15

"Only a madman is absolutely sure"  Robert Anton Wilson 

Recently I took the time to read through all my previous posts. I have a running theme of balance and am trying my best to have a, albeit broad, thesis. I thought it important to go back and see how many loose ends I didn't tie up.  To my pleasant surprise and dismay I've done a pretty good job, save one huge point. In my opening post I said the three types of balance I was going to discuss were physical, mental, and spiritual. I spent a few posts on aspects of physical and mental balance and even digressed into other pontifications on balance all while skillfully avoiding the topic of spiritual balance. Part of the reason is there are several discreet definitions to the word spiritual.  The other reason is it is a very personal subject and has different meaning for each person.  I did quite a bit of research on the topic and seem to have distilled it, in least in my own mind, to two distinct types.  More than that I distilled down to two verbs, being and doing.  

The first definition of spiritual that I encountered was defining it as "from spirit".  The Divine, ghosts, the Great Juju.  I'm intentionally staying away from references to any specific religions because I don't want to make this about a specific set of dogma. The important thing is these spirits are a personified outside being and require some kind of communing with be it through prayer, worship, tithe, services, rituals, etc.  These are all acts of doing.  I think that the "being" part of spirituality can also be experienced in a religious context but it is something that is achieved.  I also think we need to be careful of thinking of spiritual and religious as synonymous thus limiting the definition of spiritual.

The second definition I came upon was spiritual as a state unto itself.  An act of being.  The problem I kept finding with this concept is that an act of "being spiritual" requires the opposite, being "not spiritual."  It makes spiritual some kind of mushy other worldly thing and again implies a location.  That idea almost seems to contradict itself.  Trying to just be.  I started to think of the idea of reality as a multiverse of intersecting subjective experiences and thought that maybe an idea of spirituality is just being in touch with our own experience and how it intersects with what Robert Anton Wilson calls other "reality tunnels."              

So how does the idea of balance fit with this?  It seems to me that whatever definition of spiritual you choose to use the balance occurs between our outer self and our inner experiences.  We have an outward experience and integrate it into our inward understanding of reality.  I think an imbalance comes when we rely too much on our internal understanding such that we become inflexible.  Leon Festinger calls this cognitive dissonance in his landmark work When Prophecy Fails.  We try to find some way to get experiences to fit with our understanding even if that means dismissing or discrediting them.  I think an imbalance can happen the opposite way too resulting in a lack of conviction and drive.  Apathy.  Our understanding of the world is ever changing and influenced by previous experience whether we like it or not.  The key I think is being aware of that fact and being flexible to evolve.   

Over the years I have come across the name Trigant Burrow a bunch of times.  He was a psychologist in the early part of the 20th century and is important in the field of group therapy and the a early thinker in the field of neurodynamics I think.  I decided it was time to read some of his stuff.  I quickly found out that his work was way above my pay grade.  I'm just a musician.  I'm probably way over simplifying or even misinterpreting his work.  If so I apologize in advance.  That said there was one big take away even in my limited understanding; his concept of cotention.  Another one of the concepts he talks about are what he calls preconscious.  He wrote a book called Preconscious Foundations in Human Experience.  Again above my pay grade but interestingly many activities like music, art, poetry, as well as "mystical experiences" are manifestations of preconscious processes.  In the book he argues that basically preconscious processes are those that we are born with.  In his theory, over the course of human evolution, we have developed a higher order consciousness in order to adapt to our environment.  This has actually served to suppress the preconscious mind.  

Two concepts that Burrow introduced then are "cotension" and "ditension".  Basically "ditension" emphasizes the division of the observer and the observed (self and other) and is brought on by higher order thought. "Cotension" refers to the way the preconscious mind experiences. Unity, connectedness, completeness, continuity with everything. 

So how does this fit with my idea of spiritual balance or even a definition of spiritual.  In my mind part of what we are attempting with any spiritual experience be it prayer, meditation, even a hike in the woods is to get back to that preconscious mind.  I also see that preconscious mind as flexible.  Babies are born mentally flexible.  Maybe then spiritual balance has to do with a balance of the cotentive and ditentive mind?  Perhaps.  Or maybe it is just acknowledging that a connectedness exists.

Last week there was a total eclipse of the super moon.  The event was outstandingly beautiful and beyond words.  The thing that really struck me though was pictures and posts about it dominated social media.  Many of my neighbors were out watching it.  It was the #1 topic of conversation the next morning.  It felt like, even for a fleeting moment, we were acknowledging a connection with each other and with the whole of experience.  Preconscious.  Cotentive.  To me that is spiritual.             

