2023 CE: Year of respite. Foused on self-awareness and recovery of sanity. Learnt about human body, mind and consciousness.

Inner Communication
The Power of Now

Inner Communication

I’ve finished Inner Communication. I need to understand the idea of communication in the book in the context of social philosophy. Communication itself is certainly internal. Successful communication ‘internalises’ the communicators. And forms a recognition. A society. All is soft inside.

I thought of the drawing she made me do. In the image, I was reaching for an apple located in a distant island. My arm lengthened like rubber. “How vain I am?” I thought. Nietzsche spake untergang. I’ve learnt somatic nature of my mind. Body is holy. I am the incarnation of the human future.

Meditation is forgiving, putting it all down, a surrender, a release.
Meditation is being here and now.
Meditation is breathing.
Meditation is letting it flow.

I surely have fixation in my memory-ego. I wouldn’t let time go. And I don’t feel them properly. There was also a clue with ADD.

Meditation is losing all distinction between good and bad.
Meditation is movement.
Meditation is the gap between new information and old one.
Meditation is the space between the stimulus and my response.
Meditation is changing.

Preface

Mind is muscles you can train.
Training mind can improve your
- mental health
- improve physical health
- performance
Healthy people makes healthy society.
Meditation is the most efficient mind training.
Meditation is inner communication.
Meditation is not about religion or mysticism.
Meditation is a daily activity for your mind.
Why do people use language when they are thinking on their own?
Consciousness is a process that translates our experience into a story.
Unconsciousness is a process that generates pain and emotion.
“I” is not a single thing.
Practice of meditation is to identify with your consciousness.
Meditation is not about control. It’s about relaxing and letting it go.
Meditation is discipline of putting down obsessions.
Consciousness enables individual change, which enables social change.
What makes one decide to change the society they live in?
The opposite of democracy is violence.
Mind-training is a rather political, communitarian offer.

1. Why mental muscles

Brain adds bias to the world we see for survival.

Some of the biases are not suitable for modern society.
We can change these biases.
Our brain is still living stone ages.
Brain prioritises survival over accuracy.
Human perception has evolved to maximise our survival and proliferation.
Core function of our brain is to create bias.
Point of intelligence is to create bias.
Creating bias means creating meaning.
Storytelling is to put meaning in a language.
Heart of consciousness is storytelling.

Modern people with ancient brains

Under a stress, human body redirects energy to muscles in expense of
- digestive system
- immune system
Upon a danger, we rely on amygdala neural network over mPFC network.
Unresolved fear turns into anger and aggression.
Modern survival has little to do with muscles.
Brain doesn’t know that muscles don’t resolve emergencies.
Stabilise Amygdala first in order to activate mPFC.
Amygdala is the centre of our limbic system, the backbone of our emotion.
Amygdala is the core of ‘fear circuit’.
‘Fear learning’ makes us react harder for a similar stimulus.
Amygdala-impaired individual shows all reactions but fear.

Zebras don’t get a sore stomach

Cortisol, the stress hormone, increases the blood supply to the muscles.
Prolonged stress causes trouble in digestive, reproductive, immune systems.
Many “bears” continuously activate the brains of modern society.
If you have family problems, you are effectively keeping a bear in house.
Stress hormones are in the pills for autoimmune diseases.
Stress hormones are that powerful controlling the immune system.
Sore amygdala hurts your body and suppress mPFC.

Amygdala and mPFC on a see-saw

Thinking can wait when a fast reaction promises survival.
Chronic stress equals sore amygdala.
Intentionally stabilise amygdala and activate mPFC to maximise your capabilities.
‘Functional connectivity’ between mPFC and amygdala controls emotion.
mPFC-amygdala shows positive correlation under 10, but negative after that.
mPFC, amygdala and most of other brain functions are oversimplifications.
Amygdala itself doesn’t equal to negative emotions.

Importance of education for mind training

Development of mPFC finishes at around 25.
Stabilising amygdala is the most efficient against violence among the young.
Mitigation of chronic stress minimises the habit of negative emotion.
Sore amygdala is highly contagious.
Sore parents make kids sore.
Happiness of parents raises happy, capable children.
SEL, or Social and Emotional Learning helps sociability and achievement.
“social” in Korean is way too often translated to “societal”.
There are two types of abilities: cognitive skills and non-cognitive ones.
Regular curricula misses non-cognitive skills such as
- perseverance
- focus
- resilience
We are all victims of cognitive skill centric education.
No one seems to care the capability of making an actual difference.
Mind-training means one can change one’s own environment.
Future education must teach that self-transformation changes the world.
AI will transcend human cognitive skills anyway.

Sincere academics betray their disciples with over-specialisation.

2. Neurological foundation of three mental muscles

Three categories of human existence

Three categories are the basic frame of human existence.
Firstness is ‘I’, the abstract and theology.
- It’s communication with oneself: Self-control.
Secondness is ‘thou’, the mind and psychology.
- It’s communication with others: Interpersonal relationship.
Thirdness is ‘it’, the matter and cosmology.
- It’s communication with the world: Self-motivation.
Self-control is the foundation of the rest two.

