#1848 Don't Believe Everything You Think - Corey Jackson

out of ten for my back is a good d Wow. Yeah.

But it is do you know what someone should? And then we'll get onto the actual conversation with the genius that we've got on to talk about. The thing is

actually a genius about. But imagine you two, if somebody designed I'm just picturing, like, you know, those super comfy recliners where you're kind of almost on a forty five degree and you have your keyboard just in front of you tip like, so you're in like first class or business but you've got a keyboard, right, so you're not sitting your ass on your bony ass on a hard

chair and trying to keep your posture. Imagine that if you didn't have to, that'd be super comfy, probably completely impractical.

very little work on why that, why it works. And so that's the gap that I chose, And the reason I chose it is because I had lived nearly six years up in the Northern Indian Himalayan region where I learned to speak, read, write Tibetan. So I studied Buddhist philosophy and meditation practice in Tibetan for along quite a few years living there, and then work as a translator, you know, from Tibetan to English when I came back.

So Buddhism actually has quite a lot to say. In fact, it's Buddhism's all about mechanisms, you know, it's like, how does this work? And how can we amplify it or dial it down or get rid of it all together. So when I saw that it was a kind of gap in the in the literature, I thought oh, maybe there's some ways we could talk about some sort of we'd call them contemplative ideas about why it works, but

we could talk about in psych terminology. So I can basically pitch kind of Buddhist psychology at a clinical psyche and just have them nod their head and say, yeah, you know that makes sense. So in a nutshell, that's kind of what we've done, and you know, on the back of some other brilliant work actually to get here. So yeah, if I had sum it up as quick as possible, that's about it.

Canada because I have a Canadian passport too. So I moved to Toronto and when I got there, I should when there was a day when I got there and I was sitting on a park bench in a place called Queen's Park and it was cold, you know, like it's April steel and I had all the like physiology, if you want, all the symptoms of what we would call anxiety, you know, And it was really relevant to me because actually that's one of the reasons I left.

I had really kind of fallen apart in Brisbane young, you know, and things hadn't gone my way, and I'd got all strung out and had some anxiety and depression. Rather than deal with it, I moved to the other side of the world, which to a city where I knew nobody, which it should be said, is not the ideal kind of treatments.

new and exciting, and I was really into it. And it got me thinking, you know, why is it that a year or so ago, this kind of physical sensation would keep me at home. It would make me worried about you know, it's going out and seeing people. You know, every time I went out to be like, shit, am I am I saying the right thing? Am I do? I look like a dumbass? What's going like? All these

kinds of things. And now I've got the same thing, and it's actually going to propel me up off the bench into town to learn stuff, to meet people, you know, like and it was about the interpretation of it. So I got really I got really interested. Then I went on. I did a music degree while I was there, I met great people. I was there about eight years, and it kind of happened again a bit later, like the anxiety thing showed up again later, and I had this

sense that meditating might help. And this is true. There was a Buddhist Tibetan Buddhist center across the road from my favorite pub right down right around the corner from where I lived. I spent a lot of time there, and so one day at the part or the book at the pub right yeah, you know, when I got there, this pub had sixteen beers on tap, you know, and I didn't know any of them. So it's cool, like you just start at one end and like figure out

which if anyway that is a relevant call it research. Yeah, this is my first research part.

no surprise to them. They know they can explain that, you know, yes, And so I was so fascinated by it that I sold everything and moved to India basically, and when I got there, a bunch of things happened, and I had every time you go to these classes or teaching or interviews, there's always this translator, you know, And I started wondering, why why don't just learn? I want to speak to them directly. There's really impressive, interesting people,

you know, they work to me. So I put time aside, and I learned to speak the language, and then that just opens all sorts of doors, you know, for extra study and extra learning.

