It sounds pretty stupid to resist reality, but we do it all the time. When we interpret events as painful or disagreeable, we suppress the related thoughts and feelings. We avoid them by distracting ourselves with something less painful, less fearful. Something less real. This is resistance against an unchangeable reality. Against what is. Accepting means permitting ourselves to feel whatever emotions and sensations arise without trying to fix, resist or figure them out. Feelings such as fear, pain and anxiety manifest in our minds and bodies for a reason. If we give them space, they will show us why.
Recognizing and accepting fear-based thoughts and tension in our bodies is a critical step towards releasing ourselves from the control of our demons. It frees us up to respond to life in a conscious and intelligent manner.
HOW TO HUNT DEMONS
LEARN TO FIGHT WITHOUT FIGHTING
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
Carl Rogers
It wasn’t long after December 1949, when Mao Zedong and his communist forces declared victory in China’s civil war, that the ancient heritage of martial arts fell out of official favour. Considered a lowly pastime for crooks and thugs – and with its popular public fights outlawed completely – practitioners of disciplines such as Kung Fu and Tai Chi were forced to migrate en masse to the then British dominion of Hong Kong. A necessary exodus if they were to continue their training.
Having grown up in Kowloon, just across the harbour, Bruce Lee witnessed all this from up close. Indeed, he participated. In the 1950s, street-fighting was fast becoming more than just a popular pastime in the area, it was a burgeoning way of life and rite of passage. Gangs regularly cruised the Wan Chai docks – notorious for the neon pulses of its red-light district awash with prostitutes and drug pushers – looking for battles. Be it soldiers and sailors on furlough from the Vietnam War, or clans of local combatants running rampant, all were fair game.
At the age of 16, after suffering a particularly bad beating from rival gang members, Lee decided to fortify himself with formal training.
Fortunately for him, one of the great martial artists of the era, Yip Man, T.J. CONNOLLY was living on the island. Under his tutelage, Lee would come to learn the way of Wing Chun, a style of Kung Fu originating in Southern China.
The chance connection of these two individuals led to the creation of a rare cultural icon who engendered an enduring appeal across generations in both Eastern and Western hemispheres. Many may point to Lee’s successful movies, the liquid grace of his movement, and a larger-than-life persona as the source of his sustained popularity, however there is a case to say that it was down to something else. Something much deeper. The driving force behind his charisma, charm and magnetism was actually a deliberate way of living that flowed from a deeply-held philosophy. A personal ethos developed through an immersed study of an eclectic mix of martial arts and philosophical texts – from Taoist and Buddhist scriptures to the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Alan Watts – all of which he mirrored in his fighting.
Through long hours of intensive training and expansive reading, Lee came to see martial arts as a metaphor for life’s greatest goal: developing self-knowledge. And he believed the unique style he personally honed – a dynamic free-flowing form of fighting focused on flexibility and efficiency – moved him closer to this goal because ultimately ‘all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.’ A system fusing many forms into one highly developed physique, Jeet Kune Do – as he called this new form of fighting – was more than just a technique. For Lee, it was a way a life, a genuine path towards psychological and spiritual development.
Daily life is much like martial arts. Both present us with a continuous stream of momentary choices; decisions to accept and adapt, or reject and crash. Mastering any art, including the art of living, involves developing the ability and agility to ascertain and acclimatize to whatever arises.
To intercept with acceptance. Only then can we observe what’s really going on, and only then can we choose an intelligent response.
But this is not possible if we resist or deny what’s happening. When we are not ready to deal with a new experience, our natural reaction is to resist by trying to hold on to what we know (the past) instead of embracing what we don’t know (the ever-new present). The problem with this fear driven approach is that reality doesn’t disappear when we ignore it. On the contrary, it just becomes more troublesome.
Intuiting this, Lee focused his whole life on honing the ability to fully accept and engage with adverse events – in the dojo and outside of it – as and when they arise. In a 1971 interview, a year before his untimely death, he waxed lyrical about this philosophy with the following verse:
Be Water, My Friend.
Empty your mind.
Be formless, shapeless, like water.
You put water into a cup; it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle; it becomes the bottle.
You put it into a teapot; it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow, or it can crash.
Be water, my friend.
In its natural state, water accepts whatever surrounds it, whatever’s in its way. If a boulder blocks its route, a river flows over and around it. It doesn’t resist or deny the existence of the boulder – it accepts and responds to it, then continues on its pliant yet purposeful path. A high degree of flexibility allows it to be open to every and any eventuality. Lee described this approach as ‘fighting without fighting.’
Reality also flows like a river. The faster our minds move along with its continuous stream of events, the better we can respond to them. The demons that possess us – our obsessions and ruminations induced from past experiences and preconceived notions – are akin to boulders and rocks in the path of this ever-flowing stream. They are obstacles that block our way. When we resist them, we give them the power to divert us into backwaters where our minds fester and lives stagnate.
T.J. CONNOLLY
A controversial duel in 1964, in Lee’s adopted hometown of San Francisco, proved another pivotal moment in his personal and philosophical development. Despite defeating Wong Jack Man – a local enforcer for Chinatown’s chieftains who were determined to prevent Lee teaching Kung Fu to American students – the bout lasted much longer than he expected.
This experience of not being able to live up to his full potential sparked a major shift in Lee’s approach and thinking towards martial arts and the metaphysics around it.
The result was a realization that no discipline, however thorough, can harness the full potential of the human physique. Every style was limited to a particular set of actions that cannot be consistently effective or beneficial in and by themselves. Thus, he revised his frame of reference in order to develop a fresh philosophy of mind and body, one based heavily on the writings of his hero, Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Avoiding the mindless following of tradition, rituals and dogma was central to this new approach. As was self-reliance. Not surprising then that the resulting discipline, Jeet Kun Do ( translated as the ‘Way of the Intercepting Fist’), follows no set style, moves or traditional techniques.
On the contrary, its overriding objective is to be limitless – ‘using no way as way’ – in execution as much as potential. Its premise being much like its promise: treat every moment and opponent as an opportunity, not an obstacle.
Practical Exercise: Attention to Distraction
- Look in the mirror. Do you like what you see? If you’re like most people, you’ll notice flaws, spots, wrinkles and other things you’re not particularly fond of.
- Be really honest with yourself – is there a part of you that silently derides this image in the mirror? Is there an undertone of revulsion or disgust? Such feelings arise from and sustain an attitude of resistance.
- Smile at your reflection and say “I love you” or if that feels too much at this stage simply say, “You are OK / You are enough.”
PAIN Point
As resistance breeds resistance, subliminal attacks against yourself incite internal recriminations against your judging part. The result: an internal civil war. If you accept the internal censure however, if you become friendly and curious towards it, it cannot and will not resist you. It will accept you too.
