Please, Stop Being a Concept!

Authenticity is the sense of truly being what you are. There is a genuine ease and feeling of well being about being authentic and knowing this for yourself. There may also be no greater casualty than losing your authenticity, a sure descent into an empty, miserable existence.

Grasping is what shuts off access to authenticity. The best way to define grasping is over-reliance on mental concepts. It’s a strategy to secure one’s understanding of and place in changing world. It’s likely due to an overly strong desire for certainty and constancy, a reaction to being frightened. It can be so strong that it’s willing to accept plausibility, such as “my boss hates me” instead of truth (I need much more assurance and praise than others do). This need, mostly in the form of fixed psychological stances, like one race is inferior, most others are better than me, or the need to be right, causes untold suffering. Left unfulfilled, relief sought through reliance on fast food, fits based on chronic anger, an alcohol or drug high, or an anxious need for popularity makes the problem worse and the authenticity harder to feel.

A cure for being a fake does exist. The punch line to the old joke “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb” does show the way. The answer is that it only takes one, but “the change must come from within.” As I will argue, we need to be delivered from an original sin, our belief that words constitute bona fide truths. I am not saying that words are outright lies, which are deliberate falsehoods. However, through the distortion built-in to all words they just do not convey what most people believe they are meant to.

All languages have one big problem, for which philosophers may point to the “explanatory gap.” There’s a gap in our understanding between the inputs of our raw sensory-perceptual experience, the arising of consciousness, and our faltering efforts to put it all into words. How can we articulate what experiencing the color blue seems like to us? We see blue, but we don’t know two things about what we see: how blueness arises in our consciousness and, secondly, why we cannot explain blueness to a blind person.

Oddly, perversely, words cannot convey what we directly experience. If they’re aware of it, most people dismiss this egregious failing of words as irrelevant. Sadly, most go on to speak as if they knew exactly what they’re talking about. But authenticity ends when words are accepted as truth. This goes for our own personal authenticity, too.

Here’s something to reflect on. Think about your last experience of awe, when you were made speechless. Maybe it was when your child was born, or during a visit to the Grand Canyon, or first seeing Hubble’s photographs of a distant galaxy? Yet our precious sense of speechlessness lasts only until thoughts arise and suck the life from what was marvelous about the experience. Putting thoughts into words changes what was truly awesome into a joyless fact, like a date of birth (or a mile deep or a hundred thousand light years wide).

Our authentic humanity reveals itself in the aliveness of an experience when we are speechless and fully enmeshed in the sensory-perceptual moment. When thought enters the mind the feeling of awe loses much of its joy. Exclaiming, “It’s really big” doesn’t do justice to our true experience at the Grand Canyon, either. Authenticity means knowing the source of lived experience directly, without something coming in between. What comes between authenticity and us? Concepts do, because of that gap. Though they innocuously arrive in the form of flashes of thoughts and beliefs the problem lies in the grasping at them as if they are true.

Alfred Korzybski, a renowned scholar of language, once said unforgettably that, “The map is not the territory.” In short, a word (the map) is not the thing itself (the territory). Further, both the map and the word distort the truth. As for maps, look at the most common type used in grade schools, the Mercator projection of the Earth. It’s flat even though the Earth is a sphere. It also warps the territory, elongating the areas nearest the poles and squeezing those near the equator.

As for the distortions of words, the felt experience of what’s called awe is only a name that tries to point back to an authentic phenomenon. The awe-filled experiences of the Grand Canyon, pictures from Hubble and the birth of our child are uniquely different. The word awe is used because we have to communicate with each other but it does not fit the distinctive qualities inherent to each experience. The fathomless qualities of those distinct experiences get lost during their transformation into the puny word “awe.”

When people substitute the idea (map) of an experience for its actual aliveness (territory) , and most unwittingly do so again and again, they lose authenticity; they become zombies. Experiences aren’t ideas. Experiences are flush with gusto! When connoisseurs suggest, “This wine reminds me of apricots,” they have lost the experience of tasting the wine. They’ve become wine zombies, juggling dry ideas. “Wineness” taste happens to us only before words jump to mind and obscure it. The return to authenticity simply involves favoring the indescribable juiciness of experience over the barrenness of deficient words. All it takes is either resolve against the creation of a thought about the experience or restraint from accepting a thought as a truthful substitute. Practicing to remain thoughtless and speechless for a few more moments lets authenticity linger.

