Get Happy, Be Happy, Stay Happy

I received an email from Tony Wright, author of Left in the Dark, letting me know that the book is now available to view online in its entirety. If you enjoy pondering the mysteries of human development, especially those that seem to make no sense outside of supernatural or mystical explanations, you’ll love this perception-altering book!

If you like studying human consciousness and enlightenment (are we truly on an evolutionary trajectory to higher, better levels of consciousness?), Left in the Dark will provide a new frame for understanding this intriguing subject. But not to worry — it is a hope-filled message, a message that quite possibly can lead us to real, workable solutions to the mess we’re in today.

The human brain, over a period of perhaps a million years, expanded at an increasingly rapid rate then, some 200,000 years ago, this expansion suddenly stopped. There is, to date, no plausible scientific explanation for either of these linked events.

Religious and mythic traditions of paradise inform us that we once lived in a benign state of perpetual wonder and joy but from this we regressed. The reasons for this are obscure. Do these apparently unrelated perspectives have something in common?

The new theory presented here and in the Left In The Dark book suggests the extraordinary evolution of our brain was influenced by changes in the activity of our own hormones. Such a seemingly innocuous idea has dramatic ramifications. It not only explains a number of recently uncovered anomalies within the human mind, but also makes sense of the stories of human degeneration that are preserved in virtually all cultural myths and religions from around the world.

Both perspectives tell the same unexpected and shocking story — Humanity is suffering from a progressive neurological condition that has distorted our perception and altered our sense of self. This seemingly dire situation however has a positive side — we still have unimaginable potential just waiting to be unlocked. There is a very real possibility of regaining our lost perceptual heritage. (from the author’s Home page)

View the book online

Consider buying the book to support further research!

More from Tony’s site:

Virtually all cultures preserve myths with an almost identical theme; that from a past golden age humanity has suffered a progressive degeneration. Is this near universal tradition based on real events? The answer appears to be ‘yes’. Recent scientific evidence supports the idea that we suffer from an inherited hormonal condition that has damaged part of our brain. In an unexpected twist, it is the damaged part that is not only driven to play the major role in telling us who we are but also dominates our basic biological functions.

Such a scenario explains some extraordinary anomalies that have emerged from research into how our brains function. It provides an underlying reason for the present crises in health, from the dysfunction of the immune system to the declining age of puberty. It also makes sense of the diverse mystic and religious practices that are said to lead to enlightened states or ‘oneness with God’.

If our common experience of near constant low-level fear and anxiety is actually a consequence of a neurological disorder, there may be a fundamental solution to the problem. We all know that fear, distrust and a lack of connection lead to conflict and ultimately war. Such a solution therefore could be of crucial importance to our global future.

To find out more, read on…

Don’t be left in the dark Read the book!

I’ve been rereading the book Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. The first time through, I found myself having some heavy-duty reactions and resistances to the spiritual underpinnings of this worldview. I put the book away and went about my business (which means, I continued reading more books, Web sites and blogs concerning the Big Issues of Life.)

I pulled the book out again to remind myself why intelligent people are attracted to the increasingly popular ideas of Eckart Tolle, as well as to the notion that people are now “waking up” and recognizing their “mission” to shift the consciousness of the world in order to save the world.

Sometimes I’m inconsolable after spending time surveying the state of the world and discovering the various and conflicting ways people think, believe and act. The problems seem insurmountable; the dialog among holders of different worldviews a grand waste of time. I often feel this way after visiting certain blogs and reading all the comments

I want the world to start over. I’ve always wanted that — during the time I was a Christian and now as an agnostic.

I took philosophy classes in college, but most of what I read went in one eye and out the other. I didn’t have the capacity to understand much of anything at age 18. I have a lot of catching up to do now that I’m, um, a bit older and wiser.

So this morning I’m reading about several of the great philosophers, including Hegel and Habermas. In my travels I came across this blog post, which I think is priceless.

Dialectic of Secularization
April 1, 2008 — Alexei

Habermas’ article, “Die Dialektik der Sekulärisierung” has recently appeared in Blätter für Deutsche und Internationale Politik. And its worth checking out. He ends his piece with the following,

Säkulare Bürger, die ihren Mitbürgern mit dem Vorbehalt begegnen würden, dass diese aufgrund ihrer religiösen Geisteshaltung nicht als moderne Zeitgenossen ernst genommen werden können, fielen auf die Ebene eines bloßen Modus Vivendi zurück und verließen damit die Anerkennungsbasis der gemeinsamen Staatsbürgerschaft. Sie dürfen nicht a fortiori ausschließen, auch in religiösen Äußerungen semantische Gehalte, vielleicht sogar verschwiegene eigene Intuitionen zu entdecken, die sich übersetzen und in eine öffentliche Argumentation einbringen lassen. Wenn alles gut gehen soll, müssen sich also beide Seiten, jeweils aus ihrer Sicht, auf eine Interpretation des Verhältnisses von Glauben und Wissen einlassen, die ihnen ein selbstreflexiv aufgeklärtes Miteinander möglich macht.

Here’s a quick English translation:

Secular citizens who would engage their fellow citizens conditionally, so that the latter cannot be earnestly considered as modern contemporaries [perhaps equals] in light of their religious convictions, descend to the level of a bare modus vivendi, and thereby forsake the recognitive basis of common citizenship. They must not exclude, a fortiori, religious expression of semantic matters, which might even uncover one’s own concealed intuitions, and which translate into civil reasoning. If everything should go well, it must do so for for both sides. Each one must engage in an interpretation of the conditions of faith and knowledge from their respective points of view, which makes a self-reflexive, enlightened cooperation between them possible.

And I like this amazing quote from Habermas (found in the Wikipedia entry). Habermas is an atheist.

Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk. – “Conversation about God and the World.” Time of transitions. Cambridge: Polity Press 2006, p. 150-151

That’s it for now. Just needed to get some stuff out to relieve my constipation.

Thanks to Thingy, I’m now in the possession of the provocative, ground-breaking, eyebrow-raising, heretical book Left in the Dark: The Biological Origins of the Fall From Grace, by Graham Gynn and Tony Wright.

Here’s an excerpt from the foreward by ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna (download the foreward for free here). I can’t wait to dive in. I can’t wait to see how it relates to what I understand about human development, neuroscience and consciousness.

“The progress of science, and indeed, of human knowledge, requires a dynamic tension between the mere accumulation of observations and ‘dusty facts’ and a synthetic process in which the accumulated results of scientific observation and inquiry are woven together into frameworks that, in the ideal case, create revolutionary paradigms that enhance human understanding of apparently discrete and unrelated aspects of nature. The hypotheses proposed in this book may well represent such a revolutionary paradigm. These ideas do not originate from the mainstream of academia, but rather are the contribution of two independent scholars. The history of science and intellectual inquiry teach us that, as is so often the case with truly novel syntheses, established scientific and intellectual institutions are too ossified, and too invested in the conventionally accepted worldview, to allow the introduction of a new paradigm without putting up considerable resistance.

“Resistance will more than likely characterize the response to this book; its authors will undoubtedly be denounced as mavericks, unqualified to comment on such a momentous topic as the evolution of human consciousness; the ideas put forth here will be condemned as heresy. Indeed they are heresy, in the context of what we think we understand about human evolution, particularly the anomalous evolution of the human brain and consciousness. But one is reminded of the famous observation of philosopher Arthur Schopanhauer: All truth, he said, passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as being self-evident. We should be wary of rejecting out of hand the premises of a hypothesis that may one day seem self-evident.

“Evolutionary biologists have long been puzzled by what is perhaps the chief mystery of human origins: the explosive and rapid expansion of the human brain in size and complexity over a vanishingly small span of evolutionary time. There is also the mystery of hemispheric lateralization and the apparent de-integration of the right- and left-hemispheric functions that we humans suffer. In this work, the authors postulate that it was not always so; the universal myth of a pre-historic Golden Age, they maintain, is a racial memory that reflects our primate evolution in an arboreal, rainforest environment in which humans possessed mental and psychic abilities that have since become lost or atrophied in the profane ages that followed.”

Download and read the entire foreward.

“We could all be suffering from an evolutionary glitch
that has affected how we perceive, think and behave.”

Just having some fun with the headline. And grabbing your attention. I mean, who wants to be known as a stupid pessimist? On second thought, don’t answer that!

What I really want to talk about is Ode, the Magazine for Intelligent Optimists. I received a brochure inviting me to send for a free preview issue and a free copy of Touching the Earth, “a relaxation and meditation program recorded by internationally acclaimed Buddhist Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh that will bring new levels of peace and compassion to your life.” Cool! My request is in the mail.

I’ve gotten Ode a couple of times from the bookstore, and I liked it (even though they believe in human-caused global warming and will plant a tree in my name to help reverse the damage when I buy a subscription). But I’m wondering how some people react to their tagline. A magazine for “intelligent optimists.” Are they implying that it’s not a good thing to be a stupid optimist? Or an intelligent pessimist?

I’ve been thinking about such questions lately. Steve Salerno recently wrote a post regarding Randy Pausch, which has elicited some interesting discussion. Steve responded to a commenter, “But let’s even assume that false hope ‘works.’ That’s the question I pose: Reduced to extremes, would you rather be a deliriously happy moron, or an intelligent, right-thinking curmudgeon? That’s what this whole post was about. I’m guessing that many people today would rather be the happy morons, and that’s fine–for them. I’m not so sure it’s fine for society or ‘the human condition,’ if you will.”

Good question. And I have no trouble answering it. If given only these two choices, I’d rather be a deliriously happy moron.

Yes, that raises a bunch of philosophical issues, as Steve notes. But so far, the world that intelligent, supposedly right-thinking human beings have created is wonderful, isn’t it?

I want to experience a world that is set up for well-being and happiness. Isn’t that what we all want? (No, don’t answer that question! I know not everyone wants that.) It’s hard for me to get and stay happy. Apparently I’m not alone. According to French psychiatrist Christophe André, humans are naturally gloomy.

We tend to be naturally gloomy. Melancholy is la condition humaine. Biologically oriented psychologists agree there’s a good evolutionary reason for this. When we were all still hunters and gatherers, a certain degree of concern was useful. It was prudent to remain alert to dangers and problems, which is why we’re geared to focus on the negative. It appears that the Christian church understood this early on: There’s no point looking for happiness on Earth; heaven is where you’ll find it. It is the reason why Sigmund Freud wrote: ‘Happy is not included in the plan of creation.’ It has also been proven that happiness and unhappiness are registered in different parts of the brain.

The good news, of course, is that we can do things to become happy. He says:

It’s hard work but it’s pleasant. You’ve got to put your mind to it. Working on happiness acts as an anti-depressant.

You can spend an evening with friends and only realize once you get home that you had a good time. That means you’ve missed your moments of happiness. You need to realize that there are many opportunities to be happy. You have to realize: This is enjoyable, this is a nice moment, I’m having fun, this is a little bubble of happiness. I know people who have a nice weekend and cannot be happy because on Sunday afternoon they’re already -starting to think about going to work on Monday. And at work they’re thinking they’re not happy because they don’t see their children enough. Those people never have their minds in the present. You have to tell yourself: I’m going to enjoy this for a moment. My child is here and I’m going to stop thinking about my work. I’m emptying my mind and listening to what my child has to say.