go my way. I lost some where, some stuff happened, you know, but I felt all that anxiety depression thing happening again, and I thought I was through it, you know, I said, no, no, I've dealt with this once before and I was okay. And so when that started to happen, I took a really interest in it, you know. So, yeah, it was more of this. If I had to, I'd say it was a sense that I felt as if I immunized myself against this kind of anxiety, you know,

by having been through it before. And I had as holl as things are going my way, you know, and then as soon as they weren't and there was some difficulty, I just started coming up again, which really freaked me out. Actually, I said, no, no, I'm not going back here. What can I do? And I looked around. I was out at the Zen Center. I looked into some psych things, I looked into other new agy stuff, but this Tibetan

system would just answer all the questions. So I went to this center for quite a few months and months, and then eventually I just thought, you know, it's the same reason I went to Toronto is my favorite pianist lived in Toronto. So I picked up and I left Brisbane and I went to Toronto. And then I was there for a while and I got interested in this in the mind and how it works. And to me, the people who had the most to say about that were in India. So I just got sold what I

had and I moved to India. To me, it was the same, you know, and it was I never looked back. I mean, I still kind of half wish I lived there, if I'm honest.

were just from you can tell. Anyway, I said a quick hello to them and made some comment about the breakfast and was going to leave, and anyway, they called me in because when you speak Tibetan, they really get interested in you. You know, there's not manywhere and I was there for like two hours with them going on and on, and this was their question, is like, hey, we know about science and Buddhism and there's like this contemplative science and there's all this interaction back and forth.

You know, what are the ways you think it can really help? You know, we're curious, we teach Westerners sometimes, you know, what, how can I help? And my my sort of I had a few coffee amped up by then, but it was we say, just stop talking about the mind, right because Buddhism it's all about the mind, and same in neuroscience. And you've got this perhaps it's your view. I don't know. There's a there is a view within in scientific materialism that the mind is derivative of brain,

you know, and all this stuff which you can never reconcile. This, there's there's a completely pointless talking about it. If that's the case, Buddhism is wrong, like all of Buddhism is finished if that's the case. And if it's not the case, then there's some neuroscientist who get to lose their careers,

you know. So it's sort of like there's like, stop talking about it, because there's every because we can talk about what the mind does, activities of the mind, mental activity, this, talk about this all day long, right, and and then of course the question what causes happiness, what causes suffering? What causes this? That and the other? All these things pop up. So actually, yeah, it's I mean, it's a long way of saying that it isn't it's a fun

little debate topic if you like. But actually there's so much scope where they cross over that that's where my sort of interest lies. For Marimez. Everything I spent that time learning when I was in India and back here translating, and then of course a psych degree and a PhD and so on. That's you know, there's all this stuff to talk about that could be immediately useful for people, you know, if it just made its way through into the kind of you know, general pub conversations.

like in terms of data. It's like well, Craig, well, I can't you know, And it's like literally, well, I mean belief and faith, Like often it's about in something that you don't have absolute evidence or absolute knowledge or absolute proof ergo belief in faith versus data and evidence.

exist and who I am, I'm essentially mistaken about everything else. Yes, it's kind of okay because you might we might all be mistaken in the same ways, so we can still talk about things right, but but fundamentally there's still this issue that's it's a little bit it's hard to ignore for some of us. It's a bit like the lose tooth, you know, And yeah, that's the that's the exact issue. As long as I really think I'm here and if you shoot my ideas down it damages me, then I'm

going to fight back. Whereas if it's like, hey, you know, you might have some some some things to say that's going to help me deal with my own shit. And so even though you know, I might actually be able to use that. And that was what I found with the Tibetans, which is why I got so hawked, is because if they like the questioning, you know, if you come in at them and say no, I don't accept this,

then they want they want the debate. That's really of course, they always win the debate because that they twenty years of study. So it's kind of a loaded game in a way. But I like that. But I always like that. And sometimes they would tell stuff and you come back a little bit later and go, no, I've thought about it and I don't think it's quite right, and they will say, yeah, you're right, it's not you know, it's a bit and they just lead you through these more

subtle understandings. They go, yeah, it's not quite like that. Really, it's a bit more like this, and then you keep coming at them and they always have this judo move, you know, but they're working to you, and as the better you are, as you said, of like not conflating my beliefs and ideas with me, then the more you can get out of it. And it's really it's a really fun system to work in if you're just curious. It's a terrible place to be if you really solidly believe.