Communication is mind training

The essence of human existence is communication with others

Self-control: ‘I’

“I” is multiple.
Self is the objective “me”.
In Kahneman terms, experiencing self controls remembering self.
Or, ‘I’ controls ‘self’.
Your mind carefully selects your experience and creates a meaningful story to remember.
It’s difficult for ‘I’ to perceive ‘self’ without other people or occupation.
‘self’ is created by the people and the world.
In other words, all things are connected by ‘self’.
Self-control is more than suppression.
Focusing attention and energy is a part of self-control.
Self-focus means being aware of current status of self.
Self-referential processing is crucial to mind training and meditation.
Control is to take a step back and reappraise by being aware and see objectively.
Food junkies’ vmPFC only responds to the taste and not to the nutritional info.
Similar to muscles, self-control gets
- fatigued from short-term usage
- stronger from long-term usage

Relationship: ‘others’

Interpersonal relationship means to
- express your intentions
- understand others’ intention
- have leadership
Refusal and bullying activates the same spot for physical pain.
‘I’ does not start until 3 and Theory of Mind develops.
Process of positive info about I and other shares a network around mPFC.
It means process of positive info is a powerful tool for mind training.
Gut-feelings detect potential threats first.

Self-motivation: ‘world’

Self-motivation means to design something and to bring it into reality.
Autonomy means to believe that ‘I’ can change the world I’m living in.
High self-motivation shows higher Default Mode Network activity.

Brain science of mind training

Negative emotion and sore amygdala weakens the network around mPFC.
MRI utilises resonance of magnetic field on hydrogen.
Activation of a part of the brain does not correspond to a function 1-by-1.
Weakened mPFC requires more activation for mind training.

3. Training mental muscles

The illusion of genetic determinism

The result of mental training depends on the attitude of the trainee.
Some limit themselves that they can change only so much.
Parents are more of an environment than a source of genes.
Geniuses is not more successful than others.
There is no correlation between IQ and achievement.
Epigenetics is the study of the interaction between genes and their environment.
Parents should contemplate “What kind of environment am I to my kids”.
Some “inheritances” are a result of recurring environment throughout generations.
Anxiety disorder can be inherited by the pregnancy, not the genes.
Caress of parent mouse affects the development of the brains of their children.
It’s been proven that behaviour affects the expression of genotypes more than genes.
Genes and domestic environment results in a synergy that affects a person.

Mind on epigenetics

Genes conditions the impact of environment, vice versa.
Mostly, genes and environment interact to create an impact.
Body compensates its genetics, often resulting in unexpected results.
Environment can amplify genotypes.
Environment is more important because it’s much easier to change.
Better domestic environment can create a better society.
Mind training is changing the environment of our experience.

Neuroplasticity

Neural network can be altered by repeated stimulation
Hebbian principle: Neurons that fire together, wire together.
Neural network remains malleable your entire life.
Habitual negative emotions divide pros and amateurs.
Weak minds easily get frustrated, resentful and afraid.
Established habit of mind does not change for an epiphany.
Just like muscles, mind training takes persistence.
Mind training means changing the habits of mind.
Mind training is not about technique or knowledge.
Mind changes anyway, but mind training means to change it with an intention.
Note: Resolution alone does not make your mind any stronger.
Some stress or frustration may signify you are changing fast.
If mind training gives you a frustration, appreciate it and keep going on.
It’s important to manage the state of mind before you sleep.
Alcohol is an anti-mPFC matter.
Alcohol does not help you relax.
Was it a rough day? What you need is warm tea and a walk under the sun.

4. Changing oneself

What makes changing self possible

Mind training means to change oneself.
Human being is capable of changing themselves.
Self is a structure of many components, not a single thing.
Self is a living organism that consists of a constant interaction of many entities.
Scholars agree that self is a constant storytelling.
Thoughts and consciousness themselves are communication already.
Storytelling or meaning completes itself by being shared with others.
Self is a result of one’s own communication.
Objective reality is only an assumption that arises from an intersubjective experience.
Mead: Objective self is the self as a generalised other.
‘I’ can change ‘self’.
Self is a community of minds competing with one another.
Inner communication implies talking ‘me’ and listening ‘me’.
Self is an image.
Jason is brain-dead only when he takes a visual information.
‘Consciousness’ is a selective integration process of infra-systems.

Consciousness and inner communication

You can not directly intend your heartbeat.
Self often identifies with intention and execution.
But there is the observing self: consciousness itself.
We are aware of consciousness but cannot describe it.
Consciousness cannot be an object of our observation. It’s the observer.
“Here and now” means the awareness of consciousness.
Consciousness let us take a step back and observe the habit of our storytelling.
That’s how we can work on storytelling instead of being carried away by it.
Change starts from being aware of consciousness AND experience.
Once we realise that our experience is ephemeral, we access equanimity.
Consciousness may incarnate as a voice or a gaze.
The object of change is the inertia. The subject is the intention.
Self is a ball of stories, an accumulation of episodic memories.
We edit our experience with communication, not the other way around.
We only remember experiences that translates to stories.
Reality unfolds as we tell ourselves.
Self-affirmation is communication of our core values.
Writing short essays of core values increases actual achievement.
When you plan on a revenge, it makes you an enemy of your enemies.

Consciousness as a constant communication

Brain scientists believe that storytelling is the essence of consciousness.
Julian Jaynes says that consciousness has developed between left and right brains.
According to Jaynes, use of language has resulted in consciousness.
Modern society has lost true colloquialism.
Speech is an emulation of writing.
Rupture of bicameral minds left the right brain a mute prisoner.
Characters in Iliad listen to the voices for decision-making.
According to Jaynes, “analogue I” observes “bodily I” who make actions.
Recent findings in science implies that time and space are created by biological conditions.
It’s storytelling that creates space and time, not the other way around.

