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- Author: Judson Brewer
- Full Title: The Craving Mind
- Category: #books
- Through direct observation, we can become, as the term asava is translated, less “intoxicated.” I saw this effect with my patients. They became less enchanted with their intoxicants by directly observing what reward they were getting from acting on their urges.
- On average, participants lost an average of 17 percent of potential earnings to think and talk about themselves! Just think about this for a second. Why would anyone give up good money to do this? Not unlike people who forgo job and family responsibilities because of substance abuse, these participants activated their nucleus accumbens while performing the task. Is it possible that the same brain region that lights up when someone smokes crack cocaine or uses any other drug of abuse is also activated when people talk about themselves? In fact, the nucleus accumbens is one of the brain regions most consistently linked to the development of addictions. So there seems to be a link between the self and reward. Talking about ourselves is rewarding, and doing it obsessively may be very similar to getting hooked on drugs.
- a preference for online social interaction correlated with deficient mood regulation and negative outcomes such as a diminished sense of self-worth and increased social withdrawal. Let me say that again: online social interaction increased social withdrawal. People obsessively went on Facebook to feel better, yet afterward felt worse.
- Sayadaw U Pandita, wrote, “In their quest for happiness, people mistake excitement of the mind for real happiness.”
- Yet in some instances these same types of simulations get hijacked by our reward system, leading us to spend time “elsewhere” when we should be watching our children or doing the work that will get us that raise. Yes, I am talking about daydreaming.
- if you drop the action that is causing stress, you will feel better immediately; in other words, pair behavior with reward, cause with effect. Importantly and perhaps paradoxically, dropping the action that causes stress comes about by simply being aware of what we are doing rather than by doing something to try to change or fix the situation. Instead of trying to get in there and untangle the snarled mess of our lives (and making it more tangled in the process), we step back and let it untangle itself. We move from doing into being.
- Note: Which is maybe the point of reception, being an observer — stick with what you’re best at, namely gathering the input material, leaving it to the deep mind to deal with it.
- The pleasant fantasies led to an urge that I felt as a tightening and restlessness in my gut, or solar plexus area. I suddenly realized that the unpleasant worries did the same thing. For the first time in my life, I really saw how I was being sucked into my thoughts. And it didn’t matter whether they were good or bad. Both kinds of thought streams ended with the same result: a restless craving that needed satisfying.
- We have conditioned ourselves to deal with stress in ways that ultimately perpetuate it rather than release us from it.
- The Tao Te Ching states it thus: The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas. Tolerant like the sky, all-pervading like sunlight, firm like a mountain, supple like a tree in the wind, he has no destination in view and makes use of anything life happens to bring his way. Nothing is impossible for him because he has let go.1