Rewiring The Mind

A path beyond self-help for genuinely changing yourself

Hello,

We’ve all tried to change ourselves- the way we think, act, and behave, at many points in our lives. But the results are often worse than what we got in our 7th-grade optics exam.

We read self-help books. We try attending self-help “seminars”. It’s not like they’re completely useless- they certainly help the people selling those things and making good money off of us.

But as for us, the poor folks taking those programs with the hope of radical transformation? Nope.

The positive mental effects may last for a day or two, but after that, we slowly get back to our old ways- ditching the good habits, going back to the angry yelling matches at home and those 3 AM brandy marathons on weekdays.

So why do these efforts at effecting genuine transformation fail? Why do we continue to be controlled by our beastly emotions and tendencies?

There’s a simple mental model developed by psychologist Jonathan Haidt that you can use to understand this.

The elephant and the rider

Every time we have to interact with the world and take decisions, we (falsely) believe that our conscious mind is in the driver’s seat: evaluating sensory input, thinking logically, and then making a choice. But that’s not the case.

Much more consequential than that is our unconscious mind.

The parts of the brain corresponding to this have evolved for a much longer time in our evolutionary history and hence, are much more consequential in all our actions.

The unconscious mind is like the mighty elephant, and the conscious mind is like the rider on top of it- and together they navigate the world and decide what actions to take.

As you can imagine, the elephant is much more powerful than the scrawny little rider.

The latter can coax and direct it, but never manage to overpower it in a direct battle. In any such challenge, the rider is bound to tire herself out in a battle of wills, while the elephant continues to operate tirelessly and has its way.

This elephant has been observing and building up its repertoire of emotions and concepts ever since birth, and every time we act, we do so based on emotions and not reason. David Hume articulated this in his pithy style when he said “Reason is a slave of the passions”.

Even if we’re hyper-intelligent actors, all of that intelligence and rationality serve to make a particular emotion stronger- like inducing feelings of guilt based on the research paper we read on the effects of sugar when confronted with the sight of a seductive chocolate cake at midnight. Ultimately, it strengthens a particular emotion that makes us skip that diabetes-inducing gunk.

But why all this explanation on the conscious and unconscious mind? What’s that got to do with the grand failures of the quests to transform our stupid selves?

The habit pattern of the mind

It’s because deep, transformational change can only happen when you penetrate the depths of the unconscious mind and start changing its habit pattern. That is also why just seminars or books (sounds and words) don’t really work- they work at the surface level, influencing the conscious mind to eat well and exercise more, do this and do that.

The crucial thing that these attempts fail to achieve is to penetrate the thick barrier that separates the conscious and unconscious mind and influence the latter.

Breaking that barrier and altering the workings of the elephant requires a well-designed technology of spirituality. Something like Vipassana meditation- a technique designed for this very purpose.

This technique relies not on words and intellectualization, but on a practice that works with our body sensations- the key to beginning the process of change.

The reason we succumb to that 1000-calorie chocolate cake or break our new year resolution of avoiding alcohol on 2nd January despite the best attempts of our conscious mind (in the form of promises to parents or using inspirational quote print-outs as reminders) is that our unconscious mind contains deep-rooted attachments which raise their ugly heads when our body confronts the cake or the bottle.

These deep-rooted tendencies manifest as sensations on our bodies (which we aren’t able to usually observe), and we have an automatic reaction process to these sensations which overpowers the aforementioned attempts to resist.

These might manifest as thoughts of deep craving that override all resolutions, and reveling in the pleasant sensations generated on our body by munching down the cake further deepens the hold of those deep-rooted tendencies as they continue to enslave us. As a result, it further reinforces this destructive habit pattern of the mind.

The technique for change

If you have to break this ugly loop from hell, you have to attack the key point in the chain that can reverse the process.

That is, you have to work with your body sensations so you can re-train your unconscious mind to be acutely aware of the arising and passing of sensations, observing them as they truly are without triggering the immediate process of reaction.

This practice eventually leads to an understanding of the fleeting nature of these sensations and a weakening of mental defilements such as the one mentioned above, thus reduing their controlling power.

Over time, as the reactive process fades away and one learns to maintain perfect equanimity, these mental defilements start getting eradicated. This is the process of purification, of changing our habit pattern, of rewiring our mind by penetrating its deepest levels.

If you have to take away just one thing from this piece, let it be the fact that deep, transformational change that rewires the mind cannot happen with mere words or intellectual discussions. Those words aren’t strong enough to cross the barrier, and if you genuinely want to come out of the tendencies of self-deception and self-destruction, you have to use a technique like Vipassana meditation.

As one works with this technique, the elephant slowly changes its behavior. It loses its violent streak while the rider gains more and more control. The process of mastery begins- and the rider truly starts to gain control, instead of being controlled by the elephant’s passions.

For the hyper-scientific skeptic, there’s ample research to show how this practice has changed people’s lives. This documentary shows how the practice radically transformed the lives of prisoners in Tihar jail. It’s very moving.

These afflictions are universal. All humans suffer from them. What matters is how soon you can acknowledge and confront this mess and begin the process of purification.

If you can sense the deadly impact of these afflictions and can imagine how peaceful life would be once you start chipping away at them, consider attending a 10-day meditation course.

Initiate this process of change, and let slip the dogs of spiritual war.

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