Its clear to anyone who doesn’t live in a cave that there are many problems in the world right now. There’s children starving in countries gripped with war and conflict. There are incurable diseases, terrorist attacks, people losing jobs, and fat cats laughing all the way to the bank with their hard stolen money. There are so many people working on the ground level to deal with these kinds of things but as with all complicated problems, not only do we need to catch the water dripping from the leak… we need to patch the roof.
I was recently read a post by Jonathan Mead at Illuminated Mind about starting revolutions and it got me thinking… if I was to start a revolution what do I honestly care about enough to devote myself to it.
The idea of finding what your passionate about through the lens of what you would be willing to start a revolution for strikes me as a powerful tool for any person trying to find fulfillment in their life.
What in the world means so much to me, what am I so deeply committed to that I would be willing to wake up early every morning and go to bed late every night. What do I love so much that I would answer email, hand out fliers, spread information with all the passionate frenzy that makes up the life of a revolutionary?
There are so many injustices and things in the world that I feel passionate about, so many political situations, so many people suffering who I want to help but then I have to ask myself… Whats the most I can do for these people utilizing the skills I have and the things that I know I’ll be able to wake up and give 100 percent to for as long as it takes?
Sure, I could sign up and volunteer for an organization that moves food to the third world. I could even just go and volunteer for the local Food Not Bombs group in my town and feed the hungry here. These are great ideas, necessary ideas, but what about something a little more abstract. These kinds of activities are curative… what could I start a revolution in that was preventative.
I slept on it the other night, focusing on the question before I went to sleep, ‘what am I passionate about that I could devote my life to it?’ and some point in the next morning I had my answer.
The thing I care about the most, the very activity that lies at the root of all misunderstandings is the human race’s inability to pay attention. I want to start a Revolution in Attention.
Now I know that kind of answer might seem too simple for a lot of people. I don’t mean to imply that paying attention will cure all our ails but lets stop and think about what our lack of awareness about the world and the people around us has brought us to.
Daniel Goleman writes about a form of intelligence he calls ‘Emotional Intelligence’ as opposed to the more cerebral left brained sort of mind we usually associate with problem-solving and remembering information. What this means is that some people are better than others at processing data but might not be as developed in other areas like controlling and dealing with their emotions and the emotions of those around them.
Now I don’t want to fall off topic and get into exploring the specific ins and outs of Goleman’s philosophy which is already written about ad infinitum in other blog posts and articles all over the web. I only bring it up because I want to touch on the fact that I personally believe emotional intelligence is the outcome of practicing the simple act of paying attention.
While the role genetics plays can’t be left out, the amount of emotional awareness a person will have about herself and the people around her will be dramatically increased when she makes paying attention, rather than living in her own head, a priority.
When we stop to look around us, at the people, at the environment, at the technology… it’s impossible to not care. Its really even more than just mindfulness I’m talking about here. I’m talking about simple understanding in an intellectual sense too. Do you know the name of that person you pass in the hall at work every day? Do you know what’s two blocks south running parallel to the street you drive down every single day? How often do you just look around and explore… just for the hell of it?
This week, find some time to explore the things you already think your familiar with. Explore the people, places, things… just for the child-like enjoyment of knowing. Take a walk somewhere you haven’t been, maybe even start a conversation with a stranger you always ride the bus with because *gasp* it’s allowed and you might even end up having a great experience. Really start to pay attention, not only to your feelings and your own thoughts, but to the subtle expressions and cycles going on all around you.
That’s my revolution, which in a sense I’m already working on right now. Its a revolution that’s been going on for thousands of years really, maybe even more, ever since the first proto-human began living more in his own thoughts, fantasies, and fears than the rich green living world around him. Perhaps my revolution isn’t even a revolution at all in the usual sense. We aren’t taking to the streets, we aren’t marching with picket signs past the white house. My revolution doesn’t make much noise Its coming quieter than that. My revolution is about looking around you, looking inside of yourself and taking the time to notice what life is really like… then making the decision to act. Who knows… maybe you’ve passed the person who will change your life a thousand times already… but you’ve been too inside your own head to say ‘Hi.’
