Are you orienting towards Presence or the Amygdala?

The question in the title can be rephrased as: where do I usually, or often, put my attention in daily life: on the awareness and relative egolessness of being fully present, which we can come to after some meditative practice, or by our historical anxiety, i.e, the amygdala, the small walnut sized part of the brain, which is the seat of fear?

This can be a very frustrating part of the meditative or spiritual journey; having practiced meditation for a while, we often experience some of the fruits that have been promised us, perhaps some sense of peace and calm as we come into the present moment, or deeper experiences of selflessness and less separation from the world around us, the sense of beingness or oneness.

The frustration comes from knowing we are better off, more real and less anxious as we live increasingly in the present, or even becoming presence as a deeper identity, and yet we find ourselves pulled back into episodes of anxiety, contraction and isolation by anxiety and fear. Why might this be?

The past, future and our mind

Broadly speaking, if we find ourselves living in the past or future, cringing inwardly at some interaction that occurred last week (or year), or worried about some event that has yet to occur, we must be living in our minds, disturbing ourselves, as the psychologist Albert Ellis called it.

Being present, on the other hand, is more about body than mind. By that I mean that our body can't be anywhere else except right here and now. We can instantly access the present moment by turning our attention to our senses, what are we seeing, hearing, right now? Sense into your feet touching the ground, not because we expect to get any particular result, except that it can bring us, as the saying goes, out of our minds and into our lives. And often we might discover that if we are not engaging in thoughts of what might happen, or what did happen, things may feel quieter and simpler, at least for a while, and we can keep practicing this.

We can ask ourselves: "Whats wrong with right now if we don't think about it?"

As our spiritual practice progresses, we can even move from simply being present, to becoming the presence, which is to say learning to identify not with the changing thoughts and feelings, the content of consciousness, if you will, but with the one who is aware of these, who is always there in the background, and who doesn't usually come to our attention until we do some meditation. As is often noted in spiritual circles, what is most important is what is most easily overlooked - that is to say, who or what is doing the looking?

One of the functions of our endlessly busy minds is not something we're usually aware of - sustaining our ego identity. By this, I mean that if we are not finding our identity in awareness or presence itself, we are looking for it in our ideas about ourself, our history. Which means that if the internal chatter stops for too long, despite being a result we think we would like, it can become disorienting and confusing. Who are we if we don't define ourselves with a thought, who or what is left in the thoughtless state?

So if this is so, what can be done about it?

Habit Loops

The psychiatrist and neurologist Judson Brewer has described what I regard as one of the best ways of understanding the nexus between anxiety and addictions, "habit loops." And by anxiety I mean any experience in the moment from some mild personal discomfort to overwhelming dread, and by addictions I mean anything from traditional addictions like drugs and alcohol, to being persistently distracted by our phones.

This is significant not just for the difficulties these experiences and habits may bring us, but also for the ways it successfully keeps us out of the present moment, to avoid what we are feeling and replacing it with some momentary pleasure or relief. And we are literally surrounded by every every vice and pleasure that capitalism can sell us, not just the internet, but illegal and legal drugs, food of every description, gambling at the touch of a keyboard, and so on, with perpetual advertising pushing us to try this or that. Hey! the message is, you're not OK right where you are, but if you do (or buy) this or that, well, you soon will be...

The simplest and most empirically validated way of grasping such phenomenon are "habit loops." These focus on that part of the brain where we feel "reward," which we often turn to when we're feeling anxious. This puts us in mind of the Buddha's famous "Four Noble Truths," the first two of which assert the universal reality of suffering, and the second of which makes the claim that our suffering is ultimately caused by our own craving, or desires. We shall examine this now, from the point of view of modern brain science.

Neurology tells us that our brains evolved over time, and that there are 'old' and 'new' parts. The (relatively) newer parts involve the prefrontal cortex, physically located in the front of our brain, and are involved with rational thought, reflection, decision making, and so on. But these are layered on top of much more ancient parts of ourselves that I have heard called the 'reptilian' brain, and which are primarily concerned with our survival. One aspect of this, discussed elsewhere in my blog, is the 'fight or flight' impulse. Another, which we will examine now, is the concept of 'reward based learning.'

