The human brain is insanely complex. There is so much going on.
“We find that the adult male human brain contains on average 86.1 +/- 8.1 billion NeuN-positive cells ("neurons") and 84.6 +/- 9.8 billion NeuN-negative ("nonneuronal") cells.”
So you (yes you, gentle reader) have 86 billion neurons in your head right now, plus or minus. All of them firing little electrical pulses to other neurons, constantly, day and night, your entire life long. Somehow those neurons form every experience you’ve ever had, every thought you’ve ever thought, every desire, every belief, every … every everything.
I take a minute and visualize the billions upon billions of neurons firing … the patterns being created. I imagine it might look a little bit like this
or perhaps something like this
but a jillion times more complicated.
The self … you … is all of that. That level of complexity (times a jillion), going on all the time.
I imagine emotions rising and falling, thoughts coming and going, in conjunction with physical sensations, visual stimuli, sounds, all coming together in a unique, unrepeatable moment of inconceivable complexity.
And then someone asks, “How do you feel today?” And then I reply, “I’m a little sad for some reason.” All that complexity, all that vibrancy, and we sum it up with a single word.
How many different states-of-self does that one word encompass? When I use that word, does it mean the same thing as when you use it?
What words do we have for our emotions?
We have:
Sad, angry, depressed, worried, happy, concerned, bored, annoyed, irritated, miserable, anxious, delighted, blissful, ornery, proud, pissed off, thrilled, on edge, calm.
Maybe a couple dozen more? And some of them are more-or-less synonyms for others. So there’s maybe 20 or 30 different emotional states, max, that we recognize — that we can recognize — with our words. And that’s what we have to work with, in order to discuss the literally, what, hundreds of billions? hundreds of trillions? of possible actual emotional, physical, sensation-istic states of being that exist or could exist?
A pictoral analogy
Words = Minecraft, pixellated to the extreme in order to preserve computability:
Versus the depth of experienced reality:
Of course, our words don’t only limit what we can communicate to others. Because we think of ourselves as being rational beings — we live in our heads so much — it constrains what we can even be truly aware that we are experiencing. “I’m feeling angry today, and I remember feeling angry yesterday, and I don’t have the emotional self-awareness to distinguish between those two states, to realize that (let us say) they were really very different states of being. And then I link “angry today” with “angry yesterday,” and because my mind is the kind of thing that it is, it immediately wants to tell a story of some kind to connect the two. “I’ve been angry twice lately. It’s probably because ….” And then, having told that story, I am alert to the possibility that I will be angry tomorrow as well. And if and when anger does roll around again tomorrow, well now I have a real story to tell. And the narrative grows. And we fail to understand ourselves.
Not that such understanding is ever easy! There is so much complexity to understand! But we use the ludicrously blunt instrument of language, in order to try to comprehend the stunning complexity of the range of human experience. And we fail. We have to fail: failure is insured by the sheer incompatibility of the measuring device with the thing being measured. And so we fail to understand ourselves. We tell false stories about ourselves, to ourselves. And to others! And we believe those stories, and other people believe those stories, and all of a sudden that is the kind of person that we are, the sort of person we pretend to be. Our personality, our character. We get stuck in those stories.
The stories are lies. They are massive oversimplifications of an insanely complex underlying reality. But by telling and re-telling the stories, especially to ourselves, those stories start to become reality. Our experienced reality deforms itself, shapes itself, to become closer to that reality. We limit our potential selves to become that person we have (falsely) told ourselves that we are.
Blunt words + complex reality = a set of predictable distortions of the self.
Buddhists say that we don’t have a self. But we certainly do have a personality! I want to say that our personality is a predictability: a form of self-prediction and other-prediction. “You are going to do this sort of thing, because you are this sort of person!” And we are so often correct in these predictions! And we feel better when our predictions are correct, both about ourselves and about others. I think the correctness of the prediction implies the lack of self-awareness of the person being predicted. Because you are complicated! There is so much to you! Your freedom is so much more limitless than you believe it to be.
But of course your beliefs (including your belief about how limited you are) are themselves part of your self! If you don’t believe you’re free, then to that extent you are not free. Except that you are!
We are stuck (as always) in a loop. There is no place to stand, no solid place to place the lever in order to move the world. The world is always already in motion, and the lever is part of the ceaseless movement.
Communication failure
I honestly believe that I know things that nobody else in the world seems to know. I really do. But when I try to explain what I know, I can only use words that have already been used to mean other things. Even halfway through writing, I realize that I am not able to say what I have to say — again, because words are such blunt instruments and experience is so complex.
Very often, I get an idea for a good sentence or a good paragraph that will finally, finally explain what I am trying to say. And then I write it up. And then I read it. And then I know that it’s going to fail. People will read what I just wrote in relation to something that they already know. It will be something they already know, or something they sort of believe in, or something they strongly disagree with (or something similar). The meaning that I’m trying to point to, the deep reality that is part of experience and yet not understood in our culture — the meaning that shared human culture has spent the entirety of its existence refusing to understand, or perhaps simply unable to conceive — there is no way to share that reality in these words.
