Category Archives: Buddhism

What is FIML and what does it do?

by ABN

FIML is fundamentally a communication technique with wide-ranging implications for many other aspects of being human.

FIML removes mistakes from communications between partners. FIML reduces or eliminates neurotic feelings. FIML encourages honesty, integrity, responsibility, and many other virtues. It greatly improves communication. It transforms beliefs in a static self, a personality, an ego, or a set autobiography to a more realistic understanding of the dynamic nature of being, speaking, listening, remembering, functioning. FIML skills are useful when dealing with people other than the FIML partner. FIML greatly reduces the need to rely on external standards (public semiotics) for self-definition and/or communication. FIML elevates consciousness in the sense that FIML practice is done consciously and improvements are made in partners’ consciousnesses. FIML works directly with partners’ experiences and thus is a deeply experiential practice that generates experiential understanding.

FIML greatly supports Buddhist practice and though FIML is not specifically a traditional Buddhist teaching, it does not contradict any core Buddhist teaching. For many people, FIML may be a very good tool to use with the Dharma. This is so because FIML allows each partner to identify kleshas (mistaken interpretations) the moment they arise and to correct them with input from their partner. FIML also helps partners experience the reality of no-self, impermanence, emptiness, and dependent origination. When these truths are experienced together with a partner, both partners are able to deeply confirm the validity of their insights as both share in this confirmation. Both partners will notice kleshas being eliminated and both will be able to confirm this to each other, through explicit statements to each other and also through observations of each other.

FIML practice also helps partners understand and experience how the First and Second Noble Truths actually operate in their lives. When one partner discovers a klesha through a FIML query, they will see very clearly how their mistaken interpretation, if not corrected, could be the source of suffering. When they correct their mistake, they will see how eliminating a klesha is liberating and how it produces a bit of “enlightenment” (Third and Fourth Noble Truths).

FIML practice encourages honesty between partners and many other virtues. FIML partners will directly experience the importance of being honest with their partner and treating them with the utmost respect and integrity. This strengthens partners’ understanding of the Buddha’s teachings on morality (sila).

FIML’s emphasis on fully understanding the roles of language and semiotics supports the Buddha’s teachings on Right Speech (for language) and wisdom (for semiotics). In the Prajna Sutras, “dharmas of the mind” (laksana) very closely correspond to the modern English word semiotics as that word is used in FIML practice. By focusing on this word and concept and experiencing with a partner how semiotics affect everything we think and do, partners will gain great insight into the kind of consciousness described in the Diamond Sutra–a consciousness without the “marks” or “characteristics” (laksana, semiotics) of a self, a human being, a sentient being, or a being that takes rebirth.

FIML accomplishes most of what it does by being a technique that is called up quickly, the moment it is needed. FIML queries almost always lead to long and interesting discussions, but the basic technique must be done quickly. The moment either partner feels a klesha arising, they should stop and query their partner about what is/was in their mind. After hearing your partner’s honest answer, compare it to what you had thought. The better data from your partner should eliminate that particular klesha after a small number of its appearances. Remember, your partner’s data is better because you asked them quickly enough for them to be able to recall with great accuracy what really was in their mind during the moments you were asking them about. If you wait too long or get into long stories or theories, or become emotional, you will miss the chance to catch that klesha. When you do catch a klesha, feel good about it. That means there is one less hindrance in your mind.

Non-Buddhists will experience the same results from FIML practice as Buddhists, though their understanding of these results will be framed differently. We have discussed FIML from a non-Buddhist point of view in many other posts. Interested readers are encouraged to browse some of those posts for more on that angle.

we do not sample our world continuously but in discrete snapshots

by ABN

This report–Brain oscillations reveal that our senses do not experience the world continuously–supports the core activity of FIML practice, which entails noticing the first instant(s) of the arising of an emotional jangle (that is typically tied to a much more involved “mistaken interpretation” within the brain). By interfering with the first instant(s) of arising, FIML practice forestalls the habitual wave of neurotic interpretation that normally follows. Instead, new information–better data obtained from the FIML partner–is used to replace the cue that led to the initial jangle, thus redefining that cue.

Professor Gregor Thut of the University of Glasgow, where the study was conducted, says of its results: “For perception, this means that despite experiencing the world as a continuum, we do not sample our world continuously but in discrete snapshots determined by the cycles of brain rhythms.”

