consciousness | Ascension Lifestyle

18 Dec 2023
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The Moral Imperative to Learn from Diverse Phenomenal Experiences

On 26 February 2015, Cates Holderness, a BuzzFeed community manager, posted a picture of a dress, captioned: ‘There’s a lot of debate on Tumblr about this right now, and we need to settle it.’ The post was accompanied by a poll that racked up millions of votes in a matter of days. About two-thirds of people saw the dress as white and gold. The rest, as blue and black. The comments section was filled with bewildered calls to ‘go check your eyes’ and all-caps accusations of trolling.

Vision scientists were quick to point out that the difference in appearance had to do with the ambiguity of ambient light in the photograph. If the visual system resolved the photograph as being taken indoors with its warmer light, the dress would appear blue and black; if outdoors, white and gold. That spring, the annual Vision Sciences Society conference had a live demo of the actual dress (blue and black, for the record) lit in different ways to demonstrate the way the difference of ambient light shifted its appearance. But none of this explains why the visual systems of different people would automatically infer different ambient light (one predictive factor seems to be a person’s typical wake-up time: night owls have more exposure to warmer, indoor light).

Whatever the full explanation turns out to be, it is remarkable that this type of genuine difference in visual appearance could elude us so completely. Until #TheDress went viral, no one, not even vision scientists, had any idea that these specific discrepancies in colour appearance existed. This is all the more remarkable considering how easy it is to establish this difference. In the case of #TheDress, it’s as easy as asking ‘What colours do you see?’ If we could be oblivious to such an easy-to-measure difference in subjective experience, how many other such differences might there be that can be discovered if only we know where to look and which questions to ask?

Take the case of Blake Ross, the co-creator of the Firefox web browser. For the first three decades of his life, Ross assumed his subjective experience was typical. After all, why wouldn’t he? Then he read a popular science story about people who do not have visual imagery. While most people can, without much effort, form vivid images in their ‘mind’s eye’, others cannot – a condition that has been documented since the 1800s but only recently named: aphantasia. Ross learned from the article that he himself had aphantasia. His reaction was memorable: ‘Imagine your phone buzzes with breaking news: WASHINGTON SCIENTISTS DISCOVER TAIL-LESS MAN. Well, then, what are you?’

Ross went on to ask his friends about what it’s like for them when they imagine various things, quickly realising that, just as he took his lack of imagery as a fact of the human condition, they similarly took their presence of visual imagery as a given. ‘I have never visualised anything in my entire life,’ Ross wrote in Vox in 2016. ‘I can’t “see” my father’s face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on 10 minutes ago… I’m 30 years old, and I never knew a human could do any of this. And it is blowing my goddamn mind.’

There is a moral imperative for us to study and understand these kinds of differences

There is a kind of visceral astonishment that accompanies these types of hidden differences. We seem wedded to the idea that we experience things a certain way because they are that way. Encountering someone who experiences the world differently (even when that difference seems trivial, like the colour of a dress) means acknowledging the possibility that our own perception could be ‘wrong’. And if we can’t be sure about the colour of something, what else might we be wrong about? Similarly, for an aphantasic to acknowledge that visual imagery exists is to realise that there is a large mismatch between their subjective experiences and those of most other people.

Studying hidden differences like these can enrich our scientific understanding of the mind. It would not occur to a vision scientist to ask whether being a night owl might have an impact on colour perception, but a bunch of people on the internet comparing notes on how they saw a dress inspired just such a study. The study of aphantasia is helping us understand ways in which people lacking imagery can accomplish the same goals (like remembering the visual details of their living room) without using explicit imagery. How many other such examples might there be once we start looking? There is also, arguably, a moral imperative for us to study and understand these kinds of differences because they help us understand the various ways of being human and to empathise with these differences. It’s a sobering thought that a person might respond differently to a situation not just because they have a different opinion about what to do or are in possession of different knowledge, but because their experience of the situation is fundamentally different.

For most of my research career, I didn’t really care about individual differences. Like most other cognitive scientists, my concern was with manipulating some factor and looking to see how this manipulation affected the group average. In my case, I was interested in the ways that typical human cognition and perception is augmented by language. And so, in a typical experiment, I would manipulate some aspect of language. For example, I examined whether learning names for novel objects changed how people categorised, remembered and perceived them. These were typical group-effect studies in which we compare how people respond to some manipulation. Of course, with any such study, different people respond in different ways, but the focus is on the average response.

For example, hearing ‘green’ helps (most) people see the subtle differences between more-green and less-green colour patches. Interfering with language by having people do a concurrent verbal task makes it harder for (most) people to group together objects that share a specific feature, such as being of a similar size or colour. But most people aren’t everyone. Could it be that some people’s colour discrimination and object categorisation is actively aided by language, but other people’s less so? This thought led us to wonder if this could be another hidden difference, much like aphantasia. In particular, we began to look at inner speech, long thought to be a universal feature of human experience.

Most people report having an inner voice. For example, 83 per cent (3,445 out of 4,145 people in our sample) ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with the statement ‘When I read I tend to hear a voice in my mind’s ear.’ A similar proportion – 80 per cent – ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with the statement ‘I think about problems in my mind in the form of a conversation with myself.’ This proportion goes up even more when asked about social problems: 85 per cent ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with the statement ‘When thinking about a social problem, I often talk it through in my head.’

On average, those who report having more visual imagery also report experiencing more inner speech

But 85 per cent is hardly everyone. What about those who disagree with these statements? Some of them report experiencing an inner voice only in specific situations. For example, when it comes to reading, some say that they hear a voice only if they deliberately slow down or are reading something difficult. But a small percentage (2-5 per cent) report never experiencing an inner voice at all. Like those with aphantasia who assume their whole lives that visual imagery is just a metaphor, those with anendophasia – a term Johanne Nedergaard and I coined to refer to the absence of inner speech – assume that those inner monologues so common in TV shows are just a cinematic device rather than something that people actually experience. People with anendophasia report that they never replay past conversations and that, although they have an idea of what they want to say, they don’t know what words will come out of their mouths until they start talking.

It is tempting to think that there is a trade-off between thinking using language and thinking using imagery. Take the widespread idea that people have different ‘learning styles’, some being visual learners and others verbal learners (it turns out this idea is largely incorrect). When it comes to imagery and inner speech, what we find is a moderate positive correlation between vividness of visual imagery and inner speech. On average, those who report having more visual imagery also report experiencing more inner speech. Most who claim to not experience inner speech also report having little imagery.

This raises the question of what their thoughts feel like to them. When we have asked, we tend to get answers that are quite vague, for example: ‘I think in ideas’ and ‘I think in concepts.’ We have lots of language at our disposal that we can use to talk about perceptual properties (especially visual ones) and, of course, we can use language to talk about language. So it is not really surprising that people have trouble conveying what thoughts without a perceptual or linguistic format feel like. But the difficulties in expressing these types of thoughts using language don’t make them any less real. They merely show that we have to work harder to better understand what they are like.

