charting the Oneness

Given the interconnectedness of all things there is the Oneness which can be approached from many directions. And, following the introduction, the story can develop in many further directions. I see the story occupying many modules and some of them are listed below. The order of items in the list was largely spontaneous but I have edited it so that a story line is clearer. Given another mood and moment the outcome would be different.

• The story is about changing minds – my own and that of others.
• Thinking changes the mindbrain It is never too late to change your mindbrain. There is neural plasticity.
• The monkey mind is a zombie on automatic pilot. It is fed thoughts, feelings and moods by the unconscious which is 'boss'
• The scanners of the neuroscientists have shown that the modules in the brain have particular functions. The brains of monks and meditators are different from ordinary folk.

• Brains evolved to improve the interactions of organisms with their physical and social environments – attraction, neutral and aversion
• Nervous systems – cephalization (forming a head) advanced in phases from reptilian through mammals and primates (cortex) to humans (pre-frontal cortex).
• The brain modules are interactive for balance (homeostasis) eg fight or flight
• Sensory inputs about the present situation are compared with similar situations in the past (learning)
• Man is a social animal – and much of the hard wiring is for group work – heuristics, schema, rule of thumb, negative bias, reflex, intuition, hunch, nudge, instinct etc

DISCIPLINES that come to mind

evolutionary psychology, social psychology, positive psychology, behavioural economics, developmental biology, neurology – consilience

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Kahneman thinking – fast and slow

Csikszentmihalyi - flow

Wilber no boundary

Haidt morality

Kabat- Zinn mindfulness

Wilson E O consilience

politics/economics

social psychology

mindfulness

Myers/Briggs

Kiersey Temperament Sorter

Learning type

dharma talking

A few years back my practice included listening to dharma talks. They are available from many sites. I can highly recommend the following three.

http://www.dharmastream.org/ many teachers

http://www.audiodharma.org/ Gil Fronsdal

http://seattleinsight.org/ Rodney Smith

witnessing the zombie

The idea of an abiding self or ego is a mind-made illusion. Mature meditators see through the illusion and experience the non-egoic bliss of being out of time and space. But the experience is also available to newcomers to the ancestral art of sitting still.

I am a student of mindfulness who, over the years, has followed a range of teachings. Common to them all is the major challenge of dispelling the illusion of self which is infamously more easily said than done.

The technique for changing your mind is to sit quietly doing nothing but, when 'I' try, 'I' find that 'my' mind is inclined to occupation by uninvited thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM). So 'I' decide to watch the TFM as they come and go. The intention is that 'I' should be just a witness But 'I' find 'myself' standing in judgement using one of the many moral codes that 'I' acquired from the various groups to which 'I' belong.

So there seems to be an 'I', 'me' and 'mine', associated with an 'ego' or sense of 'self'. But these are not clear cut. Many variations on the basic theme emerge, presumably from the unconscious; they hang around in attention for a while; then they disappear - presumably back into the unconscious.

But do not take my word for it. Try the following experiment.

---

EXPERIMENT:

Find a comfortable seat in a quiet place

Sit down

Shut your eyes

Commit yourself to stay there for 60 seconds

Intend to observe the thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) that arise

If no TFM arise, then point your attention to your breathing

OPTION: - when the 60 seconds are up -

Label and write the names of the TFM that you remember

Think of your 'self'' as (a) the carrier of the TFM and (b) as the witness

---

I have played with the idea of there being at least two ways in which the structure and functions of 'my''self' are construed. I have given the different constructions names. (a) Zorba the zombie who experiences the background and foreground TFM. Zorba is also known as the monkey mind and (b) Walter the witness who engages in non judgemental observation of what Zorba get up to. I think of Walter as the cool dude.

So who am I? Sometimes excitable Zorba the Zombie, and sometimes cool dude Walter the witness. Do you recognise those two characters? Repeat the experiment and see what other illusions of 'self' turn up.

Good enough

There is no intention that the products of evolution should be 'perfect'. All that matters is that they should be 'good enough' which means better than the competition. The sexual reproduction system generates variations which compete for places in the next generation. Those with the most offspring win. So there is survival of the fittest by natural selection.

It is easiest to figure out what is going on by considering the domestication of plants and animals during the development of settled agriculture.

Think of dogs. Once upon time and not so long ago, there were only wolves. But people befriended them and began programmes of selective breeding for useful features – size, temperament, sense of smell, length and thickness of their coat etc. And this early form of Genetic Modification (GM) gave us the canine cornucopia of today.

