[My Stroke of Insight] Yet more left-hemisphere thoughts on the left-right dichotomy

I have had some very interesting feedback from different friends, readers and my mom on the subject of the left-right hemispheres of the brain. And as I need to do a few papers on the Human Brain for my doctorate, my reading about all this is getting deeper (or at least wider).

Synchronistically, my mother spoke to me about an incredible woman and her story of left-brain stroke and the incredible euphoria she experienced for the several weeks that her left brain was out of service. Apparently she almost regretted getting her left-brain back and describes living with only the right hemisphere active as a kind of nirvana, a growing sense of peace that sounds much like the nirvana described by the Enlightened who have attempted to describe the undescribable in left-brain language (nirvana being, as we now know, a right-brained 'phenomenon'). Interesting (dare I say cute) sidenote, the woman remembered experiencing a feeling of being enveloped by perfect love while she lay in her hospital bed. Only after she wrote about this did her own mother tell her that while she was recovering but unable to recognize anyone, she would lie in her hospital bed next to her and hug her for hours...

The synchronicity I mention comes from another friend (you know who you are) who sent me a similar description the next day with a link to the following article on Jill Bolte Taylor, the woman my mother was telling me about (although she could not remember her name). Cool coincidence in any case. Anyhoo, said friend, also sent me this excerpt from JBT's book, My Stroke of Insight, which kind of brings home the subject of the last three post entries quite well while explaining our need for the left brains 'chatter' to function in this world:

One of the jobs of our left hemisphere language centers is to define our self by saying “I am.”  Through the use of brain chatter, your brain repeats over and over again the details of your life so you can remember them. It is the home of the ego center, which provides you with an internal awareness of what your name is, what your credentials are, and where you live.  Without these cells performing their job, you would forget who you are and lose track of your life and your identity.

Together with the following quote, this time from the above-mentioned article, Ms. Taylor describes the feeling as she was having the stroke:

As the language centers in my left hemisphere grew increasingly silent, my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a "being at one" with the universe, if you will. In a compelling sort of way, it felt like the good road home and I liked it. 

Pretty incredible!

My further thinking on this is that it doesn't seem elegant to me that we should be searching to neutralize the left brain and its chatter to achieve true and lasting 'nirvana', joy, bliss, whatever (and I doubt we would want to always be there even if we could). Based on what we know of the Universe, it would seem to make more sense that we need to find a way to dissipate the duality of the two hemispheres and allow the left to keep us grounded and allow the right to allow us to feel higher emotions, i.e. find a synthesis of the two rather than a promotion of the one over the other. Unity (or advaita (non-duality)) rather than duality... where have I heard that spiritual theme before???

More thoughts on the left-right brain dichotomy

Well, I keep on thinking on the difference between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and the implications it has in spirituality, in observation, in regards to ego, in regards to understanding things and I find it all quite fascinating.

In all of the power of now literature, whether it be by Eckhart Tolle or anyone else, there is always this injunction to be in the now. One example that is often given is the awe we experience when faced with a wondrous landscape that nature offers us. Staying with that feeling of awe is usually held up as an example of "being in the now" which is the ultimate spiritual objective (if you buy into the literature, but also because it does feel good to be in that zone/feeling/state of mind...). So when does it all go to bits this wonderful feeling of being one with nature, the universe and everything? When you name it. That is, when you start to 'speak', even without words, when you describe it, when you say to yourself or someone 'it is so beautiful'... But putting this into the perspective of my last blog post, it is all really, and simply, a question of the left hemisphere speaking up to interrupt the blissful observation of the right hemisphere. Like the left is talking to the right while the latter is saying 'shut up will ya, I'm trying to watch'...

Actually, I had an idea about left-right that maybe in the Bible, in Genesis, there would be a mention of Adam observing first and naming all of the animals later but it was a dead end. However, if you will allow me the digression, I found it funny to reread the passage where God asks Adam, did you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? And Adam says, well yeah, but it's the woman you gave me who incited me to nibble. And then the woman says, well yeah, but it was the snake who incited me to eat it. Unfortunately for the snake he had no one to pass the blame along to and ended up legless and destined to slither forever in the dust. Very childish behavior on the part of our uber-parents, very 'it wasn't me' or 'he started it'...

Anyway, back to the Power of Now, which I just reached for following paragraph one's mention of it and here are a few nuggets that I found that I want to share with you.

The first is a basic premise of the book (a worldwide bestseller - assuming that counts as a positive), or rather of the author, is that "not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction..." (page 14 of the paperback edition), pointing out that Descartes' famous quip "I think, therefore I am" had it all wrong. For Tolle, to "equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking" is a major error - "the most basic error". Bringing in the left-right argument again, allows us to rethink the 'problem' a bit, for example, understanding that there is more to the mind than the chattiness that goes on in, and is the result of, our left hemisphere.

Later in the book (page 41) Tolle admonishes us (in the face of pain or beauty or whatever) "don't let the feeling turn into thinking". Once again, using the two hemisphere framework, it seems like we need to remain in observation with the right hemisphere (the silent brain that perceives but does not speak) and not allow the left hemisphere to start naming and rationalizing (or to re-use the metaphor, talking in the middle of the film that we are watching).

Being in the now, in a state of timelessness, is something that Tolle suggests we do (more often). And it is one of the characteristics of the right brain, while the left hemisphere counts, checks the watch, wonders how much time has gone by, etc. It really makes me think that the Zen (or Zen Buddhist) paradigm is about being 'right-minded', but literally! While I still don't know how to do that, it does make it a bit more easy to understand the 'requirements' and/or approach...

