Mindfulness for the High Performance World: A Practical, Skill-Based Approach to Developing and Sustaining Mindfulness, Equanimity and Balance
Author: Coleman, C. Norman; Coleman, Karolynn F.
Date: 2019-06-27T07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Psychology; Psychotherapy; General; Philosophy; Eastern; personality; Emotions; Applied Psychology; Psychedelic Library
Description: Mindfulness for the High Performance World provides a unique approach to mindfulness training, built upon the principles of Buddhist philosophy written in line with the Dalai Lama’s description of meditation and mindfulness as “Science of the Mind”. This unique volume explores mindfulness as a learnable skill in context with the underpinnings of the teachings of Eastern psychology. The authors, Norm, a physician, cancer researcher and triathlete and Karolynn, a psychotherapist, mindfulness meditation teacher and marathoner, live and work in a high-stress, high-expectation world. Their approach
Publisher: Springer

Identity in a Changing World

Series Editor

Jan D. Sinnott

Psychology Department, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA

The Identity in a Changing World book series explores the many facets of adult identity in a complex, global, rapidly changing, individual and social landscape and seeks to offer guidance on surviving and thriving in these changing environments. While humanity has always faced unparalleled (for that time) changes that impact identity, never before have information and interactions come at the current pace. This may include changes and demands in the conception of self, changes and demands coming from the local, national and global environment, and changes and demands from rapidly changing ideals and values. Contributors to the series come to it from many directions of scholarship and application, in an attempt to elucidate the many ways human psychology influences, among other things, politics, economics, values, ideals, relationships, selfhood, culture, and institutions. These explorations will culminate in suggestions for ways to mitigate the individual problems and distortions coming from a culture of rapid and confusing change. This series serves a general readership and college level students, as well as readers in many fields including researchers, practitioners, psychologists, educators, sociologists, political scientists, business administrators, philosophers, international relations experts, medical practitioners, and conflict specialists.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15966

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. Coleman

Mindfulness for the High Performance WorldA Practical, Skill-Based Approach to Developing and Sustaining Mindfulness, Equanimity and Balance

C. Norman Coleman

International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

Karolynn F. Coleman

Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

ISSN 2523-7802e-ISSN 2523-7810

Identity in a Changing World

ISBN 978-3-030-18581-7e-ISBN 978-3-030-18582-4
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank our family, colleagues, friends, and patients/clients for what they have taught us by their words, actions, deeds, and experience. We thank Roop Jyoti who demonstrated that one can change one’s mindset dramatically for the better and by doing so improve life for so many others. Roop’s persistence encouraged us to “take the course” which taught us that we could become aware of aspects of our minds of which were previously not within our awareness. We thank our team of readers for their critique and feedback of the book. Special thanks go to Jackie Wehmueller an editor, consultant and friend from JHU Press, and David Kramer for his editorial assistance and advice. We especially thank our children Gabrielle and Keith and our daughter-in-law Vanessa for being wonderful people and, indeed, great role models and teachers.

The contents of this book are our personal opinions and are not related to the institutions in which we work or have worked. The approach to mindfulness is our construct to facilitate learning mindfulness as a skill using a systematic approach. There is a wide range of approaches available to learning mindfulness and meditation, usually facilitated by teachers and possibly accompanied by counselors and therapists, which should be continued as appropriate.

Graphics

Erina He, graphic design expert who works for the National Institutes of Health, has, as a colleague and friend outside her NIH position, redrawn and improved the quality of the initial “PowerPoint” charts.

Introduction

If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.

Chinese Proverb

We must become the change we want to see.

Mahatma Gandhi

There is a Better Way

Life in today’s high performance world has been called madness. Deadlines, expectations, pace, endless, and rapid multimedia input. There is the disorientation in that truth no longer matters to some who fill the airways. 24/7/365. Pressure, competition, and endless swirling of the mind with a parade of thoughts, some fleeting and others that don’t seem to ever stop. These often include planning, replaying past events, and living events that haven’t even happened or may never happen. Out of control? Well, not necessarily. There is a way to bring the mind into your own control and return perspective, balance, insight, awareness, equanimity, and clarity. And, it isn’t as hard or complex as it might seem. Change, perhaps beyond what many imagine possible, does occur. And it can be accomplished while living well and functioning effectively within the high performance world. We wrote this book to help you do so. Getting to this point was a long journey for us but with the new knowledge that has come from linking philosophical concepts from the past with scientific discovery of today, we believe that there is a shorter systematic and practical way forward, with effort and a bit of a blueprint.

The New Approach

We present a new approach to learning the skill of mindfulness based on a technique of using Sentinel Sites℠ through which to observe thoughts. We explain how to attain deepening Levels of Awareness℠ so that one can understand what the mind is doing and be able to control thoughts and actions in the short but observable interval between a thought and an action thereby improving life for you and others with whom you interact.

If we understood four decades ago what we know now, we would have changed then. Back then, things like a mind-body connection were on the fringe of conventional medicine. Eastern philosophy sounded like mumbo-jumbo and those who followed it often left their families and lives for years to a remote location and/or to follow a guru. Many people used so-called “mind-expanding drugs” to try to reach some not-too-well-described goal of enlightenment and the results were often quite damaging. In 1974, we did indeed see and experience Eastern philosophy and culture when we spent 10 months traveling around the world on a trip sparked by our interest in mountaineering and trekking. As avid backpackers and entry-level rock climbers, the books we read on Mt. Everest expeditions built a mystique about Nepal and the Sherpa people. Since it was impossible to do the 5-week Mountain Travel Mt. Everest trek when one only had three weeks of annual vacation, we took the entire year off from our formal career paths and received an education that profoundly changed our lives and perspectives. While we went to see places, what we learned most about were people and cultures.

That trip took us to fabulous and wide-ranging locales in the Pacific Rim, India, Nepal, Central Asia, East Africa, Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles many of which were not yet tourist vacations for Westerners and, sadly, a number of these places are not accessible today. Of the various books, we read the most informative was what is now The World’s Religions
[1] by Huston Smith. The book was remarkable on many levels. It conveyed the essence of the major religions and cultures, each in about 70 pages, and by doing so allowed us to put our experience into greater context. A consistent feature was that most of the so-called founders were not religious leaders per se but were teachers and social reformers trying to make life better for those around them. We saw the smiles and felt the warmth of the Sherpa and Tibetan people we came to know in the Everest region who were content despite minimal material wealth as judged by Western standards. The happiness with life and one another was striking and we couldn’t quite figure it out—it didn’t come from drugs, delusional thinking or materialism but from what, we did not know. It did make a lasting impression.

Had modern medicine, neuroscience, and neuro-functional imaging [2] , [3] , [4] shown then what is now being discovered in carefully done research, a new paradigm for living would have been easier to accept, as it would have had a sound basis in science rather than on metaphysics, pure faith or what some writers suggested, suspending rational thought at least for a time. Being a combination of cautious, skeptical, and science-based, we filled our curiosity with reading and keeping tabs on the new mind-body aspects of medicine through our careers, Norm as a cancer researcher and oncologist and Karolynn as a clinical social worker/psychotherapist with a keen interest in families, psychological systems theory and normal human development.

For us, a real understanding and inward transformation began over a period of about 3 years starting 20 years later in 1994. It is not a magical revelation or thunderbolt from out of the blue nor is it likely very obvious to others in that we did not change our professions, leave our family, dress differently, pick up new jargon, or overtly appear different. It was a period of serious effort that began in the summer of 1994 in which two families plus three friends spent a summer in Nepal trekking to Mt. Everest base camp. By 1994, there were more books on Buddhism, Eastern philosophy and meditation and the mind-body connection was becoming part of Western medicine. The Nepalese we spent most of the summer with, in the Everest region (Khumbu), were as before, possessing warmth and happiness beyond what one would expect based on Western standards for material wealth. They were accepting of life, joyful in day-to-day activities, and were observers but not judgmental. The harmony in which they lived with one another and with nature was quite different from the West. We read and read trying to get at the essence of how they had a different mindset but had difficulty reconciling the Eastern philosophy terms, ritual, and superstition with modern science. The books on Eastern thought still caused us a sense of unease with terms and concepts, which we will cover, like reincarnation, no-self, duality, impermanence, suffering, dharma (dhamma), the Eightfold Path, Four Noble Truths, enlightenment, and karma. Did the more harmonious way of living require simply accepting a whole major construct and major detour from one’s life and family path or could it just be done with a different way of living?

The Nepali greeting “Namaste” means something like “I bow to the light in you”. In a society with a background of reincarnation, to be alive as a human being means that you had earned merit in a previous life so that people respected the humanity in one another. Amazingly given our insecure Western culture built on images and being Number One, the concept of low self-esteem did not exist. In the Sherpa region, people are relationally oriented, children were cared for and one rarely heard crying. All of life is respected and valued. Despite what we would call harsh living conditions, they had a different adaptation to living. We learned in 1974 that there is no general word for “thank you” in day-to-day Nepali because it is part of the culture to help one another and, indeed, one is gifted by the opportunity to help and serve someone else. Can you imagine that? But, it was so. And, they tapped into our communal nature as humans.

The issue of whether and how the harmony with life in the East could be lived in the West without having to accept a new religion, disrupt family and career, or become a member of some specified group was a topic of much discussion as we headed back for the final few days of our trip in Kathmandu in 1994. We spent time with a close friend Roop Jyoti who told us how his life changed by learning something called Vipassana meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka (who died at the age of 90 in 2013). He gave us a book to read The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation
[5] (William Hart), which is a rather short book that described the way of living that seemed to be pretty much how the Sherpas lived. As described, it was based on the very early teachings of the Buddha that had nothing at all to do with a religion or set of rituals. Rather it described “cravings, aversions, egolessness, attachment, mental reaction cycles and misery” and how these arise from internal thoughts rather than external sources. It points out that in our encounters with life, we have things we like, things we don’t like, and events and people who threaten our egos or our perceptions of who and what we are. How we respond to these can bring more suffering or less. The ancient observation was that while life has problems, much of our misery comes from our mental reaction cycles (called Sankara). This is a key paradigm: that while problems exist and there are certainly life events that cause suffering, much misery is self-generated, mostly out of ignorance that we do it. It was profound. Given that the book was written from Eastern philosophy orientation and much was translated from ancient Pali language texts, the terms and concepts were still hard to get our heads around. The book effectively defined the problem but did not describe how one can deal with it.

Roop and the book pointed out that knowledge that we are taught and knowledge that we accept at an intellectual level were important but experiential knowledge is the third and critical level. He suggested that we try to learn Vipassana also known as Insight Meditation and he recommended what he had experienced and what transformed his life, the 10-day course by Goenka. We quickly discovered that there are many courses and teachers of Vipassana but that there was a Goenka-based center in Massachusetts not too far from where we lived. The 10-day course is silent meditation with skilled teachers, requiring a commitment to at least try to do the entire thing, and it is free of charge—all you need to do is invest the time.

With a background and careers in science, medicine, and psychology and having lived in California for most of 1970–1985, we had seen what we felt were some very strange and at times cult-like approaches to learning Eastern philosophy. Consequently, for the next three years, we avoided taking the course. Setting aside the 11 undisturbed days required seemed impossible, and we were wary of what kind of people we might encounter and whether it would somehow be harmful or even dangerous. Whenever we told Roop that we had read another few books and understood the concepts he would smile and suggest we “take the course”. He would note that if you had a physical ailment that required time for treatment you would do so, so why not do the same for your mental state?

We each have our own path and methods of how we accomplish tasks and take on challenges.

What perhaps makes Mindfulness for the High Performance World unique is that the two of us are very different in how we go about problem-solving and meditation/mindfulness practice. From our oncology and counseling careers, we understand that there is no “one size fits all.” In addition to changing mental paradigms, in Mindfulness for the High Performance World we strongly emphasize a healthy body though good nutrition and physical activity, the importance of morality and a principled life and also of being in touch with natural surroundings. We emphasize the importance of balance and critical need for thinking for oneself. We have come to a very similar understanding of what is mindfulness for living well.

Over the years, Karolynn has taken a good number of courses in meditation conducted in a range of environments from local community centers to major retreat facilities. She is an avid reader and has read many books related to the Eastern philosophy and Western psychology. She has done a “Year of Mindful Living” and completed formal 2-year training to become a meditation teacher through the Insight Meditation Center of Washington, DC. She uses Eastern philosophy/Buddhist psychology and mindfulness teaching as part of her counseling practice.

Before taking the Vipassana course, Norm had tried meditation at home a few times, perhaps making it as long as 20 minutes once. The issues for Norm were: What in the heck do you do during a meditation? Think about an object? Focus on happy thoughts? Think about nothing? How do you sit? Do you make up some mantra or take one from a book? Having no solid idea what was the goal other than to say “I meditate” it was a frustrating and at times a seemingly ridiculous experience. A book by Kathleen MacDonald How to Meditate
[6] described some postures, the point of which weren’t entirely clear, but did describe the very important concepts of stabilizing and insight meditation.

In 1997, Norm gave in to Roop and sat his first 10-day course and a second in 1998 to see if “he got it”. Karolynn took the Goenka course in 2005. It was serious work but quite safe and well run. There was no religion, no “isms”, no proselytizing, and nothing weird. Students, teachers, and volunteers were by and large average Americans, about a third being old students having done previous courses ranged from 10 to 30 days. It is a very intense experience that was transforming, but only partly so, as the initial course is just a first step. It is essentially a meditation course where the goal is to become aware of how one can be in constant touch with one’s mental processes through the sensations they cause, and how by being aware and nonreactive much of the mental turmoil and cycles we each experience can be reduced or eliminated. One can live with much more clarity, calm, effectiveness, and inner peace. It was to teach a skill— not a belief —that could fit into any life.

The teachers correctly point out that this initial 10-day course is just the beginning—a very significant step forward. To maintain the level of awareness and clarity and progress more deeply into insight meditation, they strongly suggested one hour of meditation twice a day and taking periodic courses. Norm did this for a year and it was the second 10-day course that prompted the writing of this book, now 20 years in the making. The last five years were after an “aha—I get this” insight. This book was written as a guide so the “I got it” can be accomplished in a much shorter period of time . Norm, with a background in mathematics, science, and molecular medicine is a “get to the essence” person. His book Understanding Cancer
[7] (Johns Hopkins University Press) for people with cancer is written along these lines and has been well-received. The inspiration of Huston Smith’s book The World’s Religions is that one can get a long way into a very complex subject with a well-described, to-the-point guide.

Over the last 15 years, the advances in neuroscience and functional imaging studies of the brain demonstrate what the Buddha observed 2500 years ago that one can be in touch with mental processes and there is neuroplasticity. [8] That is, the nervous system rewires itself and the patterns of thinking and reaction can change. There is no need for any “-ism” or blind belief, magical thinking, or taking someone’s word. When developed, mindfulness is basically one’s own ongoing functional neuro-imaging like an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) or PET (position emission tomography) scan, where one is constantly aware of mental processes and thoughts. With this “self, full-time MRI” one can be aware of what the mind is doing and control how one acts. As the skill is achieved it is powerful, self-reinforcing and fairly straightforward. Indeed, one is “meditating” all the time. This book is about learning a skill.

This Book is for You

Over the past few years, we have both come to understand what is an achievable goal for a motivated person. With or despite our different approaches we arrived at the point where we more or less “get it”. We have concluded that achieving an effective skill of mindfulness is not complex but it takes serious and sustained effort and focusing on the skill itself.

This book is targeted for the “let’s get to the point” person to help you to learn a skill and method from Eastern mindfulness as efficiently as possible. We recognize that readers have different learning styles and starting points. Some concepts will be completely new for some and quite familiar to others, and this may be a useful review. What we think will be new is the systematic way of integrating concepts and actions into a useful skill which gets less complex as one progresses. We define the terms and concepts in Eastern thought and Insight Meditation in a way that you can much more quickly get to the essence of this way of living. We use Western examples and metaphors, scientific information and graphics and illustrations that we hope will save you hours, days and years so that you can get down to the business of changing how you interact with your daily life.

What you will learn is that there are degrees of awareness that can provide constant biofeedback and monitoring of your mental state and thoughts so that you will have a skill that operates 24/7. One goes from just controlling a reactive mental and physical state—which is often as far as many biofeedback and meditation methods go—to a much deeper level in which you can observe and control the very early provoking thoughts, reactions, and underlying mental state. You will have the complete system—the thoughts and the changes they produce that you can learn to feel, observe, understand, and control. No props are needed. You will ultimately get insight into your own personal issues and will be able to break the hold that reactive thinking has on you.

A word of caution and patience : The skills and techniques for mindfulness presented in this book will take time to learn and incorporate into daily living. For the novice, this is a lot of information at once but the idea of this book is that if there is some sense of what the road ahead is like, it will help one get to the goal. It will likely require some formal coursework such as, but not necessarily, the Goenka 10-day course. A good teacher, possibly with some one-on-one instruction and compatriots and fellow students will be helpful, but one ultimately develops these skills with effort and practice.

We are like you, trying to learn and adopt new ways of living better without undue disruption from our responsibilities.

Fortunately, science has caught up with rather stunning insights made 2500 years ago. Clarity, balance, and compassion are not passive but make up a very potent combination that can deal more effectively with the polarization, anxiety, fearfulness, and anger that are all too often stirred up and provide little benefit.

It will be clear that the Western religions and philosophies have many of these concepts, too, so Eastern thought isn’t either as strange or as difficult as it often appears. Mindfulness itself is a skill. We wish to emphasize to the wary reader—which we still are—that the techniques and changed mental paradigms have nothing to do with religion. Huston Smith notes, “Buddha was not a Buddhist”. According to Smith’s book [p. 82], Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was asked not “Who are you?” but “ What are you?”

“Are you a god?” they asked. “No.”

“An angel?” “No.”

“A saint?” “No”.

“Then what are you?”

Buddha answered, “I am awake.”

Contents

1 Basic Paradigms: Looking for Relief
1

External Sources of Relief
3

Internal Sources of Relief
3

Levels of Awareness Mindfulness℠: Aiming for, and Achieving, Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering. Working at New Levels
5

How the Book Is Organized
7

2 Challenges to Overcome—Unexamined Lives, Living an Image, and the Mind-Made World
9

Current Society and Culture: Living Contrary to Our Nature
10

Unexamined Lives
10

Living a Life of Images
12

Knowledge: Learned, Intellectual and Experiential
13

Suffering
15

It’s a Mind-Made World
15

What Is Reality?
16

Summary Points
18

3 Understanding Impermanence
19

Impermanence
20

Cycles of Life: Control Is an Illusion
21

Birth—Death and Occam’s Razor
25

Illusion of Control
25

Summary Points
27

4 Understanding Eastern Terms Using Western Concepts
29

Mindfulness
30

I Am Awake—Awareness
30

Ignorance
31

Egolessness/Ego—Attachment
32

Inter-Relatedness and Greed, Hatred, Delusion
32

The Four Noble Truths
33

Noble Eightfold Path
33

Compassion (Wise Compassion)
35

Karma
35

Nirvana and Enlightenment
35

Dhamma (or Dharma) and Sangha
36

Real Goals and “Near Misses”. Concepts That Can Be Misunderstood
36

Summary Points
37

5 Dealing With Problems, Misery, and Victimhood
39

Mental “Reaction” Cycles: Cravings and Aversions and the Action of Averting and Actively Interrupting
40

Reality (and Ego and Low Self-esteem)
45

Victimhood and Entitlement: Creating Endless Misery
46

Survivor
47

Gratitude, Appreciation
47

Moderation: The Middle Path
47

Leaving Level 1 Awareness
47

Summary Points
49

6 Learning the Essential Techniques of Mindfulness and Meditation Practice
51

Meditation—Awareness Training
52

Meditation Practice
57

Insight Meditation—Vipasanna: Insight into the Workings of the Mind
57

Stabilizing Meditation
58

Focus/interruption Sites℠
58

Silence and Stillness
59

Constellation of Sensations℠
63

Meditation Practice Suggestions
65

Summary Points
68

7 Moving Toward Clarity With Sentinel Sites℠
71

Sentinel Sites℠
74

The Awareness Switch
82

Not-in-the-Moment/Experiential Avoidance: And Repetitive Habit “Stress Relievers”
82

We Are Not Our Thoughts!
88

The New Paradigm-Do You Meditate?
88

Summary Points
89

8 Living with a New Paradigm and Learning to Judge Effort and not Outcome
91

Some Basic Principles
92

Achieving Balance-Nature, Nutrition, Rest and Exercise
93

Judging Effort and Intention and Not Outcome—What Can and Cannot Be Controlled
94

It Is Not so Complicated…But It Does Time and Effort
98

So How Will Daily Living Change?
100

Barriers to Changing the Paradigm of How One Lives
103

Meditation
103

Mindfulness for the High Performance World
104

Summary Points
107

Epilogue
109

Appendix A: Vipassana Meditation
111

Appendix B: Meditations—Learning “Sentinel Sites℠” and a Daily Meditation Session
115

Appendix C: Summary and Brief Reminder
121

Index
127

About the Authors

C. Norman Coleman, M.D.

received his B.A. degree in mathematics summa cum laude from the University of Vermont and his M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine. He has worked in academia in the University of California, San Francisco, Stanford University, Harvard University and in the federal government at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Medical Oncology and Radiation Oncology. His academic appoints include Assistant and Associate Professor (tenure) at Stanford University School of Medicine, Professor and Chairman of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School, Associate Director and Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute and Senior Medical Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the Department of Health and Human Services. His professional work includes laboratory and clinical cancer research, clinical care and program development including community service, national emergency response planning for nuclear disasters, and international programs. He has over 300 scientific publications, and has written a book Understanding Cancer (Johns Hopkins University Press) for patients and families. He has taken meditation courses at the Vipassana Meditation Center in Massachusetts as taught by S. N. Goenka. He is an avid triathlete including Ironman triathlons and competing in the world championship races. He has received the Service to America Homeland Security Medal from the Partnership for Public Service, numerous fellowships in professional societies and recently a Doctor of Science degree honaris causia from his alma mater, the University of Vermont for career contributions to cancer research and care and public service. He is the recipient of the Ellen L. Stovall Award for Innovation in Patient-Centered Cancer Care by the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. He is currently senior scientific advisor and a founder of the International Cancer Expert Corps, the mission of which is to provide cancer care to underserved globally.

Karolynn Forsburg Coleman, MSW
received her B.A. degree in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and her MSW degree from Smith College, School of Social Work. She has practiced in a number of settings including university hospitals, family counseling centers, and schools: middle, upper, and college level. She is now in private practice in Bethesda, M.D. where she works with individuals, couples, and families. She consults and has given workshops at community facilities. She has a breadth of experience in many psychological theories and techniques drawn from both Western psychology and Eastern psychology. Her emphasis is on results with practical solutions. She has had formal mindfulness training including a Year of Mindful Living and completed a two-year intensive meditation teacher program from the Meditation Teacher Training Institute. She guides meditation at the Insight Meditation Center of Washington’s Center for Mindful Living. Additionally, she is an avid runner (numerous marathons and triathlons) and hiker and enjoys time in natural surroundings. She values the connectivity and balance that are obtained through being in nature and through physical activity.

Both have traveled extensively including the Himalayan regions/countries in Nepal, Ladakh, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Tibet and enjoy teaching, mentoring, and learning from others and from trying to fully live life in the moment.

Footnotes

1

The World’s Religions, Huston Smith, 1991.

2

The Mindful Brain, Daniel Siegal, 2007, Bantam Books.

3

Mindsight, Dan Siegal, 2010, Bantam Books.

4

Buddha’s Brain, Rich Hanson, New Harbinger Publications, 2009.

5

The Art of Living, Vipassana Meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka, by William Hart, 1987.

6

How to Meditate, Kathleen Macdonald, 1984.

7

Understanding Cancer: A patient’s guide to diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, C. Norman Coleman 2006.

8

Mind of the meditator. M. Richard, A. Lutz, R. J. Davidson. Scientific American, 311(5): 38–45, 2014.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. ColemanMindfulness for the High Performance WorldIdentity in a Changing Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4_1

1. Basic Paradigms: Looking for Relief

C. Norman Coleman[1] and Karolynn F. Coleman[2]

(1) International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

(2) Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

C. Norman Coleman

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor E. Frankl

Keywords

MindfulnessCritical spaceStimulusResponseMind-made suffering Second-arrowThoughts and reactionsAwarenessObservationMorality

The skill that will be developed through a systematic approach is one that will lead to freedom from mental processes that seem to run on their own. It will be freedom from knee-jerk responses through insight into how the mind works by developing the ability to observe mental processes as they arise. It will lead to ongoing awareness of thoughts and pending but not yet executed reactions with the “self-MRI” so that you can live a richer life in reality with equanimity and wise compassion. The goal is for you to be able to function within the “space” described by Frankl. While we avoid jargon in this book as much as possible there are some terms that effectively convey a concept. The extraordinarily useful Paradigm of “Freedom from Mind-made Suffering” used this book is illustrated in Fig. 1.1.

Fig. 1.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm . This is the first of the three key paradigms used in the book which we will go through step by step

An important point about the figures: The figures in this book are used to convey concepts, how various things relate to one another and how they progress over time. The figures and their legends are not meant to be casual illustrations, rather in the “picture is worth a thousand words” approach these require time to look over, as is the case with graphics, illustrations, and models used in scientifically oriented journals. Figure 1.1 will be used at the beginning of each chapter to show what aspect of the Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering paradigm is being discussed. All told, there are only 18 unique figures in the book including the appendix (some figures are repeated to help avoid page shuffling).

Now to the concepts in Fig. 1.1. Life has problems and it is an inarguable observation that life includes aspects of what we call suffering—illness, not getting what you want, getting what you don’t want, aging and death. This is not to say life is suffering but that it contains suffering. The causes of it are both external to us, which is obvious, but also from how we perceive, adapt and/or react to such problems and to the basic reality and unpredictability of life. By our mental reactions and cycles we can make tough situations worse—we can turn problems into misery, often seemingly endless misery. It is the mind-made suffering we can do something about.

We seek relief from suffering and relief exists for mind-made suffering, which can be considered “the second arrow

”—the first is the incident itself and the second is how we react to it. That is, after something happens, how we react to it can be improved, with the goal of Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering or certainly a great reduction in the amount and duration of misery our minds could add to the incident that is detrimental to moving ahead with an effective solution.

External Sources of Relief

There are useful external sources of relief that include explanations and rationales from various paths of living, among them are religion, codes of behavior, and guidelines as to how to live. The Ten Commandments involve both behavior and religion. The Golden rule “treat others as you would like to be treated” is a general rule of morality. The “Noble Eightfold Path” (discussed in detail later in the book) is a guide for how to live one’s life, both morally and mentally.

Internal Sources of Relief

There are internal and self-directed coping skills included in the phrase “Freedom from Mind-made Suffering” and this is an extraordinarily useful way to conceptualize and understand much of human behavior and mental reaction. People are trying to make themselves feel better by doing, belonging, seeking, using drugs and alcohol, acquiring, conquering, destroying, and otherwise influencing their environment. Many people do not appear to be achieving great success and may even be creating more harm to themselves and to others. So, there are ways in an attempt to achieve Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering some of which make things better and may be considered skillful and successful. On the other hand, there are others that make things worse that may be considered unskillful

, not good or bad but skillful and unskillful.

Likely unbeknownst to most people consciously, our mind is constantly trying to bring us Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering. Deep insight into these mental processes and the ability to more fully control them come at advanced stages of developing mindfulness; however, one gets almost immediate benefits as one develops the skill of
Mindfulness for the High Performance World.

For all of life’s problems, it is our internal mental, biochemical, and physiological cycles that are a key step in turning problems into further misery. Unskillful effort to be free from mind-made suffering can be a major cause of additional and needless misery. We interpret something as good or bad; this perception is a mental process that creates biochemical changes based on the centers in the brain that are firing and the body parts that may be getting ready to respond; the biochemical and physiological changes that our mind constantly monitors at some level may be very unpleasant and we don’t like them such as fear or rage. This makes us want to get away from them—from the sensations our mind has created—so we may have a physical or verbal reaction or we might be stuck and just have a major persistent internal stress response. The initial perception produces physical sensation leading to a reaction cycle that can rapidly amplify and that can persist despite the immediate cause even being long gone. This is mind-made suffering! Some books call this madness!

By developing what is called mindfulness and by learning insight meditation techniques we can have skillful and successful approaches to Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering that replace unskillful and unsuccessful ones.

The physical and moral world in which one lives is certainly important including the following:

- The physical environment that provides potential benefits from good nutrition, being in touch with nature and exercise. Some is within our control and some not and is just part of the human condition.

- Clarity and purpose with which one lives life matter. Is it to serve oneself or others?

- Morality. Do we keep re-creating destructive mental states through lying, deception, cheating, and maligning others? Or do we behave and act in a way the produces calm?

- Intention and effort. We can perhaps influence but we cannot fully control most outcomes; however, we can control our intentions, motivation and effort.

Mindfulness for the High Performance World will go through the paradigm in Fig. 1.1 step-by-step to help you understand how the skillful approaches can replace the less-skillful ones. By incorporating this understanding along with healthier living, a much more meaningful life with less mind-made suffering can be achieved, no matter where you are now.

The second basic construct we have developed and will use in this book is that awareness or the lack thereof of the mental processes can take place basically on three levels, illustrated below in Fig. 1.2 which needs some explanation before we get to it. Readers new to mindfulness may not be aware of this thought → assessment → sensation → reaction → thought…. cycle. Being unaware of cycles such as this isn’t being dumb or stupid or any other pejorative term. It may be called “ignorance” in some texts. Indeed, just becoming aware that this is how the mind can function is a step toward changing habitual patterns. So, we all start at Level 1 at some point in our lives.

Level 1

There is no or minimal insight that mind-made suffering exists and that much of one’s mental suffering comes from within. There is not awareness of the link between thoughts, the biochemical and physiological changes they produce and the subsequent reaction (people are unaware or ignorant of this linkage) and that this is a self-reinforcing cycle. Consequently, actions are often based on impulse, being told what to do (unexamined) or copying others.

