Know Thyself!
— Socrates
Subjective experience is a strange subject. Studying your own experience is a different kind of challenge than is researching subjects such as chemistry or physics. When doing conventional research, we can safely assume that the cause-and-effect principles are the same in different laboratories. The results obtained by one scientists can be replicated and used by other laboratories. Knowledge once acquired can be passed down from generation to generation.
In contrast, subjective phenomena exist within the experience of each individual. Each of us is unique and has idiosyncratic reaction tendencies. There is no one exactly like you; your puzzle is different than anyone else’s. You cannot rely on a particular therapeutic method that worked for someone else because the cause-and-effect principles that operate in your subjective universe are likely to play out differently. Knowledge about the self does not generalize as well as knowledge about chemistry. Each individual has a single lifetime to learn how to work with the cause and effect principles that operate in their unique subjective universe.
Psychology is the study of the soul from the observer’s perspective; there is much to be learned from studying the knowledge acquired by this approach. Phenomenology, the study of the soul from the first-person perspective is a qualitatively different subject matter. To really know yourself, you have to appreciate how things look from both perspectives.
The Personal Research Tool provides a opportunity to research your reaction to a high-risk situation from both the first-person and the dispassionate observer’s perspective. The by-product of shifting back and forth between these perspectives is the emergence of Meta-Cognitive Awareness. When you step outside yourself and watch what goes on between stimulus and response, you can see that the interpretations that elicit your reactions are creations of your mind. They are not necessarily true and not necessarily false; they are just how things look to you at that moment. Later you may see the same event from a totally different perspective and regret your response. Meta-Cognitive Awareness, the happy byproduct of doing personal research, is one of the critical milestones along the passage from the mentality of childhood to more advanced cognitive strategies.
Meta-Cognitive Awareness
Few of us have been taught how to work with phenomena such as thoughts, images, emotions, appraisals, etc. Most of us enter adulthood automatically following the thinking patterns and cognitive rules we used as children — even when continuing to do so produces bad outcomes. But when you step out of your first-person perspective and dispassionately observe the sequence of external events and internal states that produce unwanted outcomes, something new emerges.
With Meta-Cognitive Awareness comes the appreciation that there is a difference between the map your brain constructs to represent the objective world and the territory it is attempting to represent. Interpretations, like maps, take into account all the available information, though there may be relevant information that is not available and some of the information used may be incorrect. In practice, we act as if maps and interpretations are valid so we can use them to make decisions. But those lacking in Meta-Cognitive Awareness are easily taken in by the Soul Illusion: They believe they know the truth. Not only do they confuse the map with the territory, they are certain that their interpretations based on their map are valid and complete. To complete the illusion, the feeling of certainty is taken as confirmation of the validity of your interpretations and judgments. As comedian, Emo Phillips, concluded: “I used to believe that my brain was my most important organ, until I realized who was telling me that.”
In fact, my interpretations of the things that happen as well as my appraisal of the validity of my interpretations are created inside my skull where it is otherwise dark and quiet. As Emo Phillips suggests, until you realize where all your beliefs and appraisals come from you will continually be taken in by the illusion that you see things as they really are.
Our folly is often obvious to others, and sometimes to ourselves when we look back on a self-sabotaging episode in retrospect. But in real-time the distortions caused by our thinking errors are invisible to us; we react to the things that happen as if the lenses through which we perceived the world do not distort.
If you could detach from your first-person perspective and see things from the perspective of a dispassionate observer, you would be able to see how the mechanism of your trap works and perhaps be amused by the absurdity of the Thinking Errors responsible for your counter-productive reactions.
The ability to shift from the first-person to the Meta-Cognitive perspective is the key that opens the door to mindfully influencing your life’s course. As a bonus, you may discover that Meta-Cognitive Awareness is the key to delight.