Denial is an essential part of our survival know-how.  Accept the coping legitimacy of denial.

But denial is more than just survival.  Denial is evidence of our remarkable ability to re-create reality to fit precisely with our moment-specific needs.

Denial is customized perception, a pattern-hold, an amazing unconscious (!) transformation of the stone-hard reality into a soft pillow of the mind-specific dream-world.  There is a dream-weaving magician inside each and every one of us.

Denial is the 8th Wonder of the world.

ps:

Make it the 1st Wonder!  No denial – no status quo – no peace of mind.  After all, how can there – objectively – be any status quo in this unceasing river of reality-flow?  Yet, thanks to denial, we do experience luxuriously-subjective sense of stability.  Denial – as primitive of a defense – is a primary tool of psychological survival.

pps:

Of course, this is not a recommendation of denial as a coping stance (the unconscious takes no orders!) but merely an acknowledgment of its inevitability and of its primitively-adaptive power.  Being on the outside of denial is hard.  First thing we want to do is to confront the person in denial.  While this may or may not be our eventual course of intervention, I believe, it is a good first step to appreciate the primitive survival logic behind denial (as well as its amazing reality-makeover power).

Two thoughts, two writers (both “me”), a few minutes apart:

(1) “Writing reorganizes the organism that authors it.”

(2) “All mind is second hand info.”

As “I” look at these two thoughts, “I” feel that they were written by different writers.  And they were: when “I” wrote the first thought “I” reorganized myself.  This new “me” wrote its first thought (which happens to be the second thought in this case, if “we” are speaking chronologically).  The second thought reorganized the organism that wrote it as well.  And now, this new (third) “me” sees an ironic contradiction between these two propositions: on one hand “we” reorganize ourselves each time “we” write; on the other hand, “we” are simply re-arranging what already was, cycling and recycling second-hand information (that “we” have picked up elsewhere from someone who had, in turn, had picked up elsewhere).

All this boils down to the following koan: does an eddy (whirlpool) have identity (its own water)?

Dare to consider: reality is (already) perfect and perfectible.  This “and” is the hardest “and” to swallow for a dualistic mind.  Reality is already the best that it can be at any given point in time and it can still be better.

Notice the ordinary (real-time) perfection of what (already) is.  There is no other reality than the here-and-now reality that right now is: everything that right now can be already is.  The rest is fantasy.  So, take a break from hunting non-existent unicorns and notice the cornucopia of the present moment.

Admittedly, this explanation is a bit of a puzzle itself.  But here’s how I make sense of it.  A koan, once again, is an unanswerable puzzle.  If we take it on, we begin banging our head against the wall of the unknown.  At some point, we realize that there is no solution, and we settle into a don’t-know mind.  This realization, of course, comes up pretty early in the koan work.  And it serves as the true beginning, not the end of the process.

Knowing in advance that you are working with an unanswerable question, you accept your limitations. No longer trying to know the unknowable, you calmly remain with the question in a state of not knowing.  Knowingly, you keep chasing the tail of not knowing in a process that, I believe, very much parallels the day-to-day mystery of life.  Thus, the potential therapeutic value of koan work as a kind of one-question-therapy that can help soothe the perfectionistic thirst for answers.

Here are a few of the koans [from the Present Perfect book] that I developed to challenge perfectionistic thinking for my clients and my readers:

• What color is approval?
• What is your mind full of when you are a success?
• What is your mind full of when you are a failure?

• How much would you pay for a pound of certainty?
• How do you add to what already is?
• How perfect are you when you sleep?

• When you think “I am not good enough,” who thinks that?
• When you think “I think that,” who thinks that?

What shall you do with these self-help koans?  Here’s some Buddhist guidance on answering questions:

“There are [...] four ways of answering questions. Which four?  There are questions that should be answered categorically [straightforwardly yes, no, this, that].  There are questions that should be answered with an analytical (qualified) answer [defining or redefining the terms].  There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question.  There are questions that should be put aside.” (Buddha)

As a I see it, a koan is a kind of question that you mull over at length and then you put it aside.

