waking up

sam harris

Chapter 1:

1. Meditation is waking up. “The goal is to come out of the trance of discursive thinking and to stop reflexively grasping at the pleasant and recoiling from the unpleasant, so that we can enjoy a mind undisturbed by worry, merely open like the sky, and effortlessly aware of the flow of experience in the present.” It reminds me of Pirates of the Caribbean, mostly because I just watched it. When Elizabeth is convincing jack that one day he’s going to feel the urge to be a good person, to do the right thing. And he responded that he loves those moments. He likes to watch them as they pass by. 

2. Self-Transcendence. There’s this similarity between the spiritual and the religious mentioned somewhere in chapter one but I didn’t fucking earmark it. The feeling of self-transcendence that the religious highjack through prayer and worship is essentially the same the spiritual get through meditation. Albeit in a delusional way. More on that later.

3. Happiness is elusive. “We manage to avoid being happy while trying to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain—and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running. As a consequence, we spend our lives being far less content than we might otherwise be. We often fail to appreciate what we have until we have lost it. We crave experiences, objects, relationships, only to grow bored with them. And yet the craving persists” This is such an inescapable and ironic pillar of human nature. Evolution is a fickle bitch when each of our well-crafted attributes is a double-edged sword. Adaptation is the cause for so many reasons why our species owns this planet, yet we also tend to quickly adjust our realities and redefine our normal. Life is the pursuit of Everest's peak. It’s only when we reach it that we discover it's just the base of a much larger, more appealing mountain. If we had to reach the zenith all at once we’d probably never have the stones to start. We spend our times usually focusing on intermittent change. These goals or progressive obstacles serve more purposes than we know, because if we could see the end of the road from the starting line we might never be able to starting driving there. We’re already used to just focusing on the piece that’s in front of us. The better we are at managing the objective of the now the more well-prepared we’ll be to handle the goal of tomorrow. Someone posted some shit inspirational quote on instagram the other day but it’s pretty fitting here. Something like our future selves are created by how we nourish ourselves now.

4. Meister Eckhart. I like this guy. Ya, he may have been a little crazy with his notion of oneness with god, but what i got out of it was that he was really trying to explain a convergence between faiths. He saw something that he didn't feel was being represented right and attempted to better explain it. I respect that. Bruno did that. Galileo did that. And the biggest reformer of them all, Jesus Christ, did that. Jesus was a great guy who was just trying to make the world work better for the people who were being oppressed. It’s not his fault men less pious than him bastardized his word for profitization.

5. Positive thinking. “There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them.” We are our choices. We are nourished to the extent that we nourish our bodies. And we are fit to the extent that we exert force on our bodies. And we are smart to the extent of the smart people we listen to. The amount of desert information we allow ourselves is the same discipline to ingesting junk food. 

Chapter 2:

1. Split brain phenomenon and Confabulation. During the split brain trials when the right brain picks something up and the left brain is asked why they are holding it, they don’t actually know. Rather than stating this they literally create a story to explain its past actions to its current self. The left brain is wired for confabulation, it’s wired to help us make sense of things that don’t make sense. All the while the right brain has grown up this silent, disagreeing companion held hostage right beside it, the left confabulating brain has had the voice. Is it any wonder that out of this wiring for confabulation the mind has made religion to explain its purpose? I’ve always thought that free will was an illusion because the physical laws in the universe are destined to play out as the physical laws dictate and that existence is just the playing out of all these laws, but considering that our brain makes stuff up and convinces us it’s real is scarier. Because it implies volition and on a terrifying level self-subterfuge. How can free will exist if we are all the liars in our lives. 

2. System (Fast and slow) thinking. Our brain invests as few resources as possible so that we can cognate as quickly as possible. It’s the Semantic Illusion (When people ask how many animals Moses brought on the arc, most people don’t contest that it was Noah, not Moses). System 1 makes and accepts connections without you knowing. Our brain takes in information unknowingly all the time through priming and backward masking and that makes the sense of self seem diluted because most of where our decisions come from is a place inaccessible by the conscious mind. Priming effects affect and modify our behavior, are controlled in the under-the-surface system 1, and yet we still think our slow thinking system 2 is in control. It’s really kind of irritating to know how little in control we actually are. Like peeling back the veil on something best left a mystery. Because we need to maintain these internal images to maintain our self-esteem, and it’s hard to know that when we’re being constantly reminded of how dumb and essentially autonomous our minds really are. 

