and on.Chronic stress and elevated cortisol levels also increase risk for depression, mental illness, and lower life expectancy. This week, two separate studies were published in Science linking elevated cortisol levels as a potential trigger for mental illness and decreased resilience—especially in adolescence.Cortisol is released in response to fear or stress by the adrenal glands as part of the fight-or-flight mechanism."
The universe is chaotic, from unpreventable superstorms of wind and rain, to unpredictable car accidents or to the capricious whims of our peers whose personal truths even have the ability to emotionally damage or physically hurt others. And every moment holds the potential to bring you any one of these things, any shade along the gradient of spirit-soaring bliss and soul-crushing grief.
But regardless of what it brings your way, your choice is simple: Love or Fear. And yes, I understand it’s hard to find happiness on those nights when you feel like you’re all alone in the world, when a loved one passes, when you fail that test or get fired from that job; But when these moments come, you do not have to live in regret of them, you don’t have to give them constant negative attention and allow them to reshape your brain to the point that you become a bitter, jaded, cynical old curmudgeon that no longer notices that the very fact that they’re alive means they get to play blissfully in this cosmic playground where you get the godlike power of choice.
What you can do is say; “Yes, this sucks. But what’s the lesson? What can I take away from this to make me a better person? How can I take strength from this and use it to bring me closer to happiness in my next moment?” You see, a failed relationship or a bad day doesn’t have to be a pinion to your wings, it can be an updraft that showcases to you what things you like and don’t like, it can show you the red flags so that you can avoid them. If there was a personality your ex-partner had that drove you insane, then you now have the gift of knowing you don’t want to waste your time with another partner who acts the same way.
If you are mindful to the lessons of the failures, there is no reason that you can’t make the default of every day better than the one before it. Do something new everyday, learn its lesson, choose love over fear, and make every day better than the last. The more you do this, the more you will see and appreciate the beauty of this existence, and the happier you’ll be.
Sometimes in life, all the experience and knowledge simmering around in that ol’ consciousness of ours combines itself in a way that suddenly causes the cerebral clockwork to click into place, and in this fluid flow of thought we find an epiphany rising to the surface.
One such point for me came in my junior year at University. It changed the way I viewed the world forever as it catapulted me out of the last of my angsty, melancholic youth and onto a path of ever-increasing bliss. Sounds like I’m verging on feeding you some new-agey, mumbo-jumbo, doesn’t it? Well, bear with me, because I assure you the point here is to add some logical evidence to the ol’ cliches, to give you what I would consider my Science of Happiness.
At the time of this personal discovery, I was pursuing a double-major in Computer Science and Psychology. Aside from these declared interest, I also had an affinity for (Eastern) Philosophy and Neuroscience. This led to semester course load comprising of two 300-level psychology courses, one 300-level philosophy course, and a graduate-level artificial intelligence course for both biology and computer science majors. This amalgamation of studies quickly tore my brain into a dozen directions, and when I put the pieces back together, I found myself resolute with rational reasons for optimism and for removing from my life the people who liked to complain.
1. “Synapses that fire together wire together.”
This was the first phrase my AI professor told the classroom, and to this day it is still one of the most profound bits of logic I hold onto in order to dictate the decisions of my life. The principle is simple: Throughout your brain there is a collection of synapses separated by empty space called the synaptic cleft. Whenever you have a thought, one synapse shoots a chemical across the cleft to another synapse, thus building a bridge over which an electric signal can cross, carrying along its charge the relevant information you’re thinking about. It’s very similar to how nerves carry electric from the sensation in your toe all the way up to your brain where it’s actually “felt”.
Here’s the kicker: Every time this electrical charge is triggered, the synapses grow closer together in order to decrease the distance the electrical charge has to cross. This is a microcosmic example of evolution, of adaptation. The brain is rewiring its own circuitry, physically changing itself, to make it easier and more likely that the proper synapses will share the chemical link and thus spark together–in essence, making it easier for the thought to trigger. Therefore, your first mystical scientific evidence: your thoughts reshape your brain, and thus are changing a physical construct of reality. Let that sink in for a moment before you continue, because that’s a seriously profound logic-bomb right there.
Your thoughts reshape your brain, and thus are changing a physical construct of reality.
Okay, pull yourself together, cause we’re not done yet.
2. Shortest Path Wins the Race.
Beyond the absolutely incredible fact that your brain is always doing this, consistently shifting and morphing with every thought, even more exciting is the fact that the synapses you’ve most strongly bonded together (by thinking about more frequently) come to represent your default personality: your intelligence, skills, aptitudes, and most easily accessible thoughts(which are more-or-less the source of your conversation skills).
Let’s dig deeper into the logic behind that. Consider you have two pairs of people throwing a ball back and forth. One pair stands ten feet apart, the other at a distance of 100 feet. One partner from each team throws their ball to their respective partners at the exact same moment with the exact same speed. The first team that catches the ball gets to dictate your personal decision and mental state of mind.
So which team will get the ball first? Basic physics of distance, time, velocity tell us that it will always be the pair standing 10 feet apart. Well this is basically how your thoughts work. Through repetition of thought, you’ve brought the pair of synapses that represent your proclivities closer and closer together, and when the moment arises for you to form a thought ( and thus throw our metaphorical ball of electric energy), the thought that wins is the one that has less distance to travel, the one that will create a bridge between synapses fastest.
3. Acceptance vs Regret, Drift vs Desire, Love Vs Fear.
In the time of my scholastic renaissance, this is where Eastern Philosophy came in and handed me a sort of Occam’s Razor of simplicity that I could use to strengthen my forming ideology.
It was simple, every time a moment came my way and brought with it a chance for reactive thought, my two choices were simple, regardless of the flavor you put on them: Love or Fear; Acceptance or Regret; Drift or Desire; Optimism or Pessimism.
And now, my friends, we have our two pairs playing catch.
Naturally, for my own well-being, I realized that all I wanted to do was move the pair of lovers closer together so they would always beat the fearful, pessimistic pair. And so I began to implement a practice into my life of loving everything that came my way, accepting it while relinquishing the need for control. The Buddhists say that the universe is suffering, and I believe this is because the universe is chaos, and thus by its very nature out of our control. When we try to force desires, we are bound to find innumerable occasions where the universe will not comply. And so I decided to stop desiring to the point of attachment. I started to practice the acceptance that Buddhists speak upon, to Drift in the Tao, to accept the natural flow with an optimistic love, to say to every moment that came my way, good or bad, “thank you for the experience and the lesson, and now bring on the next moment so I can give it the same love.” Over and over I did this, moving those synapses closer and closer together, to the point where any synapses in my brain associated with sadness, regret, pessimism, fear, desire, melancholy, depression, etc had a smaller and smaller chance of triggering before the synapses of love gave me my reaction, my thoughts, my personality. And so my default state become one of optimism and appreciation, and the illusory burdens I attached to this existence lessened.
Now, as I pointed out, nature appreciates chaos, and our brain is no different. And so it’s important that I point out that this obviously is not a fool proof practice that will completely eradicate negativity from your consciousness; sometimes emotion weighs too heavy and sometimes the pair that catches the chemical charge will be the negative one; but, like any muscle, if you exercise those loving synapses enough, you will find yourself in possession of a new innate strength that will make the world shine more beautifully far more frequently. You will also find yourself being far more happy because of better health–which I’ll get to in just a moment, but hold on, because we’ve got one more point to discuss beforehand.
4. Mirror-Neurons.
So if your mind hadn’t already exploded when you learned you could alter reality with your thoughts, you may want to get ready for it. Because guess what? It’s not just your thoughts that can alter your brain and shift those synapses; the thoughts of those around you can do it as well.
If there’s any ability that truly separates us from our primate ancestors, it’s that of imagination. It’s the root of all art and architecture, of the (fictional) stories that formed religions that now control the lives of billions—even to the point of war over which fairytale is the “right one.”
That human failing aside, imagination lets us live in the past and in the future, and by escaping the present moment we can use our memories of the past to predict what will happen in the future; ie: I know from past experience that fire burns skin, so I know inside my minds-eye that if I stick my hand into a fire I will lose my flesh. This is so instinctual we don’t even recognize it’s constantly happening with every symbol that we’re perceiving in our day-to-day moments. But it is this ability that allows us to navigate the complexity of our society. Even more exciting is the fact that this skill also works with emotions, not just situations.
The premise, again, is quite simple: When we see someone experiencing an emotion ( be it anger, sadness, happiness, etc), our brain “tries out” that same emotion to imagine what the other person is going through. And it does this by attempting to fire the same synapses in your own brain so that you can attempt to relate to the emotion you’re observing. This is basically empathy. It is how we get the mob mentality, where a calm person can suddenly find themselves picking up a pitchfork against a common enemy once they’re influenced by dozens of angry minds. It is our shared bliss at music festivals, or our solidarity in sadness during tragedies.
But it is also your night at the bar with your friends who love love love to constantly bitch, whether it’s about their job, the man, the government, or about their other so-called friend’s short-comings, or whatever little thing they can pick apart in order to lift themselves up and give themselves some holier-than-thou sense of validation when you nod your head in acquiescence, agreeing like a robot afraid of free-thought : “Totally, man. It’s bullshit.”
But it’s not bullshit. It’s life, it’s chaos, and as you continually surround yourself with this attitude, you are continually trying out this attitude by firing the synapses in your brain. And as I explained above, every time you fire these synapses, you’re reshaping your brain. This is why it is so important to spend time with people who lift you up, because your friends are moving those fearful, cynical, pessimistic synapses closer together, making your default, short-path-personality as jaded and bitter as your peers. Want to be happy? Surround yourself with happy people who rewire your brain towards love, not towards fear of being invalidated. [[EDIT 11/8/15 : I’m NOT saying don’t be there for friends who are having a hard time and need an ear or who need to work through a difficult situation. Nor am I saying you can’t be critical about the failings and injustices in the world. Positive change usually requires critical thought.]]
5. Stress will kill you.
You see, the thing about all this negativity, of regretting, of attachment to desires, of pointless complaining about impermanent things that will always continue to pass in an existence where time moves forward—the thing is: it all causes stress. When your brain is firing off these synapses of anger, you’re weakening your immune system; you’re raising your blood pressure, increasing your risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, and a plethora of other negative ailments–as psychologytoday points out below.
"The stress hormone, cortisol, is public health enemy number one. Scientists have known for years that elevated cortisol levels: interfere with learning and memory, lower immune function and bone density, increase weight gain, blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease… The list goes on and on.Chronic stress and elevated cortisol levels also increase risk for depression, mental illness, and lower life expectancy. This week, two separate studies were published in Science linking elevated cortisol levels as a potential trigger for mental illness and decreased resilience—especially in adolescence.Cortisol is released in response to fear or stress by the adrenal glands as part of the fight-or-flight mechanism."
The universe is chaotic, from unpreventable superstorms of wind and rain, to unpredictable car accidents or to the capricious whims of our peers whose personal truths even have the ability to emotionally damage or physically hurt others. And every moment holds the potential to bring you any one of these things, any shade along the gradient of spirit-soaring bliss and soul-crushing grief.
But regardless of what it brings your way, your choice is simple: Love or Fear. And yes, I understand it’s hard to find happiness on those nights when you feel like you’re all alone in the world, when a loved one passes, when you fail that test or get fired from that job; But when these moments come, you do not have to live in regret of them, you don’t have to give them constant negative attention and allow them to reshape your brain to the point that you become a bitter, jaded, cynical old curmudgeon that no longer notices that the very fact that they’re alive means they get to play blissfully in this cosmic playground where you get the godlike power of choice.
