How exactly do you let go? (Needs, cravings)

[meow_meow]

Hey,

So recently I've realized that simply following a strict discipline towards my diet, productivity, waking up, working out etc is good, and it works and it has great results but it doesn't solve the root issue which is - the need & craving towards shitty food, masturbation, skipping gym, alcohol etc. 

I've heard Leo talk about it, and I just recently finished reading my book (Alan Watts - The way of the zen) where he also mentions "Letting go" of the need & cravings, and attachments. Aswell as most meditation techniques teach you to "Let go" of thoughts.

So my question is, what exactly do you have to do, to let go ? or what is the step-by-step process to letting go? How can one let go of a thought?

[Gesundheit]

Step 1: You sit down with the thought.

Step 2: You endure the pain until it's gone.

Step 3: You don't go back to the old habits ever again.

[meow_meow]

42 minutes ago, Gesundheit said:

Step 2: You endure the pain until it's gone.

Well, I guess the feeling of craving could be labeled as pain, and yes I guess simply sitting trough the feeling helps for that exact moment, how about spontanious cravings - Like you walk trough a store and you notice that ice cold beer with Cheetos and.. and you just buy them, being aware of that, and feeling satisfied but guilty as hell?
 

43 minutes ago, Gesundheit said:

Step 3: You don't go back to the old habits ever again.

Easier said than done, very surface level answer TBH. 

Isn't wanting to not want itself a need? How can one not want not to want?

[Romer02]

An interesting insight I read in the book of not knowing which is on Leo's booklist is that craving or desire is thought of in the future. 

 

Therefore, when you are thinking that something is not right in the present you desire something that is not the case. Simply enjoy what is the case. 

[Gesundheit]

40 minutes ago, meow_meow said:

Well, I guess the feeling of craving could be labeled as pain, and yes I guess simply sitting trough the feeling helps for that exact moment, how about spontanious cravings - Like you walk trough a store and you notice that ice cold beer with Cheetos and.. and you just buy them, being aware of that, and feeling satisfied but guilty as hell?

Try to not give in to the cravings as much as you can. And if you fail, try to be aware of those emotions instead of becoming them/getting sucked into them. Try to be aware of the guilt emotion. Sit down with it, and follow the same steps above.

40 minutes ago, meow_meow said:

Easier said than done, very surface level answer TBH. 

Step 3 is more advanced/long-term. It's fully employed after the cravings are gone. Although, technically, it should be already employed, at least to a certain extent.

40 minutes ago, meow_meow said:

Isn't wanting to not want itself a need? How can one not want not to want?

Not-wanting is not the same as wanting not to want. Not-wanting is your original state of being; desire-less. A state of being is not a thought. Thoughts can be paradoxical. Paradox arises due to the self-referential nature of language, which is thoughts. But you won't find paradox in a state of being because it's always one state.

Your goal with the exercise is to reach the state of not-wanting, not to settle for wanting not to want, because that would be just faking it, and really a neurotic way to live life.

Think about it this way: Your original state is unconditioned. You learned things and they've become your conditioning. When you're experiencing the cravings, that's the conditioning reinforcing itself so that it can survive. When you don't give in to it, you kill it slowly. But it is a part of you, so you're basically killing yourself. So that's why you experience pain. After going through the pain, you will be free from the conditioning. The next step is step 3 where you don't allow yourself to be conditioned once again, and you do that by avoiding the things you don't want in your life anymore.

Edited November 29, 2020 by Gesundheit

[UnbornTao]

 

[Jacob Morres]

great questions i think that will lead you to a powerful technique eventually

i'm no expert but i think part of it has to do with the desire to let go. like you actually want to let it go with genuinity that arises from some reason. pain, curiosity etc. with whatever reason 

the sedona method also goes into step by step instructions with lots of good theory imo. i think that's where leo picked up the inspiration for that video

also another point - for me letting go is like you have some problem and you just drop it. no more mental drama and you let go. it took me a while to observe what that exact distinction felt and looked like, i also had no idea and still don't fully yet but i think i'm getting the hang of it. 

but yeah just some musings hopefully it was somewhat helpful lol

ps. i recommend checking into the sedona method - it has theory that may help you answer these questions 

Edited November 29, 2020 by Jacob Morres

[meow_meow]

11 minutes ago, Gesundheit said:

Not-wanting is your original state of being; desire-less

Yeah, this is a cool insight, that I wasn't aware of before.

