I've tried to show in the manual just how much of our happiness (most of it) has to do with what we have stored in our minds and bodies. When the sages and gurus say "Happiness is within", this is just what they're saying.
There's no need to complicate it in esoteric terms: happiness is in our bodies, and by removing our habitual responses of pain and discomfort, our inner processes are gradually freed from them, leaving space for happy feelings to emerge. I believe that's what they're saying. Happiness is an inside job
– inside our mind and feelings, which are all inside the body. We must keep reminding ourselves not to fall into the illusion that thoughts and emotions are outside us or beyond our management. At all times we can improve the way we conduct this symphony.
We have many habits of thought, and many of them come from the culture we grew up in. If you are from a Western country and I say to you, "I'm dreaming of a
––", you will finish my sentence: " white Christmas". If you say "Once upon a
––", I will say "time". I say "It's a bird, it's a plane!" and you say "Superman!"
Habits of thought become wide and deep, much the same way as channels are cut into stone over time by trickles of water. If you want to change the groove, and pour water on it, at first the water will run in exactly the same old channel the previous water did. Our thoughts are like this.
Another illustration, and it's perhaps my favourite, is that the thoughts we have are like audio or video cassette tapes. (This metaphor is not much different from that of the
Etch A Sketch, but because of the economy lately I'm diversifying the business.)
If we are to move towards greater happiness, there will inevitably be many 'tapes' that we have to tape over. This can be done, and with practice we become better at locating outmoded tapes, and also better at re-recording tapes. However, just like with old cassettes, there can be some residual images or sound from the previous recording. Old habits do die hard, as the saying goes, but the good news is that it's never too late to start.
One thing is certain: if nothing changes, nothing changes. If we fail to identify our old tapes (often made in childhood without our conscious choice) and replace the inferior ones with new recordings of our own making, we will stay at our previous level of unconsciousness and discomfort. I don't intend to stay there, and I doubt that you propose to stay there either.
Yes/No
Getting back to Western civilisation. One of the strengths of the Western mindset has been its development of logic. Since the days of the early philosophers in ancient Greece, logic has influenced our thought, giving us such valuable tools as the scientific method, and digital science.
However, as is widely appreciated today, one of the pitfalls of this way of thinking is that it can eclipse other ways in which the mind can work. There are limits to logic. Here are some quotations that allude to this phenomenon:
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
Boris Pasternak
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
Rabindranath Tagore
We are not computers. A computer operates on lots of little on-off switches. If we imagine 'On' as 'Yes', and 'Off' as 'No', this is a basic model of the computer's mode of operation. The computer was modelled on just part of the human brain
– the childlike, not-too-smart, not-too-creative, logical bit. Don't fall into the trap of modelling your whole brain on the computer. We are divine beings, not machinery. So live divine!
It seems to me that we need to transcend Yes/No thinking. I have come to recognise how it limits me, and stifles my happiness.
Here are some examples of Yes/No thinking.
If I go to the party I will be shy and awkward;
No one can be wealthy and happy;
You can't be spiritual and practical as well;
If I tell Jane how I feel, I will get hurt;
I would love to live by the beach but I'd miss mountain views;
Now I'm a parent, going to adult movies is over for me;
I was no good at Spanish, so no way will I try to learn Vietnamese;
I'm a plumber, Darlene, not a frigging musician!
We can stretch our horizons far beyond our wildest dreams by practising Precept 11: I will find choices beyond Yes and No. I'd like you to see if you can see the Yes/No thinking associated with each example above. I'll deconstruct the first example now:
Okay, this one is typical of the kinds of stupid and limiting thoughts I catch myself thinking a lot of the time. With practice, I am catching and weeding such thoughts out more and more.
Why does it have to be a Yes/No choice between attending a party and feeling good? Who made this a rule
– God? Why should I say to myself "Party yes, feelgood no", or "Party no, feelgood yes"?
Such a habit of thought might be old, but it is not to be revered for that. It is limiting the social life of the person who thinks it. The first way to get rid of such a mental tape is to tell yourself, "I will go to the party and feel good".