Level 2

There is understanding of the linkage between thoughts, sensations they produce through the biochemical and physiological changes and then on to a reaction. One begins to use observation of the biochemical and physiological changes to replace reaction. In essence, it is biofeedback that can help interrupt and break the reaction cycles. This includes developing a skill set including self-observation from learning stabilizing and insight meditation.

Level 3

Not only is the thought-sensations -reaction pathway understood but it can be intercepted before there is a reaction and possibly even before there is a perceptible sensation. It is the “space” noted by the quotation from Frankl at the start of this chapter. While this skill level takes time and effort to reach, one actually sees thoughts as they arise and sees the mental cycles almost before or simultaneously with biochemical and physiological changes. This skill starts with intermittent periods of mental clarity and awareness until the state of awareness and clarity can become the dominant and consistent mental state within one’s control.

Levels of Awareness Mindfulness℠: Aiming for, and Achieving, Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering. Working at New Levels

Figure 1.2 illustrates how one can progress by living at deeper levels of awareness and control and one can develop the tools and skills for Level 3, starting early in mindfulness training. As you will see, or may have already achieved, one can quickly move from Level 1 onto Level 2. All three may be operative to some extent; even as Level 3 skills are achieved there are times that awareness is less than ideal. However, with more and more practice, the mind spends more time, and indeed most of its time, in Level 3.

Fig. 1.2

Levels of awareness

The three Levels of Awareness are illustrated as a conceptual frame of reference.

- Level 1 is the cycle of Thought → Assessment → Sensation → Reaction to an event that just happens and to which we may have little or no awareness.

- Level 2 is when the development of the skill of observation of sensations (i.e., the biochemical and physiological changes) begins to lessen the reaction cycle and even allow it to stop.

- Level 3 observation of the thought itself reduces the severity and extent of sensation or even stops it from happening at all. Consequently, the reaction dissipates or is avoided. The skill of thought and observation replaces or greatly reduces the reaction and helps replace it with effective action.

As skill is achieved, one not only has tools to be aware of what is going on in one’s mind but also has effective responses to skillfully guide actions and avoid reactions. More on this as we progress.

What is unique in this book is a skill/technique to be able to categorize mental process and thoughts into a reasonable number (eight) so that the mind will only need to keep track of a few key sensations to maintain awareness. This is the Sentinel Site Mindfulness℠ approach.

So,
Mindfulness for the High Performance World will present a construct and steps that took us many years to discover. It is written in Norm’s “get to the essence” approach. We don’t claim to have discovered something that many others may well have also discovered but we think the way of learning this that we present in this book is novel and will be very helpful to the “get to the point” type of learners. We present a systematic skill-based approach to make more manageable what may initially seem like a daunting amount of complex information. Using the two constructs and key paradigms in Figs. 1.1 and 1.2 and the knowledge of neuroscience that validates the changes that occur with brain function and rewiring, we think that progress to Level 2 and probably Level 3 may be achieved much more rapidly and effectively than without such helpful constructs. Certainly, dealing with the “just trust me” approach and discomfort with some of the meaning of the Eastern philosophy terms would have been overcome by us much more rapidly using the constructs we provide in this book.

How the Book Is Organized

All chapters build on the paradigms in this chapter “Freedom from Mind-made Suffering” (Fig. 1.1) and on the progression of awareness from Level 1 to Level 3 (Fig. 1.2). This takes serious effort, time, and practice. Some steps are very challenging and may take months to years to accomplish— such as the acceptance of impermanence to which we devote a chapter. Skills such as the ability to even detect and later observe sensations require serious effort and concentration. In that the Sentinel Sites℠ Mindfulness, (called Sentinel Sites℠) approach we have created (to be described) came from the experience at the Goenka courses. We strongly recommend doing at least one 10-day (or something similar) in that one can obtain a great level of observation skill in a focused period of time. One may build solely from this approach, as Norm did, or use a variety of approaches as Karolynn did. In her various activities, she has found that many of the mediation experts have taken one or a number of the Vipassana Resource Institute[1] courses and found them useful.

We’ve aimed to make this book short but sufficiently complete so that you can use this for both basic background and as a workbook for developing insight and making progress efficiently. Chapter 2 discusses some of the obstacles faced in the journey of attempting to learn and then adopt a new approach to living with a clearer mind. Chapter 3 focuses on impermanence and Chap. 4 discusses terms and concepts from Eastern thought that require explanation and definition to avoid being stuck on strange-sounding and unfamiliar words. With this background, Chap. 5–7 move from Level 1 to Level 3 basically describing how one can not only access thoughts by the biochemical and physiological changes they produce but can also develop observational skills that become constant so that one has a high degree of awareness essentially all the time.

This is the Sentinel Sites℠ approach that is a systems approach to the link between thoughts and actions and how to be in better control of the continuum of thoughts-to-actions which have interruptible steps, perhaps surprisingly so. That does not mean everything will be done perfectly. Rather, one can have the skill of being aware, non-reactive (or at least less-reactive) and responding thoughtfully and effectively in place of knee-jerk responses that often occur when someone is living in a torrent of thoughts, feelings and actions that at first seem to be beyond understanding and control. Chapter 8 brings us to how this new paradigm will be lived. We aim to get to the point quickly, however, there is some repetition used to remind the reader of important concepts that will be especially useful for people reading the book in sections over time.

There are three Appendices: Appendix A describes a Goenka Vipassana course so that you will be comfortable taking it should you choose to do so. Appendix B provides two scripted meditations to help learn and practice new skills. Appendix C puts together some of the essential points of the book with the key figures, and concepts as a convenient, two-minute reminder.

There should certainly be no expectation that someone will gain insights and skills for achieving mental clarity just by reading this book. It takes learning and practice but this book will serve as a blueprint. Since we did not have such a to-the-point systematic guide, we don’t know if this will present too much information too quickly. What we hope is that you will realize that one can develop a superb set of skills to make life better and clearer. It requires work, persistence, perseverance and patience but it does not involve (a) anyone influencing your mind other than yourself, (b) drugs or alcohol (in fact you may find alcohol to be distracting as we have) or (c) extremes of behavior.

Grey box: There are sections labeled “Grey box”. These have additional supportive discussions that some may find overly detailed while others may find them useful.

To start the progress of learning new mental skills and clarity from a similar starting line, the next chapter is meant to encourage inquisitiveness and the freedom to think.

Footnotes

1

http://www.vridhamma.org/.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. ColemanMindfulness for the High Performance WorldIdentity in a Changing Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4_2

2. Challenges to Overcome—Unexamined Lives, Living an Image, and the Mind-Made World

C. Norman Coleman[1] and Karolynn F. Coleman[2]

(1) International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

(2) Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

C. Norman Coleman

Keywords

ProblemsMind-made sufferingExamined/unexamined lifeRealityLife of imagesTypes of knowledgeCravingsAversions

This chapter will begin at the dash-outlined box “Life has its problems” in Fig. 2.1. We examine some of the challenges to overcome in developing a new approach to life’s problems.

Fig. 2.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm. “Life has its problems”

Current Society and Culture: Living Contrary to Our Nature

The economic crises, political turmoil, fear from terrorism, disparities of wealth, instant and anonymous platforms for people giving their often negative opinions, untruths (lies), and ranting/venting on various media have created a sense of dysfunction, unhappiness, frustration, and anger. Are the feelings of neediness, insecurity, resentment, and irritation that often underlie even our good days really necessary? Are these states of mind and feelings simply inevitable or can we live a much more balanced life, despite all the imperfections and problems of living that we face each day? The answers to the two questions are “No, not inevitable” and “Yes, we can be more balanced” but a lack of balance isn’t entirely surprising given how much different we live in our 24/7 technological era. Looking at human evolution and the rapid changes in society in the last century, we live much of our lives contrary to our nature, often barely in contact with our natural environment and one another. Our busyness and electronics have helped create an “absent presence”. We are among others physically but often disconnected—at work, at home, at our recreation, and walking in nature yet unaware of it. Fortunately, with new skills, we can be aware of these issues, concerned and proactive in change and we can deal with the stresses and challenges without the degree of unhappiness or misery that we may now experience. Our days can even routinely become a positive, productive and fulfilling set of events and accomplishments.

Unexamined Lives

The unexamined life is not worth living Socrates (469–399 BC)

Almost 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher made this most provocative statement. Our use of the concept of the unexamined life is not a judgment but rather it is encouragement for each of us to take the opportunity to examine what we are, what life is truly about, how it can be lived to its fullest and how we can go about living our life to our choosing. What are the principles and values that matter? This does not say that one path or other should be taken but rather it is worthwhile to at least examine the direction of one’s life’s journey.

Figure 2.2 illustrates the concept of an unexamined life. A “normal” full life path is illustrated by the cone-shaped background. Starting with our birth, we learn, expand our horizons and choose various paths to take with a wide range of possibilities (the cone) which can and should expand over time. The individual who lives a life illustrated by the cone is allowed to examine life (clear sphere) as it exists and has a wide range of possibilities as to how life can be lived. The size and scope of the cone of possibility will vary by where someone happens to be born, intrinsic talents and abilities, the environment in which they grow up, resources available, and the freedom and curiosity to explore. In a partially examined life, which may be by choice but which is usually at least partially imposed (cross-hatched sphere), the range of possibilities is limited. Such an individual may feel reasonably content living in such a way, but given the intrinsic curiosity of the human mind, most people would likely explore a bit and make choices for themselves. The most extreme example of an unexamined life is the solid sphere where others dictate thinking, behavior and actions. The damage this can produce is potentially catastrophic.

Fig. 2.2

Unexamined life

From the time of our birth, there are many possibilities for growth, development, education, accomplishments, adventures, and people to meet. We all have some constraints, some may be quite limiting, but expanding horizons and perspectives satisfies our intrinsic human curiosity and may lead to new and improved paradigms of living.

The reasons for an unexamined life are many. Each individual’s perceptions of reality certainly vary, as one sees in eyewitness accounts of events that can have remarkable differences among observers. However, active and imposed rejection of reality takes a toll. As illustrated in Fig. 2.3, much mental energy is spent in holding back reality. The effort may be individual but it is usually cultural or societal making it a challenge, or even dangerous, for a person to move beyond the limits set for them. Given the inherent curious nature of people, the mental, emotional and physical consequences of this restraint can be severe. The risk of venturing beyond limits imposed by others may be among life’s greatest challenges but peace of mind may be hard to achieve when others do the thinking for you. In the long run, it probably takes less effort and energy to explore and live within reality than to keep holding it off.

Fig. 2.3

The unexamined life: it takes energy to hold back reality

Living the unexamined life takes energy and effort. Reality is around us. This includes diversity of people, cultures and societies and nature with its power and beauty. To live separated from reality requires effort and energy.

The patching may come from those within or from those who for various reasons enclose others. Those who try to leave may be subjected to severe consequences, yet the benefit to them of living in reality outside the rigid system may be substantial and worth the effort and risk. Examining one’s life does not imply that one will find it bad or worthy of significant change. It may reinforce the current situation and choice. The process of examination will add clarity to one’s thinking and living.

Living a Life of Images

Another face of the unexamined life is living a life of images. This may include taking on a persona of another person or even of an imaginary or idealized person. We are all subject to the advertising and media that tell us what to do and how to behave and look. Figure 2.4 illustrates what is obvious to all of us. We are surrounded by appearances, mannerisms, titles, various “bright-shiny” material objects and so forth that we find attractive. We can get into low self-esteem and unrealistic negative assessment of ourselves when we define and then judge ourselves by aiming to take on these various mannerisms. We may lose our innate strengths by trading our own characteristics, skills and talents for those of others.

Fig. 2.4

Living a life of images

One is constantly surrounded by fancy objects, appearances, titles, and mannerisms that one may consider desirable. One may consider them so appealing that these are copied so that another individual’s persona is adopted as one’s own. There is a great deal of energy expended in looking for such things to copy, copying them, looking for new and better ones and constantly following the whims and fashions of the day. Internal wanting will be constant as will not-wanting of one’s own innate characteristics.

Understanding skillful characteristics that we see in others and looking toward role models for evidence that life can be lived in a decent, moral and compassionate way can be very useful. Good mentors can help us develop in better ways. Emulating good characteristics is useful but crossing the line to become another person and constantly changing from one persona to another is problematic. It is important to understand the difference between adopting the skillful characteristics of role models compared to copying superficial aspects of other people’s existence.

Knowledge: Learned, Intellectual and Experiential

We often seek answers where they are not, and do not seek answers where they are. How do we know what we know? Eastern thought makes a big point of this question.

Fig. 2.5

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm. “Goal”

- Learned knowledge is what you are taught as a child, including things you need to know to go through the routines of life. This will include philosophical approaches and practices from your culture and, likely, some degree of dogma and ritual you are expected to follow. This may include religious teaching, behavioral norms of your country or culture, and codes of behavior. Learned knowledge includes things you are expected to know.

- Intellectual knowledge comes through formal education, self-directed reading and learning, and discussion. This is the knowledge you synthesize on your own. This is often a memorable aspect of college and young adulthood. This would include philosophy, religion, social science, and psychology. It may include reading about Eastern thought and meditation. It may be very profound in concept but it is often in the abstract. We know many things on this level but how well do we really know them?

- Experiential knowledge comes from actual experience. Before we have children, we think we know what it is like to be a parent, but is it really that way? We think we know that there is a link between our mind and our body, but do we see the link between our thoughts and biochemical and physiological changes/reactions within our bodies and how we feel? We talk about an open, clear mind, but do we really know what it is until we experience it? We may talk about equanimity and of being aware and nonreactive, but do we know what that really means and how it feels?

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. The Buddha.

We return to Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering and next consider the dash-outlined box “Goal: Freedom from mind-made component of suffering” in Fig. 2.5.

Suffering

There is a possible misconception that Eastern thought says that life is suffering (called “dukkha” or “ducca”). More properly, it means that in reality life contains events that can cause suffering. There are events that one would prefer to not have happened. Despite one’s best effort, tragedies and illness do occur and death is inevitable. On the positive side of the ledger there are many beautiful moments in life from natural surroundings to family and personal interactions to successes in work and at play and to simply being alive. Good and bad times are both parts of life and both come and go. Real internal misery comes with grasping and clinging to good events, rather than enjoying them while they last, and railing against and loathing bad events, rather than trying to make the best out of them for oneself and other people affected. Interestingly, we can create internal misery from both good and bad events by our mental reactions of wanting and not-wanting that can be called cravings and aversions

. As with the term “suffering”, “cravings and aversions” are odd-sounding but are very useful terms in developing a new way of living. We live in a “mind-made world” . We can make ourselves sick, even to the point of a stress-related fatal illness.

How we perceive, process, and respond to the cravings and aversions is a fundamental component of understanding our mind and developing the skill of mindfulness. We spend a good deal of time on this in Chaps. 5 and 6.

It’s a Mind-Made World

The mind is its own place and by itself can make a heaven of torture or a heck of heaven. A monk who was a Zen Master taught a seeker, a Samurai, about heaven and hell. [From The Gifts of Suffering[1] by Polly Young-Eisendrath p. 23]: Samurai to Zen Master, “You are supposed to be Zen Master. Tell me the truth about heaven and hell. Do they exist?”

Zen Master: “What, even such an ugly and untalented man such as you can become a Samurai—Amazing!”

Samurai, enraged and drawing sword, “I’ll kill you” he roared.

Master: “This is perdition.”

Samurai: “Thank You!”

Master: “This is heaven!”

The linkage between our perceptions of good and bad and our internal and external reactions are often said to be subconscious, automatic and beyond our control. Fortunately, as we will soon see, that is not the case at all. The mind-made world is within understanding and control and not beyond it.

What Is Reality?

When we watch a movie, we may experience strong emotional feelings. We are frightened in the horror movies, saddened in a tragedy, invigorated when some bad guy gets it in a detective or spy picture, and uplifted by seeing the hero/heroine triumph over adversity in a drama. When the movie ends, we are quickly dropped back into reality—waiting in line to leave the parking lot—yet some of the emotional feeling from the film may persist for hours or days. The emotional setting in which our eyes and ears placed us made us react as if it were real. Our body reacted to the image on the screen as if we actually lived that experience.

Let’s briefly look into our mind-body connection. The term “mind-body” may conjure up all kinds of responses from ridicule to disbelief to fear of the supernatural to awe of an incomprehensible connection that somehow runs our life completely beyond our recognition or control. Yet, with some relatively straightforward techniques, we can begin to understand this connection and develop our mind-body knowledge and skill. For now, try this experiment which we’ll call Mind-Body 101: “Introduction to the connection between thoughts and physiological and biochemical reactions”: Mind-Body 101. Sit in a relatively comfortable chair - no special position - and relax for a few minutes. Close your eyes. Try to observe your breathing by the feeling of the air coming in and out your nose. If that doesn’t work try observing the expansion of your chest or abdomen. It is not easy to concentrate on the breath as the mind jumps about very quickly. Also try to observe your pulse rate. You can often feel (don’t touch but just get the internal sensation) the pulsing of the arteries in your neck. Try to get a feel for the sensation in your skin, perhaps on your forehead or cheeks. Survey, if you can, your upper abdomen/lower chest to see if your “guts” are relaxed or there is a “knot in the pit of your stomach”. Sit and observe these for about five minutes. Five minutes is longer than you think. Two or three minutes will suffice for Mind-Body 101.

Now imagine in your mind a person who has wronged you and who has done one heck of a good job at it. It may be a friend who betrayed you, a coworker who bad-mouthed you, a business associate who cheated you, someone in a sporting event who inflicted needless harm on you, or a knock-down, drag-out argument with your spouse or family member. Preselect one of these scenarios but hold it aside from your mind until you have settled down. Then, after the 3–5 min of quiet observation bring the image to mind with full force. And, bring in what you should have done at the time to prevent or avenge this wrong-doing. And, bring in what you will do if and when you get the chance to settle the score. You will really do it next time!

Now survey your breath, heart rate, skin temperature, and feeling in your gut. Don’t get up, don’t move, just sit there, and survey. After a time, release the image of this person and either just open your eyes or, if you’d like, substitute a calm image - that of the sea shore, the woods and birds, or a lovely flower garden.

What happened to your body when you brought in the image of the “bad” person? It reacted did it not? Yet, what you reacted to was not truly there. While a precipitating event may well have strong emotions associated with it, in this exercise, there was a “reality” – a scenario-that you conjured up in your mind that brought on many powerful changes in your physiology and biochemistry. It made you feel unhappy and miserable.

Note: This experiment should not be repeated often as it is contrary to how we should use this mind and body connection. We should use our senses to know when the mind is off on its own creating reactions within us that cause us unhappiness or mind-made misery. And, with some training and effort, we can eventually use the ability to see these reactive mental processes just as they begin and to use our subtle bodily sensations to detect and eventually diminish or even rid ourselves of these unhealthy mental and physiological reactions. Mind-Body 101 is merely a one-shot experiment to demonstrate how the body can be dramatically changed by mental processes. Thus, our body receives sensations from the five external senses-sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch-and also the mind. All six sources produce sensations, a critical point in the cycle of creating unhappiness. For it is the reaction to these sensations that is a key element in what we’ll call the cycle of mind-made misery. It can be broken.

The sensation-to-reaction process is the mind-body connection that when truly and deeply understood can be used to your advantage. It can be used to tell you when you are about to react and you can learn how to not react. And even more, it can be used to tell you what is going on deep within your mind, the feelings and thoughts that may be influencing your behavior of which you may not have been consciously aware. Feelings are signals to be noted, acted on and not acted out. There are valuable mind-body techniques that can be used for relaxation and others for deeper introspection and awareness, which we will cover.

Living in reality means truly understanding how things really are. All too often, our biases, desires, dislikes and other mental processes distort it. Reality isn’t always what we may want but it is where we must live. And, we can only live in the present, which is not as easy to do as it sounds. We spend much time planning future events or reliving those from the past. While we cannot control all the events that we encounter, we can change how we respond. This, in turn, can change how we and possibly others around us respond or react so that our thoughts and actions can lead to harmony where there may have been dissonance, tranquility where there may have been anger, and wise compassion where there may have been judgment, disdain or jealousy. Living in reality is really powerful.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become. The Buddha.

A useful metaphor—Clearing your mind-field.

As in the military concept of a minefield that needs clearing before proceeding safely, so it is that clearing one’s mind-field will allow life to be traversed more richly and safely.

Summary Points

- Our way of life over the last century has often separated us from nature and the connection to our natural surroundings that are so much a part of human evolution. Physical activity and connection to nature are important components of healthy living.

- There are three kinds of knowledge: learned, intellectual and experiential. There is a progression from being told what to do or think, to contemplating something and to truly incorporating it.

- Low self-esteem can inappropriately come from judging oneself by false criteria. All too often we let other people or systems define and then validate who and what we are.

- Our thoughts produce profound changes in our biochemistry and physiology, as the Mind-Body 101 demonstrated. For many readers, this may be the first time such a connection is so obvious and is a huge step toward realizing that we can intervene in such mind-to-body connections.

We have now started Levels of AwarenessSM Level 1 (Fig. 1.2). The mind initiates thoughts and actions to try to make “you” feel better but one is unaware that this is going on. There are key concepts from Eastern philosophy that will now be covered.

Footnotes

1

The Gifts of Suffering: Finding Insight, Compassion, and Renewal, Polly Young-Eisendrath, 1996.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. ColemanMindfulness for the High Performance WorldIdentity in a Changing Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4_3

3. Understanding Impermanence

C. Norman Coleman[1] and Karolynn F. Coleman[2]

(1) International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

(2) Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

C. Norman Coleman Email: mindfulness.hpworld@gmail.com

Keywords

ImpermanenceCycles of lifeControlUnpredictabilityAgingDeathNeuroplasticity

Note: If you are already familiar with these terms and concepts you may wish to jump to Chap. 5 or skim the next two chapters. Exactly how these are interpreted may vary from expert to expert. The purpose here is to make them sufficiently understandable so that the focus is on the skill.

This chapter and Chap. 4 consider the terminology and concepts that are encountered in reading about mindfulness and meditation. These may sound a bit odd at first but it is useful to understand the terms and concepts as they are quite valuable and you encounter them in reading of Eastern thought and mindfulness. The dash-outlined boxes “Skillful, successful”, “Less skillful, unskillful” in Fig. 3.1 are a good place to start in that they are useful for students and for those with an accomplished skill set rather than the absolutes of “good or bad” and “right or wrong”. Skillful gets you where you want to go while unskillful not so. It isn’t that the good or bad and right or wrong don’t exist but in developing and practicing mindfulness “skillful or less skillful” are a bit softer and, in fact, you can find yourself smiling at yourself rather than getting angry when you don’t quite hit the mark you are aiming for by calling what you did and yourself unskillful rather than bad or wrong.

Fig. 3.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm. “Skillful” or “Less, or unskillful”

Our own impermanence is possibly one of, if not the most difficult concept to truly accept and integrate into our day-to-day thinking. It is a reality that nothing is permanent. Life and nature are cyclic. There are constant cycles of change from our molecules to our planet to the solar system and beyond. Change is an intrinsic property of physics and biology. While change is inevitable it is not predictable. The inherent property of matter and the universe make events unpredictable with change and impermanence being the only constants. They are inescapable. Coming to terms and accepting impermanence is one of the biggest challenges and triumphs to living a more aware and clear life. For this reason, it is presented next in a few ways that may be helpful in terms of understanding how impermanence is reality and permanence is an illusion.

Impermanence

The concept and term impermanence pervade both Eastern and Western thought. It is simple, after all, in that nothing is forever. It is a rather disturbing concept to think of oneself as a bunch of molecules held together for a period of time, only to be returned to the earth. On the scale of a lifetime or even just decades, one can fathom one’s impermanence. But, on a day-to-day or minute-to-minute scale, we often think of our “self” as something that goes through life relatively unchanged or unchangeable. While we age a bit, we basically are what we are, right?

To accept change on the intellectual level is easy. To do so on the experiential level, to really except one’s impermanence and be comfortable with it, is the challenge. While impermanence may be frightening it is also liberating as it is impermanence that allows us to grow and change as individuals and societies. But, it is also important to recognize that the changes that have occurred as we humans evolved from simple organisms to complex societies define some of our hard-wiring that is an inherent feature of all creatures, including humans.

Cycles of Life: Control Is an Illusion

The belief that we can control events, or the perceived need that controlling events is the solution to happiness, is a collision course with misery. That there is much in the universe that is so far beyond our control is obvious. However, recognizing that the outcome of many or most events in our daily lives is beyond our control is a good place to begin. Appreciating the cycles of life that are the basic truths of our existence as human beings is another good common starting point. The one constant among them all is that there is constant change. In the next moment, nothing will be exactly as it was in the present moment.

Before illustrating some of the cycles of biology, there is one very useful principle to introduce called “Occam’s Razor”, attributed to the fourteenth century logician and Franciscan friar, William of Occam[1]. Occam’s Razor is used in a number of ways but for our purpose we will use the definition employed by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time[2] (Bantam Books 1988, p. 55).

Cut out all the features of the theory that cannot be observed.

Using this general interpretation allows the discussion that follows to omit aspects of our existence that, to our knowledge, are not subject to classical scientific observation, such as the presence of a God or gods, the existence of one particular afterlife or another or any at all, and the presence of extraterrestrial or supernatural beings. We argue neither for nor against any belief. These are personal issues and the dispute among them for correctness or dominance has been the source of much controversy and destruction over the eons. What is most important, however, is that the presence or absence of these arguable but non-provable factors is not an essential feature of living life well. The techniques for achieving a happy and healthier mental state are not limited to one group or the other.

As this set of terms often comes up, one may distinguish religion from spirituality as described in a scientific journal[3] as follows:

Religion implies traditional beliefs, attitudes, and practices that are part of an organization. Spirituality may include elements of religion but usually describes an individual’s view and the related behaviors that express relatedness to something greater than the self.

A spiritual person is not limited to any religion or group of people and the bonds between spiritual people may simply be the deep sense of commitment to humanity and life in general. It does not necessarily imply the belief in the existence of a deity or in an afterlife although it is often used that way. Therefore, the most useful general concept that is universally applicable is “something greater”.

Neither religious belief nor spirituality need to be invoked at all. The broader definition of “something greater” may include a purpose for living, a general connectivity with the community of humanity and a strong sense of dedication to a selfless purpose. It involves knowing essential and altruistic values and acting on these values in our daily lives. Why this point is relevant is that as when one develops mindfulness, the underlying mental patterns or the “default mode” that replace the reactive cycles can—and probably should—change to kindness, gratitude, doing things for others and altruism as these not only do good for others but will lead to a very positive mental and physiological state for oneself.

An essential point in this chapter is the recognition, at least at this point at an intellectual level, of the constantly changing nature of all things. For those interested in further examples, we describe cycles of biology to provide, in concrete terms, the reality of impermanence—or constant change.

Grey box: Cycles of life occur at the microscopic level that includes molecules being synthesized, modified and broken down, energy being produced and utilized, cells dividing and multiplying but also undergoing programmed cell death (or cell suicide when it is no longer needed—called apoptosis (a-pop-TOE-sis)).

The biochemical state of a cell and the physiologic state of the entire organism varies over the course of the day. There are daily rhythms called circadian rhythms. As well there are other rhythms that cycle over months (for example, menstrual cycle) and others may be present over longer time periods. The biochemical state of a cell is also determined by its living conditions or its microenvironment. When shocked or stressed with a major change in its environment—such as too much heat, not enough oxygen, not enough nutrients, or exposure to chemicals—the cell hunkers down in what is called a stress response. In such a state, the cell does not undergo cell division. It conserves its resources for survival and reverses the stress response once all is clear. So, in essence, while we may look in the mirror and think we are stable or pretty permanent, there are tremendous changes going on all the time in what we call “me.”

Impermanence applies to our mental state so that we are not “destined” to be happy, angry, sad, mad, jealous, mean, or what have you. These states are constantly being created, renewed and recycled and many of these states—our wants/cravings and our dislikes/aversions—are products of our mental cycles. Once these mental cycles and processes are understood—at an intellectual and experiential level—we can begin to free ourselves from the bonds we have inadvertently and unknowingly created.

Hard-Wiring While change and impermanence are the rule, there are not endless possibilities of what we can do as individuals. Functions of the cell are controlled by DNA and genes. (These included hereditably genetic and epigenetic changes in gene structure and function. Epigenetic changes are a modification of the DNA structure that can turn genes on or off. This information doesn’t change the basic DNA itself but a silenced gene is often transmitted to a daughter cell so the change in function can be passed down—or it can be reversed, too.). The pattern of gene expression, that is which genes are on and which are off, determine what kind of function a specific cell will have (heart cell, nerve cell, muscle cell, blood cell). On a larger scale, the genes or DNA also control the function of the body through gene products called RNA and proteins with complex networking and feedback loops. Defective genes may cause a loss of a normal function, as seen in certain metabolic diseases like diabetes. A fascinating experiment done a few years ago in mice demonstrated that when a certain gene did not function due to a mutation the mother would no longer mother her young. Mothering is a trait built into our genes.

Whether other aspects of our human societal interaction are similarly hard-wired by specific genes remains to be fully elucidated. Nonetheless, there is emerging evidence that societal and communal behavior is in our “program” as we see it in creatures from which we have evolved. That we have this communal pattern of behavior is likely the result of evolution because living in communities gives groups of animals an advantage in the constant struggle for survival.

It is easy to speculate that due to hard-wiring, we do certain behaviors that are good for our survival. Dogs swimming, birds bathing, the sound of the sea or a waterfall to humans—there seems to be a real inner pleasure from and affinity for water. Given the importance of water, this is a good thing for survival. There is likely something in the nervous system, perhaps some pleasant sensation, that makes the creature do the specific action that it needs for survival. Sexual behavior would certainly fill this bill. That life required physical activity to survive may help explain the good feeling of simply being in shape and for those who do vigorous exercise there is the positive feeling often called the runner’s high.

Given our millions of years of existence within nature, it would not be surprising that there were pleasant sensations derived from being in the sounds, sights, smells, touch, and taste of natural surroundings. Our enjoyment may not simply be learned, we may be hard-wired to have pleasant sensations in natural surroundings that are important for our survival. This is somewhat speculative although it is apparent that there are mind-body sensation connections that do drive behavior. Thus, the mind-body linkage in which the mental processes create pleasant sensations in the body helps ensure survival.

