Home Blog Page 312

The Indicators of a Balanced Mind

Garima Roy
-
0
The Indicators of a Balanced Mind
Mental-Health-Icon-2
Mind and Psychology

“What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it empties today of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.” ~ Raymond Cramer

According to the definition of mental health, it is the psychological state of someone who is functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioural adjustment. The term “mental hygiene” was invented in the mid 19th century, and it implied maintaining peace of mind even in the midst of turmoil or incidents that would constrain or devastate its energy, quality or growth.

Only few people claim to have maintained perfect mental health throughout their life. The concept of maintaining a balanced mind seems impossible to most of us, but desired by everybody. Clustered thoughts and the inflow and outflow of matter and material in the mind lead to a battlefield in our system. Sometimes, we all know our way to peace but the mind is unable to let go of the perplexed matter.

In such a case, knowledge of the constituents of mental well-being can bring a lot of clarity to one’s life. One can introspect and flow in the right river of thoughts instead of being stuck in a tangled web.

The school of psychology defines the constituents of mind, but few noted psychologist have gone beyond to expand this model, M Brewster Smith (1950) being one of them. According to Smith the three universal, positive indicators of optimal mental well-being are: Adaptive adjustment, Integration, and Cognitive adequacy. All three are interconnected and one needs to understand that relation in order to be in a perfect state of mind.

Beginning with the Adaptive Adjustment, which means that no individual can feel well and happy unless his needs, biological and psychological, come to terms with satisfaction. Satisfaction of needs results in the dynamic equilibrium, which is desired by the mind. Each mind is different and hence, everyone’s approach to the state of homeostasis (mental equilibrium) is different.

Next is integration or self-realisation. It is a state where the individual avoids being influenced by the conflicting situations or circumstances. The individual is free to channelize energy along any path of adaptive adjustment.

Fragments of the mind.
Fragments of the mind

Integration also refers to the harmonisation of needs, means, and goals. The goals of the organism are well matched with the resources of his culture and environment.

When solving a biological and psychological problem, the integrated individual is able to retain a sense of harmony or self-consistency. This is also known as individuation.

The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, and Friedrich Nietzsche etc. According to Jungian philosophy, individuation leads to holistic healing of a being, both mentally and physically.

And the last indicator of the series is cognitive adequacy.

 In any community the individual’s well being demands that his cognition and perception of reality – his capacity to select and interpret stimuli- be adequate to ensure both adaptive adjustment and integration. (Abt and Bellak, 1950:60)

The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses is known as cognition. Ability to understand the perception, sensation, idea and intuition falls under cognitive adequacy. It becomes a prerequisite for a healthy state of mind as no goal can be achieved without the knowledge and condition of the self. An example of cognitive inadequacy is debilitated sense of self-realisation or false consciousness.

How can one fix the problem without knowing that there is a problem?

Mind is an instrument of the soul. It is like clay. It will mould itself according to your guidelines but not vice-versa. To eradicate chaos and achieve a balanced state of mind, knowing the root cause of the chaos is a major achievement.

Image source

Signature Psychology

The Path of the Sacred Clown: Where Trickster and Shaman Converge

Gary Z McGee
-
77
The Path of the Sacred Clown: Where Trickster and Shaman Converge

“If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.” ~ William Blake

Most of us are familiar with the prototypical clowns: red-nosed clowns, court jesters, and Tarot fools. But sacred clowns take clowning to a whole other level. The Ne’wekwe “mud-eaters” were the Zuni equivalent of a sacred clown. The Cherokee had sacred clowns known as Boogers who performed “Booger dances” around a community fire.

lakota-heyoka-sacred-clown
Stanley Good Voice Elk, Lakota Heyoka

In Tibetan Buddhism it’s referred to as Crazy Wisdom, which the Guru adopts in order to shock their students out of fixed cultural and psychological patterns. But perhaps the most popular type of sacred clown is the Lakota equivalent of Heyoka, a contrary thunder shaman who taught through backwards humor.

buddha-nose-sacred-clown
Usurping the Sacred with the Power of Humor

Almost all types of sacred clowns combine trickster spirit with shamanic wisdom to create a kind of sacred tomfoolery that keeps the zeitgeist in check. Their methods are unconventional and typically antithetical to the status quo, but extremely effective. They indirectly re-enforce societal customs by directly enforcing their own powerful sense of humor into the social dynamic. They show by bad example how not to behave.