Consciousness on quantum physics

It’s known that human observation interferes physical matters.
Stapp claims that quantum mechanics are essential to the operation of mind.
Kafatos claims that human consciousness is one connected cosmic consciousness.
Kafatos’ cosmology aligns with Active Inference of Friston and Implicate Order of Bohm.
Wigner’s cat divides the universe by a shared status of mind.
Some say there’s only one shared status and all consciousness are affected.
Bohm is the most prominent theoretical physicist in ‘connectivity’ and ‘integrity’.
Consciousness can be multiple and observe one another.
A triangle is made of lateral edges.
Once we are aware of a consciousness, we know we need another one that observes it.
Consciousness is not a blank slate. It’s full of ‘internal model’.
Consciousness is a prediction machine, rather than a clear glass you can see through.

Images in the brain

uniqueness
synchronicity
continuity
soma
passivity

We take “I-ness” granted. But it’s a fiction created by our brains.
Consciousness creates the sense of one, integral ‘I’.
Consciousness relates separate senses to create a whole experience.
Baars says a “Global Workspace” is the essence of consciousness.
Dehaene says ‘conscious access’ creates ‘something reportable to others.’
Consciousness translates personal experience into a shareable communication.
Consciousness is necessary to minimise the prediction error in our brains.
Communication let us share inner model across individual minds.
It seems that this ‘storyteller’ lives in our left brain.
Brain is not a passive watcher. It’s an active editor.
Space is perceived in relation to the movement of one’s body.
Our brain manages many different senses of time.
Flow of time is a creation of our consciousness.
Universal God must be moving at the speed of light.
Image of body is an illusion.
‘Somatic body’ is the perception of one’s own body.
Active inference does not emerge to consciousness.
Brain actively predicts what will come next.
Prediction yields efficiency.
Our brain creates inner model and project it to the world.
Having an inner model is much more efficient than processing everything everytime.
Thalamus is the gateway to consciousness.
Nerves are 10x thicker between occipital lobe and thalamus than between eye and thalamus.
We see more with brains than eyes.
Listening also involves more ‘inner voice’.
Minimising prediction error is minimising free energy.
Inner communication takes place between self and ‘I’.
Self creates experiences, and consciousness notices experiences.

5. How brain works

Inference: what brain does

Brain makes “inference”.
Brain integrates “percepts” to create a meaningful storytelling.
Meaningful means that it’s useful for survival.
Such integration is an old problem of brain. And consciousness is the solution.
Accessing the raw percepts before storytelling can be a good conscious exercise.
- A-C-B can be C-A and C-B. Consciousness can access percepts without mediation.
Open awareness is a powerful self-referential process.
Inference creates mental model in the brain.
Inference itself is subconscious.

Abduction: the logics behind the inference

generalised pattern: Typing gives your sleeve a shine.
specific observation: One has a shiny sleeve.
inferred guess: The one is (probably) a typist.

Peirce calls hypothetical inference “abduction”.
Abduction makes an ‘active’ guess by mixing old and new information.
Deduction is always accurate. But it does not create any information.
Induction generalises the world to create patterns that can be invalidated.
Abduction applies patterns to the real world risking many fallacies.
Abduction is the most inaccurate, risky, yet productive argument.
Kepler guessed that the orbits must be elliptical. It was an abduction.
We make abduction everyday.
Abduction is the only possible way for us to be rational in our daily lives.
Peirce says we all have innate ability to make abduction.
All misunderstanding stems from different premises behind our abductions.
It’s critical for mental fitness to work on these premises.
Premises exist as generative models in our minds.
Helmholz made the suggestion of automatic inference 150 years earlier than Peirce.
According to Helmholz, visual perception follows its own subconscious processes.
Helmholz thought automatic inference proves that perception is subconscious.
Peirce clarified that such process is abduction, not deduction.
According to Peirce, all memories and sense of history are products of abduction.
It implies that even our immediate perception is a top-down process of the generative model.
Helmholz machine describes perception as a statistical inference engine.

Prediction error and free energy principle

Free energy principle is a major achievement of Friston.
It says brain is a Helmholz machine that makes active inference and predictive regulation.
It describes brain as a complex, hierarchical network of top-down and bottom-up processes.
For example, vision is based on the prediction error from internal visual model.
Our brain tends to minimise such error and create an ‘accurate’ image of the world.
Life is defined by the boundary between in and out. The gap is the prediction error.
At the centre of the feedback cycles, self-consciousness emerges.
The goal of active inference is to minimise the surprise, or prediction error.
Active inference means to minimise surprise with movement, perception, and interpretation.

The term “active” in “active inference” reflects the idea that organisms and agents are not passive recipients of sensory information, but instead actively engage with their environment by generating actions that help them gather relevant information and shape their sensory experiences.

In a way, consciousness is the inference of our actions and the future it occurs.
In short, life try to minimise surprise. And its internal system grows into an agent.
Such agent inevitably creates a cyclical storytelling, or self-evidencing.
In our consciousness, minimising surprise emerges as storytelling.
The essence of consciousness is a constant storytelling. And it’s the inner communication.

Markov blanket

Free energy principle is not just for brains. It can describe organisations and other systems.
Markov blanket means the inner state tries to minimise free energy around the boundary.
A Markov chain connects two sequential probabilistic events.
A Markov blanket is a node that separates itself from all the other nodes.
A Markov blanket means no additional information from outside will be meaningful.
In terms of time, Markov blanket is the ‘present’ that predicts the future by the past.
external-perception-internal-action-external process creates a “strange loop”.
To perceive something is to perceive self. Because perception is also a projection of action.
Consciousness creates intention and stories but does not engage all the thoughts one by one.

