WHY WE GET ANGRY

Why do humans get angry?  We've all been there.  You're half way through an argument with someone, and something happens.  It is as though you stand apart from yourself, and look at yourself, and marvel at your own capacity to be irrational.  You can hear yourself say these strange words, accusing someone, or blaming someone.  But you carry on, as if you are locked into an inevitable story.

And it is a story, in a way.  We all tell ourselves stories about what is happening, and those stories define our reactions.  It is part of our evolutionary heritage.

THE STORIES ANIMALS TELL THEMSELVES

I am not one of those who is convinced humans are the only self-conscious beings.  I think that's just arrogance.  Many animals tell themselves stories about the situations they find themselvs in.  Interpretation of situations is a skill most common mammals have.  And going further back, a huge amount of life lives according to long-understood participation in chains of events.  True, a lot of the time it's what we call instinctive rather than rational thought.  But we're a little too rigid about that distinction.  Much of what we think of as rational is instinctive, and vice versa.

A SIMPLIFIED VERSION OF AN ANGRY DOG

Take a dog as an example.  A dog is faced with something unusual, perhaps a sudden noise, or an unexpected behaviour.  A useful simplification, transferable to humans, might be: that dog has a choice, made in an instant.  That choice is: 1. Do I withdraw, run from this unusual thing and hide until I understand what's going on?  Or 2. Do I attack, try to scare this unusual thing into not attacking me first?

Those who know dogs will know that they differ widely in their responses.  Some will usualy choose to sit back and watch; some will usually choose to come forward and attack.  But both, in a sense, are living out a story.  For the attacking dog, they are living in a long tradition of animals who survived by attacking as a standard response.  For the withdrawing dog, they are living according to a long tradition of animals who survived by withdrawing.  Their conscious mind may or may not see all this and understand it; but their being knows the story, is familiar with it.

ANGER IN HUMANS

Anger, in a way, is the impulse that lies behind the attack dog's behaviour.  People who get angry usually see themselves as vulnerable in the moment, and the story they are living out, is that they need to assert themselves in order to defend themselves.  So, ironically, the angry person who hits somebody, or lashes out verbally, sees themselves as the victim.  It seems absurd from the outside, but we all know what it feels like from the inside.

What about the withdrawing humans?  Don't they feel anger?  Oh, absolutely.  But a funny thing happens in their case: the anger gets turned inwards.  All that energy has nowhere to go, so it turns into internalised fear.  When you're disabled, paralysed by an unnameable fear of the world in general, sometimes it's just the anger you have turned inwards.  It's the choice you make as an animal: that you're not going to lash out.  So instead, you lash inwards against yourself.  A lot of depression has its root in this kind of self-laceration.

IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE?

Whether you're an 'innie' (someone who turns their anger inwards), or an 'outie' (someone who barks at and attacks others), it would be nice if an alternative could be found.  Both tendencies can be destructive.  Sure, they helped us survive over milliions of years, but in modern society we aren't so often under threat of death.  For us, anger raises its ugly head not when our bodies are under threat of death, but when a more abstract thing, our identity, is under threat.  It feels like dying when your identity is threatened: this is because your identity is your ongoing picture of yourself; and if you lose it, you imagine that your very self (i.e. your self-image) is dying.

So what's the alternative to this reaction we are all prone to, the one that has us becoming rude to others, but insisting that we are only defending ourselves?

LOSING YOUR SELF

In a good way, I'd like you to think what it would be to lose yourself.  Deliberately.  What if you willingly gave up any concept of yourself as something that needs protecting.  If you accepted, especially, that your identity is fluid, not fixed; flexible, not static.  What if you forget the evolved story of yourself as a separate being that need protecting at all costs, and replaced it with a different story... a story where you are a bit like water; you just run through the world like a river through a valley.

Who could hurt you (or hurt your identity) if you thought like that?  If a person or situation suggests that you are not clever; or not good... and you just thought 'yes, you're probably right', and got on with living.  Who could hurt your pride?  No one.

ANGER IS JUST PRIDE IN ACTION

Watch someone next time you see them get angry.  I challenge you to find any story other than this: they feel threatened, and are blaming someone or something for their feeling of threat.  They are playing out a story of 'poor me'.

I am not referring to those times when a person passionately fights for what is right in others' interests.  That kind of response I would suggest is more of a fierce wish for the right thing to happen.  I am referring to those times when a person is anrgy at the world, or others, because they are not getting what they want, and their identity is being threatened.  It's pride.  Simply selfish pride.

A MEDITATION PRACTICE: GIVING YOUR SELF AWAY

Next time a difficult situation arises, maybe try to imagine you are willing to give away your current identity.  imagine you don't need it, that you can simply flow into a new understanding whenever necessary.  You are like an octopus - you can squeeze into unusually tight spots, because your shape is malleable.

Instead of being like a brittle piece of glass, not budging until you break, you are being like a blade of grass, bending with the wind.

Notice how this makes you feel.  Maybe you feel relieved, that you won't have to waste energy on maintaining a self-image.  Maybe you feel suddenly free, because you're not so invested in fighting back unnecessarily.

A NOTE

I would like to emphasise that I am not saying roll over and accept other's misreatment of you.  But I am saying that the best form of reaction is not anger, but a fierce desire for the right thing to happen.  The difference is in your focus.  You can still defend yourself.  But your mind is no longer clouded by the illusion that you are of supreme importance.  You can now fight without your heavy crown of pride, and you'll probably be more effective.

