front page

Notes; this is to sort out the front page. roberto light 18 this is actually what I want

If we define ‘therapy’ as ‘that which organically improves our sense of well-being’ then all detoxes are therapeutic, to one degree or another. Indeed, a proper body detox is invariably also a mild psychological and emotional detox as we’re necessarily changing some of our deeply ingrained habits; eating everyday for example.

This change in the structure - or hierarchy - of our motivations/habits breaks up the rigidity of that status quo generating a flexibility - potential for easy further change - that previously didn’t exist. Technically, therapy doesn’t make the change/improvements, it just provides the conditions required for positive change to occur. An individual already has the inner resources- the mechanisms - to change what needs to be changed. What they often don’t have are the conditions that allow those processes to occur.

if we want to fix the flower

Emotional detoxes remove the build up of motivations that compete against, and suppress, our ability to be emotionally satisfied. This is important as the bulk of the delightful feelings we call happiness come from emotional satisfaction. While we obviously have other innate motivations to satisfy - survival and ego motivations primarily - what's relevant when it comes to our level of happiness is our emotional well-being. As, beyond satisfying our survival needs/motivations, we can go directly to the relevant feelings we actually want, why wouldn't we? Many do, others simply don't know it's possible and are busy ticking emotionally irrelevant boxes. Detoxing, especially emotional detoxing, demonstrates it is possible when we remove that which is interfering with our capacity to be emotionally well nourished.

Our goal is not to find love, and joy, but to remove all barriers which are preventing us from receiving it.” Rumi

When we’re feeling something, we’re feeling something. If we can control those somethings we’re controlling what we’re feeling and if we’re controlling what we’re feeling we’re controlling our level of happiness. All therapy accepts this as obvious. Again, we're all feeling something so it's rather obvious we need to change those somethings if we want to change what we're feeling.Those somethings, both pleasant and unpleasant, collect in our 'cup' and we're experiencing/tasting the resulting cocktail.The objective of all therapy is to remove/minimise those painful somethings and add in/ increase pleasant somethings. Of course, if we don't want to make the changes organically we can select a pill to plop in our 'cup'. An emotional detox is a very effective way to organically make the changes required.

The main difference between therapies is regarding how they seek to change those somethings and more distinctly where in our operating sequence those changes are made.

Nowadays we know those somethings to be bio chemicals/ nuero transmitters - and aside from purely physiological feelings - stubbing our toe, for example - bio chemicals largely flow from our motivations. If we suddenly have everything we want we’re going to feel great, we going to be very happy. If, on the other hand, we’re struggling to satisfy our motivations - needs and wants - we’re going to feel dissatisfied/unhappy because they - our motivations -are dissatisfied therefore 'clawing' as opposed to 'purring'.

At base the formula for happiness is straightforward; Satisfied motivation ‘purr’ - release pleasant bio chemical flavours into our ‘cup’ - whilst dissatisfied motivations ‘claw’ - pour ugly flavours into our ‘cup’. We’re consuming/tasting the resulting cocktail.

Frustration, for example, is ugly flavour similar to anger yet they're not exactly the same. Ideally, we don’t want either of those flavours in our cup as they make for an ugly cocktail. Love is a very similar flavour to joy - our emotions thrive on both - but they’re not exactly the same and nor are their sources the same. Ideally, we want a lot of love and joy in our cup. What is a joyless life? What is love without joy in the mix? Therefore, we focus on acquiring the capacity to experience joy.

Have a lot of love and joy in our life and the rest is just logistics.

Clearly, if our level of happiness, if what we’re currently feeling/tasting, is not as we want then we’re well advised to empty our cup to stop tasting/experiencing those accumulated stale, ugly flavours. Pour that crap out to make space for fresh, pleasant flavours of our choosing. While that part of the formula is straightforward, there's a bit more to it as joy needs space to flow into. Explaining what is meant by 'joy needs space to flow into' will clog up this page so, for now, what’s relevant is that by detoxing/deleting our overgrown motivations -effectively emptying the stale flavours out of our cup. Simultaneously we're making space for delightful flavours and that space itself a quality all of it’s own. Less is more in more ways than one. Less is a lot more when it comes to happiness.

Which is why emotional detoxes are a transformational type of therapy as opposed to the much more common incremental types of therapy. We’re not sorting through our motivational trash can trying to untangle what might be valuable from what obviously isn’t, we’re just emptying it. Tangles deleted don't have to be untangled. Contradictions deleted don't have to be resolved. Motivations deleted no longer have to be satisfied. It’s ok, our hardwired motivations - our actual motivations we were born with - aren’t going anywhere so we return to ourselves. With that overgrowth pruned back , joy/ light is now getting into our emotional core and it starts purring. 'Magically', we feel great, but it's not magic.

If we feel we lack nothing, we feel we have everything we want. If we feel we have everything we want we are, by definition, on a very high level of happiness - we’re supping a delightful cocktail.

Thus, less is more, in the sense that the fewer motivations we have inside us demanding satisfaction the easier it is to only have purring motivations therefore just pleasant flavours in our cup. Happy days. We get this if we experience it to be so, but can’t really get it otherwise as we’re typically deeming our existing assorted motivations as being us. We're taking ownership of, and protecting, motivations even if they're negative and contradicting each other. As we haven't being different, we assume we just are as we are. We keep to the same recipe - keep pouring ourselves the same cocktail - even when that taste is substandard. We're lacking the flexibility to change our recipe, thus change what we're experiencing/tasting.

“Repetition, over time, cements symptoms as identity”

Dr Mary Jo Peebles. Clinical Psychologist and Author

We all have the same handful of hardwired primary motivations - typically called instincts - we're born with. They're with us every step we take so if they're not satisfied, we're not satisfied. If they're not purring, we're not purring. On top of them we accumulate many secondary motivations over time via our culture, schooling etc. These secondary motivations serve, or at least were meant to serve, our primary motivations and if they're not then what purpose are they serving? The issue is we acquire too many secondary motivations many of which are now irrelevant, contradict each other and disconnect us from our actual primary motivations.

We're not out in the environment, doing as we do, for no reason. We've got objectives in mind, be they immediate objectives - lets get a coffee - or longer term objectives we're trying to advance/satisfy. Our objectives are downstream of our motivations - we're not seeking what we don't want; not seeking a coffee if we don't want coffee. With our current batch of objectives in hand, we make our decisions; we choose among the options we believe we have available to satisfy those objectives. Our decisions determine our actions - lets walk over to that cafe - and our actions take us to one reality or another. Our steps add up, taking us here or there, to this, or that, reality yet upstream of it all is our motivations. Sort out our motivations, sort the wheat from the chuff, and gravity does the rest. Motivations - objectives - decisions -actions -path/reality.

Of course, once we’re feeling great/ returned to our actual motivations, we still have to survive. Our survival motivations are our priority - all the rest of our 'shopping list' becomes redundant if we're dead. A detox doesn’t deposit a million $$ into our bank account, but at least we might now be working to live, not living to work. At least the bulk of those secondary motivations installed by the culture we happened to be born into are pruned back allowing us to connect with, and then act in our own actual interests. At least we're spending our time and energy ticking relevant boxes and we're defining what's relevant. If we're not acting in our own actual interests, in whose interests are we acting?

We're just trying to survive
What if what we do to survive
Kills the things we love?
Fear's a powerful thing
It'll turn your heart black, you can trust
It'll take your God-filled soul
And fill it with just devils and dust. Springsteen 'Devils and Dust'

As mentioned, as opposed to the more common incremental type of therapies, emotional detoxes are a transformational type of therapy, though this depends on how far one takes the detoxing process. This difference stems from transformational therapies making the interventions upstream at source -motivations- as opposed to midstream - objectives and decisions -fighting against our existing motivational current.

We have the Eastern worlds holistic upstream approach and the Western worlds symptom focused midstream approach. One chases mosquitos whilst the other removes the swamp the mosquitos are coming from. To remove the swamp, we need to flood the river. To flood the river we need to go upstream and fill in all those irrigation ditches that are syphoning off our energy and now irrigating foreign fields/motivations. Returning that energy down it's natural course way we've got ourselves a flood and those swamps, along with all the algae, trash etc are, swept away. No swamps, no mosquitos. Ever noticed how clean and vigorous a river is after a flood? What happens if a river never floods? It's not very joyful. How can it be?

Many get trapped in a low level of happiness, or just mediocre level, because they've accumulated too many random, and mostly irrelevant, motivations and/or because they're disconnected from their actual, innate motivations. Thus, no matter which path they choose there's dissatisfaction within; choose path 'A' and those motivations not happy on that path are dissatisfied. Yet, choose path B and the motivations happy on path A are now dissatisfied. Awkward. Even if we're very competent - tend to be able to extract what we want from the environment - we're doomed to a relatively low level of happiness. Additionally, too many motivations we're simultaneously trying to satisfy generates ugly stress further polluting the cocktail in our cup.

The rat traps are filled with soul crusaders
Their circuits lined and jammed with chromed invaders Springsteen 'Night'

The solution? prune that overgrowth back thereby simplifying our lives and reconnecting us with our actual innate motivations. Thus, we 'kill two birds with one stone'. When we factor in the pruning back allows more light/joy into our emotional core and also injects flexibility into our system we've got another two significant benefits from that same detoxing stone. Happy days.

When we can untangle ourselves from the 'right' recipe/template others programmed into us, we're now able to choose whatever recipe we want - whatever works. When we put down the set menu we can access the buffet beyond. When we can pour our own cocktails why would we pour ourselves anything but delightful ones? The first step is to empty out and experience the difference. When we get that less is more the hard is now easy as we're already got what we ultimately want - a high level of happiness.

Necessarily, this is simplified here - this is just the front page after-all - but it provides the basic theory, albeit vaguely, behind emotional detoxes. We explain further here. To colour in the model/theory a bit more it's useful to look at the worlds oldest, and still very popular, motivational detox which is the Vipassana Meditation 10 day course as it's barebones format allows us to more clearly see the fundamentals involved.If we understand how the VM 10 day detox achieves the impressive results it does we'll have a good enough understanding to know if an emotional detox, of one type or another, is something we want to do.

front page B

Notes; sorting it but also thinking best to start at the start . the above page the right one

If we define ‘therapy’ as ‘that which organically improves our sense of well-being’ then all detoxes are therapeutic, to one degree or another. Indeed, a proper body detox is invariably also a mild psychological and emotional detox as we’re necessarily changing some of our deeply ingrained habits; eating everyday for example.

This change in the structure - or hierarchy - of our motivations/habits breaks up the rigidity of that status quo generating a flexibility - potential for easy further change - that previously didn’t exist. Technically, therapy doesn’t make the change/improvements, it just provides the conditions required for positive change to occur. An individual already has the inner resources- the mechanisms - to change what needs to be changed. What they often don’t have are the conditions that allow those processes to occur.

if we want to fix the flower

Emotional detoxes remove the build up of motivations that compete against, and suppress, our ability to be emotionally satisfied. This is important as the bulk of the delightful feelings we call happiness come from emotional satisfaction. As we can go directly to the feelings we actually want, why wouldn't we? Many do, others simply don't know it's possible and are busy ticking emotionally irrelevant boxes. Detoxing, especially emotional detoxing, demonstrates it is possible when we remove that which is interfering with our capacity to be happy.