But surely there are other words, other sentences, other paragraphs? Yes, but. The whole thing needs to be understood in order for the parts to make sense, but the parts need to be understood in order for the whole to make sense. And all of it takes so much time. And the whole time I suffer from a deep sense of unworthiness, of stupidity, of embarrassment. And so the writing is very occasional, and slow, and rather painful.
And then I think: this fact that human experience is insanely deep cuts both ways, Kent. The fact that my ideas cannot be expressed cannot be unique to me! My readers — those people, both real and imagined, who do and might grapple with what I’m writing — they also have a depth of experience that cannot be shared in words.
Gentle reader, I don’t want to negate or deny or your unique sense of the universe, the ten trillion different ways your experience shimmers and shakes and moves to the beat of the universe … and/or the way you feel that in the depths of your soul that you want to experience that deep reality/freedom/awesomeness, and yet at the same time you are somehow constrained to be the same old boring you that you’ve always been.
I have a lot to say. But it’s hard to say any of it without being misleading. For example.
I want to say that I am never truly unhappy anymore. That is: I, Kent — this guy writing — this actual, concrete human being — no longer experiences true unhappiness in his life.
And in a sense, that is true. Absolutely, positively, 100% true.
But what do I mean by it? How to explain?
Go back to the starlings murmurating around (what a great word). Imagine that the entire complex of starlings represents all the emotions that I feel in a given day. Now imagine a specific strand of starlings, as it were. A little strand that goes in one direction. Let’s say that it becomes a sudden, deep, darkness that appears in one quadrant of the sky, perhaps very briefly, perhaps for a relatively long period of time. That section of starlings is playing its part within the whole complex pattern of starlings, of course, but it can also be analyzed and understood as an element in itself.
What I am saying is, there is that one specific emotional reality, corresponding to that one set of starlings, that no longer occurs. The emotional pattern moves and breathes, just as it always has, but that one corner, where things get truly dark for a time, is gone.
In less metaphorical language, what I would say about that no-longer-existent emotional reality goes something like this. True unhappiness was a place where I felt bad, and felt bad about feeling bad, and felt bad about how I often felt that bad, and felt bad about my inability to stop feeling bad, and also felt bad because I believed that feeling bad was always going to feel this bad, and also felt bad because I believed (and this is the tricky bit) that this badness was not just a feeling in my body but also reflected something deep and true about the world and my place in it. (For reference, let’s call this state of being “bad^6” for the 6 levels of badness that are included.) (And to be clear: I’m not saying that unhappiness can only go 6 levels deep — or even that 6 levels is the best way to describe the state of emotion in question. I’m just picking “6” because 6 clauses deep is where I happened to stop writing that sentence.)
So. When I say that I no longer experience true unhappiness, I am saying that bad^6 no longer happens.
Moreover, I’m not just saying “it hasn’t happened in a while.” I am saying: I am unable to feel it, because I know that the world-picture required to sustain it is false.
But!
In another sense, it is absolutely, positively false to say that I am never truly unhappy anymore. Because we only have a few words to describe emotions! And if we were to limit the phrase “truly unhappy” to mean only the specific thing bad^6, then people feeling bad^5 or bad^4 would not be able to use that phrase.And that’s wrong, because bad^5 and bad^4 are also truly unhappy states of being! Or, at least, it makes sense to use words that way — and it does not make sense to limit the use of words, to rule out that way of talking. (Also it would imply that there’s not a bad^7, which would be even worse and even more truly unhappy.)
Zida Grant wrote the following in a comment on a recent piece of mine:
I argue back at you that Beddhism is a form of mindfulness. That is, ‘feeling your feelings’ and ‘mindfulness of the body’ are the same mental activity, and no matter how many examples you give of how the most popular descriptions are different from your Beddhism, it doesn’t change the fact that there is this commonality of ‘feeling your feelings’ (or sensations or whatever.) And the common goal is ultimately to feel better. The variations are just variations.
I want to say, first of all, that Zida is 100% correct here. In other words, one can use all of these words the way she wants to use these words! There is this commonality, and the variations are just variations. Yes, yes, yes. Agreed.
But at the same time, this is another example of the failure of language. The words are pointing to a deep reality that is much more complex than words can ever capture. And on the deep experiential level, there is a critical difference between “feeling your feelings” and “mindfulness of the body.” I am trying to explain the experiential difference using words, and it’s very difficult to do, for all of the reasons that I’m writing about here. And obviously I failed to explain the critical difference to Zida!
Again, blunt words + complex reality = failure of communication. But that’s only part of the explanation. It’s also true that I haven’t had the courage, nor taken the time, to really dive deep into the moment-by-moment nature of the experience of feeling your feelings. That will be another post for another day — and it’ll be a doozie.