Now think of sheep, pigs and horses, of rice, potatoes, and brocolli, and of hundreds of other species that have undergone un-natural selection at the hands of farmers who determined which of the offspring were allowed to breed. Farmers playing God.

Now think of Hitler and the blond haired, blue eyed Aryan master race. And the Holocaust. Politicians playing God.

Now take the farmers and politicians out of the picture. Un-natural selection reverts to natural selection. But, language dictates that if there is selection then there must be a selector, who will have a forward plan and a sense of direction for evolution. God playing God.

But the supernatural agent notion is a linguistic and existential cop out. An omniscient and inscrutable being belongs in the archives of myth and magic. But there is a suggestion that the notion is now hard wired as a god spot in the human mindbrain - perhaps next to the my grandmother spot in that part of the pre-frontal cortex that deals with executive functions.

BUT – reality is a distributed network rather than a centralised bureaucracy. I had a numinous and non-egoic feeling for what that meant the other day while driving through the manicured countryside.

A cow is the grass's way of becoming milk

Milk is the farmer's way of making cheese

Cheese is the hotel's way of feeding guests

Guests are the tourism industry's way of enabling purchasers

Purchasers are industry's way of making a profit

Profit is the capitalist's way of justifying existence

Existence has been around since the big bang

Progress since the big bang has been good enough

Unveiling the unconscious

I am retired without wife or kids and have cut back on busy-ness. So I have lots of time to call my own. What do I do with it? The bare necessities involve domestic chores in the house and garden. And there is some media distraction and social interaction. Other than that, I read, write, doodle and dose by way of unveiling the unconscious.

The reading is non-fiction and focuses on the process of changing minds – mine and other people's. I also listen to key thinkers promoting their ideas online. Themes covered include evolution, neurology, the various social sciences, linguistics and mindfulness. I spend many hours one-pointedly assimilating ideas. Absorption. A multitude of stimuli come knocking at the sense doors. Conscious inputs are few while unconscious ones are many.

The writing is about what I have been reading and experiencing. I no longer feel obliged to write objectively in the passive voice. Herds of tenured academics do that much better than me. And there is Wikipedia! The self appointed task is to tell my subjective stories stylishly, and to blog them. The prose emerges in flow and usually needs to be consciously edited. The muse is not perfect but she is good enough.

There are now several hundred doodles and there are two or three new ones each day. They are produced in about thirty minutes of flow. I am not aware of their meaning. It is as if they draw themselves. They are evidence of the unconscious churn. The products remain mysterious but I greatly appreciate the non-egoic mind state which controls the process.

The dosing includes slivering and sometimes sleep. I am late to bed and early to rise. I presumably have dreams but I don't remember them. Sometimes I settle for a dose which might become a sleep. At other times what looks like a dose from the outside is in fact a session of mindfulness.

It is difficult to talk about mindfulness because sentences demand a subject, verb and object. An agent. A personal pronoun. Language perverts 'reality'. (The reality that can be described is not the real reality – Lao Tzu)

In an earlier blogpost I named my mental states. (see below). Two of them are relevant at the moment.

Zorba the Zombie says “I want xxx.”

William the witness asks “who is the 'I' that wants?” and then

“Who is the 'I' that asks who is the 'I' that wants?”

Zorba the Zombie (aka Monkey Mind) is drip fed from the unconscious with a never ending stream of thoughts, feelings and moods. These cause Zorba (aka the self) to believe in a real reality when, in fact, they are only mind-made re-presentations based on hard wiring and sensory inputs.

William the witness comes and goes. He gives the impression of calmly witnessing the emotional cavalcade that is Zorba. He is a cool dude. He can be called upon at any time to help still the storms created by the Zombie on auto-pilot.

These days more of my time is spent as even keel William than as roller coaster Zorba. There is procrastination about washing the dishes till the mood is right and then the work gets done with grace rather than with a grudge.

Richard Nisbett is a respected Social Psychologist who thinks about thinking and is gradually classifying the types of thought and feeling used by the conscious and unconscious aspects of human mentation. He offers these words of wisdom for unveiling the unconscious:

• Don't assume that you know why you think what you think or do what you do.
• Don't assume that other people's accounts of their reasons or motives are any more likely to be right than are your accounts of your own reasons or motives.
• You have to let the unconscious help you.
• You should never fail to take advantage of the free labour of the unconscious mind.
• If you're not making progress on a problem, drop it and turn to something else.