What you can do is say; “Yes, this sucks. But what’s the lesson? What can I take away from this to make me a better person? How can I take strength from this and use it to bring me closer to happiness in my next moment?” You see, a failed relationship or a bad day doesn’t have to be a pinion to your wings, it can be an updraft that showcases to you what things you like and don’t like, it can show you the red flags so that you can avoid them. If there was a personality your ex-partner had that drove you insane, then you now have the gift of knowing you don’t want to waste your time with another partner who acts the same way.
If you are mindful to the lessons of the failures, there is no reason that you can’t make the default of every day better than the one before it. Do something new everyday, learn its lesson, choose love over fear, and make every day better than the last. The more you do this, the more you will see and appreciate the beauty of this existence, and the happier you’ll be.
Podcast: Project Poseidon's Channel Aquarius
We now have three episodes of our podcast available for download off soundcloud.
http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:185587404/sounds.rss
The podcast seeks to take a somewhat grounded and rational approach to fringe topics such as conspiracy theories, the paranormal, ufos, the occult, metaphysics, psychology, philosophy, and where possible, we try to reflect with a sense of wonder on this thing we call a universe.
http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:185587404/sounds.rss
The podcast seeks to take a somewhat grounded and rational approach to fringe topics such as conspiracy theories, the paranormal, ufos, the occult, metaphysics, psychology, philosophy, and where possible, we try to reflect with a sense of wonder on this thing we call a universe.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
The Dark Side of Getting to Know Yourself
via appliedjung
Sia, an Australian singer, recently brought out a video that disturbed some people and drew a fair amount of criticism. The video is of an adult male and a young girl fighting in a cage. Sia responded to this criticism by saying that the two actors portray a single person, namely herself, and represent her two warring-self states. It is a wonderful depiction of the war between shadow and ego.
Coming to terms with your shadow is hard, unpleasant and often violent. The shadow does not wait around submissively to be seen and recognized. It screams and rages and shouts and fights and bites. And, of course, it is all you. The shadow is that which has been repressed, suffocated, abused, abandoned and neglected. It is the monkey on your back, whispering in your ear, turning your head to make you look at the things that it represents, those things that you don’t want to know about yourself.
If you are familiar with the Golden Compass series, you can liken the shadow to the dæmons that all the people are bonded to. Freud’s proverbial Id, which cannot hide its face and intentions. And to have your dæmon ripped from you is fatal. It is part of you and you cannot separate from it.
People try though. They try hard to suppress the shadow. They fear it. It scares them. It haunts their dreams. They believe that they are good and kind and sincere and nice. The bad in the world is out there, they can see it all around them and they are afraid.
Some people avoid the shadow by looking at the sun. Like Lucifer they chase enlightenment. Or they pursue knowledge and the intellect and get caught in mental masturbation, suppressing their feelings of anxiety and frustration.
Other people want to find something that will protect them from the evil. They believe that either the angels or some talisman will guard and keep them safe; or that if they ignore or pray for the evil in the world it will not affect them.
Most people focus on “what could be”, “should be”, “will be.” They think that they can control themselves and their environment. If they try harder, concentrate more, focus, think positively, it will all come right. They don’t work with what is.
But the truth is that the shadow is not under your control. It is out to get you and it will, no matter what.
There is nothing more destructive than ignoring your shadow. You lie, deceive, manipulate, and act out maliciously, which you then self-righteously justify to yourself so that you can carry on believing that you are “a nice person”. And it is so easy to justify your bad behaviour.
“They deserved it.”
“They had to be stopped.”
“Who doesn’t want to listen must feel.”
“I was only defending myself.”
“I will not be abused.”
“I was only trying to help them.”
“They had a right to know.”
“They were on the wrong path.”
“What are they so upset about?”
Of course the list is endless. And all the while you are surrounded by bad people. The world is full of evil. Everywhere you turn there is meanness, violence, hatred, selfishness and people full of wickedness. News flash! They only reflect what is inside your own heart. Acknowledging your shadow is the first and hardest step to becoming whole.
Being whole and not broken. Forgiving yourself, making friends with your shadow, accepting who you are, nurturing yourself, learning to love yourself for who you are really and not who you wish you were, these are some of the benefits you will reap from working with your shadow. It is dirty work, ongoing work, but, most importantly, also very rich and rewarding work.
Facing yourself in the mirror of the other, (which is) the world around you, is often disturbing and painful. If you dislike something or someone intensely, there is shadow content hidden in this relation. The object of your dislike contains something of your shadow in it. Deep and honest reflection will reveal it to you. Realising that you have the potential for dishonesty or being unfaithful is not easy. As is realising that you carry the pain and scarring from a devastating experience. But once in consciousness, it can be addressed and opposed or healed; whilst it remains unconscious it will wreak havoc in your life.
Similarly if you love and adore something, there are also these wonderful, exciting and surprising talents and hidden potential that remain untouched and unseen whilst in the unconscious.
By unearthing these guilts, sins, desires and hidden treasures you will liberate yourself. Suppressing desire and guilt takes an enormous amount of energy and eventually will express itself in your body as dis-ease and fatigue or depression. The biggest transformation you can experience is through the mining of your shadow. Whilst the shadow’s beliefs, desires and talents are hidden in the unconscious, it will not benefit you in the slightest. On the contrary, whilst unconscious it will thwart you at every turn. You will project these qualities onto others which does not expand or improve anyone, least of all yourself. You will shrink and become less and less until you are a petrified shallow version of yourself. Liberating the unconscious removes these projections, energizes you and expands both consciousness and personality.
Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.
C. G Jung
Please heed this warning though.
This work is not for the person who believes that they will work through the shadow and come out the other side an even nicer person! This is not the goal nor is it a realistic expectation. Whilst you have this attitude, you will not make any progress. You will remain in the false belief that you are at heart a nice person. You are not a nice person, you are a bitch or bastard and this work is about facing that about yourself and integrating it into consciousness. You can’t extract these things from your psyche. They are there to stay. It is how you work with it and what you do with it that counts, but that means that on a daily basis you will be confronted by your shadow. You have to accept that these things are part of you and love yourself for it. You are not a cardboard copy of a perfect person. You are a human being and being whole is about embracing your humanity. How can you have compassion with the beggar and lost souls of the world if you do not recognise and have compassion for the beggar within?
Archimedes said, give me one firm place to stand and I will move the world. This image is an almost perfect metaphor for becoming conscious and working with the shadow. The firm place that is referred to is the ego-consciousness. The ego is the centre of, and our access to consciousness. The consciousness referred to here is that of self-awareness and self-knowledge. This work is about strengthening and amplifying ego-consciousness. Only by taking the role of the ego seriously can you do shadow work. The shadow represents the opposite to the conscious ego position; it is the true other in the psyche. Only by being fully incarnated in and present to the ego can this work be done. If your approach is to dis-incarnate (transcend) your ego-consciousness in favour of a “spiritual” or “karmic” type outlook, this work is not for you. If you are part of a new age movement, where the ego is something of a dirty word, something to ignore, because you are part of “a much bigger spiritual reality”, don’t pursue this path.
This work is for people who realise that they are human and fallible. It speaks to those who recognize that they have something to do with what they are experiencing in the world. It is for the courageous and fearless. It is for people who are willing to forgive and open their hearts to themselves. It is for people who, to borrow from Jung; want to be whole, not perfect.
Sia, an Australian singer, recently brought out a video that disturbed some people and drew a fair amount of criticism. The video is of an adult male and a young girl fighting in a cage. Sia responded to this criticism by saying that the two actors portray a single person, namely herself, and represent her two warring-self states. It is a wonderful depiction of the war between shadow and ego.
Coming to terms with your shadow is hard, unpleasant and often violent. The shadow does not wait around submissively to be seen and recognized. It screams and rages and shouts and fights and bites. And, of course, it is all you. The shadow is that which has been repressed, suffocated, abused, abandoned and neglected. It is the monkey on your back, whispering in your ear, turning your head to make you look at the things that it represents, those things that you don’t want to know about yourself.
If you are familiar with the Golden Compass series, you can liken the shadow to the dæmons that all the people are bonded to. Freud’s proverbial Id, which cannot hide its face and intentions. And to have your dæmon ripped from you is fatal. It is part of you and you cannot separate from it.
People try though. They try hard to suppress the shadow. They fear it. It scares them. It haunts their dreams. They believe that they are good and kind and sincere and nice. The bad in the world is out there, they can see it all around them and they are afraid.
Some people avoid the shadow by looking at the sun. Like Lucifer they chase enlightenment. Or they pursue knowledge and the intellect and get caught in mental masturbation, suppressing their feelings of anxiety and frustration.
Other people want to find something that will protect them from the evil. They believe that either the angels or some talisman will guard and keep them safe; or that if they ignore or pray for the evil in the world it will not affect them.
Most people focus on “what could be”, “should be”, “will be.” They think that they can control themselves and their environment. If they try harder, concentrate more, focus, think positively, it will all come right. They don’t work with what is.
But the truth is that the shadow is not under your control. It is out to get you and it will, no matter what.
There is nothing more destructive than ignoring your shadow. You lie, deceive, manipulate, and act out maliciously, which you then self-righteously justify to yourself so that you can carry on believing that you are “a nice person”. And it is so easy to justify your bad behaviour.
“They deserved it.”
“They had to be stopped.”
“Who doesn’t want to listen must feel.”
“I was only defending myself.”
“I will not be abused.”
“I was only trying to help them.”
“They had a right to know.”
“They were on the wrong path.”
“What are they so upset about?”
Of course the list is endless. And all the while you are surrounded by bad people. The world is full of evil. Everywhere you turn there is meanness, violence, hatred, selfishness and people full of wickedness. News flash! They only reflect what is inside your own heart. Acknowledging your shadow is the first and hardest step to becoming whole.
Being whole and not broken. Forgiving yourself, making friends with your shadow, accepting who you are, nurturing yourself, learning to love yourself for who you are really and not who you wish you were, these are some of the benefits you will reap from working with your shadow. It is dirty work, ongoing work, but, most importantly, also very rich and rewarding work.
Facing yourself in the mirror of the other, (which is) the world around you, is often disturbing and painful. If you dislike something or someone intensely, there is shadow content hidden in this relation. The object of your dislike contains something of your shadow in it. Deep and honest reflection will reveal it to you. Realising that you have the potential for dishonesty or being unfaithful is not easy. As is realising that you carry the pain and scarring from a devastating experience. But once in consciousness, it can be addressed and opposed or healed; whilst it remains unconscious it will wreak havoc in your life.
Similarly if you love and adore something, there are also these wonderful, exciting and surprising talents and hidden potential that remain untouched and unseen whilst in the unconscious.
By unearthing these guilts, sins, desires and hidden treasures you will liberate yourself. Suppressing desire and guilt takes an enormous amount of energy and eventually will express itself in your body as dis-ease and fatigue or depression. The biggest transformation you can experience is through the mining of your shadow. Whilst the shadow’s beliefs, desires and talents are hidden in the unconscious, it will not benefit you in the slightest. On the contrary, whilst unconscious it will thwart you at every turn. You will project these qualities onto others which does not expand or improve anyone, least of all yourself. You will shrink and become less and less until you are a petrified shallow version of yourself. Liberating the unconscious removes these projections, energizes you and expands both consciousness and personality.
Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.
C. G Jung
Please heed this warning though.
This work is not for the person who believes that they will work through the shadow and come out the other side an even nicer person! This is not the goal nor is it a realistic expectation. Whilst you have this attitude, you will not make any progress. You will remain in the false belief that you are at heart a nice person. You are not a nice person, you are a bitch or bastard and this work is about facing that about yourself and integrating it into consciousness. You can’t extract these things from your psyche. They are there to stay. It is how you work with it and what you do with it that counts, but that means that on a daily basis you will be confronted by your shadow. You have to accept that these things are part of you and love yourself for it. You are not a cardboard copy of a perfect person. You are a human being and being whole is about embracing your humanity. How can you have compassion with the beggar and lost souls of the world if you do not recognise and have compassion for the beggar within?
Archimedes said, give me one firm place to stand and I will move the world. This image is an almost perfect metaphor for becoming conscious and working with the shadow. The firm place that is referred to is the ego-consciousness. The ego is the centre of, and our access to consciousness. The consciousness referred to here is that of self-awareness and self-knowledge. This work is about strengthening and amplifying ego-consciousness. Only by taking the role of the ego seriously can you do shadow work. The shadow represents the opposite to the conscious ego position; it is the true other in the psyche. Only by being fully incarnated in and present to the ego can this work be done. If your approach is to dis-incarnate (transcend) your ego-consciousness in favour of a “spiritual” or “karmic” type outlook, this work is not for you. If you are part of a new age movement, where the ego is something of a dirty word, something to ignore, because you are part of “a much bigger spiritual reality”, don’t pursue this path.
This work is for people who realise that they are human and fallible. It speaks to those who recognize that they have something to do with what they are experiencing in the world. It is for the courageous and fearless. It is for people who are willing to forgive and open their hearts to themselves. It is for people who, to borrow from Jung; want to be whole, not perfect.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Depression and spiritual awakening - Lisa Miller
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Is depression, as most of us experience it, meaningless suffering? Dr. Lisa Miller presents research that lends meaning to the experience of depression and to our experience on planet Earth.
Dr. Lisa Miller is perhaps the world’s foremost expert in the relative study of psychology and spirituality. Dr. Miller is Professor and Director of Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she founded and currently directs the Spirituality and Mind-Body Institute, to innovate, disseminate, and train healers in foundationally spiritual treatments. Dr. Miller solo-edited the Oxford University Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality (2012) and has published over seventy articles and chapters on spirituality in mental health and wellness. She has acted as Principle Investigator on several million dollars-worth of grants from corporate and family foundations as well as the National Institutes of Mental Health. Dr. Miller is Co-Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the new APA publication, Spirituality in Clinical Practice, and also serves as associate editor of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, the official journal of APA Division 36, Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, for which Dr. Miller has served as President and is now APA Council Representative. Dr. Miller has been elected to Fellow of the American Psychological Association and awarded the Virginia Sexton Mentoring Award. She is a graduate of Yale University, Columbia University, and University of Pennsylvania, where she studied under Martin Seligman, Ph. D.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Rule from the Shadows
via The Arcane Front
“Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, and are but slightly impressed by kindness, which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed on easy-going masters, but on tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because, having lost his strength, he has resumed his place among the feeble, who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to crowds will always have the semblance of a Caesar. His insignia attracts them, his authority overawes them, and his sword instills them with fear.”
—Gustave Le Bon
“Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, and are but slightly impressed by kindness, which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed on easy-going masters, but on tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because, having lost his strength, he has resumed his place among the feeble, who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to crowds will always have the semblance of a Caesar. His insignia attracts them, his authority overawes them, and his sword instills them with fear.”
—Gustave Le Bon
Saturday, May 30, 2015
UFOs as a psychological phenomenon
Everybody knows UFOs are bunk, you might say.
The UFO phenomenon interests me, not because I believe or want to believe that aliens are real and involved in human affairs, but because there is clearly something happening to make all these people report abductions, all these ex-military staffers report sightings, investigative journalists write books, and so forth.
From a psychological standpoint, the existence of the UFO phenomenon, and people's varied reactions to it, is interesting. As Carl Jung noted:
The problem of the Ufos is, as you rightly say, a very fascinating one, but it is as puzzling as it is fascinating; since, in spite of all observations I know of, there is no certainty about their very nature. On the other side, there is an overwhelming material pointing to their legendary or mythological aspect. As a matter of fact the psychological aspect is so impressive, that one almost must regret that the Ufos seem to be real after all. I have followed up the literature as much as possible and it looks to me as if something were seen and even confirmed by radar, but nobody knows exactly what is seen.
I'm not about to deluge you with links to UFO resources. Good information on the topic is readily available online to anyone with the curiosity, discernment, and ability to push a "search" button who is willing to go fishing for it amongst the deluge of crap that is even more readily available.
Yes, if there is "truth" to these UFO stories it turns everything our tv sets, educators, and governments are telling us about the world on its head.
Yes, there are a lot of loons out there who are UFO truthers.
Still, one can't look at the data and readily dismiss the reams of credible incident reports without lying to oneself or engaging in gross intellectual dishonesty.
This is why many self-professed "skeptics", it would seem, never bother to look at the data at all.
The mainstream massmind's infantilizing obsession with science fiction and fantasy on the one hand while maintaining rigid, rabid ignorance of this phenomenon strikes me as somewhat dissociative.
I think the implications of there being any substance to this stuff scares the bejesus out of most people, frankly. Especially "religious" people (or more correctly, dogmatic people). Or perhaps the average person is uncomfortable living with uncertainties.
There's also a really weird social stigma attached to being interested in this stuff, a taint by association that affects one's credibility and perceived intellectual merit.
For this reason I suspect there are many more people who are interested in this than would be apparent from the amount of conversation that takes place on the matter.
Strange that a society so taken with "science" should also be happy to ignore what's right in front of its face. But this goes back to cognitive dissonance, again... people are strongly psychologically motivated to ignore, forget, or hallucinate away data that interferes with their operating belief systems.
The UFO phenomenon interests me, not because I believe or want to believe that aliens are real and involved in human affairs, but because there is clearly something happening to make all these people report abductions, all these ex-military staffers report sightings, investigative journalists write books, and so forth.
From a psychological standpoint, the existence of the UFO phenomenon, and people's varied reactions to it, is interesting. As Carl Jung noted:
The problem of the Ufos is, as you rightly say, a very fascinating one, but it is as puzzling as it is fascinating; since, in spite of all observations I know of, there is no certainty about their very nature. On the other side, there is an overwhelming material pointing to their legendary or mythological aspect. As a matter of fact the psychological aspect is so impressive, that one almost must regret that the Ufos seem to be real after all. I have followed up the literature as much as possible and it looks to me as if something were seen and even confirmed by radar, but nobody knows exactly what is seen.
I'm not about to deluge you with links to UFO resources. Good information on the topic is readily available online to anyone with the curiosity, discernment, and ability to push a "search" button who is willing to go fishing for it amongst the deluge of crap that is even more readily available.
Yes, if there is "truth" to these UFO stories it turns everything our tv sets, educators, and governments are telling us about the world on its head.
Yes, there are a lot of loons out there who are UFO truthers.
Still, one can't look at the data and readily dismiss the reams of credible incident reports without lying to oneself or engaging in gross intellectual dishonesty.
This is why many self-professed "skeptics", it would seem, never bother to look at the data at all.
The mainstream massmind's infantilizing obsession with science fiction and fantasy on the one hand while maintaining rigid, rabid ignorance of this phenomenon strikes me as somewhat dissociative.
I think the implications of there being any substance to this stuff scares the bejesus out of most people, frankly. Especially "religious" people (or more correctly, dogmatic people). Or perhaps the average person is uncomfortable living with uncertainties.
There's also a really weird social stigma attached to being interested in this stuff, a taint by association that affects one's credibility and perceived intellectual merit.
For this reason I suspect there are many more people who are interested in this than would be apparent from the amount of conversation that takes place on the matter.
Strange that a society so taken with "science" should also be happy to ignore what's right in front of its face. But this goes back to cognitive dissonance, again... people are strongly psychologically motivated to ignore, forget, or hallucinate away data that interferes with their operating belief systems.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Wu Wei, Flow States and the Art of Being a Lazy Fuck
From disinfo.com:
“…It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”
“The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
I visibly waffled on several occasions when attempting to begin this article. Literally. I sat down on the couch with my laptop, ready to begin the process of typing this stupid, god-forsaken thing, and I physically shuddered. Each time. And, each time, Missus Furious would gaze at me cock-eyed and ask what the fuck my problem was.
“Nothing,” I’d mumble. “Nothing at all.”
“Ok?” She’d say, skeptically. “But why do you keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Having seizures or whatever it is you’re doing over there. Are you alright?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“YOU KEEP SHAKING.”
At that point I just shrugged and shook my head as if she were crazy.
This is what it’s like living with someone as mercilessly moronic as myself.
Anyhow, I did have several episodes of trembling. For a couple of reasons.
• • •
One: The thought of having to type Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s name a half-dozen or so times made me ill. This sounds like such a minor inconvenience that I must be making it up. But I’m not. You’re reading the work of the type of person who, when trying to watch Rey Mysterio highlights on youtube and an ad pops up, and the button in the corner of the ad says “you can skip this ad in 13 seconds,” I usually just close up the entire browser, get off the computer and go make peanut butter sandwiches or something, instead of waiting the 13 seconds.
Two: There are enough subtleties and nuances to both Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas and my own arguments, that I’m worried a fair number of potential readers are going to miss them. And, as a writer, I feel that if people misunderstand and/or don’t fully comprehend what is going on, it’s my fault, not the reader’s. So I spend an inordinate and irrational amount of time in the midsts of a neurotic episode because I’m convinced I’m not a good enough writer (or thinker) to make some of my ideas clear.
Regardless of how I feel—and regardless of my concerns—here I am. And since I’ve already buried the lede this far, let me just come out and tell you what my thesis is for the rest of the article: that so-called “flow” states are much more easily accessed—and most commonly experienced—when one is being a lazy fuck.
• • •
First off, even though Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow is one of the most popular and discussed ideas produced by psychology in the past 50 years or so, not everybody’s familiar with it. So we have to at least touch on what Flow is. Csikszentmihalyi himself describes the experience of flow as consisting of 6 components, which are:
1. Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2. Merging of action and awareness
3. A loss of reflective self-consciousness
4. A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
5. A distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered
6. Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
All of which sounds incredibly reasonable and probably accurate. My issue is really with how Csikszentmihalyi argues we induce flow states, mostly because Csikszentmihalyi spends a good portion of the his book on the topic—inconceivably entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience—discussing his belief that Flow experiences must be stimulated by activities that provide just the right amount of challenge, i.e. not challenging to the point of making one frustrated, but not so devoid of challenge that one finds the activity boring.
Again, this assertion sounds rather reasonable. And it is. But Csikszentmihalyi then expounds on that idea to insist that one cannot be in a passive or lazy mind if one hopes to initiate states of Flow.
He states:
“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” (emphasis mine)
He gives, as support to this idea, the example of a European woman who is a scholar and business magnate. She constantly travels, owns a number of homes around the world, is ceaselessly attending business meetings or conferences or concerts. She is so busy and opposed to leisure time that she expects her chauffeur to attend the local art museums in whatever town she finds herself in and give her a run-down of sorts on how the art museum was. To me she sounds insufferable and her life sounds exhausting. The importance of discussing this concept of Flow, as even Csikszentmihalyi admits, is that Flow states are supposed to make us happy. The inability to sit still and enjoy life for being life doesn’t sound like happiness to me. It sounds like distraction.
