Her friends and family think Mimi is a great catch; she is beautiful, affectionate, and very smart. Sadly, she is better at attracting intimacy than keeping it. She blames her history of failed relationships on her “loser boyfriends who are always staring at other women.” Their attribution for the relationship’s failure is that her jealous rages drove them away. Mimi hates it when her friends try to help by offering advice because “they don’t understand.” The advice they give her doesn’t ring true because they only see how it looks from the outside; they don’t have access to the experiences that drive her reaction. Alas, as her track record shows, Mimi doesn’t understand her puzzle either because she only experiences how it feels from her first-person perspective, and, at that moment, her understanding of what is true is distorted by her intense emotional state. To know herself well enough to solve her puzzle, she has to observe the sequence of external events [the things that happen] and her subjective reaction from two perspectives: How it looks from the outside and how it feels from the inside.

Mr. E. can usually figure out how to arrange things to get what he wants.  But in contrast to his uncanny ability to predict and control the events at his office, he can’t control himself.  While he may look successful to his friends and coworkers, he feels like a failure because he is on the verge of losing everything that is important to him. He attributes his disastrous financial and marital situation to his bad luck at the casino, but from our third-person perspective, he seems blind to the true cause of his problem.

These cautionary tales illustrate two versions of the puzzle of voluntary self-sabotage: An individual with a particular biological predisposition and conditioning history encounters a high-risk situation [perhaps a crisis of stress or temptation] and chooses the path that they have already discovered leads to an unwanted outcome.   Each time this happens, they realize they made the wrong choice, but that doesn’t prevent them from making the same wrong choice the next time they get the chance.

The complication that prevents them from taking advantage of the recognition of their error is that it doesn’t come until later.  When they commit the error, it seems like the right thing to do; it is only later, when they look back on it from the third-person perspective of hindsight, that they realize it was an error.  They don’t benefit from their painful education because the next time they react to a provocative situation, they will interpret it from the first-person perspective.

Emotional and motivational reactions emerge from the first-person perspective; we can predict that the next time they encounter a high-risk situation, state-dependent distortions of perception and judgment will affect their choices in a manner similar to the past.   How can we use this forewarning to prepare for the inevitable encounters with the stressors and temptations the future has in store?  The first task is to solve the puzzle inside the enigma of voluntary self-sabotage.

Different ways of framing the puzzle suggest clues to its solution:

• Why do competent folks, who can usually figure out how to get what they want, repeatedly fail to solve this important yet seemingly simple problem?
• Why don’t they use the same problem-solving skills that enabled them to solve other difficult problems to solve this one?



• Why doesn’t their success rate improve with experience?
• Why is the critical error of judgment that is so obvious to most observers invisible to the one who makes it?

If you can detect a recurring pattern of voluntary self-sabotage in your personal history, you have a puzzle to solve.  Evidently, your conventional problem-solving strategies don’t work on this one, so you’ll have to try a different approach.  The problem of voluntary self-sabotage is difficult to solve because it contains a puzzle within it: A soul’s reaction to an event that happened looks different than it feels. The truth about cause-and-effect is not avaiable from either perspective. Friends, family, and treatment providers only have access to the third-person perspective of the problem.  Their solutions tend to be simplistic, obvious, and ineffective.  The solutions that our heroes generate during high-risk situations tend to be simplistic and wrong. Solving the enigma of voluntary self-sabotage requires a collaboration of both perspectives. To become familiar with this kind of collaboration, I invite you to explore the transformation of objective reality [pixels on the screen] into subjective experience [images].

The image you saw changed in the absence of any changes on the screen because the image doesn’t exist on the screen. Images are subjective phenomena that are created by and exist only within a living soul.  When you look at these graphics, your eye and brain transform raw optical data [the pixels] into subjective experience [the images].  A similar transformation takes place when you listen to music: The psyche creates subjective experiences (rhythms, melodies, emotional reactions, etc.) from raw auditory input (pressure waves vibrating the ear drum).   Without the transformation of objective data into subjective experience, a reaction would be impossible.  The subjective world we experience is different than the objective world; it is a model, a map that guides our reactions to the things that happen.  Intrinsic to maps is a feature that is so obvious that it hardly seems worth mentioning: The map is not the same as the territory. 

