Is self-hypnosis real?  If so, is it effective?

There’s both good and bad news here. Permit me to explain.

Living well is not easy. In fact, it’s quite difficult. As long as we fail to accept that, we obstruct ourselves unnecessarily. It’s always counter-productive not to accept reality. It’s futile. It’s frustrating. Why waste energy resenting what-is?

There’s no downside to admitting that being wise is not easy. It’s the opposite: admitting that living well is not easy is liberating! No wonder life has been such a struggle. No wonder living a balanced life seems so elusive.

Unconditionally admit that the present reality is just what-is. That’s the secret. Accept everything at this moment exactly the way it is without any mental reservations or conditions.

Once we are mature enough to do that, we are free to pursue wisdom and well-being. The good news is that self-hypnosis can be helpful in that pursuit.

If you doubt that, it may be because you have been obstructed from understanding it because you have accepted one of the dozens of myths about hypnosis. If that is your situation, I encourage you to investigate this topic further. If you don’t, you are limiting your options.

Here’s the most important idea: all hypnosis is self-hypnosis.

Despite what you may have picked up from elsewhere, it is impossible for one person to hypnotize another. Suppose that you think you observe that I hypnotize someone. Why couldn’t that happen?

It’s because all I could do is to teach that person to hypnotize himself. I don’t have any control over your thoughts or anyone else’s thoughts! You don’t either, do you? Well, neither does anyone else.

There are two different kinds of techniques that involve our most important power, which is our power of focus. Why not learn and practice both kinds?

First, there are radical techniques such as meditation and absolute prayer that involve letting go of all thoughts. Even though they are radical, they are quite simple. In fact, they are so simple that they cannot be learned by the thinking (conceptualizing) mind! Their aim is uncover alert, awake, thoughtless, unconditioned awareness. (For more on this, see the posts in the spiritual well-being section of this website.)

Second, there are less radical techniques such as hypnosis (self-hypnosis), biofeedback, neuro-linguistic programming, visualization, and psychoneuroimmunology that involve controlling thoughts. They all require learning and practice in letting go of certain thoughts and replacing them with others. They are less radical techniques because they do not involve letting go of all thoughts.

Just as nobody else can meditate or pray for you, nobody else can hypnotize you.

Since hypnosis is a skill that involves learning and practicing, naturally some people are better at it than others. Seven out of ten of us have an average degree of hypnotizability. About 15% are highly hypnotizable and about 15% have a low degree of hypnotizability.

With two exceptions, nearly anyone can learn to use it effectively. A moron with very low intelligence may never be able to learn to use it effectively. The same is true for someone who is paralyzed by fear – especially the fear of losing control.

That’s excellent news for anyone who regularly reads this blog. Statistics show that this blog appeals most to those who have the intelligence to do work in graduate or professional school. That only leaves fear, and, if you are fearful, you can learn to overcome your fear. So there is no roadblock to your learning it.

Motivation to learn and practice makes all the difference. The purpose of this post is to help you to dissolve any obstacles you may have to using self-hypnosis.

If you are highly motivated to use self-hypnosis to enhance your life in some way, any clinical hypnotist can confirm that a low or average degree of hypnotizability can be improved.

Not trusting yourself decreases your ability to use self-hypnosis.

Similarly, if you are attached to the idea that it is ineffective, that skepticism will decrease your ability to use it.

If you are addicted to alcohol or other drugs that impair your ability to concentrate, to focus attention, you are also a poor candidate for using self-hypnosis effectively.

If you are addicted to analytic thought, to being wide awake, you are also a poor candidate for using self-hypnosis effectively. (I’ve noticed many professors and scientists attached to their views.) This relates closely to not trusting yourself. It’s an important point for those so addicted to understand and overcome.

A trance is a state of unusual fascination and an induction is anything that leads to it.

It’s normal to go in and out of trance all day long. Suppose you are eating while watching the television news. You get absorbed in some news story and forget to taste the food you are chewing and swallowing. That’s a trance!

It’s normal to go into a trance when watching a good movie or reading a good novel.

There’s nothing unusual about going into a trance when watching a campfire burn down.

Haven’t you ever found yourself staring out a window daydreaming, looking without seeing because you were absorbed in your thoughts? That’s a trance.

These are all examples of self-hypnosis, of letting yourself go, of replacing some thoughts by other thoughts.

It’s easy to find standard hypnotic susceptibility tests to confirm that you are able to use self-hypnosis.

Often the term “self-hypnosis” is reserved for occasions when someone deliberately induces a trance in an effort to achieve a specific benefit such as improved relaxation, lowered blood pressure, reduced muscular tension, or improved immune responses.

If you often use an alarm clock in the morning to awaken, haven’t you had the experience of awakening just before it sounds? That’s actually a common example of self-hypnosis.

If you are still skeptical about self-hypnosis, try this every night for a week. When you get into bed for the night, get into a comfortable position. When you feel at ease, focus your thoughts on the face of your alarm clock. It can be digital or analog. Imagine that it reads the time in the morning when it goes off.

Now imagine setting your biological or brain clock so that you’ll awake in the morning just in time to turn off your physical alarm clock. Imagine how delighted you’ll be when you are successful!

Next, forget thinking about it. Relax as you normally would, trusting that your biological clock will work, and let yourself go to sleep.

The next morning, write down whether or not it worked by recording the time you woke up. Do this for one week.

