[the slab report] #7 - Resetting Existential Preferences
Initiate System Update. . .or Remind Me Tomorrow?
Here’s something I haven’t remembered in a long time: Winamp Skins. There’s apparently a museum of them – thank god someone took the time to preserve that cultural heritage! (For those not familiar with Winamp, it was a media player popular in the late 1990s whose interface could be modified with the use of a “skin” – kind of like a Chrome or Gmail theme, or the dark mode on most apps - except with a lot more elaborate options!)
I distinctly remember having a skin with an animal print, though I was also partial to any neon green on black layouts that made me feel like I actually lived in the movie The Matrix.
Being a late 90s girl on the internet, I loved to customize my various computer and web preferences. I spent hours on Dafont.com trying to find the right typeface for my modified LiveJournal layouts. I tweaked the way hovering over links looked on my MySpace profile. I curated the apps that appeared in my Windows starter menu, and later my Apple Dock. I even had a computer tower that was orange with a white trim, like a creamsicle.
You could say that it was really important for me not to stick to the default settings. I felt a visceral judgment towards people who never changed their desktop background from the factory standard, or chose one of the options the computer came pre-loaded with. In my rulebook, it was akin to having your favorite music be whatever happened to be playing on Top 40 Pop Radio. Sheep!
To be honest, I’m still like this a bit. I’m not one of those people whose whole laptop is covered in stickers like the back bumper of an opinionated teenager’s car, but I do have a few choice ones that suggest something about me. That I’m unique. Sensitive but rebellious. Playful but sophisticated. Artsy and smart. LOL. It’s funny and vulnerable to confess what I’m going for. I have a preference that you perceive me in the way that I want, and that makes my ego’s happiness dependent on the result.
I’ve been thinking about the meta version of our computer preferences this month. These Existential Preferences have been revealing themselves to me as I’ve been playing Baba Is You, playing VERSIONS at the Lab, and doing The Work from Byron Katie. If you’re not familiar with Byron Katie, here’s a quick summary of her story…
I call her an “actually existing enlightened person,” although she didn’t come through any spiritual lineage or practice. She was a very depressed, suicidal, and agoraphobic woman for many years. Then, one day, she was in a halfway house, treating her many conditions, when a cockroach crawled over her ankle, and suddenly she lost all identification with herself and her previous beliefs. She was free and fresh, like a newborn baby. As her human thoughts came back, she began questioning them through a process of self-inquiry, what later became known as The Work. The Work involves asking 4 questions about a belief, and then turning the belief around—essentially meditating on the very opposite of the belief and finding evidence for how this opposite statement is true. So, for example, if the original belief that brings the person stress and suffering is “My friend lied to me,” some turnarounds would be “I lied to me” or “I lied to my friend” or “My friend didn’t lie to me” or “My friend told me the truth.” The Work involves examining reality to see if those other statements are at least as true as the first belief that activated the feelings of anger, sadness, shame, or betrayal. Sometimes I joke that the process is kind of self-gaslighting, but unlike the actual gaslighting, the goal of The Work is not coercion, but liberation: liberation from concepts that capture us.
I’ve known about The Work for a while, but this month I’ve started “doing it for breakfast” as Byron Katie recommends—doing it every day, and welcoming when situations upset me as an opportunity to practice inquiry. It’s been helping me with some situations I’ve been feeling activated by—conflicts with neighbors and family, thoughts that send me into a loop of self-doubt. The Work is especially excellent at breaking down judgements, blame, and assumptions we make about other people, but Katie recommends not doing The Work on beliefs and judgements about ourselves, because when we direct our judgements inward, we have too many conflicting internal parts that might resist the process.
But most of my suffering comes with the problems I have with myself! The way I look, spend my time, and fail to achieve my aspirations!
So instead, I’ve been doing a more playful, gentler version of The Work on situations that don’t involve other people and are more about my problems with myself. I call it Resetting Existential Preferences. It’s very much inspired by the rule-modifying mechanic of Baba is You, the liberating Extra Rule dynamic of Versions, the Turnaround process of The Work (and also a shadow integration modality called Existential Kink that I’ll probably write about some other time).
