Call us toll free: +1 4062079616
How To Be Spiritual In A Material World
Call us toll free: +1 4062079616
04 May 2024
Comments: 0

Just This Moment

I am having one of those days where my thoughts are leaning towards anticipating negative scenarios and engaging in the “what if’s” the mind is so compelled to do. And while, at this point, I know enough of the machinations of the mind to not go down those rabbit holes, it still can nag away at me as it was doing on this particular day.

While I have many techniques I use to bring my mind back into balance, something happened quite naturally on this day that really struck me. After a walk with my husband where I had laid out my potential what if’s, we made our way over to gather eggs and look at what was happening with the starts and seeds we had recently planted.

It took no time at all for my anticipating mind to tune into something life-giving, shifting me out of a chaotic mind to one quite naturally and easily at peace — a mind at ease as it found itself immersed in the bigger picture of life. All of this with no effort on my part, other than to be in relationship with something greater than myself, while spontaneously repeating over and over, “just this,” as I moved through the garden.

The “just this” was my way of focusing only on what was right before me — whether that was the lettuce I was picking, the conversation I was having or the observations I was making of the seedlings, — in effect, immersing my mind in the right now versus the “what if” future.

We take whatever we think to be true as something to believe in and act on, even when all signs point to the fact our minds have gone off the rails with fear, anxiety and judgment. And while in this day and age there is no end to solutions for an imbalanced mind from medication to meditation, we often skip right over the most accessible and effortless of approaches to healing our minds — the natural world.

Our very home and all the elements and conditions and living beings that we have co-evolved with since we first appeared on the planet are the clearest reflection of who we are, where we come from, and what we need. Why would we go anywhere else to gain perspective and to ground ourselves in truth?

We have been conditioned to believe that our well-being resides in a screen, a pill, more stuff, more prestige, more likes, etc. We have come to experience ourselves as separate from, and therefore not needing the support and the tutelage of what Earth has to offer us. Unfortunately, many of us have strayed so far and for so long, we have come to see the natural world as foreign, dark and scary, an enemy as opposed to an ally.

We are nature herself. We are created and sustained by the same force. To know this is to tap into the good news that even if we have forgotten, even if we never learned to begin with, all we have to do is to put ourselves in the presence of the natural world for it to do its work on us.

Find a reason every single day to linger, even for one minute, somewhere outside. Go without agenda. Go and be a listener. Go and allow yourself to get lost in the breeze, a bird singing, some fragrance, a starry night, the feel of rain on your skin. And say to yourself, “just this.”

 

 

Original article here

28 Apr 2024
Comments: 0

There’s Power In How We Think About Things

 

When you walk or drive down a city street, what you are seeing all around you are manifestations of thoughts. Every building began as an idea in somebody’s mind.

Someone acquired the land. Someone designed the house. Someone had the idea to organize people together to build the house, either to make money or to live in it. The trees you see were planted for shade in the yard, on the sidewalk, along the street. The pavement that we accept as a natural part of our landscape was conceptualized, designed, engineered, installed, and is maintained via thought.

Thoughts create our physical reality, and they also create our larger reality. During ancient times, when there was an electrical storm, people perceived the thunder and lightning as the voice of a powerful deity.

If somebody got hit by lightning, that proved to others that the person had committed some crime or displeased the deity. When the thunder rumbled loudly nearby, people knelt to the ground and cried out their prayers.

They knew, when they saw the awesome streaks of light across the sky, that they were seeing the finger of their god writing messages or expressing an opinion. Today thunder and lightning are seen and heard as the discharge of electrical energy between ions in the air and the oppositely charged ground.

If somebody is struck by lightning, it is either due to their own stupidity (standing on the golf course with a club in the air) or just bad luck. If the storm is severe, we take cover out of fear of a dangerous natural phenomenon, rather than a wrathful god.

The same event creates a completely different feeling, thought, and behavior in the people who observe it today. The point is, the experience of reality is different, and what makes it different is thought.

A few years ago, I spoke at a conference sponsored by Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After the presentation, my wife, Louise, and I went for a walk through the Old City, down through the Arab Quarter where most of the tourist shops are.

It was a Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, but not being Islamic, we doubted this would affect our sightseeing and shopping. It being a very hot May day, Louise was wearing a comfortable pair of walking shorts. As we moved through the streets, one shopkeeper came out of his store and started shouting at Louise, calling her a “Western pig,” a “whore,” and a “blasphemer.” “Don’t you know it’s a holy day, you bitch?” he screamed. “You have no right to show your legs!”

I mention this culture clash because the shopkeeper’s reality was that a woman (who, in Islam, has a different social status than women in most Western cultures) was flagrantly breaking the law.

Louise’s reality held that it was a hot day in a tourist center and she was dressed comfortably in conservative shorts, according to Western standards, and being harassed for it.

My reality told me that a man was displaying bad manners and disrespect for my culture and religion, for women in general, and for another human being in particular, by shouting instead of quietly coming up to us and presenting his case.

We were all correct.

And so now all of humanity is presented with a dizzying set of conflicting realities. What we choose to do about them will determine our future as a species. Consider these various ideas different people might have about life:

  • “We need electricity to be comfortable and maintain our way of life,” or “Producing electricity with fossil fuel is pumping billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leading to global warming and extremely destructive weather patterns.”
  • “Being able to drive where and when we want to at a low cost is freedom,” or “Americans’  driving habits are feeding the destruction of the planet.”
  • “All of nature is here to serve the needs of humankind,” or “Humans are no more or less important to the planet than any other life-form.”

These ideas are grounded in the stories — the myths of our culture, our paradigms, our beliefs — that form the core of what we tell ourselves is “reality.” Stories, in this context, are anything we add to our original experience that alters what we think is going on, or changes how we think about things.

Since so much of what we call reality is subjective, there are few right or wrong stories; instead, there are useful and not useful stories. This is dependent upon what culture you belong to, your status in your culture, and your relationship to the natural world and vision of the future.

Increasingly, the stories we’ve been telling ourselves for centuries are now moving from the useful to the not useful category. An example of such a story is the biblical order to have as many children as possible. In the days of Noah and Abraham, the tribe with the largest number of young men to create an army was usually the tribe that survived.

“Be fruitful and multiply” was a formula for cultural survival, even though in nearly all cases it then led to “and when you run out of resources and living space, kill off your neighbor and take theirs.”

We’ve rationalized this over the years by saying that this conquering and dominating lifestyle has brought us so many good things: television, visiting the moon, modern appliances, the eradication of many diseases.

Back when the planet had only a few million people on it (the world hit a population of 1 billion during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson), a person could probably have built a case for the value of huge families, growing populations, and the conquest of nearby (or distant) lands. It might have been of questionable morality, but it could have been defended by the norms of a culture that had survival and growth as its primary goals and had not yet hit the limits of nature. Now, however, such stories imperil the very culture from which they’re derived.

The ancient Greeks changed the world and established the foundations of Western Civilization with the idea of integrating democracy and the ownership of enslaved people. In fact, every time a culture has been transformed, since or before then and for better or worse, it’s been because of an idea, an insight, a new understanding of how things are, and of what is possible.

Ideas preceded every revolution, every war, every transformation, and every invention.

So, the good news is that if we re-define our cultural norms, re-tell the stories that make up the reality we follow, then humanity’s behaviors actually can change to conform to the new stories. It starts with us!

 

 

Original article here

23 Apr 2024
Comments: 0

How Did Consciousness Evolve? An Illustrated Guide

 

What is consciousness, and who (or what) is conscious — humans, nonhumans, nonliving beings? Which varieties of consciousness do we recognize? In their book “Picturing the Mind,” Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka, two leading voices in evolutionary consciousness science, pursue these and other questions through a series of “vistas” — over 65 brief, engaging texts, presenting some of the views of poets, philosophers, psychologists, and biologists, accompanied by Anna Zeligowski’s lively illustrations.

Each picture and text serves as a starting point for discussion. In the texts that follow, excerpted from the vista “How Did Consciousness Evolve?” the authors offer a primer on evolutionary theory, consider our evolutionary transition from nonsentient to sentient organisms, explore the torturous relation between learning studies and consciousness research, and ponder the origins and evolution of suffering and the imagination.

Evolutionary Theory

Evolutionary theory is a deceptively simple theory, which is why many people who have only a cursory acquaintance with it are nevertheless convinced that they fully understand it. Its basic assumptions are indeed simple. The first assumption, which was systematically explored first by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and then by Charles Darwin, is that there was a single ancestor, or very few ancestors, of all living organisms. This is the principle of Descent with modification: all organisms are descended, with modifications, from ancestors that lived long ago.

The second principle, which is central to Darwin’s theory, is the principle of Natural selection: organisms with hereditary variations that render them better adapted to their local environment than others in their population leave behind more offspring. Darwin showed that this simple process, when applied recursively, can account for the evolution of complex organs like the eye, and, with the addition of some plausible auxiliary hypotheses, can explain the diversity of living species and their geographic distribution. In the last paragraph of “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” Darwin summarized his ideas:

 

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less- improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

 

Once he put forward his ideas, various scientists tried to crystallize and summarize Darwin’s view. For example, in the twentieth century, John Maynard Smith suggested that four basic processes underlie evolution by natural selection:

(i) Multiplication: an entity gives rise to two or more others.

