The Power of a Will
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage– Friedrich Nietzsche
The resources required to exercise will can be temporarily depleted through exhaustion. For example, five minutes of resisting the temptation to eat a chocolate treat when asked not to impaired subjects’ performance on a math test given afterwards; conversely, having subjects take the math test first resulted in more failures to resist the chocolate temptation.
Just as you would develop muscle strength and stamina by following an exercise regime, you can enhance willpower through exercise. Lifting weights against the downward pull of gravity strengthens the muscles ability to lift weight. Likewise, aiming your attention to a particular target, despite the pull of distracting stimuli strengthens your ability to maintain focus on a target despite local distractions. This exercise is called meditation.
Counting Your Breaths Meditation
Tonight, when you go to bed, turn off the lights, and close your eyes, instead of going to sleep you can exercise your faculty of directing your attention. Visualize or sub-vocalize the number “1” during your first exhale, the number “2” during your second exhale, and so on. You will find that your attention tends to wander to more salient thoughts, images, or sensations. The exercise is to gently escort your attention back to the intended target. Sound easy? You probably won’t make it to “4″—in fact, your mind may drift so far away that you forget what number you are up to (if you do, just begin again with “1″). Now that you have been tipped off, perhaps you’ll do better than 4. Have respect for this task; it is effortful, which is why it requires discipline. The creature’s attention is bound to be captured by the most salient stimulus at any given moment. The exercise is to use your will to re-direct your attention back to the intended target. Each repetition of returning your attention to the target is analogous to lifting a dumbbell. The goal is to exercise your ability to purposely aim your attention, so that when you encounter a highly salient stimulus that would evoke a pathogenic trance, you will have the strength to override its influence and direct your attention to a stimulus that will elicit a more resourceful trance.
If meditation is analogous to lifting weights, then hypnosis is analogous to working out with a personal trainer. To follow this metaphor: If you wanted to be a professional fighter, you would hire a trainer to help you develop an exercise program to strengthen your body. A strong body is important but not sufficient to be a successful fighter, you also have to know how to fight. Reading a book that describes the principles of your martial art is likely to be helpful, but to actually develop the procedural skills you will have to hire sparring partners. Performing as intended at the critical moments requires practice and some familiarity with the psychological states your will experience during the challenge. To follow this metaphor, I am your trainer, this web site is your “how-to” guide, and the high-risk situations are your sparring partners.
Meditation as Training the Puppy
Meditation refers to thinking in a controlled manner. Through the practice of meditation, you can transcend the ways of thinking you used as a child. By developing and practicing mindful ways of responding to provocative events you can enhance your ability to act as intended despite encounters with people, places or things that would motivate you to relapse.
Meditation is sometimes called puppy training to remind us of the importance of repeated but gentle redirection. Harshness with the puppy as well as with the self has unintended consequences. Just as the puppy is not born with a set of rules about where to pee, you are not born with a set of rules about how to react during crises. It would be counterproductive to beat the puppy for a lapse in the learning process, beating yourself for a lapse in thinking would only slow your progress. In both cases, the creature learns as a result of the trainer noticing the lapse and gently correcting it. When you meditate, you notice when the mind has wandered and gently return your focus to the intended target without frustration and self-criticism.
Covert Exercises
Perception, motivation, and other subjective phenomena are continually present, and so we take them for granted. Typically, we accept them as givens, rather than work to actively manipulate them. The meditation exercises described below will give you the opportunity to observe subjective phenomena from different, perhaps novel, perspectives. These experiential invitations will give you the opportunity to become familiar with certain state-dependent phenomena, and learn how they arise and fade away. The goal is for you to become proficient at manipulating them, even during high-risk situations.
Thought Experiment: Meditating on a Mantra.
A mantra is repeated over and over until you become habituated to it and no longer attend to it, which has the effect of clearing the mind of mundane thought, and thereby freeing it for transcendent experience. Some examples of a mantra: Whisper the word, “one,” each time you exhale; whisper the phrase, “calm and tranquil” on each exhale; on alternating exhales whisper the sound, “mmmm” (a sound of coherence like, “Om”) or the sound, “sssss” (the sound of chaos like white noise). As you continue repeating the mantra, you may notice some interesting transformations taking place. For example, as the mind quiets down, mental images become more vivid, and you may be able to hold them in mind for longer periods.