From a survival point of view, certain foods and sexual pleasure, for example, clearly favor ongoing human existence, and the brain evolved various means to encourage us to move in these directions. This is accomplished, broadly speaking, by the neurotransmitter dopamine, the so-called motivation chemical that can make us feel satisfaction, excitement and gratification. Its function is not mysterious: we remember what feels good and wish to repeat it, and we try to avoid what feels bad. This survival orientation made a lot of sense when food supplies might have been scarce and unreliable, but these 'hard-wired' parts of our brain can also be put to different uses in modern societies.

As Brewer puts it, "Our modern brains say, Hey, you can use this dopamine thing for more than remembering where food is. In fact, the next time you feel bad, you can try eating something good, and you’ll feel better! We thank our brains for that great idea and quickly learn that if we eat chocolate or ice cream when we’re mad or sad, we feel better. This is the exact same learning process that a cave person went through, but now the trigger is different: Instead of a hunger signal coming from our stomach, an emotional signal—feeling sad/mad/hurt/lonely—triggers our urge to eat."

This, in short, is the link between anxiety (any uncomfortable feeling, actually), and addictions, whether the habits be food, alcohol or internet shopping. These typically take the form of a habit loop:

Trigger - Uncomfortable feeling

Behavior - Reaching for a snack or the phone

Result/Reward - Feeling relief, pleasure

While there is all the difference in the world between distracting ourselves from some current discomfort with our phones, and a drug addict picking up a drug because some deep trauma has been triggered, the mechanism is the same, and the first part of addressing it is simply to become aware that this is what is occurring. As we do so, we will likely notice that the triggers and behaviors for us are not random; certain kinds of things bother us more, and result in repeating behaviors that, while allowing for some immediate relief, usually causes us more grief in the medium and longer terms. There might be more predictability here than we think, even though pursuing these habits usually causes more chaos. What can we do to address these issues?

Orienting towards presence

If the habit is more like a serious addiction, it is not just about overcoming our denial - though this is very much the 'first step' - it is about getting some help and support, whether it be a 12 step group, therapy or medication. Still, in these situations, as well as with habits with less serious consequences, orienting towards presence can be a tremendous help.

Earlier, above, we talked about how being in in our heads, in the past or future, is often a big part of causing our discomfort. We may feel we have no choice but to struggle with difficult thoughts and feelings as they arise, but this very struggle itself, resisting what is arising in our experience, may keep the bad feelings going and perhaps even increase them, as we focus on them to the exclusion of everything else.

But there are alternatives. One, discussed elsewhere in my blog, is a therapeutic intervention such as cognitive behavioral therapy whereby we see how much we exaggerate the likelihood and severity of perceived threats, and dispute these thoughts and beliefs. Here we focus instead on mindfulness and acceptance.

I often do an exercise with my clients to bring them into the present. I ask them to allow everything to be here, and just to notice it, and as best as possible not to judge whatever is arising as good or bad, and if such thoughts arise, to allow them to come and go, without getting hooked by them; a thought is just a thought, which may or may not be true or useful. In other words, paradoxically, by accepting everything that is arising, especially the discomfort, we can calm down in a way we often found impossible when we were trying to figure it all out, to control it and make it go away.

This is what I mean by 'orienting towards presence.' Instead of getting caught up in thoughts and the inner control agenda, we pay attention to what we are seeing, hearing, sensing in the moment. Of course these things are always happening, we're just not paying them any attention. And when (not if) the difficult thoughts and feelings come back, demanding our attention, we just observe this, letting them be, which often allows them to more freely come and go. And if this doesn't immediately 'work' by making us calmer, we notice that too, and don't fight it.

Of course, this is all more easily said than done, particularly with more difficult material that feels overwhelming, and for which we usually need some support from others to help regulate us, but over time, we can come to understand that it is all more in the nature of habitual inner activity and habits, about which we have a choice in how to respond. Remember, one of the critical points here is that we are allowing things to unfold in awareness, not intervening and trying to change or avoid, and over time, this non-judgmental mindfulness can allow inner change to happen on its own, whereas in the past, so-called 'willpower' hasn't always seemed to work, despite many attempts.

And lastly, I write of orienting towards presence, not just the present, though they are very close, because ultimately, the meditative life can bring us to a place where we become more identified with the presence (awareness) itself, that which is observing everything that is coming and going, than with some historical self image. Thoughts and memories about ourselves are observable phenomena and mental constructions that come and go. In truth, they are not as real as our presence—which is always here and which we all possess equally.

Further reading on Habit loops