The brain is inadequate in some ways, and on one level it thinks like a Yes/No computer. It will listen to whichever tape is playing, and to whichever tape you record over the top of it. This is what affirmations are
– new tapes for the brain. Just make sure you put the new tape in a positive and active voice. Don't say, "I will go to the party and not feel bad". Words have great power, so don't even have words like 'bad' running around taking up space in your head. Remember, the kid (your brain) is listening!
Let's have a look at another of the examples above:
Now, such an argument might be persuasive, but look how ridiculous it is. Are there not mountains close to beaches? Maybe not where you've been before, maybe not in your neighbourhood. But somewhere?
Resolving dilemmas
Now, you might say, "Pip, there are no mountains near beaches even in my state." All right, what about another state? So you might say, "Pip, I can't live in another state". Okay, why not?
"Well" you say, "because I have always lived in this state."
"Why not move?" I ask.
"Because ... because ... I can't afford to move."
"How much would it cost to move?" I ask. "Life is so short! How can you afford not to follow your dreams?" If living near mountains and a beach is a dream, and all that's preventing you from turning that dream into a goal, is the cost of removal, then perhaps it's worth saving specifically for removal. Maybe you can sell off some assets that are not bringing as much pleasure as the joy you would receive every morning by looking down from your mountain home onto a beach.
Of course, there might be very cogent reasons for which you can't move house. However, it's good to scrutinise your thinking at a deep level, to see if your head is just acting out of Yes/No habit. The important thing to identify among our many limiting modes of thought is the role that Yes/No thinking has.
You love mountain views. You also love the beach. If you say "Yes" to one, you have to say "No" to the other
– or so you think. This Yes/No setup is called a dichotomy, defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "a division or the process of dividing into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities". In a dichotomy, you can't have one as well as the other. If it's X, it can't be Y. Now, I ask you: what's wrong with having X and Y? Let's have Yes and Yes instead of Yes and No, where it's appropriate.
Dichotomous thinking has helped the West grow strong: scientists use it all the time in working out how the world works. It is a remarkable tool if you want to work out whether calcium carbonate has a pH value higher or lower than 5.6. It is great for analysing the DNA in a skull of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, but it is not something that should entirely fill the cranium of a modern Homo sapiens.
The dichotomy tree
Dichotomous thinking is so ingrained in the mind of Westerners that we often fail to see what a hold it has on us. Often, I have found, disabling dichotomous thinking has created a whole tree in my head
– a tree of Yes/No choices that I need to cut down at the root. Allow me to explain.
Let's say I have told myself, "I can't get a promotion and still be happy". You could say, "Pip, why are these two things mutually exclusive? Why can't you have both?"
If I'm in my "poor Pip" mode of thinking, I will probably say, "If I'm made a manager, Fred and Frederina will hate me, and then I can't be happy". This adds a branch to the tree, which may be imagined as something like this diagram of a philosopher's 'logic tree', with spreading branches.
Logic tree
You'll say, "But why will they hate you?" "Because they'll be jealous." You say, "But you don't know what they're thinking." I say, "If Fred gets jealous maybe he will tell the boss about what happened yesterday when he was out of the office. I could get fired." You say, "Even if Fred did that, you probably wouldn't get fired." I say, "But the boss might be in a bad mood." You say, "He might not be", and I say, "Anyway, even if he doesn't fire me, what will he actually think of me?!" And on it goes, from branch to branch until I'm so far out on a limb it's almost impossible to crawl back.
Enough said. I have found time and again that if I don't strike at the root of my dichotomous, Yes/No thinking, it is a screen on which I easily project all my fears, insecurities and worries. I have found that it's important to strike at the root of the problem. To do this I have to ask myself to answer honestly, "What is it you're really afraid of here?" I need to know what I have set up in my mind to make me think that everything is black and white, a choice between one thing and another.
I have committed to attempt at all times to see if I can have X plus Y, instead of X or Y. If I conceive life as a perennial contest between two choices, I will be doomed. If I can but see that by having one thing I am not always excluded from having another, then I have an infinite number of further choices beyond Yes and No. This gives me more freedom and happiness in the world, because I no longer narrow my life down into a small box.
Perhaps if you try it, it will work for you. I truly hope so. Perhaps you'd like to tell others how it goes, in our guestbook (below). We are only a few chapters from the end of the manual, and I would love to get your comments where all can share them. Thank you for reading this far.
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip
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