The Antidote to Anxiety: How to Calm Down and Find Happiness in the Present Moment

[Lord777]

People often live in an illusory future instead of accepting the real present. This is why they are so rarely happy. This is the conclusion reached by British philosopher Alan Watts in The Wisdom of Precariousness: A Message to the Age of Trouble.

“As we spend our days, so we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard wrote in her timeless essay that being involved in the present is the antidote to pervasive anxiety in this age of mass obsession with results. Indeed, my own New Year's Eve promise was to stop evaluating each day by the level of productivity and start looking at life in terms of the level of presence in the moment. But how can this be achieved?

This idea of inclusion is rooted in the Eastern concept of mindfulness - the ability to live, fully absorbing all sensations and impressions and being aware of this. It became popular in the West thanks to the British philosopher and writer Alan Watts, who also gave us this beautiful meditation on a life with a purpose. In his book The Wisdom of Precariousness: A Message to the Age of Trouble, Watts argues that the root of frustration and daily anxiety lies in our desire to live for a future that is abstraction. He's writing:

“If, in order to enjoy even the most desirable gift, we must be sure of a happy future, then we want the impossible. There is no certainty about the future. The most accurate predictions are still only probabilities, not certainties; but everyone knows that each of us will suffer and die. If we cannot live happily without knowing anything definite about the future, then we are not adapted to life in the finite world, where, despite the best plans, there are accidents, and in the end death will come."

According to Watts, our inability to be fully present in the present prevents us from being happy:

““ Primary consciousness”, the primitive mind, which is familiar with reality, and not ideas about it, does not know the future. He lives in the present and perceives only what is in the given moment. However, an inventive brain analyzes the experience gained in the present, that is, memories, and can make predictions based on it. These predictions are relatively accurate and reliable (for example: “Everyone will die”), so the future seems real and the present loses value.

But the future has not yet come and cannot become a part of the experienced experience until it turns into the present. Based on what we know about the future, it consists exclusively of abstract and logical elements - inferences, guesses, conclusions; it cannot be eaten, touched, smelled, seen, heard, or felt in any other way. Chasing the future is like running after a constantly escaping ghost: the faster you chase it, the faster it hides from you. That is why all things are done in a hurry, that is why almost no one is happy with what they have and wants more all the time. It turns out that for us happiness does not consist of really existing objects and phenomena, but of such abstract and unreliable things as promises, hopes and assurances. "

Watts believes that our main method of escape from reality is the transition from the body to consciousness, which constantly calculates something and evaluates itself: a boiling pot of thoughts, predictions, anxieties, judgments and every minute meta-experience about the experience. More than half a century before the era of computers, touchscreens and the Quantified Self movement, Watts warns:

“The modern intellectual loves not an object, but parameters, not depth, but a surface.

The working townspeople today seem to live inside a mechanism whose gears are relentlessly hurling them from one end to the other. Everything they do all day is reduced to calculations and measurements, they live in a world of rationalized abstractions, which is far from being in harmony with biological rhythms and processes. Be that as it may, such tasks today can be performed much more efficiently by machines than by humans, so efficiently that in the not too distant future the human brain will become obsolete for logical operations. A person is already often replaced by machines with higher speed and productivity of work. And if the main human asset, the main value is its brain and its ability to calculate, then it will become a slow-moving commodity at a time when machines begin to more efficiently cope with mechanical operations.

If we continue to live for the future and concentrate the work of our mind on predictions and calculations, then sooner or later a person will become a parasitic appendage to the system of mechanisms."

Of course, Watts does not dismiss thinking as a useless and generally dangerous human ability. On the contrary, he insists that if we allow our subconscious wisdom to unfold freely, as, for example, during the "incubation" period of processing impressions during the creative process, then the brain will become our ally, not a tyrant. Only when we try to control it and turn it against ourselves does the problem arise:

“When the brain works properly, it becomes the highest form of 'instinctual wisdom'. That is, it should act on the same principle as the innate ability of pigeons to always return home or the process of forming an embryo in the uterus: for this you do not need to describe the process in words or know how everything happens. The brain is constantly analyzing its own actions is a disorder that manifests itself in an acute sense of separation between the self and the experienced experience. The brain can return to normal work only if the consciousness is engaged in what it is intended for: not spinning and spinning in attempts to get out of the experience of the present time, but simply be aware of it."