(ii) Variation: not all entities are identical.

(iii) Heredity: like usually begets like. Variant X usually begets offspring X, but infrequently begets offspring Y.

(iv) Competition: some heritable variations affect the success of entities in persisting and multiplying more than others.

Although it sounds simple, when we unpack these processes, we appreciate how complex evolutionary theory actually is. There are multiple ways in which reproduction occurs and there are different types of inherited variations. Maynard Smith, like most 20th-century biologists, focused on DNA- based genetic variability, but since the early 2000s, the idea that variations in DNA drive all evolutionary change has been abandoned; it is now recognized that heritable variations in DNA, in patterns of gene expression, in behavior, and in culture are all important. Variation in these hereditary units can arise randomly or can be partially directed because heredity and development can be coupled. For example, stressful conditions during development can induce changes in gene expression that can be transmitted to the next generation. It has also been accepted that there are multiple targets and levels of selection within individuals, between individuals and between lineages, and that organisms have fuzzy boundaries. (Are the symbiotic bacteria in your gut part of you?) Crucially, organisms are not passive subjects of natural selection — they actively construct the environment in which they are selected and bequeath these ecological legacies to their offspring.

 

As evolutionary biologist Mary Jane West-Eberhard put it: “Genes are followers, not leaders, in evolution.”

 

How, then, should evolutionary analysis proceed? We could start by tracing evolutionary change at the molecular-genetic, physiological-developmental, behavioral, or cultural levels. However, since organisms adjust to changing conditions in the external world and in their own genome by altering their behavior and physiology, cultural and behavioral adaptations frequently precede genetic changes and shape the conditions in which variations are selected. Genetic changes that stabilize or fine-tune the behavioral or developmental changes follow. As evolutionary biologist Mary Jane West-Eberhard put it: “Genes are followers, not leaders, in evolution.”

In the 21st century, this integrative approach to evolutionary reasoning, which incorporates the effects of variations in DNA, development, behavior, and culture is being embraced by a growing number of biologists, including us.

 

 

 

Evolutionary Transitions

How should we think about the evolutionary transition from non-sentient to sentient organisms? There are several useful ways of carving up the living world and thinking about evolutionary transitions between forms and ways of life. Ecologists distinguish between modes of living such as terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial modes, and study the transitions from water to land or from land to air. In contrast, evolutionary biologists John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry have described major evolutionary transitions in terms of qualitative changes in the way information is stored, processed, and transmitted. Examples of such transitions include the transition from single cells to multicellular organisms, and the transition from nonlinguistic communication to communication through symbolic language.

The philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests another way of thinking about broad patterns of life. He distinguishes four progressively sophisticated, hierarchically nested types of selection, which underlie what he calls a “generate-and- test- tower.” Organisms such as bacteria, sponges, and plants, which can adapt evolutionarily through natural selection, dwell on the first floor; the second floor is inhabited by organisms such as snails, fish, and mice, which, in addition to selection during evolutionary history, learn through trial-and-error and selective reinforcement during their lifetime. Organisms that can also select among imagined actions and scenarios, like elephants, dolphins, and great apes, live on the third floor, while human beings, with the extra capacity to select among symbolically represented possibilities and who are subject to cultural selection, live on the fourth.

None of these classifications explicitly mentions sentience. Sentience is, however, central to the view of Aristotle, which we described in the first vista. Aristotle distinguished between three goal-directed and hierarchically nested types of “soul,” or modes of living organization: the “nutritive-reproductive” soul of non-sentient organisms like plants, the goals of which are survival and reproduction; the “sensitive” soul of sentient organisms, whose goals are the fulfillment of desires and appetites; and the “rational” soul of humans, whose goal is to satisfy abstract symbolic values such as justice and beauty. In our book “The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul,” we reframed Aristotle’s hierarchy within the framework of evolutionary theory, and offered a unifying scheme for explaining the evolutionary transitions to life, sentience, and reflectivity.

An Evolutionary-Transition Approach to Consciousness

How can we develop an evolutionary theory of consciousness when there is so much disagreement over what consciousness is and which organisms are conscious? Our way of approaching this question takes as its inspiration the way the Hungarian chemist Tibor Gánti tackled a similar problem, the problem of how life (another elusive notion) originated. Gánti started by compiling a list of capacities that, in spite of the different views about the nature of life, are generally deemed jointly sufficient for the simplest, “minimal” life. He then built a theoretical model of a minimal living system that implements all these capacities.

Following Gánti’s methodology, our first task is to identify a list of capacities that, when all are present, most consciousness researchers would regard as sufficient for an organism to be deemed minimally conscious. Such an organism would be able to perceive, feel, and think, from its own private point of view.

A consensus list of consciousness capacities is a step forward, but identifying each and every capacity may be difficult, and a list does not tell us how they interact to form a conscious being. If we could find a single system-property — an evolutionary marker of consciousness — that indicates that the organism has evolved all the capacities in the consensus list, we would be in a much better position. Finding such a single, diagnostic transition marker would make it possible to identify the simplest evolved conscious being, reconstruct the processes and structures that underlie it, and figure out how they interact. If we can follow the evolution of the marker and therefore the evolution of consciousness, we can discover when and how the conscious mode of being originated.

As we will see, evolutionary transition markers to the living, the living conscious, and (tentatively) the living-conscious-rational modes of being (the three Aristotelian “souls”) have been suggested. Each of these evolutionary transition markers entails a consensus list of capacities that are sufficient to allow us to ascribe the corresponding mode of being to an entity.

Learning and Consciousness: An Unlikely Relation?

Is there a single, tangible property that when present in an entity means that all the characteristics of consciousness are in place — an evolutionary transition marker of consciousness? We believe that we have identified such a marker. Our marker is a form of open-ended associative learning, which we call unlimited associative learning (UAL).

Before we describe this marker and argue our case, we must say a few words about learning and about the torturous relation between learning studies and consciousness research in the 20th century.

Learning, an experience-dependent change in behavior, requires (i) that a sensory stimulus leads to a change in the internal state of the system; (ii) that a memory trace of the internal change is stored through a process that involves positive or negative reinforcement; and (iii) that later exposures to the same or a similar stimulus are manifest as changes to the threshold of the behavioral response. Characterizing these processes, the relations between them, and the mechanisms underlying them in living organisms is a complex endeavor. Just as with evolutionary processes, where the nature of reproduction, variation production, and selection have to be qualified, the study of learning requires that we consider the kinds of stimuli that are attended to, the mechanisms of storage and of recall, the relevant rewards and punishments and the ways the organism responds.

 

Nineteenth-century biologists thought that being able to learn by making new behavioral adjustments or modifying old ones was a criterion of consciousness.

 

Nineteenth-century biologists thought that being able to learn by making new behavioral adjustments or modifying old ones was a criterion of consciousness. This way of thinking changed dramatically with the advent of behaviorism, a strand of experimental psychology that dominated the English-speaking world from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1970s. Behaviorists redefined psychology as the study of learned behavior, scornfully objecting to any mention of terms like consciousness or mind. An influential psychology textbook from 1953 explained that notions like “mind” and “ideas” “are being invented on the spot for the sole purpose of providing spurious explanations. . . . Since mental or psychic events are asserted to lack the dimensions of physical science, we have an additional reason for rejecting them” (B. F. Skinner, “Science and Human Behavior”).

 

 

The behaviorists focused on two types of associative learning. In the first, classical or Pavlovian conditioning (named after the physiologist Ivan Pavlov), an animal learns that something it perceives, which is of no relevance to it (a “neutral stimulus” in the behaviorists’ jargon), predicts a stimulus that invariably accompanies a reward or a punishment such as food or pain, to which it reflexively responds. For example, the smell of food that accompanies the reward (food) elicits the salivation reflex in a hungry dog. The sound of a buzzer (or bell), on the other hand, normally does not elicit salivation — it is “neutral” with respect to salivation. However, it will eventually elicit salivation, even when there is no smell of food, if the buzz repeatedly occurs before the smell. Pavlov measured the internal state of the dog by counting the number of drops of saliva at different stages of learning.

In the second type of associative learning, Skinnerian conditioning (named after the psychologist B. F. Skinner), an animal learns what to do in order get a reward or avoid a punishment (known in behaviorist jargon as positive or negative reinforcement). For example, a hungry rat can learn to press a lever in its cage if this action is followed by the delivery of food. In general, actions that are followed by a positive (or negative) outcome will be more (or less) likely to occur in the future, under similar circumstances.

Skinner’s experiments, like those of Pavlov, were conducted in drastically impoverished and artificial conditions, totally different from those in which animals live in the real world. Nevertheless, Skinner suggested that complex behavior, including the “verbal behavior” of humans (this was his term for language comprehension and production), is the result of a sequence of reinforcements.