DROP THE DESIRE FOR CONTROL
Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of men.
G.K. Chesterton
Strange things happened in the transonic zone. Chuck Yeager knew this, as did all the other army test pilots at Muroc Air Force Base in Southern California, each of whom were vying to become the first human to break through the sound barrier. In the 1950s, as they flew their rocket-planes through the thin air skirting the edge of space, unpredictability reigned.
At these altitudes, their crafts’ controls would often go awry or freeze up completely, their wings would bump and buffet, and soon enough the whole ship would spin and shin through the air like a frisbee flipping vertically. A common conclusion was a death-inducing nosedive to the Mojave Desert below.
The root cause of these tumbles was pretty clear: the sparse atmosphere at such heights meant the ordinary laws of aerodynamics no longer applied. The result was also strikingly obvious: pandemonium and sadly for some, death. The resolution was the real crux of the matter: it was any man’s guess. That is, until Yeager stumbled upon it, completely by accident, while completely unconscious.
When an aircraft began pitching and yawing out of control, a pilot’s first instinct was to try to regain control. In his book The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe explains that, in order to do this, they needed to be afraid to panic, to stay in the moment, methodically asking ‘what do I do next?’ Even as their three-ton machines trundled through the air towards a collision with earth.
The problem, however, was there was no known way to manoeuvre out of a high-altitude rocket-ship roller-ride. In fact, the more a pilot experimented with the controls, the more rigid the stick would get, and the more erratic the dive would become. Their increasingly frantic efforts to control the plane ended up plunging them even quicker to their deaths.
But what else could they do?
The violent looping as the planes uncorked also placed the pilots at an increased risk of being knocked unconscious. And this is exactly what happened to Yeager the day he set a speed record of Mach 4.2. Around twelve miles up, his plane started to skid through the thin air before dropping and diving. As it plummeted through seven miles of the earth’s upper atmosphere, the G-forces knocked Yeager around the cockpit, battering him unconscious. Then, at 25,000 feet, a jolt from the denser air snapped him awake. Grabbing the control stick, less rigid at this lower altitude, he was able to steady the ship and land it safely.
Yeager had gotten out alive, and in the process discovered the only way to deal with the mysterious machine-meddling demon lurking just above the clouds: take your hands off the controls. Against all natural instincts, the best thing to do was, quite literally, nothing. Or as one of his colleagues described it: execute ‘the J.C. manoeuvre… put the mother in the lap of a su-per-na-tural power.’ From that day onwards, the ‘J.C.’ was the go-to procedure for pilots in these life-threatening situations.
‘What we resist, persists’ is a great maxim. Attributed to Carl Jung, it sums up the notion that the more we try to control or push away something we don’t like, the stronger it becomes. It’s a concept that ties in with popular notions such as the ‘law of attraction’ and ‘like attracts like’ which some believe are driven by magical magnetic forces at play in the universe. That whatever we focus on – be it negative or positive – miraculously manifests in our lives. If we put magical thinking aside however, this idea perfectly encapsulates the problem we have with demonic obsession and possession.
One part of this problem stems from the fear we feel in the face of something we don’t understand. It naturally makes us uncomfortable. We also tend to see acceptance as a sign of weakness or resignation – that unless we push back against what we don’t like, it will persist and never change. Thus, the effort to exert some level of control when we are afraid or uncertain – even if the results are superficial, or counterproductive – is psychologically comforting because it gives us a sense of agency, a feeling of strength and power to affect the big bad world around us.
But this simultaneously focuses our attention on what we don’t want.
Feelings of fear, shame and anger end up absorbing all the emotional energy we invest into resisting them. The laws of physics tell us that when a body pushes back against an obstacle, it experiences its full force diametrically.
It’s the same with our inner demons: they get stronger and more erratic the more we try to subject them to our will. As they become more powerful, they hijack our thought processes too, and we end up on a flywheel of fear and anxiety. Endlessly creating (aka ‘attracting’) more of the same.
A rocket-plane in a downward spiral was not the only problem Yeager and his colleagues had to deal with. The aviators also realised that they were unable to punch out of a plummeting rocket plane, for they were going too fast to safely eject from. As one colleague put it, doing so was nothing but a way of ‘committing suicide to keep from getting killed.’ The same is kind of true with our lives in general: nobody can flip a switch and be somebody else. We don’t have a backup body, spare skin or alternative life to jump into when the going gets tough. But, as Yeager discovered, there is another, albeit less intuitive, way to deal with this problem: the ‘hands-off ’ technique.
There are many examples of courageous individuals who have employed versions of this technique to great effect. By doing the very opposite of our natural human instinct to resist and control adverse situations, figures such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Rosa Parks overturned overwhelming odds to enact large-scale cultural transformations.
At the core of their success in engaging with the harsh realities they overcame was a realization that resistance and resolution are at opposite poles.
They saw that true change – inner and outer – occurs when we first accept who we are, where we are, and stop fighting against perceived enemies. In other words, we must acknowledge and allow whatever the present contains, always, before proceeding to take action. Only then can we work with reality, not against it, by making each moment, each challenge and each demon an ally, not an enemy.
Practical Exercise: Free from Control
- Think about an event or person in your life you are trying to exert control over. In what ways (physically, mentally, emotionally) are you actually being controlled by whatever or whomever it is you are attempting to control?
- Now think about the various subtle ways in which you are benefiting by attempting to control this situation? Maybe the other person is also benefiting from your attempts to control?
- What would happen (to you and the other person) if you detached from this situation or person? Even if you didn’t, what will probably happen anyway, in spite of your controlling behaviours?
PAIN Point
Attempting to control people and situations may seem to pay off in the short term, but it rarely sustains itself as a successful mode of living. Rather, it creates resentment and co dependent relationships in which true selves are never known.
NAVIGATE THE LABYRINTHINE EGO
Ego is not the enemy; it is an expression of us, conditioned; it must be accepted.
Alan Watts
Minos prayed to Poseidon for divine intervention. The request was simple: something to signal his sacred right to the throne of Crete.
A sign so powerful and definitive it would immediately usurp his brothers’ efforts to take the reins of rule. Seeing such raw passion and potential in the great warrior, the great sea-god duly responded. A heavenly bull was dispatched to the island nation that clearly communicated Minos’ regal destiny to all its inhabitants. And he was made king.
Having got what he wanted however, Minos failed to fulfil his side of the bargain – to sacrifice the bull as an offering and symbol of his service to the people. The celestial creature was just too impressive. A perfect image, Minos thought, of the supreme power he now held over the richest nation on earth. Replacing it with the handsomest animal from his own herd, figuring none would be the wiser, he offered a substitute to the alter of Poseidon.
