Reinhold Niebuhr's 'serenity prayer' makes a lot of sense: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."
However, our society's materialist dogmas assure us that we can, or it's just a matter of time when we'll have the knowledge & technology to control everything. AND we have to, because our happiness depends entirely on the quality & quantity of matter we accumulate. So we work desperately to accumulate stuff because materialism also tells us that life is random & meaningless. However, this nonsense is just our left hemisphere's inability to see the fact that it cannot control everything: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/ So it often takes a major traumatic event for the left hemisphere tosurrendercontrol, and allow the right hemisphere to re-establish balance & help us live wisely in the real world.
"Consider reflecting on what the word surrender means for you. It does not mean resignation or giving up, but rather it suggests letting go & trusting the moment, whatever arises. An attitude of surrender invites a sense of strength & ease. It suggests having faith in something beyond your limited self, something that helps when you’re living with forces beyond your control." Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle. “Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows. A Couple’s Journey through Alzheimer’s.” Penguin, 2008.
"Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor. Perhaps, in a way, that's where humanity is now: about to discover we're not as smart as we thought we were, will be forced by life to surrender our attacks and defenses which avail us of nothing, and finally break through into the collective beauty of who we really are."Marianne Williamson
“With age comes wisdom. But sometimes age comes alone.” Oscar Wilde
Aswe age, especially as retirement rolls around, diminishing physical & mental competences, illnesses, and death of friends & loved ones suddenly starts to feel very real & very personal. How little control we actually havehits like a brick. Dylan Thomas' "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" is, at one level, something we can empathize with, while at a more mature level, it's a pathetic, useless response to this stage of life. Compare it with the wisdom in Reinhold Niebuhr's 'serenity prayer.' See: "Successful Aging" http://www.johnlovas.com/2011/12/successful-aging.html
“We suffer to the exact degree that we resist having our eyes and hearts opened.” Adyashanti
“The greatest treasure comes out of the most despised & secret places… This place of greatest vulnerability is also a holy place, a place of healing.” Albert Kreinheder, “Body and Soul: The Other Side of Illness"
I HIGHLY recommend this informative, well-written book to help free those who are beginning to realize that their worldview & self-concept is a prison, rather than a safe house: Michael Pollan. “How to Change Your Mind. What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.” Penguin, 2018.
"… people who have a deep conviction and belief in a transcendent reality are better able to disconnect from the idea that the body and its ails are ‘all there is.’ By connecting to a higher power – however one experiences this or chooses to define it – we bring forth our inner sense of innate wholeness. We are able to see ourselves as spiritually perfect, even when suffering ill health. This promotes our ability to reconnect with our implicate patterns of health.” M.J. Abadie. “Healing, Mind, Body, Spirit.” Adams Media Corporation, 1997.
“The only way that someone can be of help to you is by challenging your ideas.” Anthony de Mello SJ, “Awareness: Conversations with the Masters” Image, 2011.
“Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn." Adam Grant. “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know.” Viking, 2021.