Our goal is not to find love, and joy, but to remove all barriers which are preventing us from receiving it.” Rumi

When we’re feeling something, we’re feeling something. If we can control those somethings we’re controlling what we’re feeling and if we’re controlling what we’re feeling we’re controlling our level of happiness. All therapy accepts this as obvious. Again, we're all feeling something so it's rather obvious we need to change those somethings if we want to change what we're feeling. The objective is to remove/minimise those painful somethings and add in/ increase pleasant somethings. Those somethings, both pleasant and unpleasant, collect in our 'cup' and we're experiencing/tasting the resulting cocktail.

The main difference between therapies is regarding how they seek to change those somethings and more distinctly where in our operating sequence those changes are made.

Nowadays we know those somethings to be bio chemicals/ nuero transmitters - and aside from purely physiological feelings - stubbing our toe, for example - bio chemicals largely flow from our motivations. If we suddenly have everything we want we’re going to feel great, we going to be very happy. If, on the other hand, we’re struggling to satisfy our motivations - needs and wants - we’re going to feel dissatisfied/unhappy because they - our motivations -are dissatisfied therefore 'clawing' as opposed to 'purring'.

At base the formula for happiness is straightforward; Satisfied motivation ‘purr’ - release pleasant bio chemical flavours into our ‘cup’ - whilst dissatisfied motivations ‘claw’ - pour ugly flavours into our ‘cup’. We’re consuming/tasting the resulting cocktail.

Frustration, for example, is similar ugly flavour to anger yet it’s not exactly the same. Ideally, we don’t want either of those flavours in our cup as they make for an ugly cocktail. Love is a very similar flavour to joy - our emotions thrive on both - but they’re not exactly the same and nor are their sources the same.

If we feel we lack nothing, we feel we have everything we want. If we feel we have everything we want we, by definition, are on a very high level of happiness - we’re supping a delightful cocktail.

Thus, less is more, in the sense that the fewer motivations we have inside us demanding satisfaction the easier it is to only have purring motivations therefore just pleasant flavours in our cup. Happy days. We get this if we experience it to be so but can’t really get it otherwise as we’re typically deeming our existing assorted motivations as being us. We're taking ownership of, and protecting, motivations that don't belong to us in the first place even when they contradict and suppress our actual innate motivations. As we haven't been different, we assume we just are as we are. We keep to the same recipe - keep pouring ourselves the same cocktail - even when that taste is substandard. We're lacking the flexibility to change our recipe thus change the taste.

“Repetition, over time, cements symptoms as identity”

Dr Mary Jo Peebles. Clinical Psychologist and Author

Clearly, if our level of happiness, if what we’re currently feeling/tasting, is not as we want then we’re well advised to empty our cup to make space for fresh, pleasant flavours of our choosing. While that part of the formula is straightforward, there's a bit more to it as joy needs space to flow into. Explaining what is meant by 'joy needs space to flow into' will clog up this page so, for now, what’s relevant is that by detoxing our overgrown motivations we’re deleting them -effectively emptying the stale flavours out of our cup. Simultaneously we're making space for delightful flavours of our own choosing, whilst that space itself a quality all of it’s own. Less is more in more ways than one. Less is a lot more when it comes to happiness.

Which is why emotional detoxes are a transformational type of therapy as opposed to the much more common incremental types of therapy. We’re not sorting through our motivational trash can trying to untangle what might be valuable from what obviously isn’t, we’re just emptying it. Tangles deleted don't have to be untangled. Contradictions deleted don't have to be resolved. Motivations deleted no longer have to be satisfied. It’s ok, our hardwired motivations - our actual motivations we were born with - aren’t going anywhere so we return to ourselves. With that overgrowth pruned back , joy/ light is now getting into our emotional core and it starts purring. 'Magically', we feel great, but it's not magic.

Have a lot of love and joy in our live and the rest is just logistics.

first section B

Notes; trying to get the right balance - am currently going down two different paths. need to decide.

this is good - then next page. Also, the next page continues the intro with the other page being their own.

my objective is to present value in a manner that paces them , not makes them recoil

need; drug addict - what a vm is - connect the dots

The Vipassana meditation course is the practical application of the buddhist theory of happiness. Within Buddhism there’s no concept of an afterlife therefore its focus is on happiness in this life and that’s what is relevant here.

‘When I was 5 years old my mother always told me that happiness is the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life’. John Lennon

Buddhism is concerned with happiness in the here and now and they figured out the structure of happiness, or at least how to generate happiness, a long time ago. Nowadays, our science understands that structure in much more detail than could be known in the past - no one was talking about bio chemicals a thousands years ago -but happiness, then is happiness now. In practice, we've got the more esoteric traditional model, or the modern scientific model, to choose from but, regardless of which we prefer, the fundamentals are the same. Here we'll explain happiness from both perspectives - present both models - so the universal fundamentals are clear. From there, how an emotional detox significantly improves our sense of well being/ level of happiness is readily understood.

If I have an hour to solve a problem, I'll spend 55 minutes defining it and just 5 minutes solving it' Einstein

By defining we're returning to the underlying fundamentals which, if we clarify, tends to resolve the problem. Confusion begets confusion.

We're obviously feeling something, so if we can control those somethings we're controlling what we're feeling. If we're controlling what we're feeling we're controlling our level of happiness. Nowadays, we know what those somethings are - bio-chemicals/nuero transmitters/ hormones - and we know how they're generated. It's not magic. We also know that, as regards happiness, it's emotional satisfaction that is important.

Be fill of love and joy and the rest is just logistics.

Emotional detoxes are so named as we're detoxing/deleting motivations that have accumulated within us over time and now compete against/suppress our emotional motivations. If we're not connected to our emotional motivations we're not motivated to nourish them and if we're not motivated to nourish them we don't. Not surprisingly, if we don't they become mal nourished - they're not purring as they should be. We have to prioritise, have to choose which motivations we have within us as they determine our objectives, then decisions then actions and it's our actions that take us to this, or that, reality.

We have a garden within, that garden can grow a wide variety of plants, but we want relevant and fruitful ones, not just weeds and whatever plants/motivations just happened to blow in there. Everyone wants delightful, fruitful plants in their garden but some don't understand they firstly need to weed their garden, need to take out the undesirable -need to make space- before putting in the seeds they want. We need to empty our 'cup' of the existing stale, ugly flavours before we try to pour in the delightful flavours of our choice. Many try to pour fresh flavours into an already fill cup, but what's the point of that? Little gets in - their cup is already fill - and what does is quickly diluted, and polluted, by what's already there.

If I have coffee in my cup, and I want to experience some wine, or whatever, I must firstly pour out the coffee, and the dregs. Ok, I guess I don't have to, I can just go ahead and pour the wine in but that's a bit silly and self defeating. While it's obvious we must firstly empty out the stale before we refill which the fresh, what is typically less obvious is that the space generated, via emptying out, has a quality all of it's own as joy needs space to flow into.

Our emotional well being is what largely determines our level of happiness and our emotions thrive on love and joy. While love and joy are very similar experiences -similar flavours/ bio chemicals - they’re not exactly the same and nor are their sources the same. Joy is like soft background music that is always there, but we can’t connect to it, can’t hear and experience it, if there’s also loud music. Often, it's only when the loud music is turned off that we even realise the other music was there all along. When we - if we - experience it we then get it, we understand that less is more and it’s this experience a VM course seeks to introduce us to.

Explained more scientifically; we have two seperate motivational systems; We have our dopamine system and our serotonin/ oxytocin system but we can only access our serotonin system in the absence of the louder dopamine system. For example, those on the other side of the monastery walls are not seeking interpersonal love - they’re in the wrong place for that - so they’re either all naive, and stupid, or they’re seeking something else. That we don’t get it, that we may not know what they’re experiencing doesn’t mean that experience doesn’t exist, it just means we’ve never experienced it ourselves.

“The inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one. We live in two worlds.” Jung.

Our emotions do not live in the manmade cultural reality our brains construct. Our cultural realities exist like bubbles within the larger reality, they're not the reality, not all there is to connect to and experience. However, it can seem the reality our brains construct is the reality and therefore we can be limited to just that reality. This, however, leads to emotional discontentment as we're not feeding our emotions the raw diet they require. For example; Love is blind, it's got nothing to do with our brain. The love that can be explained is not the love. The taste our brains understand, and thus can explain, is not the taste.

The Tao that can be explained, is not the Tao. Tao Te Ching

While it's always been obvious our emotions live in their own, pre brain, meaningless world, it had been assumed that world was a branch on the same brain/nervous system tree as the meaningful world our brains construct. We now know they're not just different branches, but completely different trees, albeit intertwined thus looking like they're the same tree. As I'm writing this - Sept 26 - Stanford has just proven this complete separation which will, in time, change models we'd previously considered to be accurate. However, for our purposes, it makes no real difference as, either way, our emotional motivations clearly exist in a different world than our ego/social motivations do. Explained via the existing model; our emotions do not live in the cultural world of labels, categories and meanings constructed by our brain; they live in the raw, meaningless, world that exists before our brains reformat the raw data our senses are providing. Our emotions exist in the same world they always have existed in long long before our brains developed the capacity to generate much in the way of labels and meanings.

Clearly, in the distant past, when our brains went through a series of significant upgrades - language, sophisticated thinking, etc - our previous brains were not scooped out and the upgraded versions plopped into our skulls. The upgrades added to what was already there, they didn't replace what had been there for millions of years.

Intellectualisation creates a gap or lack of rapport between you and your life. You may think about things so much that you get into the state where you are eating the menu instead of the dinner. Alan Watts

Our emotions experience the raw data our senses provide while our ego then experiences the reality our brain reformats that data into - via cultural labels and meanings. Understanding we have two systems, that there's two wells we can drink from, is important as that's often what's required to then take the steps to access that other well. Our emotions consume the 'apples' raw whilst our brain 'cooks'/processes those apples into something else which our ego then consumes and experiences. Our brain puts 'sauces' on top of the dish - labels and meanings - which we/our ego consumes, and experiences, along with the dish underneath. We're experiencing, or hopefully experiencing, both worlds simultaneously albeit via different motivations. It's easy for sauces to dominate, to be all we're really tasting which, in time, becomes all there 'is'. Mere sauces become all that matters and we become emotionally mal nourished given we're no longer bothering ourselves with the quality of the underlying dish that our emotions are nourished on. Those on the other side of the monastery walls are not confused; they exiting one reality to better access the other one. They're turning away from one well in order to find the other, much more satisfying, one.

‘I sometimes wonder if all pleasures are not substitutes for joy'. C.S Lewis

Get too dominated by our ego/ cultural reality and we start cooking all the apples/ start consuming just sauces, which leads to emotional malnourishment. An emotional detox removes those sauces, removes the attraction to those sauces, reconnecting us to what's underneath and thus we're now orientated towards our emotional interests/motivations. We're now nourishing them, they start purring and if they're purring, we're purring. There's nothing negative about some sauces, the issue is when we can't discriminate between mere sauces - what satisfies our ego - and the organic something underneath - which satisfies us emotionally. The issue is not sauces per see; it's too many sauces, it's that they're on too thick. It's the cumulative disconnecting/disorientating effect of them that's the issue. Scrape them away and we get this because we experience the massive difference. We get that less is much more because less of one is more of the other and the other is what is important, at least as regards our level of happiness.