SUMMARY

Your evolutionary story traps you into either fight or flight.  When you fight, you end up misbehaving.  And when you fly, you end up mistreating yourself.  Try stepping aside of evolution, and losing your sense of self.  If you have no self to defend, in the sense of an artificial identity, then you can see clearly.

So watch yourself, especially in difficult situations.  Learn to get over your self-importance.  And you will find your need for anger disappears, and peace returns.

In short, next time you are either fearfully self-punishing, or angry with others, get over yourself, and develop a sense of humour.  Eventually, you will become able to just watch situations without self-interest.  It's a healthy ability, because you won't be so frustrated.  You'll flow better.

LANGUAGE IS A SENSE

I'd like to make the case for language being a sense.

I know that sounds ridiculous.  But perhaps I could take you to a place where I had the thought.

I was writing a poem that was partly about our sense of smell.  How it was a very old sense in evolutionary terms, possibly deriving from when simpler organisms responded to changing chemical environments.  And I wanted to write the line:

Smell is an ancient sense,

older than words

I thought: I am, in part, treating language as a sense.  It seems perfectly natural, but why?

And I started to think about what that was all about.

PUTTING OUT AND GETTING BACK

The thing about senses is they are active.  They are not just a question of receiving signals.  That's a misunderstanding.  Without putting out tentacles, you don't feel.  Without putting out assumptions about sound, you don't hear, not clearly.

Here's an example of what I mean.  Your hearing system is not just passive; it is constantly adjusting itself, testing the world and acting on feedback.  I remember reading the story of someone who was deaf and was cured by an operation.  At first, the world was a mess of sound.  What their brain had to do was learn to calibrate itself until the world's signals were manageable.

Vision, too, works on these principles of putting out feelers and assumptions, and receiving feedback.  If you want proof, check out the concept of 'afterimage'.  When we look at something, we apply to it a barrage of assumptions; in the to-and-fro, we develop a way of adjusting our assumptions until they are sculpted, if you like, to the shape of the object we are witnessing.  When the object is suddenly withdrawn, the evidence of the assumptions we are 'putting out' is betrayed in the afterimage, which is an imprint of active assumptions against a now-neutral background. 

HOW WE PUT OUT AND GET BACK WITH LANGUAGE

Sensory adaptation is, in this sense, the act of putting out, getting back, and developing a network of residual assumptions which assist us in understanding the world.  When we learn to speak, we start by putting out noises.  (Actually we don't, we already have a set of assumptions ready from the womb; also words are not just noises, they are signs... but let's simplify things for the moment.)  We put out a noise, which is a word in its most basic form; a meaningful sound unit.  We get a response.  Maybe an echo, maybe a smile.  We spend our childhoods calibrating this 'sense of how to hear and what to say' until our word communications build in maturity.

ISN'T LANGUAGE A CONCEPTUAL NETWORK RATHER THAN A SENSE IN ITSELF?

Some would say that language is conceptual, and operates via hearing, seeing, touch etc as appropriate.  In these terms, language belongs in the general realm of 'thought', rather than sensory input and output.

But I wonder.  What if we turned the whole thing on its head, and considered thought itself the original sense.  The idea would be that organisms learned to interact in sensitive and selective ways long before the development of mammalian sense organs as we know them.  This redefinition of 'sense' would place the conceptual field right at the centre of sensing, with the five traditional senses redefined as mere sense-organs.

A TRIAL DEFINITION OF SENSE

A sense, then, might be defined as a system of knowing made up of putting out, getting back, and modifying.  It does not matter how this happens, only that it happens.

Armed with this definition, one might see how language can be a sense.  We put out words; we get them back; we interactively modify our language network until our world makes more sense to us and is manageable by us.

AN APPLICATION TO THERAPY

Applied to counselling and psychotherapy, this way of conceptualising language brings into sharp focus how the process works.  After all, they are fond of naming themselves the talking therapies, without attempting to deal, in depth, with how therapeutic change happens via language.  All sorts of concepts such as empathy are evaluated and tested; but we are substantially missing an explanation in terms of language itself.  Or rather, our explanations never really put language at the centre of things.

Here is an example of how talking therapy could be understood in linguistic terms:

1. A client suffers because their language network cannot explain their world to them.  They are frustrated, and often tell themselves stories which catch some of what is going on.  But these stories are often partial, both in the sense of part-explanatory, and in the sense of biased.

2. A client exposes themselves to an external foil, a therapist who can work with them to develop their narrative powers.  They learn to express their experience using new language which gives them a better explanation of the world around them.  'Better', in this sense, means 'more manageable', just as the deaf person who can suddenly hear quickly develops 'better' hearing assumptions and filters.

3. A client leaves therapy with a better linguistic sense of their world.  In other words, the words they put out, the words they get back, and their adapted linguistic structure, are more in harmony with each other.

4. This has an effect both on a person's relationship with themselves (their self-talk is better); and also on a person's relationship with others (they negotiate with others better).

