Fable

It's Not What You Think It Is

It Is What You Think It Is

It was about 14 and 15 years ago. I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I have taken a lot of prozac, paxil, welbutrin, effexor, ritalin, focalin. I’ve also studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through. What I want to tell you something that I think will not be easily contradicted. There ain’t no cure for love.

- Leonard Cohen¹

In a moment of calm, we are frightened by the sudden presence of unresolved emotional pain (a Fury). What do we do?

Usually, we turn away from the pain, dismissing it from awareness. In defense, we keep the Fury isolated and the associated story antiseptic. These splits often underlie our maladaptive scripts, biases, beliefs, schema, an dour personalized mind-blindness, unchallengable doubts and certainties. (For more discussion, see Physical Pain, Emotional Distress: Parallel Defenses?.)

To address unresolved emotional pain, we first must change our response. We must turn towards it. We become present, actively aware - and even perhaps an accepting listener.
 Are we mindful of our emotional pain?

Like Macbeth Witches² creating a stew, the contemporary traditions of personal growth and psychology literatures have over-attributed, overwritten, and overwrought the concept of mindfulness:³

• A quality of consciousness
• A receptive state of mind
• The ability to “be present” to reality

Those quotations are more important than most writers on mindfulness would recognize.

• Direct contact with events as they occur
• Perception undistorted by concepts, labels, ideas and judgement.

Mere fantasy. Perception is the consequence of concepts, labels, ideas and judgment.

• Presence of mind
• Clear awareness of one’s inner and outer world
• “Bare” attention
• “Pure” or “lucid” awareness

Have you wondered why writers use quotation marks in this style?

• Awareness before or beyond ideas.

Now come the italics. Was ‘ideas’ really the correct word to italicize?

• A polished mirror
• Unbiased receptivity of mind
• An attitude of nonjudgmentality or acceptance
• The mindful mode... is pre- or para-conceptual
• Non-interference with experience
• Disentanglement of consciousness for cognitive content
• Inherently empirical, seeking possession of the “full facts”

“Full facts,” this will-o-wisp entices us towards the mire of impossibility. Or is that the witches’ brew?

• An alert participation in the ongoing process of living
• Present oriented
• Recognition that one is not being attentive and aware
• A self-regulatory capacity
• An acceptance skill
• A meta-cognitive skill

Can mindfulness be pre-, post- and meta-cognitive? What do psychologists have against ‘cognitive’?

• Intentional, nonjudgmental awareness
• Nondiscriminatory or non-discursive awareness

Nondiscriminatory or non-discursive awareness of what?

• A cognitive style

Wasn’t mindfulness anything but cognitive a few lines ago?

• Attentional receptivity to both inner and external realities as a platform for informed response

How can an “informed response” occur without “judgment?”

• Present-oriented engagement
• Integrative awareness

What a mess.

How can any writer work with the “term” mindfulness?

But if one treasures any being and remains caught in words, allowing oneself to be confused by them, then the same thing will happen to one as happened to the intelligent tortoise who tried to wipe out his traces with his own tail, and precisely for that reason left them behind.

- Chi-yuan Preface for the Oxherding Pictures of Master Kuo-an

Chi-yuan’s statement uses a metaphor yet provides greater clarity. To understand mindfulness, I would rather read a variety of well-constructed metaphors than a sequence of grasping, conflicting definitions.

Writing, however, needs its words even ones as fouled up as mindfulness. Ironically, neuroscience can help make it a fair choice once again.

I surveyed the published articles of Richard Davidson, a prominent neuroscientist studying meditation and affect. He refrains from defining mindfulness. Instead, he uses the term as an adjective evoking the notion of alert attention.

In Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being,⁴ Paul Ekman, Richard Davidson and Alan Wallace use the word “mindfulness” twice without any additional description. Certainly an article on Buddhist perspective by a clutch of prominent psychologists and neuroscientists would define this basic term.

In Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation,⁵ Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn avoid any definition of mindfulness, yet the word is in the title and Kabat-Zinn is an author.

Why such skillful avoidance?

Benjamin Libet devoted his career to studying how the brain produces conscious awareness. His experiments often involved electrodes planted in the brain.

These groundbreaking studies detailed empirical qualities of the mind. He provides facts, details and insight necessary for a grounded discussion of consciousness and mindfulness.

Neuroscientists know Libet’s work, understand the significance of nonconscious processing, and recognize consciousness’s after-the-fact qualities. If they chose not to define mindfulness, they must know better.

Brown et al. authored a vast survey of mindfulness, Mindfulness: Theoretical Foundations and Evidence for its Salutary Effects⁶ - 24,000 words, 251 studies cited, a veritable library on contemporary mindfulness. Brown et al. use the word ‘mindfulness’ 348 times, and used the word ‘neuroscience’ seven times. Just as the neuroscientists avoid defining mindfulness, the psychology literature avoids citing Libet or other similar work.

