Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts

Trusting Knowledge

By | Published Saturday, November 17, 2012

The history of psychology is filled with various experts attempting to reinvent the wheel (the model of human behavior), and as a result there has been a sharp increase in theories, concepts, and definitions, over-complicating a subject that can be explained in far simpler and straightforward terms than the average psychologist or layperson can explain it.

In other words, psychology is complicated more because of the vast volume of competing and often impractical concepts than because human behavior  is complex.

This is not to say that human behavior is not complex, but that Occam's Razor is not being applied: Among competing hypothesis, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.

Personally, I believe the "why" is the easy part, but that the "how" requires much more study than we've done to this point. We may know why someone does something (he's been conditioned) but the how of it requires psychologists to look at genetics, society, mental conditions, and interpersonal relationships.

So psychology is both very simple, even elementary, and yet infinitely complex (as complex as nature itself, which all of science has yet to discover even a percentage of). What happens if people do not understand this? If they live completely on one end of the spectrum or the other, either believing that psychology is easy or that it is very hard?

I think then we end up with elitist academics who do not trust laypersons with the "complexities" of psychology, and laypersons who think they can master the human mind by reading a few pop-psychology books (coincidentally written by academics*), or by mimicking their doctors.

I don't know if either of these types are dangerous, or more dangerous than the other, but they're both fools studying only one color of a prism. Both become know-it-alls who refuse to believe the other has anything to add, and so dismiss each other.

Humans dismiss each other at their own peril!


*Studying a subject presents a great risk to any student: a false sense of security. The phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" comes to mind. If people do not maintain a mindset that they do _not_ know everything, and so that they must tread with caution, what knowledge they have gained, whether by book or course, can naively be used in the wrong way: a well-meaning friend trying to help a potential suicide through depression, or a doctor who misdiagnoses a patient for failing to be thorough in his approach.

Often what we think we know is a blinder to what is real.

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Big News, Big Change

By | Published Wednesday, July 25, 2012


I wrote a couple of drafts of what I hoped to have posted yesterday. The words seemed lacking in exact meaning, and I failed to express my feelings in any way appropriate to my current state of mind. But I've been here before, many times before, when life converges, then diverges again in a watershed moment.

I must no longer identify with “I am an author.” The experiment is ended—for now. I won't stop writing (it's too much fun and too interesting to give up), but I think for the foreseeable future, writing will not be my main priority as it's been for the better part of a year.

Fact is, I have a problem with perfectionism, with this feeling that I must be a “somebody.” I do a pretty good job about not caring about being anyone important, but I've worked writing up so much in the last several months that every time I sit down to write, or even more, when I don't sit down to write, I am reminded that I am not somebody. Such a burden on my mind, and I do not care to have it. If success means tormenting myself for not living up to society's standards of fame and fortune, I'll gladly do something else.

Anything else, but not try, not force myself to write for money, for fame, for success.

Call this my “fuck it” moment.

Now it's out of the way, and I can talk about positive things! Like the fact that I do not plan on quitting writing. I'm going to tone it down a bit, but I still hope to be consistent (an hour a day, a little for the blog, a little for a story, a little poetry or whatever). My main focus will turn to LIFE.

Right now the most fun I'm having with anything I'm doing is my studying of the Spanish language. I've been studying it on and off for several years, and I have a pretty solid understanding of the language and a pretty basic vocabulary, but I want to push myself for the rest of this year to reach some sort of mastery.

The main difference between spending most of my time writing, and most of my time studying Spanish is that Spanish is tangible. They're both dealing with language, with words, which I absolutely love, but with Spanish I can open more doors in my life than I can with writing. They're not mutually exclusive of course, but I need something concrete, practical. Learning Spanish, I'm a stone's throw away from more career options, not to mention the fact that my beautiful girlfriend's entire family speaks Spanish as their native language. I see in Spanish a quicker, more effective way to gain some success, because it's something I can actually show people, and do.

Another focus in my life at this time is in my spiritual development—and this is directly tied to my anxiety disorder.

I'm a very phobic person (very neurotic), and for as much confidence as I have in my abilities and in myself as a human being, I have an equal amount of doubt and hesitation to actually unfold myself and enter back into society. Yet that is exactly what I've been doing for the last couple of months, breaking out here or there, doing this or that, unfolding as the flower unfolds in the morning sun after a long, damp night.