Below is a very brief excerpt I transcribed from Iain McGilchrist's introduction (bottom of page) to his 2,997 page book, "The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World," whichsheds light on the basis of many of our problems today, including short attention spans, environmental destruction, populism, materialism & meaninglessness:
“This book is an attempt to convey a way of looking at the world quite different from the one that has largely dominated the West for at least 350 years – some would say, as long as 2,000 years. I believe we have systematically misunderstood the nature of reality, and chosen to ignore or silence the minority of voices that have intuited as much, and consistently maintained that this is the case. Now we have reached the point where there is an urgent need to transform both how we think of the world and what we make of ourselves. Attempting to convey such a richer insight is the ambition of this book. We have been seriously misled I believe, because we have depended on that aspect of our brains that is most adept at manipulating the world in order to bend it to our purposes. The brain is importantly divided into two hemispheres. You could say, to sum up a vastly complex matter in a phrase, that the brain’s left hemisphere is designed to help us apprehend and thus manipulate the world; the right hemisphere to comprehend it, to see it all for what it is. The problem is that the very brain mechanisms which succeed in simplifying the world so as to subject it to our control, militate against a true understanding of it. Meanwhile, compounding the problem, we take the success we have in manipulating it, as proof that we understand it. But that is a logical error. To exert power over something, requires us only to know what happens when we pull the levers, press the button, or utter the spell. The fallacy is memorialized in the myth of ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.’ It is hardly surprising therefore, that while we have succeeded in coercing the world to our will to an extent unimaginable even a few generations ago, we have at the same time wrought havoc on that world, precisely because we have not understood it. This book then is about the nature of reality. It’s about how we are equipped by our brains to try to understand it, and what we can learn from that. It’s about the approaches that are available to us to gain an understanding of reality, given that equipment. It attempts, consequently, to give an account of reality that seems truer to the evidence than the one to which we have long been accustomed, one that is far-reaching in its scope and consistent across the realms of contemporary neurology, philosophy and physics. And from that follows an account of who we are, on which nothing less than our future depends. What in particular I offer here is a new synthesis of philosophy and science, which I believe is importantly and excitingly liberating to both parties. As a rule philosophy and science go on as if the other did not exist. Scientists tend to see philosophy as a luxury they can’t afford to get involved with, a ball and chain that will slow them down in their race for the next discovery; philosophers, to see science as somewhat beneath them, and in any case irrelevant to the ponderings of the mind on itself. But as the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger put it, ‘In science and humanism, it seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said, the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field, has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge, and only in as much it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, “Who are we?”’ Here, Schrödinger is remembering Plotinus, one of the greatest of Greek philosophers. But his point is of contemporary relevance, that it is impossible to overstate. Seventy years on from Schrödinger’s pronouncement, specialization makes it even harder to expect more than a tiny handful of scientists and philosophers to be in a position to venture into a genuinely new understanding of their, in reality, common enterprise, one that has the potential hugely to enrich both parties. When any attempt is made to reach out a hand across the distancing void, it is almost invariably an exercise in reinforcing the status quo: the scientists telling the philosophers that they find only machinery, and the philosophers reflecting back to the scientists that a mechanistic view is the best option on offer. Since what you find is a product of how you attend, this is a more or less pointless exercise in making sure that both parties sink to the bottom in the shortest possible time. Philosophy is engaged in weighing evidence so as to decide between conflicting ways of understanding the world, each of which has something to be said for it. This is why philosophy never ends. But what if among the evidence, there was some way of recognizing a particular take on the world as not just floating in a contextual void, but rather the predictable result of paying a quite particular kind of attention to the world? And what if we happen to know a great deal about the evolutionary purposes and the consequences of such a way of attending, including what weight we should attach to its findings? And what if such insights gained from science, and explicated by philosophy, could be applied in turn to the science of mind itself. Then might we not begin to see a fertile symbiosis of philosophy and science, helping one another, each turn building on the next to rise to a new, more truthful vision of who indeed we are?
Rethinking some assumptions At the core of the contemporary world, is the reductionist view that we are, Nature is, the earth is nothing but a bundle of senseless particles, pointlessly, helplessly, mindlessly colliding in a predictable fashion, whose existence is purely material, and whose only value is utility. Neither Plotinus nor Schrödinger would have been impressed. I cannot remember a time when I thought that this sounded at all convincing, and a lifetime of thinking and learning has nothing to allay my skepticism. Not only is it mistaken I believe, but actively damaging, physically to the natural world, and psychologically, morally and spiritually to ourselves as part of that world. It endangers everything that we should value. Reductionism can mean a number of things, but here I mean quite simply the outlook that assumes that the only way to understand the nature of anything we experience is by looking at the parts of which it appears to be made, and building up from there. By contrast, I believe that the whole is never the same as the sum of its