There's two wells we can drink from. There's the cultural realities and the infinite reality beyond the walls of those manmade bubbles. If we could hear our emotions we'd hear something like this.

I want to run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside
I wanna reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I wanna feel sunlight on my face
I see that dust cloud disappear without a trace
I wanna take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name.

As there's two realities, two wells, there's effectively a spectrum given we can access both to one degree or another. Towards the cynical pole of that spectrum we have Donald Trump who is completely dominated by his ego, thus emotionally hollowed out. His ego tree has grown so large it's shaded out his emotional tree - no light/joy is getting into his emotional core. All he cares about is status, power and wealth as ego satisfaction is all he can now access. If there's only one teat providing pleasant flavours/bio chemicals available to us, if we're chained to the one well, then that's all there is for us to feel good via so, naturally enough, we furiously milk that teat to obtain as much satisfaction/pleasant bio chemicals as we can from it. Thus, Trump proclaims himself the 'greatest', perhaps the 'bestest' ever, given ego satisfaction is the only type of satisfaction- the only well - he can now access. The issue here is ego satisfaction is insipid, with a low ceiling, compared to emotional satisfaction. It's something, it's some pleasant bio chemicals, but it's not much. It's just the consolation prize.

At the other end of the spectrum, in a forest, just reclining under a tree with that massive smile on his face, was where Buddha resided. He said; 'By doing nothing, I do everything'. Indeed, if we're already extremely happy what is there to do? Do what? By definition, if we're 10/10 happy, there are no dissatisfied motivations to try and satisfy. What are we going to scurry around the environment for if there's nothing out there we want? Of course he just blissfully reclines and watches the world go by. If we feel we lack nothing, we feel we have everything we want. If we feel we have everything we want we are, by definition, on a very high level of happiness.

At one end of the spectrum everything can be nothing whilst at the other nothing can be everything. Especially when we understand that joy needs space to flow into.

We're not out in the environment, doing as we do, for no reason. We've got objectives in mind, be they immediate objectives - lets get a coffee - or longer term objectives we're trying to advance/satisfy. Our objectives are downstream of our motivations - we're not seeking what we don't want; not seeking a coffee if we don't want coffee. Given our current batch of objectives, we make our decisions; we choose among the options we believe we have available to satisfy those objectives. Our decisions determine our actions - lets walk over to that cafe - and our actions take us to one reality or another. Our steps add up, taking us here or there, yet upstream of it all is our motivations. Sort out our motivations, sort the wheat from the chuff, and gravity does the rest.

We have our primary motivations, the set we're all born with that are typically referred to as instincts. They're hardwired within us, they're with us every step we take so if they're not purring, we're not purring. Then we have clusters of secondary motivations which have been installed by our culture along with the ones we're just randomly acquired over time. Secondary/ acquired motivations can be deleted and if some of them are no longer relevant, no longer serving us our actual interests, then why keep them in us? Just delete them and make space. We didn't choose most of them anyway.

Some people who are very dissatisfied with their lives nevertheless have no intention of changing their own behaviour. They want to keep on doing as they’ve always done, but just have it turn out differently’ Thomas Sowell

Detoxing our motivations is upstream transformational therapy as opposed to the much more common midstream incremental therapy which requires fighting against our motivational current. That intervening upstream is much more effective is understood, at least here and there, but it doesn't fit the structure of modern societies. People have jobs, are also juggling responsibilities and assorted other motivations, so the typical one hour a week type of therapy is all they can reasonably access. Similarly, therapy businesses are businesses adapted to the same structure. For most therapists the mainstream path is the reality -they don't know anything else themselves- and their job, as they see it, is to help their clients adapt better to that mainstream path.

This is not to disparage midstream therapy; many therapists help many people. It's to explain there's another option and that the other option cannot be offered on main street. It doesn't fit, and if detoxes were offered there what are they going to sell? Water? We don't really need anyone else to help us detox, all we need is to know how and then step out of our own motivational web for a short time. Our hardwired motivations will come with us and the rest of those old motivational threads can blow away with the wind. We experience the difference, reorientate to our actual interests -new objectives - and can then spin another web. But now we're building it, now it's relevant - it's catching what we actually want. It's limited, functional, it's letting plenty of light in and we're not ourselves tangled up in it. Happy days.

Midstream therapy has a very poor success rate - not surprisingly - but it's often better then nothing. Of course, given the limitations of midstream therapy, and the expense involved, these days most seeking be to be happier quickly give up and select a pill instead.

Actually, as I'm writing this ( August 26) the Huberman podcast discussed this very topic with psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia who explained, albeit with different terminology, the same thing:

‘What I try and do is I help people get to their fundamentals. Everyone is focused on changing behaviour, everyone is focused on increasing willpower to overcome a tendency, and it’s, like, why not just change the tendency? For their natural thoughts to change, for the way they see the world to change, for their behaviours to change on their own doesn’t require willpower. Will power is necessary when you’re fighting against tendencies but it’s not required when those tendencies are no longer there.’

Exactly. One needs willpower when it's motivations vs motivations, but we don't need it if we just delete the contradictory 'tendencies'. Possibly, this is obvious to Dr Kanojia due to his Indian heritage. After all, India is the birthplace of Buddhism and, incidentally, where I did my VM course more then 3 decades ago. Also incidentally, the Huberman podcast is an excellent source for remaining updated with the latest scientific discoveries and conclusions regarding health and happiness. Very popular, it typically ranks no 1 in the world in its genre and is often in the top 10 podcasts overall. Stanford neurologist Professor Huberman is the host. He's a pragmatic, evidence only, type of guy and recently pondering the 'meaning of life' he saw it as ' learning to enjoy the time we have and to prolong that time'. Exactly, what else? and if we believe it's something else where did those beliefs come from? It's hard to imagine we'd choose them ourselves as that would be self defeating. If we believe life is about hard work, so it will be but, like, why would we want that life? Isn't that the life of a slave? We have to survive, have to work if we don't already have plenty of $$, but there's a big difference between living to work and working to live.

Well, I think it's fine
Building jumbo planes
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train
Switch on summer from a slot machine
Yes, get what you want, if you want
'Cause you can get anything now

I know we've come a long way
Things are changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play? Cat Stevens. 'Where do the children play'

Where do the children play? Increasingly, the answer is they don't play and if we don't get to play when we're young - do what we actually want to be doing - we can struggle to play/enjoy life when we're adults. Early, intensive and prolonged education continually overrides what we'd prefer to be doing - we've got to attend class - until that connection to our innate motivations/ ourselves is no longer active. How many classes on 'happiness' did you get offered in school? Exactly, that's not their job, that's the individuals job. The cultural beliefs and values -that template - we get installed in us via our education propel us down the society's mainstream path which, if it's fruitful enough, if it's in good shape, tends to work out just fine. After-all, we've got survival motivations - need a job etc - so we need to be competitive within the structure that exists. But what if our mainstream path isn't in good shape? What if it's now potholed with the once low hanging fruit long ago been harvested yet we're now programmed up to sprint down that sub standard path? Awkward. All civilisations have a life cycle, nothing last forever, and we don't get to choose where within that life cycle we happen to be born. But it is what it is and we make our way through the desert to an oasis, or we don't. Such is the game of life.

You got a job downtown, man it leaves your head cold
And everywhere you look, life ain't got no soul
That apartment you live in feels like it's just a place to hide
When you're walkin' down the streets, you won't meet no one eye to eye
Now the cops reported you as just another homicide
But I could tell that you were just frustrated. Springsteen Murder incorporated

If the quality of our life isn't as we'd like it would seem to make sense to recalibrate. To get the cuckoos out of our nest and start acting in our own actual interests.

'The cage is invisible because you were born inside it and they taught you to love the bars' Mark Twain

A 10 day vm course involves spending nearly all our non sleeping time sitting crosslegged and meditating with meditating here meaning focus on the feelings arising within us. We soon connect the dots, soon realise motivations motivate via feelings, via the various pleasant and unpleasant flavours. How else?

Using an extreme example; A drug addict has acquired a powerful negative motivation - they're infected - and this powerful motivation overpowers nearly all of their other motivations. All they care about is accessing the pleasure the drug provides and avoiding the pain they'll experience if they don't access that drug. A given motivations power equals the distance between what we believe we'll experience via satisfaction and what we'll experience if that motivation is dissatisfied. However, a motivation doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's competing for our energy against many other motivations, be they immediate, or longer term, objectives/motivations. We're typically juggling a lot of diverse, and often contradictory, motivations. Our ego, for example, seeks status whilst status is nothing emotionally. How does the drug addict escape that motivation/habit? By no longer feeding it. If the person goes 'cold turkey' for a week, or so, that motivation dies off leaving him, or her, free of it's dubious clutches and free to reorientate towards satisfying other, hopefully more positive, motivations. All non innate motivations, large and small, obvious or obscure, can be deleted via the same means. When we're just sitting we obviously can't feed our clusters of motivations so they, one by one, die off returning us to our hardwired actual motivations.

Just as it's not much fun for the drug addict to detox from that motivation - dissatisfied motivations 'claw' - an emotional detox is also not much fun but, for some of us, it's well worthing doing at least once in our lives to get calibrated to ourselves, to experience that less is more and to taste the other well.

The thing with dopamine reward system is that dopamine is largely connected to anticipation/ expectations. Dopamine is calibrated to our expectations of reality, not to reality itself. It’s not the event/thing, it’s our expectation of the event/thing that matters when it comes to generating dopamine.

The relevant point about dopamine pleasure is we’re only accessing that pleasure/satisfaction when our expectations are met, or exceeded. Think of your favourite dish at a particular restaurant; you have an expectation, a high expectation regarding that meal you’ve ordered and should that meal drop below that expectation you’re actually dissatisfied yet it’s still a very nice meal. It’s actually still better than 90% of the meals you eat yet you’re displeased. The pleasure that motivated you to be there does not materialise because of your expectations of the meal, not because of the meal itself. Hence how it’s actually a lot easier to become depressed/ unhappy if we’re wealthy, with ample options, than if we’re poor with few. This is why those that are very wealthy, and also happy, live quite disciplined, austere lives, at least as regards their day to day habits. They just have to or, in time, they self destruct. It’s why most people who win lotto are actually less happy after a few years than they were previously. We can easily drown in the midst of plenty.

The poor, on the other hand, obviously lack the means to keep ratcheting up their expectations and can therefore find satisfaction from what, for the pampered, would be experienced as painful. A 3 star hotel generates elation in some, but disgust in others. It’s not the hotel.

While, via a detox, we can often access the other well, we also tend to find our existing well has freshened up. We now appreciate much that we previously didn’t. What was a small, insignificant pleasure is now a big pleasure. Indeed, what was painful can now be pleasurable.

What matters is what’s happening inside us so it’s typically hugely beneficial to reset, to return to core, and recalibrate every now and again.

