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Brain
Food:
How to
Awaken the Dormant Mind
(Unedited
tape transcript)
We are creatures of habit
and pattern; the vast majority of our daily functionings are
repetitions of what we’ve done the day before and the day before
that. Events which are seemingly new to us, such as meeting new
people or seeking a new job, are the same old thing in our mind’s
eye, as we are approaching the same types of people and jobs in the
same way. Even the way we approach new information and challenges is
governed by habit.
This creates a neural
response pattern in the brain: The same process, repeated over and
over, imprints a mental pathway and reflex which is automatically
triggered whenever the same stimulus occurs. Thus we do things
“without thinking”. For example, every time I open a door I grab
the knob with my right hand, every time I see a stop sign I apply the
brakes.
This also creates a lazy
brain. Because these tasks are done automatically and repeatedly by
the same few brain cells, the rest of the brain lies dormant –
un-stimulated and disconnected. The vast majority of our
intellectual potential goes unrealized. Think of it as a well-worn
trail through the woods. There are any number of ways to get from
point A to point B, but after a while of going back and forth we
settle in on the path of least resistance and pretty much ignore the
rest of the woods.
As with other neglected
parts of the body, the unused portion of the brain atrophies in time,
making it increasingly difficult to restore its given potential. This
usually goes unrealized, because it appears that we are actually
getting smarter. When we repeat a motion we can get very good at it,
creating the illusion of intelligence and mastery. With practice a
person can learn to juggle three balls in clockwise rotation very
well. He may have an impressive degree of skill, but does that make
him a juggler? What if we were to ask him to reverse the rotation, or
add another ball, or perhaps a bottle? What if he were to try
juggling in the wind, or walking backwards?
Think of the brain as a
library of intelligence. When we keep going to the same shelf for the
same book we ignore the vast potential gift our brain holds for us.
And not only for us. Gifts are for the giving; when we deny our gift
we also deny the good it could bring others.
Many of us keep grabbing
the same book when we respond to something new – something out of
the realm of our experience or belief system. When we react by
dismissing it (“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about”) or
with anger and judgement (“That’s b___ s___”), it’s probably
your ego responding rather than the whole you. If we were coming
from our heart-center, our response would more likely be something
like, “That’s a new perspective; I’ve never thought about it in
that way. I’m curious ...”
When we react from ego we
give an answer that has nothing to do with the topic. In essence all
we are saying is, “This doesn’t fit with what I know so I reject
it.” The upshot is that we become rigid and closed. We further
entrench ourself in our narrow view of reality, i.e. we remain alone.
When we come from heart, we embrace other as we embrace self. We
honor other people’s truths and welcome the opportunity to grow in
understanding and awareness.
This is the essence of
the way we are designed to function, the way of all natural life. I
call it being as a question.
In order to keep the
brain alive and growing, i.e. questioning, we need to continually
challenge and break up our mental patterns. We can go about this by
consciously and impulsively doing things differently. If every time I
go to the library I visit a different shelf, I will quite likely
become a person with a broad range of knowledge and adaptive
potential. So, if I set out to become a juggler, perhaps I will
practice in the rain, walking in the sand, while I am putting on my
shirt. I’ll juggle whatever I come across -- sticks, wads of
paper, raw eggs. I’ll juggle blindfolded, while I’m reading,
while I’m crying. In time I will be a juggler.
We can use this approach
with virtually all of our daily activities. Following are examples
of the things I do every day, which I have chosen because they take
little extra time or effort and do not detract from what I would
normally be doing:
– begin walking with
the opposite foot I normally use
– open the door, carry things, eat, brush teeth with
the opposite hand
– greet people with
something other than “How are you”; when writing letters use
other than my standard greetings and closings
– every day notice
something new in my loved one, in the person I work with
– be an impulsive reader/listener
– rearrange my room,
sleep the opposite way in my bed, sit at various places at the table,
sit on the floor
– take a different off-trail route to camp each time
– encourage random
feelings and thoughts as they arise
– follow whims
– look in directions
other than those to which I am naturally drawn
– allow myself to be
sloppy in a noncritical area of my life (Those who know me say I
clearly don’t have to stick any extra effort into this
one!)
The last suggestion
warrants further explanation: This is done to create an environment
with a dynamic state of stress, which can stimulate mental
development. For example, if I have to shuffle through my skull
collection to find a particular skull that I want to show someone, I
might be inspired to compare the jaw structures of the various
animals, or a skull might trigger new thoughts and feelings regarding
the life of that animal and how she came to me. (I’d like to stress
here that you choose a noncritical
area, lest you create interference in your life that could result in
counterproductive stress.)