The only chance to get out of this vicious circle is to completely switch to our experience in the present. which is very different from judgments, evaluations and measurements, from the conditional and abstract ideal. He's writing:

“There is a contradiction in the desire to feel complete security in the Universe, the very nature of which is momentary and changeable. But the contradiction goes a little deeper than the usual conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. If I want to be safe, that is, to be protected from the fluidity of life, that means that I want to separate from life. At the same time, it is precisely this sense of one's own “separation” that is unreliable. Being safe is about isolating and strengthening my self, but it is this sense of the isolated self that makes me lonely and afraid. In other words, the more secure I am, the more I want her. Simply put, the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are one and the same thing. When you hold your breath, after the first breath you begin to breathe faster. Society,

Watts specifically addresses the issue of self-improvement, which is especially relevant in the run-up to the season of New Year's promises, and cautions:

“I can seriously think about trying to get closer to the ideal, to become better, only if I am divided in two. There must be a good self that will improve the bad one. The "I" who has good intentions will begin to work on the unlucky "I", and the struggle between these two entities will only aggravate their difference. Subsequently, the two “I's” will split even more, which will increase the feelings of loneliness and isolation that cause the “I” to misbehave. "

Happiness, Watts says, is not about improving or opposing our experience, but being here and now in the fullest possible sense:

“Being face to face with uncertainty does not mean understanding it. To understand her, one must not face her, but simply be her. As in the Persian legend about a sage who approached the heavenly gates and knocked. From within, God asked him, "Who is there?" “It's me,” the sage replied. "In this house," the voice said, "there is no place for you and me." The sage left and spent many years in deep meditation weighing this answer. When he returned, the voice asked the same question, and again he said, "It's me." The door remained locked again. A few years later, he returned for the third time, and the voice asked again: "Who is there?" And the sage shouted: "You yourself!" The door was open ".

We do not understand that security does not exist, Watts argues, until we encounter the myth of the "permanent personality" and admit that there is no permanent "I" - modern psychology calls this phenomenon "the illusion of the self." At the same time, it is very difficult to do this, since in this very action there is an awareness of oneself. Watts elegantly illustrates this paradox:

“When you observe a process in the present, do you realize that someone is watching it? Can you see not only the process, but also the one who is acting? Can you read this sentence at the same time and think about how you are reading it? It turns out that in order to think about how you read, you have to stop the process itself for a second. The first process is reading, the second is the thought "I am reading." Can you find someone who thinks, "I am reading"? In other words, when the thought “I am reading” becomes the primary process, can you think about how you will think that thought?

That is, you have to stop thinking simply, "I am reading." You move on to the third process, the thought "I think I am reading." Don't let the speed with which these thoughts follow each other fool you into thinking that you are all thinking at the same time.

In any process in the present, you only noticed the process itself. You have never noticed that you are. We have never been able to separate the thinking from the thought, the knowing from the knowledge. All that you have seen is a new thought, a new process. "

Watts points out that the heavy burden of our memory and the distorted relationship with time hinders us from living fully consciously: the individual's idea that the self is separable from experience arises from memories and the speed with which thoughts replace each other. It is as if you were spinning a burning stick and you get the illusion of a circle of fire. If you imagine that memories are knowledge of the past, and not of present experience, then you have the illusion that you know both the past and the present at the same time. This hypothesis assumes that there is something in you that separates you from both the past and the present experience. You explain it this way: “I know this real experience, and it is different from the past. If I can compare them and notice that there have been changes, then I am something permanent and separate."

But, be that as it may, you cannot compare the present experience with the past. You can only compare it to memories of the past that are part of your present. When you become acutely aware of this, it becomes obvious that trying to separate yourself from experience is as fruitless as trying to bite your own elbows.

To understand this means to understand that life is always instantaneous, that there is neither constancy nor security, that there is no “I” that can be protected.

And here lies the riddle of human suffering:

“The real reason that life can be completely unbearable and frustrating is not because there is death, pain, fear or hunger. The madness is that when any of the above happens, we scurry, rip and sword, trying to bring our "I" out of this experience. We pretend to be amoebas and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. In doing so, sanity, wholeness and integration can be found in the understanding that we are not separate, that man and his real experience are one, and that no separate self or consciousness can be found.

To understand music, you have to listen to it. But as long as you think, "I am listening to music," you are not listening to it. "