parts, and that except in the case of machines, there are in fact no parts as such, but that they are an artifact of a certain way of looking at the world. For this reason, it is every bit as true that what we call the parts can be understood only by understanding the whole to which they belong. And with the reductionist outlook, goes determinism – the belief that if we knew enough about the position and momentum of every particle in the universe, we could predict everything that happens from hereon in, including your every thought, desire and belief. Even if contemporary physics did not demonstrate that this is an impossibility, there is a problem with this kind of argument. Reductionists and determinists unerringly fail to take account of the fact that their own arguments apply to themselves. If my beliefs are nothing but the mechanical products of a blind system, so are all views, including those of the reductionist. If everything is already determined, the determinists’ tendency to embrace determinism is also merely determined, and we have no reason to take it seriously, since we’re all determined either to believe it or not already. As the philosopher Hans Jonas observed, ‘There is an unspoken hierarchical principle involved. The scientist does take man to be determined by causal laws, but not himself where he assumes and exercises his freedom of inquiry and his openness to reason, evidence, and truth. His own working assumptions involve free will, deliberation and evaluation as aspects of himself, but these qualities and capacities are stripped away from, and denied to the human object or thing that he is inspecting.’ If it were not for the fact that this world picture is mistaken, you might argue that we ought nonetheless to man-up and accept it. But it is, as I hope to demonstrate, massively mistaken. My aim is to show the reader the magnitude of the error, and its consequences. I say show, because I cannot more than anyone else prove anything finally and irrefutably. The material with which we are dealing makes that impossible. But rather I wish to take my reader, by degrees, to a new vantage point, one built upon science and philosophy, from which in all likelihood the view will appear at the same time unfamiliar and yet in no way alien, indeed rather the opposite, more like a homecoming. From there, the reader must of course make up his mind for himself. ‘To put the matter in a nutshell,’ wrote the philosopher Frederick Wiseman, ‘a philosophical argument does more and does less than a logical one. Less in that it never establishes anything conclusively; more, in that if successful, it is not content to establish just one isolated point of truth, but affects a change in our whole mental outlook, so that as a result of that, myriads of such little points are brought into view or turned out of sight as the case may be.’ Such a whole shift of view, rather than the adjustment of a few points within a familiar landscape, is what a hope for my reader. And that process must begin with the very idea of things. ‘The world is not just a set of separately-existing localized objects, externally related only by space and time,’ writes Tim Morden, professor of philosophy and physics at NYU, something deeper and more mysterious knits together the fabric of the world.' Indeed, according to Richard Conn Henry, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins, to see the universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things. Reductionism envisages a universe of things, and simply material things at that. How these things are related is viewed as a secondary matter. However, I suggest that relationships are primary, more foundational than the things related, that the relationships don’t just connect pre-existing things, but modify what we mean by the things, which in turn modify everything else they are in relationship with. That is because what we are dealing with are ultimately relations, events, processes. 'Things' is a useful shorthand for those elements congealed in the flow of experience that emerge secondarily from, and attract our attention in, a primary web of interconnections. I have nothing against things, provided we don’t see them as primary. In our ordinary way of thinking, things must be established before there can be relationships, and so this about turn would seem paradoxical. But as I shall explain, paradox very often represents a conflict between the different takes afforded by the two hemispheres. However, we must also be prepared to find as Neils Bohr recognized, whereas trivial truths manifestly exclude their opposites, the most profound truths do not. This is itself a version of the realization that what applies at the local level, does not necessarily apply in the same way at the global level. The failure to observe this principle underlies some of the current misconceptions of both science and philosophy. I believe that nowadays we live no longer in the presence of the world, but ratherin a re-presentation of it. The significance of that is that the left hemisphere’s task is to re-present, what first a presence is, to the right hemisphere. This re-presentation has all the qualities of a virtual image – an infinitely thin, immobile fragment of a vast seamless, living, ever-flowing whole. From a standpoint within the representation, as a necessarily diminished derivative of it, we see reality as merely a special case of our representation, one in which something is added in to animate it. In this it is like a cine film that consists of countless static slices, requiring a projector to bring it back to what at least looks to us like a living flow. On the contrary however, reality is not an animated version of our re-presentation of it, but our re-presentation a devitalized version of reality. It is the re-presentation that is a special wholly atypical and imaginary case of what is truly present, as the filmstrip is of life. The re-presentation is what one might call a limit case of what is real. Stepping out of this world picture and into the world, stepping out of suspended animation and back into life will involve many of our perhaps cherished assumptions."
This is a very short excerpt from an EXCEPTIONALLY wise, in-depth (2hr 24min) interview of Gabor Maté MD by Tim Ferris about the central role of trauma in depression, low self-esteem, ADHD, addictions, etc, and their compassionate treatment:
Tim Ferriss: “You just mentioned … that your gut feeling / physiological intuition can help you. And that’s something that, for many reasons, I completely muted or ignored for a very long time. So, it’s been a process of getting reacquainted with that.”
