There does seem to be some sort of meta-process that you can use to decouple from craving regarding these things, though in my experience it seems to require continuous attention, like an actively inhibitory process. In contrast, the model description you gave made it sound like craving was an active process that one could simply refrain from, and I don’t think that’s predictively accurate.
An analogy that I might use is that learning to let go of craving, is kind of the opposite of the thing where you practice an effortful thing until it becomes automatic. Craving usually triggers automatically and outside your conscious control, but you can come to gradually increase your odds of being able to notice it, catch it, and do something about it.
“An actively inhibitory process” sounds accurate for some of the mental motions involved. Though merely just bringing more conscious attention to the process also seems to affect it, and in some cases interrupt it, even if you don’t actively inhibit it.
If this recalibrates the payoff system, it would make sense within my own model, and resolve the part where I don’t see how what you describe could be a truly conscious process, in the way that you made it sound.
Not sure how I made it sound :-) but a good description might be “semi-conscious”, in the same sense that something like Focusing can be: you do it, something conscious comes up, and then a change might happen. Sometimes enough becomes consciously accessible that you can clearly see what it was about, sometimes you just get a weird sensation and know that something has shifted, without knowing exactly what.
Okay, I’m off to experiment now. This is exciting!
Eh. Sorta? I’ve been busy with clients the last few days, not a lot of time for experimenting. I have occasionally found myself, or rather, found not-myself, several times, almost entirely accidentally or incidentally. A little like a perspective shift changing between two possible interpretations of an image; or more literally, like a shift between first-person, and third-person-over-the-shoulder in a video game.
In the third person perspective, I can observe limbs moving, feel the keys under my fingers as they type, and yet I am not the one who’s doing it. (Which, I suppose, I never really was anyway.)
TBH, I’m not sure if it’s that I haven’t found any unpleasant experiences to try this on, or if it’s more that because I’ve been spontaneously shifting to this state, I haven’t found anything to be an unpleasant experience. :-)
Cool, that sounds like a mild no-self state alright. :) Though any strong valence is likely to trigger a self schema and pull you out of it, but it’s a question of practice.
Your description kinda reminds me of the approach in Loch Kelly’s The Way of Effortless Mindfulness; it has various brief practices that may induce states like the one that you describe. E.g. in this one, you imagine the kind of a relaxing state in which there is no problem to solve and the sense of self just falls away. (Directly imagining a no-self state is hard, because checking whether you are in a no-self state yet activates the self-schema. But if you instead imagine an external state which is likely to put you in a no-self state, you don’t get that kind of self-reference, no pun intended.)
First, read this mindful glimpse below. Next, choose a memory of a time you felt a sense of freedom, connection, and well-being. Then do this mindful glimpse using your memory as a door to discover the effortless mindfulness that is already here now.
1. Close your eyes. Picture a time when you felt well-being while doing something active like hiking in nature. In your mind, see and feel every detail of that day. Hear the sounds, smell the smells, and feel the air on your skin; notice the enjoyment of being with your companions or by yourself; recall the feeling of walking those last few yards toward your destination.
2. Visualize and feel yourself as you have reached your goal and are looking out over the wide-open vista. Feel that openness, connection to nature, sense of peace and well-being. Having reached your goal, feel what it’s like when there’s no more striving and nothing to do. See that wide-open sky with no agenda to think about, and then simply stop. Feel this deep sense of relief and peace.
3. Now, begin to let go of the visualization, the past, and all associated memories slowly and completely. Remain connected to the joy of being that is here within you.
4. As you open your eyes, feel how the well-being that was experienced then is also here now. It does not require you to go to any particular place in the past or the future once it’s discovered within and all around.
Recently I’ve also gotten interested in the Alexander Technique, which seems to have a pretty straightforward series of steps for expanding your awareness and then getting your mind to just automatically do things in a way which feels like non-doing. It also seems to induce the kinds of states that you describe, of just watching oneself work, which I had previously only gotten from meditation.