Either way, the philosopher and author Ed Slingerland agrees. In his book, Trying Not to Try, he takes the concept of Flow and expands and—in my opinion—improves on Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas. Slingerland makes the connection between Flow states and the Chinese philosophical concept of Wu Wei. Wu Wei is typically translated (with numerous, but less influential, exceptions) as “non-action,” “non-doing,” or “actionless action.” There is not really an English equivalent. Anyhow, Slingerland makes a rather convincing argument that Flow states are essentially states of Wu Wei.
This is important, because—even though I disagree with a number of assertions in Slingerland’s book—Slingerland is able to recognize that it’s not effort that is necessary to initiate episodes of Flow, it is a lack of effort that activates such states. Hence the title his book, Trying Not to Try.
Slingerland, though, still has his own aversion to coming out and saying that it’s a certain kind of laziness that induces Flow/Wu Wei states. Most writers who attempt to expound on the concept of Wu Wei exhibit this bizarre anxiety.
• • •
I’ve already written a bit about the virtues of laziness, and I want to emphasize that there’s a big difference between boredom and laziness, two concepts which I think a lot of people conflate. I also want to reiterate a major point from that initial essay of mine, which is: that a healthy laziness (as opposed to an unhealthy laziness, which does exist) is merely the spontaneous act of doing whatever seems most enjoyable to a person at a given moment. For example, a few people I know insist that I’m not lazy because I work 50-plus hours each week and yet I still find time to write and work-out and such things. But I genuinely enjoy writing and exercise. And typically when I am engaging in such activities, I am doing so at times when they’re so enjoyable that they are not taking much actual effort to complete. My 50 hours of work each week are really the only parts of my life that take any kind of effort — well, that and when my wife puts me to work doing some kind of tedious work around the house (for me, although many people like DIY projects). The opposite of laziness is “working hard.” But I think work only becomes hard when we’re not interested in doing it. I have to work hard at work because there are literally thousands of other things I’d rather spend my life doing.
This is my definition of laziness: the doing of things that are enjoyable at times when they are enjoyable. There were times when I was in school that writing was not enjoyable and was full of effort. Even in my series of essays for Disinfo, I believe a keen (or maybe not so keen in some instances) eye can spot those essays that weren’t all that enjoyable to write. They’re full of real effort. I’m the rare writer who believes that one should only write when inspired, and the fact that so many writers force themselves to write is why I find so many novels so unreadable.
All of which is sort of besides the point. The main idea here is that a healthy laziness is being spontaneous and doing enjoyable things at times when they are enjoyable. Sometimes activities we find to be enjoyable aren’t going to be enjoyable (for any of a myriad of reasons) and we shouldn’t do those usually enjoyable things at those times.
If we follow this advice, I believe we will find ourselves to be more often in states of Flow/Wu Wei. I know this is true for me when I write when I feel like writing, when I work-out when I feel like working out, when I socialize when I feel like socializing. I have Flow/Wu Wei watering my garden in cool summer evenings. I have felt it drinking green tea under a full moon while sitting on a rocking chair in my backyard. I have felt it on long walks after work with Missus Furious. I have even felt it lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling while daydreaming about being interviewed by Charlie Rose or about being able to eventually, one day, do a one-armed pull-up. And so on.
Most of those activities don’t meet Csikszentmihalyi’s requirement that flow states must present some kind of challenge, nor did I have to work hard to attain any of those states, contrary to his assertions. Believe me, for example, when I say that it literally takes no effort to imagine one’s self explaining pretentiously to Charlie Rose why one’s novel about drunk college kids puking on each other is really an analog for certain aspects of Taoist philosophy.
What those activities did meet, though, were my requirements: activities should be done when they feel enjoyable to do so.
• • •
Both Csikszentmihalyi and Slingerland recognized that Flow/Wu Wei states are instigated when we are doing things for their own sake. When we sew because we like the act of sewing, not because we’re all that interested in making a beautiful dress. When we cook because we enjoy the process of cooking, not because we’re all that interested in the resulting meal. When we play basketball not because we really want to win, but because playing basketball is fun.
The results of such activities may be rewarding too. Creating a beautiful dress, eating a tasty meal, and winning a basketball game certainly feel good. But there’s a difference, say, between Michael Jordan, who played basketball to feed his own ego, and a person who plays basketball because the activity of playing basketball is enjoyable in and of itself, regardless of outcome. Primarily, Michael Jordan’s efforts were effortful, whereas the other person’s was actually an act of spontaneity, or laziness, as I define it. And if you need proof that one form of playing basketball is superior to the other, all you need to do is look at Jordan or, say, Kobe Bryant, and observe how happy or fulfilled those two are, despite their numerous championships and accomplishments in the sport of basketball.
What Slingerland and Csikszentmihalyi neglect, though, is that the only way to do something for its own sake is to not give a shit about it, at least in the traditional ways we give a shit about things. What I’m talking about is being apathetic about results. If we don’t care about winning the basketball game, then our attention is focused only the joys of playing the game itself. If we’re not concerned about results, then we can focus on the joys of the process, which is where we can be lazy and in which we make ourselves available to Flow/Wu-Wei.
Note: It is inherent in the word “Flow” that a process is occurring. A river cannot flow, for example, once it has reached its end result of entering the ocean or of having been dried up. One can flow making a hamburger or eating a hamburger, but one cannot flow when the hamburger is simply sitting on the plate after the process of having been made, or when it is done being consumed. One can flow playing a game of basketball, but not when one has finished playing and has “won” or “lost” the game. One can flow when sewing a dress, but not when the dress is completed. If this is true for sewing and cooking and playing basketball, how much truer is it for the act (the process) of living life itself?
For if we work too hard, place too much effort in a search for results, instead of simply living life for life’s sake, we close ourselves off from opportunities for experiencing Flow/Wu Wei. And when we spend our lives struggling, striving, working, being effortful for some sort of ultimately meaningless result, we miss all that is enjoyable and worth experiencing… except when we’re in the mood to be effortful.
I’ll end this thing with a long-ish quote from Chuang Tzu via Slingerland that sums all of this up–even though Slingerland doesn’t seem to realize the depth and profundity of just what Chuang Tzu was saying, for Slingerland doesn’t quite recognize the connection between “spontaneity” and “laziness.”
Per Chuang Tzu:
When people are asleep, their spirits wander off; when they are awake, their bodies are like an open door, so that everything they touch becomes an entanglement. Day after day they use their minds to stir up trouble; they become boastful, sneaky, secretive. They are consumed with anxiety over trivial matters but remain arrogantly oblivious to the things truly worth fearing. Their words fly from their mouths like crossbow bolts, so sure are they that they know right from wrong. They cling to their positions as though they had sworn an oath, so sure are they of victory. Their gradual decline is like autumn fading into winter—this is how they dwindle day by day. They drown in what they do—you cannot make them turn back. They begin to suffocate, as though sealed up in a box—this is how they decline into senility. And as their minds approach death, nothing can cause them to turn back toward the light.
http://disinfo.com/2015/05/wu-wei-flow-states-art-lazy-fuck/
“…It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”
“The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
I visibly waffled on several occasions when attempting to begin this article. Literally. I sat down on the couch with my laptop, ready to begin the process of typing this stupid, god-forsaken thing, and I physically shuddered. Each time. And, each time, Missus Furious would gaze at me cock-eyed and ask what the fuck my problem was.
“Nothing,” I’d mumble. “Nothing at all.”
“Ok?” She’d say, skeptically. “But why do you keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Having seizures or whatever it is you’re doing over there. Are you alright?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“YOU KEEP SHAKING.”
At that point I just shrugged and shook my head as if she were crazy.
This is what it’s like living with someone as mercilessly moronic as myself.
Anyhow, I did have several episodes of trembling. For a couple of reasons.
• • •
One: The thought of having to type Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s name a half-dozen or so times made me ill. This sounds like such a minor inconvenience that I must be making it up. But I’m not. You’re reading the work of the type of person who, when trying to watch Rey Mysterio highlights on youtube and an ad pops up, and the button in the corner of the ad says “you can skip this ad in 13 seconds,” I usually just close up the entire browser, get off the computer and go make peanut butter sandwiches or something, instead of waiting the 13 seconds.
Two: There are enough subtleties and nuances to both Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas and my own arguments, that I’m worried a fair number of potential readers are going to miss them. And, as a writer, I feel that if people misunderstand and/or don’t fully comprehend what is going on, it’s my fault, not the reader’s. So I spend an inordinate and irrational amount of time in the midsts of a neurotic episode because I’m convinced I’m not a good enough writer (or thinker) to make some of my ideas clear.
Regardless of how I feel—and regardless of my concerns—here I am. And since I’ve already buried the lede this far, let me just come out and tell you what my thesis is for the rest of the article: that so-called “flow” states are much more easily accessed—and most commonly experienced—when one is being a lazy fuck.
• • •
First off, even though Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow is one of the most popular and discussed ideas produced by psychology in the past 50 years or so, not everybody’s familiar with it. So we have to at least touch on what Flow is. Csikszentmihalyi himself describes the experience of flow as consisting of 6 components, which are:
1. Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2. Merging of action and awareness
3. A loss of reflective self-consciousness
4. A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
5. A distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered
6. Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
All of which sounds incredibly reasonable and probably accurate. My issue is really with how Csikszentmihalyi argues we induce flow states, mostly because Csikszentmihalyi spends a good portion of the his book on the topic—inconceivably entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience—discussing his belief that Flow experiences must be stimulated by activities that provide just the right amount of challenge, i.e. not challenging to the point of making one frustrated, but not so devoid of challenge that one finds the activity boring.
Again, this assertion sounds rather reasonable. And it is. But Csikszentmihalyi then expounds on that idea to insist that one cannot be in a passive or lazy mind if one hopes to initiate states of Flow.
He states:
“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” (emphasis mine)
He gives, as support to this idea, the example of a European woman who is a scholar and business magnate. She constantly travels, owns a number of homes around the world, is ceaselessly attending business meetings or conferences or concerts. She is so busy and opposed to leisure time that she expects her chauffeur to attend the local art museums in whatever town she finds herself in and give her a run-down of sorts on how the art museum was. To me she sounds insufferable and her life sounds exhausting. The importance of discussing this concept of Flow, as even Csikszentmihalyi admits, is that Flow states are supposed to make us happy. The inability to sit still and enjoy life for being life doesn’t sound like happiness to me. It sounds like distraction.
Either way, the philosopher and author Ed Slingerland agrees. In his book, Trying Not to Try, he takes the concept of Flow and expands and—in my opinion—improves on Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas. Slingerland makes the connection between Flow states and the Chinese philosophical concept of Wu Wei. Wu Wei is typically translated (with numerous, but less influential, exceptions) as “non-action,” “non-doing,” or “actionless action.” There is not really an English equivalent. Anyhow, Slingerland makes a rather convincing argument that Flow states are essentially states of Wu Wei.
This is important, because—even though I disagree with a number of assertions in Slingerland’s book—Slingerland is able to recognize that it’s not effort that is necessary to initiate episodes of Flow, it is a lack of effort that activates such states. Hence the title his book, Trying Not to Try.
Slingerland, though, still has his own aversion to coming out and saying that it’s a certain kind of laziness that induces Flow/Wu Wei states. Most writers who attempt to expound on the concept of Wu Wei exhibit this bizarre anxiety.