14

An Egoist Argument for Being Kind

 

We live in a time where instant gratification is paramount. It rules almost every part of our lives whether it be travel, food, data transfer, phone calls, the weather. We want everything fast. Like NOW fast. The problem with thinking like this is it can also be pretty selfish. Being first is often accompanied by a total disregard for everyone else. In the immortal words of Ricky Bobby, "If you're not first, you're last." This seems to be the motto of many modern day Americans. In that spirit I am going to lay out an argument for being kind for completely selfish reasons.  

When I started formulating this argument in my head I kept coming back to several pieces I had read years ago about a philosophical concept called egoism. There are several kinds of egoism and the differentiation of type mostly deals with the variety of motivations for being selfish. One type of Egoism is called Ethical Egoism. Ethical Egoism has always intrigued me. It deals specifically with the idea that we do what we believe is morally "right" in the interest of making ourselves feel good. Basically doing things that we believe to be good gives us warm fuzzies. Additionally it states that actions whose consequences will benefit the doer can be classified as ethical.  

A topic that is so brilliantly explored in many films by the Coen Brothers is the relativity of morality. Each person has a moral code but they are flexible, they evolve, and they ultimately benefit the practitioner. I also think that our ability to evolve morally is an important part of what makes us human.

I am by no means a neuroscientist but we know that we are basically big chemistry sets. All the time the feelings and emotions we have are caused by or cause a release of chemicals in the brain. Feelings of happiness and well being have a specific set of chemicals associated with them. Remember the warm fuzzies we get from being kind to someone?  Chemicals. Also the flexibility of morals allows our brain to release the same chemicals for a variety of reasons. In the crudest sense we are drug addicts looking for a fix.  

So basically here is my contention. We can be kind because we are selfish jerks. We can be kind to make the world a better place because we don't want to live in a world full of a**holes. We can be kind for the chemical high. Whatever you see as the motivation... be kind.   

 

13

I challenge myself every year to relate everything back to a word or concept. Last year it was clarity. This year it is balance. I don't do new year's resolutions but have found it much more interesting to think of a word or concept and relate ideas back to it. To that end I've been pondering the concept of ontological guilt or anxiety as it relates to balance. It's been a while since I've studied Existentialism but basically ontological guilty is a concept where our ability to choose (free will) brings with it guilt or regret or anxiety. Did I make the right choice?  What if?  Anyone who has experienced buyer's remorse understands this concept on a more concrete level. There are also other sources of said guilt such as Interpersonal guilt which comes from our awareness of our subjectivity and inability to truly understand another person or our guilt about our relationship with nature.

Obviously this is a HUGE concept to talk about here but let's see what I can tackle in roughly 500 words.

To this point I have defined balance as an active state. I introduced a concept I coined the "fluid normal." I talked about empathy as a function of being in the present. I also talked about fear and anxiety being caused by too much willful will and not trusting yourself to the water of fluidity.  I also talked about "yes, and" and life as a grand improvisation. The common thread to all of these is uncertainty which is the very definition of ontological guilt and anxiety. It is part of the function of the human mind to find order in chaos. This is mostly based on patterns. The mind learns what probably will happen. I think this almost happens to the point where we forget that the universe, at least in my opinion, is chaotic. The anomalies are sources of cognitive dissonance and a reminder that we do actually have free will and that we don't have all the answers.

I think part of the response this creates is that we all walk around feeling guilty. It also doesn't help that our government and many religions are fraught with rules that are impossible to follow to the letter. In some religions people are even taught that we are all sinners: all guilty. As a consequence even the most pious person feels "guilty" of something. The #1 overused expression in the English language is "I'm sorry." If a word gets used to much it ceases to have meaning. I fear this has happened with apologies. 

The consequence of all this guilt in my opinion is we are never truly living in the present. I find it a funny paradox because "mindfulness" and "being present" have become buzz words.  Kind of a western neo-Buddhist thought. We try to talk of being present, but all the while different aspects of society pile on guilt. The reason why I see this as a paradox is guilt is necessarily feeling regret about what you have done (past) and feeling anxiety about the choices you will make (future). With all this attention to the past and future I think it is impossible to be in the present.