I'm only going to pay attention to people who think like me, because people who don't think like me, one, of course they're wrong. And two they make me feel these things I don't want to feel. But I think the real as you were saying before, like real science is about going this is what I think. This is

my hypothesis theory. But I could be wrong, and not only could I be wrong, I'm absolutely going to be wrong moving forward, because I've been wrong one million times up until now, so that ain't stopping.

a lot of work with it. Turns out with the diala Lama like he went to a he went to one of these mind and life meetings they're called So these Tibetan scholars and practitioners get together with like top of the field scientists Richie Davidson and these sorts of people you know, and they have these meetings and Paul Eckman got invited. And the story, as I understand it, is he didn't want to go because he didn't care.

But he's had a daughter who would love to meet the Dalai Lama, so it's the only reason he went. But it was a complete it was life changing for him, like the whole and it changed a lot of what he was doing. But he would say, like, despite this super close relationship, you know, with the Dalai Lama and

these things, I've written books together. And so he would people ask him about things like, you know, continuity of consciousness, you know, so like you know, rebirth, you know, past future lives, and he'd say, I don't believe it, but I'm a scientist, and no one's proven it, disproven it.

reality or my version, you know. And it's like having for me, that's like opening the consciousness door or the awareness s door a bit where you go, no, there's true, there's absolute truth maybe, but then there's my truth, or there's my there's the thing that's happening, and then there's my story about the thing that's happening. And I should not conflate those two things, and I need to go this is how I see it. But I could be wrong, and even you know, now there's three of us in

a conversation, but no one's having the same experience. The thousands of people will listen to this, and none of them probably will have the exact same interaction with this stimulus or response to this, or experience of this, because despite the commonality everyone's listening to the same audio, everyone creates their own experience around that one thing.

this is it's not controversial, is it. But then you would start applying this to mental mental activity. So in this there's a term in Tibetan now bombo, and we translate it as sense usually because it's you know, here see smell, see here, smell, taste, touch, and these five senses, but in Buddhism there's six because there's a mental domain and all they're all sort of you know, you talk about things you see here, smell, taste, touched, think, remember, and so on and so that so this idea that

it's only your interpretation of what's presented to your senses includes the mental domain. And this is gets really interesting, you know, because that's what you think about and this is what my actually, So this is the that mechanism that does that is what I tried to use in my PhD as to why does why is it that meditation training can dial down rumination and metacognitive beliefs and all these other things, you know why? And that's what

we're looking at. The mechanism that takes what's presented in the mental domain and interprets it as being real. This is the issue, right And if you can sort of not interpret it as being it's let's say, if I can if I treat my opinions as facts sort of like you were saying before, you know, my beliefs or my beliefs as facts, then it gets really problematic when I meet someone else with different beliefs because they have different they have alternative facts, and which is always problematic.

So yeah, there's this, but there is a sense there is an area in which my interpretation overlaps with yours. And in Buddhism we just call this conventional reality because it is a Convention's like this is a table. Your your table is a standing table, you know, like, you know, we can all agree even though our interpretations are different, you know, then so that's cool. Then, but then there are plots we disagree, and that's problematic. For us.

have heard a version of this example. But you know, I'm in the house by myself right now, but all of a sudden, I think or I believe someone's in the house, and now I'm in danger, when the truth is no one's in the house. The truth is I'm safe. That's the truth. But my belief is in the moment, and so my nervous system and you know, in the crime system and cardiovascual system, everything buys into that idea. And now my physiology has changed necessarily because I believe a thing that's not true.

happy memory from the past, you know. So if I remember that, like I call that memory up, I cannot it can like trigger an enjoyable emotional experience, right, Yes, So yeah, it's interesting though because the event, right has passed, So the event doesn't exist, right, it happened, it's finished,

but there's a mental representation of that event. Yeah. And what this is called ratification in psychology, you know, as a newish way of thinking that if I the degree to it which I treat the mental representation the memory as the event is the power with which it has to elicit emotional reaction. Yes, so I can actually believe if you have one hundred percent rarefication. So our next project we're putting together is in PTSD because this is

where it sort of makes sense. It could act like one hundred percent raification of a memory could alter my perception to the point I believe I'm in that situation. Again, of course, we know with traumatic stress this is the case. So I'm trying to use a happy example, you know, And so one of the core elements perhaps of these sort of flashbacks or of disturbing rumination, disturbing mind wandering, worry.