I've been helped along tremendously by a friend who has moved back to town recently, and by my girlfriend who continues to support me even though her own fears are evident. Recently we (my girlfriend and I) even plotted out a possible career path in counseling. Getting a masters degree in counseling seems like an intuitive thing to do (I talk a lot, am a reasonably good listener, love psychology even more than I love writing, and love even more helping people), but it'll take many years, and will be a goal that will have to be worked on piecemeal, part of which includes overcoming my social anxiety disorder.

Writing has always been my crutch; most specifically my dream of being a published, paid author. My dream of writing for a living and my desire and need to let go of my anxieties and live a well-balanced, fruitful life are mutually exclusive. If you were to ask my mother or my girlfriend what they would rather have me do, be a reclusive, malfunctioning writer or be a well-rounded and sociable human being, I think they'd both pick the latter—and so would I, because I know that I will not lose my ability to write by taking more risks with my life.

I want to be a published writer because I don't want to go out and get a job, go to college, or otherwise interact with large groups of people (which is ironic, because to succeed in writing one must be able to socialize). Yet I've been doing a lot of spiritual cultivation lately, finding my true self and all that jazz. I've realized something important. There's a difference between writing and writing. Writing is a physical act of putting ideas down on paper, and in that, is a perfect exercise of what a Zen monk would call “Drawing water and carrying wood.”

But writing is totally different. It is a matter of wanting, of craving, of possessing, identifying, and reaching for something wholly intangible, abstract, and unreal. “Success.” This wanting to be somebody.

Having a job, working, especially if it's something completely menial, would be perfect for me because it's just practice—drawing water and carrying wood.

And so as I reach out to the world around me, join in it, however painful this is (and it's been quite painful), I must let go of the intangibles I've cultivated toward writing. Now when I write, as I'm doing here, I will treat it as practice. I will write for writing, and not for anything else. I will publish for publishing, and not for anything else.

I don't care where it takes me, if it takes me anywhere. I have a goal, but I'm not attached to the outcome. The goal is to make the words, focusing always on making the words (as well as editing and publishing the words, but in their own time and place).

Hopefully I will not put down my dream of being a published writer only to pick up another crutch. I must guard against that. But also, I'm in no way denying success. I'm not sitting here saying “I don't want it.” I don't not want it, either. If I wake up tomorrow with a million dollars in my pocket because of something I wrote, I'll put it to good use!

:)



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Practical Application of Eastern Philosophy

By | Published Tuesday, July 10, 2012


A few days ago I made it a priority to reach what Zen Buddhists call Satori. My aim was to see if I could “force” myself into this altered state of consciousness. I have experienced it before, and it's a very peaceful place to be, even when things aren't going so hot, but I got there by accident, by chance, by reading or listening to something that shocked me out of my “self.” This time I wanted to find out if I could put myself there.

This sudden mining for spiritual gold coincides with an equally sudden interest in a psychologist and lecturer named Richard Alpert—otherwise known as Ram Dass. Ram Dass is an interesting topic in and of himself, but all that needs to be said here is that I am at the right point in my life to get the most out of his teachings. Just as, seven years ago, I was at the right point in my life to get the most out of Alan Watts's teachings and the teachings of Taoism. My intuition is at maximum, I have reached peak receptiveness.

So over the last few days I have meditated, and I have listened to Ram Dass lectures and clips on Youtube, and I have—as well as I can—put myself into a semi-enlightened state. I say “semi” because it is not permanent enlightenment. It is mostly intellectual (as in I “know this to be the case”), but it is yet to be known if I can apply what I'm meditating on to my non-meditative life. Osho calls this semi-enlightenment Little Satori. Big Satori is permanent.

My spirituality must be practical. I have stripped away many concepts. You won't catch me talking in New Age jargon. I don't “believe” in anything I cannot experience first hand. I am very much a minimalist.

I don't believe in deities, souls, spirits, angels, demons, good/evil, etc.

What I believe is straightforward, grounded.

I am not my body. I am not my mind. I am not my senses. I am not that which I sense. I am the experience of all of these things happening at once, in this moment.

Meaning that I am no one thing, but all things. What I seek in life is, above all else, to blend with the experience. To observe it, yes, but to understand that the observer (the “I”) is not the self.

A physical illness, a funny joke, a beautiful sunrise, emotional pain: these are merely phenomena. My purpose is to experience these phenomena.

My neurosis is Social Anxiety Disorder. Most humans live in fear to some extent, but for much of my life—throughout my teens and early 20s—I have lived in unmanageable and illogical fear. Fear of driving, flying, going to school, going to work, being sick, being healthy, dying, living, failing, succeeding—risk of any kind.

