Balanced Intelligence - Hemispheric Integration

     “You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.”
                                                      Neils Bohr, physicist & Nobel laureate     
     Isn't using "merely" and "logical" in the same sentence dangerously taboo? For many of us it is. Yet a Nobel laureate in physics might know something about thinking & logic.

     “Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphoric mind (right hemisphere) a sacred gift. He added that the rational mind (left hemisphere) was a faithful servant. 
     It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine.” Bob Samples

     Our intelligence is, of necessity, far more complex than the self-referrential internal narrative, left-hemisphere-dominant level we're all aware of, and unknowingly, tend to identify with as if it were a direct, accurate readout of all that we are & all that life is. This is a very common - almost universal, problematic form of mistaken identity ("cognitive fusion") and underestimation of ourselves & life itself.

     “If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.” Neils Bohr
     “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” Neils Bohr
 
     “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” Neils Bohr
     “True words seem paradoxical.” Lao-Tzu
        “The maturity and wisdom of a human being comes when it is possible to see multiplicity, paradox, and complementary differences with a spacious mind and an open heart.” Jack Kornfield 
        “… a mature adult … can hold both conviction and paradox.” 
        Sharon Danloz Parks. “Big Questions, Worthy Dreams. Mentoring Young Adults in their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith.” John Wiley & Sons, 2000.

     “The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. But the opposite of one profound truth, may be another profound truth.” Neils Bohr
     Black-and-white, {either / or} thinking is essential for survival - to quickly, narrowly-focus down on a specific object & definitively categorize it either as 'grab & eat this', or 'run / fight.' This same objectively-distanced mode of thinking is essential for many straight-forward, practical tasks eg math, science & technology etc. 
     But the left-hemisphere alone is severely unequipped to deal with nuances, subtleties & complexities: relationships / social interactions - personalities, cultures, races, religions etc; the arts & humanities; collaboration / negotiation / mediation; depths of meaning, values, existential issues, etc. 
     Also, the left-hemisphere 'doesn't know what it doesn't know' - it was never meant to stop, question & analyze its own judgment. So there's no room for re-evaluation or negotiation, resulting in deadlock: 'I'm right / reasonable / good; You're wrong / crazy / bad.' Populists, dictators & political / religious extremists all seem to fit this mold of rigid, simplistic black-and-white snappy slogans that grab & hold the hearts & minds of fervent supporters and make mature reflective adults shake their heads in stunned disbelief. Indeed, we see left-hemisphere vs left-hemisphere 'partisanships' locking horns on the news every night. 
     To effectively appreciate subtlety (many shades of gray) & to manage complexity (metaphor, paradox etc), a quick either / or decision is not enough. The left hemisphere's detail-orientation MUST BE KEPT IN CONTEXT by the right hemisphere's ability to appreciate the big picture, complexities & relationships. Our complex, constantly changing, profoundly interdependent cosmos requires a both / and approach: BOTH a quick either / or decision when called for eg when doing CPR; AND a much slower, much more careful consideration of as many variables as possible, when called for eg deciding on whether to marry a person; or mediating a peace deal between long-time warring factions. 
     For individuals & cultures to thrive, mature, harmonious, left / right hemispheric integration is essential.

     Here's an ultra-condensed summary of 20-yrs of research culminating in a 588-page book: Iain McGilchrist. “The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” Yale University Press, 2019.
     “If I had to sum it up, I’d say the world of the left hemisphere is dependent on denotative language & abstraction; yields clarity & power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless.
     The right hemisphere by contrast, yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings, within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, never perfectly known. And this world exists in a certain relationship.
     The knowledge mediated by the left hemisphere is however within a closed system. It has the advantage of perfection, but the perfection is bought ultimately at the price of emptiness.
     There’s a problem here about the nature of the two worlds. It offers two versions of the world and obviously we combine them in different ways all the time.
     We need to rely on the (left hemisphere) to manipulate the world.
     But for a broad understanding of it, we need to use knowledge that comes from the right hemisphere."
        Iain McGilchrist. “The Divided Brain.” TEDtalk RSA Animate: https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain


     “Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.” Neils Bohr

Falling Feels like Flying … for a Little While

YET, at the SAME TIME ...

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are tasting the taste this minute

of eternity. We are pain

and what cures pain, both. We are

the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.                                      Rumi

What we are looking for is what is looking.                                        St. Francis of Assisi

Human Flourishing via Meditation: More True Happiness, Less Suffering

     "What is wisdom? Aristotle wrote about wisdom … as practical decision making that leads to human flourishing. And human flourishing comes from practicing the virtues, so making decisions that are virtuous is wiser than not. Decisions that involve generosity, honesty, humility, and courage are more virtuous and thus wiser than decisions that are self-interested, stingy, duplicitous, or cowardly. We can practice making our decisions based on virtues. We can practice making better decisions by learning from experience, but to do so we need to change the way we pay attention to our decisions. How do we change the way we pay attention? It is important to develop the skill of attention.
     A gunshot will grab your attention without any effort on your part. And you can pay attention to a task you have to do and you can try harder to focus on it when it gets tedious, but we all know the limits on our ability to do that. These experiences suggest that attention is just a part of us like any other part of us (number of eyes or fingers) and there is not much we can do to change the way we use attention.

