Living with less prediction

If I want to be free from suffering, the most impactful thing I can do is to rest that part of my brain that is incessantly trying to predict what every shift in affect means.  Do this and let the equanimity build.

If I want to be happy I need to notice when an unpleasant affect is receiving a habitual prediction of gloom and doom. E.g.  when I'm running, I can notice how my mind has shifted to work problems.  Take a beat, notice that there are no actual work problem happening, this is my brain noticing the rise in intensity in my body from effort, and coming up with the habitual reason for this: work problems.  I did this yesterday and was easily able to shift from anxiety to excitement about the incrementum from returning to my running habit and the increase in healthy energy that this was going to bring me. 

Another good example is when I wake up in the morning, cortisol running through my body. Same, my brain starts hunting through the usual negative scenarios, all the things I'm angry or anxious about.  But I don't have to continue with those particular simulations. I can immediately ask, "what can I be excited about today?" I can start my day with an entirely different mindset. 

And then I can start the day with an hour of meditation that sets the default mode at being, instead of predicting. 

Nothing agains prediction.  It's very useful.  But it's also like trying to live on ground that is always shifting. The body, the brain and the mind needs stillness. 

If it's going to maintain balance, it needs to know what balance feels like  

new new words

incubated:  the feeling of being in  my tidied bedroom, where new growth has a chance to grow beyond a traumatic sprout. 

Yesterday I wrote about my project of coming up with new words for new feelings. Like incrementum, for the feeling after taking a baby step towards the recovery of healthy energy. 

When I started this journal thirteen years ago, and then abandoned it a few months later, and then started writing in it again, I wrote about the phenomenon of traumatic sprouts. The re-growth in a tree after there's been trauma, and the challenge of maintaining that re-growth. 

Right now my clean bedroom feels like a fragile environment.  I've rarely been able to sustain this environment for an extended period, and I wonder what impact that has on my ability to thrive and sustain success. 

I hope by identifying the feeling of being incubated, and maintaining that emotion, that the energy that I grow here will become more stable. 

New words, new feelings

I'm working on building the specific words for feelings that  I need to recreate to sustain the growth that I've made and want to build.

Repiphany: an insight that I've had before, but forgot

e.g. If I sit with that feeling of stuck-ness long enough it starts to give, and I start to feel a small motivation to change.  I've recognized this before, but it's not quite intuitive

Incrementum, the feeling after I've taken a small action towards positive change, and

Recrementum, the feeling I have after I've completed a micro habit that served me well in the past

eg. Just looking at that empty swept corner of the room gave me hope. 

Remomentum: the energy that starts to build from several instances of recrementum

eg. If I could commit to the 2 minute hotspot for a few days, I'm sure I'd build some remomentum. 

My theory of equanimity

If joy is the prediction that positive transformation is happening and will continue, then what is equanimity?

It's the prediction that peace is abundant and available, now and in the future. Even forever. 

The universe is at peace. Space seems still and endless, and it looks like that's not going to be changing anytime soon. As I build a stronger and more resilient sense of this truth, the  intense, unpleasant affect that threatens to derail me has  less of a hold, and wisdom is in the driver's seat. 

My theory of joy

 If emotions are guesses and predictions, then joy is the prediction that there will be good things, better things, transformation.

It's not everything is going to be okay, but it is everything will be good enough, better, worth being grateful for. 

It's all that we see in our lives and in the world that convinces us that we can always find a path to peace, equanimity, love. 

If I apply it within the four qualities, it goes like this.  The wish that everyone be happy and free, awakens the hope, possibility and prediction that this will be so.  What makes this feeling habitual is the equanimity that supports it, nurtures it and increases the circumstances and possibilities for joy. 

Equanimity now

A self-directed mini-retreat yesterday. 

I spent a lot of time focussing on the sensations on my skin, keeping my attention to low arousal energy. I takes less effort to maintain, so brings me into calm more quickly. 

I listened to a long and short Goenka led meditation.  Keeping in mind the objective of equanimity, I found that place of balance in my brain, when I feel the truth of 360 peripheral understanding of how well supported we all are by the universe.  When we enter that zone and let go, being is effortless.

Remembering that place, remembering the core purpose and value of our brain, balance and equanimity, is the challenge. 

It's a huge challenge because it means devoting yourself to something that seems colourless, flavourless, affectless, but is in fact the light that brightens, sweetens and awakens all that is good. 

Being an energy leader

To be a thought leader, first you need to be an energy leader.  If, as Lisa Feldman Barrett theorizes, the brain is not for thinking, but for allostasis, then if we want to influence the other brains, we need energy. 

My first stage of energy building and maintenance is nurturing calm. I move  the needle from the unpleasant arousal that is the clay from which I make my depression and self-hatred, towards the pleasant stillness that is serenity and calm acceptance. The energy grows and rises and from that I can weave together curiosity, gratitude, enjoyment. And as it peaks, the excitement and ecstasy that crests until it becomes the base for deeper peace and equanimity.  

Even the unpleasant affects from which we make depression, grief, common misery, sadness, and anxiety can become the material for that more pleasant flourishing that sparks renewal. 

This morning's meditation sparked that kind of pins and needles feeling that I'm guessing might be the awakening of new neurotransmitters.  I'm not a neuroscientist, so I don't know for sure. But I feel like I'm going through a period of transformation. 

The key is still tapping into and strengthening the flow of serotonin.