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[post_content] => In high school and college, I spent hours every day playing my guitars and writing songs. Music was the main outlet I had for the angst and depression I felt in my late teens and early twenties. In grad school, I began to emerge from those dark days, and as I increasingly found myself in the company of people who were really psychologically healthy, I noticed my music changing.
One day I was jamming with a good friend. He would play me one of his tunes and I’d improvise on that for a while, and then I’d show him one of mine and we’d play that for a bit. At some point, I started playing one of the old songs from my troubled period. The best I can remember is that the words had something to do with losing hope. He liked the tune, so I showed him the chords and taught him the words so we could sing it together. Only, as I started playing and singing it, he didn’t join in. He stopped me after a moment and said, “Sorry, man… I’m not singing that.”
I really didn’t understand it. “Why not?” I asked.
“Because it’s all about losing hope and how life sucks. I don’t want to say that.”
“Oh,” I was a bit bewildered. “Okay, let’s try something else.” And we moved on. I was a little bit offended. I didn’t always relate to the subject matter of his songs, but I didn’t mind singing them. It wasn’t like you had to believe what you were saying – it was just a song. And what about all the popular songs that we sing along to because they’re catchy? Lots of them are about topics we might not care for, but they’re still good songs.
Well, I let it go and didn’t think about it again for a long time. But years later, I had become more acutely tuned in to my thoughts and words, and I had experienced in a more definite way the way my words affected my experience. One day, I remembered that event and thought, “Wow. Good for him.”
You Are What You “Eat”
Have you ever used an affirmation? The idea is that by repeating key words, we can reprogram our mind, shift our emotions, heal our body, and even change the circumstances of our life. When done right, they really can work. I wouldn’t place all my eggs in the affirmations basket when I want something in my life to be different, but they have their place. What’s arguably more valuable than the actual practice of repeating an affirmation is what they demonstrate: the thoughts we choose can have a huge impact on our life. Apart from whatever objective ways they might affect our lives, the subjective impact of our thoughts is that they color our experience – our internal environment and outlook – in a way that makes the objective circumstances almost irrelevant.
For instance, if you think life sucks, it doesn’t matter whether you have delicious food, warm clothes, people who love you, a winning lottery ticket, and blue skies – life still sucks. And if you think life is an utter gift, you could be in rags and have no limbs, and yet see beauty and grace in everything.
It’s difficult for most people to remember to repeat an affirmation all day long, or to choose to focus on a positive idea as often as possible. But it’s quite easy for us to sing a song in our head all day long … say, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” or Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (later covered by Johnny Cash). It’s easy to listen to ranting on talk radio. It’s easy to read a daily newspaper that’s filled with more negativity than positivity. And it’s easy to barely register that we are making choices that degrade our lives.
If we want our life to go a certain way – happy, healthy, long, etc. – we need to pay attention not only to what good things we’re doing to ensure this, but also to what destructive things we’re doing to sabotage it. We all know “you are what you eat” – that what you feed your body affects the quality of your health. In the same way, the thoughts we cultivate, the way we speak, the media we consume, the people and social institutions we associate with are all part of what we’re feeding our consciousness. So, it should be no surprise that they affect the quality of our experience.
When my friend refused to sing the depressing song I had written, it’s because he was tuned into – and respectful of – the effect our words (especially repeated ones) have on our consciousness. We can easily learn to perceive the qualitative differences between certain words, thoughts, songs, movies, and organizations. When we bring our awareness to their influence on us, it becomes clear that the majority of news articles, movies, radio shows, and television programs are relatively degrading to our consciousness (and, therefore, to our entire being). According to a study by the UCLA Center for Communications Policy, sixty-one percent of television programs contain some violence!
A common rationale we use for reading, listening to and repeating tragic stories is the necessity of staying informed. In actuality, there is very little utility in keeping up with misfortune and deadly events. This habit speaks more of our collective addiction to conflict and drama.
