So far we have seen that our emotional states are almost entirely driven by the will-to-life, and that it is the same with the formation of our ideas. If we are to form an objective and more realistic set of ideas, then we have to perform the painful task of seeing life as it really is. On the surface this may seem like a recipe for unnecessary suffering, but actually, the opposite is true. As our ideas become more aligned with reality, so the neuroses lessen and we acquire a certain inner strength that serves us well in dealing with life’s realities.
Finally I need to make a very important point about all of this. This study of the real situation man finds himself in should not be emotionally charged. As far as possible it should be conducted as we might study any other subject. The modification of our ideas takes place in a purely intellectual way – or at least it should. Anyone who ventures out into these stormy waters needs to remember that pure ideas do not affect our emotional state. The inevitable outcome if we do not remember this will be some level of depression or other negative emotional state.
Suggested reading: Part 2 of Spinoza’s Ethics (very difficult), Schopenhauer, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (tortuous). These are heavy duty works requiring years of study, and so it might be better to buy books that introduce the ideas of these philosophers. Also the Stoics, and particularly Epictetus. When we come to practice there will be other books and authors.
Practices to Deal with the Emotions.
Key to the whole approach taken here is one very important idea – we need to study and work with our emotions in a manner that is as unemotional as possible. Our emotional nature is like a machine. When our survival is enhanced (better job, new attractive partner, good health etc) we experience positive emotions, when our survival is diminished (poor health, loss of money, a divorce etc) we experience sad emotions. It works like clockwork, and is as reliable as the law of gravity – water always flows downhill. This mechanical nature of the emotions is its weakness. If the emotions were random we would have no way of dealing with them or understanding them.
Many people interested in this line of work will read writers like Schopenhauer or Cioran, but do it with an emotional bias. These writers often fell into the trap of becoming heavily identified with the material they wrote, resulting in depression, and for some writers suicide. We should take Spinoza’s edict that the emotional nature of man can be studied in an impartial and purely intellectual way. So when Schopenhauer points out the futility of a single life, it is quite possible to think about this in the same way we might consider how the law of gravity allows the solar system to function. I’m really not saying this is easy, but it is essential if we are to study reality and remain strong and joyful within. I quote Spinoza:
“Thus the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from this same necessity and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through which they are understood, and possess certain properties as worthy of being known as the properties of anything else, whereof the contemplation in itself affords us delight. I shall, therefore, treat of the nature and strength of the emotions according to the same method, as I employed heretofore in my investigations concerning God and the mind. I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.”
So, having established that very important principle, let’s talk about practical methods to deal with the emotions. The first thing to say is that the emotions are in the body, and to become more aware of the body is a very important practice. To this end there are various body sensing exercises, and one that comes straight from the Gurdjieff work. This is not actually new and is mentioned in some old Zen texts.
We need to become more aware of the body because this will allow us to sense the emotional state more acutely – tension in the chest and shoulders, shallow breathing and so on. So we really need to be able to sense our emotional state in the body, and by observing the thoughts we have that go along with these states. This takes a long time to master – years. Anyone who thinks they can master this in an afternoon is just delusional, and is falling prey to a certain form of greed (another emotion that can be sensed in the body). This is subtle work requiring one to master the art of self-observation. I’ve mentioned many times that a book by Red Hawk on self-observation is one of the best resources, and is highly recommended. Self-observation should simply register the emotional state without judgement or the desire to change things. Again this is a skill that takes much practice to master. Inner judgement is a constant feature within most people, unless they have worked to observe it. If you see inner judgement do not judge it – just watch it.
To summarize so far. Our emotions operate in a purely mechanical way – life affirming events and ideas will produce happy emotions, and life negating events and ideas will produce unhappy emotions. This is how we are made and cannot be circumvented. There is absolutely no point reading Ernst Becker’s Denial of Death in an emotionally identified manner and thinking you will not become depressed. Thoughts of death that are not purely intellectual will cause depression – they are life diminishing. By becoming more attuned with our body and learning to observe our emotional state without judgement or the desire to change, we create a little bit of separation between ourselves and what is going on within the body and emotions.
Finally we need understanding – the most important part in all of this. If a person is experiencing a negative emotion they can, with practice trace it back to some diminishing of their sense of existence. Say a person wakes in a depressed mood for some seemingly unknown reason. In all likelihood there will be some background diminishing set of circumstances – shortage of money, failing relationship, or it could even be a hormonal imbalance within the body. Understanding the background driver, and how it is related to the diminishing of the will-to-life in a purely intellectual way will diminish the emotion. A person can quite literally say to themselves “Oh I feel diminished because I’m having problems meeting my monthly rent obligation and this diminishes my survival prospects.”. It sounds mechanical, and that is because it needs to be mechanical – an impartial observation. Again this requires practice and will not be picked up in the space of an afternoon.
