Adi Da wrote in “Not-Two is Peace”: “Humankind is functioning on the principle of ego – or separate identity and separative activity.  Separateness and separateness – or ego-”I” – is the idea of “difference.” That idea inevitably manifests as the process of “objectification,” control, and destruction.  [...]  The right action of humankind is action based on the presumption of prior unity – not ego, not “tribes,” not any kind of form, idea, or cultural expression that came about or emerged in times of dis-unity.”

Adi Da would probably disagree with my concept of Neural Tribe.  He’d probably say that this too is a form of dis-unity, that categorizing life into neural and non-neural is just another separative difference.  And I’d agree with that, I’d agree with Adi Da.  I realize that redefining humanity as neurality is just a smaller of the separative evils.  And yet, I think, it is a step in the right direction: it is a use of separativeness towards unification.  The idea here is to expand the radius of identification – from Human Tribe (HT) to Neural Tribe (NT).  In so doing, I am, in essence, inviting the humanity to bypass the intra-group distinctions (the kinds of tribal distinctions within the Human Tribe that Adi Da was writing about).  I am inviting Humankind to redefine itself as Neurokind so as to shift to non-tribal kindness.

The “big idea” here is to try to bypass our intra-tribal distinctions by broadening the definition of our tribe – from Human Tribe to Neural Tribe.  The idea is to reverse-engineer what Adi Da called “prior unity” by first learning to relate to our neural brothers and sisters in the animal kingdom.  This “big idea” is an old idea, it’s an intuitive idea, it’s a cliche idea: we know that having a relationship with a pet animal tames our own separative mind-beast.  This is one of the therapeutic mechanisms behind the use of pet therapy as empathy-training, say, in prison populations.

Like Adi Da (and Gurdjieff and countless others) I see the self-imprisonment of the human mind.  And I ask myself: what …

To liberate yourself, meditate.

To meditate, liberate yourself.

Woman meditating image available from Shutterstock.

Mindfulness meditations show that the mind moves, just like the body.  Rodolfo Llinas, a neuroscientist and author of I of the Vortex: from Neurons to Self offers a framework that helps make sense of this movement (2002).  Llinas proposes thatmind is a kind of glorified movement system that has evolved to assist a multicellular organism with motricity (evasive action).

The mind—for all intents and purposes—is the body, and thinking is action.

The gerundive word “being” says it all: life is motion; it’s always in process, always in formation.  Not coincidentally, the word “emotion,” for example, is related to the word “motion.”  Indeed, we experience emotions as some kind of inner motion: first, you feel one way; then, all of a sudden, you are moved in another affective direction.

The same goes for urges and impulses.  Words themselves tell the story: impulse—from Latin impulses, meaning “push, shock, pressure;” urge—from Latin urgere, which means “to press hard”.  The mind streams, presses, pushes, shoves, acts out. Ever restless it keeps you up night and day.

Notice the active tone in the advice of Swami Vivekananda:

“Hold the idea [that] ‘I am watching my mind act,’ and each day the identification of yourself with thought and feeling will grow less” (1993, 59).

You are not your mind act, you are not what your mind does, you are not your mind’s movement, you are that changeless, motionless backdrop that allows you to observe all this internal com-motion.

You are not your outer behavior.  You are not your inner behavior.  You are not an act—physiological or mental.

You are not your ”monkey-mind“ but the jungle of conscious awareness that this “monkey-mind” inhabits.

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Adapted from Lotus Effect (Somov, 2010)

[image from: Wisdom Quarterly]

[word analysis from www.etymonline.com]

At some point today you might find yourself in front of a mirror, looking at your pseudo self. That image in the mirror – that’s, of course, not you. You are not out there, on the surface of the mirror. You are right here, inside, a mirror of your own. Unplug sensorially: kill the video-input: close your eyes. And just stand there – in the here-and-now of your am-ness – reflecting upon your self-mirroring, self-remembering self.

Lotus Effect: Shedding Suffering and Rediscovering Your Essential Self (New Harbinger, 2010)

www.eatingthemoment.com

www.drsomov.com

In Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis,” first published in 1915, the protagonist’s body turns into a cockroach.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that nothing else changes.  The protagonist (and his neuroticism) remains the same.

This is the irony of change.  Change happens on the backdrop of the changeless.  As the body ages, to a large extent we still feel the same inside.  As the body ages, the gap between our physical age and how old we feel inside seems to continually widen.

Why not listen to this sense of internal sameness?

Metamorphosis is a change of Form, not a change of Essence.  You aren’t what’s changing, you are that which remains the same.

Conclude:  I am not my physical Form at any given point in time.  I am not this ever changing Body.  I am not my informational Form at any given point in time.  I am not this ever changing Mind. 

Adapted from Lotus Effect (Somov, New Harbinger Publications, 2010)

 photo credit: △kenzie▲

Context: please, if you haven’t yet, read my posts on the Neural Tribe (NT) Perspective -  Neural Tribe (an Introduction to the Meme)  and Neural Tribe Doctrine - to get a better sense of where I am coming from with all of this.  Both of these posts introduce a new narrative about what we are and what we aren’t.

Neural Topology, Neural Stats

Neurons are neurons whether they inhabit a mammalian form or an insect form. Mammalian and insect nervous systems differ in how they are distributed throughout the animal body.

Insect brains – unlike the brains of the vertebrates – are less consolidated and consist of neural ganglia (clusters) that innervate various body-parts. But this is all anatomical topology, different neural schematics, if you wish. But schematics and distribution patterns aside, neurons are essentially neurons, regardless of the species.

Which is why I propose that we unite under the same rubric of the Neural Tribe.