To finish this post, I want to share with you a wonderful little vignette that Watzlawick quotes in the book that got me going on this whole left-right theme, The Language of Change. It has nothing to do with anything, and I think he knew that too when he put it in his book, like I'm doing with this blog, but it is a great parable by Chuang Tzu that should help us all in 'anger management' when 'stuff' happens...

Suppose a boat is crossing a river, and another, empty boat is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But suppose there is someone in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout for him to keeep clear. And if the other did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case, there was no anger, in the second there was; because in the first case the boat was empty, and in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only roam empty through life, who would be able to injure him?

Of course, my anger management idea, and my final thought for now, is 'consider all those boats to be empty..."

Which side is the ego on?

I am now reading a book which is not really spiritual, at least at first glance, which has succeeded in making me think about quite a number of spiritual implications of what the author is talking about. Apparently this is not completely unintentional either, as the author does make the occasional references to religion, mysticism, Buddhism and Zen. But that is not the subject of the book by any stretch.

The book is The Language of Change Elements of Therapeutic Communication by Paul Watzlawick. Here (so that you understand that the spiritual angle I am finding is after all a bit of a stretch) is the official book description:

In this groundbreaking book, a world authority on human communication and communication therapy points out a basic contradiction in the way therapists use language. Although communications emerging in therapy are ascribed to the mind's unconscious, dark side, they are habitually translated in clinical dialogue into the supposedly therapeutic language of reason and consciousness. But, Dr. Watzlawick argues, it is precisely this bizarre language of the unconscious which holds the key to those realms where alone therapeutic change can take place.

Basically, Watzlawick's approach is to say that there are two sides of the brain (I know 'big scoop'! but bear with me). The left hemisphere which is the 'digital' side, the side responsible for counting, logic, language, grammar, syntax, semantics, reading, writing, speaking and, more generally, directed thinking. The right hemisphere is the 'analog' side, the side responsible for associations, dreams, fantasies, perception, intuition, Gestalt, recognizing faces, timelessness, concepts, word games, puns and, more generally, undirected thinking.

According to the author, the right hemisphere perceives with the left hand, left eye, left nostril, left ear. And vice versa. His therapeutic approach, and I am simpilfying greatly, is about getting the left hemisphere out of the way so that he can communicate with the right hemisphere...

In the middle of the brain is the corpus callosum, responsible for inter-hemispheric communication.

What is interesting, too, is that the left hemisphere is also known as the 'verbal' brain and the right hemisphere is also called the 'silent' brain.

Now you may be asking, and rightfully so, "Okay Alon, that is almost interesting, but what is the connection between this quick overview of anatomy and functionality and spirituality?" And you would be right to do so. So let me try and explain at least a few of the associations this raised for me...

First off is the question that is the title of this blog entry, so which side of the brain is the ego on? Since we are told that the ego is our own personal and internal nemesis, hindering us in our ability to see things as they are; since we are told that ego is the little bugger that will not allow us to meditate quietly and keeps on insisting on chatting away as the ego fears silence; as we are told that it is ego that insists on rationalizing and using logic even in areas of faith that defy to a certain degree cerebral reasoning... it seems like ego sounds a lot like Watzlawick's description of the left hemisphere.

But then I began to think about the corpus callosum, sitting so strategically in between the two hemispheres. If I were the ego and wanted to wreak havoc as the ego is purported to wont to do, I would probably sit there. If it is playing a positive role, I see the corpus callosum bridging the two hemispheres. However, the corpus callosum also controls the translation between the two hemispheres, two hemispheres that do not speak the same language and/or speak a similar language in different ways.

How easy would it be then to do a "Lost in Translation" type of translation in which only a minimum of information is communicated?! Or how easy would it be to translate 'slightly off' in order to cause some confusion or 'incommunication'? If the ego is really such a trouble maker, it almost seems too easy.

Further, reading this book, I realized that the duality that Buddhism, Zen, Hinduism and most Eastern spirituality sees as something that is supposed to be transcended so that we can reach unity, see ourselves as one, and merge with the universe... is SO biological. We are trying to overcome our own brain structure which is totally dual. Which might imply that enlightenment is about getting the two hemispheres to work together, or to bridge the two hemispheres so that they work as one, or maybe to think from the corpus callosum rather than either hemisphere or ???

Interestingly many descriptions of enlightenment and meditation, and something mentioned in Eat, Pray, Love (I discussed in a previous blog entry) is the figurative 'blue pearl' which resides somewhere in the middle, or the middle-bottom, of the brain and seems to be the source of the feeling of unique euphoria linked to enlightenment and the feeling of being one with the universe.

Also, since it would seem that, wherever we are spiritually, it would be interesting to connect more and more often to the right side of the brain, the side which understands things intuitively, that sees the bigger picture, that left side of the body meditation techniques could be used. Close your right eye, block your right nostril, put an ear plug in your right ear and then try meditating. I don't meditate very often but the next time I do I will try it. If I come up with anything interesting I will let you know, here.

Finally, if, as many believe, we have chosen to come to earth and live as humans, and having done so we chose to forget our 'godliness', maybe that 'trick' was pulled off by not giving us access to knowledge we already have (you have to know in order to forget), knowledge that is waiting for us in the right hemisphere that the left hemisphere is 'protecting' us from...

