Note to self

Rational thought, followed by deliberate conscious intention, is such a weak tool for bringing about action - let alone change - that I have to carry instructions to myself on a cue card!

I doubt the below will mean anything to you, but then it’s not meant to!

(The more astute may realise some of these half sentences are cribs and at least one lifted in its entirety.)

An imagined spiritual journey

The first scene always begins when I walk into a railway booking office and ask: ‘Please could you tell me the price of a single ticket from Penzance to Berwick-upon-Tweed?’

The journey begins when I am nineteen years old and ends, well, whenever it ends. The staging for the journey is England in the late 1920’s.

The journey is the walk from the actual start to Penzance station; by railway to Birmingham Snow Hill, from Birmingham New Street to Leeds, Leeds to York, from York to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and the walk to my final resting place.

Readers familiar with the early English church will know the actual start and finish points, plus the ‘stations’ on the journey, but may be surprised that the route appears to be being taken in the ‘wrong’ direction - but then, I am a left-handed person in a right-handed world!

In reality the route passes within fifty feet of my present home, within a quarter of a mile of my second childhood home, within two miles of one of my adult homes, within ten miles of my birthplace, within two miles of my father’s birthplace, within a few hundred yards of my paternal grandfather’s workplace, and within four miles of my first childhood home. Physically knowing the route from the late twentieth century, and having a knowledge of railway history, allows the staging to appear real in my mind.

Throughout the journey I carry a copy of Q’s anthology (soft leather cover, printed on India paper with gold edging). It is open at John Clare’s ‘I Am!’

It’s a journey through a constantly changing landscape; speed (the measure of time) also changes, but I for the most part, remain stationary.
The journey begins with the going down of the sun on one day, but ends with the dawn of another.

(At the time of writing I appear to be starting the journey for the fourth time. I am forty-eight years old.)

Nick Hewling 12.8.07

The answer... (updated 2023!)

What follows is an outrageous exercise in selecting half-quotes, which I’ve strung together into two paragraphs, all taken from the final chapter of Sue Blakemore’s The Meme Machine (see January post What are memes? Sue Blackmore explains) However they all appear in the order in which they were written, and I believe provide an accurate summary of the conclusion of the book. Indeed they are the passages and phrases that I have highlighted myself (in yellow!) on my own photocopy of the chapter which I carry in my satchel at all times.

‘..Only when we see a human being as a product of both natural and memetic selection can we bring all aspects of our lives together within one theoretical framework. ..Memes fight it out to get passed on into another brain or book or object, and in the process cultural and mental design comes about. ..There is no need to call on the creative ‘power of consciousness’, ..Free will, like the ‘self’ who has it, is an illusion. ..explanation adds nothing. It is just a story ..after the fact. ..all human actions, whether conscious or not, come from complex interactions between memes, genes and all their products, in complicated environments. ..by consciousness I mean subjectivity - what it’s like being me now. ..not a force, or a causal agent, that can make things happen. ..the most mindless and least conscious of our actions can be imitated just as easily as our most conscious ones. Cultural and social variation is guided by the replicators and their environment, ..new ideas came out of the combinations of the old. ..a combined product of the genes and memes playing out their competition in ..life. ..The creative achievements of human culture are the products of memetic evolution, ..selves can often do more harm than good, for creative acts often come about in a state of selflessness, or loss of self-consciousness, when the self seems to be out of the way. ..knowledge is a kind of adaptation. So is foresight. ..comes about by selection, only in this case it is selection between memes.’