I'll leave you with one final thought about a source of guilt. I think the core of many of these rules and law are to conquer base human traits. While some of this is important for a functioning society others are completely out of our control. Feeling guilty because you covet a piece of cake, or buy something that you think is too fancy, or have lustful thoughts about someone, or drive a little too fast, or spend too much time on social media, or order the 1/2 lb burger instead of the 1/4 lb.  To me these are all attempts to get one up on the universe. That pursuit is a noble one in my opinion but it has unintended consequences. One that immediately pops to mind is it creates a moral high ground. This is fine but this moral high ground is often used to throw stones. To judge. Basically we are giving the individual, ourselves, license to be yet another source of guilt for others in an attempt to absolve ourselves of guilt. I actually have a little chuckle when I think of this because trying to get an advantage on the universe is a futile pursuit because you're it.  You can't get one up on yourself.  

My takeaway from this and my thoughts as it applies to balance? I try to have my feelings about actions be driven by the intention behind the action. To me this is where the juicy stuff is.                     

12

Two weeks ago I talked a little about meditation. I didn't post last week because I was on vacation. This week I'm going to share a few techniques I've found useful. I have no expertise or certification in the practice. I have 20 years of personal experience, so take what I say with that in mind. Remember my idea of meditation is really just spending some time alone with your thoughts and noticing; whatever that means to you. I prefer sitting meditation in the fairly traditional sense but I have also found similar benefit in other activities. I used to be a pretty serious cyclist and I have definitely reached a reflective place being on a bike for extended amounts of time. Also, as a musician, there is a certain meditative quality to playing, though in an ensemble setting it is a much more active group meditation. I just got home from a fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico and while I am by no means a serious fisherman I can definitely see how an activity like that can be very meditative. 

The first technique that I use is a connection with my breath. This can be as simple as just regulating our breath with a simple count on the inhale and exhale. Basically exhale fully. Inhale and count the time it takes to inhale. Match your exhale. Wash, rinse, repeat. In yoga this is called sama vritti breathing or equal breath. There are a whole variety of breathing exercises and I won't go into them here. What I will say is that whenever I find myself in the process of finding a meditative place or needing to re-center myself I go straight to focusing on breath. 

Connection with breath can also be used in movement activities. In yoga this is called vinyasa. Breath syncronized movement. A connection with breath can be part of any activity. I have runner friends that talk about it. I know I used to do it cycling. It can really be part of any activity.

The next step for me is to let my mind do what it does. Some accounts of meditation call it a quieting of the mind. The problem with trying to quiet the mind is the act of trying is getting in the way. What I do instead is "try" to get out of the way and let my mind go where it may. In this place I just notice. One of the benefits I find of this activity is it allows me to experience thoughts as almost a third person observer. One visual metaphor that I've enjoyed is thinking of thoughts as leaves falling off a tree into a stream. As the thought comes just observe it, then watch it "float" away in the stream. At first I thought this metaphor was a little new age touchy feely but I have really come to enjoy it.

Another interesting technique is to do the opposite and try to focus on sounds in the environment. I find this easiest to do if there aren't any prevailing sounds like a lawn mower or construction noise. An activity I enjoy is to try to direct your hearing to different distances from your body. Start with noticing body sounds, then room sounds, then house sounds, then street sounds, then beyond. You can hear some pretty crazy stuff.  You also notice that there are lots of sounds around us all the time that we filter out.

I'll tell a funny story. I get frequent MRIs of my head and spine as part of the aftermath of my brain surgery and monitoring of lesion activity as a result of MS. Anyone who has had an MRI knows they are loud. Really loud.  Also many of the sounds they make are similar to the sounds we've been conditioned since birth to equate with danger. All manner of siren type sounds. The machine even shakes and vibrates. The sounds are also rhythmic which makes it interesting to try to sync breath with them. The techs will "narrate" the MRI basically introducing each scan. I've had so many I just tell them to plow through it and skip the talking. About 3/4 of the way though the 45 minute test they come and inject me with a gadolinium contrast to see if there is any new tumor or lesion activity. In order to do this they have to take you out of the machine for a minute. Now, often people are a little anxious about the whole thing and I can see why but I actually have grown to enjoy them. You are forced to spend 45 minutes alone with your thoughts. So the funny part. The tech comes in and rolls my little bed out of the machine and I am in a pretty deep meditative state and he says "are you actually relaxed in that thing?"  My reply... "yup."   

So I offer to you my thoughts on meditation. It is not a big thing and there is no wrong way. For me the most distracting thought I can have is "am I doing this right?" If there is no wrong way then guess what... you are.       

11

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” –Steve Jobs

This week I am going a little of script. In previous posts I have talked about different kinds of balance. Being non-judgmental. Allowing fluidity to what you consider your baseline or normal. Pondering a ‘fluid normal’ is a fun mental exercise but at some point it feels a little like the “dancing about architecture” thing. Getting your mind to that place is quite a different story. Here are my practical observations.