What I am trying to do is to disidentify from the self that fears. To be “no thing.” To embrace the void. The moment.

In order to get through that part of me which “stops” when it comes to doing something normal people find easy, if not outright boring, I must change my state of consciousness. Altering my mind through meditation and Eastern philosophy I can see the world in a different light. Not from the point of view of a human being, but from the point of view of the Cosmos itself.

That is enlightenment. Satori. It can last a millisecond, or for the rest of my life, however long that may be.

Living as the experience (the phenomenon), not the experiencer. Living as the event, not the observer. Then what can hurt me? What use are my old fears? What use is standing still? If I am the experience, then I will experience anything. Joy, sadness, ecstasy, pain, love, loneliness, freedom, even fear.

At the end of all of this is death. The void. But for one who lives and dies in each moment, the death of the body and the final death of the mind is nothing new.

This is the doorway to being a human being again. Walking through it, embracing that enlightened altered state of consciousness, I am free to be both human—with all of my faults, with all of my fears—and at the same time Cosmic—understanding fully that I am not the body, the mind, the senses, but the experience. The phenomena.

This thought gives me great peace. It's a contradiction to all that I've told myself for so many years, gripped by anxiety. It's strangely similar to the feeling I had when I was a six-year-old child, before my adult ego took over. When I was a child I got scared, but I never identified with my fear. It was not “me,” but only what was happening at the moment. When that moment passed I would be happy again, but I never recall identifying with that happiness. As a child, I was enveloped by the moment, every moment.

My phobias exist because I grew up and began to believe that I was my fear. That I was my uncertainty. That I was my anxiety.

Yet I'm not simply discovering a way to cope with the world. I'm not, as psychologists have people like me do, learning to cope. I'm learning how to live, more deeply and fully than I've ever lived before.

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The Success of Spontaneity

By | Published Friday, June 15, 2012


When I talk of spontaneity to those hard-set in the ways of Western culture, the door is often slammed in my face. Of course this is no real door, but the door to their minds, because in our culture spontaneity is synonymous with idleness and a life without goals, and many people have already closed their minds to other possibilities.

To let things be what they are, to let come what may come, and to ride the wind conjures visions of bohemians, hippies, gypsies, and bums.

Not someone with goals, with a plan, with motivation, passion and drive to get from point A to point B.

I find myself spending a lot of time refuting this concept of spontaneity. I refute the claim because it's not true. Or, more specifically, it does not have to be true. In fact, spontaneity may lead to even more goals, plans, motivations, passions, and drives—for the right person.

What do I mean by the right person? Some of us go about success in the wrong way. We try to force it. We work very hard, living on our to-do lists, and expecting to get as much out of the system as we put in. When things don't go our way, we end up frustrated and dejected because this way of operation is cold and offers very little satisfaction—it merely turns real life into an assembly line procedure. We continue on with our to-do list, but with less motivation, more than likely losing the spark we began with.

The surest way to avoid this inevitable let-down inherent to our system of “productivity > enjoyment” is to venture from the regular path, to trust that we will fly when we do.

I feel as though I live a very spontaneous life. I still have goals, but I am not tied down to them. I am free to leave my feet when the spirit takes me, to go headlong into the unknown. If I were simply living life by my to-do list I would not venture. I would stick to the list.

Living a spontaneous life means living in a way that the list, if you have one (and I almost always do), is not the end-all, be-all of reality. It's accepting our human need for creativity and exploration. Yet spontaneity is not completely discarding the old forms.

When we have passion for a thing, it is very easy to spend time with it. I have passion for exercise. I do not need to keep a detailed to-do list when it comes to running. I just run. I do so often when I have passion. Many times in my life I have found that when I try to control how I run, the distance, the time, and the harder I control these things, the less joy I get out of running—and therefore the less I run. Despite detailed goals, I am less motivated. When I just run, I run farther and faster than I would if I approached running as a chore. I still carry a stop-watch with me, and I still try to improve from one run to the next, but I don't grow moody if I don't. I don't make myself. It happens of itself.

Spontaneity increases passion because it does away with our culture's have-to's. With more passion, we do not have to guard our steps. We can trust ourselves to do what we love, because we love doing it, and there are few things we'd rather do otherwise.

The argument against this tends to be “What if I find I don't have the passion, even if I live spontaneously?” My response: “Then why do it?”

