Part II – Disarming the F*** it Switch
My argument at the end of Part I was that controlling the switch was less about draconian self-control and more about awareness.
Easier said, or written, than done, but what exactly do I mean by that?
Awareness of what our mind is up to, and trying to watch its habits and games, is quite like watching a film. We believe in our own thoughts just as an audience buys into a film. There we sit, in the dark, entirely focused on the silver screen. As the story builds we become more and more involved. Let’s say it is that classic formula, a rom-com—we’re there, becoming intimate with the characters. We see the courtship, the screw-ups when it all goes wrong, the moments when the romance is wrested back from the abyss. Unconsciously or consciously we’re guessing what’s going to happen next. If it’s a good film we’re gripped, wholly involved, right there with them, laughing with them, crying, sighing, hoping.
And then it’s over. The credits roll. The names of the actors come and go, and even if we’re not really aware of the realisation, those moving names prove that none of it was real, that the characters did not exist, that the story was just that. The lights come up and, as we pick our way out through the carpeting of pop-corn, the screen goes blank, and there is nothing there anymore. No characters, no story, nothing tugging and nudging our emotional responses with big screen lingering looks, cute lines, swelling scores as the lovers meet, kiss, part, screw, screw-up, get it wrong, then right. We know this, we understand it and accept that we, the audience, are being sold a story and that we are being willingly manipulated in our belief. It is the contract we make when we buy the ticket.
We’re not so good at recognising that our thoughts work in the same way, playing out on the blank screen of our awareness. This, our awareness, remains unchanged, like the screen. It is constant, always there, unchanging. Our thoughts are the movies, fully fleshed out stories playing all the time, endlessly trying to convince us that they are real, and that we must believe them. But, unlike at the end of the film, we do not pick our way out through the pop-corn detritus, knowing that the show is over. It is as though we are stuck in our seats, believing the film to be real, that we are in the film, that we become the film, its story our story, shaping how we feel and react.
We are not those stories, and we can get up and leave our seats anytime we like, we are just are not good as realising that we can.
So, to apply this movie analogy back to the F*** it Switch – if the line that cannot be crossed is eating sugary things, then even a teeny spoonful of ice-cream has the capacity to flick the switch. That weeny amount can trigger the powerful movie-thought that all resistance has gone, and that the only thing to do is to wallow in a tub of cookie dough ice-cream. The game is to understand that this is just a story-idea that the movie-mind has come up with. It’s a powerful story, and so believable that it’s a though the cookie dough ice-cream has its own voice, as though the thought is real, and that you are actually the cookie dough ice-cream because that is the intensity of the thought-movie. Sugar, by the very nature of its addictive quality, is one of the most common F***it Switch triggers, but it can just as easily be a day of loneliness too far that flips the over-whelming need to re-open the old scars on an already cross-hatched arm, or the wrong kind of questioning from an aggressor that throws the switch into uncontrollable violence. Awareness is seeing that we are just being controlled by another story, and that we have bought into the sugar, the need to see blood, or to vent a sense of disempowerment through attacking. We can, if we choose, just watch the movie-thought playing out without responding because that blank screen of awareness allows us to understand what the fallout will be on the other side of the flip of the switch.
This watching, this awareness, is how to trick the F*** it Switch. It is also the equivalent to a backstage rock festival ‘Access all Areas’ pass into the mind, but that is drifting off point and into the secret code to joy, and that is very definitely for another post and time.