The main function of a sacred clown is to deflate the ego of power by reminding those in power of their own fallibility, while also reminding those who are not in power that power has the potential to corrupt if not balanced with other forces, namely with humor. But sacred clowns don’t out-rightly derive things. They’re not comedians, per se, though they can be. They are more like tricksters, poking holes in things that people take too seriously.

Through acts of satire and showy displays of blasphemy, sacred clowns create a cultural dissonance born from their Crazy Wisdom, from which anxiety is free to collapse on itself into laughter. Sacred seriousness becomes sacred anxiety which then becomes sacred laughter. But without the courageous satire of the sacred clown, there would only ever be the overly-serious, prescribed state of cultural conditioning.

Lest we write our lives off to such stagnated states, we must become something that has the power to perpetually overcome itself. The sacred clown has this power. Christ was a sacred clown, mocking the orthodoxy. Buddha was a sacred clown, mocking ego attachment. Even Gandhi was a sacred clown, mocking money and power.

Like Thomas Merton wrote, “In a world of tension and breakdown, it is necessary for there to be those who seek to integrate their inner lives not by avoiding anguish and running away from problems, but by facing them in their naked reality and in their ordinariness.” Sacred clowns are the epitome of such integration.

heyoka-lakota
Modern-day Sacred Clown

Heyokas, for example, remind their people that Wakan tanka, the great mystery, is beyond good and evil; that its primordial nature doesn’t correspond to human platitudes of right and wrong. Heyokas act as mirrors, reflecting the mysterious dualities of the cosmos back onto their people. They walk the Red Road, following in the bloody footprints left behind by their Heyoka fore-brothers.

They go forward, to that place where emptiness is full, and fullness empty. “As a representative of Thunderbird and Trickster,” writes Steve Mizrach, “the heyoka reminds his people that the primordial energy of nature is beyond good and evil. It doesn’t correspond to human categories of right and wrong.

It doesn’t always follow our preconceptions of what is expected and proper. It doesn’t really care about our human woes and concerns. Like electricity, it can be deadly dangerous, or harnessed for great uses. If we’re too narrow or parochial in trying to understand it, it will zap us in the middle of the night.”

Sacred clowns are adept at uniting joy with pain, acting on the higher and more inscrutable imperatives of the Great Mystery. They tend to govern transition, introduce paradox, blur boundaries, and mix the sacred with the profane. They are called upon to reestablish the bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds. They dare to ask the questions that nobody wants answers to.

They are the uncontrollable avatars of the Trickster archetype, constant reminders of the contingency and arbitrariness of the social order, poking holes in anything taken too seriously, especially anything assuming the guise of power. They are a conduit to forces that defy comprehension, and by their absurd, backwards behavior, they are merely showing the ironic, mysterious dualities that exist within the universe itself.

HEYOKA
Thunder Shaman

Sacred clowns understand that humans fail, and failing means that sometimes we need to change. They remind us that the goal is not to stick to the same old path, but to embrace the vicissitudes of life and to discover new paths and the courage it takes to adapt and overcome.

Taking the universe into deep consideration, letting it be, and then letting it go, is far superior to clinging to a “belief” and becoming stuck in a particular view. Sacred clowns realize that the highest wisdom lies in this type of counter-intuitive detachment, in accepting that nothing remains the same, and then being proactive about what it means to change.