I’ll be sharing a few more of these koans in a follow-up post.

[Excerpt from Present Perfect]

[Reference: Panha Sutta, as translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu]

On the edge of the Grand Existential Canyon we sit, minds dangling over the cliff,

Burning* millions upon millions of our cellular bodies, daily, like endless money,

Feeling grand as ever, as if we were rich (and we are (we just don’t know it yet (but we will (eventually)))).

*metabolism is a slow cellular fire

Say you got a B on a test.  You look at this grade and you think that you could have done better, that you could have gotten an A.  But that’s theory.  The reality is that you got a B, not an A, and this B represented your practical (not theoretical) best.

With this in mind, let me ask you this: what do you mean by perfection—the theoretical best or the practical best?  When you think about perfection, are you thinking about the imaginary perfection of what could be or about the perfection of what actually is?  Of course, this is something of a rhetorical question.  I know the answer: as a perfectionist, you define perfection as a theoretical best.  That’s exactly why you are never satisfied with reality as it is.

The real world—the one and only world that there is at any given point in time—always pales in comparison with a better world that you can imagine.  In any comparison of the real and the ideal, the ideal, by definition, comes out on top and the real loses out.  No matter how great you are, you can always imagine yourself being even better.  This conclusion is in the nature of imagination: fiction is always one step ahead of fact.  The tragedy of perfectionism is that a comparison of what is with what could be is a foregone conclusion.  To repeat, the ideal, the fictional, the imaginary is always better than the real, the factual, the existent.

Thus, perfectionism is a destiny of dissatisfaction.

Question: what is more valuable—a real twenty-dollar bill or an imaginary one-hundred-dollar bill?  Once again, I’m being rhetorical.  I’m sure you’d say that a real twenty-dollar bill is more valuable than an imaginary one-hundred-dollar bill (and if I’m wrong, feel free to mail me a check for twenty dollars and I will reciprocate with a fake one-hundred-dollar bill).  But if that is so, then how do you end up concluding that the perfection of what is (the real, practical best) ends up being less valuable than imaginary perfection of what could be?  How does an actual B on the exam become less valuable than an imaginary A?  How does an actual moment of performance in your life seem less valuable to you than an imaginary moment of performance that never took place?

Once again, I am being rhetorical and so are you, by the way, if you’re thinking that the B you got on the test could have been an A.  Rhetorically (theoretically), it could have been.  In practice, however, it couldn’t have been.   Sure, you can get an A in the future; that remains an option.  But if you could have gotten a B instead of an A on a given test in the past, then you would have gotten an A, not a B.

To continue to believe that what happened didn’t have to happen and what didn’t happen should have happened is to believe in a fictional history of an actual fact.

[Excerpt from “Present Perfect”]

The topic of evil has been a long-standing interest of mine and this writing is to acknowledge that a major cultural milestone has been reached in the discussion of evil.  Read Simon-Baron Cohen’s “The Science of Evil” or at least a review of it by NY Times.

Much of what I have been blogging and writing about has been focused on compassion and forgiveness.  As I see it, all human behavior breaks down to two elements of psychology: motive and effort.  Motive is universal: we are all pursuing wellbeing, moving from minus to plus, operating – at core – on the pleasure principle.  So, in this sense, we are all motivationally-innocent.  No evil here.   Just living.  Effort-wise, we are all doing the best we can at any given moment in time.  Of course, one’s best is safe and beneficial to others but another’s best is dangerous and even possibly sadistic. Why is that? 

Because we are all different.  If  something is organically amiss in your brain – say, you are under-stimulated – or, if something is culturally amiss in your mind – say, you haven’t been conditioned for and reinforced for empathic behavior – then, of course, your pursuit of wellbeing is likely to be zero-sum, i.e. happening at the expense of someone else’s wellbeing.   That’s life: we can only operate on the variables at hand.

