Beggaring belief - part IV

Part I Here

You have heard of “the zone” right?

The zone where everything is effortless and you forget yourself. This is the brain working temporarily without this inhibitory mechanism quite simply. Now before you even go in to the interview, you are probably nervous about the interview.

This is natural to feel nervous, we believe that we have to go in and make a good impression. Maybe you feel quite anxious and the thoughts arise about what the interviewers will think of you, whether you will be able to sell yourself in the correct way etc... This is exactly the inhibitory mechanism of self at work.

At this point this is the feedback of thought that starts to gain momentum and causes you some unnecessary worrying. You tell yourself not to worry but rather than calm you down, it actually has the opposite effect. It is the brain producing thoughts about an illusory entity and what this fictional entity has tied in to the outcome of this event. It is literally thought being produced in reference to a perceived threat, to a perceived entity that does not exist.

This is literally the brain warping reality to fit its beliefs. In reality, all you have to do is go in a room and talk to some people, its not such a big deal. However through this illusory construct of self, there is a sense of importance and the gravity of the situation is massively amplified.

As I said it is natural to feel a little nervous but if through the interview, you are constantly wondering what they think of you, analysing what you are saying and trying to come across as intelligent witty or whatever, you are actually repressing the brain through thought. Rather than focussing on the task at hand, the brain is diverting itself in to thinking about something not real. Rather than thinking about the task at hand the brain is trying to deal with a situation and imagining a false construct of self simultaneously.

The brain is actually subject to an inhibitory function, through this idea of self. Go figure.

We can also take any point in the diagram and we can try and layer another scenario on top. I read a post that a woman posted on a psych forum and the crux of the post was her basically saying that she had everything that she thought would make her happy, yet she was getting depressed about the fact that her life seemed empty. She had a loving husband, a family and a house and yet she expected that she would be living in domestic bliss.

You see, the self is always striving, always wanting more, hungry for the next set of attachments to feed on. Once it stops getting these new attachments, the sense of self starts to become threatened, as without new fuel all the time, the sense of self begins to lose its reinforcements.

As the brain is tricked in to thinking it is a real thing through the belief structure, we again start start a feedback cycle in which the brain perceives that without this reinforcement of the illusion, that it is actually a perceived threat to its survival. 
So you can have everything you think you need, yet you are still subject to this illusory mechanism. The self is tied in to this survival drive and causes negative feedback of thought about an illusory mechanism which sets off our neuro - chemical punishment system.

Right here we come against the neurological binding problem. That is a post in itself but here it is plain to see how our neuro – chemistry can be directly affected by negative thought about a fictional reference.

Depression not only affects thought, it has been shown to alter the bodies chemistry. This is not actually natural. Well it is totally natural but... it was never supposed to be this way. The entity of self was never supposed to be believed to be a real thing. 
The “I” function was there to give us the ability to analyse our own cognition which resulted in a massive leap of intelligence but it was not actually supposed to be believed as a real thing.

The brain has simply warped reality to its model, to reference a fictional entity. However, this “I” function was a very useful evolutionary function. It is in no way an evolutionary glitch however, the brain was never supposed to actually believe it to be real.

 The brain was supposed to be able to use meta cognition, to allow itself to build conceptual models. It was never actually supposed to map a fictional entity over reality that was responsible for the brains thinking and actions. To believe that this is so is pure fantasy. It IS simply the brain warping reality to fit its subjective model.

So say we don't get the job. There is some kind of level of negative feedback, especially if we staked in to our attachment and from this attachment began to form attachments to other desirable qualities.

For instance, maybe you had already started planning on buying a new place or a new car. So on top of our attachments we have formed another level of false attachments. When the failure becomes apparent, we will feel negative about it but hey, that is normal to feel disappointment.

Our body doesn't reward us with good feelings when we don't accomplish things. This is a normal part of the bodies feedback that we can experience and that is down to our evolutionary psychology and our neuro – chemical reward system.

There is no problem here until our façade of attachments comes crashing down. As the self invests in to these things and tries to derive a sense of self from the outcome, this particular outcome can be viewed as an inconvenience all the way to a total catastrophe, depending on the investment in to the attachment.

At this point, maybe the thought “nothing ever goes right for me” may crop up, as you beat yourself up over your failure to get the job. Now at this point, this is where thought is literally feeding back in to itself. The self image that crumbles causes negative thoughts about a non existent entity to self perpetuate.

 Thoughts about negative thoughts and what they make you as a person will continue to cycle and this feedback can cause from a little, all the way to a lot of distress for a person.

At some point, an evaluation will be made about this and a judgement will be made about what this makes you as a person.

Obviously you view yourself negatively in this light and the natural thought is to think you should have done better. It is a simple case of reactivating this core belief of I'm not good enough again. Even if life has been going good for a while, you will suddenly find that after all this time, this core belief will be reactivated.

Now for many people, it is not a catastrophe and they can move on from this but if you throw a few other negative things in to the mix that happen around the same time, you have this potent mix of negative feedback and a downward spiral of cognitive dissonance, that may or may not result in depression in varying degrees.

Some people are better able to cope than others with the cognitive dissonance, some people see it as a tragedy, others will see it as a minor convenience but all of us will experience some degree of negative feelings about this event.

On the flip side, we got the job and rather than be wallowing in self pity, we feel good, really good in fact. So good, we go and get a loan for the new car and everything is running swimmingly now. However, have you ever noticed that once everything is finally sorted, you are happy for a short time but for some reason, you expected to feel differently than you do?

It maybe a short time but as the old saying goes, “more wants more”. This is exactly the problem with this illusory construct of self. In order to perpetuate the illusion, the lie needs constant reinforcement of its existence. How exactly does it do this?

Part V Here