I Am Who I Am; No More, No Less

You are upset for having to have some confrontation, some choice to make, to stand up for what you feel is right, even when it means going against loved ones, family, friends, or bosses and co-workers! Although, what you think seems wise, it is not: you know no one confronts anyone. People are Souls, not bodies. Souls are eternal, bodies only house the Soul. The truly wise mourn neither for the friend nor the family. Just as the Soul remains in the body as it changes from childhood to old age. So, too, the Soul remains as we change from one body to another.

Remember that we experience physical sensations such as heat and cold, pleasure and pain through our senses. They are temporal, because they have a beginning and an ending. These experiences will eventually pass. If the mind is focused solely on ever-changing sensory experiences, it will not be possible to quiet the mental chatter long enough to realize one’s eternal Soul. That which is real, is non-changing is eternal; that which is unreal is nonpermanent. So the ever-changing world can be said to be nonexistent, because it is not permanent. Only the Soul can be said to exist, because it is the one thing that does not change. Knowing that the Souls of those you love are eternal and cannot ever die, fight this injustice.

The Soul is eternal; it always existed, and always will exist. It doesn’t move, create, or change anything. So if a person is really the Soul, how can the Soul-Person be confronted if the Soul doesn’t do anything other than exist? When clothes wear out, we don’t grieve too much about it; we simply buy new clothes. So too, the body is a covering for the Soul to wear in order for Self-Realization to have a form to realize its true eternal Soul. So when the body becomes old and unable to be a sturdy home for the Soul, the Soul casts off the old worn-out body and takes on a new one to continue the path to realize one’s true eternal nature.

Now, if this talk of Soul is too abstract, let us think from the mundane vantage; even from this view, there is no cause for grieving. From the point of view of life and death, we know that everything is born, lives, and eventually dies. So why grieve over the inevitable? If you should confront a course you feel is unethical, defending the helpless or the righteous, if you are disliked for doing your life-purpose, your God-given duties, then you shall go to heaven. If you are victorious, you shall enjoy heaven on earth. So for all these reasons resolve your mind and heart and fight the good fight knowing the true permanent nature of the Soul and the ever-changing and impermanent nature of life and see no difference between pleasure and pain, and winning and losing. Focus on the eternal, focus on inevitability, focus on duty, and you cannot incur sin. Sin is a function of the ever-changing world. It occurs when you focus on or get stuck in the relative world: this is sin. Acting beyond change, acting for eternity, takes you beyond sin. This is known as Self-Realization.

Now the spiritual kernel of Vedic philosophy is presented in the mechanics of how bondage is caused and how one can remove the bonds to realize their true nature, the eternal Soul. Let us now talk about yoga the action that merges the inner self with the universal Self, the realization of this eternal nature of Self. If you are sincere, even a small amount of time devoted to yoga delivers you from fear. For this wisdom will free you from the bondage of actions of cause and effect. Focus on your goals, or on the things that must be done without distraction. Avoid people’s words spoken or written just because they sound nice; that is, if they are the words of a charismatic person or a sweet talker. Listen to the essence or substance of what is being communicated for true value.

Some people only do good to gain fame and power. Some aim for heaven; a temporary resting place before returning to earth for continuing on the path of Self-Realization, rather than aim to realize their eternal life. Some people use knowledge as power or prestige or to gain wealth. How many people do you see worshipping knowledge above all else; above ethics, spirit, or compassion. In our modern age, intellectual knowledge is prized over common experience. The Vedic notion is that the highest, most important knowledge is Self-knowledge, because it is the only permanent knowledge. If a person does not seek this permanence, then of what value is intellectual knowledge? If this knowledge does not provide a lasting experience, what good is it? So Krishna says that even the most spiritual of books are only words unless they provide an eternal experience; that is a very profound view of the priority of one’s relationship with their Soul compared to the relevance of spiritual books.

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Happy 2013 WordPress Community!

Happy 2013 WordPress Community

Simple Cognitive Errors

Simple Cognitive Errors

Simple cognitive errors can have disastrous consequences unless you know how to watch out for them. We like to think of ourselves as pretty rational, but that's hardly how we seem from the perspective of accident investigators and search-and-rescue crews.  People who deal with the aftermath of human error can tell you all too well that otherwise normal, healthy individuals are exceptionally predisposed to making the kind of mistake best described as boneheaded.  Interestingly, research into this kind of self-defeating behavior shows that it is usually far from random and when we make mistakes, we tend to make them in ways that cluster under a few categories of screw-up.  There is a method to our mindlessness.  Most of the time, we are on autopilot, relying on habit and time-saving rules of thumb known as heuristics.  For the most part, these rules work just fine, and when they don't, the penalty is nothing worse than a scraped knee or a bruised ego. But when the stakes are higher, when a career is in jeopardy or a life is on the line, they can lead us into mental traps from which there is no escape. One slipup leads to another, and to another, in an ever-worsening spiral. The pressure ratchets up, and our ability to make sound decisions withers.