• • •
I’ve already written a bit about the virtues of laziness, and I want to emphasize that there’s a big difference between boredom and laziness, two concepts which I think a lot of people conflate. I also want to reiterate a major point from that initial essay of mine, which is: that a healthy laziness (as opposed to an unhealthy laziness, which does exist) is merely the spontaneous act of doing whatever seems most enjoyable to a person at a given moment. For example, a few people I know insist that I’m not lazy because I work 50-plus hours each week and yet I still find time to write and work-out and such things. But I genuinely enjoy writing and exercise. And typically when I am engaging in such activities, I am doing so at times when they’re so enjoyable that they are not taking much actual effort to complete. My 50 hours of work each week are really the only parts of my life that take any kind of effort — well, that and when my wife puts me to work doing some kind of tedious work around the house (for me, although many people like DIY projects). The opposite of laziness is “working hard.” But I think work only becomes hard when we’re not interested in doing it. I have to work hard at work because there are literally thousands of other things I’d rather spend my life doing.
This is my definition of laziness: the doing of things that are enjoyable at times when they are enjoyable. There were times when I was in school that writing was not enjoyable and was full of effort. Even in my series of essays for Disinfo, I believe a keen (or maybe not so keen in some instances) eye can spot those essays that weren’t all that enjoyable to write. They’re full of real effort. I’m the rare writer who believes that one should only write when inspired, and the fact that so many writers force themselves to write is why I find so many novels so unreadable.
All of which is sort of besides the point. The main idea here is that a healthy laziness is being spontaneous and doing enjoyable things at times when they are enjoyable. Sometimes activities we find to be enjoyable aren’t going to be enjoyable (for any of a myriad of reasons) and we shouldn’t do those usually enjoyable things at those times.
If we follow this advice, I believe we will find ourselves to be more often in states of Flow/Wu Wei. I know this is true for me when I write when I feel like writing, when I work-out when I feel like working out, when I socialize when I feel like socializing. I have Flow/Wu Wei watering my garden in cool summer evenings. I have felt it drinking green tea under a full moon while sitting on a rocking chair in my backyard. I have felt it on long walks after work with Missus Furious. I have even felt it lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling while daydreaming about being interviewed by Charlie Rose or about being able to eventually, one day, do a one-armed pull-up. And so on.
Most of those activities don’t meet Csikszentmihalyi’s requirement that flow states must present some kind of challenge, nor did I have to work hard to attain any of those states, contrary to his assertions. Believe me, for example, when I say that it literally takes no effort to imagine one’s self explaining pretentiously to Charlie Rose why one’s novel about drunk college kids puking on each other is really an analog for certain aspects of Taoist philosophy.
What those activities did meet, though, were my requirements: activities should be done when they feel enjoyable to do so.
• • •
Both Csikszentmihalyi and Slingerland recognized that Flow/Wu Wei states are instigated when we are doing things for their own sake. When we sew because we like the act of sewing, not because we’re all that interested in making a beautiful dress. When we cook because we enjoy the process of cooking, not because we’re all that interested in the resulting meal. When we play basketball not because we really want to win, but because playing basketball is fun.
The results of such activities may be rewarding too. Creating a beautiful dress, eating a tasty meal, and winning a basketball game certainly feel good. But there’s a difference, say, between Michael Jordan, who played basketball to feed his own ego, and a person who plays basketball because the activity of playing basketball is enjoyable in and of itself, regardless of outcome. Primarily, Michael Jordan’s efforts were effortful, whereas the other person’s was actually an act of spontaneity, or laziness, as I define it. And if you need proof that one form of playing basketball is superior to the other, all you need to do is look at Jordan or, say, Kobe Bryant, and observe how happy or fulfilled those two are, despite their numerous championships and accomplishments in the sport of basketball.
What Slingerland and Csikszentmihalyi neglect, though, is that the only way to do something for its own sake is to not give a shit about it, at least in the traditional ways we give a shit about things. What I’m talking about is being apathetic about results. If we don’t care about winning the basketball game, then our attention is focused only the joys of playing the game itself. If we’re not concerned about results, then we can focus on the joys of the process, which is where we can be lazy and in which we make ourselves available to Flow/Wu-Wei.
Note: It is inherent in the word “Flow” that a process is occurring. A river cannot flow, for example, once it has reached its end result of entering the ocean or of having been dried up. One can flow making a hamburger or eating a hamburger, but one cannot flow when the hamburger is simply sitting on the plate after the process of having been made, or when it is done being consumed. One can flow playing a game of basketball, but not when one has finished playing and has “won” or “lost” the game. One can flow when sewing a dress, but not when the dress is completed. If this is true for sewing and cooking and playing basketball, how much truer is it for the act (the process) of living life itself?
For if we work too hard, place too much effort in a search for results, instead of simply living life for life’s sake, we close ourselves off from opportunities for experiencing Flow/Wu Wei. And when we spend our lives struggling, striving, working, being effortful for some sort of ultimately meaningless result, we miss all that is enjoyable and worth experiencing… except when we’re in the mood to be effortful.
I’ll end this thing with a long-ish quote from Chuang Tzu via Slingerland that sums all of this up–even though Slingerland doesn’t seem to realize the depth and profundity of just what Chuang Tzu was saying, for Slingerland doesn’t quite recognize the connection between “spontaneity” and “laziness.”
Per Chuang Tzu:
When people are asleep, their spirits wander off; when they are awake, their bodies are like an open door, so that everything they touch becomes an entanglement. Day after day they use their minds to stir up trouble; they become boastful, sneaky, secretive. They are consumed with anxiety over trivial matters but remain arrogantly oblivious to the things truly worth fearing. Their words fly from their mouths like crossbow bolts, so sure are they that they know right from wrong. They cling to their positions as though they had sworn an oath, so sure are they of victory. Their gradual decline is like autumn fading into winter—this is how they dwindle day by day. They drown in what they do—you cannot make them turn back. They begin to suffocate, as though sealed up in a box—this is how they decline into senility. And as their minds approach death, nothing can cause them to turn back toward the light.
http://disinfo.com/2015/05/wu-wei-flow-states-art-lazy-fuck/
Thursday, February 26, 2015
The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich (1897 – 1957) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Sigmund Freud, and one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry. He was the author of several influential books, most notably Character Analysis (1933) and The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933). His writing influenced generations of intellectuals and during the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students scrawled his name on walls and threw copies of The Mass Psychology of Fascism at the police.
From the 1930s onward, he became an increasingly controversial figure. After moving to the United States, he coined the term ‘orgone’ for a cosmic energy he claimed to have discovered, which he said others referred to as God. In 1940, he started building orgone accumulators, devices that his patients sat inside to harness the reputed health benefits. However, following vociferous media criticism, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration obtained an injunction against the shipment of orgone accumulators and Reich’s books. Charged with contempt in 1956 for having violated the injunction, Reich was sentenced to two years in prison, and that summer over six tons of his publications were burned by order of the court. He died in jail of heart failure just over a year later.
Read about him in detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich
"He {Wilhelm Reich} had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government.
Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned.
Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a civil liberties issue.
When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who ever lived and discovered the basic secrets of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve further investigation."
-Robert Anton Wilson (March 1995)
Kate Bush even wrote a song about him:
You can read Reich's book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, here:
http://www.relatedness.org/Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism.pdf
From the 1930s onward, he became an increasingly controversial figure. After moving to the United States, he coined the term ‘orgone’ for a cosmic energy he claimed to have discovered, which he said others referred to as God. In 1940, he started building orgone accumulators, devices that his patients sat inside to harness the reputed health benefits. However, following vociferous media criticism, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration obtained an injunction against the shipment of orgone accumulators and Reich’s books. Charged with contempt in 1956 for having violated the injunction, Reich was sentenced to two years in prison, and that summer over six tons of his publications were burned by order of the court. He died in jail of heart failure just over a year later.
Read about him in detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich
"He {Wilhelm Reich} had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government.
Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned.
Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a civil liberties issue.
When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who ever lived and discovered the basic secrets of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve further investigation."
-Robert Anton Wilson (March 1995)
Kate Bush even wrote a song about him:
You can read Reich's book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, here:
http://www.relatedness.org/Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism.pdf
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Life is But a Dream - Essays for the Discordian Occultist
Part 1
“As sunlight obscures the stars by day so too does wakefullness blind us to the fact that we are still dreaming.”
– Liber Kaos, Peter J Carroll.
Everything you experience of the outside world has to pass via your senses into your brain. Your body acts as an instrument through which reality is filtered. Ignorance allows you to focus. You always exclude more than you are taking in. If this article has your full attention it will necessarily be at the expense of other things. If you’re reading it on your mobile in a pub some people will see your focus as ignorant, for example.
It is with your memory and imagination that you decode meaning from the chaos of the external world. You’ve been around in some form or other since the dawn of time. In my experience it’s only recently that any of it has made any sort of “sense” thanks in the main to my memory and imagination.
However, that “sense” and meaning is ultimately decided by you. You get the final call as regards what is or is not “real”. This is the case with everything you have ever experienced.
Sleep is a good expression of this truth. While enveloped in sleep the brain invents scenarios by ignoring most sense data. This act of invention is usually a result of your subconscious mind combining memories and imagination. This video posted on Disinfo recently about lucid dreaming allows you to investigate the dream state further by learning to use your conscious mind to create dreams. There’s plenty of information online elsewhere about the process but a simple three step guide for the busy Discordian would run something like this:
Step one: Resolve to perform frequent ‘reality checks’.
Reality checking techniques vary from person to person but I find pulling my hands up into my line of vision is enough. This is tricky for me to do while dreaming as they usually appear a little slow moving or blurred. Other people switch electric lights off and on or try reading words, in short perform any simple activity you find is usually difficult in a dream.
Do these checks every hour or so until it’s an instinctive habit. The point of them is to trigger the realisation that you are dreaming.
Step two: Keep a dream diary and fill it in every morning.
This principally aids your memory and ability to recall any dreams from the previous night. No point in lucid dreaming if you forget about it the next day.
Step three: Learn not to freak out when you do finally feel lucid within the dream state.
I fell into the trap of waking up each time I realised I was dreaming for a while. This was mainly because I’d get so excited when a reality check revealed I was dreaming that I’d also trigger a ‘fully conscious wake up in the middle of the night situation’.
Step four: Explore the world of lucid dreaming where anything you think is true becomes the case instantly.
Magick is the art of manipulating reality both internally and externally. Lucid dreaming is an interesting preparatory first step. Further magickal exercises will build upon principles you’ll discover as your mind becomes more able to consciously manipulate the dream state. Most so-called low magick is principally concerned with projecting dreams outward into our external reality. There’s little point in doing this if you can’t dream properly.
The phrase “living the dream” owes more than a little to magickal thinking. However, our aim is to live this dream we call reality in a fully conscious ‘awakened’ state.
http://disinfo.com/2012/11/life-is-but-a-dream/
Part 2
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”
- How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, Philip K. Dick
Magick is a highly subjective skill. According to the occultist, Ramsey Dukes, as a discipline it lies somewhere alongside ‘art’, ‘science’ and ‘religion’ [1]. All of these pursuits require a certain state of mind. The magick user who entirely excludes the possibility of magick from his worldview is like a cleric who knows no God, an artist with no appreciation for art or a scientist who refuses to accept the laws of mathematics. It’s not necessarily the case that you will be unsuccessful but it’s significantly less likely. So, for as long as is comfortable[2], it’s time to allow magick to be part of your reality.