Differences in visual imagery and inner speech are just the tip of the iceberg. Other hidden differences include synaesthesia, Greek for ‘union of the senses’, in which people hear lights or taste sounds, and Eigengrau, a German word for the ‘intrinsic grey’ we see when we close our eyes. Except not all of us experience Eigengrau. About 10 per cent in our samples claim their experience is nothing like Eigengrau. Instead, when they close their eyes, they report seeing colourful patterns or a kind of visual static noise, like an analogue TV not tuned to a channel.

Our memory, too, seems to be the subject of larger differences than anyone expected. In 2015, the psychologist Daniela Palombo and colleagues published a paper describing ‘severely deficient autobiographical memory’ (SDAM). A person with SDAM might know that they went on a trip to Italy five years ago, but they cannot retrieve a first-person account of the experience: they cannot engage in the ‘mental time travel’ that most of us take for granted. As in other cases of hidden differences, these individuals tend not to realise they are unusual. As Claudia Hammond wrote for the BBC about Susie McKinnon, one of the first described cases of SDAM, she always ‘assumed that when people told in-depth stories about their past, they were just making up the details to entertain people.’

What is it about differences in imagery, inner speech, synaesthesia and memory that render them hidden? It is tempting to think that it’s because we don’t directly observe them. We can see that someone is a really fast runner. But having direct access only to our own reality, how are we to know what another person imagines when they think of an apple, or whether they hear a voice when they read? Still, while we can’t directly experience another person’s reality, we can compare notes by talking about it. Often, it’s remarkably easy: for #TheDress, we just needed to ask one another what colours we see. We can also ask whether letters always appear in colour (a grapheme-colour synaesthete will say yes; others will say no). People without imagery will tell you they cannot visualise an apple, and those without inner speech will say they do not have silent conversations with themselves. It is not actually difficult to discover these differences once we start systematically studying them.

Paradoxically, although language is what allows us to compare notes and learn about differences between our subjective experiences, its power to abstract may also cause us to overlook these differences because the same word can mean many different things. We use ‘imagine’ to refer to forming an image in the mind’s eye, but we also use it when referring to more abstract activities like imagining a hypothetical future. It is perfectly reasonable for an aphantasic to not realise that, in some cases, people use ‘imagine’ to mean actually forming mental images that have a perceptual reality.

Much of our understanding of hidden differences relies on people’s self-report. Can we trust it? Modern psychology is sceptical about self-report, a scepticism I’ve inherited as part of my academic training. Recent reports of large individual differences in imagery and inner speech have often been accompanied by incredulity. How do we know that these differences reflect something real? Can we really just take people at their word when they say they don’t have an inner voice?

If the goal is to understand what a person feels, self-report trumps objective measurement

Before tackling the more complex question of whether we should trust self-reports about internal subjective states like imagery and inner speech, let’s consider some simpler cases. When someone says they dislike cauliflower, they are reporting on their subjective experience, and we tend to take them at their word. But we don’t have to. We can easily set up an experiment where we observe how likely they are to eat cauliflower when given alternatives. It would be surprising if someone claimed to not like cauliflower but chose to eat it at every opportunity. There are, of course, cases where such ‘stated-vs-revealed preference gaps’ occur. Many researchers have made their careers studying these gaps. For example, if one lives in a culture where cauliflower-eating is associated with higher status, people may be compelled to say they like it even though they don’t. Conversely, someone might eat cauliflower only to avoid offending their host. Such situations call for caution in interpreting people’s preferences – both stated and revealed – but they do not negate the observation that, in ordinary circumstances, taking people at their word regarding their preferences is a very good guide to their behaviour.

Let’s take another case. You are in a shared office and your office-mate says they feel cold when the thermostat is set to 72°F (22°C). Do you take them at their word, or do you say ‘But 72°F is the proper indoor temperature? How can you feel cold?’ Suppose you take measurements of their skin temperature, core temperature, even an fMRI scan showing activation of their insula. None of these would allow you to claim that they don’t feel cold. None of these measures would negate their self-report. If one was concerned about hypothermia, relying on objective measurements may well be appropriate but, if the goal is to understand what a person feels, self-report trumps objective measurement.

The same logic applies to other inherently subjective states such as loneliness, pain and awe. To measure loneliness, it is not sufficient to count how many people someone talks to or is friends with because one person’s active social life may be another person’s depth of loneliness. We can tell if there is a flu epidemic by using objective tests, but diagnosing a ‘loneliness epidemic’ requires taking into account whether people feel lonely. This is also why, despite all the available technology we have to measure people’s physiological states, when it comes to pain, we continue to rely on pain scales, a simple form of self-report. If we take introspective judgments seriously when it comes to preferences, emotion and pain, why would we be more sceptical about them in cases of phenomenal differences such as imagery and inner speech?

One possibility is that we are able to reliably introspect about some things and not others. Perhaps we can reliably report on ‘basic’ states like pain and whether we like cauliflower (though, even here, there may well be differences in people’s ability to self-report), but in other cases our introspection fails. For example, most people think they are above-average drivers – one of the many examples of the so-called ‘Lake Wobegon Effect’. We can also be wrong in the other direction. In a typical implicit learning study, participants are exposed to sequences of flashing lights, sounds or shapes that obey a certain rule. They subsequently have to identify whether new sequences obey the same rule or not. Participants often feel like they are just guessing, that is, they think they have not learned anything. Their behaviour, however, can be far above chance level, indicating that they in fact have learned something. In such cases, the ‘incorrect’ self-report is still informative: it gives us insight into the person’s subjective reality (they think they are in the 80 percentile of driving ability, they think they are just guessing, they think they haven’t learned something that they, in fact, have). But at the same time, these self-reports do not reflect objective reality. They are poor guides to predicting what a person can or is likely to do.

Lastly, consider dreams. In a 1958 survey, Fernando Tapia and colleagues reported that only about 9 per cent of respondents indicated that their dreams contained colour. Other surveys done around this time reported similarly low proportions. A decade later, the tide turned and a large majority reported dreaming in colour. The philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel considers several explanations for this discrepancy. One possibility is that black-and-white photographs and television changed the content of dreams. As colour TV came to dominate, colour returned to people’s dreams (‘returned’ because, in a few studies from the more distant past, people did not claim to dream in black and white).

The problem with this is that there is no reason to think TV should have such an outsized impact on the phenomenology of our dreams. After all, the world never ceased to be in colour. The alternative, argues Schwitzgebel, is that ‘at least some people must be pretty badly mistaken about their dreams.’ Our ability to report on the perceptual content of our dreams may simply be unreliable. And with no objective measures against which to measure the subjective report, we can’t really know whether these reports reflect anyreality, subjective or not. Why then would there be any consistency in people’s reports from a given time? Perhaps because, in the absence of having good access to their phenomenal states, people go with the response they think is most reasonable. In the 1950s, the dominant popular and scientific view was that dreams lack colour. And so, when queried, participants simply mirrored that dominant view. The same happened as the dominant view later changed. Neither case, Schwitzgebel argues, reflects ‘correct’ phenomenology because we simply do not have valid introspection when it comes to the colour of our dreams.