Can you pick up a ball without trying to pick up the ball? It sounds contradictory, but it turns out that there is a specific behaviour we do when we are “trying”, and this behaviour is unnecessary to pick up the ball.
How is this possible? Well, consider when you’ve picked up something to fiddle with without realising. You didn’t consciously intend for it to end up in your hand, but there it is. There was an effortlessness to it. [...]
But this kind of non-‘deliberate’ effortless action needn’t be automatic and unchosen, like a nervous fiddling habit; nor need it require redirected attention / collapsed awareness, like not noticing you picked up the object. You can be fully aware of what you’re doing, and ‘watch’ yourself doing it, while choosing to do it, and yet still have there be this effortless “it just happened” quality. [...]
Suppose you do actually want to pick up that ball over there. But you don’t want to ‘do’ picking-up-the-ball. The solution is to set an intention.
[1] Have the intention to pick up the ball. [2] Expand your awareness to include what’s all around you, the room, the route to the ball, and your body inside the room. [3] Notice any reactions of trying to do picking-up-the-ball (like “I am going to march over there and pick up that ball”, or “I am going to get ready to stand up so I can go pick up that ball”, or “I am going to approach the ball to pick it up”) — and decline those reactions. [4] Wait. Patiently hold the intention to pick up the ball. Don’t stop yourself from moving — stopping yourself is another kind of ‘doing’ — yet don’t try to deliberately/consciously move. [5] Let movement happen.
Cool. :)
An analogy that I might use is that learning to let go of craving, is kind of the opposite of the thing where you practice an effortful thing until it becomes automatic. Craving usually triggers automatically and outside your conscious control, but you can come to gradually increase your odds of being able to notice it, catch it, and do something about it.
“An actively inhibitory process” sounds accurate for some of the mental motions involved. Though merely just bringing more conscious attention to the process also seems to affect it, and in some cases interrupt it, even if you don’t actively inhibit it.
Not sure how I made it sound :-) but a good description might be “semi-conscious”, in the same sense that something like Focusing can be: you do it, something conscious comes up, and then a change might happen. Sometimes enough becomes consciously accessible that you can clearly see what it was about, sometimes you just get a weird sensation and know that something has shifted, without knowing exactly what.
Any results yet? :)
Eh. Sorta? I’ve been busy with clients the last few days, not a lot of time for experimenting. I have occasionally found myself, or rather, found not-myself, several times, almost entirely accidentally or incidentally. A little like a perspective shift changing between two possible interpretations of an image; or more literally, like a shift between first-person, and third-person-over-the-shoulder in a video game.
In the third person perspective, I can observe limbs moving, feel the keys under my fingers as they type, and yet I am not the one who’s doing it. (Which, I suppose, I never really was anyway.)
TBH, I’m not sure if it’s that I haven’t found any unpleasant experiences to try this on, or if it’s more that because I’ve been spontaneously shifting to this state, I haven’t found anything to be an unpleasant experience. :-)
Cool, that sounds like a mild no-self state alright. :) Though any strong valence is likely to trigger a self schema and pull you out of it, but it’s a question of practice.
Your description kinda reminds me of the approach in Loch Kelly’s The Way of Effortless Mindfulness; it has various brief practices that may induce states like the one that you describe. E.g. in this one, you imagine the kind of a relaxing state in which there is no problem to solve and the sense of self just falls away. (Directly imagining a no-self state is hard, because checking whether you are in a no-self state yet activates the self-schema. But if you instead imagine an external state which is likely to put you in a no-self state, you don’t get that kind of self-reference, no pun intended.)
Recently I’ve also gotten interested in the Alexander Technique, which seems to have a pretty straightforward series of steps for expanding your awareness and then getting your mind to just automatically do things in a way which feels like non-doing. It also seems to induce the kinds of states that you describe, of just watching oneself work, which I had previously only gotten from meditation.