If you haven’t yet developed your biological clock, you may find yourself skeptical that this will work. It’s important to notice when you have such a skeptical thought: whenever you do, immediately replace it with the thought that there’s every reason to trust your brain to do it as well as it automatically controls, for example, your heart and respiration rates.

If you do, you will discover for yourself that your biological clock works wonderfully well!

That’s because your brain works wonderfully well.

That’s a simple example of using self-hypnosis. True: eliminating the need for a physical alarm clock is not a major improvement, but doing it proves that you are capable of using self-hypnosis to improve your life.

Excellent! Now, if you want, you can learn more about it and practice using it to make other improvements.

Why not use self-hypnosis?

It can be an effective way of making life easier.

[Recommended resource: S. Gurgevich, Ph.D., SELF-HYPNOSIS Home Study Course.]

As always, consider passing this along to others who might benefit from it and leaving a comment, suggestion, or question in the box below.

Is there a way of ordering objects that enables us to think better?

This is an interesting question that can lead to all kinds of issues in what is often called the philosophy of mind.

All thought requires a starting point. I have often used the notion of an object, which seems to be the same as what Buddhists think of as a “form” and what some thinkers think of as a “being.”

In something like the way that it’s natural to order integers from lower to higher, there is a natural way of ordering objects that, if used more frequently, would increase clarity when we think.

“Let us say that an ‘object’ is, minimally, anything that may be singled out for one’s attention or referred to in thought, discourse, or perception, whether or not it exists or is taken to exist. . .Everything is an object. . . It must not be supposed that one needs a criterion for singling out an object. The notion of singling out an object is too fundamental. One either singles out an object or one does not” (from my The Concept of Existence .).

Whenever you think, you’re thinking is about some object or other, whether it is a pebble or a lake or a cloud or a dog or another human being. Almost always, we take the objects we think about to be entities (real, existent objects).

(Do you disagree? Try thinking without thinking of something or other!)

To think is to conceptualize. Concepts are principles of classification (sorting, categorizing, dividing, separating).

What about the notion of an object? Is it a concept?

No.

If it were, it would be useful for sorting things into objects and non-objects. However, that’s impossible. There are no non-objects.

All you need to do to prove that statement wrong is to give a counter-example. However, that’s precisely what is impossible. To give a counter-example would be to single out a non-object, but, if it can be singled out, it’s an object rather than a non-object.

(In terms of fundamentality, which is the way of ordering objects I’m about to suggest, the notion of an object is more fundamental than any concept.)

“To ‘single out’ is to ‘make alone,’ and thus make lonely” (from A Course in Miracles.).

Before we get to ordering objects, there’s something to wonder about when it comes to singling out objects that may be lurking behind this quotation.

When an object is considered apart from its context (conceptual space, background), is merely singling it out somehow distorting reality? After all, if it were really unrelated to any other object, it wouldn’t be itself.

The reason for this is that all objects have qualities. Qualities are commonalities such as being blue or rectangular or heavy or warm.

If, as is natural to think, two different objects can have the same quality (for example, two shirts can both be light blue), then there is a sense in which objects cannot ever be singled out apart from their contexts.

Sengcan seems to state this when he says, “If mind does not discriminate, / all things are as they are, as One.” If there were no singling out of objects, reality would be simple unity.

Eckhart Tolle may be making the same point when he claims that every entity “is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth” (from A New Earth, p. 25.).

One might object to this by suggesting that, still, there would be a difference between consciousness (mind, awareness) and unity itself.

The answer to this objection is, as Butchvarov puts it, “If we take the intentionality of consciousness seriously, we must say that a singling out of an object . . . is nothing apart from its object” (from Being Qua Being, p. 120.).

Whether or not merely singling out an object distorts it, there is still an issue about ordering objects.

The ability to single out objects (forms, beings) is insufficient for judging (understanding, conceptualizing). For that to occur, objects must be ordered or somehow related.

The ability to make identity (two-in-one) judgments is a necessary condition for judging.

Is there a natural way of relating or ordering objects?

Spiritually awake people, who are in a rush to claim that all thought systems are delusional and nothing but egoic fantasies, have a tendency to say that there is no natural way of ordering objects. For example, “suspend judgment entirely” (from A Course in Miracles.).

Surely it is a good idea to view all judgments with detachment and question them. Furthermore, because conceptualizing is divisive, it’s foolish to believe that any single judgment captures the whole truth: “Not one thought you hold is wholly true” (from A Course in Miracles.).

Yet even if only some judgments are, at best, partially true, they are still useful. If someone hadn’t told me about spiritual awakening, I never would have thought of it.

I think there is a useful, natural way to order judgments: the logical relation of fundamentality is the natural way of ordering objects. X is more fundamental than Y if it is impossible to single out Y without singling out X.

For example, consider this important question, “What is a wise human being?”

Since the answer to that question presupposes or takes for granted the answer to the question, “What is a human being?”, the question, “What is a wise human being?” is less fundamental than the question, “What is a human being?” If you don’t understand which objects are human beings, it’s impossible to classify them into those who are wise and those who are not.

Similarly, the interesting question, “What is a human being?” presupposes the answer to the question, “What is a being?” If you don’t understand which objects are beings, it’s impossible to classify them into those who are humans and those who are not. So, “What is a human being?” is less fundamental than “What is a being?”