But the gods tend to see such things. In ancient Greece, they also tended to be wrathful. And in Poseidon’s case, particularly vengeful. While the Cretans as a nation went on to achieve greatness – conquering all the Mediterranean isles between Babylonia and Egypt, even breaking through the Gates of Hercules to reach Ireland in the north and Senegal to the south – on a personal level, Minos began to have problems.
As punishment for his deceit, Poseidon infected his wife, the queen, with an uncontrollable lust for the bull. One thing led to another, as they do, and she became pregnant. Nine months later, a baby was born. Its name: the Minotaur. Defining features: a bull’s head atop a human body.
The king, understandably, was beside himself. Ashamed and afraid, he hid the bellowing beast away forever in a labyrinth built by Daedalus, the most accomplished architect of the day. Enclosed within, the hideous creature would never see the light of day, nor the disapproving eyes of the public.
Minos had been crowned king, he had got what he wanted, so what went wrong? Simply put, he made a mistake that many of us make in similar situations: he became enchanted – with himself, the idea of being in control, with the power of his office. A deluded self reasoning took control of his faculties, leading to the belief that the glory and investiture of the throne was his alone. The sacred animal was a perfect symbol of this newfound power, so he kept it to remind himself and others that he was in control.
But we are never in control, and the gods tend to remind us lest we forget. While not sacrificing the bull seemed inconsequential, it was a sure sign to the heavens – read karma, fate, fortune, conscience, or whatever you want to call it – that Minos had succumbed to feelings of entitlement, pride and self aggrandizement. In short, his ego had taken over. He had turned to his advantage the authority of his position, based on the belief that he was bigger than the world, more important than his people, and determined to flaunt it at every opportunity.
Just like the mythical Minotaur, the ego is a complex beast with mixed origins. While it retains many masks and guises, it’s possible to trace its roots to two broad human needs. The first, seen in Minos’ impulse to keep hold of the bull, is the desire to prove to ourselves and the world that we are strong, powerful and worthy of love and admiration. In short, that we are in control. The second, seen in the king’s response to the Minotaur’s arrival, is the desire to conceal that which we believe is shameful and scandalous. To ensure nobody finds out about our dark shadows and dirty secrets lest they judge or reject us.
Of course, both behaviours are intricately intertwined. Two sides of the same coin. The more we think we have to hide, the more we try to make up for it by proving we are pure and strong. Likewise, the less we are in control of our internal world, the more we try to exert control over the external world.
The central role of the labyrinth in this story is also not by accident. We often see maze-like structures in fables and myths of old as well as ancient spiritualities and religions (the mandalas popular in Tibetan Buddhism being just one example). Jung saw their prevalent presence across cultures as a subliminal symbol for the human psyche. Indeed, as a singular representation of our complex inner landscape, they are perfect archetypes.
The ground beneath them represents the Self itself – with a capital ‘S’ – to which Jung ascribes our core being and essential nature. While the maze of walls and false facades built upon this foundation comprise the network of scaffolding that forms our ego self (with a small “s”). The outer walls of this colossal construct represent the part of our ego that is our ‘persona’ (an ancient Greek word for the mask of a theatrical actor).
Its primary purpose is to prevent anyone from penetrating the ego’s edifice while simultaneously shielding the shady aspects that linger behind it. In this way, the world, we mistakenly believe, only sees what we want it to see: a controlled image of strength, righteousness, and orderly perfection.
The overriding message seeping out from such stories is the importance of navigating beyond this mental labyrinth. The big challenge of course is the sheer complexity and perilous nature of the task. Just as Minos’ maze was deceptive, convoluted and full of blind passages – when finished, its designer Daedalus was barely able to find his way back to the entrance – the ego, too, is a vast hall of mirrors and smoke.
But maybe this is the whole point. Rites of passage are not meant to be easy. It is, after all, the adversity we face that provides life’s most valuable lessons, the suffering that carves out our true character. In this sense, the quest to transcend the ego transforms into the very path that provides us with – by forcing us to develop – wisdom, strength, resilience, compassion and courage. Traits that enable the unconditioned Self – sans the egoic identity we spend our whole lives constructing – to step out of the shadows and into the light.
Practical Exercise: The Identity Bracelet
- Imagine the ego as a multi-beaded bracelet with each bead representing a conscious or unconscious belief. Past conditioning, culture, race, education, family, experiences and/or our environment contribute to the formation of each bead. As they accumulate, they strengthen and reinforce the ego.
- Now think about a strong belief that you have. Is there a story attached to it? A story could be, for example, that you were wrongly treated as a child, perhaps even abused in some way. This story can feed a belief that “I am a victim.” The ego then identifies with this belief, and it becomes part of your identity.
- How would you feel if the legitimacy of this belief was questioned? How would it feel to drop this belief? Does your identity feel threatened? Is it painful?
PAIN Point
The ego developed to serve and protect us in a world full of pain and suffering. Its power grows quickly however, to the point where its defensiveness against insecurities takes over our lives. This is why, when we are ready – upon reaching a certain level of maturity – we must take deliberate action to dethrone the ego.
IDENTIFY THE INNER CRITIC
The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In 430 BC a devastating plague swept through Athens that sent a quarter of its citizens to early graves. Panic was spreading just as fast, founded on a fear that everyone would succumb to the sickness. To make matters worse, it was the second year of the Peloponnesian war in which their sworn enemies Sparta were scything down the city-state’s able-bodied men at an increasingly alarming rate. If the disease kept spreading, and the war kept raging, soon there would be no one left to replace the fallen soldiers on the field.
The only positive it seemed – as recorded by the Greek historian Thucydides – was that the ‘disease never took any man the second time.’ The Athenians had noticed that those who survived the sickness never seemed to contract it again – they just couldn’t figure out why. Over two millennia later, we now have a scientific understanding of why this was happening.
It’s down to a process called adaptive immunity – the ability of our bodies to build up an immunological memory – which enables it to respond more effectively to viruses.
We don’t come into this world predisposed to fend off infections such as typhus (the disease historians believe caused the Athenian plague). Our bodies learn to do it on the fly. The immune system literally trains itself to neutralize the antigens of a virus by building up vocabularies of antibodies which evolve in response to invading microorganisms. And once it learns how, that knowledge is retained for the rest our lives, ready to be recalled if and whenever the threat reappears.
Like all organic systems, however, it’s not perfect. It can malfunction, often with disastrous effects. The immune response can sometimes be tricked into believing that normal healthy organs and tissues have been infected with a dangerous virus, so it does what it’s designed to do: it attacks and destroys them. The effects of this system failure can be debilitating, including swelling, inflammation and/or permanent damage to skin, joints, kidneys, heart and lungs. This, in turn, can lead to all manner of chronic autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and multiple sclerosis.