If reports about phenomenal states like imagery and inner speech are like reports about dreams, we have every reason to remain sceptical of whether differences in introspection report actual differences in people’s actual experiences. If they are more like reports about our preferences and emotions, then we can (mostly) take people at their word. Even then, we must consider social pressures to respond in a certain way. If having vivid imagery were a requirement for admission to art school, we should not be surprised if aspiring artists all claim to have very vivid imagery. If hearing a voice when one reads were considered a sign of mental illness, people would be less likely to say they hear a voice when they read.

Establishing the validity of self-report can be done in several ways. First, we must show consistency. If one day people claimed they experience inner speech constantly and the next day they claimed they never did, we have a problem. As it turns out, people’s reports are highly consistent. Inner speech questionnaires taken months apart show high correlations. (At the same time, Russell Hurlburt’s work using descriptive experience sampling, which probes people’s thinking at random points during the day, does show that people overestimate how much of their thinking is in the form of inner speech.)

We can also see whether differences in reported phenomenology predict differences in objective behaviour. This is not an option when it comes to dreams, but we can make specific predictions about behavioural consequences of having more or less visual imagery and inner speech based on existing theories of imagery and language. Differences in self-reported phenomenology can be linked to differences in objective behaviour. Those with less inner speech have a harder time remembering lists of words; those with less visual imagery report fewer visual details when describing past events.

There are also reported differences in more automatic physiological responses. More light entering the pupil causes it to constrict. But simply imagining something bright like the Sun also causes (a smaller, but still measurable) constriction. Aphantasics show perfectly typical pupillary responses to actual changes in light. However, their pupils do not change to imagined light. At the same time, many hypothesised differences in behaviour are notobserved because, it seems, people compensate by, for example, discovering ways of remembering detailed visual content without engaging explicit imagery. Such compensation can prove beneficial. People with poor autobiographical memory find other ways of keeping track of information that can help stave off some of the cognitive decline in ageing.

It’s harder to brush aside self-reports of someone who says they could imagine things, and now can’t

Another way to establish validity is that we can ask whether there are neural and physiological correlates of reported phenomenal differences. If differences in reported imagery were mere confabulations or the results of people just telling researchers what they think the researchers want to hear, it would be surprising if they had different brain connectivity and functional activation as measured by fMRI. Yet this is what we are finding. Fraser Milton and colleagues scanned groups of people identifying as aphantasics and hyperphantasics (those with unusually vivid visual imagery). When asked to lie in the scanner and stare at a cross on a screen, the brain responses of the hyperphantasic group had greater connectivity between prefrontal cortex and the occipital visual network, compared with the aphantasic group. Participants were also asked to look at and imagine various famous people and places. The difference in activation between perception and imagery (in a left anterior parietal region) was larger in hyperphantasic compared with aphantasic participants. Those with typical imagery tended to fall in between the aphantasics and hyperphantasic group on many of the measures. Less is known about neural correlates of differences in inner speech. In work presented at the 2023 meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Huichao Yang and colleagues found a relationship between how much inner speech people reported to experience and resting-state functional connectivity in the language network.

Lastly, even though we don’t know what it’s like to be someone else, we can compare how our phenomenology differs from one time to another. There are numerous reports of people with brain injuries that cause them to lose visual imagery, and some cases of losing inner speech. It is much harder to brush aside self-reports of someone who says they used to be able to imagine things, and now they can’t (especially when these are confirmed by clear differences in objective behaviour).

Holderness’s caption introducing the world to #TheDress had a second part. ‘This is important,’ she wrote, ‘because I think I’m going insane.’ The idea that the same image can look different to different people is alarming because it threatens our conviction that the world is as we ourselves experience it. When an aphantasic learns that other people can form mental images, they are learning that something they did not know was even a possibility is, in fact, many people’s everyday reality. This is understandably destabilising.

And yet, there is a scientific and moral imperative for learning about the diverse forms of our phenomenology. Scientifically, it prevents us from making claims that the majority experience (or the scientist’s experience) is everyone’s experience. Morally, it encourages us to go beyond the ancient advice to ‘know thyself’ which can lead to excessive introspection, and to strive to know others. And to do that requires that we open ourselves up to the possibility that their experiences may be quite different from our own.

Original article here

12 Dec 2023
Comments: 1

What really happens during a near-death experience

Sci-fi author Brian Herbert once wrote, “The only guarantee in life is death, and the only guarantee in death is its shocking unpredictability.” These words ring true to researchers who investigate what happens in a person’s final moments—and the frustration that comes with these studies. One big problem almost always gets in the way: How do you ask people what dying feels like when they’re no longer here?

Because we haven’t yet figured out how to communicate with the dead, the best-case scenario is talking to people who have had a close brush with death. They often mention seeing bright lights, their life flashing before their eyes, or visions of deceased loved ones. Some have even reported spotting the Grim Reaper by their bedside. It’s a paradoxical situation, says Kevin Nelson, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky: A few perceptions are common—a shining light, for instance—but the near-death experience is unique to each individual.

There’s still a lot of mystery when it comes to the cause, but the field is progressing thanks to people who have allowed scientists to study their brains in these situations. People who have survived these close calls say the encounter can be life-changing. One thing is certain: medical experts say near-death experiences are not a figment of the imagination.

And figuring out the mechanisms behind this phenomenon goes beyond general curiosity. One goal is to better understand how cardiac arrests happen. It could also potentially save lives, because doctors would have more knowledge for when to continue resuscitations after a patient’s heart stops.

“The research not only benefits our understanding of consciousness, but also in understanding the importance of the heart, lung, and brain in our everyday physiology,” says Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Unreal recall

A near-death experience can happen to anyone. In fact, 1 in 10 people have reported sharper senses, slowed time, out-of-body sensations or other features associated with near-death, despite not being in grave danger. Research shows that near-death experiences come in four types: emotional, cognitive, spiritual and religious experiences, and supernatural. Of the four, people often recall supernatural activity, particularly the feeling of detaching from a physical body.

About 76 percent of people report an out-of-body experience during a near-death experience. While some people may attribute this to a spiritual experience, this is actually a sensory deception caused by the brain, which scientists have successfully replicated in people who are asleep. Research has shown that direct electrical stimulation of a brain area normally inactive in REM sleep can provoke an out-of-body experience. “Like a flip of a switch, you can literally throw somebody out of their body and back into their body,” Nelson says.

Often, though, people with cardiac arrest will recall near-death experiences. “About a quarter of people who suffer and survived cardiac arrest have memories about some aspect of near-death experience, Borjigin says. This is because people with cardiac arrest have decreasing blood pressure, she says. With the heart unable to pump properly, oxygen is unable to travel to the rest of the body, which is essential for every single cell in your body to survive. When a brain is alerted to a sudden decline in oxygen, your brain undergoes certain changes that contribute to the perceptual distortions that accompany a near-death experience.

Electrical surges in the brain

Ten years ago, Borjigin and her team observed that rats in simulated cardiac arrest still had fully active brains even 30 seconds after their hearts stopped. What’s more, their brains increased in electrical activity. To confirm whether this happens in humans, Borjigin recently tested the brains of four people who were critically ill and removed from life support.