‘..the ‘me’ that could do the selecting is itself a memetic construct ..The choices made will all be a product of my genetic and memetic history in a given environment, not of some separate self that can ‘have’ a life purpose and overrule the memes that make it up. ..there is no room for anyone or anything to jump into the evolutionary process and stop it, direct it, or do anything to it. ..and no one watching. ..how can ‘I’ live as though I do not exist, and who would be choosing to do so? ..concentrate on the present moment - all the time - letting go of any thoughts that come up. ..kind of ‘meme weeding’ ..in any moment there is no observable self. ..Ideas will come up but these are all past- and future-orientated; so let them go, come back to the present. Just notice what is happening. ..pay attention to everything equally. ..attention is always being manipulated by things outside yourself rather than controlled by you. ..and created you. ..there is no distinction between myself and the things happening. It is only when ‘I’ want something, respond to something, believe something, decide to do something, that ‘I’ suddenly appear. ..‘I’ in the middle - me in charge, me responsible, me suffering. ..Learning to pay attention to everything equally stops self-related memes from grabbing the attention ..waking from the meme dream. ..accept that the selection of genes and memes will determine the action ..just get out of the way and allow decisions to make themselves. ..it is odd to observe that actions happen whether or not ‘I’ will them. A great sense of freedom to let so many decisions alone. You do not have to try to do anything or agonise about any decision. ..letting the false self get out of the way, and the decisions make themselves ..the whole process seems to do itself. ..hope and desire are based on the idea of an inner self who must be kept happy ..meet them all with a refusal to get involved ..life really is possible without hope. ..people become more decisive rather than less. ..the selfplex ..it is there for the propagation of the memes that make it up. Its demolition allows more spontaneous and appropriate action. Clever thinking brains, installed with plenty of memes, are quite capable of making sound decisions without a selfplex messing them up. ..you stop inflicting your own desires on the world around you and on the people you meet. ..giving up the illusion of a self in control. ..guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure ebb away and I become, contrary to expectation, a better neighbour. ..When there is no selfplex, there is no concern about the future of my inner self - whether people like me or whether I did the right thing or not ..free to notice other people more. ..easy to see what another person needs, or how to act in a given situation, ..stopping all the harm we normally do, ..there is no one to rebel.’

..the question of course was; how does cultural and social evolution work?

2023 - time moves on and I no longer carry a physical copy but a digital one on my mobile device, now even more simplified and arguably even more of a distortion of Sue's original!

John Clare - from the Northampton Asylum

They, have never thought to lay a pathway from the hospital entrance to where the pavement ends on the edge of our town. If you do not have a car, and generally we don’t, and given the irregular bus service - then you must for a short distance walk along the main road. The hospital has changed its purpose over the years, today if you are a patient there it usually means you are coming to the end of a prison sentence, but receiving treatment because you have a mental disorder. If you are driving along the road and are frightened by a menacing male figure; well, remember he looks ragged because he has so little to his name, is walking because he has no money, is scared by the amount of traffic (that is you) and shocked by the outside world which he hasn’t felt, unaccompanied and for himself, for - how long?

When I have business at the hospital I always walk. Those who seek to ‘involve’ me always offer a lift, I refuse saying it’s just up the road. In fact it is a half hour walk at a leisurely pace - and it has to be that way. Those workers who organise us, talk of ‘journeys’ to a recovery, or care ‘pathways’ - I prefer something more grounded in the reality of the material world and with a real history. On that journey I inevitably think of the times in my ‘career’ as a mental patient when I have just had to be outside, have used walking as an attempt to clear my mind. I often think of the poet John Clare’s fifty mile walk home, over the best part of two days and a night, having escaped from his first confinement, and who, were he alive today, might well have had the same diagnosis as myself (Bipolar Affective Disorder) - and of course have found a large part of his pathway occupied by the A1! The real journey to the hospital has only one ‘staging post’ and that is the wooden bus shelter, which survives - just. There I pause, to make that adjustment you must make when passing from your own world to that of workers and clients interacting with each other. I roll a cigarette, look for any additions to the graffiti (a kind of testimony) and think about the problem every client has - the inability to explain oneself to others.

John Clare (1793-1864) was a small farmer who briefly found fame in the 19th century, becoming known as ‘the peasant poet’ but was then socially excluded when he began to experience mental health problems. He spent the last 20 years of his life confined in the Northampton County Asylum but was able from time to time to continue writing poems, one of which was ‘I Am’;

‘I am! Yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish, an obvious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am - I live - though I am toss’d

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that’s dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange - nay, they are stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod -
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept -
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie, -
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.’

Detail from photo of the  Northampton Asylum grounds as they are today via St. Andrews Healthcare

Forty years after his death however, he did achieve a kind of inclusion, validation and immortality through the efforts of a legendary teacher Arthur Quiller-Couch who included the poem in the first edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse. Quiller-Couch (known to all as Q) taught at Cambridge University and in the early 1930’s was personal tutor to one Alistair Cooke who then went on, through his radio broadcasts (Letter From America 1946-2003) to give several generations in the UK their first taste of America. He pioneered ‘writing for talking’ in which the broadcaster speaks personally and directly to what he imagines is just one person!