I would further hypothesize that the same holds true for our “perceptions” of inner emotional states. In this context, recall the five skandhas of Buddhism–form, sensation, perception, activity, consciousness. A form can arise in the mind or outside of the mind. This form gives rise to a sensation (a FIML jangle is a type of sensation), which gives rise to perception, followed by activity (mental or physical), and lastly consciousness.

In Buddhist teachings, the five skandhas occur one after the other, very rapidly. They are not a continuous stream but rather a series of “discrete snapshots”, to use Thut’s words. In FIML practice, partners want to interfere with what has become a habitual “firing” of their five skandhas based on (neurotic) learned cues. FIML practice strives to prevent full-blown neurotic consciousness (the fifth skandha) from taking control of the mind by replacing the source of that consciousness with a more realistic interpretation of the neurotic cue. The cue corresponds to form in the five skandhas explanation. The more realistic interpretation of that cue is based on the true words of the partner.

The five skandhas can also help us understand how FIML is different from more or less normal psychological analysis. In normal, or traditional, analysis we use theories and schema to understand ourselves. In FIML we use a specific technique to interfere with habitual neurotic “firings” of the five skandhas. FIML partners are encouraged to theorize and speak about themselves in any way they like, and it is very helpful to do this, but the core FIML activity cannot be replaced by just theorizing or telling stories.

Here is a link to the study itself: Sounds Reset Rhythms of Visual Cortex and Corresponding Human Visual Perception.

Allen J. Frances on the overdiagnosis of mental illness

by ABN

 

“It’s always better to under-diagnose than over-diagnose.”—Allen J. Frances

This talk is worth watching.

As a side note, I hope that readers of this site, especially Buddhists and/or those practicing FIML, will understand at least some of what Frances is saying as being about how societies organize their semiotics. We still use priest-like figures with esoteric knowledge and identifiable clothing and mannerisms to write large tomes (the DSM) that define what is real or healthy or normal.

FIML practice is designed to put much more of the process of defining who you are in the hands of partners themselves. My comments are not directed at Frances, who does a good job with his talk. I just want to point out that the ways our common semioses are organized or structured are very much subject to political and economic forces as well as to the power of the media and society’s hierarchical institutions. FIML gives partners an opportunity to rationally discover and redefine the terms and semiotics that contribute to how they see themselves as individuals and how they see the world(s) they live in. I think Buddhism is supposed to do much the same thing, but Buddhism itself has been subject to the same kinds of forces as the DSM, resulting in much of the teachings becoming little more than a static semiotic–or culture-bound standard–that, though good and helpful, is less than optimal.

How to do FIML

by ABN

Two people–A and B–are talking.

A says something (X) that makes B feel an emotional jangle. The jangle could be slight or it could be strong.

B is mindful of this jangle, aware that it has happened within one second or so.

Before B goes any further and starts to call on her usual interpretations of what her jangle “means”, she stops and asks A: “What was your state of mind when you said X“?

A answers honestly, providing a complete description of his state of mind during the few seconds surrounding his saying X.

B does not hear anything in A‘s description that justifies her emotional jangle. To be certain she might want to ask a follow-up question: “Are you sure you were not implying that you are bored when you said X“?

A answers honestly and says, “Yes, I am sure. I was not and am not bored. When I said X, I just meant that we don’t need to be concerned with that one aspect of the subject. I did not mean that I am bored with the subject, and certainly not with you.”

A trusts B to tell her the truth. Thus, she is forced to realize that her jangle was not justified.

__________________

At this point A might want to describe her new understanding to B and discuss it with him, either briefly or at length. The choice is hers. B may also have something to say about what happened.

__________________

A few things to understand about the model described above:

  • A jangle is the first emotional/physical/hormonal response instigated by a neurosis.
  • Neurosis in FIML is defined as a “mistaken interpretation”, or an “ongoing mistaken interpretation”.
  • A mistaken interpretation can simply arise out of conditions and need not arise out of an ongoing habit. It is still a mistake and it is best to correct this mistake, but on its first few appearances, these sorts of mistakes are at worst proto-neuroses. Only if they continue will they become full blown neuroses, or “ongoing mistaken interpretations”.
  • In our example above, person A does have a neurosis, an ongoing mistaken interpretation, concerning the way people speak to her. She tends to mistakenly interpret many tones of voice or other cues as indicating boredom with her.
  • (A‘s neurosis is just an example. FIML partners will have other kinds of neuroses–feeling disrespected, unwanted, frightened, etc.)
  • Let’s say that the example above is the third time that A has asked B about this neurosis when it first appears as a jangle, and let’s say that each time B has described a state of mind that is not bored. Firstly and most importantly, A believes B because she trusts him. Secondly, A can tell from what B has said–how he described his mind–that he really was not bored. He was thinking something else.
  • Now that she has seen that her “boredom” jangle was a mistake three times in a row, A‘s mind will very naturally begin to abandoned that mistaken interpretation.
  • She may ask about it a few more times, but when she keeps getting similar answers from B, her mind will come to realize that it is wasting energy creating a painful interpretation that isn’t true.
  • In many cases, A‘s mistaken interpretation will simply disappear from her mind with no other work on her part. In a short time, she may hardly be able to even remember what it was.
  • Her neurosis will drop away from her almost effortlessly because her mind will be fully convinced that she has been making a costly mistake. Her mind will be convinced of this because she trusts her partner and knows that he is giving her truthful information.
  • In the example above, A becomes fully aware of her initial emotional jangle within one second or so. Buddhists who regularly practice mindfulness will find this fairly easy to do in most cases. People who have never been exposed to Buddhist mindfulness training may find this more difficult, depending on their backgrounds.
  • Mindfulness means that we are observant, mindful, of how we react to things. With practice, it is possible to be mindful of the very start of even a strong emotional reaction.
  • Almost as soon as a FIML partner notices (is mindful of) a jangle arising, they should start a FIML query by asking their partner what was in their mind as in the above example.
  • The partner making the query should strive to hold any further emotional reaction (the full-blown neurotic response) in abeyance.
  • If their mindfulness is good, they should be able to see that, so far, all that has happened is a word was spoken and a jangle arose.
  • The point of the FIML query is to discover if the jangle was justified or mistaken.
  • A FIML query should be spoken in as neutral a tone of voice as possible, though partner B should be able to understand if A‘s feelings start to show a bit. B needs to be mindful of what A needs at this point.
  • A needs an accurate description from B of his state of mind.

__________________

The key to FIML practice is being mindful of the jangle as soon as it appears, and then making a query in a neutral tone of voice (so your partner will not start reacting to you). FIML is different from an ordinary discussion of “personal issues” in that FIML practice is designed to capture and isolate a real emotional jangle before the mind brings in all the usual baggage that goes with that jangle. Partners may find it interesting or beneficial to discuss childhood experiences or theories about why they feel the ways they do, but these discussions should come after the basic FIML practice of determining whether the initial jangle was justified. I am confident that most jangles, if not all, will not be justified. Please see other posts for more details on FIML practice.

Some basic benefits of FIML practice

by ABN
  • FIML clears up communication problems in the moment (at the time they occur and just afterward) while establishing a valuable precedent for clearing up future problems, which are inevitable.
  • FIML helps partners see their own neuroses (mistaken interpretations) and understand how those neuroses operate in their lives during a real moment of their lives. Each basic FIML discussion is based on a real problem identified by one or both partners.
  • Being able to efficiently and effectively fix real problems as they occur gives partners a sense of confidence and joy.
  • If only one partner had a problem with something, both partners still benefit because the second partner will come to understand how the first hears or speaks and why. Partners will increase their understandings of each other as well as of language, semiotics, communication, emotion, psychology, etc.
  • Each FIML discussion can be extended into other fields (history, science, art, Buddhism, etc.) as much as partners want. This helps both partners increase their awareness of how the large “net” of cultural semiotics is put together and where they stand in relation to it.
  • Each FIML discussion forms a basis, or can serve as an example, for the next discussion. After a single neurosis has been identified a few times, partners will learn to recognize it immediately and deal with it very quickly.
  • Fixing one neurosis increases confidence and skill, making it easier to fix the next or to deepen discussions to include other kinds of psychological material.
  • Once partners are reasonably skilled at FIML, they will find they are able to deal with a much broader range of subjects because they have communication techniques that allow them to quickly overcome misunderstandings.
  • Once the skills are developed, FIML discussions are a lot of fun. In many ways, there is nothing more interesting.
  • FIML practice greatly supports Buddhist practice and should serve to help Buddhists gain immediate and very personal experiential comprehension of the Dharma.
  • Buddhist terms like delusion, suffering, liberation, wisdom, karma, compassion and more will take on new meaning as they become less an abstract code for behavior and more a personally understood aspect of our own behavior.
  • FIML helps us see for ourselves in real time how our own particular delusions create suffering, and how we can attain liberation from those delusions.
  • FIML works with very small instances of delusion so it is neither painful nor embarrassing. Indeed, it is a great pleasure to eliminate delusion.