HOW THESE IDEAS CAME ABOUT

I developed these ideas as part of my post-graduate studies.  It seemed to me that therapeutic literature didn't deal very well with language in therapy.  It put it on the periphery, and didn't make it central.  This was OK for some clients - existing concepts were sufficient to explain the process reasonably.  But there seemed to be a more general underlying process, in terms of the client's narrative ability, which cut across many therapeutic sects.  It seemed to me to give a better explanation of the improvements people make.  It is not that empathy and love etc don't exist.  Of course they do, and they are important.  But it is perhaps our linguistic sense, in the widest understanding of the word (including signs, symbols, gestures, furniture positioning etc) that is central to the process by which we find healing through understanding.

Writing that poem...

Smell is an ancient sense,

older than words

...reminded me of that research.  It wasn't very well received at the time.  I was told to ground my work in existing counselling theory.  I was told that a narrative approach was all very well, but it wasn't consistent with person-centred counselling.  I disagreed.   I think that person-centred counselling is the use of language, in its widest sense, to come to a new interactive understanding of the self and others.  And, the more I think about it, the more I see language as a sense in itself.

USING WORDS

So, next time you use words, imagine yourself emitting sensory signals, with the expectation of receiving signals back.  Don't think of it as a logical venture, but as an exploration, a building of a better picture of your world.  Let yourself build a language for yourself, a way of understanding, that works for you.  You will know when it works because, like that deaf person calibrating their new hearing sense, your linguistic sense will better comprehend the world you live in.

SUMMARY

Think of a sense as being a means of putting out signals, getting back signals, and modifying your understanding.  Through your life, you learn to tell stories, and you hear stories back.  You can judge how well these stories meld into a clear understanding, by noticing how much you suffer.  The less clear your understanding is, the more you will suffer.  Talking therapy can help you to negotiate a new story, one which better explains, and is better calibrated to, your world.  Your relationship with yourself and others might improve.

How you use symbols, whether they be words, or signs, matters.  I hope I have argued a case, even, for your language being a sixth sense!

THE PROBLEM OF ECONOMY

If your car is driving at a steady 60mph, do you design all car engines to run only at 60mph? Photo by nik radzi on Unsplash

There is a persistent problem, recurring and recurring, that is to do with an underlying illusion, and an assumption based on it.  The illusion is that a thought or action can be comprehensive; and the accompanying assumption is that there can be a story or method which resolves everything.  I call it a problem of economy, because, once we realise that all resolution is only partial, then we have to admit that, because we cannot comprehend everything, we are only offering ourselves economical sketches of the truth.

Put simply, our brains are not big enough to wrap up everything, and we had better therefore be humble about the systems we rely on.

THE MATERIAL ECONOMY

One example of how this works is out in our material economy - the economy that the news reports on regularly.  An economy is an invention of man, a word, to describe what happens when individual relationships spiral into systematic relationships.  The word business simply means 'doing things', and correspondingly an economy is simply 'a mass of things being done'.  When we describe an economy as growing, we are guessing, in aggregate, how much doing has been done this year.

In other words, the economy, as we describe it, is literally that - a shorthand description to simplify all our business relationships into something we understand.  Humans love summaries: so we invent one number, the Gross Domestic Product, to codify our simplified understanding.  And suddenly we have moved from perceiving several relationships, to perceiving only one number.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

One may well ask, what is the problem with this summarising, this being economical with the truth.  Whom does it harm? 

To answer that, I'd like to refer to what happens when recession strikes a modern economy.  When an economy is efficient and happy, everyone simplifies their thinking about it.  Valuing businesses becomes a simple question of profit multiples, for instance.  When life is good, there is no need to delve in, to make things complex.  We do the same in our personal lives.  Sometimes it takes a crisis to understand how complex relationships are.

Things, in fact, get so simple in the good times, that businesses start making profits on simple assumptions.  They mistake a temporary truth for an eternal one.  National lending companies operate on simple growth models.  Banks lend on simple formulae.

In short, humans become economical with the truth when there is no need to justify the truth.

Chains of business interactions start to depend on these simple assumptions, and on narrower and narrower margins.  If you feel that growth is going to be 5% for ever, then you can have 5,000 business sectors, each making easy money on 0.005% of that growth.

THE EFFICIENT ENGINE VS THE OPTIMAL ENGINE

The economy becomes like an efficient engine.  Honing itself until it can make money on practically nothing.  There grows a pyramid of hangers-on, all assuming one thing: things will go forward as they have been doing.

However, there is a problem.  Imagine that you are driving along a motorway at 60 miles per hour.  Your engine is working so efficiently, that you decide that all car engines should be designed to work only at 60 miles per hour or above.  After all, that seems to be the going speed.  

You can see that this is absurd.  You have simplified life into a few formulae that work for now.  If you redesigned all engines to work at 60mph, what would happen next?  Would you really be surprised when disaster strikes?

THE OPTIMAL ENGINE

When, suddenly, there is a traffic jam ahead, all hell breaks loose.  Your simple car economy is only built to run at 60mph in a straight line, and so your cars have no brakes, and little steering.  Suddenly there is a big pile-up.

You may feel this is silly.  I agree.  But then how we run economies is silly.  We make the same assumptions about efficiency, forgetting optimality.

We all know the optimal car has good brakes.  The optimal car is very steerable.  The optimal car knows how to achieve some efficiency at different levels of output.

In the same way, we need to build more complexity into our economies.  At the moment they are one-trick ponies, only designed to work at growth of a few percent per year.  Anything else, and we can't cope, and all argue with one another.