     But there is good evidence to suggest that attention and our use of attention can change and improve with practice. To develop the skills of attention means to increase the capacity for holding things in mind while thinking (working memory), to improve noticing, and to increase our control of attention. For example, some research has demonstrated that practice in playing certain video games can increase your ability to use attention practice in meditation can as well. While the effects of video game playing on increasing attention may be controversial, there is good reason to think of attention as a skill of selecting information, shifting your mind among relevant information, holding information in mind while thinking, and avoiding distraction.

     How does attention help make decisions wiser? We make a lot of our decisions without a lot of thought. Deciding what to have for lunch does not involve the same kind of thinking as deciding to change jobs. But even when we think we are thinking hard about a decision, we can be limited by habits of previous decisions. We often skim the mental surface of a problem, not stopping to be curious about what lies beneath. Some research has suggested that this might be good -- fast and unreflective decisions seem to lead to better decisions sometimes. Looking at problems and decisions through a narrow and shallow focus of past habits may work for some things, but it will not develop the skill of wisdom. If you do not see the virtuous options because you have not thought about them in the past, you may miss them. If you cannot think about a problem from someone else’s perspective, you may not consider everything necessary for a wiser decision. When we are distracted, we miss bits of information we should use in helping us decide, and improving the skill of attention, reduces such distraction. Increased attention allows us to consider more aspects of a complex problem leading to a wiser decision. Practicing the skills of attention over time, resisting distraction, holding goals in mind, and controlling what we attend to, can help all of us make wiser decisions."

       Howard C. Nusbaum "Thinking About Wisdom as a Skill" wisdomresearch.org/forums/t/1559.aspx#

 

Howard C. Nusbaum

Shutterstock / Dirk Ercken

Fear-based Rigidity & Wisdom Paths to Mature Consciousness

     Keeping an open mind-heart to reality's incomprehensible complexity, ambiguity, liminality, paradox, constant change, including the inevitable aging, sickness and death of ourselves & everyone we love, is hugely challenging.
     But because of our impressive repertoire of subconscious avoidance maneuvers, we're minimally conscious of how powerfully this impacts our daily life. We're usually unaware of the severity of our existential dread & anxiety. 
     Nor do most of us have an intelligent, mature, conscious relationship with any wisdom tradition - the inner sciences that arose specifically to navigate these most challenging aspects of life.
     Instead, most of us take one of two extreme, fear-based positions: drift in cynical nihilism - OR - lock into a dogmatic belief system (or go back & forth between these two).
     But there are intelligent, mature approaches to the various wisdom traditions that CAN help intelligent, educated people evolve in consciousness / spirituality. I'm only familiar with Buddhist, Advaita & Christian paths.
     There are other wisdom paths (Aboriginal, Hindu, Kabbalah, Sufi, etc) & other superb authors. Even outspoken atheists, like Sam Harris (below), recognize the vital role of wisdom traditions. 

               Adyashanti. “The End of Your World. Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment.” Sounds True, 2010.

               Freeman L. “Jesus the teacher within.” Medio Media / Continuum, 2000.

               Goldstein J. "Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening." Sounds True, 2013. 

               Helen Hamilton. “Reality Check. A Simple Guide to Final Enlightenment.” Balboa, 2021. 

               Helen Hamilton. “Dissolving the Ego.” Balboa Press, 2021.

               Harris S. "Waking Up. A Guide to Spirituality without Religion." Simon & Schuster, 2014.
 
               Hollis J. "What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life." Gotham, 2009.

               Hollis J. “Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life.” Gotham Books, 2005. 

               Isira. "Buddha on the Dance Floor." ‎ Living Awareness, 2014.

               Keating T. “Invitation to Love. The Way of Christian Contemplation.” Continuum, 1998. 

               Kornfield J. "Awakening is Real. A Guide to the Deeper Dimensions of the Inner Journey." Sounds True (audio) www.soundstrue.com

               May G. "Addiction and Grace. Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions." HarperCollins, 1988.

               May G. “Simply sane. The spirituality of mental health.” Crossroad, 1994. 

               Palmer PJ. “A hidden wholeness: The journey toward an undivided life.” John Wiley & Sons, 2004. 

               Parks SD. “Big questions, worthy dreams. Mentoring young adults in their search for meaning, purpose, and faith.” John Wiley & Sons, 2000. 

               Sawyer D. “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, 2014. 
 
               Smith R. “Awakening. A Paradigm Shift of the Heart.” Shambhala, 2014.

               Walsh R. “Essential spirituality. The 7 central practices to awaken heart and mind.” John Wiley & Sons Inc, 1999.

               Welwood J. ed. “Ordinary magic. Everyday life as spiritual path.” Shambhala, 1992.