When these comatose patients were taken off their ventilators, they could not breathe on their own. But, using EEGs, Borjigin noticed two people showed a surge in gamma brainwaves as their bodies started shutting down. Gamma brainwaves are usually a sign of consciousness, because they are mostly active when someone is awake and alert.

“We’ve shown the brain has a unique mechanism that deals with a lack of oxygen because oxygen is so essential for survival that even an acute loss massively activates the brain and could lead to a near-death experience,” Borjigin explains.

The boost in gamma waves occurred in a brain area called the temporo-parieto-occipital (TPO) junction. This is responsible for blending information from our senses, including touch, motion, and vision, into our conscious selves. It’s impossible to know if the increased brain activity was related to any visions they may have had, because, sadly, the two patients died. But Borjigin suggests activation of this area suggests people may likely pick up sounds and understand language. “They might hear and perceive the conversation around them and form a visual image in their brain even when their eyes are closed.”

Hidden consciousness

In one of the largest studies of near-death experiences, an international team of doctors has linked the surge in brain activity to what they called a hidden consciousness immediately following death. In the study, people who were brought back to life through CPR after cardiac arrest could recall memories and conversations while they were seemingly unconscious.

Between May 2017 and March 2020, the team tracked 567 people who underwent a cardiac arrest. They used EEGs and cerebral oxygenation monitoring to measure electrical activity and brain oxygen levels during CPR. To study auditory and visual awareness, the team used a tablet showing one of 10 images on the screen, and five minutes after, it would play a recording of fruit names: pear, banana, and apple, for another five minutes.

Only 53 people of the original 567 participants were successfully resuscitated. Initially, they showed no signs of brain activity and were considered dead. But during the CPR, the team noticed bursts of activity. These spikes included gamma waves and others: delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves—all electrical activity that signals consciousness.

Twenty-eight of those 53 patients were cognitively capable of having an interview. Eleven people recalled being lucid during CPR, being aware of what was happening or showing perceptions of consciousness like an out-of-body experience. No one could recall the visual image but when asked to randomly name three fruit, one person correctly named all the fruits in the audio recording—though the authors note this could have been a random lucky guess.

The study authors also included self-reports of 126 other survivors of cardiac arrests not involved in the study and what they remembered from almost dying. Common themes included the pain and pressure of chest compressions, hearing conversations from doctors, out-of-body experiences, and abstract dreams that had nothing to do with the medical event.

The findings debunk the idea that an oxygen-deprived brain stays alive for only five to ten minutes. They also raise the question whether doctors can save people already determined to be dead. “These patients were actually alive within, as seen in the positive waves on the EEG, but externally they were dead,” says Chinwe Ogedegbe, an emergency trauma center section chief and coauthor of the study.

Beyond the brain’s resilience to the lack of oxygen, the authors propose an alternative “braking system” that could explain the distorted perceptions of consciousness. The brain normally filters and inhibits unneeded information when you’re awake. In this unconscious state, however, the braking system is gone, which could allow dormant brain pathways to activate and access a deeper realm of consciousness containing all of your memory, thoughts, and actions. “Instead of being hallucinatory, illusory or delusional, this appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality,” the authors write in their paper.

Unfortunately, with only a small number of participants surviving their cardiac arrest, it’s unclear whether this altered consciousness is more visual or auditory. Ogedegbe is working to increase the number of participants in the next trial to 1,500. Doing so will give researchers a better idea of the type of brain activity that goes on when someone is at death’s door, and potentially provide comfort that their loved ones can sense them in their final moments.

Original article here

09 Dec 2023
Comments: 1

5 Mistakes We Make When We’re Overwhelmed

When you feel overwhelmed, you may react in ways that not only don’t help the situation, but that even make it worse. Maybe you’re oblivious to these patterns, or you know what they are but struggle to do anything about them.

The following are five common self-sabotaging mistakes overwhelmed people tend to make. There are practical solutions for each that will help you feel like you’re on top of things and do a better job of navigating your most important tasks and solving problems.

You think you don’t have time for actions that would help you.

People often have great ideas about things that would help them feel better and more in control — for example, hiring someone to help around the house, practicing self-care, seeing a therapist, taking a vacation, or organizing a game night with friends. However, they dismiss them because they think they’re too busy or that it’s not the right time, waiting to take those actions until a more ideal moment that typically never arrives.

Instead of thinking about what would be ideal, choose the best option that’s easily available to you now. Perhaps you don’t have time to research the best therapists by interviewing multiple candidates, but you do have time to pick someone who meets a few of your criteria and try a couple of sessions with them.

When you have good ideas but don’t act on them, it can lead to a sense of powerlessness or incompetence. You may also have endless open loops of “shoulds” and waste time and energy thinking the same thoughts over and over again. Plus, when you don’t act, you miss out on the benefits you’d accrue from trying your ideas. By acting to help yourself, you’ll get practice finding doable solutions, feel more self-efficacy, and reap those benefits sooner.

You don’t utilize your unconscious mind enough.

Focus isn’t the only way to get things done. Your unconscious mind is great at problem-solving, too.

When I go for a walk, my mind wanders. I don’t aim to walk mindfully; rather, I let my mind drift without directing it too much. When I do this, it invariably meanders to work, but not in an unpleasant way. Solutions to problems magically emerge, and what I should prioritize becomes clearer without effort.

Even knowing this, it’s hard to allow myself to take a walk early in the workday (before temperatures where I live get too hot). What’s fascinating is that when I walk before work, my anxiety about the work I need to start once I get home creeps up. However, this doesn’t get in the way of me having insights into my problems and priorities. Both can occur together.

Your unconscious, wandering mind is as valuable a tool for solving problems and creative thinking as your focused mind. Utilizing your wandering mind will help you get important things done, without so much pressure to be focused and undistracted all the time, which can be an unreasonable expectation.

People who are feeling overwhelmed sometimes try to block out work thoughts during their personal time by listening to music, a podcast, or other entertainment. But that can rob you of some of the productivity potential of your drifting mind. Try identifying the activities during which your mind naturally drifts in helpful ways and solves problems for you. For me, these include running errands (driving), exercising, taking showers, and lounging in the sun.

You interpret feeling overwhelmed as a weakness.

Lots of times, we feel overwhelmed simply because we need to do a task we’re not very familiar with, or because a task is high stakes and we want to do a superb job of it. By itself, this isn’t necessarily a problem. We can often work through the task despite those overwhelmed feelings.

However, sometimes we get self-critical about the very fact that we feel overwhelmed. We think: “I shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by this. It’s not that hard. I should be able to handle it without it stressing out.” When you’re self-critical, you become more likely to procrastinate, because not only does the task trigger feelings of overwhelm, it also triggers shame or anxiety about having those feelings.

Some people react to this shame and anxiety in other ways. They might approach the task with extra perfectionism, or they might become more reluctant to ask for tips and advice from others. It’s important to replace your self-criticism with compassionate self-talk, which I’ve provided specific strategies for previously.

You default to your dominant approaches and defenses.