TRANSLATING THE CAR/ECONOMY ANALOGY TO OUR OWN IDEOLOGIES AND BEHAVIOUR

Psychologically, we are all at it.  We are all playing this game of oversimplifying life, and then getting caught short when things change.

It is how your mind is built.  That's the rule.  You go out and live, and your mind produces for you a simple story to fit what seems to be happening.  You get married, and your mind accepts a story that tomorrow will be much like today, and you will stay together.  But the complexity of experience doesn't fit our over-simplifying, and sooner or later, you will experience a crisis.

A DEFINITION OF CRISIS

From the point of view of cognitive economy, a crisis is the inevitable result of experiencing an event or change that throws into doubt your simplified model of life.  Your mind has necessarily simplified life, because you cannot possibly think all the thoughts that need to be thought in order to understand everything.  Simple you meets complex life.  And you see it as a disaster.

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION RE-EVALUATED

How do anxiety and depresssion look from this angle?

Well, anxiety is the response of the mind to pressure beyond its ability to cope.  Something happens which calls into doubt our ability to control our world, and we throw an enormous panic, because we are suddenly reminded that everything is in doubt.  Call it existential angst if you like.  It is existential because we are simple beings, much simpler than experience.  So experience haunts and surprises us all the time.

Depression is the response of the mind to long-term pressure beyond its ability to cope.  In terms of support, it is a response to long-term neglect.  Something happens, and lasts, which calls into doubt our ability to control our world, and our constant panics haven't worked,  so instead of fluctuating in uncertainty, we slump into a kind of certainty that everything is terrible.  Call it existential depression if you like.  It is existential because we are arrogant beings, much prouder than experience.  So experience disappoints us all the time.  Depression is perhaps more realistic than anxiety - at least it has a world view that allows for a vast range of experience.  Even though, when we are depressed, we forget the positive side of life.  So it is still a simplification.

HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH ECONOMY AND ECONOMIES IN A DIFFERENT WAY?

We know our current methods are unsustainable.  Our simple models of the world, whether ideologies, or operating methods... they are just that, simple.  Our simple view of economies forgets the complexity of our environment, and the fact that it will be ruined soon if we carry on prioritising consumerism.  In our private lives, our cognitive economy manifests in our assumptions about others, our assumption that tomorrow will be like today, our desperate reliance on contracts to make life more predictable.

But you can't agree a contract with nature.  It refuses to allocate any being to sign on its behalf.

The only solution is to begin to operate with more wisdom, because wisdom is the ability to see beyond the simple models everyone is using in the present; it is the ability to accept that tomorrow we may wake up in a flood, or a fire, or a war, and everything will change.  If you like, if life is a journey, wisdom is our rucksack.  Our store of wisdom is there to help us when times vary, when economies break, when the complexity of life bursts through.

LIVING WITH WISDOM

Material wisdom may involve knowing that, sooner or later, everything is taken away from us.  It may involve questioning our reliance on simple economic growth models.  Ideological wisdom may involve allowing for the fact that our ideologies are all wrong by definition - too simple.  Psychological wisdom may involve recognising, consistently, that nothing we think now will ever be enough preparation for what happens next.  That our minds, and our bodies, are organised around simplifications of life, and those simplifications are not life itself.

SUMMARY

Our brains are built to simplify our experience into assumptions.  When the going is good, because there is no need to analyse, so we simplify even more, and take things for granted - habits, money, relationships, natural resources.  We become extremely efficient in our habits, and live in a blinkered world.  Then along comes a crisis, to remind us that life is more complex than our assumptions.  We fold in anxiety and depression.  Perhaps wisdom is knowing, in our bones, that tomorrow may not be like today.  Perhaps wisdom is being humble enough to understand that we are wrong before we start; that everything is in that sense an illusion; that we are always oversimplifying, economising, with our minds and bodies.  If we are lucky, that wisdom may make us better equipped to live in a universe that often doesn't do what we think it should.

THE THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF POETRY

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash

Poetry is a funny thing.  It is merely a collection of words on paper (or stone, or spoken through the air).  But its value is disproportionate to its apparent modesty.

LIKE JEWELLERY

Perhaps its true therapeutic value lies in its density.  By density, I mean the way it manages to compress whole networks of meaning into one small space.  An analogy I often use is jewellery-making.  An expert jewellery-maker will think about their craft; plan their design; and ensure that there is no wasteage in the way the item expresses itself and fulfils its function.  In the same way, the writer of a poem thinks about the form, the arrangement of their words; will take care over their order and pacing; and try to make sure that their poem expresses, economically and richly, the experience they are sharing.

EXPRESSING EMOTIONS

The words we have for emotions are quite poor in themselves.  Psychologists have even tried to reduce human character to six key words.  This tendency of the caring professions to reduce emotion to a few key words can be quite distressing to clients.  It can create a disjoin between what someone knows they feel, and the words they seem to have available to express whats inside.  'I'm anxious', or 'I'm depressed' doesn't seem to cut it sometimes.  It's great when you need a diagnosis, or a quick way of categorising where you are and what help you might need.  But as a rich expression of experience, these words are lacking.  And it's made worse by the diagnostic manuals' insistence on reducing these key words to a set of predefined symptoms, which usually have to be miraculously felt for six months, or a year, or some equally improbable and artificial time span.

