Conscious, Intentional, Healthy Maturation

     We've had, and continue to have, amazingly inspiring individuals among us: Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, Deepa Ma, Viktor Frankl, Terry Fox, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, etc.
     And we have individuals among us who, at best, elicit our mercy & forgiveness. 

     "the measure of a civilization's growth is in its ability to transfer increasing amounts of energy & attention from the material side of life to the psychological, cultural, aesthetic, & spiritual side of life."                                        Arnold Toynbee's Law of Progressive Simplification
       Joel & Michelle Levey. Living in Balance: A Mindful Guide for Thriving in a Complex World. Divine Arts; Revised ed'n (Aug 12, 2014)

     OUR individual responsibility is to lead civilization, by being the best human being we can be. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2014/07/552-greatest-risk-of-all.html

Are we Taught to be Smart BUT Unwise?

     The degree to which we see ourselves as fixers of broken (diseased) patients, we are detached from humanity. Sadly, "professional detachment" is actively promoted in medical curricula as a requirement for practice. This may be considered "smart" but it's clearly unwise. See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2014/07/were-experts-and-dumbasses-smart-but.html
     This flawed mindset keeps us isolated AND suffering! It's off base on many levels: 

     "Loneliness, a socially painful state of perceived social isolation, may be a common risk factor for pain, depression, & fatigue. For example, people who felt socially disconnected were able to tolerate less physical pain than those who felt more socially connected, suggesting that feeling unconnected to those around you may increase pain sensitivity. In addition, lonelier people became more depressed and fatigued over time than people who felt more socially connected." 
       Jaremka, L.M., et al., Loneliness predicts pain, depression, and fatigue: Understanding the role of immune dysregulation. Psychoneuroendocrinology (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2012.11.016

     "Being socially connected has health benefits. For example, married people had lower premature all-cause mortality rates, higher 5-year cancer survival rates, and fewer chronic health conditions than their non-married counterparts. In addition, people with more diverse social ties had lower premature all-cause mortality rates and a better prognosis following a myocardial infarction or stroke than people who were less socially integrated. On the other hand, distressing interpersonal relationships enhance risk for a variety of health problems such as coronary heart disease, delayed wound healing, metabolic syndrome, and premature all-cause mortality. Importantly, the links between close relationships and health remain after controlling for important sociodemographic and health-relevant risk factors.
     Growing evidence suggests that immune function may be one potential pathway linking close relationships and health; proper immune function is essential to health. Indeed,
inflammation and other forms of immune dysregulation increase risk for premature all-cause mortality and a variety of diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and metabolic syndrome."
       Jaremka, L. M., Derry, H., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (in press). Psychoneuroimmunology of interpersonal relationships: Both the presence/absence of social ties and relationship quality matter. In D. I. Mostofsky (Ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Medicine (Vol. 2). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.           http://pni.osumc.edu/publications.html

Don't we feel like this at times?

We're Experts AND Dumbasses, Smart BUT NOT Wise

     When being honest with ourselves, we'll admit that despite - & to a large extent, because of - all we know about our particular health-care role, we sadly lack wisdom. We've spent so much time & energy cramming info into our heads, trying to appear smart, that we don't even understand the concept of wisdom, never mind living wisely.

     Wisdom is “a developmental process involving self-transcendence. Self-transcendence refers to the ability to move beyond self-centered consciousness, and to see things as they are with clear awareness of human nature and human problems, and with a considerable measure of freedom from biological and social conditioning. This ability to move beyond a self-centered perspective is certainly an important component of wisdom.
     Transcending the self is needed to move beyond ingrained, automatic ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, and to connect empathetically with the experiences of others.”
        Le TN, Levenson MR. Wisdom as self-transcendence: What's love (& individualism) got to do with it? Journal of Research in Personality 2005; 39(4): 443-457.

     "wise individuals evince less despair and greater equanimity because they (are) more likely to grapple with existential dilemmas and paradoxes that give life more meaning."
       Le TN. Life satisfaction, openness value, self-transcendence, and wisdom. Journal of Happiness Studies 2011; 12(2): 171-182. 

