How I outsmarted myself…back to Christ

An apology

I’ve had false starts on this piece several times over the past year or so, but it seems important, so here we go again.

I was raised a Christian, and in a good, solid, Protestant tradition.

My maternal grandfather, Ernest Butterfield, was a third-generation Methodist minister and a truly wonderful man.

My family’s faith traditions were heavily influenced by the teachings and beliefs of my maternal grandfather, Earnest Butterfield, a third-generation Methodist minister who preached for most of his career in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. We attended church weekly. We shared a blessing over every suppertime meal. I was taught to pray every night before I went to sleep, and more, to bring all of my troubles to God—to talk to Him as a friend.

I loved church and enjoyed an exultant sense of closeness to God. I whole-heartedly accepted Christ as my Savior and regularly searched my heart for sins, trying to become more godly, to wrestle into submission my obvious flaws—my quickness to anger, my tendency to trap myself within certain resentments.

My understanding of the Christian faith was, of course, lacking in nuance and depth. As a child, I didn’t have the complex and complicated imprint of life’s experiences that we draw on to truly connect with Scripture, to grasp the emotional and spiritual tension behind what may be, otherwise, only a couple lines of text. A 10-year-old can’t really understand how gutted Job was when he learned his family was obliterated, or why David wanted, urgently, for Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba, or why Peter leapt out of the fishing boat and swam to shore when he realized he and his companions were speaking to the risen Christ—the One he had, such a short time ago, denied, and from whom he therefore thought he was parted forever.

Today, even writing a couple lines about that last story is enough to make tears come to my eyes. As a child, it hardly registered at all.

My own denial of the Lord wasn’t so much a sharp break as a gradual drifting.

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You may be right. I may be crazy.

But the lunatics are warning us: we’re in a war.

Sigismonda Drinking The Poison. Artist: Joseph Edward Southall
Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

I stopped doing overly political posts on Facebook some time ago. It got to be too painful.

But with all that’s going on, and the signs I’m seeing that suggest our society is taking a major turn toward the dystopian, I do share the occasional tidbit or quote.

The posts come across as cryptic. I know that.

And so a cousin of mine asked me, recently, to explain what I meant by a particular comment.

I declined.

But I do probably owe him something of an explanation, so here it is.

Let me put it this way

Many years ago—i was in my late 20s—i was out hiking when I noticed a plant I’d never seen before.

When I say “notice” I mean the effect was almost startling. Something about the shape of the leaves and their intensely dark color jumped out at me. 

The plant was enmeshed in a tangle of weeds but as a shape or pattern it stood out clearly, almost as if it were glowing or backlit. It was striking and very beautiful.

I took a leaf home and ID’d it. 

The plant was poison hemlock, one of the deadliest plants in the northeastern US.

How and why did I notice it? 

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Is it not absurder still …

“Is it not absurder still to refuse to listen to these voices from afar, because they come stammering and wandering as in a dream confusedly instead of with a trumpet’s call? Because spirits that bending to earth may undergo perhaps an earthly bewilderment and suffer unknown limitations, and half remember and half forget?”

Lady Gregory, Visions and Beliefs

We were not put here to fight

Proposed:

1. The human mind-brain is exquisitely evolved to juggle and interpret inputs in order to screen them for patterns.

Do I see a face? Why yes. Yes, I do.

This happens quickly (instantaneously, as far as our conscious minds are concerned) and sub-consciously.

It’s how we survive. We must detect the tiger before it leaps. By the time the big hungry kitty kitty leaps out of the undergrowth, it’s too late.

In other words:

2. Detecting the pattern that means “tiger” amidst the tangled, chaotic inputs of brushy undergrowth is an extraordinary and extraordinarily useful capability.

3. It’s also something that is going on consciously in our mind-brains. We don’t control it.

We are continually scanning the world to detect patterns that indicate potential threats.