If our consumption of negative media and ideas is not purposeful, it is destructive. It is like eating a rich dessert (but considerably less satisfying): if we choose to consume it, we should stop the moment we have had enough. If we are five sentences into descriptions of dismembered bodies and we have pretty much gotten the picture, it’s time to put the article down. Usually the headlines are more than enough.
When we consume media with a violent or hopeless tone, its impact on us is determined partly by our perspective and our psychological health. Sometimes we resonate strongly and persistently with the pain we witness, and other times we are able to remain detached and let it pass through us without being excessively influenced by it. Until we develop our sensitivity, however, we usually can’t perceive how it hurts us. If we are interested in whole health, we need whole honesty with ourselves about our reasons for consuming unhealthy media and surrounding ourselves with people and organizations that propagate negativity.
As with diet, I’m not suggesting that we must always make the best possible choice; I’m only advising that we be as conscious and truthful with ourselves as we can be. More important that banishing any destructive influences from our lives is staying aware and honest about the nature of our relationship with these influences. In all cases, we’re better off fully experiencing the effect of a given influence rather than being unconscious of it. I recommend, in the presence of questionable media and conversation, you feel what happens in your body – as willingly and completely as possible. If you find yourself getting tense or tight, or feeling not at ease, listen to your body. Then let these feelings go, and consider altering your consumption.
Luckily, there is a world of beautiful, uplifting, positive, healthful stuff out there. Surround yourself with positive people, listen to music that makes you feel good, check out some beautiful art, read some lovely poetry. And notice how it changes your life.
Much love,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => The other day a friend took out a cigarette and started smoking it in front of me. It was a bit of a surprise, and it made me reflect on how much less I encounter smoking than ever before in my life. Rates of smoking among adults in the U.S. have fallen from 42% in 1965 to 13.7% in 2018. Smoking in kids has fallen from 27.5% in 1991 to 8.8% in 2017. Both trends reflect a decline of about 68%. At the same time, smokers have greatly reduced the number of cigarettes they consume in a day.
This is great news, and I’d like to help the remaining smokers give it up. I used to run a successful program to help people quit, and I’d like to share the approaches that worked well for the participants. Clients would get acupuncture and herbs to help with the cravings; we would do some digging and releasing to clear the underlying psychological patterns associated with smoking; and finally I would tell them this:
“You are not forbidden to smoke. Don’t feed the inner conflict by saying to yourself, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this.’ If there’s a shouldn’t within you, then there’s also “but I am doing it,” and from that, it follows that you’re bad, you’re wrong, you’re breaking the rules, you’re a failure, you deserve to be punished, etc. It perpetuates a whole mess of negative thoughts, guilt, and shame which are arguably as bad for you as the smoking itself.”
If they felt like having a cigarette, I would tell them to do six things.
Number one: Use empowering language. Instead of telling yourself, “I can’t have this cigarette,” which feels like you’re being constrained by an outside force, use verbiage that implies your choice and power in the matter, such as: “I don’t smoke anymore. I just don’t put that stuff in my body. I’m not a smoker anymore. I choose to only breathe clean air now.” And rather than telling other people, “I’m trying to quit,” which gives you an out, tell them, “I quit!” Or, if that feels too big, “I’m in the process of quitting.”
Number two: Take a minute to slow and deepen your breathing. Much of the appeal of smoking is that smokers routinely take time to step outside and do some deep breathing. Aside from the smoke inhalation part, this is a great stress management practice, so we don’t want to take that away.
Draw your inhale the whole way down to your lower belly, imagining you’re filling up the bowl of your pelvis with it. Then make your exhale very long, getting all the air out. Do this several times. (If it’s helpful at first, you can hold your fingers to your lips as if drawing through a cigarette.) If the desire for a cigarette remains, continue on.
