The Secret of Life

Summer Schedule - And A Video About Trust

We've been having some nice warm summery weather here in the UK and I've been finding that the trowel and the watering can have been shouting rather louder than blogging. Last year, while we were moving house, I put The Secret Of Life on the backburner for a few months to give me a chance of keeping my life in some sort of sane balance, and all of a sudden, it seems like a good idea to do the same again this year. All this means is that I'll be posting once or twice a month instead of once or twice a week over the summer, which will allow me to revitalize and bounce back all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when the leaves start to fall from the trees again.

In the meantime, the best way to keep track of my occasional posts might be to subscribe to my feed or register for email updates (if you haven't already done so). You'll find all the necessary clickable bits in the sidebar. This might be a good idea, because I've got some interesting posts planned in the next few months, including one with the intriguing title "Twelve Words That Can Heal The World'. I'm hoping you'll like that one...

A couple more things this time: you may remember my earlier posts about neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's remarkable experience during her stroke. If so you may be interested to download Taylor's recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, the first of a new series of spirituality interviews which Oprah is running as a follow-up to her Eckhart Tolle - New Earth series.

And finally, here's a video which reminds us of a very important factor in using the law of attraction: trust. I described this element as 'letting go' or 'non-attachment' in my 'Heart Of The Secret' series of posts, but 'trust' is another excellent way to look at it.

It's easy for those of us who are motivated to produce art in some form or other to become pessimistic about our chances of finding an audience. After all, there are so many demands on people's time these days. But the guy in this video turns this idea on its head, quietly trusting that his audience will come... and it seems to work for him!

I found this inspiring - do take a look...

In case you didn't catch the name, the singer in the video is called Terry Prince. Incidentally, I came across this video on a blog called Bold Thoughts by David Hooper. (David has written a book on the law of attraction, the audio version of which is available on free download.)

Rebuilding A Rainforest

After the previous post about the world food crisis, I thought it would be nice to balance it with a bit of good news. So I was delighted to find this item in The Observer about the successful restoration of 5000 acres of rainforest:

"Six years ago the area around Samboja in Borneo was like much of the world's tropical rainforest: denuded. The trees had been cut for timber, the land burnt, and in place of what should be some of the richest biodiversity on the planet were thousands of acres of grass.

"But from this ruined landscape a fresh forest has been grown, teeming with insects, birds and animals, and cooled by the return of moist clouds and rain. It is a feat that has been hailed by scientists and offers hope for disappearing and ruined rainforests around the world."

The project is the brainchild of Indonesian forestry expert Dr Willie Smits, the principal aim being to establish a new habitat for endangered orangutans. But the implications of what has been created are surely broader than this. Smits says: "If you walk there now, 116 bird species have found a place to live, there are more than 30 types of mammal; insects are there. The whole system is coming to life. I knew what I was trying to do, but the force of nature has totally surprised me."

What this suggests to me is that nature is ready and waiting to repair the damage we have done to our planet - if only we give her a chance.

Smits says: "The principles are that you must have scientifically sound approaches, work with local trees, and you have to have the respect of local people - that's the key."

Indeed, the project has been planned with the local population very much in mind. Local farmers were able to plant agricultural products between the trees in the early stages of reforestation, and for the long term, a circle of sugar-palm plantations has been planted around the forest. This provides income for over 650 families, and also acts as a barrier against forest fires.

Can you imagine what might be achieved if there was the will to create similar schemes on a global scale? This project illustrates what we humans are able to achieve if we are willing to work with passion: to take on board the complexities of the task in hand, and to work in harmony with people and with nature.

If we can approach our global fuels policy in the same sort of spirit, we can surely avoid the kind of suffering and injustice I described in the previous post. What we need is for our leaders to pay attention to what they are doing, to be present, instead of having most of their minds on how what they're doing is going to play at the next election. They need to engage with the complexities of the situation, instead of just setting headline-grabbing targets.

If we all sit down together and put our energy where it is really needed, working for the benefit of everyone concerned instead of just our own self-interest, there is no limit to what we can achieve. We can redress the damage we've done to our planet. We can create a better world. All we need is the will that it should be done.

You can read more about the reforestation project - and sponsor an area of rainforest - at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. Dr Smits and his colleagues have written a book about their work: Thinkers Of The Jungle - The Orangutan Report

We Have The Biology

I just want to share a few thoughts about the video by Jill Bolte Taylor which I mentioned a few posts ago. If you haven't seen it, do go and take a look. It's quite amazing.

Jill experienced a stroke which intermittently incapacitated the left hand side of her brain, so that her right hemisphere became dominant. She reports becoming disconnected from her mental chatter, experiencing a sense of peace and euphoria, and feeling at one with All That Is.

She realized that she had found Nirvana and yet she was still alive. If this is true, she reasoned, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana. She pictured "a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate people who knew that they could come to this space at any time".

This got me thinking about human potential.

Many people believe that our ultimate goal is to merge with universal consciousness, with All That Is, with God, or whatever you want to call it. Then our suffering will come to an end and we will dissolve in a cloud of bliss.

This is quite a nice idea and is certainly a lot better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but I can't help having the sneaking feeling that, when push comes to shove, it isn't enough. That, ultimately, bliss is not enough.

The way I look at it, bliss is where we started from. We embarked on our current adventure in the so-called material world in a quest for something more than that, for experience, for darkness as well as light - in order to allow us to fully know the light.

The only trouble is: we got too heavily into this. It's like we were playing a game of, say, Tomb Raider, but forgot that we were playing a game. So we started thinking that the Tomb Raider world was real. Which is where we are at the moment. Only now we're starting to wake up and remember it's only a game. Not to stop playing the game - because the game has great potential - but to wake up and get the game into perspective. To see the world as we know it now, with its seemingly solid objects, but also to see that all this is really a fantasy in a field of bliss. To walk around and interact with the world and the people in it, but understand at the same time that we are all part of a quantum field of energy, that all of us are really One - and start behaving accordingly.