In the late 1930’s a young women from Philadelphia made her way to New York in the hope of becoming a playwright. It would be thirty years before she found success, but she educated herself at various public libraries and discovered there Q’s writing on modern language and literature. Indeed one of her books is entitled Q’s legacy, alas not as widely read as her second book which simply contained her correspondence with a secondhand book dealer in London’s Charing Cross Road. Helene Hanff wrote short, direct and extremely powerful letters to Frank Doel, which would not look out of place today on any social networking site.

From 1975 until his death a couple of years ago, John Mortimer created in fiction a great comic hero. Horace Rumpole, defending barrister, who rejects status and money, in order to uphold the rights of ordinary citizens. He’s ridiculed by the people around him, but always comes out fighting using humour as a weapon. Famously he often quotes from his bedtime reading - Q’s anthology. He has a soft leather bound copy, printed on India paper with gold leaf around the edges, alas my copy has only a cardboard cover - but it’s still just the right size to slip into a pocket when out and about searching for some grass to lie on beneath that vaulted sky.

(And of course, all the above is what is meant by the vertical transmission of memes!)

Bate, J (2003) John Clare: A Biography Picador: London
Quiller-Couch, A. T ed. (1906) The Oxford Book Of English Verse 1250-1900 Clarendon Press: Oxford

Religion and mental health

Traditionally mental health services have been pretty bad at addressing the spiritual or religious needs of their clients. The problem can be very simply stated - a majority of workers don’t have strong religious convictions, whilst most of their clients do.

Until recently the strategy of most workers was avoidance, but that often came across as disrespect because so many clients describe their problems, and see the world at large, in religious terms. Establishing any kind of rapport requires some suspension of disbelief.

The ridiculous situations that can arise are well illustrated by a recent example from general nursing where a nurse from Somerset was suspended for praying for a patient! (I should state at this point - given the content of the rest of this site - that although I consider the psychologist Sue Blackmore, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and philosopher Dan Dennett as intellectual mentors - I do not follow them in considering religious beliefs to be ‘dangerous memes').

Those of us without religious beliefs should also acknowledge the obvious truth, that local churches often provide a level of support and sense of belonging (social inclusion) which mental health services have never come close to! A great friend and peer of mine is learning to read and write by studying the Bible, he’s almost sixty and has undergone in the last four years the most rapid and fundamental turnaround in his mental health I’ve ever seen in any client.

In the last three years or so various leaflets and documents have been produced for mental health workers, clients and their supporters about mental health and religious beliefs. From the Royal College of Psychiatrists the leaflet Spirituality and Mental Health. From the Mental Health Foundation, Making Space For Spirituality - how to support service users plus their full report. Finally a video of theologian Karen Armstrong on the possibilities of transcendence through practical acts - do unto others, as you would have them do unto you!

Online meditation and Wisdom2.0

Think of the Web as an add-on to your brain. When you combine it’s increasing connectivity with the memetic selection of searching you have a partial reflection of how the mind works. What was once a very weak analogy between the brain and computers, is becoming stronger.

Whether your influence over the domain in which selection takes place is greater than you have in your social environment is unclear - it appears that way, but it could be an illusion. However the dangers of too greater specialisation, leading to extreme dependence on a particular environment are very real. The more precisely you search and the more limited your connections, the more you exclude and put blinkers on yourself. Another form of emotional and cognitive isolation.

Equally the stressors in the virtual world often mirror those in the physical one. The idea of applying meditation techniques to the way we use computers and the internet has been taken up by Soren Gordhamer in his book Wisdom2.0

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-2-0-Creative-Constantly-Connected/dp/0061651516/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264459010&sr=1-1 Later this year there will be a Wisdom2.0 conference http://www.wisdom2conference.com/

Soren writes columns for The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soren-gordhamer and Mashable.com http://mashable.com/author/soren-gordhamer/

At http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QBcEFUNCOk&feature=PlayList&p=3B93FF3D190E0C51&index=6 there is a short video.

An evolutionary approach to mental health

What follows is a temporary, but necessary diversion into ‘grand theory’. Necessary, because any approach to mental health that isn’t compatible with a theory of human behaviour in general doesn’t stand a chance. (Those stuck in the insular world of psychiatry and clinical psychology please note). I’ve included references this time, just to give pause to those tempted to come down on me ‘like a ton of bricks’!

I have an evolving definition and explanation for what mental distress (disorder or illness, mild or severe) is. It shows itself as a misplaced fear of others. Personal relationships breakdown, followed by an inability to form and maintain new ones. The sufferer becomes progressively more emotionally and cognitively isolated (which may or may not involve physical isolation too).