Several years ago I worked as a canvasser for a local environmental group. Great work, it was essentially getting paid to walk around a strange neighborhood and talk to all sorts of people about county politics and pertinent issues. Some people were inviting and genuinely interested in the health of their local environment. Some people couldn’t care less and were very resentful of me and the fact that I had I brought these unhappy ideas to their doorstep. Some residents however, were completely ideologically opposed to the position of my organization and eager to tell me why. I have to admit it was from these interactions in particular that I derived the most enjoyment, and often frustration.
When the person behind the door was in disagreement it allowed me an opportunity to either, change their minds, offer possibly new and radical ideas to them, or to be argued down into utter defeat, and have to recover in the twenty or so steps to the next opportunity.
Part of the thrill was that I could never know what it would be when I rapped or rang, part of it was the chance to argue, sometimes heatedly, topics I felt passionately about. The arguments were heated but not angry, emotional but civil, they almost always ended with a sincere smile and handshake despite what philosophical distance remained. Winning one now and again was nice but there was certain thrill to the exchange of word, to the disagreement and to bringing it to an amiable conclusion. It’s exciting to get wrapped up in a debate. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, but some more than others.
“Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.” Gertrude Stein
There is ample literature, seminars and such available on Mindfulness Based Conflict Resolution, mostly geared toward businesses. Strangely, however upon reading a lot of it I found it lacking in useful advice for how to use it to win arguments, when possible. Here at Focused Awareness we emphasize physical and emotional awareness as one major benefit from mindfulness practice. During an argument both our physical stance and out emotional state can change dramatically, often impeding our ability to reason and thereby keeps us from constructing a logical, compelling, and persuasive argument. When we are conscious of these changes we can more often keep our heads in a verbal conflict and better understand why we are fighting in the first place.
In the many How to Win an Argument Lists available for web surfers a common piece of advice I would have to agree with is to speak slowly and calmly during an argument. Here the characteristically incomplete nature of internet information is displayed. Easy to say, but how is it really done?
Not many of us can slow our heart rate at will, but a little breathing might help.
First of all just notice yourself in the midst of a heated debate. Notice your shoulders and hands, you don’t need to force yourself to relax, many times we can’t. It’s much easier to just realize how you are standing. If you take a moment feel that your fingernails are digging into the palms of your hands you naturally will loosen your fists, which loosens your arms, shoulders, back, and diaphragm. The same is true for curled toes, locked knees and stiffened necks, all parts of a fighting stance that, if we can slacken, will ease the attached negative emotions. You can now breathe easier, your heart rate will go down, reason can reclaim your mind and you will better argue your point.
Notice the person you are having the argument with. Notice they are a person, not their viewpoint. Also notice their body position, are they leaning in, are their fists clenched or are they sitting with folded hands, listening. Pointing out their clenched, ready to pounce stance may allow them to relax as well. You can now find those mythical points of agreement and build toward resolution.
Unfortunately, it’s only advantageous to be the calmer one in a debate if the argument is rational. If your adversary is arguing based on solely on emotion, a rational case may not ever be persuasive. How then can we end an emotional argument, besides just yelling the loudest? Well, you can be more aware of your own emotions and not be the one on that more side. More so, being conscious of how we really feel and being honest to yourself and those around you will allow us to have the confrontation at the earliest possible point, before there need be screaming.
To debate a person whose argument is based entirely on emotion, your best option is to agree, emotionally, or bow out. Sincerely empathize with their emotions, internalize them, feel them yourself in order to understand the nature of the argument. When you are in agreement about the emotions involved the debate can proceed to facts. The squabble can even be avoided all together when it is found to be unnecessary or intractable.
You can’t win ‘em all. So true, yet so tough to swallow, especially when you know you are right, when you can feel it. What is that feeling though, where is it really situated in our body. At the pit of our stomach, in the glaring, shiny truth above our eyes, or is it doubt that spurs our passion. Is it ignorance and fear, no one is immune, you may be simply uniformed and have an opportunity to listen. Noticing where your self-assured mindset comes from will help you understand if this is a battle you can or even should win.
Humans deep down love to argue, and even if I’m wrong and they don’t, we still often find ourselves doing so at varying degrees of intensity, with loved ones, co-workers, and other people in our lives, strangers sometimes. Differences in opinion are unavoidable, healthy and necessary to further the growth of both our intellectual ideas and our overall emotional intelligence.
