Major topics of this glossary
This glossary is about disembedding, which relates to activities such as mindfulness meditation, reflective journal writing, therapy, and postmodern philosophy (deconstruction) for the purpose of “letting go” of unwanted thoughts and emotions. The concepts described here relate to these four activities. However, mindfulness meditation will serve as the main example.
Objects of awareness:
Phenomenon: A thought, emotion, or bodily sensation. People are often attracted to mindfulness meditation because they want to calm, change, or eliminate certain phenomena, including thoughts and emotions (anxiety) and bodily sensations (pain).
Mutable phenomenon: “Mutable” means “changeable” (like “mutate”), so this is a phenomenon that one could hope to change, in the long run, through meditation. Anxiety is “mutable” if one can change it.
Immutable phenomenon: A phenomenon that is beyond your control. However, one could change the way in which the phenomenon gives rise to other phenomena. Thus, if one feels sick, one can’t necessarily change that through mindfulness. But one could prevent the sick feeling from giving rise to a cycle of other stressful phenomena such as the thought “I might never get better.”
This is related to the Buddhist story of the “second arrow” from the Sallatha Sutta. Imagine that we have been accidentally pierced by a hunter’s arrow. The first arrow that pierces us represents some unavoidable (“immutable”) harm, like sickness. But then for some reason we decide to shoot ourselves with a second arrow, inflicting even more damage. The second and succeeding arrows are mutable phenomena. These might be worrisome thoughts about the future like “I might never get better,” or about guilt like “I shouldn’t get sick.” Thus, the second arrow is self-inflicted and optional or mutable. (https://mindfulnessmeditation.net.au/arrow/) The thought “I shouldn’t worry about being sick” or even “I shouldn’t have shot myself with a second arrow” is itself a guilt-inducing third arrow.
First / second arrow: A mutable phenomenon is a second, third, fourth, etc. arrow, while an immutable phenomenon is the first arrow. Each arrow has the potential to give rise to the next.
Example 1:
First arrow: I have a sore throat.
Second arrow: This is terrible, it’s just like last time.
Third arrow: I might never get better. I shouldn’t get sick, I might get others sick.
Fourth arrow: I just shot myself with a second and third arrow. I shouldn’t do that, it will make me anxious. That will make the sickness worse.
Example 2:
First arrow: It’s been half an hour, and my friend hasn’t responded to my e-mail.
Second arrow: That means they don’t like me any more.
Third arrow: And that means no one will like me any more.
Fourth arrow: Oh no, I’m so negative. Just listen to what I’m thinking. No wonder no one likes me any more.
Some provisos on mutable vs. immutable phenomena:
- All phenomena change over time. This idea of impermanence (anicca) is a fundamental tenet of Buddhism. The mutable vs. immutable distinction is not about whether things change (they always change) but whether you can change them in the long run through your efforts. However, it’s almost impossible to tell that for sure. There is no particular phenomenon that is always a mutable second arrow or always an immutable first arrow. For example, some people say that their chronic pain is immutable, but others say that it too can be alleviated by mindfulness. Thus, it may be futile to try to guess which phenomena are mutable.
- Mindfulness meditation feels like watching a phenomenon, not like saying “please, change now” or pushing for a change. One does not say “go away, anxiety” or “go away, pain” while meditating on anxiety or pain. Anxiety is a bit like a messenger who has an urgent message to deliver. As the ruler, you have to decide whether to hear the unpleasant message and also how to react to it. If you listen to the messenger, she may eventually go away satisfied that she has been heard, but if you don’t listen, if you tell her to “please go away,” she will resort to more and more drastic stratagems to get you to listen.
Lightly describing phenomena: Means being aware of a phenomenon using language; being able to talk and think about it in words. If the phenomenon is anxiety, the description is “I am anxious” or, more specifically, “I am worried that I’m a bad person.” It has a “light” feeling to it – that is, the affect is not “oh no, I’m so anxious, how terrible” but rather “I just have some anxiety.” This light feeling helps to avoid adding a second arrow to the first. In mindfulness meditation, we often gently label things (such as the breath), saying “in” and “out.” This helps us to practice lightly describing.
Falling into phenomena: Means that each new attempt to understand or engage with a phenomenon becomes a new arrow. E.g one, “falls into” anxiety by thinking: “I will fail my math test” or “I am getting sicker” or “I hurt their feelings.” In contrast, one lightly describes anxiety by lightly thinking: “I am just anxious about failing my math test.”
Observing phenomena: Lightly turning one’s attention toward the bodily sensations or emotions associated with the phenomenon. Whereas lightly describing uses words, observing turns the attention to a phenomenon without using words. Observation, like lightly describing, may help to change a mutable phenomenon. In mindfulness meditation, it may be helpful to try to “observe” the breath rather than “falling into” it.
Phenomenal perspective: The perspective on life where you recognize that much of what seems “real” to us is actually a phenomenon and is impermanent (anicca). That is, when we feel sick, some of the unpleasant feeling comes from immutable bodily sensations of the sickness, but these may change (albeit not through our efforts.) Also, some of it may come from a mutable thought or emotion, a second arrow: worrying about being sick. Perhaps some of it comes from a third arrow: worrying about worrying about being sick. (“Oh no, I shouldn’t worry about being sick!”)
Getting stuck:
Intuition: A subtle, almost unconscious push. This is like the sensation you get when you’re writing something and you think “that’s not quite right,” but you can’t put your finger on what is wrong or why.