These are my three elements that I worked on. Actually, the rarefication of the mental activity, so the belief that it's really happening to me now, which is only a small step from what you were just presenting. The I think there's someone in the house, I get worried. Actually I could just think that there's you know that I could just think that this memory is real, doesn't It's a little bit and it's enough to set off some

kind of reaction. Uh. It's called a metacognitive theory. There's a it's a brilliant piece of work from Adrian Wells called he calls it a self regulatory executive function model, and basically it works trying to so trying to dial down people's beliefs about their own thinking. Yeah, and it's so fascinating, so that there are if people, for example, there are five domains, but the three that we're interested in.

People believe that worry is helpful. So you think, oh, if I cover my bases, you know, by worrying about stuff. They believe that their thoughts are uncontrollable and dangerous, and they believe they have to control their thoughts. If you ever tried to control your thoughts, you will know. And so anyone high in those beliefs will set off chains of worry and rumination which will lead to anxiety, depression,

and others. And so it's a brilliant model. I love it, and I use that to suggest, you know what, it's not even the metacognitive The actual beliefs are only problematic if you ratify them. Yeah, so an actual fact the ratification. And it turns out that for two and a half thousand years Buddhism has been refining and developing technology to

undermine ratification. So that's what we did, is we use traditional Indo Tibetan Buddhist practice and understanding and train people in that to see the flow on effects.

thing it refers to you know. So yeah, there is actually conceptual So then when in Buddhism they start to talk about nonconceptual states and these sorts of things, that's what they're talking about is meditation practices that reduce the amount of that interpretation. There's always some interpretation, but it reduces your belief in the interpretation, but it actually dials

down the bandwidth of the interpretation itself. So as things are presented to my senses and especially mental domein right as they're presented that I don't it doesn't have this capacity to cause all these kind of reactions whether they be emotional or physical or verbal or whatever. Wow. So the answer is yes, conception just conceptual activities.

chose it. I never really did a deep dive on it. I never put it under the spotlight, had a good think. It's just what I believe.

school with. You know, I'd known them for a few years and holy shit, they were weird, you know, like I didn't know I lived.

Still you have this flexibility in thinking that a that you can and we should be using, you know, because you do lose it allegedly. But yeah, of course they just come, you go to and you see it at work.

So when let's say, in the monsoon in northern India, in the Tibetan communities, all these worms I lived in the out there's rice fields and so you know, and there's all these worms everywhere, and the Tibetan kids as they walk to school will take a broom and make sure they brush all the worms off the pathway so they don't step on them, because they believe there's an issue with killing them, whereas there might be other cultures who would happily just trample across them, you know, beliefs

inherited entirely from parent previous generations of course.

for really wild, radical, even violent views. So yeah, this it gets more and more important, I think to think about the kind of the views and the skills we're giving children as they come up, especially to those teenage years because of that, because now it's very easy to find an echo chamber, that's mean extreme echo chamber, not like before, you know, the really intense and you don't have to speak to anyone as Eber eats everything. Although I don't know how you make money, so yeah, well.

get stressed. I mean a PhD, you know, And of course once you're stressed about the PhD, everything else is stressful, you know. But of course I know how that works. I know what a cognitive load is, and I also have been and what results I should see. And I've been trained in self reflective practice to try to make sure I don't say and do dumb shit, right, because I have so much such a long history of doing that.