But since I came up with this with the left side of my brain, how much credence should we give that idea?

Astrologer quote on activating potential

A friend sent me a quote from Grant Lewi, an astrologer, that I am passing along:

It is not limitations that eat out the heart, but inaction, the knowledge of powers not used, the sense of having failed to develop to the utmost. The overcoming of fate is not the overcoming of limitations: that is impossible. It is the exercise of free will, the assertion of the full self, expanding to its utmost with the tools at hand, in the circumstances that are set.

To me that awakens associations of potential, which sometimes sounds like a terrible word to me. I feel like it refers to great things that have not yet been done. As I have often been considered by others, and my self, as someone with 'potential'... I hope to ditch 'potential' and start asserting more of my full self, whatever that may look/feel/act like...

Just don't hold your breath, developmentally I have never been a speedy Gonzalez : )

Spirituality is kind of banal... and TNH on knots

It's funny, almost no matter what hobby or passion you have you will find that someone has written an article of how [insert your passion or hobby here] is spiritual. Usually these kind of articles, books and blog entries flourish when said hobby or passion is trendy. I remember seeing articles on golf being spiritual and all the reasons it was like meditation, as well as fishing, knitting, washing dishes and other extreme sports... Another rash of more recent articles have been written on spirituality and surfing. How it is about being one with nature, putting your ego aside, operating in the present, being in the here and now, et cetera et cetera. Soon maybe we will see articles that suggest that spirituality is like... spirituality : )

Some of these articles are stretching it a bit but I guess the point is that spirituality can show up anywhere you look for it. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said (or said something like) you won't find what you are looking for by digging shallow holes all over the place; instead pick a spot, any spot, and dig deep.

Still and always reading Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh (I'm taking peace slowly in small steps : ))...

A great chapter in this little book, which strangely enough seems a lot bigger than it actually is (which is probably a good sign, although I am not sure of what), is called "Internal Formations" (page 64 in my paperback version). In it he speaks about the formation of "knots". Basically, every trauma, no matter how big or little can create a knot. If you are insulted, or feel slighted or hurt, or embarassed by someone's behavior ... (you get the point) he suggests that this creates a small knot. By not being aware of the knot, by not immediately working to untie it, it becomes tighter and tighter until it can become impossible to untie. The idea being, for couples especially but also for friends and in working relationships to 1/be aware of the formation of the knot and 2/work to untie it sooner rather than later. This can be done by talking about it with the person in question or through meditation.

In his words, "the absence of clear understanding is the basis for every knot." The knots need "our full attention as soon as they form, while they are still weak, so that the work of transformation is easy."

The work of 'knot awareness' (my phrase not his) means being aware of small knots that form. Some clues to this can be found by pursuing the following questions (or similar questions):

• why did I feel uncomfortable when I heard him say ...?
• why did I say ... to him?
• why didn't I like that character in the movie?
• why do I always think of ... when I meet ...?

Obviously, I guess, although TNH does not mention this specifically, the objective is to attain some form of spiritual progress in which you stop making knots or, maybe, in which you tease those two little strings apart before they actually get intertwined. Personally, I have had the feeling that the truly spiritual are not only impervious to insults (i.e. masters of knot avoidance) but are also indifferent to compliments (step 2 in spiritual mastery?) as the ego knows what it is worth (or not) by then... Tout un programme (~quite the program) as the French would say...

This idea of knot formation reminds me a lot of bioenergetics and somatics (among others), i.e. disciplines of psychotherapy that believe in the body-mind connection in the sense that the body harbors all of our 'emotional traumas' real and imagined in the body, like a squirrel gathering acorns. These emotional hurts go somewhere, can build up into real blockages and until they are released (worked on) it affects both the body and the mind. But that is well beyond the scope of this little blog, so I will end on that aside.

Have a wonderful weekend.

[Thoughts on] Eat, Pray and Love

So I am reading Eat, Pray and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and besides how much I enjoy her writing style and the content of what she writes, I find it is also a wonderful spiritual primer. The one thing with spirituality is that it is such a personal endeavor for most of us that it is hard to compare notes with others. There are things that I was sure were personal issues or shortcomings that I needed to deal with and this little book has given me a lot of perspective on that. Most of these 'issues' are faced by everyone, in varying degrees, and I (really) didn't realize it.

One (of many) great passage in the book (page 138 in the paperback edition I'm reading), Gilbert says, "I don't think I'm good at meditation... I can't seem to keep my mind still." The monk she is complaining to answers, "It's a pity that you're the only person in the history of the world who ever had this problem."

While that seems quite silly and evident, it is true that I don't think I'm good at meditation either... and I can't seem to keep my mind still too. And that has been an excuse for me for not really trying. While it makes me smile to read her adventures in this domain, it also inspires me and gives me a necessary kick in the butt. I have read alot, I keep reading alot, but do I try to stop and apply some of the things I have read? Nooooooo...

Another great part of this book, which really spoke to me was a section in which she decides that she is going to become silent. She tells of a spiritual fantasy in which she becomes a silent mystical saint that people admire for her silence. Without going into the book's details, she is then reassigned a job at her Ashram in which she will have to speak all day. She goes on to recount a favorite statement of her guru's guru: God dwells in you, as you.

