Intro Series II: Mindfulness and the Arc of (Bigger-than-)Self Transcendence
How metabolisation leads, in psychological terms, to an arc of bigger-than-self transcendence...
This is the second post in an Intro Series where I introduce the key concepts and lay out the intellectual grounding of the Bigger-than perspective I’m developing in this Substack. There are a number of interlocking pieces to the Bigger-than approach and it is necessary to go over each piece individually in order to be able to then put the pieces together in such a way that leads to an ability to address bigger-than-self distress and the meta-crisis from this perspective. Here are the links to parts I, III, and IV in this series…
This post takes its title from an adaptation of a paper by Garland and Fredrickson (2019) titled “Positive psychological states in the arc from mindfulness to self-transcendence: Extensions of the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory and applications to addiction and chronic pain treatment”. Theirs is a more recent article in a series of articles on which these two were contributing authors since 2010 that put forward and test an empirically grounded theory of the mechanisms of mindfulness practice.
This post will continue on the discussion in the previous post on mindfulness practice, and examine it from the perspective developed by Garland, Fredrickson, and their co-authors in that series of papers. The perspective they develop points to a way of being that can unfold from regular skilful mindfulness practice: a kind of prototypical psychological pattern or developmental “arc”, as they call it. This arc or pattern is illustrative of a possibility of a kind of flourishing in mental wellbeing that can enable individual to process bigger-than-self distress and not only not sacrifice our quality of life but to (potentially vastly) improve it.
This arc is a foundational kind of pattern to the perspective I put forward in the current approach on how to best address bigger-than-self distress. It offers a hopeful, active, grounded way forward in approaching such distress. It neither avoids the at times difficult, painful, or confronting aspects of the bigger-than-self issues we care about, nor gets lost in reactivity about them, and all the while maintains an optimistic focus on what individuals can do, in their own lives, to make things better than they might have been, no matter the actual outcome.
So, what is this arc? Let’s explore, first, the body of work Garland, Fredrickson, and collaborators have put together over the last decade or so, which will provide an empirical and theoretical grounding for the pattern I’m wanting to talk about and later apply to bigger-than-self distress.
Broaden and Build Theory, Mindfulness, Positive Reappraisal, and Upward Spiral Processes
The first collaboration between Eric Garland, who has gone on to become the most prolific author of mindfulness research in the world, and Barbara Fredrickson, then and now one of the world’s foremost researchers in positive psychology, was in their 2010 article1 titled “Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: Insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology.”
In this paper, they put forward a theory that interventions such as mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation build positive states, which over time lead to structural and functional changes in the brain, and help the person to build personal and social resources. This is grounded in the observations of Fredrickson’s (1998) “broaden and build” theory of positive emotions, which has been tested and supported by a multitude of studies conducted across different laboratories over several years. This theory states that positive emotions such as joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love broaden our perceptual thought-action repertoires, reveal increased range of potential responses in a given context, and that this in turn results in a building of personal resources over time.
Garland et al. (2010, p. 851) put forward the idea that emotions can be viewed as “self-organising systems that operate to maintain their own organisation”. They posit that emotional systems can be seen as feeding into a spiral-like structure. In such a structure, emotions such as sadness can be seen as engendering downward spirals, where (in an over-simplified caricature) sadness leads to increased rumination, withdrawal, which leads to more sadness, more rumination, and so on - leading to a downward spiral that if left unchecked could lead to depression.
In contrast, they posit that positive emotions or states can engender upward spiral processes, where experiencing a positive state such as awe or joy expands one’s perceptual and behavioural repertoire, and leads to more optimal functioning and increased social openness. They note (p. 851) that downward and upward spirals are not merely mirror opposites of one another: “Rather, consequential structural differences set them apart. Whereas downward spirals lead to narrowed self-focus and rigid or stereotyped defensive behavior, upward spirals lead to increased openness to others and novel or spontaneous exploratory activity. In effect, upward spirals are more open, permeable, flexible and social than downward spirals… In so doing, positivity may develop a life of its own” This difference previews a distinction that will be important in facing bigger-than-self distress, but which is as yet incomplete on its own (for example, I believe “wisdom” is a better construct to focus on than “positive states” per se).
