As a result of reduced travel and increasing business closure, pollution levels are dropping all over the world, and the environment is thriving. As humans everywhere are forced to self-isolate due to the coronavirus pandemic, lowering pollution levels have led to the unexpected prevailing of nature. Sir David Attenborough wrote that " Humans are a plague on the Earth that need to be controlled..." Yet many see that this pandemic is the chance to repair and strengthen relationships with each other and our planet. This down time gives us opportunity for introspection, a cardinal opportunity, to have a look at where we have been an where we are headed. For about 500 years we have been trapped in the science myth wherein anything that couldn't be weighed or measured was simply discarded as invalid. We collectively pretended that our numinous and spiritual instincts could simply be ignored. By ignoring that heroic half of our identity we have become cold and indifferent and riddled with inner turmoil while we tried to justify the trashing the environment and murdering hundreds of millions of people with our weapons of mass destruction. Individually and collectively we ignored the shadow self, by preteneding that our greed and self deceit, was acceptable in the name of progress.
“We experience ourselves our
thoughts and feelings as something separate from the Whole we call the
universe. This is actually an
optical illusion of consciousness. It's like a prison
for us. Our task is to free ourselves from this prison by widening our
Circle of Compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of
nature in its beauty. This is the only foundation for our Inner Peace
and Security”
- Phil Borges quoting Albert Einstein
It is as if nature is offering us one more chance to see what a mess we have made and understand that the unsustainable must fail. We are standing on the brink of and environmental calamity that could make the carona virus seem trivial. We must reconnect to Earth, to each other, and to ourselves with caring and compassion. Compassion may be of crucial importance for our individual physical and psychological health. Understanding compassion as a moral emotion intimately tied to the question of ethics and the cultivation of ethical sensibility. Joseph Campbell said we live in a time without an adequate mythology suitable to live by. Whether we're aware of it or not, we long for wisdom and love, and for knowledge of what seems to exist just beyond what we know as our reality. This other universe is commonly called non-ordinary reality and it is natural for humans to have questions about the forces of nature, the meaning of life, purpose, self, identity, death, and knowledge of the divine. Once every people in the world believed that the sun and moon were divine. We want to know about ancient myths aboutcreation, and the elements of water, fire, earth, and air, as well as plants and animals and the wisdom of ancestors. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human form or other characteristics to beings other than humans, particularly deities and animals. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations and natural forces likes seasons and the weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices. Most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters, some dating back to very ancient times.The last of several great ice ages began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch. Roughly 20,000 years ago the great ice sheets that buried much of Asia, Europe and North America stopped their creeping advance. The Holocene is the name given to the recent 10,000 to 12,000 years of the Earth's history -- the time since the end of the last major glacial advance. The edge of the sea ice is a productive zone for the phytoplankton, and zooplankton, and as the ice gradually retreated, many other species exploit this enormous supply of food and the ice edge abounds in animal and bird life. And on land during the Early Holocene melting ice triggered the development of massive expansion of grasses and forest lands. Plants, animals and humans flourished. By learning to plant and harvest crops, hunter-gatherers became farmers. As the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they developed the first forms of government, architecture, philosophy, and religions. This also marks a very big change in the idea of ownership and property. Ownership became the central part of politics (domination and dominion). The rich began to get richer, and this trend continued until today the bulk of the World's Wealth is controlled by as few as 1% of the population. Usually the employ middle management to maximize their profit margins, which amounts to a kind of dehumanization. Society itself seems to be increasingly disconnected from our intuition and controlled by bad science, propaganda and media violence. The pharmaceutical industry has rapidly grown into the worlds most profitable business. "Magic is any sufficiently advanced technology." -Arthur C. Clarke Now that we have looked into the down side of our plight, what about the upside? The act of entering certain states of consciousness has the ability to affect the objective world around us. During the mid-20th century, advancements in theoretical physics led to a new view of reality among quantum physicists. From the 1950s the scientific study of the nervous system made huge advances, mainly because of the progress achieved in other and related fields, such as computational neuroscience, electrophysiology, and molecular biology. Neuroscientists were able to study the nervous system's structure, functions, development, abnormalities, and ways it can be altered. Neuroscience, also known as Neural Science, is the study of how the nervous system develops, its structure, and what it does. Neuroscientists focus on the brain and its impact on behavior and cognitive functions. Emotional intelligence shares the neuroscience behind what’s going on inside your head. Recent developments in quantum physics provide us with more answers as to how reality