Fig. 3.2

The cycle of life and Occam’s Razor

Between fertilization and death is life as we know it. Following fertilization, there is a fetus then a baby, which grows into an adult. With time, the person becomes elderly and death eventually occurs. In addition to one’s motivation and efforts, what one becomes in life is a result of one’s genetic makeup, received from the parents, and other external forces including nutrition, education, environment, community and family values.

What happens after death is debated and there are many strong beliefs. Many of these beliefs appear contradictory. Is there an entity called a soul? Are we reincarnated as a person or as some life force? Are there judgment and an assignment to a heaven or a hell? Is this permanent or does one get another chance? That the body itself decays is well known although there is a recent trend for some people to try to preserve themselves through cryogenics (cold storage).

Despite strong beliefs and at-times vehement and passionate arguments it is not possible to conclusively prove what happens after death. Since this cannot be proven with certainty, it is not productive to argue about this. Thus, we use the concept of Occam’s Razor and will not deal with the untestable. One can deal with life’s issues without having to agree on what happens after death.

However, we certainly do leave our mark during life and after our death. We do leave a legacy

. Our actions and deeds affect life for those who are touched by them. This obviously affects our children but also those with whom we come in contact. It might be through an invention or discovery, through a book or work of art or through teaching and a leadership role. While these are visible evidence of a legacy, what may not necessarily be appreciated is that each and every one of us leaves our mark by our daily actions and interactions.

Thus, whatever one wishes to call it, we do leave behind the results of our deeds and actions which reflect our character, principles, ethics and efforts. We all have a legacy, in a sense we all have a degree of immortality, in addition to whatever are our beliefs as to what happens after death.

Birth—Death and Occam’s Razor

The cycle of birth–life–death is not in doubt. As soon as we are born, we are moving inexorably toward our death. Death is such a dramatic event that it is the focus of much of our attention throughout life, certainly as we enter the parenting years and beyond. To keep us on the same page, let’s illustrate this cycle of life and apply Hawking’s definition of Occam’s Razor in Fig. 3.2 so it isn't necessary to debate what happens after death.

One thing we have in common, all of us, is that what we say and do impacts those around us. In essence, we are all teachers and role models because our actions are observed by others and influence others in perhaps very subtle ways. Think of what it is about leaders of various beliefs, religions, and institutions that we tend to admire. It is their personal characteristics

—how they lived their lives, what values they held dear and how they demonstrated kindness and wise compassion, even in the face of enormous odds or animosity. These “great” people are in that category because their words and deeds have taught us how to live better in love, peace, harmony and positive contributions to our world. It is their example—deeds—and teaching—words—that have changed the lives of others. Whatever our role in life or position is in society, we all have the ability to teach others through our words and deeds.

Illusion of Control

What is in our past is gone forever. We cannot recreate that situation no matter how much we may try or want to. That the past can influence the present and future is apparent. That the physical conditions of the past affect the present conditions is obvious. Being caught in a natural disaster or struck by a serious illness can greatly alter our physical state and can even end our life. Being born in one part of the world has an enormous impact on how we live our lives. Nothing we do in the present can ensure where we will end up in the future. We can do our best, try our hardest, obsess our most repetitious and worry our deepest, yet we cannot ensure ourselves of an outcome. Even perfection, should it exist, cannot produce permanence. This is not to say that efforts won’t have at least some bearing and perhaps a crucial contribution on how things turn out. Nonetheless, we can only control our effort and not the outcome. Judging effort and intention rather than outcome is more reasonable when assessing others and, most of all, yourself.

Grey Box: Chaos and Uncertainty Are Realities as Is the
Unpredictability of Nature

In that developing an acceptance of impermanence and that one cannot control outcomes is critical, a few final concepts are presented from physics, nature, and mathematics. That nature constantly changes is apparent. The seasons come and go, each year being different from the one before. Weather constantly changes. The “same” lake, river, beach, mountain cabin or campsite that we visit each year is always somewhat different. One concept that is closely linked to change is that of unpredictability. This is useful to understand as much of our unhappiness comes from the desire to control outcomes or from the perception of control.

A mathematical theory called chaos theory helps describe phenomenon such as weather, animal populations and the financial markets. As noted in Exploring Chaos[4], (Nina Hill, editor, p. 8): “Chaos theory has resulted from a synthesis of imaginative mathematics and readily accessible computer power. It presents a universe that is deterministic, obeying the fundamental physical laws, but with a predisposition for disorder, complexity and unpredictability”.

An important conceptual distinction is between “deterministic” and “predictable”. It is deterministic in that, in the Northern hemisphere, it will be warmer in July than in February, yet, it is not possible to accurately predict the weather on July 4, 2020 or even two weeks hence.

Even if one could measure most components of a physical system such as those within one’s body, there is a built-in uncertainty in the measurement of physical properties and the physical state of matter that stems from quantum mechanics, a branch of physics. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 54) states: “In order to predict the future position and velocity of a particle, one has to be able to measure its present position and velocity accurately”. But the act of measuring its position will disturb its velocity in an unpredictable way. Similarly, the act of measuring its velocity will disturb its position. In radioactive decay, a certain percentage of a group of molecules will decay every second but exactly which ones will decay cannot be determined. Thus, there is built-in uncertainty in the very core of our molecules.

If we look at predicting processes in ourselves, it is not possible to accurately measure the initial conditions on many levels—from the quantum mechanics of molecules, to the biochemical status of the cells, to the effects from the environment around us. And, it is not possible to accurately predict external forces—food, other people, weather, natural disasters, infectious organisms, and so forth. Clearly, there are volitional acts of man that must be regulated either by internal ethics or external laws, but even these are beyond one’s full control.

Impermanence, change and cycles impact our universe, planet, society, body, molecules, and mind. Features of the physical world can be observed by our five senses. It is the ability to observe change and cycles within our minds that bring us into a position where we can regulate how we interact with the world around us and how we can bring richness, peace and new meaning to living. Impermanence will provide feelings of loss along with fears of the future and wishing for things to stay as they are but also provide a focal point for making changes and even for broad optimism of what can be attempted and accomplished.

Summary Points

- All things are impermanent from basic physics to biology to the obvious world around us. It is a challenge to truly accept the concepts of one’s impermanence but once accepted it can be used to great advantage in changing how to live. This is a very important concept to work on at the intellectual and experiential level.

- Humans have hard-wiring built-in over the course of evolution. Our communal nature is an important aspect of our survival.

- We also have the ability to alter our thinking and reaction patterns, as observed by neuroscience imaging. There is neuroplasticity in the brain function so that reaction patterns can be rewired.

- Occam’s Razor (as used here) is an excellent concept to allow us to avoid arguing over things that cannot be proven. While such topics as afterlife, religion, deities are personal choices or may be made for us, it is not necessary to agree on one versus the other to improve one’s level of happiness or comfort. Change in how one lives life can occur within almost any framework, given the effort and willingness to explore new techniques and develop new skills. It does not require giving up belief or tradition.

- Commitment to concepts and missions greater than oneself can be part of any life. It is not limited to one group or another.

- Perfection, even if one thinks it exists, does not guarantee an outcome. We can control our efforts and intentions and influence an outcome but we cannot control it. Judging oneself on outcomes is a recipe for misery.

- Impermanence is, on the one hand, frightening, when one realizes that he/she will eventually die and that all things must pass. On the other hand, impermanence is liberating in that we can alter what we do, how we act and how we think, to make life better for ourselves and those around us.

We are beginning to see how one can move from Level 1 Level of Awareness to Level 2. Impermanence is a reality that when understood and incorporated into thinking is surprisingly liberating.

Footnotes

1

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html.

2

Stephen Hawking, Bantam-Dell Books, 1988.

3

J. Ziegler, Spirituality returns to the fold in medical practice. J. Natl. Cancer Instit. 90(17), 1255–1257 (1998).

4

Nina Hall. Exploring Chaos. W. W. Norton Co, 1994.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. ColemanMindfulness for the High Performance WorldIdentity in a Changing Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4_4

4. Understanding Eastern Terms Using Western Concepts

C. Norman Coleman[1] and Karolynn F. Coleman[2]

(1) International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

(2) Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

C. Norman Coleman Email: mindfulness.hpworld@gmail.com

Keywords

AwarenessIgnoranceDelusionAttachmentEgoKarmaFour Noble TruthsNoble Eightfold pathEquanimityMoralityConcentrationWisdomCompassionDhamma (dharma)SanghaGratitude

This chapter continues consideration of the three dash-outlined boxes “Skillful, successful”, “Moral and ethical tools” that include the “Golden rule” and “Eightfold Noble Path” in Fig. 4.1. We continue to define some of the terms and concepts of Eastern philosophy in ways that might make them easier to understand or as a review for readers with experience. (Note: This is by no means a teaching of Buddhism nor a suggestion that one should study it. It is included as some of the constructs from it are useful for developing mindfulness for the high performance world.)

Fig. 4.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm. “Skillful” and “Moral and Ethical tools”

N.B. The discussion of each of these can become very complex and philosophical and require considerable effort and a distraction from the effort to develop mindfulness. The method we present builds on the essence of mindfulness. It is most amazing and impressive how the Buddha made these fundamental observations millennia ago demonstrating the power of thought and insight. Not meaning to overly simplify or minimize the value of the scholarly approach, the aim here is to provide a useful approach so that one can move to achieve the skill of mindfulness and awareness.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is living in the present—seeing things as they are with clarity, awareness and equanimity. One grows in experience and wisdom. It is not a specific activity or thought and it is not a self-centered way of living. It is, in essence, being “awake” to reality.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction in mind-body medicine is a new field within preventive and behavioral medicine. Research has shown that mindfulness, concentrating with moment-to-moment awareness, can provide long-lasting physical and psychological symptom reduction, as well as deep positive changes in attitude, behavior, and perception of self, others, and the world. It helps individuals cope with the stresses associated with the challenges of daily living.

Meditation, mindfulness and related techniques are well entrenched in Western psychology. For example, cognitive therapy is a Western psychology that uses the linkage between how one thinks with how one feels and subsequently how one behaves. Self-monitoring and working with a therapist helps one understand the link between thoughts and then the more negative unrealistic ways of thinking are replaced by more positive realistic ones. In a sense, meditation/awareness training is a tool that facilitates the self-monitoring of both thoughts, sensations and conditioned behavior patterns so that the linkage can be understood and change can be made in thinking and behavior.

I Am Awake—Awareness

The thinking and reaction patterns within our individual minds have a profound impact on how we live our lives, as illustrated in Fig. 1.2, Levels of AwarenessSM. Awareness encompasses the patterns of thought, the link between thoughts and how we feel, the ability to see clearly-to see things as they are—and the ability to approach life with equanimity and to approach other people with understanding, wise compassion and balance.

Techniques to facilitate becoming more aware and centered, including but not limited to meditation, are used throughout the world. Mediation is used in various ways and techniques in a wide variety of settings, including religious, spiritual, and mental and physical health. Often when one begins to talk about meditation, it may conjure up societies and religions that are unfamiliar to most Westerners, some of which perhaps appear foreboding. One may think of monks in saffron robes, reincarnation, many gods and rituals, mantras and meditations with burning candles; perhaps we think of the very different cultures—large populations, poverty, different clothing, body decorations and systems of bartering and business with which we are unfamiliar.

The basic skill has nothing to do with any of this. Returning to The World’s Religions by Huston Smith we will look at the basic philosophy of living articulated by a man named Siddhartha Gautama known as the Buddha about 2,500 years ago. The background for the basic philosophy of living and the meditation technique attributed to him is well articulated by SN Goenka in The Art of Living[1]:
Vipassana

Meditation

. We are not advocating Buddhism or any belief system but focusing on the remarkable insights from observations of the person known at the Buddha.

The Buddha spent much time trying to understand suffering and unhappiness. As with most reformers, the practices and beliefs are based on or are compatible with the philosophies of their time, in this case, reincarnation. But, belief in reincarnation or an afterlife is not at all necessary to utilize the insight meditation techniques to improve how one lives. Fundamental to the approach discovered 2,500 years ago is that the cause and solution for suffering lie within and any person can learn and use this approach to life. The answer is not in extremes—neither asceticism nor indulgence would provide the answer—but rather the “Middle Way” or middle path. Buddha did not engage in metaphysical discussions as these had no answer (he used the Occam’s razor concept, too, long before Occam did). His approach was designed to be practical, to work.

The basic philosophy starts with Four Noble Truths. While often interpreted as pessimistic it is not so. It is meant to be realistic, to see things as they are. By doing so, one can live a more happy, peaceful and harmonious life. To delude oneself produces more problems rather than effective solutions. More on the Four Noble Truths below following discussion of a few Eastern philosophy concepts which make them easier to understand.

Ignorance

An essential component or term in Eastern philosophy that is often misunderstood is ignorance. Ignorance is not derogatory or judgmental. It is rather a lack of understanding of the true nature of all things, that the one element everything has in common is impermanence, and that by our mental reactions and endless cycles we often turn problems into misery.

Egolessness/Ego—Attachment

A tricky term to grasp is that of attachment as it includes various things to which one clings, including one’s identity and the mental and physical being and the lack of real comprehension of their impermanence. It is an unrealistic perception of oneself. Attachment expands to include not just one’s physical self but one’s possessions, thoughts and way of life. While a person with your name certainly exists, you and the world around you are constantly changing so that there is no permanent self. The term “attachment” may be a bit awkward while in the West ego is a more familiar term. Therefore, in this book, we use the terms “ego” and “egolessness”—the concept of “I”, “me” and “mine” as one of the key misconceptions that underlie the mental cycles and can cause overwhelming misery. It is not that you don’t exist as you certainly do, but there is no permanent self and accepting what is and is not really you and yours, breaking the hold of attachment to rigid ideas and accepting that things constantly change have enormous liberating potential.

Not only is the physical structure constantly changing but the mental state is also constantly changing. Our emotions, reactions, thoughts, and sensations change from moment to moment. If we are angry now, we don’t have to be angry later (or five seconds from now!). If we want something very badly now, we may not even care about it later. If aging and death are terrifying now, they don’t have to be terrifying later. Impermanence frees us to change.

Inter-Relatedness and Greed, Hatred, Delusion

There are a few useful concepts from Buddhism. One is the understanding of the continuum of nature and us as part of it. While for a period of time, there are molecules and energy that make up a being known as “me”; we are not really apart from the rest of the universe as our components are part of the greater set of components. We just borrow the molecules for a time, with luck maybe up to 100 years or so. The concept of “I” being separate from everything else leads to attachment to things and to ego. We tend to think of ourselves as a distinct, completely separate entity. While we do, indeed, exist for a period of time we are connected in innumerable ways to the world around us and are part of the continuum of the greater universe that surrounds, encompasses and enables us. Recognizing this “connectivity” is helpful in not harming others or the environment as it is “us”.

There are three “poisons” that are the source of “evil” or negative mental states: greed, hatred and delusion. Not being judgmental, it is not difficult to see how these three characteristics can be quite harmful to one’s own mental state and also cause harm to others.

The Four Noble Truths

The nature of suffering (or dukkha or ducca) The origin of suffering The cessation of suffering The way leading to the cessation of suffering (The Noble Eightfold Path)

The first Noble Truth is easy to understand: life does contain problems and suffering. The second Noble truth, that wanting/craving and not-wanting/aversion are among the key causes for suffering, is a bit more difficult but can be understood by some introspection and with techniques, to be detailed below. What it says is that much of our suffering we create by wanting to satisfy our selves. We want certain things to happen—we want an outcome. We want other things to not happen—we want an outcome. The “thing” can be a material object we obtain, a natural occurrence (sunny day), another person to do something or not do something, an event to happen or not happen (Super Bowl victory, illness, aging, death), and so forth. We develop attachments to these. There are outcomes we want and don’t want (both can be cravings) and those we really aim to avoid such as a threat to ourselves physical, mental or otherwise (aversions). The act of craving and aversion—the mental reactions—are what cause our mind-made misery. Back to the two arrows: (1) the event that has occurred is the first arrow; (2) the mind-made misery—our reaction to the event—is the second arrow. The third Noble truth is great news—there is a way out, and the fourth truth is a description of how to do it in the Noble Eightfold path.

Noble Eightfold Path

The Eightfold path is divided into three segments. None of these contain religion, ritual or dogma and all are compatible with any religion, ethnic group or geography. The basic approach is essentially a blueprint for living. The three components of the Eightfold path are Morality, Concentration and Wisdom.

Morality: To develop a mind that is peaceful and calm, one cannot continually do harm to others. Therefore, one needs to live a moral life. Morality includes Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood, described in detail in a number of the texts including. In essence, one should not say or do anything that would be harmful to others or to oneself. Similarly, one’s occupation should not be harmful to other living creatures.

Concentration: One needs to understand and begin to tame the workings of the mind. This includes Right Effort, Right Awareness (called mindfulness) and Right Concentration. The effort and concentration include focusing (learning how to focus the mind on the breath is commonly used since the breath is always there and requires no props), seeing the relationship between the mind and sensations, being aware of the working of the mind itself, and living in the present. This requires serious effort on an ongoing basis. Concentration is the ability to focus and stay focused. Meditation is not an end in itself, but rather it is a time to develop the skill that enables a more constant state of mindfulness.

Wisdom: The third component consists of Right Thought and Right Understanding. As one comprehends, at the deeper and deeper levels, the true nature of the mind, then the thoughts that had previously been troublesome—the cravings, aversions and ego/attachment—will dissipate. These will be replaced by healthier thoughts—wise compassion, kindness and gratitude, and the healthier mental state of awareness and calmness that replaces endless cycles and reactivity. This is termed “ equanimity

.”

The calm and open mental state is not at all passive and inert but rather a mind state that is very rich. Some authors describe this as the “Buddha nature“, which is the mental state one achieves as one peels away the layers of mental reaction. This inherent “nature” is a very alive and peaceful state in which one lives a more satisfied and productive life. One is living life as it is, not as one wishes it to be and not within some artificial construct with the constant distractions from ego (attachment), cravings and aversions.

A key point of insight is that the state of equanimity is not something that must be hunted, prayed for or wished for. It is an underlying component of what we are and it will become the “default mode” to which our mind turns in place of the “reactive mode”. Perhaps one can fully reach an “all-equanimity” state or enlightenment although what is a more appropriate descriptor is that one develops the mental ability to turn off distractions, turn on and experience moments of full awareness and, all-in-all, live more and more in a nonreactive or very minimally reactive state. As the previous reactive mental cycles dissipate, a different background mental theme can be established, one of true wise compassion and gratitude

. A new default mode comes into effect. These changes involve neuroplasticity as described in the book by Dan Siegal[2].

Sila, or abstaining from actions which cause harm—are central to obtaining focus and awareness.

There are five precepts: abstention from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and the use of intoxicants. These are not commandments in the Ten Commandment sense but to not practice these will make it hard to proceed. The use of intoxicants seems to be an issue of interpretation (any use or excessive use) but as one progresses, the impact of any intoxicant on mental clarity may become apparent. However, one may choose to interpret the use of intoxicants such as alcohol, their deleterious effect on mindfulness will make the benefit of avoiding any intoxicant more obvious as one develops the skill of mindfulness. One may not like the loss of clarity that alcohol produces and so abstention is easy to do (if not socially awkward at times but readily resolved).

Compassion (Wise Compassion)

The concept of compassion can be misunderstood. It is not pity or condescension but empathy and caring.

Compassion is one of the greatest gifts we can give anyone and it costs nothing. It can be directed toward oneself and to others. It requires attention and observing one’s ego so that it is done for the other person’s sake and not one’s own. True and wise compassion not only helps the recipient of the compassion and kindness but it helps the person live a richer, compassionate life. A deep-seated good feeling comes from serving others so that the compassionate person benefits as does the recipient.

Dali Lama: “My religion is very simple. My religion is Kindness”.[3]

Karma

The term “
Karma

” has a variety of uses and the underlying concept is frequently misunderstood. It is not due to external forces or beings, it does not require magical thinking, and an individual is not relegated by some force to a certain fate or mental state. Rather, the mental, emotional and physical state in which we live is a result of past actions and experiences. This can get bogged down in past and future lives and reincarnation but this is not at all necessary. Our current mental state results, in large measure, from our actions and the thoughts that drive them. If we remain angry, we’ll feel angry. If we have harmed another person or persons, we may be fearful of being caught. If we have violated laws, then we may be worried about being punished so that we are deceptive. If we display kindness to all others, we do not generally need to be fearful of interactions with them. If we tell the truth life is easier as “you don’t have to explain the truth”.[4] The presence or lack of “afflictive emotions“ (next chapter) will define the “environment” in which we live. A great description of Karma is that “we are the heir to our own deeds.”

Nirvana and
Enlightenment

Nirvana is not a place but it is a state of being in which the reactive mental processes—wanting/craving and not-wanting/aversion—and the attachment to permanent things (ego)—are no longer present. Life is clear, albeit imperfect, and one can live in harmony with compassion—true kindness and caring—without reactions and reacting. Enlightenment is used variably but a good description is being awake to life’s true nature and having an open, nonreactive and compassionate mind. The discussion of these terms and states could be rather lengthy and are not necessary for developing the skill of mindfulness.

Dhamma (or Dharma) and Sangha

The term dhamma or dharma is often used to express the “true nature of things”. As such, dhamma is not a religion or a practice per se but rather it is a description and recognition of the true nature of things—of reality

. And, as one lives in reality rather than in an artificial or mental construct, then life becomes more and more harmonious.

There are said to be three components to a healthier life, Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. Buddha refers to a clear, awake mind; Dhamma to living in reality, how things really are; and Sangha is community of people with a similar life approach. We use this in an inclusive way, that is, to include fellow travelers in life trying to live a good, kind and moral life, whatever their race, religion, national origin, vocation, etc. With the commonality of compassion and morality as the base and adding kindness and gratitude as an underlying theme one can see and enjoy the marvelous diversity of how people go about living on our planet. Such a perspective opens one up to the many wonders of life on Earth and to the beauty and joy of being alive.

Real Goals and “Near Misses”. Concepts That Can Be Misunderstood

Compassion versus Pity

Compassion means truly understanding the nature of the other person. Seeing life from their point of view. Understanding that others are trying to free themselves from unhappiness and suffering albeit in a way that may not be particularly successful.

Pity is essentially looking down on another. Loathing and denigration may follow.

Love versus Desire

Love is unconditional. It requires nothing in return.

Desire is craving.

Sympathetic Joy versus Comparison

Joy in this regard is truly enjoying another’s accomplishments. Delighting in their success or good fortune.

Comparison is the “where’s mine?” assessment that leads to jealousy. Looking at what someone else has or has done and judging yourself harshly by that comparison.

Equanimity versus Indifference

Equanimity is a clear state of mind in which life can be seen as it truly is. True compassion, caring and kindness. A deep openness and attention.

Indifference is a mind state in which one does not really care.

Positive Influence and Effort versus
Control

Positive influence. With effort, one can influence how events may turn out. Influence with good intention for others and yourself and not for self-motivation or gain will have a positive impact on just about any situation.

Control. Controlling outcomes is not possible due to unexpected forces and events. Influencing outcomes or people solely for self-motivation or gain is certainly possible to some extent but such manipulation can be harmful to others and ultimately to oneself.

Summary Points

- There are many useful codes of living that guide moral behavior. A skillful way of living is not limited to one group or another.

- Mindfulness is living in the present with awareness and equanimity. It is a state of clarity without constant mental reactions.

- The Four Noble Truths say that suffering exists, it has a cause, relief can be obtained and how to do so, using the Noble Eightfold path.

- The Noble Eightfold path describes how to live with less suffering through Morality (Right Speech, Action, and Livelihood), Concentration (Right Awareness, Effort and Concentration) and Wisdom (Right Thought and Understanding). It is not religious.

- The idea of egolessness means that while you do exist there is no permanent self. Attachment is not only to oneself and permanence but to “my” and “mine”. Continuum means that there is not “me” and everything else but rather we are all connected with one another. Change is constant.

- Karma is not predetermined but rather the mental and, in part, physical state in which you live is influenced by your past actions and deeds. The concept does not require past or future lives. Nirvana, then, can be said to be a clear and aware state of mind, also not requiring future lives or heaven.

- Three components to peaceful living include being aware, living in reality and being with people with similar values (Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha). None requires past or future lives or deities, although all could certainly be compatible with such beliefs.

- A few things that can be misunderstood and which have very different mindsets are: compassion versus pity; love versus desire; sympathetic joy versus comparison; equanimity versus indifference; and positive influence versus control.

That one can progress from Level 1 Level of Awareness to 2 and 3 is not mystical or magical and the concepts are much more straightforward than the terms which may sound strange at first.

Footnotes

1

The Art of Living, Vipassana Meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka, by William Hart, 1987.

2

Mindsight, Dan Siegal, 2010, Bantam Books.

3

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/my_religion_is_very_simple-my_religion_is/145384.

4

Sisella Bok. Lying: Moral choice in public and private life. Vintage press, 1999.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. ColemanMindfulness for the High Performance WorldIdentity in a Changing Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4_5

5. Dealing With Problems, Misery, and Victimhood

C. Norman Coleman[1] and Karolynn F. Coleman[2]

(1) International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

(2) Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

C. Norman Coleman Email: mindfulness.hpworld@gmail.com

Keywords

Skillful/unskillfulReaction cyclesCravingAversionEgoAfflictive emotionsRealityVictimhood and entitlementLevel of awareness™

With the essential concept of impermanence discussed and some of the other common terms considered, we now begin to explore at the intellectual and experiential levels the workings of the mind that we will soon learn to change. We consider in Fig. 5.1 the unskillful approaches including the dash-outlined box “Constant reactive mental state” and “Unskilled actions that create more misery” including “Ego, greed, cravings, aversions and victimhood” and lead to “Turning problems into misery…” With the intellectual knowledge in this chapter, we’ll begin the progress from Level of AwarenessSM 1 to Level 2 (Fig. 1.2). We will begin to gain insight into how we are aware of mental processes by the biochemical and physiological changes they produce.

Fig. 5.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm. “Less. or unskillful” to “Turning problems into misery”

Medical imaging and neuroplasticity—there is no need to just take mindfulness and that changes can be accomplished on faith. Modern science has provided us with the demonstration that different parts of the brain are metabolically active during different mental as well as physical functions. Techniques using magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy (MRI and MRS), functional MRI (fMRI) and positron emission tomography scanning (PET) measure biochemical activity in various parts of the brain during activity or thought. Because it is not the purpose of this book to delve into these anatomical details, we refer you to superb expert books that describe the various components of the brain involved in basic to highest functions including, from lower to higher: the brainstem (basic functions), limbic regions (relationships, includes amygdala and hippocampus), and cortex (more complex functions, particularly the prefrontal cortex).[1],[2],[3] While the intellectual knowledge of these various centers is fascinating and removes a good deal of the mystique or “accept it on faith” regarding the effects and benefits to meditation, as one develops mindfulness one can see one’s own brain working differently, patterns of reaction dissipating and new levels of awareness becoming the dominant mode. This may seem unimaginable when one starts out but that change will happen.

So, building further on the important theme of impermanence, the biochemical and signaling patterns in the brain are not permanent because of a process called neuroplasticity, that is, the brain’s paths can be rewired. In an example that may be more familiar, there are many examples of a person who suffered a brain injury or stroke recovering function by using secondary areas of the brain. Even, our brain-thought patterns are impermanent and are subject to change.

In Mind-body 101 we saw the connection between mental processes and sensations that we purposely created. We learned how by thought alone we could create a crescendo of biochemical and physiological changes that made us feel angry and could have caused a really nasty reaction or violence and then by interruption allow it to dissipate. That was a somewhat extreme example, but let’s now consider what goes on in our heads and bodies all of the time, much of which may be unbeknownst to us until we develop the skill to see and understand it.

Mental “
Reaction

”
Cycles:

Cravings and Aversions and the Action of Averting and Actively Interrupting

The concept of cycles of mental and emotional reaction is illustrated in Fig. 5.2. Importantly, we expand “aversions” to include what we do to actively avert something we do not like. The action taken can be particularly dangerous as it could be words and/or physical steps to cause harm. These might be impulsive and not so good or, in a split second, purposely constructed not out of rage and consequently more likely to be effective to fend off a threat. There is that split second—the space between thought, sensation and reaction—in which you can consider what and how to respond beyond a knee-jerk response. It is very liberating and we’ll get there.

Fig. 5.2

Cycles of mental and emotional reaction

In this illustration, an action by someone or something that happened leads us to conclude in our mind that this is “bad”. Mr. A has done something that makes Mr. B perceive that Mr. B has been wronged. This may be a legitimate conclusion by Mr. B or it may be a totally incorrect perception of what Mr. A said or did.

Mr. B now begins to feel angry. Blood pressure is up, pulse quickens, adrenaline is released, the chest and throat tighten and the skin gets a prickly feeling. Mr. B doesn’t like this feeling and now starts getting more annoyed and angry. This makes him even more uncomfortable and he gets more and more angry. This angry feeling and the dislike of it makes Mr. B get more and more angry toward Mr. A, who may be completely innocent. Yet, Mr. B now flies off into a rage, possibly with great anger and hate. This might be a verbal, physical or even fatal action!

As can be seen, this reaction within Mr. B may happen very quickly, yet there are steps and time between Mr. A’s action and Mr. B’s perception of Mr. A’s action, to Mr. B’s big time reactive response. By learning that there are steps between a thought and one’s action and then by learning how to sense and understand that a reaction is starting to occur, one can control one’s response. The response might be much different and, in fact, the knee-jerk reaction may be avoided entirely. A previously uncontrolled cycle of reaction may be broken. This does not mean that one might not begin to feel angry. That is not it at all. One will sense a change and be even better able to understand one’s feelings and mental responses by the type of response the mind is doing. But one will become able to replace the reaction with an effective and appropriate response—possibly awareness, equanimity and compassion and doing something that makes it better and not worse. Eventually, such a reactive mind state can be a thing of the past. Mr. B can fix this situation himself.