4. Today, the inputs we scan include vast amounts of textual information and projected images.

5. Within this chaotic mass of inputs, we “see” patterns that warn us of environmental threats, economic threats, social threats, cultural threats — any number of “bogies” that our minds assemble, from those inputs, for the purpose of forewarning us so that we can take action before the actual threat materializes and hurts or kills us.

This happens in our minds.

6. “Threats” are therefore mental forms. They are future possibilities, not 3D reality.

They are bogies.

7. Each of us brings to our experiences certain biases that influence what inputs we perceive, what inputs we reject, and how we interpret inputs. These are in part learned, and in part the consequence of our personal histories.

For example, if I grow up in a financially-stressed household, I will be biased to scan for “forms” among the inputs around me that are in the “shape” of economic threats.

If I spend all my time with people who are convinced that man-made climate change dooms the world, I will be biased to scan for patterns in the sea of inputs around me that reinforce the threat posed to me by climate change.

And the more attention I pay to those patterns, the more I notice them. It becomes self-reinforcing.

I can look at a cloud and see a cloud. I can look at a cloud and say, does it look like a face?

And immediately I start to pick out shapes in the cloud that look like a face.

Anyone can do that. It’s the way the human mind-brain works.

THEREFORE:

8. When we condemn each other for “fearing the wrong threat,” we’re ignoring the fact that we are all — ALL — subject to the same fundamentals wrt cognitive processes.

The political “left” and political “right” in the US (for example) scream at each other largely on the basis of the need to argue over bogies. “This is the real threat!” “No, THAT is the real threat!” “OMG, how can you be so stupid to think that’s a threat when clearly it’s not!” “OMG, while you waste time on that threat, this REAL threat over here is going to destroy us all!”

We scream that the “other side” lacks the data to support its threat assessments.

This battle between us ignores the fact that even in the most thoroughly studied areas of scientific or social research, there are always scraps of contradictory (or seemingly contradictory) data — which means that an engaged mind-brain can find contradictory patterns, or can fail to see patterns that appear obvious to other engaged mind-brains.

It doesn’t take more than a couple hours of reviewing the arguments of one side to confirm this.

My bogie is no less valid than yours — and vice versa.

9. The fact is, there are NOT legions of people out there who hold their political positions because they are stupid or uninformed — on either side. I don’t care what the powers-that-be claim.

There just aren’t.

10. On the contrary, the problem is more fundamental and ought to be approached with empathy and compassion: we are all afraid. We all want to be safe. We are all doing our best to identify threats and protect ourselves and the rest of the planet from those threats.

I have been blogging here lately about the collapse of insect populations. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of articles about this trend online, now, many of which cite field research supporting it. But is the global collapse of insect populations objectively true? And is it really a harbinger of a broader environmental collapse?

I have no idea. And I’ve been on this planet long enough to have seen many, many environmental doomsday predictions fail to materialize.

This has taught me something very, very important:

Sometimes what looks like a tiger in the brush is actually just … the brush.

11. We need to stop condemning each other.

We need to stop buying into the politicians’ power games (which they play because their own fearfulness is allayed by persuading others to believe in their bogeys).

12. Reality is more pliable and subjective than we can even imagine.

13. Fear is not the answer.

14. We must learn to approach our disputes with kindness, and patience, and compassion.

15. We must learn to love each other.

16. That is why we are here. We know it.

17. That is the only thing that is true.

18. There is nothing else.

Easy to ridicule . . . yeah. I know.

white-flowersFor the past several days, I’ve been mulling an op-ed piece that ran in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal titled If I Don’t See It, It’s Not There.

The piece is written by Steve Salerno, a former Men’s Health editor who wrote a book in 2005 about how the self-help industry is not really all that helpful.

Salerno’s target this time is the “talking heads” who contributed to the DVD version of The Secret, which — in case you spent 2007 dozing in the ol’ armchair — was a blockbuster addition in the robust tradition of “positive thinking” literature we Americans have been devouring en masse since the days of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale.