House got too crowded clothes got too tight
And I don't know just where I'm heading tonight
But out where the sky's been cleared by a good hard rain
There's something calling my secret name

Had a coat of fine leather and snakeskin boots
But that coat always had a thread hanging loose
Well I pulled it one day and to my surprise
It led me right past that house and on over the rise

I had some victory that was just failure in deceit
The joke was coming up through the soles of my feet
I been a long time walking on fortune's cane
But now I'm stepping lightly and feeling no pain

Well here's to your good looks, here's to my health
Here's to the loaded places that we take ourselves
When it comes to luck, we make our own
Tonight I got dirt on my hands but I'm building me a new home. Springsteen Lucky Town

We don't want to make this page too long so the intro continues here.

VM intro continuation first page

Our emotional detoxes;

While the underlying fundamentals of emotional detoxing are all the same - we starve out useless motivations - the detoxes we offer differ from VM courses/detoxes for a number of reasons.

Firstly; VM courses tend to be too harsh for most of us modern types. While some discomfort is unavoidable we want to minimise pain as it's counterproductive longterm. Secondly; it's not so much about doing nothing as it is about doing differently. We can 'walk and chew gum' at the same time. In other words; we can delete negative motivations whilst enjoying positive ones simultaneously thereby counterbalancing the pain from our disgruntled motivations. Thirdly; the one size fits all format of VM works for large groups but ideally a detox should be tailored to the individual and not just regarding the process, but also as regards outcomes. People are different, their situations are different, they have different amounts of time available, their ultimate sweet spots differ etc. Forth; if we're going to do an emotional detox it makes a lot of sense to also do a physiological detox especially as the process is largely the same anyway. In other words; even a 10 day emotional detox starts with at least a 3 day body detox which takes us someway down the emotional detoxing path.

Ultimately, Nui's job at real detox Lombok is to guide individuals to a new experience -to help them find the other well - to bounce them someway along the spectrum. But, everyones sweet spot on the spectrum is different and that's for them to discover and define. Some experience the 'avalanche' effect; one boulder/ motivation tumbles down and out leading to many more instantly tumbling out - an avalanche. This instantly bounces us along the spectrum a significant way and can be a somewhat surreal experience as the reality that was is now very different. It's the same - that tree is still there - but what aspects of the environment we're bringing to the fore, thus what we're pushing into the background, has changed. Because it's our motivations that are determining what we're prioritising. Someone walking down a street seeking cigarettes is scanning for shops that sell cigarettes -bringing that data to the fore - as that's what is relevant to them. When our motivations change, our objectives change, thus what is relevant changes. We're no longer scanning for, and bringing to the fore, what we were so the exact same location is now both perceived differently and experienced differently. Our motivations not only determine the path we choose but also what that path 'is'.

However, there's no specific objective, no 'right' place to get to. Those that are flexible put themselves in one spot - powered by one set of useful motivations - to better achieve a set of objectives and/or enjoy a context, but can then move themselves/reorientate when, or if, they want to by changing their motivations. They're pouring their own cocktails and when we can do this why would we pour ourselves an ugly one? For the humble, thus flexible, this is obvious and it seems weird that others can't just change their recipe if the taste isn't satisfactory. Empty that crap out and pour yourself a fresh one instead of complaining and doing exactly the same.

Seen a man standin' over a dead dog
By the highway in a ditch
He's lookin' down kinda puzzled
Pokin' that dog with a stick

Got his car door flung open
He's standin' out on Highway 31
Like if he stood there long enough
That dog'd get up and run

Struck me kinda funny
Seemed kinda weird, sir, to me
How at the end of every long hard day
People find some reasons to believe Springsteen reason to believe

What's important is experiencing that the spectrum exists as we then gain the flexibility to move along it ourselves. What's important is realising we don't want the thing, we want the feelings we believe we'll experience via that thing. The obvious question then becomes; what feelings do we prioritise - what do we actually want to be experiencing - and what other feelings/motivations are blocking our ability to access the ones we actually want? We simply can't untangle what's in our overcrowded 'basket of motivations' without emptying it. By emptying it we find much that needed to be untangled is no longer there. Knots that no longer exist don't have to be untangled. Contradictions that no longer exist don't have to be resolved. Motivations that no longer exist don't have to be satisfied allowing us to redirect that energy towards satisfying other, more fruitful, motivations. Additionally, joy needs space to flow into. What is life if it's not joyful? What is love without joy? Less is much more.

'We carry with us the seeds of our own destruction - it's part of the human package - along with the seeds of the things that bring life and good things into the world but there is a very big tug-of-war all the time. It's hard to come down on, uh….we have a hand that builds and we have a hand that burns, so this is a song about someone who figures out how to come down on the side of the hand that builds. This song is called ´Leah´….”

to here page 1 is enough.

Intro Page B - second intro page

My notes; the above is intro fisrt page - it's fine because it focuses of value without slapping people around too much.

next page as below.

As the Maslow illustrates, our species comes pre programmed with a handful of hardwired primary motivations, which we generally call instincts. Obviously, our survival instincts are the strongest - all the rest of our shopping list becomes redundant if we’re dead. Beyond surviving we can turn our focus towards thriving but things get a bit awkward because, even aside from acquired secondary motivations, our primary motivations define ‘thriving’ differently. Our ego, for example, seeks status and approval, whilst that means nothing emotionally. In practice, our ego and emotions tend to be in a tug of war - each pulling us in different directions as they’re nourished from different wells. Further complicating things for our emotions is our survival instincts and ego instincts are natural allies in that a promotion, for example, satisfies both of them. Awkward.

All cultures, and sub cultures, have their set of beliefs and values which aligns the group -puts everyone on the same page, more or less - allowing the group to be cohesive and functional. All social animals, including social primates such as us, structure the collective via hierarchies; we have our prime ministers, presidents ….. .

Group cohesion is, or at least was in the precarious past, paramount. Individuals simply couldn’t survive in that brutal world outside of a functioning, competitive group so it’s no surprise we’ve got a powerful motivation aligning us with our group. The loner types struggled to survive, and even if they survived for a while, how did they reproduce? We’ve descended from those motivationally wired up to stick with their group through thick and thin. If I want your respect I can only satisfy that motivation via your beliefs and values. As, in the past, we were deeply embedded in our group/tribe we all had the same set of beliefs and values thus all on the same page. Indeed, the notion there even could be other sets/hierarchies would have rarely occurred to us given how isolated, and insular, groups were until very recently. Other groups were inherently the ‘baddies’ given we were judging them by our own set of beliefs and values which was the ‘right’ set. If we’re all that is right and good then, by definition, those different from us are wrong and bad. This, though irrational, is a feature, not a bug, given survival is our priority and we were dependant on our group to survive. It only potentially becomes a bug if we find ourselves living in a multi hierarchical landscape - there’s many hierarchies to choose from - but we remain welded to whichever one we happened to be born into. If that one is working fine, then that’s perfect -happy days - but if not of what use is it?

To obtain status we climb the hierarchy we’re born into. Our culture has its particular set of beliefs and values - definitions of right and wrong, good and bad etc - which we can come to deem the set. Whilst rationally/ scientifically, beliefs and values are obviously subjective, we’re not particularly rational - why would we be? Our ego is doing as ego does, it’s very powerful so we typically cannot accept this. We can readily accept other sets of beliefs and values are subjective, but not ours as doing so would undermine the status we’ve, often painstakingly, accumulated. If we accept beliefs and values are subjective then our status is also just subjective and that’s not very satisfactory for our ego. Objective status, though an oxymoron, is much tastier than subjective status.

Hence why humility has always been so valued as the humble are not so concerned with status they are free to orientate towards emotional satisfaction. Their emotions are winning that tug of war, they can access both wells. Instead of hunting status, and its symbols, they hunt the invisible feelings that are emotionally relevant; They hunt that invisible game. Pats on the head are something, but not what’s important.

Strength is fantasy, time is illusion

The classic ego resistance to change haunts therapy rooms all day everyday. Just because we’re not so happy doesn't mean our ego is not thriving, it just means we’re emotionally malnourished. Indeed it’s often our powerful ego that is the problem as it’s winning the tug of war against our emotional interests. The cultural reality is all there is, there is no other well. If we’re all that’s right and good then how can we possibly be expected to change our recipe, our beliefs and values? The universe should align with our wants - we’re superior right? - and when it does then we’ll be happy. Um ok, good luck with that strategy.

Don’t seek to move the mountain, just move yourself.

The mountain not to our tastes? We can, if we want, get our shovel out and start making that mountain how we want it to be. Seems a tragic way to spend our limited time, but ok. We can, if we want, tell ourselves what we happen to currently prefer is how the mountain should be. We’re not being selfish, we’re being noble -high five. Or we can just move ourselves to a reality that suits our tastes and let the mountain be as it is. After -all, who made us God? Additionally, another option is to change our tastes so we now enjoy what the mountain has to offer. Options, options, options if we’re flexible.

Which points to the tragic, catch 22 nature, of many peoples unhappiness; if they had the emotional buffer - enough emotional satisfaction - to withstand their ego getting slapped around during therapy -to gain the flexibility they lack - they wouldn’t be seeking therapy in the first place. Naturally enough, if the modicum of satisfaction we are experiencing comes via our ego we’re not in a position to allow that teat to be snatched away from us. The plunge down is too painful and we came in to feel better, not worse. Awkward, and why a pill is increasingly the preferred option.

One of the significant advantages of upstream therapy, as opposed to midstream therapy, is we’re avoiding ego resistance given the changes are being made upstream of ego. All our egos are doing is slapping ‘right’ and ‘good’ on our own reflection - we’re sneaky monkeys like this - so if our reflection changes our ego, after being a bit befuddled, simply recalibrates to the new us. Status is dime a dozen; every little niche has its hierarchy, there’s honour among thieves, for example, so it’s self defeating to remain welded to a template that isn’t emotionally fruitful.

This rigidness seems weird to those who are humble and thus flexible. If the taste isn’t satisfactory then, like, change your recipe. Screamingly obvious to the humble given they see a range of subjective recipes they can select from, whilst others just see the set menu that happened to be put in front of them.

Seen a man

Intro page B continued

this is second intro page just the second section of that page - along with the MAslow

The opposite of craving is contentment. Or, in the absence of craving there’s contentment. If we feel no lack, there is no lack. Therefore, supercilious motivations, especially if they’re not readily satisfiable, are not our friends. When we’re seeking to satisfy one cluster of motivations we’re not satisfying another set yet how relevant is the dominant cluster and are they even ours to begin with? Mama bird stresses herself feeding the cuckoos in her nest, she’s spending her time feeding the same chicks who have pushed out her actual chicks. Obviously, she experiences the cuckoo chicks to be her own chicks, after all they’re in her nest and they motivate her via the same means as all her motivations motivate. Her system has been hacked.

Our primary motivations are hardwired in, they’re not going anywhere. They’re us, they’re with us every step we take, and if they’re not purring we’re not purring. We can, if we want, sidestep their well being and instead spend our time trying to satisfy motivations others deposited in us - secondary motivations - but why would we do that anymore than mama bird would choose to look after alien chicks instead of her own?