EXPRESSING DEPTH OF EMOTION

Again, the caring professions often rely on the emission of tears in order to be able to say that subtlety of emotion is being expressed.  Trainees talk of 'breakthrough moments', but sometimes don't realise they are merely taking the moment a client cries as an indication of depth of feeling.  This is great, and often true.  But it ignores the fact that, for many clients, tears are not the most subtle expression of what's inside.  The clues to their depth of experience are differently expressed, perhaps in a turn of phrase, perhaps in a movement of the hand.  To limit depth to crying is absurd.

THE OPPORTUNITY OF POETRY

Poetry is attentive.  There is an understanding between writer and reader/listener that attention has been paid to its production, and attention is being paid to its communication.  Poetry is 'the communication of special words in a special form', if you like.  As such, for the person-centred practitioner, there is already, in the transaction, a version of the three most famous, so-called 'core' conditions, positive regard, empathy and congruence.  Poetry as a transaction relies on positive regard for its successful communication; it seeks to understand, and so empathy is in its bones; and it seeks truth in a situation, and therefore congruence is its meat.

Poetry offer us an opportunity to communicate with one another at great depth.  What is more, in terms of time, poetry works differently to normal conversation.  Because it is produced in such a dense way, and written down or memorised, it acts as a lasting record of what is felt about an experience.  Communicants can return to it again and again for strength or exploration, and parts of poems can become iconic in the memory, landmarks on the emotional landscape if you like.

HOW POETRY MIGHT WORK IN THERAPY

There are already many practitioners who use poetry in one way or another.  Some of the key ways in which it can work are:

• A client can introduce a therapist to poems that mean a lot to them.  The bringing of a poem, or any meaningful piece of art, becomes a kind of gift, received by the therapist, and part of the sharing relationship.  The client can learn a lot about whether to trust the therapist by watching how the therapist handles the introduction of such an object.  It offers a third thing in the room, which can acts as a structure around which empathy can be gently offered, and join exploration can happen.
• A therapist can encourage a client to write some poetry of their own.  This encourages a form of self-exploration in expression akin to meditation or yoga.  The client is daring to stop and listen to themselves, and then to choose a mindful action which matches or expressed what is going on for them.  Poetry in this sense is an intimate act, and can help a client to develop the ability to communicate and self-extend in other social situations.  The therapist can, by unconditionally accepting the poetry, and taking an interest, demonstrate to the client that they matter, and that what they have to say matters.
• A therapist and client can work on poems together.  The client may be afraid of more direct forms of interaction, and working together on a poem, perhaps one the client has drafted, can help the client to learn interactions through an indirect medium.  The two people are focused on a third thing, which enables some clients to communicate what they find it hard to communicate face-to-face.  Furthermore, it is an analogy of many therapeutic interactions: the client offers an expression of self; the therapist offers understanding and clarification; both work together to hone and manage the joint expression of what is happening until a new reality is found, or at least a new way of seeing, for both parties.

HOW IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

In my therapeutic practice, I have had the privilege to experience, several times, the introduction of literary influence by the client.  Not always, but often, it has had the following three stages:

1. The client tentatively introduces into the room a book, a story, a poem, or a picture.
2. The therapist receives the offering, listens carefully, and communication begins about what the object might mean.
3. The interaction is used by the client as a kind of test of the therapist's authenticity.  If the object is dismissed or somehow belittled, then the client knows not to trust the therapist.
4. A new understanding is reached by both parties about the client, and usually about the relationship in the room.  A great sense of appreciation often results, a kind of indescribable gratitude that such sharing has been possible.
5. The art work becomes iconic in terms of the therapy, either for the client, or the therapist, or both.  It is useable as a reference point, a lasting reminder of a shared experience and a new understanding.

SUMMARY

I am encouraging you to consider introducing appreciation of written poetry into therapy.  In particular, I am suggesting that encouraging a client who wants to, to write some poetry of their own, can enhance the therapeutic experience, and provide several advantages that are quite hard to get any other way.

I have explored the reasons for this.  How poetry is carefully designed like jewellery around our experiences.  How it offers greater depth of description of emotion, beyond our poor few official words for feelings.  And finally, how it offers a new comminucation experience between two people, which, if appropriately valued, can build great trust and understanding.

DISCIPLINE OR ENVIRONMENT?

There is an age-old debate that has been travelling through the centuries, without often enough being explicitly laid out.  This is the argument between internal discipline and external environment, and deals with the issue of which should predominate in self-development.

This dilemma is hidden in other debates, such as the nature-nurture debate.  Is our character innate, or does our environment somehow imprint our character on us?  This is probably the most common modern version of the argument, but perhaps we can take a step back, and remove the politics from it.  The nature-nurture dilemma often has behind it a wish to influence the political debate around social care.  Those who favour nature might prefer to hold individuals responsible for their own internal discipline, a right wing view.  Those who favour nurture might prefer to hold the state responsible, a left wing view.

But standing back from it all and distilling the debate into a more individualistic dilemma, what is the question we are left with?  Maybe it's this:

In a given situation, when is it right to rely on our own inner discipline and resources; and when is it right to rely on external influences such as a good environment, and externally-imposed discipline?

ASCETICISM

Perhaps the ascetic approach is the one that favours self-discipline.  The argument goes that it is usually best to improve ourselves as a stand-alone unit, to the point where our powers of endurance make us as independent as possible from circumstance.  Only then, the argument would go, can we truly stand up for ourselves.

