caring capitallsm

Got up at eight and frittered away the morning with some domestic stuff and some ICT music making. I am not far off having the blues. A judgement is emerging – I am killing time. I should have a to do list and remain focussed.

There is a factory in China that makes mobile phones. A conveyor belt supplies the workers with the parts needed for very specific but simple tasks. The job calls for close attention. At regular intervals the supervisor calls for a fifteen minute break for the workers to close their eyes and rest their heads on the workbench. The caring face of capitalism!`

mindful instances

 instances of mindfulness - click HERE

about the many instances of mindfulness practive

Three threes

I know and have feelings about quite a lot of stuff. But nothing comes from nothing. The mental stuff takes shape as thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) which have their causes in nature, nurture and chance (NNC) and are sourced by individuals from family, community and school (FCS).

The individuals have experiences in the womb as they develop from fertilised egg to new born infant. They then live through life’s stages picking up ideas about how to ‘be’ in a particular natal culture.

In the long early days of our foraging ancestors, life would have been relatively uncomplicated. But the pre-frontal cortex expanded and this gave rise to an ever growing division of labour which made life much tougher – especially after language evolved.

Note that children are no longer thought of as blank slates. Instead we have the notion of neural plasticity and of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). There can be no TFM without synchronised activity in various parts of the brain. By ‘taking thought’ the brain can influence the mind which by ‘taking thought’ can influence the physical structure of the brain. Mind over matter and matter over mind – a two-way street that is three steps long

• STEP ONE: Signals from the inner and outer environments are received as inputs to the sense organs which encode them and sends them to various modules and networks in the brain
• STEP TWO: There is churning in the mind and brain as new inputs are decoded and matched with short and long-term memories. This allows for both fast reactions (eg reflexes, biases, instincts) and for slower and more thoughtful responses.
• STEP THREE: there are changes in the amount of neurochemicals controlling the extent of reaction and responses to both internal and external stimuli.

SO – nothing comes from nothing and everything comes from something.

Briefly - TFM come from NNC with support from FCS – why are we as we are? The three threes offer an analytical framework for finding an answer.

Being willing

Action in an Inverurie café. I sat with a coffee, a scone and a reporter’s notebook. I captured some passing thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM). In this blogpost I have rearranged and edited them which means they appear more controlled and sensible than when they first appeared.

I made a last will and testament in 1986. Since then I have changed my ideas of what to do with the toot. I cannot take it with me so I would be as well to spend it. And to prevent ugly scrabbling amongst potential beneficiaries, I should leave instructions about what to do with what is left. And I should act quickly because death might come suddenly by way of a careless truck driver or a peanut going down the wrong way.

I feel gloriously retired from the institutions that gave me paid work in various parts of the world. I spent two years or more working in Edinburgh, Jamaica, Zambia, South Sudan, Belize, and Lesotho and for shorter periods in Tanzania and Geneva. On top of that I took time out for a couple of Masters degrees and for traditional tourism in France, Mexico, Central America, the states, Tanzania, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, Egypt, Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and several parts of Scotland.

And then between contracts I took time out to contemplate the infinite. There were five retreats that lasted eight years in total. The present retreat (the sixth) began in 2004 and is ongoing. I sat with the Northern Lights Sangha once a week between 2004 and 2014. In 2010 I was diagnosed as having Parkinson’s Disease.

During the retreats I figured out that my personal mission statement was:

To find peaceful compassion within

so that

I can help others to find it also

so that

The world will be a better (less authoritarian) place

Many retirees make outer journeys on cruise ships and thus keep busy moving around touristic venues. But to what end? It appears to me that they seek to avoid the emptiness that comes with the chicks leaving the nest and the end of paid work. Only a few face up to the plenum void – to that which is full of empty and stretches unconsciously from the very small to the very big.

I am more attracted to the inner journey and to mindful sitting. I therefore come to appreciate the origins, nature and purpose of thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM). Following the successful training of the non judgemental ‘witness’ there need be ‘no boundaries’: and most people will appreciate the links between the mind and the brain and the possibility of mind over matter.

Training the mind for an alternative world view is like training an elephant to roll logs. The Olympians are monks and nuns who give their lives to the practice. But those who can manage no more than a few minutes a day can also find increasing peace of mind.

I paused now and then to notice the other customers in the café. Most of them sat only long enough to have a quick coffee. There were four instances of an elderly man waiting for the wife to finish shopping. Passing wonderment about their domestic arrangement – does the male take on any of the domestic chores? What TFMs pass through their mindbrains? To whom or what might they bequeath their lifetimes accumulation of toot?

Busy brain

I did not sleep well last night. There was no major feeling of dis-ease but there was a mild background mood with traces of low self esteem and of me being a chancer.

I watched bits of movies on YouTube but they were not active enough to hold my attention.  I was able to be the nonjudgemental witness most of the time except there were shades of the witness in all the carriages of the thought train - so focus was slight and it changed rapidly. 

This piece of writing is going very slowly. There is a tendency to drift off on a mixed bag of thought trains.

There is a mild inclination to make an index of the more common thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM). But that is not easy as most of them are shortlived. And, while I try to do justice to one thought train, many others pass unrecorded.

A niggle at the moment is that I have misplaced my tablet. It will be in the house somewhere because I have not been out. It is usually my glasses that get misplaced and many precious minutes are dedicated to searching in likely and then in unlikely places.

There is guilt for not having a specific place for everything. Sometimes I put this down to laziness; at other times to the emergence of my inner anarchist. I have a problem with rules and often feel that they are carried over from my early days in the family. This is associated with feelings of joy in knowing that there is no forward planning group in evolution. 

Then there are thoughts about parenting. New born babies have enormous potential but it is rarely realised. Biological evolution is not aiming for peace and love. The bottom line is to give rise to more and more viable genes, individuals and social groups.

As a childless school teacher I could get angry about the way kid’s are socialised into being wage slaves and consumers of everchanging fads and fashions. More money than sense. “A feel and his siller are seen pairtit.”

There is need for changing minds and brains. We have three variables to play with – nature, nurture and chance. And we can be more or less mindful while playing with them.

It is useful to think of three modes of evolution – cosmic, biological and cultural. The cultural mode is possible because of the development of the pre frontal context. Tinkering with the brain has led to more consciousness in the mind: this includes the concept of a self with a need to understand and control the world. Many modern people are “neurotic nihilists living in an existential vacuum.”

SO – a busy mind. But what I have written is a tiny part of all the stuff that passed through the mind while writing and this was an even tinier part of the underlying unconscious churn.