This can be learned. The English call it ‘mindfulness.’ Concentrating helps; meditation is very good. It takes hard work every day, but it works. Happiness can be learned. It’s within reach. When I get too nervous, too excited, too eager, then I know I need to rest and take a walk. When I walk, I need to stop occasionally and look around. Look and be open; absorb nature.

Happiness is about the little things. Happiness tends to be calm and peaceful. You don’t jump up and down with happiness, but with joy. Yes, there is such a thing as intense happiness, but it doesn’t happen often in one’s life. Striving toward absolute, huge, oceanic happiness, le bonheur fou, can be discouraging and distract you from little happiness.”

Read the entire article online, courtesy of Ode.

I’m always thinking about the human condition, life on Earth and where we’re headed. Many believe we’re in a global crisis, with the health of the entire planet hanging in the balance. This may be true. I don’t know.

We now hear the call, from many quarters, for a great shift in human consciousness. Some groups are more than willing to lead this great shift, and they offer up a stellar slate of so-called leading-edge visionaries to serve as the pioneers. I do understand that a shift or change of consciousness is not possible without a new vision, leaders and participants. But I find myself resisting these group efforts.

For starters, some of the “visionaries” are highly questionable. I don’t get why people will simply believe what an author claims is true. You know, like having a conversation with God. Or that “Jesus” beamed a revelation into a psychiatrist’s brain for transcription. And while we’re on the subject of credible sources, it’s beyond my comprehension how people can believe that beings from other dimensions or universes are contacting Earthlings with important messages. Anyway…

I just don’t trust subjective experiences as truth. I want to know the facts, as much as we can know and understand them. I want stuff to be objectively proven. Or at least seem reasonable based on what we know. So I’m drawn to understanding the human condition through scientific study and research. Here’s a comment I wrote under Neuroanatomist Finds Nirvana, which prompted today’s post:

If you’re interested in human development and understanding the context for the varying levels of human thought and behavior (especially those we have now), I highly recommend studying Spiral Dynamics.

http://spiraldynamics.org

If you’re interested in learning about a fairly new, systematic approach to understanding and solving psychological problems, check out the Human Givens approach.

http://www.hgi.org.uk

Both of these are grounded in scientific study and research. I’ve found these systems and approaches extremely helpful for getting my arms around some of the biggest issues of our time. Not that I understand everything, of course, but now I have a basic framework for hanging the millions of pieces of the puzzle (to me).

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor shared her “stroke of insight” at this year’s TED Conference in Monterey, California. If you’re interested in hemispheric brain function, mystical experiences, the concept of humans as energy beings, or consciousness, this is a must-see video.

Watch the video

Read the transcript

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness …

Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the “Singin’ Scientist.”

What she said about the right hemisphere and perception:

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like.

I am an energy being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.

I have never experienced right-hemisphere perception like this. It’s hard for me to even imagine it. My left hemisphere is running the show in my head. However, my “body” easily connects to the energy of my environment. Actually, everyone does this. But I think we have varying abilities for receiving and perceiving information. Fascinating stuff.

I started this blog post several weeks ago after reading “Consciousness is Nothing But a Word,” an article by Henry D. Schlinger in Skeptic Magazine. I enjoy reading about consciousness, which remains a mystery. I absolutely loved the article and Schlinger’s ideas about what consciousness is. To my delight, the article is now available online in the latest e-skeptic.

I believe we do have the ability to create the wonderful world we want.

I invite you to read the article and comment.

Shake it, baby, shake it!

According to this Live Science article, “Scientists may one day be able to destroy viruses in the same way that opera singers presumably shatter wine glasses. New research mathematically determined the frequencies at which simple viruses could be shaken to death.”

Every “thing” vibrates because everything is made up of atoms that vibrate. We vibrate. Even our “thoughts” vibrate, because brain function is electromagnetic.

Sounds pretty woo-woo, doesn’t it? But this stuff comes straight from science.

Maybe one day the energy healing folks will have the last laugh. Maybe one day the Stuart Davis “thoughts are things” video (warning — R rated!) won’t be a parody. Maybe Bruce Lipton is right about his understanding of epigenetics, and that our own thoughts control certain genes.

Maybe is the key word for me. Obviously I’m very interested in woo stuff, but I need a lot more scientific evidence before accepting certain notions hook, line and sinker.

“When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?” (The Edge Annual Question — 2008)

Find out what 164 leading scientists and thinkers said.

For example, Todd Feinberg, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, writes:

For most of my life I viewed any notion of the “soul” a fanciful religious invention… I have come to believe that an individual consciousness represents an entity that is so personal and ontologically unique that it qualifies as something that we might as well call ‘a soul’.

And from neuroscience researcher Sam Harris:

Like many people, I once trusted in the wisdom of Nature. I imagined that there were real boundaries between the natural and the artificial, between one species and another, and thought that, with the advent of genetic engineering, we would be tinkering with life at our peril. I now believe that this romantic view of Nature is a stultifying and dangerous mythology.

Every 100 million years or so, an asteroid or comet the size of a mountain smashes into the earth, killing nearly everything that lives. If ever we needed proof of Nature’s indifference to the welfare of complex organisms such as ourselves, there it is. The history of life on this planet has been one of merciless destruction and blind, lurching renewal.

Care to comment about YOUR change of mind based on science?

Most of us want to be happy. The United States Declaration of Independence declares the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. The Dalai Lama says the purpose of life is happiness.

The desire to be happy is a human given, wired into our brains, because without it, why go on? This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view.

It is this innate desire that unscrupulous gurus often exploit. Some of their followers do experience happiness, so they’re inclined to spread the word about the guru. Unfortunately, other followers are left in a worse state, many mired in deep depression or teetering on the brink of suicide. What goes wrong? In most cases, the followers have been immersed in conditioning and methods found in cults. The mind is broken down, and the person can no longer deal with reality.