Obviously there is more to it, but there is enough here to get a person started on an objective, and purely intellectual study of the emotions. I would strongly recommend studying Part 3 of Spinoza’s Ethics, and Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation. But remember – study these things as if you were studying engineering, or some other intellectual pursuit – without emotion. A gentle, but very useful introduction to Spinoza can be got from Grossman’s Spirit of Spinoza – it also includes many exercises.
Liberating The Mind
Most of our thinking is dedicated to our survival. This may not seem particularly obvious, but you only have to look at where you put most of your effort to see that this is true. So, you get an education, some training, get a job, buy a house, find a breeding mate, do yoga or go to the gym, and a thousand other things simply so you might continue to exist. Along with all of these things is a great deal of planning and thinking. For many people their thinking does not go beyond these things, and there are others who are so heavily driven by the will-to-life that they might accumulate great wealth, position and power.
If our thinking was wholly dedicated to these things there would be very little confusion. However, some people start to think about other things, such as the meaning of life, why there is suffering, why they feel miserable, and more generally what the hell this whole thing called existence is all about. So they not only end up thinking about all the stuff they need to make sure their existence continues, they now have whole a universe of ideas and concepts that are used to form judgments about life. Unfortunately many of these people will be attracted to New Age gurus, self-help gurus, religions and anything else that might provide answers to the endless questions they have. And here is a strange twist in
all of this. People who go seeking are often more confused than those who busy themselves exclusively with everyday affairs. Not only this, but the beliefs they acquire through religion, spiritual traditions, or any other organization they hook up with, may actually be dangerous and harmful. Most of these things are full of should and shouldn’t. We shouldn’t be angry, we should be loving, we shouldn’t eat meat, we should eat raw vegetables, and so on.
The key to unraveling all of this mess is very simple. Never believe that anything you think has the right to say “I”. For most of us our days are full of voices in our heads that claim to be “I”, and each of them claims to be king if only for a few minutes. Many of these imposters will be saying should and shouldn’t, with no real regard to how we actually feel. I can probably count the authors who have understood this on one hand. All other authors eventually end up saying should and shouldn’t.
The reason we need to understand our emotions is that we need to know what is really going on inside us, instead of some fantasy that we have constructed from reading our latest self-help book, or spiritual treatise. Unless we are in touch with how we really feel, all our efforts to achieve some level of inner peace will be futile. If we have achieved some genuine and intelligent understanding of our emotions, then they will tend to bother us much less. We don’t offer them resistance, and as you may know, what we resist tends to persist. This inner letting go sounds easy, but it isn’t. It may take many years and devastating self honesty to be able to accept how we feel in many situations. I wrote about liberation from emotions first because that is where we have to start. But here is a simple exercise to help us gain a little distance from all the voices in our heads that would claim “I”:
Sit comfortably while maintaining a straight back. Relax the shoulders particularly, and the muscles in the face. Close your eyes and simply try to observe the thoughts passing through your mind as they occur. This is easier said than done. Most people who try this, report that when they start to observe their thoughts, the thoughts stop. And indeed, this is likely to happen. Simply persist with this exercise and eventually you will be able to observe the thoughts trickling through your mind almost as an outside observer. Until this time, if observing your thoughts causes them to stop then at least you get a respite from the constant noise in your head. Do this for at least five minutes, and preferably for 20 minutes or more. You will inevitably daydream at various points in this process. Simply go back to observing the thoughts, and absolutely do not criticize yourself in any way for having lost concentration.
You may eventually reach the state where the separation between thought and your internal observer takes on some kind of permanence. This allows a person to go through life with a certain equanimity. Again, it may take many years to achieve this, but the ability to see how thought obscures something within us that is thoughtless, is a priceless gift.
NOTHING SPECIAL
The term ‘nothing special’ comes from a beautiful book called Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. The main thrust of the book is that there's nothing special about Zen. I would extend that to say there's nothing special about anything. Everyone wants something special, and they are all looking for the next treat or bit of entertainment or thing to excite them. Indeed, most people want to be special too, to be famous or rich or particularly attractive or whatever it is that they think would give them some affirmation in the eyes of other people. So, we all want to be special.
People want to be special because they've got nothing within them. They feel empty, so they're looking for something to fill them. The thing that they would most easily identify as the thing that would fill them would be something special. So, they attempt to borrow specialness in terms of maybe wearing the most recent fashions or identifying or associating with somebody who they believe is special or who has some profile in the world. This desire for specialness is a curse, and it takes people away from the ordinary. The ordinary is beautiful, and you don't need anything special. In seeking the special, we're seeking more power. We're seeking more power because we don't have our own power. If we had our own power, our own sense of self-approval, then we wouldn't go looking for expensive watches and handbags, and all the other nonsense that many people spend their life acquiring. If you want examples of people who self-validate, then you need to look no further than Christopher Hitchens, or Nassim Taleb. You may not have heard of Nassim Taleb, but he's a very wealthy guy who writes books. Some of the books he writes are on philosophy, and some are on mathematics. He's a bit of a polymath and a reasonably high-profile figure in his field.