Garland et al. followed the 2010 theoretical paper up a year later with their 2011 “Positive Reappraisal Mediates the Stress-Reductive Effects of Mindfulness: An Upward Spiral Process”, which tested their hypotheses in an observational study across 339 participants undergoing an 8-week mindfulness-based intervention. What they found was that mindfulness facilitated a more positive reappraisal (indicated by endorsement of items such as “I think I can learn something from the situation,” and “I think I can become a stronger person as a result of what happened”) and decreased catastrophic appraisals. This increased positive reappraisal was then predictive of increases in dispositional mindfulness (and which had significant therapeutic effects on self-reported stress levels), and supported the upward spiral process characterisation that Garland et al. had put forward in the 2010 article.
Mindfulness-to-Meaning, Interoceptive Recovery, Savouring, and Insight
Four years after the 2011 article, Garland et al. released their (2015) “Mindfulness Broadens Awareness and Builds Eudaimonic Meaning: A Process Model of Mindful Positive Emotion Regulation”. In keeping with their own proposed processes, this article broadened and built on earlier work on mindfulness and positive appraisal to posit additional and more developed views of the mechanisms of mindfulness, to complement the focus in other mindfulness mechanisms literature (e.g., Hölzel et al., 2011, reviewed in previous post) on the extinction and disengagement-related mechanisms of action. Specifically, they focused on the mechanisms of (1) the building of eudaemonic meaning, (2) a process they call interoceptive recovery, and (3) savouring of positive experiences.
1. Building Eudaimonic Meaning
It seems that part of what sparked the updates to the earlier theory was work that Fredrickson et al. (2013, 2015) did linking a social genomic indicator of stress (known as Conserved Transcriptional Response to Adversity, or CTRA) with indicators of wellbeing from positive psychology. In these studies, they found a stark contrast between wellbeing strategies that were based on hedonic principles (“high levels of positive emotion and life satisfaction”) and those that relied on eudaemonic principles (“psychological and social processes that transcend immediate self gratification and strive toward more deeply meaningful and pro-social goals”). The 2013 study showed up-regulation of the CTRA response in people with high levels of hedonic wellbeing, and down-regulation of the same response in people with eudaimonic wellbeing.
The 2015 article replicated this finding twice, first in a discovery study that used global unidimensional measures of eudaimonic wellbeing, and later in a confirmation study that found significant results on 5 out of 6 subscales of the eudaimonic section of the more detailed and robust Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-being. There was no indication of any favourable contribution from hedonic wellbeing.
This brings us to Garland et al. (2015). They suggest that mindfulness training might promote eudaimonic wellbeing by facilitating positive reappraisal of stressful internal and external events, largely mirroring arguments they have made in their previous (2010, 2011) papers.
2. Interoceptive Recovery
Garland et al. (2015) integrate the sensory awareness of body sensations aspect of mindfulness into their updated theory. They discuss how, in periods of emotional challenge, it is common to engage in (avoidance) strategies that result in loss of interoceptive awareness. The recovery of interoceptive awareness through mindfulness practice may serve to broaden the sense of context of a given present moment emotional experience, and so facilitate a metacognitive de-centring, including in situations where de-centring from thoughts has otherwise become difficult due in part to lack of interoceptive awareness.
With this addition, Garland et al.’s mindfulness-to-meaning theory gains more nuance: rather than countering downward spirals of negativity, de-centring “fundamentally shifts a person’s regulatory orientation from appraisal to attending to perceptions of external stimulus contexts and concurrent visceral sensations… This shift is important, because in neural terms, moving down the spiral involves a loss not only of positively appraised representations but also of unappraised perceptions from which new appraisals may be generated.”
I believe one of the more visible contexts we can see the results of this loss of unappraised perceptions is in cycles of political or ideologically-driven interpersonal reactivity on social media: the target issue and way of thinking takes up so much space that participants lose sight of other background information or perceptions from which new appraisals may be generated. The interoceptive recovery aspects of mindfulness practice can help to reverse this, whether it is occurring between parts of our own internal cognitive system or in interpersonal or social contexts - not by countering the appraisals but by this fundamental shift in regulatory orientation from over-focus on content of appraisal to one’s perception of the appraisal and co-emerging interoceptive sensations associated with it.
3. Savouring of Positive Experiences
Savouring of positive experiences is one link of the mutually reinforcing feedback loop that is posited to result in the upward spiral process that mindfulness and positive reappraisal foster. Meaning-making continues to unfold in, and is influenced by, the internal affective environment in which it is taking place. Garland et al. cite a study showing that observers are more likely to notice unexpected stimuli that have meaning congruent with their current semantic frame than those which are incongruent. They conclude from this that “meaning modulates attentional selection and may determine whether a stimulus will even be perceived.”