So basically,
Craving = Thought (of food, alcohol, being lazy etc), that I've attached to.
Letting go =  Sitting trough the pain that arises while trying to not give in to the thought (Craving) ?

& repeating the process of Letting go each time thoughts, that cause cravings, arise should eventually free me from them?

[Gesundheit]

2 minutes ago, meow_meow said:

Yeah, this is a cool insight, that I wasn't aware of before.

So basically,
Craving = Thought (of food, alcohol, being lazy etc), that I've attached to.
Letting go =  Sitting trough the pain that arises while trying to not give in to the thought (Craving) ?

& repeating the process of Letting go each time thoughts, that cause cravings, arise should eventually free me from them?

Exactly!

But keep in mind that sometimes it will be excruciatingly painful, and so you just need to sit with it no matter what. The mind will play all sorts of tricks on you. Try to stay aware and non-judgemental. And try not to break. But if you do, it's okay, you can try again later right from where you left.

Also, keep in mind that the more time you've invested in a certain habit, the deeper it will be within your psyche. So that will mean more pain and more time required to completely let go. The more pain you can absorb without breaking, the better/faster.

[Mu_]

9 hours ago, meow_meow said:

Hey,

So recently I've realized that simply following a strict discipline towards my diet, productivity, waking up, working out etc is good, and it works and it has great results but it doesn't solve the root issue which is - the need & craving towards shitty food, masturbation, skipping gym, alcohol etc. 

I've heard Leo talk about it, and I just recently finished reading my book (Alan Watts - The way of the zen) where he also mentions "Letting go" of the need & cravings, and attachments. Aswell as most meditation techniques teach you to "Let go" of thoughts.

So my question is, what exactly do you have to do, to let go ? or what is the step-by-step process to letting go? How can one let go of a thought?

This may sound like weird advice, and it may not work, but its worth a try.  When your feeling the craving or need.  Pause a moment and toon into the feeling, then once you got a good grasp and mental picture of the experience, recreate it in your minds eye and then in your body.  Yes, you read that right, recreate the craving experience your already having in your minds eye and in your body exactly as your experiencing it, in the exact locations your experiencing it.  This may take practice and it will feel weird, but it just may clear the craving in its tracks.

If this sounds weird, or your asking how you would do it, imagine this and try it now.  If your feeling say neutral now, think about something that is pleasant and notice how it slighty changes your emotions.  Now while this is happening, focus your attention on the pleasant feeling.  Notice how it increases the experience.  Now try and feel that experience in your hand or foot or stomach, and see if you can feel that experience in those locations.

So, if you can do this, its basically the same thing, but instead of thinking about something pleasant, your thinking about the exact experience your already going through (make sure its as close to exact as is actually occurring) and recreating it in your body and minds eye. 

When you do this it doesnt need to be sustained for more then 5-20 seconds.  It should shift the experience if your doing as accurately as possible.

[Origins]

@meow_meow
1. Contemplation work on the following - the importance of congruence between words, actions and the karma that gets created there

2. Congruence - Ensure as much as you can that - your words of intention match your actions (arguably one of if not the most important aspect of personal development is this kind of congruence)

3. Contrast bias - How is it that a coal miner can work for almost zero dollars a day in the putrid skin melting heat to survive but you're unable to control your cravings? How is it that a mother can give birth for upwards of 10 hours but you can't put down the cookie when its not the best to have a cookie? And don't get me wrong, cookies are great its your choice, but this is not about whether eating is bad and what kind of eating is bad this is about trying to achieve higher congruence.

To me there's concerning these scenarios there's usually huge amounts of hidden and unconfronted dishonesty occurring between your relationship with reality and your relationship with yourself, one of the things I've stated was the value of having yourself as your best friend, which means something different to various people, but what comes before that is your relationship to reality. If you don't put your relationship with reality, which is detected by all of your senses, intuition and overall intelligence including that which clear past experience is meant to inform you about, first, you'll compromise any friendship you have with yourself when it comes to that friendship being based in reality. And that's like any relationship, and I have no doubt, even if its not apparent that because there's a lack of congruence in this area there's probably going to be a lack of congruence in other areas of your life too, because integrity is not just something that happens in the moment, it ripples out in time and it leaks into and affects every other aspect of integrity we can have with reality. To the degree that we fall out of alignment with this relationship with reality in the context of congruence is to the degree that our integrity will be compromised. Integrity in this breath simply means following through and a pairing between words and reality, this is valued far more highly than simply the ability to "be nice", being nice allows you to "blend in" but it says nothing about your ability to actually cope with reality or even have friends because who wants a friend that's always nice anyhow, I mean at least there's congruence with something but a lot of the time people are overly nice when there's reduced congruence between the relationship the person has with reality and the relationship they have with themselves.