Dr. Gabor Maté: “Let me address why we shut down our gut feelings, if I may. A human being has two fundamental needs (apart from the physical needs in infancy) in childhood. One is for attachment. Now, attachment is the closeness and proximity with another human being for the sake of being looked after or for the sake of looking after the other. Human beings, as mammals, and even birds, are creatures of attachment. We have to connect and attach because, otherwise, we don’t survive. If there’s nobody that’s motivated to take care of us, to attach to us that way, and if we’re not motivated to attach to others, we just can’t survive.
One additional thing is that the endorphins, which are the body’s internal opiate chemicals (which heroin and all the other opiates resemble), they help facilitate attachment.
If you take infant mice, and you knock out their endorphin receptors, so they don’t have endorphin opiate activity in their brain, they won’t cry for help and separate from their mothers, which would mean that they would die in the wild, which goes back to what happens in early childhood. When there’s stress and trauma, these endorphin systems don’t develop. And then, when people do heroin, it feels like a warm, soft hug to them. They feel love and connection for the first time. That’s why it’s so powerful.
So, we have this need for attachment, which, obviously, the human infant who is the most helpless, the most dependent, the least mature of any creature in the universe at birth, cannot survive without the attachment. And that attachment relationship, given that we have the longest period of development of any creature, well into adolescence and beyond, attachment is not a negotiable need.
But we have another need, which is authenticity. Now, authenticity – ‘auto’ to self - means being connected to ourselves. Just knowing what we feel and being able to act on it. That means our gut feelings. So, let’s look at how human beings evolved. For hundreds of thousands of years, and for 100,000 years or of this species existing on earth, how did we live? We didn’t live in cities and houses and so on. We lived out there in the wild, until very recently in human existence. Now, just how long do you survive in the wild, if you’re not connected to your gut feelings?
Tim Ferriss: Not very long.
Dr. Gabor Maté: Not very long. If you start using your intellect instead of your gut feelings, you just don’t survive. So, that’s a powerful survival need as well. So, attachment is a survival need. Authenticity is a survival need. But what happens if your authenticity threatens your attachment relationships? For example, as a 2-year-old, you get angry because you didn’t get that cookie before dinner.
But your parents can handle anger because they grew up in homes when there was rage-aholism, and they’re terrified of the very expression of anger, so they give you the message that good, little kids don’t get angry. The message you receive is not that good, little kids don’t get angry, but that angry little kids don’t get loved because your parents are on their cell. They won’t look at you. They talk to you in a harsh way. You’re not getting loved, not experiencing love, at that moment. Now, but you’ve got to stay attached. Guess what you’re going to suppress? The authenticity every time.
And this is how we lose connection to ourselves and to our gut feeling. So that, strangely enough, that very dynamic, which is essential for human survival in a natural setting, now becomes a threat to our survival in this more modern setting where to stay authentic is to threaten attachment. And so, we give up our authenticity. And then, we wonder who the hell we are and whose life is this and who is experiencing all of this. And who am I really? And so, that’s where the re-connection has to happen.
That’s where the healing happens is with that re-connection. But it’s because of that conflict, that tragic conflict in childhood between authenticity and attachmentthat most of us face, that we lose ourselves and lose connection to our gut feelings.”
A drowning person with arms desperately flailing to keep their head above water, closely describes how we can feel when severely stressed. It also describes the sometimes extreme efforts serious meditators exert trying to achieve desired goals during meditation practice. When - and only when - not overwhelmed by the fear of imminent drowning, we may realize that by simply relaxing in water, and retaining air in our lungs (while breathing), our face naturally comes to rest above the water line, without further need for other movement / exertion. This is a huge shift in understanding - the complete opposite of panicked flailing, wherein we exhaust ourselves with frantic physical & emotional exertion, including hyperventilation. Sadly, a drowning person is not even capable of hearing swimming instructions, never mind making good use of them. HOWEVER, we all CAN practice & learn the above manoeuvre in shallow water. SIMILARLY, we can learn to meditate FAR more effectively AND naturally, by practicing the meditation below - initially while minimally stressed.