Back to Libet. His book, Mind Time⁷ is fascinating. He spent decades studying consciousness and ultimately the question of free will. He explains his work and conclusions in clear detail. He explores the impact of his studies on the topics of free will, culpability and even the nature of mind.

Libet used electrodes to stimulate nerves in the brain. The stimulus created a physical sensation such as tingling on the back of the hand. He then recorded the time it took someone to be aware of the tingling. He tried to answer the question, how long before we are aware?

His answer: half a second.

It’s an astounding answer. If the time needed to react to a threat is so slow, our species would have been preditor-bait until extinction.

Studies show people with the quickest reflexes can react in as little as 0.08 seconds. In other words, mental processes can be completed before we have any awareness.

Libet on the ramifications of the 0.5 second delay before awareness (a long quote worth reading):

It is well established that the image reported by a subject may be considerably different from the actual image shown to the subject. For example, if a prudish man were shown a picture of a naked lady, he might report seeing something quite different, or he might report that he saw no image. The subject would not be consciously and deliberately distorting the report; instead, he would appear to believe that he was giving a report of what he saw. That is, the distortion of the content appears to take place unconsciously...

Our discovery of the substantial cerebral delay for awareness thus provides a physiologically required time interval during which other inputs may modulate the content of an experience before it consciously appears...

There are many philosophical meanings that we could derive from the existence of a delay (of up to 0.5 sec) in conscious awareness, after the actual time at which events occur. We would have to modify the existentialist view of living in the experience of the “now”; our experience of the “now” is always delayed or late.

Further, there is the possibility provided for each person’s character or past experience to alter the conscious content of each event. That means each person has his or her own individual conscious reality. The 0.5-sec delay for awareness of an event makes that possible. Differing perceptions of reality may have meaning for the different paths that people follow, based on each individual’s conscious perception of reality.

In any case, our knowledge of a substantial delay for awareness shakes up our confidence in our certainties about realities of the world.

pp 71-72.

Our minds are labeling, evaluating, judging machines. They grade, respond to, and may even alter essential details pulled from moments rendered coherent. Survival requires these keen skills.

Our mind colors every aspect of experience with our personality, past experiences, biases, beliefs, schema, and our personalized mind-blindness, unchallengable doubts and certainties. We cannot know experience but for the way our mind and body render it.

Our mind creates experience with a recursive, combinatorial “language” which describes how objects create our realities. Every time we use a “word” - that is, practice a response to an object - we also change its meaning.

Every iota of experience is rendered in the body before it is a word in the story of the event. The body is the theatre of our living.⁸

When consciousness dawns on a moment of experience - after 0.5 sec - the mind is already in tempestuous throes: is this possible ▲▼^x▲ good? no! is this ▲▼^y▲ good? no! how about this...

Each ▲▼^x▲-response, an emotion, is marked with some level of “good.” It’s how we use what we have learned.

A productive emotion is one which generates pleasure or lessens punishment. “Pleasure” and “punishment” are sensations in the body. So the marker of an emotion’s productivity is literally an associated sensation on a spectrum ranging from ecstatic pleasure to excruciating punishment. Since these markers are body-based, they are better labeled “somatic markers.”

We use what we have learned. When we encounter an object included in various categories, we rapidly deploy the associated emotions.

In Cookie Conflict, I used an example of a cookie with white chips which looks to a chocolate chip cookie. This cookie would be in the categories of cookie, white chocolate, fatty foods, sugary foods, empty calories, etc. It would be seen in the context of taking some else's cookie, gaining weight, my feelings about my body image, an unexpected treat, etc. Associated responses might be to eat the cookie, to take one bite of the cookie, to walk away from the cookie, to get something healthy from the refrigerator, to plan to exercise to offset the calories from the cookie, to find someone and ask who's cookie it is, etc.

Each response is marked with a sensation on a pleasure-punishment spectrum. Naturally, we would first consider the response with the highest amount of anticipated pleasure, as indicated by its somatic-marker. In this manner, somatic-markers enhance the efficiency of the decision-making process.

If there is conflict among possible responses, we inhibit any behavior, until one can be chosen. Our Behavior Inhibition Systems (BIS) monitors conflicts between possible ▲▼▲-responses,⁹ allowing the search for the best possible ▲▼▲. We adjudicate. This feat of mind is astounding.¹⁰ (For more discussion of BIS/BAS, see my essay, Cookie Conflict: How Do We Do).

With the BIS-provided additional time, our brains invokes higher-order cognitive processes to evaluate the choice. These processes have different bases for measurement than those of a somatic marker. In other words, our BIS/BAS process might “give us a chance to think about what to do.”

These higher order cognitive processes - including many aspects consciousness - would formulate more a refined ▲▼▲-response and measure its productivity over more dimensions: for example, what’s the immediate consequence of ▲▼▲-response, what’s the consequence to my relationship to my girlfriend, what’s the long-term consequence, and so on.