Madness results from our failure to constantly update and modify the mental map of the world we have in our brain. If we do not ‘test’ our predictions, beliefs, dreams, thoughts, internal dialogue, fantasies, hypotheses, plans, ideas about how the world is, and what the people within it think and feel, our map becomes rapidly out of date. If we act with an out of date model of the world - we will look mad to others, and they will treat us as mad. If others don’t share a large part of our model of reality we are emotionally and cognitively isolated. Though none of us ‘see’ the world as it really is, we all rely on making a more or less accurate map; by sharing we come to have a more complete understanding than we could ever achieve alone. The ability to doubt and live with uncertainty, and hence know that we must constantly test our vision of the world - is sanity. To control and fix our view is the first step on the road to disaster. And of course the only way to maintain an unchanging outlook is to isolate oneself from any evidence that might contradict it. If we fail to observe (insufficient data) or misinterpret (wrong theory) then the map becomes more out of date. If our prediction disagrees with the experiment it is wrong. An unmodified and out of date model of the world is one where our thoughts and feelings are anchored in the past, hence our predictions of the future may be hopelessly wrong. Mental disorder is emotional and cognitive isolation to varying degrees.

Emotional reactions always come first, from what our five senses are telling us in the present moment, only afterwards do we attach thoughts. If we attach thoughts that come from the past, then we are operating with an out of date model of the world. So often we are not aware of what, in the present moment is ‘cueing’ our emotions and reproducing redundant thoughts. It is natural to be in a meditative state and to focus on the present moment. When the mind drifts away the discipline is to learn to let go, again and again. It is the opposite of taking control. It is about allowing decisions to make themselves, of not worrying about an unknowable future and refusing to get involved in hopes and expectations. The goal should be greater mental awareness of others, at the same time as being more physically relaxed. A full-time activity done with the eyes open. Meditation is not a set of skills that once acquired, can be called on at leisure; for one’s inability to operate in the world, based on the learning made in past relationships, will always return unless such skills are continuously practiced. Unwanted emotions and thoughts from the past will always ‘crash-in’ - meditation is a continuous process of letting go. The myth of self-control leads most to imagine that without it, mayhem and moral collapse will ensue. In practice, the need to manage others falls away and you become a better companion!

The best introduction to meditation I have come across, as a way of operating throughout the day, is to be found in Harrison (1994), and can be read along with his articles on how the core skills have been extracted from their religious context (Harrison 2005-). Sue Blackmore goes further, much further, by placed meditation techniques in the context of human cultural and biological evolution, and how we have evolved the very idea of a ‘self’ (Blackmore 2000:219-246). It’s possible to move towards a resolution of the contradictions of modern life, and the mental distress they give rise to, by developing both an evolutionary perspective and by being aware of the promise of social neuroscience (deCharms 2008, Goleman 2007, Ramachandran 2009). If you view daily life as evolution by natural selection, from minute to minute as well as on a timescale of the last 180,000 years (since we became homo sapiens with our full range of mental capabilities and capacities), see the biological and social as evolving in parallel and feeding back on each other (though at very different rates), then other kinds of questions and explanations suggest themselves (Oppenheimer 2004, Dawkins 1989, Blackmore 2000, Stevens & Price 2000, Nesse & Williams 1996, Nesse 2006).

We have lived out ninety-five per cent of our history as hunter-gathers, moving through and living from the environment. The last eight to ten thousand years, since we have sought to transform the environment (with the invention of agriculture, ideas of ownership and permanent settlement), has been an exceptional, perverse, untypical and abnormal period. Our point of reference for mental wellbeing should be the pre-agricultural world, where we evolved to be nomadic, as part of groups (‘bands’) of no more than about one hundred and thirty people, consisting of relatively close genetic relatives. You cannot ‘know’, as in feel an emotional attachment for, more than about that number of people.

Empathy (the ability to feel what others feel) and a ‘theory of mind’ (knowing how others think) derive from humans almost unique ability to imitate using the ‘mirror neurons’ of the brain, and give the capability to identify with, and be accepted by your group! (Blackmore 2000, Ramachandran 2000, 2003:97-131, 2006, 2007, 2009) If these abilities are blocked by life experience, then you become isolated from the people you are genetically most attached and attracted to. The last eight to ten thousand years has seen the construction of a world containing mental illness. And the culmination is the development of mental health workers, with the normal human capacities, who then try to empathise and share the ‘theory of mind’ of the unhealthy! This leads to the maintenance or reproduction of mental distress. Therapists should be leaders, mentors and role models to whom a client can apprentice themselves, and should not try to connect or catch the habits of the ill. As clients we must imitate the mentally healthy. Three out of four people don’t have a mental health problem during their life times.