This essay includes two exercises, the first will involve noticing magick and the second will involve using it. The first exercise is outlined below in three easy steps:
Step one: Resolve to notice the number 23.
The particular number is not relevant at this stage. Some observe the number 11 or 13 or 7 but as we’re Discordians the number 23 will tune us into the right state of mind for this series of thought exercises. People who are inexperienced in the ways of numerology are advised to watch Eric Cartmen’s explanation of the causes of 9/11 [Mystery of the Urinal Deuce (Season 10, Episode 9)]. A good numerologist can easily spot the 23’s in the numbers 203, 2003, or, at a push, 5.
Step two: Get your dream diary and record what 23 means to you each time you see it.
This diary will now be re-named a “spellbook”. Spells can take years to manifest and there’s no way of checking your effectiveness if you can’t remember which ones you have cast.
Step three: Learn not to freak out too much when the number 23 does actually seem to take on some sort of significance.
I suggest you apply maximum fluidity to the meanings you start to notice here. The number 23 doesn’t usually acquire one meaning and the more you pay attention the more you should realise it’s neither always lucky or unlucky. All we are noticing is it carries a certain significance.
Step four: Toward the end of the week (usually by the fifth day) you’ll be able to explore a world where other random details can also be viewed as significant.
In his occult masterpiece “The Secret History of The World” Jonathan Black nails a description of the sort of mindset we’re trying to invoke here:
“In this history the universe is anthropocentric, every single particle of it straining, directed towards humankind. […In] the mind-before-matter universe that this book describes, the connection between mind and matter is much more intimate. It is a living, dynamic connection. Everything in this universe is alive and conscious to some degree, responding sensitively and intelligently to our deepest, subtlest needs.”
[my italics]
The Secret History of The World, Jonathan Black. P33-34
While dreaming one’s thoughts manifest almost instantly and if you’re lucid at the time this process is easily observed. Now you have entered a more magickal state of mind we’re going to see how long it takes to replicate this process in waking life. This next exercise is similar to one suggested by Pope Bob in the first chapter of “Prometheus Rising”[3]. The only difference is we’re adjusting things slightly to account for inflation and we are not searching for any explanation other than a magickal one. Once again it is a three step process:
Step one: Resolve to evoke a nice shiny fifty cent piece.
Step two: Keep an eye out for the fruits of your evocation.
Step three: Learn not to freak out when you finally do find it. It will be found by you easily and the moment you’ve got it in your hand you will be ready for part three of this five part series where we will finally get cracking on some real high grade Discordian nonsense.
Step four: Wonder why it is that each of these three step plans has had a fourth step?
Part 3
“Thoughts are things” – Prentice Mulford, noted American philosopher.
Previous articles in this series, “Life is but a dream” and “Living The Dream,” have deliberately avoided too much theory and focused instead on practice. One of the reasons we started in Part 1 with lucid dreaming is because it acts as a safe environment for your early magick use[1] while teaching you most of the essentials in a fairly short period of time. For example, in that particular state you will have noticed the slightest negative thought manifests instantly. Furthermore, if you set out to have a nightmare it’s not hard to make yourself wake up screaming. However, few people do this because dealing with such situations usually comes instinctively. After all in that world you are an all powerful great magician who can make even the grass go green.
Now your experiments are moving into the external world where you will have spent years learning how limited your power is. The key point here is that everything you’ve ever encountered has had to come through your own reality filter, otherwise known as your mind[2]. Everything you know about the outside world has had to pass through the bowels of your brain.
During these exercises lets agree for the moment that you cannot order the chaotic external world and focus instead upon the only thing you can control, your mind. Think of the techniques below as safety precautions which have been shown by others to help keep that vital instrument clean and healthy.
1, Cultivate a level of “mindfulness” with daily meditation
Meditation is a good start. I use the techniques taught by Alan Watts[3] as a matter of personal preference. Meditate frequently as part of a daily routine and you may glimpse a sense of what Buddhists call mindfulness. This encompasses a feeling that judging events and circumstances is futile. It’s an excellent way to avoid nightmares as fear requires you to make a judgement. Resources on how to meditate are available elsewhere online and there are many variations on this. In a nutshell here is the three step process I use daily:
Step one: Frame it as an activity which you are doing in the spirit of play, it’s not a solemn duty or task. It’s in essence meant to be fun.
Step two: Find a comfortable place and time where you will not be disturbed. You’re about to ignore the outside world and sit in it without interaction, this will be easier if you’re free of distractions. Set aside around 30-60 minutes. Follow whichever specific procedure appeals to you most but personally speaking I was first drawn in by the simplicity of an exercise called “the mindfulness of breathing”. Here you close your eyes and count, in repeating cycles of ten, the natural flow of your breath.
Step three: Learn not to freak out too much when life gets in the way or when you have an unexpected moment of success.
Step four: !
2, Adopt a temporary moral code.
Try using the beliefs of a “moral” spiritual system for a while and see how it suits you. Magick is a highly subjective skill so which set of scruples you choose to use is entirely up to you. Any theology which has a moral system that appeals will do but personally speaking my favourite option is contained within a short New Age masterpiece called “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz.[4] It takes an afternoon to read and carries less baggage than any of the more serious religious options. Give it a go in the same week you spend meditating and notice how your reality starts to shift into an easier place.
Here is the three step process, contained in more detail within, The Four Agreements:
Step one: “Be impeccable with your word”.
If you say you’ll do something ensure you actually do it. Avoid lying to people and think of it as a weapon not unlike poison.
Step two: “Don’t take anything personally”.
No one really knows you or why you’re doing what you will. If they say or do good or bad things it speaks only of their own character. This is also true of your own judgements. Say nice but truthful things about people and you’re exercising positive internal energy. Keep bitching about people and you’ll emphasise the bad in yourself.
Step three: “Don’t make assumptions”.
Discover the world with your own mind, don’t be led by others. Trust yourself and investigate the reality you personally inhabit. We all live in different worlds and it’s far better to gaze in wonder than become one of those dull characters who assume they know it all.
Step four: “Always do your best”.
Hopefully the above brief description has enticed you to go look at that book. Get it from a library or buy it or whatever, don’t just use my incomplete description of it. However, as with all these essays I am suggesting tools not rules. It’s perfectly acceptable to try Christianity, Islam, Satanism, Judaism, or any of the other deeply moral spiritual systems available in today’s theological supermarket. You’re only doing it for a bit though so don’t go telling everyone, they might get upset if you decide to give their BS[5] a miss later on.
3, Learn not to freak out
The advantage of your path is that Discordianism is a joke religion. Laughter is the music from which our universe is created. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, “the angels can fly because they take themselves lightly”. The moment you forget this you might fall into the trap of taking things seriously. So, here’s a quick three step guide to some of the things you need to know before going any further:
Step 1: There is in fact no such thing as magick.
Step 2: Maybe you should stop using the word “is”.
Step 3: A good Discordian never believes anything they can read.
Step 4: As a “High” initiate there is obviously nothing I can ever actually let you know about Discordianism.
4, Cultivate a sense of your true will.
All systems of magick are pretty hot on the notion of free will. Even the control-freak Gods of the the Abrahamic religions recognise in their more sober moments that you must respect other people’s right to self determination. They don’t do this because they’re ‘nice’ Gods, they do it because the consequences for a magick user who tries to control another are not beneficial in the long term. There’s a deep misunderstanding in some forms of modern occultism that bending others to your will is a worthwhile exercise, in my experience it’s not. In fact it locks you into a situation where you will ultimately depend upon them rather than yourself.
A good occultist entices people to co-operate rather than forces them to do so. However, not pushing other people around is the easy part, working out if you’re being true to yourself is far more problematic.
Getting to know thyself is a lifelong task as you are changing all the time. This essay could be a first step towards you really considering that journey of self discovery or, more likely, it’s just a timely reminder.
At a guess your body will likely currently be full of drugs, toxins and ideas that do not really belong there. Is it your true will to drink more beer or are you in fact under the influence of alcohol and by extension the will of the company who sells it? Did you really want that bar of chocolate or did the idea get seeded in your subconscious mind by a clever advertisment?[6]
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not suggesting you need to stop the drink or drugs I’m just pointing out if you’re going to use them make sure they don’t end up using you. Do these things mindfully or they cloud your judgement when it comes to discerning your “true will”. We’re Discordians, not monks. We live our lives but before you use the techniques of magick it’s worth you ensure it’s your drerams you are living and not someone else’s.
If you follow all of the above stages any problems you face will be more easily placed into perspective. Without wishing to lift the magick curtain too much next week you’re about to do nothing more than try an instense experiment in applied philosophy. Unlike Thelemites or other occultists you’ve always got the comfortable back door provided by the fact that Discordianism is a joke, it’s nothing more than a chance to play around with funny ideas.
Part 4:
“Magick has many aspects, but primarily it acts as a dramatized system of psychology”
- “Pope Bob”, Robert Anton Wilson
Here’s one way of making a sigil. It’s partly cribbed from a talk given by Grant Morrison at the Disinformation conference[1] with slight personal additional details provided by my own experiences. Sigils are a low-magick technique which will not fail to get you exactly what you need. It can become a high-magick technique but for the moment we’ll just stick to the basics[2].
One important thing to note is that sigils always appear to work. The distinction being; if I kicked in a window, I’d feel I knew who’d done it. If I cast a sigil which asked for that window to be broken and then discovered a few days later it was now broken, no one can prove a causal relationship between the sigil and the broken window. However I might get the impression that my sigil was involved in the process somewhere.
Secondly, the following is a (in my opinion better) version of other ideas that have been kicking round recently such as, The Secret, Cosmic Ordering, and, to a lesser extent, “positive thinking”[3]. It’s also similar to “preying,” if you think your God lives within you[4].
All these above techniques have common elements. All of them are pretty much in agreement regarding the first part of the process, set your intent. The most effective Discordian occultists spend more time on step one than they ever do on step four.
Step one: Decide upon your will.
– All your workings should be done with pieces of paper and a pen.
This is the hardest part. You need to imagine what it is you want as clearly as possible. Then refine it until you’ve got a vision of what it is you ‘really’ want. Then refine it again after you’ve imagined the earth shifting upon its axis in order to grant this wish over the next few years. Check you’re good with the consequences and then, refine it again. I can’t emphasise this enough. See the further reading section for more details.
Once you’re happy write it out as a single sentence:
EG: I AM A HEALTHY FOURTEEN AND A HALF STONE, ENERGETIC PERSON.
Notice a few things about the above. When I cast this I wanted to be 14 and a half stone. There are many ways this could have happened, some of them include ill health. Hence the words healthy and energetic.
Think of those old fairy stories where someone makes a wish and there are tragic consequences. King Midas wanted everything he touched to turn to gold. He ends up regretting his wish. The difference between your sigil becoming a blessing or a curse is in its detail. Give it lots of thought. Write and re-write the sentence. Check the further reading section for more information.
Also notice, it’s not “I WANT TO BE” or “I AM THIS AND NOT THAT”. Negatives in sigils are just negative! If you write “I WANT TO BE A MILLIONAIRE” look forward to a life of wanting to be a millionaire. Remember what we learned in part one where you began lucid dreaming. What would happen to you if you dived into the dream world with negatives in your mind?