     "When we truly live each moment, what happens to the burden of life? ... If we are totally what we are, in every second, we begin to experience life as joy. Standing between us and a life of joy are our thoughts, our ideas, our expectations, and our hopes and fears.
      ... people who have been practicing for some time begin to have a sense of humor about their burden. After all, the thought that life is a burden is only a concept. We're simply doing what we're doing, second by second by second. The measure of fruitful practice is that we feel life less as a burden and more as a joy."
        Beck CJ. Nothing special: Living Zen. HarperCollins, 1995.

     Mindfulness practice is a well-established, intentional path from suffering towards wisdom, equanimity and joy.

A Weed Grows in Venice

 

Can We Really Know Anyone - even Ourself?

     A senior meditation teacher once advised: "Only don't know."

     A definition of expert: "One who's incapable of learning."

     "The Renaissance is all about secret transformations. Human beings - we're not objects, we're not things. We are alive & changing every minute. Our very nature is change. Our very nature is transformation - which we forget, because we say "Oh that person is like that." And we forget they're like that today, but they could be like something else tomorrow, and maybe they were something else two weeks ago. 
     We keep actually putting labels on people and typing them. And in fact the one thing about human beings is that we're quicksilver, endlessly transforming and changeable." 

     Peter Sellars, American theatre director, interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel on CBC Radio:
     http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Ideas/ID/2442656684/

Corner Store, Rome, Italy

 

We're Much More Alike than Different

     We're very (overly?) aware of our own burdens & struggles as health-care professionals. It's really helpful to periodically gain some appreciation about how others live.

     "Meditation, as a space of clarity and equanimity, eludes me. But I recently read a book by the Soto Zen teacher Dainin Katagiri in which he talks about the struggles of meditation, and it helped. His instruction is, quite simply, 'Just shut up and sit.' This message resonates with me. So now, even when my mind is full of monkeys and a plethora of uncontrollable thoughts, I just shut up and sit. I can do that."
       Patrick Brady, inmate of the California State Prison, written while in solitary confinement. 
       Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, Spring 2014.

Franco Balducci's 2007 "Traveller of Peace", San Gimignano, Tuscany, Italy

"Not Good Enough" Runs our Lives

     I'll never forget an instructor in first year dentistry - Dr. S. Each time I'd show him something I had just finished working on, he'd look at it for 30 seconds or so with a disgusted look on his face, then inevitably say "Ehhhh, do it over again." What he meant of course was "not good enough!"
     Like Dr. S, our parents likely meant well by repeatedly urging us to improve on various activities - HOWEVER - after a steady diet of this, doesn't a distinct impression form that WE are not good enough? And what do we do about this deep sense of insufficiency? WE STRIVE for ACCEPTANCE, which deep down we know we can't ever achieve, because ... we're simply "not good enough." 
     So we sense that we're perpetually running after (praise, acceptance) some elusive "must have" thing - like the fake rabbit that's always just out of the reach of the hounds on race tracks. Is this at least partly why some of us will "never retire"? At the same time, we're running from criticism, rejection.
     Maybe "not good enough" not just runs, but ruins lives. Is there any wonder why self-acceptance is a critical part of various psychotherapies?

Simulated Town, Palestine - Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Connection, Wealth, Health & Evolution

     This morning on CBC radio's "The Current", social psychologist Paul Piff reviewed research that consistently shows how the wealthy tend to be disconnected from ordinary folks, tend to intellectualize (rather than empathize with) human suffering, and give a lower proportion of their wealth to charity than average folk. Wealth appears to act as a buffer - wall, armor, blockage - between the wealthy & reality.
     Yet isn't up-to-date accurate information about what's going on in society, preferably globally - connection - highly valued by astute business people, politicians, talk-show hosts etc? Isn't the ability to quickly fill a need in society - interbeing - the critical feature of successful start-up companies? Don't companies that "loose touch" with what's current & relevant, quickly become irrelevant & bankrupt?
     Isn't poor communication - with adjacent cells in an organism; between mind & body; between individuals in a couple, family or country; between nations, etc, etc, - at all levels of existence - pathological?

     Prioritizing or achieving great wealth & power seems to impede normal human evolution - food for thought in a culture obsessed with the "rich & famous".

     "... it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

     See also: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/05/healing-central-goal-of-life.html
     and: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/08/162-cheating.html

       For more on the artist below & other Florentine "pop up artists", see: http://www.theflorentine.net/articles/article-view.asp?issuetocId=9231

Blub   instagram.com/lartesanuotare   Florence, Italy