[from Jason Gosnell (2005.06.20.2005CST)]
From Bill Powers (2005.06.19.0556 MDT)
No. If you do that, you will meet with resistance from the higher system
that set the reference level for fog or no fog, sunshine or no sunshine, in
the first place. You will be using your own volition to cause arbitrary
changes that produce errors in your own control systems, which will resist
automatically. It is interesting that you can do this, of course. What is
volition, that it can attempt to create signals that oppose signals from
other control systems inside you?<<
This seems to be the most critical thing to me. You can't really fool your
nervous system--not for long anyway. It's funny that the mind or ego or
whatever can set this up. It seems that any successful movement must include
things as they are now--before I can move--an acceptance of "what is" I mean
as noting what my actual experience is before idealizing a solution. Maybe
it's OK as a hypothesis to have an idea, but one can follow this and ignore
error signals for quite some time...I learn this the hard way on
occasion--bigger freakin error signals! The, finally, "what is going on?"Of
course, learning it is OK, that's a part of the process. That we can intend
something without regard to the facts of biology for example is amazing...I
guess we just struggle and test things out as we go. This issue could be one
of PCT's contributions to mental health as a profession where some of this
has been tried only to result in more illness.
I have seen some of Dick's awareness/MOL approach as it stands in the book I
have and I suppose RTP is a form of it too. Does anyone else have an
organized or simple approach to the MOL? I have just a totally random
approach of stopping and asking myself what is going on within me now?
What's this all about? There's a lot of thinking BS I sometimes get caught
in and confused by--my habitual way of thinking--sometimes I magically
plunge through that right into an awareness of the problem...and then from
there is just an ongoing process of observation and responding differently.
Even more difficult than getting to the problem sometimes is coping with or
experiencing the feelings. So, this is another kind of skill--how to hold a
feeling in awareness and not get pulled into identification or disowning it.
I know one way is to assist with self-talk: "I am aware that the feeling of
anger is in me now", or saying Hello to anger even and even imagining
breathing with the feeling. Sometimes that helps massage it a bit. Somehow
the relationship to the feeling is modified through the self-talk. Is an
explanation of this assistance from internal speech included in PCT? I can
see that it allows the observer to become more active--there is some
distance from the experience and yet some connection.
I have included an interesting set of questions for breaking identification
with thought by Byron Katie...
Is it true?
includes the variation on this question...what's the Reality of it?
Can I absolutely know it is true?
includes...where's my proof?
How do I react when I think that thought?
Who would I be without that thought? or, what would my experience be without
that thought?
It seems very effective at times, other times it seems better to have a
randomness to my self questions.
Do people have any methods like this organized? Also, if interested, there
is something interesting on Eugene Gendlin's Focusing approach that may be
like MOL, but he doesn't explain the idea of "levels" at all:
www.focusing.org. If anyone is interested, I would love to see a PCT
explanation of this process.
Regards, Jason Gosnell
···
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Powers [mailto:powers_w@FRONTIER.NET]
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 8:38 AM
To: CSGNET@listserv.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: June Gloom
Bjorn Simonsen (2005.06.18,09:45 EST) --
My question is: _How_ do ordinary people change their references?
In the simplest way possible: by wanting something different at a higher
level that requires a change in the perception coming from the lower
system. Remember how the hierarchy is constructed: reference signals at a
given level are created by the outputs of systems at the next higher level;
perceptions at the higher level are created out of perceptions of lower
levels.
_How_ do ordinary people change from wanting no fog to wanting
fog? _How_ do ordinary people change from wanting to smoke cigarettes to
not wanting to smoke cigarettes?
If you have to drive from your house to someone else's house, you probably
will want no fog. If you want a sense of being enclosed and isolated from
the world, you may find you like the feeling of having fog all around. You
do not want fog or no fog simply to have fog or no fog. Whatever you want,
you want for a reason, and the reason is to be found at a higher level.
What you want at one level is only a means of controlling an experience at
a higher level. So says the theory, as of today. So far, it seems to be
correct.
Wanting to smoke a cigarette is no different, as I found when I quit. It is
greatly complicated, however, by the fact that smoking temporarily
alleviates a sense of emptiness, almost like hunger, that is also caused by
smoking after the initial anesthesia wears off. The warnings against the
dangers of smoking are hypothetical, since you do not feel the most
dangerous effects until it is too late. The feelings associated with
smoking are immediate and real. Smoking, like drinking and taking drugs, is
an attempt to feel better, physically and emotionally, which works in the
short term but which causes worse feelings immediately afterward, which can
be controlled only by smoking or drinking (etc.) more. People would not
drink, smoke, or take drugs if doing so did not make them feel
substantially better. But these activities cause the very symptoms we use
them to get rid of, so a positive feedback situation is created from which
there is no escape -- until, at a higher level, we manage to comprehend the
trap we are in and experience higher-level errors that can be corrected
only by breaking the cycle and correctly perceiving what is going on.
Reorganization is required, which means that some degree of good luck is
involved in achieving any change.
It isn't that easy that you just say: "Now I don't want fog anymore, now I
want sunshine", is it?
The Method of Levels is my attempt to help people find the places at higher
levels where reorganization will create changes that are effective in
resolving conflicts, and perhaps in getting out of positive feedback traps
(a possibility that has only just occurred to me while replying to your
questions). We are still exploring the effectiveness of this approach, and
coming to understand it better.
The changes that resolve problems are not simply changes in reference
signals. They are changes in the way reference signals are adjusted when
there are errors in higher-level systems. Instead of reaching for a
cigarette when I feel a little anxious, I now look for the source of the
anxiety and try to remove its cause instead of just the effect. I
understand the feelings better that I used to control by smoking or
drinking, and now I have different ways of dealing with the problems behind
them, so I don't experience them as much.
When I get that feeling I used to call "wanting a cigarette," and I still
get it even after eight years or so, I now simply wonder whose face I want
to hit. And usually I find something like that going on.
Best,
Bill P.
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