If you truly have followed this series from part one, as opposed to most who will have just casually landed on it and curiously read to this point, why not try to lucid dream your intended future first and try it out a bit? If, for example, having lots of sexual partners gets messy in that world ditch it and come up with a better wish. It needs to feel like a world you are comfortable in. Once that’s the case, state it as if you are already there, in that positive future.
As an exercise imagine you’re in that future calling back into the past when you wrote out this sigil. Try describing and declaring what it’s like in as much detail as possible. Now listen out for your “imaginary” future self shouting “I’m the owner of a brand new convertible and I love it” or whatever. Now, write it down!
Finally a note of caution here. Remember we spoke about ‘true will’ in the last piece? Well, if your dreams and visions involve others do not enchant realities which compromise their true will.
So, for example, don’t put “I am married to Dave who works in accounts”. Ask for a less uncompromising: “I’m married to a bloke like Dave who works in accounts”. This doesn’t rule Dave out of the equation, after all who is more like Dave than Dave? However if he thinks you’re a repulsive creature who he’d rather vomit over than have sex with, you’ve given the poor guy a get out and you can still get what you need. Far better to enchant someone, like him who likes you of their own free will.
It’s not unlikely you’ll encounter minor problems with all this but remember what you learned in part three and fear not: you will live and learn!
There’s nothing to stop you doing another sigil in the future.
—
Step Two: Remove the vowels and repeated letters.
The first step was by far the most important part. These next bits are 1% of sigil craft and the bit you’ve just done was the remaining 99%. However, this 1% which I’m about to explain is the more “magick” bit. It’ll make you feel more like ‘an occultist’ and there’s enormous value in that.
This means you should check you’re comfortable with what you’ve just done as part of this second step. You need to feel good on both a subconscious and intuitive level about the sentence you’re turning into a weird looking symbol. If you’re not it’ll come out in the process later on once the sigil is cast. For now, I’ll assume you are and crack on.
Firstly, sigils are crafted and re-drafted by a process of elimination. Like a sculpture you’re going to chip and chisel that sentence down until it looks like a sort of magical wingding. Begin this by removing the vowels and repeated letters, leaving yourself with a string of consonants, like so:
MHLTYFRNDSGCP
An example of my weight loss sigil in its early stages
Step three: Combine the letters into one big pattern and begin reducing it into a simpler image.
This bit is where most people get in a tizz. Remember the most difficult part of the process was over once you’d finished step one. There are no rules as to how you go about combining the letters but I find it best to jumble them all into one big squiggle. The main picture is an example of the one we’re looking at. Ultimately it was successful and I used a revised version to hit my target weight of 13.5 a year later. This is down from my initial 18.5 stone.
Keep re-drawing it and omitting details as you go along. The point of this process is to lose sight of what it is the sigil means. Keep drawing until the exact point of your work is irrelevant to you. Get really bored of the process and lose sight of why it is you’re bothering with such superstitious nonsense. Make it look more and more “magickal” to you. Hit a point where it starts to become a labour of love which is totally detached from your initial intent.
The finished product must look perfect and beautiful. It represents the total of your efforts. This is now a sigil, yet to be cast. It represents a thought which you are about to plant into the collective dreamworld so it can start to descend into the world of objective reality and your future.
Not quite but almost the finished product
Treasure it a bit. Don’t cast it straight away. Be pleased with it.
Step Four: Cast it.
People are divided upon how exactly you should do this. You’re looking for an intense transcendental experience where you can focus on this image and force it through your mind into the magical dream world while you are fully conscious. Pain, meditation, orgasm, psychedelic-transcendental drugs or all of the above combined are popular methods. Whichever you’re best at. Combine the intense experience with a good solid look at the sigil. Then close your eyes and think of it. Project it into your minds eye and out into the cosmos. Then destroy the paper it is drawn on and forget all about it.
One simple way, which I use, is with a candle. Have the sigil drawn on a piece of paper. Burn it and then let the flame burn (but not harm) your fingertips. At that precise moment close your eyes and picture it in your mind. There we are, it’s cast. The pain should have done enough to distract you and send it neatly into the world of ideas…
There are numerous other methods but the most important part is, as I said, step 1.
Once you’ve cast your sigil you must then aid its descent into the real world. If you asked for a new job, get applying for them. If you wanted to lose weight like I did, stop eating those chocolate cakes.
“As sunlight obscures the stars by day so too does wakefullness blind us to the fact that we are still dreaming.”
– Liber Kaos, Peter J Carroll.
Everything you experience of the outside world has to pass via your senses into your brain. Your body acts as an instrument through which reality is filtered. Ignorance allows you to focus. You always exclude more than you are taking in. If this article has your full attention it will necessarily be at the expense of other things. If you’re reading it on your mobile in a pub some people will see your focus as ignorant, for example.
It is with your memory and imagination that you decode meaning from the chaos of the external world. You’ve been around in some form or other since the dawn of time. In my experience it’s only recently that any of it has made any sort of “sense” thanks in the main to my memory and imagination.
However, that “sense” and meaning is ultimately decided by you. You get the final call as regards what is or is not “real”. This is the case with everything you have ever experienced.
Sleep is a good expression of this truth. While enveloped in sleep the brain invents scenarios by ignoring most sense data. This act of invention is usually a result of your subconscious mind combining memories and imagination. This video posted on Disinfo recently about lucid dreaming allows you to investigate the dream state further by learning to use your conscious mind to create dreams. There’s plenty of information online elsewhere about the process but a simple three step guide for the busy Discordian would run something like this:
Step one: Resolve to perform frequent ‘reality checks’.
Reality checking techniques vary from person to person but I find pulling my hands up into my line of vision is enough. This is tricky for me to do while dreaming as they usually appear a little slow moving or blurred. Other people switch electric lights off and on or try reading words, in short perform any simple activity you find is usually difficult in a dream.
Do these checks every hour or so until it’s an instinctive habit. The point of them is to trigger the realisation that you are dreaming.
Step two: Keep a dream diary and fill it in every morning.
This principally aids your memory and ability to recall any dreams from the previous night. No point in lucid dreaming if you forget about it the next day.
Step three: Learn not to freak out when you do finally feel lucid within the dream state.
I fell into the trap of waking up each time I realised I was dreaming for a while. This was mainly because I’d get so excited when a reality check revealed I was dreaming that I’d also trigger a ‘fully conscious wake up in the middle of the night situation’.
Step four: Explore the world of lucid dreaming where anything you think is true becomes the case instantly.
Magick is the art of manipulating reality both internally and externally. Lucid dreaming is an interesting preparatory first step. Further magickal exercises will build upon principles you’ll discover as your mind becomes more able to consciously manipulate the dream state. Most so-called low magick is principally concerned with projecting dreams outward into our external reality. There’s little point in doing this if you can’t dream properly.
The phrase “living the dream” owes more than a little to magickal thinking. However, our aim is to live this dream we call reality in a fully conscious ‘awakened’ state.
http://disinfo.com/2012/11/life-is-but-a-dream/
Part 2
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”
- How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, Philip K. Dick
Magick is a highly subjective skill. According to the occultist, Ramsey Dukes, as a discipline it lies somewhere alongside ‘art’, ‘science’ and ‘religion’ [1]. All of these pursuits require a certain state of mind. The magick user who entirely excludes the possibility of magick from his worldview is like a cleric who knows no God, an artist with no appreciation for art or a scientist who refuses to accept the laws of mathematics. It’s not necessarily the case that you will be unsuccessful but it’s significantly less likely. So, for as long as is comfortable[2], it’s time to allow magick to be part of your reality.
This essay includes two exercises, the first will involve noticing magick and the second will involve using it. The first exercise is outlined below in three easy steps:
Step one: Resolve to notice the number 23.
The particular number is not relevant at this stage. Some observe the number 11 or 13 or 7 but as we’re Discordians the number 23 will tune us into the right state of mind for this series of thought exercises. People who are inexperienced in the ways of numerology are advised to watch Eric Cartmen’s explanation of the causes of 9/11 [Mystery of the Urinal Deuce (Season 10, Episode 9)]. A good numerologist can easily spot the 23’s in the numbers 203, 2003, or, at a push, 5.
Step two: Get your dream diary and record what 23 means to you each time you see it.
This diary will now be re-named a “spellbook”. Spells can take years to manifest and there’s no way of checking your effectiveness if you can’t remember which ones you have cast.
Step three: Learn not to freak out too much when the number 23 does actually seem to take on some sort of significance.
I suggest you apply maximum fluidity to the meanings you start to notice here. The number 23 doesn’t usually acquire one meaning and the more you pay attention the more you should realise it’s neither always lucky or unlucky. All we are noticing is it carries a certain significance.
Step four: Toward the end of the week (usually by the fifth day) you’ll be able to explore a world where other random details can also be viewed as significant.
In his occult masterpiece “The Secret History of The World” Jonathan Black nails a description of the sort of mindset we’re trying to invoke here:
“In this history the universe is anthropocentric, every single particle of it straining, directed towards humankind. […In] the mind-before-matter universe that this book describes, the connection between mind and matter is much more intimate. It is a living, dynamic connection. Everything in this universe is alive and conscious to some degree, responding sensitively and intelligently to our deepest, subtlest needs.”
[my italics]
The Secret History of The World, Jonathan Black. P33-34
While dreaming one’s thoughts manifest almost instantly and if you’re lucid at the time this process is easily observed. Now you have entered a more magickal state of mind we’re going to see how long it takes to replicate this process in waking life. This next exercise is similar to one suggested by Pope Bob in the first chapter of “Prometheus Rising”[3]. The only difference is we’re adjusting things slightly to account for inflation and we are not searching for any explanation other than a magickal one. Once again it is a three step process:
Step one: Resolve to evoke a nice shiny fifty cent piece.
Step two: Keep an eye out for the fruits of your evocation.
Step three: Learn not to freak out when you finally do find it. It will be found by you easily and the moment you’ve got it in your hand you will be ready for part three of this five part series where we will finally get cracking on some real high grade Discordian nonsense.
Step four: Wonder why it is that each of these three step plans has had a fourth step?
Part 3
“Thoughts are things” – Prentice Mulford, noted American philosopher.
Previous articles in this series, “Life is but a dream” and “Living The Dream,” have deliberately avoided too much theory and focused instead on practice. One of the reasons we started in Part 1 with lucid dreaming is because it acts as a safe environment for your early magick use[1] while teaching you most of the essentials in a fairly short period of time. For example, in that particular state you will have noticed the slightest negative thought manifests instantly. Furthermore, if you set out to have a nightmare it’s not hard to make yourself wake up screaming. However, few people do this because dealing with such situations usually comes instinctively. After all in that world you are an all powerful great magician who can make even the grass go green.
Now your experiments are moving into the external world where you will have spent years learning how limited your power is. The key point here is that everything you’ve ever encountered has had to come through your own reality filter, otherwise known as your mind[2]. Everything you know about the outside world has had to pass through the bowels of your brain.
During these exercises lets agree for the moment that you cannot order the chaotic external world and focus instead upon the only thing you can control, your mind. Think of the techniques below as safety precautions which have been shown by others to help keep that vital instrument clean and healthy.
1, Cultivate a level of “mindfulness” with daily meditation
Meditation is a good start. I use the techniques taught by Alan Watts[3] as a matter of personal preference. Meditate frequently as part of a daily routine and you may glimpse a sense of what Buddhists call mindfulness. This encompasses a feeling that judging events and circumstances is futile. It’s an excellent way to avoid nightmares as fear requires you to make a judgement. Resources on how to meditate are available elsewhere online and there are many variations on this. In a nutshell here is the three step process I use daily:
Step one: Frame it as an activity which you are doing in the spirit of play, it’s not a solemn duty or task. It’s in essence meant to be fun.