She explains this as 'God dwells within you as yourself, exactly the way you are.' Spirituality is not acting like the image you have of a spiritual person. No 'massive, dramatic, change of character' is necessary, there is no need to 'renounce our individuality.' The guru's guru then adds, "To know God you only need to renounce one thing -- your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character."

Once again, not a life-shattering insight, but to me, for me, this is a very important insight/reminder. I have various and varying images of what a spiritual person might look and act like (chief among them is my image of St. Francis), but that is (sigh) not who I am. And that is ok. I guess I need to learn to accept that it is ok to 'work within my own personality' as Gilbert coins it. She, drives the home point with a quote from Sextus, a Greek philosopher, "The wise man is always similar to himself."

Sometimes you find spirituality in the most unexpected places -- even in an Oprah-recommended, NY Times bestseller -- and this book is as enjoyable as it is thought-provoking or, rather, life-provoking. Gilbert's inquiries and adventures make me want to say yes to life more wholly (holy) and find the spirituality which is me and the me which is spiritual...

Hopefully the feeling will last beyond the last page.

Sitting at a sidewalk cafe...

Yesterday I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe having a cup of coffee and reading a book. At some point someone stopped in front of me.

I looked up and saw a woman of indeterminate age (was she 40 looking like 60, 60 looking like 60, or, most probably 50) standing there and apparently talking to me. I say apparently because I was listening to music on my iPod and could only see her lips moving. Based on her dress, demeanor and the fact that she was holding her hand out at me, I realized quite quickly that she was a beggar. I looked up without hearing a word of what she had to say, I flashed her a quick plastic smile and went back to reading.

She just stayed there and apparently kept on talking. Darn, strategy number one (ignore) and two (smile and ignore) had failed. I tried strategy number three, I looked up, smiled, and spread my arms and shrugged my shoulders trying to convey 'sorry I can't help you'. She remained and kept on talking. So I took off my earphones and looked up to hear what she had to say. Doing so I looked more closely at the woman: she had natty hair (rasta style but without the style), an old dress, and the worst teeth I have seen in a long time. Black, twisted teeth, wasted teeth. And what was she saying, in broken French with a Spanish-Italian-Portuguese accent (not sure which) it sounded like 'sorry but could you spare some money for a coffee, I drink too much coffee and if I don't drink coffee I get a bad headache.' She then patted her head, as if she was saying 'my poor head' and smiled again.

She said it in a non-aggressive and somewhat apologetic manner. For some reason I thought it was cute and thought, what the heck, she doesn't look like she is going to buy alcohol or drugs with it. She probably really just wants a coffee. As I was digging for some change in my pocket she flashed me a smile and that is when I noticed her eyes. Brown eyes, standard in that department, but extremely lively, friendly and young! The splendor, sparkle and youth in her eyes was in such contrast to all the rest I couldn't believe it. The hardship that her body, hair and hygiene were communicating were nowhere to be found in her eyes. It really was surreal. 

I finally found some money and gave it to her and her entire face lit up like a little girl on Christmas morning. She took a few steps and then turned around and smiled at me again, nodded, said 'may God bless you' and then walked slowly around the corner - out of my view and, undoubtedly, life.

I couldn't stop thinking about her eyes. It is difficult to convey but it was surreal - the book and the cover were telling such completely different stories that I was left wondering who she really was and what had really just happened...

[Osho on...] Nonchoosing

I felt like I needed to revisit Osho's The Book of Secrets (what a great name, which shows simple insight into human nature, I mean who could resist reading a book with a name like that?!). The book has been on my bedstand for years and I haven't read it for... years. And I only read selected chapters here and there the first time around...

Anyway, I opened up the book to a random page, and it turns out I had already read it as several parts were already underlined in pencil (an old habit of mine that I apparently inherited from my mom). The book's format is very much 'guru-like' as many spiritual books are, i.e. visitors or disciples ask questions and Osho answers and a scribe writes all of this down for posterity.

While the chapter is officially about tantric sex, the themes that run through it are actually about surrendering, denial, extremes, the middle path, acceptance, choosing, goals and (behind it all) the how of living your life. Quite a lineup.

To simplify the message, Osho basically says that choosing one path is equivalent to denial of at least one other. Choosing nonviolence is equivalent to denial of violence, and "the moment you deny, you have accepted the extreme path." He adds, "two extremes, howsoever opposite, are parts of one whole - two aspects of one thing. If you choose one you have chosen the other also." (This reminds me, for some reason, of all those politicians who go on moral crusades and always seem to get caught later in some form of moral breakdown.)

For Osho, acceptance of the universe we live in, or "accepting the total life" is the middle path. "Acceptance of totality is to be automatically in the middle." You are neither for or against something, "you are just floating in the stream."

The idea, which is a Tantric principle, is called the 'deep let-go'. When you are choosing, you are not letting go, and that means that ego is operating. Osho states the principle as "when you choose, you are moving against the whole universe". Instead of going with the universal flow you are allowing your own wants, desires, fears to resist the flow.

Osho uses a nice image, which John Donne may or may not be in agreement with:

When you choose, you are not choosing the universal flow: you are standing aloof, isolated; you are like an island. You are trying to be yourself against the whole flux of life.

If choosing is not the way, then it will not be too surprising to you to hear (read) that nonchoosing is the way. Basically, still using the river metaphor that Buddhists and many spiritual others use quite often, nonchoosing is about not deciding where life is going but allowing life to move, allowing life to take you with it, and this without a fixed goal.