Medical experts who help people recover from being in cults describe the same experience and blame it on a process called “dissociation,” in which the mind withdraws from reality based on cues and no longer connects properly to such tasks as consciousness, memory, identity and perception.

It can come about from achieving the “absolute unitary state” too many times. At its best, it can lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety and stress and offer practitioners a renewed sense of purpose. At its worst, it can cause extreme mental illness and even symptoms of related multiple-personality disorders.

Read the entire article, Tapping into inner happiness

Entering into different states of consciousness is very real and very powerful. I’ll even go as far to say that it may be possible for people to assist others in changing their brain state through physical contact and intention, such as giving and receiving Deeksha.

My point is simply this: There are safe ways to develop happiness, and there are unsafe attempts. Be careful.

Thoughts are… things. They are sculptors of the brain. And, dare I say, they are sculptors of the body.

Eight Buddhist adepts and 10 volunteers who had had a crash course in meditation engaged in the form of meditation called nonreferential compassion. In this state, the meditator focuses on unlimited compassion and loving kindness toward all living beings.

As the volunteers began meditating, one kind of brain wave grew exceptionally strong: gamma waves. These, scientists believe, are a signature of neuronal activity that knits together far-flung circuits — consciousness, in a sense. Gamma waves appear when the brain brings together different features of an object, such as look, feel, sound and other attributes that lead the brain to its aha moment of, yup, that’s an armadillo.

Some of the novices “showed a slight but significant increase in the gamma signal,” Prof. Davidson explained to the Dalai Lama. But at the moment the monks switched on compassion meditation, the gamma signal began rising and kept rising. On its own, that is hardly astounding: Everything the mind does has a physical correlate, so the gamma waves (much more intense than in the novice meditators) might just have been the mark of compassion meditation.

Except for one thing. In between meditations, the gamma signal in the monks never died down. Even when they were not meditating, their brains were different from the novices’ brains, marked by waves associated with perception, problem solving and consciousness. Moreover, the more hours of meditation training a monk had had, the stronger and more enduring the gamma signal.

It was something Prof. Davidson had been seeking since he trekked into the hills above Dharamsala to study lamas and monks: evidence that mental training can create an enduring brain trait.

From LifeTrek Provision 11/11/07: Empathy Wiring

Ruh roh. As one who the researchers would classify as underweight, this study caught my attention.

The new study began several years ago when the investigators used national data to look at death risks according to body weight. They concluded that, compared with people of normal weight, the overweight had a decreased death risk and the underweight and obese had increased risk….

They do not yet know, precisely, what it is about being underweight, for instance, that increases the death rate from everything except heart disease and cancer.

Source

That does it! I’m definitely going on a chocolate-several-times-a-day diet. Oops, did I say chocolate… again?

All kidding aside, this study is so intriguing. What are the common denominators for the decreased death risk in the overweight group? My head is spinning as I factor in what I know about epigenetics and German New Medicine.

Here’s a great introduction to epigenetics on PBS.org. The video there is amazing. Toward the end of the video, you’ll learn about using epigenetic medicine to give instructions to the epigenome. Now imagine using the power of the mind to give instructions to the epigenome. Then consider reading two extremely interesting books:

The Genie in Your Genes: Epigenetic Medicine and the Biology of Intention

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles

We are living in such exciting times!

Enlightenment. It sounds so lofty, so full of promise. Who wouldn’t want to be full of light, wisdom and love? Who wouldn’t give their eye teeth to walk around in a perpetual state of bliss, no longer shackled by fear, anger, worry, and other unpleasant feelings?

Sign me up! As long as you don’t call that peaceful state Enlightenment. Or hook it up with a religious or spiritual system that I need to buy into.

The other day I read Bill Harris’ comments about human development (e.g., Integral theory), religion and spiritual states on his new blog. Bill is the director of Centerpointe Research Institute and developer of Holosync audio technology, which helps you to create deep states of meditation. (Bill appeared in The Secret, but don’t let that scare you. He’s one of the few who actually has the facts straight about how to create the life you want. It’s not magic.)

Here’s what he writes (in part) about human development:

Human development takes many forms–humans undergo moral, cognitive, ego (or self), interpersonal, emotional, values, and spiritual development–just to name a few areas of development. A thread running through all these streams of development is our ongoing attempts to discover meaning in our existence, to find some sort of significance.

I suspect that you’ve probably thought about this. Here we are: vulnerable, alone but also part of a larger whole. We’re here for a finite amount of time, and then we’re gone. On one hand, we have a certain amount of control over our existence, while in other ways we’re subject to forces we can’t predict or control. So we ask questions such as, Who am I? Why am I here? What it all about? Why do we die? Why is this happening? How do I know what to do next? How do I relate to the rest of the world, and to other people? What is Truth? How do I know what is right and what is wrong? Can I be happy? How? And so on.

In the beginning, of course, we aren’t asking such existentially complex questions. But from the moment we’re born we do start trying to make sense of our existence. How we do this changes and develops over and over as our environmental situation changes–hence the idea of developmental levels. These are levels of meaning-making, of understanding. You might even say that they are levels of wisdom. …

There are many ways to slice these developmental steps. One broad way would be to talk about four basic divisions: preconventional, conventional, postconventional, and transcendent. Let’s look at these. … <snip>

This fourth stage, or perspective, could be termed transcendent, or unitive. Those at this stage come to realize that all objects–including abstract ideas such as the self, the ego, and even the idea of three-dimensional space and time–are human-made constructs, based on layers upon layers of symbolic abstraction. There is an awareness that language presupposes many things that may not be true about reality, and traps us in a view that may not always serve us.

