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Happiness, 6.13 (V) Week 6, Video 11 - Summary Of Week 6

6.13 (V) Week 6, Video 11 - Summary Of Week 6

[MUSIC] Hi, all. Welcome to the very last video of this module on the Stevenson habit and exercise. In this summary video, rather than doing a regular old summary, which is simply to run through all of the stuff that we've discussed this week. What I thought I'd do is something a little bit different. I thought I would discuss some of what might be called the apparent paradoxes of mindfulness. I mentioned one such apparent paradox already in the earlier video, which is that although mindfulness involves being in intimate touch with whatever is going on. It also involves observing the goings on from a bit of a distance, as if those things were happening to somebody else. How could one both be in touch, in intimate touch with whatever's going on, and still observe it from a distance? This is only a paradox if you think about mindfulness rather than experience it or practice it. If you practice mindfulness, you realize that the observing is not really going on from the perspective of the mind. But rather, it is going on from the perspective of this thing called bare awareness, or as some other people refer to it, consciousness. This makes all the difference. When you observe through the mind, there is a distance between yourself and what you observe because the mind tends to judge, categorize, comment, etc., which creates this distance. By contrast, when you observe from bare awareness, there is no distance between yourself and the object of your observations. As they say in some of the literature in this topic, the subject, that is the observer, and the object, that is the observed, become one in a state of mindfulness. Sam Harris, in Waking Up, talks about this really beautifully by referring to the work of someone called Douglas Harding. I won't get into that here to keep this video a little bit shorter. But if you're interested in how mindfulness collapses the distances between yourself and what you're observing, you should definitely check out Waking Up. So, that's one paradox of mindfulness, that it seems to involve a distancing yourself from things while at the same time being immersed in them. This apparent paradox was brought out beautifully in a pictorial representation of the Buddha at the time that he reportedly got or obtained enlightenment. Notice that in this picture the Buddha's right hand is touching the ground. This is to symbolize that enlightenment is not some lofty, mystical, esoteric state in which you're totally out of touch with reality. Rather, it's a state in which you're fully lodged in reality even as you're not clinging to it. You're observing, or at least capable of observing, everything from this position of bare awareness. Which puts you in intimate touch with whatever you choose to observe, while at the same time, also making you capable of not getting entangled in any of it. Another apparent paradox of mindfulness is that even if you are mindful of something negative or unpleasant, you still feel good, or at least less bad, as a result. Most people are surprised that being mindful is a better way of feeling good than is regulating their emotions or distracting themselves from these emotions. Accepting or embracing what you are feeling seems to be the last thing that you want to do if you are feeling bad. However, as we saw from Matt Killingsworth's TED talk, findings show that we do feel better when we are mindful than when we let our minds wander even during negative events. Several other studies have confirmed this. For example, as you heard professor Neff say in week two, one of the major components of self-compassion is mindfulness. Professor Neff wouldn't have chosen mindfulness to be a component of self-compassion if it made you feel miserable. We also saw from Professor Shapiro's talk that mindfulness lowers stress. How could it be that accepting a negative event and experiencing it fully can make you feel better than reiterating the event or distracting yourself away from it? This is only a paradox if you confuse mindfulness with ruminating about an event or analyzing the negative experience as opposed to merely observing it. When you merely observe an unpleasant experience, you discover that it was more negative in your mind than it turns out to be as an experience. The saying, there's nothing to fear but fear itself captures this idea. There's also a metaphor that I find useful in understanding this idea. If you have ever traveled up a mountain by car or train, you know how you sometimes see a big cloud that appears to be very thick from a distance. From a distance, it seems that if you were to enter the cloud, you wouldn't be able to see anything inside it. But once you do enter the cloud, it becomes insubstantial. In fact, once you're inside the cloud, it doesn't even seem like a cloud at all. The cloud may have seemed to have completely shrouded a whole village from a distance. But once you enter it, you realize that you can see things quite clearly and make your way around. Negative and unpleasant feelings are like these clouds. Once you've gathered up the courage and you enter and explore them, it turns out that they reduce the things you can handle. Specifically, they reduce the sensations in various parts of your body. For example, the feeling that we all call anxiety, reduces to the sensation of feeling hot and sweaty among other things. The feeling that we call anger reduces to the sensation of