All too familiar in our news reports are the cycles of hate, violence, and abuse. So too are mental cycles and knee-jerk reactions and very unskillful actions present in our personal daily lives. So, the mental cycle in Fig. 5.2 is an example of “it’s a mind-made world” and how the perspective and cycle of Mr. B can lead to a consequence not necessarily based in reality. What is really disconcerting in this illustration is that Mr. A may not have been guilty of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Mr. A. may have made a minor transgression and was coming to meet Mr. B to make amends. Or, Mr. A may have done wrong but Mr. B’s open explosive response led those who saw it to say, “now we understand why Mr. A dislikes Mr. B.” This reaction, stirred up by Mr. B’s inner assessment and judgment and his reaction to his own judgment has made Mr. B miserable and even made him look bad or like the “guilty party” when, in fact, Mr. B may be a very moral person and, in general, quite kind and gentle.

Take this cycle up to increasing scope from person to neighborhood gang to ethnic group to religion to country to an alliance or coalition. Sounds like the daily world news?! What is the common theme in all these is that one develops a judgment of a person or group that leads to a mental reaction to their own judgment—in this case with hatred/aversion or to jealousy/craving—and then to an action based on this reaction cycle.

Fig. 5.3

Afflictive emotions

The cycles of mental and emotional reaction in Fig. 5.2 make it apparent how our thought process can lead to direct harm to others and indeed to ourselves. In Fig. 5.3 we illustrate how this cycle can cause harm to oneself, interpersonal relations and how we may be perceived by others through afflictive emotions

.

Mr. B’s emotions impact, or afflict, others. These other people, for example, Ms. C, may have had absolutely nothing to do with the incident between Mr. A and Mr. B. But, with the negative demeanor of Mr. B, now Ms. C is impacted and her relationship with Mr. B may change dramatically. As one can see, our state of mind affects our actions and interactions so that as one gets a better handle on them one feels better and has a better relationship with others. These repeated cycles are called “sankara”, considered in detail in Chap. 6.

Figure 5.2’s reaction cycle was that of dislike and wanting to do some harm or get revenge. One may label Mr. B’s reaction as an aversion.[4] An aversion is a strong emotion of wanting to get rid of something and/or really not wanting to be in a situation and physically wanting to get away immediately. The feeling may be brought on by thinking of a physical threat like a mugging or encountering a person you may really dislike. It comes out when one feels like a victim and the body prepares to do something quickly and possibly violently. While most aversions clearly don’t rise to this level the start of the process can be sensed and there can be a rapid crescendo which might be necessary to truly avoid and avert a serious threat. With the ability to interrupt this process one can avoid a foolish overreaction that could be dangerous or physically harmful. There are negative responses to the environment that are much different mental processes than the crescendo-ing aversion or victimhood, as we will see, so not all negative responses are at risk for this rapid escalation of thought-to-action.

Cravings are usually positive desires. We may want something to happen but they may be negative by wanting something to not happen. For example, Mr. A may see something that Mr. K has such as a new car, a job title or an item of clothing that Mr. A really wants. Mr. A has a mental cycle of wanting that leads to the thought that Mr. A will be happy if he gets this item to where Mr. A really, really wants it to relieve him of this empty, miserable, short-changed feeling. This would be a “craving” due to the mind wanting something to happen. On the other hand, the mind may want something to not happen. For example, having an opposing team you dislike win a game, have a politician from the opposite party to yours get elected, or having a major outdoor function ruined by rain are “not-wanting” cravings. A craving—wanting or not-wanting—is primarily an internal feeling that might lead to action such as buying something you want or cheering against a player’s success (strike out! Miss the putt!). These mental cycles are not as explosive as an aversion and they feel different, as we will see.

What ifs. Another common set of feelings that fit with cravings are the “what if’s” that may be over quickly but may cycle on and on. There is nothing one can do to change what happened so one can let go or possibly take an effective action. However, the endless cycling “what if so-and-so didn’t miss that shot” and we would have won the series can create mind-made suffering. A better solution is to understand what happened and without anger or malice, move on to an effective future path.

The two general types of mental reactions, cravings and aversions, create a feeling of misery within and also an environment that afflicts one’s internal emotions on others.
Afflictive emotions can range from a sense of discomfort or tension to outright hostility and violence that others sense and impact relationships. This is all too common in daily life, politics, the media (especially the anonymity on the web) and on the world stage. Some are purposeful baiting but others may be projecting unintentional hostility or denigration of others.

Ending the volley—the tennis metaphor. The afflictive emotions are a perfect example of a gift not worth accepting. While one has to be aware that someone else is afflicting others, and one should try to be understanding and use wise compassion, one does not need to accept the afflictive emotion. It is analogous to the concept of tennis—if you don’t return the ball the game stops!

Grey box: The power of being comfortable with oneself has been exemplified by those in the most difficult situation one might imagine, that of a political prisoner subject to hatred, torture and humiliation by one’s captors. Solzenitchen noted that “You can only humiliate yourself, no one else can.” A Tibetan Monk survived by using his torturers as teachers. His torturers taught him how not to be. His triumph was not becoming like them. That the idea of the mind-made world is by no means limited to the East or to the so-called modern society in the West is seen in this quote from Mark Twain: “I have lived through many terrible experiences, some of which actually happened.”

Mental techniques can be developed to prevent oneself from entering these reaction cycles or, if they begin to develop, to cut them short. The calmness and presence of mind not only help that person but will serve to change the nature of a work, home or life environment to one with more harmony and calmness.

This is a good time for Mind-Body 102 exercise, still an entry “100 -entry level” exercise, to illustrate how you can interrupt a mental cycle. In a situation where you are beginning to feel annoyed or angry at someone or some situation, change your mental focus to something else, such as taking three forceful breaths in and out your nose (or possibly counting to 10 or focusing on your right foot or another object) and see if your level of feeling angry has either stopped increasing or possibly even lessened a bit. It won’t go away but did it at least plateau rather than continuing to rise? For people new to mindfulness, this may be first evidence that changing mental focus is in your control and also will make you feel better than you would have if you just let the mind do what it was doing on its own.

Reality (and Ego and Low Self-esteem)

Broadening a concept presented in Chap. 2 reality is the only place in which we truly live. And while we review the past and plan for the future, we only live and can do anything in the present moment. It takes a great deal of energy to try to hold back reality and over time, reality will rear its head. Saying it’s hot when it’s snowing is not likely to convince oneself or others that it is indeed hot. However, many or perhaps most of us live certain aspects of our lives in nonrealistic states, thinking of ourselves in ways that are not correct. This may go either way—an inflated opinion of ourselves (big ego) or an inappropriate low assessment (low self-esteem). Figure 5.4 illustrates the energy it takes to create an illusion and that the energy required becomes greater and greater the farther one is from reality.

Fig. 5.4

Living outside reality

There is a reality of what we can accomplish, what we truly are in relation to other people, and what is a realistic proportion of resources that we will/should have. To live outside the realm of reality can be dangerous. The figure illustrates 4 doctors: Doctors A, B, and C have excellent skills and understand their limits, the limits of the current state of knowledge and what they can realistically accomplish. Dr. D, (upper part) on the other hand, has developed a big ego. She believes that she is somehow special and can accomplish a lot. This may be true but she begins to believe, perhaps based on the expectations from others, that she is a “super-person”. This leads to bigger expectations that eventually exceed what can be met. This will disappoint her and those who have placed her on this pedestal. The longer this is sustained, the bigger the fall.

Mr. E and Ms. F represent people who have the opposite perspective on themselves to Dr. D. Mr. E is a very adequate student with many talents but may become the object of taunting at school, or may end up with only a modest position in a company. Ms. F may be a bit overweight and not a Cover Girl and also may not be in the “in” group. They both have the opportunity to do much good in their lives and in their community, yet they have low self-esteem, based on others’ judgment of them. This could manifest itself in antisocial behavior, violence, drug abuse, depression or suicide. With techniques to look within and to judge oneself on the intentions and meaningful actions, and not on the outcome, one can avoid living with low self-esteem, too.

The danger from living outside reality is not so different with an over-inflated or over-critical self-assessment.

Victimhood and Entitlement: Creating Endless Misery

The unexamined life, introduced in Chap. 2, can come in many forms. Entire societies or groups develop “cultural responses” that logically seem normal to those involved within them. Life has real injustices that make a person or a group of people the victim and there are also events that might be totally innocuous that lead a person or group to have the perception that they are victims. Victimhood does exist, but it is the victimhood mindset that can create misery for the victim, the perpetrator and innocent bystanders. Even worse, it precipitates endless cycles of entitlement and revenge. Victimhood mindset combines ego, cravings and aversions, so it is a good example of the damage that mental cycles can produce. And it has a hair-trigger reaction that can be extraordinarily damaging and dangerous. Being “disrespected” has been a cause for killing.

Being the victim of an injustice requires justice. Being the victim of a disaster requires an effective societal response. To name a few examples, such a victim status is used in interpersonal relationships, politics and international diplomacy. However, given the potential of a highly deleterious immediate consequence from the response to the feel of victimhood, that is rage or violence, it will be considered a mind-made state requiring immediate attention in Chap. 6.

Clarity and awareness break the cycle of victimhood and can lead to justice, reconciliation, understanding and compassion. At the very least it can lead to walking away without having to carry the victimhood feeling and resentment and without having to compete in the “I’m the Biggest Victim” battles. Internalizing this anger and hatred is very harmful. The Biggest Victim War is a war not worth fighting. Is the winner actually the loser?

Survivor

The concept of “survivor” can describe a range of mindsets. On the positive side is the will to get through difficult situations through effective actions and to then move beyond the event and on with life. On the negative side may be the mindset that one is simply a chronic victim and that life is a series of victimhood events. With clarity, one can realize when one is feeling like the “chronic victim”, move toward an effective solution to the problem at hand, and then move forward with what is ahead, appreciating the good events and not living with the expectation that yet another victim-producing event is just around the corner.

Gratitude

, Appreciation

And realistic perspective feel better and will produce better results than anger, victimhood and revenge. Gratitude is key and is among the Sentinel SitesSM.

Moderation

: The
Middle Path

Eastern philosophy uses the concept of “The Middle Path” that means avoiding operating in the extremes. After years as a prince with material goods and years living as an ascetic, Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, realized that the healthy way to live is the middle path. A musical instrument metaphor for this is:

If the string is too loose it won’t play, if the string is too tight it will break.

Leaving Level 1
Awareness

In Fig. 1.2 we defined Level of Awareness Level 1:

- Level 1 is the cycle of Thought → Assessment → Sensation → Reaction that just happens and to which we may have little or no awareness

So, while we will now work on the mindfulness technique in Chap. 6, from intellectual and some experiential knowledge from life and Mind-Body 101 and 102, we have already started progressing from Level 1—no awareness of the mental processes and reactions—to Level 2. On Level 2 we are aware that our mind produces sensations that enable us to see thoughts. Big step done!

Table 5.1 includes important skills and accomplishments that you have already begun to attain and which will be further developed with meditation techniques and mindfulness. The six Categories are in (a) Skills achieved, (b) Concepts understood, (c) the three groupings in the Eightfold path, and (d) the Default mode for your underlying mental themes that can be modified.

Table 5.1

Progressing from Level 1 to Level 2

Category

Specifics

Progress already-made

Skills achieved

Mind-made suffering can be changed

Neuroimaging provides scientific evidence that one can change mental pattern

Concepts understood

Impermanence

Begin to incorporate this difficult concept at the intellectual level

Morality

(First part of Eightfold path)

Speech

Morality laws and codes to live by; understand importance of not creating more problems

Actions

Livelihood

Concentration (Second part of Eightfold path)

Awareness

Begin to feel sensations Recognize there are sensations from causes in addition to “mind-made” (Red box warning, Chap. 1) Need to do some serious work. Suggest a mindfulness course; strong recommendation for VRI* (Goenka) course May now have short periods of deep concentration. Recognize that your change of focus can break a mental cycle

Effort

Concentration

Wisdom Wise Compassion (Third part of Eightfold path)

Thought

See that thoughts can change physiology

Understanding

Understand some of the mindfulness concepts at intellectual and experiential levels

Default mode for thoughts

Gratitude, kindness (to others and yourself) and compassion

Try listening and assessing rather than immediately responding Be grateful for what you have rather than making a comparison to what others have Being open and not reactive is not passive or being a “dupe”. It helps stop knee-jerk reactions and allows a more effective course of action

*https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index

So, with the background material finished, some understanding of the issues and necessary solutions to aim for and achieve, and some skills already acquired, we will next move into the technique. Some important points to consider are:

- Progress does require (1) change, (2) living with morality (the first three parts of the Noble Eightfold Path—Right Speech, Action and Livelihood), (3) Concentration (the second three parts of the Path- Right Awareness, Effort and Concentration), (4) time—which will vary for each person and will likely be months and years although progress will be immediate and beneficial, and (5) some instruction and discussion—which will vary greatly from person to person and at various steps as one progresses.

- Following the 5 precepts is useful for the morality and also for helping achieve a less reactive mind.

- Progress does not require (1) accepting a new belief system or any “-ism”, (2) paying large sums of money, (3) abandoning your job, family or responsibilities, (4) following someone else’s schedule or (5) appearing different (other than in a positive way through interactions and living with compassion).

Summary Points

- Life’s problems are real and unpleasant but they become mind-made misery by virtue of mental cycles of reaction. Unskillful ways of thinking and reacting can be a cause of misery and suffering that are entirely unnecessary.

- Unskillful approaches of thinking and behaving include (a) cycles of cravings (wanting, and not-wanting), (b) aversions—and the action to avert—to get away quickly or strike back and (c) ego-centered thinking and behavior, including deluding oneself about reality. These all need “off switches” which we will develop.

- Our mental state impacts how we see the world around us and how others view us. Inner turbulence can create afflictive emotions that not only can damage others but will also likely cause others to react negatively in return.

- These reactive mental states may not be obvious initially, but insight, learning, and practice allows one to be in control of these mental states and possibly even get rid of most of the deleterious states over time.

- Victimhood is used by many individuals and groups to justify anger, destruction and entitlement. It is a state of mind and existence that can lead to unspeakable violence and unending misery in a flash. It needs an immediate and effective “off switch” which we will develop.

- One cannot change reality and it takes great energy to try to hold back reality. Making believe or wishing something happens or does not happen does not change what is real.

- One can control effort and intention and possibly influence outcome. It is best to not assess oneself and others too much on outcome but on effort and intentions.

- Reminder from Chap. 1, RED BOX. There are many sensations that come from (a) normal physiological processes, (b) parts being overused, (c) injury and (d) diseases. Mindfulness refers to sensations that are produced as a thought is about to or already has become an action.

Footnotes

1

The Mindful Brain, Daniel Siegal, 2007, Bantam Books.

2

Mindsight, Dan Siegal, 2010, Bantam Books.

3

Buddha’s Brain, Rich Hanson, New Harbinger Publications, 2009.

4

The Art of Living, Vipassana Meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka, by William Hart, 1987.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. ColemanMindfulness for the High Performance WorldIdentity in a Changing Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4_6

6. Learning the Essential Techniques of Mindfulness and Meditation Practice

C. Norman Coleman[1] and Karolynn F. Coleman[2]

(1) International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

(2) Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

C. Norman Coleman Email: mindfulness.hpworld@gmail.com

Keywords

Skillful/unskillfulReaction cyclesCravingAversionEgoAfflictive emotionsRealityVictimhood and entitlementLevel of awareness™

This chapter now considers in Fig. 6.1 the skillful and successful approaches in the dash-outlined box “Understanding reality and the mind; Developing skills—Mindfulness with Awareness, Equanimity” and insight meditation technique.

Fig. 6.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm. “Understanding reality and the mind”

Meditation—Awareness Training

Thanks in great measure to the neuroscience and neuroimaging studies including those by Siegal[1],[2] and Hanson[3] that the brain can be rewired through a process of neuroplasticity meditation need not be considered magical, mystical, strange, or frightening. There are many types of meditation involving different postures and activities, some silent and others with accompanying sounds and specific sequences to follow[4]. There are also many books on and schools of meditation. We emphasize mindfulness as a skill one can learn. It is awareness training in that it will provide insight into what the mind is doing and how it is working. It will allow you to develop techniques to live a much more calm, clear, connected, and effective life. The type of meditation described is called “insight meditation”. Importantly, meditation is not the end in itself but it is the training period for a technique that is eventually becoming the new mental patterns for 24 h of the day.

There are physical attributes to the meditation posture and relaxed diaphragmatic breathing as it is said to bring 30% more oxygen to brain as well as being stabilizing and relaxing, the latter related to focusing one’s mind. Meditation can help bring you to a quiet awareness state and inner wisdom into your pattern of thinking. It can help you live an examined life, being alive and awake

, remembering what counts and what one is grateful for, and acting on that. You can develop your own wisdom through personal experience. Silence is an important component as in Quaker and Buddhist traditions. It helps you to be in the present moment, not past or future.

Grey box: Visualization versus meditation. Related to some extent to meditation is visualization often used in sports to focus the mind on something specific and improve athletic performance^. Visualizing a race or a competitive event allows the mind to have certain performance objectives ready to go. Such a technique can be applicable in almost any aspect of life that requires a mental or physical performance. Being able to focus on a specific body part and on mechanics can improve athletic performance. However, while developing the ability to focus is a key part of the meditation process (and has good spinoffs for other of life’s activities) visualization is different from the very open state of mind in which one is aware called mindfulness. Meditation can help develop the ability to focus for mindfulness and visualization.

(^Note: we both have done competitive endurance sports as noted in “About the authors”).

According to the Art of Living, the key to what the Buddha taught and that was missing from other philosophies of his time is that our five physical senses and the sixth, the mind all produce sensations in our bodies. These may be subtle and may be called “subconscious” but they are constantly present. Our mind detects these sensations, calling some good or desirable, others bad or undesirable and others neutral. We want the good ones—positive craving or don’t want bad ones—negative cravings—and don’t want something to happen requiring a prompt response—aversion. We defend a “permanent self” and our ego. That thoughts produce biochemical and physiological changes one can sense is really not surprising as thoughts prepare us for various actions. The brain, at some level of our awareness, is keeping track of all of what is going on all the time. So, over time and with practice, the mental processes themselves become readily visible. This is the self full-time MRI that you will develop. This is
Mindfulness for the High Performance World.

What is key is that there is time and a step or more between thoughts and actions

. And, as one sees the thoughts arise and keeps track of the sensations as the thoughts arise, the process of thought-to-action can be interrupted and control is achieved over the reactive mind and reactions. It takes some understanding of the links, a bit of training (like any mental or physical event would), developing observation skills, and practice. The key in the Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering paradigm

(Fig. 1.2) is that the mind is just trying to be helpful to you but it may not necessarily be pursuing skillful solutions. Importantly one can be grateful for the mind’s attempts to make one feel better rather than angry and self-critical. We’ll come back to this later as it is a key component to Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering and the Sentinel SiteSM approach which provides a way to bringing what seems like a lot of things to track into a manageable set of skills.

Figure 6.2 illustrates the basic mind-state most of us are in. It is actually quite obvious when one gets a little insight and thinks about it a bit. We have input into our brain from the five external senses plus the mind. In response to a stimulus, our body undergoes biochemical and physiological changes that produce sensations—that we judge as good and likable, bad or not-likable, or neutral, neither good nor bad. The specific type of mental processes causes different constellations of sensations and, as will be discussed, we ultimately can understand what our mind is doing by surveying these sensations, which can be done continuously with some training and practice! For example, when we are angry we may have tightness in the chest, clenching of the jaw and hands, tingling of the skin of the face and scalp and more subtle sensations that result from the biochemical and physiological changes that the thought of anger produced. We don’t particularly like the feeling of anger and we project that “don’t like” onto what or who we assume to be the cause. That may or may not be a correct assumption, but we are ready to swing into action, possibly with a wrong or very dangerous action.

This sequence of sensation-to-reaction will at first seem to be instantaneous—it almost is but not quite and that “not quite” is the window in which we can get control of both our thoughts and our actions. This is the space described by Frankl in the beginning of Chap. 1. So, we have thoughts, sensations, and a judgment. Gross sensations are easy to detect—the tightness in the gut that may come with fear, the warmth of the skin that arises with anger and so forth. More subtle sensations precede or coexist with the coarser ones and are a component in a constellation of sensations

. The earliest detection point can eventually be used both for our own intervention and to understand our own thoughts. How to make sense of the myriads of sensations was a big block and after a good number of years a systematic approach became apparent as a way ahead. Is there a way to put these sensations into a limited number of logical categories so that the brain need only be mindful of a manageable group? And, for each subtype, is there a constellation of sensations that are preceded by a very early indication so that the mind could aim to be aware of these and be able to intervene?

This was a major “aha” moment that this system approach can be built from the 3 major classes of reactive mental states described in basic (nonreligious) Buddhism-ego, cravings and aversions—a combination of these (anger and victimhood) and 4 other categories to be described in detail as we proceed. With seven types of thoughts/reactions to watch out for and the skill we already learned using the focus/interruption point to break cycles, there was now a clearly manageable skill set with each of these eight having one thing for mindful observation to follow.

We call these Sentinel Sites℠ and while there are many thoughts, a key point in Mindfulness for the High Performance World is that by grouping of types of thoughts there is a surprisingly small number of Sentinel Sites℠ to keep track of. This is discussed in Chap. 7. Increasing awareness early on in thought processes, coupled with techniques and experience that prevent what seems to be a knee-jerk response, will produce the awareness and equanimity that is accessible to all of us. It is a striking transformation. Figure 6.2 illustrates the mental processes of perception and categorization by our mind and of the sensation-reaction cycle.

Fig. 6.2

Mental processes

We receive stimulation from our five physical senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. We also receive stimulation from our mental processes. These produce biochemical and physiological changes within centers in the brain and also in various places throughout our body which our nervous system monitors and detects as sensations. Our mind perceives or interprets these as good, bad or neutral. We feel good or happy with good perceptions and want to keep this good feeling. We feel bad with bad perceptions, perhaps irritated or annoyed, and we want to get rid of the bad feeling. Neutral feelings will also produce some sensation that we can become aware of.

The primary sensation may be very subtle or may be obvious. The reaction toward the primary sensation (which is a reflection of the thought that produced it) such as wanting and hating will lead to more gross or coarse sensations and we have an even bigger reaction to that. This cycle of reaction is basically sustained by our own minds. It is called
Sankara

. It is the “second arrow” described earlier. Indeed, something may be very desirable or undesirable and we know that. But we are not obligated to have a reactive mind, rather, we can have a mind that is aware of what is going on, understands the mental processes, and can come up with a clear response. Or, we may decide that no particular response is useful or necessary and be able to observe and basically just let the cycle stop. With skill we can make the observation, assessment and response very rapidly.

Ultimately, the reactive cycle will be expressed in how one feels, one’s health or how one reacts to the people around them. One avoids the sankara and the negative afflictive emotions described in Chap. 5. So, to be able to interrupt this cycle can not only allow us to feel better but also to interact in a more healthy and effective way with the external world in our actions and our emotions.

Observation and impermanence are the key! By not sustaining a thought-to-reaction cycle it will fade away. Without you sustaining it, its impermanence becomes apparent. Figure 6.3 illustrates this.

Fig. 6.3

Mental processes: observation can stop the cycle of reaction

The perception-to-sensation-to-reaction cycle in Fig. 6.3 can be broken by observation, a technique and skill that can be learned. Since it is the mind that creates the reaction, the mind must sustain it or it fades away. The mind can let it go. As we insert observation into the sensation → reaction cycle the intensity of the reaction lessens and may even disappear entirely.

Surprisingly to some but not too surprisingly when one thinks more about it is that the same sensation can come from many different stimuli. Many different things can make us become angry. As we get more and more angry, we get more sensations and the cycle continues until we have a reaction that either hurts us or other people around us. One can break the sensation-reaction cycle without necessarily knowing the original cause. This alone makes one more comfortable, less miserable and less likely to say or do something one later regrets or worse, can’t undo. So, as shown in Fig. 6.3, by simply observing, one can dissipate the reaction cycle. This may allow other deeper cycles to be brought to the surface where they too can dissipate, producing even greater clarity and calm. And, at Awareness Level 3, the thoughts producing these cycles can be observed and understood.

The power of observation comes with practice. It does not make one passive or quiet. Rather, it allows one to experience life much more fully because the energy spent in reaction cycles is replaced by clarity. It also allows living in the present and in a healthier relationship to others and one’s surroundings.

So, to summarize, without understanding reaction cycles and how to minimize them, we end up acting or reacting partly out of ignorance. One wants the good things and their related sensations to stay or come again and the bad ones to go away and stay away (cravings and aversions). We want these for I, ME and MINE (ego), so the scope of what makes us reactive increases even further. We can detect these thoughts by the sensation and constellation of sensations that are produced within our body based on biochemical and physiological changes. By using observation, the thought-reaction cycle will dissipate. This is true for all thoughts. While we may now be bombarded by thoughts, they can all be dealt with in a generally similar manner. So, let’s practice.

Meditation Practice

Insight Meditation—Vipasanna: Insight into the Workings of the Mind

Recognizing that there are many schools of meditation and ways of learning mindfulness, in the “to the point” approach an intensive and effective start to learn the principles of focus and observation are from the Vipasanna meditation course by Goenka.[5] (This is merely a suggestion from experience and not a recommendation) Insight refers to insight into how the mind works and not insight into specific problems although the Vipassana skill certainly enables one to understand and solve and resolve many of life’s problems and issues.

In this type of mental training, one puts in the time and effort to observe one’s mind and mind-body interaction and to learn to respond differently to sensations. In essence, the key is to not respond but to just observe, as the true nature of all thoughts and their related sensation is impermanence and all will dissipate if we do not sustain them. If we don’t react toward them but just observe, then they will pass away and we will not establish or continually reinforce a pattern of mental reaction. Over time and with practice, we come to a calmer inner state and an awake mind, and will be able to observe the mental processes themselves with balance and clarity and head off or even rid ourselves of reactive and distracted mind states. By enhancing our powers of observation, we replace reaction with well-conceived and skillful action and we are replacing a constantly distracting and jumping here-and-there mind with calm and clarity. We will be better able to actually work on and fix the root cause of the reaction cycles and possibly resolve very long-standing and deep-seated issues.

Stabilizing Meditation

While described in variable ways, one may divide meditation into three general types: stabilizing, insight and metta. The first is stabilizing meditation[6] that is designed to calm the mind. It usually focuses on breathing. Why? Because the breath is always present and it takes almost no effort to direct your focus there, even in the midst of the most stressful setting and even for a second or so, just to break a mental cycle. You will likely note, as does almost everyone, that it is at first quite difficult to be able to focus on the breath for any length of time, even for a few seconds. Some techniques recommend feeling the subtle sensation of the breath around the nose on the upper lip, a highly sensitive site in the body, while others focus on other aspects like the abdomen or chest.

Focus/interruption Sites℠

The abdomen and chest areas are sites in which tension, reactions, fear, and other emotions are felt and can be used as key links to thoughts (will be discussed in Sentinel Sites℠ section in Chap. 7). It is a very strong recommendation to learn from the outset to focus on the observation of the breath on the upper lip/nose area as the focus point to help interrupt and break cycles and also to serve as a means to develop sustainable focus. Why is this recommended? Because as changes in thoughts produce physiological changes and get you ready for action, the body will alter respiratory patterns so that the rate, depth, and pattern of inhalation and exhalation will change. With skill, the very subtle changes in muscle tension will be observable very early on in “Sentinel Sites” and these occur within the chest and abdomen (diaphragm). Therefore, using the sensitive area around the nose and upper lip can detect early reactive changes (not quite as readily as can the deeper sites but close) but focusing on the focus/interruption site can also be used instantly to interrupt and break patterns. In that respiration is always ongoing, there is constant change in sensation due to air flow that can be felt in this lip/nose site so it is a great site with which to develop sustainable focus. While learning other means of focus on the breath are used, this focus/interruption site point is emphasized in our “fast-track” approach so that one does not need to learn-then-unlearn techniques. One does develop the skill at using the breath both to understand what the mind is doing and also as a focus/interruption site.

Focusing on the breath using a small focus point takes effort and practice so don’t be discouraged early on if this is hard to do. It is quite hard initially! For those who have not yet tried meditation, focusing on the breath is trickier than it sounds as the mind keeps wandering. Simply realizing how hard it is to focus is a lesson into the contortions and leaping about of our minds (called the “monkey mind”). It also brings out the concept of impermanence as one sees how rapidly one thought turns into another. Don’t worry about where you are starting from because with practice the mind will be brought into focus. Of note is that in Goenka 10-day new student course, the first 3 days are spent just on learning the upper lip focus point.

Silence and Stillness

Vipassana require silence. Silence helps concentration and focus. During the meditation courses, silence is also used to prevent distractions that could occur if meditators chatted with one another and tried to emulate what someone else is doing rather than the critical self-discovery—that is developing experiential knowledge.

Figures 6.4 and 6.5 illustrate what the meditation technique is about. Details of what to actually do follow. Figure 6.3 is the third of the 3 key paradigms (Fig. 1.1, 1.2 and 6.3) that illustrates the sequence from focus to stabilizing mediation to insight meditation. Each of these figures takes a bit of time to read through.

Fig. 6.4

Meditation

We are constantly being bombarded by stimuli from the 5 senses and thoughts. Our mind assesses these and gives them a “quality” rating of good, bad or neutral. The initial and subsequent perception and rating leads to biochemical and physiological changes in our bodies that create subtle sensations. These sensations give us a clue to the underlying thoughts.

The first step in meditation is to begin to quiet the reactive mind. There are numerous techniques and activities such as walking meditation, tai chi, yoga, chanting, etc., that focus and quiet the mind. Indeed, exercise and being in nature also do. Many techniques are available that focus on the breath because it is always there, requires no props and doesn’t require the mind to conjure up an image, a mantra or another activity.

The ability to focus on subtle sensations is important. Thus, techniques which focus on the subtle aspects of breathing train the mind to focus and also to begin to see subtle sensations, sort of a two for the price of one. A calm quiet place is important as is a still posture because removing oneself from the five external stimuli allows one to focus on the sensations caused by the mental processes.

