An urge of bullets

What is the urge? Is there an urge? There is something of a 'should' about producing a story before the end of the year.

There could be comment on recent socialisation and on how it altered the construals in my mindbrain. But that might lead to gossip about particular people.

The tablet is in the sunroom and it is feeding the speaker in the office by bluetooth. No wires. Magic?

The atmosphere is dribbling with electromagnetic signals most of which cannot be captured by our sense organs. For example we can 'see' visible light but not ultraviolet or infra-red.

For example Radio 4 signals swamp Portsoy but they have to be decoded by a radio before I can hear them.

These days in the mornings I watch BBC News and in the afternoon listen to PM on BBC4. This is excessive. I pay heed to the stories as they are told but forget them almost immediately. But presumably they have some influence on the TFMs that are generated in the unconscious. The politics of what is regarded as news is a minefield. If I was to be on an official retreat the media would be outlawed. It is a 'bad' habit. There are 'better' things that could be given attention.

The recent socialisation included people who led lives considerably different from mine. Being a submissive introvert I tended to reckon that they were right and I was wrong. 'Happiness is being normal'. But for many people being 'normal' is uncomfortable.

In life there is suffering. And the cause of suffering is craving. And there is a path of thoughts and behaviours that can put an end to craving and thus suffering. It is the noble eight fold path that can be listed in a group of three:

wisdom

1. right view
2. right intention

moral discipline

3. right speech
4. right action
5. right livelihood

concentration

6. right effort
7. right mindfulness
8. right concentration

The three groups can be thought of as intellect, morality and mind control although not of necessity in that order. And the greatest of these are mind control, and mindfulness in particular.

SO it would seem that there was an urge to re-mind my-self of the catechism that is the dharma.

One urge and eight bullets.

Prospering horizons

Barry Boyce believes that “Our minds are … basically sound and good.” But what does that mean? What are minds for? We can consider this through the lens of evolutionary psychology. Our minds sit between stimuli and responses.

stimulus --- mind --- response

We are social animals whose minds respond to social stimuli. Some of these responses are hard wired as reflexes and instincts and are the source of our intuitions, biases, schema, and rules of thumb. Some of the responses are learned during our cultural programming, education and brainwashing. Consciously and unconsciously we are conditioned by nature and nurture. But surely what was conditioned can be reconditioned.

Being social we are neurologically hard wired to conceptualise in terms of 'me', 'us' and 'them'.

When the concepts of I, me, mine, ego, and self are active, a person's behaviour may be self-ish or self-less.

When being selfless a person supports an expanding horizon of 'us' which includes parents, siblings, family, friends, community, group and tribe. There are intra group rules related to division of labour and power. Evolution favours those groups that deal effectively with social interaction.

When being selfish, 'us' competes with 'them' for resources. There are different rules for interacting in inter group conflicts which often have a territorial base. Emigration, murder and genocide have been common features of human evolution.

The poet Alfred Tennyson gave us the image of, “Nature red in tooth and claw.” Evolution has created animal bodies adapted to eating plants only, eating other animals only, or eating both. Human teeth and guts are adapted for eating both and we spent most of our ancestral time hunting and killing to complement the plant based section of our diet. But the only constant thing is change. And history need not be destiny.

SO? When the champions of modern mindfulness aspire to be vegetarians they are going against their evolved nature. Is this wise?

When people aspire to a bloodless and nicey nicey world as a sound and good thing they are not dealing with the way things truly are as yet.

BUT, on the positive side, there is neural plasticity. Even old people can change their mind. Even murderous meat eaters can expand their horizons to include as part of 'us' all of humanity, all living things and even the non-living environment. (ref Wilber's 'No Boundaries)

All human brains are capable of mindfulness. People have embraced it for thousands of years and it is now vigorously spreading through modern western culture. Unlike the other animals, humanity thinks and the thoughts can be captured, if still imperfectly, in spoken and written words.

SO I can theorise possible futures where there is a compassionate container for 'us' with prospering horizons

Serendipity talks

Sometimes in the evening 'I' give up writing and surrender attention to outputs from the laptop. Late last night and early this morning I was gob smacked by three posts that are in tune with my present pattern of thinking.

Susan Cain gave a TED talk on the power of introverts. She was plugging her latest book which I read last week. 'Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking'. We are both introverts. We enjoy reading and writing and playing with ideas, especially in a state of 'grace' ie while non-egoic and out of space and time.

Elizabeth Gilbert gave a TED talk about genius. She is a writer and is often in flow and guided by her 'muse'. In her practice the initial creative outpourings are scruffy and need editing. She is aware, however, that there are similarities with the easy non-egoic action of musicians in the groove and athletes in the zone.

Bob Duggan posted an article to BigThink.com reviewing Wendy Ann Greenhalgh’s book 'Mindfulness & the Art of Drawing: A Creative Path to Awareness'. She reckons that it is possible to enter the non egoic state of flow while drawing and doodling. She sees it as an alternative way of entering advanced states of consciousness.

George Clark has recently been blogging short stories based on the idea of grace and grudge. His mind is in a state of grace when it is non-egoic and outwith space and time. There are three states of mind which make this possible – meditation, flow, numinosity.

Doodles appear several times a day and their source and meaning remains a mystery, except that there will be overlaps in their neurological correlates of consciousness (NCC) – probably in the default mode network (DMN). Doodling is an easy way for me to quieten the monkey mind and to be gracefully suffused with peace.