“MEDITATION: Resting in the gap Generally the mind is filled with an uninterrupted flow of thoughts and feelings that can feel overwhelming or oppressive. If you practice mindfulness, you may gradually develop an inner spaciousness that allows you to breathe deeply and negotiate the flow. In the direct approach, you may spontaneously discover natural spaces or pauses between the thoughts where an inner silence and stillness reveal themselves effortlessly. Take a few minutes to sit quietly and pay mindful attention to your breathing. Now turn your awareness to the cascade of thoughts and feelings. Even though it may feel incessant, every now and then you’ll notice a tiny gap between the thoughts that’s open, silent, unfurnished. One thought arises and passes away, and before the next thought arises, there’s a gap. Let yourself breathe into this gap; sense it fully, and gently prolong it. For the next ten minutes or so continue to notice, sense, and prolong the gaps or pauses between thoughts in a relaxed and gentle way, and feel into the silence and stillness that these gaps reveal. You may notice that the sense of a me disappears in the gap; that is, unlike thoughts, the gap is not self-referential, it’s just open and aware. This is a glimpse of your natural state. Continue to explore the gaps from time to time as you go about your day.” Stephan Bodian. “Beyond Mindfulness. The Direct Approach to Lasting Peace, Happiness, and Love.” Non-duality Press, 2017. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BOOK with MANY other valuable PRACTICES
“I do have a strong idea about the limitations of the computer in our skulls — it’s just large enough to take care of our lives and must ignore an awful lot of what is going on around us. . . . I have a very primitive approach to science — I wonder how the universe originated, how could it have originated … how could you make something out of nothing … and sophomoric ideas like that. And so, after having banged around with that — how do you make a universe out of nothing — I have decided, just logically, that it can’t be done and therefore it must always have existed. And so, from that, I get a sense of permanence and, also, an annoyance with the limitations of my head. And I really do think that what we perceive as time is simply a processing device in our heads to let us consider a little of reality at a time — we couldn’t let it all come in at once.” Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Neuroscience researcher, psychiatrist & author, Iain McGilchrist, among others, have said that "the brain is primarily a reducing valve" to prevent our consciousness from being overwhelmed by the massive amounts of constantly changing sensory data in which we're immersed. Rather than maximal clarity of awareness, the basic function of our mind seems to prioritize survival. This includes a number of built-in biases and other 'thinking mistakes':https://buffer.com/resources/thinking-mistakes-8-common-mistakes-in-how-we-think-and-how-to-avoid-them/
Based on very little, narrowly-selected data (see above), we incorrectly assume that we understand what's going on, and though wrong, we may be absolutely certain we're right! (Burton RA. “On
being certain. Believing you are right even when you’re not.” St. Martin’s
Griffin, 2008.) Thesedelusions provide a sense of control over our surroundings & life, necessary to function in a bewilderingly complex, constantly changing environment. BUT ...
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet
We have so much to learn, and we can IF we're brave enough & psychologically flexible enough to open our heart-minds to at least some of the data outside our comfort zone. Below are a few of the points discussed in a fascinating interview with Bruce Greyson MD about his research over the past 40 years on near death experiences (NDEs):
Bruce Greyson BG: “A near death experience is a profound event that people experience when they are near death, on the threshold of death, or sometimes when they are afraid they’re about to die. And they include such things as a sense of leaving the physical body; going through some type of tunnel to another realm of light where they encounter a loving beam of light; they often go through a life review; and at some point may see other entities such as deceased loved ones; and then at some point they choose to come back to their bodies, or are told to come back. But the entire experience is infused by a sense of peace and well-being, which is in stark contrast to the near-death state where they’re terrified usually, and in a lot of pain.
