Being on the look-out for lost purposes, cached goals or values, defensiveness, wire-heading patterns, and other tricks your brain tends to play on you.
Being aware of, and accepting, as large a part of yourself as possible.
The following things, I think, are not mutually contradictory:
Noticing as much as possible about what your brain is doing. Taking special pains to notice defensiveness, wire-heading patterns, and other things like that that you might flinch away from seeing.
Accepting that your current state is in fact your current state. Getting used to the idea thoroughly, and to its details, so that you won’t find yourself painfully flinching away to avoid seeing your current state.
Helping information get from one part of your brain to another. For example, I find I’m often defensive and mean when I don’t want to notice something (e.g., when I don’t want to notice that I’m stressed out about a task I haven’t done). So, if I instead notice my discomfort about the unfinished task (which may have nothing to do with the poor person who just reminded me of the task), I can short-circuit my brain’s defensive reaction.
I guess I did mean more than the above by “accepting as large a part of yourself as possible”, but I’m not sure how to unpack it or whether I was right about the other parts.
For what it’s worth, I deleted the grandparent comment (which said that 8.3 and 8.4 seemed mutually contradictory) shortly after posting, but would not have done so if I knew that someone was replying and that there would be a hole in the thread. Sorry about that.
These seem mutually contradictory.
I phrased them badly.
The following things, I think, are not mutually contradictory:
Noticing as much as possible about what your brain is doing. Taking special pains to notice defensiveness, wire-heading patterns, and other things like that that you might flinch away from seeing.
Accepting that your current state is in fact your current state. Getting used to the idea thoroughly, and to its details, so that you won’t find yourself painfully flinching away to avoid seeing your current state.
Helping information get from one part of your brain to another. For example, I find I’m often defensive and mean when I don’t want to notice something (e.g., when I don’t want to notice that I’m stressed out about a task I haven’t done). So, if I instead notice my discomfort about the unfinished task (which may have nothing to do with the poor person who just reminded me of the task), I can short-circuit my brain’s defensive reaction.
I guess I did mean more than the above by “accepting as large a part of yourself as possible”, but I’m not sure how to unpack it or whether I was right about the other parts.
For what it’s worth, I deleted the grandparent comment (which said that 8.3 and 8.4 seemed mutually contradictory) shortly after posting, but would not have done so if I knew that someone was replying and that there would be a hole in the thread. Sorry about that.