Most importantly, they teach us that there is no such thing as an enlightened master. We’re all spiritually dumb. The closest we can ever get to being “enlightened” is simply to understand that we are naïve to it, and then to laugh about it together as a community.

Sacred clowns have the ability to plant this seed of sacred humor. They are constantly in the throes of metanoia, disturbing the undisturbed, comforting the uncomfortable and freeing the unfree. They remind us, as Rumi did, that “the ego is merely a veil between humans and God.”

Image Source:

Stanley Good Voice Elk, a Heyoka
Usurping the Sacred
Modern-day Sacred Clown
Thunder Shaman

Ayn Rand’s Stream of Philosophy

Garima Roy
-
3
Ayn Rand’s Stream of Philosophy
Ayn Ran
Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand, a 20th century controversial novelist/philosopher, had some thought-provoking ideas to add to the world of philosophy and metaphysics. Her work attracted both appreciation and criticism of the same intensity. However, due to the complex nature of the writing, her philosophy has been heavily misunderstood.

The ideas disseminated through her writings were misinterpreted to practice power in society and still continues to be. A lot of self-centered capitalist use it as a basis for their urge to exert power through money. Rand’s writings have been wrongly quoted in boardrooms of multinational companies to motivate employees to achieve their deadlines.

In particular, the infamous Objectivism theory, that is used as a basis for justification by several greedy and selfish. On the other hand Rand’s, Objectivism Theory talks about a man as a heroic being who is capable of achieving anything to be happy. Accordingly, a man should seek happiness and do what he finds fulfilling and self-satisfying. Objectivism also embraces the basic fact that existence exists. Reality is, and in the quest to live we must discover reality’s nature and learn to act successfully in it.

“I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.” ~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Misreading philosophy has always created dangerous history. Rand inspired people to bring out the best in themselves and live an engaging and meaningful life. Her scheme of philosophy believed in defining your own meaning that was known as the law of identity. Human beings acquire identity that is confined within the social norms of identification.
ayn-rand-quote
According to Rand, the idea of a conventional being should be challenged and one should explore and evolve for the joy of the self. Instead of blindly following definitions, it will be interesting to live in a world where every being is living its true theory of happiness. The problem aroused when the statements of objectivism were faultily implemented. Some people were caught saying that money makes them happy, hence, the manipulated money business. The fact of the matter though is –

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.” (Atlas Shrugged, Part Two, Chapter II, “The Aristocracy of Pull,” p. 383)

Many vindicated the evil flow of thoughts by using the theory of objectivism without realising that there is a clear discrepancy between self-indulgence and greed. Self-interest is a personal joy whereas greed is a never-ending competition to acquire power.

The truth is everybody is born different and wants to live differently. But in the quest to feel familiar they chose to ignore their yearnings, and chose to follow the common path, no matter how unhappy it makes them feel. One tends to seek that false sense of approval instilled by the society in one’s mind.

In that seeking, many forms of vice is acceptable. Rand reinforces the thought to go beyond the obvious through her writing. Someone has to break the chain to bring in the inevitable.

Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.” – Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness

Like Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living” which means that one should look within to find happiness and discover the true meaning of life. One should embrace life and explore the horizons of the inner self.

Ayn Rand talk on the Purpose of Life

Attention: A Key Feature of Consciousness

Juan Pablo Hern
-
5
Attention: A Key Feature of Consciousness

From the moment we wake up we come across millions of stimuli but only some of them are grasped by our focused attention. The stimuli that we did not direct our attention to becomes an undifferentiated bundle that falls into oblivion.

Scientists continue to debate and experiment in order to pinpoint its exact inner workings. Nevertheless, attention is involved in the selective directedness of our mental lives, which is crucial for all sort of things – from practical to spiritual, for if there was no such directedness towards the world, we would be inert.

AHuman_Factors_vision-attention_memoryccording to psychologist and philosopher William James, attention “is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts…It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.”