For instance, the whole idea of subject and object as separate things–one of the main premises in language–is seen by those at the unitive stage as constructed rather than actual and real. Subject and object, a unitive thinker would say, “go together.” They are actually one thing, not two. In fact, all polarities created by the mind (and language) arise together: up makes no sense without down, good makes no sense without bad, me makes no sense without not-me. All of these polarities, say unitive thinkers, are arbitrarily constructed.

At this transcendent stage what I and many others have called a witness perspective allows the person to stand aside and observe what is without adding meaning, without creating a mental map of what is being observed, or at least view things with a realization that all meaning being added is just something made-up. A person at this level realizes that the mental map we make of reality isn’t reality itself, that the map is not the territory it represents.

At this level the existential questions I’ve posed are seen from a very cosmic perspective, where the typical separate self-identity is no longer seen as the essence of the person. Instead, everything is seen from a universal or cosmic perspective–you might say, from an experience of being “one with” everything. Consciousness or rational awareness assumes either background or foreground status depending on one’s momentary attention. This stage is often spoken of as “enlightenment” or “self-realization.” It is estimated that less than 1% of people are at this level of development.

http://www.centerpointe.com/blog/?p=7#more-7

I liked most of his comments. But I found myself wanting to object to the Transcendent, or enlightenment, stage. For instance, I have no desire to be one with, say, my pencil or computer mouse. (I’ll make an exception for chocolate.)

Why are less than 1 percent of humanity at this level? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? (Oops, I’m giving away my stage of development.) What exactly is enlightenment, and is it something every person should strive to attain? Is it even possible for every single person?

Sometimes the striving to reach “enlightenment” can be a terrible waste of time at best; tragic at worst.

From my perspective, enlightenment has nothing to do with being filled with light or gaining special insight or wisdom. It has nothing to do with being “spiritual” or “religious.” “Enlightenment” is simply a brain state — and it can be easily explained by neuroscience.

Today while googling “brain science AND enlightenment” I found these remarkable articles by Todd Murphy, a behavorial neuroscientist and psychologist.

Forgetting About Enlightenment
Enlightenment as a Neural process. A forensic look at the Buddha’s transformation

(Murphy does support meditation because it trains the mind to be aware of positive and negative emotions. Then you can choose which to cultivate and which to prune.)

The Spiritual Personality
The personalities of people who are involved with spiritual practices like prayer, meditation and ceremony are shaped by the altered-state experiences their spirituality creates. The part of the brain that manages our states of consciousness, the temporal lobes, is a little busier in these people than most, producing personality traits that appear over and over among spiritually oriented people.

This article is especially interesting to me. Not too long ago I encountered two lovely people who are on a spiritual path. Unfortunately, they lost touch with reality — big time. They divorced their mates and moved in together, causing their family and friends much pain and suffering. They had trouble carrying on a normal conversation with others, used spiritual lingo that their families couldn’t understand, and seemed spaced out. Their thinking was illogical. “Intuition” and “guidance” became the new rule. Personal hygiene went out the window.

Murphy may provide an explanation:

Another personality trait that spiritual practitioners almost always seem to show is a fascination with spirituality. It may seem to be too obvious to say, but what it less obvious is that spirituality dominates over other kinds of concerns more than other pursuits do. What seems to be happening is that the repeated experience of altered states is so novel, and infused with such a sense of meaningfulness that things which lack meaning in them lose their impact.

Another personality trait that can emerge after enough time in an altered state has two names. In medical terms, its called hyperemotionality. In spiritual terms, its called open-heartedness or more simply ‘being filled with love’. A psychologist might call it ‘extreme vulnerability.’

Most of the time, unusual states of consciousness invoke intense emotional states. TL seizures most often involve fear, terror or a sense of ‘impending doom.’ (Interestingly, there are also dissasociative seizures that seem to have no emotion at all.) Spiritual states are usually pleasant. Everything from simple calm or freedom from fear to bliss or ecstasy.

This extra input to the amygdala has an impact beyond just making for intense moments. It makes the person more emotionally sensitive at all other times as well. Among TL epileptics, it commonly makes for extra irritability. For spiritual practitioners, it seems to be more a matter of an extra need to feel safe. After a certain point in spiritual development or ‘growth’, the aspirant begins to be more careful about the ‘energies’ they connect with. Their own way of seeing it is a bit monastic. Monks and nuns withdraw from the world, avoiding socially intense situations. In more modern times, we hear of meditators ‘withdrawing into their own space’. The need to defend one’s self from verbal assaults, and to avoid those who aren’t like-minded gets more intense. Practitioners become more ‘open-hearted’, and along with it, more vulnerable. Few romantic relationships escape unscathed. If one partner begins spiritual practice, and the other doesn’t, they may soon find that the level of intimacy that’s comfortable for each is now different. Of course, the now-spiritual partner has a new set of interests, and that tends to divide two partners. The practitioner can feel that they’ve ‘outgrown’ the relationship, while the one who’s not doing practice might tend to blame the group their partner joined, or to feel that their partner has taken religion ‘too far’. In fact, one study of TL epileptics found that they were more likely than others to undergo multiple religious conversions. …

In order to go further with this topic, we need to talk about the amygdala again. What seems to be happening is that as the two amygdala get more active, the chances of their falling out of phase with one another increases. Normally, the left amygdala (remember language is on the left) is the dominant one. Normally people process their experiences by thinking about them; thinking in words.

Humans seem to have two senses of self. Left hemispheric, and right hemispheric. The pathways of the human sense of self on each side have been found to include the amygdala. When the two amygdala fall out of phase with one another, the ’self’ on the left can become aware of the activities on the right. The right-sided sense of self is experienced as an outer (ego-alien) ‘presence’. All of this is fairly well established. What I want to add to it, as an hypothesis, is that the two amygdala are out of phase whenever we’re relating to another. (I’ve designed a study that should put it to the test, but lack of funding at present makes it difficult to carry out.) As a person experiences altered states more often, they find that the way they relate to ‘the other’ is changed.