INTERDEPENDENCE

And maybe the opposite corner of the battle is represented by interdependence.  The argument here is that we cannot escape from our interdependence; that we were born into a web of interrelated activity that never ends.  We have no choice but to learn to work with our surroundings.  Our welfare depends on putting ourselves in favourable environments, and keeping away from unfavourable places.

A BALANCE

A quick answer to the dilemma is to take a view that to be wise, is to know when to stand alone, and when to rely on others or your environment.  In that sense, perhaps a best answer is to take a contextualist stance.  To say: I can't say whether internal self-discipline or a positive external environment is most healthy.  I will have to evaluate every single situation I find myself in, and make a choice depending on that.

AN EXAMPLE

To take an extreme example, a person in the last minute of their life would be silly to continue to develop their self-discipline.  They don't need it for anything more, and so might choose to be with friends in their last moments, enjoying the positive influence they bring.

At the other end of the scale, before a long journey, a person would be wise to build up their powers of endurance, as they do not know what environments will come to pressurise them along the way.

SUMMARY

This is a short article, but it covers an important dilemma we all face.  Whether, in self-development, to build up our internal resources (resilience), or to build up our external environment (support).  The suggested answer is that wisdom is the ability to contextualise the debate, and to match the choice to the situation.  If resilience is unnecessary, don't build it.  If it is necessary, in order to do good, then build it.

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Meditation, at its most basic, is the simple art of taking time to contemplate.  Contemplation, in turn, is a kind of relaxed, controlled thinking, which lets the mind rest on its object of focus.  So, if you sometimes find yourself looking at a leaf or a tree, or even a person's face, and dwelling peacefully on its features and nature, then you meditate, whether you are aware of it or not.

THE OPPOSITE OF MEDITATION

One way of thinking about meditation, is to consider what would be its opposite.  Have you ever seen a person in the middle of road rage, spitting with anger at something another driver has done?  Have you ever been in the middle of an argument with someone close, and said a lot of things that you later regret?  These things are the opposite of meditation.  When you have road rage, or when you shout at someone else in anger, then you are showing three things:

1. You are not in control of yourself.  Your mind and body seem to take on a life of their own, not listening to anyone or anything.  You, literally, 'lose it'... 'it' being the ability to master your actions.
2. You are not aware of your surroundings.  You may notice, when in a rage, that the world reduces to the size of a pinhead.  Some people call it tunnel vision.  You are so incensed, that you have no resources left to observe, as if from a distance, what is happening.
3. You are selfish.  That is to say your own needs in the particular situation outweigh everything and everyone.  That is why we do so much damage when we are in a temper - because we have become so afraid of what we might lose, that we cannot bend to the perspective of others.

MEDITATION AND RELIGION

Meditation is often associated with Buddhism, but contemplation has a long tradition in most religions.  Islam relates that the Prophet Mohammed often withdrew to a cave to meditate and pray.  In the Hindu tradition, meditation is a practice of self-awareness whereby a wise person comes to understand their relationship with others, and with reality.  In Judaism, an individual may set themselves apart to contemplate, either intellectually or intuitively, bringing greater insight.  The Christian tradition uses meditation as a time of reflective study and focus.  Buddhists meditate to develop mindfulness, concentration, peace and insight.  And so on.

A BASIC PRACTICE

Common to almost all types of meditation are a few basic steps, which can be the background to any meditation practice.

1. Preparation - make sure you are settled in an environment which enables you to focus, and be sure that you yourself have established an intent to take time to contemplate.
2. Bodily alignment - you can adopt a comfortable sitting position, or lie down, or kneel, or even stand or walk slowly; the important thing is that your body is aligned, or arranged, in a way that enables you to focus.
3. Focus your attention on a single object of contemplation.  It may be your own breath; you could listen to it enter and exit your body.  It may be an external object, such as a sunset, or a candle, or a tree.  Or it could be a particular piece of wisdom or scripture that means something to you.
4. When you sense your attention disappearing (perhaps your usual worries and distractions begin to reappear in your mind), then gently realign your focus onto the object of your meditation.
5. Remain in that contemplative state for a period of time, returning your mind to the object of meditation whenever you sense it straying.

WHY IS MEDITATION SO POWERFUL

What is the power of meditation?  Remember the list above, of things that are the opposite of meditation.

1. You are not in control
2. You are not aware of what is going on around you
3. You are obsessed by your own needs

You may notice that these three symptoms are characteristic of a lot of mental illnesses, and certainly of a lot of distress.  Meditation, on the contrary, seeks to establish three opposite things:

1. Control - learning to focus in a peaceful state brings you the ability to control your thoughts, and ultimately your feelings.
2. Awareness - learning to observe and contemplate, and to apply this to yourself and others, gives you greater awareness, as you are less distracted, and therefore make fewer mistakes of observation.  You see more clearly.
3. Kindness - learning to set your own worries and internal chatter aside, makes you better able to listen and attend to others.  Because you are not attached to any one outcome, you can more easily flex your perspective and see life how others see it.  Therefore, you will be better able to match your actions to the wider context, and should experience greater flow in your movement and thinking.

There are many cognitive reasons why meditation works, but perhaps they can all be summed up in the above.  If you wanted to drive someone mad, you would make them lose their sense of control, blur their sense of focus, and make them fear for their own safety.  In contrast, then, if you want to bring yourself peace, then to practice mastery over your thoughts, to enhance your awareness, and to widen your perspective beyond your own attachments, seem entirely logical.

