A couple of weekends ago I went to see Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part 2 at the cinema. It was in the IMAX and it was, in every sense of the word, stunning. Like the first in the series, it is beautifully shot, the acting and screenplay are terrific and the soundtrack is extraordinary.
Dune was my favourite book as a teenager in the 70s and was the only book I finished and immediately started to re-read. After David Lynch’s strange and unsatisfactory attempt to film the book in the 80s, I was a little sceptical that anyone could bring it to the screen and remain faithful to the book, but Villeneuve has done a masterful job and has created two films that will stand as high watermarks for science fiction film making for some time.
I loved the book so much that I memorised the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear. The Bene Gesserit are a religious order in the books that works behind the scenes manipulating political leaders for its own ends.
This is the Litany:
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
The Litany is recited by those trained by the Bene Gesserit in times of peril to calm the mind. It is, of course, not a completely original sentiment. Franklin D. Rosevelt, in his inaugural address, said:
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Shakespeare had Julius Ceasar express something similar in his eponymous play:
“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
Perhaps because of these associations with times of great conflict or danger, until recently, I had always thought that the Litany was something that only applies to situations of enormous peril. However, I have come to realise recently that it is useful to remember the sentiment in everyday life (you don’t need to memorise the Litany!).
No more so is this true than with dealing with urges, whether they be for drinking alcohol or any other destructive pastime.
When you understand that our behaviours are driven largely by our emotions, then it becomes clear that to change our behaviour, we have to address the underlying emotional state that is present. For urges, that emotion is fear.
The reason we get the urge in the first place is that our brains have been tricked into thinking that the substance or behaviour in question is necessary for our survival. Repeated use of alcohol, cocaine or other addictive substances, or repeated behaviours that carry some sort of payoff, such as gambling or use of pornography, trigger the reward pathways of our brain and in time, these pathways create urges to repeat the behaviour that created the reward. This is an ancient system in our brains that was evolved to help us find sustenance, shelter and a mate. These reward systems of the brain are strongly connected to the Limbic System, which is the “feeling and reacting” part of the brain—this is where our emotions arise from.
So when we feel cravings or urges, the Limbic System adds a liberal dose of fear to the experience. We are afraid of experiencing urges without the means to stop them, for example by having a drink.
This is where the Litany Against Fear comes in handy. If we face down the fear, we find that the fear of the urge is far worse than the urge itself. The Limbic System is like a poker player holding a pair of twos and bluffing, if you call its bluff it will fold like a cheap tent.
So how do we do that?
The bluff that is being played on us by our primitive brain is to make us afraid of the urge. So when we encounter the urge, our response tends to be panic, fighting and getting angry at ourselves. These are all negative emotions that just add to the fire and make it feel like we are powerless in the face of it.
The way to call the bluff is to get really curious about the urge and lean into it. Ask yourself how it feels in the body. Where do you feel it? Does it get worse with time or does it dissipate? Is it bearable or unbearable?
There’s a great experiment by research scientist Sarah Bowen that illustrates the power of this approach.[i] She invited a group of participants who wanted to quit smoking and asked them to bring an unopened pack of their favourite cigarettes.
As the experiment began, Bowen placed the smokers around a table and gave them some rather fiendish-sounding instructions. Step by step, the smokers had to look at their cigarette pack, remove the cellophane, open the pack, smell it, pull out a cigarette, hold it, taste it, and take out their lighter and hold it close to the cigarette without lighting it. At each step, Bowen forced the participants to stop and wait for several minutes.
The purpose of the experiment wasn’t to torment the participants but rather to investigate if mindfulness can help smokers resist cravings. Before the test, half of the smokers had learned a mindfulness technique called Urge Surfing.
She explained to the participants that urges always pass, whether or not you act on them. So, when they feel a strong craving, they should imagine it as a wave in the ocean. At first, it builds up, but then it inevitably crashes and dissolves.
Urge surfing is a technique where you picture yourself riding the wave. Instead of resisting or giving in to the craving, you pay close attention to it. What thoughts are going through your mind? What feelings are passing through your body?
After the experiment, she didn’t ask them to change their smoking habits or encourage them to use the technique they’d learned. She did however ask them to report back how much they’d smoked, their daily mood and cravings for the following week.
By the seventh day after the experiment, the participants who had not learned to surf the urge showed no change while the smokers who learned the technique had cut back by an amazing 37%. And remember, they were not instructed to even try to cut back.
So when people lean into the urge, they generally find that the sensations are not comfortable, but they are certainly not terrifying.
Of course, I am not talking here about people who have physical addictions to drugs that bring physical and sometimes dangerous symptoms when people quit a drug, but rather these tactics can be used by psychologically dependent people.
Once you have seen how fear is a driving force in so much of our behaviour, and by that I don’t mean the terrible fear of dying in combat or some other emergency, but the everyday fear of unpleasant feelings, you start to see how facing your fear is such a liberating practice.
Another of my favourite authors, Joe Abercrombie, had one of his characters, Logan Ninefingers, say this in The Blade Itself:
“Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
This is so true! I remember a couple of years ago I had a slightly unpleasant task to do that I kept putting off. I had made a bit of a mistake at work—nothing major— and I had to email a few people to tell them and get them to do something to remedy the situation. It really wasn’t serious, but I was a little embarrassed to have made an error and I anticipated I might get a little pushback. I was reading Joe’s book and, taking the sentiment of the quote on board, stopped procrastinating and wrote the damned emails! Nobody cared about my mistake!
Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, had an interest in Zen Buddhism so it is perhaps not surprising that he recognised that fear is something to be faced, not ignored. Buddhists counsel us to be mindful of our fear, to be curious about the sensations in the body and mind but not obsess about what has triggered the fear. When we do this, often the fear diminishes, as Zen Buddhist Domyo notes in his blog[ii]:
“Amazingly, just becoming mindful of our fear is often enough to defuse some of it, or put it into a larger perspective that decreases our reactivity. As soon as we recognize, “Oh, fear is arising in me,” we’re no longer completely absorbed in the fear. Unless, again, we’re in imminent danger, at this very moment we’re okay. Fear is about what might happen in the future, and it’s not yet happening.”
So the next time you feel an urge to do something you don’t want to do, or feel some resistance to doing something you know you should do, remember, “Fear is the mind-killer”.
[i] Bowen, S. & Marlatt A (2009), Surfing the urge: brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers
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