Out of the Dark
Toward Living for the Mind
 

Teresa D. Hawkes
 
 

Thomas Emrich  -- Black Ink On Wood

When I was two, I looked into a stream flowing behind my parent’s back yard. Fall leaves were floating on it, swirling by my feet. The water coiled and uncoiled around rocks protruding here and there. For some reason I memorized very precise images and feelings from this moment, as well as the back of my brain commenting, “so, this is time.”

In this one memory is revealed a basic fact about the way my body processes reality – observation, memorization of certain factors associated with certain moments, accompanied by an assessment, a summation of some kind. By the time I was two that process was well-established and was already being used to compute and express thoughts about the basic structure of the world I observed around me.

I don’t know if everyone does this. Maybe they do. If the discoveries of neuroscientists are right, then our body and the way it processes experience is the ground for everything we are capable of perceiving, integrating, and assimilating into the internal maps we use to guide us through life and express ourselves in many different ways. Perhaps every body processes things slightly differently, so “reality” and its many dimensions (which include “time”) seem slightly different to each of us. Perhaps there are certain body “templates” that maximize certain “functions,” “capacities,” or “orientations,” which individuals then contribute to their groups in fairly predictable ways.

We simply do not know for certain yet. 

What each of us do know, and know intimately, is what is written by experience in our bodies. Our bodies receive and process experience on a number of levels – and I say “bodies,” not brains, minds or nerves. 

Neuroscientists are beginning to understand the various systems in our bodies which contribute to the outcome we call “understanding,” or “mind.” Antonio Damasio, one of our most insightful and thorough neuroscientists, says this:
 

1. The human brain and the rest of the body constitute an indissociable organism, integrated by means of mutually interactive biochemical and neural regulatory circuits (including endocrine, immune, and autonomic neural components);
2. The organism interacts with the environment as an ensemble: the interaction is neither of the body alone nor of the brain alone;
3. The physiological operations that we call mind are derived from the structural and functional ensemble rather than from the brain alone: mental phenomena can be fully understood only in the context of an organism’s interacting in an environment. That the environment is, in part, a product of the organism’s activity itself, merely underscores the complexity of interactions we must take into account.¹

The complexity of these interactions is vast to say the least and points to how difficult and important it is for each individual human to learn how to adequately process their own unique experiences, fully realize their own “humanity,” discover their own “purpose” and “path,” and integrate themselves into a community that now consists of billions of other people with their own unique histories and points of view.

This is why it does not surprise me that people cling to ancient explanations for life and what is required of us. It is much easier to deal with being the child of a particular God with a definite template for each of us to adopt and live out than to deal with being an organism evolved to adapt intimately to each moment as it coils and uncoils around the rocks of circumstance extruding here and there from the endlessly flowing stream of events that is the actuality of embodied life here on planet Earth.

It is much easier to imagine our memories, abilities, sense of serendipity or coincidence, dreams, imaginations, and insights come from outside us, from some place or Being beyond our control, than to deal with how experience interacting with our basic tendencies and abilities gives us options for action in the vastness of a Universe we do not now, nor have we ever, really understood – in which death and deleterious consequences of all kinds are absolute facts of daily life – potential outcomes of any decision we make, any action we might take.

Yet here we are, beginning to actually understand things – a little bit at least. 

Neuroscience and Physics are two rich places to look for new information about the basic structure and function of our minds and the Universe as it unfolds around us. We must also look at our own lives lived intimately in the midst of our communities. 

There are those who will tell you that only certain “experts,” can tell you about reality. This is simply not true. They can give you information about their particular area of specialization, they can give you their interpretations. Because we were evolved to survive among our own particular circumstances, however, their information may or may not be useful to us. Only we can determine that. We can no more rely on “experts” to give us templates for our own lives, than we can ancient ideas about a transcendent deity and his/her requirements of us.

To live day-to-day requires us to be fully present in the circumstances we have to deal with so we are able to make careful observations of what is going on, determine if we require additional information, then make the appropriate efforts to get and assimilate that information. Only then can we form clear understandings that will enable us to make choices leading to outcomes that are beneficial more often than not.

And here is the crux of the matter – understanding how our organism works to do these things as a matter of course…because, if what neuroscientists are discovering is accurate, this is precisely what our bodies were evolved to do – observe, ingest, assimilate, create templates for action, change those templates as required.

It is this process we poorly understand, yet rich bodies of information are being assembled in several areas: psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and the practices of body-based meditation.

Part of the way our organism seems to function is that a period of time for processing new information into our old templates must pass. This processing is largely going on in the background – in the deep layers of our body -- as we continue our day-to-day functions. People trained in the analytical methods of the Euro-US cultural complex are often very good at planning, strategizing, and calculating options. What they are not good at is ingesting information and just letting things ride until the deep layers of their bodies can adequately process and integrate the information. Perhaps this is why we so often gather multitudes of facts about this and that problem, but we can’t make much sense of those facts, even as we keep doing and doing, getting nowhere fast. 
 

There is an old adage that comes out of eastern mystical traditions – 

All the answers you will ever need are already inside you.

This sounds like a silly platitude, and it is, seen from a certain angle. Yet, answers of all kinds are inside us, but where do they come from?

They come from our innate, immense capacity to ingest information, form templates for action, and upgrade those templates as new information enters and circumstances change. How else could our species have adapted so quickly to every kind of habitat on this planet? Most species are very limited in this regard.

Our forte, our positive genius, is quick adaptation – quick in biological terms at any rate! Certainly we adapt and change our responses, our behaviors, much more quickly than our bodies or the biosphere as a whole can keep up with – both of these are now struggling to adapt to the things we do everyday.