As a philosopher, I am often frustrated by people who supposedly have interesting things to say about certain topics without clarifying what they are talking about!

It may not always be fun to clarify, for example, the nature of beings, but, if you are going to talk coherently about the nature of human beings, you’d better do it.

Do I have to tell you that I never listen to talk radio? The hosts and guests always seem to me to be jabbering idiots who are unable to think well. I’d much rather listen to a gurgling brook or rain on the roof.

If you are serious about improving your understanding (thought system, set of judgments), I suggest paying far less attention to nonphilosophers and doing more ordering objects for yourself.

Is there really such a thing as the right attitude?  If so, what is it?

Life is lived right now, in the present moment. It is impossible to relive the past; it is not yet possible to live the future.

Is there a best mindset to adopt right now?

If so, is it important to adopt it?

In the notes to his version of the Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell retells a wonderful story by Zenkai Shibayama Roshi that comes from Japan. It perfectly illustrates the right attitude.

“A hundred and fifty years ago there lived a woman named Sono, whose devotion and purity of heart were respected far and wide. One day a fellow Buddhist, having made a long trip to see her, asked, ‘What can I do to put my heart at rest?’

She said, ‘Every morning and every evening, and whenever anything happens to you, keep on saying, “Thanks for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever.”’

The man did as he was instructed, for a whole year, but his heart was still not at peace. He returned to Sono, crestfallen. ‘I’ve said your prayer over and over, and yet nothing in my life has changed; I’m still the same selfish person as before. What should I do now?’

Sono immediately said, ‘Thanks for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever.’ On hearing these words, the man was able to open his spiritual eye, and returned home with great joy.”

The best attitude is one of nonresistance. Whatever conditions prevail in the present moment, they are already real. It is counterproductive as well as futile to resist reality, to reject what-is, to treat the present moment as if it were an enemy.

What-is is as it is. In the next moment, perhaps, what is may be different. Now, however, it is just – thus! You may prefer that it were otherwise, but it is not otherwise. So, since what-is could not be different than it is, rejecting it is futile.

The best attitude is the opposite of the worst attitude, which is having a troubled mind. The opposite of being distraught is being peaceful, being completely at ease. Any degree of resistance to the present moment means separation from it.

Since separation is the root of suffering, resistance creates suffering. Therefore, resistance is counterproductive.

The worst attitude is the attitude of the fool, which is futile and counterproductive.

The best attitude is the attitude of the sage, which is the attitude of nonresistance (complete acceptance, unconditional allowing).

If we do not suffer in the present moment, when will we suffer?

If we are not happy in the present moment, when will we be happy?

Since we only live in the present moment, we can only suffer or be happy in the present moment.

It is not the conditions of the present moment that determine whether we suffer or are happy; instead, it is the attitude we take towards them. Both eastern and western sages have been teaching that for millennia.

Taking the right attitude yields happiness. Taking the wrong attitude yields suffering.

So, in terms of the quality of life, it is extremely important to adopt the right attitude.

How? How can you take the right attitude? How can you take the attitude of nonresistance?

Detach from your preferences. Instead of trying to cling to what you like and to avoid what you don’t like, let go of your preferences.

That’s it!

It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

Another way to say this is to let go of all judgments, especially all gratuitous evaluations.

To think is to judge or conceptualize. The wrong attitude is the attitude that comes from incessantly being trapped thinking.

Those who are trapped thinking even tend to deny that there is a difference between thinking and awareness (consciousness)! Actually, thinking is merely one kind of awareness.

The delusion that all awareness is thought is probably due to language, especially written language. Do you really think that our ancestors of 100,000 or 1,000,000 years ago incessantly deadened life with concepts as we do?

Instead of thinking “I don’t like this” or even “I like this,” let go of all such evaluations. Let go of all such thinking.

So the right attitude is an attitude of “no-thought.” This is awareness without preferences or concepts. It’s an attitude of simply noticing what-is without reacting to it.

Adopting the right attitude has great advantages. Here are two major ones.

First, freshness is restored to experience. If you don’t insist on conceptualizing them, which automatically deadens them, or imposing your preferences on them, which creates separation and, so, suffering, even routine experiences become new and enjoyable again.

Second, the right attitude is the only breeding ground for creativity. All creativity comes from no-thought.  [Click here for more on this.]

Furthermore, adopting the right attitude has no downside. It’s not as if sages never think! While (unlike us) most of their awareness does not involve thinking, when they do think, their thinking is even more effective than before when they were (like us) thinking nearly all their waking time.

Because moments of no-thought or awareness probably occur spontaneously to all of us, taking the right attitude may not be as difficult as you think. Simply pay attention to them and let their duration expand.

That takes no time at all. After all, the only time for paying attention is the present moment.

“A free life is still free for great souls.” [Page 163. All quotations in this post are from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra from The Portable Nietzsche, W. Kaufmann, ed.]

What does that mean? I’m not sure.

When I was an undergraduate, Nietzsche was my favorite philosopher. His writings are more suggestive than systematic. Scholars have interpreted his fundamental ideas in very different ways.

Let’s worry less about what Nietzsche thought than what we think. In other words, let’s use some of his remarks as stepping stones to think for ourselves.

Those who are not sages little understand those who are. “Little do the people comprehend the great – that is, the creating.” [163] It seems clear that Nietzsche thinks it is only the creating ones who lead a free life.