Quieting activities and/or the initial focus on the breath is referred to as stabilizing meditation. It is very valuable not only to stabilize oneself and prevent reactions but by seeing how difficult it is to hold that focus, one learns how the mind jumps about, that thoughts are not permanent and that to sustain a certain feeling requires an active sustaining mental process. This is a superb insight into impermanence of thoughts and mental and physical states.

The next phase, which requires teaching and practice, is insight meditation. Essentially, one begins to focus only on the mind and how it is working and communicating through the sensations and biochemical and physiological changes it produces. Sitting still in a quiet place is extraordinarily helpful in developing deep awareness. In this observation part of meditation, one surveys in a methodical manner all the sensations from top to bottom and back again. One does not create sensations on purpose and one does not look for specific sensations but observes what is arising. In addition to the systematic step-by-step, site-by-site observation, one occasionally does more sweeping “body scans.” Good, bad and neutral sensations will all fade if one only observes and does not react—that is: do not want them to stay or go, just watch. Even the most unpleasant one will change. As one focuses on another part of the body, the previous unpleasant sensation may even disappear completely. All sensations have the same common characteristic: impermanence!

By understanding that sensations are the window to the mind, one can understand one’s mental processes and be in control of them rather than be a slave to them. Some schools of thought say that we cannot know what is happening within our minds but this technique demonstrates the contrary. We can observe and know and change the thought patterns, even our deep-seated ones with practice over time. The techniques of stabilization and insight meditation will become part of one’s daily life. A more and more consistent state of mindfulness and awareness will develop.

Figure 6.5 illustrates that the sequence from Stabilizing to Insight meditation may go back and forth as concentration and focus may come and go. Certainly, some very intense sensations may arise during meditation so that a return to observing the breath at the nose/lower lip—the focus/interruption site—allows these to fade and then one can return to insight meditation. Purposely bringing in these intense thoughts is not helpful early on in training (although this is useful much later on as will be discussed in Chap. 7). Sensations will arise on their own-no shortage there!

(Before continuing with this chapter, this may be a good time for a short break, even just a few minutes, to let some of these concepts settle in. It will take time and effort to develop technique but the intellectual and early experiential learning you may have already achieved are huge steps forward).

Fig. 6.5

Sequence of meditation

In the top part of this figure is illustrated the sequence of stabilizing (S) and insight (I) meditation. To quiet and stabilize the mind, one focuses on breathing. This requires effort and at times, it may be necessary to exaggerate the breathing to focus on it. In some sessions, there is so much mental turmoil that one hardly gets past Stabilizing meditation. Yet, the time spent doing that will bring some relief and progress. At some sessions, there may be times of open awareness which may come and go but once experienced one will realize that the mental cycles and racing thoughts can be tamed and what is left is a quieted mind with only awareness left. This is discussed in Chap. 7.

Next one goes to the insight meditation which is observing sensations. The breath is used here, not to focus on, but to observe. As one gets agitated, the breathing becomes deeper and irregular so an occasional check to see what is happening with the breath is useful. Observation of biochemical and physiological changes is done in a careful, methodical and sequential way so that not just the more obvious sensations are observed. Over time, one learns to sense very subtle changes both on the external body, where sensory nerve endings are plentiful, and also on internal sources of sensations such as muscle tension. This may take years to fully accomplish but even early skills are extraordinarily useful. (One can go a long way in an initial course).

With experience and practice, it will become possible to have an extended period of time in insight meditation. But even the experts become distracted at which point returning to the focus on the breath, the stabilizing technique, is useful. A meditation session may include a number of these changes from Stabilizing to Insight. As discussed below, some techniques use a “loving-kindness” or “metta” component (M) to enter a positive mind-set at the end. This may not be possible during a very difficult session.

The power of observation is illustrated in the lower portion of Fig. 6.5. As one observes the sensations, the sensation-reaction cycle often coming from thoughts deep within the mind begins to surface. By observing and not reacting, this will eventually dissipate and even disappear. The same cycle may be repeated many times but by not attaching to it with a craving or aversion and just observing it will lessen in intensity and fade. As one reaction cycle goes, others will arise, often from very deep within the mind, and they, too, will disappear with observation. The cause of the cycle, say fear or anger, may not be known but the weakening of the mental reaction not only makes one feel better and more clear but the underlying reason for a certain feeling may suddenly come to the surface. These epiphanies do occur and are stunning in how some deep-seated problem suddenly is understood and goes away. (We know this from experience.) As one becomes more proficient at observation, the mind will likely begin to link the constellation of sensations that occur with the specific mental processes that are the cause of much of the internal mind-made misery- cravings (wanting and not-wanting), aversions (action to avert, to get rid of), ego (defending one’s ego-I, Me and Mine—attachment), and victimhood, with its attendant sense of entitlement or revenge. Over time, observation skills developed during meditation and body scans will become an intrinsic part of the mind’s routine activities so that ongoing surveillance of the subtle sensations will provide you insight into what your mind is up to and allow you to end these reaction cycles earlier and earlier. This will lead to increased clarity, awareness, and equanimity with much less inner stress, turmoil and the tight gut, clenched jaws and other rather unpleasant physiological responses. You will function so much better and feel so much better in the high performance world and in life in general.

It is possible to become largely free of reactions with enough practice. There is an “off switch” that one learns to use and there is an “on switch” for kindness, compassion and gratitude to replace the cycling negative thoughts with positive ones. These are discussed in Chap. 7. However, the really good news is that even modest success in mastering these techniques can enhance the enjoyment and clarity of life. Even more, realizing very early on that the reactions are within one’s ability to observe, diminish and understand is a very powerful feeling of control and relief. One gains from mindfulness practice early on and progressively throughout the process of changing thought patterns. Likely one is also rewiring one’s brain. There will be a mixture of gradual progress, seeming setbacks and an occasional leap ahead with an “Aha!” moment.

Constellation of Sensations℠

What will also be learned by the careful stepwise observation and body scans and not just focusing on the coarser sensations is that certain mental states produce their own constellation of sensations. For example, the tightness in the stomach or chest with anger may be accompanied by or most likely even preceded by more subtle sensations. As skill is developed and a deeper level of observation is achieved, one can see constellations of sensations wherein there are different constellations for the major causes of internal suffering: cravings, aversions and the defense of ego (I, Me, Mine). There may be a general sense of fearfulness, the cause(s) of which are not initially obvious at all but linked to the ego. An addition to this is the feeling of victimhood which is dangerous as it gets out of control quickly. And, there are sensations when the mind is in what we call Not in the Moment or
Experiential Avoidance so one can feel and be aware early on when the mind is wandering.

As skill develops, the mind will learn to survey for the more and more subtle beginnings of these thought-to-reaction patterns, understand what you are thinking of which you may not have been fully aware and rapidly curtail reactions or rapidly proceed to an effective action. These thoughts might not go away completely, which is fine, but they may be stopped as soon as they start and not build up and feed on themselves. Equanimity and even some humor will replace anger and reaction.

We did not find this concept of “constellations of sensations” in material we have read but it ends up being a very important step. It will take time to first develop the power of observation of individual sensations from all parts of the body that later on can be seen as part of different constellations that are associated with the different reactive mind states (ego, cravings, aversions, fear, victimhood). Learning these constellations during meditation practice allows your mind to constantly survey what is going on during the non-meditation part of your day (the other 23 h). These will be discussed in detail in Chap. 8. The surveillance techniques become second nature and improve over time. They allow the more destructive and difficult mental cycles to be “headed off at the pass” and mindfulness to become the new state of mind. Indeed, you will achieve mindfulness most or all the time. There are certainly slips possible from time-to-time and learning from them with gratitude and not self-deprecation will further enhance mindfulness skill.

Looking at the progress made, while these will be covered in detail as to how to use them in the next chapter, we have noted 7 Sentinel Sites℠: cravings; aversions; ego (attachment); a combination of these (victimhood); focus/interruption point; experiential avoidance; and gratitude mind-set. The eighth relates to obligation/accomplishment which is likely very active for those in the high performance world. We had not seen that described as a specific entity but is certainly useful as it does drive thinking and behavior. Now having some understanding why these were selected makes it a short step forward into how to use them, ahead in Chap. 7.

Metta

: The third component in meditation is that of loving-kindness (called metta

). This is usually done at the end of a meditation session when one has achieved a calm and balanced mind-state. It is not always done. In metta, one projects loving-kindness for all living things, including oneself. This is not narcissism but being kind and forgiving and not overly critical of oneself and others. Metta should also be felt for those who might otherwise annoy or anger you. Sounds bizarre or strange? Why express such feelings for your enemies? The teachings are that these people are causing troubles because they are ignorant of the true nature of life and living so that it is appropriate to be compassionate toward them. Not surprisingly, such a concept is hard to accept at first. But, when you think about most “transgressions” of others, it becomes clear that most (not all) people would not cause problems for themselves or others if they realized that this would be harmful. So, being compassionate toward them is good. And, even if someone is doing bad things that must be stopped, they are more effectively stopped by a person (you) with a clear mind and focus rather than someone blinded by anger or rage. It works!

While applying the thoughts of loving-kindness toward all others, you may bring to the surface angry, hostile or other inappropriate reactions that you have toward them that you were not necessarily aware of. Such an observation may help you deal better with your interaction and relationship with that person. Thus, “metta“ is a good technique to develop further mental insight and peacefulness. And, also it is a way of being compassionate to others such that you may not only surprise them but may completely alter the relationship for the better.

This is a lot to think about and may sound overwhelming but it is doable. It boils down to the use of observation and the upside of impermanence. Figures 6.4 and 6.5 cover important concepts and if they make sense you’ve come a very long way. If you are reading this book end-to-end, this may be a good time for another short break. The rest of this chapter includes some unique aspects of
Mindfulness for the High Performance World approach and some practical suggestions regarding meditation practice and training.

Meditation Practice Suggestions

Some meditation practice and training suggestions: We will run through some observations that you may find useful in making progress in a fairly direct way. Some were already discussed and are re-emphasized.

- The first step is to quiet the mind. Numerous physical techniques that do so include walking meditation, tai chi, yoga, exercise and being in nature. Some meditation techniques use mantras, icons, objects, special people and scenery to help focus. These are fine for calming the mind, appreciating life, feeling part of a greater community, increasing physical flexibility and gaining awareness of connectivity to others and the world around us. However, for developing the ability to be a deep observer of our mind these focuses are not necessary and for some people may become a distraction.

To conserve effort and get to an end result more quickly it is logical to use a sensation that is always there to both focus and train the mind. That is focusing on the sensation of the breath. And it is wise to focus on the breath near the upper lip/nostril as the Goenka course teaches to both learn how to focus as other possible sites like chest and abdomen end up being places that are good for surveying deeper mental processes: the Sentinel Sites℠. So, the breath serves three purposes: 1) to help quiet the mind, 2) as a point of focus-for both learning how to focus (“focus site”) and as a “focus/interruption site” to break a mental cycle and prevent an action and 3) as an indicator of mental state. And these require no props to bring along!

- For the Vipassana technique we describe the meditation learned at the Goenka course is done sitting in a quiet setting. For those who are not able to sit on a cushion/pillow, sitting in a chair is substituted. Nothing else is needed. No particular pose is necessary although developing an ability to sit still for an hour is part of the teaching. As a side benefit, this can be a great time to work on posture. Meditation can be done in groups or alone, and, of course, one can mix and match daily self-meditation, group sittings and courses depending on what works for you.

- There are a wide variety of sensations. While some uncomfortable sensations are the result of inner thoughts, not all are. Maintaining a decent posture helps focus and it takes some time for each of us to figure out our own posture, cushions and support so that one can maintain a still position for an extended period. However, damaging a body part from a physically stressful position is not a road to progress (e.g., stressing a tendon or having a part fall asleep). Some people say that these physical pains are just inner pains coming out, and while some may be, one needs to be careful and apply judgment. The ability to sit completely still for extended periods of time, up to 30 min or even an hour, is developed over time and is of great value. You should not expect to be able to do so on day #1.

- As you survey sensations from all parts of the body using a systematic approach you will recognize the one constancy of all sensations—they are all impermanent. When you realize that you need not react and that the good, bad and neutral sensations are impermanent, you begin to feel an inner calmness. You realize that the mental state is not out of your control, rather it is in your control. This may be a stunning “Aha!” experience. And the first time you know that you can allow a sensation-and the related thought- to just dissipate (Mind-Body 102) you will begin to understand how much more control you have than you may ever have thought possible.

- It is worth emphasizing that you do not chase just the major sensations for a few reasons. As you work systematically up and down the body when focusing on what you think is a “silent” area you learn that a major sensation may lessen in intensity simply by focusing the mind on another part of the body. Mental states and reactions produce constellations of sensations that are detectable as one gets better at seeing subtle as well as strong sensations. To just focus on a gross sensation like gut tightness may miss the subtler sensation that occurred first and that can be used in the future to avoid the secondary gut tightness. The ability to eventually use these earlier sensations to head off reactions is discussed in Chap. 7 on Sentinel Sites℠ but learning to feel subtle sensations is a key skill to develop.

- The Vipassana course recommends sessions of one-hour duration and, when possible, twice a day. An hour of sitting still is a very effective use of time as it allows time for all three parts of the meditation. It is strongly recommended by the course to sit for one hour at least once a day early on. As mindfulness becomes the way of thinking, formal set-aside time remains extraordinarily useful, however, one can pick up short intervals of focusing throughout a day. If it is not possible to have extended time for formal sittings, one can still progress well, so not to worry. Also, people will have different affinities for groups or individual sessions and one should do what works for them, remembering experiential learning and thinking for oneself are of paramount importance. Norm is a do-it-yourself person while Karolynn sits with and teaches meditation groups.

This technique is not repression. You do not suppress the thoughts and you do not make feelings and sensations go away but rather you observe them and know that they are there and let them go away on their own, as they will. By exploiting the understanding of the impermanence of all things, you interrupt the progression from initial event to reaction. The biochemical and physiological changes pass by observation and simply by not reacting. The technique replaces old habits of reaction with the technique of observation and with a state of broad awareness.

This is a good time for the next exercise, Mind-Body 202, a “200 level course”. In this exercise, settle down and focus on the breath as it comes in and out around the nose and upper lip. It will be hard to remain focused for very long, even for a minute. After a few minutes, whatever success is attained, survey the sensations starting from the top of the head moving slowly, over a few minutes, down to the feet. Survey in order, giving equal time to parts of the body that seem quiet or inert and those that have active sensations. It may take 10 min or more to survey section by section. One may notice sensations that were not previously observed and one may notice that when the mind focuses on one area the others lose their intensity. This exercise will further show how active the mind is in jumping from one thought to another, from past to future, rarely stopping in the present to observe. The exercise may indicate that there are sensations of which you were not aware, and this is just scratching the surface. If you cannot sense any, don’t worry as this does require some training, effort and time.

[Note: For those of you considering a Vipassana course, we have included Appendix A that describes what will transpire during your initial 10-day course. This is included for those, like us, who were quite skeptical of being subjected to some odd or unhelpful experience. It provides background that might be helpful, whether you take this or another insight meditation course. In the new student course, it takes three days of focus on the breath before one even starts on body sensations and a few days until this may become observable. So, if during Mind-body 202 you came up empty—you are within the vast majority of people when they start out. You’re in good company!].

Things to consider. Whatever you choose for your teaching and practice, there are some things to consider.

Teachers: Teachers are guides but you must do the work and learn the mental-physical connections. The knowledge and wisdom must be experienced. No one can do this for you and, while appreciation to and respect for teachers whose efforts help you is good, there is no need for you to have undue loyalty to one particular leader or to pay vast sums of money. They have no magic, although good teachers can be of great help. And, it must be remembered that experiencing, understanding and changing these processes take time and effort.

Changing “addictive” behavior. A unique aspect of some of the Eastern philosophies is the role of sensation from biochemical and physiological changes that leads to the reaction. When a drug addict wants more drug, an alcoholic wants more to drink or a very materialistic person wants more goods, it is not the act of shooting up a drug, scarfing down a drink or buying new clothing that provides the doer with sense of “relief.” It is not the action itself but rather, it is the sensation that these acts create or maybe the dulling or relief of an unpleasant sensation that is sought. We are, in a sense, “addicted” to the sensation and less so the particular object. There is some “feeling” that we get, perhaps a relief of some discomfort or some transient positive feeling that occurs when we then do the action. We are “addicted” to acquiring and not to one particular purchase. We like or need the sensation that alcohol or drugs produce or dull and not the particular brand of alcohol. While chemical addictions are certainly real, there are much healthier ways to deal with these cravings. This may be very hard to accomplish but using observation rather than a deleterious action is a powerful way of gaining control of the unwanted activity. It may resolve much of the root of the activity and allow the brain to rewire some circuits so that the addiction may subside.

Meditation period is not for problem-solving: This technique is very much different than problem-solving in that it focuses on breaking the mental reaction cycle. The dissipation of a reactive mind will likely make problem-solving very much more effective, but the meditation period is not for that! During meditation, you can easily slip from the meditation to the problem-solving mode. That will happen and without being self-critical or judgmental you observe this jumping about and just gently bring your mind back to the purpose of the meditation, which is changing the thought paradigm. Use the focus/interruption site to stabilize and then return back to insight meditation as in Fig. 6.5. There are still many, many hours for problem-solving after the meditation.

Words can only go so far: Experiential learning is needed beyond intellectual learning as there are concepts that simply cannot be defined by words. For example, Zen Buddhism uses various riddles and scenarios but a key underlying Zen concept is that words are ultimately inadequate.[7] One cannot adequately define love, hate, peacefulness and many other terms. Thus, our abilities to think, feel and conceptualize are beyond our ability to communicate verbally.

The “default mode” and our basic nature: As one enters the more peaceful state, one opens one’s mind up to the “inner nature” of true compassion. While we may enter meditation to seek a healthier mental state and more peaceful life, what is counterintuitive is that these peaceful states need not be sought but, rather, they are the “default mode” as they are part of our basic nature. One helps this along by using gratitude and kindness in your initial response rather than self-interest and victimhood. We cover this in the next chapter but having this positive approach rather than the more negative one does help prevent reactions and lead to more harmonious and effective solutions. The experiencing of the more calm “inner nature” begins to be seen as the cycles of reaction dissipate (more on this in the next chapter). Without this aspect of peaceful hard-wiring and some inherent good feeling that comes from helping one another, our species might not have survived had we been incessantly aggressive and destructive toward one another.

Level 2. We are now well into Level of Awareness℠ Level 2 where we now understand that the blind reactions of Level 1 are not inevitable. Developing skills at Level 2 will take serious effort and time but benefits to this effort accrue early on. Like now!

Summary Points

- Meditation comes in many forms. The goal of insight meditation, or Vipassana, is to understand how the mind works and to gain control of the process between a thought and a reaction.

- Following input from the five senses and our thoughts, the mind perceives this as good, bad or neutral. This initial perception and assessment lead to biochemical and physiological changes that produce sensations ranging from subtle to those that grow to become substantial. There is an initial subtle sensation that may or may not become more intense. Reacting to the sensation includes wanting it to stay or go (craving), wanting to get away or even strike back (aversion) or nothing in particular (neutral). A sensation-reaction cycle may be sustained by the mind and keeps churning away, even as the cause may be gone. With skill, time and experience, one can detect the sensation-to-reaction earlier and earlier and prevent the reaction.

- Breaking the cycle is not only possible but a lot easier than people realize. The “counting to 10” approach will help contain a reaction. It is a way of diverting the mind from cycling. What takes learning, experience and time to develop is the ability to see the earlier and earlier sensations—the window to the thoughts—well before the more major reactions start, and just observe them or interrupt the cycle or crescendo.

- While there are various types of thoughts that arise, the reactions may be broken down into an easily manageable number. More in the next chapter.

- Meditation has three components. Stabilization quiets the mind and begins observation. Insight-is the observation period where sensations are observed systematically. Metta includes a period of good thoughts for all others and appreciation for what one has.

- Insight meditation requires quiet and stillness. Focusing on the breath allows both stabilization and insight. While other focusing techniques may be useful, at some point it will be necessary to clear the mind of external distractions so focusing on the breath coming and going on the upper lip or nose is useful for developing sustainable focus and also used as the focus/interruption site when needed to break a cycle.

- Meditation time is not for problem-solving. When that happens as it certainly will, just go back to meditation without getting upset with yourself. Insight meditation skill will help both solve old problems and prevent new ones.

- The calm inner mind exists within and emerges as the reactive mind is cleared through observation and meditation practice. It isn’t sought, it is allowed to emerge.

- There are accomplishments in practice and understanding that once achieved lead to a much different way of living. The path to this clarity differs for each of us, yet there are certain “Aha”! points that are important and unpredictable breakthroughs.

- While it takes effort and time to develop these skills, there is an immediate benefit from understanding the processes and being able to intercept them. The clarity comes not from seeking it (that is another craving), from not hating the current situation or person (another aversion) or from not belittling yourself for lack of progress (attachment-ego or fear of impermanence which is a dominant theme in life) but from allowing the mind to become an observer. This really works!

Footnotes

1

The Mindful Brain, Daniel Siegal, 2007, Bantam Books.

2

Mindsight, Dan Siegal, 2010, Bantam Books.

3

Buddha’s Brain, Rich Hanson, New Harbinger Publications, 2009.

4

There are a wide variety of courses that describe Insight Meditation. We suggest one that is intense but direct toward observation of sensations but others can certainly also provide instruction.

5

https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index.

6

How to Meditate, Kathleen Macdonald, 1984.

7

Shunryu Suzuki. Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind. Shambala Press (initially published in 1970).

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. ColemanMindfulness for the High Performance WorldIdentity in a Changing Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4_7

7. Moving Toward Clarity With Sentinel SitesSM

C. Norman Coleman[1] and Karolynn F. Coleman[2]

(1) International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

(2) Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

C. Norman Coleman Email: mindfulness.hpworld@gmail.com

Keywords

Sentinel site™Constellation of sensationsFocus/interruption siteExperiential avoidanceCravingAversionEgoGratitudeAwareness

Prior to the emergence of the scientific basis from neuro-imaging that brain pathway patterns can change it would have been a challenge how to present the progression one gains from meditation. The essence of insight meditation can be distilled down to a few concepts that might make it easier for others to learn. In this chapter we provide, from experience, the dotted arrow in Fig. 7.1—pulling together morality, concentration, wisdom and awareness in the oval that will become the mental state to help create a healthier life.

Fig. 7.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm. The arrow leading to “Healthy life”

We will move to from Level 2 to Level 3 in Fig. 1.2, copied here for convenience.

Fig. 7.2

Levels of awarenessSM

Level 1 is the cycle of Thought → Assessment → Sensation → Reaction that just happens and to which we may have little or no awareness.

Level 2 observation of sensation (biochemical and physiological changes) begins to lessen the reactions.

Level 3 observation of the thought itself reduces the severity and extent of sensation or even stops it from happening at all. Consequently, the reaction dissipates or is avoided. The skill of thought and observation replaces or greatly reduces the reaction and helps replace it with effective action.

All three may be operative to some extent, even as Level 3 skills are achieved, however, with more and more practice, the mind spends more time in Level 3.

In proceeding through Level 2 to 3, there are the following key points:

- The true understanding from mindfulness practice and from life is that one can only live and function in the present moment. While the mind may want to be elsewhere to problem solve, plan, redo, and make you feel better, what one can do is only in the present moment. As mindfulness skills are developed you will be readily able to move your concentration and focus between activities.

- Understanding at the conceptual and experiential level that thoughts alter biochemical and physiological changes that can be observed by the sensations produced. It provides a window into thoughts, the brief, but accessible space between thoughts and action, allowing actions and reactions to be controlled. This skill of observation allows all thoughts to dissipate, dissolve and also to eventually be understood. Purposeful actions include letting thoughts go by observation or as appropriate by making a carefully considered response that is done with morality, kindness and wisdom. This is not passive but active, clear and effective in contrast to a knee-jerk reaction or a previously conditioned response.

- Being grateful to your mind for trying to bring you Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering and not angry, annoyed or irritated will help you gain control over the distractions and recurring cycles.

These are seminal points on the way to clarity. Time spent redoing past events and time spent living in the future are not where actions take place. Of course, understanding past events and planning for the future are important but one can only do something in the moment being lived and it is surely worthwhile being clear and present.

There are other important steps along the way we will pull together, review and address now. They include incorporating impermanence as a useful tool and understanding that the basic mental reactions—ego (attachment), craving, aversion, victimhood, fear—produce a constellation of feelings that can be observed. You will see that the same general kind of mental reaction can have different underlying causes as there are many thoughts that relate to ego, craving and aversions. However, when a thought is a craving it produces its constellation of sensations which is distinct from the feelings/sensations created by ego and by aversion. And the same is true for the others. So, the mind now is surveying sensations—the window to the thoughts—more and more continuously and often allowing thoughts to just dissipate. As a thought arises, the mind can not only allow it to dissipate but can also categorize it as a craving, aversion, ego, victimhood, fear and possibly a few others. It can often quickly in a split-second figure out what the thought is and how to deal with it. One can see both ends of the thought

-sensation connection so that every thought can be observed and we gain both insight and control. So, let’s develop some additional technique.

Following the “aha” moment that thoughts can be observed directly or by the sensation they produced and then by putting together this systematic approach we have found there is a limited number of patterns that are dominant so that what the mind has to follow is not overwhelming at all. There are the three types of thoughts described by the Buddha and used over the millennia—cravings, aversions and ego (attachment). Others are combinations of these, such as victimhood and fear, and there are likely a few other key patterns that each of us has. So, while not meaning to overly simplify, by doing some grouping there is not a very large set of sensation constellations for the mind to track; indeed, we suggest only around eight, as we cover in this chapter.

As proficiency and clarity develop, one is, in a sense, becoming mindful all the time. There will be instances when there is a causality link between a recurring feeling and the deep underlying thought that in a flash will break the hold of that thought. A cyclic thought (called sankara) that had a long-standing hold may be seen, understood and basically ended. Another observation that will peek through from time to time as skill is developed is a moment of complete mental clarity and awareness

. When working to just observe thoughts as they arise, there will be a moment when there are no thoughts arising and sensations being created but the state of observation is there. It is not a blank mind but it is calm, alert and aware and there is a feeling of openness and peacefulness without any of the reactive cycles at all.

This does not come by seeking it but just by letting the over “stuff” go by observation. Actively seeking it will be just another craving, being annoyed you can’t get there will be an aversion, belittling yourself for not seeing it will be another ego issue… so just keep on observing. Once you are there even briefly, you will have experiential knowledge that this exists. This is the transition step from Level 2 where the sensations are the guide to mental processes to what we call Level 3 where the mental processes themselves are observed.

It is here that gratitude and wise compassion should become the underlying mental theme or pattern, replacing previous reactive patterns. These can be actively cultivated early on in
Mindfulness for the High Performance World so the previous habitual cycles are dissipated, leaving awareness, clarity and a more peaceful undertone.

An interesting question is what is the earliest relationship between a thought and the detectable physical changes it produces? Or can the thought be seen and turned off as it is arising, even before any observable physical changes? This distinction may not be important but the link happens very early on in a process that at the beginning of exploring meditation seemed impossible to ever achieve. As Level 3 is developed the mind’s ability to observe and categorize reactions just as they are starting becomes very facile and rapid. While there are occasional slips in which a reaction gets away (for sure!), it is a state of mind that is generally clear, in the present with thoughts visible as they come and go.

Sentinel Sites℠

We only have a limited sample size so that this observation may not be universal, but given that the primary mental reactions—ego, craving, aversion—have their own biochemical and physiological responses and subsequent actions it appears that each produces a different constellation of sensations that it triggers as it prepares the body to act. Consequently, the mind can classify a type of reaction by surveillance of where sensations arise and how they feel. At the start of meditation training, the very intense feelings come from powerful dominant sensations—the chest tightness, abdominal/gut tightness, and a few others. And, early on, the goal is to not stay at these but to let them go to (a) see how the mind sustains them and they will dissipate if not sustained, (b) look for other subtler sensations that are being dwarfed, and (c) develop the skill to focus and to change to the focus of your choosing. However, as one develops the ability to focus and see changes occurring early on these major/intense feelings do map to early changes in respiration and the physiological stress response. Therefore, one can detect the sensations and physical changes deep inside the chest (the intercostal muscles between the ribs), in the diaphragm, in the tightness in the upper abdomen and early feeling of the start of the release of adrenalin.

We call these “Sentinel SitesSM” that are a very early part of the constellation of sensations for a particular thought pattern and which are different for thoughts related to aversions, cravings and ego and also for victimhood and fear, the latter a more primal feeling yet still attributable to thoughts. So, there will be a certain feeling occurring in a certain body site that will relate to a category of thought. In that these involve internal muscles and organs, these may be a general area in which a tightness occurs. There may be some overlap among the sites, but the combination of the feeling (constellation) and the location will allow the mind to link a type of thought and physical change which the mind will become quite good at tracking, observing and letting go.

Mapping of what we call Sentinel SitesSM is something we had not found in what we read, but it was part of a major step in awareness (Norm in particular) and in developing a systematic approach to mindfulness. It takes a complex, often overwhelming set of information into a workable system and skill set. It may seem paradoxical as to how to locate these. One learns early during meditation training that the task is to not bring up thoughts but just see what comes up and observe all sensations. It is worth a modest “confession” here that after years of meditating and becoming proficient at the body scan for both external and internal sensations and of being able to observe and not react, meditation became very repetitive and boring. The detailed body scans took a few minutes and the sweeps took a perhaps 10–30 s, but was this it? Was this all that meditation was about? Feeling very subtle sensations and being able to break mental cycles was useful but that as the endpoint seemed unsatisfactory.