works. Apparently there is an interplay between our local space-time reality and human consciousness, and objects are not really solid. Quantum theory proves that it is the act of observation itself that causes a wave function to collapse into a particle. This is called the observer effect. An over-simplification of this discovery implies that physical reality depends on consciousness. That implies that we stand at the threshold of a revolution in thinking that transcends anything that has happened before. Bringing body-mind techniques to the forefront of modern healing practices through a lens filtered from training in a variety of physical sciences, such as biology, neuroscience, bio-engineering, and psychology. In this way science and spirituality, creates and strengthens the link between these two fields. It shares the benefits of neuroscience and ancient techniques of self-help, personal growth and transformation, and healing. Its purpose is to transcend the dullness and disenchantment which has become endemic to modern living and replace it with a renewed and authentic sense of awe and wonder and enthusiasm, and restore our sense of meaning and purpose in life. Dehumanization is the act of degrading people with respect to their best qualities - depriving them of individuality, compassion, or civility: Once certain groups are stigmatized as evil, morally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of those groups becomes more psychologically acceptable. Restraints against aggression and violence begin to disappear. Not surprisingly, dehumanization increases the likelihood of violence and may cause a conflict to escalate out of control. Once a violence break over has occurred, it may seem even more acceptable for people to do things that they would have regarded as morally unthinkable before. Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment. This can lead to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide. Dehumanization is also a psychological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral consideration - Jews in the eyes of Nazis, - slaves were also dehumanized by their abysmal condition. Science has been blamed for the dehumanization of modern life. By the first half of the nineteenth century our society was already well enmeshed in that process by means of which the strenuous activity of hard-headed industrialists and bankers, possessed by a single-minded devotion to making money and to extending their power through the production and use of complicated machines and other devices, as well as political manipulations. As a result of the activity of these people and of their twentieth-century successors a new type of world has come into existence, the world of the modern urban industrial state where practically everything is commodified to be sold to the highest bidder. We have mostly become mere employees of the system, mere “units” or objects or commodities, interchangeable, and are condemned for all our working lives to purely mechanical activities in which nothing properly human exists and whose performance is not in any way consistent with our inner and personal aptitudes and identities. The denial that man possesses a capacity for metaphysical or spiritual knowledge typifies much of what passes for philosophy in our times. Conformity is the social form which we have adopted, and it cuts our consciousness to fit its needs, its imperatives tailor our experience. Part of the problem here is that western philosophy has developed the idea of “ordinary consciousness,” of which anything beyond this range is to be labeled pathological or even schizophrenic. The various the wisdom traditions eventually became tribalism where each faith group feels superior. The church took over Pagan gods, holy places, holidays or "holy days," and customs, in order to reconcile people to the new religion, and vigorously persecuted "magic, sorcery, and superstition" of all sorts. Religious dogma usually discourages or preempts personal questioning of the rules. Even when the end of life draws near we are expected to accept on faith a set of cut and dried answers about the hereafter. Coming into being and passing away remains as the ultimate mystery for many of us. But there is a comprehensive collection of information and resources about the Near-Death Experience, which includes a huge collection of NDE accounts. But we are here and now in a time of global crisis where people are forced to live in isolation and separation. We would do well to use this time to examine the growing body of evidence that there is a connection between belief, perception, energy fields we can employ to rewire our brains and recondition our bodies to make lasting changes to live a more, compassionate, and authentic lifestyle. Links:
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Showing posts with label compassion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label compassion. Show all posts
Thursday, July 9, 2020
Compassion
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Links of the Year
Informative - controversial
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Saturday, December 1, 2012
Brain Plasticity