Presumably, the only way to understand the creators who lead a free life is to become one. How?

There is no way!

“’This is my way; where is yours?’ – thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way.’ For the way – that does not exist. / Thus spoke Zarathustra.” [307]

(Incidentally, this is no different from what great philosophers such as The Buddha , Plato, and Descartes have also stated.  [Click here for more on how to increase creativity.])

Even if there is no universal path or way to leading a free life, Nietzsche does offer suggestions or hints. The most important of these concerns solitary stillness.

“Yesterday, toward evening, there spoke to me my stillest hour: that is the name of my awesome mistress.” [257]

Do you, too, love stillness? A free life is impossible without loving stillness.

Stillness is apprehended in solitude. Do you, too, love solitude?

“Flee, my friend, into your solitude! . . . Where solitude ceases the market place begins; and where the market place begins the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of the poisonous flies begins, too.” [163]

Any extraordinary way to a free life of creativity requires rejecting the ordinary way of the world, the way of the market place.

The louder the market place, the more difficult this becomes. However, even today it is still possible.

Do you seek to accomplish great tasks? Do you desire to be part of great events?

“[T]he greatest events – they are not our loudest but our stillest hours. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values does the world revolve; it revolves inaudibly.” [243]

Notice how he connects the idea of a free life with creativity and fresh valuations.

Has it ever struck you how conditioned we all are? Have you ever noticed that, the more familiar you are with someone else, the easier it is to predict how that person will react in certain circumstances? Have you ever admitted how conditioned you yourself really are?

Nietzsche is suggesting that we don’t need to stay that way. He is telling us that a free life beyond conditioning is possible for us.

Remaining a slave to our conditioning is unnecessary. Living more freely is optional.

“The earth is free even now for great souls. There are still many empty seats for the lonesome . . .” [163]

This is a message of hope!

Your way to being a great soul is by making stillness your lover, by embracing your condition thereby transforming loneliness into solitude.

He doesn’t tell how exactly how to do this in any particular case. He wrote the book, though, to tell us that leading a free life is still possible.

Unbind yourself. Don’t worry about changing everyone else: “No longer raise up your arm against them. Numberless are they, and it is not your lot to shoo flies. . . Flee, my friend, into your solitude . . .” [165 & 166]

Your way is to overcome yourself, thus showing others how to live. “Your highest thought, however, you should receive as a command from me – and it is: man is something that shall be overcome.” [160]

Do not worry about being alone. “Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.” [168]

Besides, until you lead a free life, you cannot be a friend. “Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend.” [169] The love friends share is a great benefit of leading a free life.

A final suggestion is this: when you do something, do it wholeheartedly. Doing it wholeheartedly is doing it from stillness. In my preferred terminology, that means infusing Becoming with Being [click here for that distinction], or doing it from awareness rather than from thought.

For example, consider writing something. How should you write? From stillness:

“Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will experience that blood is spirit.” [152]

Every act can be a spiritual act.

That’s an idea that I have suggested before [click here for more on bringing Being into Becoming]. Of course, it’s not original; it’s been suggested by The Buddha and many, many other philosophers.

As always, I encourage you to test the ideas I present for yourself. Why not lead live more freely? Why not become a great soul?

Why not find your unique Way?

Ordinary reactions keep us fettered by Becoming. [Click here for the Becoming/Being distinction.] The way to become unfettered is simply to drop them.

Please do not confuse them either with instinctive behaviors or with unavoidable judgments.

Instinctive behaviors such as blinking or flinching are hardwired. It’s appropriate to jump back when a snake strikes or a fist flies towards your face. Such instinctive behaviors don’t require any thinking (conceptualizing) at all. It’s as if your brain is taking care of you without requiring you to decide to do anything.

Unavoidable judgments are those required for problem solving. When you are lost in the woods, sit down and come up with a plan for survival. When you are shopping for a new sofa, compare the similarities and differences of the various options.

The more important the problem to be solved, the more important it is to think it through carefully. Often what seems intuitively correct is a course of action exactly opposite to what should be done. Used correctly, our ability to think is a blessing.

Used too frequently, though, our ability to think is a curse. It’s not thinking that is the problem; it’s our frequent misuse of thinking, our attachment to compulsive thinking [click here for more on compulsive thinking].

Most reactions are ordinary. Why does that matter?

Ordinary reactions such as gratuitous evaluations only result in a proliferation of forms that keep us distracted from noticing the formless.

As a result, instead of being grounded in the immensity of Being, life is reduced to noticing one damn form after another. Then we wonder why we are so dissatisfied!

The first step towards dissolving dissatisfaction is simply witnessing that proliferation of forms. Once it sinks in how unnecessary and damaging they are, it’s possible to begin regularly letting them go.

For example, suppose you come out of a store after buying a package of gum. I ask you, “What did you think of the clerk?” I’m asking about your reactions.

You answer by saying that she was hot or he was obese or he was friendly or she seemed happy — whatever you thought.

Question: why did you make any judgment about the clerk at all?

The stranger that question seems, the more lost in thought you are.

Don’t you usually live lost in thought? Aren’t you usually stuck in mind?

To begin to see why that is counter-productive, let’s imagine either that you never see that clerk again or that you do.

If you don’t, what was the point of your reactions, your judgments? Why waste mental energy thinking when it isn’t necessary? Instead, why not complete the transaction, smile nonjudgmentally, and leave?

