The Buddha laid out very clear instructions to fix your mental code in the Moggallāna sutta (MN107). I will detail them here in modern language and add on my own preparation which helped fix (yes, fix) my adhd and autism. What remains is what I chose to keep.
1 - commit to the process
2 - stop reinforcing bad code
3 - identify the redundancies and broken algorithms in your environment
4 - line up new code
5 - install
1 - Faith and going forth
A person hears the dhamma and gains faith in the Buddha. They commit to the path and place it above all other worldly concerns.
You decide ‘enough’.
You cease your worldly pursuits and devote yourself to the act of reprogramming your mind. It will be a full-time pursuit until the process is finished. You believe in the process because you know that it works. It will work because you believe. You know you cannot take one more day of the suffering. You have no choice.
2 - Virtue (sīla) - moral discipline
They undertake the precepts and cultivate restraint of body and speech, living in pure conduct
If you live like an athlete you will become an athlete. If you live like a virtuous person, you will become one.
Change your behaviour *first*, and the mind will follow. Line up new code. You need to look over the code on the neobuddhism page and possibly the nikayas themselves. This is reality, and you are lining up a way of being which does not conflict with it.
3 - Guarding the sense doors
They guard the senses: when seeing, hearing, etc., they do not grasp at signs or features that would lead to craving or aversion.
You avoid those activities which will cause craving and clinging.
You stop all phasic-spiking and addictive activities. You stop playing your internet games. You stop doing your high intensity training. You stop fighting and associating with people who push your buttons. You stop reinforcing bad code.
4 - Mindfulness and Clear Comprehension (Sati–Sampajañña)
They act with awareness and understanding in all activities — walking, eating, speaking, etc.
You observe everything about yourself and your reality. You are doing the job a business analyst here; you are assessing the requirements of the business (reality) and forming a mental picture of how your system (mind) should function.
5. Contentment
They live content with basic requisites — robes, alms food, shelter, and medicine.
This is a lean development process. You are cutting out all unnecessary bulk and fluff from your system so it can be as efficient as possible. Your *only* aim is efficacy. That is all you think about. Efficacy.
6. Abandoning the Five Hindrances
Retiring to solitude, they abandon the five hindrances: sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt.
You get into your codebase and start to remove the old code properly. During this time you should start lining up your new code for real.
I spent this time in solitude analysing the system and exporting my thoughts.
I realised that I can only process one thread at a time, so I decided to train myself to skip-think.
I spent several weeks taking one thread and running it all the way to the moon. Then I would take the next thread to the moon. And the next. I would see how the results of the threads linked together. I would go to God and I would go to Shiva and I would find the End Times and I would wind it all back and discover that the answer was a stubbed toe.
You have to run the threads to completion. These incomplete threads are where you are getting trapped in thought-feeling loops.
I then used the pairs from the dhammapada, one per day, going deep into what that meant to me. I lined up the 88 hells over the course of several weeks. I looked up one day and thought ‘it is ready’. That was the day when I hit my parental-relationship level code, but it might be some other equally deep loop for you. Only you can do this. Nobody else.
7. Jhāna – Meditative Absorptions
With the hindrances gone, they enter the four jhānas:
Here is the install process. This is where shit gets real and physical and you will quite literally rewire your brain by manipulating your neurotransmitters.
The jhāna progressively push you through various neurochemical states which increase neuroplasticity. These changes are partially mirrored in MDMA- and aripiprazole-assisted therapy. The Buddha's approach was better.
j1 = lowering norepinephrine = reduces obsessive thinking
j2 = increasing tonic dopamine = increases neuroplasticity and potentiation of new attractor states
j3 = increasing serotonin = increases metaplasticity and enables you to escape local minima (thought loops)
j4 = equanimity = all neurotransmitters are stable and the code can be installed
You DO NOT HAVE TO SIT to do this. I did not do any sitting meditation for mt first encounter with nibbana. My entire process was walking, polishing knives and writing. n2 n3 and n4 I used sitting meditation but my dopaminergic environment was far more stable by then so it was easy and natural.
8. Knowledge and Vision (Ñāṇa–Dassana)
From this concentrated mind, they direct it to higher knowledge.
This process will be instinctive. You have lined up your code. You have taken all the threads to the moon. Here is where you make the results gel and form a new neural network which cuts out redundancies.
Recollection of past lives
This is seeing how all your previous personas have been temporary and lacking. The pain they caused, the death that inevitably came from giving that persona life.
Knowledge of beings passing away and reappearing according to kamma
This is seeing the suffering that certain cravings and actions have caused you.
Destruction of the taints (āsavas) — the knowledge that leads to liberation.
This is seeing that without certain behaviours you will become a happier person.
The Buddha did not have written language. You do. This code has been lined up over the preceding weeks while you worked through your dark night. Don't sweat the details too much. Maybe use these guidelines as a template for lining the code up in step 6.
Then you hit install. You fucking go for it. You have no choice by now. You pull out all the stops and spike the fuck out of those neurotransmitters.
For me, my brain felt full. It was physically swollen, too big for the skull. I could feel electric hands in each of the synapses reaching out, trying to escape their local minima and form new circuits. I had to dance and gyrate and chant and shake my head and blast music and sit down and zap - something hit me and I felt my network physically reconfigure.
I termed this the global cascade; I felt a river of electricity go from my midbrain all through my cranium, down my face, shoulders, arms, legs, everything. It was all rewritten.
9. Liberation (Vimutti)
With the taints destroyed, they realize liberation of mind and liberation by wisdom in this very life.
They know: “Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done is done.”
… and it was done. I knew it was done. There was no doubt.
I cried with joy. I cried with relief. I … words do not suffice.
Things only continue to improve.
I actually said ‘what had to be done has been done’.
And you should too.
The Buddha. What a guy. What a fucking guy.
Optimise that code my peeps.
Do what has to be done.
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