When we get stressed out, we tend to get a bit more rigid. Because we have less cognitive and emotional bandwidth to consider other options, we become less flexible about adapting to the demands of the situation and default to our dominant ways of handling things.

We all have values, but we don’t always use them to our advantage. For example, thoughtfulness can turn into overthinking, self-reliance can morph into micromanaging or doing everything yourself, having high standards can lead to being picky or perfectionistic, and resourcefulness can steer you toward doing things in unnecessarily complicated or unconventional ways.

When you’re overwhelmed, make sure you’re matching your values to the demands of the situation. Does the particular task or problem need _____? (Insert your dominant value, such as thoughtfulness or self-reliance.) Or would a different approach be better suited to the circumstances?

You withdraw from your supports.

If you feel overwhelmed, you’ve probably got limited emotional energy. This can lead to important changes in your behavior and emotional availability. They can be subtle — maybe you usually give your child a long hug when they come to you, but instead, you now give them a quick perfunctory squeeze while still thinking about other things, then get back to whatever you were doing.

This is self-sabotaging. You’re missing opportunities to fill up your emotional cup when you need it most, and you risk your loved ones noticing the differences and acting out to get your attention (for example, a child drawing on a wall, or a spouse picking an argument about something unimportant).

Identify ways you still enjoy connecting with your supports even when you’ve got limited emotional energy. For example, I like to draw alongside my five-year-old during my breaks, or construct something out of blocks and shapes with her. We also like to cuddle in bed while watching our own individual screens. If you struggle to get around to these activities, create routines for them so they fit into your day or week in specific places — for example, maybe you always bake with your child on Saturday mornings.

By being aware of the five patterns outlined here, you can make getting through busy and challenging times easier on yourself and those around you. They’re understandable patterns to fall into — and not a reason for you to be self-critical. Know what the traps are and make easy, small changes to overcome them.

Original article here

05 Dec 2023
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‘What the heck is going on?’ Extremely high-energy particle detected falling to Earth

Astronomers have detected a rare and extremely high-energy particle falling to Earth that is causing bafflement because it is coming from an apparently empty region of space.

The particle, named Amaterasu after the sun goddess in Japanese mythology, is one of the highest-energy cosmic rays ever detected.

Only the most powerful cosmic events, on scales far exceeding the explosion of a star, are thought to be capable of producing such energetic particles. But Amaterasu appears to have emerged from the Local Void, an empty area of space bordering the Milky Way galaxy.

“You trace its trajectory to its source and there’s nothing high energy enough to have produced it,” said Prof John Matthews, of the University of Utah and a co-author of the paper in the journal Science that describes the discovery. “That’s the mystery of this – what the heck is going on?”

The Amaterasu particle has an energy exceeding 240 exa-electron volts (EeV), millions of times more than particles produced in the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful accelerator ever built, and equivalent to the energy of a golf ball travelling at 95mph. It comes only second to the Oh-My-God particle, another ultra-high-energy cosmic ray that came in at 320 EeV, detected in 1991.

“Things that people think of as energetic, like supernova, are nowhere near energetic enough for this,” said Matthews. “You need huge amounts of energy, really high magnetic fields, to confine the particle while it gets accelerated.”

Toshihiro Fujii, an associate professor at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan, said: “When I first discovered this ultra-high-energy cosmic ray, I thought there must have been a mistake, as it showed an energy level unprecedented in the last three decades.”

A potential candidate for this level of energy would be a super-massive black hole at the heart of another galaxy. In the vicinity of these vast entities, matter is stripped back to its subatomic structures and protons, electrons and nuclei are hurled out across the universe at nearly the speed of light.

Cosmic rays, echoes of such violent celestial events, rain down on to Earth nearly constantly and can be detected by instruments, such as the Telescope Array observatory in Utah, which found the Amaterasu particle.

Below a certain energy threshold, the flight path of these particles resembles a ball in a pinball machine as they zigzag against the electromagnetic fields through the cosmic microwave background. But particles with Oh-My-God or Amaterasu-level energy would be expected to blast through intergalactic space relatively unbent by galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields, meaning it should be possible to trace their origin.

Tracing its trajectory backwards points towards empty space. Similarly, the Oh-My-God particle had no discernible source. Scientists suggest this could indicate a much larger magnetic deflection than predicted, an unidentified source in the Local Void, or an incomplete understanding of high-energy particle physics.

“These events seem like they’re coming from completely different places in the sky. It’s not like there’s one mysterious source,” said Prof John Belz of the University of Utah and a co-author of the paper. “It could be defects in the structure of spacetime, colliding cosmic strings. I mean, I’m just spitballing crazy ideas that people are coming up with because there’s not a conventional explanation.”

The Telescope Array is uniquely positioned to detect ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. It sits at about 1,200m (4,000ft), the elevation sweet spot that allows secondary particles maximum development, but before they start to decay. Its location in Utah’s West Desert provides ideal atmospheric conditions in two ways: the dry air is crucial because humidity will absorb the ultraviolet light necessary for detection; and the region’s dark skies are essential, as light pollution will create too much noise and obscure the cosmic rays.

The Telescope Array is in the middle of an expansion that that astronomers hope will help crack the case. Once completed, 500 new scintillator detectors will expand the Telescope Array across 2,900 km²(1,100 mi²), an area nearly the size of Rhode Island and this larger footprint is expected to capture more of these extreme events.

Original article here

02 Dec 2023
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Been There, Done That! (Are You Sure?)

I bike the same route to my job every morning. Turn right, over a bridge, gentle left, hard left, hard right, check for cars at the 4-way stop, left turn, gentle right, huff and puff up the same long hill… and on I go. I can recite the entire route from memory. Same streets, same houses, same trees, same lake, same parks, all whizzing by as I focus on the road ahead, keeping up my speed to get a good workout and get to work on time.

I vary the return trip a bit at the end of the day because I have more time to explore. But do I get bored with the morning ride? Never! A few days ago, for example, those “same” streets were very much not the same, because it was still dark out, rain was smearing my glasses, and the road was covered in bright yellow, wet autumn leaves. I felt deep gratitude for the “beginner’s mind” that steered carefully and kept my speed under control through those slippery crash hazards. In the moment, I appreciated my bike, my legs, and my bright headlight. It all made me smile, to be awake and aware, and the sun was rising when I pulled into my destination.

Often we think we need something new and different in order to be happy; we think we can only be stimulated by change. Maybe you have walked the path 1,000 times between your home and your car, or the bus stop, or wherever you keep your bicycle. So you think you’ve done it, seen it, nothing is new. You may sigh and say “Been there, done that” and feel unhappy.

But in reality, we’ve never experienced this moment before. Not this one either. Nor this one.

In the eyes of a beginner, our path has many wondrous things to notice, smile at, even celebrate. Because with every moment things are changing. What are you looking at? Are you stopping to look with fresh eyes?

Joanne Friday writes beautifully about this in her story “Freedom from My Own Mind,” in the book Tears Become Rain: Stories of Transformation and Healing Inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh. When a brain injury after a car accident left her with no memory and the inability to manage her stress hormones, she writes, “I was trapped in a constant state of anxiety and fear.” Spontaneously joining a retreat with the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanne learned the joy of looking with fresh eyes at what was right in front of her. “Since I had no memory of the past and was in fear of going forward in my life with no ability to think or function well, I loved the idea of focusing fully on the present moment.”

