Psychology

Doing Or Watching Myself Do?

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One of the weird things about meditation is what you learn about yourself – like it or not. I have sometimes said that whatever other values meditation has, the things along the way are beneficial. A lot of it comes from understanding your own habits, obsessions, and mistakes.

In this case, I’d like to talk about learning the difference between doing and watching.

My meditative practice, as noted often, is informed by The Secret of the Golden Flower (Cleary Translation) among other readings. I tune my breath to be slow and even as I watch it, refining my breath and my awareness as I go. I sometimes call it the Triple Action as following, slowing, and evening is all one.

Without going into the benefits and experiences – as I and others note discussing goals often distracts from the act – it’s fascinating to see what happens when I get off track. If you’re not a meditatior and wonder “how can you get off track by just breathing evenly and slowly” then my advice is “try to do it consistently for five minutes.”

So anyway there I am meditating and tuning my breath, feeling strangely distracted and distant, and of course I continue to meditate since that continuity is part of the point. I continued and still felt like something wasn’t quite right, that I couldn’t quite focus. Then suddenly I become aware of what’s happening.

I’m not just there following my ever-refining breath, I’m watching myself do it. I’m following the watching of myself. It’s like doing something by looking in a mirror – just a lot of what we do is looking at reflections of ourselves in our own mind, our own self-image. I was so intent on the mirror I kept losing focus on the thing I wanted to pay attention to – my breath.

Now I kept up with my practice – insights can be distractions – but that stuck with me when I was done. Sometimes you’re not watching something, you’re watching watching. Sometimes you’re not thinking, you’re thinking about yourself thinking. The human mind can get into some pretty wild infinite recursion, which is immediately obvious as soon as you remember your last neurotic obsession.

This was a reminder of how we can make simple things very complex, how we over-think, over-monitor, and end up abstract from our lives. It’s pretty amazing what following your tuned breath can reveal to you.

But don’t let such realizations distract you.

  • Xenofact

The Intake

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The five colors blind the eye.
The five sounds deafen the ear.
The five tastes harm the palate.
Dashing about riding and hunting injure the mind.
Rare goods lead one astray.
The sage is for the root not the eye.
They take one, discard the other.

-Tao Te Ching Chapter 12, interpretation

This chapter from the Tao Te Ching is one that I hadn’t thought of initially, just assuming it was about getting caught up in things. Over the last few years I’d come to realize how profound it is, and I have to say the internet played a huge role in that.

Not using the internet for research. But watching how overloaded with crap it is, and how it sells us crap. Does it seem like we’re overloaded with things to buy? Is there endless hype and things you’re told you want? Are you trying to keep up with the latest hyped game and getting the graphic card you’ll need? The internet in Web 3.0 is a gigantic device meant to overload the senses, keep us online, sell ads, and sell products.

And, as I became disgusted with the state of Web 3.0, I began to really get this chapter.

Humans can only process so much information. Some of that is the limitations of our senses and systems, but some of it is a blessing because we’re information, and taking in too much ruins who we are. To be who you are, you can’t drown yourself in information, but process it so you grow effectively. Information is a lot like nutrition, you choose the right input, the right amount, and you’re healthy and functional.

Web 3.0 is a mixture of buffet, processed food, and force feeding for the mind. It’s not good for us, and people are using it to drain our attention, money, and time.

So now I get this quote. Too much stimuli, unselected and unchosen, numbs us, distracts us, and misguides us. We have to be selective, we have to keep aware of who we are, centered, so we don’t numb and distract ourselves. It also keeps us from being exploited.

Its a reminder of how some common sense has been written down over the aeons . . . and how we have to keep rediscovering it.

-Xenofact

Saints Not Gods

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We all hear people accused of “treating people like gods,” from politicians to tech entrepreneurs to actors. We may make such accusations, and might even be the targets of such criticisms. It’s something that got me thinking recently, noting the worshipful way people approached individuals over the years.

However, when I think about it when we say people are “treating others as gods” we’re actually not saying what we think we’re saying.

Consider when people approach another human being, from a podcaster to a writer, in an almost religious way. They praise their talent and vision and knowledge and whatever, but they also treat them as infallible. Such worshipped people aren’t just talented or beautiful, but morally accurate and superior.

Know what? Doesn’t sound like they’re gods to me.

Even a passing acquaintance with any mythology reveals that your average set of deities isn’t perfect. They are powerful, they are beautiful, they are wise or talented in their sphere of action. However they’re not what we’d call perfect in a moral way, because they are beings of specific spheres and inclinations and powers. Indeed some of my favorite myths are of the peccadilloes of the gods, from Thoth’s wordiness to Hermes’ tricky plays to Lu-Dong Bin’s post-Immortality love affairs.

Gods may have something to say but they’re not perfect creatures in the moral sense in most cases. Maybe that’s what makes them so accessible, since neither are we. They’re relatable.

I think when people get strangely religious about other humans and attribute to them some great moral meaning, they’re being treated as saints. They’re being treated as some morally perfect being, unquestionable, the same way a saint is seen as some approved-by-a-superior-being creature. They are being treated as perfect.

Which let us be honest, is often hilarious because people find some of the biggest dinks to worship. Like the more messed up they are the harder the worshipers work to act like they’re some moral paragon.

So next time someone talks of another human being who is treated like a god, ask if they really mean saint. Because it seems too often that’s what people really mean.

-Xenofact