3. Ethical Obligations of Consciousness. This is essentially the mantra of secular humanism and I like the way Harris describes it. “We feel ethical responsibilities toward other creature precisely to the degree that our actions can affect their conscious experience for better or worse.” The notion that every dichotomy of good/bad, right/wrong, desirable/undesirable action is dependent on the change in experience of conscious creatures is both intuitive yet somehow we never frame it like this. It circles back to Harris’s retelling of the theory of mind. We don’t kill because we know the suffering that would result for so many. We don’t kill painlessly because we’re causing suffering by removing our victims’ potential futures. It speaks to the inherent nature of morality. In Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God, which I recommend to every human for a true history of religion alongside the evolution of our species, the book climaxes on the argument that man’s need to answer the question of existence proves a progression of moral enlightenment throughout religious development. As conscious beings, we’re always trying to define and embody what is right, and we’ve mistaken religion as the lens through which we need to view it. It’s like we’re all, secular humanists and believers alike, in an enlightenment arms race. Our goals are the same, we’re just getting there through starkly different routes. The difference is one is sane and the other is a fucking enabler of childish delusion. Although…. Maybe delusion isn’t appropriate to use anymore. We define delusions as an indicator of mental illness. Why is this not applied to religion? Is it a species-wide neglect because most policy-makers are themselves believers? Or is it more fair to say that we we’re born delusional and only certain expressions demand the beratement? With confabulation and system thinking and the literal dozens of other cognitive biases plaguing the normal human mind, with delusion ubiquitous in all of human behavior, is delusion a fair term to use for the mentally ill? And why are us atheists/secular humanists so prickly about calling out the delusions of believers when we ourselves have much more comprehensive and far-reaching delusions in ourselves? It’s hypocrisy but still we cling to it. Dumb.

Chapter 3

1. Confabulation and Teleportation. We are the story we tell ourselves. We engage in introspection and with great confidence see the history of our lives with all the characters and settings—us at the center as protagonist in the tale of who we are. It’s all a great, beautiful lie that we couldn't function without. It’s pretty fucking stupid but equally powerful. It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy at work under the threshold of consciousness. If we can harness it, we can be anything. It continues to amaze me that the simple process of self-deception, whereby we start to tell ourselves a truth about ourselves (e.g., I’m confident), act in the ways we think confident people do, only to have people notice our confidence and treat us as they would a  confident person, to finally reinforce the cyclic nature of helping ourselves persist upon the story that we are in fact confident until we truly are. It’s fucking amazing and the applications are limitless. 

2. Gratitude and Interrupting the mechanics of anger. This idea that we consciously fuel the negative states we find ourselves in is depressingly true. In anger, we think about the retributive justice we’d dish out had things gone a different way, if the consequences were different. We fantasize, harbor terrible feelings, and sulk and brood. It’s an emotional poison and it's interesting to frame it as just as detrimental to our health as eating junk food, binging alcohol, or letting our physical bodies waste away from disuse. It’s all the more interesting to consider that the cure is its inverse. Through practicing gratitude we become the positive emotions we let pass through our consciousness, like an emotional veggie shake or egg yolk. I think more than practicing gratitude about the privilege of the lives we lead here in the technologically, war-free western suburbia is practicing compassion. We’re just as biologically wired for compassion as we are for bursts of anger and fear. In evolution, kinship selection, this principle that at the level of the gene natural selection has favored those of our species who showed compassion to their kin to better ensure their genetic legacy, is profound. I mean sure on the one-hand it proves the self-serving nature of an altruistic-guised act like compassion, but on the other it's given us the foundation to spread compassion outside of our familial circles. We have the capacity for compassion to strangers and even enemies and that’s kind of beautiful. I’m a little wary to accept Harris’s telling of thoughts only being thoughts and how they’re the basis for human suffering They’re also the basis for human contentedness, but maybe that’s just my non-meditative story-minded self talking. I don’t think the path to happiness is to cease consciousness. Without being entrenched in the story of ourselves, we don’t have any skin in the game for mental states, good or bad.

3. Amnesia and out of body experiences. I like this question of where our body actually is. Having unconscious memories and muscle memory for things even though we can't remember from whence they came, and the idea of the out of body experience confirming that what we’re calling consciousness is really just the point of view from which we’re viewing our lives is awesome. The man behind our eyes delusion is really more just like a sort of hitchhiking voyeur that catalogues our life and makes comments to us about things we already know are going on.

4. Vanity and attending to the self. I take offense to vanity and narcissism being the indicators for self-awareness isn't something to fun to consider. 

Chapter 4

1. We are consciousness: We are more than our thoughts. Probing a positive or negative memory allows us to evoke that thought and emotion in the present. But a thought is just an advertisement that moves across the screen of consciousness. They are transient. Fleeting. If we recognize them as distractors, we can let them pass by. Focsuing on them, pinging into them, like we tend to do with our baser emotions like anger and fear, is what causes suffering, because the continued emotional state is reliant on us fueling that thought with attention. Understanding we are more than the thoughts in our heads gives us a power to control them. Our minds forever wander, and this is the main obstacle to consciousness. The solution, however, isn’t to suppress these thoughts. It’s to notice them for what they are, just appearances in consciousness. Once we realize this we can be free of the self. Failing to notice the true nature of thoughts arising in consciousness is what makes us think we are only the current thought in our head. Most people walk through their entire lives being the current thoughts in their head because they lack awareness. But think about it, we cannot be a thought. They flash across your day and vanish almost as quickly as they came. Like an ambulance driving down the street. The pursuit of spirituality is attaining a state of mind where you always realize that consciousness is free,  by breaking one's identification with thought and allowing the continuum of experience, pleasant and unpleasant, to simply be as it is. We may a time or two find this state of mind accidentally, but meditative mastery is being able to do so intentionally. To call on it. It takes a handful moments, and the rest decades. Popular culture has us thinking the point of meditation is self-transcendance labeled as bliss. When you are able to rest naturally, merely witnessing the totality of experience, and thoughts themselves are left to arise and vanish as they will, you can recognize that consciousness is intrinsically undivided. In the moment of such an insight, you will be completely relieved of the feeling that you call "I.“ The most conclusive way to begin is to invert consciousness. Turn your eyes inward, and look for that which is looking. You can’t ever find where you are. Because you aren’t there.