So then yeah, no it works. So when I do have those stresses, and you know, when I feel that stuff rising, I have things I can do to counteract it. I have released valves leaders I can pull that I have been taught thanks to some very very kind and awesome teachers of mine.

all these amazing things that have been learned. They tend to be short term fixes in my experience, Like a psyche intervention isn't going to launch you into you know, but but what it will do is get the obstacles out of the way to start to deploy the sort of contemplative weaponry. You know that you might have this contemplative technology which is a much much more stable, high end types of well being, and so of course to

get stressed, of course, to get emotional. But I feel as if I have I have a really good tool set, and as my contemplative training increases, I know to deploy, I know, to sort of activate those things sooner and sooner and sooner. And so for me, what I want is the shortest possible gap between the stressor and getting and activating some sort of response. You know, That's what I'm That's what I'm looking for. So at the moment

something happens, I got it. I've got a whiteboard here of things I have to do, you know, and if I look at the whiteboard, stuff does to happen. But I know what I want is from from noticing I need I need the stress to happen. I need to notice the stress is the first step, and I need to do something about it. And I need to have that happens as fast as possible with the higher highest percentage I can. If that makes sense, it's as often

as possible, as quickly as possible. And if you think about it like that, which is how I teach people and know the people I work with, This is what we're we're doing. So you know, how are your percentages? Man like? Have you you know over time over three weeks, are you less reactive? And so, yeah, I would say my mental health is good. It's not only that I feel as if I'm the same way as you both know, athletes and people can train to achieve higher levels of

physical health. The SAME's true of the mind. With the right diet, the right training, you can achieve really high levels of mental health. And that's my goal in life, you know, is actually to push for those and maybe help some people along the way if they can.

I'm not trying to sound like the dell a Lama or Bloody Eckhart totally here, but you know, trying to figure out where does all my stuff finish? And where does Craig start? And by stuff, I mean everything from physical stuff to programming, psychological garbage, emotional garbage, experiences, memories, you know, fear, anxiety, self doubt, self loathing, self love, Like where where am I in the middle of all

of that stuff? To try to And I feel like, you know, in Buddhist philosophy you do a deep dive and understood one of the things, trying to understand the self. Yeah. I'm probably wording this incorrectly, but and I feel like almost the comparison over here his fingers in the ear la la la, don't want to know. I've got to buy a big itellly.

I think it's unchanging. And that's the problem. You know, the other side of what you're saying in terms of say, buying a bigger TV and these things is you can we talk again in this you know, this cultivating emotional balance program that that I sort of worked with in my research and and my work. We we've again we've lifted this from from Asia. We've lifted this from from Buddhism.

Really just divide happiness into two types, which is worth doing because the ancient Greeks didn't agree on it, you know, they killed not Socrates. Anyway, the guy came up with you Demonia, who's escaped my mind for some reason. Just ah, like the most flamous of the more I don't think about this all day. So the Greeks couldn't agree on it, neuroscience doesn't agree on it, cognitive psychology can't. No one

can agree on what happiness is. But of course if you look to Asia, you know, which we never do as scientists, then maybe there's something there. And there's this there's a very neat division. Actually in Buddhism, we can make it sort of very secularized by saying we talk about two types. There's a type of happiness defined like this, a type of happiness or well being derived from what

you bring to the world. And you've got a hedonic type, which is you can imagine type of happiness well being derived from what you get from the world's full Because there's no third option here, right, you just divide it up into two. And they're not good or bad because you know, if it's raining and you have an umbrella, this is this is hedonic. If I'm hungry and I

have food is hedonic, So you need hedonic wellbeing. The issue is how much of that hedonic resources do I put in the pursuit of the genuine this eu'd ammonic type. This is the issue. Yes, So yeah, that's having a big TVs is not in and of itself bad the usual Do I believe it will make me genuinely happy? And the answer for most people is yes, which is problematic because it just puts you on a hetonic treadmill that will throw you off at some point. Well.

aiming for is to try to have things. So I get, you know, someone hands me a I don't know, like a pizza or a chocolate or a beer or a whatever, you know, and it appears to me like that thing is going to make me happy, right, And that's what that's the appearance. It is in no worries. You know it's not true. It is. It can't be true because if it was, let's say it's pizza. You know, if piza made me happy, then the more pizza I ate, the happier I would be. Right, Yes, as long as