 

Skinner’s experiments, like those of Pavlov, were conducted in drastically impoverished and artificial conditions, totally different from those in which animals live in the real world.

 

The increasing tensions between the obvious limitations and the grandiose pretensions of behaviorism eventually led to its demise. However, the ongoing study of associative learning led to new insights. For example, it was discovered that learning depends on how surprising, how unexpected, the predictive neutral stimulus or action is of the reinforcement. A totally predictable stimulus requires no learning, whereas one that does not match expectations is newsworthy. Learning in animals, on which machine- learning algorithms are patterned, involves the updating and minimization of mismatched expectations.

The study of associative learning today includes the investigation of the underlying cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms in ecologically relevant conditions such as the social conditions in which animals learn from each other. It is a rich and productive research program, which is no longer constrained by the behaviorists’ maxims. There is an irony in our (qualified) return to the 19th-century suggestion that open-ended associative learning is an evolutionary transition marker of consciousness, the very term that behaviorists tried to purge from psychology.

 

Of course I do as I’m told.

Hunger and shock are great reinforcers

Push lever and

Obey the rule

And NEVER

Show my inner soul

~ Jane Monet

 

Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) Is the Evolutionary Transition Marker of Consciousness

What is the evolutionary transition marker of minimal consciousness? Following Gánti’s methodology we started by compiling a consensus list of consciousness characteristics based on the work of psychologists, philosophers, and neurobiologists:

  • Binding/unification: seeing the apple as a composite whole (red, round, smooth) yet with discernable features
  • Global accessibility and broadcast: back and forth interactions among specialized brain modules allowing comparisons, discriminations, generalizations, and evaluations that inform decision-making
  • Selective attention and active exclusion: excluding or amplifying signals according to past and present context
  • Intentionality (aboutness; representation): the mapping (representations) of body, world, action, and their relations
  • Integration through time: Holding on to incoming information long enough for it to be integrated and evaluated, so the present can be said to have duration
  • Flexible evaluative system and goals: evaluating perceptions and actions as rewarding or punishing according to context
  • Agency and embodiment: inherent spontaneous activity and goal-directed behavior
  • A sense of self: registration of self/other and a stable perspective

On the basis of this list, we suggest that the evolutionary transition marker of minimal consciousness, which is the within-lifetime analog of unlimited heredity in evolutionary time, is Unlimited associative learning (UAL). UAL is the within-lifetime analog of unlimited heredity in evolutionary time. An organism with a capacity for UAL can, during its own lifetime, go on learning from experience about the world and about itself in a practically unrestricted way.

 (i) It can distinguish between novel complex patterns of stimuli and actions. For example, it can learn to navigate in a new terrain — to discriminate between different types of animals, between different routes leading to food and shelter. The learned patterns are genuinely novel: they are not reflex-eliciting patterns, nor have they been learned in the past.

(ii) It manifests second-order learning: Once it learns a new complex image or a new pattern of action, these patterns can themselves become associated with new compound patterns, allowing the organism to build up chains of associative links.

(iii) It can learn even if there is a time gap between the “neutral” complex stimulus and the reinforcement (the reward or punishment). Such “trace conditioning” requires that the memory of the neutral predictive stimulus is stored even when the reinforcing stimulus is transiently unperceived.

(iv) The value of a learned pattern can be readily changed: the reward or punishment value of a particular stimulus or a particular action is not fixed. It can change when the conditions change. Something that once predicted punishment (e.g., danger) can predict reward (safety) when conditions alter.

If an animal shows unlimited associative learning (that is, practically unrestricted learning) it means that all the capacities of consciousness are in place. Unification and differentiation are needed to construct compound stimuli (an apple is perceived as both red and round); global accessibility is needed to enable integration of information from multiple systems (e.g., the visual, olfactory, memory and evaluative systems — the red apple has a specific fragrance and following past experience is expected to be rewarding); selective attention is needed to pick these stimuli out from the background (e.g., ignore green or badly smelling apples and pick only the red fragrant ones); intentionality is needed, since the system maps or represents stimuli and the relations between them (e.g., the animal has a cognitive map of its environment); integration over time is needed for being able to learn even when there is a time gap between the neutral and rewarding stimulus; a flexible evaluation system is needed to make context-dependent learning possible (e.g., alter the value of a stimulus from punishing to rewarding); embodied agency is needed for exploring the world and for learning associations between actions; a “self,” entailing a stable point of view, is needed to compare stimuli and actions from the same perspective, and self/world distinction is needed so that the organism will not confuse stimuli generated by its own actions with stimuli generated by the external world. An animal with UAL is able to exhibit many complex behaviors, and can attain many different goals. Moreover, there is evidence that an animal can manifest UAL only when it is conscious. UAL is therefore a good transition marker for consciousness.

The Origins of Suffering

Ecclesiastes said: “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” Knowledge and suffering are also entangled in the myth of original sin, in Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon,” and in the myth of the eternally suffering Prometheus who blessed humans with the civilizing power of fire. What was the price of the knowledge-through-feelings that UAL inflicted on animals?

Like all great innovations, UAL opened a Pandora’s box of new challenges and problems. We believe that the greatest problem stemmed from overlearning: since parts of a sensory image can have different values (neutral, beneficial, life-threatening) in different conditions, false alarms are very likely. For example, for a fish, a particular pattern of vibrations combined with a particular pattern of colors can indicate a dangerous predator, while the color pattern alone and the vibration pattern alone may sometimes be associated with a nonthreatening passing animal. But since the rapid flight that the vibration or color pattern elicits is less costly than deathly injury, flight is preferable even if the vibration or color patterns turns out to be nonthreatening on most occasions. It is surely better to err on the side of caution. Randolph Nesse called the adaptive logic of erring on the side of caution the “smoke detector principle.”

 

Chronic anxiety and stress are costly, leading not only to a waste of time and energy but also to a greater propensity for painful diseases.

 

The price of overreacting includes, however, anxiety, paranoia, neuroses. Chronic anxiety and stress are costly, leading not only to a waste of time and energy but also to a greater propensity for painful diseases. Nevertheless, the cost-benefit balance is on the side of knowledge — a wise, suffering animal is better off than a nonsuffering, doomed fool.

Animals that could mitigate the high costs of UAL without giving up its benefits would have a great advantage. The evolutionary elaboration of the ubiquitous stress response and the evolution of active forgetting are some of the ameliorating mechanisms that we expect to find in all associatively learning animals, and in particular, in UAL animals. Suffering was not eliminated, but it became more controlled.

In the last paragraph of “On the Origin of Species,” Darwin wrote: “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.” It was in the Cambrian, we suggest, that the great war of nature began to involve suffering — the subjective experiencing of the anguish and pain that is entangled with knowledge.

The Evolution of Imagination

The first conscious animals explored and learned about their world and the effects of their actions by seeking the satisfactions of food, sex, and social bonding and avoiding the pains and fears imposed by predators, deprivation, and disease. Their explorations were guided by what they learned in the past, which, in turn, led to further learning and exploration.

Driven by learning, consciousness and cognition evolved further. In some lineages, selection for increased learning capacity led to the gradual evolution of imaginative, dreaming animals. They did not just learn about aspects of their world; they also learned about how events unfolded in time. They recalled past events— they could recall when and where a particular event happened, and they planned ahead by recombining aspects of their recollections and evaluating the planned, imagined event. These animals, which inhabit the third floor in Dennett’s generate-and-test tower, could imagine different scenarios and choose between them.

 

 

Here is a famous example: Western scrub jays cache (in many locations) different types of foodstuff, such as tasty worms that rot within a short time, and less-favored peanuts that stay edible for much longer. They later remember not only where they cached the different foods, but also when: they recover worms soon after caching, and peanuts when they return to feed long after caching. Interestingly, they are aware of the possibility of theft by other jays. They re- cache food if they were watched while caching, but only if they themselves are thieves!

There are many examples of imaginative planning by birds and mammals, and there are more limited examples of the imaginative ability of some fish, bees, and cuttlefish. It is likely that imagination evolved gradually and to different degrees in different species. Curiously, most imaginative animals are social. Are their social sensibilities related to their imaginative capacities? Whatever the answer and however striking animal imagination is, it remains in the private domain. The ability to communicate about what one imagines is peculiar to humans.

 

 

 

Original article here

18 Apr 2024
Comments: 0

Friend or FOMO?

 

Despite our best efforts, we often find ourselves readily believing everything our friends post on their social media feeds.

Regardless of any nuance that may exist offline, our friends’ cheery, filtered posts show them feeling loved, seeing their loved ones every day, and never fighting or struggling to get their emotional needs met. They seem to move through the world with ease and community, having found their people when they were 2 years old and retained their friendships for the remainder of their lives. Therefore, those of us who have friendships that aren’t always as seamless feel like we are definitely failing.