Draw yourself up a list
of several simple activities to start with, gradually adding to it.
After you’ve functioned in this pattern-breaking mode for a while,
you’ll find yourself naturally seeking other activities to apply it
to. Then it’s time to eliminate the list and become more
spontaneous, because using the list itself can become habitual. Some
folks do well with no more than Break Habit
reminder notes posted here and there.
For me this has become a
way of life; it has added a dimension of creativity and challenge to
what would normally be the mundane, routine affairs of my day. I
feel more alive, more connected to myself, more consciously involved
with other people and my surroundings. As time goes by I notice more
and more that I am growing in adaptability and awareness. This is
particularly evident when I’m in new environments or when
unexpected situations arise.
Perhaps the most dramatic
and unexpected change has been in my thought processes. I have
become more naturally prone to considering various ways of doing
things before undertaking them, and to listening openly to a range of
opinions before formulating my own. I sometimes find myself feeling
that I do not even need to have an opinion.
This dynamic, inquisitive
state of being is how our ancestors normally functioned and how we
would as well were we living in a natural state. It is the way we are
intended to be. In the natural realm everything exists for a reason;
we are given our magnificent rational capacities not to fill the
space in our oversized skulls but to serve us on our Lifewalk. We
probably use but a few percent of that capacity, which I have
personally come to view as a dishonoring of what I have been given
and a cheating of others in regard to what I could give.
By living in the
fullness of our minds we nourish our heart-of-hearts – that place
within where feelings, intuitions, senses and mind meld to guide and
wise us. In turn we dwell more fully and richly in the Hoop of Life.
New Additions
Within first 15 minutes
of learning something, repeat it so that it will imprint on memory
bank--otherwise it goes to short-term memory, which gets periodically
dumped.
A benefit of breaking
mental patterns is the flash of ideas and options it opens one to.
How do we break old
patterns? The same way we learned them — through repetition. By
thinking and acting a new pattern, even when it doesn’t feel right
or comfortable. Act it out anyway, as though it were the natural
thing for you to do. In time you will naturally start developing
feeling around your new action, which will trick your mind into
accepting it and your body memory into integrating it. It will
gradually get stronger than the old pattern and supplant it. You have
done it without struggling with the old pattern; you have just let it
wither and fade away.
Our mind is designed to
give us a constantly rotating menu of options to choose from. It is a
survival trait--the more options the greater our chance of success.
When we get stuck in mental ruts we either do not hear or do not
consider a portion of our options. Reduced options increase our
chance of failure.
Why do we get stuck in a
mental trough? Prejudices, conditioning, beliefs, emotional
woundedness. Sliding into that trough is a survival mechanism
also--we learned to do it to protect ourselves. The draw back is that
when we grow in awareness and are ready to step beyond and heal
through those strictures, we find ourselves bound tightly to them by
our mental patterns. They set up a neural response network--a
trough--which is very hard to break down so that the mind can work
freely again.
How can we break this
network down? By breaking down the simple, automatic habitual
patterns in our life. In doing that we deprogram the neural network,
so that when the big things come up that push our so-called buttons
or slip us into unhealthy patterned behaviors, we will be free to
make other choices.
For example, if I learn
to consciously choose which hand I will eat with, rather than
automatically resorting to my accustomed hand, I will be better able
to consciously choose for example whether or not to eat when I am
stressed rather than automatically turning to food. All choices big
or small, philosophical or mundane, rely on the same neural patterns.
Following is a process by which you can break down those neural
patterns to free yourself to realize your full potential.
Being as a Question is a
tool to break mental patterns, as well as an outcome from breaking
mental patterns. Here is an example of how the two are related, and
an exercise to help with both.
A Woman was returning
back to her camp from gathering acorns. She came across a hungry Man
and gave him three acorns. She gathered two more to replace the
three. Then she came across a hungry Child and did the same, and so
it went all the way back to her camp. Yet, when she arrived she had
a full basket of acorns. How could this be?
Those of us who are
locked into our mental patterns will typically try to come up with
any number of ways that she could keep the same volume of nuts while
purportedly replacing every three nuts given away with only two.
Someone who begins as a question will not have made the assumption
that she began the trip home with only one basket of nuts. He will
be able to see right away that she may well have been carrying more
than one basketful.
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