Salerno takes The Secret crowd to task for the way they’re reacting to the recession — which, truth to tell, isn’t always very, erm, nuanced. For example, he includes a quote from one Nan Akasha who says she chooses not to believe in the recession. The implication being that one can make unpleasantness go away by squeezing one’s eyes shut or something.

But here’s the thing. As seductive as Salerno’s mockery is, open that same paper’s Tuesday May 5 edition and on page A12 there’s a piece about the latest research on quantum physics. The research confirms what quantum physicists have been theorizing for quite some time: first, that particles can somehow stay connected with one another across space (non-locality); and second, that the act of observation is itself somehow involved in defining a quantum particle’s characteristics.

Some people would dismiss this as pertaining only to sub-atomic phenomena. In the big-particle world of paychecks and golf balls and stubbed toes (they would say) quantum spookiness doesn’t apply.

But what if our minds operate on a quantum level?

What if our thoughts are sensitive to quantum-level energy patterns?

What if thought itself is a quantum-level activity?

jesterEven more radical: what if our minds function in some respects like a lens that causes quantum-level particles to resolve and literally come into being as a prelude to perceiving them en aggregate with our physical senses?

And, furthermore, what if the demarcation between our minds, as individuals, isn’t as well-defined as we might suppose?

Think about it. The electromagnetic waves emitting from my brain don’t stop at the edge of my skull.

Is it possible that your brain might start resonating with mine if we stood near each other, or vice versa?

And if so, might there be on a collective level a kind of mass entrainment involving the synchronization of our individual energy fields, that might in turn exert some sort of effect on what we describe as physical phenomenon?

If so, then maybe recessions and pandemics — as well as prosperity and cures — really are influenced by our minds. Not created — this isn’t cartoon magic — but resolved out of a kind of soupy pool of potential events or phenomenon — then fixed into place because we take collective notice.

Personally, I suspect something like this does occur. But its mechanics are not only too subtle to be discerned by our physical senses, they are also too subtle to be described, let alone manipulated in terms as childish as “if I don’t believe in the recession, it won’t have happened.”

Salerno’s mockery isn’t entirely misplaced. I’m reminded of a funeral I attended not long ago, where the preacher assured us that the deceased was sitting on a cloud, watching us. Yes, he meant that literally. Presumably Salerno would guffaw as loudly at that solemn Christian as he does at Bob Procter and Joe Vitale.

Which is too bad, because he’s missing something important — something that might mark a turning point for mankind. Quantum physics attempts to peer into a dimension where space and time don’t exist in the way our senses would conscribe them — where death isn’t really death, and where life really is a kind of dream . . . it would be a shame to miss it just because, stated simplistically, it sounds too fantastic to be true.

So who is driving the bus? Really?

More evidence that our rational self isn’t really the self that’s in charge: as described in a piece by Robert Lee Hotz in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, research suggests that when we “decide” to do something, we’re not really deciding. What we’re really doing is becoming aware of a decision that’s already been made.

In one study, researchers led by John-Dylan Haynes in Berlin monitored “neural currents” in volunteers’ brains (using magnetic resonance imaging) as the volunteers pushed buttons using either their left and right hands. The researchers discovered that they could predict which hand the subjects would use by the neural activity that preceded the button-pushing.

The foundation of this research is the work of
the late Benjamin Libet, who came to similar conclusions
.

One way a lot of people respond to these sort of findings is to question whether humans have “free will.” But if you accept the assumption that there is an aspect of the Self that operates more or less independently of the Self with which we generally identify, none of this is the least bit surprising. Of course “Self 2” causes ripples in the brain’s electromagnetic field. They just happen to be ripples beneath the surface of conscious awareness. It doesn’t mean we don’t have “free will.” It may, however, mean that “free will” is a meaningless concept.