Day to day, we switch our attention from one thing to another: from our thoughts to the car that is passing by, from a memory to the possible future, from listening to the radio and talking on the phone. Sometimes, we even put our attention at places that we don’t want to! The thing is, attention is the gate where we decide what things enter our mind, therefore I think it is worthwhile to take time, and think where we want to direct our mental activities.

The things that are relevant to us will catch our attention, which is for certain. But there is a risk involved in only focusing on things that are relevant, because we can shut ourselves from everything else. We do not see the world as it is, rather we see the world that we are looking for!

Energy Flows Where Attention GoesThe amount of information that we can process is also limited; only but a fraction reaches our consciousness and it is generally the things that we pay attention to.

One of the most popular takes on attention describes it as some sort of bottleneck. According to this view, attention is the necessary mechanism that allows us to attend to the large amount of sensual input delivered to our mental apparatus.

If we did not have this filter, the sheer volume of information would otherwise “overheat” our mind. Just like a computer, which has a certain amount of processing capabilities, our minds can only manage a certain amount of thoughts or details. There are other theories on attention, for example, the “Feature integration theory.”

According to this theory, attention gives rise to perception, and “binds” parallel channels of stimuli. For example, when we see and grab a cup, there are two different features of the cup that are being delivered to our visual and the tactile senses correspondingly. Attention is what allows us to take the tactile and visual information and merge it into one object; a “cup”.

Types-of-Attention We will not occupy ourselves with the etiology (i.e. the study of its origin) rather, we shall take a look into some of the important aspects of Attention.

Different kinds of attention

There are many types of attention, for example, attention can be goal-oriented or stimulus driven. In one, we are attending to a specific thing; in the other we are receptive. The things that “catch” our attention can come from within, or from outside.

Attention and perception are deeply related

Experiments have shown that perception does not necessarily precede attention, rather they are interwoven. We perceive what we direct our attention to, and vice versa. What we think is a crystalline world, reality is but a product of where we direct our attention. In Daniel Simons words, “We see the world not as it is, but rather as it isn’t.”

We are not as attentive as we think we are

Because attention allows us to access only but a tiny fraction of what is going on, we miss out much more than we “capture”. Check out the “monkey business illusion” in the below video –

Even though “weird” things happen around us, sometimes, because we are looking for something else, we fail to recognize them. This is because our mental directedness is very specific. In this sense, perhaps, the things that we miss out aren’t weird, just unsearched for. Our mind is so focused on requirements of mostly social nature, that we cannot really take time to look around and allow the things to speak for themselves.

Think about it, in our daily life, where do we put our attention? Sometimes we are so immersed in our thoughts that we fail to get in touch with what is out there. In this following video, we can see how much we can miss out and fail to recognize the more unusual events.

Attention and free will are intimately linked

It has been long noted by many, that the relationship of volition and attention is an intimate one. We have the power to place our attention in certain specific aspects of experience. For example, take the word: tree. We can put attention to the chirping birds on the tree, but also, to what the word refers.

In the same way, perhaps, we cannot influence the configuration of our surroundings, but we can definitely put attention on whatever aspects we want. Attention is flexible and trainable. Let us put it where it´s worth it.

References and further reading

Attention and intention working miracles with awareness
Attention
Perception and Attention
Attention and Intention, Decoded!
Voluntary and involuntary attention
The Role of Attention Attention
Attentional shift
Energy flows

Zen and the Art of Unreasonable Happiness

Gary Z McGee
-
6
Zen and the Art of Unreasonable Happiness

“There is no path to Happiness. Happiness is the path.” ~ Dan Millman

Over the years we’ve been bombarded by a plethora of get-happy-quick schemes. Everybody seems to have some sort of long-winded “secret” to happiness.

But when it comes down to it, there is no trick to happiness. When the chips are down, and our backs are against the wall, happiness is a choice. It’s up to us. We all have the capacity to cultivate our own happiness.

Being happy isn’t an if/when proposition –“I will be happy if…” or “I will be happy when”– It’s a will/won’t admonition. Being happy is about collapsing into something primordial inside ourselves.

