Meditation Shapes the Mind

The Meditation Awareness Research Center (MARC) at UCLA was founded by Dr Susan Smalley, PhD, who was interviewed in the Huffington Post by wellness editor Patricia Fitzgerald. There are several great links in the article, including meditation teacher, Diana Winston, a link to meditations and research measuring brain lobe thickness for people who meditate compared to those who do not.

From that data "brain areas are thicker in practitioners of Insight meditation than control subjects who do not meditate. Graphs show age and cortical thickness of each individual, red= control subjects, blue = meditators.

The study doesn't interpret lobe difference to mean better lifestyle it simply notes the difference in the shape.

Grounding- G1 revisited

I've recently experienced a period of G1. For me that shows up as my mind is very busy, I mull and rethink options and as a result I'm challenged when I want to focus.

So this is what I know. Moving to a G5 (high groundedness) is always about coming back to knowing what is really True- that I am this Divine idea here and now... I just forgot. So I work knowing that idea with affirmative prayer. Sometimes I work with a Prayer Practitioner who can see this Truth, my Divine essence when I am not seeing it myself. The Practitioner provides a professional service which I pay for and they affirm Spiritual Truth- they pray- with me. In this context the prayer helps me remember my coming to G5 highest level of feeling connected to living, or grounded.

Then there are three other things I've been doing. One- I'm back in Nature- taking time to walk and observe and connect with the woods. Two- I work with my hands. I led a workshop on creating a prayer stick, in which the creation of the stick is really a solemn prayer. Selecting the stick and different colors of yarn, then applying the yarn with a splicing knot that absorbs all loose ends and then finally applying my personal carvings into the wood became a prayerful activity. Often the things we do in recognition and awareness of purpose become some of the most significant. And three- I intentionally exercise and breathe with an intention to move out of my mind and into my physical body. The body, the breath, the heart know a natural rhythm. I know after my Tai Chi class I feel better mentally and physically. My chest is opened up and I'm much more limber, from legs, lower back and shoulders.

Apollo 11 and the Pale Blue Dot

I watched the Apollo 11 lunar landing from a campground on the shore of Lake Wallenpaupack. We were vacationing (building the house) in Hawley, PA that summer and in the evening went to the lake. No cable back then and only weak fuzzy signals from the Scranton VHF TV station. So on this 40th anniversary of the landing I have enjoyed reading, listening and watching the interviews and the expressions of the travelers, the Earth team that supported them and the population of observers.

And in that search I found the Carl Sagan segment called, 'the pale blue dot' based on photos taken by the Voyager I unmanned spacecraft in 1990 while 3,781,782,502.403 miles from Earth. I like the way it shows the relative size of our Earth to other celestial bodies. It gives a scale to compare our position and our history on this pale dot. And in that comparison I experience the vastness of the infinite universe.

Infinite Breath Exercise

Here is my favorite breathing technique. It comes from many teachers, most recently Don, and I am grateful to them all- both live and those on CD. I use it when I want to relax, move to greater calm or groundedness. It can also be used while lying down for greater relaxation into sleep.

• Stand with legs shoulder width apart. (lie down for sleep)
  
• Place your right hand over your abdomen with your right thumb touching your naval. Place your left hand over your right. Relax your knees, back straight and eyes facing forward
  
• Inhale through the nose and as you inhale, let the breathe go into your abdomen. Feel your hands move outward as your belly fills with air. Let it expand.
• Completing the inhale, begin to breathe out. At the final moment of exhale contract your abdomen to get a more full exhale, an emptiness.
• Then inhale again, this time pushing out your abdomen further than the last. Typically these muscles aren't used in our regular breathing patterns so gently help them remember full expansion as you inhale this time.
• Establish a rhythm of inhale and exhale. You can experiment holding the breath for a few seconds at the end of the inhale but I find it's great to have a flow, a rhythm of inhale to exhale, inhale to exhale. Continue for at least 10 breaths or 10 minutes or more- whichever you can support.
  
• I picture and map an infinity symbol with my breath. Breathing in I complete half of the symbol, a loop, mentally tracing it through my upper body. As I exhale I complete the lower half of the symbol with my breath going into the ground and back to my waist.
• Experiment and vary as you find what works best for you.
  

When you focus on the breath you will find that all other thoughts are removed. If you find you are thinking, just relax and go back to the breath. With regular practice this becomes more natural.

Mathematics and Physics

Study a language or study a culture and you find there are many ways that humans describe their experience, ways they describe the infinite. Today in the NY Times, I read that Bill Gates has purchased the video rights for Richard Feynman's 1964 Series of Cornell Physics Lectures. It's called Project Tuva and is online now.

I started watching the 55 minute segment titled The Relationship between Mathematics and Physics. In it Feynman says, (12 :20) and (14:05)
"It is impossible to answer really, honestly in the way a person can feel, to explain the beauties of the laws of nature without having a deep understanding of mathematics."