Stuck: You are stuck in a phenomenon if it is unhelpful. You can tell if a phenomenon is unhelpful via intuition. Your intuition may tell you that you are suffering due to your being stuck in this unhelpful phenomenon. If someone says “you seem impatient today,” you might conclude that you’re stuck in your impatience, but then again maybe you aren’t. Maybe impatience is warranted and helpful in this situation. Only intuition can help you decide that.
Cycle: Moving from one phenomenon to the next uncontrollably in an unhelpful (“stuck”) way, as the first arrow leads to the second and third. Falling-into phenomena can set you up for a cycle. In contrast, with lightly describing or observing phenomena, one does not “fall into” the phenomenon and follow the cycles it suggests. The word “cycle” implies a circle: after feeling sick, worrying that you are sick, and worrying that you may never improve, you are returned eventually to the feeling of sickness, where you start all over again.
Getting unstuck:
Disembedding: Letting go of a phenomenon you are stuck in. In mindfulness meditation, this works via a practice of directed attention as well as positive emotional effects, like quieting the sympathetic nervous system. Let’s discuss three approaches:
- Directed attention to positive immutable phenomena, such as the breath or the sensation of walking. This builds executive function – the ability to move one’s attention away from some phenomena and toward others. This executive function can be applied even when not meditating.
The reason that breath and walking are used as a focus for meditation is perhaps that both quiet the sympathetic nervous system and make us feel more relaxed. So it may be desirable to turn the attention onto breath or walking, which are pleasant sensations. Positive social interactions (such as with a therapist) also suppress the sympathetic nervous system, providing a different route to disembedding via lightly describing phenomena.
- Directed attention toward negative immutable phenomena, or first arrow, such as pain or discomfort. Here, the purpose still is not to stop experiencing the immutable phenomena and more to notice that the sensation arises and passes away over time, which can alleviate anxiety about it. In this way, observation may prevent the immutable phenomena (first arrow) from generating mutable phenomena (second arrows) such as “I’m so worried about this pain.” Finally, sometimes it is impossible to do (1) because e.g. pain is distracting us from the breath. Then we may need to meditate on the pain to gain the benefits of (1).
- Directed attention toward a mutable phenomenon or second arrow. Instead of allowing the attention to fall into the phenomenon and move toward a cycle of phenomena, lightly observe the phenomenon itself. The phenomenon could be anxiety, for instance. It could also be a craving (Buddhism: “tanha”) for things to be a particular way, or a desire to make certain things permanent. The attention is directed toward the mutable phenomenon in a light, welcoming, caring way, as if to convince the phenomenon that you are listening to it thoughtfully – think of the messenger story above. This exercise may help to alleviate the power of the arrow, which is to say, to disembed from it. Also, awareness of what’s going on in our mind gives us the opportunity to choose.
Sub-disembedding: Disembedding from a particular solution to a problem – without disembedding from the problem itself. E.g.: if you are worried about a relationship – and you are worried in an unhelpful way about framing an e-mail to “fix” the problem – you might disembed from the specific process of framing an e-mail, yet remain in a cycle about “fixing” this relationship.
Super-disembedding: Disembedding from a problem altogether. In the example above, you might stop worrying about “fixing” the relationship entirely. This is not the same as discarding the relationship; it just means not falling-into your worries about it. There can be levels of super-disembedding, e.g.: (1) worrying about framing an e-mail, (2) worrying about “fixing” a particular relationship, (3) worrying about “fixing” your relationships in general.
Conscious and unconscious:
Unconscious pattern: This is like a phenomenon, but it is buried in the unconscious mind and cannot be perceived consciously. For example, if your anger at your spouse or child comes, unconsciously, from imitating the pattern of your parents’ anger at each other, you may be unaware of your parents’ role. Thus, your memories of your parents are an unconscious pattern rather than a phenomenon.
Drawing-out: Moving an unconscious pattern from the unconscious mind to the conscious mind, where it becomes a phenomenon and can be observed and disembedded from. At first, there is only an unconscious pattern. Then it is experienced as an intuition – such as an unexplained push toward taking a certain action. The sense that something is helpful or unhelpful is typically experienced, at first, as an intuition. Finally, it becomes a phenomenon that is clearly perceptible in the conscious mind. In this way, the memory of your parents could change from an unconscious pattern to a phenomenon that can be meditated upon.
Disembedding practices
Mindfulness meditation: You practice disembedding by directing your attention toward your breath or other phenomena, as discussed here.
Reflective writing: You lightly describe a topic by writing about it. Since we associate the written word as being partly trustworthy and partly untrustworthy (or at least we should!) writing something down helps us let go of it; it is “just” written words.
Therapy: You lightly describe a topic with your therapist.
Deconstruction: You lightly describe an idea by reflecting on how it is constructed via language over a period of historical time. For example, in Michael Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish, Foucault analyzes how the concept of discipline and punishment evolved over time. Punishment is a stimulating idea that gives rise to feelings and thoughts about retribution, guilt, or shame. Foucault’s goal is to disembed from these phenomena; they are “just social constructs” rather than scientific truths. In the middle ages, punishment involved brutal public displays such as the stocks. Later, this idea turned into discipline – the notion that schoolchildren and prisoners should have regimented schedules. In this way, Foucault lightly describes discipline and punishment and shows that they are “just” ideas. Our society does not have to be stuck in them. In deconstruction, you consider how an idea is just a set of words, whose meanings are defined in terms of other words, whose means in turn are defined in terms of other words … This is a practice that comes from postmodern philosophy.