Number three: Connect to the want-a-cigarette feeling. How do you know it’s time to smoke? Most of the time you’re barely aware of the feeling; you just respond to it unconsciously and have a smoke. This step is about making conscious the connection between the craving feeling and the act of smoking.
Drop into your body and tune in to what’s coming up. Don’t try to define it; just feel what it feels like. What exactly is the feeling? Where is it concentrated? What can it tell you about yourself?
You may tend to regard it as a yearning, but what’s beneath the yearning? The yearning is a response to something deeper. There’s some form of discomfort there and smoking is the thing you do to get the feeling to go away. But there are other ways to release it. The feeling is just a feeling; it’s not going to harm you, and it doesn’t mean you have to smoke.
There are many approaches to dealing with the feeling. A good place to start is by simply allowing the feeling to be here without resisting it. Can you feel the feeling fully? Can you invite it to be experienced by your whole self? Can you breathe into it? And can you open yourself and allow it to leave?
Just follow the prompts above and see what happens. Don’t judge yourself if the feeling doesn’t go away. If the desire for a cigarette remains, continue on.
Number four: Uncouple the act of smoking from any other activity. We don’t want smoking to be linked to anything else, especially things you do all the time. So, if you tend to have a cigarette while on the phone, a cigarette after sex, a cigarette after eating, or a cigarette while driving, choose another time to smoke. You’re going to keep eating, having sex, and driving, so we want to clear the association with smoking. Before smoking, do everything reasonable to remove yourself from other activities and positive environments.
Number five: Talk to your body. If you still want to smoke, take out a cigarette, become aware of our lungs, your heart, and your whole body. Then ask inwardly, “Do you want this?” or “How do you feel about this?” Then listen and feel for a response. If the desire for a cigarette remains, continue on.
Number six: Give all your attention to the act of smoking. Be alone, tune out everything else, and smoke that cigarette. Be completely present to the act. At whatever point the urge to smoke has dissipated, stop and stub it out. When you’re immersed in it, this point tends to come well before the end of the cigarette. And even if you do smoke the whole thing, it will tend to satisfy you for much longer than if you smoked it mindlessly. While my hope for people is that they’ll quit entirely, cutting down from ten to three is a great and worthwhile accomplishment.
If you’re a smoker I’d love to hear about your experience with these simple steps. And if you know someone else who could benefit from this article, please pass it along.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Six Steps for Quitting Smoking
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[post_content] => There’s a well-known spiritual quote from philosopher and teacher Jiddhu Krishnamurti. The story goes that he was speaking to a group of students (who saw him as an enlightened master), and he whispered, “Do you want to know my secret?” At this, the room fell silent and everyone leaned forward. Then he continued, “I don’t mind what happens.”
What I like about this idea is that it’s simple; it speaks of a state of transcendence of the ego and unshakable peace. But as an expression of absolute spiritual truth, it also lends itself to spiritual bypassing and illusions about spirituality.
The tricky thing about Krishnamurti’s statement is that he was presumably speaking not from his ego but from an expanded state of consciousness, his higher Self. Thus, while not minding what happens was his outlook from this state, it’s not necessarily the path that got him there.
In Krishnamurti’s case, he went through a series of spontaneous, often painful experiences over many years that caused an opening of his consciousness. That’s not something we can replicate at will. So what can we garner from this “secret”?
It’s a good opening to a discussion on how we relate to absolute spiritual truths while existing in a world of relativity. Even among non-dual spiritual traditions (meaning, all the world is considered to be an expression of one great Being, and separation is an illusion), there is often a distinction made between the Source in an absolute sense (which is formless) and the many forms it takes in the relative world.
In the realm of the relative, which is where the majority of human minds dwell, relativity directs nearly every aspect of our lives. For instance, when we say something is good, we’re usually not coming from the experience that the universe is fundamentally Good, and therefore all of its expressions are imbued with that same essence of goodness. What we mean is that things are good relative to some other way they could be. Thus, we’re directed toward things that we perceive as better than our other options and away from things that seem worse. And absolute spiritual truths – like “the universe is fundamentally good” – are simply lofty concepts to most people. We do get glimpses of them though (as I’ve written about in my articles on “gaps” in the dominant egocentric state), and these often fuel a drive for spiritual awakening.
