How Meditation Can Set You Free

In 2005, David Foster Wallace gave a now-famous commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College about self-awareness, perspective and objects of worship.

The ideas in this talk aren’t novel. In fact, they rhyme with ideas from Buddhism and the Ancient Greeks that are thousands of years old. I believe the reason this talk continues to resonate with people is because Wallace structured it as an urgent wake up call:

1. First, he points out the natural, hard-wired default setting we all share:

   • deeply and literally self-centered and to interpret everything through a lens of self.
   • automatically sure that we know what reality is, not considering other possibilities.
   • worshipping things that we’ll never have enough of: money and possessions, body and beauty, power, intellect.

2. Next, he explains how this default setting guides us towards bleak lives full of unsatisfying, unmeaningful and frustrating experiences; lives filled with self-centered, petty frustrations and boredom.

   This is especially jarring when juxtaposed with the hopeful optimism that bright-eyed college graduates have for their future. Yet it cannot be ignored because the dreary life experience he paints is relatable to most of the parents and older family members in the audience.

3. Finally, after seeding fear of this in inevitable, monotonous future, he shares a path to salvation: We have the ability to change our self-awareness, perspective and objects of worship, and enabling us to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. Doing so is necessary for a more fulfilling life free from the rat race of present society.

I suggest you check out the original speech if you haven’t already.

In this piece, I’ll build on Wallace’s urgent wake-up call by sharing techniques and frameworks I’ve found to be fruitful for improving self-awareness, perspective and elevating above the unconscious default state.

Introducing the Parts Model of the mind

Have you ever decided to have a productive day, only to find yourself procrastinating with food, porn, internet, substances or video games? When you take actions you don’t logically agree with, it’s common to feel disappointed, ashamed and frustrated with yourself.

If you resonate with this, there’s good news: you’re not a masochist; you don’t take pleasure in acting against your chosen interests. And since you’re not actively interested in self-sabotage, this means there’s good reason behind every action you take.

A model of the mind we find particularly fruitful is to imagine the psyche as a collection of distinct, mostly autonomous parts. These parts have their own beliefs, desires, intentions, hopes and fears, and act out in different ways inside our bodies and minds. This “parts model” sees the mind as an amalgam of all its parts, rather than a single, unified agent. The parts model is a simple yet deep idea that can be seen across Buddhism, psychotherapy, and psychedelic therapy.

In Buddhism

In The Mind Illuminated (2014), author John Yates takes inspiration from Buddhism in describing the mind as composed of sub-minds, each of which have their own tasks and functions, and operate “simultaneously and autonomously”. Each sub-mind is composed of further sub-minds, making the mind fractal-like: parts all the way down to the most basic mental processes.

This mental model seems trustworthy to many people because you can verify its claims directly within your own experience.

In Psychotherapy

Psychotherapists and psychologists often employ strategies that involve a parts model, including Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, sub-personalities work, and the Gestalt empty chair technique.

Tim Ferris recently did a podcast episode with Richard Schwartz, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, where they talked about IFS and did a live IFS session with Tim.

These approaches are used to tackle internal conflict between parts, such as overcoming a stubborn addition (where it feels like one part of you is running the whole show), or resolving a decision you feel stuck on (because your parts are conflicted about what to do).

In Psychedelic Therapy

Recent FDA-backed clinical trials indicate MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is the most effective treatment for PTSD we have discovered. Interestingly enough, therapists working with MDMA explicitly use IFS therapy (a parts model therapy) to heal patients with PTSD.

A traumatic experience is particularly frightening or painful, and by definition can’t be psychologically processed in the same way as ordinary experience. When a person is traumatized, part(s) are divided or cut off from the rest of the psyche, and get “stuck” in the emotional, psychological, or physiological place the trauma happened. The part is forced out of consciousness because the burden it carries—the unprocessed psychological material associated with the event—is too frightening or painful to be with.

These parts are kept at a distance, in the unconscious, and are generally hard to reach or access. When an experience reminds someone of the traumatic event, the part(s) get “triggered” and the person suddenly re-experiences intense emotions, thoughts, or sensations associated with the trauma.

In Pop Culture

Disney’s Inside Out (2015) is one of many examples of the parts model being used intuitively to represent our different emotions. The analogy resonated with people, earning it a 98% Freshness score on Rotten Tomatoes and $858.8 million at the box office. Yet most people who watched it probably aren’t any closer to being attuned to their various parts.

The parts model asserts that your decisions are influenced by more than just your intellectual mind – the part of you that decided you were going to have a productive day.

So don’t beat yourself up for taking actions you don’t intellectually agree with. Instead, try to understand where that decision is coming from. What part(s) of you were drawn to this decision, and why?

Benefits of being attuned to your other parts

Not being attuned to your other parts can make it hard to stay concentrated during an activity like studying, meditating or exercising. Some parts of you want to perform the activity. Others don’t. These other parts want to think about work, sex, what you’re having for dinner, the movie you saw last week, or anything else.

However, if you can become attuned to your other parts, you’ll be able to:

1. Forgive yourself for taking actions you don’t intellectually agree with.
2. Understand your parts better every time you take a surprising action.
3. Make plans and decisions that have the support of greater fractions of your parts, increasing the odds of adherence.

