The Grace of Gratitude

Cognitive Science and Its Revelations

Yesterday, I was privileged to espy a dialogue between John Vervaeke, Rick Repetti, and the Magnificent Mark Miller.

It was a marvelous discussion, but the highlight was the final plug at the end of the show, when I learned that Dr. Miller hosts his own Contemplative Science Podcast. Despite the chilly weather, I enjoyed two episodes of this on a long walk.

Some of you may recall my affection for Dr. Miller’s assessment of the negative feedback loop that is known as “addiction.” Whether we’re talking about substance dependency, or merely how to break cycles that trigger us to become embroiled in the stews of anxiety/depression, discussing this idea of a feedback loop is probably one of the most important things we might be doing these days.

Which brings me to another talk I binged this day last. In this one, with Todd Hargrove, the Good Doctor talks about one technique which can be used to thwart some of these sorts of problems

— that of the Gratitude Journal.

“For anyone who’s listening today — I’m a long term meditator, and long term meditation teacher as well. Early on in my career, I was really passionate about the really deep attention and awareness-training programs. Really hardcore, teaching attention to be exclusive, doing long term retreats. . .

That’s all good stuff, but I’ll tell you — after twenty years of practice, looking back now — I think the most powerful practice I know is a gratitude practice. It’s the most transformative practice I know.

It’s not some kind of little side practice. It’s the practice.

And here’s why [it helps to] focus on the things that are working.

At first that feels really weird — one of the reasons why it might feel really weird is because it’s antithetical to some of the belief structures you have in play, and that’s a good sign.

(Of course, if you’re in a situation where things really aren’t working well, then we’re not talking about putting on rose-tinted glasses, or not working through the things you’re working on.)

But starting to jeopardize some of those strong beliefs that nothing is going right is so valuable for us. And it can start very small, and as soon as the system catches it it takes on a life of its own.

And we have some good evidence that even people with major depression can benefit from this. They did a study where they took people with really serious, long-term depression, and they gave them beepers. And they beeped them randomly, and asked them to write down what mood they were in, and what they were thinking about, and everything else.

Before the study, they asked [the clients] “how often are you depressed?” And [the clients] said “I’m depressed all the time. I wake up depressed, I live depressed, I fall asleep depressed. I’m always in pain. What is this question?! I’m here at the hospital. I’m in crisis. I’m always in crisis.”

But when they actually beeped them, they found that 80-90 percent of the time they weren’t. That it was only 10-15 percent of the time they were.

Now I don’t mean to downplay that. 15 percent of the time is a huge amount of time to feel like you’re in crisis. But the fact is lots of good stuff was happening, too, but it wasn’t being picked up by the system. It was like the system was largely ignoring the neutral and positive things that were happening, and continuing to construct this reality.

That’s one of the take-home messages that I find so powerful by considering this framework. The world you live in is being created in part from the top down, based on your beliefs. So, if you have some bad beliefs, you could really be living in a different world than if you had some other beliefs, some different beliefs.

So, something like Gratitude is huge. That positive feedback loop is massive.”

As echoed above, he goes on to say that sometimes making changes in the world is not only beneficial, but even necessary. But without the framework of some positive beliefs, without some pro-active and affirmative offense against the negative loop, one is not going to have the clarity or even the energy to make those necessary changes. (Or, perhaps, even to be able to see how to find help to gain those things.)

Sounds like an Ideal worthy of Pursuit.

II.

Welp, today at Mass, on the 1st Sunday of Lent, I heard tell of a folk story that personifies a similar strategy. Instead of a hero keeping a Gratitude journal, this came in the form of Christ going to the desert to confront the Slanderer (also known as the Tempter).

The Slanderer’s mission is entirely thwarted. This is not because the things he offered were not in some sense valuable, or wouldn’t be seen as attractive by most of us. They were instead presented as significant in a way which was objectionable to the Christ’s vision of Wholeness and Virtue (Eudaimonia, the flourishing spirit which arises from a life well-lived).

Like the Buddha (who had been liberated from the cycle of Samsara by the cessation of desire and aversion through the transcendence of the notions of Brahman and Atman that accompanies the Way of the Noble Eightfold Path), Christ (whose early adherents were also said to follow “the Way”) was simply not subject to the whims of desire and aversion.

He saw an Ultimate version of reality which he called “God.” He saw clearly that the Way of God was one which had life-affirming power. Because of the intensity of this worldview, secondary concerns which would threaten the health and wholeness of his Being were simply not desirable.

III.

It may not seem immediately apparent that this kind of mythopoetic vision has a lot of overlap with the type of cognitive re-framing in part l of this essay.

I ask for you to grant me a wee dram of poetic license.

While the bit about feedback loops has more to do with recognizing a modicum of fortune where there appears to be none but despair, and the stories of the Sages being more about their immunity to both misfortune and delight, I contend that there is a sonorant consonance between the related ideas.

And it is this: if we see life as being something to which we might as well resign ourselves, everything which comes across our path that threatens our sense of wholeness and well being seems an harbinger of a foreboding inevitability.

If we shift our consciousness through practice to instead give our heartminds to an ideal, we can find ourselves undergoing the metanoia sometimes called “repentance.” (Last night I heard Larry King talking of how he had been “scared straight” so as to no longer desire cigarettes after a close call with a cardiac arrest.)

To begin the process of cognitive restructuring, it might seem at first that one is nearly lying to oneself. But there’s a change of mind (meta-noia) which is not only obtainable, but even probable, provided one has the will to choose to have faith in it despite its seeming invisibility.

Moving toward this Grace, one can simply “trust the process” and know that, however far-fetched it may seem, whatever comes on the other end is better that this thing we see now.

From a strictly skeptical rationalism, this seems naive and foolish. From the vantage of Cognitive Science, it seems certain to an extent that could easily become consensus.

As they sometimes say in 12-Step groups, “More will be revealed. . .”