Traditionally, spirituality is associated more with faith
rather than experimentation. However, some spiritual teachers such as Eckhart
Tolle speak the language of experimentation. In fact, Ekchart’s experiments are
typically low-cost. For example, he says, “One conscious breath in and out is a meditation”.
In this article, let’s explore one such experiment Eckhart suggests which I
call “Catch me if you can”.
Well, the overall objective is simple – you want your
mind to be peaceful as much as possible. Perhaps it is peaceful most of the
time, except, may be, when you are provoked by someone – say your boss. Dimitry
from Moscow asked this question to Eckhart during Eckhart's interview with Oprah
Winfrey, “When I am criticized, I get into power games, so can you recommend
something?” To which Eckhart asked Dimitry, “When do you become aware of your
frustrated state? after a few minutes? End of the day?” Dimitry answered, “It
depends upon the situation. If the situation is minor, I am aware of it five minutes
after. But when I am deeply criticized by my boss, I can be in this state for a
week.”
Now, Eckhart’s experiment is as follows. Whenever you
get into a negative emotion such as frustration or anger, you need to observe how long you
remain completely lost in that state. Note that once you are lost in, say
anger, there is nothing you can do about it because you and anger are not
different in that state. The recovery towards peaceful mind starts once you
notice, “Oh, there is that anger in me.” At what point of time such an observation happens is
the crux of this experiment.
The objective of this experiment (or game) is to catch
yourself in the state as early as possible. Eckhart divides your "Gotcha" point into
three stages.
·
Stage-1:
You catch yourself just before you are going to become angry – perhaps you
notice the trigger such as your boss’s criticism and become alert. Your goal is
to catch yourself in stage-1 as much as possible. Why? Because your emotion
can’t sustain itself for long when you detach yourself from it.
·
Stage-2: You
catch yourself as you are entering the state i.e. you catch yourself getting
angry. Perhaps you can’t do much about it and you get angry anyway. Perhaps the
awareness subsides the emotion before it takes off.
·
Stage-3:
Like Dimitry, you catch yourself in the state (say anger) after some time. It
could be a few minutes or as much as a week after you enter into the state.
This is when most of us become aware of our emotional state.
For example, the last time I got angry was when I was
standing in a payment queue at Adiga restaurant on M G Road and one person just
barged in and went directly to the counter. I got angry and told him to stand
in the queue. He did. And within a minute I became aware of my anger and it
subsided 10-15 minutes later. It was a stage-3 observation i.e. catching myself
in angry state. Could it be in stage-2 next time? Let’s see.
I see following challenge in extending this experiment. It
may work for extreme emotions such as frustration or anger. Could it also work
for low-intensity emotions such as anxiety? How easy will it be to catch
yourself getting anxious? I don’t know. Any ideas?
Source: Primary source for this reflection is Eckhart’s interview by Oprah Winfrey on chapter 4 of Eckhart’s book “A New Earth”. Dimtry’s question starts at 53:10. A similar question was asked by Dionne from Port of Spain, Trinidad at 44:06. Unfortunately, the video is no longer available online.
Eckhart describes this experiment in the following video "Dealing with anger, resistance and pessimism" (7:15)
Interesting experiment. Worth trying. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI found a practical way to experience this .. In the morning traffic when I was stuck in a jam behind a signal, I realised that engine is running un-necessarily. I switched it off - only to have it start again as the traffic started moving. So when you get to a standstill in a traffic if you can be aware, you can switch off the engine in time and save petrol (and in turn money!). That's the plan now for some time - once I get handle on that then next goal would be to track 'negative' emotions!
ReplyDeleteOverall a good technique - Thanks again.
This is cool. Applying this to catch yourself before being anxious would be nirvana. Anxiety is not as clear as anger, hence difficult to know and catch. I am hoping wearable devices can catch variation in body temperature, sweat and hear beat to indicate anxiety.
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