And it’s not ‘faulty’ genes either, it is because we did our early learning with very close genetic relatives to whom we are automatically attached. Problems arise as a result of conflicts between the quality of our learning and our attachment to the person from whom we learnt. If you were separated from your close genetic relatives, your learning may well have been exceptional, but your life may become a search for those you are instinctively attached to. Equally you may search the world in vain for a ‘soul mate’, because it is so unlikely in modern society that you will ever meet that person, from the edge of your natural ‘group’, with whom you have a relatively close genetic attraction. It never was nature or nurture - but the ways in which your personal learning, your own cultural evolution, conflicted with the demands of your own biology. Your genes will determine to whom you are attached and attracted to, but it is with your learning that mental disorder is created and maintained.

References　
Blackmore, S (2000) The Meme Machine Oxford University: Oxford
Dawkins, R (1989) The Selfish Gene Oxford University: Oxford
deCharms, C (2008) Christopher deCharms looks inside the brain TED conference presentation Feb 2008

Goleman, D (2007) Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships Arrow: London
Harrison, E (1994) Teach Yourself To Meditate Piatkus: London
Harrison, E (2005-) articles for Nova Magazine available at http://www.perthmeditationcentre.com.au/articles/index.htm [10.1.10]
Nesse, R.M (2006) response to the ‘2005 Edge Question’ in Brockman, J (ed.) What We Believe But Cannot Prove Pocket: London
Nesse, R.M and Williams, G.C (1996) Evolution and Healing: The New Science of Darwinian Healing Phoenix: London
Oppenheimer, S (2004) Out Of Eden: The peopling of the world Robinson: London
Ramachandran, V. S (2000) MIRROR NEURONS and imitation learning as the driving force behind “the great leap forward” in human evolutionhttp://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html [19.7.08]
Ramachandran, V. S (2003) The Emerging Mind Profile/BBC: London
Ramachandran, V. S (2006) ‘Mirror Neurons And The Brain In The Vat’ response to the 2006 Edge Question at; http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran06/ramachandran06_index.html [3.6.09]
Ramachandran, V. S (2007) Self Awareness: The Last Frontier http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/rama08/rama08_index.html [6.1.09]
Ramachandran, V. S (2009) The neurons that shape civilisation TED conference presentation.

Stephens, A and Price, J (2000) Evolutionary Psychiatry: A new beginning Routledge: London

Meditation techniques for mental health

Meditation is about being more physically relaxed at the same time as gaining greater mental awareness - throughout the day and with your eyes open! It’s about being in the present moment and therefore more grounded in reality. Despite the rather naive acceptance by some psychiatric authorities of mystical claims about ‘altered states of consciousness’; misunderstanding over an apparent connection with trance, dream like states and psychosis; and the timid approval by the NHS of just one aspect of meditation known as Mindfulness (sometimes referred to as ‘kitchen-sink meditation’) - it is, once stripped of its religious elements, the most important tool I have against madness. It’s the best anti-psychotic there is.

Untangling the myth however is not easy, you need to ‘suspend your disbelief’ and consider for a moment that the meditator is more in touch with reality than you are. You may imagine someone on a mountainside, eyes closed in the lotus position, but the real practitioners may be passing you in the street unnoticed - they blend into the social landscape because they are in the here and now, whilst you are preoccupied with your own thoughts. Your conscious thoughts can only be about the past or future, in the present you only have your senses with which to literally ‘feel’ your way around. Realise your emotions come from the data your senses are giving you now - then you’ll have it! It’s a shock, like waking up from a dream, you are back in the real world for the first time since - when? Suddenly self-consciousness, anxiety and fear can be put to their proper use; of spotting the occasional occurrence of real danger. You can get back to the proper use of your time, finding activities that match your skills and can become absorbed in, achieving some degree of ‘flow’, that sense of happiness that comes from the loss of self-consciousness - something we all felt in childhood play.

The first ‘pay off’ from meditation is the awareness of where you feel fear in your body, what in the environment has triggered or cued your brain to remember some past unpleasant association. It may be an unwelcome series of sensations to begin with, but it soon becomes a useful revelation. This is followed by learning to let go of unwanted thoughts and feelings about the past and future. In the process you can stare life in the face - as it is now.

