The Brain That Can Act Upon Itself

I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the brain and would still consider myself quite ignorant overall. One thing I came across really stood out for me because it might provide a bridge between science and spirituality.

I became familiar with Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. when I was reading a book called, The Brain That Changes Itself. This is a great book for opening up questions and doesn’t attempt to tie up everything nicely with a bow, but rather loosens up some stanch positions that we all might have.

Jeffrey Schwartz discovered that when he made some O.C.D. patients consciously aware that the compulsions they were having were caused by a misfiring in their brains, the patients could then exercise some control over those compulsions. In other words, they were able to separate from the compulsion through the understanding that there was the brain sending the signals and then there was the mind (consciousness), which was observing the signals. The really interesting part is that when the patients did not act on the compulsion, or at least not as quickly or as repetitively as they normally would, the brain actually started to lessen its misfiring over time and the compulsions became less and less. Now, I’m well aware that the conclusion of the brain creating consciousness; or a sense of awareness, and then being able to change or act upon itself as a result of this consciousness, is too simplistic and would never be accepted as such from a scientific standpoint, but so what.

It would explain in the most basic way how mindfulness works perhaps, by altering your brain; which is what creates our experience in the first place. You either change your brain through a chemical reaction (pharmaceuticals) or you can use the consciousness created by the brain to improve it. Trick is you have to actually identify this consciousness we seem to be and direct it in such a way as to make these changes.

Look at the language center of the brain and how when you lock onto a thought, as mentioned in a previous post, you start the process of thinking. How is this any different than O.C.D.? except O.C.D. patients seem to be exceptions outside of the norm in how the brain functions. See that the brain fires and creates thoughts and then there is the consciousness that notices the thoughts. If you then direct your consciousness to another part of your brain – and my bets are on the prefrontal cortex right at the moment – your life radically changes. I’ve done this enough to have proved it to myself, but I truly think the scientific understandings will make us more consciously aware and able to separate from the various brain signals that we wrongly identify with.

Questions We Generally Avoid

When these questions pop into my mind, in one form or another, it amazes me that I can conveniently ignore them sometimes and by ignoring them, I take seriously some of the other concepts of life that make things seem really complicated and urgent.

I’ve come to my own conclusions, or am at least in the process of meditating upon them.

1. Which came first the man or the sperm?

2. Am I alive? What is the difference between when my body is alive and dead?

3. Are all the cells of my body alive? If not, is it the cooperation of them all together that makes this “body” come alive? Are we defining alive correctly, or is what we call alive now, simply a more complex life form?

4. When does life start? If a sperm cell can be called alive and a female egg cell can be called alive, is a new human being just a continuation of LIFE?

5. Why is the sperm the smallest cell in the human body and the female egg, the largest?

6. Is my brain necessary for me to experience this world? Can I experience anything without the use of the brain?

Thinking

I recently went to hear Eckhart Tolle talk while he was here in Toronto. I found his talk overall very helpful and it did feel different to hear him in person, which I wasn’t sure would be the case.

From the whole two hour talk, one thing he said had the greatest impact on me. He mentioned there were people who can currently choose to stop thinking. He also stated that from his whole life his only real accomplishment was to be able to stop thinking, and even then he didn’t have that.

This thinking thing has been most confusing I think.

This is my experience of thinking. If we can catch ourselves in a fairly quiet mind moment; when the thoughts are not too intense or moving through our minds too quickly, we can catch ourselves doing a scan. A scan is where our consciousness; which is really more true of us, will allow a parade of thoughts to go by and then select one. It’s good to notice the thoughts are already there, we’re simply selecting.

Thinking is the act of attention on any given thought which then gives rise to other thoughts of a similar nature, or are somehow connected to the original thought.

Thinking is not something we do, it’s something that happens when we lock our attention onto a thought. Looking carefully at the process will have you clearly seeing how little control we have beyond the choice to engage or not engage, and few of us even have this option available to them at this time.

You need a certain level of consciousness to stop thinking. How does one become more conscious? By reading this you have already introduced into your mind some thoughts that will allow your mind to change your brain (more on this to follow), which creates consciousness, little by little or maybe all at once.

Potentiality

From mystics I’ve heard the statement in various forms: Everything that happens is good, or is the best thing that could have happened.

This has stumped me for years. I sensed that the mystics were right, so I continued to try to see this truth for myself.

At first I reconciled this with my different judgment of things, by assuming this thing that looks bad to me, is a necessary evil so to say. I realized that from a limited perspective, it’s impossible to see how it could also be called a good thing. Sometimes I’ve been able to see this myself, but mostly after the fact, very much after the fact.

After writing out “It all boils down to…” it became clear to me for the first time.

Again, I look to nature for the examples. A tree will always strive to become the best tree it can be. If a building goes up right beside it, the tree will be deprived of sunshine and this will hinder the expression of its potentiality. Imagine if trees were like humans. The stunted tree beside the building might stretch itself in otherwise unnatural ways to reach the sunlight. The mighty tree in the woods nearby might look with arrogance and contempt at the seemingly lesser tree in the city and judge it as less than itself, as guilty of doing hideous things that it would never do.

This understanding can be applied to the whole world. We are every bit a part of nature as a tree is, and we have within us the full potentiality of a human being. Our conditions, which include everything within and without, are the only thing holding back this full expression.