Notes

by ABN
  • All motivation and action is based on an assessment of “reality”.
  • Public assessments include the sciences, mainstream psychologies and religions, various traditions such as the arts, sports, work, etc. The general elements of these assessment are agreed on by many people. This makes them sort of satisfying within a limited sphere of thought. They can hold a good deal of psychological water, but not all of it.
  • Private assessments are usually neurotic (mistaken) because even if shared with others, they tend to contain many unfounded assumptions. These assumptions often appear true to the individual but don’t hold up well if exposed to other views or better evidence.
  • Not only do neither public nor private assessments of reality as described above completely satisfy, but even when combined, they fail to fully satisfy. This is because the problem of interpersonal ambiguity cannot be answered in those ways.
  • FIML practice provides a means for partners to reach a reasonable assessment of reality that includes both wholesome public and wholesome private components. The private components are made wholesome through FIML practice because partners actually have the means to achieve satisfying mutual understanding, to remove ambiguity.
  • FIML partners should feel that they can say what they want to each other. They should also feel that they can refrain from saying things they don’t want to say.
  • Most people tend to see other people as being on some sort of scale–they might be seen as “normal” or “crazy”, “responsible” or “irresponsible”, “reliable” or “unreliable”, etc.
  • These scales are always a mixture of public and private components as described above.
  • FIML partners, in contrast, need only ask how is the non-FIML person adapting to ambiguity? What standards have they chosen or forced on themselves? What standards do they use to assess “reality”?
  • Their standards will always be skewed one way or the other. To simplify, they will either be fairly strict adherents to a public code or fairly eccentric adherents to private neuroses, or most commonly, a mixture of these two.
  • Even Buddhist practice can fall victim to this problem. Insofar as Buddhist practice is nothing more than an imported public standard, it cannot satisfy for long. Buddhist practice plus FIML will satisfy because FIML allows partners to establish mutual interpersonal standards that both of them can understand and agree upon completely. These standards are not the imported standards of someone else, but self-generated, mutually generated standards created by the partners themselves.
  • If you don’t fill the void of interpersonal ambiguity, you will have to compensate by compartmentalizing your life, importing standards from the public sphere, or generating your own neuroses (mistaken interpretations). This point may seem obvious or trivial, but it is huge. Emotional suffering, delusion, the First Noble Truth all stem from this problem.

Why you can’t fix it with generalities

by ABN

Psychological, cognitive, emotional, or communicative problems cannot be fundamentally corrected by using general analyses or generalized procedures. You can teach someone to think and see differently, even to behave differently, by such procedures, but you cannot bring about deep change by using them. The reason this is so is change through generalizations does little more than substitute one external semiosis for another. The person seeking change will not experience deep change because all they are essentially doing is importing a different explanation of their “condition” into their life.

This happens with Buddhists who remain attached to surface meanings of the Dharma as well as to people seeking mainstream help for emotional problems. Any change will feel good for a while in most cases, but after some time stasis and a recurrence of the original problem, or something similar to it, will occur. You cannot become enlightened by importing someone else’s ideas. You cannot achieve deep transformation by replacing one inculcated semiosis with another. You cannot find your authentic “self” by using the static ideas of others.

The way around this problem is to use a technique that is at its core entirely dynamic. Buddhist mindfulness, which stresses attentiveness in and to the moment, is a dynamic technique. The problem with this technique in the modern world is it is not well-suited to the cacophony of signs and symbols that surround us almost all the time. Mindfulness too often entails being mindful of a cultural semiosis that is itself a tautology, a trap that does not contain within itself an obvious exit.

Mindfulness coupled with FIML practice overcomes this problem because the interactive dynamism of FIML gives partners a tool that strengthens mindfulness while at the same time affording them the opportunity to observe in the moment how their habitual semiosis operates, and why it operates that way. FIML gives partners the means to create a rational leverage-point that they can both share and use to grapple with neurotic issues that have always eluded generalized treatments.

FIML does not tell partners how to be or what to think. It describes nothing more than a technique that gives partners access to their deep “operating systems”. If you hack your “operating system” with FIML practice, you will find that you are able to eliminate neuroses (kleshas in Buddhist terms) and replace them with a semiosis (subculture) of your and your partner’s own choosing. To do FIML, partners must have a deep ethical, emotional, and intellectual commitment to each other, but it is important to recognize that these are not static or generalized ideas. They are dynamic principles upon which the transformational behaviors of FIML are built.