Over many millennia, the human mind has evolved a similar defence mechanism. Like our bodies’ immune systems, it begins early in life compiling vocabularies, not of antibodies, but of judgments and expectations from the people around us. These are absorbed and retained in the form of an inner voice that stays with us throughout our lives, echoing the threats, criticisms and concerns of parents, teachers, clergy, society and the culture in which we live. Its sole aim is to protect us from the shame and pain of being found less than what we should be, less than what is expected of us by those whom we depend on for shelter and support.
To defend us against this criticism and make us acceptable to others, the inner voice seeks to curb our natural inclinations. It does this by assuming a sub-personality within our psyche – a separate ‘self ’ (with a small ‘s’) that forms part of the ego – which calls out our weaknesses and vulnerabilities before anyone else can.
Just like our immune systems however, this inner critic has a capacity to go rogue. As we grow up, its critiques often tend to get stronger, more frequent and personal. To the point where they can easily evolve into habitual self-shaming and blaming. As time goes by, with nothing to restrain it and its original intentions lost, the continuously corrosive self talk can spin up spirals of negative thoughts and feelings that form self-en closed feedback loops. And a truly vicious circle is created.
Without intervention, the resulting state of misery can assume complete control of our minds. With the spectrum of symptoms ranging from low self-esteem and anxiety to full-blown depression, often accompanied by a plethora of psychosomatic illnesses.
This precarious situation is exacerbated by the fact that the brain doesn’t do downtime. MRI scans show that the mind remains occupied even when we’re physically at rest. Our cerebral focus and activity revert to what scientists call the Default Mode Network (DMN) – a federation of brain regions that help us model the world. One of its core purposes is to prepare us for the future by leveraging present and past experiences to predict what will happen next. Designed to give us an edge in the struggle for survival, its automatic activation allows us to reflect and learn from past events and run through different ways of dealing with similar situations in the future. It does this by continuously analysing our past behaviours and events and then providing internal appraisals. A healthy DMN, for example, might follow a line of query such as ‘where did we wrong there?’ and ‘how can we do better next time?’ (sometimes heard in the mind as the voices of parents because, as children, we often internalize the voices of authority). If the inner critic gets out of control however, these queries can easily morph into more critical comments such as ‘you screwed up there’ or ‘you have to do better next time.’
And if we just so happened to have overly strict or downright abusive authority figures in our early lives, the self-criticism can easily evolve into something much more toxic. We can descend into a simulating habit of self-talk such as: ‘you’re stupid, fat and lazy’, ‘you’re a disgrace’, or even, ‘why don’t you just kill yourself.’ Its perhaps not surprising then that a growing number of studies connect the constellation of brain matter that forms the DMN to depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.
As it patrols the external battlements of our egoic defences, our inner critic blares and bleats in the backgrounds of our minds, yet most of us barely notice it. Possibly because we’re so consumed with what’s going on in the external world – we’re just so busy (or to put it another way, conveniently distracted by busyness). Another reason could be that its volume, tone, and content varies a lot. Sometimes it’s loud, sometimes quiet; sometimes urgent, other times blasé; sometimes it may even sound almost positive, but not for very long. How it develops and speaks to us – and to what degree it mutates into an overbearing inner critic – depends on a combination of factors from both nature (e.g., genetics) and nurture (e.g., upbringing, environment and past painful or traumatic experiences).
The gradual decline in sanity of Vincent van Gogh is a fitting example of an out-of-control inner critic. Long before he famously cut off his own ear, the Dutch artist had a history of self-harm. While his official diagnosis at the time was ‘acute mania with generalized delirium’ – the doctors seemingly wanted to cover all bases – he was known to regularly hear voices. Demeaning and disparaging voices that nobody else could hear but barely left him alone (maybe this is why he chose his ear for the chop). The doctors had no idea how to treat this affliction, so his inner critic – unrestrained and out-of-control – ultimately drove the painter to a point where he felt he had no choice but to take his own life. And we lost one of history’s greatest artists at just 37 years of age.
Since his death in 1890, there has been much speculation as to what mental afflictions van Gogh suffered from. The theories are wide-ranging.
According to Wikipedia, it was one or a combination of: epilepsy, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, sunstroke, lead poisoning, Ménière’s disease, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, substance use disorder, non-suicidal self-injury disorder ‘self-harm’, and a possible anxiety disorder. Another one to add to the pile is ‘Overbearing Inner Critic.’
Practical Exercise: Tuning into the Inner Critic
- Try to tune into the voice of your inner critic, listen to its fears about what people might think about you. See if you can come up with its favourite “people will think” statements (perhaps they sound like ones your parents used to make?) Some examples might be:
▶ People will think I’m stupid…
▶ People will think I’m selfish…
▶ People will think I’m arrogant…
▶ People will think I’m unreliable…
- What’s the worst that could happen if “people” thought this about you? The answer to this is usually some form of rejection e.g. people will not want to spend time with you or support you.
- Now think further about this worst-case scenario. Imagine if people did leave you alone or wouldn’t help you. Would you starve to death? Would you be lost? Likely not. So think about what you would do in this situation – you would find other people, other job, other XXX etc. Think about how you would find a way to survive and support yourself.
PAIN Point
The great concern of the inner critic is that you will not be loved.
It’s trying to protect you against rejection. Appease its anxieties by integrating the resourceful part of you that can deal with adverse situations, that can deal with rejection.
EXPOSE THE EGO TO REALITY
Apprentice yourself to the curve of your own disappearance.
David Whyte
Of the 28 separate human remains discovered at Sima de los Huesos, a pair of fatal fractures stood out on one skull, while several others showed signs of trauma inflicted by a blunt instrument. It looked like a clear case of mass homicide. Except for one complication: the skeletons were over 430,000 years old.
After further investigation, they also appeared different. As in, not human. Shorter and stockier, archaeologists’ first guess was Neanderthals, our prehistoric cousins, but the smaller brain-size suggested a more distant ancestor. The results of DNA analysis later confirmed their suspicions: the bones belonged to a brand-new species-stage of hominoid evolution – a precursor to Neanderthals – perched atop the branch that splits off from the lineage of Homo Sapiens. In other words, they were neither humans nor Neanderthals but the forefathers of both.
Sima de los Huesos (Spanish for ‘pit of bones’) sits about a quarter-mile deep within a network of caves in the Sierra de Atapuerca, a series of foothills that sidle the Cantabrian Mountains in northern Spain. It’s only entrance – the same then as today, according to studies of the cave’s architecture – is a narrow forty-five metre chute. It would have taken quite an effort to crawl down there alone, never mind drag a corpse. This is why archaeologists believe it’s an ancient burial chamber as opposed to the site of some murder or accident.
If they are right, this would make it the oldest evidence of mortuary practices discovered to date, at least amongst hominids. Other animals have been ritualizing death for God knows how long. Elephants, for example, can sometimes be seen comforting dying members of the group, often returning to death sites to lament over their skeletal remains. A 2017
Scientific Reports paper also described what appeared to be ritualized corpse cleansing by Zambian chimps, a whoop of whom were seen standing solemnly over a dead juvenile while its mother used a grass stem to clean debris from its teeth.