So, we are motivationally innocent.  And effort-wise we are all doing the best we can (even if it sucks and hurts someone in the process).  No evil here either, just the reality of modern-day jungle.   Does this mean that we have to open up the jails and let everyone out?  Of course, not.  As a society, we have to stay safe from those who are unsafe.   As a society, we have to protect ourselves against those who – for reasons of nature, nurture, or both – are unable to pursue their wellbeing within the cultural-legal parameters.  But as a civilization, we don’t have to demonize the less empathic of us as “evil.”

The concept of evil, as I see it, is the only evil.  [And I don’t even mean that really.  Why have we reified painful human behavior into the concept of “evil”?  Because that’s what the mind does: it tracks patterns and organizes them and labels them for ease of reference.  So, even the concept of “evil” isn’t really evil.]

You might be thinking: “Who is this naïve guy?”  Good question.  A reader of mine will know that I respect all identity-questions as valid jump-off points into self-knowledge.  Indeed, what are my “exposure credentials” or “credentials of suffering” to be asserting that there is no evil?  Have I suffered enough in my life for you to take my point seriously?   You judge:

-  Grew up in the Soviet Union, with my family hiding our partial Jewish background to safeguard us from the Soviet antisemitism.   [it didn’t feel like evil, just as a reality to adapt to]

-  2 years in the Soviet military which is notorious for its hazing cruelty. [it didn’t feel like evil, just as a reality to adapt to]

-  Soviet military – compulsory – at that time was akin to slavery* [you are made/culturally forced to do what you wouldn't do otherwise] [it didn't feel like evil, just a cultural reality to survive]

-  A few years in the Perestroika Russia:  been mugged a few times during those wild times. [it didn’t feel like evil, just as a reality to survive]

-  Worked in the American jail [saw no evil there either, just human beings that I could relate to, pursuing their wellbeing the best way they knew how, some hoping to improve, some still too defended to broaden their survival tactics; but once again, no evil].

There’s been more but it’s, of course, all small potatoes.   This brief autobiographical foray is here to preempt righteous moralizing from a reader that will tout his or her suffering credentials instead of participating in a tactful discussion of the utility of the concept of evil.

In sum, I wish to issue a round of reading applause to Dr. Cohen for a brave, gutsy, well-thought and coherent challenge to the concept of “evil.”  Evil – if there is such a thing-less thing – is nothing other than lack of empathy, a deficit to try remediate (say, through empathy-training), not some dark, demonic force lurking within us; evil is a limitation to empathize with and to protect yourself from, not a reason to exclude a fellow human being from the sphere of our compassion.

Resources:

No Socially Unacceptable Motives, Just Socially Unacceptable Behaviors

*Slave is a historically Slavic concept: slave (n). circa 1290, “person who is the property of another,” from O.Fr. esclave, from M.L. Sclavus “slave” (cf. It. schiavo, Fr. esclave, Sp. esclavo), originally “Slav,” so called because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples. [source: www.etymonline.com]

For example (from this morning): “LOAN OFFER!  READ THE ATTACHED FILE AND CONTACT MR. CLARK.”

Yes, it was all in caps.  And no, I didn’t contact Mr. Clark…

You just know there’s suffering and ambition behind this.

Suffering + Ambition = Humanity

Are we going to read what we wrote?!  All these unfinished poems?  All these unpolished stories of narrative fiction?  All these drafts of actualities?

Of course, not: we are once, we are ever a-changing, we are - in a sense – never…

Even if we save a memory-file, it will be opened by the echoes of our here-and-now Essence (i.e. by what we are yet to be (if we are lucky to still be in some hypothetical – however near – future).

Psychological health – it seems – has evolved to include electronic health [e-health].

Purge the digital dust.  In the overall schema of thing-less things, memory is just ones and zeros anyway (foreground and background).

Good hardware is software: it flexes and bends with twists and turns of life, without clinging to its to Form.

Memory is a waste of information.

Live [breathe, love, think] now:

Where am I going with this?  Right here, to this thought: you are missing an opportunity for compassion-training.  Get yourself a $30 dollar BugZooka (which is a battery-free, catch-and-release, pump action hand-vac) and spend this summer practicing compassion.