Rather than being open throughout the brief encounter, you went through it with a closed mind. By being preoccupied with your own thoughts, you missed much of what actually happened. The encounter lacked depth or fullness.

It may seem a trivial example until you begin seriously wondering what happens when you go through life missing the depth or fullness of all or most of your experiences.

If you do, don’t you think that the clerk sensed your evaluative reaction?

How do you feel when someone evaluates you? On the other hand, how do you feel when someone is open to you and lets you in just as you are? Instead of disarming the clerk’s wariness, you fed it. Is that the best way to begin a more lasting encounter?

Or consider cases in which you encounter other kinds of animals or plants rather than other humans.

When you notice a beautiful tree, do you instantly classify it like some beginning botanist? What difference does it make how you classify it or how botanists label it? Why not skip the classifying and just intuit the beautiful aliveness of the tree?

Similarly, isn’t it simply marvelous to watch a bird building its nest? Whether or not you know what kind of bird it is, it’s possible to appreciate its toil and ingenuity. It’s astounding what animals can do — and sometimes the greatest zoologists do not understand how they are able to do what they do.

The difference between us and sages is that they only think when it is necessary to think.

Most of our thoughts are recycled, hence stale and boring. We stay stuck on the same thoughts year after year! We sleepwalk through life paying more attention to dead thoughts than to the living present. Since life occurs only in the present, we therefore miss most of it.

Sages are the opposite. Their minds are usually open to whatever is unfolding in the present moment. When it’s beneficial to think, they think – and then they think fresh, creative thoughts. Otherwise, they fully attend to life unfettered by ordinary reactions.

To live more like sages live, just begin to practice dropping all ordinary reactions. They are not only unnecessary, but they obstruct Being. As soon as you notice one, let it go.

How simple! How refreshing!

We all have limitations (constraints, disabilities, handicaps). The only question is, “What’s the best way to respond to them?”

Sages from both the eastern and western traditions seem to agree on the best way to respond to them.

The response depends upon dividing them into two kinds: those we are able to do something about and those we unable to do anything about.

With respect to the first kind, namely, limitations you have that you are able to do something about, decide whether or not it’s worth paying the price to do something about them.

If they are, get busy. If they are not, let go of all thoughts about them.

For example, suppose that your plans are limited by a lack of money. That’s only an “external” constraint that can be cured. There are lots of ways to create financial wealth: select one that fits your strengths and get to work.

Similarly, if you lacked the understanding or background for a certain job that you desired, do whatever it takes to improve your skills and then pursue that position.

Suppose that you are constrained by a correctable physical constraint. For example, suppose that you are too fat or too unfit to go very far in a certain sport that is otherwise well suited for you that you want to pursue. That’s an “internal” constraint that can be cured by losing body fat and increasing your degree of fitness.

The goals of this sort that are most important are those that relate to your personal purpose. These are the ones that are the most valuable to you.

If, for example, being a physician or a carpenter or a clothing designer really fits your aptitudes well and you think that is where you’d enjoy being of greatest service, then turning those aptitudes into strengths will be high priorities for you.

The way to ensure that your work is of the highest quality is to bring your human purpose [click here for a discussion of human purpose] into your personal purpose. This involves regularly letting yourself become wholly absorbed in whatever you are doing.

In other words, to use my preferred terminology, this means opening Becoming to Being [click here for the Being / Becoming distinction].

However, it’s really with respect to the second kind, namely, limitations you have that you are unable to do anything about, that relate most closely to spiritual well-being.

Why even consider constraints of this kind when you have no control over them?

You may be powerless to affect a particular constraint, but you still have full control over your attitude towards it.

That attitude is critical.

The first step is to admit that you do have limitations of this second kind.

For example, your body is a form of limited duration; in other words, you will die.

For example, you are aging, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

For example, you are subject to illness. You can take precautions, but, sooner or later, you will succumb to illness.

For example, as important as they may be, all your relationships with others will end.

It’s also true that, the more identified with your mind you are, the more you will find such limitations unpleasant.

Nothing abides. There’s no such thing as a permanent form.

So, what should your attitude be about limitations of this second kind?

Complete surrender. This means a total absence of inner resistance [click here for more on nonresistance].

This applies to all limitations of this second kind. Suppose, for example, that you are suffering from a serious genetic illness or other incurable disease.

Externally, there may be acts available that will ameliorate its effects such as taking pain-killing medication.

Internally, however, any resistance is counter-productive. Please let it all go.

How?

By stopping identification with any form or set of forms (such as your body, your thoughts, and your emotions). As long as you continue to choose to identify with form(s), you are creating your own limitations!

Ultimately, you are not any form or set of forms. You are not limited to Becoming.

You are Being. You are one with Being itself.

That is relevant here precisely because Being is Unlimited. It is The Limitless.

Surrendering to the fact that you have irremediable limitations is a critical step on the spiritual path.

Instead of thinking there is something wrong with you, you are exactly as you should be. If you think there is something irremediably wrong with you, that is because you have not yet realized your true nature, namely, Being itself.

What is the purpose (value, meaning) of what we do?

Every deliberate human act or action actually has two values. Neglect of one of them is common and causes us to suffer needlessly.

One kind is the intrinsic (internal, inner); the other kind is the extrinsic (external, outer).