What we forget when we do this is that there’s a social pressure to show each other that we belong, and that we are doing everything the “right way.” It’s not just you who feels that pressure. It’s also the very friends to whom we’re comparing ourselves. While we may know this on some level, once we start mindlessly scrolling—as these platforms encourage us to do as often as possible—we begin to take our friends’ posts at face value.

We forget that this post about a “perfect birthday party” might not be the whole story, because we’re not detectives looking for lies in the innocuous posts of our loved ones. But it’s important to remember they’re not “lies”; most people tend to project perfection and gloss over the hard stuff when they’re posting online. Unfortunately, what happens when people fall into that habit is that the rest of us feel like we’re failing in comparison—and we’re failing alone.

This feeling of comparison and the accompanying loneliness and shame that it brings inspired me to write my 2023 book, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships As an Adult. When my book was first published, I was shocked that so many people told me they felt this shame and loneliness too. They whispered to me, “I always think everyone but me has great friends they’ve known for 80 years and never struggle in their friendships. I didn’t know anyone else was feeling that way too.”

While it’s true that most of us are struggling, many people aren’t going to post when they’re crying at 2 a.m. over a friend breakup, when they’re having a fight with a friend, or when they’re hit with anxiety that a friend of theirs didn’t like their posts lately and must therefore be upset with them. They’re going to post when they see their friends in person (possibly for the first time in weeks or months) and are still riding that high from finally feeling connected to others. Still, we can’t know the complex backstory of that celebratory post. Our perception is that they’re succeeding and we’re failing. That may be because we haven’t met our people yet, or our friendships don’t look exactly like that, or our friendships are kind of weird and strained right now and we don’t have as much community as we need.

So, what can we do other than ask all our friends to include detailed facts about the overall health of “my girls,” and if they’ve ever had some seriously messy shit go down in their friend group that might make us feel a little better about our own friendships? The complex but simple answer is that we have to be kinder to ourselves when we’re scrolling. But how can we soothe ourselves when we’re scrolling and it feels like we’re really drowning and everyone else is sailing on a pristine yacht?

When I find myself in that space, I remind myself that I don’t know the detailed interactions between people and that only those who truly know their friendships are the ones within them. For all I know, that friendship is on its last legs or that group has two people in it who hate the other two. And while I absolutely don’t wish that on them, or hope someone is hurting, my point is that it’s important to entertain more than one possibility when we’re stuck in that comparison spiral.

Once we remove the shame of “they’re right, I’m wrong” from our brains, we have more space to nurture our own friendships and our own communities at our own pace. It’s hard to do that when you’re beating yourself up. So once you’ve talked yourself down from the ledge, ask yourself: How can I reach out to the friends I do have or want to have? How can I connect with them further? How can I find more joy in the friendships I have? How can I set more boundaries and communicate better with them? And perhaps: How can I let go of the friendships that aren’t making me truly happy? 

As soon as we finally stop comparing ourselves to the limited view we’re getting from other people posting about their friendships, we can truly be free to take that energy and put it toward what we really want: not envying a picture-perfect friendship that might not exist, but to finally, bravely, cultivate deeply nurturing friendships that—even if they’re flawed—are absolutely real.

 

 

Original article here

 

 

15 Apr 2024
Comments: 0

Open-minded people have a different visual perception of reality

 

 

Psychologists have only begun to unravel the concept of “personality,” that all-important but nebulous feature of individual identity. Recent studies suggest that personality traits don’t simply affect your outlook on life, but the way you perceive reality.

One study published earlier this year in the Journal of Research in Personality goes so far as to suggest that openness to experience changes what people see in the world. It makes them more likely to experience certain visual perceptions. In the study, researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia recruited 123 volunteers and gave them the big five personality test, which measures extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. That last personality trait involves creativity, imagination, and a willingness to try new things.

They then tested who experienced a visual perception phenomenon called “binocular rivalry.” This phenomenon occurs when each eye is shown a different image—in this case, a red patch in one eye and a green patch to another. Most people switch back and forwards between the two incompatible images, as the brain can only perceive one at a time. But some people merge the two images into a unified red-green patch. Participants who scored higher on openness were more likely to perceive this combined image.

This makes sense, according to the researchers, because openness to new experiences is linked with creativity. In an article on their results in The Conversation, they write that the ability to combine two images seems “like a ‘creative’ solution to the problem presented by the two incompatible stimuli.”

Anna Antinori lead author of the study, explains that we’re constantly filtering out what sensory information to focus on. For example, you might well be subconsciously ignoring the noise around you or the feeling of a chair against your back. And this then determines what we perceive. “The ‘gate’ that lets through the information that reaches consciousness may have a different level of flexibility,” she says. “Open people appear to have a more flexible gate and let through more information than the average person.”

This isn’t the only study that connects personality with perception. As the researchers note in The Conversation, an earlier study shows that those who score high in openness are less likely to experience “inattentional blindness.”

This visual phenomenon occurs when people are focusing so hard on one feature of a scene that they completely fail to notice something entirely obvious—such as in the video below.

Around half of people are so busy watching ball-passes that they miss the man in a gorilla costume.

Though the research suggests that personality affects the way we filter conscious experience, it’s not clear exactly how this process works. The authors speculate that overlapping neurochemicals in the brain may link perception to personality. “Thus the abundance of the same neurochemical, or lack thereof, may affect both one’s personality and low-level vision,” adds Antinori.

There is also evidence to suggest that personality traits aren’t fixed. One study has shown that meditation can affect binocular rivalry, and training can make people more open to new experiences. Then there’s research that shows psilocybin (the key ingredient in magic mushrooms) makes people more open.

But while studies show that personality can shift over time, there’s currently little research on whether perception also changes to correspond with new personality traits. But given the above cited evidence that meditation can shift perception, Antinori believes the way we see the world may well change in line with personality. “It may be possible that a change in people’s personality may also affect how they see the world,” she says.

The mechanics behind how personality is formed—and the effects it has—are still unknown. But mounting evidence suggests that our personalities are affecting our experience of the world in more ways than we realize.

 

 

Original article here

12 Apr 2024
Comments: 0

How to (Actually) Change Someone’s Mind

 

If you’re a leader, it’s likely that not everyone who works with you will agree with the decisions you make — and that’s okay. Leadership involves making unpopular decisions while navigating complex relationships with colleagues, partners, and clients. But often, you will need to get buy-in from these constituents, and therefore you will need to convince them to change their mind.

There is little friction involved in convincing people who are your natural supporters. But trying to change the mind of a dissenter, or a detractor, is a different story. How do you go about convincing someone who, for one reason or another, doesn’t see eye-to-eye with you? Someone who gives you a flat out “no”?

In the recent research we completed for Laura’s book, Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage, we observed, and then interviewed, more than 60 leaders who were trying to convince business associates and other constituents to change their minds on a course of action that they initially disagreed with. The leaders who were most successful in overcoming others’ skepticism were those who diagnosed the root of the fundamental disagreement before trying to persuade. They first asked themselves, “What’s driving my detractor’s resistance?” These leaders often pinpointed which aspects of their arguments elicited the most pushback and the most emotional reactions. Then, depending on the answer, they approached the situation with one of the following three targeted strategies.

The Cognitive Conversation 

When to use it: The detractor may be opposed to your argument because of an objective reason. If they’ve clearly articulated a logical set of objections, and they don’t appear to be hiding ulterior motives, approach them with a cognitive conversation. This is especially useful when the detractor is known to have a no-nonsense attitude and can easily set aside emotions in their decision-making process.

How it works: A successful cognitive conversation requires two things: sound arguments and good presentation. Take, for example, a situation where you are pushing to switch suppliers and you’ve found one whose materials and products are superior to the current supplier, whose products have been causing numerous downstream issues. But your colleague is in favor of sticking with your current supplier with whom he has a long-standing relationship. He expresses his resistance to your proposal by pointing out the higher prices the new supplier charges. You want to prepare sound arguments that disprove the detractor’s objections. In this instance, you might point out that the new supplier is actually less expensive in the long run, when you take into account all the additional production costs cause by the current supplier. You also want to use a logical framework and clear storyline to force the detractor to reassess their thinking. For example, you can emphasize that the decision is based on cost, quality, and service, but above all, cost and quality.

Be cautious about not introducing emotions into the discussion, which could give the impression that you and your detractor are not on common ground. For example, you don’t want to make it seem as if you believe your colleague’s relationship with the former supplier is irrelevant. The goal is to show the person that, on an objective and factual basis, their initial stance on the situation isn’t as reasonable as your argument. Be warned, these detractors are not easily swayed by broad generalizations. Be ready to mentally spar with them and come prepared with facts that back up each aspect of your overall argument.

The catch: Don’t assume that getting a “yes” from this type of detractor signals a conversion into an everlasting supporter. You may have persuaded them on this specific issue, but they may disagree with you again in the future. If that’s true, expect to have another cognitive conversation on that separate argument.