Let me preface this with the notion that I have always had a severe allergic reaction to dogma. Dogma is merely a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. As the quote above states this is living someone else’s truth or life. We often think of dogma in the context of religion but it can definitely be applied to secular things too. Anything that has a prevailing paradigm has dogma. It is not necessarily insidious. This definition encompasses many of the things we come into contact with. Rather than get on a soapbox I wanted to just preface my experiences with meditation with the idea that anything can have dogma.

So what is meditation? We often think of mediation as some kind of mystical experience that involves sitting on the floor, twisting up like a pretzel, closing your eyes, and listening to tapes of waves crashing while incense and candle burn. We buy stuff, maybe a special pillow or special meditation clothes. We buy books and tapes. We even go places to take classes in how to do it. I have been practicing meditation on and off for 20 years and while that stuff can help none of it is meditation. I find it actually a little antithetical to what we want from a meditation practice. I’ll elaborate later but this is where the idea of dogma comes in for me. Americans are very good at thinking that there are steps and technique in “doing it right”. If we don’t follow those steps we are “doing it wrong” and “failing”. That is the beauty of what meditation is for me. There is no right or wrong. That creates a severe case of cognitive dissonance in a culture that has been taught from the time we were children that there is right and wrong and that’s it.  

Unfortunately that gets us no closer to understanding what it is. I think, at the core, meditation is just being alone with your thoughts. I think one of the common misconceptions about meditation is that it is about learning to control your mind. In my experience it is quite the contrary. It is about learning to get out of your own way. What the heck does that mean? That is where this dogma idea comes in for me. If the idea of meditating is to get out of our own way, dogma is actually putting steps IN the way. Technique. Levels. Steps. Gear. Stuff.

The number one thing I hear from people considering mediation is that they “don’t know how to do it”. So they take a class. They buy a book or a tape. They seek out a guru (who you jivin’). They grade themselves based on how long they can stay sitting. I remember distinctly being in a conversation where everyone was standing around comparing how long they meditate for. I don’t think people were intending to brag but they were measuring and comparing. We’re good at that. So we do things to “push” ourselves to sit longer. Longer is better, right? I’ll be more relaxed and centered, right? Stress melts away, right? I’m get one up on this life thing, right?

All I can relate here is my own experience. By saying this line of thinking is right or wrong would contradict my central theme. All these thoughts are valid and important. Any ‘steps’ are valid and important. But to me that is what meditation is. It is whatever comes up. Noticing. For me it can be a sitting meditation but I also feel like I get the same benefit out of going for a bike ride or walk, listening to music, taking a shower, gardening, cooking, even mowing the lawn or doing chores. I find when I get out of my own way my mind comes up with some pretty wild stuff, like the ‘bacon’ movie or this post.

So what is meditation? Whatever works for you.

In my own meditation, when I notice I’m trying not to try, I start laughing.

Trilogy

Trilogy

Like many restless minds before me I was at the point in my life where I could no longer see the point of it all. I found myself asking the big questions. What is my purpose in the universe? What is the meaning of life? I didn't know how to begin answering these questions so my mind went back to stories from my childhood and tales of ancient heroes. One problem. I didn't know of any dragons to slay, any damsels to rescue, any towns being terrorized by a horrible beast, or any souls trapped in the underworld. So much for that. I decided to look for meaning in the meaningless. The benign. My shoulders slumped but then an old adage popped to mind, "breakfast is the most important meal of the day". Maybe that's it. I know mom is always right. My quest began.

I started where all quests should, at the beginning. Every morning for the past eight years my day has started my getting my son a bowl of his favorite breakfast cereal. Wait. Cereal. Serial. Cereal. Serial. It can't be that easy. Could the meaning of life be hidden in homophones? I set to work combining the two concepts. Breakfast cereal and the Serialist style of composition made popular by Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Webern, and Berg. The twists and turns of dealing with each type of cereal/serial started to give me a glimmer of insight into the strings that bind everything but I still found myself feeling empty. Fine. Everything is connected. So what? With a pounding headache I took an aspirin and decided to go to yoga class. Yoga has always helped me find some stillness.

That day the yoga class was particularly intense (which sounds like an oxymoron to non-yoga folk) so I decided to stop over at a breakfast place close to the yoga studio after class. I had brought a backpack with me that had a book and some manuscript paper in it. A waitress came and filled my coffee cup. I got out my book and started reading. I must have gotten sucked in because the waitress came back and asked if I was ready to order. I hadn’t taken a look at the menu yet so she topped off my coffee cup and left. After a quick glance at the menu I chose what I was going to order. When the waitress returned I placed my order and she topped off my coffee cup. I relaxed back into my booth and started reading again. I was feeling very at peace for the first time today.