In the teachings of Dzogchen, it is often said that thoughts and emotions arise in consciousness the way that images appear on the surface of a mirror. This is only a metaphor, but it does capture an insight that one can have about the nature of the mind. Is a mirror improved by beautiful images? No. The same can be said for consciousness. Now think of something unpleasant: Perhaps you recently embarrassed yourself or received some bad news. Maybe there is an upcoming event about which you feel acutely anxious. Notice whatever feelings arise in the wake of these thoughts. They are also appearances in consciousness. Do they have the power to change what consciousness is in itself?

There is real freedom to be found here, but you are unlikely to find it without looking carefully into the nature of consciousness, again and again. Notice how thoughts continue to arise. Even while reading this page your attention has surely strayed several times. Such wanderings of mind are the primary obstacle to meditation. Meditation doesn't entail the suppression of such thoughts, but it does require that we notice thoughts as they emerge and recognize them to be transitory appearances in consciousness. In subjective terms, you are consciousness itself— you are not the next, evanescent image or string of words that appears in your mind. Not seeing it arise, however, the next thought will seem to become what you are. But how could you actually be a thought? Whatever their content, thoughts vanish almost the instant they appear. They are like sounds, or fleeting sensations in your body. How could this next thought define your subjectivity at all?

It may take years of observing the contents of consciousness—-or it may take only moments—but it is quite possible to realize that consciousness itself is free, no matter what arises to be noticed. Meditation is the practice of finding this freedom directly, by breaking one's identification with thought and allowing the continuum of experience, pleasant and unpleasant, to simply be as it is. There are many traditional techniques for doing this. But it is important to realize that true meditation isn't an effort to produce a certain state of mind—like bliss, or unusual visual images, or love for all sentient beings. Such methods also exist, but they serve a more limited function. The deeper purpose of meditation is to recognize that which is common to all states of experience, both pleasant and unpleasant. The goal is to realize those qualities that are intrinsic to consciousness in every present moment, no matter what arises to be noticed.

When you are able to rest naturally, merely witnessing the totality of experience, and thoughts themselves are left to arise and vanish as they will, you can recognize that consciousness is intrinsically undivided. In the moment of such an insight, you will be completely relieved of the feeling that you call "I." You will still see this book, of course, but it will be an appearance in consciousness, inseparable from consciousness itself—and there will be no sense that you are behind your eyes, doing the reading. Such a shift in view isn't a matter of thinking new thoughts. It is easy enough to think that this book is just an appearance in consciousness. It is another matter to recognize it as such, prior to the arising of thought. The gesture that precipitates this insight for most people Meditation is an attempt to invert consciousness upon itself—to look for that which is looking—and to notice, in the first instant of looking for yourself, what happens to the apparent divide between subject and object. Do you still feel that you are over there, behind your eyes, looking out at a world of objects? It really is possible to look for the feeling you are calling "I" and to fail to find it in a way that is conclusive.

Chapter 5

1. Spiritual Dependence: the relationship between guru and student, pastor and congregation, is one of a dependency born of dissatisfaction. Many people, even ourselves, often denounce the world when we don’t feel we’ve found a satisfactory place in it. It’s hard for some to hear, but spirituality in the presence of worldly denunciation is more like using spiritual teaching to justify a pathological lack of ambition. Of engendering a total external locus of control and putting the tide of your life in the hands of another. It’s extremely appealing for someone who fears failure and arguably finds it to flock to a doctrine which criticizes the search for worldly success. But it sets followers further back, because this leeching relationship to a guru of love, gratitude, awe and obedience breeds an unhealthy mental return to childhood. The structure of these relationships condemns students to intellectual and emotional slavery. It feels like freedom to lay down the burden of having to question and just accept the answer of a world authority in the world of spirit. 

2. Near Death Experience: All of these people who have claimed to see heaven are just describing the effects of dmt or ketamine. The neurosurgeon who claims to have died momentarily and experienced heaven doesn’t seem to grasp science. It’s paradoxical to have experienced something and remembered it when the brain is not firing electrical activity, because the areas for memory encoding need to be active to remember the experience. 

3. Pharmacological Spirituality: Repeated from before, everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. Friendships are formed to feel love and avoid loneliness. Foods are eaten to enjoy the taste on tongue. We read to change our perspective or to think another’s thoughts. Every waking moment of life - and even in our dreams - we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value. Life is foraging nourishing states of mind, fleeing depriving ones.