One of the things meditation tackles well is our ‘illusion of self-control’. We like to think we are consciously in control of ourselves all the time. We distrust our basic, spontaneous impulsive actions. We must be constantly choosing all the time as free independent individuals. As a result we have become acutely self-conscious. Yet there is only so much we can keep at the forefront of our minds at any one time. We come to consider it a failure or lapse in our own standards when we inevitably end up following the impulses of biology, and the learning we unconsciously achieved earlier in our lives. Meditation, by placing us back in the present moment and allowing us to feel what cues us, what stimulates our senses, shows us just how unnecessary the time and trouble we spent on worrying about decisions really was. Decisions are all about an unpredictable future over which we can exert little control. However, we can learn to trust our own brains to get on with it, become grounded in the environment of the present, reconnected to the social world of others, and just be.

Objectives

- to concentrate on the present moment all the time; let go of any thoughts that come up (knowing they can only be about the past or future), know too that in any one moment there is no observable ‘self’; to notice what is happening (not a series of events but continuous change), to pay equal attention to all that can be seen and therefore know what habitually cues you to feel or respond in a particular way (your attention, reactions, emotions, and the ‘story’ you tell yourself about who you are) - and so ultimately realise that it is the actions of others that is creating you.

- to understand that the ‘I’ or ‘me’ that appears when you want something is an obstacle to your sense of wellbeing; to allow decisions to make themselves (unconsciously) since the conscious self is not in control and actions happen whether or not you will them - sense the freedom that comes from knowing you don’t have to try to do anything!

- to refuse to get involved in desires and hopes (about an unknowable future), to know that it is quite possible to live without hope (now is all there is), that in the world of the present you can stop inflicting your desires on others, stop the harm we often do and be able to notice others more.

Finding A Focus

At the core of meditation is the ability to focus on something; whether it be within the body, an external object or a mental image. Focus is not concentration as such, but a fixed point of reference, something you always come back to. A fixed point, baseline or benchmark from which you can navigate your mental interpretation of the physical world. Physical relaxation must come first and the easiest way in is to focus on the breath - not control it, just ‘watch’ it. Once relaxed you can begin to focus away from yourself towards the environment you find yourself in. In a natural environment it makes sense to let your gaze rest on the horizon and make that your focus. Whether we like it or not our attention will be constantly distracted by whatever our senses pick up from the environment and the internal thoughts and feelings prompted by those cues. The ‘trick’ is to always come back to the focus, again and again. You acknowledge the thought or perception, and let it go in the act of always returning to the focus. When truly focused, for however shorter time that may be, you think of nothing else. However the choice of focus at any one time does need to be something that holds your interest - something you enjoy exploring. Good focusing is a joy, as you begin to learn to let go you can start to recapture that childhood sensing and feeling, which never required conscious thought and has a fascination all of it’s own.

Balance

There is however a need to create a balance, between physical relaxation (too much of which leads to sleep) and greater mental awareness (which if not matched with the right degree of relaxation, may provoke a degree of anxiety about ‘what’s going on’ and increase self-consciousness). Stress is not an external force, but occurs within the body, our attention is usually directed outwards so we don’t recognise it in our bodies. In the process of physically relaxing we can identify stress and let it go; so our increasing awareness becomes a tool with which to see the world rather than a product of anxiety that may cause us to turn away.

Relaxation

If the first requirement is physical relaxation, and that is dependant on focused breathing, then an unrestricted diaphragm is a precondition of meditation - it is not the choice of posture itself that matters, but how you hold yourself in it. You can meditate whilst sitting, lying down or walking. The breath naturally changes throughout the day and from minute to minute, if you can learn to watch it and not seek to control it, you notice how it automatically adjusts itself. After meditating for a while you realise it was your conscious attempts to control it that caused the problems in the first place. Unrestricted breathing then allows you to ‘listen’ to the body. Normally when we relax our minds have a tendency to wander, to fantasise or free associate, leading to sleep. Meditation usually has the opposite intention, beginning with the kind of self-knowledge that arises from a greater awareness of the body. You can literally feel mental stress as physical pain - as you begin to relax. Much mental distress is a shutting-off of awareness, of stopping feeling. Becoming more aware of the body begins to put you back in ‘touch’! Much of the tension in our bodies is an attempt to suppress unacceptable emotional responses. The technique known as a ‘body scan’ starts with an awareness of the breath, followed by deliberately focusing bit by bit on every area of the body, identifying tension, gently flexing the muscles, at the same time as noticing the thoughts and feelings that arise. And in the act of physically letting go, it’s a shock to realise just how much mental preoccupation seems to float away. Fear, anger, sorrow and desire all disappear when we are truly relaxed.