The breakthrough and the conceptualization of Fig. 7.2 of the Levels of AwarenessSM came as the link between the thought and sentinel site for knowing the thought became apparent. The initial writing of the book was stuck at the 13-year mark after learning Vipasanna but with the new observations and five years of testing them and realizing this construct works made the decision to write a “how-to” book clear and compelling. Had I (Norm) figured out this system shortly after “taking the course”, many years would have been saved. How quickly this can be achieved will certainly be different for each individual and from where one is starting but we think that a high degree of mindfulness can be achieved with a course such as the 10-day VRI/Goenka course and consistent work over a year or so with the blueprint presented in
Mindfulness for the High Performance World.

While skills can be achieved in a reasonable period of time, this does not mean this is an instant success although having a blueprint can reduce time spent in diversions or cycles. These next steps described cannot be rushed as developing the basic skills of meditation in Chap. 6 are essential! As one develops experience and skill, what is useful during a quiet meditation is, on occasion, to bring up a thought that you know would create one of the three basic sensations (craving [want and not-wanting], aversion and ego/attachment) and look at the constellation of sensations produced; and later also look for the very earliest change you can observe for each sentinel site. The mind then learns to watch for these. When a thought comes up the mind can rapidly categorize it for you by seeing the changes it produced in a very short period of time, allowing the opportunity to better understand the situation and control the subsequent action. The Sentinel Site is a bar-code for the type of thought

. One has the thought itself, the type it is and the ability to stop a reaction from starting or increasing which not only controls the process but allows further understanding of one’s thinking, thereby breaking or reducing the endless, repetitive cycles and being able to get into open awareness. This is not blocking out what’s happening but enhancing mental clarity with a very welcome feeling of understanding and control. You’ll be in the moment a lot more or can quickly get back to it.

So, one can begin to understand by the constellation of sensations and then by subtle Sentinel SitesSM what kind of thought is coming up and then rapidly deal with it and avoid the reaction. One can see both ends of the process—the thought and the sentinel biochemical/physiological changes-so, indeed, just about all thoughts become visible and knowable. They can be seen and understood very rapidly to avoid a needless over-reaction and one can begin to effectively disaggregate mental cycles including obtaining insight into their cause and developing the ability to control where the mind spends its time.

The reason we emphasized early on focusing on the lip and nose as a site to watch changes in respiration, and not on the chest or abdomen, as the lip is very sensitive and has constant changes in sensation from breathing. It serves superbly well as a point to focus-or interrupt if one needs to stop a mental reaction (“focus/interruption site”) —but it is not a “sentinel” site. Altered respiration and turning on the sympathetic nervous system (flight or fight) or parasympathetic system (relaxation, calmness) is a key step in the earliest part of a thought becoming an action. So, leaving the more powerful physiological changes that are more deeply located for Sentinel SitesSM allows for a very early interception of a thought-to-action process.

Sentinel SiteSM mapping will be an individual process but after a few years of using this approach, cataloging perhaps 8 or so different important patterns was sufficient. We’ll suggest eight that seemed to do the job. The listing is not in priority, as they are all important. Each has a constellation of sensations and a more dominant and early Sentinel Site that is detectable and something the mind can constantly watch out for. Each of us may have different sorts of combinations and where they are felt but since these are universal types of thoughts, there is likely commonality.

Here is a suggested list. First, include the three major ones:

1. 1.

Craving which can be wanting something to happen or not happen; it can have a negative component and it is more of a chronic or persistent wanting or not-wanting (as discussed in Chap. 5). Impermanence and the concern for loss can lead to cravings of wanting things to not change;

2. 2.

Aversion—as used for the sentinel site, it is the perceived or real need to fend off some sort of insult or attack that can be verbal or physical action. It is your own interpretation of an incident but something you’d like to get rid of rather promptly or at least have that split-second to decide what, if any, action to take. This requires an emergency off button to stop or delay the action and produce that gap that gives you control and ability to decide what to do. The focus/interruption point serves this key role.

3. 3.

Ego—defense of the self and permanent self. With a sense of gratitude (below), appreciation and love, this can be positive. This is likely the most constantly arising or persisting of these three. Discomfort with Impermanence is a combination of ego and cravings (and possibly some aversions) but ego largely involves defense of the self and this is a key Sentinel Site.

4. 4.

There are two useful combinations of the first three that need to rapidly be held in check so that the best response can replace reaction:

1. 4a.

Fear—a combination particularly of defense of self and aversion, which can lead to a flight-or-fight-or-paralysis response. It can be persistent and given the power of ego, self-preservation and fear of impermanence it is probably one of the most common underlying thoughts and sensations and

2. 4b.

Victimhood—which is a dangerous combination of all three that can lead to a violent or an abusive response. This is the rage, revenge sort of response that leads to much violence in the world. This must be immediately stopped and replaced by thoughtful response.

An interesting observation that may relate to our communal nature and we think is unique in this system was a frequently present pattern or thought-sensation we call:

1. 5.

Obligation/Accomplishment/Duty which drives much of what we do for our tasks each day. These obligations/tasks produce anxiety when we have a lot to do but a positive and even happy sense when we do it. The motivation to accomplish a task may be out of a desire to do it, a sense of duty or out of a fear of not doing it. These motivations might be managed differently but there is a sense that something needs doing and then a sense of accomplishment. This is likely a powerful process in the high performance world.

Not being in the present, or

2. 6.

Not-in-the-Moment, or
Experiential avoidance

, is another mental state to track, discussed in detail below. It is a very common mind-state and purposeful action.

Having a new underlying mental theme to replace or ameliorate worry and fear is crucial:

3. 7.

Gratitude and kindness replacing anger and reaction is another thought process to observe and to actively keep turned on as the default mode. This not only makes life better as it replaces or at least mitigates the old fear and unhappiness default mode with an appreciation for what one has rather than looking for what one doesn’t have. Importantly this mind-set helps divert the split-second reaction and may prevent you from doing or saying something that might be regrettable. This underlying theme is a powerful way to keep the sympathetic nervous system in check and the parasympathetic one on. Metta turns this on.

4. 8.

Focus/Interruption site learned very early in mindfulness meditation is the skill with which to rapidly stop a thought—to—reaction cycle. Indeed, it can be turned on in a split second and allow you to maintain or regain control of where the mind is going. Even in the worst situation (for example, terrifying or enraging—victimhood and fear) utilizing a quick observation to the interruption site intercepts a thought—to—reaction sequence. It is a split-second to enable a better response. It is the “space” in the Frankl quotation. The area around the nose and upper lip is recommended as it is very easy to use and not a sentinel site.

Figure 7.3 (Chart) is a suggestion for the 8 Sentinel SitesSM. What made this so effective is that while many thoughts arise, one need only keep track of a limited number of categories. The first six are dealt with by observation (more nuanced discussion is in Chap. 8) and the seventh, gratitude, by keeping it playing and the eighth, learned early on, as the safety valve “off switch.” These may be somewhat different for each of us but a really key point is that despite the wide variety of sensations and the fact that the brain is tracking all body parts, there is a very manageable number of things to keep track of which the brain will learn to do as one progresses in the Vipassana/insight meditation process.

Fig. 7.3

Concept of sentinel sitesSM and limited number of things for mind to keep track of. We propose these but others and/or additional ones may work for you. These will be individual and this is just an example

Happiness

, sadness and other powerful emotions.

The skill of mindfulness enables the full range of emotions but does so with some understanding of the underlying thoughts behind the emotions and also the ability to control their intensity. Happiness may be a combination of gratitude, accomplishment and being alive with clarity and with a feeling of control. Sadness and loss can be profound with deaths and tragedies being powerful. These may include a craving for something missing. Sadness may arise during thoughts of impermanence yet with the ability to understand why that thought is present and the skill to just be with that feeling, understanding its origin and/or lessening the intensity by interrupting the thought may make it easier to deal with. Remembering to be grateful or even deploying experiential avoidance and changing the thought may help. There may be the recognition that a sadness anticipating a loss is just a thought arising and that this is not happening now so that one can do a quick interruption and move on to something else. One can move back into the present. Thus, emotions will be better understood enabling one to feel them and choose a course of action.

Important note (from your doctor!!): Normal physiological processes and physical illness can produce sensations in these parts of the body so that all sensations that come from these areas are not necessarily caused by mental processes. In that mental processes can be a cause of sensations as the body is beginning to act/react to something, being able to track what is going on there is a very helpful sensor (full-time MRI) of what the mind is up to.

Grey box: What may be helpful is some description of where these sites may be felt. They involve readying the body to do something, which entails changes in respiration, “flight or fight” endocrine changes, and changing muscle tension and posture. Respiratory changes are felt very early on in the diaphragm area (lower chest) and in the tension inside the chest (intercostal muscles). The tightness and acidity in the stomach (and possibly also the adrenalin release) can be felt in the “gut” or upper abdomen. Aversion as used here getting ready for an action (averting) or protecting oneself from harm involves getting large muscle groups ready to go and an almost immediate change in respiratory muscles. Wanting—or craving—are less intense and felt elsewhere. Fear and victimhood are combinations. And individuals will have their own patterns and constellations so trying out some thoughts in the categories in Fig. 7.3 (Chart) and seeing what sensations they produce for you will help map Sentinel SitesSM for the brain to keep track of. What is important in the systematic approach is that there is a limited number thoughts-Sentinel Site linkages that one needs to keep track of to maintain a reasonable, and increasingly available, state of mindfulness. (We provide an example of where these may be in the next chapter).

Caution,
if you are reading this book cover-to-cover, this level of skill may take a substantial amount of time and effort to reach, so don’t overdo it now and don’t be frustrated if you can’t observe this. With a good base in observation that comes from Vipassana courses and training and serious effort in meditation practice, the ability to observe will be developed, the endless mental cycles slowed, the “monkey-mind” quieted and eventually the constellations of sensations and the Sentinel SitesSM can be observed for you and your physiology/biochemistry.

For beginners reading through this information for a first time and also for early practitioners still developing the skills in feeling the subtle sensations you might not be ready for a meditation session. We have put in a description of what one may be like in Appendix B and not in the chapter itself so as to not create a distraction.

How the use of Sentinel SitesSM may play out is that during your day you may be off day-dreaming and not in the moment.
Experiential avoidance

—not being present has its own set of sensations that your mind can track and bring you back—if and when it so chooses so your mindfulness skill can quickly check into see what kind of thoughts your mind is processing by the biochemical and physiological changes in the Sentinel Site(s) that is (are) active. By observing and letting it go, you can help bring the mind out of the cycle and into focus but, notably, by seeing the kind of sensation/thought link and then seeing what you were thinking, you can begin to uncover various thought patterns, perhaps repetitious ones that you can deal with, discussed more below. Or if your key Sentinel SitesSM are quiet, you will find yourself in a state of awareness that may be surprisingly clear. Learning to “clear away” the sensations in the Sentinel SitesSM by just letting them go will bring you to awareness! And, you can eventually let them go pretty much all at once. So, you now have a skill to see what your mind is thinking, break away from patterns and rapidly get to clarity. This is an advanced skill but it is logical and not magic or limited to just a few gurus or experts.

Level 3
Awareness

. Table 7.1 describes various skills, concepts and accomplishments (which were in Table 5.1 for progressing from Level 1 to Level 2) now for progressing from Level 2 to Level 3.

Table 7.1

Progressing from Level 2 to Level 3

Category

Specifics

Progress

Skills achieved

Self-MRI- sensations

Coarse sensations → focus on all sensations → constant survey by mind Learn to see sensations, including on the outside and inside of your body. Have the mind begin to keep track of Sentinel SitesSM and head off reaction cycles

Concepts understood

Impermanence

See and categorize the many sensations into Sentinel SitesSM to reduce what needs to be tracked as you establish mindfulness Distinguish sensations from normal physiology, injury or tissue damage from those that are mind-made Understand, accept, and utilize impermanence to break old cycles (sankara)

Morality (First part of Eightfold path)

Speech

Actions Livelihood

Morality laws and codes → internally directed (as well as externally as needed) See the inner calmness from “doing the right thing”. Self-reinforcement of moral and ethical behavior Cannot achieve inner calm without morality (sila)

Concentration (Second part of Eightfold path)

Awareness Effort

Concentration

Periodic clarity increases in frequency. As the reactive mind quiets, this emerges and becomes more readily accessible Mindfulness becomes part of new mind-set making it easier to do this More sustained and less effort as reactive mind quiets In the aggregate—these are the mindfulness skills that are becoming default mode

Wisdom
/
Wise Compassion (Third part of Eightfold path)

Thought Understanding

Awareness, and equanimity achieved Nonreactive

You will be in the present more and more and can turn awareness “on” by letting distractions go Access thoughts by the thought itself or by sensation it produces Compassion and more selflessness are much more healthy and pleasant mind-states

Default mode for thoughts

Gratitude, kindness (to others and yourself) and compassion Keep turning gratitude on in place of or at least to balance out other thoughts (greed, ego, anger, etc.)

Kindness and gratitude become underlying the default theme (from former reaction-first) The previous distractions and experiential avoidance techniques your mind employs to try to help may actually become funny rather than annoying now that you understand the mind is trying to help. This may reduce the frustration that these repetitious or recurring patterns may produce

This is a good time for a short, or longer, break as a lot has been covered.

The Awareness Switch

Using the ability to interrupt a mental reaction cycle or thought pattern by observation brings one from Level 1—lack of appreciation or ignorance of this dynamic—to Level 2, where there is an effective tool of observation being developed. This change may happen very early on in mindfulness practice so that one begins to benefit almost from the moment one leaves the starting line. Sharpening the abilities to focus and to just observe allows one to see sensations earlier and earlier so there is more time to intervene between the thought to sensation to reaction to action process. Learning how to see the thought very early on through the constellation of sensations it produces and to the Sentinel Site for the major categories of thoughts allows one to intercept all of these processes and to have a great deal of control over them. Indeed, with experience, the mind does this largely by itself.

What happens as the cycles disappear is a state of awareness—all of the senses are working but there are no reactions going on. Without the subroutines and ongoing distractions, there is a very clear and calm state. It is not dull, but rather things are seen as they are and one is amazed at how much of what is going on might have previously been missed. Letting go of the reactions and having the Sentinel SitesSM quiet or “off”, being in the moment without a wandering mind and having underlying gratitude is the switch to full awareness. The senses are active and observation is clear and rich.

Grey box: In reaching this clarity, there is a sense of accomplishment and gratitude and also brightness (as a number of people have noted). While speculative, the brightness seems in part due to greater awareness of what is actually happening around you with the eye taking in, or at least the brain recognizing, a bigger field of vision.

Not-in-the-Moment/Experiential Avoidance: And Repetitive Habit “Stress Relievers”

People spend a lot of time not in the moment. Before learning these techniques, this may be almost all the time. Experiential avoidance can include a number of things from various intoxicants such as alcohol and “recreational drugs” to serious addiction, on the one hand, to simply thinking about other things rather than what is actually happening on the other. Medical help may be needed for some of the serious causes. However, learning the skill of mindfulness and practicing keeps us present and the clarity it produces can help break other habits or means of distraction. At least it can help one make purposeful decisions as to where the mind will be focused, which is a major accomplishment.

The “repetitive habit” observation from our experience is one we have not seen described elsewhere. Being fully aware isn’t always where you and your mind want to be (an understatement to be sure!). So, the mind will use experiential avoidance and pull in a distraction. It could be an old problem to solve, a “day dream” of being someplace else, recalling a song, counting the number of this or that, marking time, or planning for something in the future. It appears that some repetitive behaviors and habits like leg twitching, foot wiggling, knuckle-cracking, thumb twiddling, finger tapping, gum chewing and other actions are part of mental distractions from the present as they do divert mental focus. These likely represent other brain centers being pulled in as diversions—for example, songs involve some different parts of the brain than general language. With experience, the mind’s initiation of these “stress relievers” can be observed and then sustained or headed off. One has an active choice! There may be recurring themes that the mind brings in as a distraction. These distractions were found to be very annoying until it was recognized for what they were and how to turn them off. Just observe, be grateful for the minds efforts and let them go. Being grateful for the mind’s effort rather than self-deprecatory is key to gaining control!

One maneuver the brain will use is sleep, which is quite easy to access in our over-stressed and over-tired lives. Sleep is good to help to restore health and it is often called on during meditation when the mind doesn’t quite want to work hard (the mind can be pretty clever!).

Don’t be mad at it or frustrated by these distracting thoughts, it is just the mind trying to help. By being grateful for what your mind is trying to do begins to weaken the distractions. Indeed, once recognized for what they are these can readily be turned off. Reacting to it with aversion doesn’t work. Observation, gratitude and some humor and away it goes. It tries to make a comeback so repeat as necessary! Indeed, figuring how to stop the mind’s efforts of distraction to create Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering was a major step in achieving clarity and accessing the Awareness Switch.

Going from experiencing moments of awareness and clarity to being able to actually turn on that mindfulness state can occur by:

- Realizing that these mental distractions—or experiential avoidance—can be simply stopped as you do with sensations is a key step. Mental distractions are no different than any other cycle and like the sensation-reaction-cycle they are impermanent and go when they are just observed.

- Understanding that gratitude is a very powerful counter to a reactive mind. It is calming to the mind and physiology/biochemistry and creates a sense of well-being. It is calming against afflictive emotions from others (and yourself). Recall the vignette of the Samurai and the Master in Chap. 1. Use gratitude sincerely and often!

- Experiencing that the clear mind-state takes the least mental effort and actually feels good (peaceful and also the feeling that you accomplished something by getting there). The clear mind will become the dominant or more prevalent mental state and the trying-to-be-helpful distracting mind becomes secondary. Indeed, when one is in a situation that one does not wish to be or when one simply chooses to do so, the mind can pull in other mental processes like problem-solving, planning, analyzing or even day-dreaming while keeping your mind on the present and also on this distraction process. Being in full awareness mode is a very different feeling that once the mind (you!) figures it out, it will actually choose to stay there. It will learn to switch it on by switching other sites off.

- Recognizing that as a reactive mind becomes aware and quiet, a new underlying background mental theme needs to replace the cravings, aversions, ego, victimhood, fears, and others that were dominated. What to choose or cultivate as a default mode for your thinking? As in Fig. 7.3 (Chart)
wise compassion as the mindful response and gratitude and kindness as the underlying theme. You will be both in the moment and will feel much better on all levels-biochemical, physiological and mental. (Is this what is meant by enlightenment and nirvana? (Chap. 3)).

Chart 7.5 (box) is a summary of how one can not only respond using stabilizing and insight meditation techniques but also gain understanding and insight into the underlying thoughts, suppositions, assumptions and misconceptions that may have created the tensions and suffering in the first place. These are the categories presented in the chart in Fig. 7.3.

(It may be worth a brief mental break before this summary).

Chart 7.5. Replacing reaction with effective action

—and gaining insight into the underlying dynamic

The thoughts are all impermanent and observation without reaction allows them to dissipate. If need be, one can use diversion-focusing for a mere second or two on the “focus/interruption site”. The change in focus can promptly and effectively curtail a reactive mind. And, during the process the underlying dynamic or assumption that produced the thought or reaction may be understood so that thought itself stops recurring. Once detected and a reaction stopped, more effective action can be taken. This entire thought—interruption—observation—understanding sequence that prevents a reaction can be almost instantaneous, just as the previous “knee-jerk” response was! The gap you now control is just a split second or a few seconds by which you can change an unskillful reaction to a skillful action. You now have a skill to understand and control (or modify) your thoughts and to direct your responses to where they are more purposeful, productive and effective.

So, a suggested strategy is for various categories of thoughts and related Sentinel SitesSM is:

Sentinel site

Response

Aversion

Observe and let go (and then do thoughtful response)

Avert an action

Victimhood response Avert-action taken, (see below)-immediate interruption through focus/interruption point. Then proceed to effective action.

Craving

Observe and let go (and then do thoughtful response)

Ego (attachment)

This is common category. If need be, (a) judge effort not outcome (you are not a “loser or failure”) → (b) observe and let go (create a better underlying mental state by considering working for a “greater good” and not just self-interest “ego gratification”). Ego can be prideful in times of a positive outcome (prize, award). Enjoy that positive outcome but remember that, too, is impermanent and avoid a craving. On the other hand, with gratitude, appreciation and love, one can have very positive feelings and state of being.

[Note]: Remember and continually reinforce the reality of impermanence. Much of one’s thoughts relate to self-preservation so understanding and utilizing the concept of impermanence to one’s benefit is key. Remind yourself each day that impermanence is a powerful force to which one is often fearful and needs to be dealt with frequently. On the other hand, it can be liberating and encourage change.]

Victimhood

Combination of above three—ego, craving aversion-immediately concentrate on the focus/interruption site (head this reaction off fast as this can be a near instantaneous severe/destructive reaction). So, interrupt—observe and let go (and rapidly get into problem-solving rather than victim mode). One quick use of the focus/interruption point can stop this in a second!

Fear

Usually combination of aversion and ego (self-preservation)—focus on the focus/interruption site and quickly assess an effective strategy if action is needed (it may take just one breath to bring in clarity). This could be a very drastic flight-or-fight-or-freeze response but should be done with as much awareness as possible

Obligation/accomplishment

Part of what we call “the business of life” with a feeling that one must do a task now or soon. It may be a duty. It may include some feeling of positive or negative craving or maybe even an aversion. If the task isn’t pleasant or welcome but necessary to do now, try to look at the opportunity to accomplish the task for others rather than dreading the task. Or one may assess and realize that the obligation can wait and reduce the anxiety of the sense of immediate obligation.

This category has a very positive component to it. Not only may you get things done but there is a very healthy sense of accomplishment, appreciation and happiness

Not-in the-Moment; Experiential avoidance

The mind is trying to be helpful and bring you Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering. Be grateful for this and not angry or frustrated with yourself. Gratitude is a very positive mental state. The mind will likely use some “repetitive habit stress relievers” in addition to day-dreaming. As these mental processes are discovered these then become under the same control as any other-observation allows them to stop. (some of the mind’s efforts at experiential avoidance are funny!)

Focus/interruption Site

When a cycle needs to be interrupted, a quick switch to this will slow or stop the crescendo and even stop the thought and reaction entirely. It is a great safety switch learned from the beginning of mindfulness practice. It works in one breath!

Is the “Sentinel Sites”SM approach essential? It is likely that people who achieve skill at mindfulness have made links between thoughts and sensation. It took us a long time get from observation to mindfulness and this Sentinel Site approach pulled together a way of allowing the mind to keep track of what’s going on (especially for Norm) and to have a limited number of things to keep track of. So, the answer is “no” this approach isn’t necessary but it is likely that people who have accomplished a good level of skill have some sort of systematic approach to both letting go of thoughts but also understanding them. For “fast-trackers” it may be a very useful approach and follows from the logic of different responses for different thoughts which are related to different brain centers. The ability to immediately interrupt a cycle, do an appropriate response, or just note what is happening, and at the same time, gain insight of your awareness of what’s happening almost instantly provides people with a systematic approach toward achieving mindfulness. Of course, whatever works for you is key and you must be the judge of that. More on this in the chapter summary.

We Are Not Our Thoughts!

This is an extraordinarily important concept. While we think many things, how we act and what we do defines who we are. A terrific model for this concept is the hub of awareness from Dan Siegal in Mindsight[1]. In his model, the hub is the inner place of the mind from which we become aware, the rim represents anything we pay attention to from thoughts, feelings, perceptions of the outside world and sensations, and the spokes are where we are directing our attention to the rim. While all this is happening, we are not actually any of these but our intention, motivation and actions/inactions are how the world sees our character and how we make our impact. Going back to concept in Chap. 4, we are all teachers, so our impact on others and the world is both what we do and how we live our lives.

The New Paradigm-Do You Meditate?

Now to go back to the question at the beginning of this book, “Do you meditate?”, the answer is both simple and complex. The answer is really that one will do so all the time, while setting aside some time daily or periodically to quiet the external five senses, see what’s going on in the mind and sharpen the focus of the observing mind. Meditation is training for full-time mindfulness. Eventually, brief check-ins on the Sentinel SitesSM may be all you need. Figure 7.2—Level 3 a new state of awareness will be accessible. No props are needed– you have your thoughts, sensations they produce, a means of categorizing them so they are understandable, the ability to interrupt and let thoughts go and also the skill to replace a knee-jerk reaction with an effective action, which may include just letting something go by.

This mental clarity is part of a healthy lifestyle as we discuss in the next chapter. Many of the terms that seemed strange are now fairly obvious. Buddha, dharma and sangha say that (a) there is awareness, wisdom and clarity, (b) that there are realities of life such as impermanence and cause-and-effect operative, and (c) that being among people with similar approaches can be helpful and enjoyable. Karma, that we are the heir to our own deeds, becomes clear in that mental reactions produce physiological and biochemical changes and can alter one’s health and also the words we use and actions we do can come back to us by how others respond to us. Nirvana is a mental state of peace and clarity. Experiential learning means living an examined life and that being told what to think or do leaves one short of the peace that comes from making one’s own choice. The Eightfold path is merely some good advice and the solution to what the four Noble truths say: suffering is part of life and it has causes we can understand and thereby find relief so that life’s problems (ducca) are part of life but need not become endless misery. We can become relatively free of mind-made suffering. People for thousands of years have recognized the mental and biochemical/physiological changes that come from changing how one thinks and reacts and this is now being verified in neuro-imaging techniques only 15 or so years old. This science can remove the magical and mystical nature of “meditation”. Aspects of Western psychology and a “drug for every symptom” from the pharmaceutical industry has obscured aspects of reality and, for some, likely hindered a path to peace of mind. Intoxicants lessen clarity.

Reaching what we call Level 3 awareness takes work, effort and some confidence that it is reachable. Even having some direct insight into the mental reactions does not obviate the need to still use Level 2 awareness—the sensation and observation approach. Some of the newer spheres of observations you will develop include the surface/skin sensations, inner muscle tensions and deeper internal physiological sensations. The levels of observation are certainly continuums and there are meditators who, it seems, develop very deep levels of observation to where they can control physiological process to a large extent (we don’t choose to do much on that level). Teaching and guidance can surely help but the ability to reach clarity is not limited to a few people. Gratitude toward teachers is good—being told what to do isn’t necessarily so. The work needs to be experiential and not just intellectual. Likely, over the centuries many people get to this clarity on their own but some guidance helps.

The power of observation one develops in insight meditation training is very helpful in other aspects of life. For physical activity, one can see various muscle groups at work and see/feel imbalances so that physical exercise (with a good instructor or physical therapist) can be more efficient and also can be a time to develop observation skills. Focusing skills can be used as part of visualization that helps one complete difficult challenges. So, the various skills build on and enhance one another! One is using mindfulness for living and succeeding in the high performance world.

The basic discussion of developing awareness is now completed. The next chapter will look at the “oval” in the paradigm figure. It covers a few principles that may be useful and some blocks to progress that seem prevalent.

Summary Points

- Each individual will take a unique course to develop the skills of focus and observation. However, there will be points along the way that will be significant steps and transitions noted in Tables 5.1 and 7.1. The Level of Awareness model is a teaching tool to describe the increasing depth at which one can work. It is used to help demystify what is behind insight meditation and mindfulness.

- The skill of observation helps in many aspects of life including mindfulness, physical activity and visualization.

- The deepening clarity is not sought but it is there as the reactive mind settles down and observation replaces reaction and mental cycles (sankara). Living a moral, principled and meaningful life is essential to developing the calmness and a feeling of a life well-lived. Service to others and to society, living in harmony with nature, doing physical activity and eating a healthy diet all help create a sense of well-being.

- Gratitude to your mind for trying to bring Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering, albeit not always in the most successful strategy, will replace frustration and being overly self-critical. It will enable just letting go of the less skillful strategies and will gain control over experiential avoidance.

- Impermanence will finally become appreciated as a useful tool and accepted as part of life. It is part of living, in reality, and a huge amount of energy and time is saved from not having to sustain unrealistic positions. Impermanence can produce a sense of loss with a threat to the ego (self) and cravings for maintaining things as they are, but can also lead to new productive actions and optimism for what one can do to change and improve things.

- The combination of being able to see thoughts and the early sensations they produce (Sentinel SitesSM), the initial brief experience of a nonreactive and aware mind, and the understanding that the mind is producing distractions to try to be helpful in relieving an unpleasant or unwanted situation will help move toward the skill of an “Awareness Switch” where the state of clarity can be largely turned on at will.

- The “avoiding intoxicants” which is part of the 5 precepts may now be viewed differently. One may not want them as they impair clarity. Being the “non-drinker” in a social situation is becoming more common.

- The Sentinel Site approach can be a useful system as can other variations on this general theme of understanding thoughts as they arise and being able to interrupt the thought-to-reaction step, do a skillful response and also gain insight into what your mind is up to. If something else does the job for you, great. Use it. Eventually, you may become so adept at seeing thoughts you don’t need this, but it is a good backup to see if your mental interpretation of a thought is producing the corresponding physical (Sentinel Site) sensation. Sometimes there is a mismatch and the sensation will reveal you may have been fooling yourself! It is amazing when this happens.

- Experiential learning is the step that makes intellectual learning part of one’s own physical and mental constitution. While the path we have described is logical and to-the-point, this is from our own experience and reading and we hope it is helpful to you. Trial and error are useful but having a blueprint and goals that can be achieved can help you get there.

- While thoughts can create negativity, they can also create very strong positivity including a sense of accomplishment, appreciation, love and being part of a community of people doing good for the benefit of others. Happiness, sadness and other strong emotions will persist but the underlying thoughts behind them will be better understood allowing for them to be appreciated and also remain within reasonable control.

- Repeating a key theme—science is now providing substantial evidence of the ability for the mind to change how it works. Remarkably, people have observed this for thousands of years so we are at a point in time where the mystery behind this is largely being solved. It isn’t magic or limited to a few “gurus”.

Footnotes

1

Mindsight, Dan Siegal, 2010, Bantam Books, p.88.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. Norman Coleman and Karolynn F. ColemanMindfulness for the High Performance WorldIdentity in a Changing Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18582-4_8

8. Living with a New Paradigm and Learning to Judge Effort and not Outcome

C. Norman Coleman[1] and Karolynn F. Coleman[2]

(1) International Cancer Expert Corps, Inc., Chevy Chase, MD, USA

(2) Private Practice, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

C. Norman Coleman

Keywords

CharacterPrincipleMoralityPathologizingNatureExerciseNutritionEffortOutcomeBarriers

The helpful and healthy changes from mindfulness are one component of a better life. As illustrated by the dotted-oval in Fig. 8.1, living a life of purpose and principle, no matter what one’s living setting helps bring inner peace. Healthy living includes nutrition, exercise and being in natural surroundings.