The Champion Conversion  

When to use it: When the detractor isn’t easily persuaded through cognitive arguments, or when they harbor a grievance in your relationship with them, engaging in debates may be futile. Take, for example, a management decision where you’d like to promote a qualified individual who performed brilliantly under your supervision, but a counterpart of yours argues that your subordinates often get promoted over hers. Even if your promotion candidate is objectively more deserving, others may still feel resentment and refuse to provide support.

How it works: Don’t jump in and try to convince the other person. Instead, invest time in personally learning about and building rapport with them. Here, it’s not about arguments or presentation, at least initially, but understanding their perspective and why they might feel personally affronted. For instance, you might ask questions about her team, and which team members she feels have the most potential. Gradually convert this detractor into someone who is your champion or advocate, perhaps by shedding more light on the qualities that you value in individuals, both on your team as well as your counterpart’s team, or showing how you value her leadership style. By the time the decision must be made, try to make sure you’re both on the same page as to which qualities matter for promotion decisions and that you’ve clearly articulated how your candidate exemplifies those qualities.

The catch: No matter how much of a champion the other person becomes, don’t expect them to agree with a decision that’s fundamentally illogical. You can’t rely on relationship alone; your stance still needs to be backed by clear logic. Additionally, these types of detractors can easily sense if you’re trying to manipulate the situation to get them on your side. Authenticity is key: allow the other person to see who you are so that they can more fully understand your point of view.

The Credible Colleague Approach

When to use it: There are times when the detractor’s deeply held personal beliefs make them fundamentally opposed to your proposal. Take, for example, a colleague who might disagree with you on the need to run a necessary clinical trial for a new product. Because they believe that the clinical trial might be harmful in some way or run counter to their values, they oppose the idea, even though the evidence shows that the benefits outweigh the harm. It’s sometimes tough to pinpoint where these personal beliefs stem from, but some combination of the person’s upbringing, personal history, and unspoken biases will, at times, make it seemingly impossible for them to accept a decision, no matter what logical or emotional argument you throw their way. In these situations, there isn’t much you can say or do to change their mind.

How it works: Rather than trying to argue with someone who seems resistant, bring in a credible colleague. A champion of your position from another part of the organization, whether they are a peer or superior, may be better suited to convince this detractor. This forces the detractor to disentangle who you are from what your argument might be and evaluate the idea based on its objective merits. If you and the detractor are at an impasse, the credible colleague might just tip the scales in your favor.

The catch: Calling in an external supporter is a double-edged sword. While it can achieve the outcome you want, it may exacerbate your detractor’s opposition, especially if the detractor feels that the credible colleague has forced them to take your side. It’s critical to find the right colleague who can tactfully advocate for your position while maintaining a cordial relationship.

 

It’s not easy to have detractors, and it’s even harder to change their minds. The key is to understand the source of their resistance and use a targeted strategy that best resonates with your particular detractor. You’ll have a much better chance of getting a “yes.”

 

 

 

Original article here

07 Apr 2024
Comments: 0

7 Incredible Benefits of Lifting Weights That Have Nothing to Do With Building Muscle

We hate to sound like a broken record, but it really is crucial to incorporate lifting weights into your workout regimen. In fact, when it comes to exercise for older adults, strength training actually trumps cardio because preserving muscle is more important than losing fat as you age.

“Every decade, starting in your mid 30s, you lose a percentage of muscle, which affects your metabolism, balance, and ability to brace yourself in the event of an injury,” explains Larysa DiDio, a certified personal trainer and Prevention’s contributing fitness editor. “By weight training, you build more muscle to protect your body against injury.”

So, how often should you lift weights?

Ideally, twice a week—whether you lift free weights, use machines, or do bodyweight exercises, says Rachelle Reed, PhD, CPT, Pure Barre’s manager of training development and barre kinesiologist.

That said, as you get stronger and fitter, both Reed and DiDio agree that you should bump up your sessions to more than two times a week. “You can totally lift every day—just make sure to work on different body parts or train your body differently each day,” DiDio says.

Wondering which muscle groups to focus on? Reed says that depends on your goals. For a full body workout, “many trainers will tell clients to focus on the upper body one day and the lower body a couple days later,” she says. To help you get the most bang for your buck, consider folding in compound exercises and supersets into your routine, a form of strength training in which you move from one exercise to the next with no rest in between.

In addition to building strength, lifting weights has a host of benefits. Keep reading to learn all the reasons you should pick up a pair of dumbbells (or kettlebells, or dare we say, a barbell) today.

You’ll lose weight and burn more calories

While cardio can help you get rid of belly fat, lifting weights helps you build more muscle, which can also help you burn more calories. That’s because muscles are metabolically active, meaning they burn calories even when you’re not exercising. “In fact, muscle tissue burns seven to 10 calories per pound daily, while fat burns only two to three calories per pound daily,” DiDio explains.

What’s more, a 2017 study in Obesity suggests that weight training combined with a healthy, low-calorie diet, can help preserve lean muscle mass that’s lost through aerobic workouts. “When weight loss occurs in the absence of strength training, all facets of body composition are lost,” Reed says. “You lose some weight in fat, some in muscle, and some in bone—and it’s unfavorable to lose weight that’s coming from both muscle and bone.” That’s why strength training is so important. When people exercise to lose weight, the majority of the weight loss is fat loss.

You’ll protect your bones

As you age, your bones become more brittle and weaker, especially if you’re post-menopausal, which is due to lower estrogen levels—the hormone responsible for maintaining bone mass. But lifting weights can help you build bone mineral density through Wolff’s Law, which states that bones can grow in response to forces that are placed upon it. In other words, creating pressure on your joints through weight-bearing exercises can actually help you build stronger, healthier bones.

“Strength training involves muscles contracting against the bones they’re surrounding,” Reed explains. “This force applied to the bones helps improve bone density overtime.”

In fact, an October 2017 study from the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research shows that high-intensity resistance training exercises, like deadlifts, overhead presses, and back squats, can help improve bone mineral density in women with osteopenia and osteoporosis.

You’ll manage stress and boost your mood

Had a hard day at work and need to release some tension? Time to pick up those weights. Just like any form of exercise, strength training can enhance your mood by releasing feel-good hormones called endorphins.

Recent research also suggests that exercise, including weight training, may help protect against Alzheimer’s and dementia. Researchers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center discovered that the hormone irisin, which is released during exercise, may help promote neuronal growth in the hippocampus—the area of the brain dedicated to learning and memory.

“Any type of exercise is a mood booster, but weight training makes you feel stronger and it builds the back and neck muscles that are most directly associated with stress,” DiDio says.

You’ll improve your posture 

If you have a desk job, chances are you’re dealing with a case of rounded shoulders and a hunched back, which place additional pressure on your low back. This can lead to bad posture and limited range of motion in the shoulders, which are the most flexible joint in the body.

But lifting weights can help reverse this by opening up the chest, strengthening the back muscles, and improving freedom of movement. “It also strengthens your core, which keeps the back in alignment and upright,” DiDio says.

Go for multi-joint compound exercises (think a squat to overhead press or a lateral lunge to twist), which can help you work in different planes of motion and muscle groups, saving you time and effort.

You’ll reduce back pain

There’s no one reason for back pain, but muscular imbalances, like weak knees and an unstable core, can contribute, among other things. Most people think aches and pain are due to strains, but sometimes, it’s a result of bad biomechanics. Your muscles work in a kinetic chain, so if there’s a weak link, it can often manifest into a bigger problem in different areas of the body. But by building total-body strength, you can bypass most injuries.

For example, if you have weak hip flexors, it also means you have weak glutes—their opposing muscles. And, “typically they [muscles] don’t weaken evenly, so this can also throw your pelvis out of whack, which could affect your gait,” DiDio says. “As weak and tight muscles tug and pull, they can cause imbalances and pain, which is your body telling you that something is wrong.”

You’ll improve memory and brain health

A 2016 review from the British Journal of Sports Medicine shows that physical activity can help prevent or delay cognitive decline in people over 50, regardless of their current neurological state.

When you’re moving, your body pumps oxygen-rich blood to your brain, boosting neuroplasticity—your brain’s ability to create new neural connections and adjust to changes in environment. By increasing neuroplasticity, you can better handle stressful situations that come with life and stay sharp.

“Indeed, the American College of Sports Medicine has published several studies investigating the positive effects of different types of exercise on cognitive performance in older adults, and they agree that this is an area of research worthy of further pursuit,” Reed notes.

You’ll be better in tune with your body

There’s nothing like lifting a pair of weights to help you tune into your senses when you work out. Whether you’re doing an overhead press, a plank row, or a goblet squat, lifting weights creates greater awareness around using your breath to help you get the most out of each rep. Plus, doing complex moves can test your listening and cognitive skills—it takes some brain power to process a trainer’s cues and execute a move properly!

 

 

Original article here

04 Apr 2024
Comments: 0

How to Say “No” After Saying “Yes”

 

Picture it — a colleague asks if you can chair a new committee they’re starting. Without even pausing to think, the first words out of your mouth are, “Sure. I’d love to!” Flash forward, and you’re looking at emails piling up in your inbox and a flurry of appointments on your calendar. It suddenly hits you that you’re spread too thin. You know you need to say no after saying yes, but you’re hesitant to back out of the obligation after you’ve already given your word.