After about 15 minutes the waitress returned with my order and warmed up my coffee again. I ate my breakfast.  When I was finished I pulled out the manuscript paper and began to think. I was hoping to be struck with inspiration but no ideas were really coming to me. The waitress returned to get my plate, topped off my coffee, left my check and headed back to the kitchen.

By now I was starting to feel the effects of the coffee. I stared at the manuscript paper. As caffeine is known to do it was starting to make my eyes dart back and forth and it made tracking the five little black lines on the paper difficult. I was still feeling the after glow of the yoga class and I was in a state of inner peace but my body was definitely not at peace at all. I’m not sure how much coffee I drank but I was starting the sweat and my feet were shuffling.

Suddenly the humor in the strange juxtaposition of those two feelings hit me all at once. I had a deep sense of inner peace but was very caffeinated. I laughed out loud. Fueled by prana and caffeine I put pencil to paper. In about 15 minutes I had it. The piece I was hoping for. Caffeinated Om.  After I was done I felt a deep sense of satisfaction.  Was coffee and yoga the answer?  Something was still missing.  I was hoping coffee and yoga would give life meaning and it had helped but alas...

As heroes are want to do I decided it was time to return to the source. A physical quest into the deep dark woods. What did I hope to find there? I wasn't sure but I was determined to find out. I bundled up and headed out into the snowy forest armed with only my iPhone and my earnest curiosity. My quest took me deep into the woods. The journey was hard. It was cold and the snow was deep. What I found there changed my life forever but I also got more than I bargained for. I had found the meaning of life but was I ready to see the truth? Was I prepared to see the interconnectedness of everything in the universe? Was I ready to wake up?

as printed in The Chicago Progressive

10

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”  Lao Tzu

Over the course of the past couple of weeks, in various things that I've been reading, I've come across the concept of empathy. I decided to research the topic further and found myself WAY out of my depth. I had assumed there was quite a bit of research on it but not as much as I found. Initially this made me feel overwhelmed but then a question popped to mind. Why is this? I think it might be because we have this idea in our culture of empathy as some kind of magic power. Maybe the volumes and reams of writings on it are an attempt to show that it is not magic at all. The common thread in many of the things I read though is that empathy, in the simplest sense, just means identifying someone else's feelings or emotions and relating them back to your own.

As Brené Brown so eloquently stated, there is difference between sympathy and empathy. In her words “empathy drives connection and sympathy drives disconnection.” In other words sympathy is being an outside observer. Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Sian Bielock talks about the concept in terms of embodied cognition in that emotions contain outwardly visible cues and part of empathy is reading and identifying with someone else’s “body language.” In her research she talks about how being able to identify with someone’s feelings actually makes our brain behave similarly to having those feelings ourselves. Think of being embarrassed for someone or being sad for someone that you don’t even know. This is not a detached “feeling sorry” (i.e. sympathy). In these cases you are putting yourself in the shoes of the other person and actually feeling sad or embarrassed on a chemical level. This goes for positive emotions too.  

When I think about what all of this has in common with my concept of the “fluid normal” it is about being present. When I talk about being present I'm not talking about it as some sort of mystical meditative present. I'm thinking it was more of it in terms of the Lao Tzu quote above. Living in the past or the future means you are not being observant of the present. Remember from a past post I talked about how Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that the brain has a finite amount of processing power. Spending brainpower thinking about the past and future takes away from the attention you can spend on the present.  Spending more brainpower on the present can mean seeing something in another person but more importantly in might mean seeing something in yourself that you can reflect on and relate to others. If your emotional reaction to things is muted, then so will be your ability to be empathetic to the feeling in someone else. 

As a digression, I think smartphones are an empathy killer... but there is probably an app for that.

So then empathy is not magic at all. Quite the contrary. I think we see it as some sort of witchcraft because we are so disconnected with the present that our ability to see ourselves in others is compromised. Remember, we are all sides of the same coin or reflections of each other. There is a great Alan Watts quote, “the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.” To me love in this context is not an “I Love You” kind of love but rather a love of the moment. Brené Brown talks about it as experiencing the moment non-judgmentally. Think of love then as a non-judgmental acceptance of the moment. This certainly doesn’t mean that you have to LIKE every moment, but the moment is the moment and you can only influence the future by how you deal with the now.  

In all of this the key in my mind is being in the moment with yourself. This deepens your connection with others.