WHAT IS MINDFULNESS, AND HOW IS IT RELATED?

Mindfulness usually refers to a state of enhanced awareness, in which you observe and accept your own feelings.  A state of mindfulness contains all the things we have talked about above: self-mastery (so that you have not 'lost your mind' any more), awareness (so that you are not 'driven to distraction' any more), and kindness (so that you are not obsessed with your own needs any more).

Mindfulness, therefore, is pretty much the name we could give the meditative state.  In an argument, a mindful person would be one who showed their ability to keep control of themselves, to see the whole context clearly, and to act without self-obsession.

THE BENEFITS OF MEDITATION

Setting aside time each day to meditate has a number of benefits.  In particular, do you notice how, in the course of a normal day, you are subject to aggravations, distractions, frustrations, difficulties?  A bit like a computer, you need time to get your house in order, and regain your focus.  You need to clear up loose ends, let go of what is bothering you, and return to 'place zero', a place of rest from which you can face the world again.

Using another analogy, imagine you are a Formula 1 driver.  Would you be a good driver if you spent all your time racing round a track at breakneck speed?  No.  You need rest, you need recuperation, you need focus.  Nature is full of rhythms to be wisely respected: there are day and night; there is activity and reflection; there is expenditure of energy and regathering of energy.  In the same way, part of your daily practice is to take time to regain your control, awareness, and perspective.  To refocus.  Otherwise you will be good for nothing, a bedraggled wreck.

There are wider benefits too.  We have focused on the individual.  But wider societies and ecologies can benefit from mutual self-mastery, awareness and selflessness.  An ability to take different perspectives, and not just act out of fearful self-defence, is sorely needed in the political and environmental world today.

A SUMMARY

Meditation is the practice of taking time out to focus peacefully.  It enhances self-control, awareness, and kindness.  Daily meditation sets an example to everyone that you are prepared to calm your own 'road rage', to see the other side, to take account of the whole picture, to take responsibility.  If you learn the art, then eventually it will become part of your normal behaviour.  You will find life easier, and others may find you more helpful and companionable.  Moreover, you may find your mental health improving, as you attend to the wonderful being that is you, and let it accept its wider place in the universe.

WHY DO I GET SO EASILY DISTRACTED?

We live in a world that is forever trying to grab our attention.  That's what advertising is.  Literally.  Ad=to, vert=turn.  People and things are trying to turn your head.  The outside world, full of advertisers, is trying to get hold of your attention, and keep it.  It would be a mistake to think of advertising as a recent invention.  Watch nature.  Birds are the epitome of advertisers, always tweeting this and that, making sure that they are noticed.

But it's distressing to many, all this advertising.  It clouds our heads.  Advertisers give us shorter and shorter time spans, firing images at us every second.  We end up punch drunk, unable to take much in consciously, but with a constant stream of images feeding us from our eyes.  We lose control of our lives, and become information feeders, turning to Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, or some other screenbased distraction, to provide our eyes with images-without-thought. 

We don't notice our distress immediately.  We only notice that we are becoming less and less able to stand on our own two feet.  Silence without a screen becomes difficult, hard to bear.  Nothing happening threatens us with an unnameable fear.  We turn back to our screens for comfort - at least something is happening there; at least the screens want to talk to us.  But the screens are feeding us the same thing as millions of others are receiving: the information equivalent of sweets, designed to keep us hapy for a while, and then to crave more.

DISTRACTION TRAINING

We are being trained to be distracted.  Advertising, after all, feeds on distraction: it is essentially the same thing.  If we could not be distracted, then we could not be successfully subjected to advertising.  Commercial forces have a vested interested in enhancing our ability to passively receive images from the world around us; and they also have an investment in making us fearful when those images are absent.

THE RESULTANT HUMANS

The result is the creation of a generation of humans that does little except watch screens passively.  When we are not doing that, we are worrying about the silence.  So we go back to the screens.  And so on.  We are deceived into thinking that we are doing something.  What did you do today?  Oh, this and that.  Actually, I watched some screens.  But I don't want to admit that.  So I will make up some things.  This and that, I will say.  But I wont say 'I did nothing but watch screens.'

THE RESULTING ATTENTIONAL ISSUES

Let's think what we are creating.  We are becoming beings who cannot exist without something to grab our attention.  Our mobile computing devices are becoming our carers, effectively screening us out of the world around us, and into the world that they create.  Developers are constantly creating pathways which they believe we can easily travel down.  Places they can make us go in our minds.  Until, before we know it, we have given in to all the tunnels and roads that the internet leads us down, and forgotten the real world we live in.  Even better, we have compromised our idea of real, so that we see these offered screen-realities as just as real as our lives outside them.

WHY WE ARE SO EASILY DISTRACTED

To summarise the above, we are being trained by the modern comercial world to be easily distracted, and unthinking.  That's what advertisers are aiming for. Imagine a consumer whom it was impossible to distract, and hard to persuade.  That consumer would cost you a lot of money.  Instead, you want a population that has the attention span of a gnat, and few powers of steady rational thought.  The fact that we are easily distracted, is a result of our training.  By television, by a world of screens.

