Hi dudes,
Meta Process wrote:
You said: "Out greatest weapon against anxiety is the power to ignore it."

Could you elaborate? I've found that the greatest weapon against anxiety is to understand how it's generated in abstract and in real time, which requires awareness, and to change those patterns by conscious engagement and/or having "pure" awareness fix it unconsciously. If we ignore it, couldn't we have unconscious sentiment sneakily screwing up our decision making processes?

See ya.

Edit: Change and conscious engagement don't mean resistance/aversion/fighting it here.



Dudes, Sorry this is long, I really need to get this right and could do with some assistance. Processes really are such difficult things to describe, and the processes we discuss here are largely unknown!  BUT... I need to make this clear for advanced tutorials so hopefully I can practice here  :  )

I'll have several different shots at explaining this and would appreciate feedback... which ones (if any) convey most clearly the meaning of 'ignoring things'?

explanation 1:
There are two ways to ignore things.
For example, how do your feet feel right now? Comfortable? Too cold? A bit itchy? Too hot? To answer that question you have to concentrate on your feet. Before the question, you were completely ignoring your feet. Normally, unless some area is in pain, we ignore large parts of ourselves most of the time.

Now imagine one of your feet aches a bit, but I keep telling you to ignore your feet. The mind starts out trying to ignore, but the unconscious keeps on pulling your attention back to your foot because it's thinking, 'there may be a problem dude!' We may know consciously that the foot hurts because we stubbed our toe on a table leg earlier, but the unconscious only knows 'there may be a problem'.

We know that ignoring this constant ache could also be a problem, because we know inflammation is harmful, so we need to take a painkiller to reduce the damage.

However, if during the painful time there's a knock on your door and a mysterious parcel is delivered full of all your favorite things, chances are you'll forget the aching foot for the time it takes to open all the goodies and wonder who the f*** sent this then. Then you find a note in the box, so you email the sender and say thankyou.

During that time, when you are totally distracted into something else, the foot doesn't hurt at all. You realize, hey -you had pain control without even trying!

The trick is, we can distract ourselves in exactly the same way, by focusing on something good and interesting; we don't have to make any effort at all. Instead of focusing on the pain and how to ignore it, we focus on something totally different. And the pain goes away, and the inflammation stops, and the foot heals a lot faster. Because the unconscious is getting the message 'this isn't so important' (if it were very important, we wouldn't have been so easily distracted, right?) -This is unconscious, creative logic, and it's a lot more flexible than formal logic.

The unconscious has been hacked, and no painkiller is necessary.
This is what is meant by 'play on the surface' (open the interesting parcel) 'and the brain does all the work for you underneath' (stops the pain, reweights the event).

Explanation 2:
By concentrating on nasty things, dwelling on and worrying about problems, we make them more nasty and more difficult. By concentrating on anxiety and how to get rid of it, we make the unconscious think it's a big deal; that is to say, we give it the wrong weighting. What we need is for the unconscious to recognize anxiety as 'no big deal'; (because it's easily removed unless we fear it.) Likewise by focusing on problems we make them a 'big deal'.

So, the existence of anxiety shouldn't be ignored, and of course we benefit by awareness of that, but when it's actually happening, one of the best ways to cut short its duration is to convince the unconscious that it's no big deal and we do this by energetically getting into something we know is beneficial -by distracting ourselves on purpose.

We do this in full conscious knowledge of the power of intelligence to heal itself when given the right conditions. It's the placebo-on-purpose technique. Once a problem is correctly weighted, the unconscious is confident we can hack it. At that point anxiety disappears and we really can hack the problem with a clear mind. There is a link here to the proverb, 'once you know the name of something, you can control it' (the 'name' is the weighting; the correct coordinates, the congruous associations). In hippy terms, you've 'got it correctly sussed, dude'  :  )

explanation 3:
Have you ever been so absorbed in something you're reading that someone speaks to you and you literally don't hear them? That's what I mean by 'ignore'. If we are never even aware of the possibility of anxiety, it has no power to arise. We have taken its power off it. If it starts to creep in, and we think, 'Oh, that's just my unconscious being a wimp; there's nothing to get anxious about', anxiety has no chance. We still have full awareness of logical dangers and sensible behavior; the only thing being ignored is anxiety.

Explanation 4:
Has anyone seen 'The Last Samurai'? ...You know that part when he's trying to learn to sword fight and the japanese dude says, “Too many minds”? That scene is a metaphoric way of explaining the process of ignoring things. He's paying too much attention to too many things and overweighting their importance in the situation. 'Don't mind things' (no mind) = no attention paid to irrelevancies. He is being taught mindfulness -total focus on only the relevant things in the here and now moment. This opens the door to 'the zone' and optimal technical and creative performance.

We possibly need another term rather than ignoring things; how about 'negating things'? One negates things from the experience to achieve total mindfulness of the experience. Anxiety is one of the things negated.

To be 'negated' is to be given an 'irrelevant' weighting. For example attack from a minor infection that is automatically repelled in a day with a mild sore throat and a few sneezes is pretty irrelevant to our generally getting on with things. If we go about our business making progress in beneficial ways, all will be well and it's no big deal. But if we start to worry that its some dreadful infection that's going to kill us all, chances are the cortisol will reduce our immunity so the infection takes hold. The more we worry and focus attention on it, the more we compromise our immunity and the worse it gets. Getting things into perspective, looking at the big picture, and concentrating always on progress in the beneficial; this is what negating things can achieve.

Do you see there is a point in time when we hold control of our own future there? There are two possible futures; one of which we will create. We can consciously decide whether to or not to get an infection. We know we can boost our own immune systems by negating anxiety. We are responsible for our choices in what we pay attention to. Hold on to that thought...
Best,
AR