For now, in response to Zida, let me just point to a difference that is simple to articulate. “Feeling your feelings” heals serious anxiety. By contrast, Buddhist practice is utterly unable to deal with anxiety.
As Zida points out in a later comment on the same post, it is common for those who suffer from depression or anxiety to be told not to practice Buddhist meditation. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning my own experience with Buddhism and mental illness.
I already went down the "Buddhist meditation causes mental illness" path! It was precisely doing Buddhist meditation -- along with my pre-existing, moderate levels of anxiety -- that flushed me into my very serious anxiety disorder. "Feeling my feelings" is what flushed me back out.
When I first fell into my anxiety, I had been meditating so much that I went to a local Zen master to discuss it with him. I was very worried, for a while, that what I was experiencing was a bad form of … not quite enlightenment, but an almost-enlightenment that had been made dangerous due to errors in my practice — really due to my unwillingness to let a teacher guide my meditation practice. The Zen master was briefly worried about that as well, but he became very happy when he decided that it was a mental illness, and therefore not his problem! "Get thee to a therapist," he said to me, in precisely those words.
What I take from that experience is that Buddhists don't really understand the human mind or the self or whatever you want to call it: in fact that they're not interested in understanding it! The self includes the propensity, in some circumstances, for mental illness. If you claim to understand the nature of the self, you should be able to help with that. You shouldn’t run away from it.
I have another reader in mind — this one a good friend — as I write all of this. She is interested in beddhism and often tells me that “my ideas have validity.” But she also thinks that I’m wrong, because the mind can play a critical role in healing.
And again, I cannot object to that … because, in the sense that she means it, is it true. The mind can, and does, play a critical role in healing. That is completely, utterly, absolutely true! I can probably think of a dozen different ways in which it is true. There is only one critical sense in which the sentence is false. Moreover, the sense in which it is false is much stranger and harder to explain than the senses in which it is true!
But what this means is that, although this good friend tells me that my ideas have validity, the truth appears to be that I have not, in fact, communicated my ideas to her.
This is a sad thought. Because how many other people are likely to listen to me with more attention and more patience than she has?
Perhaps it’s just that everything I’ve written is not good enough. It doesn’t explain what needs to be explained.
Is it even possible to explain it in words? A very famous thing about Buddhists is that they have no problem just saying “nope” to that question. The deepest truths about the self and the nature of the universe simply cannot be expressed in words. You have to walk the path in order to see the truth — and the truth, once seen, does not need words.
I’m not content with that answer. I think that what I have to say can be put into words. I seem to be failing so far, but I keep trying.
The same good friend recently recommended a book to me, which I’m reading. It’s about psychoanalysis and it seems to alternate deep dives into the theory of psychoanlysis with lengthy explorations of the author’s psychoanalytic practice. And sometimes it’s the descriptions of the practice that resonate best with the reader. One imagines (and hopes) that words spoken/heard in the context of a psycoanalytic practice communicate more clearly than would be the case if the same words were written/read.
I think there’s something important here: context probably matters a lot. By writing a substack, I am implicitly putting my words out there for anyone to read — no context, no nothing, just words on a screen. The specific context of analysis, or any kind of therapy — or, frankly, any old in-person human-to-human communication — may make possible a deeper understanding that can to some extent cut through the “blunt language” problem.
Maybe we just understand each other better when we talk in person?
Well, I guess that’s what I got for today. Thanks for reading.
Yes, I agree! Our brains are just like that—love the videos you put up. So words and stories can’t begin to capture that complexity. On the other hand (!), words and stories are metaphors, and our minds (as opposed to our brains) are metaphors in some sense. Or made of metaphors. So it’s actually not that big a stretch to use words and stories; it’s the nature of our minds. Our feelings aren’t metaphors, but they aren’t enough to live by, to make decisions by.
Very interesting that it was while doing meditation that you became anxious. I became a little anxious when I started meditating; eventually I blocked completely and gave up for a time. Others may experience much worse. And then your teacher recommended therapy! I was struck by what you wrote, that:
“What I take from that experience is that Buddhists don't really understand the human mind or the self or whatever you want to call it: in fact that they're not interested in understanding it! The self includes the propensity, in some circumstances, for mental illness. If you claim to understand the nature of the self, you should be able to help with that. You shouldn’t run away from it.”
I don’t know that Buddhists should try to understand the gamut of human problems, but surely psychologists should, but I think it’s like you said: they really aren’t interested. Because to understand, they would have to understand themselves, and that’s really disconcerting, disturbing. Just to take one example, they would have to understand that we don’t have free will.
As for mindfulness vs. Beddhism, it seems to me that you’ve said that Beddhism is more active. Would you agree? I mean, for myself, mindfulness is necessarily active; that is, it is always difficult. But most descriptions of it make it sound like it is very easy, that you can just be with your feelings/breath and if you drift, you just come back, and it’s all peaceful. So maybe this is the difference? I look forward to reading your detailed post about this.