Yoh!

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/head-voices.html

Big Think on minding

“Most of what goes on in our heads we have no access to – we have no idea of what is going on ...
Unconscious influences, peer-pressure foremost among them, guide many of our most important decisions. Think you're thinking for yourself? Think again.” So says Richard Nisbett a cutting edge social psychologist. (see below)

I appreciate that my sense organs provide a continuous flow of inputs which are interpreted by marrying them to memories. This guides the design of a relevant reaction. The process creates a lot of churn and many possible stories could be told. But, in the African savannah, and in the local supermarket, there may not be time to methodically review all the options; so evolution has made it possible to operate with automatic biases and intuitions some of which are hard wired into my brain by nature and some of which are learned from my culture by nurture.

My mind is an iceberg of staggering complexity. Most of its activities are below the surface in the unconscious. Above the surface the conscious activities (including self consciousness) are severely limited. They are much less in control than they think they are. If you make time to sit quietly you will know that the mind has a mind of its own – a monkey mind ceaselessly swinging from one thought, feeling and mood to another.

In the past 20 years or so the academic world has embraced multi disciplinary teamwork, and new disciplines have developed. For example cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, and behavioural economics operate under the umbrella of evolutionary psychology. This puts pressure on the 'experts' for whom knowing more and more about less and less is no longer a viable option - especially for those who would be at the cutting edge of radical thinking.

I like the idea of being a lifelong learner at the cutting edge. It links to my quest to find better ways to be human and thus to make the world a better place. This of course begs the questions, “What constitutes 'better'?” ie “Why do I like this rather than that?” and, on the ineffable slow burner, “Who is the 'I' that likes?” I have three high level aspirations:

“To make the world a better place”	promote left of centre social democracy and tackle environmental issues
“To find better ways to be human”	promote mindfulness meditation and thus encourage peace loving individuals; encourage east/west dialogue and working in multidisciplinary teams
“To be a lifelong learner at the cutting edge”	spin the action/ reflection cycle with lots of time for (a) academic study so as to expand horizons and (b) stillness so as to avoid zealotry

Most of the minding processes take place under the radar of self consciousness and 'I' am not aware of them. But a new balance can be set. It is never too late to change your mind.

• Neuroscience is showing that by taking thought the mind can change the brain. 
• Social psychology is systematically listing the short cuts and rules of thumb that make fast thinking possible. 
• Behavioural economics is demonstrating that the notion of the rational economic agent is a myth. 
• Mindfulness based courses are proving effective in reducing stress and improving peace of mind in a wide range of social settings.

There is a lot of churn in my unconscious as it processes incoming data to generate appropriate fast reactions and slow responses. Life is an ongoing learning experience. The only constant thing is change. How I see 'reality' depends on the situation that I am in. But forewarned is forearmed. There is the possibility of leaving the unconscious to pull the zombie strings. That is the default mode but it is not cast in stone. By taking thought the process can be tweaked. There are other options:

Take the experimental findings of social and cognitive psychology to heart. Study the thinking about bias, intuition, stereotyping etc and therefore take account of non rational thought processes at the stages before, during and after an interaction.

Keep up to speed with the findings of the neuroscientists about the neural correlates of consciousness and the possibilities of harnessing the potential of neural plasticity. The brain changes the mind changes the brain.

Bathe in the intellectual sunshine that is evolutionary psychology. Re-construct the story of the evolution of nervous systems, their cephalisation in vertebrates, the emergence of the frontal cortex in primates, the appearance of language in humans about 100,000 years ago, and the exponential growth of culture in the last 5000 years.

Bathe in the spiritual sunshine that is mindfulness meditation. Make time to sit quietly doing nothing and know the peace that passes rational and language-based understanding. Experience the blissful mind state that is non-egoic and outside space and time. Practise everyday Zen when operating in flow.

It's never too late to change your mind.

BigThink:

http://bigthink.com/videos/richard-nisbett-on-the-influence-of-other-people

who – me?

who wants what?

what does who want?

why does who want what?

I am who

I want enough stuff and peace of mind

do I need what I want?

who is the I that needs and wants?

I am minded by deep mind

deep mind is minded

by genes and experience

by the fittest ancestors

by the unspeakable force

how to get what I need and want

where and when?

Subjectively spiritual

“The word 'spirituality' has become unusably embarrassing for many people, either because it's so imprecise or because it carries cultural baggage.” Sam Harris is trying to rehabilitate it. https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom/videos/10153232398983527/

Here is my contribution to the rescue bid.

