(Part I is: Hacking Your Brain Chemistry Without Drugs.)
This video is an interview with Daniel Ingram about what it is like to be enlightened. In the video Daniel explains how you can reduce unpleasant emotions by changing the active network in your brain. (A transcript of the video can be found at the end of this article.)
It is quite interesting. Putting the information in the video into practice seems relatively easy to do.
Most people who have done some form of meditation are familiar with the experience of losing their concentration and finding themselves lost in thought, noticing it, and then returning to the object of meditation.
When you are lost in thought, the default mode network in the brain is active. In that state emotions can be troublesome. When you return to meditation, you get out of the default network and into the experiential network where emotions are much less troublesome.
If an unpleasant emotion arises in the course of a meditation session or during daily life, then you are probably in the default network. Getting out of the default network is easy. Just observe something, like your surroundings, or your breath, or even the emotion itself if you treat it as an object of observation rather than an experience you are immersed in - although it can be difficult to avoid getting drawn back into the default network if you are observing the emotion.
The trick to using this phenomenon effectively is to remember to use it when it matters most: when a very strong emotion arises. Strong emotions tend to take over your mind, they grab your attention and draw you into them even for people who are used to meditating.
It also takes a certain amount of maturity, or insight, to recognize that when you have a strong emotion your suffering is not caused by the problem you are reacting to, your suffering is caused by how you are reacting to the problem. You can solve a problem with compassion and reason without reacting with unpleasant emotions, but people have a tendency to think the emotions are right or reality. As Daniel said in the video, like a person who doesn't like being drunk but keeps on drinking anyway.
But if you understand what is in the video, it possible to have the presence of mind when you have a strong emotion, to extract yourself from the default network and activate the experiential network. If you can do this a few times and observe it easing your suffering, it shouldn't be too hard to make a habit of it - even if you are not yet awakened to the point where you are out of the default network full time. The positive reinforcement from the reduction in suffering should help you habitualize it. And practicing on smaller issues should help develop the skill or habit to make it easier when a strong emotion arises.
This also provides an answer to an important question: how to let go of an emotion without suppressing it. If you find an unpleasant emotion arising and you shift out of the default network into the experiential network by observing something while also observing the emotion - you are not suppressing it.
All of this reminds me of what Michael Singer wrote in his book The Untethered Soul. He uses the phenomenon of lucid dreaming to explain how to develop a sense of detachment to unpleasant thoughts, emotions, and impulses.
He says that in a regular dream you think it is real, but in a lucid dream you know you are dreaming.
To be lucid with respect to your own mind means to be aware of the activity in your mind as if you were an observer, not a participant like when you are watching a movie and become so drawn in to it that you forget where you are and react as if the movie was real. To be lucid with respect to the activity of your mind, is to observe your thoughts emotions and impulses but not to get drawn into them so that they take over your mind and you forget you are observing them and start reacting to them.
By staying lucid, by remaining an observer, you stay out of the default network where emotions can be so much more troublesome.
What it is like in practice
Using this technique you can try to keep your default mode network inactive by practicing mindfulness.
When you try to observe emotions with the default network inactive, they seem to be "wispy little things" as Daniel describes them in the video. And you don't get caught up in the story they are telling as if it was reality. So it is much easier to see emotions as impersonal sensations rather than facts of reality that need a defensive or aggressive response.
As impersonal sensations, emotions no longer seem like they are "mine", or that they are telling a story about "me". They are more impersonal like seeing something outside your body is impersonal. So you don't feel egoistic reactions like offense, or outrage, or defensiveness, or aggressiveness, when "unpleasant" things happen. It's like if a child tried to throw a snowball at you and missed. All of those reactions would reinforce your sense of self. Without that reinforcement your sense of self diminishes.
You can also see how emotions, when you think they are "mine", cause you to deduce the existence of a self.
All of this also provides a way to understand physical discomfort. When you notice physical discomfort, try to notice the emotions caused by the physical sensations and observe how the emotions change when the default mode network becomes inactive.
