Are we just automatic reactions?

Am I talking to sets of automatic reactions? 

I keep coming back to the disturbing question of determinism - basically the idea that, in one way or another, free will is an illusion. To begin with, I believe in free will and I think that the answer to the riddle, as with so many other things, lies in conscious awareness. 

But once I truly started seeing all the forces, both within and without, that govern our behavior, it was an overwhelming experience. One that continues to overwhelm me. 

Three of my main negative driving forces, are low self-esteem, the need to be seen and a sense of powerlessness. My behavior and the choices that I make can often be boiled down to these forces.

This does not always lead to bad results. All of these forces can lead me to take action. But they can also lead to feelings of hopelessness and that there is a sense of desperation in the things that I do. And either way, I am not free to act in an authentic way. Wounds that I have attracted during my life, rather than my authentic self, drive my behavior. 

This is fueled even more by how I imagine that I’m expected to behave. Either by culture, society or the social group that I’m already in. Or to be consistent with what I unconsciously believe to be my personality. 

All of this was not easy to see. The mind can always come up with a rational reason for unreasonable behavior. If it even has to. Oftentimes my behavior just passes me by without me even thinking about it.

But the more I bring conscious awareness into my life, the more I find myself being able to observe what is going on, both within and without, and make a choice that is proactive rather than reactive. The more I am also able to see what drives my behavior in a certain situation.

Defending negative behavior to avoid feeling bad

This keeps us trapped in negative behavioral patterns. I think that this has something to do with us erroneously and unconsciously assume that we choose the negative behavior. And therefore we think that it is something that we have to defend. Because it is almost as if it is a part of who we are. So we come up with all kinds of excuses and justifications.

What can we do instead? The first thing is to realize that we are okay the way we are. This may sound paradoxical, but hear me out. Negative behaviors do not make us bad. At the core, we are all beloved children of God. There is nothing shameful in having acquired some baggage along the way.

And here comes another paradox: It is more or less never a good idea to point out someone else’s flaws. Because 99% of the time, this will only lead to a defensive reaction. But if we can take a step back, let go of the defensive impulse and actually consider what is being said, when someone criticizes us, we have a lot to gain from it. We might come to the conclusion that what is being said is totally unfounded. But our gut reaction is often to dismiss the criticism off hand, without first taking it into consideration. 

I want to conclude this post by talking a little more about the baggage that we cling to. It’s even okay to not want to let go of it. Or to not be ready to let go of it yet. We don’t need to explain or justify. In fact, we don’t need to do anything at all. But if there comes a time when we realize that the pain of holding on to it, outweighs the pain of letting go, why not let it go, if we feel that we can do what it takes to do so? It’s much easier to do this if we don’t have leads of stories attached to it, that tell us why we can’t.

Bad habits on bad days

Have you noticed that bad habits tend to rear their ugly face whey you have a bad day? Of course you have. Everyone has. The last part you maybe didn’t know though. Because since many are dead set on looking perfect, they rarely talk about such things. 

This is similar to what in psychological terms is called the “what the hell effect”. The “what the hell effect” comes into play when you feel like you’ve already indulged in something, so you might as well do it some more. Here it’s more like: “I’m already in a bad place right now, so who cares if I make it even worse.” Combined with the craving for some instant gratification to escape one’s problems of course. Because when we escape into our senses, we get a temporary relief from our painful thoughts and emotions.

Even if I don’t plan on giving up when I indulge on bad days, it is as if something is pulling me towards doing just that. As soon as my balance is upset, it is as if something tries to use this fact to pull me even deeper into unconsciousness. Deeper into unconscious behavior. If this is subconscious neurosis, Vadim Zeland’s pendulums, archons, demons or the actual devil, I don’t know. All I know is that as soon as I’m feeling weak, I feel this pull towards making bad decisions that goes beyond just wanting to escape my pain. 

This is quite difficult to spot. We explain, make excuses for, rationalize etcetera. But the fact is, at least in my case, that when I feel weak and out of balance, I tend to have thoughts in my head that I normally would dismiss. I tend to act on those thoughts and I tend to slip into patterns of behavior that I under any normal circumstances would recognize as undesirable, saying something akin to: “Ah, what the hell!?”

