Mind your Mind - Fragility, Screws and Monkeys
So the infamous Raincoaster draws my attention to ranting journalists from the blessed beeb.
Now, I think it’s easy to see that there’s some serious head fucking going on there. That Scientology guy makes ridiculous reactions to every action. If a journalist (normally pictures of calm and objectivity…theoretically) starts shouting at you like that, then I’d expect cowering, squaring up or simply running away. Instead he just repeats his point, rhythmically, with no letting up. It’s an excellent method of maintaining the level of anger in your target.
And lets just imagine being forced to sit through 19 minutes of kids with needles in their eyes and holocaust denial (well not denial, but ludicrous misreadings of history). That’s brainwash material right there..surely. Now I’m not saying that Beeb reporters are never going to lose it, everyone loses it sometimes, but I can’t believe that that reaction came from anything other than someone being seriously screwed with.
I’d like to see Louis Theroux do the Scientologists.
Anyway, I guess the point is that you’ve got to be careful with your head.
There’s some seriously sensitive machinery in there, and everything you do, see and hear affects it.
If you start to feel out of control, you’ve got to take a break. If stimulus is frustrating and making you lose touch, then get away from it. It’s important to know how to keep yourself calm.
You see, I’ve had a few breaks in my time. It’s not nice. You’ve got to learn when to get off those kind of rides, and that means recognising when you’re on one before you pull out of the station.
I can’t really explain more than that. But watch out for your mind.
I like to think of it as being mindful (Buddhist terminology) of your mind. It’s a form of awareness. Don’t just think things, but look at how and why you’re thinking things. It’s a difficult process, and it may be one best suited to more meditative times in your life (I don’t suggest doing it whilst driving, but then, people chew gum and drive, so maybe I’m the one with concentration problems. Actually, scratch that…I have massive concentration problems).
So does this post have a point. I guess not, if I were you I’d read yesterdays effort…I enjoyed it much more.
But yeah, steer clear of people who want to control the way you think. Be mindful of your mind and learn when to trust it and when to kick it up the arse.
When trying to focus in T’ai Chi, an image that my teacher explained stuck with me. He talked about a Chinese word that translates as ‘Monkey Mind’ and it’s the lack of focus that happens when trying to do standing practice (basically finding the right position and standing in it. It’s really good stuff despite how it sounds). Anyway, you’re supposed to be keeping your mind focused upon the Dāntián (the centre of gravity and root of the chakras or some such; essentially it’s the source of movement and strength for most of the T’ai Chi stuff) whilst remaining in position. In fact you have to focus their quite often.
Anyway, he explained the focus, the attention of the mind, as being like a monkey that likes to wander around and play, and you’ve just got to notice it when it happens, and then bring it back to the centre. Now, this may have simply been a way of me to remain distracted, but my mind (quite visual at times) cooked up this image of a monkey. A tiny monkey sitting in the lotus position in my belly (the Dāntián), then occasionally opening an eye, then the other, and stretching its arms out, slowly picking up its legs and wandering around into the air around me. At this point I’d notice the monkey had moved. I’d send out a little miniature me, who’d take the monkey by the hand and lead it back to my centre, where it’d obediently assume the lotus position. Attention is successfully bought back to the centre.
So our mind is like a monkey, swinging from branch to branch, playing and toying and learning from the world around it. That’s all well and good, but make sure that you’re the one leading it, and that you let it take a rest, a sit and a chance to focus.
I think that’s a terrible analogy….but I don’t care.
I try to look after my monkey mind.
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Regarding focusing on the dantien, I’ve been taught to put 50% of the mind on the dantien while the other half to just relax. In addition, I’ve also been taught to “listen behind”. Actually the whole behind listening thing really helps for some reason. Good luck on taming the monkey mind!
TT Liang is a strong advocate of using music to assist in this taming. You can read more about it at: ( http://tctaichi.com/articles/liang_music.htm )
I’ve heard of the monkey mind but don’t think I’ve ever visualized it as well as you just described it.
Ok, that is one wackjob ‘religion’. They have some sort of cleansing/purging ritual in which their members sit for hours giving away intimate details of their lives that are recorded and sit in some vault. No wonder they hang around, those buugers have them in the palms of their hands. Sounds like some Nazi brainwashing session…
Ew…
And what was that shit about needles and eyes? Blech.