Meditating for sleep is different, with the eyes closed you may wish to initially focus on the breath, and body scan. But you shouldn’t seek greater awareness nor be tempted to move on and fantasise in a controlled, ‘story making’ way. Rather think of how dreams are when you’re asleep - less coherent, more a free association of thoughts. One technique is to explore a single visual image rather than imaging a movie.

The link between mental and physical relaxation becomes obvious when you see what great physical performers can do, and realise they could never do what they do unless they were relaxed in a holistic sense. But an even greater revelation comes when you see and hear those same people interviewed! If you want exemplary examples of ‘mental health’ look to the great dancers.

Awareness

Many people equate being alert with conscious thinking. But we can only be conscious of a very small amount of the brain’s activity at any one time and much of it we are never aware of. And we don’t need to be. What is useful is to educate ourselves from time to time about those things that habitually cue us to behave in a certain way. Not so much in order to change, but to stop ‘beating ourselves up’ over those things we have consciously decided should not be part of our self, our ‘I’ or ‘me’. Indeed with a lot of practice you can have consciousness, but no consciousness of self - just awareness!

Mindfulness is a basic technique to help you move from motionless meditation at an allotted time, to incorporating it into what should be continuous movement throughout the day. It’s about focusing on, and paying close attention to the detail of what we are doing in any given moment. Being very aware of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures of the moment, becoming awake and tranquil by focusing intently on minute details. (There are obvious parallels here with being absorbed in the physical practice of a skill, but without the prescribed outcome). When eating just eat, when walking just walk. Walking is a good way to face each day a fresh, when you walk you ‘own’ nothing, you’re in constant movement and there is nothing but change around you, it feels natural to be nomadic - or it should do!

Mentally letting go again and again, brings greater awareness in the hear and now. It is the greatest reward of meditation to be suddenly flooded with insight, an intense feeling or a change of mood. To wonder where it came from, stop, look around, and then be amazed a second time to realise what cued that change. Understanding, and acceptance, of how things just are - in the same moment. And then to let go again. To borrow from Wordsworth: ‘Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind …’. You lose nothing by letting go of good, as well as bad thoughts and feelings, because as you change, the ones that are useful and real will come back time and time again. Equally tranquillity comes not from changing the world, but from allowing the moments of emotional pain to die a natural death. Sometimes we don’t want to let go of our worries and fantasies, the conflicts that preoccupy us, they become part of our identity and maintain the world as it is, giving the illusion of self-control - the feeling that we can predict the future. But if we can be relaxed and aware in the present, all that falls away - we forget what used to preoccupy us.

When out and about the focus may switch from the breath to a visual object, a fixed point for navigation, but equally there is visualisation, an imagined image for still periods, usually with the eyes closed. But then there are transition states too, for example, ‘body asleep, mind awake’ which can have a better quality than sleep alone. You gain the benefit of an asleep body, but the mind, rather than having the chaos and illogical thoughts of dreaming, stays clear and focused.

And there are the times when it doesn’t matter if what we are sensing, tasting, touching with our bodies is pleasant or not! You just don’t feel the need to explain, understand, or solve, but simply watch and feel - then the realisation of the ‘right thing to do’ will occur at the time when it is appropriate to act. If we are open to the world, not preoccupied with ourselves, then our instinctive responses (which we have been taught to mistrust or contain) will fit the facts and we just feel the appropriate response in a given situation.

To Be More ‘Grounded’

Once grounded, we change and move on automatically. A connectedness to the physical world around us should be our moment to moment preoccupation. We cannot see others in our environment as they are, without it. When we are not preoccupied with ourselves, then we can see the needs of others. And it is in this state that we can approach an understanding of what may be the true basis of what is called spirituality or religious experience. Making others, and or, other things, rather than oneself, the central focus of our lives, allowing transcendent experiences - going beyond our usually limited perception of others. But it is equally valid to assert that in the past there must have been a time when we were all very effective at meditation. That in some sense it must be a natural state, for it is hard to imagine our hunter-gatherer ancestors being able to survive without such skills. Think of hunting, of long hours on one’s feet, of the constant gentle movements needed to pick up a trail, to track and stalk, feel movement in the air, the physical coordination, the ability to navigate, feel the sudden stress of real danger, but be able to let go when it passes, the need for so much stillness, and the quick flowing response. And afterwards, to squat for a while under a tree, to be within the only real temple there is - not enclosed by the buttressing of the branches, but open to the vaulting of the sky beyond. Later, the making of fire - the focus of community and collective narrative.