I made a statement yesterday that one of my ideal financial scenarios was to be able to save all of the orca whales from captivity; that's a pretty big statement I made there that's going to force me to motivate myself in a lot of areas that I've never motivated myself towards in my life, and if I don't follow through with my goal there what does that say about me? You might never achieve your lofty goals but didn't you really do your darnedest to achieved them? The latter is the true measure of congruency, because at least you did your best to discover the truth.

So...

4. Truly do your best to discover the truth - That's a lot what congruency is about, "How am I working towards that?" "What is the difference between goal and actualisation so far and what actions do I need to bridge the gap?"

It causes minor but incrementally worse damage that can be increasingly terrible on a large scale of time if we do not at least strive to meet the goals that we set out to do. I'm not at all a person that likes people that say a whole bunch of crap and then finishes with "Hey I'm just human too but... I'm giving you the oughts of reality", no that's a straight up bullshitter that you shouldn't listen to. I've said a whole bunch of crap on this site so far, and you may evolve from the past things you've said, which is great, but when the measurement occurs between what you said, who you are and the supposed evolution, what is left standing? What does the truth reveal?

Once the mask starts to slip, its time to stop listening, reality doesn't allow you to use human fallibility as a scapegoat. Say a word, keep it and reality will return you with the corresponding reward or punishment and various degrees there depending on how accurate you are.

Edited November 30, 2020 by Origins

[meow_meow]

@Origins Damn, that's hell of a explanation, some spiritual heavyweight stuff.
I seriously had to re-read this at various times during these days until I finally got the point, and yes, you're answer amazingly accurate, it correlates with my issues with setting and maintaining inner boundaries which basically means saying 'No!' (to people and to myself) and actually not doing the thing that I said No to. (Congurance)
How it oftern times ends up is - Saying No (to beer), but then grabbing a beer a few hours later, then feelings of remorse anger etc arise (Sabotaging integrity and relationship with myself)

But simply trough discipline I've managed to get my gym routines, diet, work productivity etc more or less on point.
But the cravings are still there, the main point of the topic was how to diminish them entirely. 

Anyhow, your answer really helped me to connect the dots, thanks for that.
 

On 11/30/2020 at 6:07 AM, Mu_ said:

This may sound like weird advice, and it may not work, but its worth a try.  When your feeling the craving or need.  Pause a moment and toon into the feeling, then once you got a good grasp and mental picture of the experience, recreate it in your minds eye and then in your body.  Yes, you read that right, recreate the craving experience your already having in your minds eye and in your body exactly as your experiencing it, in the exact locations your experiencing it.  This may take practice and it will feel weird, but it just may clear the craving in its tracks.

If this sounds weird, or your asking how you would do it, imagine this and try it now.  If your feeling say neutral now, think about something that is pleasant and notice how it slighty changes your emotions.  Now while this is happening, focus your attention on the pleasant feeling.  Notice how it increases the experience.  Now try and feel that experience in your hand or foot or stomach, and see if you can feel that experience in those locations.

So, if you can do this, its basically the same thing, but instead of thinking about something pleasant, your thinking about the exact experience your already going through (make sure its as close to exact as is actually occurring) and recreating it in your body and minds eye. 

When you do this it doesnt need to be sustained for more then 5-20 seconds.  It should shift the experience if your doing as accurately as possible.

This truly sounds like a weird advice, and this actually might help with cravings that occur when I'm shopping for food, boored etc.
I'll def try this out, thanks.

Edited December 3, 2020 by meow_meow

[Origins]

@meow_meow No problem, stay strong! You've got this!

[vibv]

Okay. It's like this: You don't really want to stop. Why else would you keep doing it?

Why do you even want to stop? It's obviously not clear enough. There's something that it seems to give you. That's what you feel.
Examine that! Do the action .. but do it as consciously as possible.

Once it's totally clear that you want to stop, it will be very easy.

The suffering results because you experience a division inside yourself. One part wants to stop but the other wants to keep doing it.

Do it totally - and then stop totally.