It’s easy to illustrate the extrinsic value. Suppose you are walking down the hallway to go to another room. What is the extrinsic purpose of the act of walking?

That’s easy: to get to another place. That place, the other room, is obviously something in addition to, or outside, the walking itself. It’s the goal of the walking.

This is what Aristotle called the “final” cause [causa ut] of the walking, its telos in Greek, which means “end.”. (Interestingly, it’s central to Aristotle’s world view that all things, not just acts, have such ends.)

It’s also easy to understand that every act must have such an end or goal. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t know what to do!

Why, for example, would you eat if you didn’t want to satisfy your hunger or to enjoy the taste of food?

Why would you wash if not to get clean?

Why would you drive in a northerly direction if you didn’t want to go someplace north of your present location?

So getting to the other room is the extrinsic purpose of your walking down the hallway. You are not just walking aimlessly (unless walking aimlessly was itself the extrinsic purpose of the walking).

If asked while walking, “What is the goal of your walking?” or “What are you trying to do?” or “Why are you walking in that direction?”, you’d naturally answer by telling the interlocutor that you are trying to get to that other room.

We don’t just act in a random manner for no reason. We act because we are trying to accomplish something. That something is the extrinsic purpose of an act.

What, though, is the intrinsic value of an act?

Sadly, this other kind of purpose is easily ignored or overlooked.

One way to approach it is to distinguish an act’s “what” from its “how.”

If you were asked while walking, “What are you doing?”, you’d reply that you are going to the other room. That satisfactorily answers the question.

However, if you were asked, “How are you walking?”, you might be puzzled about how to reply.

Notice that one answer might be, “I’m walking mindfully,” in other words, you are paying attention to your walking while you are walking.

You may well not be walking mindfully. You might, for example, be thinking about what you are going to do in the other room once you get there. If so, you would be walking distractedly, without paying conscious attention to what you are doing.

Here is where we become unbalanced. We mistakenly assume or hope that some future moment will be better than the present moment, which is why we are constantly thinking ahead.

Do you understand the problem with doing this?

If you are constantly thinking ahead to the future, you are constantly failing to pay conscious attention to the present moment. What’s wrong with doing that?

The present moment is the only moment we ever have. Put another way, the future always appears as present, which is why nothing ever happens in the future. The future is nothing but a set of thoughts!

If we are always distracted from paying attention to the present moment by thinking about the future, we are in the habit of missing our lives. Our lives only ever happen in the present moment. Our lives never happen in the future.

Separation is always the source of suffering.  Insofar as we are doing one thing while thinking about another, we suffer.

So ignoring how we do something while we are doing it is a terrible habit to be in. It is ignoring the intrinsic purpose of an act.

All deliberate acts have an intrinsic purpose as well as an extrinsic purpose. What is it?

It’s the same in all acts: to bring Being into Becoming [click here for the critical distinction between Being and Becoming].

Other kinds of sentient beings such as other mammal species have no difficulty living in the present moment. Unlike humans, as far as I can tell they don’t have the ability to ignore the present by thinking about the future.

This ability of ours is a precious gift, but we constantly misuse it.

Our distinctive purpose as human beings is to open Becoming to Being.  

We do this by using our minds properly, by focusing our attention correctly.  Sometimes we need to think (conceptualize) to solve problems, but most of the time thinking is not required.

Paying full attention without thinking is living mindfully.  It is nothing other than living without distraction.  If it is necessary to think, think; otherwise, just pay full attention to whatever you are doing in the present moment.

We suffer so much from ignoring the intrinsic purpose of an act that it is as if we are living a dream life. In a sense, we are.

It’s not only possible to wake up from it, it’s simple to do so. “Simple” does not mean “easy.”

Now you are able to understand why it’s not easy: it requires breaking an insidious habit. Every adult who has tried understands how difficult breaking a habit can be.

What makes this habit worth breaking is also easy to understand: there is no suffering in the present moment.

(As I speak, “suffering” is psychological and not to be confused with pain that has physical causes. There can be pain in the present moment, but it’s just pain. I use “suffering” to refer to being uneasy, discontent, dissatisfied, unhappy, dukkha, and so on.)

When we use our minds correctly, we don’t suffer.  The argument for a life balanced between the two kinds of values depends upon this fact.

In other words, we balance our lives when we pay attention to the intrinsic as well as to the extrinsic purpose of our acts. Why is a balanced life better than one that ignores the intrinsic difference?

It’s because there is no suffering when living a balanced life.  Fully enlightened sages never suffer.

Why don’t you resolve to find out for yourself whether or not that is true?

There’s no more serious problem than compulsive thinking.

Let’s use “thinking” or “thoughts” to refer to what are sometimes called “mental formations” or “mental forms.” These are not just thoughts that are judgments or images, but they also include memories (of the past) and anticipations (of the future). Since, as I argue in How to Survive College Emotionally, there can be no emotions without thoughts, it’s important also to include all emotions.

All these are typically enmeshed in thoughts that are egocentric evaluations: “I like this” or “I don’t like this.”

Thoughts typically form a dense filter between us and reality, so dense that, for example, we don’t even relate to other people but only to our own thoughts about other people!

Obsessive or compulsive thinking is the most serious problem because it spawns all dissatisfaction (discontent, suffering, unhappiness, uncenteredness). (Please distinguish psychological dissatisfaction from physical pain.)