With the sole exception of Lewis Carroll’s map (which scales a mile to the mile), all models of reality come with the Map-Territory Disclaimer: The map is not the same as the territory.  The disclaimer is worth mentioning, even though it is blatantly obvious at an abstract level, because Darwinian forces demand that biological creatures regard their perceptions as valid so they can react to the things that happen.

Maps are fictions created to meet the needs of its users and the interests of its creator. Google Maps, for example, helps users navigate their way through unfamiliar territory. For a fee, Google will highlight your business location so that it appears larger and more salient on the map than it objectively is. Likewise, my subjective reality is a fictional model of reality that I create to navigate my way through the stressors and temptations that come my way.  Like Google Maps, the representation of reality that I create ignores some details and accentuates others depending on my needs at the moment.

The difference between a model and the real thing is self-evident when thinking about it abstractly, but when the situation demands an immediate reaction, you must regard your experience of reality as though it is the same as reality.  Accepting this necessary but bogus premise is a harmless concession to expedience as long as you remember that your current perception of the things that happen and your judgment of how to react to it is state-dependent. Mr. E’s appraisal of the wisdom of a detour through Las Vegas is distorted differently during the remorseful state following a relapse [“it would be the worst decision of my life”] than when he is driving through the high desert while on vacation to get away for the stress of the office. At that moment, his map of reality is so distorted by his proximity to the incentive that he expects that a Las Vegas detour will have a positive outcome.  From the dispassionate, third-person perspective, we are skeptical of his naive prediction and would bet that the actual outcome will include the sincere but familiar intention to never gamble again.

Even though Mr. E. has access to more information about his motivations and internal experience than we have, our prediction of what he will do and how it will turn out is probably better than his.  That’s because our current motivational state does not distort our appraisal of what is true.   The reality he experiences on the road to Las Vegas is very different from the one he was experiencing soon after his last relapse.  His judgment about his Vegas detour is wrong because it is state-dependent. His problem is that he makes an irreversible decision on the basis of this wrong judgment because he is taken in by the illusion that his experience of reality is the same as reality. The implication of this cause-and-effect setup is that the same thing will happen the next time he encounters a high-risk situation.  The puzzle inside this enigma is the illusion that his current experience of reality is the same as reality.  The day after a relapse, he tells his wife that he doesn’t want to gamble anymore.   Because he is telling the truth, he assumes it will always be true.   But when the pain of the last relapse is far away, and the thrills of the casino are nearby, he will judge things differently and assume that his current experience of reality is the same as reality.  Because his error is the result of an illusion, learning doesn’t prevent him from being taken in by the illusion that his current experience of reality is the same as reality.

Your personal research began by exploring how your nervous system transformed an array of meaningless pixels into meaningful images that could evoke aesthetic, emotional, or motivational reactions.  As you personally discovered, the process of transforming digital data into a subjective experience is not flawless.  Your personal experience demonstrated (harmlessly) that you can be taken in by the bogus assumption that you see things as they are.  Needless to say, the illusions you can spot are not nearly as dangerous as the ones that really take you in.  Intense emotional and motivational states distort subjective phenomena, including perception, judgment, and even the appraisal of judgment [On the way to Las Vegas, thoughts and images of his wife’s appraisal of his judgment cross his mind.  After serious re-evaluation, he is certain that his judgment is sound].   What will look like bad judgment in hindsight feels like good judgment at the moment.

Popular versions of the Soul Illusion:

• Immaculate Perception— Mimi feels certain that the unlikely explanation for her partner’s tardiness is valid because it automatically came to mind when she wondered why he was late.  [Of all the possible causes of his lateness, this is the most attention-grabbing attribution.  Whatever captures her attention will determine her subjective reality]  The illusion that her subjective reality is the same as reality is responsible for her gullibility and dogmatism in the domain of intimacy but not other domains of her life.   She considers herself to be data-driven, but in matters of the heart, she is uncharacteristically insensitive to data.  Offspring of the Illusion of Immaculate Perception that complicates problem-solving:
  • Gullibility — She gives assent to the belief that her lover will abandon her for another woman on the basis of insufficient evidence.
  • Dogmatism — Once she designates an interpretation as the true one, she becomes stubbornly loyal to it despite contradictory evidence and logic.