maybe tightness in your chest, among other things. And sadness reduces to the sensation of a pit in your stomach, etc. And if you closely observe these sensations without judging them or getting caught up in ruminations such as why me, poor me. It's always me that these things happen to, and it's never gonna go away. I'm gonna be depressed forever, etc. You notice that these sensations ebb, flow, mutate into other sensations, and ultimately vanish. This observation that everything changes and is constantly changing, and ultimately vanishes is, of course, one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism, the tenet of impermanence. Of course, not everyone may be capable of merely observing everything that's going on without getting caught up in ruminations and analyses. Which is why Professor Shapiro believes that sometimes it may be wiser not to try to be mindful at first. But instead, to use one of the emotion regulation strategies to make yourself feel confident and positive first. And then, once you have gained that confidence, then you can be mindful. You'll have the confidence to embrace or fully accept these negative sensations and feelings. Here she is expressing the sentiment in her own words. I should warn you that the line when I spoke to her wasn't very clear, so please listen carefully. » I do think sometimes it is helpful to focus on positives even when you're feeling negative. So kind of like, how the mindfulness community often says view as what is, view as what is. And I think that's wonderful, but sometimes being with what is, what is, is pretty terrible. And I think, if you're really being with what is in a very nuanced way, recognize that what is is very painful. And that what you truly need in that moment is to pendulate, which is something beneficial. And I mean that's why the Buddha taught is what was true is that they were afraid when they were going into the forest, right. But he could have said to the monks, oh, well just be with your fear. But what he said actually is, here, let me give you an antidote to fear. Focus on positive feelings, and love, and kindness. And, I think that's important. I think, it gets overlooked in the community. Oh, well, we just need to get with our suffering. But I think, it's actually important to really cultivate the joy, and gratitude, and compassion. » As you just heard Professor Shapiro say, even the Buddha, who was otherwise a big proponent of mindfulness, used emotion regulation tactics sometimes. In this case of getting his followers to feel confident first before he led them into that fearful forest. This story that Professor Shapiro told us conveys that not everyone may be ready to handle every negative situation with a mindful embrace. Sometimes, before you can play the role of a mere observer, it may be prudent to use an emotion regulation strategy first. This is one reason why it's important to start mindfulness practice when things are going well in your life, rather than wait for when things become really stressful. With that, let me move on to the third apparent paradox of mindfulness, which is that since mindfulness promotes response flexibility, this ability to choose how you respond to stimulus rather than responding to it reflexively. It may seem that mindfulness dampens spontaneity. That is, it may seem that mindfulness would lead to a suppression of desires and instincts, and lead to taking decisions based only on thoughtful deliberations. This, again, is a conclusion to which only those who confuse mindfulness with being overly mind-dependent would arrive. In reality, mindfulness doesn't lead to mind-dependence, but rather leads to what might be called my independence. I know that sounds rather cutesy, from mind-dependence to my independence. But, it's true. Mindfulness is ultimately about getting familiar with what's going on inside of you, both at the level of the body and at the level of the mind. So, by practicing mindfulness, you'll get more intimately familiar with both what your sensations and feelings, that is, your instincts are telling you, as well as what your rational side, your thoughts and deliberations, are telling you. As a result, rather than reacting either too impulsively or excessively analytically to a situation, both of which could lead to worse decisions. You're likely to respond in a manner that's simultaneously more spontaneous and mature. Another benefit of mindfulness, which comes from being more intimately in touch with your sensations and feelings, is that you're likely to enjoy the sensory pleasures of life a little bit more. So meals would seem tastier when you eat mindfuly. Likewise, the warmth of the sun seems more delicious, and the mattress seems much more luxurious when you're feeling mindful than when you're not. Getting back to the ability to respond to a situation both spontaneously and maturely, this ability is something that will almost certainly take some time to acquire. This is because in the process of practicing mindfulness, it is likely that you will judge many of your instincts and feelings as wrong, which will not just kill your impulsivity, but also your spontaneity. So, for example, since you have taken this course, if you sit down for a mindfulness practice, you may judge the feeling of hubristic pride, say, arising in you, or of neediness, or of being overly controlling, or of distrusting others as wrong feelings. This will immediately trigger the thought since you've also now sat through some mindfulness videos that it's wrong to pass judgment on your feelings. And