These cognitive errors are most dangerous in a potentially lethal environment like the wilderness or the cockpit of an aircraft, but versions of them can crop up in everyday life, too, such as when making decisions about what to eat, whom to date, or how to invest.  The best defense is to know they exist.  When you recognize yourself starting to glide into one of these mind traps, stop, take a breath, and turn on your rational brain.  We become victim to a simple but insidious cognitive error and I call it 'redlining'.  Anytime we plan a mission that requires us to set a safety parameter, there's a risk that in the heat of the moment we'll be tempted to overstep it. Divers see an interesting wreck or coral formation just beyond the maximum limit of their dive tables. Airplane pilots descend through clouds to their minimum safe altitude, fail to see the runway, and decide to go just a little bit lower.  It’s easy to think: I'll just cross redline a little bit. What difference will it make? The problem is that once we do, there are no more cues reminding us that we're heading in the wrong direction. A little bit becomes a little bit more, and at some point it becomes too much. Nothing's calling you back to the safe side.

A related phenomenon has been dubbed the "what-the-hell effect," which can occur when dieters try to control their impulses by setting hard-and-fast daily limits on their eating, a kind of nutritional redline. One day, they slip up, eat a sundae, and boom—they're over the line. Now they are in no-man's-land, so they're just going to blow the diet completely. They're going to binge.  The best response to passing redline is to recognize what you have done, stop, and calmly steer yourself back toward the right side.  Focus on the outcome, what is important in the long-term process, and not what happens on any individual day.

The domino effect results from a deep-seated emotion of the need to help others. Altruism offers an evolutionary advantage but can compel us to throw our lives away for little purpose. In stressful situations, you see a failure in the working memory, which is involved in inhibiting impulses. People lose the ability to think about the long-term consequences of their actions.  Now pausing for a moment and taking a deep breath and even taking one step back sometimes allows you to see it in a different light, to maybe think my efforts would be better spent running to get help. I imagine that in these situations, that is an alternative that is not even considered.  Something similar unfolds in some romantic relationships, when partners, perhaps unwittingly, enable or get sucked into their partner's addictions or narcissism. You end up doing things for the other person even though it is not in your own best interest or even in the interest of the relationship. The only way you can save yourself is to get the hell out.

As GPS units and satellite navigation apps have flourished over the past few years, there has been a spate of cases, in which travelers follow their devices blindly and wind up getting badly lost. In each case, the underlying mistake is not merely technological but perceptual.  It is the failure to remain aware of one's environment, what aviation psychologists call situational awareness.  People have always had difficulties maintaining situational awareness, but the proliferation of electronics and our blind faith that it will keep us safe has led to an epidemic of absentmindedness.   A big element in situational awareness is paying attention to cues. If you're focusing just on that GPS unit, and you see that little icon moving down the road, and say to yourself, OK, I know where I am, technically, that can be a big problem, because you are not looking at the world passing by your windshield.  Full situational awareness requires incorporating outside information into a model of your environment, and using that model to predict how the situation might change. If all you are doing is following the line of the GPS, and it turns out to be wrong, you'll be completely clueless about what to do next.  In daily life, we rely on what is called social situational awareness to navigate our way through the human maze. When you miss social cues, an embarrassing faux pas can occur. Using swear words is completely fine in some settings. In others, it is not as the stranger in a crowd, you'll have to pay attention to figure out what is appropriate.

There is a manifestation of our irrational assessment of risks and rewards. We tend to avoid risk when contemplating potential gains but seek risk to avoid losses. For instance, if you offer people a choice between a certain loss of $1,000 and a 50-50 chance of losing $2,500, the majority will opt for the riskier option, to avoid a definite financial hit. Casinos make a good profit from our propensity for risk-seeking behavior. Gamblers wind up in a hole, and then instinctively take bigger and bigger risks in an attempt to recoup the losses. Most go in hoping for the best, but to a veteran in the field of applied psychology, it's a foregone conclusion.

Our minds recoil from uncertainty; we are wired to find order in randomness. We look at clouds and see sheep. This can be a useful trait when it comes to making decisions, since we're helpless without a theory that makes sense of our quandary. Unfortunately, once we form a theory, we tend to see everything through its lens. It is hard to let go of a fixed belief. A consequence is that when people get lost in the back country, they can convince themselves that they know exactly where they are, a problem known in the search-and-rescue community as bending the map.  Such errors of overconfidence are due to what phenomenon psychologists call confirmation bias. When trying to solve a problem or troubleshoot a problem, we get fixated on a specific option or hypothesis, and ignore contradictory evidence and other information that could help us make a better decision.

A vast collective error of confirmation bias unfolded in the past decade as investors, analysts, and financial advisers all managed to convince themselves that legions of financial derivatives based on subprime mortgages were all fundamentally sound. There was plenty of evidence to the contrary, and many commentators pointed out the facts. But the money was so good that too many found it easier to believe. They kept convincing themselves right up until the roof caved in.

How can you avoid confirmation bias? You can employ some of the same strategies for sidestepping other mind traps. Take yourself off autopilot. Become aware of your environment. Make a habit of skepticism, including skepticism toward your own assumptions and gut feelings. Don't use your intuition to convince yourself that things are going right, use it to alert you to potential problems.  Please listen to those niggling doubts.

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