I am continuing to benefit greatly from this ongoing discussion. I am also amazed at the many times I come across AVRT and the Beast in the world, outside of this thread and the RR book.
I just picked up a book called The Willpower Instinct, which I thought was just another book on willpower and how to break habits, but the crux of it is about the neocortex versus the urge parts of the brain. I'm still at the beginning, but the author talks about the development of the 2 parts of the brain and how we need to strengthen the neocortex (the rational part) and learn to separate it from the urge part of the brain. One way to strengthen the neocortex is to meditate daily. We have a tendency to let thoughts run rampant in our brains all day long. We identify and attach to these thoughts. The point of meditation is not to try to shut off thoughts, but to notice them and not get attached to them.
This relates to RR in that AVRT is about noticing and separating from the beast in our heads. meditation is a good way to develop that recognition and separation. I used to be a daily meditator and have been wanting to get back into it and will as of today. My beast has been loving my procrastinating.