Whilst, in the absence of cravings/ lack there’s contentment some still have trauma -painful echos - to try and resolve. But even when it comes to trauma we’re typically well advised to empty out - delete the old stale threads in our web - and see what we’ve now got. Adding a couple teaspoons of sugar to a bitter taste often makes it palatable enough. The pain we feel is rarely coming from one source/thread even if our brains believe that to be so. How can our brains possibly know?

An event with significant pain can be a traumatic event and that pain can echo on. The same event with no pain is not a traumatic event and there’s no painful echo. It’s not the event, it’s our reaction to the event that’s relevant. We can’t change the past but we can change what we believe about the past and can change the feelings associated with the past.

A tree pruned back can now grow differently. Ever cleaned out a room, a garage, or a storeroom and gone ‘wow, that’s so different’. We suddenly aware of possibilities that simply hadn’t existed prior. We become used to - we adapt to - that which remains as is for long periods of time. The status quo becomes the way it is, not just the way it currently is. When we deem something to be just as it is, so it becomes and remains.

This is one of the fundamental reasons midstream therapy has such a poor success rate; the interventions are happening at, or downstream of, objectives. We giving our cuckoos a vote, asking them what path they want us to take. At best, we’re just renovating our rut yet, for many, the rut is itself the problem. Although, a cozy rut is no longer experienced as a rut and, ultimately, we’re all looking for our cozy niche, our delightful rut, our oasis. Sure, but we must exit the dysfunctional one to find the cozy one which, in some cases, might be the same one, more or less, but just experienced differently.

Again, it’s not the thing, or the event, we want, it’s the feelings we believe we’ll experience via that thing/event. The ex smoker no longer wants the cigarettes, in many cases now loathes the mere thought of that which they used to crave. The exact same thing is experienced very differently and via what process did the person go from state A to state B? By detoxing/ starving that motivations. Which is the ‘real’ them? The smoker or the non smoker? They both them, both potentially them. The ex smoker, if they want, can become a smoker again, can go through the ‘yuk’ stage to arrive back at the ‘yum’ stage. They can reinstall that motivation easily enough.

When we get that less is more, accept it’s all subjective thus we’re fluid not rigid - it’s all happening in us - we then start to manage what’s happening in us. Not surprisingly, happiness/contentment becomes easy, or at least a lot easier. We stop taking ourselves, and our little lives down here on this particular planet, so seriously. It doesn’t really matter what we do, or don’t do, the universe doesn’t care either way - why would it? - and we’re dead soon enough so we dance while we can. All caterpillars go through a cocoon stage - a transformation - to emerge with wings and when we’ve got wings our reality, and options, are very different.

of Victor Hugo's poem:

'Be like the bird, who

Resting in his flight

On a twig too slight

Feels it bend beneath him

Yet sings

Knowing he has wings.’

Every fools got a reason to feel sorry for themselves

And turn their heart to stone

Tonight this fools halfway to heaven, but just a mile out of hell

And it feels I’m going home.

These are better days

These are better days it’s true.

Beyond extremes, it’s not reality, it’s how we’re experiencing reality that matters. What, from the buffet that exists, we’re accessing and then how that tastes to us. If it doesn’t taste delicious then why are we ordering the same dishes? The answer is because we’ve come to believe the set menu is all there is and/or all there is for good people and we’re motivated to be good/ have status as opposed to being happy. We’re confusing the two. Sure, we have to survive, that’s our priority of course but such is the game of life.

The rat traps are filled with soul crusaders

Their circuits lined and jammed with chromed invaders.

Ego vs Emotions

Notes; this is good and allows me to just lightly cover ego on first intro page.

All social animals, including ourselves, structure the collective via hierarchies. We have our prime ministers, presidents …..A groups hierarchy is formed by their set of beliefs and values and we seek to satisfy our urge for status/approval via the hierarchy our group - our in group - happens to have. This innate motivation for status is generally referred to as our ego and, relevant here, is that our motivation for status competes against our emotional motivations. After all, they are seperate motivations nourished on very different fodder.

Just as our emotional motivations, naturally enough, take a backseat to our survival motivations so they typically also take a backseat and hand the steering wheel to our ego as, in the past anyway, we simply couldn’t survive outside our group.

While, as regards our level of happiness, we want our ego in the back and our emotions up front we’re motivationally wired up to prioritise survival which meant aligning with our group. In the past, our ego was very much a feature, not a bug, and while many of us live in a very different context nowadays - we live in the midst of many hierarchies - we’re still wired up the same. While rationally, scientifically it’s rather obvious the beliefs and values that construct our cultural realities are subjective - different cultures/sub cultures have their own definitions of right and good etc - accepting it’s all subjective is typically not something we’re able to do. We tend to be able to accept the beliefs and values other groups have are subjective, but strongly resist accepting the set we’re subscribed to is.

Status is obviously dime a dozen; every little niche/group has their hierarchy, there’s honour amongst thieves, for example, however if we accept our own beliefs and values are subjective then we’re accepting our status is also just subjective. Awkward, as subjective status is not really status - it’s weak sauce - compared to ‘objective’ status.

By the time we’ve popped out of our cookie cutter schools we’re already invested in the set we’ve been programmed up with - we’ve already gained some status/approval via that set - thus we now defend that set in order to defend our status.

Which, if this works out fine, then it’s fine. If our society’s mainstream path, which we’re now motivated to go down is in good shape, if it’s fruitful enough then all is good. We’re able to satisfy our survival motivations, can thrive materially, accumulate enough status/respect and have a satisfying emotional life. Sexual/reproductive instincts are also in play and we tend to be able to do ok there also. Happy days, or at least happy enough days.

However, it all gets awkward when our society is past it’s zenith and in the dying stage of it’s life cycle. When our mainstream path is now potholed, with the once low hanging fruit long gone, we’re now propelled down a path that isn’t fruitful. Awkward.

Again, in the brutal, precarious past we adapted to, and got out of, by developing the capacity to form ever larger groups which lead to increased specialisation, better tools, better infrastructure, healthcare etc etc our ego played a critical role. Our group was/is right and superior which was the useful mentality as regards surviving and thriving. That we were judging others by our own set of beliefs and values might have been irrational but we’re not particularly rational - why would we be? We’re scurrying through the environment seeking to satisfy motivations including being good and right/ having status which, if we’re good and right, means those different to us are bad and wrong. Conveniently, this means we, and our group, are more worthy than those others therefore if we take their resources, and our type multiplies instead of their type, this is good right? That they deem themselves superior, and us inferior, is inconvenient to ponder and not the pragmatic mentality, so we don’t.

But times change and what mentality is useful also changes. If we’re struggling to survive then, naturally enough, we don’t have the luxury to navel gaze about our level of happiness. As our survival motivations, and our ego, tend to be naturally aligned - a promotion satisfies both, for example - our emotional needs are easily dragged along emotionally barren paths. Such is the game of life and we figure out how to manage our motivations so we can also be happy, or we don’t.

Ideally, we define success as happiness. In our hierarchy the happy are at the top. Now our ego and emotions are aligned. We’re still high-fiving our own reflection, but at least it’s got a big smile on its face.

Hence why humility has always been so prized as the humble don’t value status much thus naturally value emotional satisfaction instead. As they’re orientated towards emotional satisfaction they choose emotionally satisfying paths which, not surprisingly, leads them to emotionally relevant fields. Happy days. The tug of war between our emotions and ego is much more easily won by our emotions if our ego is pruned back and relatively weak. In a multi hierarchical world it can easily be a negative to remain welded to whatever hierarchy we happened to be born into if the path those beliefs and values puts us on is unsatisfactory. If we can put that set menu down we can access the buffet beyond but, given we’re receiving some satisfaction via our ego, putting it down is initially painful.

Ego resistance to significant change haunts therapy rooms all day everyday. If we’re all that’s right and good then it’s not really for us to change is it? Not our fault we’re unhappy, the problem/s are elsewhere obviously. Our ego consumes our recipe - the menu - not the meal so if it’s content and purring with the status quo it will naturally strongly resist any change to our recipe. It will strongly resist anyone questioning our recipe. That will offend us; ‘OMG, are you implying I’m not superior to most others?’ Excuse me!! If they’re less than happy they’ll typically choose a pill. That we might be emotionally mal nourished is not our egos concern unless it impacts our status. If it’s embarrassing to be sad then ok, our ego is interested in rectifying the situation, but only to the extent it no longer negatively status. If no one knows then, ho hum, it doesn’t matter to our ego.

The humble just live and let live. You do you, I’ll do me. You have your beliefs and values, cool, but what do they have to do with me? They’re not demanding others align with their wants as who made them God? Why should other adults dance to my beat anymore than I’m willing to dance to theirs? Orientated towards emotional satisfaction, flexible and pragmatic. Happy days.

Somewhat ironically, those dominated by their ego do not like this mentality; ‘ Omg, you’re selfish for not doing as I want you to do’. Um ok.

When we’re dominated by ego we take ourselves, and our little world, seriously making it hard to be happy carrying all that baggage around. There’s boxes that need to be ticked before we deserve to be happy. The humble don’t see it like that; they see the urge to tick those boxes as motivations which, if they didn’t choose to have them whirring away inside them, aren’t theirs to begin with so why keep them if they’re useless?

If, as adults, we’re not choosing our own objectives then who is? We don’t get to choose the species we are, don’t get to choose what hardwired motivations we have, but we get to choose how, or even if, we manage our garden of motivations. Get to choose what other plants/weeds are also in there. If, by and by, we end up with a tangled mess of a garden that’s not providing us with what we really want then whose fault is that?

House got too crowded

Given the above there’s a tragic, catch 22, dynamic involved with unhappiness.

Overflow from intro B

We'll all somewhere on that spectrum perhaps believing the reality we're currently perceiving, and experiencing, is the reality. That the 'us' we see in our mirror is the us. That the motivations whirring away in us belong in us. That it's all rigid and solid, all frozen in place given that's how it seems to be. If that status quo is fine, if we're happy enough as is then we're already at our sweet spot on the spectrum and there's nothing we need to change. Happy days. If we're not happy enough we need to move along the spectrum to find our sweet spot but we're not going to do this if we're frozen solid and deeming that frozen reality the reality. An emotioal detox bounces us along the spectrum proving to us it's existence, introduces us to the other well, whilst giving us the flexibilty we previously lacked. When we bounce from one 'us' to another 'us', when the same reality is now experienced very differently, it's screamingly obvious it's all subjective and fluid. That it's all swirling shades of grey - yin/yang - and not the black and white our brain is reformating it into. We're now out of the rut, we've put the set menu down and can access the buffet beyond.

This life thing we're experiencing is just that; an experience and when we lighten up we can accept this and focus on generating the experiences we want. Those on the higher levels of happiness are hunting the feelings - those invisible somethings - that really matter. They're not hunting status and it's symbols. When we're motivated to be superior we can only do so via the hierarchy of beliefs and values we're subscribed to thus those beliefs and values control us, they're the walls of our rut. If we're humble, if we don't care much about status, we can accept beliefs and values are subjective - recipes - and if they're just recipes we might as well have one that is emotionally nourishing. We're flexible, pragmatic and happy with the alternative being rigid, unhappy but 'superior' yet that superiority only exists in our head. Everyone thinks they're superior, status is dime a dozen; every little niche has it's hierarchy, there's honour among thieves for example. Staying welded to whatever set of beliefs and values we happened to be born into is completely fine if that recipe is generating a satisfactory taste. But if not, of what use is it beyond allowing us to high five our own reflection? Again, that's something, but it's the consolation prize.