In his book Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial, archaeologist Paul Pettitt explains how the elaborate last rites which humans practice today evolved from much humbler behaviours – more primitive even than that of elephants and chimps – which typically addressed very visceral needs.
According to Pettitt, the gradual evolution of these practices followed four distinct yet overlapping phases:
- Hundreds of millions of years ago, organisms developed the ability to sense ‘necromone’ molecules emitted from decaying corpses – this enabled animals to protect themselves against hazards associated with carcasses e.g., ants eat, bury or drag away dead colony members before they fester.
- The evolution of emotions in certain lineages of smart, social creatures saw them grieve the passing of group members e.g., magpies squawking alarm calls around corpses.
- Our hominoid ancestors developed ways to ease death’s psychological and emotional toll by conducting funerals and burials in specific places e.g., initially by simply placing bodies in a hole or pit.
- Around 50,000 years ago, various human cultures began to devise diverse, elaborate and often spiritually-imbued customs.
As well as grieving for loved ones, these later practices helped our ancestors deal with the evolving awareness of their own mortality. A creeping yet crushing revelation which surely rocked the foundations of the evolving ego to its core. Psychologists now have a name for this inner conflict: ‘cognitive dissonance.’ In lay terms, it means reality has just shown the ego something that contradicts its grand self-centred view of the world. The result is always pain, anxiety and distress.
Cognitive dissonance doesn’t just resolve itself: either we go through the painful process of accepting the updated interpretation of reality or we fortify the ego’s defences against it. As the latter is less acute and painful, it tends to be more common. This is why, around this time, a few prehistoric problem-solvers stepped up on to centre stage with spiritual stories, myths and later, religions – all of which spoke of the elixir of life or some other form of immortality. As a result, funerary rites and rituals, bolstered with promises of an afterlife, became not just bearable, but celebratory.
Living in the shadow of our own apocalypse, these new belief systems brought comfort to our egos. Personas, reputations, achievements and possessions – religions now told us – could be stored or buried with our bodies, ready to be transported with us to the realms of eternal life after death. That is, if we were blessed, righteous or, in in the case of some belief systems, simply wealthy enough. Seen through this lens, the hardness of death was significantly softened. Life on earth, it turned out, was just a prelude to paradise.
Over time, the elaboration of dogma and scripture embedded religions into societies and cultures, concealing the concept of death even deeper within our minds. The very idea gradually became buried deep beneath an array of abstract ideas, symbols and images of angels and demons, heaven and hell, devils and strangely bipolar gods. To the point where we are today in which most people doggedly avoid talking about death. After millennia of abstraction, we’re simply not equipped to deal with such a strange idea as our own demise.
Possibly stranger still is what we’ve replaced the idea of death with in the modern mind: social rejection. The reason for this conceptual substitution goes way back before the agricultural revolution when expulsion from one’s tribe usually meant death (if the elements didn’t get you, a predator soon would). Thus, our ancestors gradually learned to equate social rejection with physical destruction, with both threats producing the same painful emotions in our mind-body systems.
What does this mean today? As the ego is the mind’s primary defence mechanism against social rejection, any threat to its worldview is now perceived as a threat to our very existence. To be resisted at all costs. And this is why, as we see from the results of multiple studies, most people today say they are more afraid of public speaking – with its inherent risk of public disapproval/rejection – than their own demise. Or as Jerry Seinfeld put it ‘to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.’
There’s only one winner, of course, in this psychological war. Unlike all other demons that we encounter, death really is indestructible. The good news is that this isn’t really a problem; as with all demons, we are not seeking to destroy it, only change our relationship with it. In death’s case, this is achieved by doing things that expose us to its presence in our lives.
Through regular contemplation on death, for example, we can allow the idea of our mortality to seep down into the very structure and foundations of the ego. Exposing it, ever so subtly, to its own impermanence.
The ego will resist of course. It will retreat into the familiar world of thoughts, planning, judging, blaming – anything to avoid facing this fundamental truth. That is its nature. But if we persevere, slowly but surely, it will succumb to this most fundamental rule of life –impermanence – and its edifices will erode in the river of reality.
Practical Exercise: Death Rehearsal
- Contemplate what happens after you die: visualize your body disintegrating as it’s either consumed by fire or hidden in the ground where it rots and is eaten by worms.
- Think about everything you currently own. Your role as partner, parent or grandparent will go to someone else. Your work is done by others or is forgotten. Other people move in the position you held. The people you knew find new friends.
- All that remains of your achievements are some photos, articles, maybe an institution, all fading memories in the minds of others.
You will never change anything you’ve done; you’ll never again experience this life. Now remember – this will happen very soon.
And you cannot do anything about it. The only thing you can do is live, now.
PAIN POINT
Learning how to die while still breathing conquers the fearful hold death has over us. When we slay this biggest of all demons, the others don’t stand a chance – they all fall like dominoes.
BEHOLD THE POWER AND PATTERNS OF CONDITIONING
The human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol.
Rory Sutherland
In May 2007, Dr. Ben Goertzel rocked up at Google’s headquarters to talk about his favourite topic: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). It was a particularly apt topic for him to speak to given he’d coined the term several years earlier – to describe a theoretical machine with the ability to think, understand, learn and apply its intelligence to solve any problem, in any situation. Just as good as any human would.
His main message that day was: stop trying to replicate the brain’s neural processes. Instead, create algorithms with the power to develop their own cognitive abilities. This, he passionately argued, would give birth to something much more sophisticated than a ‘mere’ human-cloning cyborg – it would spawn a super-being of almost infinite intelligence.
As the audience of googlers listened – some intrigued, some bored with the immense minutia spluttering forth from the scraggly-haired super-geek – Goertzel outlined his definition of an intelligent system. In the simplest of terms, he explained, they are systems that perceive patterns in the world – and in themselves – with the ability to improve based on this recognition.
In two of his earlier books – the wonderfully named Chaotic Logic:
Language, Thought, and Reality from the Perspective of Complex Systems Science, and The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind – Goertzel maintained that the mind’s primary function is to reflect and detect patterns in the world. In essence, he sees the brain as an advanced pattern-matching machine. And he’s not alone in this view. Ray Kurzweil, for example – the famed futurist whose scientific predictions are reportedly over 85 percent accurate – once described what science has since shown that ‘pattern recognition comprises the bulk of our neural circuitry’; and humans are therefore ‘far more skilled at recognizing patterns than in thinking through logical combinations, so we rely on this aptitude for almost all of our mental processes.’