In the WSJ piece, Hotz goes on to report other research that suggests that we make better “consumer decisions” (e.g. what car to buy) when we’re distracted.

See? It’s not just about swinging a golf club ;-)

Demon, Daemon, Daimon, Daimonion

I’ve been thinking more about Tim Gallwey’s book, The Inner Game of Golf, and the implications of what he discovered about executing the golf swing.

Gallwey observed that there are two different “modes” of being that affect a golf swing. One is judgmental, critical, verbal, analytical. The other is kinesthetic and sub- or non-verbal.

It’s always tricky to describe different aspects of the self or psyche or personality. Gallwey was no dummy. He was writing in the 70s for an audience that hadn’t been acclimated to new agey-type material. So it’s no coincidence, I’m sure, that the terminology he coined to describe these two modes was pretty dry: Self 1 and Self 2, respectively.

As simple designations within the context of mastering a golf (or tennis) swing, that terminology works. But what about off the course?

“Self 2” is a mode of being that is gained by intent, trust, and a shift to pure awareness — the same state we try to achieve during certain types of meditation. It’s the mode that we associate with “being in the zone,” where everything just flows effortlessly. There’s a kind of magic to it. Here’s a bit from the book:

Before I address the ball, I look at the situation and let Self 2 pick the target. I see the ball already there and convince Self 1 that the results are already accomplished. You might say that I pretend that the desired results have already occurred. This leaves Self 1 with nothing to be tense about or to doubt. It is the ultimate in the doctrine of the easy — what could be easier than to do something that has already taken place?

Now all that is left is to enjoy hitting the ball. In effect, I say to myself, Now that the ball has already landed where you want it, how would you like to have hit it there? Then I express the quality I want to experience by hitting the ball the way I really want to, allowing Self 2 to express himself to his full limits.

Within the scope of Gallwey’s work, this phenomenon resolves down to body vs. “head.” The body knows how to swing a golf club. The golfer must simply get his head out of the way so that his body can execute the swing unimpeded.

But anyone who’s looked at any of the “self help” literature published in the 40 years since Gallwey’s first Inner Game books will recognize this template. What’s more, it’s been applied — over & over — to activities that have nothing to do with sports. From Joseph Murphy and Neville Goddard up through Esther Hicks and Deepak Chopra, the advice is identical to Gallwey’s golf swing routine: set a goal, picture it accomplished, and then get out of the way and let the path to the goal unfurl.

What’s interesting is the terminology people use to describe “Self 2.” Murphy is one of many who use “subconscious.” Neville Goddard — perhaps reflecting how slippery this terminology becomes — sometimes fell back on metaphor but also used “Imagination,” “The Divine Body,” “the inner body” (in e.g. Awakened Imagination), “consciousness,” and the “I AM” (e.g. The Power of Awareness). Some writers go right to the heady mystery of it and ascribe to it Divinity (“let go and let God”). Others don’t bother with naming it at all, but focus on process.

Mulling all this over the past few days, the term I’m drawn to most, unfortunately, is “daemon.” Unfortunately because a daemon, to inheritors of the Judeo-Christian tradition, is a demon, aka evil disembodied creature best left well alone. Too bad we can’t rescue the word, at least in some form — revert back to how Socrates, for instance, spoke of his daimonion (“little daimon”) in terms of

“a divine or supernatural experience . . . It began in my early childhood — a sort of voice that comes to me; and when it comes it always dissuades me from what I am proposing to do, and never urges me on.”

That’s from Plato’s Apology, my Penguin Classics edition I picked up somewhere for two bucks.

Socrates was drawing on an older use of the word, as described here by Wikipedia:

The Proto-Indo-European root *deiwos for god, originally an adjective meaning “celestial” or “bright, shining” has retained this meaning in many related Indo-European languages and cultures (Sanskrit deva, Latin deus, German Tiw, Welsh [Duw],]), but also provided another other common word for demon in Avestan daeva.