This implies that the de-centring afforded by mindfulness practice, and savouring in turn, has a much more important role in meaning-making than might be ordinarily assumed. Garland et al. point to this in relation to being able to find positive meaning in adversity, which has been found to be associated with the tendency to attend to positive information. In the context of bigger-than-self distress, a related ability might be to notice and find ways to participate in positive, hopeful, meaningful actions even in the midst of the existence of a significant amount of collective human behaviour that is seemingly not contributing in a positive way to the bigger-than-self issues one cares about. If the semantic frame we are looking through is overly negative (despairing, angry, anxious, etc), even if this might make sense given the circumstance, it is not likely to be helpful in the task of making meaning of the situation in ways that help.
Savouring, in this light, may include seeing positive aspects of humanity or individual humans in the midst of negative appraisals by others. It may include seeing ways to contribute meaningfully in the midst of a world where consumption is noisier and more profitable. It may include seeing interconnectedness and commonalities where there is a strong focus on individuals and differences.
Garland et al. (2015) discuss how savouring can be linked with eudaimonic wellbeing rather than just hedonic pleasure by focusing on meaning - savouring positive meaning, not only momentary sensory experiences. This is not an either-or relationship in their eyes but instead a mutually reinforcing one, where momentary positive affect can promote meaningful positive reappraisal.
They continue, and I quote in full because (a) they say it so well here and (b) it is illustrative of such a critical mechanism by which this upward spiral process might interact to produce eudaimonic meaning (bolded text my addition, US spellings theirs): “As such, mindfulness, reappraisal, and savoring may interact to infuse hedonic well-being with eudaimonia. This interaction emerges from the cultivation of self-reflexive awareness during a positive emotion regulatory process in which one savors and elaborates on the implications of the positive reappraisal, triggering networks of wider associations and meanings in the course of this temporally extended phase of contemplation. In this way, the reappraisals that arise out of the state of mindfulness may become semantic attractors for novel positive experiences. Through this process, mindfulness connects daily life events with deeper meanings (eudaimonics), not by eschewing negative life experience and hedonics but instead by situating adversity and hedonics into a deeper and more extensive meaning system. This meaning system is robust against positive and negative experiences in that it acknowledges the transitory and somewhat impersonal nature of all experience, which may facilitate reappraisal in difficult contexts and nonclinging forms of savoring in hedonic ones.”
Garland et al. (2015) add that a further benefit of such elaborative processing and savouring of positive states and reappraisals may cultivate a strengthened “felt sense” in association with the novel positive appraisal. In this way, the new positive meaning structure is consolidated, and feels increasingly natural and consistent with the individual’s emerging increasingly positive eudaimonic meaning-making system. Moreover, they point out how the process itself may become increasingly self-reinforcing, whereby future negative appraisals are more likely to be noticed and reappraised. Note that positive reappraisals here are not wishful thinking, nor bypassing negative aspects of the context being appraised: instead they are noticing genuine positive features that a more negatively valanced attention set might not have picked up on.
Positive Psychological States in the Arc From Mindfulness to Self-Transcendence
I’m skipping over several articles from authors that commented on the Mindfulness-to-Meaning theory, and a 2016 article that tested and found support for the theory (at least in the basic mechanism of the link between mindfulness and positive reappraisal), but the next and most recent significant update to Garland and Fredrickson’s theory here is in the 2019 article titled “Positive psychological states in the arc from mindfulness to self-transcendence: extensions of the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory and applications to addiction and chronic pain treatment”.
In this latest article, Garland and Fredrickson (2019) extended the Mindfulness-to-Meaning model to include more complex positive psychological states such as self-transcendence and non-dual experiences and described how these states seem to be relevant and useful to the treatments of both addiction and chronic pain (e.g., Garland, 2016). They discuss how as the process of mindful de-centring, positive reappraisal, and savouring moves through cycles, there can be a gradient of self-transcendence that unfolds.
Positive Self-Transcendent Emotions
They identify positive self-transcendent emotions as an initial level of this gradient: emotions such as awe, love, elevation, gratitude, compassion that include something larger than the self or beings other than the self in the emotional experience. As the cycle is repeatedly activated, these self-transcendent emotions can give way to experiences of absorption, oneness, and bliss.
