chapters

The Final Review

An awareness of one's mortality can lead you to wake up
and live an authentic, meaningful life.

—Bernie Siegel

Souls like us are in a weird position. Our reactions are determined by the laws of cause-and-effect. But that does not mean we are playthings of external sources of control. To the extent that we can understand the causes of our reactions that produce bad outcomes, we can intentionally influence future reactions.

Primitive creatures who do not possess the faculty of abstract reasoning cannot appreciate the causes of their reactions and hence cannot work with them to intentionally change their course. Paradoxically. it is we rather than the primitive creatures who continue to follow a path that predictably leads to a bad outcome. Despite sincere intentions not to make the same mistake, we do it again and again.

Two sources of avoidable suffering :

  1. Excessive appetites for a substance [such as alcohol, drugs, food] or an activity [such as sex/pornography, gambling/day-trading, gaming, device use, etc.]. These traps are also known as: Addictive Disorders and Incentive Use Disorders.

  2. Excessive emotional reactions, which often show up as relationship problems.

In most domains of life, your default reactions work out fine so there is little motivation to switch to a more advantageous path. However, there is probably at least one domain in which the path you have been following has repeatedly (and predictably) taken you to unwanted outcomes.

There is a potential silver lining to this unfortunate state of affairs. You might have never gotten around to following Socrates recommendation: "Know thyself" were it not for the pain that drove you to research the causes of your choices that brought it on. The appreciation of how your reactions contribute to the sequence of external events and internal states that end up at a bad outcome allows you to exercise an intentional influence on the course of events.

You are not the first to have fallen into one of these traps. Some smart folks who have come before you, as well contemporary cognitive scientists, have developed strategies to act in accord with your interests and principles despite the stresses and temptations that would motivate you to defect.

Freedom Is Not Free

The path of least resistance is effortless and free. However, if you want to follow a more advantageous path you have to pay a toll. The ability to respond mindfully to the things that happen requires that you know yourself well enough to solve the puzzle of why you act counter to your interests and principles and that you develop the practical skills to work with subjective phenomena.

  1. Know yourself: The price for this knowledge is: Doing the personal research to discover the important determinants of your reactions

  2. Exercise your will: The price for this power is: Develop the procedural skills to act as intended during progressively more trying high-risk situations.

These undertakings are complicated by the unusual nature of the subject matter: The cause-and-effect principles that pertain to your psyche. The complication is: Your reactions look different from the observer's perspective than they feel from the first-person perspective. To know yourself, you will have to appreciate subjective phenomena from both perspectives.

Reading books about how to dance or play tennis can give you the understandings that enable you to perform at a high level. However, high level performance requires that your body practice the skills to develop the "muscle memory." According to our Two-Mind Model, both abstract understanding and procedural skill is required to follow your path of greatest advantage. The ancient and modern methods described here will help you with both of these requirements.


 The Existential Path > >

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