A third technique for dealing with moralization is what's known in Buddhism as disidentification. Eckhart Tolle discusses this in detail in his highly-recommended book, The Power of Now. Disidentification is not the same as detachment. As I said before, I am not suggesting that you cut yourself off from your emotions. Instead, I am suggesting that you differentiate your emotions from your self. This involves taking a step back when you find yourself in the heat of passion and observing and experiencing the anger as a psychological and phenomenological experience rather than focusing on how justified you might feel. By exercising our capacity for self-reflection-which distinguishes us from other animals-we can short-circuit the otherwise automatic chain from emotion to thought or behavior. We can stop ourselves from lashing out or even thinking moralistically if we simply observe and experience the anger. This sort of self-observation and pure self-experiencing is known as mindfulness. Being mindful is like flexing our muscle of introspection, and like physical muscles, this muscle needs exercise to be strong and to work effectively. To exercise our introspective muscle is the purpose of mindfulness meditation. Contrary to some other forms of meditation, such as transcendental meditation or yogic meditations that involve focusing on a mantra or an image, mindfulness meditation is not meant to help us to detach ourselves from our minds or bodies. On the contrary, mindfulness meditation is meant to help us immerse ourselves in our experience and gain control over the otherwise uncontrollable, automatic mechanisms of the "monkey mind." It is also meant to alleviate unnecessary suffering by allowing us to let go of the resistance to reality that creates such suffering. There are numerous studies that chronicle the psychological benefits of meditation, but for the sake of this talk, I will mention only one. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Be Here Now and founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, pioneered the use of mindfulness meditation with patients suffering from chronic pain. In a matter of weeks, meditation practice led to a significant reduction in the suffering of these patients. (With other patients, it even led to measured changes in brain chemistry correlated with increased energy and enjoyment and reduced stress and anxiety.) Why? What the patients discovered with mindfulness was that the majority of their suffering originated not in the pain itself, but in their reactions to the pain. All of the automatic thoughts people have in response to chronic pain-"this pain is unbearable," "my life is worthless," "I am so ashamed," "I can't take this anymore," "my life is meaningless," "things are never going to get any better"-all of these thoughts cause more suffering than the pain itself. Through mindfulness meditation-also known as insight meditation or Vipassana meditation-people simply close their eyes and watch these thoughts float into their minds and choose not to perpetuate them. They also fully experience the pain rather than trying to resist or escape it and find that it thereby dissipates more quickly and is bearable after all.