Curiosity & Being

I live life to the full or 11:30, whichever comes first.

- Strange de Jim

You want to be successful and produce beneficial outcomes for to yourself and loved ones. Paradoxically, the emotional consequences of this desire —  and the strivings to achieve it —  can make you unsuccessful and promote reactions within you that are harmful to yourself and loved ones.

The Paradox of Doing Mode: The more you want, the greater are the state-dependent distortions produced by desire. Moreover, the more you want, the greater is the frustration when you do not get the desired outcome, and the greater are the state-dependent distortions produced by the negative emotional state. Wanting good outcomes [Attachment to Outcomes] increases state-dependent distortions and makes us more vulnerable to being taken in by the Soul Illusion.

The Paradox of Trying to Escape Doing Mode: Sometimes you can achieve better outcomes if you let go of doing and simply accept things as they are. But letting go and accepting is not the typical way of reacting to the things that happen. Ever since graduating from infancy we have practiced Doing. After all this practice, Doing is the default mode. Escaping autonomous Doing Mode requires some doing.

You may be motivated to explore Being Mode because it will help you achieve an outcome you desire. An alternative motivation is the curiosity to explore experiential phenomena. There is a fundamental difference between these kinds of motivations.

Thought Experiment: Exploring Intrinsic Motivation

Conformity, obedience, and pleasure seeking are motivations that promote dependence on an external agent.  The goal of our collaboration is to free you from dependence on something you do not want to be controlled by, so that you act in accord with your interests and principles.

Appreciating meaning and the motivation that comes from within can be unfamiliar because meaning and hence motivation is generally given to us by external agents such as parents, teachers, supervisors [obedience], peers, the media [conformity], or our biological drives [pleasure seeking]. Becoming mindful of internally generated meaning and intrinsic motivation is part of the process of escaping dependence.

Curiosity is an example of intrinsic motivation. Other intrinsic motives include the desire to engage in Flow Activities, to enhance the quality of your relationships and your life, and. of particular relevance to this course, the twin desires for freedom from self-sabotaging emotional reactions and from addictive traps.

The focus of this thought experiment is to become mindful of what motivates your actions: Are you asleep at the wheel so that your actions are part of an autonomous sequence? Are you afraid of disobeying the rules of those more powerful than you or not fitting in with others think and do? Is you primary motive to seek pleasure or relief? Or, are you awake in the here and now and mindfully acting in accord with your interests and principles?

For now, the challenge is to notice the relationship between your actions and the causes of your actions. This, of course, is much more difficult than it sounds. To collect the data of interest requires that you awaken from autonomous doing so you can notice what is going on — that is, become aware of your experience of what drives you at the moment without being distracted by the natural tendency to evaluate what is going on so you can fix it. .

Your lease on life is limited with few chances for do-overs. Regrets are poor substitutes for getting what you want out of life. But wanting and striving often gets in the way. Sometimes heroic effort is what separates success from failure, and sometimes it is best to just accept what is without trying to evaluate or fix it. How do you know how to react?

The Serenity Prayer provides the answer and will tell you when Doing Mode and when Being Mode is most compatible with the challenge your face. .

 

Deconstructing the Serenity Prayer > >
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