There are two relevant facts. Although researchers seem to agree upon them, there’s really only one way to prove them and that is by direct experience.

First, about 80 to 98% of thoughts are repetitive or recycled. This means that they are neither fresh and interesting nor useful. Obsessive thinking is addiction to them. We mistakenly identify with them.

Mind is incessantly looking for more content. It is always restless and eager for more thoughts to consume. It drives the desire to gain.

Mind is easily bored. Boredom is always a sign of compulsive thinking. When obsession with thoughts is overcome, boredom vanishes permanently.

Second, about 2 to 20% of thoughts are original and nonrepetitive. This means that they are fresh and interesting as well as useful. These are all the creative thoughts, the original solutions, the insights behind all our achievements from philosophy and science and art to solutions to everyday economic and interpersonal problems.

Mind is a terrible asset to misuse.

Compulsive thinking is the paradigmatic misuse of mind. An excellent example of this misuse is the racing mind insomnia that occurs when you are tired and trying to sleep but unable to because of attachment to repetitive thoughts.

Believing that becoming a master thinker was the way to live well, I became a master thinker. I have the doctorate in philosophy and the publication record to prove it.

There’s nothing wrong with becoming a master thinker. In fact, it has many advantages. It can take you very far in mind-dominated occupations such as the academy. (I had a secure job as a philosophy professor for 32 years.)

However, mastering life is not one of the advantages or consequences of being a master thinker. Master thinkers tend to be slaves to obsessive thinking. Living well does not mean being bound by obsessive thinking.

Living well means being free from compulsive thinking. Thoughts are there only when needed.

To make this point, sometimes spiritual teachers go too far when they state for example that mind is maya (delusion).

Mind is not evil, but attachment to mind is the wrong way to live well. Compulsive thinking, obsession with thoughts, is foolish.

Living well is using mind well without misusing it.

The right approach is a middle way between too little thinking and too much thinking.

Our human tendency is to be so successful using mind to understand the world in order to manipulate it better to suit our preferences that we become attached to using it too much. This is the vice of compulsive thinking.

How is it cured?

Simple: drop the 80 to 98% of thoughts that are repetitive and retain the 2 to 20% of thoughts that are fresh.

How?

The way to do it is not to make overcoming compulsive thinking into a goal to be achieve in the future. If you do that, you make it impossible to cure! Why?

There is no future! The future is nothing but a set of thoughts. The future only ever appears as present. Nothing actually ever happens in the future.

The cure for compulsive thinking is in the present moment. The idea is to get “out of your head” to let go of attachment to thoughts.

Thoughts will still arise. Simply notice them as they arise and let them go. If you don’t attach to them, they vanish.

Mostly, attempts that require time to do this fail. This is why common meditation techniques and practices don’t work well for most people. Most practitioners make overcoming compulsive thinking a goal to be achieved in the future, which entails they will not achieve it.

Addictions can only be broken by paying attention in the present moment.

The most immediately effective tactic may be aliveness awareness [click here for how to do it]. Like focusing on your breathing in standard meditation, it draws your attention out of your thoughts.

Putting more and more “distance” between you and thoughts puts compulsive thinking behind you and undermines the tendency to identify with your thoughts.

You realize you are free when you release that identification, when no future gain could significantly improve the present moment.

Not only will you be free, but also your thinking will become better! You might think that deliberately letting go of most thoughts would make thinking less effective, but the opposite is the truth.

Want more help?  Because it’s difficult or impossible to live well with an unhealthy brain, begin eating and exercising well (see the physical well-being category on the menu bar) and have a look at all the posts in the spiritual well-being category on the menu bar.  All the help you’ll find there won’t cost you a penny.

If you are willing to spend a little money, I recommend the books, CD’s, and DVD’s of Eckhart Tolle without reservation.

Continuous learning can be a valuable idea, even more valuable than it initially may appear.

It is obviously important if you are unemployed or underemployed and looking for a job.

I remember my father telling me when I was a teenager that, whatever field I chose to go into, there was always room at the top for more excellence.

Want a top job? Even with a high unemployment rate, if you have a set of skills that are in demand, there are always good jobs to be had.

Who is responsible for improving and upgrading your skills? You are.

All thoughtful adults realize that the pace of technological change has accelerated in recent decades. The seemingly relentless advance of technological change undermines demands for certain types of jobs and accelerates demand for other types of jobs.

Continuous learning is how to ensure a brighter financial future for yourself and your loved ones. Watch for changes in demand and adapt yourself to them by matching your strengths to the demand. If you do, your skills will be in demand. That demand can put a lot of money in your pocket.

Continuous learning in this sense has been called by Lynda Gratton “serial mastery.” Just as serial monogamy has become increasingly more acceptable in the ruthlessly competitive battle between the sexes, serial mastery is becoming increasingly more lucrative in the ruthlessly competitive battle of economic warfare (competition).

If so, continuous learning isn’t just an aspect of flexibility; it’s a financial leverage point.

Notice that it’s a strategy that does not involve getting stuck on one identity, one self concept. It involves changing some of the important “content” of your life deliberately and regularly.

If you stay stuck with a self-identification for which there is no economic demand, you will suffer financially. You will look in vain for someone to give you a job as a typesetter or a pin maker. You can even vote for politicians who promise you such obsolete jobs; if you do, they may win their elections, but you won’t get your job.