As a psychiatrist … I spend my life trying to help people make changes in their lives and know how difficult it is. A near death experience comes along, and in a second or two, it can totally transform peoples’ lives. It generally makes them more spiritual, more compassionate, more altruistic, and less concerned with physical things – material goods, power, prestige, fame, competition. And I’ll give you some examples of this. One fellow I knew was a high-school bully whose goal in life was to become a marine, and he eventually did become a marine. This was back in the ‘70s, and he served in Viet Nam. He was a sergeant leading his platoon and he was shot in the chest and had shrapnel all over his lungs. He was air-evaced to a hospital in the Philippines where he underwent surgery. During that surgery, he had a blissful near death experience. And when he awoke, he was a changed person. He was kind, compassionate. When he recovered, he was sent back into Viet Nam to lead his platoon again, and he found that he could not shoot his gun. The idea of hurting someone was just unthinkable to him. So he ended up leaving the marines, coming back to the States, and becoming a medical technician. And I’ve heard story after story like this. About police officers who had near death experiences, and again, could not partake in a violent life. One person I interviewed was a Mafia employee, and had to give up that career. I’ve also heard of people who were in competitive businesses who came back from near death experiences thinking that competition makes no sense, that we’re all in this together, and what you do to somebody else, you do onto yourself. They often come back with a sense of the golden rule as being what it’s all about – not a goal that you should aim for (as the rest of us do), but say they realize that this is the law of the universe, like gravity. That what you do to someone else, you do to yourself as well.”
Rick Archer RA: “Why do you think an NDE produces these personality changes?”
BG: “I don’t know the answer to that. As I said, I don’t know of anything else that is that powerful in transforming peoples’ lives. But it changes their attitudes, their beliefs, their values, and therefore their behavior. And I’ve talked to people in their 90s, who had the experience as teenagers, and they say it’s like it happened yesterday. I’ve never forgotten it and the changes stay with me.”
RA: “What effect has doing all this research had on you?”
BG: “I started out in this career as a die-hard materialist. I grew up in a scientific family, where all we talked about, all we knew about, was the physical world. We weren’t opposed to the spiritual, it’s just never occurred to us there was anything beyond the physical. So I went through college and medical school thinking what you see is what you get, and when you die, that’s the end of it and there’s nothing beyond the physical. And then when I first started my internship in psychiatry, within a couple of months, I was confronted by a patient who was unconscious when I tried to evaluate her in the emergency room. I ended up talking to her roommate in a room down the hall to get some background information about her. Then I saw the patient the next day when she awoke. She stunned me by describing to me the entire conversation I had with her roommate, including what we were wearing, where we were sitting, and so forth, not making any mistakes at all. That just blew me away. Frankly, it terrified me. Just before I came to see her, I dropped some spaghetti sauce on my tie and covered it up with my lab coat so no one could see it. And when I talked to her roommate, it was so hot in the room, I unbuttoned the coat and she could see it. The patient, who at the time was lying unconscious down the hall in another room, knew about that. The roommate was in the intensive care unit overnight with no visitors allowed. The only way the patient could have known these things is if she had followed me down the hall to another room – it made no sense to me. As far as I was concerned, we were our bodies - how could you leave your body?
Three different studies of scientists, one done in Scotland, one done in Belgium, and one done Brazil, have found that 50% of scientists believe that the mind is something independent of the body, something nonphysical that exists outside the brain.”
RA: “I ponder sometimes what it must be to live life if you think this body is all you are, and when this dies, that’s the end of it. It would be such a radically different perspective than what I’m accustomed to. Some people seem to be fine with it. Personally, I think I would find it very disturbing.” BG: “Well, let me respond to that, because I started out life that way – for the first 25 years – and it was not disturbing at all. It was very comforting to know that we had all the answers, and there was nothing surprising out there. When you encounter something that can’t be explained by materialistic models, it’s quite unnerving. And it does require you to confront everything you thought you know.”
RA: "It’s a major issue in the scientific world – one of the main unanswered questions in science is ‘What is consciousness?’ There’s this big debate whether consciousness is created by the brain or vice versa. There’s this entrenched paradigm of materialism that is resisting the ever-growing body of evidence – anomalies that would overturn it." BG: “Most of us grew up thinking that the mind is what the brain does because it seems that way in everyday life: when you get intoxicated, you don’t think very clearly; when you have a stroke or hit your head, that effects your thinking. But it does seem that in extreme circumstances, like near death experience, when the brain seems to be diminished, the mind seems to be doing better than ever. And there are other examples of this as well, including the studies done at Hopkins and elsewhere in the last decade with neuroimaging of psychedelic drugs, showing that the more elaborate mystical experiences are associated with a decrease in electrical activity in the brain.
