Towards Cognitive Dissonance Resolution

On November 28, 2021, I held a 15 minute event concurrently on Insight Timer Live and the Wisdom app called “Towards Cognitive Dissonance Resolution” with the description:

One way to address cognitive dissonance is to simultaneously hold unpleasant, confusing, chaotic oppositions equanimously in awareness with kind intent to transmute into calmness and clarity for the liberation of all

Often using the pronoun “we” throughout to highlight community commonalities, I mentioned the similarities of “cognitive dissonance” and “paradox.” I then wondered if the definition of either of these words accurately portray the stuff of this semi-meditative practice involving simultaneously holding in awareness similar yet significantly different notions.

We start with the more emotionally neutral theme of transportation: planes, trains and automobiles, then get into the more spiritual spectrum:

• flow — stillness
• idealism — realism
• humility — empowerment

I pause to drop in instructions to notice the amount of identification with each of the concept pairs as well as to notice the degree of clinging (to one over another); continuing:

• purity, chastity — passion, procreation
• boundaries — boundlessness

I pause again to speak on how I came about this practice and on coming across a recent teaching: what may seem like duality and polarity are actually “one,” but “not one and the same” — they’re at different locations on the same spectrum. Continuing again:

• safety — being free
• judging — discernment
• conventional reality — non-dualism/ultimate reality
• minimalism — abundance
• vulnerability — resilience
• helping others — helping oneself, self-care
• agency, will, action, doing — surrender, letting go, being
• [not mentioned in podcast although important: sovereignty — interconnectivity]

Then some singular concepts to help gel this practice before jumping into the challenge:

• unity
• honor
• dignity
• worthiness
• wholeness

And the finale:

• vaccination — no vaccination
• political left — political right

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The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:

wholeness and welcome

this is josh devold from

integrating presence and today’s event

is called towards cognitive dissonance

resolution

the description i have here is

one way to address cognitive dissonance

is to simultaneously hold unpleasant

confusing

chaotic oppositions equanimously in

awareness

with kind intent to transmute into

calmness and clarity for the liberation

of all

well that sounds like a big mouthful

doesn’t it and

like a really challenging thing to do

with really high intentions

but we’re not gonna start there and if

there’s time left towards the end we’ll

we’ll get into

the more difficult things

i don’t know if i’m getting the terms

right exactly

with cognitive dissonance also

we might be working with paradox here

too regardless of the exact definition

what we’ll be doing is we’ll be in a

semi-meditative state

and will hold multiple notions in

awareness

and these notions will be

they’ll be similar yet significantly

different for instance

one with

really low

emotional charge

would be planes trains and automobiles

unless of course there’s some trauma

involved there or you watch that i guess

80s or 90s movie maybe i don’t know can

you simultaneously hold traveling in a

plane

a car

and a train at the same time in

awareness so let’s just try that for a

moment

or just pick two

can also pick just two of these

get distracted you can just recall it

again

okay

so now what i’m going to do is i’m going

to read a few of these concepts that are

similar

yet there’s a significant difference and

we’ll start with some of the

well-known spiritual concepts that

sometimes you know people go from one

end to the other and i’ll just read a

few of these and we can do these

holding them simultaneously in awareness

and then i’ll drop in some other

considerations here too so let’s start

with this notion

of flow and stillness

flow being in a

a flow state

in stillness

being like a tree and still

so recall flow state

recall a still state hold them both in

awareness

now

idealism

and realism

so these are kind of abstract concepts

so we won’t spend long on this

idealism

remember a time when you’ve been

idealistic or how you would like to be

idealistic and then a time when stark

realism has hit

okay the next one

is humility

and

empowerment so being humble

and being very powerful at the same time

and awareness

now notice where there’s more

identification with one of these over

the other

if there tends to be a tendency towards

oh i’m more

a flow person or i’m more an idealistic

person or i’m more

humble than empowered

and then also know

see if there’s any clinging around these

like

i want it to be one way more than

another or

it’s got to be more this way or

i don’t see how these things relate

or

this is confusing

so any amount of kind of clinging

and identification to either these

this next concept

purity and chastity

with passion and procreation

so again

abstinence

versus

sexuality

now

boundaries

and boundlessness

so having to establish

are where there’s

firm boundaries in our lives

and

on the other

boundlessness like heart qualities of

kindness

compassion there’s no limits

no

limitations

boundaries and boundlessness

okay so i’ll just

take a little

pause here to kind of talk a little bit

more about this technique at one point i

was encountering different things

in life not necessarily as high-minded

as these are as beautiful as these

qualities here but they were

they were contradictory states

the commonality is to

to resolve them at all cost well

sometimes that would just lead to more

frustration the frustrations already

there it occurred to me to just hold

these in awareness and just be with the

unpleasantness and the pain and the

uncomfortable

notions of these what i noticed that

started to kind of happen is the

emotional intensity around them just

started to dissipate and dissolve

there was this okayness with things

being confused

and opposing each other

they could be there

and could

just speak they didn’t have to go away

this kind of confidence and trust came

up that you know i was doing the best i

could if i could do better i would

also these are

one they’re not one in the same this is

another teaching i heard recently but

they’re on the same spectrum

they might be at other ends of the

spectrum but they’re connected

so let’s jump back into it here

safety

and being free

one end

being secure and safe

the other

being free

judging

and discernment

we often hear about judging or don’t

judge

it’s a hot topic

and then discernment to know the

difference between things judging

discernment

so conventional reality

just day-to-day living

kind of like our

base programming level here

and non-dualism or

more ultimate reality

conventional and ultimate reality

and of course none of us really can

truly hold ultimate reality in awareness

maybe there might be somebody here but

we can just kind of get as close as we

can to pointing to it

now on to minimalism and abundance

living a mental minimalistic lifestyle

minimalism in how we operate

matched with abundance where there is

ample

resources

the notion everything we need

will get exactly when we need it

now on onto vulnerability and resilience

being vulnerable

is the way our heart opens

the way we connect

to others especially very deeply

and resilience

ability to

bounce back

to heal quickly

to be able to go in

situations with courage

vulnerability and resilience

now on to helping others

and helping ourselves their self-care

helping others

and self-care

so

now um

agency will and action and doing so this

active side maybe more the masculine

side

with the surrender letting go and being

feminine side

so again doing and being

or action and surrender

letting go and agency

okay and now here’s some singular

concepts

to kind of help gel this practice

before we jump into more challenging

ones

so we can just drop these in

unity

unity

unification

honor

and respect

dignity

worthiness

being worthy

wholeness

okay so now jump right in here to the

challenge

vaccination

no vaccination

holding these opposing viewpoints

notions and awareness

and the political left

and the political right

okay thanks for joining maybe the last

two didn’t seem as challenging after

some of the more

high road material we took