(Continued from Part 1)

It is obvious that falling involves many factors outside our control: wind, loud noises, the quality of the rope, etc…

My current hypothesis is that the trapeze artists who focus on things that they can directly control (IE: their arms for balance, their next step) or things that they need to pay attention to (IE: a total, empty focus on the rope ahead) are the one’s who are most successful.

I also pose that if this focus on the rope is out of fear, the individual is more likely to fall because of the hidden focus on falling itself (the origin for the fear).

Our behaviors will mirror the focus of our minds. If that focus is genuinely positive we will generally embody all that we think of as positive. In such instances our minds are geared towards the best next step and we feel a kind of confidence and efficacy in our own faculties.

When our genuine focus (IE: our real focus, what we are truly thinking about – this is reflected in our feelings) is on the negative, then steps to failure are what blast into our minds most readily. Now we have behaviors or things to avoid so that we “don’t mess up,” instead of positive behaviors and things to pursue or focus on so that we get to our desired objective.

Hyper-Intention with Conscious and Unconscious Processes: 

As we have stated, hyper-intention stops the thing from happening because behind the wish for the thing to happen is the fear that it won’t happen. That fear is what brings about the desperate wish for the thing, it is the base and the prime influencing force on the mind in instances of hyper-intention.

This is especially the case with phenomena that involve us, but not on a conscious level. For instance, blushing, orgasm, falling asleep, feeling happy, having fun – all of these are things which we cannot intensely wish for in order to get, they are not consciously determined in the same way as lifting our right arm, thinking about a chess game, or yelling loudly – as these are much more directly alterable by our mental and physical faculties.

This might seem odd in that things seem to be quite different in the physical world. If I intensely wish to be the best soccer player in the world, this might help me achieve that goal, even if my intent springs from a fear of not being the best, I can still consciously will myself to train hard and long, and practice constantly in my free time. 

A pitcher who hyper-intends to throw a fastball in the strike zone is probably more likely to do so than a man hyper-intending sleep as he lays down at night. The process is the same, we see a swirl of fear, anxiety, and fear-related thought. The only difference is: the pitcher can consciously will and act in order to bring about the right pitch, while the sleeping man cannot. We do not directly control the mechanisms of sleep and so have little chance of consciously overriding the fear and hyper-intention.

As with the hyper-intending trapeze artist who intends not to fall, the pitcher who hyper-intends not to throw a bad ball will be more likely to fail, to bring his fear of throwing a bad ball into reality. However, he – unlike the man trying to sleep – still has conscious control over his skeletal muscles despite his ineffective thought processes. 

The same tendencies with hyper-intention and sleep likely go for orgasm. If we hone a hyper-intention on finally getting to orgasm, it becomes unlikely that we will attain it. This, again, is because the intention springs from a hidden fear which springs from a hidden mental focus on NOT achieving orgasm – a mostly unconsciously controlled mechanism.

Hyper-Intention / Reflection and the Danger / Social Contexts:

It is notable that instances of hyper-intention usually either involve the potential for what one perceives as “social disapproval” or “life endangerment.” Two remarkably common fears for people in American society are the fear of public speaking and the fear of death. 

Hence, it would be rather odd to hyper-intend the act of getting the peanut butter off the shelf if we are home alone (because we are unlikely to see much risk for danger or disapproval). However, it is probably easier to see how one might hyper-intend the act of shooting a 3-point shot in basketball at the buzzer or of stuttering when speaking with one’s boss, or of “performance anxiety” in bed.

The factors of social disapproval and life endangerment are not unique to hyper-intention, they are merely the most blatantly likely candidates for inducing fear – which obviously plays a pivotal role in creating the hyper-intention experience. 

Freedom from Hyper-Intention / Reflection:

We have determined that the effects of “H-I” and “H-R” originate from their basis in a subtle mental focus upon some outcome or result which is wither deeply desired or detested.

This subtle mental focus manifests as an anticipatory anxiety because of a fear that what we don’t want will happen (IE: We want to sleep but fear that we won’t get to sleep so we don’t. Or, we don’t want to blush in a social situation and we fear that we will blush so we end up blushing – both of these are due to our mental focus, the origin of our mental and emotional experience). 

Hence, freedom from these conditions merely involves a change in focus. An intense focus on the undesired result will only bring about its manifestation. Similarly, an intense focus on the desired result that has its origin in a fear of the undesired result will instead bring about the undesired result.

Of course this is easier said than done. 

It would seem that alleviating the anticipatory anxiety itself would free us from manifesting the undesired results. We might say that we must eliminate the subtle thought of the undesired outcome in the first place (which we described as the origin of the fear), but this may not be necessary.

For instance, I may be thinking about the potential that I will not get to sleep, but if I do not place heavy weight on it, if I do not run hyper-intention on that thought, I will likely still not manifest the undesired result. Here, then, we have not squashed all thoughts of the undesired result, but we have squashed the anticipatory anxiety by eliminating the kind of hyper-intention to that brings about fear.

For instance, I might lie in bed and realize that I might not fall asleep. If this thought strikes fear in me, then the emotion and the thought will create a loop and draw me into hyper-intention / reflection mode. However, if this thought does not build like a snowball with feeling and thought, then it will simply be another passing thought.

Accomplishing the effect of nullifying fear is its own science, but it leads us to look at one of Frankl’s own strategies: paradoxical intent.

The Function of Paradoxical Intent:

What, then, is the function of Frankl’s “paradoxical intent,” given the understanding that we have come to of the other terms and the mental processes and phenomena underlying them?

From what he writes, it appears as though intending exactly what we fear makes it so that our fear itself is hyper-intended and so is not brought to be. Our thoughts shift to a kind of fear turned against itself since we now try to eagerly aim in bringing about our fear (which likely creates a fear that this fear will not manifest). 

Frankl also refers to the humor in such a contradiction, and that in joking with ourselves we may become capable of letting go of fear itself. He seems to think that the ridiculousness of holding such an intention will aide to relieve our minds of the anxiety.

By our model it would seem that anything that would relieve the hyper-intending experience would have to alter one’s focus in one of two important ways:

• Relieve the conscious mind of the thought of the “negative” result or outcome
• Relieve the conscious mind of the resistance to the “negative” outcome 

This is the algorithm for eliminating what we know as “fear” in the first place – for the negatively judged “thing” and resistance to it are the origins of fear (or so this inquiry poses, dive into your own experience).

So how does Frankl’s “paradoxical intent” accomplish this?

It seems to bring a new subtle fear into place where the first was (except this fear facilitates what we genuinely want).

In addition, it frames our entire experience in a way that potentially brings us to focus on the humor and ridiculousness of the situation itself.

(Dear Frankl, I hope I’m drawing the right conclusions with my own thinking and yours.)

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