While I understand about choosing, and that choosing implies denial of something or moving against something, and that all movement against implies a movement towards etc etc, I have a hard time swallowing the living without a goal idea. Actually more than having a hard time swallowing it, I think the idea scares the heck out of me. Having goals is such a part of our society and such a big part of how I think that living without a goal sounds like jumping out of a plane without a parachute! Short-term, medium-term, long-term goals, academic goals, professional goals, personal goals, relationship goals, family goals, savings goals, spending goals, sport goals, reading goals, language goals, travel goals, lofty goals, material goals, spiritual goals - they are everywhere in my life. Who would I be without my precious goals and to-do lists? While many people seem to define themselves in part by their achievements, maybe I define myself (at least in part) by my goals... Something for me to think about.

In any case, Osho is not very ambiguous about who is at fault here, and unfortunately he is probably right (and don't worry, he was talking to me when he said this ; )):

Your ego point is the problem, because of it you create problems. There are no problems in life itself; existence is problemless. You are the problem and you are the creator of the problem, and you create problems out of everything. [...] This nonsurrendering of ego is the source of all problems.

But, the solution is also as clear: "once you accept life in its totality things start happening, because this total acceptance frees you from the ego point."

Let's put that on our to-do lists : )

It's not what you do...

Hi,

I read an interesting story in the New York Times the other day that got me thinking. It was about a hiker that went out into the wilderness on his own without telling anyone where he had gone (kind of like 'Into the Wild' for those who saw the film). From some strange twist of fate he managed to find himself trapped by a boulder. Actually an 800-pound boulder rolled onto his hand. There was no way to get his hand out from under it and there was no way anyone would find him. So he tied a tourniquet around his wrist and sawed off his own hand to get free. Pretty incredible. Now he is being paid big bucks to tell his story around the US to businesses and children, about will, survival, etc.

Reading a little bit about what he has to say about the experience is quite interesting. He came to some interesting 'conclusions' and insights while stuck under his boulder. He says he decided to live. Or rather he understood that he was going to die but decided that it would not be that day and not by that boulder (which reminds me of the great James Bond title 'Die Another Day').

I don't think we realize how strong an insight that is. An insight that connects to a film I saw the other day, Synecdoche New York, by Charlie Kaufman. The film was very dark, and very much about how we are all hurtling towards our deaths, but each one of us secretly hopes that we will be the exception...

Knowing that we are going to die, really knowing it, makes us realize that we are ephemeral and that there is nothing we can do about it. It should probably allow us to be less attached, to take things in stride, to make light of things we sometimes take seriously (like that idiot that cut you off in his car), to have a more buddhist-like approach to death, etc.

Personally I know this, I read this, I just wrote this, and yet I forget it often. But when I do remember it, it is liberating... Now if I could really just integrate it into who I am.

Which leads quite well into the second major insight our lone hiker had. A bit of background is necessary to explain the insight. The hiker in question had moved away from a big city to Colorado in order to be faithful to who he was - an outdoorsman. He decided that it was important in life to do what you love and thus he moved to a place where he could do just that. But that was not the insight, au contraire! As seductive as that may be - do what you love - his insight was quite different actually. While under his rock (his book, coming out soon, is called Under a Rock and a Hard Place - not bad), he came to an interesting insight. [Slight digression: one awful thing about having done anything more than a minimal amount of 'spiritual' reading is that you can never claim ignorance. Every insight I see or hear, I have almost certainly read somewhere already. But reading is not 'getting' and sometimes you read or hear or experience things in a different way and only then do you really 'get' it.] Anyway, while under his rock, he realized that moving to Colorado did allow him to do what he loved. BUT, he also realized that he still and always defined himself by what he does. And his insight, in my own words, was that it is all about 'how you are'. It is not what you do that defines who you are, but how you are which defines who you are.

This last insight has got me thinking. While that thinking has been going on for a few days and so it would be hard to share in its entirety, one of the areas I have been thinking about is 'what you do'. And putting together the two insights shared by our hiker, it makes me rethink the importance of choosing what you do. Apparently it is less important than what I thought. What is most important is 'how you are'. And 'how you are' implies, to me, how you are with others. And that implies relationships - very close, close, not so close - and maybe how you are in each of those is what it is all about. Hmm.

[Odd post] On moths and synchronicity

I am presently a bit swamped by intellectual endeavors so the frequency (and quality) of my blog posts are suffering.

Today I would like to share an anecdote, that I find fascinating (I don't need much apparently) and completely mysterious.

For the last 7 days, when I come home at night, I find one small moth on the backside of my front door. After a few minutes the moth flies right at me and lands either on me or, if I am working on my computer, on my computer screen. Strange, right?

Now what if I told you that it is not the same moth every time? More than that it has been a different moth every time! As the moth flies to me or on me I have been catching the moth/s with a small glass and a cardboard CD case. Glass covers moth and then cardboard case goes between me and my friendly, neighborhood moth. Said moth, is then accompanied to a window. Window is opened, moth is released, window is closed. Windows stay closed. Another day, another moth. Catch, release, repeat.

No other moths are in the apartment and I can't figure out where they are coming from...

Makes me think of a Sherlock Holmes mystery and, more relevant to this blog, to Jung's story of synchronicity and his patient's dream scarab.