It is probably for this reason we imagine our “minds” have “transcended” the dull, inert matter of our bodies and of this physical realm; why we believe that our “minds” are “better than” our slow bodies and must somehow be an emanation from a better, faster, cleaner, more functional realm somewhere else, if we could only get out of these bodies and get there.2 

What we desperately need to realize is this -- we don’t need to get out of our bodies. Quite the opposite is true -- we need to get into them more fully, more efficiently. 

To do this we will need to adapt our present way of thinking and our lifestyles.

Here are three simple suggestions to help us work with our biology: 

1. We are not machines (duh). We require rest, not just to rejuvenate either. Rest is part of how our bodies process information into usable “maps” of reality. Without rest, proper integration of information cannot take place. I’m not talking about getting your eight hours at night here. I’m suggesting that we need frequent short periods of downtime to let our bodies assimilate information throughout each day. This means we will have to move slower in general – but since we are moving too fast to adequately process the information we do have anyway -- the felicitous possible outcomes of slowing down should be apparent without too much explication on my part.

2. We need to play. Play is part of the way our bodies “try on” potential templates and additions to templates before encoding them for use in day-to-day situations.

3 We MUST eat for our bodies AND for our brains. Somehow, we must balance the very different caloric and food requirements of these two intimately related systems. I have not read any studies of energy utilization and work done in the central nervous system as processing takes place, but in my work as a meditator where food is taken very seriously and some long-term day-to-day life experiments with such are ongoing, insights on this matter have come to me. I will reveal them here. Take them for what you will. 
    The brain craves energy. It prefers quickly assimilated carbohydrates and caffeine. It likes any kind of exercise activity that dumps lots of oxygen and neurotransmitter down into the circulation, interspersed with periods of deep rest. 
    The body likes slowly assimilated carbohydrates and proteins. It will tolerate certain levels of caffeine and simple sugars. The body likes exercise activity that is slow, sustained, and involves the entire system, interspersed with periods of deep rest.
    The trick is to eat to mitigate the effects of periodic “doses” of simple sugars and caffeine in the body. If you stay within your body’s tolerances where these substances are concerned (in the presence of no genetic anomalies that make either of those substances problematic) generally you will be fine. Exceed them too often, and you begin to break down your system – that is, instigate a cascade of events leading to imbalance, and eventually, illness.
    As for the exercise, it helps to mitigate the effects of simple sugars and caffeine in the body and must be done on a regular basis, incorporating elements for both body and brain. One of the interesting side effects of regular exercise done from this perspective is the production of “insights” of great depth and frequency. Yes, you can stimulate your creativity, imagination, and problem-solving through the use of exercise – body based meditation, in effect.
 

As you can see what I am suggesting is working closely with the way our bodies process information and nutrients in order to maximize their ability to generate “mind.” Our species is all about our “minds” at this point. Even stone age cultures in the Amazon jungle have immense, rich “mind” lives, therefore, it is to our benefit to more fully understand and utilize the processes by which “mind” is created. I cannot suggest strongly enough that you explore the work of modern neuroscientists, particularly that of Antonio & Hanna Damasio on the biological basis of “mind.”³ 

Now that we have attained a level of technology that allows us to alter the very source of life itself on Earth (DNA), we simply cannot afford to be in the dark about our most basic tool for using that technology – our own minds!
 

c. 2004 TDHawkes
 

Notes

1. Damasio, A.R., Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1994. p. xvi-xvii. 

2. We have spent a great deal of time imagining this other “realm,” who lives there, designed it, governs it, what the being or beings supreme there require of us, how their realm is tenuously related to the one in which we find ourselves from day to day. 

We have spent millions upon millions of lives suffering and dying over descriptions of this realm that none of us have ever actually seen. This other place has been a major obsession of the majority of humanity for at least the last ten thousand years – which is all we can adequately document. As an aside, we have occasionally tried to deal with the physical realm’s more mundane concerns, like feeding, clothing, educating, employing, and providing healthcare and a meaningful life to some of us.
 

If the neuroscientists are right, that other realm does not exist. What exists is this realm and the majestic magic of our bodies creating everything we experience as “mind,” which is a natural process of our existence.

If the neuroscientists are right, all our notions, all our art, poetry, ethics, science, architecture, loves, hates, emerge from these bodies.

Everything is here, inside us, coming out as need requires, as eloquent response to moments many of us neither notice nor treasure but relegate to the trash heap of mundanity, seeking always for something better, more magical, more mysterious, more perfect, more fulfilling, more beautiful somewhere we will never stand, wasting our lives and the lives of those around us.

If the neuroscientists are right, to waste one moment here is to lose it forever.
 

There is no way back to the past, to the things we have squandered or treasured, lived fully or ignored, even though certain physicists posit bubble universes, static universes in which nothing is truly lost, or time we can travel through like we go from New York to Paris.

All of those things are, for the moment, off in that realm where we will never stand, that realm where no one has ever stood except in imagination.

Which makes me wonder, what is the process producing imagination? How does imagination support our survival as individuals and as a race? Why did it evolve in us in the way that it has?

I find these questions fascinating because we can actually investigate them. We cannot investigate questions like what the Bardo consists of, whether there are spirit guides giving us answers, or if our small, individual self is an emanation from a Higher Being somewhere forever out of reach except through various practices which amount to sympathetic magic and produce totally inconclusive results at best.

Why I find some questions more interesting or worthy than others is a topic for another time. I’m content to leave things here with the immortal words of John Lennon, “I’m not the only one.”

3. Other books by Antonio Damasio: 

The Feeling of What Happens. Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. 
Looking for Spinoza. Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. 

4.  Also, look deeply into the work of Daniel Gilbert 

particularly

Gilbert, D. T., Brown, R. P., Pinel, E. C., & Wilson, T. D. (2000). The illusion of external agency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 690-700.