People who have gone through a certain form of spiritual awakening (what’s sometimes referred to as enlightenment, liberation, or moksha) often describe it as an experience of becoming perpetually conscious of the absolute. This doesn’t make the relative disappear, but the awareness of the undying oneness that unifies all apparent differences enables them to play in relativity without the “high stakes” feeling – and the anxiousness and drama that go with it – that most humans experience. This is why it’s referred to as liberation, which can be a very appealing notion to anyone who wants to be happy.
So, apparently from this state, Krishnamurti said, “I don’t mind what happens” because, in an absolute sense, nothing is ever wrong. Nor is there such a thing as tragedy or victory. To win a race just means one part of the Source crossed the finish line before another part of the same Source (or God beat God, if you prefer that name). Likewise, the death of any given expression of the Source is akin to a red blood cell dying and being recycled into a new blood cell; the Whole has lost nothing in the process.
It's important to recognize that an absolute spiritual truth is different from an uplifting life principle or a good piece of advice. If someone told you their “secret” is “Focus on the good” or “Don’t sweat the small stuff” or “Practice gratitude” or “Don’t take anything personally” you could immediately adopt it and start living it. But to a person who hasn’t realized and directly experienced it, an absolute truth isn’t actionable in the same way. And in relative terms, the absolute may make no sense at all.
Imagine that a dog is biting your leg and you think to yourself, “I’m going to be spiritual about this. What did Krishnamurti say? Oh yeah, I don’t mind what happens. I guess I’d better breathe through this. Whew, that’s a lot of blood. Do I just let him keep gnawing? I don’t mind. I don’t mind. I don’t mind. If I call 9-1-1, does that constitute “minding”?” I doubt many people would take an unrealized spiritual truth to this extent, but as you can imagine, it’s possible to get into some trouble this way.
Next week we’ll try to find the usefulness in statements of absolute truth and we’ll talk about what to do if you do mind what happens. Meanwhile, I always love to hear what readers think of these philosophical explorations.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Can We be Misguided by Spiritual Truths?
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[post_content] => In high school and college, I spent hours every day playing my guitars and writing songs. Music was the main outlet I had for the angst and depression I felt in my late teens and early twenties. In grad school, I began to emerge from those dark days, and as I increasingly found myself in the company of people who were really psychologically healthy, I noticed my music changing.
One day I was jamming with a good friend. He would play me one of his tunes and I’d improvise on that for a while, and then I’d show him one of mine and we’d play that for a bit. At some point, I started playing one of the old songs from my troubled period. The best I can remember is that the words had something to do with losing hope. He liked the tune, so I showed him the chords and taught him the words so we could sing it together. Only, as I started playing and singing it, he didn’t join in. He stopped me after a moment and said, “Sorry, man… I’m not singing that.”
I really didn’t understand it. “Why not?” I asked.
“Because it’s all about losing hope and how life sucks. I don’t want to say that.”
“Oh,” I was a bit bewildered. “Okay, let’s try something else.” And we moved on. I was a little bit offended. I didn’t always relate to the subject matter of his songs, but I didn’t mind singing them. It wasn’t like you had to believe what you were saying – it was just a song. And what about all the popular songs that we sing along to because they’re catchy? Lots of them are about topics we might not care for, but they’re still good songs.
Well, I let it go and didn’t think about it again for a long time. But years later, I had become more acutely tuned in to my thoughts and words, and I had experienced in a more definite way the way my words affected my experience. One day, I remembered that event and thought, “Wow. Good for him.”