Saying no is never easy, but it’s particularly challenging after you’ve already said yes to a commitment. You may worry that backing out will burn bridges, cause you to be perceived as flaky or unreliable, or lead to you being labeled a poor team player. These fears are heightened for “sensitive strivers” — highly sensitive high-achievers — who tend to overthink situations and have a hard time setting boundaries.

If you can relate, then the thought of retracting your agreement and facing the brunt of another person’s disappointment or anger at you may be too much to bear. This reaction makes sense, since studies show that the brain makes no distinction between possible social rejection and physical pain. Instead, you grit your teeth and follow through with the commitment — sometimes at the expense of your own wellbeing, which backfires. Not only does it result in excess stress for you, but others may be able to sense that you’re distracted, overwhelmed, or resentful.

Whether you have overbooked yourself, realized you have a conflict, or otherwise can’t or don’t want to participate in a project, it’s essential to uncommit gracefully. Doing so will keep your reputation intact and your relationships strong. Here’s how to go about saying no after you’ve already said yes with tact and professionalism.

Consider the cost.

Before you deliver the news, make sure that backing out is in fact the right decision. Consider the opportunity cost. For example, let’s say you’ve said yes to a new initiative from your boss, but now you’re having second thoughts about participating. Evaluate how crucial the project is to key business priorities. If the initiative would give you exposure to other parts of the company or allow you to build social capital or new skills, then it may be worth the sacrifice. However, if the costs outweigh the benefits (such as the impact on your personal life or your current projects), then it’s better to withdraw.

Shift your perspective.

If you’re paranoid that saying no after you’ve already said yes will make you appear irresponsible, embrace the fact that it would be selfish and inappropriate to follow through on the task knowing you couldn’t complete it. You may feel like you’re being generous and helpful by agreeing, but if you can’t follow through on your promises, it’s not a recipe for high performance, personal happiness, or strong relationships. Plus, consider the positive traits you display when you back out gracefully. You exemplify strong prioritization, time management, and transparent communication — all qualities of powerful leadership.

Be diplomatic but truthful.

When it comes time to deliver your message, be assertive and clear without overexplaining. In other words, aim to be direct, thoughtful, and above all else, honest. For example, if you were pulling out of your friend’s committee, here’s what you might say: “When I said I could join the committee last month, I fully believed I had enough bandwidth to do a great job. After taking a closer look at my calendar, I realized I’ve overextended myself and there are several professional commitments I can’t move. This means I won’t be able to participate as chair.”

Providing a short explanation or justification as to your reasoning can help your withdrawal be better received. For instance, you could explain, “I know we talked about me joining as committee chair, but when I agreed I didn’t expect a big project would be assigned to me at work. Because of that, I need to decline.” In the case of backing out of the initiative with your boss, you could share, “I’ve had the chance to review my priorities and this new project would stop me from contributing to my core job responsibilities at the highest level. That wouldn’t be the right — or best — decision for myself or the team, so I have to respectfully change my yes to a no.”

Preserve the relationship. 

It’s appropriate to apologize and take responsibility for any mistake, misunderstanding, or simply overextending yourself. After all, the other person was counting on you and may have been making plans around your participation. In the case of withdrawing from the committee, you could say, “I’m sorry for any inconvenience this causes. It means a lot that you thought of me for this opportunity and I’m rooting for it to be a success. I can’t wait to hear how everything goes.” Expressing gratitude and ending on a positive tone shows care and compassion.

Offer an alternative. 

Propose a different timeline or to reschedule to a new date if you genuinely want to help. Take a rain check and leave the door open to say yes in the future by saying, “After revisiting my schedule, I need to change my decision and decline this invitation right now. But please keep me in mind for the future. Would you reach out again in a few months?”

You can also avoid leaving the person in a lurch by suggesting an alternative. Perhaps you offer to introduce the person to a coworker who can help or a contractor they could hire. Maybe you redirect the person to a resource that can help them such as a community, podcast, or training material that can meet their needs or solve their problem.

Learn from it.

Backing out of commitments isn’t fun or comfortable, but it can provide a valuable lesson and an impetus to overcome people-pleasing tendencies that may be standing in your way of being more successful. Use this as a learning opportunity to build greater discernment around what you do — or don’t — agree to in the future. Going forward, try to say yes only to opportunities that excite you, and ones you have room for.

No matter how thoughtful you are, you may need to occasionally go back on a promise you’ve made or change your mind. Don’t make it a habit but do approach the situation with sensitivity and consideration to get the best possible outcome.

 

 

Original article here

25 Mar 2024
Comments: 0

Explaining The Akashic Mystery

 

 

A desire to seek spiritual wisdom and a reassuring connection to the creator is evident throughout history in most cultures and traditions. Humans have tried to understand the origin of life and the source of their own being since the beginning of recorded time. Akasha is an ancient Sanskrit word for “source,” referring to the essence of the creator’s source, characterized by many traditions as the essence of love.

When we direct our minds, emotional and spirit to self-love, we accept a natural, loving, healing presence in our lives; this is when miracles happen. They aren’t really miracles outside of nature, but Illness, disease and loss are often a call from our soul to redirect our lives. When we are living our lives connected to our source in love, that natural way of living brings us back to health and a sense of well-being. It feels like a miracle to live from our source in love.

Agape or akashic spiritual love is about our connection to our spirit, our soul and the creator (infinite intelligence, love and light). This is a reciprocal relationship. This love speaks to a constant influx of spiritual energy that sustains our etheric, emotional, mental and physical bodies, which combine to create our self in this life. This love is the basis of the mystical essence of all religions, but in itself is not a religious belief system. This is the quantum field or the akashic essence of creation, where all potential exists and all creation is born from.

While we are mostly unconscious of this flow, we are created to exercise free will concerning how we direct and conduct our life. We can become conscious of this flow and learn to direct it as a loving, healthy, and sustaining current in our life. We are given the choice to connect or not to connect to this spiritual love and the guidance it contains. Our self-awareness and our ability to recognize our needs and care for ourselves is in direct proportion to our capacity to allow this akashic spiritual energy to sustain and elevate our lives.

The akashic energy, like a universal ether, fills the world — every being and even the very air we breathe. The akashic energy resides within your body, activated and used by your spirit throughout your life. You can choose to consciously access and develop this energy as you gain a higher awareness of your spiritual nature.

Within the akashic energy field is a receptive intelligence that embeds all experiences and events into an energetic library of information — the wisdom of all creation. Encoded vibrationally into the fabric of space, some have likened the mechanism as similar to how holograms are created. I see the records as energetic packages of information.

The records containing the macrocosm and microcosm of your life — the big picture of your soul’s plan and purpose, and the very personal information of the details of your daily life — are all retained in this akashic field. This includes every thought, word, feeling and action throughout your entire lifetime, and even before this incarnation. Accessing this information is done in small bytes of information, which you can benefit from by learning about and developing a more complete sense of yourself. What are the patterns you repeat over and over in this lifetime, and perhaps in a previous lifetime that need healing? Chin up, you have been given all the time and experience you need to learn, grow, and refine the sheen of your human presence here on Earth. Now is a good time to roll up your sleeves and access your akashic records.  When you access the knowledge and creative energy in your records, you learn how to heal yourself and become a creator of positive outcomes in your own life.

You have the tools and potential within your consciousness to access your personal history and soul records within the akashic field. With this access, you gain understanding about the wounded places where your soul has disconnected from its source of love through trauma or misunderstood experiences in this life or past lives. You can reclaim and heal these wounded parts of self as you access the akashic field of infinite intelligence and love.

Accessing the healing capacity within this realm requires a flow of exchange between you and the akashic energy done with deep respect and humility. The entrance fee for stepping onto this healing path is taking ownership of your thoughts and choices with clear intentions to raise your vibration above blame, shame, victimization and guilt. These sorts of excuses will only keep you attached to your pain and prevent your healing. Honesty, forgiveness, curiosity and a willingness to open to spirit will elevate your vibration, and thus your access to akashic intelligence and all its healing, nurturing love, leading you right back home.

 

 

 

Original article here

21 Mar 2024
Comments: 0

How to enjoy your problems

As a therapist, I’ve found that so much of what I do is about giving people the space to say what they’re struggling with. It can take them months. Not to resolve the problems, or even to understand them in a deep, philosophical sense, but literally just to realise what their problems are.

This is especially true for people with complicated conundrums, stressors that are difficult to explain. There’s a special loneliness reserved for people in this situation – who are facing problems that seem weird and who worry that, if they let themselves admit how bad things are and how bad they feel, they’ll realise they’re too messed up to recover. If you recognise this description, I know how you’re feeling. I’ve experienced these fears too.