Another obvious effect is that as the left ’self’ begins to lose its mastery over the individual, the person is more and more likely to ‘feel’ their way through situations, rather than thinking about them. One study found that people who experienced altered states frequently were unable to follow scientific, ‘linear’ reasoning.

Still another effect is that, because each time the right-self intrudes on the left, the left-self loses a bit of its control, and because the left is normally dominant, the effect is that the person’s self esteem (while they are in normal states) goes down. As near as I can tell, it stays that way until the person’s normal states are adjusted so that they then have a permanent ‘baseline’ state that allows their right-sided ’self’ to emerge in all circumstances.

Until this happens the person can suffer from ‘the dark night of the soul’, which can come as moments when they doubt their self-worth, or as long periods of melancholy. More often in my experience, such people respond with a specific coping strategy. They become ‘holier than thou.’ In these cases, spiritual practitioners will respond to comments from others with ’spiritual’ interpretations.

You missed your bus? You weren’t ‘meant’ to be on it. How have you been lately? There is no lately: there is only this moment. The person you were attracted to isn’t interested in you? Give your love to Jesus. I seem insensitive? I’m only sharing my truth in this moment. You’re angry about something? It just shows how are attached you are. You’re offended by something? That’s just your ego coming out.

In extreme cases, such people have an answer for everything they don’t care to hear, and each answer shows how ’spiritual’ they are, and subtly ‘puts down’ the other. Its just not possible, for one who is ‘holier than thou’, to feel beneath others. This type of person won’t be free of the inner turbulence that an extra-active amygdala creates, they just won’t feel that they are lower than others. Because we are such linguistic beings, we are very sensitive to words that we don’t like. An easy way to cope is to have a stock of things to say that invalidates whatever the ‘other’ has to say, and to do so in a spiritual-seeming way. If they are successful, they can become gurus or teachers in their own right.

Now, gurus (or masters or satgurus, sufus, tzaddiks, roshis, growth group or workshop leaders, priests, or a ministers) often don’t like to be ‘defined’ or ‘labeled’ or ‘categorized’, but there a category that seems to invite them in. Its a term from primatology, the study of our closest living evolutionary cousins, the primates. You know. Monkeys and chimpanzees. Gurus are dominant or alpha individuals. Within their community, the guru is the boss. He (forgive the sexist pronoun) usually calls the shots. He disperses the donated resources, and if the tradition doesn’t include celibacy, to be his romantic partner is a ‘position’ of some prestige. All other conditions being equal, the guru will be more successful at passing on his genetic material than the disciple. If you become a guru, your self-esteem will automatically rise. You’ve become the alpha person.

In one study of seratonin levels in monkeys, it was found that the seratonin level of the alpha male in the troupe was higher than that of the betas. When he was removed from the group, one of the betas took his place. When his seratonin levels were taken again, it was found that they had risen to the level of the previous alpha. Becoming a guru works against low self-esteem, just as becoming a leader of any kind will bring a person ‘up’.

We’ve been talking about gurus and ‘wannabe’ gurus. Another type we need to look at is the ‘perfect disciple’.

Another way of responding to low-self esteem is to lower your self. The perfect disciple will always see the guru as being higher. Devotion to the guru allows a context where low-self esteem can be acted out in a constructive way. Being subordinate is rewarded in communities gathered around a spiritual master. The Buddhist and Hindu practice of prostrations or pranam allows a person to behave submissively without actually taking on a position of inferiority for those around them. Only the master (and the ‘inner circle’ of senior disciples) is worthy of these gestures. For day-to-day living in the ashram, the slogan seems to be ‘we’re all bozos on this bus’. Outside of their community, their having found the path allows them to discount what others say. They don’t know the truth. Such a believer need not pay any heed to slights or challenging remarks from others.

Source: www.spiritualbrain.com. Reproduced by permission.

Fascinating, isn’t it?

Last night I discovered Terence Watts and his book Warriors, Settlers & Nomads: Discovering Who We Are and What We Can Be at Shrink Rap Radio (a very interesting psychology podcast, which I’ll discuss in another post). I love learning about personality typologies, so although I was nearly comatose from lack of sleep, I listened long enough to get the general idea. I figured I was probably a Settler, which I noted with a sense of disappointment. Then I went to bed.

This morning I was hit with a “doh” realization. I am a Nomad. Almost positive. I was filled with energy just thinking about it. Why did I assume last night that I was primarily a Settler? Because I could see that I had some of the traits, such as being pleasant and accommodating, and nodding my head a lot when talking with people. Also, I’m in the communication profession, which is a typical Settler interest.

But this morning I thought about how I love to travel and discover new places, how I’m not content staying in one place (whether in a house or a job) for long, how I don’t want anyone or anything to own or control me, how I thrive on searching out new information and getting new ideas, how I am drawn to what some would consider the radical or extreme (as long as the thing is in the realm of reason!). Always searching, searching, searching. Always on some kind of journey. If that doesn’t sound like a Nomad, I don’t know what does.

So, here’s the little experiment. I’m going to read Warriors, Settlers & Nomads and see if I’m right. I’m also going to see if Watts says anything about the biological make-up of a Nomad as being hypersensitive and in-tune with people, places and things — something I’ve been researching and thinking a lot about lately. My hunch is that early on, a Nomad would have needed a super-sensitive system in order to instantly read and assess new (and potentially dangerous) environments.

I can’t wait to dig in to the book and find out! (Yep, I must be a Nomad!)