[Farnaby]

@meow_meow I think we often fall into the trap of guilting/shaming ourselves for doing the stuff we would like to transcend. IME this only leads to repression and creating a shadow around those impulses. 

What has worked for me personally is to cut myself some slack and just be mindful when I'm doing things that can potentially become a problem. I don't mean falling for egoic excuses like "everyone has addictions" but approaching all this with curiosity and being honest with myself about when those habits are starting to have detrimental consequences in my life. 

IMO if you just repress and shame yourself when you "relapse", you're going to create a lot of tension which will only beg for a short-term release. 

With the cold beer and cheetos example it would be something like: 

- I have a strong urge to buy that 

- If I can catch that urge and sit with it, great. No problem if I end up buying it. I will have created space around the urge and at least increased my awareness of what drives me to "unhealthy" habits and also my tolerance for discomfort.

- If the urge is too strong, I will try to be mindful while I drink the beer and eat the cheetos and see how I feel during and after. 

- If I didn't do that mindfully, I will try to reflect afterwards on everything that has led to that "unconscious" behaviour (maybe I had a fight with my partner or maybe I'm burnt out, just explore with an open mind).

At least that seems to work for me. 

And as @vibv said, I think we have to acknowledge that a part of us (our short-term reward oriented brain) doesn't want to give that up. It's just the way we're wired. 

Hope this helps  

[MrWolf]

On 29/11/2020 at 9:00 PM, Gesundheit said:

Not-wanting is not the same as wanting not to want. Not-wanting is your original state of being; desire-less.

Id heavily question the possibility of existing in the world without any desires. Without desire there is no existence. Desire is not inherently bad. Its the life force. Being desireless means you have no identification with your desires; your desires are only about what is needed. You have no personal identity with the desires that you play with.

[Gesundheit]

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

Id heavily question the possibility of existing in the world without any desires. Without desire there is no existence. Desire is not inherently bad. Its the life force. Being desireless means you have no identification with your desires; your desires are only about what is needed. You have no personal identity with the desires that you play with.

Wrong. We inhale and exhale air all the time effortlessly, and without desire. Breathing is life, and it is desire-less. Try again, Mr. Ego-mind.

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, Gesundheit said:

Wrong. We inhale and exhale air all the time effortlessly, and without desire. Breathing is life, and it is desire-less. Try again, Mr. Ego-mind.

Ill take my own experience and observations before someone who calls me Mr Ego-mind any time. Ore even Osho, Sadhguru ore Gautama the Buddha´s words, who coincide with my own experience on the matter of desire. You are just philosophising and making shit up. Do you feel desire-less? Drive(Desire) Is our fucking fule. Its the life force! It all about how to use it. Its StarWars! Look what happens to people who denounce desire. They end up fucking small boys when no one is looking. Good luck living without desire. Its at totally stupid idea that is being babbeled out everywhere by Greenies.

Edited December 3, 2020 by MrWolf

[Mu_]

@meow_meow Ya let me know if it works, I'm curious, since its something that I accidentally discovered myself and am curious if it works for others.

[MrWolf]

On 30/11/2020 at 5:07 AM, Mu_ said:

This may sound like weird advice, and it may not work, but its worth a try.  When your feeling the craving or need.  Pause a moment and toon into the feeling, then once you got a good grasp and mental picture of the experience, recreate it in your minds eye and then in your body.  Yes, you read that right, recreate the craving experience your already having in your minds eye and in your body exactly as your experiencing it, in the exact locations your experiencing it.  This may take practice and it will feel weird, but it just may clear the craving in its tracks.

If this sounds weird, or your asking how you would do it, imagine this and try it now.  If your feeling say neutral now, think about something that is pleasant and notice how it slighty changes your emotions.  Now while this is happening, focus your attention on the pleasant feeling.  Notice how it increases the experience.  Now try and feel that experience in your hand or foot or stomach, and see if you can feel that experience in those locations.

So, if you can do this, its basically the same thing, but instead of thinking about something pleasant, your thinking about the exact experience your already going through (make sure its as close to exact as is actually occurring) and recreating it in your body and minds eye. 

When you do this it doesnt need to be sustained for more then 5-20 seconds.  It should shift the experience if your doing as accurately as possible.

Thats an interesting idea/observation. Very original. Kind of making the compulsion conscious by creating it yourself.

(I like your YT Video on meaning)

Edited December 3, 2020 by MrWolf