In modern Greek, the word daimon (Greek: ??????) has the same meaning as the modern English demon. But in Ancient Greek, ?????? meant “spirit” or “higher self”, much like the Latin genius. This should not, however, be confused with the word genie, which is a false friend or false cognate of genius.

Socrates’ daimonion got him in a world of sh*t, of course, since the Athenians in power were nervous about people following their own little daimons instead of state-recognized gods.

Politics aside, to my thinking, the Socratic notion of daimon gets a little closer to the real nature of Self 2. Self 2 is more than mere body consciousness; it possesses an intelligence that is in many ways superior to that of Self 1, and capabilities that extend beyond mere physical acts. This explains why it comes into play in experiences that involve more than our bodies — that involve events and objects over which we have no direct physical influence. It explains as well its association with our blessings and success — one’s daimon serves as a midwife who delivers blessings into one’s life.

That said, I’m equally impatient with teachings (including a lot of Buddhist literature) that denigrate Self 1. Just because we develop habits of self-criticism that are against our best interests doesn’t mean Self 1 is an obstacle to be overcome or destroyed (!) — we are as wrong to demonize the ego as to demonize the daimon. Both were given to us by the source God, after all. Instead, we should view Self 1 as a kind of personal GPS: it feeds back data we need about where we are and whether our coordinates are to our liking, and identifies conditions that we can use for goal-setting.

The trick is to cultivate a partnership between these two “selves.” Ideally, Self 1 evaluates current coordinates and pinpoints suitable future coordinates. Then Self 2 — the daimon — guides us and executes the actions necessary to move us toward those coordinates.

That’s where the giddiness comes in, of course, because much of what the daimon does is invisible to the ego. So Self 1 has to chill out and trust that its goals will be met even though evidence of that fact might be in scarce supply. Faith as evidence of things unseen and all that.

What Gallwey discovered is that during this stage, we can fall back on simple awareness. This displaces our tendency to over-analyze or engage in constant verbal critiquing — mental activities that inhibit the daimon’s ability to do its work.

None of this gibes with official Christianity, of course, a discrepancy that Philip Pullman has tried to exploit with the His Dark Materials books. Too bad, really — Pullman is no doubt very bright, but a spiritual crank (c.f. his fixation with mischaracterizing the writings of a man who, being dead, can’t defend them. What a waste of fame.) Even without intellects like Pullman’s around to egg things on, however, I suppose it would take some time before we could return “demon/daemon/daimon” to its rightful usage — in fact, if I were a scholar I’d look for evidence that early Christian authorities took their position on demons right from the Athenian playbook. Persuade people to mistrust their inner voice and you make them dependent on your official pronunciations. It’s an old trick but we still fall for it, sorry, Socrates.

Or we keep our work beneath the radar by using terms like “subconscious” or “Self 2” — words that are safe precisely because they don’t evoke the real mystery and power that is there for us to explore — if we dare to trust how close we really are to the divine . . .

Dueling faiths

That would be science v. religion >:-)

Courtesy of Curtis Brainard and CJR Daily, we have this nice round-up of the media coverage of Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion [Update, link no longer good, sorry]:

[U]nfavorable reviews of The God Delusion have branded Dawkins’ promotion of science as “fundamentalist” and “evangelical.” It gave pause when proponents of intelligent design began to argue like scientists, and it is equally so when the opposite happens, and scientists begin to argue like preachers.

You don’t say!

lol

The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between the conscious and unconscious. Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable — perhaps everything. No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science.

C.J. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

What evangelical atheists fail to appreciate is that they, too, are in the thrall of myth. More Jung:

The real facts do not change, whatever names we give them. Only we ourselves are affected. If one were to conceive of “God” as “pure Nothingness,” that has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact of a superordinate principle. We are just as much possessed as before; the change of name has removed nothing at all from reality. At most we have taken a false attitude toward reality if the new name implies a denial.

;-)