Markov blanket and inner communication

Storytelling is necessary because talking to others can minimise surprise a lot.
That’s why consciousness exists and it constantly make percepts reportable.
If you have significantly different inner state than others’, you are deemed delusional.
Talking to others means Markov blankets are touching each other’s boundaries.
That’s why communication is done with the body, not just mind.
Higher level of nervous system control the lower levels to down regulate surprises.
Friston says “I exist. Therefore I think.”
Mental fitness makes you turn around and see inside of your boundary.
Phasic alertness comes from outside like a siren.
Tonic alertness comes from inside. It maintains the identical state of being awake for a long time.
Ego is an image created by the brain.
It’s more of a process, the contents of transient ego model.
Why do we need such a self-consciousness? The answer is movement.
The essence of self is an inner state that is aware of senses and actions.
Traditional meditations all focus on inner state.
Tai chi emphasises chi.
Mental fitness goes for less surprises incurred by wrong predictions.

New understanding of mental disorders and reward systems

Old psychology uses the sandwich model: sense-perception-action.
Disability of inference is the new culprit of mental disorders.
It means that there’s an imbalance between premises and new information.
Anxiety, depression, even autism and schizophrenia are caused by interference of inference.
Dreams are unreal because the brain is not taking any new information to adjust premises.
It’s the same when we close our eyes and meditate.
Even if you see something when you meditate, such experience is not very meditative.
Folie a deux demonstrates how different storytelling affects others’.
We get much more genes from mothers. (mitochodrial genes)
Human sense is built for survival and not effective for the scientific truths.
Human brain is a sophisticated delusional system for survival.
Shared delusion is considered the truth.
Delusion always comes as truth. You need to know all truth is delusion.

Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

It’s been revealed that ‘reward’ and ‘compensation’ are overrated.
Friston says dopamine hits when the experience is significant, not necessarily rewarding.
Predictable rewards do not fire dopamine hits.
Dopamine system only works on the gap of expectation and surprises.
If something fires a dopamine hit, it means the prediction was accurate.
- It doesn’t seem right.
To change behaviour, give new environment or stimulus.
Unpredictable stimulus is much more stronger than reward/punishment.
Mindfulness means to take everything as if it’s new.
Mindful meditation let you take everything new so you will get constant flow of dopamine.
Technology is more of an extended sense state, rather than an object of it.
Media are a part of our active inference process.
Markov blankets can be overlapped.
Each sections of brain also makes Markov blankets.
They create network and organisations and societies.
Not just the structure, but the process of inference is overlapped.
Inner communication is an interaction among different level of Markov blankets.
We cannot arbitrate lower level of our mind. But our higher mind can influence them.
Focusing on sense can activate the broad cortex and soothe amygdala.
Second step of sense training is to see what emotion senses incur.
There’s always a gap between intention and movement.
Inner communication training is creating intention training.
Consciousness simply notices experience. Noticing consciousness is the best self-reference.
Another way is to notice the habits of storytelling, and to intentionally change them.
Consciousness lives at the top of the generative model.
It’s important to be positive storytelling about yourself and others.
Step back from “action mode” and engage “existence mode” to remove all anger and anxiety.

6. Intrinsic order and inner communication

Quit the mechanical world

implicate order, enfolding
Unfolding is the default worldview on the mechanical world.
Analytical mind says the parts are the reality and the whole is a mental construct.
According to Bohm, reality is the ‘universe as a whole’ and the parts are made up by human.
Human mind is built to create and receive fictions, not the truth.
Newtonian science suppose that you can know the whole by the parts and their interaction.
Bohm says an organic, process-oriented thoughts can be more helpful.
Implicate order makes sense in ‘events’ and ‘processes’, as opposed to ‘particles’ or ‘reality’.
Voxel is an arbitrary separation made by human mind.
We might think voxels are the “reality”.
Animate world has been decimated after Descartes.
Violence and sacrifice are justified for the “spirit” is the reality and the bodies are not.
But any ideology and society must serve the human body, not the opposite.
There’s nothing to gain in sacrifice of human body.
Inner communication theory moves away from this body-mind duality.

Universe as a whole and implicate order

discontinuity: Electrons “jumps” to change orbits with no intermediate state.
indeterminacy: Particles are placed on superposition and react to their environments.
According to Bohm, universe is one from the first place.
Parts can be only understood after the whole.
Consciousness and experience are not strictly divided.

Organic world and the wholistic movement

Bohm: enfoldment + unfoldment = holomovement
Stabilised flow comes as a solid object, like a vortex.
Consciousness is an implicate order for your thought and emotions.
Soma-significant means that the body and mind are two sides of one reality.
soma-significance: bottom-up
signa-somatic: top-down
Energy and matter creates the space and time, not the other way around.
Matter is condensed energy.
Bohm speculates that matter, energy, and significance makes a triangle.
Ego constantly resist the environment to separate itself from the outside.
It may be stuck on the past and project it to the future.
Experiencing self makes Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow”.
Consciousness is pure energy.
The goal of inner communication is to understand the ego, not eradicating it.
We fall into pain when we identify with our ego.

Bohm and Friston: active information

Electrons are guided by ‘active information’ and change its state accordingly.
activity of information
“Activity” has been only eligible to physical entities, Bohm says that information acts too.
A boat is guided by ‘information’ from the radar.
Meaning is always implicated in language. Meaning is implicate.
Implication is inference in logical sense.

Generative order and inner communication

Bohm proposes generative order as an opposition to causality.
Generative order does not ask ‘why’.
Unfortunate events are not the reason for misery, it’s the habit of our mind rewinding it.
Viral infection is a generative order because it makes diseases without being one.
All growth are generative order, rather than causality.
Thoughts are constantly ‘generated’ by consciousness.
Anger is generated. It’s not ‘caused’ by the event you might blame it on.
Mental fitness is emotional immunity.
Mental fitness is working on the generative order.
Working on the generative orders is more effective way to make a change.
Rheomode focuses on the verb in communication. Rheo- means flow in greek.