• Immortal Perspective —  I see things as they really are, and so will always see things as I do now:  After a relapse, it is obvious to Mr. E. that the costs of gambling far exceed the benefits.  Now that he “knows” the truth, he feels certain that he has solved his problem and will never gamble again.  

Inside the skull, it is dark and quiet. The brain creates the subjective phenomena that we experience as images and sounds from the input it receives from visual and auditory neurons. However, our visual apparatus is only sensitive to a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum; likewise, there are many sound frequencies that are too low or too high for our auditory apparatus to perceive. The bloodhound, the bat, and the dolphin create different maps of the world by using different sensory instruments than we do, and so their representations of reality are different from ours. A creature’s experience of reality is a fiction its nervous system creates from the data it receives. Acting as if these fictions are true enables it to interpret and react adaptively to the things that happen. The only price for using these maps is to remain aware of the Map-Territory Disclaimer. Most of the time there is no penalty for accepting the bogus assumption that “my experience of reality is the same as reality,” but sometimes there is.

The function of perception is to transform what happens in the outside world into adaptive reactions.  The nervous system evolved to guide a certain biological creature through dangerous territory.  The graphic user interface of a computer is a good metaphor for the maps of reality we create to guide us through.  Nobody believes that there are file folders and recycle bins inside the computer.  The only thing happening in there is zeros and ones populating storage locations.  Engineers have done us a favor by creating a fictional world within which to edit our documents — imagine how impaired your performance would be if you had to work directly with the ones and zeros.   An important task of your nervous system is to transform all the information received by your sense organs into a map of reality that helps you cope with the world where life and death happen.   Like the icons on your computer screen, the creative fictions your nervous system creates are not literally true; they are representations for you to use in the service of your interests and principles.   Computer icons are so obviously fictional that only the most gullible user would take them literally. The Soul Illusion, on the other hand, takes in all souls.

Thought Experiment

It’s easier to recognize someone else’s wrong judgment than your own. To work your way up to understanding your problem, begin by observing — from both the first- and third-person perspectives — the misjudgment that led Mr. E. to a relapse. [Readers who have never wrestled with an excessive appetite may judge his problem as simple. If you are fortunate enough to be in this category, you’ll have to exercise your cognitive and imaginative faculties to appreciate the first-person perspective that makes it so complex.] So, suspend your disbelief and pretend that you are Mr. E soon after a relapse. Imagine what thoughts and images would go through your mind if you lost more money than you could afford and felt that you failed yourself and your family. If you can utilize your imaginative faculties to evoke frustration, self-loathing, or shame, you’ll be able to appreciate the sincerity of his vow to never gamble again.

Now, to appreciate what causes him to violate that sincere vow, imagine how you would appraise the Vegas detour if you were Mr. E. . . .

. . . on the road “to get away from it all” when he realizes he is within a few hour’s driving distance of Las Vegas and “a four-star hotel room for fifty bucks, instead of a dingy Comfort Inn in the middle of nowhere. It’s not gambling that draws me to Vegas; what I want is an escape from the stress I’ve been under, and the luxurious and dazzling environment of my favorite hotel is just what I need right now.”

Cynics might judge his assertion, “It’s not gambling that draws me to Vegas. . . .” as a fabrication designed to access the payoff he desired. However, a lie-detector test would show that he was telling the truth.  His sin was self-ignorance, not self-deception.  He confused the authenticity of his good intention with its immortality.  If he knew himself better, he would have realized that even though he did not feel the urge to gamble at the moment, he might feel differently in different circumstances. For example, when he walked from his parking space to the front desk, he had to pass through the casino, and as he did, he was trance formed. The fellow who sincerely promised his wife he’d never gamble again was no longer in the driver’s seat. Someone with a different set of motives and biases was now operating the vehicle. His perception, judgment, and all other state-dependent phenomena were now biased differently than they were just a few minutes ago. What was true before is not true now; what was crazy before makes perfect sense now.