that might, in turn, trigger yet another judgment, that it's wrong to judge a judgment of a feeling and so on. And in the process of being caught up in all of these judgments and judgments of judgments, you will almost certainly not be able to be in touch with the present reality. And hence, you will lose your spontaneity. So for example, you may not notice a fleeting feeling that you just experienced, and hence not react to it. But like I said, this loss of spontaneity is temporary. Over time, as you learn to recognize the difference between observing from your mind and observing from bare awareness, and also learn how to steer yourself into feeling present. You will see that mindfulness doesn't lower spontaneity, but rather enhances it. Here's Professor Shauna Shapiro expressing this idea in her own words. Again, I have to warn you that this isn't the best of recordings, so please pay careful attention, listen. » You have to go through stages. And I think the first stage is you need that distance to start to just slow the mind down and get some clarity. That most people are so unconscious and on automatic pilot that it's important to go through a phase of not being reactive. Now people call being reactive sometimes being spontaneous, but it's not. It's reactive, it's condition. » Okay. » So you need to slow it down so that you begin to witness life a little bit more. Then, once you have a little more clarity, I call it like the zoom angle lens and the wide angle lens. When you have that wide angle lens of clarity, then you have the choice point, the still point where you can go right into the experience where it becomes so juicy and so alive. And you can kind of saturate in that experience until the next moment arises, and you can spontaneously respond to that. » Okay. » Does that make sense? That you have to gather the witnessing quality actually first, and the equanimity of the nonreactivity. Otherwise, we're just conditioned ping-pong balls. » So, as you just heard in Professor Shapiro's mind, the loss of spontaneity is just a stage, an important stage, of course. But just a stage that you have to go through in acquiring the ability to zoom into the present. And that during this stage, which she calls wide-angle stage, you may lose some of your spontaneity, okay? So to kind of step back a little bit, we ended the module on mindfulness with video about presence practice. This practice, of course, is only one way to practice mindfulness. There are lots of other ways to practice it. We live in such amazing times that if you want to check out other mindfulness practices, they're all only a mouse click away. You can check out Professor Barbara Frederickson's Loving Kindness Meditation Practice by going to www.positivityresonance.com and clicking on the Meditations tab. Or you can check out John Kabat-Zinn's Guided Meditation by just Googling it. If you're a variety seeker like me, I would encourage you to check out three or four techniques which will give you some flexibility to pick and choose the mindfulness practice that suits your current mood. If you're feeling like exercising your kindness muscles, for example, you can do the loving kindness practice. If you want to do a body scan instead, you could choose another practice, and so on. All right, so, again, let me just kind of try and see if I can wrap everything up. In this video, I've discussed some interesting paradoxes of mindfulness. And I want to end this video by discussing what I consider, not to be a paradox, but more a mystery, one of the most mysterious aspects of mindfulness. The fact that merely observing something, without passing judgements, makes us feel happy. As I mentioned in an earlier video, it could very easily have been the opposite, that merely observing something without passing judgement could've made us feel terrible and terrified. As we saw, at least some scientists think that the reason we feel good, when we connect with reality as it is, is because our fundamental nature is one of positivity or happiness. This is one of the main ways by which mindfulness enhances our happiness levels by connecting us with our basic, seemingly happy or even blissful nature. When you practice mindfulness, you develop the ability to feel temporarily more positive or to use a more new age word, centered as a result. And when you continue to practice mindfulness, what starts out as a temporary feeling of centeredness, becomes increasingly more frequent. Then, when you continue on with the practice, you realize that you are now operating kind of routinely from the space of centeredness than from a space of mind-wandering or a space of stress. That's when you will have turned the corner into really reaping the benefits of the mindfulness practice, when you're able to become mindful more or less, regardless of what's happening to you or outside of you. So one of the big ways by which mindfulness boosts happiness is by connecting us with our inner source of happiness, but that's not the only way in which it enhances happiness levels. As we discussed in some earlier videos, it also improves happiness levels in myriad other ways, by improving our physical heath, the health of our relationships, and also our chances of success by improving our emotional intelligence. Now, in addition to these, there's yet another way by which mindfulness improves our happiness levels. It is by mitigating the six other deadly happiness sins and by reinforcing the other six habits of the highly happy. How so? That's a question to which I will turn to in the remaining videos of this week. See you soon. [MUSIC]