This new way of seeing the world also applied to how Joanne viewed her own injured body. Daily walks prescribed by her doctor were torment, as she focused on the pain from her ruptured discs and her mind filled with fear and speculation that she couldn’t return to the healthy self she once knew. But then Joanne tried walking meditation, taking slow steps outdoors and focusing on the miracle of being a part of everything. “The trees exhaled what we inhaled, and we exhaled what the trees inhaled. When we focus on what a miracle this precious lifetime is, we are walking in the kingdom of heaven,” she writes. “I realized that where I chose to place my mind determined my experience. I had a choice!”

I was asked recently how we can find happiness in this world that contains so much conflict and suffering. I find happiness because I look for it, right where I am, just like Joanne did. There are tiny flowers on the ground and funny bumper stickers on people’s cars. The person who walks past me has a face, and it might smile if I smile at them. When I look as a beginner looks — as if I haven’t already seen a million flowers, read all the bumper stickers, passed so many faces in my lifetime — I experience these little joys.

My wife still makes me laugh, after 22 years. Yes, we’ve struggled, and we still have our struggles, but because of that we also notice and cherish our happy moments. We’ve never been here before, with all that brought us to this point, with all the challenges swirling in our brains, with whatever is going on in our work lives, our community, and the world. We truly have never been here before. And in this moment at the dinner table, I see her make a silly face, hear her bad pun or her intentionally obtuse question that makes our kids and me stop and wonder if she’s all there.

I could think with exasperation, “Oh there she goes again being silly.” Or look at her and roll my eyes, as our teenage kids sometimes do. But instead I get to laugh at her lightness, as if this is the first time, because it is! What a wonderful feeling when we pause and look in each other’s eyes, and catch the eyes of our kids, and know we are enjoying this moment together.

And that lightness then spreads. Laughter is like yoga, making happy chemicals move around in our brains. Our teenagers may even admit that smiling feels way better than eye rolling. They see my glee at their other mom’s silliness, and it’s contagious. Finding joy isn’t a crime, even when others around us are suffering. I see it as the opposite: Our happiness waters our seeds of compassion because we know that others want happiness too. Instead of getting lost in our own dissatisfaction at the “same old same old,” we can look and see those around us who need our smiling face, open to the possibility of this new moment.

Original article here

28 Nov 2023
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Modern Medicine Has Its Scientific Roots In The Middle Ages − How The Logic Of Vulture Brain Remedies And Bloodletting Lives On Today

Nothing calls to mind nonsensical treatments and bizarre religious healing rituals as easily as the notion of Dark Age medicine. The “Saturday Night Live” sketch Medieval Barber Theodoric of York says it all with its portrayal of a quack doctor who insists on extracting pints of his patients’ blood in a dirty little shop.

Though the skit relies on dubious stereotypes, it’s true that many cures from the Middle Ages sound utterly ridiculous – consider a list written around 800 C.E. of remedies derived from a decapitated vulture. Mixing its brain with oil and inserting that into the nose was thought to cure head pain, and wrapping its heart in wolf skin served as an amulet against demonic possession.

“Dark Age medicine” is a useful narrative when it comes to ingrained beliefs about medical progress. It is a period that stands as the abyss from which more enlightened thinkers freed themselves. But recent research pushes back against the depiction of the early Middle Ages as ignorant and superstitious, arguing that there is a consistency and rationality to healing practices at that time.

As a historian of the early Middle Ages, roughly 400 to 1000 C.E., I make sense of how the societies that produced vulture medicine envisioned it as one component of a much broader array of legitimate therapies. In order to recognize “progress” in Dark Age medicine, it is essential to see the broader patterns that led a medieval scribe to copy out a set of recipes using vulture organs.

The major innovation of the age was the articulation of a medical philosophy that validated manipulating the physical world because it was a religious duty to rationally guard the body’s health.

Reason And Religion

The names of classical medical innovators like Hippocrates and Galen were well known in the early Middle Ages, but few of their texts were in circulation prior to the 13th century. Most intellectual activities in northern Europe were taking place within monasteries, where the majority of surviving medical writings from that time were written, read, discussed and likely put into practice. Scholars have assumed that religious superstition overwhelmed scientific impulse and the church dictated what constituted legitimate healing – namely, prayer, anointing with holy oil, miracles of the saints and penance for sin.

However, “human medicine” – a term affirming human agency in discovering remedies from nature – emerged in the Dark Ages. It appears again and again in a text monks at the monastery of Lorsch, Germany, wrote around the year 800 to defend ancient Greek medical learning. It insists that Hippocratic medicine was mandated by God and that doctors act as divine agents in promoting health. I argue in my recent book, “Embodying the Soul: Medicine and Religion in Carolingian Europe,” that a major innovation of that time was the creative synthesis of Christian orthodoxy with a growing belief in the importance of preventing disease.

Establishing an intellectual framework for medical study was an accomplishment of early medieval scholars. Doctors faced the risk of being lumped together with those who dealt in sorcery and pagan folklore, a real possibility given that the men who composed the Greek medical canon were pagans themselves. The early medieval scribes responsible for producing the medical books of their age crafted powerful arguments about the respectability and piety of the doctor. Their arguments manifest in illustrations that sanctified the human doctor by setting him parallel to Christ.

This sanctification was a crucial step in including medicine as its own advanced degree program at the first universities that were established around 1200 in Europe. Thus began the licensing of healers: the elite “phisici” – the root of the English word “physician” – trained at the university, along with empirical practitioners like surgeons, herbalists and female healers who claimed a unique authority to treat gynecological illnesses.

Today, religious dogmatism is often equated with vaccine hesitancy and resistance to basic scientific truths like evolution. But deeply religious thinkers of the past often saw rational medicine as an expression of faith, not something endangering it. Herbal remedies were scribbled into the margins of early medieval works on theology, history, church sacraments and more. This suggests that book owners valued such knowledge, and people of all classes were actively exchanging recipes and cures by word of mouth before writing the most useful ones down.

The Body In Nature

Though the Dark Ages is a period from which no case histories survive, we can still form a picture of an average healing encounter. Texts from that period emphasize the need for the doctor to be highly learned, including being well read in philosophy, logic, arithmetic and astronomy. Such knowledge enabled healers to situate their observations of sick bodies within the rules that governed the constant transformations of nature.

There was no way to perceive the internal state of the body via technology – instead, healers had to be excellent listeners and observers. They sought to match the patient’s description of suffering with signs that manifested externally on the body. The inside of the flesh could not be seen, but the fluids the body excreted – sweat, urine, menstrual blood, mucus, vomit and feces – carried messages about that invisible realm to the outside. The doctor’s diagnosis and prognosis relied on reading these “excreta” in addition to sensing subtle changes in the pulse.