The PIG

Mr. E.’s subjective universe was trance formed by his proximity to the source of his corruption.  The ability of a payoff [positive or negative] to distort state-dependent phenomena is hyperbolically related to its immediacy.  So temptations that usually don’t have much effect can dramatically distort subjective reality when they are very close, in terms of time, space, or psychological distance.  The Problem of Immediate Gratification [the PIG] is the reason that solving other people’s problems is so much simpler than solving our own: Judgments made from the first-person perspective are distorted by the PIG, while judgments made from the third-person perspective are not.  Mr. E.’s appraisal of the wisdom of a Vegas side trip changed since his last relapse, while his wife’s did not. 

Mr. E.’s Irreversible Decision

Subjective phenomena are state-dependent.  During the remorseful state following his last relapse, he judged the costs of gambling to be far greater than its benefits and so decided never to gamble again.   The word “decide,” like “suicide,” “homicide,” and “insecticide,” is based on the root “cide,” which means to kill.  Making a decision is how a soul chooses which of the possible realities get promoted to objective reality, and which are relegated to die in oblivion.   Intending to quit gambling is one thing, promising that he’ll never gamble again is something else entirely.  

Betting his reputation

A commitment is stronger than an intention.  Mr. E. wanted to kill the possibility of changing his mind, so he gave his personal guarantee, out loud, that he would never gamble again.  In fact, it was less of a guarantee than a gamble: He was betting his willpower on doing what he said he would do.   The power of future commitments would be enhanced if he honors his word, but if he fails, his sincere promise becomes worth less.  Commitments are voluntary; he can achieve a good outcome without betting his word on impeccable performance.  Making a bet on yourself that you can’t allow yourself to lose is a powerful strategy.  Anyone taking this bet must understand that they are giving long odds: One loss overcomes many victories. 

In theory, it should be simple to act in accord with a freely made commitment.  In practice, it is difficult because subjective reality is state-dependent but objective reality isn’t.    Mr. E. appraises the wisdom of spending a night in Las Vegas differently during the hours after his last relapse than during the hours before his next one.  Because he is taken in by the Soul Illusion, he makes “irreversible decisions” during states of mind that everybody knows will change.  

The best predictor of how someone will react in the future is how they reacted in similar situations in the past.  So, the future looks pretty grim for our heroes.   However, there is a solution!  Some of it is carved into the stone above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, some of it comes from Nietzsche’s perspective and the rest emerges from the personal research performed by the collaboration of the soul’s first- and third-person perspectives.

The solution to recurring patterns of self-sabotage is carved into the portico of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.   The first two pearls of wisdom are so obvious that hardly anyone pays attention to them, and the third gets little attention because hardly anyone appreciates it.

It’s not perversity, stupidity, or a disease that causes our heroes to repeat the same painful errors of judgment; it’s the dogma that they know the truth.  As dispassionate observers, we can see that what they judge as true is distorted by their current emotional/motivational state.   For example, when Mimi feels safe and confident, she interprets her boyfriend’s actions differently than when her perception is distorted by the terror that he will abandon her.  The more intense the emotion, the greater the state-dependent distortion.  Mimi’s boyfriend, who was hoping for a lifetime partnership with the attractive, affectionate, and very smart woman he was dating, has grown weary of the exhausting drama she has created for the two of them.  

Mr. E.’s problem is also the consequence of state-dependent phenomena.   The only way that anyone aware of his history would judge a trip to Las Vegas to be a terrible idea would be if their perception and judgment were wildly distorted.   Nevertheless, Mr. E. confidently expects a positive outcome, and he appraises each decision he makes along his path to relapse as a good one.   The smart money says that in less than 24 hours, Mr. E. will judge the Vegas detour from a different perspective.  In either case, he will feel certain that his current appraisal is valid.  Needless to say, his feeling of certainty is worth nothing!