It’s about letting go of expectations, genuinely letting go, and just being present with that innate, awe-inspired, drunken smile within. That place of inner-Zen, where your heart leaps over itself like a little red trickster god.

happiness
Happy happy, joy joy!

The most important truth is this: you do not need a reason to be happy. That’s the only “formula” you will ever need. Your ego will wrestle with the idea of this, but your soul knows it to be true. But, as with most things, happiness takes practice.

It takes discipline. It takes a riot of the heart. It takes staring into the abyss and laughing, wholeheartedly at whatever comes out of it: pain, fear, loss, grief, jealousy, anger.

The best way to practice the necessary discipline of happiness is through mindfulness meditation. This is the Zen-aspect of happiness: being present to that peaceful center within, despite the tragicomedy that our lives can be.

With enough practice and disciplined mediation, we can learn how to empower ourselves by controlling our “negative” emotions through “positive” action. We can become Masters of Seizing the Moment through the use of emotional alchemy.

We learn how to extract the maximum emotional satisfaction from each moment, despite the “quality” of the moment, while minimizing the amount of energy squandered on negative emotions.

Buddhist monk, photographer and author Matthieu Ricard talks on the habits of happiness –

It’s what Dan Millman referred to as unreasonable happiness; where, even in the face of some of life’s greatest tragedies, we can find sparks of happiness that can turn into raging fires if allowed to fruition.

The action is the thing. Most people act the way they feel. But this doesn’t have to be the case. We have a choice. With enough discipline and practice we can actually feel the way we act. For example: you can “feel” scared but “act” courageous. Similarly, you can “feel” road rage but “act” calmly.

With enough practice you can eventually feel the way you act. Through emotional alchemy, happiness truly is a choice. Philosophically speaking, the nihilism that arises from an inherently meaningless universe must be countered by the courage to bring meaning to the meaninglessness.

Charlie Chaplain said it best, “Smile though your heart is aching.” Indeed, the only way to be truly free is to choose happiness over meaninglessness. Our only freedom is found in loving the task of being a fallible human going through the motions of knowing we’re going to die.

The typical human knows that he knows; the learned human knows that he doesn’t know; the wise human knows that it doesn’t matter, and chooses happiness instead. With emotional alchemy we don’t learn courage, love, and happiness; we simply act courageous, loving, and happy; despite our feeling fearful, hateful, or sad.

The pretense is mere makeup. The action is the thing. The more unconditional we are with ourselves, the more we’re able to recondition the original condition.

Like Jonathan Haidt, author of the Happiness Hypothesis, wrote, “Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brains work so well that our reasoning can work at all.” This is the power of emotional alchemy. This is the power of unreasonable happiness.

Happiness is Contagious
Happiness is Contagious

The best part about being happy, especially if it’s unreasonable, is that it’s contagious. If you’ve ever stood in a Laugh Circle, you know what I mean. Try it: stand in a circle with your best friends. Then have everybody start fake laughing. You’ll be surprised how fast that “fake” laughter becomes “real.”

That’s because joy is contagious. Laughter is infectious. Happiness is a survival mechanism, when it really comes down to it. Especially for the social creature that is the human animal.

Let yourself be surprised by joy. Let yourself laugh for no reason. If not for yourself, do it for others. Happiness needs no reason, and neither do you. Just do it, and then pass it on to others. Allow yourself to be the first domino with a smile on its face instead of dots. Fall back. Let yourself go, and collapse into your joy.

The other dominoes will thank you for it in the long run. Nothing could be easier. Then again, depending upon your perspective, nothing could be more difficult.

But like his Holiness the Dalai Lama once said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

The first person you need to be compassionate with is yourself. Whether reasonable or unreasonable, choose to be happy.

Image Source

Happy happy, joy joy!
Happiness is Contagious
A taste of Happiness

1...311312313...348Page 312 of 348