These states seem to involve a softening of the boundaries between subject and object, with accompanying positive affective experience - for example, ranging from appreciation of the beauty of a sunset; to then noticing the affective sequelae of that sort of experience and appreciating that in a sort of second-order way, such as feeling deep pleasure, meaning and gratitude in an appreciation of the warmth of feelings that arise when experiencing the sunset; to savouring so fully the feelings of pleasure meaning and gratitude that it opens into feelings of bliss, which can trigger dissolution-type experiences whereby the experience of the distinction between subject and object become more permeable or even disappear completely.
Nondual States
Non-dual states appear at the outer edge of this continuum, in Garland and Fredrickson’s (2019) conceptualisation of it, whereby there can be a temporary complete dissolution of the experience of a separate self and the world is experienced without reference to the normal subject-object boundaries that characterise everyday human consciousness. As will be discussed further below and throughout this Substack as a whole, the existence and seeming consistency of experience of nondual states raises interesting questions in the context of responding to bigger-than-self reality, as the experiences of nondual awareness can represent an experience of merging with bigger-than-self reality, the self dissolving into bigger-than-self reality as a river might merge with the ocean.
Alterations in Reward Processing
One practically applicable possibility that Garland and Fredrickson (2019) identified in association with this arc of self-transcendence and nondual experience provides is in the area of altered reward processing. They described how nondual experiences can help to alter reward processing in ways that decrease individuals’ propensity to engage in addictive behaviours. That is, in having these kinds of experiences, via cycling through the upward spiral process described, there is a gradual coming together of hedonic wellbeing (or present-moment positive affective experience) and eudaimonic wellbeing (meaningful experience, which is aligned with concepts such as service, giving back, loving, actions which tend to engender gratitude). As one has these experiences with more frequency and regularity, there can be an increasing reduction in need for the addictive behaviour or substance.
It seems possible, even probable, that the same alterations in reward processing can help to motivate engagement in behaviour that is aligned with meeting the challenges of bigger-than-self distress. That is, behaviour and cognitions that are based on past conditioning that is not adaptive in the current bigger-than-self reality could be let go of in favour of behaviour that is aligned with the new eudaemonic meanings that get made in the upward spiral/reappraisal process. This process, by including the alterations in reward processing, could be self-reinforcing.
It may also be worth speculating that behaviour that come through this route would be qualitatively different and much more appealing than through any external reward/punishment systems or extrinsic motivational systems in general. That is, the further an individual has travelled along the upward spiral, it seems the more nuanced their meaning-making systems would get, the more pleasurable affective experiences they would tend to experience, and the more the natural reward processing conditioning of their embodied cognitive systems would enable the adaptive kinds of behaviours and rational responses to bigger-than-self issues that would give richness and satisfaction to the mindful, upward spiral, eudaemonic life.
Bigger-than-Self Transcendence
One thing I wanted to give a sense of in this post is the expanded psychological territory that’s present in the perspective I take in this Substack - the idea that we can increase the range and depth of our present moment experience through engagement in practices such as mindfulness, and related meditative and contemplative practices.
This expanded range and depth of experience always begins with the present moment and a stance of acceptance towards reality as it is - it is not trying to get somewhere other than a closer, more honed awareness of what is, and a more optimal and useful (positive) appraisal of what is happening in the moment as possible. And yet, as this is engaged in, things change, and over time this can broaden our thought-action repertoires, build ever richer, more nuanced eudaimonic meaning that is placed in dynamic relationship with hedonic positive affect that can alter our reward circuits, and place us on an arc of greater self-transcendence.
Where this leads in relation to bigger-than-self distress is an expanded capacity to feel emotions and sensations, and participate actively and mindfully in our meaning-making process, in ways that are aligned with psychological flourishing and eudaemonic wellbeing. But it can also, as was touched on in the previous post, lead to changes in self-concept. It can lead to an experience of feeling ourselves as part of bigger-than-self reality, in a much more visceral, meaning-filled way than we might otherwise have experienced. And with that comes different possibilities for responding to bigger-than-self distress and bigger-than-self issues as a whole. These possibilities will be explored more in future posts, including the next series of posts on Bigger-than-Self reality and the Experience Gap.
Thanks for reading - here are links to parts I, III, and IV of the Intro Series.
In most of the articles I cite in this post, Garland and Fredrickson are not the sole authors but are usually amongst the lead authors and are the only two that appear on each of the articles cited - I mean no disrespect to the other authors who contributed to the articles cited here.