So, how do we address this quite understandable “negative” brain bias?

 

Well, religions, the world over, seem to intuitively understand the importance and salutary effect of pausing, 2, 3, or 5 times a day, to remember one’s relationship with the Source of life. Prayer, a kind of mindfulness, helps to disrupt habitual, often immature-ego-driven, habits of the mind, and let the mind relax into a more ego-soft and translucent way of being. Through mindful recitation of various blessings, we are called to awaken in gratitude to our blessings, to remember and reconnect with the Source of all blessings. In Buddhism, mehta or maitri practices train and bathe the brain-mind in practices that evoke the juices of loving-kindness.

 

Based upon modern brain studies and psychological research, and drawing upon traditional mindfulness practices, “positive psychology” has developed tools that direct us to train our brain-mind to pause, digest and metabolize, beauty, experiences of delight, joy, and gratitude. We are enjoined to help our brain become a more sunny place. These practices bring sunshine to the overall atmosphere of our brain-mind. This has all kinds of salutary effects upon our immune system, our overall physical health, certainly our psychological health, and even on the people around us.

 

link to hardwiring happiness

Because a primary concern of our material brain-mind is survival, events that threaten either physical or psychological safety, security or survival, stick like velcro.

 

Because positive experiences don’t have immediate value for the survival concerns of our brain, positive experiences tend to roll off our brain/mind as if it were teflon.

 

This is one description of the reason for a natural negative brain bias. If we are to enjoy a life that is not ruled by this brain/mind bias and the ways this darkens our mind-space, we have to both honor and directly address this tendency.

It is my experience that when we treat all that arises as a flower in God’s garden, we get the combined benefits of top down and bottom up healing.

 

Top Down (positive psychology…):
All by itself, remembering that everything is a flower in God’s garden, has a salutary effect on the climate of our body mind.

 

Developing regular practice of welcoming all that arises and all that we encounter with an openness to discovering it’s sometimes hidden divinity, allows sunlight to bathe and nourish our self-relational and the larger relational field. This is kind of a positive psychology, top down kind of practice.

 

Bottom up (transformational):
Additionally, when we skillfully deploy a tool like IFS to bring greater refinement to our welcoming all parts of life, these aspects of life, even the most difficult, cannot help but relax and reveal the divinity, the blessings that they cannot help but bear. This is a process of transformation, transmutation, alchemy, of turning apparent dross into gold.

 

Good therapy helps us become co-creators of an inner and outer world that is bathed in light, that is luminous with the radiance that animates all creation. We also serve creation by participating in releasing and revealing this inner light. *

 

*This may sound esoteric and fluffy. IT IS NOT. By performing some of the injunctions explored in this site, we can, each of, us determine for ourselves the veracity of what I am describing.

In the Jewish tradition, we are invited to keep a piece of paper in each pocket. On one piece we are write, “for me was the world created.” On the other, “I am dust.”

 

I want to say a little about the nature and function of a healthy ego.

 

Ego simply means “I.” In one sense, ego is simple a cursor on the computer screen of life. It is a vantage point a point of view, our point of view within the larger field of reality.

 

It is REALLY important to remember that our ego and the higher cortical brain out of which our ego arises, is ongoingly a byproduct of creation and the creative Intelligence that permeates life. It, we, are not the source of ourselves.

 

Our egoic mind, our subjectivity, is a byproduct of evolution, and it allows something quite wonderful to happen. Through this evolutionary achievement that is the higher cortical brain and through the subjectivity that has grown out of this material substrate, creation and Creator enjoy a peculiar relationship with themselves. Our eyes, are the eyes of creation and the Creator. Through these eyes, and the specific subjective location of these eyes, creation enjoys many particular vantage points upon itself.

 

Far from being only a mote in the vast emptiness of the universe, our ego, is, within this larger art project that is creation, also, a kind of pivot point that allows creation to look upon itself. Our mind, our eyes, our limbs are the mind, eyes, and limbs of earth, creation, and Creator.

 

The ego is a marvelous evolutionary achievement AND it is merely creation’s and the Creator’s butler.

 

In our culture we have come to think of ourselves as truly separate subjectivities with no access to the minds of other human beings or the minds or our natural world. We then reduce that subjectivity further and speak of it as a biologistic epiphenomenon.