Successfully doing this can lead to overcoming self-sabotaging thoughts and beliefs, gaining better understanding of your values and priorities, and having more consistently meaningful experiences.

Benefits of expanding your perspective

Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist Monk who has been called the “world’s happiest man,” believes the main reason rich countries are more depressed is because they have a greater focus on individual ego rather than collectivism. He agrees with Wallace that we naturally view ourselves as the center of the universe, because we are very literally the center of our own perceived experience. This focus on individual ego is linked to our endless chasing and dissatisfaction, societal issues (e.g. polarization), and our negative tendency to see each other as means to be used.

By consciously working to expand your perspective, you’ll:

• learn to find meaning in otherwise unremarkable experiences
• free yourself from endless chasing and dissatisfaction
• feel less polarized about issues
• experience other people as sources of meaning rather than as means to be used

How to become more attuned to your other parts and expand your perspective

For each method, I’ll explain how it can improve your ability to be attuned to all your parts. Even if you’ve struggled to consistently practice some of these in the past, hopefully this additional context will help a greater fraction of your parts see value in committing to these practices.

Meditation and Breath Work.

Meditation takes many forms, all of which involve focusing on a singular meditation object nothing else. Breath work is a popular form of meditation that chooses to focus on following the breath. These different forms all typically teach that thoughts are distractions, noise, or mental chatter that should be quieted, cleared, or observed and let go.

Research has shown that meditation can improve your cognitive control. Intuitively, the ability to choose what to pay attention to stems from the ability to choose what not to pay attention to. And gaining this ability enables you to better recognize when you’re experiencing conflict between your parts.

Times Square is a perfect case study of a place designed to "steal your mind,” with advertisements and easy access to pleasant sensations. Meditation is one way to steal your mind back.

In addition, educated people often over-intellectualize stuff and get lost in an argument inside their heads. This is the default state. It is often better to simply pay attention to what is going on right in front of you plus what is going on inside you. And improving cognitive control enables you to do this more easily.

Introspection via Journaling, Mindfulness apps or Therapy.

According to the parts model, many of our minds’ parts typically reside beyond our narrow bands of awareness.

Thus, a great way to gain greater self-awareness of these parts is to adopt an introspective practice where you assess how your various parts are feeling. These come in many formats; structured and unstructured, independent or guided, verbal or written, etc.

However you choose to do so, collecting data on how you feel in various situations lets you take a step back and analyze your reactions to various experiences. Bringing your subconscious feelings into awareness is a gradual and methodical process.

Worship a strong set of Ethics and Morals.

As Wallace says, there is no such thing as atheism; there is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships as a way to find real meaning in life. The only choice we get is what to worship. And our unconscious, default setting is to worship things like money, possessions, beauty, power and intelligence – things that we’ll never have enough of. “They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing”. In his words, worshipping these default things will “eat us alive”. Ricard agrees, and draws a distinction between these “pleasant sensations” and real happiness.

We can combat this by consciously choosing to worship something healthy. The compelling reason for choosing to worship some sort of god or spiritual-type thing is for its inviolable set of ethical principles. Setting your sights on a strong, time-tested set of ethics will shift your aspirations towards embodying the virtues, values and morals that are meaningful to you. And importantly, a strong set of ethics don’t need to come from spiritual religion; to start, there are several institutions focused on healthy, productive secular ethics.

As a Buddhist monk, you’d expect Ricard to suggest people worship Buddhism. But he openly recognizes the declining role of spiritual religion in modern society, and instead suggests a modern approach: shifting your focus towards the “secular ethics” of altruism:

In our polarized world, if you cling to an ideology, then, of course, anything that goes against it becomes provocation. However, with altruism, you don't care about ideology, you care about the fate of people. The most legitimate aspiration of any human beings is the basic wish not to suffer, the basic wish for well-being. Based on that, everything becomes so simple: You are ready, flexible, open, pragmatic... utilitarian in the good sense of the word, not instrumentalizing others (seeing other people as means to be used).

Wallace is right; have a bit more urgency!!

To recap, here’s our suggested way of elevating yourself out of the unconscious default state that Wallace points out we all experience:

1. Increase your self-awareness via the parts model.
2. Expand your perspective beyond the default self-centered narrative.
3. Derive real meaning from how much you embody your chosen set of ethics.

But improvement takes time and effort. And effort sustained over time takes buy-in from multiple parts. This buy-in is the bottleneck.

Have a bit more urgency around understanding your parts and getting buy-in from multiple of them. Every moment until then is time spent complacent as your life continues on in this default state, heading towards an unsatisfying, unfulfilling and frustrating life experience.

And after you’ve gotten the buy-in and begin working on your mindset and perspective, remember that mental fitness is similar to physical fitness – it not only requires regular practice to improve, but also usage to maintain.

Investing in your mindset and perspective is similar to financial investments: the progress compounds. Thus, the best time to start is now to reap the most benefits from compound growth.

We know this stuff, it’s codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables, wisdoms. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

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