Do antidepressants do more harm than good?

by ABN

Link to study (Primum non nocere: an evolutionary analysis of whether antidepressants do more harm than good).

I have seen a good deal of criticism leveled at this paper, but its reasoning seems sound to me and worth considering.

From the paper: “Ultimately, we come down on the side that the benefits of antidepressants are generally outweighed by their costs, though there may be specific populations where their use is warranted.” (Emphasis mine)

Most of the criticisms I have read of this paper are based on anecdotes (they worked for me) or attacking the journal that published the paper or that they didn’t do any studies of their own. Note that the authors’ argument is not based on a particular experiment but rather on the “…principle of evolutionary medicine that the disruption of evolved adaptations will degrade biological functioning.” Note also that their conclusions are qualified: “Because serotonin regulates many adaptive processes, antidepressants could have many adverse health effects.” And: “We conclude that altered informed consent practices and greater caution in the prescription of antidepressants are warranted.”

I tend to agree with this conclusion and though I have seen anti-depressants do much good, it is almost certainly true that they are over prescribed and very unlikely that they do no harm at all. Thus, the conclusion “…that altered informed consent practices and greater caution in the prescription of antidepressants are warranted” seems well-justified, even if some of the reasoning leading to that conclusion may prove to be wrong.

For Buddhists, there are many other practices to try before resorting to anti-depressants. For FIML practitioners, we would hope that in many cases partners will realize that depression is a symptom of living in a crazy world.

Mutual transformation

by ABN

The right goal of interpersonal relations should be mutual transformation. To be more precise, mutually beneficial mutual transformation.

Most of us would agree with this and most of us would hope that that is what we are doing in our important relationships. But are we?

I am sure many of us have joined groups or pursued friendships where we felt that this was what we were doing–often both parties have felt this way–only to discover that, eventually, something goes wrong and the mutual part or the transformational part gets lost or damaged.

This happens because one or both parties begin seeking stasis rather than transformation. Or one or both become selfish rather than mutual. And these sorts of outcomes occur because–assuming both parties were sincere in the beginning–they cannot maintain mutual understanding. They develop “artistic differences”, as the saying goes, or become “incompatible” in one way or another.

Sometimes people part ways and sometimes they soldier on, accepting the moderate warmth of stasis over the coldness of loneliness and starting over.

If we base our relations on emotions only–love, affection, friendly feelings–and fail to make them  consistently mutually transformational, they are bound to founder or become unsatisfying. One way people try to get around this is to make their relations mutually beneficial in material ways. All this does is mutually trap people in material conditions and a material outlook.

Children often form mutually transformational relationships with each other because they are growing quickly and have loads of new material to digest and understand. Isn’t that one of the main reasons we sometimes miss being kids, being able to act like kids? We miss childhood not just because we had less responsibility then but also because we grew along with our friends in ways that were mutually transformational. Of course, it was never all like that. But life for most of us surely does get flatter or more static as we become adults. Where kids are dynamically socializing, adults too often are socialized into static subcultures that do not even permit transformation. As adults, we have to play the angles, get along, be careful what we say, etc. Being a “mature” adult usually means being socialized into a static subculture that requires us to maintain the same beliefs and practices for years, if not decades.

You cannot expect mutual transformation in most jobs or in most clubs or in most religious groups or in most groups of friends. Why? Because groups usually are held together by static semiotics–they have rules, codes, beliefs, attitudes, required behaviors. And those things foreclose transformation away from those things.

Mutual transformation is a good standard for assessing what is happening in your life. It can help us gain insight into a wide range of human relationships. Mutual transformation depends on equality and lateral communication. Equality and lateral communication is fundamental to finding your way out of the overweening semiotics of whatever culture or subculture you belong to. Cultural semiotics are mental events. They happen within our minds. How can you transform them or transform yourself out of them if you cannot grasp them and discuss them with your most intimate friend?

Mutual transformation requires both parties to be able to change. Rather than be unwilling to admit we are wrong, we should be delighted to discover that we have been wrong because now our lives have one less error in them. Politics is intensely boring largely because politicians almost always have to be consistent and never admit fault. That is the opposite of mutual transformation, personal growth, or real Buddhist practice.

The purpose of FIML practice is to help partners mutually transform themselves. FIML gives partners the tools to use language in ways that transform both of them for the better. In a way, FIML lets us be kids again–kids with adult brains that have at last come to understand how to use our minds and tongues to speak honestly, creatively, wonderfully to each other.