Fig. 8.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm. “Healthy life”

In this chapter, we return to daily life and how it might be lived with the new paradigms.

Some Basic Principles

Character, Principle and Morality

These can be learned by codes of behavior, role models and the observation that these are needed to have mental tranquility.

Meaningful Life

We often look for answers in “things” or “major accomplishments” when the answer to what is important is already there—family, nature, community contributions, kindness, and compassion. While sitting near death on the now infamous Mt. Everest expedition, Beck Wethers realized that it wasn’t the conquest of mountains that was important but that what he was seeking he already had, and his drive to conquer the mountains may have sacrificed the true prize—health, family, nature and meaningful contributions.

Respect

There is a greeting in Asia “Namaste” accompanied by a hand clasp, nod or bow and usually a warm smile. It is variably translated as “I bow to the light in you.” It is a very respectful greeting that signifies an environment in which individuals are tuned into the light in themselves and others. Everyone is of value. The greeting, bow, and smile produce a feeling of respect and warmth that is contagious. It serves an example of the empowering effect of positive environments. Sincere gratitude is healthy and helpful.

Beyond Pathologizing and Jargon

Living an examined life going beyond the limits placed on your thinking and actions by others is a real challenge. One must get beyond jargon, ritual, pathologizing and permitting others to think for you. Western culture, psychology and the pharmaceutical industry seem to have a pathological diagnosis and a pill for everything, including what are very normal human activities and feelings such as young children who are curious and can’t seem to sit still for hours, adults that have anxiety in stressful situations, everyone who on occasion has sleepless nights and so many other so-called “illnesses or afflictions” so that you are told by the pharmaceutical industry to “ask your doctor if our ‘new expensive drug’ is right for you.” The long-term consequences of the diagnosis and treatment “du jour” is rarely considered yet the damage can be horrific, especially when the theory of the day that led to this diagnosis and treatment is proven to be wrong. The misrepresented or limited data often purposely presented by the pharmaceutical industry tells its own story. The diametrically opposite and/or duel of opinions between experts helps point out that one needs to be careful about accepting a “diagnosis” and thus a label.

To live an examined life requires intellectual learning and experiential learning. Each of us learns differently and resonates toward one form of learning or another. When you are told to do or believe something, but it doesn’t make sense, or pass the “sniff test” and that it must just be taken on faith without evidence, then be cautious and scientifically skeptical. Use what works for you and think for yourself!

Achieving Balance-Nature, Nutrition, Rest and Exercise

Where can one find calm amidst the stresses and challenges of life? One can turn, or return, to nature, good nutrition, and physical activity along with the mindfulness training. This does not require great disruption in life but only some perspective and the wise use of time. Nature and exercise by themselves may not entirely solve the problem of unhappiness and reactive mental cycles but they do provide relief, some biochemical and physiological improvement resulting from fitness and a very solid platform upon which the mental training can be built.

Nature is a wonderful holding environment—air, beauty, music—that helps us come to our senses, expands our modes of perception-touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell. It can facilitate a heightened sense of awareness. It connects us with parts of ourselves that we have forgotten or have been unable to hear in the roar of daily life. In contrast with the fragmentation of our contemporary lives, it offers integration—a coming together of mind, body, and soul. It is empowering; it fuels creativity and problem solving; it creates a sense of well-being; it relaxes. Next time you are there, skip the headphones and listen to the outdoor symphony.

Exercise, Nutrition and Nature

To achieve a more balanced state, we must also take good physical care of our body and the environment in which we spend time. This does not require obsessive or extreme behavior but a sense of perspective and balance and a respect for moderation or the middle path. A “breakthrough” intervention now being supported by decades of research from the National Institutes of Health is the importance of exercise. It has the documented effect of reducing virtually all forms of illness. It helps patients prevent or recover from high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, breast cancer, arthritis, and chronic pain. It improves mental function, sleep, weight loss, muscle mass, and extends life expectancy.

Nature’s Lesson of
Impermanence

Nature is a wonderful teacher of the concepts that are important in a healthy life. With its change from minute-to-minute, day-to-day, month-to-month, and season-to-season, nature demonstrates impermanence to us. The enormity of the power of nature, the time scale in which it operates, the impossibility for humans to control it and its fragility and resilience should provide clear perspective of both our dependence on nature and one another and on the limited influence any person will ultimately have on the world and universe. The growing crisis of global climate change serves as a harsh reminder of the price we will all pay for being indifferent to nature and for not being respectful and protective of our natural world. Denying it isn’t a very effective strategy. Reality prevails.

Judging Effort and Intention and Not Outcome—What Can and Cannot Be Controlled

We are often our own worse critics. The paradigms of success and failure in our Western and “developed” society, unfortunately, emphasize what one does far beyond the how one goes about doing it. That our efforts can influence the outcome is true, of course, but we cannot control outcomes. There is nothing wrong with and indeed potential great benefit from hard work toward a goal. To accomplish things serious efforts are required but one must recognize the danger from operating in extremes. Even striving for perfection cannot guarantee an outcome, and if only outcomes are judged, we may inappropriately consider ourselves failures or inadequate. Because the deep understanding of impermanence and lack of control are so important, in Figs. 8.2 and 8.3 we summarize these realities of our universe.

You may have this point well in hand but because this is so important, for reinforcement Fig. 8.2 illustrates two contrasting paradigms for judging oneself.

Fig. 8.2

One can control volition and intention and not outcomes—two contrasting paradigms by which to judge oneself

In our culture, there is a strong tendency to judge people or oneself by the accomplishments, position, wealth, and power. There is a favorite chant, particularly used in sports of “We’re #1!” Consequently, many young and not-so-young people have fame, fortune, position, and status as their goal. Winning becomes everything. Accomplishments are certainly important but if one judges oneself by what is accomplished, one is likely to have many unhappy days. As indicated in the top part of the figure, there are many events and circumstances that effect outcome that are simply beyond one’s control. So, if we judge outcome we may fail because of one of these uncontrollable circumstances despite our best efforts and intentions.

On the other hand, one can always control one’s intention, volition and effort as in the lower part of the figure. To have important and meaningful accomplishments requires effort. But, when things don’t turn out as hoped and a terrific effort was given with good motivation, then that should be internally satisfying. Part of our “hard-wiring” is our communal nature so that efforts in service to others and society will make one feel good and will likely be reciprocated with respect, kindness, and friendship. These may be seemingly inconsequential efforts on a global scale but very significant on a person-to-person or local community scale. Integrity and character matter. Whatever the outcome, making a good honest effort, living a moral life, and judging oneself on that rather than outcome is a much healthier way to live life. Both good and great things can be accomplished.

There will surely be events that we may not have wanted but living life as it is can make every single day, every single moment and every single encounter a rich and rewarding one. And, with a nonreactive mind, we may accomplish in our careers and lives, far more than we would have imagined. We can bring clarity in place of bias. We may make contributions that bring fame-yet we understand the impermanence of fame. We may attain a certain financial status-yet we appreciate what we have and understand the impermanence of material goods. We may be motivated by inequality to help others. We may be called on to make a major personal sacrifice but we can understand the need to live and act by principle. We may attain a circle of friends that sustain us and enrich our lives—yet we understand that each of us is impermanent and the nature of our relationship with one another is also constantly changing. We may have a family with which we share great joys and sorrows—yet we understand that these, too, are impermanent and will change.

Figure 8.3 emphasizes that unpredictability is a basic property of the universe in which we live. Unpredictability is the basic property of matter—from the basic laws of quantum mechanics we have the underlying property of chaos- unpredictability. If the future is not predictable, and not controllable it is madness to judge ourselves on the outcome. Illustrated in Fig. 8.3 are growing spheres in which we exist. If all the components of this figure surrounding “me” seem a bit absurd, then it successfully makes the point of the lunacy of the idea that we are in control of our universe and, thus, outcomes.

Fig. 8.3

The unpredictability of nature and our world and universe

Unpredictability occurs in all the realms we face, from our individual atoms to the entire universe. Understanding this is an important aspect in judging one’s efforts and accomplishments and in leading a happier life.

A Test Drive

For those of you who read through the book and are just at the beginning of mindfulness training, or even for those with some experience, here are two interesting Mind-Body exercises.

Mind-Body 303 will show you that a reaction can be prevented by the use of stabilizing techniques. There are many of these stabilizing techniques with counting to 10 being a classic example. However, in this exercise we see that a quick mental transition to observing the breath at the focus/interruption spot can rapidly interrupt a sensation-to-reaction episode.

Mind-Body 303. In a situation in which you are beginning to get angry or upset, try to observe your breathing at the upper lip/nose area for a few seconds. You should be able to do this while continuing your activity. For example, if someone cuts you off while you are driving and you are ready to give a nasty gesture or honk the horn, first note the tension in your chest or gut and then quickly try just focusing on your breathing as it comes out of your nose. Keep driving but just focus some of your attention on your breathing and not on the offending person or car. Do this for 10 breaths or so. Then go back to check out the tightness in your chest or gut or wherever you felt tight and angry. See if simply changing the focus lessens the angry sensation or at least stops it from growing in intensity. It very likely will and it will give you an idea how you can gain control of your reactions by focusing your mind and how the focus/interruption spot technique can stop reactions from escalating in a moment.

Mind-Body 404 will illustrate that the intense reaction you feel and which can be very upsetting leading to an unskillful response is invariably preceded by a subtler biochemical and physiological change that produces a subtle sensation. The gross or coarse sensation of anger is not the primary one. The coarser sensation may seem to be followed instantaneously by a reaction but there is in reality a time gap in which you can intervene to either intercept the subtle → coarse feeling or, at least, to lessen or prevent the intense reaction by intercepting the coarse feeling → reaction. Eventually, training yourself to feel the earliest sensations (Sentinel SitesSM) and responding by observation can make an incredible difference in how you feel and react. The sensation → reaction cycle can cease under your control! You will begin to rid yourself of these endless mental cycles (or at least reduce the intensity and impact) and be able to avoid explosive reactions. You will Clear your Mindfield!

Mind-Body 404. This is a more advanced experiment in the mind-body connection. In that you may not have had training in detecting the subtle sensations, this may be difficult to do at this point on the road to change but it is worth a try. This will be in an uncontrolled setting unlike Mind-Body 101 in Chap. 2. You will look at more subtle sensations than in Mind-Body 303.

Focus on pleasant activities for this exercise. As you go about your daily life, see if you can get in touch with some inner sensations and see how you feel as you are just about ready to react and also on the feelings as you take action. For a positive example, look at the feeling you get while doing an unexpected politeness or courtesy such as holding a door open for someone, treating a friend or colleague to coffee, bringing home flowers for no particular reason other than the joy of their beauty, or giving a surprise gift to a colleague after a business trip.

The purpose of this experiment is to see how you feel inside as you are doing something that is kind and compassionate and not done for your own benefit but for someone else’s. Can you feel some feeling?

OK, we’ll try a negative event, too. There is no limit to irritating events, so try this with an annoying event. If someone does something such as cutting into a line, see if feel the subtle sensation of being put-upon before you actually get irritated or angry. You should be able to feel the irritation build up before you get ready to act in such a relatively minor transgression as cutting in a line. For a more major transgression, your current subtle sensation to major sensation to reaction to action may be too rapid to see the sequence although with experience you will be able to see that, too.

So, what is
Mindfulness for the High Performance World? Regarding Mind-Body 303 and 404, with teaching and practice, the lead-time between thought and sensation and reaction will grow to where the process can be readily intercepted and actions will be controllable, purposeful and constructive rather than knee-jerk and potentially damaging to you and others. Eventually, with the changed paradigm there will be less reactivity to intercept, your thought pattern and spontaneous actions will be healthy for you and others, you will be more effective and in control of yourself and life will be more peaceful. You will likely reduce your stress level along with stress hormones, blood pressure and other unhealthy physiological responses that accompany a reactive, cycling mind. You will become aware of the thoughts directly and the changes they produce in sensations (biochemistry and physiology). By having a technique to see the whole chain of thought to action you know what is going on in your mind and have control over what you do. You are not your thoughts but you can modify them and you can control your response and actions. You will develop the skill to switching the mind’s focus. This is a very healthy chain of events!

It Is Not so Complicated…But It Does Time and Effort

In the first of two summary figures, Fig. 8.4 summarizes the goals in
Mindfulness for the High Performance World.

Fig. 8.4

The skills mindfulness for the high performance world

The thought → to reaction pattern can be broken into four steps (the heavy boxes at top): (#1) Input into the mind from senses and thoughts are (#2) assessed and perceived. They may be assessed as good, bad or neutral. The thoughts produce (#3) sensations from the biochemical and physiological changes. These are the earliest stages of a response. Next, we do something, (#4) a reaction and possibly a damaging action.

In Level of Awareness 1 (Levels of AwarenessSM as in Fig. 1.2), there is little to no recognition of this process, gross sensations occur and there is a knee-jerk reaction. But there is some chance for intervention and where work can begin is Star #1, in the time between the sensation to reaction. The Focus/Interruption skill will work here.

In Level 2 a deeper level of skill is developed, working toward mindfulness. The skills include learning to focus and developing the Focus/Interruption point. Stabilizing meditation is learned which requires training (such as in the 10-day VRI/Goenka course but other courses are certainly available). Work is around Star #2 including the ability to categorize the thoughts by their sensations (the thoughts’ “barcode”) which includes observing constellations of sensations and, over time, Sentinel SitesSM or a system that works for you. Ongoing mindfulness during meditation and throughout the day brings skill in insight meditation and the power of observation.

Further developing mindfulness skills brings one to Level 3 awareness. With experience and skills, one begins to master the key mental processes and reactions The boxes in this level are shifted to the left (early time points) as one is now working at Star #3 where the thoughts themselves are observed, early sensations are seen, awareness and observation are fully active and the response is wise compassion and equanimity with the underlying default theme of gratitude.

It is not so complicated but developing the skill requires ridding oneself of old habits and reactions, learning these skills intellectually and experientially and putting in the effort. It takes time, commitment and effort but it can be done and even a partial success is a huge success!

So How Will Daily Living Change?

There will be a paradigm shift in living. The changes will occur in all aspects of your life including the most high performance and stressful settings. You will learn to observe and not react and by doing so you will be a much better observer with effective and skillful actions. You will be calmer and less reactive, angry, fearful and cynical. Life’s problems and dilemmas will be faced with more equanimity and clarity. You may likely find humor in situations that once caused frustration and anger. This will not be laughing at others but seeing the humor in the situation and laughing with others. You will be open to new ideas and free of bias and prejudice. The transition takes time but as soon as you begin to recognize that there is a new paradigm for living and begin to change, you will see the improved clarity, reduced reactivity and the feeling of “being there” with a new focus, understanding, and equanimity.

Life will be lived in the only place it can be lived: in the present. While planning, preparation, and anticipation of upcoming events are certainly important, you will be able to be within and even affect the moment and will not be constantly planning the future or reliving the past. The proper application of this approach is not living for the moment but living in the moment.

What Will Interpersonal Interactions Be like?

Compassion and kindness will be much more forthcoming. Openness will replace preconceived notions and bias. You will listen better. The importance of morality and integrity will be recognized both for the good it does others and society but also for the calmness and inner peace that comes to you from living that way. The good feelings that come from truly helping others and being part of a community will replace victimhood, entitlement, and revenge.

Trying to emulate someone else’s demeanor is not the same as real change. Understanding character and the value of integrity from role models is very instructive. You will learn from observation but become your own person and not take on a persona or feel compelled to follow one guru, teacher or group after another. While teachers are necessary, you will be the one to decide and think for yourself.

Retreats, Courses, Groups—Being Part of A Sangha

Being with people with common interests can be very uplifting and stimulating. There are many ways of continued learning including the obvious: books, lectures, retreats, dhamma talks, internet, meditation sittings and more. Leaders can be inspirational but it is key to not let others do the thinking for you.

How to Communicate New Knowledge and Changed Behavior to Others

Change can be difficult for others to perceive or accept in you. The benefit of your changes will be within your characteristics and actions. Discussing these new approaches with friends and colleagues is tricky. Being critical or judgmental of others who do not agree or who are not interested in either learning what you have to say or acknowledging the changes in you could potentially be very damaging to relationships. The best communication is teaching by example. How I live my life is the lesson.

How to Incorporate New Conceptual Approach into One’s Life

While being in the present, work diligently toward a better future recognizing it has not yet happened and change is possible. Your new skills may help you be involved in transformational endeavors that help others. Changing how one lives, thinks, and acts takes time. Be patient, learn from the past but do not dwell on it and minimize recrimination and self-blame. Up to a point, understanding one’s role in problems is useful but one must eventually move on. You may even patch up old feuds, reenergize old friendships and have amicable or at least civil relationships with those who you once considered your problem or enemy.

Are
Drugs or “Mind-Expanders” Useful?

No. In fact, you will appreciate the clarity of a mind that is impacted adversely even by a little bit of alcohol or a prescribed medicine (see five precepts in Chap. 4). You may not want a glass of wine or a drink. It can feel awkward but that’s okay. People will get used to you, if not perhaps looking quizzically at you. Medical treatments for biochemical imbalances are appropriate and, in some instances, essential. But why risk all the work you have done for your education, to construct your life and to enhance true mental clarity for some “recreational” drugs that are rampant in our Western society? That is truly allowing someone and social pressure to do the thinking for you and in a potentially devastating effect from just a single use like cocaine.

Every Encounter Matters

With a paradigm that lessens the likelihood of a reaction in favor of awareness, a thoughtful and effective response and an underlying theme of wise compassion, there is the opportunity to make every encounter a positive one for you and others. With a moral and principled approach and an ability to listen and try to understand the other person’s situation, the likelihood of inappropriate sarcasm will lesson. Even if not all input from you is welcome by others, at least the intention will have been good. Passing up an opportunity to provide your opinion may be best sometimes. The same goes for passing up actions. Sometimes less is more!

Listen, Hear and Learn; Don’t Miss Life’s Beauty and Meaning! Much of It Is Free!

With a nonreactive mind that is in the present, your ability to listen and truly hear what others are saying will improve. Avoid the absent presence so common nowadays with all the electronics and such that people are in the same physical space yet disconnected.

Recreation is an important part of life. With an appreciation for nature and physical activity as part of human beings’ hard-wiring, you now realize that recreation must be active and not just passive. With walking or jogging through the quiet tree-filled neighborhood or park, take the time to listen to nature and enjoy the beauty rather than reworking the past yet again or anticipating upcoming events or confrontations that may never happen. Perhaps skip the headphones and listened to nature and be aware of your own inner rhythms.

Spending less time on a daily basis with the repetitious beat and distractions from head phones and background TV and more time observing your own mind and physiological processes and also what is actually happening to others around you is something to try. Limiting experiential avoidance is good training for being in awareness.

Judge Effort and Not Outcome

Looking back on the day, the weather may have been inclement, the stock market may have fallen, your sports team may have lost, a highway accident caused you to miss an evening event, and so on. Many things may have had outcomes you did not prefer yet you did your best. Isn’t it more realistic to evaluate your efforts than to judge your day on outcomes beyond your control?

Listen to Comments and Criticisms But Validate Your Own Efforts

We live in a society filled with criticism, commentary, opinion, blogs, anonymity, etc. It is important to listen to these with your own value system as the guide. And it is also critical to listen to others, with compassion as your guide, who does not share your point of view to understand their arguments and opinions. They might not listen to your point of view or even recognize your compassion but this might kindle some willingness to share ideas. Often there can be solutions in common to what may be confrontations or conflicts based fears or inequality.

Your contributions and output will be judged by those, some of whom are supporters, competitors, hypercritical, out-of-it a bit, or habitually negative. Some of this can be very uplifting and reinforcing while others may be hurtful or insulting. Your mindfulness skills will enable you to prevent a knee-jerk response such as a needlessly hostile retort and that split-second to stop the reaction will allow for an extraordinarily effective and, perhaps, surprising response. The key concept is that you are the one to validate your actions based on intention, effort and outcomes in context of the reality of the challenge or situation. Getting by in what has become a hypercritical world can be a big challenge, however, with your mindfulness skills and moral/ethical compass life will be navigated in a much healthier and happier way.

Barriers to Changing the Paradigm of How One Lives

We are all products of our backgrounds and upbringing. Some people have biochemical imbalances that require medication and others have suffered terrible psychological trauma. Everyone has been brought up in one system or other, some being more open-minded than others. It is clear that one needs and benefits from teachers, necessary medical treatment, appropriate psychotherapy and healthy support systems. Education, support, nutrition, activity, community and purpose are all part of living better, with the caveat to explore with a clear and analyzing mind so as not to substitute one rigid path or unexamined life for another.

To recognize or acknowledge that there may be better ways of living our lives may be frightening at first. In some instances, to acknowledge a different way of living may make a person at risk for being ostracized by one’s community. To address these fears, one can acknowledge the existence of closed systems and unhealthy environments and assess if the risk of not changing is worth taking; action and inaction both have consequences. With sincere motivation, deep openness and with the ability to observe one self and others, one can navigate many a situation that may, at first glance, seem insurmountable.

Meditation

While not designed for a person completely new to mindfulness, Appendix B contains mediation sessions, one being to learn Sentinel SitesSM and the other as an example of a daily or periodic meditation that can help develop, maintain and sharpen mindfulness skills.

Mindfulness for the High Performance World

To accomplish the transition illustrated in Fig. 8.5 will take time probably years (^^ see Grey Box “How long will it take”). Positive change will occur very early on. It is hoped that the practical and systematic approach to learning the skill of mindfulness will make this much more readily accomplishable.

Fig. 8.5

Mindfulness for the High Performance World

As the various mental reactions are turned off by observation, the Sentinel SitesSM will be quiet. Quieting the Sentinel SitesSM can turn off or turn down the mental reactions. The distractions and repetitive cycling created by the mind can be switched off by using observation and this can be enhanced by a default theme of gratitude and kindness. Gratitude for what you have and to your mind for trying to be helpful will add a degree of calm and remove some negativity toward oneself. What then remains when the Sentinel SitesSM and experiential avoidance are off and gratitude is on is awareness.

Where the Sentinel SitesSM are experienced may well vary for each individual and you will learn your own. In the person in the figure, where they may occur are indicated. Aversions- in tightness in chest as action is readied; Ego-more or less in upper abdomen as a tension; Aversions- lower abdomen; Fear and Victimhood-are a combination of Aversion with others and is quite intense; Obligation/accomplishment, more in the front of the abdomen and chest. Gratitude is a mindset to watch for and turn on; Experiential avoidance is seen as a distraction but may have repetitive behavior (hearing a tune, counting, foot tapping). The Focus/Interruption point is the upper lip.

^^Grey Box, How long will this take? Good question, we don’t know but let’s look at what needs to be accomplished. Mindfulness is a skill that needs to be learned at the experiential level, which includes understanding the basic paradigms presented and requires the recognition and acceptance of impermanence. That is both a bit frightening and also liberating but is a key reality to comprehend as it applies to who we are and to all our thoughts. Change is constant and once one realizes one is not one’s thoughts and that all thoughts have one thing in common—impermanence—then one is well on his/her way to develop mindfulness for the high performance world or any world for that matter. One needs to accomplish the ability to observe sensations (the self-MRI) , to focus and change the focus point, to do the body scan treating all sensations the same-impermanent- and to let them go. Being able to rapidly let a powerful thought go and, when necessary, to turn to a focus/interruption point will enable one to not be taken over by a thought-to-reaction -to action cycle that can be very rapid but can always be intercepted. A one to two second interruption can stop the crescendo and allow it to dissipate and so that you will fashion an effective response. A VRI/Goenka 10-day course is a huge jumpstart to learning focus and observing subtle sensations. Other courses can also do so.

Then it will take some time to sort out one’s own Sentinel SitesSM although since these are physiological and biochemical changes, they are likely to be somewhat to very much in common among individuals. To simplify as much as possible (and this is speculative on our part and there will certainly be personal variability), it seems possible to categorize these into eight (as in Fig. 7.5) or at least to some manageable number of categories. In the categorization in Fig. 7.5 the first three Sentinel SitesSM are cravings, aversions and ego, the fourth being a composite of these three that need to be rapidly intercepted—fear and victimhood—to avoid a detrimental knee-jerk reaction and possibly a highly destructive action. The communal nature and ability to plan that we have as human beings will have some sense or “feeling” of responsibility/obligation/duty, a “ to-do” list, as a fifth site that produces some discomfort when not done but that feels good when accomplished. This can have some aversion feelings if the task is particularly odious or annoying.

The next two sites are a bit different. The sixth is understanding when your mind is going into experiential avoidance, not-in-the-moment. It is trying to be helpful to you when you are in a setting you’d rather not be so turning that off seems best done with gratitude and maybe some humor (it is funny what it tries to do). A craving or aversion to this experiential avoidance sustains it. Observation lets it dissipate. Because being in awareness is such a healthy and useful mind-state and feels very good and peaceful, understanding that experiential avoidance is something you can control by your thoughts and just letting go (impermanence) may also eliminate the desire for any altered mind-state such as those from drugs and alcohol.

The seventh is changing the underlying theme that plays in your mind’s background and that can be started on right now! Replacing what we commonly have as the fear, ego, cravings, aversions and victimhood with gratitude and kindness will allow one to function with wisdom and compassion. This will bring greater appreciation of life and will enable you to act more effectively towards others and yourself. This isn’t passive but is awareness. It is effective action replacing reaction. And, rather than continually judging oneself on outcomes, which one can influence but not control with effort, one can assess one’s motivation and effort and be a bit kinder to oneself when things may not go the way one hoped for. This composite effort of awareness, equanimity and compassion lead toward the Freedom from Mind-Made Suffering in Fig. 1.1.

The eighth is the first one learned, the Focus/Interruption site through which a thought-reaction cycle can be interrupted and stopped.

So, with a 10-day Goenka course or a similar sustained effort, one then needs to develop the self-MRI skill. An hour a day of meditation is highly recommended, especially early on, but if it can’t be fit it in every day, at least do it four or so times per week and aim to sustain this frequency for at least a year. The full hour is needed to allow stabilizing meditation before insight meditation (Vipassana) and allow some time to work on metta. Morality in day-to-day life is essential to avoid creating more and more reactive mind-states (besides doing harm to others).

What we don’t know is that if we had the
Mindfulness for the High Performance World model and roadmap, how quickly we could have moved from body scan to Sentinel SitesSM and experiential avoidance to the Awareness Switch. It may be much, much shorter to accomplish, possibly in months, but still likely measured in years for it to become the new rewired mind-state (neuroplasticity)—which is the purpose of this book. We don’t want to underestimate the time and effort required as that may lead to frustration or to overestimate it as that may discourage one from trying. We do know that positive change begins to happen from the day one starts to see impermanence of thoughts, makes gratitude and kindness the underlying theme and begins to judge intention and effort and not outcome. You may already be a long way down this path. Over time, the mind develops the self-MRI ability so in a sense, there is constant ongoing mindfulness by which one can constantly check up and be aware of what is happening. It will become a routine part of life. Some more prolonged set-aside time for meditation will be useful from time-to-time and for some it may be daily and/or periodic retreats. A healthy diet, exercise, and being in nature add to well-being and the sense that one is making an effort to be balanced.

(Note: We would appreciate feedback and comments through mindfulness

. hpworld@gmail.com.)

Summary Points

- The three components to a healthier life described in Eastern philosophy and compatible with Western thought include: (1) (Buddha) a clear awake mind; (2) (Dhamma) living, in reality, and understanding how things really are and not one’s version of reality. Living well includes good nutrition and exercise; and (3) (Sangha) being in a community of people with a similar or compatible life perspective, including a healthy environment. Living where you are is fine but having some like-minded colleagues to exchange ideas is useful. Diversity is welcome. Connecting frequently with nature is important for health and perspective.

- Morality is critical.

- Doing meaningful things that help others is a major component of inner peace that addresses our hard-wired communal nature.

- While certain conditions require medication, calling a normal human action an illness or a condition (pathologizing) leads to many people being on medications who may not need them. Medications, including recreational drugs and alcohol, alter the brains biochemistry and reduce clarity. Many may cause addiction—endless craving—and some may do permanent damage. As awareness develops the desire for any mind-altered states will be reduced and ended.

- Your change may be profound to you but others may not either see it or wish to see it. They may resent being lectured to and find it odd or condescending. That’s okay; respect that. Let your actions do the talking as they do speak louder than words.

- There is so much beyond our control so that it is not possible to control outcomes. While there may be a desire to change to a new paradigm, there are numerous forces from within and without that may hamper progress and must be dealt with. One must go at a pace that works for them.

- Through positive change, how one lives their day within the family, job and daily routine can be much more rewarding and less troublesome. Time invested in clearing your mindfield pays off in living better many times over.

- How long it takes to accomplish this obviously depends on where you start, however, we hope that this practical and systematic approach and learning a skill-set can save a great deal of time. Fortunately, even early changes make a big difference and progress is self-fulfilling.

- A quick reminder of why investing in one’s health is worth the time? As Karolynn wisely notes: “If you don’t spend the time taking care of your health, you’ll spend the time taking care of your illness.”

Epilogue

Making significant changes in life is easier said than done but it was not nearly as difficult as we would have imagined. It is possible for you to obtain a power of observation of thought processes you may have never thought possible or that you struggled to understand from among the odd-sounding terms from Eastern philosophy. Indeed, we hope that by putting this into terms and concepts more familiar to the West and backed by emerging neuroscience that this approach sounds fairly obvious. It actually is and just takes some investment of time, effort and patience. The new mental clarity, sense of peacefulness, wise compassion toward others, enjoyment of what you have, and less time spent with endless mental cycles will more than pay back the time invested in developing new skills and techniques.