6.13 (V) Week 6, Video 11 - Summary Of Week 6

[MUSIC] Hi, all. Welcome to the very last video of this module on the Stevenson habit and exercise. In this summary video, rather than doing a regular old summary, which is simply to run through all of the stuff that we've discussed this week. What I thought I'd do is something a little bit different. I thought I would discuss some of what might be called the apparent paradoxes of mindfulness. I mentioned one such apparent paradox already in the earlier video, which is that although mindfulness involves being in intimate touch with whatever is going on. It also involves observing the goings on from a bit of a distance, as if those things were happening to somebody else. How could one both be in touch, in intimate touch with whatever's going on, and still observe it from a distance? This is only a paradox if you think about mindfulness rather than experience it or practice it. If you practice mindfulness, you realize that the observing is not really going on from the perspective of the mind. But rather, it is going on from the perspective of this thing called bare awareness, or as some other people refer to it, consciousness. This makes all the difference. When you observe through the mind, there is a distance between yourself and what you observe because the mind tends to judge, categorize, comment, etc., which creates this distance. By contrast, when you observe from bare awareness, there is no distance between yourself and the object of your observations. As they say in some of the literature in this topic, the subject, that is the observer, and the object, that is the observed, become one in a state of mindfulness. Sam Harris, in Waking Up, talks about this really beautifully by referring to the work of someone called Douglas Harding. I won't get into that here to keep this video a little bit shorter. But if you're interested in how mindfulness collapses the distances between yourself and what you're observing, you should definitely check out Waking Up. So, that's one paradox of mindfulness, that it seems to involve a distancing yourself from things while at the same time being immersed in them. This apparent paradox was brought out beautifully in a pictorial representation of the Buddha at the time that he reportedly got or obtained enlightenment. Notice that in this picture the Buddha's right hand is touching the ground. This is to symbolize that enlightenment is not some lofty, mystical, esoteric state in which you're totally out of touch with reality. Rather, it's a state in which you're fully lodged in reality even as you're not clinging to it. You're observing, or at least capable of observing, everything from this position of bare awareness. Which puts you in intimate touch with whatever you choose to observe, while at the same time, also making you capable of not getting entangled in any of it. Another apparent paradox of mindfulness is that even if you are mindful of something negative or unpleasant, you still feel good, or at least less bad, as a result. Most people are surprised that being mindful is a better way of feeling good than is regulating their emotions or distracting themselves from these emotions. Accepting or embracing what you are feeling seems to be the last thing that you want to do if you are feeling bad. However, as we saw from Matt Killingsworth's TED talk, findings show that we do feel better when we are mindful than when we let our minds wander even during negative events. Several other studies have confirmed this. For example, as you heard professor Neff say in week two, one of the major components of self-compassion is mindfulness. Professor Neff wouldn't have chosen mindfulness to be a component of self-compassion if it made you feel miserable. We also saw from Professor Shapiro's talk that mindfulness lowers stress. How could it be that accepting a negative event and experiencing it fully can make you feel better than reiterating the event or distracting yourself away from it? This is only a paradox if you confuse mindfulness with ruminating about an event or analyzing the negative experience as opposed to merely observing it. When you merely observe an unpleasant experience, you discover that it was more negative in your mind than it turns out to be as an experience. The saying, there's nothing to fear but fear itself captures this idea. There's also a metaphor that I find useful in understanding this idea. If you have ever traveled up a mountain by car or train, you know how you sometimes see a big cloud that appears to be very thick from a distance. From a distance, it seems that if you were to enter the cloud, you wouldn't be able to see anything inside it. But once you do enter the cloud, it becomes insubstantial. In fact, once you're inside the cloud, it doesn't even seem like a cloud at all. The cloud may have seemed to have completely shrouded a whole village from a distance. But once you enter it, you realize that you can see things quite clearly and make your way around. Negative and unpleasant feelings are like these clouds. Once you've gathered up the courage and you enter and explore them, it turns out that they reduce the things you can handle. Specifically, they reduce the sensations in various parts of your body. For example, the feeling that we all call anxiety, reduces to the sensation of feeling hot and sweaty among other things. The feeling that we call anger reduces to the sensation of maybe tightness in your chest, among other things. And