Otherwise, I am still reading Chopra's Path to Love. Some very interesting insights, simple but effective, so to speak. One particular question he attempts to answer is how to preserve the devotion, faithfulness and love of a relationship, without giving in to neediness and attachment. He explains, quite well, that what is NOT needed is detachment, which he assimilates to 'not caring'. What he recommends is a 'state' (not the best word, but it is the one he used...) of nonattachment


A good summary of the idea in Chopra's words: "Attachment is a form of dependency based on ego; love is nonattachment based on spirit."

Earlier he explains the difference as follows:

Love allows your beloved the freedom to be unlike you. Attachment asks for conformity to your needs and desires.

Love imposes no demands. Attachment expresses an overwhelming demand - "Make me feel whole."

Love expands beyond the limits of two people. Attachment tries to exclude everything but two people.

So on that final note, I wish you much love without attachment, and if I resolve the "Mystery of the Recurring Moth" I will let you know...

[Commentary] 21 grams

One movie character that absolutely fascinates me is the role played by Benicio del Toro in 21 grams (2003). (a link to the movie's information on IMDB here).

Before I go into his story, allow me to pay hommage to the Director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Writer, Guillermo Arriaga, of this incredible movie (and a wonderful cast including personal faves Sean Penn, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Eddie Marsan (who plays the reverend)).

My personal take on just some of the many themes of this movie are destiny, crime and punishment, death, repentance, love, making good, doing the right thing, revenge, self-loathing, starting over, closure, the coincidences (serendipity?) necessary for two people to meet in this life, and the impenetrable nature of God...

The character's name is Jack Jordan, an ex-con who becomes a Born-again Christian and more than anything a deeply religious man. And although the themes mentioned above touch all of the characters in the film in one way or another as their destinies are intertwined, the role that crystalizes these 'issues' is Benicio's.

Here is the 'official' synopsis of the role:

Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) is an ex-con that has spent more time in jail than out, but has reformed and is working in a church, spreading the gospel, and helping kids that are heading toward the same kind of trouble he's been in. He and his wife have two young children.

The movie does an incredible job at showing the incredible complexity of Jack Jordan as he struggles to come to terms with his life and the tragic events that happen to him despite his attempts to be a good man. Without attempting to recount the whole film, he unwittingly kills two young girls and their father in a car accident. Thereafter he cannot come to terms with the guilt, nor understand why he is being punished. He tries to commit suicide in jail and the pipe on which he tries to hang himself collapses. He is then released from jail on a technicality. Later Sean Penn intends to kill him to venge the deaths of the others and cannot go through with it. Not long after, Benicio goes to find Sean Penn and the mother of the children (played by Naomi Watts) and asks to be killed by those whose lives he hurt and it doesn't work out as expected. He even tries to take responsibility for Sean Penn's self-inflicted gunshot, admitting 'I shot him' to a sheriff, but again, he is released as the facts don't align with his story.

Having spent his years out of prison trying to atone for past behavior, through no fault of his own, he is now stuck in a bottomless well of guilt and no ability to atone. Deep conviction in God's wisdom crashes (more or less literally) into incomprehension of God's ways.

A tragic story and a tragic character, written, portrayed and directed with brio. And the brilliance was in part due to how much we come to care about and understand this character. Definitely not one of us, but at the same time one of us in the sense that the conditions of our lives are as fragile as Jack Jordan's and our (shared) incomprehension of why bad things happen to good people.

I guess more than anything the role is about the flip side of Serendipity, the negative coincidence, which I will now term derensipity.

And on that creative note, I will end this post. Be well.

Spirituality in the face of evil

It is difficult for me to get my head around how to feel/act/react in the face of evil. It is easy to be spiritual in a protected environment but how do you deal with evil people? In Conversations with God and other spiritual books, the question you are suggested to answer before you act/react to anything or anyone is "what would love do now?" And I don't know what love does in those cases when you are faced with a truly bad apple...

I just saw a scary documentary about the rise of the extreme right throughout many countries in Europe. According to the documentary, in 16 different countries in Europe the extreme right has recently obtained the highest electoral scores since the second world war. There are several Euro deputies which are extreme right. In a nutshell, post 9/11 anti-muslim sentiment is being used as justification for anti-immigrant attitudes, laws and prejudices. Fascism seems to be gaining traction.

So in the face of people who dislike other people without knowing them but based only on their race, creed, color or religion, what does spirituality have to say? Or more generally in the face of "socially unacceptable behavior? Turn the other cheek is a tough credo to accept. Love and compassion for them is also tough... What is a proper response to aggression, violence, hate or any of the negative '-isms'?

Possibly the greatest insight of the golden rule - Love thy brother as thyself - is that no matter how someone behaves you are similar to some degree. That is brother = thyself. Not an easy thing to admit, maybe THE major difficulty of the golden rule. And that is probably part of spirituality, recognizing that no matter how despicable or ugly we might find someone's actions, we have the potential for thinking or acting similarly (or worse) given the proper context.