7. Inner communication and meditation

All communication happens inside

“In” as in inner communication means the field of implicate order.
Inner communication is an act of speech to oneself.
Speech act is an act of change-making.
Inner communication is not mere notification. It’s changing one’s mindscape.
Human brain listens what it’s going to say before it does.
Interpersonal communication is really just two inner communications interacting.
Language itself is a generative order.
We use language in our heads. It means our mind is social from the first place.
Inner communication is not that “inside” anyway.
Self-image corresponds with the image of the caregiver.
Conflict doesn’t exist between people. It’s locked in individuals.
To overcome conflict, one must change the habit of negative inner communication.
Inner communication emphasises controlling self-talk.
Your thoughts are not yours. Neither your emotions are. Those are not what you are.
Core practice of inner communication is detachment from your thoughts and emotions.
Usually, storytellings have an ‘attribution style’. It says what happened because who/what.
A habit of positive storytelling strengthens mPFC and soothes amygdala.
Negative storytelling about others comes back to you.
Respect for others is self-respect.

Power of inner communication

Inner communication is the terminal of all communications.
It’s not a joke that placebo is the best medicine out there.
Believing in improvement, believing in one’s own capability has strong power.
At the moment of emptiness, we can take any storytelling in.
Mental training is to notice mental commentary inside.
Negative mental commentary makes you obsessed with unimportant things.
Non-sense shakes existing generative order and empty the self.

Meditation as mental training

Sense meditation: tranquility
Movement meditation: tranquility
Consciousness meditation: transcendence

Meditation is a scientifically valid method of training.
Meditation can happen in any communication.
Mental training is to create self-generative order.
Self-consciousness enfolds and create freedom.
First-timers should focus on soothing amygdala.
It’s difficult say that meditation is related to certain religion.
A banal word can be a tool of transcendence.
Unethical behaviour can activate amygdala.
Francisco Varela proposed self-organisation, enactive perception, and so on.
Compared to America and Europe, meditation is misunderstood in Korea.

8. Inner communication meditation for soothing amygdala

Anger is fear

Under a threat, the product of our nervous system is interpreted as emotions.
‘Emotion’ is for negative experience.
‘Emotion’ is negative concept.
“Positive emotion” is more of a thought than an emotion.
“Positive emotion” belongs to the mind more than the body.
Negative emotions are based on the body.
emotion = negative emotion = fear
There’s no specific neural network that corresponds one of our “emotions”.
Resilience comes from the lack of fear of failure.
“I feel and move. Therefore I exist.”

Emotion is in the body, not the mind

Allostasis: stability through change
Allostasis implies that life must be an active ‘prediction’, not a passive feedback.
Homeostasis cannot explain metamorphosis.
Allostasis is more operational and time-aware.
Mental illness comes from wrong predictive control.
Consciousness takes prediction error as a discomfort so it will be taken care of.
Emotions are how we recreate the world, not a mere reaction.
Anxiety disorder makes you interpret generic noise a discomfort.
Such discomfort may end up creating a feedback loop.
Pain emerges from sense-making, between the body and the environment.

Escape from emotional disorder and chronic pain

Sati meditation is a well-known attention reallocation training.
Doing something you believe to remove pain actually does so.
Soothing amygdala cannot be done directly, because the limbic system is subconscious.
Relaxing body soothes amygdala. It’s the only way to control your emotions.
Breathing is the only part of autonomous system that you can control.
One deep breath soothes your amygdala immediately.

Relaxation training for amygdala

There are many types of meditation: walking, running, swimming, etc.
Finding a right posture itself is listening to the body.
Head, neck, jaws, and some other parts are directly connected to your brain.
Bruxism comes from an over-stimulated amygdala.
Eyes can relax when you direct your attention inside.
Moving eyes left and right reduces anxiety.
Internal sense affects suppressing or avoiding certain behaviours.

Internal sense training meditation

Internal sense also can happen by a touch from someone intimate.
ADD makes you lose the sense of time.
Internal sense, including vagus nerves, is important to mental fitness.
Prolonged negative emotion makes you suppress the internal signals.
Developing internal sense can heal mental wounds better than therapy.
Gut nervous system independently remembers and makes judgement.
Comfortable guts removes anxiety and fear.

EMDR misunderstood

Recalling bad memories is a result of bad mood, not a cause.

9. Proprioception training and movement meditation

Proprioception training

Internal sense is for ‘attention’. Proprioception is ‘intention’.
Proprioception training is bringing attention to movement.
Effective movement takes integration of information and active inference about environment.
Our body conducts an ‘intention’, instead of imperatives to each muscle.
Consciousness ‘raises an arm’. Then muscles and nerve cooperate to create the movement.
Consciousness also aggregates informations to extract meaning.
Consciousness was created to effectively control movement.
Consciousness is an invented function for movement.
Thoughts are ‘inner movement’.
Brain does ‘premotor act’ before a movement. That’s what thought is.
Intention of movement and the perception of movement always leaves a gap.
Intention and movement are processed in different parts of brain.

Consciousness is for action

Sea squirts are animals. But they lose their heads when they lose movement.
Movement creates the space.
You hear tranquility only when the noise disappears.
Equanimity is real ‘me’. ‘I’ is the tranquility and the space themselves.
Thoughts and emotions reveal consciousness.
Only reality is the ever-expanding here-and-now.
Fixed Action Pattern bundles small movements to coordinate an action.
Mental disorders are closely related to contraction of muscles and subconscious movement.
It means relaxing muscles prevent emotions.