If you adopt continuous learning as a mindset, it will automatically improve your attitude. Instead of wanting others to give you a job, you will proactively be preparing yourself for jobs with rising demand.

It’s not true, as a recent advertising slogan had it, that attitude is everything. On the other hand, attitude is critical. The world itself is neither heaven nor hell. Your attitude, though, can make it seem as if it were either heaven or hell.

Adopting it as an attitude is, at least partially, living an examined life. As far as philosophers like me are concerned, you can, like cows in a field eating grass, lead an unexamined life or, like other intellectually alive human beings, lead an examined life.

Do you see it as a duty or as an opportunity?

If you only see it as a necessary duty, your attitude is not yet as open as it may become.

Continuous learning would not be possible without openness to other perspectives [click here for more on perspective].

All perspectives are relative. No perspective is absolute.

There is, though, a final stage beyond adopting continuous learning as either a strategy or even an attitude.

It’s the stage in which you cease to identify yourself with any “content” whatsoever, the stage in which you see all “content” as occurring within unbounded openness.

If you limit yourself only to “content”, only to the domain of Becoming [click here for more about Becoming], you will never find your true self.

Shunryu Zuzuki, Roshi: “Unless you know how to practice zazen, nobody can help you.”

If you do not have an effective spiritual practice, nobody can help you.

My chief suggestion in this post is that utilizing continuous learning to broaden the scope of what you identify with can be an important step in the process of realizing your own true nature.

Wouldn’t it be good to know how to stop being lazy?

Instead of feeling guilty or beating yourself up about not exercising, lowering your percentage of body fat, finishing your book, or painting the garage, if you knew how to stop you could just get done whatever needs to be done.

As I have explained, there is no knowledge of how to bring about any future outcomes [click here for a brief explanation].

Therefore, there is no knowledge about how to stop being lazy.

It follows that I do not have any knowledge to share with you about how to stop being lazy.

On the other hand, I do have two suggestions.

First, use episodes of laziness as opportunities for increased self-examination.

What you’ll likely find is either that (i) your beliefs and behaviors are mismatched or that (ii) you have conflicting desires.

(i) For example, suppose you are at 20% body fat and want to lower it to 15%. If you don’t really believe that doing that will have much impact on your health in the long term, won’t you tend to be lazy about doing what is required to lower it? Incongruent beliefs and behaviors manifest themselves as laziness.

(ii) For example, you want to lower your percentage of body fat to 15% so that you’ll be more attractive to members of the opposite sex so that you’ll have more sexual opportunities. So you believe doing it will be good for you. On the other hand, you don’t really believe that promiscuously taking advantage of more sexual opportunities will result in your being much happier. In such a situation you are unlikely to stop being lazy about body fat reduction because you don’t really think it would be worth it.

I have argued that your work should be your play [click here for that post]. Notice that whenever your work is your play, you are not lazy.

Once I was fortunate enough to see Vladimir Horowitz in concert. Do you think that a master pianist like him is lazy about practicing? It’s what he lives for! The worst torture you could do to him would be to deprive him of his ability to play the piano.

There’s a fun book by Andrew Matthews called: FOLLOW YOUR HEART:  Finding Purpose in your Life and Work. In it, he writes: “Your life is a perfect reflection of your beliefs.” Therefore, to change your life for the better, all that is required is changing your beliefs. Why? Your life will automatically change accordingly.

If you really believe the benefits of doing something will be worth it, you’ll do it. You won’t let excuses get in your way. You already understand that it is work that gets rewarded, not excuses.

How to stop being lazy? Look at your beliefs. Why are you having difficulty doing what you think you should be doing? Why are you being lazy?

The “external” laziness is a reflection of an “internal” conflict. The “outer” mirrors the “inner.”

When you are like Horowitz, when you really love what you are doing, you won’t be lazy. When work is play, you won’t be lazy. Who doesn’t like to play?

This is especially important in the marketplace, in the domain of economic warfare and relentless competition. It’s important to love what you are doing. Why?

You will be competing against some people in your field who love what they are doing. If they love what they are doing and you don’t, who do you think will have the persistent advantage?

There are many people who are financially trapped. Even though they want to, they cannot change what they are doing because changing would cause financial upheaval in their lives.

Why not avoid that kind of situation by doing only what you love to do?

Of course that’s possible! This leads to my second suggestion.

Second, stop worrying about how to stop being lazy.

That’s possible because there’s nothing you need to do. Nothing. Nada.

There’s  an underlying belief that causes enormous suffering, namely, the belief that you have to do something to live well (to live a meaningful life, to live with purpose, to justify your life).

Not!

Though you may not realize it, you already are what you need to be [click here for more on this]. (Realizing it is not really a “doing” either; instead, it’s a simply dropping or letting go.)

Since that is so, if it is time to sit and watch the wind on the surface of the lake or watch the birds and the squirrels in the park or hear the dull crashing of the surf, sit!

Instead of worrying that you don’t know how to stop being lazy, just directly experience whatever is unfolding in the present moment. (A great way to do that is to use aliveness awareness; click here for how to do aliveness awareness .)

There’s no need to try to change anything or to try to force something to be different.

Instead of starting with resistance [click here for more on resistance], begin with nonresistance [click here for more on nonresistance].

Let go of worrying about how to stop being lazy. Just let it be. The present moment is exactly as it should be.

You are fine just the way you are.