'To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.'
William Blake 1757-1827: ‘Auguries of Innocence’ (c.1803)

That might well serve as a description of the potential of meditation and truly being in the moment. And Blake of course, experienced visual hallucinations from early childhood onwards. Meditation is a discipline that takes time and effort; though the more competent one becomes the more effortless it feels! Nonetheless like any set of skills, if you don’t practice then you lose them. It’s often when you feel at your lousiest, and have to ‘try’ the hardest that the most rewarding meditations follow. It is not unusual to suddenly feel worse as you relax and become more aware - you realise what’s been going on! This is the crucial moment to learn to continue meditating and not turn away - it is when the benefits really begin. At its best meditation gives a series of ongoing, ever deepening natural ‘highs’ based solely on increasing awareness of the fascination of the world around you. But don’t become a ‘bliss junkie’; stuck in a particular form of meditation, confined by time, place and routine or ritual - with a fixed set of beliefs about what is happening to you and your state of mind, seeking a continuous high, but effectively isolated from the rest of the world.

Meditation offers greater enjoyment of the sense world, deeper more varied emotional experiences and a sense of there being enough time. It feels like life with the ‘blinkers’ off, of a mental fog having lifted, in which we no longer fantasise - but then you catch yourself losing the focus again! But that’s as it should be, when navigating your way around a world of continuous change. Scientists and researchers in search of an ‘evidence base’ for meditation may object that whilst you can demonstrate a link with physical relaxation, the idea of greater mental awareness is not amenable to experimentation. Perhaps they are looking in the wrong place. I would wish to argue that it is the heightened awareness that comes with sudden stress or anxiety, and which to some extent has been measured, which through the discipline of meditation, is being harnessed by an individual who nonetheless remains physically relaxed.
　
Catch Tomorrow Now
　
Can you stop?
Let go of thoughts and feelings
Of the past and future
And just be in the present moment.
Now is all there is.
Reattach your emotions to your senses
In the real physical world of the present.
Notice what cues your thoughts now
Acknowledge them and let them go
Good or bad.
Allow yourself to feel the bad when it happens
Then it passes quickly.
Allow yourself to be ‘surprised by joy’
And let go those feelings too.
Knowing they will return unbidden.
Think of yourself as having no fixed self.
Able to construct a self anew every day
Attentive to others, unconcern for an ‘I’ or a ‘me’.
Aware of the others who make you what you are.
You learn most by imitation.
You only remain fixed
When you remake yourself today
As you were yesterday.
You imagine the past must persist into the future
But only because you reproduce it afresh everyday.
Don’t look forward or back, but around.
Seek to be more relaxed and aware.
Absorb what’s around you
And catch tomorrow now!
　
The Rules
　
Can you stop?
Let go of the past and future - again and again
Be in the present moment
Pay equal attention to everything
Notice in the moment what cues your thoughts and emotions
Now is all there is
Let decisions make themselves
Refuse to get involved in hopes and expectations
Physically relax yourself continuously
Always have a focus

Catch Tomorrow Now - part 2

Can you replace your assumptions about others,
With curiosity and fascination?
And can you unlearn as you let go?
Your routines should be made to work for you,
Habits should be unconscious,
Leaving you free to notice other things.
There is no such thing as a mistake, only new learning.
And the meaning of any communication,
Is always the message received.
Every thought comes with an emotion attached
And rationalising is just a way,
Of putting emotions on hold!
Experiences just make you feel good or bad,
Meanings become attached afterwards;
And meanings never started anything!
Motivation for action can only come,
From an emotional attachment to others.
But it’s a misplaced fear of others,
That is the consequence of mental disorder!

What are memes? Sue Blackmore explains

Get a handle on memes, and cultural evolution.

Browse her website; http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/

Read The Meme Machine; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Meme-Machine-Susan-Blackmore/dp/019286212X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263301384&sr=1-1

Sue is Visiting Professor of Psychology the University of Plymouth.