AN ANTIDOTE

I was wondering what the opposite to all this distraction would be.  And I thought, maybe it is a mind that is so well-mastered that it is not amenable to being distracted.  And so I began to try the opposite of the distraction.  I imagined to myself that nothing in my environment could attract or engage my attention.  I used a lot of the techniques I had gained through years of meditation.  I noticed distractions fleetingly, and I let them go.  Noticed another one, and let it go.  Noticed another, and let it go.  Soon I could bypass the noticing and letting go.  The distractions started to become fewer, to lose interest in me.

DEVELOPING SELF

I went for a walk.  Even though the basic distractions had disappeared, some old distractions came to take their place.  It is as though we have a working memory space where thoughts and sensations come to offer themselves.  Imagine a glade in your mind, in the middle of the forest of your self, where available thoughts, feelings and sensations come to gain your attention.  If you tend to them, they stay.  If you ignore them, they go.

OLD PROBLEMS RETURN

I found that some old, rather magnetic thoughts entered my glade.  A few family problems, for instance.  I found myself tending to them, forgetting myself.  Then I noticed, remembered myself, and let them go.  More and more, deeper and deeper thoughts came and went, now not stopping in the glade to check for my attention, but simply wandering across and out of the other side.  I realised that, once normal distractions were removed, old problems came into the space made available and tried to gain traction, attention.  I didn't give them the time of day, and they went away.

BIGGER PROBLEMS

After that, some really enormous problems came into the glade of my imagination.  Death, love, things like that.  World-defining issues that, they argued, really couldn't be ignored.  'Look at us,' they said.  'We are the really BIG problems of the world, able to speak to you now that you have dispensed with the smaller issues.  You absolutely HAVE to attend to us.'  But I didn't.  I ignored them, and let them go, and left myself alone.

A DEEP COLD

Soon, I felt very cold.  Nothing was around me, just infinite space.  All the problems and issues that normally flooded my brain had left me.  It was just me, and an infinite expanse of what felt like darkness.  I wondered whether I could cope with this cold, this alone-ness.  Nothing seemed to flourish there.  It was like being trapped in a big underground cave with no escape.

WARMER

But soon, a little warmth came back.  A sun shone onto my skin, and I felt it.  I realised I did not need to notice it for it to have its effect.  Then I saw some plants.  Then I knew again the space in the forest, the place where I had had all my thoughts in the past.  It was the same place, but it felt less fussed.  And nothing in there was trying to gain my attention.  Everything was flowing through me as though I wasn't there.  But I felt as though I were a part of everything.  I didn't really mind being absent.  Ironically, I was present, too.   The closest analogy I can think of is the air in a balloon.  I was the air in the balloon.  You couldn't see me.  But the balloon would not be the balloon without me.  I was the space in the middle of everything.

BEING SPACE

I guess what I am trying to say is, today I left behind all my worries and distractions for a while.  I found a way to just be, and let the world go on around me.  I didn't need to be needed.  I didn't need to grab hold of anything and make it my own.  Philosophically, I guess you could say I became space.  Like the air in the balloon.  Mystically, one could say I lost myself, and became one with everything.  Casually, one could say I dropped my selfishness and became a quiet watcher.

THE RELEVANCE TO DISTRACTION

I tell this story because I want to talk about how we might deal with distraction.  I tell it as a story because, in many ways, it is a circular journey.  You drop your usual worries; you drop the bigger worries that then invade; you drop the biggest worries you can think of, like death and relationship.  Then you just sit.  And the world comes back.  Everything that you had before comes back.  But your relationship with it is different.  Now, you are not distracted by any one part of it all.  You are identified with the all, and so the parts cannot affect you.

Thing of being a parent at a children's party.  The party is full of little stories, of little Jill being mean to little Jack, of little Jimmy losing his presents, of little Jane losing her friends.  But you are outside all of that.  You care, but it is not a caring that is obsessive, or controlled by events.  It is a caring that sees the whole picture, and therefore finds it hard to be discombobulated by any one part of it.

AN IDEA FOR YOU

I have an idea for you, a little project.  Set aside a day, not so long in the future, just for you.  On that day, pretend you are a new kind of human being, one that cannot be distracted by internet, by screen, by person, by situation, by drama, by problem.  You are just you.  Imagine in your mind a forest glade, which is your space.  Watch the thoughts come and go in that space.  Eventually, lose your connection to them, so that the whole forest dissolves into itself, and runs without you.  Now you have your own dispensability, your own redundancy.  Your redundancy is your greatest weapon.  

Now sit with it, with your redundancy, your absence, and enjoy it.  It will feel cold and lonely for a while, but in the end you may feel warmth returning.  You may be able to re-engage with the world in a different way, still seeing everything, but not controlled by it.  You will have become a quiet watcher.  That is meditation.  That is pretty much it.  You'll be able to smile.  In fact, you'll want to smile; because you now know that nothing matters, so everything matters; that nothing needs your attention, so everything can have your attention; that nothing is, so everything is.  It's quite relaxing.

SUMMARY

We live in a world where everything is striving to grab our attention.  It is exhausting.  It makes screen addicts of us all.  So find some time, perhaps a day, for yourself.  Go for a walk, or sit, or do something else relaxing.  Learn to detach from any problems that arise in your mind.  First the little problems.  Then the bigger ones that take their place.  Finally, let yourself sit in complete, empty space.  You will find you slowly become a part of the world, but in a different way.  You will not be attached to any one thing, but you will be all-present.  It will be very relaxing.  You will have arrived.

Or, if this all means nothing to you, you have just read something you disagree with.  But that's fine.