Registering reality in this way makes sense simply because it’s economical. By turning our brains into sequence-spotting systems, evolution greatly reduced the energy it consumes (about 20 percent of the body’s overall kilojoules). But this also suggests that, at a fundamental level, the brain is quite mechanistic and deterministic. Almost pre-programmed.
And if this is the case, then what is the ‘I’, Self, soul, the higher level of consciousness that many speak of? Does such a thing even exist?
Answers to such queries are hard to pin down because our minds and bodies are, well, hard to pin down. They’re never the same from one moment to another. Take our thoughts for example: they’re forever forming, flowing and coalescing like clouds, before evaporating in the blink of an eye. There’s no permanency there. At a cellular level, there’s also nothing constant: every second, thousands of cells die while new ones are generated, part of a larger process that completely replaces every cell in our bodies every decade or so.
Nietzsche referred to this continuously evolving characteristic of mankind as the ‘will to power and morphology.’ All living things, he maintained, have an innate desire to develop and grow, right up until the moment they die. In other words: for all natural systems, including human beings, change is the only constant. In the modern world, however, humanity has convinced itself that there is one exception to this rule; that a system of sorts exists which somehow manages to maintain a certain level of continuity. This system, of course, is the ego. And it’s what most of us are actually really referring to when we speak of the ‘I’, mind, Self, or soul.
As intellectual discussions about the ego can easily get abstract, for simplicity’s sake, we can skip any conceptual analyses and look straight under the hood – at what underpins and powers all the ego’s operations. It’s one thing and one thing only: beliefs. A vast database of stories, assumptions, conditions and predispositions hardwired into our minds and bodies via patterns of thoughts, sensations, memories and emotions. It’s the embedded firmware that tell us why we feel the way we feel and whether that feeling is good or bad. This, in turn, instructs our behaviour and reactions to whatever we are experiencing. In short, beliefs define who we are.
Behavioural psychology – a discipline that deals with the main drivers of human actions – tells us a lot about belief patterns. Its theories are based on the premise that all human behaviour is pretty much determined by an infinite number of causes and events that combine to create all future events and causes, and so on. In this view, humans could almost be thought of as organic robots: inputs received via interfaces (our five senses) are processed by prior programming (beliefs and conditioning), which in turn leads to some kind of output (physical, verbal or mental acts). In simplistic terms, behavioural psychology says that our beliefs, as the central processor of events, are the creators of our reality.
In many ways this is a good thing. By sidestepping basic decision-making processes, this prior programming and conditioning allows us to take advantage of precedence (much the same way lawyers make use of case law). In effect, building up an immense database of prior causes and effects in order to produce pre-canned responses in case of recurrence.
Something along the lines of: ‘If something happened before and made me feel like this, I should behave like this to prevent/produce that feeling again.’
Using patterns of associations in this way, our conditioned belief systems enable us to function, survive, and evolve. It In other words, they’re the basic algorithms of human behaviour.
But these algorithms are not perfect. And this is where Goertzel comes back into the picture. His latest and possibly grandest project is aiming to augment human intelligence in a way that has the potential to drastically change our culture, belief systems and who knows, maybe even the future of humanity. It involves the building of a global network of machine-learning resources – think Amazon for AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) services – made available to the masses.
Sacrificing the vast amounts of money a man of his abilities could make in the corporate world, Goertzel is instead aiming to safeguard the fairness and rights of future societies by countering the monopolization of this crucial field by billion-dollar conglomerates such as Intel, Facebook,
Meta and Google. In his mind, he’s protecting the human race against a
potential SKYNET (of the Terminator movies) scenario occurring by distributing AGI access, production and control across the internet. If this threat is real (and many believe it is) and Goertzel is successful, the eccentric philosopher-engineer with a penchant for zebra-patterned cowboy hats could turn out to be the future saviour of mankind!
Designed to operate on the basis of logic and predictability, the machines Goertzel and his colleagues are using might seem a world apart from the human brain with its messy mass of neurons and synapses. With their distinctly demarcated designs, supercomputers stand in stark contrast to the organic jumble of grey matter that sits within our skulls. But it’s this soupy nature of the brain that makes it – if not supremely logical – at least hugely efficient. Its tightly interconnected and porous regions perceive, interpret, store and share information using significantly less space than even the most advanced computers.
This means that the same calculations which might take a supercomputer several million steps can be achieved by just a few hundred neuronal transmissions. Much more economical in energy consumption (we’re talking the kilojoules required to power a dim light bulb versus that of a whole building). It’s this ability of the brain – a massively parallel system with 100 billion neurons working simultaneously – that allows it to perform amazing feats of processing and pattern recognition.
The organically-evolved nature of the brain, however, brings with it some significant shortcomings, especially when it comes to the workings of our belief systems. The main problems derive, ironically, from two core features crucial to their everyday operations: power and autonomy. Lets first look at power. As the primary filters of our perception, our conditioned beliefs retain the awesome power to control and create our reality.
As they do this, they tap into deep physiological levels to energize or inhibit
- The emotions associated with them are extremely visceral – their ‘truth’ is literally felt in our hearts and guts, often much more than in our minds.
In other words, when we deeply believe something, our whole bodies feel certain that it’s true. Even if it’s not. Even if it’s illogical or damaging, we’ll search for patterns in ‘reality’ to support that belief.
And this is where the second core feature steps up to deliver a double-blow. To operate without conscious oversight (and the crazy amounts of energy this would consume), patterns of beliefs and behaviours work in much the same way that AGI works: with a high degree of autonomy to develop, learn and act by themselves without any guidance. While this is all well and good for positive and life-affirming patterns, it gives negative patterns – along with the destructive thoughts and behaviours they yield – the ability to power and empower themselves ad infinitum. Like a flywheel sending us one a one-way ticket to the depths of depression.
There is an effective way to stop this flywheel spinning however.
We can return to the domain of computer science for inspiration, a world in which a “daemon” (we’ll see the story behind the origin of this word later) is used to describe a program that runs as a background process. The average user never sees these programs, nor has any control over them, and never really needs to. Unless, of course, a bug appears in its code, causing havoc with the computer’s operations. Using their understanding and experience, a savvy technician will troubleshoot the problem via various tricks and tests. They’ll eventually trawl through the daemon’s code and discover the root cause, resolve the issue, and then we can go back to using our computer. This process is called ‘debugging’.
We can adopt an analogous process to identify and eradicate negative beliefs and conditioning. As we will see in parts 3 and 4 of this book, by learning to become technicians experienced, not with computer software, but with the patterns of conditioning embedded in our minds and bodies, we can develop the subtle skill of debugging our inner daemons.
Practical Exercise: Debugging Damaging Beliefs
- Ask yourself if any of the following excuses and beliefs sound familiar to you:
▶ “I don’t have what it takes to do this.”
▶ “I’m not good enough. “
▶ “I don’t deserve love and/or respect.”