B.S justifications for behavioral patterns on auto-pilot

We often let our behavioral patterns run on autopilot without really questioning them. One of my behaviors is to sit down and watch a movie or some TV-series when I get home from work several days per week. I’ve been telling myself that I needed this in order to keep up motivation. The other day I chose to take care of a few things that needed fixing instead and finished the day off with reading a bit. And I discovered that this gave me much more energy and motivation.

This might sound trivial. But is it? How often do we tell ourselves that we need something that we don’t really need in order to function properly, just because we have gotten comfortable with it?

And we keep on telling ourselves this or that to justify why we cannot or should not change. “This is just who I am”. “I need this to function”. “My life would be boring without this”. You know the deal. I’m not saying that these might sometimes be valid reasons to hold on to a bad habit. Sometimes the bad habit fills a function that we cannot do without for the time being. I’m only talking about my particular experience here, knowing that I cannot be the only person in the world with this type of experience.

I’m also not saying that we should beat ourselves up because of our bad habits. God is with us no matter what our lives look like and I if anyone knows how hard change can be. It’s the stories about why we cannot change that I want to get at. Because these stories make it so much harder. Because our beliefs have a tremendous effect on our emotions and our actions. And we have the power to question our beliefs. And we have the power to change them if we come to the conclusion that they are based on faulty premises. Oftentimes it is as simple as finding an example from our experience of life, where our current belief proves faulty. 

As for the habits, unless we have a valid reason for believing that we need them, we can just simply acknowledge that we have a hard time breaking a certain habit. Period. And then we can work from there. 

Perhaps we come to the conclusion that we simply don’t feel like going through the trouble of breaking the habit in question. Or there may be other valid reasons for holding on to it. But whatever we do, I think that it is important to be as honest with ourselves as possible as to why we do something. Because since our attitudes affect who we are and how we behave, just simply committing to being as honest with ourselves as we can be, will have a tremendous effect on us and our characters, no matter how we finally decide to approach a certain issue in our lives.

Living one's insights

It’s one thing to have insights and another to put them into practice. I catch myself more or less daily, acting against my better judgment. Because old habits are so ingrained in me. 

This has something to do with memory. I simply forget that I know a better way of doing things. I simply forget that I know better than doing certain things at all. And I forget that there is a better mindset to do things from. 

As with so many other things, this has to do with awareness. I lose myself in emotions and thoughts. I lose myself in the past or in the future, instead of being here and now. I lose myself in wishing for things to be different. And so I do things automatically, out of habit. 

I come back to awareness, awareness, awareness. It’s all about awareness. When I’m here and now my mind expands. I gain access to higher ways of functioning. When I lose awareness, I fall back into old patterns. Often I even forget that I can choose to bring awareness into every given moment. That every time that I lose awareness, it is a simple choice to bring it back to the present moment. It does not take any effort at all. But our minds are so used to everything taking effort, that it fools itself into thinking that this also takes effort. And so it resists it. 

Change can go fast if you take action

When it comes to my habits, they often can be change pretty fast if I take action contrary to them. One good example is that when I started doing things at my job that I previously tried to avoid because of lack of experience, this habit started to shift. It started after the first time that I consciously chose to break my old habit. 

Maybe the “consciously” part shouldn’t be dismissed here? I also wonder whether some habits contain sub-habits that they need to be broken down into. For example my habit of eating too much when I watch movies. Perhaps I first need to kick the habit of always eating when I watch movies. And if I’m more selective when I watch them and remove some of the more mindless entertainment, this might make my movie experiences more meaningful. And this might lead to a lesser need for other mindless pleasures associated with it. And if I’m going to eat stuff when I watch movies, I could gradually replace the unhealthy stuff with healthier alternatives. And so on.

I know that this probably sounds pretty trite and basic. But I think that many people would be surprised at how many things are on auto-pilot in their lives, while it flies under the radar under the erroneous label of free choice. I think it’s very much time to start taking our power back from our unconscious habits!