We need money to survive in this world. We must eat, clothe, and house ourselves. Yet how we make that money is entirely up to what we enjoy doing. If you don't want to work in a cubicle, don't. If you don't want to be ABC, but would rather do XYZ, do what you must to get to that point. But do so spontaneously. Don't try to out-think life. Don't try to trick the system. Don't do a thing for any other reason than that you find joy in doing it.

When there is joy—joy borne of spontaneity—there is a way, a living, a life.

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Free Will and Determinism

By | Published Monday, May 28, 2012


I don't believe that human beings have control over their destinies. Between free will and determinism, I lean toward determinism. We're products of our environment. We like what we like and enjoy what we enjoy and dream what we dream and do what we do largely because of what we've experienced in the past.

Yet in a world of free will “versus” determinism, I cop out. I believe both play a roll at once. When looking at past and present, it seems impossible to believe in free will, as determinism in the form of human behavior and natural genetics plays such a heavy-handed role in how we behave. But there is a third item to look at.

In the moment is where free will reigns. When I mean “the moment,” I don't mean every moment, but only in those moments that we are fully aware of what we're doing and so are able to make conscious decisions. In this way we can out-dual even our habits. At the ice cream shop we may go in unaware of what we're doing and choose vanilla out of habit (determinism), or we may show patience and see the numerous flavors, and in our awareness, discard our past experiences to choose something not out of habit, but against it.

And so in the moment, with free will, there is no destiny. No one can predict what a conscious being will choose to do, or how he or she will react. We may all be destined for something, greatness or otherwise, but many of us can, with practice, live a life outside of that destiny, even as it unfolds around us.

For some this is a harrowing task, and with so many possibilities, some are unable to choose at all. I am one of those types (I often fall back on habit because choices given to me in life are too daunting, complicated, or confusing). And yet within the moment, out of awareness, free will still reigns. Not directly tied to past or future, choices are made for other reasons than habit and behavior. Choices are made out of awareness.

This post isn't about choosing ice cream flavors, it's about choosing something much more important. In life we face challenges each and every day, and these challenges are toxic, violent, uncomfortable, etc. If we are not aware, we will depend on our past experiences to react to what is happening to us right now. If we were brought up with violence, we may act with violence. If we were brought up with compassion, we may act with compassion. These are generalities, of course. All people are different, and the makeup of one's brain certainly supersedes environment. But it's determinism in the end, and this may lead (even for, or especially for, the compassionate) to a life of frustration, having things happen to us and not understanding why, or why we react the way we do.

But with awareness there is another option. Not to behave as we've always behaved, but to behave in a new way, a way that better suits the situation at hand. To step out of the norm of human behavior and face challenges with a new set of tools, active and purposeful, instead of our former passive habits.

And so I have decided (at least for today) that I have only one real choice in life. I am in control over only one thing. I control how I react—but only if I am consciously aware of the moment.

I must choose anger or acceptance. I must choose fear or joy.

There's not a whole lot else I, as a human being, control. I cannot control what others do or feel. I cannot control the society or culture I am born and raised in. I cannot tell someone “build me an ice cream shop with many flavors” or get ice cream for free (making me a slave in so many ways to so many different things).

But I do control my reaction to the eventful situations life throws my way. This may not be a big deal to others, or for some they may have realized this fact many years ago, but up until this realization I had always struggled to understand a world in which both free will and determinism were possible. How could I fit them together? I have now done that, and it's a breakthrough in many ways.

Past...future...present. One (determinism) controls two of these, and the other (free will) just the one, but all are important in understanding why people do what they do; understanding why I do what I do.

I don't believe in destiny. I do believe in right here and right now. “Destiny” is just another moment in time to me.

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The Game: Motivation vs. Slothfulness

By | Published Tuesday, May 8, 2012


I started a sort of “game” when I was a teenager that I've always gone back to whenever I find myself adrift in slothfulness—if I need extra motivation.

I have always been a sports fan, for as long as I can remember. One of my first memories was of a baseball, though it was just a random object then. I was at one time (though not anymore) a statistics junkie. I wasn't satisfied reading the stats in the paper. I watched the games and kept track of the stats for my then favorite player, Andruw Jones.

I was also an avid goal setter and it did not take much thought to connect the two together—goals and stats. I devised a points system. I would get so many points for doing something, and lose so many points for not doing something, and at the end of each day I would write down whether or not I “won” the day according to the difference in points. This is probably not an original idea, as ideas go, but for me it was groundbreaking.

What this did for me, other than to please my perfectionist tendencies, was to give myself an idea of what I was getting done. I could judge whether a certain week was good or bad based on my record. 7-0 was a great week. 0-7 wasn't.