You Are What You “Eat”
Have you ever used an affirmation? The idea is that by repeating key words, we can reprogram our mind, shift our emotions, heal our body, and even change the circumstances of our life. When done right, they really can work. I wouldn’t place all my eggs in the affirmations basket when I want something in my life to be different, but they have their place. What’s arguably more valuable than the actual practice of repeating an affirmation is what they demonstrate: the thoughts we choose can have a huge impact on our life. Apart from whatever objective ways they might affect our lives, the subjective impact of our thoughts is that they color our experience – our internal environment and outlook – in a way that makes the objective circumstances almost irrelevant.
For instance, if you think life sucks, it doesn’t matter whether you have delicious food, warm clothes, people who love you, a winning lottery ticket, and blue skies – life still sucks. And if you think life is an utter gift, you could be in rags and have no limbs, and yet see beauty and grace in everything.
It’s difficult for most people to remember to repeat an affirmation all day long, or to choose to focus on a positive idea as often as possible. But it’s quite easy for us to sing a song in our head all day long … say, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” or Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (later covered by Johnny Cash). It’s easy to listen to ranting on talk radio. It’s easy to read a daily newspaper that’s filled with more negativity than positivity. And it’s easy to barely register that we are making choices that degrade our lives.
If we want our life to go a certain way – happy, healthy, long, etc. – we need to pay attention not only to what good things we’re doing to ensure this, but also to what destructive things we’re doing to sabotage it. We all know “you are what you eat” – that what you feed your body affects the quality of your health. In the same way, the thoughts we cultivate, the way we speak, the media we consume, the people and social institutions we associate with are all part of what we’re feeding our consciousness. So, it should be no surprise that they affect the quality of our experience.
When my friend refused to sing the depressing song I had written, it’s because he was tuned into – and respectful of – the effect our words (especially repeated ones) have on our consciousness. We can easily learn to perceive the qualitative differences between certain words, thoughts, songs, movies, and organizations. When we bring our awareness to their influence on us, it becomes clear that the majority of news articles, movies, radio shows, and television programs are relatively degrading to our consciousness (and, therefore, to our entire being). According to a study by the UCLA Center for Communications Policy, sixty-one percent of television programs contain some violence!
A common rationale we use for reading, listening to and repeating tragic stories is the necessity of staying informed. In actuality, there is very little utility in keeping up with misfortune and deadly events. This habit speaks more of our collective addiction to conflict and drama.
If our consumption of negative media and ideas is not purposeful, it is destructive. It is like eating a rich dessert (but considerably less satisfying): if we choose to consume it, we should stop the moment we have had enough. If we are five sentences into descriptions of dismembered bodies and we have pretty much gotten the picture, it’s time to put the article down. Usually the headlines are more than enough.
When we consume media with a violent or hopeless tone, its impact on us is determined partly by our perspective and our psychological health. Sometimes we resonate strongly and persistently with the pain we witness, and other times we are able to remain detached and let it pass through us without being excessively influenced by it. Until we develop our sensitivity, however, we usually can’t perceive how it hurts us. If we are interested in whole health, we need whole honesty with ourselves about our reasons for consuming unhealthy media and surrounding ourselves with people and organizations that propagate negativity.
As with diet, I’m not suggesting that we must always make the best possible choice; I’m only advising that we be as conscious and truthful with ourselves as we can be. More important that banishing any destructive influences from our lives is staying aware and honest about the nature of our relationship with these influences. In all cases, we’re better off fully experiencing the effect of a given influence rather than being unconscious of it. I recommend, in the presence of questionable media and conversation, you feel what happens in your body – as willingly and completely as possible. If you find yourself getting tense or tight, or feeling not at ease, listen to your body. Then let these feelings go, and consider altering your consumption.
Luckily, there is a world of beautiful, uplifting, positive, healthful stuff out there. Surround yourself with positive people, listen to music that makes you feel good, check out some beautiful art, read some lovely poetry. And notice how it changes your life.
Much love,
Dr. Peter Borten
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