- Beliefs often keep us in our comfort zones. While they may reduce the risk of rejection, failure or discomfort, they sabotage our relationships, dreams, careers, our lives. Is it really worth it?
- The next time you say to yourself “I’ve always been this way” or “This is just who I am,” catch that thought and follow its thread.
Ask yourself: Is this really true? Where did it originate from? It may, for example, be that you were not completely accepted as a child. How did you feel most of the time as a child, can you remember? What was expected of you and what behaviours and emotions were judged by other people?
PAIN POINT
Limiting beliefs affect every aspect of our lives and hold us back in so many ways. We can remove or replace these beliefs with more positive ones not by tricks of so-called ‘positive psychology’, but through the deep work of ‘negative psychology’: digging down into the soil of our subconscious and working them out at their roots.
STEP BACK INTO EMPTY SPACE
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller
The ancient Greeks believed the whole cosmos was formed in the gap between heaven and hell, in a place they called ‘Kaos’ (meaning ‘emptiness’ or ‘abyss’). Within Hellenic cosmology however, Kaos was much more than just a gaping void. It was the ‘womb of darkness’ where the whirling winds lay a cosmic egg from which the first gods were hatched.
Usually depicted in the clutches of a coiling serpent, this egg contained the universe itself, including the seeds of humanity and consciousness.
Kaos was thus crystallized in the minds of the ancients not as something destructive but something very different. It was the space that gave birth to the universe. It was infinite potential.
Around the same time as these origin ideas were forming on the Greek peninsula, an eclectic mix of faiths and belief systems was evolving in the rich fertile lands of the Indus Valley, on the borders of modern-day India and Pakistan. Over time, these faiths coalesced into many religions, two of the largest being Hinduism and Buddhism.
We know Hinduism developed first (indeed, many scholars believe it’s the oldest religion in the world), and that Buddhism was a later outshoot that retained many of its concepts and ideas. It also developed new ideas however as it spread beyond India into Tibet and China, where it integrated principles from other spiritual disciplines such as Taoism. These developments gradually shifted the focus of Buddhism away from worshipping and gratifying colourful external deities to much more personal, inward-focused practices involving breathwork and meditation. The ultimate goal for its adherents became enlightenment – a state of existence in which one is in direct contact with reality at all times.
Interestingly, Zen Buddhist monks often refer to this ultimate state of being as the ‘void’, ‘emptiness’, or ‘zero-ness’. Despite using a completely different process of rationalization to the Greeks, Eastern spirituality seems therefore to have arrived at a very similar conclusion as to what the universe was founded upon: a form of nothingness (this can be seen in other religions too1 ). The idea that various origins beliefs are worlds apart is further sapped by other major faiths. Take, for example, the literal interpretation of the ‘word’ in the book of Genesis (e.g., ‘In the beginning was the word’) – typically interpreted by Christians as a synonym for God who gave birth to everything. Like the cosmic void of the Greeks, the Christian deity is comparable to an empty space, pregnant with infinite potential. A single word on a breath of a beginning, a formless state in which all future forms of reality originate.
Most of us have forgotten about these similarities and the vital principles of space and emptiness they point to. This is due, in no small part, to the vast collection of abstractions that now clutter our minds. We are quite simply deluged with an endless array of concepts and thoughts that conceal the importance and prevalence of emptiness, thus we rarely experience its power and potential in our lives.
To counter this we can take a step back from these distractions and abstractions, and allow ourselves to temporarily enter a mental state in
- The Jewish-Sufis of the 10th–13th centuries believed that the only way to approach God was to ‘annihilate’ the personal ego in the ‘divine nought.’ And in his Summa Theologica,
Saint Thomas Aquinas maintained that ‘about God, we cannot say what he is, but what he is not;’ and that it’s only possible ‘to know god as the unknown.’ which there are no thought processes, mental constructs, or ideas. Just empty space. This can be achieved by diverting the mind’s focus away from thinking in the head, towards feeling in the body.
In neuroscientific terms, the place where all this thinking occurs is referred to as the ‘Global Workspace of Consciousness’ (GWC). As working memory for subjectively experienced events, the GWC acts like a computer’s RAM (Random Accessible Memory) – it’s the stage on which the contents of our conscious minds play out. Whatever the mind is actively focused on is retained in short-term RAM storage for quicker access. All else – executive and subconscious processes, along with the vast array of memories and sensations not directly relevant to whatever currently has our attention – stays behind the scenes. They don’t disappear, they’re just outside the spotlight of our awareness.
The GWC works by creating abstract structures in the mind that represent the experiences of our physical senses. Mental symbols which range widely and can, for example, relate to feelings of warmth, cold, love, and fear. They also represent much larger concepts such as time and space. And it is space, in particular, that is extremely important to the GWC because it’s not just another thought structure or symbol – it’s the very ether in which they all exist. It’s so fundamental to human cognition and perception, as linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker puts it, that it’s more like the ‘medium of thought itself.’ A conclusion he arrives at as follows:
Location in space is one of the two fundamental metaphors in language, used for thousands of meanings. … Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions … underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied.
Think about it this way: whenever we see something, we see it in our minds somewhere; whenever we hear a sound internally, we hear it as coming from somewhere; and whenever we touch or feel something inside of us, we feel it happening somewhere. We never actually operate directly with objective reality because our minds translate what is perceived from our senses into a pseudo-spatial world of three dimensions.
Our brains, in other words, are like 3D projectors shining several shades of light through reality.
Recognition of this mental modelling behaviour can be found in George Lakoff ’s 1987 theory on the Spatiality of Form which infers that the one-dimensional grammar of language (words) is trans coded into a three-dimensional model in our minds whenever we’re spoken to. And vice versa when we respond. In other words, everything we experience in our minds is represented and connected over space.
Some modern psychological treatments such as Internal Family Systems take advantage of this spatial model to help patients identify, accept and reprocess troublesome aspects of their psyches. We, too, can utilize a similar framework to free our minds up to deal with our demons.
By dropping the temptation to jump in and fill mental space, or to alter or submerge whatever arises within it, we can imagine ourselves stepping back into the spatial domain that’s always available in our minds. In effect, making ourselves empty for whatever reality presents. This state of empty presence is the only space and place where we can come face-to-face with our demons. It’s the only arena in which we have the capacity to see them clearly, out in the open, away from their shadowy lairs. And it’s only then that we can start to work with them. It’s only then we can start to see and learn what they, and us, can become.
Practical Exercise: Rest in Space
Close your eyes, relax and take three slow, deep breaths, then:
- As you breath in a fourth deep breath, imagine all the air flowing in through your eyes and down the back of your head and neck, then through your chest and finally resting at the bottom of your stomach.
- Let your awareness rest here with the breath in your stomach for a moment. Then follow it as it flows naturally up and out your nose.