Wakefulness

Brain function is more about frequency.
Consciousness is an independent loop. It can operate by itself without external input.
Thalamus is the central relay station of senses.
40hz can prevent dementia.
Low brain activity results in less reactivity to light stimulation.
Meditation can indirectly induce 40hz frequency
Synchronicity in brain is a strange phenomenon.
Brain frequency is an approximation. It’s not a precise measure.
Compared to fMRI, brain frequency shows a better time-resolution.

Movement meditation for emotions

Damaged proprioception makes it difficult to move around.
Movement meditation has proven to be more effective than sitting meditation.
Proprioception focuses on the gap between the ‘intention’ and the habit of ‘movement’.
Subconsciousness is more important in all kinds of movement.
Somatic exercise focuses on the information from body to the consciousness.
Some reports a worse anxiety after meditation.
If you can calmly see inside yourself, your mental fitness is above average already.

Different forms of proprioception training

Mirroring postures may improve your flexibility, but not your proprioception.
You must not forget to breathe.
Postures are for the breath, not the other way around.
Any training can be proprioception when done slowly.
Hard training is not always better.
Feldenkrais have found that harmony of each part of a movement makes it comfortable.
Same intention has different parts in different people.
Feldenkrais thought one should let go of all intentions to move well.
Relaxing right shoulder can relax the left one too.
Alexander said non-doing is non-intending.

10. Inner communication meditation for activating mPFC

Awareness and self-referential process

Two activities can activate mPFC: self-reference and positive information about self/others.
Awareness means to see your thoughts, feelings, and conditions. It’s a powerful self reference.
Remembering past or imagining future is not self referential. Here and now is.
Consciousness notices thoughts. Thoughts are not you.
Consciousness is ‘I’. I is always the subject of perception, not an object.
Experience the experiences.

Self-reference training and the result of meditation

Consciousness integrates many experiences and makes them reportable.
Self itself is a clump of storytelling, a lump of episodic memories.
Take a step back from your core beliefs.
mPFC has nine core functions.
- control of the body
- communication
- control of emotion
- control of anxiety
- reaction flexibility
- insight
- sensibility
- morality
- intuition
All nine functions can be developed by meditation.

Three steps of self-reference

Self-Other Knowledge Asymmetry theory says you might not know yourself more than others.
“Decentering” makes you look yourself objectively. It’s important in meditation.
It’s to focus on the gap between the perception and reaction.
If you can stay between the spur and your reaction, you can overcome anger and anxiety.
Third-person reference for yourself can help you cope with emotions.
Explaining current situation to yourself can be a meaningful mind training.
Notice your current emotion and label them.
Notice that there is a storyteller between the stimulation and your reaction.
That’s the self-reference where you look back yourself.
decentering = observing self = self-as-witness
Our minds tend to go future or the past.
To face inside here and now, you need to train non-focus.
Anxious people have higher activity in mPFC and amygdala when doing nothing.
Mind-wandering brings up negative emotions.
CEN focuses on tasks. Default Mode Network lets you be creative.
Creativity happens between focus and wandering.
Creative ideas come from free time, daydreaming, memories, connecting to your inner self.
Multi-tasking uses CEN. It activates amygdala. Mind wandering is not multi-tasking.
Regardless to CEN or DMN, point is to be here and now.
Obsession of consciousness suppresses it.
See the gap between inhale and exhale.
Consciousness is always the subject. You cannot ‘feel’ consciousness.
Silence is the premise of all sounds. Sounds cannot affect silence.
No object can destroy the space.
All silence is one. There’s no difference between your silence and mine.
The moment between inhale and exhale expands infinitely like an eternity.

Six positive inner communication meditation

forgiveness
compassion
love
accept
gratitude
respect

Forgiveness-compassion-love are from God to human.
Accept-gratitude-respect are from human to god.
Forgiving forgives the past and gives everything to the future.
Forgiving is to throw oneself into the here and now.
Hatred makes you sick and senile.
Many plan a revenge for a tiny flaw of others.
Avenge is the familiar narrative from our childhood.
There’s no time to consider that it might be you. Others must be wrong. They are the enemies.
Revenge is a pleasure to many men.
There is an option: maybe it’s you, and that’s okay.
Forgiving is a panacea.
Forgiving is not reconciliation.
Foundation of yoga is to not do what you should not.
Ahimsa: Do no harm.
Unforgiving will harm yourself.
Forgiving is for yourself.
Self-anger is the worst thing.
Self-forgiveness is to admit your mistakes and to take responsibility.
If you don’t admit your flaws, you cannot forgive yourself.
If you don’t reflect candidly and neglect your own fault, self-forgiving is impossible.
Someone who does not self-reflect cannot self-respect.
Forgiveness is for no one else but yourself.
It’s important to teach kids how to see themselves as they are.
Single day of communication increases the possibility of prosocial behaviour.
Possessive attitude consumes the children.
Love forgives everything already.
Giver is the master. To become the captain of your life, you should give yourself everything.
World is for givers.
Metta is the traditional meditation of giving love for everyone.
Love meditation starts from thinking the most beloved.
Metta starts from someone you love already, then the less beloved.
Focus on your loving mind, not the target.
Pushing what you hate, pulling what you like, they all create resistance.
Accept means total surrender.
Letting patients accept the pain works better than the promising an elimination of it.
Accept is to let go. But it’s easy to get it confused with apathy.
Accept means to want something but to not get obsessed.
Being free from obsession let you be free from failure. That’s what resilience is.
Wanting happiness too much makes you unhappy.
There are two fears: losing and not getting what you want.
Want what you have. That’s accept.
The source of unhappiness is not the bad things. It’s your resistance in your mind.
Resistance against unhappiness often creates more unhappiness.
When you accept, you get out of the mud and go on, letting the mud simply pass your life.
It doesn’t mean you are careless. Care the mud but not more.
Resistance means you create the object of resistance in yourself.
That means you can remove it too. Realise you can extinguish your own anger.
Resistance damages your mind without creating much impact to the world.
Gabor Maté says stereotypes make you unable to accept.
Why some situations make you angry? Why they make you feel ignored?
Anger means you have decided the worst possibility to be the truth.
Obsession is behind all anger and fear.
“a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing”
Conditional happiness in not a real one.
Reflective researches say that gratitude might not be that effective for weakened minds.
One example of complete accept and respect is facing the immense nature.
Namaste means all human being is spiritual, therefore they must be respected.
Realisation of spirit is the fast lane to recovering self-worth and escaping attention addiction.
True freedom is the freedom from what others might think.
“I can’t live without you.” is not romantic. It’s a statement of violence.
Meditation: Take chances as they are.
Everything has coincidences behind it.
All ‘explanations’ is the same: causal storytelling out of coincidences.
Life is full of accidental emergence and disappearance.
Your own existence happened by chance.
The highest accept is to take such chances by it is.
Some people never take a moment to put things down and relax.
Happiness naturally occurs from an active mPFC