The search continues for the best possible ▲▼▲ until either 1) time runs out, or 2) the doubt in the value of unconsidered possibilities is below a certain threshold.¹¹ After search, then response. Usually, this process is iterative, search, respond a little, search, respond some more, search...

We rarely respond with one unified act, however simple or sophisticated. But are we being mindful?

If we want mindfulness to bless us with the ability to openly nonjudge, we curse ourselves with fruitless efforting. Of course, our best lessons are learned when we surrender after fruitless efforting. Zen is such a paradox.

Certainly, no one regards mindfulness as fruitless efforting. What is it then?

An event - ▲▼ - starts when we are confronted by a challenge (an emotionally significant object ▼ - real or recalled). Sometimes we are triggered and react defensively.

We might desire to respond with care rather according to rigid scripts. To respond with care is a skill like forbearance, (or buffering in psych parlance).¹²

We practice to build this skill, learning a conditioned response. “To buffer” is an act. There is no verb, “to mindful.” To forbear, to tolerate, to accept, “to buffer” - all are qualities of inhibition.

The operation of mindfulness may occur through the creation of a mental gap between the stimulus-response relations that shape automatic behavior, such that behavior becomes disengaged from its usual causes. In this sense, mindfulness may encourage the capacity to respond in ways that subserve one’s values, goals, or needs, rather than to react in terms of habits, over-learned responses, or reactions to situational cues.¹³

The description of mindful “buffering” from Brown et al., matches qualities of inhibition (BIS) and activation (BAS) - prefrontal cortex systems. To buffer suggest both to improve reaction inhibition and to increase the required value of a possible behavior before activation (a simple concept in the context of economic search theory).

We increase self-control by being more sensitive and vigilant towards less-controlled behaviors. We become rigid toward less-controlled behaviors. Is this truly mindfulness? Or does mindfulness ask the question: what are my less-controlled behaviors? Why?

Wouldn’t mindfulness reduce vigilance and rigid self-control? Can mindfulness inoculate these less-controlled behaviors?

The other, harder work is to address our measurement and evaluation of objects. If our automatic evaluation changes, our instinctive response changes.

Much of the evaluate/behave system is the responsibility of BIS/BAS, the familiar: is this good? No! Is this good? No! How about this?...

To this process, we might add a sense of outcome: I chose the third possible response. I almost chose the seventh, but that behavior would have been a disaster. My initial response probably would have been best... I should have gone with my gut instinct. Gut instincts often prove best. I worry about regrets. Shouldn’t I buffer...

When we have new experience of an emotional response and its associate marker, we might find the emotion has become more or less productive. Accordingly, we alter the associated somatic-marker to reflect a new sensation of its productivity.

We adapt. We modify the underlying markers.

Structures of learning range from simple to complex just as responses range from instinct to an elaborate plot. The smallest unit of learning is the somatic marker itself. Like complex behaviors built from simple acts, collections of somatic markers become larger constructs - biases, scripts, beliefs, schemas, our unchallengable doubts and certainties, even our personality.

Whenever we change our somatic-markers, we change the quality of our past experience. We do not recall past experiences as if looking up a definition in a dictionary. We recompose the event and its associated markers. A different marker creates a different experience.

Sometimes, such as when we suffer prolonged depression, we rework a broad collection of somatic-markers. Then when we reflect on our past, it is as if we are looking through dark glasses. Our past has been re-marked.

If mindfulness is to have the quality of inoculation, it must start with body awareness. Somatic markers are body events. By directing awareness into the body, we gather empirical data.

As an example, focusing on the face can be particularly valuable. My mouth was open, the corners were dragged downward, my brows were pulled high, shaped as arches. I was horrified. At such a moment, we can know horror independent of the content of an event that evokes it.

If mindfulness is about the quality of consciousness not its content, then wouldn’t reflecting on an experience first be about the body responses? The sensations would be available before the story is recalled.

If mindfulness is a quality of consciousness, then its domain is the structures of somatic markers - our measuring sticks to tell us what’s up.

Mindfulness requires attunement. We start empirically with the sensations and emotions of the body. As the consciousness expands it then becomes aware of a broader mental process - how emotions become feelings and thoughts. Some regard introspection as the core of Buddhist psychology.

With each new object, we can return to the body to experience how it is marked, or we can pay attention to the content. Attunement might be thought of as the ability to suss out the body experience of an object without attending to its content.

It’s like listening to a song, not its lyrics. It’s like sensing the feelings of someone talking, without necessarily hearing the words.

In this manner, we peel away all the whys and wherefores, discarding content. We are left with the raw emotion of behaviors, particularly our defensive behaviors.

Each time we evoke our somatic markers and explore their constructs, we create the opportunity use this new experience to modify the markers. Our awareness can alter them.

When we develop self-attunement, the capacity to look within, we see the world more clearly because we sense how it is marked in our body.