Thought Experiment: Tolerating Discomfort.
Eat an amount of hot sauce or hot pepper that produces a slightly greater reaction than you are used to and focus on the sensation of pain. Simply investigate the experience of pain and how you react to it. Later, after the hotness recedes try it again and see if you can push your limits while maintaining a clear, focused mind. Important note: don’t cause tissue damage or hurt yourself; be compassionate and only push the limits to the extent that you can do so without being self-punishing. You can also experiment with a cold shower, or alternate the shower temperature between a bit too hot and a bit too cold. A goal of these exercises is to experience the sensations while maintaining a clear and focused mind, and without tightening up mentally or physically.
One goal of these exercises is to learn to accept thoughts, emotions, pleasure, and discomfort for what they are—passing subjective phenomena. You will discover that learning to tolerate whatever comes up is more important than attempting to control whatever comes up. Though you often have little control over objective reality (the events you encounter), you can develop the ability to appreciate and accept what you do not control.
Thought Experiment: Tolerating Desire.
When you encounter the experience of desire, label it by silently saying something like: “Ah yes, there’s desire again.” No need to judge the experience, analyze it, or try to change it. Just label it as soon as you’ve identified it—nimbleness is important. What does desire feel like? What are the mental and physical changes that are associated with desire? Notice how the experience changes with time. Does it seem to occur in a series of waves of greater or lesser intensity? Are there thoughts that suggest you give in to the desire? The goal of this exercise is to observe the experience of desire without being taken in by it. You may find it helpful to assume the perspective of a psychologist collaborating with Dr. Dubin in the study of your creature’s experience. We don’t want the creature to suffer unnecessarily, but our primary interest is bringing about a good outcome for this innocent creature you inhabit. We understand that tolerating a little suffering up front will spare you great suffering later.
The Soul-Directed Discipline
How long does desire last? When you are experiencing it, desire seems to last forever. Intellectually, you understand that desires and cravings, like all subjective phenomena, have finite, typically brief, life spans. One of our challenges is to communicate this Meta-Cognitive Awareness to the creature you inhabit. The soul-directed discipline is to periodically detach from immediate experience and observe it from the dissociative perspective—i.e., the way it would appear to an unbiased observer who was interested in your welfare, perhaps the way Dr. Dubin’s colleague would view your situation. The goal is for the creature to recognize that its perceptions, motivations, and response tendencies are state-dependent and so are vulnerable to the distortions caused by powerful local stressors and temptations. With some practice you will be able recognize warning signals such as. “I want that” or “one won’t hurt” and make the meta-cognitive shift to “Ah yes, there’s desire again. Desire is a temporary experience that will pass; you do not have to give in to it.” Learning to accept experience without having to change is an interesting discipline and not without its own rewards.
Will’s Question and Doing Mode
Once you have recognized the psychological state: Desire, or any warning signal that you are in a high-risk situation, you have to react. The Being Mode solution [awareness of present experience with acceptance]. is to dispassionately observe the thoughts, feelings, motivations, and other state dependent phenomena associated with desire accept it—in the absence of the motivation to do anything about it or make yourself feel better.
The Doing Mode [problem solving orientation] solution is to change your state from Desire to a more resourceful one. Your current psychological state is at least partially determined by what you are attending to. Any change in the focus of attention evokes trance formation. The change may occur as a result of the appearance of a highly salient stimulus, or because you intentionally directed your attention to a particular stimulus, for example getting in the mood for sex by intentionally focusing on sexually arousing thoughts and images.
Merely thinking about the incentive or, perversely, trying not to think about it, increases your urge to use it. The incentive has many associations and there are many salient trance forming thoughts and images that can elicit a high-risk state. You exercise will when you shift your attention from what is most salient to what is meaningful.
Thought Experiment: Exercising Will
When I find myself thinking of the incentive I focus on Will’s Question: “What is the best use of my attention right now?” Your answer is the intended target for your attention. Naturally other stimuli will compete for your attention. Continue to redirect your attention back to that target until you alter your psychological state in the intended direction.
Each exposure to a high-risk situation is an opportunity to use this sparring partner to enhance your ability to aim your attention despite the influence of stressors and temptations. Nature will be good to you and will give you many opportunities to practice your skill of Intentional trance formation.