Though easy to write about, refraining from thought creation and the categorization of our experience may be one of the most difficult things we will ever do. Oblivious of the problems arising from the gap, speedy acquisition and unrestricted use of language are encouraged from the moment we are born. It’s our most important form of communication. Our skills are tested and we can fail at life tasks if it’s not well developed. However, to understand what language can and cannot do is imperative. It can only create and juggle symbols. If language is used inappropriately it will obscure our authenticity and distort what’s true. What it cannot do is help us find our way back.

What then is authenticity? I’m suggesting that it’s our concept-free beingness (territory), that unique combination of us as our ever-changing sense-perceptions, which are beyond words (maps). As mentioned above, authenticity is obscured at the first occurrence of a thought. In contrast to a thought or word, which are concepts, our sensory-perceptual experiences are percepts. That percepts cannot be named does not make them mysterious, sacred, or special, just consistent with the fact that experiences cannot be named. Because all we know comes to us through our sensory-perceptual experience, the only reality we initially encounter is perceptually based.

In this way, the percept, not the concept, is fundamental to authenticity. It dims when concepts dominate experience (for instance, Muslims are un-American) and is re-gained as concepts are displaced in favor of what we actually experience (for instance, I know someone who is a fine fellow, regularly visits a mosque and is a U.S. citizen).

Our own authenticity is like this—experiential, before words—that singular, inexpressible percept that’s been with us since childhood. It is always available, though easily obscured by a lifetime’s haze of bound concepts. We are not concepts such as, “Fortune 100 executive,” “dumb,” “too average-looking,” or any other “thing” that can be named. Those are merely alignments we may have unwittingly sidled up to. Grasping at one or another such stances in order to affix ourselves to something namable never satisfies. Those eventually, and surely, diminish us. At our most basic, our nature is perceptual. Ask yourself, “What has remained perfectly constant about myself over the years?” Something has been. Likely, it’s the percept of yourself. You can’t say what it is, though you experience it and it follows you like your shadow.

The experience of authenticity provides the stability most mistakenly seek through fixed thoughts and concepts, or food, money, power, and fame. Thoughts come and go without grasping; we perceive just what’s there and not fanciful complexities, like my car doesn’t work because the mechanic has it out for me, that aren’t. Re-acquaintance with it simply (or maybe not so simply) demands not grasping at concepts.

Though we might believe we understand the world only through thoughts, concepts and words like dog, twit, stop, greed, etc., this is not true at all. It’s only one way we understand it. Our equally competent, other intelligence system processes perceptual information. Because we logically understand only by employing concepts, no one can understand how perceptual data informs us. It’s beyond the reach of the part of our mind that requires concepts to function. Nevertheless, perceptual processing does a great job in relieving us from the burden of thoughts and providing us with intuitions and insights. Its power and influence is not to be taken lightly. Though you may not realize it or understand it, you already rely on it.

No better proof of the power of perceptual processing comes from the late Yankee sage, Yogi Berra. When his manager pressed him to think about the bad pitches he was swinging at, young Yogi lamented, “How can a guy hit and think at the same time?” Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller Blink also described the processing of perceptual information, or as his subtitle put it, “The power of thinking without thinking.” In Gladwell’s book, the power of non-thought-based intelligence is described in examples of art experts who uncover forgeries in the blink of an eye and marital therapists who know in a moment if a couple will divorce. Even Albert Einstein was reported to have discovered his theory of relativity through a flash of intuition while he was walking the Alps with a friend. Observations from our everyday lives also attest to the wisdom of perceptual processing. Asleep on a cold night, we don’t engage our logical mind to conclude, “I’m too cold now.” We just pull up more covers. We “know” to do this. We don’t think have to our way through it.

A more scientific example of perceptual processing comes to us from a 1988 psychology research study done by Lewicki and others. These researchers asked subjects to press one of four electronic buttons to predict in which quadrant of a computer screen the letter “X” would next appear. Results showed that their performance steadily improved as they intuitively absorbed a complex system of rules for the location of its next appearance. Even though it defies our efforts to understand it logically, our knowing without thinking exists as a powerful source of intelligent functioning. This research supports the behavioral economist’s argument that we see the world in two ways, by using memory and words or by experience.