As fate would have it (see post on synchronicity : )) between the time that I started the first draft of this post and the time of this writing I listened to some music and a very appropriate song manifested itself out of the iPod ether: U2's God Part 2. Here are the lyrics:

Don't believe the devil, I don't believe his book
But the truth is not the same, Without the lies he made up

Don't believe in excess, Success is to give
Don't believe in riches, But you should see where I live
I...I believe in love

Don't believe in forced entry, Don't believe in rape
But every time she passes by, Wild thoughts escape

I don't believe in death row, Skid row or the gangs
Don't believe in the Uzi, It just went off in my hand
I...I believe in love

Don't believe in cocaine, Got a speed-ball in my head
I could cut and crack you open, Do you hear what I said

Don't believe them when they tell me, There ain't no cure
The rich stay healthy, The sick stay poor
I...I believe in love

Don't believe in Goldman, His type like a curse
Instant karma's going to get him, If I don't get him first

Don't believe in rock 'n' roll, Can really change the world
As it spins in revolution, It spirals and turns
I...I believe in love

Don't believe in the 60's, The golden age of pop
You glorify the past, When the future dries up

Heard a singer on the radio late last night
He says he's gonna kick the darkness, 'til it bleeds daylight
I...I believe in love

I feel like I'm falling, Like I'm spinning on a wheel
It always stops beside of me, With a presence I can feel
I...I believe in love

There is a lot we could say about these lyrics (what a great song!) but the main reason the lyrics of this song resonated with me for this post was the passage "I don't believe in violence, I don't believe in rape, but every time she walks on by violent thoughts escape." My feeling is that no matter how nice we try to be and how nice we act, how 'spiritually evolved' we may be (or believe ourselves to be) our thoughts are a bit more tricky.

Now one thing that comes out of almost all spiritual and pseudo-spiritual lit' is that thoughts become reality (which could be a brief condensation of the law of attraction). So the thinking of the thought is equivalent on some (meta-physical) level to the acting of the act. Kind of like the aphorism attributed to Jesus, let he who is without sin cast the first stone (after a quick search it would seem that the exact phrase is "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her"). I doubt anyone reading this blog believes in violence, or rape, or murder, but certainly violent thoughts escape. We can hide from them or recognize them but there they are. Sometimes, as Oscar Wilde knew, we are all murderers... In the Ballad of Reading Gaol an epic poem he writes:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust, Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh...

"Each man kills the thing he loves..." Which probably means none of us can cast the first stone...

But it is one thing to admit that we have violent thoughts and another to accept the violent actions of others. Even if we are able to admit that we all have our monstrous sides to us, what then? To admit that you could have done something does not mean that you need to accept, condone or turn a blind eye to someone else's improper behavior... But what do you do? The parenting metaphor in which a parent can love a child without accepting improper behavior seems too easy in the face of psychopaths, criminals, deviants or just mean people. Bono, seems to come up with a spiritual answer, I believe in love. But how do each of us, which together makes 'society', deal with these issues?

I am not coming up with any answers or insights. I will have to revisit some spiritual literature to see if I can find the topic discussed. I have a vague recollection of the subject being mentioned in the Course in Miracles and/or Conversations with God but I can't be sure.

So it looks like I will have to complete this post at a later date, after I do a little research. If you know of any place I should be looking or have your own personal opinions on the matter please let me know.

PS If you were curious, the Goldman reference in the song is to the guy who wrote a scathing biography about Lennon that apparently Bono did not really appreciate...

Synchronicity

According to Wikipedia:

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which are causally unrelated occurring together in a supposedly meaningful manner. In order to count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.

It really is a great word/concept! One of my favorites. There have been a few synchronistic events in my life, which I guess is the norm for most of us - often attributed to that infamous lucky star.

Anyway, the origin of the word, according to lore, which I hope is correct because it is a good story, the word was coined by Carl Jung after working with a patient who was telling him about a repetitive dream she had had about a golden scarab. Just then Jung heard some tapping on the window behind him and when he opened the window to see what it was a bug flew in and he caught it in his hand. To his dismay, it was a rose-colored scarab!

Jung apparently also described the term, in the 1920s, in the following terms at different times: an "acausal connecting principle", a "meaningful coincidence" and as an "acausal parallelism." I personally like the meaningful coincidence best of the lot...

What is interesting is that this concept apparently baffled Jung to the point that about 30 years separated his coining of the term and his actual publishing of a complete treatise on it. Another quote by Jung, written apparently around 1950 shows the evolution of his thinking on the subject and the importance he accorded it:

Synchronicity is no more baffling or mysterious than the discontinuities of physics. It is only the ingrained belief in the sovereign power of causality that creates intellectual difficulties and makes it appear unthinkable that causeless events exist or could ever exist. But if they do, then we must regard them as creative acts, as the continuous creation of a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from any known antecedents.

I love this notion of "creative acts" which sounds like creative acts of the universe, and his reference to "a pattern that exists from all eternity" sounds a lot like a reference to God or a God-like intentionality of the universe. Hmm...

Otherwise, the same notion has sometimes been explained (even by Jung) as some form of collective consciousness (like two people making the same invention at the same time on two sides of the world), while others place it in the realm of divine intervention, of destiny or some form of determinism, predetermination, or that heavily-charged and hard to accept notion (for me at least) called fate.

Synchronicity has also been popularized recently by books like The Secret, in which magical thinking is assimilated to the law of attraction, which says your thoughts create your reality. I believe that is true to a certain extent, but more in the sense that you are free to interpret what happens to you any way you like. I don't know how much control we have over what actually happens, even though I would like to think we have some influence, but we can all control how we live and experience everything that happens to and around us. There is the classic example of seeing potential obstacles as stepping blocks, and of there are others, like simply feeling gratitude for whatever happens... For many, the good and the less good are both good, i.e. it's all good.

