Spiritual clarity is not only a state available to rare sages. It is also a daily work on yourself. Anyone who wants to achieve inner balance, control their mood and join the source of calm can cope with it.
Psychologies: The author of a book on how to achieve spiritual clarity, learn to be serene, I want to ask: “How are you?”
Christoph Andre: Good, not bad … Although sad: nothing, it happens after a vacation!
Despite the work that you are doing so successfully with yourself and with your patients, do you still get out of sorts?
K.A.: You know, psychologists are often interested in those things that they themselves need! If you talk about something, this does not mean at all that you yourself are impeccable in this respect. At best, it is possible to lay out ways to take on a solution to a problem and move forward. I do not draw a clear line here between my experience and the stories of my patients. For me, this is a way of showing that everyone is subject to mood swings: it is impossible to “mothball” our soul space, therefore, we will never be able to achieve permanent serenity.
However, some sages and those who practice meditation succeed …
K.A.: Yes, but there are very few such people, and they succeed in very special conditions. This requires a life of almost complete isolation from the world. As long as you stay “connected” to life, as long as you have friends, lovers, children, and uncontrollable relationships with other living people, you cannot help but experience mood swings, mood swings. It’s like with happiness: on the one hand, we can never stop striving for it, and on the other hand, we must clearly understand that this is work that has to be started anew every day. However, this is also true for many other things: this is how we eat, sleep, or think… We need to really learn that the throwing of the soul that overtakes us again and again is not a sign of our defeat, but an inalienable property of every person.
Our moods are complex states. It does not happen that only sadness or one anger: we always have mixed feelings.
You talk about states of the soul, but there is no such scientific term in psychology…
Christoph Andre: I mention them because nothing more suitable could be found in the psychological dictionary. I mean, there are distant, “cold” judgments, for example: “This thing is beautiful,” and there are “hot” judgments, inseparable from our emotions: “How did he get me today!” Of course, one could talk about the «emotional involvement of the subject in the processes of thinking and cognition» … But you must admit that this does not sound very inspiring!
- Can we help ourselves?
So we’re talking more about emotions?
K.A.: Not really. The peculiarity of our state of mind is that it is both thoughts (acts of cognition) and emotions, it is always a play of chiaroscuro and semitone. They are unobtrusive enough that we can push them to the periphery of our consciousness and try to be distracted by something else: I feel a slight sadness, but I try not to show it, but if I were in despair, I could not pretend. But our moods are complex states. There is no such thing as only sadness or only anger; we always have mixed feelings. For example, melancholy, about which Victor Hugo said that it is «happiness to be sad.» Or nostalgia: a mixture of happy memories and pain from the fact that time is passing … In my opinion, we are wrong when we pay so little attention to the concept of «state of mind», because poets and writers have worked on it so much. Freud said that in all areas of psychology where he happened to look, poets had already visited him.
The mental states or moods you speak of have been called passions by some philosophers. And by the way, the concept of serenity that you use is also rather philosophical.
K.A.: Today we are witnessing an interesting movement in psychology, which seeks to find a theoretical basis that is different from psychoanalysis — for example, turning its gaze towards philosophy. Serenity is also wisdom. But if you talk about wisdom with philosophers, they will tell you that it must be abandoned, it is unattainable, it is too difficult… No! I’m not a philosopher, so it’s easier for me to say that wisdom is available to us, at least from time to time. It’s not just a concept, it’s something concrete. For example, if I’m having a bad day and I’m irritated, I try to say to myself before I return home to those who are dear to me: «Don’t spoil these bright moments with your worries.»
Wisdom is available to us, at least for a while. And it’s not some abstract concept, it’s something very concrete.»
Are we all equally gifted with the ability to be serene?
K.A.: Generally speaking, people are nowhere and in nothing equal. Neither physically, nor intellectually, nor in the ability to pacify their emotional outbursts. Researchers have found that the gene encoding the neurotransmitter serotonin (stimulating feelings of pleasure and euphoria) is present in a special variant in 10-20% of the population, and these 10-20% roughly correspond to the most emotionally reactive people. There are, no doubt, other factors, both innate and acquired, which we will eventually discover. But it is important that everyone has the opportunity to work on their weaknesses, move towards peace, learn to “calm down” themselves.