Despite the fact that it works without naming, words, or the logical juggling of concepts, perceptual information processing is intelligent, demands little effort, supports most of our daily informational requirements, and provides the way to know, but not understand ourself.

It’s easy to spot inauthentic people, zombies, because they define themselves by concepts and act as if those concepts are true. Fixations, like yearning to be healthy, tall, smart, handsome, rich, famous, or powerful, etc., mask authenticity. The lack of personal authenticity with its common fixations (for instance, the fixation that people should not be of a different race or religion from me) has caused enormous harm throughout human history. Zombie people cling to thoughts about how they should be, perhaps smarter, more attractive, more capable, and then always try to relate to the world from that bogus stance. It’s the “always” that gives them away. There’s no “always” in genuine authenticity. Authenticity is flexible, without a despotic fixed position. Unfortunately, people tend to grasp at one fixed thought or another (racist, need for fame, unworthiness, etc.) and in so doing can’t see other truer alternatives as they arise.

The solution is clear for each of us. Simply relax the grasping tendency: 1. Withdraw your attention away from thoughts that linger too long by placing your attention elsewhere, like paying attention to your breathing, your chewing of food, or your walking stride; 2. Stay with the cleared awareness of what’s there without concepts; and 3. Repeat the cycle as sticky thoughts try to remain. Further, trust the perceptual information processing system–relax into it and let it do its work.

To be authentic, one must have the interest and energy to examine every fixed stance that appears to the conceptual mind. Life circumstances change continually. To keep pace, a flexible view helps. No stances or views are true for very long so. Frequent reappraisal helps keep us flexible and in accord with life circumstances. The process begins by detaching from the grip of thought. Clear consciousness exists when attention is withdrawn, like from the thought “my skin color is the only good one.” When consciousness is freed of thought, at least for a short while, one can more easily look around for other views (like whether other skin colors are acceptable, too). With less influence from past thoughts, it may be easier to determine whether any others are better. If they are better they are kept (e.g., honesty is the best policy, yup, seems like a keeper). If not, they can be discarded for another that’s best taken on temporarily. An additional alternative also exists. Perceptual processing can also supply helpful answers, providing you don’t muddle it up with thought. They are called insights.

Test yourself. What stances do you hold too strongly to? Just as good a test, reflect on views you can’t accept. Could you accept being of another racial or gender orientation, losing your home and much of your wealth, or receiving a terminal diagnosis, all without a high degree of stress? Consider asking friends to help you identify harmful stances. Fix what’s holding you back.

With the description of authenticity I’m proposing here, it’s not hard to see how its lack on a personal level may damage the quality of our overall civilization. All of us parts sum up to that whole. The failure to be authentic has been shown have catastrophic consequences, like mistrust of others, wars, various types of discrimination, environmental damage, wealth disparity, etc. Reflect on how it applies to some of the most meaningful personal qualities that support civilization, like abundance or scarcity; satisfaction or suffering; well-being or illness; understanding life or coping with death; and, ultimately, aligning with reality or rationalizing falsehoods. Consider how a return to your own authenticity might be personally, professionally, and societally helpful.

Disclaimer: This is a personal view and should not be considered as a replacement for mental health care.

Engaging Both Information Systems to Optimize Well-Being and Decision-Making.

Note: Be sure to read the definitions of the terms thinking and thought/ thoughting as well as concept and percept that appear at the end of this article.

Have you thought much about your thoughts? There is a difference between their content, like a difficult family problem, and the process of their appearance/ disappearance (bothering you all day long). Let’s take a moment to consider their processes and how you manage them.

Regardless of what they are about, all thoughts have distinct qualities, which include:

1. Duration (how long each thought lingers),

2. Frequency (the number that arise every minute),

3. Repetitiveness (the number of times the same one returns), and

4. Intensity (the degree to which they capture your attention).

In relation to the combination of these traits the term “thought energy” (TE) can be used. A higher TE involves long duration thoughts having high frequency, repetitiveness and intensity. A lower TE involves short duration thoughts having low frequency, repetitiveness and intensity.

Do your own assessment. Got a lot going on up there? People pay therapists, travel, hike in nature, attend concerts, etc., just to clear their heads of thought. No one can play a sport, make their best decision, read, or concentrate on a card game with high TE. Often, that’s WHY people do these things—to get out of their heads (of too much TE). Some even resort to the thought-numbing effects of drugs and alcohol. Yet, thought can be so intrusive, chronic, intense and negative that people will risk their life to be rid of them. A clear-headed approach seems best for well-being and optimal decision-making. Agree?