So it can be very instructive to observe emotions from a mindful state where the the default mode network is inactive. By a "mindful state" I mean just noticing your surroundings, or just being aware of what you are doing as you are doing it, or noticing all the sensations that come into your awareness. You can tell when you get distracted and the default mode network becomes active, it's just like when your mind wanders during meditation. When you notice that happening, just go back to your mindfulness practice. Another thing that tells you the default mode network is becoming active is if you feel more than just a wisp of an emotion. That is a very sensitive indicator. It acts like a biofeedback signal that reminds you to remain fully mindful.
A very nice way to do this practice is to go for a walk and notice what you see, hear, and feel with your sense of touch, as you look around you may also notice a feeling of spaciousness. It produces a feeling of a lack of separation.
What about Self?
In the video, when Daniel explains what enlightenment is like, he says his emotions are reduced to "wispy little things" because keeping his mind focused on the outside deactivates the default mode network. He doesn't mention anything about understanding the true nature of self.Many people believe the emotional changes that bring about the end suffering attributed to enlightenment are due to having a correct understanding of the illusory nature of self and it is that understanding that produces the emotional changes. However as I mentioned above, when the default mode network is deactivated one stops acting egoistically. I know this from my own experience.
When you try to observe emotions with the default network inactive, they seem to be "wispy little things" as Daniel describes them in the video. And you don't get caught up in the story they are telling as if it was reality. So it is much easier to see emotions as impersonal sensations rather than facts of reality that need a defensive or aggressive response.As impersonal sensations, emotions no longer seem like they are "mine", or that they are telling a story about "me". They are more impersonal like seeing something outside your body is impersonal. So you don't feel egoistic reactions like offense, or outrage, or defensiveness, or aggressiveness, when "unpleasant" things happen. It's like if a child tried to throw a snowball at you and missed. All of those reactions would reinforce your sense of self. Without that reinforcement your sense of self diminishes.
It seems to me that implicit in Daniel not mentioning it when explaining what enlightenment is like, is that understanding self is just a satisfying realization of "truth" for truth seekers, but the emotional benefits come from a kind of permanent mindfulness produced by a lot of meditation.
If that is right, it has implications for how people primarily seeking to end suffering should practice meditation: they should focus mostly on training to keep their default mode network inactive.
Below is a transcript of the video, edited slightly for readability:
Tom
I got a question for you Daniel. As we were leading into this podcast I was trying to think of what listeners might be thinking at this moment. And so with regard to this aspect of enlightenment, people are curious right? They really are wanting to understand what that means. So can you just maybe give us a reference point of how is enlightenment?
Because at one point you hadn't completed the path of insight, and now you have. So there's a pre, let's call it, fully insight awareness stage. And now there's the post stage that you've been in many many years. Can you just give us a bit of a comparison on how that looks on a daily basis like how how it's similar or different?
Daniel
So to most people I'm going to look pretty ordinary. I mean I tend to be pretty positive. I have a lot of energy. But that was true in some ways before. Not to the same degree, I'm a lot happier now. So it definitely helped reduce some suffering, and add some mental clarity, and some emotional resilience, there's no question.
And to try to bring this down to earth: I was talking to someone a few days ago and they had reached some difficult stage of practice. So they had gone through the spiritual high where they were super excited about this app they were using, the waking up app by Sam Harris. And they were like: mind had gotten so powerful. And then all of a sudden they felt like they were disappearing, and they couldn't think, and like they didn't have control of anything. And then they got terrified. So they went through the high stuff, and they got to the difficult stuff. They started freaking out. And they thought they were broken, or like they were scared, or they were going to lose control, or whatever. And they were having a very hard time relating to their fear.
And I said, "Well let's do an exercise." And they said, "Okay." And I said, "Okay, first of all we're going to take the room as frame. All the experience is in the room. Right? So you're sitting in a room and you've got, you know all these sights, all these sounds, this big volume. And let's hold that sort of evenly in the mind with eyes open as the frame of experience. Now think one of these really scary thoughts you've been having, right, until you start to feel it in your body. But keep the room as frame so you've got the sense of it. While you're thinking these thoughts and having these feelings, you want to notice how big and strong they are in the room. Right? What percentage of your experience are those sensations? How strong are they actually?"