Stregnht is fantasy, time is illusion

We all have to survive and necessarily our emotional interests take a back seat to our survival interests. We social primates evolved to align with our group given we couldn't survive outside of our group, at least not in the precarious past. Necessarily, our emotional interests need to sometimes take a backseat and let our ego have the steering wheel. But our ego will take us to where it wants to go, will take us to the fields where status grows abundantly, it'll take us to the well that exists in the cultural reality. Our species has a relatively powerful brain, it's just a turbo charged primate brain - don't expect too much - but it's capable of understanding, and then managing, our own operating system.

Is it not percular people will readily learn about their phones operating system to get it purring but will not learn about their own operating system to get themselves purring? Such is the power of our ego; we're already programmed up with beliefs and values which are already giving us a delicious sense of status/approval. Questioning those beliefs and values is questioning our status - ouch - so we're not interested on lifting the colourful veil as what we'll see will contradict what we like to believe. However, if that veil is now a matadors cape, if our mainstream path is not actually very fruitful, then perhaps we have no choice. For the humble it's always weird how most aren't interested in changing their recipe even when it's obvious they need to. Their beliefs are giving them something and they can;t forgo that something for a time to access much more. They can't put down the set menu as it's better then nothing.

Seen a man standing over a dead dog

For most of us, reality slaps us around enough to keep our ego pruned back and we have a reasonable balance between the two motivations; we've got enough status, respect, approval from our in -group plus also emotionally well nourished. We live inside the cultural reality but there's at least some windows in those walls, some light/joy from beyond is getting in. get enough light in and we might see there's a door, but for most of us being within and also accessing joy and love is our sweet spot. Joy is actually what's more important as what is love without joy? Again, we also have to survive and generally that involves being on the mainstream path so we juggle our primary motivations as best we can along with all our accumulated secondary motivations. We take ourselves here or there. If we're overloaded and confused we probably just go in circles. However, the very successful amongst us do have to grapple with their ego because if they don't their fate is to be like Trump.

Lights out tonight, trouble in the heartland

I like to quote Springsteen as he accesses both wells, know which one is the valuable one and writes about the struggle. A billionaiaire, fmo

It's hard, perhaps impossible, to explain this simultaneiously so we'll break this intro into sections which, when put together, hopefully make sense. Emotional detoxes are a type of upstream transformational therapy as opposed to the mcuh more common midstream, incremental type of therapies. Understanding the difference will take us some way towards understanding emotional detoxes.

From there we'll explain emotional detoxes via the classic VM course/detox. What does an emotional detox involve and how does it achieve what it achieves? It obviously changes things but what are those things and how are they changed?

Next; secondary motivations need to be explained. What are they, what's their purpose? how did they get within us and how do we delete the ones that are negative, or just irrelivant for us today. If nothing else, they're taking up precious space and, as mentioned, space has a quality all of it's own.

Even if we were to delete all our secondary motivations bringing us back to just our core, innate, primary motivations our emotions are not necessarily suddenly goign to be well nourished. Obviously, connecting to them and noruishing them will be much easier without all those random secondary motivations distracting us but our other primary motivations also compete against our emotional motivations. They have their own jobs to do and don't care about our emotional well being. Why would they? Obviously, our emoions need to take a back seat to our survival motivations but they can easily also be forced into the back seat by our ego motivations which, typically these days, is not actually necesary. Our emotions biggest innate foe is actually our ego but if we can understand our egos job, how it's trying to help us we can then manage it. Ideally, if we define success as happiness - if we primarily value happiness then our ego and emotions are aligned. Happy days.

i do this on different page

first section intro

My notes; this first section first then Maslow and straight into upstream vs midstream

17 oct- pretty good - the general outline here is good and then to the other sections.

The Vipassana meditation course is the practical application of the buddhist theory of happiness. Within Buddhism there’s no concept of an afterlife therefore its focus is on happiness in this life and that’s what is relevant here. If we believe there's an eternal Heaven, or Hell, awaiting us then the quality of this relatively short life we're currently experiencing isn't so important - eternity is a long time whereas the handful of decades we're on this planet isn't. Rationally, this life becomes something of a qualifying round with the focus on accessing the potential eternal bliss up ahead. Being good, as defined by the culture we happened to be born into, becomes more important than being happy.

While we may not personally believe in an eternal after life we, if we're westerners, cannot escape our culture is heavily influenced by this binary - good/bad - judgemental mentality. To us it's normal, indeed it is normal in our societies, but it's not normal in Buddhist societies. Obviously, if we're primarily seeking to be happy - seeking those relevant feelings - we're much more able to navigate directly to them without feeling the need to firstly tick the 'right' boxes.

Rightly, or wrongly, for better or worse, Buddhism is concerned with happiness in the here and now and they figured out the structure of happiness, or at least how to generate happiness, a long time ago. Nowadays, our science understands that structure in much more detail than could be known in the past, but happiness then is happiness now. How we improve our level of happiness also, not surprisingly, remains the same although the terminology, and the concepts, used to explain it are obviously different - no one was talking about bio chemicals a thousands years ago. In practice, we've got the more esoteric traditional model, or the modern scientific model, to choose from but, regardless of which we prefer, the fundamentals are the same. Here we'll explain happiness from both perspectives - present both models - so the universal fundamentals are clear. From there, how an emotional detox significantly improves our sense of well being/ level of happiness is readily understood.

If I have an hour to solve a problem, I'll spend 55 minutes defining it and just 5 minutes solving it' Einstein

By defining we're returning to the underlying fundamentals which, if we clarify, tends to resolve the problem. Confusion begets confusion.

We're obviously feeling something so if we can control those somethings we're controlling what we're feeling. If we're controlling what we're feeling we're controlling our level of happiness. Nowadays, we know what those somethings are - bio-chemicals/nuero transmitters/ hormones - and we know how they're generated. It's not magic; satisfied motivations 'purr' -release pleasant bio chemicals into our 'cup' -while dissatisfied motivations 'claw' releasing unpleasant flavours like frustration into our 'cup'. We're then consuming, expereincing/tasting the resulting cocktail.

By definition, if we have everything we want, we are on a very high level of happiness. If we feel we lack nothing, we feel we have everything we want thus we're very happy. Less is then more, in the sense that the less motivations we have within us demanding satisfaction the easier it is to avoid dissatisfaction/ ugly flavours. When we prune back our overgrown tangled motivations we're deleting much of the dissatisfaction - removing ugly flavours from our 'cup' - thereby significantly improving what we're tasting/experiencing. When, via an emotional detox, our sense of well-being significantly improves we get that less is more because we've experienced it to be so.

At the, almost impossible, extreme of this 'less is more' spectrum is where Buddha was with that massive blissful smile. He said 'by doing nothing, I do everything'. Indeed, what is there to do, if one is 10/10 happy, as there are, by definition, no dissatisfied motivations demanding to be satisfy? Do what? There are no cravings propelling him out into the environment to seek their satisfaction. Of course he just reclines in blissfulness and watches the world go by.

Towards the other end of the spectrum we have someone like Trump who is dominated by his ego resulting in him being emotionally hollowed out. All he care about is status, wealth and power as that's all our egos care about and that's the motivation/instinct that looms large within him. His ego 'tree' has grown so large it's shaded out his emotional 'tree' - no light now gets into his emotional core thus that light - love and joy - no longer exists for him. We milk the teat/s that give us pleasant bio chemicals and if, as with Trump, his emotional one has shivelled up long ago he milks what does exist. As ego satsifaction is inspid, with a low ceiling, compared to emotinal satsifaction he's foreced to milk that teat as furiously as he can. Thus he's the 'reastest, the bestest ever. Ego satisfaction is something, it's better than nothing, but it's the consolation prize.

At one end of the spectrum everything is nothing whilst at the other end nothing is everything.

This makes more sense when we factor in that our emotions are nourished by both interpersonal love and joy. However, joy exists in the absence of too many competing motivations. In other words; joy needs space to flow into, but more on this below.

It's not about trying to be like Buddha - we couldn't even if we wanted to - he symbolises that pole of the 'less is more' spectrum which reminds us we do not want the thing, we want the flavours/bio chemicals we believe we'll feel via the thing/event. We're experiencing via our motivations as they currently exist within us and if that random combination is working well for us then that's fine - happy days. If the taste is fine, the recipe is fine and there's no significant motivations needing to be pruned back/deleted. If we want 'abfhdgjgdj - if that's our 'shopping list' and we're easily enough ticking all those boxes then that's great; we're very happy. But if we're struggling to be very happy we might want to prune back that shopping list, might want to sort the wheat from the accumulated chuff and thereby resolve the contradictions that probably exist. Additionally, if we're scurrying around the environment with a long, complicated, and probably contradictory, shopping list we're introducing ugly stress into our system/ cup given we only have a certain limited amount of time and energy.

People get stuck on low, or mediocre, levels of happiness, even if they are very competent - if they tend to be able to get what they want from the environment - because their motivations are confused and contradictory and/or they're disconnected from their actual innate motivations. They're not acting in their actual interests - they're sprinting down a path thats heading in the wrong direction with 'wrong' being, away from emotional satisfaction. If some of our motivations want what we believe awaits down path 'A' but some of our motivations want what we believe awaits down path 'B' then no matter what path we choose we've got dissatisfaction within. Regardless of how competent we are we've got ugly flavours in our cup, thus supping a sub-standard cocktail. The solution is obvious; pour that stale cocktail out and refill with delightful flavours of our choosing. In other words; detox/ prune back our overgrown tangled motivations - many of which were deposited within us by the culture we happened to be born into and are now irrelevant - and return to our actual innate motivations/instincts. Experience the difference. Get that less is more and recalibrate to our actual motivations/selves.

This is what an emotional detox achieves for us and while this -less is more - is rationally/scientifically straight forward, we're not particularly rational creatures. We're social primates -we're motivationally complicated - with some of our innate motivations -ego - reluctant to even accept we're primates. If we can't accept ourselves it makes being happy awkward because, like it or not, we can't escape our hardwired instincts/ motivations. They're with us, purring or clawing, every step we take, so we want to make sure they're well nourished and purring. If they're purring, we're purring. It's not complicated.

Well, it is kind of complicated because our handful of hardwired instincts each have their own job to do; they're motivated towards, and away from, different things. In other words, they don't all want us to select the same path, not all purring on the same path. Our survival instincts want, as their name suggests, us to do what we need to do to survive and they're obviously the strongest. They're our priority as all the rest of our shopping list becomes somewhat academic if we're dead.

we do to survive

Obviously, our priority is survival and only then do we have the luxury to turn our focus towards happiness. Yet, once beyond survival mode we've still got complications because even though our emotional well being is what's important, as regards level of happiness, we've got an ego which doesn't care about love and joy. Our ego only cares about/ is nourished on status and approval. Awkward. Our ego motivates us to select the path that gives us delicious status yet that path is rarely the path our emotions want us to take as love and joy don't grow in the same fields as status does.