"Mathematics is not just a language. Mathematics is a language plus reasoning. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning. It is in fact a big collection of the results of some persons careful thought and reasoning. By mathematics it is possible to connect one statement with another."

Knowing that the Universe operates with specific and repeating laws, mathematics is a way to describe that operation, to understand the laws of nature. And the linking of that reasoning helps us predict with greater understanding how things work. It is a way to describe the the unknown, the infinite. When I was a student, we were proud that our discipline was one of the few that had theoretical footing for that predicted how things worked and at the same time, included teams of experiments designed to check the theory. Each aspect pushing the other to greater understanding.

Feynman is eloquent and animated in his explanations. Gates explained that if he had seen these lectures as a college student he might have been a physicist rather then leaving Harvard and becoming a software entrepreneur. And best of all you don't need a science background or PhD to appreciate Feynman's arguments describing nature.

Juxtaposition + Context- Lisel Mueller

Recently, I've been intrigued by the poetry of Lisel Mueller. Born in 1924 she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1997. Her parents came from an academic background (bio short) (bio long) and fled Nazi Germany to work and live at the University of Evansville in Indiana. Some analysts say her work includes elements of a dark side- I like to think of it as contemplative. In support of the artist's work, here is her 1997 book Alive Together. I picked up a used copy from Alibris.

In a PBS interview 1997, Elizabeth Farnsworth asked, "Do you have a goal when you're writing poems? Is there some purpose you want to achieve when you write?"

Mueller responded, "Not really, not consciously. Something just comes to me. Usually it's the juxtaposition of two things. I see something in a new context in which I had not seen it before, and this excites me, and I mind this, try to figure it out in a poem."

It is the same for me. Sometimes the relative position of things makes them stand out against each other and it's interesting. I wonder about them and try to figure it out. It could be the light of the clouds and sky against the trees, the perfect reflection of sky water or the quiet of a conversation and understanding with a friend or family. About how business operates- measured by exacting metrics but enacted by breathing, emotion, thinking, tactile, unique human forms. These juxtapositions stand out and provide fuel for my thinking and writing. And often time it is through the writing that I come to a better understanding.

For the past two weeks I've kept a browser tab open with her poem, 'Monet Refuses the Operation'. I've read the poem many times but for some reason every time I go to close the tab I hesitate, there is more to interpret. Monet had cataracts and in this poem he is speaking to the doctor, explaining why he refuses the operation to remove them. Mueller depicts Monet saying, 'I will not return to a universe where objects don't know each other.'

When you begin to look at the Universe as being manifestations of one idea, you see a connection where objects know each other. There is no real separation. Monet and Mueller are saying this. In her closing line she says, "Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end."

That is beauty, that is nature, that is the Divine. I am now ready to close the tab.

Bud and Feynman on doubt, uncertainty and religion

Yesterday I spent a few hours and dinner with my 90 year old uncle (my dad's brother) Bud. We share family heritage, interest and careers in technology and we also discuss views on life, death and philosophy. Yesterday we were into, 'How do people come to an absolute belief in their religious view?' He says it comes down to 5 letters, F-A-I-T-H. There is no fact, there is no research or technique to prove a religious belief. It's faith. A consummate story teller, Bud's question is his hook when engaging visiting ministers at the assisted living community.

As a physics student I studied Richard Feynman through 'The Feynman Lectures on Physics'. In my youth, I was taught religion and participated in a great church community. I related to spiritual concepts which provided a good foundation but the absolute nature of my Christian upbringing did not fit well. It left no room for doubt and uncertainty. I enjoyed this Feynman interview and am today grateful for a sense of the bigness of the Universe and the mystery.

Needed: more effective prayer

Inspiration piece- Christian Science Monitor July 1, 2009

Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) birthed Christian Science. The degree to which her platform was influenced by Phineas Quimby, considered the father of New Thought has been in dispute for a century. This makes interesting reading but with aging the fuel for controversy has long burnt out.

When I was a child I learned prayer as a way of reaching out and asking for something. Sometimes it was a barter but almost always my prayers were pleas, of outward bound wishes sent into some place that I did not understand. What I have now come to know is the power of affirmative prayer as seeing the outcome already done and completed.

Both methods have similarities as Emerson said in his essay Self Reliance, "Prayer is the contemplation of facts from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul." I resonate with RWE's point. Recognizing the power of the Universe and its presence within me I now know this Truth (Truth with capital T indicating Spiritual Truth). I experience spiritual connection when in this contemplation of recognizing and unifying with this mystery, the unseen.

But to the point of 'more effective prayer'. This article talks about seeing the desired outcome as already done, already in existence and complete. It suggests that we spend time seeing this 'highest point of view' and that leads to the having the mental mindset and acting as if we already have the thing we desire. That is the mental preparation necessary to have the prayer 'answered'... to realize the outcome.

In the New Testament, Jesus said (1, 2), 'It is done unto you as you believe'. So when looking at a situation whether nearby or far over seas, whether in your family, your work or in your personal goal setting there is a place, a contemplation of facts from the highest good, that serves as the path to more effective prayer.