What most influences our emotional instability?
K.A.: Early childhood, if the developing attachment to parents in it was fraught with difficulties: the untimely death of one of the parents, their own emotional instability, susceptibility to sudden mood swings … Next, the values and principles transmitted in the family matter: is the expression of emotions allowed at all ? Or, on the contrary, with emotions there is too much? Parental behavior also plays a role; for example, they can explain to a child that when a person is angry, then, respecting the other, he should not shout at him, but should first moderate his anger, and then enter into an argument. Finally, the circumstances and events of life matter. Patients who have problems in relationships — shyness or social phobia — often say that they realized their weakness as a possible social problem when they were in school. For example, they blushed when a classmate asked them for an eraser, or they lost the power of speech when they went to the blackboard … Such people begin to depend very much on how friendly those around them are. And by closing in on themselves, they do not acquire the ability for emotional self-regulation that could develop if they continued to contact others, perceiving them not as judges, but as equals to themselves.
- Meditation to help relieve fatigue
Don’t you think that today we need energy more than peace?
K.A.: Energy can be accompanied by serenity; moreover, for me this is the true goal: to achieve «calm energy». The point is that it is necessary to distinguish between energy and nervous excitation. Excitement is what we are looking for in coffee, it is overstimulation that will increase my irritability. And the energy will give me a willingness to act, but will not cause tension, it is an opportunity to develop positive moods in myself.
But after all, we often notice a negative state of mind, saying: he (a) is “not in the mood”, “not in the spirit” today.
K.A.: No, there are many positive moods! Trust, good humor, calm… But we do tend to talk more about mood swings in a negative way. The evolutionary approach explains this bias: negative states — anxiety, resentment, fear, anger, and others — are more useful in the short term, since they allow adaptation and promote survival, while these functions are less pronounced in positive states. Evolution has aimed us first of all at survival and only secondly at revealing our potential.
In your opinion, any state can become our allies in the movement towards peace. Why?
K.A.: I think we cannot experience peace and serenity until we are convinced that we are able to overcome our bad mood. Peace as a protective cocoon is no longer real peace, but something very fragile…
And what exactly should be done?
K.A.: Take for example a person who has just quarreled with someone close to him. He leaves the house filled with resentment and continues to sulk at the other, replaying the quarrel in his head over and over again. Then he begins to realize that he himself fuels anger. And he asks himself the question: “Why are you so angry? Because you feel powerless? Because you’re sad? Yes, that’s the whole point, you feel unhappy because you wish things had turned out differently. Well, focus on it and find a way out. And then think about the fact that the other is also unhappy now … ”Usually you need to do something like this: turn your anger into sadness. But do it humbly, realizing that year after year we will fall into the same trap … but still, each time the anger will be a little weaker. This is the goal: to learn to manage your moods, and not completely subjugate them to yourself.
We are not equal in anything: neither in the physical plane, nor in the intellectual, nor in the ability to pacify our emotions. Christoph Andre
You say that when we walk, meditate or focus on the breath, it helps to achieve deep peace. But this does not affect the sources of our sadness or anger …
K.A.: It’s just that I don’t see the benefit in starting to look for reasons when a person is psychologically in a bad state. To move deeper, you must first get rid of what lies on the surface. Learning to meditate, to regulate our emotions, to ease them are not just external tricks, this is the way in which we gain access to a more true finding of ourselves. Of course, from time to time we may want to pretend that we are completely calm, when in fact we are feeling dissatisfied or annoyed. Or we may try to convince ourselves that everything is okay when it really isn’t. But, in my opinion, this is already a good start — to try to move away from your painful state in order to gradually soften it. One of the main messages of positive psychology is to remind us that introspection and inner balance are not only the result of study and understanding. They are also the result of work, exercise, habit. This is how any mastering of new skills works: we can influence our mood if we work on it. It is no more difficult than learning to play the piano, but requires no less perseverance. It takes years of practice to get to a good level, but after a few months this activity can begin to give us pleasure.
* A. Lutz, J. Dunne, R. Davidson «Meditation and the neuroscience of consciousness» (Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, 2007).