Transcending Simplistic Concepts AND Suffering

     "What's asked of us is a kind of integrity, not an idealism. When you're a child, at first you see your parents as all good or all bad, depending on how they are that day. And later on you can hold that they are complex, that they have all of those parts.
     And maybe spiritual practice, to put it in another language, is about seeing life with irony, and metaphor, and complexity. And it confuses our mind to see that there's something good and something painful, all mixed together;  that birth and death come together; that the world isn't just black and white; nor that there's a perfect teacher with everything else being no good. But that there's metaphor, and irony, and complexity, and humor, and tragedy - tragedy in the Greek sense: that no matter what we do sometimes, we will suffer, and birth & death. All these are confusing to the mind. And if you try to figure it out and try to create perfection, you can't.
     But what they can lead you to, and what looking at your relationship to teacher or spiritual practice can lead to is a development of the heart; is a greatness of forgiveness; and wisdom; and a capacity of the heart to come to rest, even though things aren't black & white, because they're not black & white; an ability to be at peace; and to love, and to appreciate & feel gratitude, even for things that are mixed - which is everything. ...
     And sometimes through the disillusionments, and the pains and the difficulties, we come not with our minds - our minds can't do it - with our hearts to see the irony, the complexity, the many levels, the metaphor of it, the incredible dance of our life - and something else shines. It's like Anne Frank's diaries, even in the midst of all of that suffering, she saw that there was some other reality. There is another reality, that's in us. There's a sacredness, a dignity that we can find. And sometimes it's not until we're deeply disappointed for a while that we reclaim that in ourselves."

       Jack Kornfield "Transmission - Receiving the Living Wisdom of Spiritual Teachers - In-depth reflections and teachings on the student-teacher relationship."           www.soundstrue.com

Halifax homes

In the Shimmering Complexity of this Timeless Moment

     This very timeless moment shimmers, quivers, with complex energy-form. Everything seems already right here & now, though we're usually caught in the illusion of getting somewhere else - in the momentum of our lives - bypassing the myriad details of reality that question & contradict our dream.

How We Experience Complexity

     "ideas that are complex metaphors to the erudite, are literal for the laity."

        Jay L. Garfield PhD, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor of Humanities, Yale-NUS College, Singapore - from the New York Times interview by Gary Gutting "What Does Buddhism Require?" http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/gary-gutting/

     “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”      Anais Nin


       “The poet and painter William Blake said, ‘As a man is, so he sees.’ He meant that the way a person sees or understands him or herself deeply conditions the ways he or she sees and understands objects, others and the world.”

       Rupert Spira. “Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness.” Non-duality Press, Salisbury, UK, 2011.

 

cand1d   www.dpreview.com

On Being Curious & Open-minded Towards All Phenomena

     In mindfulness training we encourage participants (& ourselves) to be nonjudgmental, have an open mind & be curious towards all arising phenomena, even those we would normally consider unpleasant. 

     "Curiosity is the predisposition to recognize & search for new knowledge and experiences. The psychological urge evoked by curiosity is accompanied by increased engagement with the world, including exploratory behavior, meaning making, and learning. For decades, scientists have narrowly focused on how curiosity is relevant to achievement in school, work, and sports, & an appreciation of art. Curiosity ... is relevant to any context where there is the potential for novelty, uncertainty, complexity, surprise, and conflict between the urges to approach or avoid stimuli. Several scientists have argued that a family of individual difference variables that conceptually overlap with curiosity (ie novelty seeking, uncertainty orientation, need for structure, need for closure, need for cognition, openness to experience) are relevant to healthy social interactions & relationship. The present research extends this work about the relevance of curiosity to social functioning.
     Results: A curious personality was linked to a wide range of adaptive behaviors, including tolerance of anxiety & uncertainty, positive emotional expressiveness, initiation of humor & playfulness, unconventional thinking, & a nondefensive, noncritical attitude.  

     Conclusions: This characterization of curious people provides insights into mechanisms underlying associated healthy social outcomes."

     Kashdan TB, Sherman RA, Yarbro J, Funder DC. How are curious people viewed and how do they behave in social situations? From the perspectives of self, friends, parents, and unacquainted observers. J Pers 2013; 81(2): 142-54. 

     Read "Creativity & The Brain Review": http://www.knowyourbrain.ca/Library/Library.html

Jett in deep contemplation - by Amanda Wintink PhD

Our Ego Doesn't Matter

life is infinitely more complex
than we'd like to believe
we like to think that people & events
conspire to please or displease us
but each of us is actually
a very tiny part of a huge totality
anicca
anatta
dukkha 

Old Growth Forest near Kentville, Nova Scotia

Patiently Observe the Bare Experience - Gather Data

     “I would like to beg you … as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves as if they were closed rooms or books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers, which could not be given to you because you would not be able to live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer.”            Rilke
 
       Palmer PJ, Zajonc A. The heart of higher education: A call to renewal. Transforming the academy through collegial conversation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010.

Udayan Sankar Pal   www.facebook.com/UdayanSankarPal