This blog rolls out ideas, practices, and techniques that are helping reduce suffering and increase happiness, for self and others. Suggestion: Go to the first post on Dec 2, 2011 and scroll up to follow the presentation. Welcome!
Put your attention onto an area of muscle tension or twitching. Then initiate voluntary REM. Move your eyes left and right, up and down, round and round (both ways), while keeping split attention and focus on the area of muscle tension. For me this practice often leads to muscle relaxation and comfort, with no conscious awareness of the thoughts or images attached to the original area of focus.
Sometimes the thoughts or images do arise. Then I use any of the other practices to transform these thoughts — or not — and just mindfully observe.
Another variation I use is to add the self directed EFT, the “Even though technique…,” while doing the voluntary REM.
And I do these any any or all of the four voices. It is hard to stay stuck using this mix of practices!
Establish a twitch of the thumb to mean ‘yes’ and the twitch of the second finger to mean ‘no.’
Then, ask your unconscious selfing processes any question that can be answered with a yes or a no. One of your fingers will twitch, indicating a response.
I use finger signaling frequently, and often when in the we voice.
It is especially useful because it provides the unconscious mental processes another way chance to communicate with the conscious self in a way that can be understood by the conscious self.
I learned this technique while studying self-hypnosis. It’s another technique for the toolkit.
Last summer I learned (from routine screening) that I had experienced a silent heart attack. Subsequent investigation confirmed and showed damage.
Lots of fear was triggered.
At one point, I went into the we voice and asked what are we afraid of? Dying? No.
Then what? Answer came back, in the impersonal voice, dying alone.
Oh. What can we do about it?
Answer popped into my head. Oh, nothing…but when the time comes we will all join hands and go over the waterfall together! I (personal voice) just broke out laughing. In stitches for a few minutes.
Frankly, I (personal voice) have been at peace with the situation since then.
This one was a “biggie,” but most of life’s challenges are not. I routinely use the we voice just to check with all my parts as see what’s going on.
It is an honest, open, and intimate experience.
A friend at dinner the other night spontaneously said that she thought I was awakening.
Could be, at least to a small extent.
I, we, it, and best thinking are all certainly happier and suffer a lot less. Something is changing!
Loosely.
Buddhist mindfulness meditation techniques train the brain to dis-embed or dissociate the arising word and image thoughts from the conscious observing part of the brain.
You learn to experience whatever your brain produces without adding any more of the thought stream to it. You cultivate bare attention to the live feed of the five senses and the live feed of the inner dialogue and imaging.
Extremely, extremely useful and a necessary skill. My practices presuppose skill with setting up and experiencing mindfulness and bare attention.
Similarly, Buddhist concentration practices, whether narrowly or broadly focused, create positive mental states by temporarily suppressing negative thoughts and feelings from arising.
Buddhist vipassana or insight practices encourage you to confirm the wisdom in your own subjective experience of the Buddha’s views on impermanence (anicca), not-self (anatta), and suffering (dukkha) and how to reduce suffering.
Important point: You aren’t encouraged to do practices, investigate, and discuss and draw your own maps. You are persistently invited to agree with the Buddha’s views. While I found them to be true…they are only partially so.
They are some of the characteristics of existence but not the whole..so for me it was constraining and limiting. Thus arose this exercise in map making of the inner territory being experienced and explored. Something was missing. Over time I added all these other pieces for actually transforming the arising patterns and helping to use them to solve daily life challenges.
This creates the space to then return to mindfully observing whatever is arising and passing away. In many ways, these patterns are similar in intent (but not the same) as Buddhist kindness meditations.
Another distinction. I do not sharply compartmentalize the use of mindfulness and concentration meditation and self directed, language based change patterns as most instructors do. A ‘sit’ or in my case a ‘lie-down’ will encompass both. When a negative experience is arising, I may chose just to observe, experience and add nothing…or employ one of the language change patterns presented here.
Sitting for a long time with ‘dark night’ experiences is not necessary or skillful in this practitioner’s experience.
Also, choice of conjunctions matters. For me it is both/and, not either/or, to get the greatest reduction in unnecessary suffering and greatest increase in useful joyful happiness.
It’s a language pattern I frequently use when I’m in the we voice. I also use it when helping others.
The structure is:: “Even though I [negative thought, image, or feeling], I [positive thought, feeling or image].
Equally useful is to substitute ‘we’ for ‘I.’
This is an extremely effective language pattern. It is also really simple and easy to use.
The first phrase paces the underlying or presenting ‘problem’ issue, and the second phrase links or leads to a positive thought and feeling.
In NLP, it is the structure of a basic reframe.
In recent years it has also become the foundation language pattern for EFT (Emotional Freedom Training).
It is a simple language pattern, which you and I can use to help ourselves and others. It is one of the most effective language patterns I know for voluntary, conscious, self-directed personal change.
When you are in the we voice pattern, one very useful change technique is to ask each part for its positive intent.
This is a presupposition (can’t be proved, just experienced) that allows previously unacceptable or rejected thought patterns to ‘have a place at the table of conscious awareness’ in the front of the brain.
Then a conversation can follow, with one part being the chair of the committee or meeting, about how to achieve the positive intent of the thought/part without hurting the rest of the whole self.
This is a language pattern from NLP. It was taught as a conversational technique for helping others. I’ve found you can use it on yourself from within the ‘we’ voice with great positive benefits to feeling and behavior.
In fact, ANY conversational pattern you use with some one else can be used within the we voice. You’ve already helped others many times, now you just establish one part of the we voice to do so with the hurting parts of the whole self.
And remember to always return to the personal (“I”) voice when that work is finished.
It’s easy. It’s just a matter of the the level of aggregation or level of organization of matter. Organic life forms are composed of inorganic compounds. In the same way, the personal virtual self (the “I”) dialogue feels alive and real, but when a practitioner watches and listens to it run, the practitioner can see the individual sounds or images in the string of internal selfing are absent of personal characteristics.
The dots on the wall are just dots on the wall until you step back and see the pattern of the painting! Level of organization or level of aggregation matters.
We human beings live at the level of the whole heart, body, and mind, where each part (no matter how it is defined) is a apart of, not apart from, but not the whole of the self. So for me it is always important to return to this experience of the whole as the ultimate ‘reality’ for day to day living.
So, at this point in practice, this brain (impersonal voice) understands the impersonality and not-self characteristics of the components of subjective experience, and I (personal voice) also experience ‘being’ and ‘self,’ feeling they are ‘real,’ all the while also knowing that they are very useful constructs of the mind that represent but are not the whole.
Whew! But, what can i say? That’s how it is for me right now. Hard to describe. Easy to live with.