Cain - http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts

Gilbert - http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius

Duggan - http://bit.ly/1Yf6x5l

Clark - http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/marvellously-mundane-mindfulness.html

taming your elephant

Your mindbrain is like a wild elephant
It can be tamed and trained

Click HERE

From the point of view of evolutionary psychology why is the potential so hard to realise?
Thoughts?

short and to the point

The Buddha did not waste words.
He recognised four types of questions

Click HERE

marvellously mundane mindfulness

The mystery is why so many people do not discover the joy of mindfulness as a matter of course. The human brain has evolved the potential of being mindful and it seems silly and wasteful that it is not more commonly realised.

It might be that basic, pre-linguistic consciousness (aka the unconscious) was mindful and that the more recent and talkative self-consciousness is not. As a species we talk a lot and thus develop cultures which have greater survival value than those ancestral systems that had more peace of mind but less chatter. Evolution is a tinkerer. Good enough is good enough – perfection and optimal design are not natural objectives.

Our human ancestors first appeared about 500,000 years ago and had brains much the same as we now have. Language is a new comer and did not appear till about 200,000 years ago. We are now hard wired to learn a language when we are very young – it is in our genes. But the particular language that we learn depends on our culture.

The exponential growth of human culture is closely linked to the evolution of today's 6,500 languages. But they are not perfect, only good enough, which means better than the neighbours. Language makes it relatively easy to be a social animal and to share thoughts, feelings and moods with family and friends and to keep them hidden from the opposition – the neighbouring groups of foreign tongued devils.

The mindbrain exists to monitor the internal and external environments and to react quickly and respond more slowly in appropriate ways. Inputs from the sensory organs are linked and processed by various modules including the short and long term memories. Data is churned in the unconscious, stories are construed, and some of them are channelled to the attention centre of the self-conscious.

This churning and channelling process is subjectively experienced as the monkey mind over which the untrained self-conscious mind has no control. But training and control are possible, desirable and socially useful. The key is more or less formal and time consuming mindfulness meditation.

The goal is a state of extra-ordinary mind that is selfless (non-egoic) and outwith space and time. There is peace of mind which makes it possible to distance yourself from worrisome TFM. The awkward stuff may still be around but it does not cling to attention so tightly. But it is also possible to totally lose your self and the monkey mind.

There are three extra-ordinary states of mind. They overlap:

1. Meditative – drop off body and mind by sitting or walking mindfully for a few seconds or for a lifetime.
2. Flow – engage with a challenging task and operate in the zone, or in the groove – non-egoic and outwith space and time – peaceful and productive.
3. Numinous – open the doors of perception and see infinity in a grain of sand ie experience the Oneness.

Mystery solved. We live in a modern world with a stone age brain. But evolution has not stopped. And we are now able to shape it. But this might be a bad thing rather than a good one.

Effortless confabulation

1. Brainstorm 14 jargon words. (Option – use more or less)
2. Arrange them in alphabetic order.
3. Select a few and use them in alphabetic order to make a sentence.
4. Repeat the above process till all the words are used.
5. Reflect on how easy it was to “make sense”

Here is a worked example:

---

attention

brainwashing

change

cortex

culture

education

enlightenment

liberation

mindbrain

mindfulness

neuroscience

propaganda

stillness

witness

The good news is that by paying attention to the process of brainwashing the direction of change can be controlled. The structure and function of the cortex can be shaped by one's culture such that the education system leads to enlightenment. Liberation is possible when the mindbrain is exposed to mindfulness. Neuroscience has shown that the impact of cultural propaganda is less when a person embraces stillness and acts as a witness to what is going on in their mindbrain.

---

For more about this game see http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/seeing-patterns.html

Conscious snacking

This morning there was a feeling to cut back on snacks. This would shrink my belly, and make it easier to apply my surgical stockings. So, there is motivation to make something happen, to change my mindbrain and therefore to change my behaviour. This is an example of thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) being transferred from the unconscious to the attention centre where they can be witnessed and labelled.

If there is motivation there is energy and intention. Energy makes work possible. Work involves making changes. Intention involves a goal and action plan related to the changes. This is likely to be constructed in the executive modules of the pre-frontal cortex with inputs from other parts of the mindbrain. Most of the hard work will be done before the TFM are passed to the attention centre of the self conscious.

Now consider the lilies of the field. They don't have a mindbrain but they know how to germinate from a seed and how to grow and produce flowers and seeds in the next generation. What is the nature of this kind of knowing. Must there be a knower and a known? Might not there be an unknown knower?

Now consider your 9 months in the womb. Before your father's sperm fused with your mother's egg

you did not exist. But once the egg was fertilised, it divided many times, and went through a set of development stages. Then you were squeezed through your mother's birth canal into the world of breathing, breast feeding and years of reliance on others.

A lot happened during the 9 months in the womb. There was transition from single-celled zygote (fertilised egg) to many celled neonate (new born). The knowledge to manage the process evolved and was handed down from the ancestors in DNA code. But when did you come to your attention? When did consciousness turn into self-consciousness? Was it somewhere between zygote and neonate or was it not till well into childhood?

With one part of my mindbrain my intention is to cut down on snacking but with another part the intention is to carry on as normal. Yet another part witnesses the struggle between the earlier two. When I pass the packet of chocolate digestives on the kitchen counter the urge to reach for one makes me smile. Old habits die eventually if only I can be aware of what is going on more often than not. Familiarity breeds cement. We become whatever we accustom the unconscious to act upon.

My I is mind made from moment to moment. Having experienced the absence of any abiding reality it gets easier to be aware of and to unhook from such TFM as may turn up in the attention centre. And, in the non judgemental stillness that follows, there are thoughts without a thinker¹, peace is found, and the chocolate biscuits remain for visitors.

1ref Mark Epstein