I read a fun story today in a French novel on art in which a couple is in a museum and the woman is in ecstasy in front of the painting. The husband can't take it any more as his wife is always positive, always sees things in a positive light. He tells her something like "I can't stand your positiveness any more - when the alarm rings in the morning you are thankful, when it's time to go to work you are thankful for having a job, you see art and it makes you joyful, I can't take it." What does she say? "I am so happy that you feel comfortable enough with me and all of these strangers to express such deep sentiments in public." Personally I understand and feel sorry for him, but somehow I am jealous of her...

So when does being positive look naive, ingenu or silly? Like Voltaire's Candida, who in the face of every possible disaster repeats what his tutor, Professor Pangloss taught him, that "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." And when is it spiritual and enlightened? And how did I get so far adrift of the subject of today's post? I don't know...

To get back to the subject and to close this post, let me just say that several books have referred to synchronicity or made it part of their plots. Those I seem to recall that made direct or indirect references to it were Lewis Carroll , Douglas Adams, Philip Dick and one Russian author I discovered thanks to a Russian friend (imagine the coincidence : )) Alexander Green (aka Alexandre Grine in French). He wrote one particularly beautiful book called the Scarlet Sails, which was given to me the aforementioned friend several years ago. According to Amazon it is only available used. Beautiful story. If you can find it. Maybe with a little help from synchronicity...

[Living the now] On pain (and pleasure)

Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) and Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddha, and so many others exhort us to live the now, live the present moment without anticipation, expectation, reservation, preconceived notions, fantasy, judgment, etc.

Just be. Don't name the sunset, don't describe the sunset, don't even watch the sunset, just be with the sunset. Some say be the witness, some say be the observer, some imply detachment, others immersion. Tomorrow does not exist, yesterday is gone, all that we have is the eternal now.

In a recent blog post, I mentioned that Thich Nhat Han (TNH) even says that hope is tragic as it is a projection into the future, which means that we are not correctly living the present. You can't change the future, you can only effectuate change in the present.

Most of these writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, philosophers who exhort us to live in the present, usually imply that living the present brings us close to bliss, which we imagine to be joyful.

Eckhart Tolle tells us, probably rightly so, that "the mind creates an obsession with the future to escape from the unsatisfactory present." Or "die to the past every moment, you don't need it." That "There is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the future."

I also find an interesting link between Tolle and TNH and the idea of hope (and goals). The former says, "There is nothing wrong with setting goals and striving to achieve things. The mistake lies in using it as a substitute for the feeling of life, the Being."

And a final quote from Tolle on hope and expectation and waiting for a better day:

When you catch yourself waiting... snap out of it! Come into the present moment.
Just be and enjoy being.

Now all of this sounds nice from the top of Maslow's pyramid, but I have always wondered how being in the now handles things like hunger, cold and, especially, pain.

I am sure that much has been written about it but I don't seem to remember much writing about being in the now which concerns pain management. Pleasure and pain have often been mentioned together as the two river banks in between which we navigate our lives, trying to row our boats closer to the bank of pleasure and inevitably being thrown against the shoals on the banks of pain.

In particular, I do not recall having seen any discussion on the spiritual nature of pain. Why do I call pain's nature spiritual? Well it seems to me like the only time that we are able (or condemned) to completely live in the present moment, a moment that seems like the eternal now.

Take a migraine headache for example. When you have a migraine attack (or just a bad headache) it seems nearly impossible to think of anything else but the present moment (even just thinking is difficult). You just live the present moment and all concentration is on the present moment and the pain. It seems like the pain is so strong that we cannot think of anything else and we cannot imagine a world in which this pain does not exist. It is all consuming, it is blinding, and it does away with the past and the future quite effectively. So is this a spiritual moment? I doubt that anyone would say so... and I haven't seen it written anywhere.

However, it is interesting to read in the lore of many mystics and yogis the mention of bouts of intense, all-consuming, all-body, pain from which the person (I think I have only heard of men having these experiences) emerges enlightened. In one account of a yogi that I read in "What is Enlightenment?" magazine, the yogi says he felt like he was replaced within his body with another entity, i.e. he really was changed by the experience.

So these extreme situations can be enlightening, but what about the migraines?

[Thich Nhat Hanh] Hope as an obstacle

Ever since Barack Obama has come on the scene 'hope' has been bantied around liberally and seems to be back on everyone's lips. An interesting take on hope comes from Thich Nhat Hanh who says:

"When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic."

Not exactly what most of us would have said spontaneously. I mean many people around the world were happy to see one president leave and another come in on the basis of hope, hope for a better future, hope for a better world, hope for a new day, hope for less inequality, hope for less hate and violence, hope for peace in the Middle East, hope, hope, hope. And what could be wrong with that?

Well, TNH explains, still and always in his Peace is Every Step (link), that this is an example of clinging to a future that might never come, rather than focusing energy and resources on now. If I can paraphrase, his idea is not to hope for a better day but to make a better today.

More specifically he says:

Western civilization places so much emphasis on the idea of hope that we sacrifice the present moment. Hope is for the future. It cannot help us discover joy, peace, or enlightenment in the present moment... I do not mean that you should not have hope, but that hope is not enough.

TNH warns us that if we put our energy into the energy of hope we are robbing the present moment of our energy, and reminds us that we don't need the future, since it is only in the present moment that we can make a difference.

He also quotes AJ Muste of the American Peace Movement who once said, "There is no way to peace, peace is the way," and goes on to explain that we can contribute in our own way to peace with our actions, smiles, attitude, words and each and every step that we take. "Each step we make should be joy."

A wonderful idea. Let's hope he's right. : )