We hope that Mindfulness for the High Performance World will help you lead a more rich and peaceful life by living in harmony within yourself, in a life that includes nature, physical activity, healthy eating and service to the greater community in which we live. We hope that you will be able to gain the benefits from Eastern philosophy, Western psychology and modern neuroscience with the recognition that the underlying principles are within your grasp and that you can benefit from the vast experience of these approaches without the many encumbrances, rituals and window dressing that obscure a logical process.

Achieving mindfulness skills does not free one up from the challenges and difficulties of life as these are realities and do occur, but it does provide skills to deal with them and also to live a richer life. The importance of other aspects of healthy living-exercising, eating well, helping and caring about others, working for the common good, morality and integrity

- and doing so with mindfulness are time and effort well-spent. Minimizing turning problems into misery by having mindfulness skills will not only allow one to feel better but may also help lead to more effective approaches to problems and, therefore, better solutions.

We realize there are many ways to learn and teach mindfulness

. We hope that this book will reach those of you who, like us, continually explore life and its meaning but whose responsibilities and range of activities require the need to get to the essential elements as expeditiously as possible. Even with the essential skills and techniques in hand, it will take time to develop and refine them so that you become more proficient in awareness and equanimity

.

We are all teachers by our daily words and actions and, therefore, we are all students. There is much to learn by observing with a clear and open mind. And there is much to teach when your mind is aware, thoughtful, non-reactive and compassionate in an effort to truly understand and have compassion for those around you. We hope that we have provided you with some intellectual wisdom and some guidance toward experiential wisdom that can lead you to living your life to its breadth and depth. And, we hope that by changing your paradigm for living you can enrich your life and the life of those around you. We wish you the best.

Feedback . We are interested in how the information in this book worked for you. Please do so through: mindfulness

.hpworld@gmail.com. We will try to respond to all comments in a timely manner.

Appendix A: Vipassana Meditation

There are many teachers and therefore many places to learn new approaches to improving how you live. We suggest that the Vipassana meditation courses (especially a 10-day course early on) as developed by SN Goenka to be very useful (he died in 2013 at age 90). They are offered worldwide and are without charge ( www.dhamma.org ). This appendix reiterates information in the book and is presented so that you will be more comfortable with the idea of an extended silent retreat.

Figure A.1 is a reminder of the basic components that are learned during the meditation awareness training sessions and which, ultimately, become a part of the new thinking processes that will be developed.

Fig. A.1

Basic components learned using meditation techniques

A critical component is to not be reactive. By controlling one’s reactions, one will usually feel better about oneself and will likely have a more positive interaction with the outside world. Indeed, one becomes more aware.

Avoiding reactions and afflictive emotions

(the dark boxes ) is only part of what can be accomplished. This is certainly a very helpful skill. Beyond this, insight can be developed into how such mental cycles arise so that they can be avoided or, eventually, hardly arise at all. What makes this entire process easier to try and to continue working on is that even with the earliest steps along the road to insight and wisdom

, life changes for the better. The payoff begins almost immediately and grows and grows.

Overview of a 10-Day
Vipassana

Course of SN
Goenka

New students begin to learn the technique in a 10-day course. The worldwide location of the courses is on the website. After completing a 10-day course one becomes an old student

.

The need for 10 days seemed long and was a barrier to our taking the initial course, given the challenge of setting aside 11-plus days including travel. It requires silence and no communication with the outside world, no phones, computers, etc. added to the challenge of setting aside the time from very busy high-performance lives and careers. They explained that shorter duration courses were tried and found to not be sufficiently effective. For this method, this was required. It turned out to be a correct assessment.

The skeptical Westerner should be assured that the course is done in a very professional manner. There is no fee. One gives a personal pledge to follow a number of rules including refraining from drugs

, alcohol, sexual activity, and talking, and to follow the rules of the teachers. Medications needed for medical conditions are permitted. However, in the course application, there is a warning that this 10 day of silent meditation may not be for everyone so that the prospective student can talk with teachers and/or staff before signing up if there is a concern. One can even visit the center for a look before signing up.

Each course has head teachers and there are also assistant teachers for the larger courses. They are trained and certified. One of our friends runs centers in Nepal and it is clear to us that people are designated as teachers only after substantial experience and training. The teachers are there to guide and help and answer questions in the periods of time set aside specifically each day for that in which one can talk to the teacher

. Should there be any problems, the teachers and staff are available at all times and are quite supportive. And, the pledge to stay for the course is only a personal one so that one is free to leave the course should that be their decision after discussion with the teacher

. Such discussion makes sense as the course is not easy and what a student may see as a problem may, in fact, be real progress!

The course setting depends on the location of the meditation center but the goal is a natural and quiet setting in which one can develop a new level of awareness

, focus, observation, and concentration

. Men and women are in separate quarters and each person has their own bed and small surrounding area. In one of the centers we used, old students were allowed to use tents. Basically, people do not interact although one is surrounded by fellow students at meals, during meditation and on the grounds. One is certainly not isolated but the goal is to minimize interaction and distraction so that the student develops the mental skills of concentration

, focus and, observation. There is space for walking in silence. The food is vegetarian. Old students volunteer to work with the center’s staff and prepare the food. There are two meals per day, breakfast, and lunch, with an afternoon snack for new students. Old students omit the latter snack but if medical or other conditions require that additional meal, it is available.

The course is standardized based on a daily evening dissertation from Goenka on a video (as noted he has recently passed away and how that might impact the programs remains to be seen). The discourse explains the general purpose of learning the Vipassana technique as well as specifics on what is to be learned the next day. The teachers lead the sessions and are there to assist, answer questions during the appropriate time, and be supportive.

The group meditation and dissertations are presented in a meditation hall with women and men separated, again to avoid interaction and disruption of concentration

. In certain centers based on the facilities available, both old students and students who are progressing in the initial course may be assigned their own individual meditation room to use in addition to the hall. This further enhances the environment for concentration

. The day starts early with a wake-up bell and time to clean up prior to a morning session at which there is occasional chanting from tapes. This is followed by breakfast and there is some time for chores and cleaning up. The group tasks such as cleaning the group facilities are done by the students on a sign-up sheet. This is part of practicing service. The amount of work required is quite reasonable and again, it is done in silence.

All the students meditate together in the hall in three one-hour group sessions during the morning, afternoon and evening. They are all together for the evening dissertation. At other times, students will meditate at their assigned place for that course in the meditation hall, go to their individual meditation rooms, or walk around the grounds. Students are encouraged to meditate as much as they can in order to maximize the benefit from the 10 days set aside for the course. No particular posture or equipment is required. Chairs and cushions are provided. The teachers will help new students get adjusted. If you have accoutrements such as pillows and benches that you have found useful, they should be brought with you. You are provided with a list of suggested items to bring for the 10 days.

The environment is conducive to and supportive of serious effort to learn the technique. For the initial course, the first three days are spent learning to focus on the breath. The focus point is sharpened over the three days. No counting, mantras, or other tools are used so that one learns to focus on the breath to quiet the mind ( stabilizing meditation

) and to begin to learn observation ( Vipassana

- insight meditation

). Then, using the breath to settle down and focus, the next six days are spent learning how to sense and observe the subtle sensations present in the body. After a few days, the group one-hour meditations are to be done while sitting completely still. Again, there is no punishment for not doing so but the reason for being still is explained in the dissertation and students are encouraged to try their best. Among the reasons is to further focus the concentration and observation skills.

Students meet with the teachers as a small group, more frequently for new students. There is an optional sign-up period during the lunch break to ask questions of the teacher one-on-one for a few minutes. The purpose is to learn technique and not debate philosophy, religion

, metaphysics or what have you so the questions are limited to technique. Students do not talk and compare experiences. One progresses at one’s own pace. This is a technique that is designed to be practiced and become a part of the new paradigm for living so that each person develops the skill to use the awareness and equanimity from this technique in both their meditation periods at home and also throughout the entire day and life.

One can see how the 10-day period is necessary when seeing the progression from an almost complete inability to focus on the breath for even 10 seconds on day 1 to a rather amazing ability to focus on subtle sensations and to observe and not react for sustained periods towards the end of the course. The first course is just the beginning of the practice and use of this new paradigm and skill but it provides a remarkable skill set, even for Western skeptics, if we are examples. The final day of the course is for the practice of Metta and talking is allowed. One sees how quickly the distraction of talking and interacting impacts one’s ability to focus. The need for silence became obvious. The students help clean up the center for the next course and then depart. In this day and probably in the day the course starts, one also learns that the fellow students are people basically living normal and busy lives. There is no feeling of this being strange, cult-like or anything other than an educational experience.

Only after one course is completed is a student

, now technically an old student

, permitted to give a donation to the center. There is no solicitation, requirement, mailing list or what have you. People are asked to contribute funds or effort to the center and to the overall worldwide program if they found this helpful and wish to help others. Nothing is required and one can leave and simply never return or have contact with the center or overall program. This lack of obligation adds to the level of comfort that this program and technique are for your benefit.

Students are encouraged to meditate at home two hours per day, one in the morning and one in the evening to further solidify what is learned and to incorporate this into daily life. Old students often take additional 10-day courses. The latter are a bit less structured in that from day 1, the old students are sharpening their already-learned skills and developing deeper insights and observations. After a certain number of 10-day courses are completed, there are courses of longer duration (20–30 days) and some with other content. Whether and how people decide to pursue this technique or skill is entirely up to them.

Appendix B: Meditations—Learning “Sentinel Sitessmsm” and a Daily Meditation Session

There are many approaches to meditation

. When learning technique and developing skill, it is valuable to have 1-h long sessions as it takes time to go from getting settled in a position, to quieting the mind (stabilizing) to learning how to observe sensations and the mind (insight), and to use of metta

. There are a wide variety of ways of quieting the mind. However, the “to-the-point” approach is to focus on the breathing in the

“focus-interruption” spot around the nose and upper lip. Some meditations focus on specific thoughts and concepts, such as impermanence

. Since this will certainly come up, what is needed is to develop an acceptance of this and other thoughts as they come up and utilize your technique to see them and let them go. Challenging concepts like impermanence require a long time to come to terms with and to accept as a reality and also as an opportunity to change

. Remember, meditation time is for developing mindfulness skills and not solving specific problems, although these certainly come up and need to be let go during the mediation.

This Appendix, which should be read in context with Chap. 7 (Chart 7.5), provides guidelines for 2 types of sessions: one is to explore what are your Sentinel Sites SM and the other is to outline what is a useful sequence in a meditation session for you to polish and advance your mindfulness skills. In that one is indeed meditating “all the time” as skills develop these sessions may end up being shorter, approximately 30 minutes, and not necessarily daily. The duration and frequency that work best for you can certainly be longer and you may also find that a quick “reminder” meditation may be done as needed during the day.

1. 1.

Start by selecting a good posture and reminding yourself of the purpose. The goal is to develop mindfulness and not solve problems. Remind yourself of the

Noble Eightfold path

. While we do not recommend a specific position, sitting reasonably straight will allow for deep inspiration and quiet breathing. In that people tend to slump when tired or just in general, practicing good posture here can help maintain this healthier stance during the rest of the day. Some people lie down to meditate while others find this a great way to start a nap. Settling into a position, reminding yourself what you’re here to do and stopping fidgeting may take 1–2 min.

2. 2.

Next, focus on the interruption site and get a sense of the breathing pattern of the breath going in and out. It will likely be a bit choppy reflecting the jumble of thoughts that are ongoing and there might be some tightness in the lower ribs and upper abdomen-around the diaphragm. It may take a few minutes for the breath to become smooth in and out. Sometimes a few deep breaths and slow exhalations add to calming. Focusing on the interruption site and calming the breath may take 2–3 min. There may be days when this is hard to do but that’s okay. Just this effort will help calm your thoughts. It is stabilizing meditation

.

3. 3.

Next do a few careful, complete stepwise body scans from bottom to top and top to bottom. Take note of the more active sites but don’t dwell on them any more than quiet sites. When you get distracted by the mind jumping around, don’t get mad or irritated but just return to the interruption point and then back to where you left off-or start a new scan. This part of the session will take about 10 minutes but if you will be doing a longer meditation

, this period will be prolonged and may be the major part of the meditation

. The sweeping body scans are useful and provide a good “status” report of all the senses. These scans can take a minute or so. One sees all sensations as impermanent as one just watches them and not react. As focus has changed a sensation will lessen or go away entirely. It may come back, but that’s okay. These are windows to what your mind is doing.

Learning Sentinel Sites
SM : The following practice is used to learn your Sentinel Sites SM it is not the goal of mindfulness to bring up specific thoughts. The goal is to see what comes up on its own, understand it, and let it go. However, to find the link between the key types of thoughts and where you feel them, this type of training session will be done on a few occasions-but very few, maybe 10 or so! It can be part of a regular session, especially the hour-long. It shouldn’t be the whole session. The Sentinel Sites SM are presented in a useful order and they are not all learned the same day. They can be learned in any sequence and they are all of equal use. What we found useful in this approach is that while developing the skill takes time, there is only a limited number of sites to keep track of and not a whole super-complex or obscure system.

The first sentinel site—the focus/interruption point—is used often in meditation and in life and that was practiced in step 1. The next one to develop is gratitude as it not only helps calm the mind and have you feel a bit better right away but it is the underlying theme that should be used to replace anxiety, anger

, worry, etc. This just requires you to think about things, people, being alive, and other aspects of your life for which you are grateful and to see how it makes you feel. This may be a challenge as it may bring up things that you are not grateful for or even anger and victimhood, but keep switching in gratitude

. You’ve done two sites!

The next are the three sites described in most Eastern texts which are cravings

, aversions and ego (attachment). Cravings are good to do next as they impact behavior in a somewhat subtle way. Cravings as we use the term can be wanting or not-wanting. So, after Step 3 during a session, think about something you really want to happen. It could be an event, getting a gift, making a purchase, receiving a promotion, etc. See how that makes you feel. Stay at this for a few minutes. Now think of something you really want to not happen—having a holiday ruined by weather, getting a bad result on a test, having a team you don’t like win the Super Bowl, etc. See how that makes you feel? While one craving is positive and one is negative, both can create a gnawing feeling, probably in the lower abdomen but that may vary. Three sites down.

On another occasion work on aversion. As used here it may be a continuum of a not-wanting type of craving but it is more—it is something you want or absolutely need to avert. It could be someone who insults you, someone who cuts you off or pushes you, or someone who is going to physically attack you. This is a very intense and primitive response that gets you ready to go—which is okay—but before lashing out you need to actively stop this—that is avert it momentarily to be sure you do the most effective and skillful response. The response will likely come up quite quickly and with great intensity and will involve changing breathing, tightening of chest muscles and getting large muscle groups ready for action. Or it may be lashing out with a verbal attack. This is quite uncomfortable and scary as it may seem automatic—but it isn’t quite. Bring in a scenario once and watch the rapid crescendo. Then do it again and as it starts or accelerates switch to the interruption point for a few or a good number of breaths. This may require a very forceful diversion to the interruption site but this is the gap Frankl’s quote talked about. Your mind will want to pull you back but keep going to the interruption point. Even just for split second… it is powerful. You can control this enough to stop the knee-jerk response and deliver an effective verbal or physical response or just let this go if that response makes sense. Four sites down and the interruption being used as an active skill. Awesome accomplishment.

On another occasion, examine the site that hardly needs any effort to bring in—the ego/attachment site. This is the most commonly active site that encompasses fear, embarrassment, sense of failure or shame, egocentricity, sense of loss and most of all the idea of your impermanence and even death

. This is usually in the pit of your stomach but like all of these, it is individual where you feel it. Think about how you feel when you are rejected or when fear you are inadequate or other thoughts that makes you fear for an outcome. Accepting impermanence as a reality is so difficult but important as that acceptance is needed to completely turn off this site. But, like all thoughts, just changing attention to something else can turn this down and even turn it off. Five sites done including the craving/aversion/ego triad.

On yet another occasion or possibly after learning the third site of the craving-aversion-ego triad you can look at the sixth site which is just a combination of these three but one worthy of special attention. Victimhood is the most dangerous as it can lead to very dangerous behavior. So, think of some incident in which you were a victim. Someone cheated on a test and got the grade that they needed to make a cut and you didn’t. Or someone authority accuses you of something you didn’t do and you will get punished or lose something substantial. Or someone tried to pick your pocket or mug you and your spouse/friend. The victimhood sensation is a combination of all three-aversion, ego, and craving-and is very rapid. This requires the interruption point immediately. Even literally a split-second to create a gap before you act can lead to stopping or modifying a response. Fearing for your life or safety is another combination of elements-aversion and ego. It, too, benefits from the gap to allow you to decide the best response. This may take only a second or so to concoct a wise reaction rather than a knee-jerk response. With a thinking mind and not a reacting one, you will get a better outcome. So, the sixth site is really just a combination of three others but victimhood can be so dangerous it is worth keeping an eye out for and having interruption ready to actively and forcefully step in.

On another session, work on a site that may be a little tricky—it is the obligation/accomplishment feeling that we found to be unique from the others and quite prevalent, especially so in the high performance world. This is a feeling you get at times when there is something you need to do for yourself but it is usually pronounced when there is some obligation to others. It may be an assignment or a task you promised to complete. It may be a duty of your job or your commitment to a cause. It can feel good to do and even better when you finish. So, it can be a very positive motivator. Or, if it is something you’d rather not do but have to—such as a work assignment that makes you miss a child’s event, or a home chore that makes you miss a game of golf—it can be stressful and a drag but also a relief or great source of accomplishment when done. Seven sites done.

The eighth is a little trickier as the mind is doing it to trick you! It is the experiential avoidance thoughts or actions that can take over your thoughts and prevent you from developing mindfulness skills. Experiential avoidance thoughts and actions are distractions that may be deeply ingrained—or so it seems at first—but not so. It may be certain thoughts that keep arising, or more likely, some sort of place your mind goes to when it doesn’t want to do what it is being asked to do. This is something you don’t bring on but watch what your mind and body do when they don’t like where you are physically or mentally. Your mind will bring in various thoughts, repetitive patterns, distractions, etc. These can be the foot twitching, knuckle cracking, gum chewing, day dreaming, doodling, humming a song, counting, etc. These may make you very annoyed as they keep coming up and are hard to stop—at first—and their incessant nature may even make you feel down on yourself. The key here is to identify some of them and then you’ll see the pattern. These are effectively dealt with in a surprising manner. By using gratitude toward your mind for trying to bring you relief and even humor you turn the negative into a positive and with gratitude and simply changing the focus these will decrease or stop. You may have to keep repeating this to weaken these distractions but this will work. You may find you’re thinking about a song or a place and it can be an interesting mental challenge to see why that diversion was picked up. It may actually begin to be funny! As you develop this skill you will be able to see when and why an experiential avoidance activity or thought came in and if it is a repetitive pattern you may be able to clear that with gratitude or at least recognize it for what it is and it’ll lose its grip.

We’ve learned how to sit, settle down, scan, and recognize Sentinel Sites SM . This last sentence may represent months of work but it is just a set of skills to learn.

Using Sentinel Sites
SM : Once you have seen where your Sentinel Sites SM are, they are there to be used to understand the type of thought going through your head. You will be aware of thoughts and you can see how—and where —it is making you feel so you can get a much better understanding of your thought patterns. You have a thought that you may think is in one realm but is actually more in another. That matters to some extent to get insight into thoughts however, remember that they all go away by just allowing them to go. Impermanence is a great friend here.

Surveying Sentinel Sites SM will be your routine meditation once you’ve learned to recognize them. The meditation will have the same initial steps-settling down with good posture, reminding yourself what you’re here to do, working on the focus-interruption site, being sure gratitude is turned on and then doing a general body scan

. After a few body stepwise and sweeping scans to keep your observation of subtle sensation skills sharp you can then focus on the Sentinel Sites SM . As you observe one that is active you will be able to see the thought that goes with that. Then, focus on that sentinel site and work on gently just letting it go. Or go to the interruption site and then back to the sentinel site to help let it go. You can work your way through all the sites. Use the practice to let them go or toggle back between the sentinel site and the interruption site to help end the thought

. Watch to see what experiential avoidance techniques the mind tries to use. Sleep may be one of them, but you’ll soon see how the mind distracts you.

When you have some skills in the body scan and Sentinel Sites SM , a meditation may become very efficient. With a quick settling down and a short time on the interruption site, a body scan can quickly run over the whole body but then the mind can settle in on observing the Sentinel Sites SM . It will be able to just let them go either one at a time, as a group or even all at once. When you happen to have them all quieted down, with no experiential avoidance and with gratitude as the theme, you may find yourself in a very relaxed breathing pattern and no active thoughts—and with a very keen sense of alertness and observation. This is the Awareness Switch and a full mindfulness state. It may not last long but you will eventually have the skill to keep track of your thoughts and sensations just about all the time and be able to see, understand, and turn on and off thoughts.

Meditate All the Time

As the skill is developed during meditation the mind and you will be able to use the observation of these limited number of sites to keep tabs on what is going on in your mind. You will have the skill to turn off distractions and be fully in the moment, focusing on the people and issues around you. Thoughts will arise and actions will be needed, but you will be able to see these. You might find a sentinel site “turned on” and then you can quickly see what the thought is that is driving it. This will give you insight into your mind and what it is doing and you will be able to change the thought or carry it through as you so choose. This all happens very quickly and efficiently. You have to control in that split-second gap between thought

-reaction and action. The previous chaos of thoughts and feelings are now under your control

, pretty much all the time with occasional slip-ups that become less and less.

You will be meditating—or better stated you will be mindful—just about all the time and can switch on awareness

. Meditation sessions will be useful and they might range from frequent checks during the day to formal sessions daily or periodically to brush up courses or retreats, whatever works for you. Whatever your personal belief system, or however stressful is your life and job, you have the skill of mindfulness that can make any situation better.

Additional Concept from Eastern Philosophy and Psychology: The Four Foundations of Mindfulness

From Karolynn’s meditation teaching there are The Four Foundations of Mindfulness

. These are different approaches to mindfulness training.

Four foundations

Mindfulness of

How the approach in this book achieves these

1. Body and breath

(a) Focus/interruption site and

(b) feeling breath pattern on lip

2. Feeling tone of each moment

(a) Awareness of all sensations and

(b) Using Sentinel Sites SM to understand the thoughts behind and sensations

. Makes the task of tracking sensations easier

3. Mind

(a) Allow the mind to calm down, using interruption site and observation (b) When the mind is quiet, Sentinel Sites SM will be “off” or largely off; actively turning off sites by observation is the: (c) Awareness Switch and what is left is an observing mind and awareness

. It is clear

4. Mental objects

(a) These are the thoughts and the objects of the thoughts. This is what the mind is doing but these are not what you are nor do you need to be attached to them (b) The mind may be busy or trying to help with Freedom from Mind-made Suffering”

. Thank it- gratitude

—rather than be frustrated or angry at yourself

(c) Experiential avoidance

—mind doesn’t like where it is/you are

Appendix C: Summary and Brief Reminder

This is designed as a “two-minute” reminder of key points. It includes the three key paradigms (Figs. 1.1 , 1.2 , 6.4 and 6.5 ) and the summary Clearing Your Mindfield illustration (Fig. 8.5 ).

Fig. 1.1

Freedom from mind-made suffering paradigm

. Note this is not religion or belief system but is a technique compatible with any of them. Healthy life in oval is achievable goal

Fig. 1.2

Levels of awareness SM and efforts to gain freedom from mind-made suffering

Fig. 6.4

Meditation

Fig. 6.5

Sequence of meditation

Level 1 is the cycle of Thought

→ Assessment → Sensation → Reaction that just happens and to which we may have little or no awareness

Level 2 observation of sensation (biochemical and physiological changes) begins to lessen the reactions Level 3 observation of the thought itself reduces the severity and extent of sensation or even stops it from happening at all. Consequently, the reaction dissipates or is avoided. The skill of thought and observation replaces or greatly reduces the reaction and helps replace it with effective action

.

Gratitude

- your mind is trying to be helpful so look at this with gratitude toward yourself and your mind for trying and not with anger or frustration.

Knowledge—ranges from learned to intellectual to experiential. Meditation brings one to the experiential level.

Observation of sensations

(and biochemistry and physiology)—is not magic or mysterious but just ongoing self neuro-imaging “the full-time self MRI”

. One can learn to see and gain control of your thinking and response

Impermanence

—essential concept to grasp and incorporate into thinking–it applies to oneself—you exist but constantly change

. Needs periodic reminder/ reinforcement.

Suffering is part of living or the human condition; life contains but is not suffering. Causes are ego (attachments), cravings and aversions and the reactions to these. One can avoid the “ second arrow

” which is mind-made suffering.

One cannot control outcome. Hard work and effort are important in accomplishing goals but it is wise to judge yourself on effort but not outcome

Eightfold path

(1) Morality

(Speech, Action, Livelihood), (2) Concentration

( Awareness

, Effort and Concentration

) and (3) Wisdom

( Thought

[ awareness

, equanimity

], Understanding [ wise compassion

]).

Replace a reactive mind with wisdom

(compassion, awareness and equanimity

) and gratitude and make this the new default mode

Meditation session is not for problem-solving-it is to observe and settle the mind . All sensations should be given equal focus—pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. All will fade by observation and not reaction

.

In a meditation

, one may go back and forth between stabilizing and insight meditation

. The session may include metta

.

Constellation of sensations

: As skill is developed to observe and not react to each individual sensation, one can next begin to see that various thoughts produce a constellation of sensations

.

Focus-interruption site: upper lip and tip of nose can serve as both. Sharpen the ability to focus and provide a prompt diversion to break a reaction cycle and stop a dangerous action.

Sentinel Sites SM : Eventually, one will be able to see a very early Sentinel Site for a major thought process and the mind will keep track of and deal with these thoughts-sentinel site as they arise. There are a limited number that one needs to keep track of (~eight or so).

Observation of thoughts: Sentinel Sites SM may ultimately allow these to be dealt with effectively as soon as they begin or very soon after. There will be an effective off-switch and the ability to figure out what to do rapidly and skillfully with a clear head.

Not-in-moment; Repetitive centers, day dreams, other modes of experiential avoidance

, etc.: the mind uses these as distractions to try to be helpful. Use gratitude and humor to stop these and let them go and not cause frustration and anger

.

Awareness Switch

: with the mind’s ability to keep track of Sentinel Sites SM and let them go by observation (or momentary diversion of focus and then observation) and then to see the experiential avoidance being called on and let that go gratefully one is in a state of awareness

. By developing the underlying mental theme of compassion and gratitude one can rapidly turn on or stay in a state of awareness

, equanimity

, and wise compassion

(Fig. 8.5 ).

Fig. 8.5

Mindfulness for the living well in the high performance world. This will take time, effort and perseverance in order to understand, achieve and establish a new paradigm for living. But there is immediate benefit as each new skill is developed

Index

A

Absent presence

Actions

Afflictive emotions

Altruism

Anger

Attachment (used with egolessness)

Aversions

Avert-action taken

Awake

Awareness

Awareness Switch

B

Bar code for type of thought

Biochemical change or state

Body scan

Buddha

Buddha nature

Business of life

C

Cell cycle, death, replication

Change

Chanting

Chaos theory

Character

Characteristics

Clearing your Mindfield (Fig 8.3)

Closed system

Communication, non-verbal

Community people, organism

Compassion vs pity

Compassion (wise compassion)

Concentration

Connectivity

Constellation of sensations

Continuum

Contrary to our nature

Control

Cravings

Cycles, mental

Cycles of nature and of life

D

Death

Delusion

Dhamma or dharma

Dogma

Drugs

Ducca or dukkha

Duration of session

E

Eastern thought

Effective action

Effort vs outcome

Egolessness (used with attachment)

Eightfold path (Noble Eightfold path)

Emotional cycle, reaction

Emotions, strong emotions

Enlightenment

Entitlement/victimhood

Epigenetic and genetic

Equanimity

Evolution

Exercise

Experiential avoidance

F

Focus-interruption point

Four foundations of mindfulness

Freedom from mind-made suffering

Full-time self MRI

functional MRI (fMRI)

G

Gautama

Genetic and epigenetic

Goenka

Gratitude

Guilt

Guru, teacher

H

Happiness

Hard-wiring

Hate/anger

I

Icons

Ignorance

Images, life of

Impermanence

Injustice/victimhood

Insight meditation

Integrity

Intention vs. outcome

Interruption

isms

J

Jealousy

Judging outcome/effort

K

Karma

Key paradigms (Figs 1.1, 1.2 and 6.3)

Knowledge, learned, intellectual, experiential

L

Legacy

Levels of Awareness SM

M

Magical thinking

Magnet Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Mantra

Mapping of Sentinel Sites SM

Materialism

Meaningful life

Mediation, stabilizing, insight, metta

Medication

Meditation

Mental cycle

Mental training

Metta

Middle path

Mind-body

Mind-Body exercise (101, 102, 202, 303,
404)

Mindfield

Mindfulness

Mind-made suffering

Mind-made world

Mindset

Misery vs problems

Moderation

Monkey mind

Morality

N

Nature, characteristics

Nature, natural surrounding

Nirvana

Noble Eightfold Path

Noble Truths

Non-duality/duality

O

Occams Razor

Outcomes vs. effort or intention

P

Paradigm

Path

Perfection

Positron Emission Tomography scanning (PET)

Precepts (five precepts, sila)

Problem vs. misery

Q

Quantum mechanics

R

Reaction

Reactive mind

Reality

Religion

Repetitive behaviors and habits

Response, effective response

Revenge/victimhood

Ritual

S

Sadness

Sangha

Sankara

Second arrow

Self-esteem

Sensations

Sensations-RED BOX

Sentinel Sites SM Mindfulness

Sila-or five precepts

Silence, stillness

Skillful/unskillful

Spirituality

Stabilizing meditation

State of observation

Stillness, silence

Stress relievers-repetitive habits

Student

Suffering

Survivor/victimhood

T

Teacher

Thought

Three poisons

U

Uncertainty principle

Unexamined life

Unpredictability

Unskillful vs. skillful

V

Validate, validation

Victimhood, victim

Vipassana

Visualization (versus meditation)

W

We are not our thoughts

Western psychology

What if's

Wheel of Awareness (from Dan Siegal book)

Wisdom

Wise compassion

Z

Zen