This whole thing of specialness comes from the sense of lack. Nassim Taleb is a 'special' person in that he doesn't want to be special. He hates being special, but he's only got himself to blame. He wrote some very, very good books about the way the world operates and of course, everybody now wants to talk to him and so on. But he hides away, and he’s largely a recluse. Another special person is Christopher Hitchens, who famously said when somebody asked him where he gets pleasure from life, “I get pleasure from crowing over other people's misfortunes.” Hitches was a Spinoza fan, and in Spinoza there are a few lines which say that most people get their pleasure from other people's misfortunes - which unfortunately is true. But, if somebody gets their power by looking at somebody else's misfortune, in other words, they feel they have more power because other people think they have less, then that's what that person will do.
Anyway, the real topic of this section is about people who would have you believe that they have something special in the domain of religion, spiritual stuff, self-help, all that kind of thing. The people who sell it must convince you that they have some powers or some insight that you do not have. So, they may claim to be enlightened, whatever that means. They may have some unusual insights, some woo-woo and some knowledge that you don't have. They may be in contact with spiritual beings, or they may be in contact with aliens, you know anything like this. Anything that would seem to be unique and bestow more power upon someone if they could acquire those properties as well. The gurus who sell enlightenment are effectively promising that if you can somehow obtain this state, then all your troubles will be over. Well, let me tell you a few things about Shunryu Suzuki, who was one of the most highly regarded Zen teachers in the West. There was an occasion when he fell into a river, a very deep river. He was drowning because he couldn't swim, but was rescued. He said afterward yes, I was frightened. The whole thing was just an amazing experience. I was terrified. I thought I was dying. Someone asked him if he was enlightened and his wife, who was with him at the time, said he doesn't know what that word means. Over and over and over again he emphasizes there is nothing special. He would sit for hours each day, just in his Zen position observing his breathing. He said that if he could do that all day, he would do that and nothing else. Nothing special. But the people who are selling enlightenment are trying to persuade you that if you can achieve the state that they say they have obtained, then you will accomplish some less painful and more insightful view of the world. We all want that - that's why we're suckers for it. Then you also have the people who sell you some idea that they have special knowledge. Maybe knowledge of the nature of God, perhaps they have unique insights into the nature of God, or maybe they have unique insights into the nature of our existence. You know, anything - anything that might be attractive to people. They might claim incredible insights into how we might be happy, as do the positive thinking charlatans and all those kinds of people. Then you come across the real idiots, the people who are in contact with the angels or aliens or spiritual beings of one kind or another. And, because they profess to have this power that you do not have, then maybe that attracts you, so you then go and spend money with them. These things will involve spending money at some point. They're not doing it because they particularly want to help people, they're doing it because it’s a business. We tend to overlook that fact when the promises seem to be so great.
Now, let me tell you about a more sen
sible approach to all of this. You are blessed with the one thing that nothing else on this planet has, and that is a rational mind. You can look at the evidence around you and infer certain things from it. Without this ability to be rational we'd all still be in caves, frightened of the lightning because we would think that lightning and thunder was the anger of the gods or something ridiculous like that. And an interesting fact is that as science pushes back the frontiers of our understanding, so does the point at which we start to say, ‘oh well this is the mystery of God.’ So, once upon a time thunder and lightning were thought to be a manifestation of God. Maybe various illnesses a few hundred years ago would have been thought to be some punishment by god or something. Now we know that maybe they're viruses or bacteria. All the time we're pushing back this frontier - this point at which we have to say, ‘oh this is the work of God’.
Physicists are reasonably close to understanding that the universe came from a womb of universes, what they call them multiverse. Of course, then you ask the question ‘where does the multiverse come from?’ And then at that point, somebody says ‘oh well, that is the work of god or whatever.’ Wherever there's ignorance then people will start to talk about god. Anyway, to get back to the main point, you are blessed with this ‘reason.’ You don't need any special woo-woo, you don't need people telling you about enlightenment or special insights into the nature of god or spiritual beings or angels or aliens or anything like that. There's plenty here to fascinate you. If people studied even the popular books on physics, they'd see some bizarre stuff, and you might even call it special. The idea that if someone travels very fast relative to you, then they will shrink in size as far as you're concerned. And that's a real effect. I could go into how that's a real effect, but I don't want to deviate too much.
The Corporeal Fantasy Page 19