I know many people who are repulsed by the thought that if it could have played out better, it would have, but seeing this clearly is the key to forgiveness, which is understanding.

Everything truly unfolds to its fullest potential at any given moment.

In the expression of man, consciousness is what is developing currently, and this consciousness is what will allow man to know what he really is, and with that knowing he can then be what he really is, and this will be fully expressed in the world.

Everything is good, or the very best that it can be.

It boils down to….

There IS life force – call it what you will. This is the cause of everything; original cause. Everything already caused will influence new causes. So yes, environment affects creation, but only to the point where it can inhibit or allow it.

Man is a little different, but not much when you look closely at nature. Nature does everything in its power to allow the fullest expression of the life force, which expresses uniquely in each life form. Look at a crack in the sidewalk where nature will utilize any opportunity to express life, even as a weed. Man has a uniquely evolved brain and subsequent mind, meaning that the mind conditioning of man; which might be considered the equivalent to the instincts of animals and nature, can be risen above due to its very nature, and man can then be shown how to alter conditions to allow for a fuller expression of said life.

Everything in this world is meant to point back to this and make it so clear, that we do rise above the conditioning and further evolve the consciousness of man. Until man rises above his conditioning, his potential is limited by that conditioning. Life force can only continue to express outwardly in as much as current conditions will allow.

Responsibility

Two things have compelled me to write about this thing called responsibility. One, the other day my Son, asked me what ‘sue’ meant. I explained it the best I could, but what mostly came out of my examples were; people relinquishing responsibility for their lives. Secondly, I have felt recently the actual power and relief of an act of responsibility and it brought about a whole new perspective for me on the subject.

What I had done over the Christmas holidays, is sign up for what was promoted as the biggest gift exchange ever attempted in North America. It was a $10.00 limit and sounded like a lot of fun. I decided to sign up and within a day or two was given the email address of my swapper. She seemed nice, lived in NS and we exchanged general details of our lives as well as some of our interests; to help come up with ideas for gifts in the exchange.

I bought my gift and sent it priority mail, with a tracking number, in hopes she would get it before Christmas. Her last email to me was thanking me for sending my gift off with a promise that she would get back to me with her tracking number also. I never heard from her again, though my tracking number confirmed that she did receive the package from me.

Once it became clear beyond a reasonable doubt that I had been stiffed, I felt really irritated and didn’t enjoy the feeling at all. I pondered the possibilities that something had happened in this person’s life, making a gift exchange with a stranger a very low priority indeed. I had a hard time otherwise fathoming how this person could so blatantly go through a process of basically stealing from me.

With a little time I was able to send her an email where I professed bewilderment that she had dropped the ball like she had, but that I hoped she had a good Christmas regardless and I understood that she was only doing the very best she was capable of doing. Yes, on some level I do believe that if we can do better, we do, and if we can’t, we don’t.

But, I still didn’t feel any better. It would come back to me from time to time and it bothered me, a lot! I wanted to write back a different email, telling her what I really thought of her character and how I didn’t have that kind of money to give away to a complete stranger with nothing in return, and I just wanted basically, revenge.

And then it hit me finally, something I knew all along, but conveniently ignored. I was responsible. Yes, responsible for it happening to me. I knew there was a possibility of being left high and dry, but like the gambler who understands intellectually the risk of putting that big bet down and yet goes for it anyway, I gambled and lost. I was responsible for putting myself in that situation to begin with. I said yes. I said yes and there was no one else to blame but myself. Then wonder of wonders, I felt better.

What actually made me feel better was to have the control back in my hands again. When I made someone else responsible, I was at their mercy.

Looking back with true honesty and reflection I can see that I have said yes to the things I both enjoy and don’t enjoy, and no to the things I am happy to have avoided, or lament the absence of in my life.

It might be tempting to say, “I have enough responsibility in my life, enough things and people that I am responsible for, that it would be nice if everyone else lived up to their end of the bargain and were equally responsible.” If you were truly already acting responsible, then if this day ever came, the only thing that would change is your response to these same people. You would continue to respond appropriately; response able.

Deep down, we feel bad about ourselves a lot of the time and it is very hard to take any more responsibility onto ourselves. Where it might seem that admitting we said yes to a relationship that has turned out destructive, is going to further depress us, the opposite is actually true. For only if you have said yes, is it equally true that you have the power to say no. We also said yes to the job where we might feel undervalued and overworked, and yes to the current dynamics of our families and friendships. If there is any area in our lives where we feel compelled to deny responsibility and proclaim that we had no choice, this will be the area where we will feel powerless. So, first and foremost, we must be responsible for accepting our responsibility.

True responsibility is a knowing of our own power and control over our lives. We say yes or no constantly, but most of our problems stem from doing this unconsciously. We say yes or no to things out of our conditioning, our belief that these are the things we must do or not do and it appears there are no viable options aside from these. Or we do not give enough thought or awareness to our choices and inevitably we end up choosing some things that are ultimately not in our best interest.

We vaguely see the potentials, yet we toss the coin up into the air and hope like hell it’s the outcome we desire. When it’s not, we want to blame the coin or the person tossing it rather than look at how we agreed to the tossing of the coin in the first place.

Responsibility is a scary, beautiful, liberating experience.

With that said, this writer takes no responsibility for your response to this article. What you decide to do with it is your responsibility, as it always was.

Hello world!

Just some thoughts seeking expression, do with them what you will.