11. Various traditional meditation for enhancing mental muscles

Traditional Buddhist meditation

Sati: now, attention, memory, presence
Awareness is a form of memory.
Sati meditation focuses on the prediction error.
Vipassana means to realise that nothing is permanent, and ‘I’ is empty.
Samatha means tranquility.
Early buddhist script presents vipassana and samatha as two sides of mind.
Koan is a combination of Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism unique to north east asia.
Koan tradition wrestles with a topic from the teacher.
Authority of the teacher is not particularly useful for the mental fitness.
Disciples discover the true self by looking into the crack on their ego.
Random topic from the teacher disrupts the current generative order and create the ego.
The subject of perception cannot be the object.
*The ultimate answer is “I don’t know.”
This not-knowing is not the opposite of knowing. It’s the foundation of any knowing.
‘I’ before ‘me’ is the real self: atman of vedanta.
Buddha denied atman
- anatta: There is no ‘me’.
- anicca: Things change.
- dukkha: agony
Denial of atman is the foundation of Buddhism.
‘I’ is a shell without the ghost.
All your possessions are irrelevant to what you are. They pass by your life.
You cannot describe consciousness. But you cannot deny it once you perceive anything.
It all means self-reference.
Buddha did not tell you to rely on tradition or authority.
He said you’d be better on your own.
He said you should rely on the source of your thoughts: body, feeling, mind, objects.
Zhu Xi developed neo-confucianism in criticism of buddhism. It focuses on the real world.
He said you should maintain a calm amygdala and bring equanimity to daily life.
It’s important to continue the discipline in everyday tasks.
“Chi means to see that all is empty.”
A saint knows how to truly rest. They are comfortable with themselves.

Tradition of breathing in meditation

If you are reading this, you must be breathing.
We all have breathing in common.
One way is to just notice the breaths.
Focus on the breaths without engaging. Just notice as they are.
This practice soothes amygdala and activates mPFC.
You might see something in the practice, some lights or shapes.

Ten thoughts on breathing

oscillation
renewal
boundary of autonomous system
mind-body connection
enengy
movement
here-now
exhale
communication
coalescence

The Power of Now

I tried to rephrase or copy the parts of the book I have highlighted. It helps but I should change how I read books. Every chapter gives me profound inspiration. Every chapter is worth a dedicated post or something alike.

Here are action items.

When thoughts arise, become a silent watcher and observe the one who thinks.
Embrace what She is. Full acceptance does the most change.

1. You Are Not Your Mind

The Greatest Obstacle to Enlightenment

Watch the thinker.
Thoughts are only a tiny aspect of intelligence.
There is a vast realm of higher consciousness.
Being is the eternal Life beyond the ephemeral forms of life.

Freeing Yourself from Your Mind

Compulsive thinking is your worst enemy.
Detach from your mind and practice the gap of no-mind.

Enlightenment: Rising above Thought

Thoughts are addictive. They become your identity.

Emotion: The Body’s Reaction to Your Mind

Focus on the somatic body.
Emotion is physical, while thoughts are in your head.
Anxiety is close to fear. But it also involves a sense of abandonment and incompleteness.
Intimate relationship quickly turns the pleasure into the pain.

2. Consciousness: the way out of pain

Create No More Pain in the Present

Pain is non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance.
The mind is busy denying the now and escaping from it. Because it’s new.
Mind cannot remain in control without ‘time’. The timeless Now is the end of it.
Accept. Then act. Always work with the present, never against it.

Past Pain: Dissolving the Pain-Body

Past creates pain-body. Intimate relationships, situations of loss, hurt, and so on.
Observe your own pain than someone else’s.
The pain-body wants to survive just like any organic entity. You let it live by identifying with it.
The pain-body don’t want you to consciously observe it.

The Origin of Fear

Once you disengage from the mind, whether you are right or wrong doesn’t matter for you.
Watch out for any kind of defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending?

The Ego’s Search for Wholeness

Emotional pain, the egotistic mind has a deep sense of not being whole.
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you.
Die before you die. And find that there is no death.

3. Moving Deeply into the Now

Don’t Seek Your Self in the Mind

Ego is insatiable. It leaves in a state of fear and want.

End the Delusion of Time

Remove the time from the mind and it stops.

Accessing the Power of the Now

Intense presence is needed when the self-image is threatened, a challenge triggers fear, or an emotional complex from the past is brought up.

Letting Go of Psychological Time

Non-forgiveness implies a heavy burden of psychological time.
If you get obsessed with external goals, the Now is no longer honoured. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future.