We have studied NDEs across the globe from different cultures and we also have records of NDEs going back to ancient Greece and Rome, and they all sound essentially the same in terms of the phenomenology. However, how people interpret what they experience, is influenced by their cultural background. An example is, most people report encountering a warm loving beam of light that makes them feel welcomed and well-protected. In Western countries that’s often interpreted as God or Christ, and you don’t hear that in Hindu and Buddhist cultures – they will say I saw Krishna or Buddha. However, even among Christians, they will say to you, ‘I’m going to call this “God” so you’ll know what I’m talking about, but it wasn’t the God I was taught about in church – it’s much bigger than that. I’m just using that word so we can communicate.’ ”
RA: “One metaphor or analogy I find very handy for explaining the possible relation of consciousness to the body is that of the radio in relation to the magnetic field. The radio isn’t actually generating the music, it’s picking up fluctuations in the field and giving us music. And if you damage the radio, the music stops, but it doesn’t mean the fluctuations in the field have stopped.” BG: “Exactly. And I think that’s a good analogy for how the brain and the mind interact. It makes sense in terms of evolutionary theory that the brain, having evolved as part of our physical body, would have this filter function to let in from consciousness, only those thoughts and feelings that are relevant to our survival in the physical world – how to find food, shelter, a mate, and so forth. And if the brain is perceiving things about deceased loved ones or a deity, those aren’t relevant to physical survival, so it’s sure to filter those out.” Above from: Bruce Greyson MD interviewhttps://batgap.com/bruce-greyson/ anda shorter, more concise, excellent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MMJPjnShZs
Many of us remain stuck in one rut or another, for much of our adult lives. For a variety of reasons, we "keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results." A surprisingly common motto in this "ordinary unhappiness" is: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Of course, we first have to finally realize that our life IS 'broke.' If we're lucky enough to experience a major shake-up, we might become motivated pursue a far deeper, more intimate engagement with life. Jungian psychology can provide valuable insights into Mindfulness (MBSR). While Jungian psychology - like MBSR - is secular, it does use some Christian-sounding terminology. I've found that the more psycho-socially evolved people are, the less aversion they have towards various religions, even if they themselves are not affiliated with any specific religion. Much like hating oneself &/or others, rigidly holding animosity/anger/rage against one's own &/or others' religions absolutely freezes one's healing, growth & maturation. Such blocks often require professional help to resolve. The very basis of any form of healing & healthy maturation is gently releasing rigidly held, narrow, fear-based self-concepts & worldviews, and slowly, progressively opening up to psychologically more flexible, more spacious, inclusive, loving ways of being.
“… the Jungian perspective divides the development of the personality into two fundamental periods. The first is from birth to psychological midlife, commonly referred to as ‘the first half of life.’ The second is from psychological midlife to death, and is commonly referred to as ‘the second half of life.’ During the first half of life, our basic developmental task is to differentiate a personality as we grow out of childhood. That personality should be strong enough to find a place and to form relationships in the external world of societal life. It should be able to function effectively there, according to the common standards, aims, and goals of that world. In symbolic terms, this achievement is referred to in Jungian psychology as finding the common gold. Generally, once this task is completed, we begin feeling lost – as though somehow, in achieving our place in life, we have lost ourselves. That is, we do so if we are alert enough to let that much self-awareness through our defenses. If we don’t or can’t, we will develop some other attention-getting type of symptom, usually expressed in the form of an emotional or physical dis-ease. In either case, our primary task in the second half of life is to come into relationship with our unconscious and the center of our being – our Self – by finding our soul and the meaning of our life. In this way, we discover the true gold, the symbol of the illuminated soul. The Jungian analyst must take nature as his or her guide. What we do in analytic sessions is not so much therapy as it is furthering the development of the creative seed inherent in the analysand and nurturing that development. This process often includes going backward in a person’s life – especially family life – and helping the person create a friendly inner background in which his or her reconstruction can begin. Once the corner is turned from the first half of life to the second, one discovers that a lifestyle that looks good and works (no matter how well) isn’t sufficient to provide the true gold of fulfillment. This realization alone is enough to give us an idea of how difficult the work of individuation can be. During this turning point in personal growth, suffering evolves to a higher level. In this context, suffering comes to mean expending ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ with religious devotion in the effort to discover the true gold of our nature. It represents the courage to depart from conventional wisdom, ambition, pleasures, comforts, pride, and values in favor of following the creative voice within us. There are many possible wrong turns and no guarantees of success in this journey. But if we are successful, genuine self-realization rewards us by giving birth to a deeper experience of love, compassion, and joy in our lives.” Bud Harris. “The Journey into Wholeness: A Jungian Guide to Discovering the Meaning of Your Life’s Path.” Daphne, 2020.