The path to a predictable bad outcome looks different from the outside than it feels from the inside.  To know yourself well enough to exercise an intentional influence on the course of events, study the sequence from both perspectives.   Each point of view reveals something the other can’t see.  Only a collaboration between the two perspectives can reveal enough of the puzzle to enable its solution.  To do this research, you’ll have to select a persona for the researcher.  The only restriction is that the persona you choose must have unconditional positive regard for you and be aware of your core motives and values.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

— Marcus Aurelius

To get the most out of a novel, movie, or other work of fiction, suspend your disbelief and take in the information as though it were true.  By allowing yourself to be taken in by the fiction, you can fully access the emotional experience the artist is attempting to elicit.  In exchange for granting this assent, you get to be entertained.  In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stephenson is trying to scare you, and since you are reading it for entertainment, you want to be scared.  So, the two of you collaborate to evoke the experience of terror for the thrill of it.  The magic happens when each collaborator does their job skillfully.  Stephenson did his part by using his words evocatively, but unless you invest your attention and imagination to transform these words into meaningful images and stories, they mean nothing.  If you were able to access the terror you hoped you would, you did your part well enough to induce Intentional Trance Formation.

Stephenson’s ability to evoke terror by creating fictional stories pales compared to Mimi’s.  The thoughts and images she created during the 20 or so minutes she spent waiting for her boyfriend to show up for their date (or at least call to explain his absence) were sufficient to elicit a radical change in her emotional state.  Once she transformed into Ms. Hyde, she was no longer the warm, supportive woman who he had been attracted to; she had been transformed into a monster who chased him away.  Ironically, the bogus assumption that her partner would eventually abandon her initiated a sequence of internal states and external events that transformed what had been fiction into fact.

Not all self-sabotaging patterns have this recursive feature, but all involve Unintentional Trance Formation.  Mimi doesn’t want to drive her  lovers away, but, as she explains to her friends and family, “I can’t control my emotions.”  Nevertheless, without requiring drugs or any other external assistance, her faculties of imagination and concentration were sufficient to work herself into an emotional frenzy.  In this altered psychological state, she changes from a sweet yet sophisticated Mimi into a monster with thin skin and sharp claws.  Mimi is the one who initiated the transformation that made her prophecy come true!

Perceiving an event is like taking a photo.  When the photographer triggers the shutter, the photo records how the world looks from the point of view of the camera.  There are many possible camera angles from which to photograph a particular subject.  Professional photographers purposely position the camera to achieve an outcome that serves their aesthetic or commercial intentions.  There are many possible explanations for Mimi’s boyfriend’s tardiness.

In contrast to the photographer, Mimi didn’t choose a perspective from which to interpret her boyfriend’s failure to show up for their date.  Her perspective was chosen for her by a factor outside of her control:  Salience.   Rather than directing her attention to the interpretation most likely to be true or the one most likely to promote an advantageous outcome, her attention was captured by the most salient [attention-grabbing] interpretation.  In the subjective reality induced by this interpretation, the sweet yet sophisticated Mimi had transformed into a monster with thin skin and sharp claws.

Ironically, Mimi’s body could only produce the malevolent potion if her faculties of imagination and concentration were sufficiently well developed.  Mimi has the capability to take advantage of her cognitive talents rather than be handicapped by them, but only if she learns how to use them.   Mimi’s development may have been set back by her unfortunate childhood, but now she is an adult.  Like the rest of us aspiring adults, she can enhance her ability to mindfully influence her emotions and appetites by practicing Hypnotic Suggestion.  So, I invite you to use the  “Heavy Leg Script” from the venerable Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale to structure your first-person experience of intentional Trance Formation.

Possible interpretations of sensory input are continually battling for your attention because the winner gets promoted to be your subjective reality while the others pass away in oblivion.   Viewed from the perspective of what’s good for you, the battle is between the most salient interpretation of reality and the interpretation that would evoke the motivational/emotional state best suited to your current challenge. 