Here’s how I play Resetting Existential Preferences. When I notice a feeling of dissatisfaction about something, I get excited (because it’s an opportunity to play the game!) and ask myself, what preference of mine is being rubbed up against right now? For example, yesterday, I was really not feeling cute. It frustrated and bummed me out, and nothing I did with my hair or my outfit seemed to help. I realized that I have a preference for feeling cute. I prefer to feel cute! Yes, that’s my preference. To reset this preference, I simply try out the opposite of it: I prefer not to feel cute! And then I ask myself, how might this be true? When I really allow an answer to come up, I realize there are several good benefits to not feeling cute:
When I don’t feel cute, I can moan about it, and my partner will reassure me of how cute I am, which gives us the opportunity to exchange some affection and helps me remember that I’m loved regardless of how cute I am/feel.
When I don’t feel cute, I spend less time vainly looking at myself in the mirror or taking selfies, which is liberating to my time and ego!
When I don’t feel cute, I become motivated to improve something about my appearance. For example, I finally scheduled a long-overdue haircut yesterday!
There are others ways I might want to feel beyond cute… strong or elegant or powerful or free or kind or.. alive?!
It turns out I could actually enjoy either situation! Finding three or more reasons for why I might actually hold the opposite preference is a solid practice, but the goal is not to then switch my preference to the opposite for the rest of my life. Rather, the goal is to neutralize the original preference, to reset it to its default, pre-preference state. Ultimately, I’m trying to prefer to feel whatever way I actually feel in the moment, to make every preference be “I Prefer What Is.” This preference resonates with two teachings of liberation that I keep encountering in my spiritual driftings… Perhaps you know them too?
A — The one about spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti who said in a talk “Do you want to know what my secret is? " With his followers listening rapturously, Krishnamurti said: "You see, I don't mind what happens." (Source: Oliver Burkeman on the guru that didn’t believe in gurus but also Eckhart Tolle and pretty much every other spiritual teacher with a podcast)
B — The one about the Dalai Lama, who was asked by a reporter to share the happiest moment in his life. The Dalai Lama smiled mischievously and said: “I think now!” (Source: Tara Brach - the blessings of enough)
Something that feels important to remember with this this game/practice is that the default or neutral preference state is not the same as the average or the cultural ideal or the mean of the normal curve. It’s not the Top 40 Preference. And it’s not someone else’s preference. Rather, it’s the Non-Preference—the preference to prefer what is.
Would you like to play Resetting Existential Preferences game with me? Try it in the comments of this post, or privately, by replying to this email. I’m sure there’s something you feel dissatisfied about that you can play with: what you look like, what your energy levels are, how much money you have, how well your memory works, et cetera. Unless of course your preferences are already perfectly neutral! In which case, enjoy your bliss!!!
P.S. This is an installment of [the slab report] – the special and secret lab report that normally only goes out only to supporting subscribers, but is being sent to everyone this month as a preview! If you want to keep receiving my personal existential experiments and playtest invitations, you can subscribe here ($5/month) or here (pay-what-you-want).
P.P.S. I was realizing yesterday that all of my existential games are essentially a version of Opposite Day. Ha. Even so, there’s a lot of philosophical mileage and therapeutic power in the Reversal! So I’m going to keep playing with it!
I was doing something like this last week! Not exactly, though. It was specifically around being ugly. I was looking at myself and despairing about how ugly I felt, and then I remembered... I actually love people who are really super ugly and don't give a fuck about it. I love ugly fashion and ugly hair and ugly shoes (especially if they somehow still manage to be aesthetically pleasing to my taste, it's like a magic trick). Ugly feels rebellious and hilarious and a bit wicked. So I've been spending more time being purposefully ugly. Sometimes I still look in the mirror and get upset - but when I remember how much I love being ugly, I feel better.