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle it without debate.” Joseph Joubert
A radical experiment into the nature of the brain is one step closer to thought. Blue Brain is a molecule by molecule computer recreation of part of a mammalian brain. An initial stage of the research, mapping and simulating the neocortical column, an area utilized in higher brain function and thought, is complete and now they are putting it into a virtual body to see how it reacts.
The idea of digital consciousness provokes disbelief and sometimes disgust at the concept of a laughably diluted digital consciousness.
Can a computer simulation of a brain ever produce real consciousness, or even original thought, and what would it think and how would it feel in its virtual body?
More importantly, what will this simulated brain tell us about physical consciousness, if anything?
I believe it will eventually tell us volumes about the brain and want to believe it will give us insights into the mind, if it doesn’t explain it away completely. Maybe answering some of the neurologists basic questions and certainly open the door on a new unexplored corridor of quandaries about the separation of brain and mind for the philosophers.
Perhaps a scaled down version of the mind will posses total awareness, Buddha mind like yogis and (maybe) dogs. Or will it be an over engineered, highly complex, atom for atom, computer simulation with nothing more to say to us but the very specific rules and code they painstakingly programmed into it. i.e. Will it simple tell us what we all ready know.
The researchers at Blue Brain Project and one emminent post-humanist scientist Ray Kurzweil believes we can simulate the mind, and so do I. when we do it will not in any way diminish the wonder or awe inspiring complexity of consciousness, the more we know, I am sure, the more incredible it will be. if it is mechanically simple, philosophical ponderances as well as biological ones will still present themselves. And it will happen as the leading Blue Brain Project scientist put it, “The psychology is there today and the technology is there today. It’s a matter of if society wants this. If they want it in 10 years, they’ll have it in 10 years. If they want it in 1000 years, we can wait.” Some people can’t wait, people like Le Trung of Project Aiko, a kinda scary female android built in Canada, of course.
And as far from consciousness as that may be, there will be a day when we have to look into the eyes of some form of man made consciousness and look into ourselves to see what is still there.
This or subsequent experiments are going to cast a bright light onto our unclear understanding of who or what it means to actually be an ego in the body. If the basic constituents of human consciousness can be assembled out of a material other than our own biological components then it makes a strong case for materialism. Whichever philosophical side wins, everyone of us will still have to experience consciousness, day to day, despite the ramifications of the success or failure of attempts at creating artificial intelligence. To what extent we are aware of and appreciate that consciousness and the body it inhabits, is entirely up to us.
Dealing with physical pain is a normal occurance in the life of any human. We all occasionally get a headache, migraine, achy joints etc. The usual remedy is to pop a couple tylenol or aspirins. Some people have a few beers after work… but what about those of us who find ourselves in much more than that. What about the millions of people around the world every day dealing with various types of chronic and constant pain , for whom taking a few pills isn’t enough? Or what about the people who find pain killers TOO effective, turning grandma into a puddle of giggling mush.
“Whatever it takes to take the mind off the pain”
But what if pain wasn’t really that bad. What if the actual sensory experience of the pain your feeling didn’t really ‘hurt’?
When dealing with pain of the physical body in mindfulness practice the important thing to remember is that you want to go into the pain rather than try to avoid it.
You can do this by allowing your awareness to become totally focused on the actual sensation of the pain away from comparison to ‘not pain’ and away thoughts floating around in the mind about how horrible the pain is. Resting as the witness of the pain and taking notice of its individual charateristics and features will allow you to adopt a different relationship to your pain.
When you can recognize yourself as the awareness separate from the content of what is occuring within awareness, you are doing what ken wilber calls
‘resting as witnessing consciousness’.
In some of the medical research being performed on mindfulness for specific pain reduction applications, the researchers have found that the physical sensation of pain in some subjects suffering from arthritis remained the same while the psychological discomfort they had been experiencing dropped significantly…
These kinds of findings only further illuminate the distinction between what we feel, and how we feel about what we feel.
When we’re practicing mind training or mindfulness we are always trying to first relate to the freedom of being awareness no longer identifying with its own content.
This idea of learning to use the awareness like a muscle is the foundation of mind training techniques found in nearly all spiritual traditions.
So next time your dealing with a bout of pain in the body follow a few simple steps that will help you alleviate the suffering.