When Mr. E is sufficiently distant from his last relapse, stimulus elements related to the thrill and satisfaction of gambling periodically drift into the stimulus pool, and when they do, they attract his attention [the definition of stimulus salience].  If he gives in to the temptation to allow his attention to be sucked in, a recursive process, similar to audio feedback, will rapidly and powerfully amplify his motivation to gamble.  If his favorite uncle were still alive, he would have suggested that Mr. E redirect his attention to more useful thoughts,  But that wouldn’t have been as much fun as allowing his imagination to run with the imagery and so taste the vicarious thrills and pleasures of being in Vegas once again.   Investing his imagination and attention in such fantasies elicits a payoff that is similar to the thrill he gets when he is actually gambling.   This experienced thrill is a manifestation of biological secretions that transform the ex-gambler — who finally learned the lesson that he couldn’t control himself at the casino — into the gullible rube who feels certain that he will control himself this time.   

Mr. E, in his four-star hotel room in Las Vegas, was in a different trance than when he was on the road and appraising the pros and cons of a side trip to Las Vegas.   The pros included amazing hotels, restaurants, and nightlife, and the cons included the danger he would relapse back into gambling.  Since he sincerely felt that he could and would control himself, the cons were trivial.  So, he decided to enhance the quality of his life by taking that side trip.   Will it work out the way he predicts? 

The smart money says, “Hell no!”   Nevertheless, it is not impossible for him to act as he said he would, but unless he does something radically different, he will follow the predictable path to the usual outcome.   To follow a more advantageous path, he would have to use his knowledge of how cause-and effect operates in his subjective universe to influence the sequence of external events and internal states.  There are several ways for him to influence the causal chain intentionally.  His best shot is to work with his perspective the way a photographer artistically positions the camera.  Even if he did, it would be unrealistic to expect Mr. E’s puny ability to aim his attention to win the battle against the highly salient local temptations.  Mr. E is advised to show respect for his challenge and take control of his attention at the first sight of Nevertheless, volitional control of attention is a skill that strengthens with practice.  To practice directing your attention, choose a target for it and concentrate on that thought or image despite the more salient distractions that seek to capture your attention.  Naturally, your will to maintain control of your attention will often be overpowered by a distraction that is momentarily more salient.  The strengthening exercise is to recapture your attention and direct it back to the intended target.  You can use a mantra as the target, or the “heavy leg” audio, or simply count your breaths.  The objective is to exercise your ability to choose what occupies your consciousness.

Pavlov (does that ring a bell?) conditioned a dog to salivate when he rang a bell paired with placing acid in the dog’s mouth.  After a few pairings, the dog salivated whenever Pavlov rang his bell.  The mechanism of Pavlovian conditioning turns out to be a good model for conceptualizing self-control of one’s passions.   Just as the sound of the bell caused Pavlov’s dog to secrete saliva, thoughts and images of her boyfriend abusing her trust caused Mimi’s neuroendocrine system to secrete the potion that transformed her into Ms. Hyde. 

Pavlov had control over the dog’s salivation because he, not the dog, chose when to ring the bell.  Mimi’s trance formation is unintentional because she, like the dog, doesn’t decide when to trigger the conditioned reaction.  Her reaction was determined by the stimulus that captured her attention.  The most salient information — not necessarily the most important or helpful information — will capture her attention and induce trance formation. 

Through no fault of her own, the unfortunate events of her childhood conditioned Mimi to react to the things that happen in intimate relationships in ways that are poorly matched to the task of establishing a secure and loving relationship as an adult.  She can’t undo the past, but she can know herself well enough to exercise an intentional influence over how she reacts to the things that happen.   

To induce trance formation intentionally, use your imagination to pretend that a reality that would cause the intended experience is true. So, to intentionally induce the subjective reality that your right arm is heavy, pretend it is made of lead; to induce the experience of lightness in your left arm, pretend that Helium-filled balloons are tied to your left wrist, pulling it upwards.   In the battle for which side captures her attention during the critical high-risk situation, images that signal potential abandonment are far more capable of inducting transformation than their competitors because Mimi is not pretending it’s true; She is certain.