Brain Lock-n-Load

I said in my first blog about meditation that there were two main aims. The first of these aims, calming the mind through mindfulness of breathing I wrote about yesterday. The second aim is the attainment of insight into the nature of the mind and the body. The tool used to effect this is the Buddhist meditation technique of Vipassana. I will write about Vipassana tomorrow but today I would like to do a preamble on some of the concepts on which it is based. These concepts to the layperson seem a bit abstruse and I was wondering how I was going to present them.

However, the answer was right in my face. These concepts, of which there are three, are to be found in the Four Steps by Dr. Schwartz in his book Brain Lock. For those who haven't read this great book, I would highly recommend it. You can read a brief summary of the Four Steps on the OCD-UK website here. I bought this book many years ago and it has helped me tremendously.

The first concept is embodied in the 15-minute rule from the Four Steps. When you have a compulsion, you are advised to try to resist it for 15 minutes. The idea is to separate the ritual from the obsession causing it. The longer you separate the two, the weaker the compulsion should get. It is impossible for the discomfort to remain the same forever, it will decrease all on its own. In Buddhism, the property that anything which arises will eventually pass away is called anicca. Anicca states that all things in nature are inconstant and subject to change.

The second concept is to be found in the battle cry "It's not me, it's my OCD!". In Brain Lock, Dr. Schwartz encourages us to regard OCD as "false thoughts". We do not have to think of our OCD thoughts as belonging to us or a part of us at all. They are to be treated as ownerless. In Buddhism this property of being ownerless is called anatta. Our OCD behaviours are not our self and so we should not be too concerned about them just as we would not be that concerned about someone else's property and possessions.

The last concept is touched upon in the Revalue Step in Brain Lock. Over time as you begin to win skirmishes over OCD, you will begin to see that all the little thoughts, obsessions and compulsions have no inherent value or satisfactoriness. We thus place less emphasis on them in our daily lives. We begin to see that succumbing to a compulsion may provide temporary satisfaction, but that satisfaction will be gone when the next obsession arrives. Thus the nature of compulsive behaviours are unsatisfactory because they do not lead to permanent relief. In Buddhism, this property of unsatisfactoriness is called dukkha.

As I have said in a previous blog, logical reasoning makes for a very blunt weapon against the armour of OCD, but with Vipassana meditation as our artillery cannon and anicca, anatta and dukkha as our armour-piercing ordnance, we at last have a weapon that makes even OCD tremble in its boots! So let's lock 'n load Baby! Tomorrow we take the war right onto OCD's front doorstep.

Metta,
John