No one who has already taken themselves to a high level of happiness seeks therapy as they've already made whatever changes were required. At base, all pragmatic therapy, no matter the type, seeks to introduce flexibility into the individuals system which then allows the individual to make the changes needed. Again, if they had the required flexibility, if they could improve their recipe themselves, they would already be on a high level of happiness. Emotional detoxes remove that which is making us rigid thereby enabling us to make the required changes. In practice, we find pruning back our motivational overgrowth has deleted much of that which was causing the problems in the first place; knots that are deleted no longer have to be untangled.

When we detox we, counterintuitively perhaps, find that less is more. The issue wasn't our inabiltiy to satisfy our motivations, it was the presence of too many irrelevant and contrary motivations. Just as a laptop gets bogged down, and confused, with too many programs running, most of them now irrelevant, so does our own operating system. We can press refresh and if that works great, but sometimes we're actually better off to return to 'factory settings' - to return to our actual innate motivations/programs - so they can function properly. We find when our core is purring, we're purring. We can't escape our hardwired instincts/motivations - they're with us every step we take - and if they're not purring, we're not purring.

What we're feeling - the cocktail of bio chemicals in our 'cup' that we're tasting/experiecning - come from somewhere , they don't magically materialise. Get those somethings - motivations - pruned back to what's relevant, pruned back to our real motivations and we find that less is more. Again, if our actual motivations are not satisfied, we're not satisfied. If they're not happy, we're not happy as satisfied motivations - having what we want - is the very definition of happiness. Obviously, if we've accumulated too many motivations it then becomes very hard to have everything we want and it becomes impossible to realise a high level of happiness because no matter which path we choose we have a bunch of unsatisfied motivations. Choose path A and those motivations that aren't satisfied on that path are grumbling - pouring ugly frustration etc into our cup - yet choose path B and those wanting path A are now dissatisfied. All that is possible is a mediocre level of happiness no matter how competent we are. What the point of juggling irrelivant motivations ? they're just distracting and disoirentating us from our actual interests and we're just introducing ugly stress into our cup by trying to satisfy them. Less is more.

The Maslow hierarchy of motivations shows our species hardwired motivations/instincts and at the top we see 'self actualisation'. A vague term but clearly it involves discrimitinating between self and non self. How do we do that? the only way to return to our actual real motivations is by pruning back the motivational overgrowth. Experience the massive difference - get that less is more - and then add in secondary motivations that are actually relevant and helping us. Otherwise we remain drones never gaining control over our own operating system. Clearly, if we can control what bio chemicals we’re generating within, and then consuming/experiencing, we’re controlling what we’re feeling and if we’re controlling what we’re feeling we’re controlling our level of happiness. That we can reverse engineer happiness - go directly to it instead of feeling the need to take the long, dubious path to it is obviously possible and an emotional detox proves this to us. If we're fill of love and joy, the rest is just logistics.

How an emotional detox achieves this is explained below but we must first understand the structure of happiness or the how makes no sense.

While, as regards happiness, it's primarily emotional satisfaction that is important we can see that our emotional motivations face significant competition for our time and energy even within our primary motivations/instincts. We're social primates, we're motivationally complicated and not inherently wired up to be happy. Survival is obviously our priority; all the rest of our shopping list of wants and needs becomes redundant if we're dead.

We're just trying to survive

As most people understand their phones operating system better than they understand their own this probably makes little sense, but it will shortly.

'When I was 5 years old my mother always told me that happiness is the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life’. John Lennon

Emotional detoxes could, perhaps more accurately, be called motivational detoxes in that we’re deleting/ minimising motivations that have accumulated over time and now compete against our emotional motivations for our limited time and energy. We have to prioritise, have to choose which motivations we have within us thus derive satisfaction from. If we're swamped by irrelivant secondary motivations ( explained below ) we're seeking to satisfy those infections, those cuckoos in our nest, and not our actual innate primary motivations. We didn't even choose most of our secondary motivations, they were deposited in us by the culture we happened to be born into, yet they can easily control us.

Our goal is not to find love, and joy, but to remove all barriers which are preventing us from receiving it.” Rumi

Our emotions thrive on love and joy. While love and joy are very similar experiences -similar flavours/ bio chemicals - they’re not exactly the same and nor are their sources the same. Joy is like soft background music that is always there but we can’t connect to it, can’t hear and experience it, if there’s also loud music. Often, it's only when the loud music is turned off that we even know the other music was there all along. When we - if we - experience it we then get it, we understand that less is more and it’s this experience a VM course seeks to introduce us to.

Explained more scientifically; we have two seperate motivational systems; We have our dopamine system and our serotonin/ oxytocin system but we can only access our serotonin system in the absence of the louder dopamine system. For example, those on the other side of the monastery walls are not seeking interpersonal love - they’re in the wrong place for that - so they’re either all naive, and stupid, or they’re seeking something else. That we don’t get it, that we may not know what they’re experiencing doesn’t mean that experience doesn’t exist, it just means we’ve never experienced it ourselves.

“The inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one. Man lives in two worlds.” Jung.

Our emotions do not live in the manmade cultural reality our brains construct. Our cultural realities exist like bubbles within the larger reality, they're not the reality, not all there is to connect to and experience. However, it can seem the reality our brains construct is the reality and therefore be limited to that reality but this leads to emotional mal nourishment. Love is blind, it's got nothing to do with our brain. the love that can be explained is not the love.

While it's always been obvious our emotions live in their own, pre brain, meaningless world, it had been assumed that world was a branch on the same brain/nervous system tree as the meaningful post brain world. We now know they're not just different branches, but completely different trees albeit intertwined thus looking like they're the same tree. As I'm writing this - Sept 26 - Stanford has just proven this complete separation which will, in time, change models we'd previously considered to be accurate. However, for our purposes it makes no real difference as, either way, our emotional motivations clearly exist in a different world than our ego/social motivations do. Explained via the old model; our emotions do not live in the cultural world of labels, catagoies and meanings constructed by our brain; they live in the raw, meaningless, world that exists before our brains reformat that organic data our senses are providing. Our emotions exist in the same world they always have existed in long long before our brains developed the capacity to generate much in the way of labels and meanings.

Our emotions experience the raw data our senses provide while our ego then experiences the reality our brain reformats that data into - via cultural labels and meanings. Understanding we have two systems, that there's two wells we can drink from is important. Our emotions consume the 'apples' raw whilst our brain 'cooks'/processes those apples into something else which our ego then consumes and experiences. Our brain puts 'sauces' on top of the dish - labels and meanings - which we/our ego consumes, and experiences, along with the dish underneath. We're expereincing, or hopefully experincing, both world similtaniously albeit via different motivations. It's easy for the sauces to dominate, to be all we're really tasting, which, in time, becomes all there 'is'. Mere sauces become all that matters and we become emotionally mal nourished given we're no longer bothering ourselves with the quality of the underlying dish that our emotions are nourished on. Those on the other side of the monestary walls are not confused, they exiting one reality to better access the other one. They're turning away from one well in order to find the other, much more satisfying one.

Get too dominated by our ego/ cultural reality and we start cooking all the apples/ we're consuming just sauces, which leads to emotional malnourishment. An emotional detox removes those sauces, removes the attraction to those sauces, reconnecting us to what's underneath and thus we're now orientated towards our emotional interests. There's nothing negative about some sauces, the issue is when we can't discriminate between mere sauces - what satisfies our ego - and the organic something underneath - which satisfies us emotionally. The issue is not sauces per see; it's too many sauces, it's they're on too thick, it's the cumulative disconnecting effect of them that's the issue. The problem tends to be we don't even see them as being just sauces, that we see them as the reality, as all there is, all that matters. Scrape them away and we get this because we experience the massive difference. We get that less is much more because less of one is more of the other and the other is what is important, at least as regards our level of happiness.

There's two wells we can drink from. There's the cultural realities and the reality beyond those walls. If we could hear our emotions we'd hear something like this.

streets have no name

As there's two realities, two wells, there's effectively a spectrum given we can access both to one degree or another. Towards the cynical pole of that spectrum we have Trump who is completely dominated by his ego thus emotionally hollowed out. His ego tree has grown so large it's shaded out his emotional tree - no light is getting in. All he cares about is status, power and wealth as ego satsifaction is all he can now access. If there's only one teat providing pleasant flavours available to us, if we're chained to the one well, then that's 'all' there is for us so we furiously milk that teat to obtain as much as we can from it. Thus Trump proclaims himself the 'greatest', perhaps the bestest ever, given ego satisfaction is the only satisfaction he can now access. The issue here is ego satisfaction is insipid, with a low ceiling, compared to emotional satisfaction. It's something, it's some pleasant bio chemicals, but it's not much. It's just the consolation prize.

At the other end of the spectrum, in a forest, just reclining under a tree with that massive smile on his face, was where Buddha resided. He said; 'By doing nothing, I do everything'. Indeed, if we're already extremely happy what is there to do? Do what? By definition, if we're 10/10 happy, there are no dissatisfied motivations to try and satisfy. What what are we going to scurry around the environment for if there's nothing out there we want?

At one end of the spectrum everything can be nothing whilst at the other nothing can be everything especially when we understand that joy needs space flow into.

We're not out in the environment for no reason. We've got objectives in mind be they immediate objectives - lets get a coffee - or longer term objectives we're trying to advance/satisfy. Our objectives are downstream of our motivations - we're not seeking what we don't want, not seeking a coffee if we don't want coffee. Given our current batch of objectives we make our decisions; we choose among the options we believe we have available to satisfy those objectives. Our decisions determine our actions - that cafe sells coffee so lets walk over there - and our actions take us to one reality or another. Our steps add up taking us here or there yet upstream of it all is our motivations. Sort out our motivations, sort the wheat from the chuff, and gravity does the rest of the sequence.

Detoxing our motivations is upstream transformational therapy as opposed to the much more common midstream incremental therapy which requires fighting against our motivational current. That intervening upstream is much much better is known, at least here and there, but it's doesn't fit the structure of modern societies. People have jobs and are also juggling responsibilities and myrad other motivations so the typical one hour a week type of therapy is all they can reasonably access. Similarly, therapy businesses are businesses adapted to the same structure. For most therapists the mainstream path is the reality -they don't know anything else themselves- and even if they do, how can they offer detoxes? What are they going to sell? Water? We don't really need anyone else to help us detox, all we need is to know how and then step out of our own motivational web for a short time. Our hardwired motivations will come with us and the rest of those old motivational threads can blow away with the wind. We experience the difference, reorientate to our actual interests -new objectives - now that we're reconnected to them and can then spin another web. But now we're building it, now it's relevant - catching what we actually want. It's limited, functional, it's letting plenty of light in and we're not ourselves tangled up in it. Happy days.

Midstream therapy has a very poor success rate - not surprisingly - but it's often better then nothing. Of course, given the limitations of midstream therapy, and the expense involved, these days most needing therapy quickly give up and select a pill instead.