An article in the journal Science entitled “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind,” by Killingsworth & Glibert (2010) offers some useful information. They used a smart phone app to get real-time reports about: 1. How often people’s minds wandered (when passively arising thought captured their attention), 2. What they wandered to, and 3. How those thoughts affected their happiness. Astonishingly, mind-wandering occurred at least 46% of the time. It also “…revealed that people were less happy when their mind’s were wandering….” Their research found that mind-wandering caused unhappy thoughts and was not the result of it.

Apart from mental clouding and unhappiness there are other downsides of a high TE. One is “preconception bias”—over-reliance on a too general opinion, like racial preference or optimism, before new facts are considered. It’s a death knell for any good, informed decision, like those for hiring a new person, lending or borrowing money, choosing a lover, or developing a new business proposition.

Attentive mindfulness clears the mind like a broom. Hitting a golf ball, reading, exercising, as well as many other activities all sweep the mind clear of thoughts. They do so because they require our attention. Attention sweeps thoughts away because they are incompatible with one another. To this point, Yogi Berra told the baseball coach who scolded him about swinging at bad pitches, said, “How can a guy hit and think at the same time?” My answers are: 1. You can’t, and 2. You shouldn’t. Our other information processing system does that kind of work. How do we do anything when thoughts are either gone or not used? We return control back over to our information processing system that uses percepts, not concepts. It’s really our main operating system but it’s hidden because we need concepts for thinking. Our other system relies on percepts for knowing.

Percepts are bits of information that comes to us through our senses that are in a more original form because they have not been changed into concepts (thought-words) and given “meaning”. Through this system we perceive danger, strength needed for braking a car, appreciate beauty, the truthfulness of a conversation with another, etc. It works continuously, efficiently and effortlessly without the use of any thought or thinking. Those who are consumed by a high TE may not believe even they use this system for the tasks above, but it’s true. To analyze conceptually, like “How much is 23 times 11?” thoughts and thinking must interrupt the workings of this system to come to that kind of answer.

Someone with established mindful attention, usually from the steadfast practice of mindfulness or meditation, lowers his or her TE score. The duration of each thought has shortened. None need to linger for more than a very brief moment. Even Einstein’s insight about relativity occurred in a flash of thought. The frequency of thoughts has decreased from lack of interest in the little of what repeated ones offer. Intensity, the most onerous of all thought qualities, also has weakened since the truth of their importance has become better understood by a more clarified mind.

Though it’s impossible to calculate, those well-practiced in mindful attention likely go for long periods without attending to or engaging any thoughts that passively arise. Yet, they can stop to think when that’s needed. Though the term “mental clarity” can be used to describe this mental state but it misses the quality of its depth and duration. The words “calm abiding” may be better, however. They may better convey the persistent attentiveness in combination with the mental clarity that comes from being undistracted by thought.

A good deal of valuable information is wasted when we use only one of our two information processing systems (either the conceptual or the perceptual). Directly accessed and untainted by the distortions caused by the alteration into concepts, the use of perceptual information has many benefits. For example, it cannot not suffer from preconception bias, like genderism. Gender is a concept and no concept is involved in this process. To the clarified mind, the processing of perceptual information offers insights, those unbidden but complete solutions that occur (e.g., that a animal-themed crossword puzzle clue “Bear” is actually not about the noun but about the verb). Every decision gets evaluated, as it should, only by the relevant information.

Before Seymour Epstein described this system in the 1970’s, which he called he “experiential,” not the “perceptual” information processing system as I do, it was unknown to academic circles. However, the meditation communities appear to have appreciated it for centuries. It became critical for resolving findings from behavioral economics research that were consistent but incomprehensible. Because of its importance for understanding how and why people make decisions about worth, understanding the powerfulness of this system helped Daniel Kahneman win the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics. Search for and look through the behavioral economics research articles published over the past 20 years. See for yourself. The work is fascinating.

It’s important to understand that everyone, including yourself, uses perceptual information to make sound decisions. Further, no one becomes stupid because thought has dropped away and mental clarity has returned. Perhaps this will encourage some of you to lower your thought energy through the practice of some sort of mindful attention. No harm will come and you won’t lose IQ points. Mental clarity, well-being and peace of mind await.