1. Take a few deep breathes and find somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed. Unplug the phone, turn off the t.v., put the kids to bed, whatever you need to do to build a sanctuary for yourself. After all, on its deepest level, this is about getting back to yourself and in a profound way learning to honor your own feelings and experiences with an open mind and heart.
2. Perform a scan of the body allowing your awareness to travel up from the feet to the top of the head. If you find your attention being pulled elsewhere by the physical pain present at the moment, simply acknowledge the pain is there and move your focus back to the part of the body you were scanning.
3. Once you have relaxed your breathing and you’ve become aware of the activity going on in all parts of your body outside of the pain, allow your awareness to focus on the physical pain itself. Take note of the particular qualities the pain has… is it sharp or dull? wide or narrow? rough or smooth? you get the idea. This type of passive non-judgemental relationship toward the pain is key. Just allow the pain to be, study it like a scientist who has never experienced pain before.
4. After five to ten minutes take a break by becoming aware of the room around you, colors, sounds, etc. and repeat this exercise as many times as you feel is effective.
I hope this and some of the other techniques we’ve been putting up on the blog are helpful. If you have any questions or comments, or you’ve been dealing with chronic pain yourself by using mindfulness, please feel free to leave us some feedback. We’d love to hear from some readers.
If I had to pick one thing, one single idea or practice, that makes the difference between success and happiness on the one hand, and despair, depression, and general unhappiness on the other, I would have to say the difference is present moment awareness.
Just the simple experience of feeling exactly what you;re feeling…
right now, moment to moment, non-judgmentally.
Not only is it important to allow your thinking to subside when it isn’t necessary, but really being in your body, where you are, already presumes success. Let me explain what I mean.
When a person identifies as someone who is ‘TRYING’ to be successful, they are living in the future. They are projecting fantasy ideas about what success is i.e. ‘I’ll be successful when I finally have that Bugatti Veyron’ or ‘I can stop struggling and just be happy once I’ve gotten settled into my new beach house.’
Now there is nothing wrong with having goals, even material ones, the only problem is waiting for those goals to be accomplished before you are happy is misunderstanding happiness all together. So what is happiness?
GETTING UNSTUCK
Think back to a time when you felt truly happy in your life. For most people a truely happy moment is often described as ‘time stopping’ where their concerns about the future fall away, their habitual clinging to the past does the same, and they are left with the brilliant clarity of the present moment.
When your mind stops groping into the future waiting for some event to be happy, or clinging to fears and frustrations from the past, it only naturally rests in the present moment. People often describe these moments of embodied presence as feeling ‘more alive’ than they had ever felt before.
A SIMPLE THREE STEP TECHNIQUE FOR COMING TO YOUR SENSES
Before you start:
Sit comfortably in a chair, with your back straight and your hands resting comfortably in your lap, take a few deep breathes through your nostrils and continue to breath normally
1. Begin by becoming aware of whatever there is in your visual field at the moment. Could be a bike tire, maybe a window, perhaps some people walking down the street outside. Try to stay focused just on the colors and movements without thinking about them in too much detail, let whatever you’re seeing sort of move across your field of vision like an abstract brush stroke. If some thought or noise distracts you, simply notice that you are thinking, and return your attention to the scene in front of you. Maintain this effort for at least two minutes.
2. When you begin to find it difficult to hold your attention on your visual field without your mind wandering again, slowly shift your attention to your auditory experience of the moment. Do the same thing in step 1 only allow yourself to become aware of the total field of sounds around you. Try to become aware of the 360 degrees of ambient noises resting just beneath your normal conscious awareness. Maintain this mindful listening for at least another two minutes, coming back whenever the mind wanders, before moving on to step three.
3. Shift your awareness to your physical bodily experience and proprioception. Feel the weight of your body and the rythm of your own breathing in this very moment. If you can allow yourself to become aware of your body as a whole, passively watching, resting as awareness experiencing the experience of having a body. Dwell on the body for at least a minute before repeating this series again from step 1 once or twice.
After sufficient practice with this technique, just the desire to shift your awareness to a particular sensory mode and hold it there becomes significantly easier. Controlling where you direct your awareness is a crucial skill when it comes to finding success and happiness in life. The more you learn to direct your focus the stronger it becomes just like working out a muscle. So practice using your mind every day and mastering its behavior, once you come back to this moment, you may find You’ve already been successful the whole time.
RSS Feed
Find us on Facebook