This morning on my Internet travels, I learned about Fire The Grid, which allegedly takes place July 17 at 11:11 Greenwich Mean Time. According to the Fire The Grid site,

“The light beings use the term ‘fire the grid’ when they speak of the energizing of humanity with divine power, on July 17, 2007. They say firing the grid will accomplish two things. First, it will pulse healing energy into the center of the earth and regenerate the core, or the heart of the planet. Just as we poured our energy into my dying son, we will individually give the gift of our true intention, the gift of our individuality and the gift of our healing energy. As they explained, my son’s energy field was badly deteriorated, as is the Earths. We must pour some of our living energy into the Earth, and the accumulation of our combined energy will regenerate the Earth. They told me humans are like little lightening rods, channelling God’s energy to the planet. Because we have separated ourselves from our complete connection to The Source, by not having a fully functioning human grid, God’s energy has not been able to easily flow into the Earth. If we choose to come together to rebuild our grid, then the natural flow of energy between us and God, God and the Earth, and from person to person, will be restored. Do you see what a wonderful gift you will give? This energy will live on eternally with the earth and its inhabitants; the splendour of the creator’s intention for us realised in the creation of this new energy field for our planet.

How do we do this you ask? The time has been set for July 17, 2007 at 11:11 Greenwich Mean Time. I have been given no indication about why this date and time have been chosen, but this date has been told to me over and over again. I have been asked to bring together as many humans as possible, throughout the world from every corner of the globe, to simply sit and pray or meditate for one hour during that time. Hopefully, with your help, we will amass a union of humans, such as the world has never seen. Loving humans with one intention - to heal our planet and awaken our souls to our true purpose… to become one with our Source of Light.

This planned sitting of the people of earth will demonstrate the love and faith we feel for the goodness of our world and her inhabitants. We are the catalyst to the healing of earth. A true believer has the power of ten fold, so if you only think you may believe, know that the faith of the others will boost your own faith and the power will be intensified. That is why we must all sit at the same time. We will feed each others power, strengthening the force of delivery and compounding the energy we send into the core of our home. Each and every one of us is important alone, but together we are a very powerful source of creative energy. Remember we are all a piece of God, and that energy of creation lives in all of us.”

Okey dokey.

Millions of people around the world are preparing for the momentous event. And this makes me extremely sad and disheartened. I believe July 17, 11:11 will only serve to reveal to millions of desperate people that they’ve been duped.

But hey, I could be wrong. Eleven is my special number. Born 9/11, husband born 8/11, married 3/11.

Life can be heavy business.

I’ve been following Steve Salerno’s series on the fallout of second-hand self-help. Very heavy stuff.

And this morning I finished reading the latest issue of Skeptic, which has Ingrid Hansen Smythe’s insightful, scathing review of The Secret published online back in March. The magazine also features articles on faith versus atheism, religion as an elemental impulse, reviews by Norman Levitt and Deepak Chopra of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins’ latest book which is causing an uproar, and much more. Very heavy stuff.

Just when I need a dash of levity, I receive the monthly e-zine from the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Frankly, I don’t comprehend half of what they talk about, but I really like the column from Swami Beyondananda. Here are his words of wisdom about the confusing keys to enlightenment.

Dear Swami:
I’m a bit confused. For millennia, the Buddhists have been telling us that the key to enlightenment is achieving emptiness. But physicists now say that empty space isn’t empty at all, but instead filled with enormous amounts of energy. So Swami, what is it — fullness or emptiness? And — whatever it is — how does one go about achieving it?

Lou Minocitti, Grass Valley, CA

Dear Lou:

Let me first say you came to the right Swami with this question. Not to brag, but many times I have been told, “Swami, you are so full of emptiness!” You can only imagine how tempting it is to take on an emptier-than-thou attitude — you know, like those vacuums putting on airs about how empty they are. Talk about having nothing to talk about. No wonder nature abhors a vacuum. This also might explain those “Vacuums suck!” bumper stickers I’ve been seeing lately.

But I digress. As you have suspected, true emptiness is nothing more or less than infinite fullness. The void is so full of everythingness you cannot distinguish anythingness so it might as well be nothingness. The scientist, looking for something, sees fullness. The Buddha, looking for nothing, sees emptiness. Same difference.

But whether you call it the All-That-Is or the All-That-Isn’t, this is a very peaceful state because once you are one with everything, there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. Now, that’s relaxing. So, how does one achieve this state of full emptiness? By ceasing to identify with the separate identity, or ego.

In this regard too, you’ve come to the right Swami. As one who takes great pride in my humility — twice a finalist on America’s Most Humble — I will share my secret, a mantra guaranteed to banish the ego in three easy steps: Ego … egoing … egone.

© Copyright 2006 by Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved. Give the gift of laughter with Swami’s Fool Enchilada Special. To find out more about that and Swami’s schedule, call (800) SWAMI-BE or visit the Swami online at http://www.wakeuplaughing.com

Finally. Positive news about Paris. Or better said, Paris making positive news. I’ll be rooting for her continued growth.

See “Caged” Paris Finds God, Phones Walters

Dear Swami:

I keep hearing about this Law of Attraction, but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Every time I am attracted to someone, they end up being attracted to someone else. And money? Forget about it. The more I affirm, the less I seem to have. I’ve tried meditation, I’ve tried affirmations, I’ve read books and attended seminars but somehow the Universe doesn’t seem to be getting my messages. Swami, am I missing something?

Erna Liddle, Lexington, Kentucky

Dear Erna:

You came to the right Swami with this question, because I had the same experience years ago. As a young seeker, I found myself unemployed and without money. Today, I refer to that time as my “Baroque Period” — you know, so Baroque I was Haydn from the landlord. Anyway, I knew with certainty that all I needed was to harness the power of the mind, and my needs and desires would be fulfilled. One Friday, I received a notice from the utilities company that on Monday, they would come to turn off my electricity for not paying. And so I began my intensive affirmation process that a large check I was expecting would indeed arrive by Monday. With each affirmation, I felt more confident and certain.