“While religion at its best calls us to a community of the curious and a unity beyond dogma and tribalism; religion at its worst calls us to worship the very things that divide us and to pit people against one another in the name of one fantasy or other.” Rami Shapiro. “Holy Rascals. Advice for Spiritual Revolutionaries.” Sounds True, 2017.
“Let us fall in love again And scatter gold dust all over the world. Let us become a new spring And feel the breezes drift in the heaven’s scent. Let us dress the earth in green. And like the sap of a young tree, Let the grace from within sustain us. Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts And let them light our path of Love. The glance of love is crystal clear And we are blessed by its light.”
Rumi
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“The subject tonight is Love And for tomorrow night as well. As a matter of fact, I know of no better topic for us to discuss Until we all die!"
Hafiz
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“In this choiceless, never ending flow of life There is an infinite array of choices. One alone brings happiness - To love what is.”
Dorothy Hunt
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“Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.”
Rumi
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"There is silence everywhere, you just have to listen for it. I am surrounded by love, I just have to stop looking for it. Trust opens both, If I let it."
Today is Martin Luther King Jr Day. Dr. King was murdered for the things he said & stood for. He was calling for a qualitatively different way of relating to ourselves, others, & life which a large proportion of Americans found & obviously still findsimpossible to understand, disturbing & intolerable.
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. Our hope for creative living lies in our ability to reestablish the spiritual needs of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments." Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.” Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Why on earth would roughly 40% of Americans - most of whom claim to be Christians - find such words intolerable? Maybe Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest, provides perspective:
“I became more and more intrigued and disturbed about why it was that Christianity, a religion that clearly has one of the most loving and inclusive gurus that’s ever walked the face of the planet, at its epicenter, should tend to develop itself in formats that were so rigid, exclusive & non-generous. And why didn’t people walk the talk? It became more and more of a heartbreak to me. So it was actually through reading Jacob Needleman’s “Lost Christianity” in 1980, that the first pieces began to come together. He said at one point, ‘telling people to wake up and be conscious, is like telling stones to pick themselves up, sprout wings and fly to the sea.’ There’s a missing piece, and until you can get that missing piece online, you can’t do the teachings of Jesus. ‘If one aspires to live the beatitudes or any Gospel teaching it is necessary to establish the level of consciousness from which they emerge.’ is virtually a direct quote from Symeon the New Theologian in the 11th century, who was the first one to be on to the fact that the Jesus teachings emerged from a very high level of consciousness, and that until you could basically run that program, you are going to be constantly dumbing it down to a place where it’s basically an inversion of itself. So Needleman was onto the fact that something is broken in the way that we pay attention that keeps our consciousness scrambled, low, distracted, and not under our free command, and it's this that is constantly making hash out of the Gospel that Jesus was teaching." Cynthia Bourgeault - Oct 23, 2017 interview: https://batgap.com/cynthia-bourgeault/
There are at least 2 levels of
understanding anything: literal & metaphorical. Literal refers to an
objective fact that can be observed & agreed on by any number of observers eg she was crying. A metaphor uses a comparison to make a point
eg her tears were a river flowing down her cheeks. Our present
industrialized consumer society is materialistic & literal, almost exclusively focused on
the production & acquisition of material goods: digital devices, clothes, cars, houses, property, alcohol / drugs etc. "The one who dies with the most toys wins" is weirdly funny and the philosophy of a LOT of people. Discussing non-material matters - which requires metaphor - very oftencreates confusion, smouldering anger, up to & including violence & murder, among those who are simply not capable of understanding at this level.
"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change." Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