- Gently repeat this circular process, again and again. Rest in the space that’s created when the focus of your attention moves away from the mind and its chatter.
PAIN Point
Our focus is too easily given away to shiny things of little worth.
This distracts us from the great internal space inside of us, the arena in which all great battles are fought, where all wisdom is gained, where our true Selves reside.
CULTIVATE THE PERMISSION TO ALLOW
The boundary to what you can accept is the boundary to your freedom.
Tara Brach
There’s an old Taoist story about a farmer who worked his crops for many years…
One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbours came to visit. ‘Such bad luck,’ they said sympathetically.
‘Maybe so,’ the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. ‘How wonderful,’ the neighbours exclaimed.
‘Maybe so,’ replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbours again came to offer their sympathy on his perceived misfortune.
‘Maybe so,’ answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbours congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. ‘Maybe so,’ said the farmer.
The overriding objective of the limbic system, a collection of brain structures that process memories and emotions, is to keep us alive. It does this by ensuring we react to perceived threats very quickly. The etymological origin of the word ‘emotion’ – a combination of two Latin words: ‘motus’ meaning motion, and ‘ex’ meaning ‘out’ – tell us all we need to know. Emotions are energy in motion. Their purpose is to get us to act – be it out of anger, jealousy, love or fear.
As emotions are so critical to our survival, they evolved to be much more powerful than the rational thinking parts of the brain. When something is perceived as dangerous or unpleasant, for example – or even when we simply relive a bad memory – we can be sure that our emotions are inciting us to do something about it, as quickly as possible. Not to think things through in a logical manner but swiftly react: to judge, run, strike, or stall. To pacify the threat or change the situation before we suffer some serious pain.
But the story of the Taoist farmer paints a different picture. It implies that our initial reactions to events may not always be that useful, or indeed accurate. It speaks of ups and downs that produce unexpected outputs, and situations that continually change and develop irrespective of our emotions. It suggests that most of what happens in life is oblivious to our opinions, judgements, desires and reactions.
One of the recurring themes of Nietzsche’s writings is his fondness for ‘Amor Fati.’ Latin for ‘a love of one’s fate.’ At first glance this may seem inconsistent with the philosopher’s more famous notions of ‘ubermensch’ and the ‘will to power.’ By the end of his life however, following a host of trials and tribulations, Nietzsche came to believe all that happens in life – the good and bad, the beautiful and ugly – is ultimately necessary. In light of the countless factors preceding every event, he reasoned, things could never be any other way.
This was not a view formed from fatalism, determinism or despair but quite the opposite. It highlights the positivity that secretly underpins existentialism, of which Nietzsche was a major proponent, by buttressing the belief that to become truly powerful – and imbue meaning and beauty into life in the process – one should, more than anything else, be open and accepting to everything that happens.
In Ecce Homo, the last book before his death in 1900, the philosopher summed up this insight with the following line:
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.
His well-known theory of the ‘ubermensch’ supports this observation; it signifies, after all, someone who is capable of an uncompromising acceptance of reality. One who can admit life’s pain and suffering in an unintuitive and radical way – not with reactive resistance but with courage, patience, persistence, and humility. Nietzsche believed that this, and only this, leads to a life of happiness and joy. Why? Because it extracts us from a fight we are destined to lose. With what? Reality.
And Nietzsche went even further, recommending that we learn to love pain as much as all the seemingly good things in life. That the good and bad were inextricably linked because one cannot exist without the other. In the preface of his 1882 book, The Gay Science, he claims both are necessary for the development of wisdom:
‘Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit…. I doubt that such pain makes us “better”; but I know that it makes us more profound.’
This doesn’t equate to giving up or surrendering to the whims of the gods. Neither does it relegate the will of the intellect to the realm of uselessness. Nietzsche maintained rather that the human will is required for many occasions; but even more require the ability to accept, embrace, and stop fighting the unavoidable. Especially when events are clearly out of one’s control and immune to any action.
To adopt this way of living we can look to the Taoist farmer: how he wasn’t swayed by prejudices and preferences, how he didn’t react in a kneejerk manner to pleasant or unpleasant events. Moreover, he didn’t allow the inevitable emotions he must surely have been feeling to overcome his mental faculties. In other words, he had developed the ability to remain calm even when his body was likely swelling and surging with stressful, or sometimes pleasant and exciting, hormones and neurochemicals.
Anthony De Mello believed that this ability to remain steady regardless of whatever life throws at us – to remain in ‘absolute cooperation with the inevitable’ – is a key attribute of spiritual enlightenment. And he’s not alone; it’s an ethos exhorted by all the great religions and spiritual traditions. In Buddhism it’s called ‘equanimity, the greatest of the ‘immeasurable virtues’ and the one that underpins them all. In Stoicism it’s called the ‘art of acquiescence.’ While a similarly detached mind is a state extolled within Sufi, Jewish and Christian mystic traditions.
Admittedly, this all sounds pretty out-there, unachievable, ethereal even (we humans are, after all, hard-wired by evolution to exert control over our surroundings, to dominate nature, or at least harness some of its effects on our lives for the better). Separating our awareness from the machinery of emotions that drive this behaviour is possible however. If we start slowly, by practicing equanimity with the little things first: by catching yourself reacting to little slights and mishaps that happen throughout the day. Start to notice their impact on your body, the automatic inclination to react, to tense up; then deliberately relax your muscles and observe the flow of emotional energy as it plays itself out. Success in allowing such moments to pass hone’s one’s ability to stay calm amidst the larger storms of life. The practice also cultivates an understanding that good experiences are usually not all that great, and bad experiences usually not all that awful; neither lasts very long, nor is worth identifying with or claiming as your own.
Whatever our emotions stir up, whatever thoughts they trigger or demons they awake, an equanimous mindset allows us to experience them as they are. Not to reduce or amplify them, but to observe and understand them. This gradually weakens our reactivity to them. And in doing so, weakens their power over us.
Practical Exercise: Qualities of Equanimity
Close your eyes, relax and take three long, slow, deep breaths, then:
- Acknowledge the transience of life. See that all things – joys, sorrows, pleasant and painful events, as well as all beings, buildings, nations and even civilizations – arise and pass away. Feel the possibility of peace in your heart in the midst of this ever-changing life that will never be under your control.
- Reflect on the qualities of a mind that has equanimity. Sense the benefits of being calm and balanced.
- Now let yourself relax into an inner sense of spaciousness; then repeat the following slowly and silently: “May I be balanced and at peace” and “May I have ease of being”; then “May everyone be balanced and at peace” and “May everyone have ease of being.”
PAIN POINT
We all experience moments of happiness in our lives, but also moments of great pain and suffering. Understanding and accepting this – through the practice of equanimity – is the epitome of wisdom.