And they said "Okay." And you know they were like and sort of starting to close their eyes.
I said "No, no, eyes open. Remember the room."
And they were like, "Okay."
And I was like, "Do you have a thought?"
They're like, "Yeah."
"Do you have the feeling?"
And they were like, "Yeah."
And I was like, Remember the room right?"
And they're like, Yeah, I can't do it, I can't make the fear stick. It's just disappearing. It's just disappearing. I can't do it right now with holding the room as frame."
I was like, "Yes. Right. Exactly. That's the point. That's the point. Right?
It doesn't work. You can't because in order to to exaggerate our feelings and emotions we have to sort of do this thing where we activate what's called the default mode network. We activate something called the PCC in our brain which is the posterior cingulate gyrus. When we do that, the room kind of disappears for a second and our thoughts become super big and strong. Whereas if we were holding the room as frame with our PCC very deactivated, our thoughts are these wispy little things in the room. I mean in comparison to like you know physical sensations or colors or whatever, you can barely even find them. Right?
And so this is basically that, just you know the vast majority of the time in other words. So whereas most people's default mode network is to have thoughts and feelings be the predominant experience and the room is there when they need to pay attention to it. You know, they can take a whole shower, or drive to work, and not even remember any of it. You don't even know if you washed something because you weren't there, you weren't present. Well if you train to really be present, you can flip over into this other way where it goes, wait a second when just everything is sort of evenly perceived and thoughts are just these wispy little things. Well then the amount of trouble that all that used to cause is vastly less. And so that's sort of one example that helps to explain what this experience is like.
But in other ways I'm just an ordinary dude. Ordinary mammal you know. Dude hanging out. Doing dishes. Sweeping the dust bunnies off my floor.
Tom
So when you say that you hold the room as frame, as an example, that is your, sort of, your reality? For the most part you're grounded?
Daniel
That's that's the default, right. So as most people's default is what's called the default mode network which is internal thoughts, worries, thoughts of past, and future ruminative thoughts. That's where their brain lives if you don't give them something else to do. Well, me given nothing else to do, the room predominates and thoughts are these wispy little things in it.
Tom
Gotcha cool.
Daniel
They can still convey their message right? And there might be a little feeling, and the're little sensations here, or whatever you know. But it's what percent of experience, like this much [gestures to show tiny amount] right? I mean, it's like, what percentage is this little thing happening here? These little sort of thoughts somewhere here? Like it's almost nothing. So they can convey their message but they don't become exaggerated. And because they don't become exaggerated, there's nothing like constantly re-triggering of all these, you know, adrenaline, and cortisol, and stress chemicals, and stuff, in the same way that used to happen before.
I mean what most people do with their emotions is like, they may be just walking along in a safe place but then they remember something that happened to them that was really bad, right. You know, and they get angry about it or something. And then those anger chemicals flood their body. And then they lose touch with the space they're in. And more thoughts come up that are angry. And then those thoughts re-trigger more angry chemicals. And then they get angrier because they don't have this perspective right. And then they just keep re-triggering the chemicals because the perspective is now lost, sort of amplified by the chemicals that are the angry chemicals or whatever, the angry pathways in the brain, or the desirous pathways, or the sad pathways, or whatever. And so it just gets worse and worse and worse.
And somehow they think this is a good idea. It would almost be like a drunk person who realized they were drunk, and, and then didn't like it, but they just kept drinking you know? And they, they just keep slamming them back and getting drunker and, you know. And just more and more of these sort of things start flooding their brain, and they're losing more and more touch with perspective. And yet they just keep knocking them back, you know? Just like whoa man, you know? And so it's nice to have a brain that has been trained to not do that. It's not like continued stimulation can't cause reactive chemicals, they do. But they're they're triggered by what's going on in the world in a way that is not like the world disappearing, thoughts becoming this huge thing, and then spinning like that. And that doesn't mean that I don't feel feelings, or that I have perfect intelligence, or clarity, or anything like that because I'm still a mammal. But it is much better. It's much better to not have that being caught and stuff be the default mode.
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