Medieval people were detailed investigators of the natural world and believed the same forces that shaped the landscape and the stars operated inside bodies formed from the same four elements of earth, water, air and fire. Thus, as the moon’s waxing and waning moved the ocean tides, so did it cause humors inside the body to grow and decrease.

The way the seasons withered crops or provoked tree sap to flow might manifest in the body as yellow bile surging in the summer, and cold, wet phlegm dripping in the winter. Just as fruit and meats left untouched began to rot and putrefy, so did dregs and undigested material inside the body turn poisonous if not expelled. Standing water in ponds or lakes generated slime and smell, and so were liquids sitting stagnant in the body’s vessels seen as breeding grounds for corrupt vapors.

In this sense, the menstrual cycle was representative of all bodies, undergoing internal transformations according to seasonal cycles and periodically purged in order to release pent-up fluids.

According to this logic, health depended above all on maintaining the body’s relationship to the physical environment and ensuring that substances were passing through their proper transformations, whether it was food turning into humors, blood disseminating throughout the body, or excess fluids and wastes leaving the body. Bloodletting was a rational therapy because it could help rebalance the fluids and remove toxins. It was visible and tangible to the patient, and, to the extent that we now better understand the placebo effect, it may well have offered some kind of relief.

Fasting, purging, tonics and, above all, monthly dietary regimens were also prominent tools healers used to prevent and relieve sickness. Several medical books, for instance, specified that consuming drinks with cinnamon in November and pennyroyal in August could recalibrate the body’s temperature in winter and summer because one drink was warming while the other was cooling.

Some medieval remedies – such as one produced from wine, cow bile, garlic and onion to heal eye infections – were later proven to be likely effective in treating sickness. But whether these remedies worked isn’t the point. For medieval doctors, vulture brains and cow bile operated according to the same logic that continues to inform research today: Nature operates in mysterious ways, but rational deduction can unlock the hidden mechanisms of disease. The M.D. has direct roots in the Dark Age elevation of “human medicine.”

Before mocking medieval doctors, consider how popular juice cleanses and detox regimens are in the 21st century. Are we really so far from humoral medicine today?

24 Nov 2023
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Best time ever to be alive on planet Earth!

I believe we are living in the most extraordinary time ever with breakthroughs happening on many levels:

Our intelligence is expanding and in many cases fusing with what I call infinite intelligence. This results in spontaneous knowing of things beyond our learning and training.
We are now able to embody our greater beings, with a capacity to create who we want to become as opposed to being trapped within the confines of our genetics and our past.
Vibrational frequency is rising across the whole planet, resulting in an upleveling of consciousness, which in turn generates deeper appreciation for and connection with all life.
Some of us are now experiencing freedom from reactive emotional response, finding joy in emotive moments that power breakthroughs.
We’re discovering and enhancing our bodies’ miraculous ability, all while embodying a new vitality fuelled by universal life source power.
We’re recognising that death is not the end, but instead the beginning of the next grand adventure where joyful freedom reigns.
We’re making friends with the universe. On the one hand through technology like the James Webb Telescope. On the other hand through our own deepening connection with the inherent intelligence behind Creation.
And how about the increasing beauty and power of Nature and the animal kingdoms! Cross species love. Breath-taking GREEN. An understanding that Water is intelligent … see Veda Austin’s work with water. Even an increasing ability to work with what I call ‘the weather gods’ to help fulfill the greater purpose of Nature’s movements with as little harm to life as possible. Some might call this shamanic. I call it a deepening alchemical partnership with the miraculousness of Life.
An unleashing of genius all around the world, leading to exciting new innovations that bring solutions we could hardly have dreamed were possible.
Source fills the air we breathe and the cells we dwell within. We are interwoven to one another and to all life now through what I call the internal Source ‘mycelium’ network.

We are quantum leaping by the day into new horizons of possibility. Elevating ourselves into next levels of being. Enhancing our abilities to create life as never before. Best time ever to be alive on planet Earth!

About the Author:

Soleira Green is a visionary author, quantum coach, ALLchemist & future innovator. She has been creating leading edge breakthroughs in consciousness, quantum evolution, transformation, innovation, intelligence and more over the past 25 years, has written and self-published eleven books, and taught courses all over the world on these topics.

20 Nov 2023
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100 Ways to Slightly Improve Your Life Without Really Trying

1 Exercise on a Monday night (nothing fun happens on a Monday night).

2 On the fence about a purchase? Wait 72 hours before you buy it.

3 Tip: the quickest supermarket queue is always behind the fullest trolley (greeting, paying and packing take longer than you think).

4 Bring fruit to work. Bring fruit to bed!

5 Consider going down to four days a week. It’s likely a disproportionate amount of your fifth day’s work is taxed anyway, so you’ll lose way less than a fifth of your take-home pay.

6 Everyone has an emotional blind spot when they fight. Work out what yours is, and remember it.

7 Plant spring bulbs, even if they’re just in a pot.

8 Send a voice note instead of a text; they sound like personal mini podcasts.

9 Keep a bird feeder by a window, ideally the kitchen. It’ll pass the time when you’re washing up.

10 Always bring ice to house parties (there’s never enough).

11 Get the lighting right: turn off the overhead one, turn on lots of lamps (but turn off when you leave the room).

12 Sharpen your knives.

13 Feeling sluggish at work? Try the Pomodoro technique: 25 minutes on, five-minute break, and repeat.

14 Buy a cheap blender and use it to finely chop onions (it saves on time and tears).

15 Keep your children’s drawings and paintings. Put the best ones in frames.

16 Set aside 10 minutes a day to do something you really enjoy – be it reading a book or playing Halo.

17 Don’t be weird about how to stack the dishwasher.

18 Reuse all plastic bags – even bread bags. Much of the packaging you can’t reuse can be taken to larger branches of supermarkets for recycling.

19 Take a photo of the tag you are given when leaving your coat in a cloakroom.

20 Can’t sleep? Try a relaxing soak with lavender bath oil before bed.

21 Add the milk at least one minute after the tea has brewed.

22 Laugh shamelessly at your own jokes.

23 It might sound obvious, but a pint of water before bed after a big night avoids a clanger of a hanger.

24 Start a Saturday morning with some classical music – it sets the tone for a calm weekend.

25 Look closely.

26 Set time limits for your apps. Just go to the settings on your smartphone and add a limit – for example, if you have an iPhone turn on Screen Time.

27 If possible, take the stairs.

28 Always be willing to miss the next train.

29 Eat meat once a week, max. Ideally less.

30 Be polite to rude strangers – it’s oddly thrilling.

31 Ask questions, and listen to the answers.

32 Connect with nature: stand outside barefoot for a few minutes – even when it’s cold.

33 Join your local library – and use it.

34 Go for a walk without your phone.

35 Eat salted butter (life’s too short for unsalted).

36 Stretch in the morning. And maybe in the evening.

37 If you’re going less than a mile, walk or cycle. About half of car journeys are under two miles, yet these create more pollution than longer journeys as the engine isn’t warmed up yet.