 

When we forget from whence our subjectivity arises – and in our culture, this forgetfulness is a dominant mode of being and knowing – , we will view the world through a disconnected egoic vantage point. Disconnected from Source, or dwelling in forgetfulness, all ego can do is perform autopsies upon life. We perform autopsies, take things apart, and then maybe try and put them together. Or, we may copy what we have found, creating marvelous machines that are a quaint and dangerously simplified version of the original. Then we clap our hands and pat each other on the back and believe that we have created something or that Now we understand the workings of some sliver of reality.

 

Our vaunted intelligence, the intelligence of our egoic mind, has no basis within itself to create anything.

 

However, when ego remembers, is, through it’s screaming emptiness called to remember the Source of itself, then is it initiated into it’s primary function as God’s or creation’s butler. Then can we participate in, be co-creative participants in creation.

“Knock and the door will open”

 

“Ask and ye shall receive”

 

“Every seeking is guided beforehand by what is sought”

 

When we use a tool like IFS diligently, we discover that love is the great solvent and disinfectant. We discover that nothing stands before love.

 

Perform these injunctions and discover reliable transformational magic. You are an essential ingredient. And, you cannot do it alone.

 

However, know that what we are speaking of is, indeed, reliable magic.

How do we know that something is wrong? Our wounds announce themselves. Like a cut that has dirt in it. Maybe we cut ourselves weeks ago and forgot to clean it out. We forget about it. The wound becomes infected and, days or weeks later, wound forgotten, we accidentally bump against the spot in the shower. Ouch, sharp pain and then that old and forgotten wound begins to throb. This pain, this awakened throbbing is the uncleaned and neglected wound’s call. When we “hear” the call, when we look to the source of that call, we notice that the site of the wound is red and swollen. It calls for tending.

Wounds to our psychology, wounds to our bio-psycho-spiritual development, to the wholesome unfolding of this treasure, this instrument that we are, are no different than the forgotten cut and the dirt that keeps it from healing.
These wounds announce themselves in various kinds of breakdowns in our relationship with ourselves and others.
Pain is the strangely articulate voice of some part of us, profoundly, mysteriously, and reliably intelligent, telling us that something needs tending.
Let us pay attention to what hurts, what is not working and therefore creating suffering. If we pay attention, then our suffering serves. If we ignore the pain, then, we suffer unnecessarily.

So, when we remember that we are a byproduct of creation and the Creator and when we remember that our life is continuously , moment by moment, arising from a Source that we are not, then we must begin to turn towards that Source.

 

To where else might we turn? Really?

 

We must begin to sense that arising, feel into it, relax into that arising, explore the many ways and expressions of that arising. When we remember that all that arises is of creation and the Creator, then will we begin to realize that we are always already in relationship with the primordial and pervasive evolutionary Intelligence that gives rise to and permeates all of life and all of creation.

 

Many things flow from this wondrous fact. One such thing is the fact that every question that arises in us, lives in a prior relationship with and is guided by that which we seek. Our appetites and hungers, lead us back to the Source of all life, nourishment, and answers. Whenever we seek the answer to some longing, some seeking, all we need to do, is to ask into the fertile ground from which we and all life are ever arising.

 

Mindfulness practices, and more specifically, SSP and IFS are tools to help us orient towards and open to the fecund Source of all life and all wisdom that fills us and all of life.

 

Everything we need, is already within and around us. Truly!

In general, I am more interested in bottom up practices of healing. That is, healing practices that help us to connect with the deep structures of brain and mind and free them from narrow or extreme patterns of functioning. I am interested in practices that liberate the structures, energies, wisdoms from their narrow and extreme modes of functioning. IFS, EMDR and other brain integration techniques, and Bruce Ecker’s Coherence Therapy, are a few modes of therapy that transform our brain-mind from the bottom up.

 

I do have a renewed interest in what I call top down modes of healing. Current brain research shows that the brain changes when we meditate. Current research in neuroplasticity demonstrates that we can use properly targeted cognitive-behavioral techniques to directly impact brain functioning. Positive psychology helps change the overall climate and habits of our brain/mind.

 

So, it seems we need to work from the both directions if we are to optimize our bio-psycho-spiritual health.