Let me clarify a couple of things.  First, I am not advocating for bugs.  I am advocating for myself.  I live in the world that is more of a jungle than it theoretically has to be, in a world that plays mindless god left and right, in a world that could certainly benefit from a bit of compassion-training.  This kind of world is unsafe, for me, for you, for anyone.   So, my interest in compassion-training is entirely self-serving.  Sure, I care about the bugs too.

Case in point, one recent morning as I got up to wash my face there was a moth in the sink on its back, flapping its wings.  It was stuck.  Its wings were “glued” to the walls of the sink by the moisture.  I opened the trashcan and rummaged for something thin yet hard to help the moth peel off away from the surface of the sink.  I found the cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper and tried to use this.  It didn’t work: as I tried to scoop up the moth, I kept damaging its wings and it would flap wiggle its body in desperate agony.  I felt like Saddam Hussein in a torture chamber with a  captive audience.

I knew the BugZooka wouldn’t work in this situation because the wet moth would be stuck inside the capture chamber and I’d have to scrape it out somehow.  So, I opened the faucet, hoping that as the water fills up the moth might be able to flip over on its stomach at which point I could try to scoop it out once again.  It didn’t work.  It got sucked into the drain to its death.  I felt bummed out for a moment: as primitive of a life as it was, it ended.  There was no lingering guilt (after all, I did the best I could) just a moment of regret, a moment of identification, a moment of compassion, a moment of humanity.

This is exactly the sort of thing that having a BugZooka allows you to practice.  You see a bug, you grab your BugZooka, you sneak up on the little creature, you push a little red button, and bam: you see the unsuspecting creature temporarily trapped and panicked inside a plastic chamber.  Then you open a window or step outside and you release it back into the wild, feeling good that you didn’t have to kill anyone.  It’s a trivial moment but, I believe, it is nothing less than god-training (and I mean this in a secular, humanistic way).  Fact is: to live we have to kill.  We kill to eat, we kill to heal (notice the “bio” in the word anti-bio-tics, “bios” means “life” in Greek).  The business of living – on some level – is inevitably zero-sum.  We will – one way or another – take life, i.e. play god.  So, if we are going to play god, we might as well practice being mindful, discriminant gods, not mindless, trigger-happy, zombie gods that can’t stand to be bugged.

One more point to clarify.  As I am suggesting this stupefyingly simple compassion-training summer-camp, I realize that there is bound to be a reader out there who will read this and sigh with scorn: “It’s just bugs, kill the damn things, they don’t know any better.  Life is cruel.  There is no room for these bleeding-heart shenanigans.”  I can envision the objection that compassion-training is passivity-training, that compassion training will make someone vulnerable and defenseless.  I don’t think so:  compassion training is one thing, self-defense and assertiveness is an entirely separate matter.  Case in point: I spent this morning writing this silly little blog about bugs and yet, should you barge into my home uninvited in the middle of the night, I’ll do my physical best to mess you up in order to defend my family.

My point is simple: compassion-training is not an either/or issue; it’s not  a choice between compassion or self-care/self-defense.   Not at all.  Compassion-training is not a dualism of the opposites, it’s a dialectic unity of the opposites: compassion is self-care.   Meaning: when you practice compassion, when you avoid unnecessary violence you a) take care of your mind/conscience  and b) practice and model mindful coexistence that makes the world (and you) safer in the long run.

In short, skip on a week’s worth of lattes and get yourself a $30 compassion-training kit.  Awaken your benevolence one bug at a time.

Here’s the link:  http://www.gaiam.com/product/id/1006886.do?SID=WG092SPRTAPEMACS&GCID=S18376x028&keyword=bugzooka

p.s. I am not paid by BugZooka, I don’t own Gaiam stock, I have not accepted and I will not accept any gifts from Gaiam should they want to thank me monetarily for any increase in their sales of this product; writing this was reward enough.

[graphic: from Seeds of Compassion]