Spirituality is a way of thinking and feeling which is sometimes realised spontaneously but is more often reached through taming and training the mind. It's names include in flow, in the zone, in the groove, and being attended by the muse. There is also the notion of release or liberation from bondage, and of enlightenment. Common to them all is a delightful, non-egoic state that is out of space and time.

The following table sets out some features of the frame of mind before and after spiritual awakening. The content is partly based on my subjective experience and understanding.

BEFORE - normal people (religious or atheist)	AFTER - abnormal people (spiritual)
are captured by a cultural world view which provides them with intuitions and common sense	are released from their natal, cultural world view. This allows them to be counter intuitive and to display uncommon sense
have world views which are parochial, xenophobic, superficial and unenlightened (myth and magic)	have world views that are global (cosmic), open-ended, deep and enlightened (evidence-based science)
are nurtured, using words, to be egoic and self-conscious	are wordlessly aware of being hard wired to operate non-egoically in unconscious flow

Points to ponder

• Evolutionary psychology has shown how we have a stone age brain in the computer age.
• Neuroscience shows the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) and has identified many specialist modules.
• Experimental psychology has demonstrated many subtle quirks in the way that decisions are made in the mindbrain – we are not as clever and rational as we like to think we are.
• There is no need for all the unconscious activity to be available to the self-conscious.
• The unconscious has been around for a long time; self-consciousness is recent.
• The idea of an abiding self is an illusion. It is constantly being re-created.
• We have evolved rules of thumb to react fast and respond more slowly – using reflex, instinct, bias, intuition.
• Once separated from its historical, eastern roots mindfulness meditation is seen to be a psychology of perception.

Be still and know the peace that passes all understanding

Just sit, dropping off body and mind – stillness speaks

a new take on awareness

Recent work in experimental psychology and neurology has added to our understanding of the mindbrain's purpose, and of its modular structure and function.

The modules are conditioned by nature (hard wired biases, reflexes and instincts), by nurture (learning and enculturation linked to myths and magic) and by serendipity (chance acts of god (?) (thunder, lightning, droughts and floods)). The conditioning operates at the conscious and unconscious levels.

Living things include single celled and many celled plants and animals. They all have to interact with their physical, biological and cultural environments. In many celled animals this involves a sequence of events:

sensory stimulus	sense organ	sensory nerve	sensory module	integrative module	evaluative module (good, neutral, bad)
light	eye	sensory nerve	visual area	light, sound, smell = lion	fight or flight REACTION
1	2	3	4	5	6

Inputs from the sense organs make up a huge amount of new data which has to be assimilated so as to reconfigure 'reality' (including 'self') on a continuous basis. This happens when the hard wired data and some of the earlier data is retrieved from short and long term memory and churned with the new data.

This data sorting happens in the default mode network (DMN). The DMN is less active when the mindbrain is task oriented. The DMN is most active when it is 'resting' ie cut off from externally sourced stimulus/ response reactions. This is presumably what I think of as the kaleidoscopic, unconscious churn.

Outputs from the churn include thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM). Some of these totally commandeer the attention centre while others rarely amount to more than vague impressions. My subjective experience is that the assimilated mini stories are rooted in TFM from times past. But most of them are fleeting and ephemeral although that is enough to let them influence the pattern of reality in any given moment.

For example when shopping in the supermarket I seek out the daily specials, the two for the price of one, the cheap own-brand options, flesh and cheese at less than £8/kg, and wine at less than £4/bottle. The TFM is that those who buy the more expensive options have more money than sense; shame on them. But my sensibilities have been shaped by Dad going bankrupt when I was about 12. So the TFM carries reflections of the old folks shame and embarrassment.

Another example – authority figures. I do not trust my elders and betters - the good and great. Dad punished me for something that my little sister did. My English teacher did not believe that I wrote my appreciation of Wordsworth. The Minister accused me of plagiarism when I argued the case for evolution in Bible Class. The expectation of omniscience is ill founded.

There are two ways of understanding awareness. While sitting quietly being mindful you can be aware that the monkey mind is busy and let the TFM go. While lying on the therapist's couch you can be aware of the TFM – especially the fleeting stuff – and talk about it.

There are many types of meditation and of talking therapy. East v West. Following on the work of Jon Kabat Zinn there is a merging of approaches sometimes called Buddhism Lite. The roots lie in the psychology of perception. Reality is mind-made using language. “He who speaks does not know.” Enough said.