Sure enough, on Monday the doorbell rang. It was a huge Czechoslovakian guy who said, “I’m here to shut off your electricity.” And so I learned a valuable spiritual lesson. If you want the Universe to do your bidding, you have to spell it out.

But I really learned about the Law of Attraction when I did my apprenticeship in Texas as a sacred cowpoke with the legendary master of meditation and outdoor cooking, Baba Q. Every Sunday, at his ranch the I’m OK You’re OK Corral, we would have an attractor-pull where we would practice pure animal magnetism. I became a champ, and believe me, it’s quite a feeling walking around with a hundred or so gophers (and an occasional armadillo) stuck to you.

It was during that time (which I now refer to as my Gopher Baroque Period) that I learned something that might be of help to you. The entire problem with affirmations is that we use them to ask for what we don’t have because if we already had it, we wouldn’t be asking for it, would we? The problem is, that in doing the affirmation, we are first and foremost affirming we don’t have something. That is the thought we are broadcasting, and the Universe dutifully sends us more of the same. That is how the Law of Attraction becomes the Law of Repulsion.

So how do you trick the Universe into giving you something you don’t already have? By fully feeling that you already have it. That’s right. The key to fulfillment is full-feelment. And in solving this tricky problem, I inadvertently found the secret to health, wealth, relaxation and release of worry once and for all. After years of trying to live in the now, I decided to get ahead of the game. I bought a condo in a future of my choice, and I’ve been living there happily waiting for the world to catch up.

© Copyright 2006 by Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved. Give the gift of laughter with Swami’s Fool Enchilada Special. To find out more about that and Swami’s schedule, call (800) SWAMI-BE or visit the Swami online at http://www.wakeuplaughing.com

While visiting Candace Pert’s site, I discovered the EQ Planet podcast episode, The Physics of Emotion with Candace Pert.

The podcast is hosted by EQ (emotional intelligence) development expert Joshua Freedman of Six Seconds EQ Network.

Former chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health and professor at Georgetown Medical Center, Dr. Candace Pert is the pioneering scientist who discovered the opiate receptor mechanism — unlocking a new perspective on neurotransmitters and emotion (her bio is on candacepert.com).

In this episode of EQ Planet, Dr. Pert explains “emotional resonance” and the way emotions change every cell in the human body to literally change the frequencies of nonverbal communication. With profound implications for leadership, parenting, education and personal mastery, Pert’s perspective is on the cutting edge on neurobiology and neurophysics.

Listen to the podcast. It’s good stuff!

The Secret and several of its Law of Attraction teachers rely on what physicist Murray Gell-Mann calls quantum flapdoodle to prove the Law of Attraction. Mangled quantum mechanics is also at the heart of What the Bleep.

But a gullible public isn’t the only problem. Apparently, not even physics students may be able to convincingly confront the wacky ideas popularized in these films, as well as in the plethora of books on “creating your reality.”

“It’s not the student’s fault. For the most part, in our teaching of quantum mechanics we tacitly deny the mysteries physics has encountered,” writes Fred Kuttner, a physicist and one of the authors of Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness.

This book couldn’t have come at a better time. (Hey! I wonder if I attracted it?!)

Physicists properly join today’s arguments involving the teaching of Darwinian evolution. There is, however, a social issue closer to the responsibility of physicists: Quantum physics is increasingly invoked to promote pseudoscience.

Such promotions may start with correct statements of the intriguing implications of quantum mechanics, move to legitimate hyperbole, and then go off into complete hype. Take a recent “international hit” movie as our case in point. It’s strangely titled “What tHe #$*! Do wE (k)now!?” (What the Bleep Do We Know!?). Time magazine described it as “an odd hybrid of science documentary and spiritual revelation featuring a Greek chorus of PhDs and mystics talking about quantum physics.”

Early on, the movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being in several places at once. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s recognized as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually moves to quantum “insights” that lead a woman to toss away her antidepressant medication, to the quantum channeling of the 35000-year-old Atlantis god Ramtha, and on to even greater nonsense.

Most laypeople cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum nonsense begins, and many are susceptible to being misguided. According to polls, well over half of the people in the US and England have significant belief in the reality of supernatural phenomena. Robert Park, in his book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2000), states the problem well. “Many people . . . seek a certainty that science cannot offer. For these people the unchanging dictates of ancient religious beliefs, or the absolute assurances of zealots, have a more powerful appeal.

“Paradoxically, however, their yearning for certainty is often mixed with a respect for science. They long to be told that modern science validates the teachings of some ancient scripture or New Age guru. The purveyors of pseudoscience have been quick to exploit their ambivalence.” We should not underestimate how persuasively physics can be invoked to buttress mystical notions. We physicists bear some responsibility for the way our discipline is exploited.

The human implications of quantum mechanics that fuel popular discussion arise in the measurement problem and in entanglement. The measurement problem and entanglement is at least how we refer to these topics in a physics class, where we rarely go much beyond their mathematical formulation. Elsewhere, the same issues are legitimately discussed more broadly in terms of the nature of reality, universal connectedness, and consciousness. But we don’t distract physics students with excursions into issues that extend embarrassingly beyond the boundaries we define for our discipline. Science historian Jed Buchwald notes, “Physicists . . . have long had a special loathing for admitting questions with the slightest emotional content into their professional work.”

Accordingly, unlike the biology student able to defend evolution against intelligent design, a physics student may be unable to convincingly confront unjustified extrapolations of quantum mechanics.

Read entire article: Teaching Physics Mysteries Versus Pseudoscience

Buy the book (20% discount available from Oxford University Press)