I had to eating pizza, I'd be happy. And we know it's not true. It would turn to suffering access. So the issue becomes when that thing appears. We think about this as mindful and insight training. When something appears to me and like wow, it appears like like that thing will make me happy. But I have mindfulness training, which doesn't buy in. Mindfulness training in Buddhism isn't non judgmental. This is a this is a new thing. Buddhism doesn't

talk about non judgmental for very good reasons. Buddhism is interested in non reactivity, so that so that when it pops up to me and I immediately do have a judgment, Oh, it's going to make me happy, right, yes, and so then but rather than automatically reaching for it, it's the reactivity we cut and you have a moment, hey, will

it really so? No? I know that it won't, but only intellectually, you know, I know that it's not like this, And that's when you start to get mindfulness links up with these insight kind of trainings, and that's what it's for. So as bad as bad decisions, potential bad decisions pop up, I keep interfering with them. No no, no, no, no no no, or then and you make a good decision.

And as you would know, like thanks to long term potentiation, however you want to think, the more you make the good decision, the more it becomes your habit, and eventually you've sort of reversed the negative you know, reactivity, and actually what's the word, you know, it cultivated the positive one. And that's what meditation training is really for. At first, you do it with the things that you say and do physical, verbal but over time you turn it in on the mental as well.

inherently with any of those things. But you know, we all know that. I mean, I do it. I get X amount of listeners and I'm like, oh, that's amazing. And then two days later on I want two X, and then I want three X, and I'm on and off the hedonic treadmill because I'm like, now I need twenty X to get the same pleasure response that I used to get with one. The only thing that's changed is me. I've desensitized myself. Blah blah blah blah blah. So my long winded question is is there what is

what does Buddhism teach about success? Or is there a concept of success? In Buddhism. Oh yeah, there's nobody in Australia that doesn't want to be successful. And of course that means different things to different people. But is there is that an idea or it seems like it might not be well you would.

lot of work. But in the meantime there are these sort of you know, way stations you know if you like along the path and so, yeah, you would from a would as perspective you'd be looking at So I should just flag this and I'm not pulling this out of I'm just giving my own opinion here now. So I don't want to people to think but that there are things you would look at, things like well, sorry, having said that, I can tell you what the dal

Alarma actually says. I've heard him say this numerous times, is that if you've got a meditation practice or a spiritual practice of some kind and you want to know it's working, look back five years till now, like are you doing better now than you were five years ago? And if so, it's working. So there is that What would those measures be? Is the issue? Right?

compassion thing into it too. Now, is this would be success if I'm managing to operate in such a way that is at least least minimizing any sort of disturbance I might be causing people out there.

This is important? And then in terms of my reactions, how much do they lead to or make a push towards the genuine side of wellbeing rather than the hedonic? And then if you do that, you have to stop and think, well, what sort of things cause this eudaemonic this genuine happiness? And that's when you start talking about high levels of attention skills, kindness, compassion, insight, we talk about equanimity and these things, so there are causes for it.

So how often do I put how well and consistently do I put my hedonic resources in the service of the genuine? That's the KPI, you know. And for me sometimes I just sit down and watch really shit TV because I'm tired, and you know what I mean, That's okay, because I don't have any expect The issue is I don't expect it's going to help. I'm just gonna, you know, just blank out for an hour or so. But that's it.

How often am I putting this hedonic resources to the into the service of the world, of the genuine?

it's a long term solution. That's the issue. You know. If you believe that's going to have some impact in the longer term, then that's when it causes some problems. Otherwise, you're fine, man, take a day off.

I run online online communities. There's a free section that's just full of all the resources of courses I run, and then there's a paid section where I work with people one to one or in groups as well, which you can find if you get in touch with me. But the Substack at the moment is becoming my go to. I'm quite fond of that platform. By the way, I'm becoming my go to.