If you can learn to enjoy your problems, that’s enlightenment

The day of my mom’s funeral, I wrote and delivered her eulogy. Trembling and dissociative, I spoke my shaky words into the small crowd of faces, many of whom I didn’t recognise, most of whom avoided looking at me or at her body, freshly embalmed and glowing under buzzing lights like a gas station hot dog. I hadn’t eaten in days, and I’d been up late the night before fighting with my birth mother, whom I had not seen in years. She’d reappeared when she heard the news about her mother, who was also my mother, having adopted me when I was at a young age. Years of poverty and addiction had made my birth mother desperate, and theoretically I knew that. But there’s nothing theoretical about throwing a sandwich at someone, especially when that person is a stranger to you, but also the person whose body made yours, and they’re stuffing your inheritance into a dirty pillowcase to flee with it.

When you tell someone your mom died, they feel bad for you. Even if they haven’t been through that, they know it’s a big deal. And they know what to say: ‘I’m so sorry, Chelsea. Please let me know if I can help.’ But I found that’s not the response you get when you tell the boss at your new job you’re late because you just found out you were never adopted, and the witness signature in your mom’s will wasn’t signed, so it’s actually legal for your estranged birth mother to steal your inheritance and spend it on drugs. (Well, the drugs aren’t quite legal.)

People also didn’t know what to say when they asked why I was crying between therapy sessions, and I told them my ex tried to get back together, but I said ‘no’ because I was in a grief stupor, I’d fallen in love with someone much younger, who then ghosted me and now I’ve lost them both at once. Also, my bank account was overdrawn so I was eating beans until payday, which meant I’d been farting in sessions. Maybe that’s why they just said: ‘Damn. Well… your 3 o’clock is here.’

Put another way: there are some problems that are considered OK to talk about and some that aren’t. There are problems people put on the front page of their memoir, and problems they, well, edit out. But regardless of whether other people get your problems, you have to get them. You have to accept your life, absurd as it may be, and try to find some joy in it. And if you can get past accepting and learn to enjoy your problems? Well, that’s pretty much enlightenment. That’s what this Guide is about.

Whatever it looks like, your life is worth celebrating

I first read the phrase ‘enjoy your problems’ in 2017. I was doom-scrolling Tumblr when I came across a blurry shot of a concrete wall with those words scrawled in Sharpie. It wasn’t well done enough to be called graffiti, which enhanced its charm. I was struck by its simplicity, the way it suggested doing exactly the opposite of what humans usually do. Most of us spend our lives denying we have problems. Does it work? Never. But that doesn’t stop us from wasting a lot of time trying.

After some Googling, I learned that the saying is attributed to the Zen monk Suzuki Roshi, a teacher who helped popularise Buddhist teachings in the United States, founded the San Francisco Zen Center, and wrote the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (1970). In Buddhism, equanimity is one of the four brahmavihārās or boundless qualities, which are seen as keys to cultivating an open, awakened state of being. Equanimity, in modern English, is defined as ‘evenness of mind especially under stress.’

In many mindfulness communities, Buddhist equanimity is interpreted as a sort of neutrality, a lack of preference about what happens to us: ‘I could get the job, or not. I could become wealthy, or I could remain poor. Either will provide opportunities for enlightenment.’ That kind of thing. Often, though, this receptivity gets mistaken for apathy, which can make us think that being numbed out and aloof is the ideal.

But in fact, the Buddha described equanimity a bit differently, as a state of being that is ‘abundant, exalted, immeasurable’. These words imply a more active, engaged way of being in the world, rather than simply not caring. But how does one manage to embrace their fate – with all its inherent problems – surreal as they may be? As a therapist, I’ve studied what scientists have to say about healing but, more than anything, I’ve learned the hard way: by wading through my own mess.

If you’re still reading, chances are your life doesn’t look like you thought it would. Your experience is probably not reflected in anyone’s social media feed or represented by standard-issue sympathy cards. But regardless of how sad or strange things have gotten for you, your story is worth telling. Even with its bewildering side quests and meltdowns on aisle four, your broken life and your broken heart are worth celebrating. What if you stopped waiting to arrive at some imaginary destination where all your problems are solved, and started embracing your life as it is, today? Here are some tips to help you get there.

What To Do

Don’t judge yourself

Do you know why they say the grass is always greener on the other side? Because it’s hard to see grass that far away. It isn’t actually greener, it just looks like it because you’re not close enough to see the dead patches and the dog poop. Not only that, but you don’t have to mow that grass. Our own situation always feels worse to us because we’re the ones who have to deal with it.

Everyone, without exception, gets sick of their own problems. And yes, everyone has problems. As a therapist, I’m privy to many people’s truth. My sample may be skewed, but it would shock you to hear the struggles of folks who seem to have it together. Their stress is either just like yours or weird in a different way. That’s because suffering is a universal experience. It isn’t a sign of failure. It’s not proof that divine forces are punishing us. Life is just hard, and often unfair. It’s also beautiful, and it becomes even more beautiful when we stop pretending it should be easy.

When you judge yourself, you add insult to injury. It’s one thing to have problems, it’s another to blame yourself for having them. Yet that’s what many of us do. We tell ourselves that our stress is the wrong kind, or proof that we suck. What if you told yourself the opposite? What if you felt proud of your problems? What if you believed they’re actually lovely problems, the most dignified problems a person could have? Try on this thought for size: all the coolest people have your problems. People wish they had your problems. How does that feel?

Tell your story

Throughout your life, you’ll have to paraphrase your biography many times in many settings. You’ll be asked to reduce the long, complex reality of your experience to bite-sized portions, just a couple quick phrases to get the point across. But when was the last time you really told your story? The messy, unedited version? When was the last time you told the truth of your life to yourself?

Everyone has a story, and everyone’s story deserves to be heard. This isn’t true only about your past, but also about the story of what’s happening now, the parts that are still being written. Telling your story isn’t about coming up with the most brilliant moral or the perfect words. The power is in the simple act of speaking what’s true.

You don’t have to be a writer or motivational speaker to do this. You can tell your story to a friend at a coffee shop, or anonymously in a Reddit thread, or even to yourself in a diary. Describing, in detail, what you’ve survived can empower and energise you. It can help you recognise what you’re capable of. Will it feel weird to be that honest? Maybe. But try to embrace the embarrassment. Be cringe. Make saying the truest thing the goal, not sounding cool or normal or mentally stable. If you’re not sure who the right audience is, here are some ideas:

  • new therapist;
  • support group;
  • Uber driver;
  • hair stylist;
  • old friend you haven’t caught up with in a while;
  • new friend from a friend-making app;
  • recurring character in a dream;
  • person sitting next to you at a bar; and/or
  • neighbour or neighbour’s dog.

Move your body

As a classically trained psychotherapist, I know the power of talking things through. I’ve seen it change my patients’ lives and I’ve felt it change mine. Studies have shown that talk therapy can rewire the brain and may even cause epigenetic changes. That said, there are limitations to what can be accomplished while sitting in an office, and even more constraints around what we can heal with language alone.

In moments of extreme suffering, many ancient traditions suggest movement. In my personal life, I’ve found that dance is what gets me through my darkest hour. I am by no means a professional dancer but, thankfully, that’s not what it’s about. ‘Conscious’ or ‘ecstatic dance’, is a form of movement meditation wherein a practitioner simply moves their body in whatever way feels natural, allowing emotions to arise and be processed through spontaneous motion.

Those who practise conscious dance consistently show significant improvements across all psychological measures, especially mindfulness and sense of wellbeing. If dance isn’t really your thing, there’s also yoga, tai chi or long walks. Researchers have even found that visualising yourself moving produces many of the same benefits, like emotion regulation.

The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, put on a playlist of songs that reflect the energy you’re feeling. Turn off the lights, dress in your comfiest clothes, and move. Dance, as they say, like no one’s watching. Dance until you stop thinking about the fact that you’re dancing. If you don’t know what to do, choose one tiny movement and repeat it for an hour or until your brain gets quiet, whichever comes first.

Make something

All great art starts with a feeling. Often, the feeling isn’t that pleasant. Artists respond to life’s most challenging moments not by asking ‘How can I fix this?’ but rather ‘How can I explore this? How can I express it?’ Rather than trying to stop feeling heartbreak, great poets ask: what is the nature of heartbreak? What does it feel like? What might it sound like, taste like?

Art’s function is simply to capture the human experience and convey it in an honest and meaningful way. In moments of great despair, let pain inspire you to make something. There is genuinely nothing too sad or disturbing to make art about, so bring your darkest thoughts and feelings. You don’t have to make anything brilliant, and you don’t ever have to show anyone. Similar to telling your story, the act of creative expression is transformative in itself.

The next time you’re feeling stuck on a problem, try to get curious about the colour, shape and sound of how it feels. Write a poem that describes the sensation in detail. Draw a self-portrait, or paint a still life of your dirty room. Make a wreath of dead flowers and hang it on your door. Write a letter to someone who’s hurt you, even if you never plan to send it. Then, write a letter to someone who’s helped you, explaining how their care has impacted your life. Write a song in the shower. Design an altar to your sadness and meditate at the foot of it.