It's been a few years since I've used this method, but I'm now putting it back into service. I've been in a funk lately, ever since I published “Rising”. That was over a month ago, but in the last week since I've begun my method, I've noticed very positive improvements. I've only had one day, and really only a single night, in which I wasn't directing my attention toward one of the goals on my list, motivated by having a positive score.

This is arbitrary, and I don't win anything other than personal pride. I'm not even promising myself incentives (I'll buy myself X if I complete Y for a month). But using this method has a positive effect on my mood. Not only does it keep me motivated, but it gives me a record by which I can remind myself how well I've been doing.

An example of what I'm talking about:

If my goals are “Play guitar. Write. Read.” I will give myself a point for accomplishing each for the day, and if I fail to spend any time on these activities I'll write down a -3.

So it's +1 or -3. If there are 10 things on my list, and if I do most of them, I can get away with not doing two of them, and still let myself write down that I won. My score will have been 8-6. I write down a W and turn my focus to tomorrow.

~*~

This is really nothing more than a game I play with myself, pinning motivation against sloth. Sometimes sloth wins, tallying more points than motivation did, but usually I'm eager enough to win that motivation will go the extra mile. I don't cheat, but I don't enjoy giving myself a Loss, and so I will often do whatever is necessary to put myself over the top.

The biggest advantage I gain is in consistency. I've been trying to learn Spanish for years, and though I can read it okay (so long as I have a dictionary ready), I cannot understand or speak it. My main problem is consistency, as it is with most of the things I try to accomplish. I'll study one day, then I won't study again for two weeks.

By breaking things down into statistics, I'm now sufficiently motivated to study every day. This goes for writing, reading, playing guitar, working out, meditating, etc.

You may ask “if you enjoy doing these things, why do you give yourself points?” Or even “if you're a Taoist and your ideal is to live spontaneously, why do you give yourself points?” The simple answer to both questions is that I enjoy watching TV as much as I enjoy doing anything else, let's say writing stories. Sometimes writing stories becomes a bit like a chore, and I need some way to sit down and do it anyway. This is a method that works.

It may not in and of itself be spontaneous, but I find the direction it gives me to be spontaneous. I'm not glued to schedules and I “flow” through my day knowing that I can do what I want, when I want to do it, so long as I am more motivated than I am lazy.

It's a bit of pressure off my shoulders.

And it's fun kicking sloth around!

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Psychology of Reading

By | Published Sunday, April 8, 2012


To me storytelling goes deeper into the psychology of “character” than real life can, because real life develops too slowly for us to sit back and see it all unfold in one sitting. A well-written story is always going to be profound in some way because it captures a life and shows us what it contains.


I feel it's very important to understand psychology, to understand what makes people tick and why they do the things they do and feel as they do. Story has shined a light on aspects of human nature not readily available elsewhere.

Because, as I read, I've always been shining that light on myself.

Story lets me see how a human being reacts to life, and how those reactions eventually change who they are and what is happening to them. Real people have little perspective on their own lives, and it's often easier to understand what is happening to others than to understand what is happening to ourselves.

Real life is like standing inches from a stone wall, and not being able to tell that it's part of a mountain five miles high. What story offers us is a chance to get out from under the shadow of the mountain, to travel ten miles away, and see how the mountain looks in its entirety.

Reading a story is like seeing someone's life unfold in a single week (the time it takes to read a book). Whether it's fiction or biography, we have an opportunity to understand another life.

No matter how exotic a story may be, the emotions each character has is being fed by the real emotions and experiences of the author. The best books contain characters readers can relate to, because they can share the rich joy, sadness, anger or fear of the character as she reacts to plot.

This is why writing is so important. This is why reading is so important.

Writers and readers take on the same thing at different ends, but they meet in the middle, where they are able to dance with psychology and understand a little better why the world is the way it is. It's this that attracts me to writing, more than anything else. I want to help people express their real need to understand life.

Their real need to find joy, and to experience their “negative” emotions in a way that can't hurt them. Stories let us feel afraid and feel hurt and angry, but in a way that is safer than experiencing these feelings in real life. Because it's happening to someone else, someone not real, someone who can't be hurt by what happens, we're allowed to freely express what we feel without being subjected to guilt.

We're taught from an early age not to be afraid, not to cry, not to laugh too loudly, not to take risks. It's therapy to read books that scare us, make us cry, snort with laughter, or take risks right along with the characters we're scared, sad, or happy for.

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