The Insanity of Psychological time

War for ideology is an example of future heaven creating the present hell.
Are you always trying to get somewhere else? Is most of your doing a means to an end?
The mind creates an obsession with the promising future as an escape from the present.

Finding the Life Underneath Your Life Situation

Hope keeps you focused on the future, perpetuating your denial of the Now.

The Joy of Being

Ask yourself: Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing?
It doesn’t mean you should change what you do, but the how.
Be free of psychological time. Lose grim determination, fear, anger, the need to become not.

4. Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now

Loss of Now: The Core Delusion

To know that you are not present is presence.

Dissolving Ordinary Unconsciousness

Watch what happens inside you as much as outside you.
Observe how you avoid, resist, or deny life, by denying now.

Freedom from Unhappiness

Someone close to you may cause trouble. This is irrelevant.

Wherever You Are, Be There Totally

If there’s nothing you can do for the Now, simply accept it and drop the resistance, so the miserable, resentful, or sorry feeling can’t survive.
Is there something you should be doing? Don’t hesitate.
Stress is wanting ‘there’ while being ‘here’.

The Inner Purpose of Your Life’s Journey

Outer journey takes millions of steps. Inner journey takes one: the Now.
The one step contains all the steps it takes.

5. The State of Presence

It’s Not What You Think It Is

Close your eyes and wait for your next thought. It creates intense presence.

6. The Inner Body

Finding Your Invisible and Indestructible Reality

Inhabit the body. Feel the body from within. Know that you are beyond the outer form.
Take the focus away from thinking and direct it into the body.

Connecting with the Inner Body

Cut the thoughts. Feel it.

Have Deep Roots Within

The goal is to remain in contact with the inner body, to feel it at all times.
It strengthens your immune system.

Creative Use of Mind

Use your mind purposefully, in conjunction with your inner body.

If you need to use your mind for a specific purpose, use it in conjunction with your inner body. Only if you are able to be conscious without thought can you use your mind creatively, and the easiest way to enter that state is through your body. Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. Become aware of the stillness. When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative. In any thought activity, make it a habit to go back and forth every few minutes or so between thinking and an inner kind of listening, an inner stillness. We could say: don’t just think with your head, think with your whole body.

7. Portals into the Unmanifested

Space

You cannot see the blank space while thinking.

8. Enlightened Relationships

Addiction and the Search for Wholeness

Addiction comes from pain. It leads to pain. You use it to cover up your pain.
Disengage. Be the silent watcher. Observe the repetitive patterns of your mind and the roles played by the ego.
The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner.

Relationship as Spiritual Practice

Be glad at your, or your partner’s madness, for the unconsciousness is brought up.
Unconsciousness and knowing cannot coexist for long, whether it’s you or your partner.
Don’t accuse each other for unconsciousness.
When your partner behaves unconsciously, relinquish all judgement.
No greater catalyst for transformation exists. If you practice this, your partner cannot stay with you and remain unconscious.

Dissolving the Collective Female Pain-Body

Collective pain-body comes from the accumulated pain in history.
Your pain will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal.
Victim identity empowers the past over the present.
You are responsible for the peace of your inner space.
The past cannot prevail against the power of now.
Full attention means full acceptance.

Give Up the Relationship with Yourself

Being different forces enlightenment.
Relationship with self creates unnecessary duality and complexity.

9. Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There Is Peace

The Higher Good beyond Good and Bad

When a loved one dies, you cannot be happy, but can be at peace.
It seems most people need suffering before they accept.

You dissolve discord, heal pain, dispel unconsciousness — without doing anything — simply by being and holding that frequency of intense presence.

The End of Your Life Drama

Ego is clever. But it never solves a problem because it is the problem.
Ego resists the end of its drama. It fears its own awakening.

Impermanence and the Cycles of Life

“I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.”

Emptiness is one step away from despair, and one step away from enlightenment.

Using and Relinquishing Negativity

Ego believes it can use negativity to manipulate reality and get what it wants.
Offer no resistance, as if no one is going to get hurt. It makes you invulnerable.
Peace is already in you, in the Now.
Accepting non-peace is peace.
When you accept what ‘is”, every moment is the best moment.

The Nature of Compassion

Meditate on the mortality of physical forms. Die before you die.

Toward a Different Order of Reality

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” But don’t confuse cause and effect. Your primary task is not to seek salvation through creating a better world, but to awaken out of identification with form.

You don’t need the world, let alone the need for it to be different.
You make a better world by being free from it.
Unconsciousness is the source of Evil. Eliminate the cause, not the effect.

10. The Meaning of Surrender

Acceptance of the Now

Surrender shows you what needs to be done. And you take action one by one
Don’t project yourself into the future and lose now.
When you enter the timeless Now, change comes in strange ways without much effort.

From Mind Energy to Spiritual Energy

“Blessed are the gentle; they shall have the earth for their possession.”

Surrender in Personal Relationship

Fighting unconsciousness makes you unconscious.
Staying in the Now gives you choices so you can drop your reactions.

Transforming Illness into Enlightenment

Denying is as idiotic as not recognising your own image in the mirror.

Transforming Suffering into Peace

First chance is to accept what is. Second chance is to accept what you feel about it.
If something is unacceptable, accept inner reaction. Let the pain and fear be there.
Full attention is full acceptance, is surrender.

The Power to Choose

The mind likes the known and hates the unknown.
The present is always new. That’s why the mind tries to ignore the Now.

If you are one of the many people who have an issue with their parents, if you still harbor resentment about something they did or did not do, then you still believe that they had a choice — that they could have acted differently. It always looks as if people had choice, but that is an illusion.