Terms:

1. As used in this article, the terms thinking and thought/ thoughting have different definitions. An active, intentional use of thoughts (concepts) within a rules-based system, like those using logic or time, constitutes thinking. Synthesis of information, arithmetic/ mathematics and planning, like for trips and buildings, all use thinking. Thought/ thoughting is the passive, non-volitional occurrence of the mental appearance of concepts. Daydreaming, insights, thought streams, and ruminations are all examples of thought/ thoughting.

2. Concepts are abstract or generic ideas generalized from specific instances. Words are all concepts, including those of “person,” “cup,” “finances,” and “law.” They only describe objects down to the level of a category. They do not and cannot identify anything unique or specific. On the other hand, percepts are the information we receive from our senses that characterize particular instances. As opposed to the concept “car,” which describes a class of objects, the percept of a specific car includes all of its the shapes, colors, sounds, smells, etc. You know when something is a percept when you cannot express it verbally. Though some incorrectly assume otherwise, colors, smells, and tastes are all percepts (often called sense-perceptions). They can be transformed into concepts, like red, for example. But, to people who could never see, specific instances of red, the redness of red, cannot be described. Percepts are non-conceptual and so cannot be expressed by words. They are literally indescribable.

The First Three Work Together.

The Fourth Creates a Virtual Reality.

There are a number of definitions of mindfulness in use today that can be clarified for the uninformed or the novice to intermediate practitioner. One relates to “paying attention it in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment nonjudgmentally (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Another defines it as “a state of active, open attention on the present” (Psychology Today, 2016). Still another indicates that it’s “…a technique in which distracting thoughts and feelings are not ignored but are rather acknowledged and observed nonjudgmentally” (The Free Dictionary, 2016).

These definitions more than often raise a few questions. Aren’t we already paying attention? Aren’t we always in the present moment—how couldn’t we be? Isn’t paying attention just paying attention? What’s “a particular way” mean, why don’t they ever say what this particular way is? Do these definitions needlessly obscure the positive benefits of mindfulness and only relate to some decrease in that ill-defined notion we call stress?

Among the many definitions of mindfulness, I like the definition provided by Gunaratana much better than most. He wrote, ”…there can be no precise answer, at least not in words. Words are devised by the symbolic levels of the mind, and they describe those realities with which symbolic thinking deals. Mindfulness is pre-symbolic. It is not shackled to symbols.” He goes on, “Mindfulness is a subtle process that you are using at this very moment. The fact that this process lies above and beyond words does not make it unreal-quite the reverse. Mindfulness is the reality that gives rise to words—the words that follow are simply pale shadows of reality.” (Gunaratana, 2002, p. 137).

I might add that mindfulness is “a process of continuing disinterest in concepts while continuing interest in the sense-perceptions (experience).” Awareness to consciousness that’s “…prior to the formation of concepts but after the activation of the sense receptors….” (Pashko, 2016).

The perceptual world exists even before we put words to it; for example, before a cup is named a “cup” it is something perceived by the visual and tactile senses. The words we add transform the world from what it is to what we think it is. Every thing we call a “cup” just bears some relationship to a mental reference standard we’ve created. That’s the “cup.” The physical object before us cannot be named. Kant’s (1724-1804) Critique of Pure Reasondelves into this well. Yet we mistakenly believe and act as if the concept is the thing itself. Here’s where Gunaratana’s definition of Mindfulness becomes so helpful. It points us back to perceptual experience before “what is” becomes distorted by concepts.

We transform the world through conceptualizing in order to think. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? What many think is true about the world isn’t necessarily so. Because we think using concepts we logically juggle an already distorted view of “what it is.” My new article characterizes these inaccurate transformations as responsible for poor decision-making, the mental rigidity that leads to a lack of creativity, the bias at the root of discrimination, and stress. This is how mindfulness performs its fundamental work; the distortions generated by conceptualizing are seen in relation to direct perceptual experience and then re-aligned. If you don’t believe concepts influence how you reflect upon and act in this world, here’s a link about the inappropriate grasping at concepts. It’s here at:

Video: Overly strong grasping at concepts

Before moving forward, the terms concept and percept must be clarified because many have mixed up their meanings. Let’s return them to their proper use and see what happens. The most maligned word is “perceive” and the words mistakenly substituted with it are “conceive” and “believe.” As an example, I have heard people say, “I perceive you’re unhappy.” Uggh. The speaker can believe that person is unhappy or form a concept (conceive) that the person is unhappy but he cannot perceive unhappiness. Perceiving is a near kin to sensing but a distant cousin to conceiving, the process of forming a concept. Perceptions cannot be put into language because they occur prior to concept formation…and all words are concepts. For example, no one can say his or her subjective experience of the color blue. Blueness is a percept that perceived. Lastly, believing, of course, simply means accepting something as true, whether it is or isn’t. There is no link between the use and meaning of the words believe and perceive.

Mindfulness isn’t particularly special. It involves paying attention to sensory perceptual experience but not to the concepts/ thoughts in the mind. That’s what people fear about it, too. Out of ignorance, not many trust a mind without thoughts. Yet, when you ask, most will agree that it’s the thoughts in their mind that cause them stress. Certain hobbies such as yoga, crochet, jogging, etc., are inherently stress reducing because they help us get out of our heads full of thought. Though it isn’t special, it’s difficult to be mindful most of the time because we assume that thoughts are the source of our intelligence. But, this isn’t true. Words and thoughts arise from the clear background of awareness. It’s that clear background that’s intelligent, not the words or thoughts. When you speak, you do not know the third word next to come out of your mouth. Yet out it comes, guided by the clear background of intellectual processing. Recognize this as the origin of creativity and clear decision-making. Recognize this as the origin of unbiased truth and the “location” of where stress is relieved.

Yet, holding fast to our mistaken belief that conceptual processing rules our intelligence, we’re reluctant to give up our thoughts and hold tight to their use. This is the clinging that seems to make mindfulness so difficult, keeps creativity at bay, and stress levels at their highest. Actually practicing mindfulness is the only way to achieve relief from the burden of ruminative thoughts, compelling as those may be. One cannot just understand that mindfulness helps return us to creativity, optimal decision-making, and a more stress free existence, to achieve these optimal conditions. These are only achieved by breaking the clinging through the practicing of mindfulness so an open mind can be re-established. The muscle of attention needs to be built up from having become flabby from luxuriating within a constant stream of distorted and unhelpful thoughts. Once the attentional muscle is strong enough, you can point it wherever you like, at a problem, at a lover, or at a grand scene in nature without restrictive thoughts obscuring the view…and wouldn’t it be great to live like that?

Lamenting his inability to understand a full half of himself, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman complained, “Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me” (Kahneman, 2012, p. 390). His (and our own) remembering self is the one tied up in concepts. Here we are children/ adults, teachers/ business people, weak/ strong, etc. These concepts are distorted through implications of changelessness. But change does certainly occur so they cannot be who we are, our identity. However, you can look in the mirror to “see” that thing that has always looked back since you were a child; the thing that has continuously been “with” you. This is your perceptual identity that does your living. It seems a stranger because it cannot be named. Although this never-changing part of ourselves, the percept of who we are, cannot be expressed by words and concepts, comprehension of it becomes perfectly clear through mindfulness practice. Then, we not only know ourselves fully, we live through this fundamental, authentic identity and live more harmoniously in the world we can better relate to. Feel free to join in.

Gunaratana, B. H. (2002). Mindfulness in Plain English. Boston, MA:Wisdom.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. New York: Hyperion Books.

Kahneman, D. (2012). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Mindfulness (n.d.) Psychology Today. retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/mindfulness on 20 June 2016

Mindfulness Meditation (n.d.) The Free Dictionary. retrieved from http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/mindfulness+meditation on 20 June 2016

Pashko, S. (2016). Implication of the differences between our perceptual and conceptual views. Psychology & Neuroscience, 9(2), 267-281. Link to paper.

To the picture above: Don’t tell me it’s category or try to define it by using many categories, just tell me what it is. (This applies to your identity, too.)Hint: Oddly, it can’t be done.

Aren’t You Unique – Not Just a Category?

The article “Implications of the differences between our perceptual and conceptual views” in the June 2016 issue of the American Psychological Association’s journal Psychology & Neuroscience explores the two major ways people process information and make decisions. Though this might sound like a dry topic, research into these yielded Daniel Kahneman the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics –“for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment….” As a result, though, we better understand human decision-making and the so-called “cognitive biases”– the mind-boggling ways in which our thinking doesn’t align with our actions. We also now know that one of these ways relates to the attentive, diligent, clear-knowing equanimity, that describes the type of information processing that occurs through “mindfulness” (Purser & Millio, 2014).