Other things you can make:

  • sad playlist;
  • three-layer cake;
  • knitted blanket;
  • friendship bracelet;
  • collage;
  • bedazzled phone case;
  • video montage of memories; and/or
  • herb garden.

Cry for help

You may be afraid that leaning into painful emotions will make you less likeable but, often, it’s the opposite. Toxic positivity makes a person rigid and seem controlling, and others can feel put off by the pressure to look on the bright side. Putting on a performance of constant happiness also comes across as phoney and unrelatable, whereas authenticity is refreshing and infectious. Vulnerability creates an opening for genuine connection. Embracing the full spectrum of feeling makes you emotionally available, and others can feel the depth of your presence.

As you lean into painful feelings, you will naturally become more aware of your craving for intimacy. Your body starts to demand that you be in communion with something greater than yourself. Trust that. Craving connection is healthy. Feeling difficult emotions can motivate you to finally seek therapy, get back in touch with family members, join a club, or simply answer more honestly when someone asks how you’re doing. If you’re more introverted, it may inspire you to read stories about others who have survived similar challenges or write a letter to an old friend. Maybe it will lead you to the woods where you can feel your place in the ecosystems surrounding you.

Communities aren’t just people who share certain beliefs and rituals, they’re also people who share problems. Bonding over common struggles isn’t unhealthy. The term ‘trauma bonding’ has made its way into common culture, but it’s misunderstood. A trauma bond is an unhealthy attachment to a person who abuses us. Bonding with others over shared hardship, whether it’s an experience we went through together or something we can relate to, isn’t a problem but a universal human behaviour. Reach into the world with the understanding that others are also surely experiencing this struggle.

With all that in mind, here are some tips for reaching out:

  • Start with those you trust. If you have friends, family members or healthcare providers you’ve opened up to in the past, reach out to them first. Even if you haven’t talked in a while, and even if you haven’t ever shared the issue you’re facing, it’s easier to be vulnerable with people with whom we’ve already developed some trust and rapport.
  • Be direct. I know it can feel awkward to ask for support, but directness is the way to go. If your goal is to talk about what you’re struggling with, don’t ask them how their work is going. Let it be known that you need help. Ask if they’d be willing to hear about something difficult you’re going through. People often find transparency refreshing (and if they don’t want to hear you out, they can always say no).
  • Find a support group. If your social circle is lacking, look for a group to join. There’s been a huge uptick of support groups of all kinds since the pandemic. Many are free or accept insurance. There’s group therapy; peer support groups for folks experiencing things like health issues; local meetup groups focused on special interests and identities; and online help forums for everything from single parenting to publishing to immigration. You may have to do a bit of digging but, trust me, they’re out there.

Pray in your own way

In preparing to write my book A Pity Party Is Still a Party (2023), I studied the mental health benefits of ritual, by which I mean any set of actions that are understood to have emotional or spiritual meaning. I was surprised to find that even simple, made-up rituals have the power to relieve anxiety, help you bond with others and trigger ‘flow’ – a state of deep immersion in an activity that can promote feelings of transcendence and ecstasy. Rituals work both as a preventative measure for reducing stress and for coping with disappointment. Ritual is especially helpful in times of uncertainty, providing a barrier against the physical and spiritual toll that times of change can take on us.

But many have lost touch with the art of ritual and prayer. If you aren’t religious, it might be difficult to imagine what relevance ritual, much less prayer, could hold. I get the question, but I believe in defining the terms loosely. Ritual helps you release your inhibitions and become fully immersed in the present moment. It could be a quiet cup of tea in the morning, a bath at night, or a walk through the woods every weekend.

You also don’t have to be religious to pray. I see prayer as any act that reminds you of your connection to your chosen community, the nonhuman world, and the Universe as a whole. Don’t underestimate how much it can shift your perspective and help you feel less alone.

Praying can also mean grieving. Is there a loss you haven’t fully grieved? It could be the loss of a relationship, friend or even a lifelong dream. It could be a literal death or the death of who you used to be. Grief is inseparable from love; to love is to prepare to grieve, to grieve is to release the love that’s stuck inside of us with nowhere to go. All losses deserve a rite of passage, to be mourned fully. This, too, is a way of praying.

Practically speaking, praying can look like a quiet hike through the woods with your phone off. It can be singing your favourite song at the top of your lungs 10 times in a row. It can be getting up extra early, eating a ripe peach on your front porch and listening to the birds in your yard before anyone else is awake. It could be dancing at a dive bar until you’re covered in sweat and everyone feels like family. Or cancelling your plans to go out, driving to a place of importance with a canteen of hot chocolate, and turning off the car so you can see the stars while you speak to a person you’ve lost.

Redefine happiness

Even if you manage to stop judging yourself for your woes, you might still expect your joy to look like other people’s. This is still a form of self-judgment. In telling yourself there’s a universal standard for what you should want, you reinforce the idea that your authentic desires aren’t good enough. This can cause a lot of inner turmoil, confusion and shame. It can alienate you from yourself and your genuine feelings, which you must be in touch with to make good decisions.

You have the right to redefine – for yourself – what happiness looks like. Instead of trying to live a life that’s free of problems, aim to live a life that fascinates you and feels meaningful. When you can, choose problems that seem worth the challenge, and for the problems imposed on you, try to shift your perspective on them. True wellness is less about avoiding struggle and more about appreciating the full spectrum of experience, from moments of awe to exhilaration and even terror.

I know it’s tempting to believe some future moment has your happiness. That, someday, you’ll figure out how to solve your problems and finally arrive in that place where you can really enjoy things. But your life has already begun. This is it. We don’t know what happens once we die but, even if we lived forever, all we would ever be able to experience is the moment we’re in. Stop and feel how it feels to be you, in this place, this body, and this moment. And the next time you feel something difficult, ask yourself: what if this is a beautiful problem? What if you came to earth just to experience this?

I don’t know if I would choose to come to earth to throw a sandwich at my birth mother, but I do know that when I sit down to do therapy, I feel fortunate to be able to use my hard lessons for good. In these moments, the particular triumphs and tragedies of my life seem small but not insignificant, like my part in a song we’re all singing together. My days are gentler now than they’ve ever been, but I know I’m not immune to problems. On my best days, pain mingles with pleasure and becomes a secret third thing. The whole of my life forms the lens I see the world through, a perspective I’m proud to bring. Each part of it matters. Your experience is also offering you this, a kaleidoscope of sensations that both set you apart and join you with the universal strangeness of being human. Enjoy it while you can.

 

Key Points – How to Enjoy Your Problems

  1. If you can learn to enjoy your problems, that’s enlightenment.Regardless of whether other people get your problems, you have to get them. Try to accept your life, absurd as it may be, and find some joy in it.
  2. Don’t judge yourself.It’s one thing to have problems, it’s another to blame yourself for having them. Yet that’s what many of us do. Tell yourself the opposite – feel proud.
  3. Tell your story.Describing, in detail, what you’ve survived can empower and energise you. It can help you recognise what you’re capable of.
  4. Move your body.In moments of extreme suffering, many ancient traditions suggest movement. Dance until you stop thinking about the fact that you’re dancing. Not sure how? Start with a tiny movement and repeat it for an hour.
  5. Make something.You don’t have to make anything brilliant, and you don’t ever have to show anyone. Similar to telling your story, the act of creative expression is transformative in itself.
  6. Cry for help.Vulnerability creates an opening for genuine connection. Embracing the full spectrum of feeling makes you emotionally available, and others can feel the depth of your presence.
  7. Pray in your own way.You don’t have to be religious to pray. I see prayer as any act that reminds you of your connection to your chosen community, the nonhuman world, and the Universe as a whole. Don’t underestimate how much it can shift your perspective and help you feel less alone.
  8. Redefine happiness.True wellness is less about avoiding struggle and more about appreciating the full spectrum of experience, from moments of awe to exhilaration and even terror.

Can you take enjoying your problems too far?

Of course! Anything can be taken too far. Here are some signs that you’re indulging a bit too much in your sorrow.

  1. Putting things off. My patients often worry that if they embrace difficult emotions, they’ll get too comfortable with feeling bad and lose the impulse to improve their situation. I understand this concern but, really, avoiding emotions is more often what keeps us in a state of stagnation.

You don’t have to choose between feeling hard things and taking action to better yourself. Finding meaning in pain can be the thing that helps us feel ready to move on. That said, if you notice you’re consistently putting off tasks that are good for you, it may be a sign that you’re heading in an unhealthy direction. If so, reach out to a trusted friend or therapist for help getting motivated.

  1. Isolating. Solitude can be nourishing, and everyone has different social needs. But if you’re going many days without having an authentic exchange, or you’re losing contact with people you used to be close to, this probably means it’s time to reach out. Let someone you trust know how you’re doing and invite them into your experience.
  2. Negative self-talk. We all have a harsh inner critic at times, but enjoying your problems is about loving yourself through hard times, not beating yourself up. If you notice your thoughts are becoming meaner or more alienating, seek support right away. You deserve empathy, both from yourself and from others.

 

 

Original article here