UPDATE: I highly recommend this video discussion for all Buddhists and all practitioners of FIML. Barrett describes the fundamental reality of human consciousness as it grapples with emotion, sensation, bodily feedback and general states of physical being. Her insights are 100% consonant with Buddhist philosophy and FIML practice. Both FIML and Buddhism differ from what Barrett is saying only in that in addition to the emptiness, impermanence, and vagueness of human emotional states they also see human thought, belief, interpretation, perception and comprehension in the same way. In FIML practice, these deeply important uncertainties also include language, semiotics, communicative acts, and the psychologies associated with them.

At one point, Barrett says she is not saying there is nothing there or no truth to emotional states. She is just saying they typically are not clearly definable and often mistaken. Exactly right. I would add that Barret sees a very important part of the underlying problem of human psycho-spiritual existence but she only sees that one part and offers no more than a description of it.

FIML practice provides not only a more accurate description of the problem but also a method to greatly enhance our understanding of all human states of being as they occur in real-world, real-time situations. FIML differs from traditional Buddhist practice in that it offers a robust practice for two people to use together.

To emphasize a major point: Barrett has caught a very big fish but is holding it by the tail only. Buddhism is based on the whole fish as is FIML. Both Buddhism and FIML offer deeply important ways to deal with the whole fish. FIML adds a precise practice between two people that speeds up understanding. Buddhism claims there is an ‘ultimate reality’, a Buddha mind above and beyond the ‘relative reality’ of mundane uncertainty and clinging. FIML provides deep psychological understanding and correction of the mundane problem while also allowing glimpses of Buddhist ultimate reality. Barrett, Buddhism, and FIML all are addressing the same thing from different points of view. ABN

UPDATE: This video is a delightful 2+ hours discussion, not to be missed. Buddhists will enjoy how it elucidates Buddhist teachings on the Five Skandhas and how they underlie Buddhist understanding of human psychology.

It is also an excellent description of why you must do FIML. It provides a detailed and nuanced picture of why FIML practice is essential for full optimization of human psychology, language use, semiotics, and mental functioning. FIML has no content and does zero to define you or anyone. FIML shows you how to gather information and discover for yourself.

FIML is a method that allows partners to isolate significant (or not) moments during real-time, real-world communication that can be identified and agreed upon by both partners and thus become objectively analyzable (in the sense that both partners agree on what the moment was or what it entailed). That is how language can greatly help us understand how our speech, sensations, emotions, bodily states are functioning in the real-world in real-time.

The hard part about FIML is you cannot at the inception of a FIML moment sit back, like Barrett and Huberman, and just wander around pleasantly talking about theories and ideas within a well-defined (and restricted) scientific paradigm.* The first moments of a FIML query are by definition unexplained and undescribed to both partners.

Once identified and described the unique, idiosyncratic import of those moments will be discovered. And often what is discovered will be of next-to-no importance or be some sort of mutual or one-sided mistake or trivial misinterpretation. At other times, deep and deeply interesting patterns or critical associations will be discovered. At those times, you will be able to clearly see how your habitual mind is functioning in a real-world, real-time situation.

Since FIML moments are moments, they are small enough and well-described enough for partners to mutually clearly understand and admit what has happened without reservations. This is extremely refreshing, especially when experienced scores and then hundreds of times. There is no other way to get this information and mutually understand it than FIML practice.

* I do not mean to slight or dismiss Barrett or Huberman here. They have provided a superb description of an extremely serious problem and also illustrated how science today has not solved it. Barrett mentions how serious the problem is but does not provide a solution to it. Knowing the problem is there is a good start. It’s like identifying a disease. Solving the problem as FIML does is the next step. FIML treats the disease and largely cures it. I 100% agree with Barrett when she emphasizes how serious this problem is. I see its seriousness as being even greater than she does. This problem is far worse than a few mistaken convictions in law courts or a persistent fog of interpersonal confusion. It is a constant ever-present demon in all of us and it leads to enormous suffering, sadness, violence, murder, tribalism, worse. As for science, FIML is a subjective science, possibly the realest and most important subjective science there is right now.

In Barrett’s vocabulary, basic FIML works with the very fine ‘granularity’ of emotion/ sensation/ interpretation. A next step after identifying these granular moments during FIML is to analyze/ discuss how they are related to other granularities and also less granular more abstract habits or mental states/ conditions; this is where in Barrett’s terms FIML ‘adds dimensionality’ to our worlds. What is remarkable about FIML is the dimensionality we add is based on mutually agreed objective idiosyncratic data.

Around the 1:30 mark and beyond, Barrett describes what Buddhists know as the Five Skandhas — 1) form/ percept/ stimulus, 2) sensation (bodily action), 3) perception (more detail and feedback), 4) activity (more detail, feedback and abstraction), 5) consciousness/ mental state (delusional, or within relative reality). The Five Skandhas, of course, are fractal, dynamic, fast-moving, multi-granular, and describe/ categorize bodily-mental states at all levels of delusional/ hallucinatory/ relative ‘reality’.

‘Get your butterflies flying in formation’. ABN