The research into cognitive biases tells us we take action based on our sensory perceptual experience as much as by our thoughts. For example, college students rated their vacation on a daily basis (Wirtz, et al., 2003). When it ended, they were asked to evaluate its entirety and whether they would want to repeat it. The results showed students based their intention to repeat the vacation mainly on their rating at the time of the last assessment, “even if the final evaluation did not accurately represent the quality of the experience that was described in the diaries” (Kahneman, 2012, p. 389). This points to a difference between how we think about the world and how we perceive it experientially. Neither is exclusively the correct way. How we decide and take action depends on which of our two information processing systems, the rational-cognitive or the experiential, dominates. Because most people have virtually no understanding of experiential information processing, fully half of how we understand, learning about and effectively using this system is important for effective navigation through life’s complex passages.

Here’s an excellent TED talk on this subject by Dr. Kahneman:

The Riddle of Experience vs Memory

As for the rational-cognitive system, it’s how we think when using an internalized form of words and concepts. Everyone’s familiar with this. What makes our understanding of experiential processing so different, and it is surprisingly different, is that although it does not use concepts it’s equally as powerful. Not having the use of conceptual language, however, it’s been unappreciated for eons because it can’t speak up for itself. So, the rational-cognitive system has mistakenly gotten all the credit for being smart. The downside, however, is that overuse of the rational-cognitive system produces a counterproductive backlash of maladies. These tend to come in various forms of stereotypy, though there are numerous others that I’ll describe in future posts.

How bad is it? Bad. Here’s a link that shows our struggles…

Bias and who we think we are.

Let’s consider the analogy of the blackboard and words written in chalk upon it to our mind and thoughts, respectively. On the blackboard everything can be written, from simple concepts and elaborate equations to the subtlest poetry and the most artistic of drawings. Everyone has a sense of the “words” of their thoughts but how many see the clear background of their mind, the “place” into which thoughts arise, linger and fall? It’s important to note that while the blackboard and the clear background of the mind are unlimited in their intellectual processing abilities, once words and thoughts appear, their full capabilities become constrained, no longer fully open. Many believe thoughts are the only way we “think.” Holding this erroneous opinion leads to a mind full of stressful thoughts in an attempt to conceptualize what simply cannot be categorized, which is … well everything! Seeing the error of this view, perhaps by reading this blog and reviewing the published scientific research, leads not only to stress relief but also to clear knowing and open-mindedness. Consider a bamboo tree. What defines it. Where does it end? Within the soil, the “cane” doesn’t actually end. It continuously connects with its rhizomes. So what has just happened to your concept of the word “tree?” Now ask yourself, “What’s truer?” That the concept of “tree” fits the word “bamboo” or that it is what you perceive it to be, just what it is?

During these posts, I will explore what can be called our perceptual view, our mindful, intelligent processing of the world without over-reliance on words or thoughts. I expect you will find this view strangely familiar, although confusing to a world exclusively reliant on thought. It’s my hope that you will come to understand just how mindfulness works and perhaps even consider the activity for yourself and your friends. Among the topics address in this series of blog posts will be: the origins of the placebo response, “response shift” and improvement from psychotherapy; a cause of confused thinking and decision-making; overcoming bias; the development of insightfulness and creativity; an origin of and cure for anxiety/stress; dualism/monism; embodying the perceptual view through mindfulness; and considerations for wellness/ quality of life. Listed in this way, these may seem to be topics too highfalutin to be of any practical value. But this is not true. The more deeply we understand these topics the more clearly we will see the world. Seeing the world more clearly then making better decisions benefits not only us but others as well.

Kahneman, D. (2012). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Pashko, S. (2016). Implications of the difference between our perceptual and conceptual views. Psychology & Neuroscience, 9(2), 267-281. Link to paper.

Purser, R. & Millio, J. (2014). Mindfulness revisited: A Buddhist-based conceptualization,Journal of Management Inquiry, 1-22.

Wirtz, D., Kruger, J. Scolion, C. N., & Diener, E. (2003). What to do on spring break?Psychological Science, 14, 520–524.