Step two: Find a comfortable place and time where you will not be disturbed. You’re about to ignore the outside world and sit in it without interaction, this will be easier if you’re free of distractions. Set aside around 30-60 minutes. Follow whichever specific procedure appeals to you most but personally speaking I was first drawn in by the simplicity of an exercise called “the mindfulness of breathing”. Here you close your eyes and count, in repeating cycles of ten, the natural flow of your breath.
Step three: Learn not to freak out too much when life gets in the way or when you have an unexpected moment of success.
Step four: !
2, Adopt a temporary moral code.
Try using the beliefs of a “moral” spiritual system for a while and see how it suits you. Magick is a highly subjective skill so which set of scruples you choose to use is entirely up to you. Any theology which has a moral system that appeals will do but personally speaking my favourite option is contained within a short New Age masterpiece called “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz.[4] It takes an afternoon to read and carries less baggage than any of the more serious religious options. Give it a go in the same week you spend meditating and notice how your reality starts to shift into an easier place.
Here is the three step process, contained in more detail within, The Four Agreements:
Step one: “Be impeccable with your word”.
If you say you’ll do something ensure you actually do it. Avoid lying to people and think of it as a weapon not unlike poison.
Step two: “Don’t take anything personally”.
No one really knows you or why you’re doing what you will. If they say or do good or bad things it speaks only of their own character. This is also true of your own judgements. Say nice but truthful things about people and you’re exercising positive internal energy. Keep bitching about people and you’ll emphasise the bad in yourself.
Step three: “Don’t make assumptions”.
Discover the world with your own mind, don’t be led by others. Trust yourself and investigate the reality you personally inhabit. We all live in different worlds and it’s far better to gaze in wonder than become one of those dull characters who assume they know it all.
Step four: “Always do your best”.
Hopefully the above brief description has enticed you to go look at that book. Get it from a library or buy it or whatever, don’t just use my incomplete description of it. However, as with all these essays I am suggesting tools not rules. It’s perfectly acceptable to try Christianity, Islam, Satanism, Judaism, or any of the other deeply moral spiritual systems available in today’s theological supermarket. You’re only doing it for a bit though so don’t go telling everyone, they might get upset if you decide to give their BS[5] a miss later on.
3, Learn not to freak out
The advantage of your path is that Discordianism is a joke religion. Laughter is the music from which our universe is created. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, “the angels can fly because they take themselves lightly”. The moment you forget this you might fall into the trap of taking things seriously. So, here’s a quick three step guide to some of the things you need to know before going any further:
Step 1: There is in fact no such thing as magick.
Step 2: Maybe you should stop using the word “is”.
Step 3: A good Discordian never believes anything they can read.
Step 4: As a “High” initiate there is obviously nothing I can ever actually let you know about Discordianism.
4, Cultivate a sense of your true will.
All systems of magick are pretty hot on the notion of free will. Even the control-freak Gods of the the Abrahamic religions recognise in their more sober moments that you must respect other people’s right to self determination. They don’t do this because they’re ‘nice’ Gods, they do it because the consequences for a magick user who tries to control another are not beneficial in the long term. There’s a deep misunderstanding in some forms of modern occultism that bending others to your will is a worthwhile exercise, in my experience it’s not. In fact it locks you into a situation where you will ultimately depend upon them rather than yourself.
A good occultist entices people to co-operate rather than forces them to do so. However, not pushing other people around is the easy part, working out if you’re being true to yourself is far more problematic.
Getting to know thyself is a lifelong task as you are changing all the time. This essay could be a first step towards you really considering that journey of self discovery or, more likely, it’s just a timely reminder.
At a guess your body will likely currently be full of drugs, toxins and ideas that do not really belong there. Is it your true will to drink more beer or are you in fact under the influence of alcohol and by extension the will of the company who sells it? Did you really want that bar of chocolate or did the idea get seeded in your subconscious mind by a clever advertisment?[6]
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not suggesting you need to stop the drink or drugs I’m just pointing out if you’re going to use them make sure they don’t end up using you. Do these things mindfully or they cloud your judgement when it comes to discerning your “true will”. We’re Discordians, not monks. We live our lives but before you use the techniques of magick it’s worth you ensure it’s your drerams you are living and not someone else’s.
If you follow all of the above stages any problems you face will be more easily placed into perspective. Without wishing to lift the magick curtain too much next week you’re about to do nothing more than try an instense experiment in applied philosophy. Unlike Thelemites or other occultists you’ve always got the comfortable back door provided by the fact that Discordianism is a joke, it’s nothing more than a chance to play around with funny ideas.
Part 4:
“Magick has many aspects, but primarily it acts as a dramatized system of psychology”
- “Pope Bob”, Robert Anton Wilson
Here’s one way of making a sigil. It’s partly cribbed from a talk given by Grant Morrison at the Disinformation conference[1] with slight personal additional details provided by my own experiences. Sigils are a low-magick technique which will not fail to get you exactly what you need. It can become a high-magick technique but for the moment we’ll just stick to the basics[2].
One important thing to note is that sigils always appear to work. The distinction being; if I kicked in a window, I’d feel I knew who’d done it. If I cast a sigil which asked for that window to be broken and then discovered a few days later it was now broken, no one can prove a causal relationship between the sigil and the broken window. However I might get the impression that my sigil was involved in the process somewhere.
Secondly, the following is a (in my opinion better) version of other ideas that have been kicking round recently such as, The Secret, Cosmic Ordering, and, to a lesser extent, “positive thinking”[3]. It’s also similar to “preying,” if you think your God lives within you[4].
All these above techniques have common elements. All of them are pretty much in agreement regarding the first part of the process, set your intent. The most effective Discordian occultists spend more time on step one than they ever do on step four.
Step one: Decide upon your will.
– All your workings should be done with pieces of paper and a pen.
This is the hardest part. You need to imagine what it is you want as clearly as possible. Then refine it until you’ve got a vision of what it is you ‘really’ want. Then refine it again after you’ve imagined the earth shifting upon its axis in order to grant this wish over the next few years. Check you’re good with the consequences and then, refine it again. I can’t emphasise this enough. See the further reading section for more details.
Once you’re happy write it out as a single sentence:
EG: I AM A HEALTHY FOURTEEN AND A HALF STONE, ENERGETIC PERSON.
Notice a few things about the above. When I cast this I wanted to be 14 and a half stone. There are many ways this could have happened, some of them include ill health. Hence the words healthy and energetic.
Think of those old fairy stories where someone makes a wish and there are tragic consequences. King Midas wanted everything he touched to turn to gold. He ends up regretting his wish. The difference between your sigil becoming a blessing or a curse is in its detail. Give it lots of thought. Write and re-write the sentence. Check the further reading section for more information.
Also notice, it’s not “I WANT TO BE” or “I AM THIS AND NOT THAT”. Negatives in sigils are just negative! If you write “I WANT TO BE A MILLIONAIRE” look forward to a life of wanting to be a millionaire. Remember what we learned in part one where you began lucid dreaming. What would happen to you if you dived into the dream world with negatives in your mind?
If you truly have followed this series from part one, as opposed to most who will have just casually landed on it and curiously read to this point, why not try to lucid dream your intended future first and try it out a bit? If, for example, having lots of sexual partners gets messy in that world ditch it and come up with a better wish. It needs to feel like a world you are comfortable in. Once that’s the case, state it as if you are already there, in that positive future.
As an exercise imagine you’re in that future calling back into the past when you wrote out this sigil. Try describing and declaring what it’s like in as much detail as possible. Now listen out for your “imaginary” future self shouting “I’m the owner of a brand new convertible and I love it” or whatever. Now, write it down!
Finally a note of caution here. Remember we spoke about ‘true will’ in the last piece? Well, if your dreams and visions involve others do not enchant realities which compromise their true will.
So, for example, don’t put “I am married to Dave who works in accounts”. Ask for a less uncompromising: “I’m married to a bloke like Dave who works in accounts”. This doesn’t rule Dave out of the equation, after all who is more like Dave than Dave? However if he thinks you’re a repulsive creature who he’d rather vomit over than have sex with, you’ve given the poor guy a get out and you can still get what you need. Far better to enchant someone, like him who likes you of their own free will.
It’s not unlikely you’ll encounter minor problems with all this but remember what you learned in part three and fear not: you will live and learn!
There’s nothing to stop you doing another sigil in the future.
—
Step Two: Remove the vowels and repeated letters.
The first step was by far the most important part. These next bits are 1% of sigil craft and the bit you’ve just done was the remaining 99%. However, this 1% which I’m about to explain is the more “magick” bit. It’ll make you feel more like ‘an occultist’ and there’s enormous value in that.
This means you should check you’re comfortable with what you’ve just done as part of this second step. You need to feel good on both a subconscious and intuitive level about the sentence you’re turning into a weird looking symbol. If you’re not it’ll come out in the process later on once the sigil is cast. For now, I’ll assume you are and crack on.
Firstly, sigils are crafted and re-drafted by a process of elimination. Like a sculpture you’re going to chip and chisel that sentence down until it looks like a sort of magical wingding. Begin this by removing the vowels and repeated letters, leaving yourself with a string of consonants, like so:
MHLTYFRNDSGCP
An example of my weight loss sigil in its early stages
Step three: Combine the letters into one big pattern and begin reducing it into a simpler image.
This bit is where most people get in a tizz. Remember the most difficult part of the process was over once you’d finished step one. There are no rules as to how you go about combining the letters but I find it best to jumble them all into one big squiggle. The main picture is an example of the one we’re looking at. Ultimately it was successful and I used a revised version to hit my target weight of 13.5 a year later. This is down from my initial 18.5 stone.
Keep re-drawing it and omitting details as you go along. The point of this process is to lose sight of what it is the sigil means. Keep drawing until the exact point of your work is irrelevant to you. Get really bored of the process and lose sight of why it is you’re bothering with such superstitious nonsense. Make it look more and more “magickal” to you. Hit a point where it starts to become a labour of love which is totally detached from your initial intent.
The finished product must look perfect and beautiful. It represents the total of your efforts. This is now a sigil, yet to be cast. It represents a thought which you are about to plant into the collective dreamworld so it can start to descend into the world of objective reality and your future.
Not quite but almost the finished product
Treasure it a bit. Don’t cast it straight away. Be pleased with it.
Step Four: Cast it.
People are divided upon how exactly you should do this. You’re looking for an intense transcendental experience where you can focus on this image and force it through your mind into the magical dream world while you are fully conscious. Pain, meditation, orgasm, psychedelic-transcendental drugs or all of the above combined are popular methods. Whichever you’re best at. Combine the intense experience with a good solid look at the sigil. Then close your eyes and think of it. Project it into your minds eye and out into the cosmos. Then destroy the paper it is drawn on and forget all about it.
One simple way, which I use, is with a candle. Have the sigil drawn on a piece of paper. Burn it and then let the flame burn (but not harm) your fingertips. At that precise moment close your eyes and picture it in your mind. There we are, it’s cast. The pain should have done enough to distract you and send it neatly into the world of ideas…
There are numerous other methods but the most important part is, as I said, step 1.
Once you’ve cast your sigil you must then aid its descent into the real world. If you asked for a new job, get applying for them. If you wanted to lose weight like I did, stop eating those chocolate cakes.
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