We'll all somewhere on that spectrum perhaps believing the reality we're currently perceiving, and experiencing, is the reality. That the 'us' we see in our mirror is the us. That the motivations whirring away in us belong in us. That it's all rigid and solid, all frozen in place given that's how it seems to be. If that status quo is fine, if we're happy enough as is then we're already at our sweet spot on the spectrum and there's nothing we need to change. Happy days. If we're not happy enough we need to move along the spectrum to find our sweet spot but we're not going to do this if we're frozen solid and deeming that frozen reality the reality. An emotioal detox bounces us along the spectrum proving to us it's existence, introduces us to the other well, whilst giving us the flexibilty we previously lacked. When we bounce from one 'us' to another 'us', when the same reality is now experienced very differently, it's screamingly obvious it's all subjective and fluid. That it's all swirling shades of grey - yin/yang - and not the black and white our brain is reformating it into. We're now out of the rut, we've put the set menu down and can access the buffet beyond.

This life thing we're experiencing is just that; an experience and when we lighten up we can accept this and focus on generating the experiences we want. Those on the higher levels of happiness are hunting the feelings - those invisible somethings - that really matter. They're not hunting status and it's symbols. When we're motivated to be superior we can only do so via the hierarchy of beliefs and values we're subscribed to thus those beliefs and values control us, they're the walls of our rut. If we're humble, if we don't care much about status, we can accept beliefs and values are subjective - recipes - and if they're just recipes we might as well have one that is emotionally nourishing. We're flexible, pragmatic and happy with the alternative being rigid, unhappy but 'superior' yet that superiority only exists in our head. Everyone thinks they're superior, status is dime a dozen; every little niche has it's hierarchy, there's honour among thieves for example. Staying welded to whatever set of beliefs and values we happened to be born into is completely fine if that recipe is generating a satisfactory taste. But if not, of what use is it beyond allowing us to high five our own reflection? Again, that's something, but it's the consolation prize.

Stregnht is fantasy, time is illusion

We all have to survive and necessarily our emotional interests take a back seat to our survival interests. We social primates evolved align with our group given we couldn't survive outside of our group, at least not in the precarious past. Necessarily, our emotional interests need to sometimes take a backseat and let our ego have the steering wheel. But our ego will take us to where it wants to go, will take us to the fields where status grows abundantly, it'll take us to the well that exists in the cultural reality. Our species has a relatively powerful brain, it's just a turbo charged primate brain - don't expect too much - but it's capable of understanding, and then managing, our own operating system.

Is it not percular people will readily learn about their phones operating system to get it purring but will not learn about their own operating system to get themselves purring? Such is the power of our ego; we're already programmed up with beliefs and values which are already giving us a delciious sense of status/approval. Questioning those beliefs and values is questioning our status - ouch - so we're not interested on lifting the colourful veil as what we'll see will contradict what we like to believe. However, if that veil is now a matadors cape, if our mainstream path is not actually very fruitful, then perhaps we have no choice. For the humble it's always weird how most aren't interested in changing their recipe even when it's obvious they need to. Their beliefs are giving them something and they can;t forgo that something for a time to access much more. They can't put down the set menu as it's better then nothing.

Seen a man standing over a dead dog

For most of us, reality slaps us around enough to keep our ego pruned back and we have a reasonable balance between the two motivations; we've got enough status, respect, approval from our in -group plus also emotionally well nourished. We live inside the cultural reality but there's at least some windows in those walls, some light/joy from beyond is getting in. get enough light in and we might see there's a door, but for most of us being within and also accessing joy and love is our sweet spot. Joy is actually what's more important as what is love without joy?Do we have the capacity to love if we lack the capacity to expereince joy?

Again, we also have to survive and generally that involves being on the mainstream path so we juggle our primary motivations as best we can along with all our accumulated secondary motivations. We take ourselves here or there. If we're overloaded and confused we probably just go in circles. However, the very successful amongst us do have to grapple with their ego because if they don't their fate is to be like Trump.

Lights out tonight, trouble in the heartland

I like to quote Springsteen as he accesses both wells, know which one is the valuable one and writes about the struggle. A billionaiaire, fmo

It's hard, perhaps impossible, to explain this simultaneiously so we'll break this intro into sections which, when put together, hopefully make sense. Emotional detoxes are a type of upstream transformational therapy as opposed to the mcuh more common midstream, incremental type of therapies. Understanding the difference will take us some way towards understanding emotional detoxes.

From there we'll explain emotional detoxes via the classic VM course/detox. What does an emotional detox involve and how does it achieve what it achieves? It obviously changes things but what are those things and how are they changed?

Next; secondary motivations need to be explained. What are they, what's their purpose? how did they get within us and how do we delete the ones that are negative, or just irrelivant for us today. If nothing else, they're taking up precious space and, as mentioned, space has a quality all of it's own.

Even if we were to delete all our secondary motivations bringing us back to just our core, innate, primary motivations our emotions are not necessarily suddenly goign to be well nourished. Obviously, connecting to them and noruishing them will be much easier without all those random secondary motivations distracting us but our other primary motivations also compete against our emotional motivations. They have their own jobs to do and don't care about our emotional well being. Why would they? Obviously, our emoions need to take a back seat to our survival motivations but they can easily also be forced into the back seat by our ego motivations which, typically these days, is not actually necesary. Our emotions biggest innate foe is actually our ego but if we can understand our egos job, how it's trying to help us we can then manage it. Ideally, if we define success as happiness - if we primarily value happiness then our ego and emotions are aligned. Happy days.

i do this on different page

ok, this is it - the first intro page.

Upstream vs Midstream therapy

My notes; this goes in early doors as it's relevant and interesting. it then leads into emotional detoxes/vm.

Defining therapy as interventions that organically improve our sense of well being/ level of happiness there’s two distinct types of therapy; There’s the much more common midstream therapies and there's upstream therapies such as motivational detoxes.

Our reality is determined by our actions; we take ourselves to/ build ourselves this reality or that. Our steps/actions add up taking us here or there.

Our actions flow from our decisions; we choose this or that option/ path from the ones we believe are available and our decisions are determined by our objectives. We’re not scurrying around the environment for no reason; we’ve got objectives in mind we’re trying to satisfy. We tend to have short term objectives - lets get a coffee - along with a range of longer term objectives we’re juggling/ seeking to satisfy advance.

Our objectives are downstream from our motivations, and the balance of power between our competing motivations. We don’t seek a coffee - that objective doesn’t exist - if we don’t want a coffee. Wants are motivations - we seek what we want - whilst fears/aversions are motivations away from what we don’t like/want.

Motivations - objectives - decisions - actions - our reality.

Upstream therapy, as the name implies, intervenes at source by pruning back our motivational overgrowth so we’re no longer motivationally confused and can act in our own actual interests. Effectively, given our primary motivations are hardwired in, we’re deleting secondary motivations so we’re left reconnected with our actual innate primary motivations. With that overgrowth pruned back light gets into our emotional core and we experience the massive difference - less is more.

From there our objectives will change, given our motivations have changed, which will change our decisions then actions then reality.

Upstream therapy makes the changes at source by sorting our motivational wheat from the chuff and from there gravity works for us by automatically making the downstream changes.

Midstream therapy, on the other hand, intervenes midstream around objectives and decisions. Here we’re fighting against our own motivational flow/current which makes midstream therapy hard, slow, expensive work and is the main reason it has such a poor success rate. Most give up and just select a pill instead.

One might reasonably wonder why, if upstream therapy is so superior, it’s not much more common? There’s a number of reasons for this with the main one being the structure of our modern societies; people have jobs plus an assortment of responsibilities/other motivations they’re juggling which means the hour a week type of therapy is all they can readily access. Similarly, therapy businesses are businesses that have adapted to the reality/structure that exists. Additionally, therapists only know what they know - what they've been taught - and for most the cultural mainstream path is the reality. They know nothing else and they have bills to pay like the rest of us.

It’s not that it’s not known, here and there, that upstream therapy is vastly superior, it’s that stepping out of our own motivational current for a week, or 10 days, is not compatible with the structure of modern societies. How can a business on main street offer 10 day motivational detoxes? They’re going to sell what? Water? There’s significant money in trying to untangle knots but very little in advising the person to just delete them. If we know how to delete/ prune back our overgrown motivations for what do we really need help with? We can just retreat to somewhere quiet and detox on our own as many thousands do, and have done, throughout history.

As mentioned, this, at least in the East is well known and obvious. Indeed, as I’m writing this - sept 26 - Pyschrirtist Dr …. Was on the Huberman podcast explaining the benefits of upstream therapy;

Obvious to him, but he’s of Indian heritage and this is obvious there. Buddhism began in India and was, incidentally, where I did my VM course 3 decades ago.

If we understand our own operating system we understand our ability to nourish our emotions is impeded by both the build up of secondary motivations, most of which just reflect the culture we happened to be born into, and other primary motivations. Motivations, be they primary, or secondary, are motivating us to spend our time and energy satisfying them so what’s the point in retaining junk, second-hand motivations if they’re disorientating us from our actual interests?

The Maslow heirachy of needs/instincts shows our species hardwired, innate motivations we’re all born with and their hierarchy. Obviously we have survival motivations - we need food, shelter etc - and it’s no surprise they’re our priority; all the rest of our shopping list becomes redundant if we’re dead. Then we’re strongly motivated to have some security, a bit of a buffer between us being in survival mode. Similtanously, we’re juggling emotional motivations and ego motivations plus all the secondary motivations we’ve acquired over time.

As all those motivations have their own idea of what is a good time, and what is a painful time, they’re all motivating us to do this or that, go here or there. They're competing against/pushing against each other and battling ourselves is a battle we can't win.

Our objectives reflect our motivations but, more importantly, the balance of power between them. We’d like a coffee, but that motivation only has a given amount of power which, if satisfying that motivation is too hard, or something more important to us - a stronger motivation - is activated we’ll forgo the coffee and focus on the new priority. A motivation we don’t satisfy doesn’t mean that motivation no longer exists, it means it’s being overpowered by other motivations.

Not surprisingly, over time the motivations that have accumulated in our ‘basket of motivations’ are a tangled, contrary mess with our emotional motivations buried somewhere in there amongst that mess. This state of affairs, as regards happiness, can be a problem as our ability to act in our own interests, including having our emotions well nourished and purring, is seriously compromised. There’s too many cuckoos -foreign motivations- in our nest and we’re scurrying through the environment serving their interests, not ours. Indeed, unless we return to our core, primary motivations how do we even know what our own interests even are? At the top of the Maslow hierarchy of motivations we see ‘self actualisation’. No matter how we define that vague term it clearly involves discriminating between self and non self.

How do we do this? Welcome to emotional detoxes as that’s the service it provides.

Emotional Detoxes.

My notes; this explains VM - what the course involves and how it deleted motivations.

Again, we’ll explain emotional/ motivational detoxes via the VM detox as its barebones structure allows the fundamentals to be more readily grasped.

We’ve already covered the core of what emotional detoxes achieve so here we’ll look into the how of it all.

A 10 day VM course involves spending the vast bulk of our non sleeping time just sitting crosslegged and meditating. Meditating here means focusing on what’s happening inside us to notice the ebb and flow of feelings. We soon connect the dots; our motivations motivate via the various flavours of pleasure and pain. How else?

Using an extreme example;

Secondary Motivations

My notes; our emotions face competition from both our secondary motivations and from other primary motivations.

This explains what is meant by 'secondary motivations'.

Emotions vs Ego.

This lightly covers ego vs emotions - mentions Trump and spectrum.