Nature, nurture and serendipity factors interacted to create the patterns of knowledge, feelings and moods which categorise the ‘reality’ in the mindbrain which ‘I’ think of as being ‘mine’.

 

And the ‘reality’ is not a constant thing. It is an output from ongoing subconscious churn and it rarely lasts for  more than a few seconds or minutes.

Flowing on the blue highway

I spent many years reading, writing, sitting, and being mindful. This was sometimes in a group of like-minded souls, but mainly on retreat by myself. The outcome can be summed up briefly as “the cure for the blues is to change your mind as you move along the never-ending highway.”

The highway is your route through life and it is never-ending because it has no beginnings or ends because the only certainty is doubt and the only constant thing is change. Nothing comes from nothing. The only prime factor is the big bang which is the ancestor of all that came after.

The unconscious is constantly churning out interpretations of recent sensory inputs which means that you change your mind on an ongoing basis. I might like it if outputs were in a static photo album but what I get is more like a dynamic youtube auto play collection where there is an ongoing stream of almost coherent audio/visual materials with adverts in the mix. 

SO – “reality” is what is in your mindbrain (in the attention centre?) on a particular thought moment and these race past following a logic that is rarely shared with the conscious part of the mindbrain. Thus I can appreciate the Taoist view that “The reality that can be described is not the real reality”. I can also sympathise with those who feel that the mind has a mind of its own: and that the unknown part – the unconscious – accounts for at least 99% of mental activity.

SO – it is not that YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND but rather that THE UNCONSCIOUS CHANGES BY REACTING TO THE STIMULI IT RECEIVES.

BUT – either way – a cure for the blues can be achieved by the fact of mind change in a particular way. 

The mindbrain exists to create mental models of life, the universe and everything. When working well these models evoke a sense of well-being and peace of mind through ensuring the supply of Maslow’s pyramid of six needs: Physiological needs (food clothing and shelter), Safety needs, Social belonging, Esteem, Self-actualisation, Self-transcendence. Note that the lower needs have to be met before the higher ones become operative. 

Most cultures, even modern ones, have a creation myth which relies heavily on magic thinking (eg Jesus Christ turns water into wine). There is now a wide range of scientific disciplines approaching the topic. These include: anthropological, archaeological, mythological, historical, theological, psychological and neurological, 

Feelings of melancholy, sadness, or depression arise when the myths and magic no longer cast their spell – you suffer from cognitive dissonance. The thesaurus captures the feelings and moods: · unhappiness · melancholy · misery · sorrow · gloominess · gloom · dejection · downheartedness · despondency · dispiritedness · low spirits · heavy-heartedness · glumness · moroseness · dismalness · despair · the doldrums · the dumps.  The first of the Buddha’s four noble truths is that “In life there is suffering.Yes.

SO - we should not expect things to stand still – especially thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM)

The “blues” take over when things do not go according to plan 

SO-  don’t make plans: we had best be like evolution and go with the flow as it moves along the never-ending highway.

Spending time in perspective

It might be useful to consider how I spend time. A considerable amount is used looking for my glasses. And I use more moving from one room to another and trying to remember why. Many 60+ people have those problems.

Time can be felt passing slowly or quickly. Scientists deal with it in chunks with nanoseconds at the short end and the big bang (13.8 billion years) at the long end.

But, for everyday purposes, we go from tenths of a second (think of athletics) through minutes, hours, days, years and sometimes decades. And we reckon 70 years to be a good innings for a human!  That means 3640 weeks or 25,480 days which includes a third for sleeping.

When people first evolved, their dealings with time would have been linked to nature

•    Sunrise (dawn) daytime Sunset (dusk) nightime
•    Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring
•    The equinoxes – the longest and shortest days
•    Past present future

As science progressed clocks chopped time into smaller and more synchronised chunks and this linked to dividing the past into geological periods on planet earth and to happenings in the cosmos.
SO units of time at the extremes are hard to understand and few of us ever try. We rest content with the more hum drum middle ground and its tools e g diaries, calendars, and to-do-lists.

When the Good Lord created time he made plenty of it – but gave only the tiniest of chunks to me.

SO am I using it well in writing this note for my blog?

Notes -

• A nanosecond is an SI unit of time equal to one thousand-millionth of a second, that is, /1,000,000,000 of a second, or 10⁻⁹ seconds.
• Equinox -- the time or date (twice each year) at which the sun crosses the celestial equator, when day and night are of equal length (about 22 September and 20 March)
• A geologic period is one of several subdivisions of geologic time enabling cross-referencing of rocks and geologic events from place to place. These periods form elements of a hierarchy of divisions into which geologists have split the Earth's history.