The Freudians will tell you that eye damage is all about castration complex. But that’s psychoanalysis for you. Perhaps that’s what they’re tapping into by using the images to destabilise you (although they’re using it to convince you that psychiatry is bad).
I found it really interesting watching the two documentaries on youtube. There’s the Panorama one (Scientology and Me) and a Scientologist made one on the panorama people.
Documentaries these days are all so incredibly obviously biased that it really upsets me. I really hate the commercialisation of factual information. Modern film editing trends make it so much easier to twist little snippets of footage into any shape you want. Both sides are guilty of that, which only gives more credibility to the crazies.
Or something.
That’s an awesome post. I studied tai chi but never to any great extent; I have this wonderful knack of falling over that is quite amusing but antithecal to good tai chi practice.
You’re right: you’ve got to recognize where you’re heading and sometimes you’ve gotta jump off that train. I just cut a totallly toxic person out of my life and yeah, I’m not proud of the fact that I did it by flying into a screaming rage, but when you look at the aggro that was going to be put into the world by her interactions with me over even one more year, we’ve come out net ahead. The world is better off for my shouty fit.
Thanks.
The mind’s too fragile to be allowed to lose control. Nothing takes control away more than the wrong kind of people. As an enlightened soul (ha) I find it hard to see the bad in people, but then…sometimes it really is there.
Or at least it’s part of an unhealthy dynamic.
I always worry that I might be an emotional vampire. I tend to feed on peoples feelings and get lots of energy from other people. For example, if I’m stone cold sober in the midst of a group of drug addled fools, I tend to show the symptoms of the drugs in question. I even once had a comedown after hanging out with people taking MDMA…that was strange.
Anyway, I think it’s alright as long as you act as a conduit for some kind of feedback loop.
Don’t just take the energy, radiate it outwards.
Or something.
I think I’m talking nonsense in a strange direction.
Ah well.
Personally, I would like to see Borat doing a study on scientology!
Mind fuck the mindfuckers!
btw, beware of the raincoaster when she starts flailing her tentacles!
But how do you not get tantalised by the tentacles.
Just think of the things they could…..
Anyway,
What with the Scientologists stalking and researching their interviewers I don’t imagine Baron-Cohen would ever get away with that…no matter what identity he picked. In fact, that might stop Louis Theroux too, he generally only gets away with it by always refering to himself as being from the BBC…considering the Scientologist documentary about how the BBC is evil and vicious and harbour terrorists (or whatever they tried to imply) I doubt that would work any more.
What we need is someone who could deadpan their way through buying everything without losing their mind to it.
Something tells me that’d be a pretty hard task.
‘Mind your Mind - Fragility, Screws and Monkeys’ by Alabaster Crippens
This is an excellent article . I just happened upon it and I’m glad I did. You are correct about the effect on the mind of the journalist who’d just endured watching that terribly exaggerated anti-psychiatry display by scientology’s front group. This also occured after days of being followed by the church private investigators and security men.
You wrote ” Instead he just repeats his point, rhythmically, with no letting up. It’s an excellent method of maintaining the level of anger in your target.” and you explained that well. Scientologists are trained to control the minds of others but most are clueless that they themselves are victims of the same tactics. The intent is to overwhelm the person. Make him comply. If he gets out of hand, try to drive him nuts. Nice church, heh?
You give really sound advise for preventing someone from messing with one’s ‘monkey mind’ , as you coined it, and you did it in a visually effective way. Thanks for writing this piece. I plan to share the link to it with others who I know will appreciate it much as I do.
Share away. Thanks for compliments. I can’t say I know much about mind control or Scientology in general…but what I saw in the documentary spoke for itself. And yeah….I can’t say I coined the monkey mind thing (ancient Taoist wisdom apparabossibly), though my T’ai Chi teacher was much impressed with my visualisation of it.
Ooh, hit submit to early. Basically, thanks for reading, I’m glad you saw something in it. If you’ve had closer experience of the church then I’m sure you’re more aware of their badness than I am…but yeah, techniques like that are just horrible…and you can see how it works once you’re removed from it…but you need to keep a watchful eye on your mind.
So lets do that.