Sure, a typical cockroach has only about 1,000,000 neurons whereas a typical human boasts about 100,000,000,000 neurons. But that’s a difference in neural statistics and not a difference in neurons per se. The number of neurons is a measure of information-processing capacity.   It’s a quantitative difference, not a qualitative difference.  I don’t know about you but I am not sure that the number of neurons makes a difference in terms of one’s sense of being, in its informationally-pure form (e.g. when you are just kind of blank, when you are just being you).   What I am saying is that I am not sure that being a bee feels all that different from being a human being.  My guess is that being feels like being whichever body-form it happens to animate.

Sure, a bee and a human being differ in terms of the information we process, but (if you are familiar with my Lotus Effect thesis) we are not the information we process, we are not the thoughts, feelings, sensations that pass through us.  Subjectively, from within, we are a field of being.  And that just comes with being neural and has nothing …

Some semi-poetic philosophizing for whatever it’s worth…

There is Nothing to Fear

A circle repeats itself.  Only a fool tries to stop the circle of time.  Wise mind lives in the meta-cognitive center, in the Witness mode of all that inevitably is.

There is Nothing to Fear

Human, recall the mother of all assumptions: there is no nothingness, i.e. there is nowhere to escape to, nowhere to run from, nowhere to hide at.  With options like these, there is nothing to fear.

There is Nothing to Fear

The Universe is.

It is beginningless.

It is unborn and undying.

And so are you.

There is Nothing to Fear

Whether you are post-Big-Bang or pre-Big-Bang, you are.  That’s what matters. The rest is simply a matter of curiosity, a matter of Matter being curious about its own unborn and undying Self.

There is Nothing to Fear

The Universe is One, not two.  You are alone, dreaming a paranoid nightmare, sparring with your own Avatars.  Wake up to see that you are safe.

There is Nothing to Fear

There is just you, Universe.  There is no Other.  With no Other but your own Self, who are you to fear?  There is no tiger inside your skull: look to see.

There is Nothing to Fear

Water runs without fear, why should you run in fear?  A blade of grass trembles in wind, not in fear.  Why should you – a multicellular colossus, a Tree on Legs – feel so easily uprooted when you are the very Ground of all that is?  Stand firm, like a sequoia, and kiss the sky!

There is Nothing to Fear

Ego is Self.

Self is Info.

Fear no Ego.

Fear no Self.

Fear no Info.

There is Nothing to Fear

Fear requires the Other.

But the  Other is an illusion of non-Self.

Fear no illusion.

There is Nothing to Fear  

The word “other” exists but what it refers to doesn’t.  There is no Other, there is but Self.  Fear no Self.  As long as there is a self, a self is self-serving.  You are on your own side, an ally, not an enemy.

There is Nothing to Fear

So, the stardust that you are, sit …

The First Patriarch of Zen, Bodhidharma, was an Indian guy on a mission to spread Mahayana Buddhism to China.  Here’s what he preached:

“I don’t talk about precepts, devotion, or ascetic practices… These are fanatical, provisional teachings.  Once you recognize your moving, miraculously aware nature, yours is the mind of all buddhas.” (1).

What does this mean?  What’s he saying?  Bodhidharma is saying: “Hey, you, you aren’t just this conceptual you that you think you are, you aren’t just this self-concept.  No!  You are Conscious Matter.  You are Living, Breathing, Moving, Dynamic Nature itself.”

At least, that’s what I get from this.

Here’s what Emperor Wu (of Liang dynasty, 6th century) got from Bodhidharma.  Emperor Wu bragged to Bodhidharma about what a great sponsor of Chinese Buddhism he is and then asked: So, have I acquired any merit?

Bodhidharma’s reply was: Nope!  No merit!

This, of course, confused the Emperor.  But hopefully the lesson is not lost on you: Buddha-mind cannot be bought.  Why?  Because you already have it: “Buddha mind, the state of consciousness discovered through meditation, is the same for all people, peasants and kings alike.” (2)

Take-away?

Same am-ness, different skulls.

Let me clarify before we part ways for now: when you think-feel “I am…” and I think-feel “I am…,” the am-ness that we experience, the presence of our existence that we tune into, this very ground of our being that we stand on… is the same.  We are of the same root consciousness.

Put differently:

Same ground, different trees.

Grok it?

====

Resources: Lotus Effect

(1) Pine, 1989, 42-43

(2) C. A. Simpkins & A. Simpkins, Simply Zen, 1999, 11

photo credit: Bananawacky

Richard Davidson, PhD, a neuroscientist, says this about meditation: “The roots of the word ‘meditation’ in Sanskrit comes from the word ‘familiarization.’  And according to that definition, meditation is actually familiarizing yourself with your own mind.”

This is very good.  In my work as a clinician I am often asked to define meditation.  Mediation – as a process of familiarization with your own mind – is a great way of defining what meditation is.

But what is familiarization?  Familiarization is a getting-to-know, an encounter, a meeting.  A meeting with yourself, in this case.

So, don’t be a stranger to yourself.  Pay a visit!  Go ahead and knock on your mind’s door.  Ask yourself: “Who’s there?”

Related: The 10th Mirror

Reference: Changing Your Brains, Changing Ourselves (Lea Winerman’s interview of Dr. Davidson in Sept 2012 Monitor on Psychology)

photo credit: forayinto35mm

“Ninety-eight percent of the atoms in the body change every year.  The atoms in the bones, which are apparently so solid and permanent, are completely exchanged every three months.  The body’s skin is new every month, the stomach lining every four days, the surface cells that contact the food every five minutes.  In this flux of constant change, all that remains the same is the immensely complex standing wave in the underlying field of nature’s intelligence.  Consciousness is primary.  The body is a pattern in the field of intelligence.” (1)

What are you if not a body of consciousness?

What are you if not an eddy in a stream of life?

Related:Lotus Effect

(1) Hari Sharma, MD, Freedom from Disease