Positive feedback loops and meditation

maarten

A friend sent me this article on meditation. It explains how meditation can help to create a positive feedback loop in the body that leads to more health and well being, IF we start with having positive feelings in the first place.

For me the interesting message of the article is that we should incline towards positive feelings throughout the day so that we can get a positive feedback loop going. If we are negative during the day, and then try to fix this negativity in the meditation, then at least according to the article, it does not work. Since I have had depressed feelings most of my life, I tried to train myself in countering those feelings by looking for "the positive". At some point (I had to keep at it for many years), I really began to enjoy having this focus on the positive side of things. If someone would complain about the weather or the train system, I would wonder why people were loading so much needless negativity onto themselves. However, I think the process is quite subtle, because it is not about chasing positive experiences and avoiding negative experiences, but rather it is about gladdening the mind. If there is a positive experience, and I feel glad, I reinforce feeling glad. It there is a negative experience, I try to let it bounce of me (which is not the same as avoiding the experience, but I try not to let it penetrate me). I think there is a sutta that describes this as throwing something into a cushioned door and seeing the object just drop dead without making a dent or a sound.

What for me was striking, is that having positive feelings and thoughts seemingly produces pleasure in the body, and to be honest this is why I have become so interested in the topic of positive thinking over the last months. Having a positive attitude has become related to experiencing pleasure, and as a result I am lately looking a bit differently at people who are being negative, because I see them as sabotaging their own sense of well being. At the same time it is an ongoing experiment for me, possibly I will later see things differently again and wonder how I could have been so mistaken :-). In any case, the above article seems to match my experiences, and it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this topic.

BhikkhuJayasara

a few years back I started saying every morning what I called the "positive thought mantra". basically it was a paragraph that I put together saying something like this -

" today is a good day, this week will be a good week, this month will be a good month, and this year will be a good year. I know that no matter what causes and conditions occur, whether I perceive them to be positive or negative, that with positive thoughts and a positive mindset I will be able to deal with whatever life throws my way and create a more positive life for myself and others".

I said this daily and I started to notice that my world changed around me, times where I use to think " omg this is going to bad".. and maybe the last 10 times it turned out bad, it started turning out good, and even if "bad" stuff happened, it was not nearly to the degree it was before. I agree 100% with this concept.

lobster

Paradoxically a healthy ego is more likely to lead to practice. Very depressed people would find it virtually impossible or even destructive to meditate. My sister is currently in such a place. However other practices can be done at such times, walking, prostrations etc.
Looking for, finding and reinforcing the positive is part of NLP.
I find the positive approach helps my negative traits to realign. Thank Buddha for neuroplasticity. Once in a positive place, the idea of hell realms seems like a good place to visit for picnics . . . bring a few hungry ghosts too . . .

Grumpy old Buddhists one can only have compassion for - get them to a nunnery
Do you find self hypnosis or trance work helpful? To stimulate the vagus nerve do we need jokes? Is the vagus nerve connected to the funny bone?

Great thread, be interesting to observe the antics of the nay sayers, when they arrive . . .

zenff

lobster said:

Great thread, be interesting to observe the antics of the nay sayers, when they arrive . . .

Who could say no to such a warm invitation ?


The Black Hat of negative thinking is functional.
It should have a place .
http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php

It helps when we recognize real dangers instead of being blindly optimistic. Organizations fail when they have a culture in which there is no room for criticism and warnings.
In our own thinking there should be room for the Black Hat too. Sometimes negative thoughts are accurate.

lobster

thanks zenff
De Bonos early work I am familiar with. Not this excellent millinery technique. The Hat system is used in computer security. The crackers are known as black hats, more protective hats are the grey and white hats . . .
The great thing is being able to choose and swap, not be swallowed by ones own apparel.

zenff

Exactly.

maarten

Thanks for all the comments so far! It is interesting to think about how we relate to positive and negative events. Maybe you get up in the morning to play a football game, all cheerful, and then the weather changes and the event is cancelled. Probably, if the cheerfulness depended on playing the football game, then the disappointment of not playing is very likely to destroy it. I was quite struck by the words of Ajahn Chah in the thread posted by Leon: "when you hold a glass, you have to understand that it is already broken" (end quote, I may have paraphrased). Therefore we have to enjoy things in the here and now, while understanding that they are impermanent.

So if I feel good about the prospect of playing a football game, then I can already (before the game even started) enjoy having this good feeling, and get a positive feedback loop going. If then the game is cancelled, the momentum of the positive loop will not stop. I can treat the event of the game being cancelled in a realistic way: the game is cancelled, yes it's a pity because I would have liked to play, but: "I feel so cheerful that I cannot really be affected by it".

There is no need to see negative events as somehow being positive. If we have a positive feedback loop, then we can observe negative events and deal with them without having negative feelings.

BhikkhuJayasara

zenff said:

lobster said:

Great thread, be interesting to observe the antics of the nay sayers, when they arrive . . .

Who could say no to such a warm invitation ?


The Black Hat of negative thinking is functional.
It should have a place .
http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php

It helps when we recognize real dangers instead of being blindly optimistic. Organizations fail when they have a culture in which there is no room for criticism and warnings.
In our own thinking there should be room for the Black Hat too. Sometimes negative thoughts are accurate.

The way I look at it is not that we are destroying the negative side.. it's that we are EVENING OUT the sides.. where as we almost always think and feel " ah this is going to suck" even if you are a somewhat positive person, not just depressed, when you practice positive thought you train your mind to not automatically go to negativity.