Once upon a time people spent most of their efforts finding food and shelter. But life has become so complex that we need to deal with a large array of situations and problems that our ancestors could not have imagined. The pace of our lives seems to keep speeding up and causing problems. These problems can seem to outweigh our ability to understand and act accordingly. So we need to develop some strategy to cope. In just the last few decades we are facing what seems like an onslaught of big problems that are profoundly affecting the quality of life globally. Many believe that our entire species could be at risk. Yet this topic is conspicuously missing in even the most important political campaigns. We seem dazed and ineffectual as if we lack the will or understanding to even discuss making necessary changes. Such personal distress and withdrawal behavior needs to be examined. But what goes on inside us often seems mysterious or hidden. Biofeedback is a technique using signals from our bodies to find out about the internal mysteries. Fast brainwaves are associated with stress-related hormones such as cortisol, and a high level of anxiety causes decreased learning ability, inhibits the immune system and increases homocysteine and bad cholesterol levels. Slower brainwaves associate with "feel good" hormones such as serotonin. Chronic stress can be viewed as a delicate balance between the demands presented to us as we grasp them, and how we conceive our resources, our ability to react to those demands. It is the perception of these components that apparently triggers the release of cortisol to mobilize the body's physiological processes against attack or infection. Prolonged or chronic stress can cause various health problems, addictions, dissociation, and alienation. Demands that are perceived as overwhelming may cause us to enter into a vicious feedback loop. Our thoughts play tricks on us, leading to anxiety, which in turn brings about a new wave of disturbing and depressed thoughts leading to erratic behavior, causing unfulfilled demands, which leads to a new wave of disturbing thoughts, etc. If we change our thoughts, our perception of the demands or of our resources we can break this loop and engage the relaxation response. Fear, vulnerability and insecurity are part of the nature. Often our fear produces a withdrawal into a protection mode . Our fear may have come from our personal trauma and wounding that we carry, or from the cultural traumas that we live with. Without understanding fear, we build fortress of walled off relationships, all as attempts to find security or protect ourselves. To want to protect ourselves is an understandable thing which can help in some situations. But we can’t really protect ourselves fully from insecurity and so we also need the wisdom of insecurity and compassion. If fear is up - compassion down, and vice versa, so to cultivate compassion learn to work with your fears and to learn emotion regulation strategies as well as positive compassionate feelings. This could have enormous implications for society as a whole. This ability to relax and live in the face of uncertainty is learned a little bit at a time. As you befriend your fear, you say, “oh, this is fear.” After many times of noticing it or working with it, you start to say, “oh I know you, I know what fear is like, I know what insecurity is like” and you begin to relax. Eventually you understand that it is possible to be present and that awareness and compassion are bigger than the fear. So there comes a shift of identity from being lost in the fear to being able to be present with our insecurity and the tenderness of vulnerability. When we accept our genuine vulnerability we open in a way that allows for a wise and much more fully lived life. Compassion arises when someone brushes up against suffering and is a combination of empathy, feeling what another is feeling, and also an opening of the heart where there is a wanting to help in some way. As science reveals the benefits of cultivating compassion, it is starting to gain more prominence as something that could have a positive impact not just in our personal lives, but around the globe. One study has shown that experienced meditators show more activity in the Insula in response to stimuli that were meant to generate compassion. The Insula is part of the brain that is responsible for the awareness of our embodied emotions. This suggests that we can take advantage of the brain’s plasticity and by generating compassion, we can change our brain. It seems that a continued and intentional practice of compassion can not only change our lives individually, but the ripple effect can be significant. People do this every day by giving donations, making sandwiches for people on the street, helping someone across the street, visiting those who are dying, or even just offering a smile to someone who seems to be having a tough day. This intentional attention not only primes your mind to be more compassionate, but apparently can take advantage of your brain’s plasticity and change your brain Neuronal plasticity describes the capacity of neurons to grow and build new connections throughout our lives, depending on what we pay attention to. Can we train ourselves to be compassionate? A new study suggests the answer is yes. Cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples' mental states, say researchers. The use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) indicates that positive emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion can be learned in the same way as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport. The scans revealed that brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing compassion meditation. "Many contemplative traditions speak of loving-kindness as the wish for happiness for others and of compassion as the wish to relieve others' suffering. There is pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute. Human happiness and mental well-being doesn’t come from avoiding these changing circumstances, they happen to all of us. True happiness comes from the openness of heart, compassion, resiliency and mindfulness, the wisdom that we bring to it, that gives perspective and meaning. Our sufferings don’t define us. Most psychological suffering is optional. Empathy is a necessary precondition for compassion to arise but it is hard to pick up the distress of others when you are distressed. Compassion is a mixture of a feeling of love for another person, a wish to see that person happy. So if that person is suffering there is a desire to do something about it and to have a motivation to help. Compassion moves to pain and is a way of unconditional love which is love that is not conditioned to getting something back, or even wanting something back. If you feel compassion, your out of the way, and it's good for you, like a heroic act where there is a feeling close to real freedom. |
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