sadness reduces to the sensation of a pit in your stomach, etc. And if you closely observe these sensations without judging them or getting caught up in ruminations such as why me, poor me. It's always me that these things happen to, and it's never gonna go away. I'm gonna be depressed forever, etc. You notice that these sensations ebb, flow, mutate into other sensations, and ultimately vanish. This observation that everything changes and is constantly changing, and ultimately vanishes is, of course, one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism, the tenet of impermanence. Of course, not everyone may be capable of merely observing everything that's going on without getting caught up in ruminations and analyses. Which is why Professor Shapiro believes that sometimes it may be wiser not to try to be mindful at first. But instead, to use one of the emotion regulation strategies to make yourself feel confident and positive first. And then, once you have gained that confidence, then you can be mindful. You'll have the confidence to embrace or fully accept these negative sensations and feelings. Here she is expressing the sentiment in her own words. I should warn you that the line when I spoke to her wasn't very clear, so please listen carefully. » I do think sometimes it is helpful to focus on positives even when you're feeling negative. So kind of like, how the mindfulness community often says view as what is, view as what is. And I think that's wonderful, but sometimes being with what is, what is, is pretty terrible. And I think, if you're really being with what is in a very nuanced way, recognize that what is is very painful. And that what you truly need in that moment is to pendulate, which is something beneficial. And I mean that's why the Buddha taught is what was true is that they were afraid when they were going into the forest, right. But he could have said to the monks, oh, well just be with your fear. But what he said actually is, here, let me give you an antidote to fear. Focus on positive feelings, and love, and kindness. And, I think that's important. I think, it gets overlooked in the community. Oh, well, we just need to get with our suffering. But I think, it's actually important to really cultivate the joy, and gratitude, and compassion. » As you just heard Professor Shapiro say, even the Buddha, who was otherwise a big proponent of mindfulness, used emotion regulation tactics sometimes. In this case of getting his followers to feel confident first before he led them into that fearful forest. This story that Professor Shapiro told us conveys that not everyone may be ready to handle every negative situation with a mindful embrace. Sometimes, before you can play the role of a mere observer, it may be prudent to use an emotion regulation strategy first. This is one reason why it's important to start mindfulness practice when things are going well in your life, rather than wait for when things become really stressful. With that, let me move on to the third apparent paradox of mindfulness, which is that since mindfulness promotes response flexibility, this ability to choose how you respond to stimulus rather than responding to it reflexively. It may seem that mindfulness dampens spontaneity. That is, it may seem that mindfulness would lead to a suppression of desires and instincts, and lead to taking decisions based only on thoughtful deliberations. This, again, is a conclusion to which only those who confuse mindfulness with being overly mind-dependent would arrive. In reality, mindfulness doesn't lead to mind-dependence, but rather leads to what might be called my independence. I know that sounds rather cutesy, from mind-dependence to my independence. But, it's true. Mindfulness is ultimately about getting familiar with what's going on inside of you, both at the level of the body and at the level of the mind. So, by practicing mindfulness, you'll get more intimately familiar with both what your sensations and feelings, that is, your instincts are telling you, as well as what your rational side, your thoughts and deliberations, are telling you. As a result, rather than reacting either too impulsively or excessively analytically to a situation, both of which could lead to worse decisions. You're likely to respond in a manner that's simultaneously more spontaneous and mature. Another benefit of mindfulness, which comes from being more intimately in touch with your sensations and feelings, is that you're likely to enjoy the sensory pleasures of life a little bit more. So meals would seem tastier when you eat mindfuly. Likewise, the warmth of the sun seems more delicious, and the mattress seems much more luxurious when you're feeling mindful than when you're not. Getting back to the ability to respond to a situation both spontaneously and maturely, this ability is something that will almost certainly take some time to acquire. This is because in the process of practicing mindfulness, it is likely that you will judge many of your instincts and feelings as wrong, which will not just kill your impulsivity, but also your spontaneity. So, for example, since you have taken this course, if you sit down for a mindfulness practice, you may judge the feeling of hubristic pride, say, arising in you, or of neediness, or of being overly controlling, or of distrusting others as wrong feelings. This will immediately trigger the thought since you've also now sat through some mindfulness videos that it's wrong to pass judgment on your feelings. And that might, in turn, trigger yet another