38 Sleep with your phone in a different room (and buy an alarm clock).

39 Send postcards from your holidays. Send them even if you’re not on holiday.

40 Instead of buying new shoes, get old ones resoled and buy new laces.

41 Buy a plant. Think you’ll kill it? Buy a fake one.

42 Don’t have Twitter on your phone.

43 If you find an item of clothing you love and are certain you will wear for ever, buy three.

44 Try taking a cold shower (30 seconds to two minutes) before your hot one. It’s good for your health – both physical and mental.

45 Text to say thank you.

46 Read a poem every day. Keep a compendium, such as A Poem for Every Day of the Year, by your bed.

47 Take out your headphones when walking – listen to the world.

48 Buy secondhand.

49 Buy in person!

50 Learn how to floss properly.

51 If something in the world is making you angry, write (politely) to your MP – they will read it.

52 Say hello to your neighbours.

53 Learn the basics of repairing your clothes.

54 Always bring something – wine, flowers – to a dinner/birthday party, even if they say not to.

55 Learn the names of 10 trees.

56 Call an old friend out of the blue.

57 Every so often, search your email for the word “unsubscribe” and then use it on as many as you can.

58 Buy a newspaper. (Ideally this one.)

59 Always have dessert.

60 Drop your shoulders.

61 Make something from scratch. Works best if it’s something you’d normally buy, such as a dress or a bag.

62 Go to bed earlier – but don’t take your phone with you.

63 Volunteer. Go to gov.uk/government/get-involved for ideas.

64 Dry your cutlery with a cloth (it keeps it shiny).

65 Instead of buying a morning coffee, set up a daily transfer of £2 from a current into a savings account and forget about it. Use it to treat yourself to something different later.

66 Don’t save things for “best”. Wear them – enjoy them.

67 Sing!

68 Think about your posture: don’t slouch, and don’t cross your legs.

69 Hang your clothes up. Ideally on non-wire hangers (it’s better for them).

70 Skinny-dip with friends.

71 Switch your phone off on holiday (or at least delete your work email app).

72 Always use freshly ground pepper.

73 Thank a teacher who changed your life.

74 Respect your youngers.

75 Keep your keys in the same place.

76 Ditch the plastic cartons and buy milk in glass bottles.

77 Rent rather than buy a suit/dress for that forthcoming wedding (even if it’s your own).

78 Always book an extra day off after a holiday.

79 Ignore the algorithm – listen to music outside your usual taste.

80 Mute or leave a WhatsApp group chat.

81 Learn a TikTok dance (but don’t post it on TikTok).

82 Cook something you’ve never attempted before.

83 Join a local litter-picking group.

84 Handwash that thing you’ve never cleaned.

85 Don’t get a pet/do get a pet.

86 Nap.

87 Learn how to breathe deeply: in through the nose, out through the mouth, making the exhale longer than the inhale.

88 Buy a bike and use it. Learn how to fix it, too.

89 Politely decline invitations if you don’t want to go.

90 If you do go, have an exit strategy (can we recommend a French exit, where you slip out unseen).

91 If in doubt, add cheese.

92 Don’t look at your phone at dinner.

93 Do that one thing you’ve been putting off.

94 Give compliments widely and freely.

95 Set up an affordable standing order to a charity.

96 Keep a book in your bag to avoid the temptation to doomscroll.

97 Listen to the albums you loved as a teenager.

98 Make a friend from a different generation.

99 Staying over at a friend’s place? Strip the bed in the morning.

100 For instant cheer, wear yellow.

Original article here

16 Nov 2023
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Signs You’re Moving Into a High-Vibe Version of Reality

You feel calm inside … and that calmness offers an ease of genius flow and vitality.
You have emotive bursts popping up from inside.
Sometimes they’re purposeful and other times you might cry over nothing at all. I believe this is your power offering itself to you to elevate the world.
You fall in love with nature, animals, people, the Earth.
You see wonders everywhere you look. And you want to put more of that wonderfulness into the world around you for others to thrive upon.
It becomes effortless to energetically zing others up. The more you do this, the greater you feel.
You see the potential in people and situations and aim straight for the new possibilities on offer in every circumstance.
You feel younger than your years and look in the mirror to find that’s showing up in you physically too.
You love easily with zero concern for a broken heart because this kind of love comes from a greater place with greater purpose and offers itself readily to all.
You understand things at greater levels, eliminating the reactive responses that come along with a lack of comprehension of greater purpose at play.
You feel more like the greater being you really are, finding ways to live this here on Earth.
You discover you can talk to animals, trees, oceans, the universe, etc. and they energetically talk back to you with brilliant insights into how life is unfolding right now. We are increasingly interconnected as Source beings in a symbiotic version of reality.
You become an alchemical elevancer of Life naturally and instinctively.

May grace, genius and greatness flow through us all now with wonder and joy.

About the Author:

05 Nov 2023
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Crows Are Self-Aware and ‘Know What They Know,’ Just Like Humans

In what now feels like an annual update, crows are even more surprisingly smart than we thought. But do they have true consciousness? Research shows that crows and other corvids “know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds,” according to STAT. This is considered a cornerstone of self-awareness and shared by just a handful of animal species besides humans.

In new research published in Science, German scientists put crows through a series of puzzling tasks. During those tasks, the scientists measured neural activity in different kinds of neurons with the goal of tracking how crows were sensing and reasoning through their work. They sought to study a specific kind of thinking called sensory consciousness, and they chose birds in particular as an evolutionary history pivot.

The task is simple, but involves some high-level brain stuff:

“After the crow initiated a trial, a brief visual stimulus of variable intensity appeared. After a delay period, a rule cue informed the crow how to respond if it had seen or had not seen the stimulus. [A] red cue required a response for stimulus detection (“yes”), whereas a blue cue prohibited a response for stimulus detection.”

“Sensory consciousness, the ability to have subjective experience that can be explicitly accessed and thus reported, arises from brain processes that emerged through evolutionary history,” the researchers write. “Today, the neural correlates of consciousness are primarily associated with the workings of the primate cerebral cortex, a part of the telencephalic pallium that is laminar in organization. Birds, by contrast, have evolved a different pallium since they diverged from the mammalian lineage 320 million years ago.”

The birds performed in a way that affirms their sensory consciousness, which scientists say could mean the “neural correlates of consciousness” date back to at least the last time birds and mammals shared that brain section:

“To reconcile sensory consciousness in birds and mammals, one scenario would postulate that birds and mammals inherited the trait of consciousness from their last-common ancestor. If true, this would date the evolution of consciousness back to at least 320 million years when reptiles and birds on the one hand, and mammals on the other hand, evolved from the last common stem-amniotic ancestor.”

In an analysis in the same issue of Science, another researcher, Suzana Herculano-Houzel of Vanderbilt University, makes a critique of the study’s hypothesis. The structure being studied, she says, could resemble another structure because of physical properties more than a shared evolution or an indication of extremely early consciousness. The size of the structures matter a great deal, too.

“[T]he level of that complexity, and the extent to which new meanings and possibilities arise, should still scale with the number of units in the system,” Herculano-Houzel explains. “This would be analogous to the combined achievements of the human species when it consisted of just a few thousand individuals, versus the considerable achievements of 7 billion today.”

Original article here