judgment, that it's wrong to judge a judgment of a feeling and so on. And in the process of being caught up in all of these judgments and judgments of judgments, you will almost certainly not be able to be in touch with the present reality. And hence, you will lose your spontaneity. So for example, you may not notice a fleeting feeling that you just experienced, and hence not react to it. But like I said, this loss of spontaneity is temporary. Over time, as you learn to recognize the difference between observing from your mind and observing from bare awareness, and also learn how to steer yourself into feeling present. You will see that mindfulness doesn't lower spontaneity, but rather enhances it. Here's Professor Shauna Shapiro expressing this idea in her own words. Again, I have to warn you that this isn't the best of recordings, so please pay careful attention, listen. » You have to go through stages. And I think the first stage is you need that distance to start to just slow the mind down and get some clarity. That most people are so unconscious and on automatic pilot that it's important to go through a phase of not being reactive. Now people call being reactive sometimes being spontaneous, but it's not. It's reactive, it's condition. » Okay. » So you need to slow it down so that you begin to witness life a little bit more. Then, once you have a little more clarity, I call it like the zoom angle lens and the wide angle lens. When you have that wide angle lens of clarity, then you have the choice point, the still point where you can go right into the experience where it becomes so juicy and so alive. And you can kind of saturate in that experience until the next moment arises, and you can spontaneously respond to that. » Okay. » Does that make sense? That you have to gather the witnessing quality actually first, and the equanimity of the nonreactivity. Otherwise, we're just conditioned ping-pong balls. » So, as you just heard in Professor Shapiro's mind, the loss of spontaneity is just a stage, an important stage, of course. But just a stage that you have to go through in acquiring the ability to zoom into the present. And that during this stage, which she calls wide-angle stage, you may lose some of your spontaneity, okay? So to kind of step back a little bit, we ended the module on mindfulness with video about presence practice. This practice, of course, is only one way to practice mindfulness. There are lots of other ways to practice it. We live in such amazing times that if you want to check out other mindfulness practices, they're all only a mouse click away. You can check out Professor Barbara Frederickson's Loving Kindness Meditation Practice by going to www.positivityresonance.com and clicking on the Meditations tab. Or you can check out John Kabat-Zinn's Guided Meditation by just Googling it. If you're a variety seeker like me, I would encourage you to check out three or four techniques which will give you some flexibility to pick and choose the mindfulness practice that suits your current mood. If you're feeling like exercising your kindness muscles, for example, you can do the loving kindness practice. If you want to do a body scan instead, you could choose another practice, and so on. All right, so, again, let me just kind of try and see if I can wrap everything up. In this video, I've discussed some interesting paradoxes of mindfulness. And I want to end this video by discussing what I consider, not to be a paradox, but more a mystery, one of the most mysterious aspects of mindfulness. The fact that merely observing something, without passing judgements, makes us feel happy. As I mentioned in an earlier video, it could very easily have been the opposite, that merely observing something without passing judgement could've made us feel terrible and terrified. As we saw, at least some scientists think that the reason we feel good, when we connect with reality as it is, is because our fundamental nature is one of positivity or happiness. This is one of the main ways by which mindfulness enhances our happiness levels by connecting us with our basic, seemingly happy or even blissful nature. When you practice mindfulness, you develop the ability to feel temporarily more positive or to use a more new age word, centered as a result. And when you continue to practice mindfulness, what starts out as a temporary feeling of centeredness, becomes increasingly more frequent. Then, when you continue on with the practice, you realize that you are now operating kind of routinely from the space of centeredness than from a space of mind-wandering or a space of stress. That's when you will have turned the corner into really reaping the benefits of the mindfulness practice, when you're able to become mindful more or less, regardless of what's happening to you or outside of you. So one of the big ways by which mindfulness boosts happiness is by connecting us with our inner source of happiness, but that's not the only way in which it enhances happiness levels. As we discussed in some earlier videos, it also improves happiness levels in myriad other ways, by improving our physical heath, the health of our relationships, and also our chances of success by improving our emotional intelligence. Now, in addition to these, there's yet another way by which mindfulness improves our happiness levels. It is by mitigating the six other deadly happiness sins and by reinforcing the other six habits of the highly happy. How so? That's a question to which I will turn to in the remaining videos of this week. See you soon. [MUSIC]