This is what I see as our ultimate goal (at least for the time being!): not the release of oblivion, but something more like what Jesus called 'Heaven on Earth'. To be in the world yet not of it, to live in our 'material' universe with all its potential for rich and diverse experience, yet at the same time to know who we truly are: to live lightly and fearlessly, free of the heavy burden of separation.

Jill Bolte Taylor's video suggests that we have the potential to do this right now, in these bodies of ours, with these heads of ours. We have a left hemisphere to see our familar world of 'solid' objects, and a right one to see the field which underlies it . All we need to do is get those hemispheres into balance.

Heaven on Earth is only a tweak of consciousness away. We already have the biology we need.

A Stroke Of Insight

The Ultimate Truth series will continue shortly, but I couldn't wait to share with you a wonderful new video called A Stroke Of Insight, featuring neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. It's more about our left and right brains and the way they affect our perception. I think you will find that it more than repays the eighteen minutes of viewing.

Here's the blurb from the web site: "Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: one morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another." You can see the video here. Let me know what you think!

By the way, Sue Ann Edwards has had/is having a similar experience and regularly shares her invaluable insights at her Always Embraces All Ways blog.

Finally, a couple of footnotes about The Secret Of Life:

The links to spirituality sites concerning Deeksha, Eckhart Tolle etc now have a page all to themselves which you can access here or via the sidebar. I also still have pages of links to some of my favorite blogs (Spirituality & Self Development Blogs here and Other Blogs here).

Plus: I finally succumbed to avarice and installed some Google ads. With any luck, I should get the first payment before I reach retirement age... I was always a bit curious about what sort of ads I would get on the site. The ads for The Secret and Eckhart Tolle I can understand but I'm not so sure about the ones for cute animal pictures. It must be all those giraffes and elephants that keep showing up in my posts...

How Much Do We Really Know?

There were some interesting comments on the previous post, The 'Left Brain - Right Brain' Dancer. Some saw her turning clockwise, some anticlockwise, and others a bit of both. If you haven't looked at this picture, you might want to take a look now.  If you see the dancer turning anticlockwise, perhaps you would like to try a little experiment for me? Place your attention on your 'heart center', the center of your chest, and hold it there for a while as you watch the dancer. Does she now turn clockwise, I wonder?

One of the people who commented on the post was Liara Covert of Dream Builders. I am grateful to Liara for the interesting - and sometimes challenging - comments she leaves here. This time she remarked: "...research studies always offer food for thought. We can choose to believe them or not. We can choose to take information with a grain of salt."

Having a scientific education, I'd once have disagreed strongly with this statement. These days, however, I think I'm closer to Liara's point of view than to my own stance back then. I wouldn't  go quite so far as she does. If I jumped out of a plane, for instance,  I think I'd want to take a parachute with me, whatever I might decide to believe about gravity. But this is an extreme example. Is our knowledge of things always so well defined?

In our society, we like to think of ourselves as being governed by logic, but the truth is that all too often we have insufficient evidence to come to a purely rational decision about things. Our lives these days tend to be complex, and a great many factors are often involved. We rarely have all the relevant information, and even what we think we know can often be based on guesswork and supposition. People who think of themselves as essentially rational will grit their teeth and try to apply logic nevertheless, in spite of the lack of sufficient evidence, but isn't this really like building a house on inadequate foundations? Is it really any more sensible than reading tea leaves or looking for signs in the sky?

It may seem like anathema to the modern mind to take notice of such signs and omens, but many of us do such things instinctively even though we may believe we are creatures of logic. Prime examples are buying a house or choosing a partner. Most of us wouldn't dream of doing either of these without giving a great deal of weight to how we felt about it.

If, on the other hand, we were buying, say, a refrigerator, we would be much more likely to rely on logic, ticking off a checklist of features perhaps. How we felt about it would seem much less significant. It is only when we step up to larger, more important purchases, such as a car, that our gut feelings come to seem important. Even more so for a house - and even more than that for choosing a partner. In other words, the more important the decision, the less we tend to go on logic alone and the more we go on our feelings, our instinct, our intuition. How does this fit in with our rational, scientific world view exactly?

Of course, it might be argued that there are whole areas of our lives where logic can be applied with complete confidence. Think of all the scientific evidence we have built up about this, that and the other. This allows us to build at least parts of our lives upon certainty.

Or does it?

Liara says we can choose to believe such information or not. But how can she say such a thing?

Perhaps she is simply keeping up with the news...

I wonder if you saw a news report last week about a research study carried out at the University of Hull here in the UK which reviewed the data from 47 clinical trials into the use of SSRI (and similar) antidepressants. The study concluded that in most cases, the drugs are no more effective than a placebo. This is contrary to the evidence from previous studies. So why the discrepancy? Simply because the Hull team studied unpublished as well as published data. It seems that the drug companies have chosen to publish only those studies which suggest that their drugs are effective. If the studies have shown the opposite, they haven't been published. The Hull team had to use freedom of information legislation to get hold of the missing data.

(It occurs to me that the team in Hull must have really gone out in a limb in order to do this - and I find myself wondering if the study has been reported outside the UK. Has anyone seen it in the US or other non-UK media, I wonder?)

So in this case at least, the research studies didn't reflect the outcome of scrupulous research according to rigorously applied scientific methods at all, but simply the vested interests of the companies which had financed them. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that a similar approach may have been taken in the study of other drugs.

Suddenly, the body of research evidence in the field of therapeutic drugs no longer seems such a strong foundation for rational analysis. Other areas of research may be less controversial perhaps, but we are fooling ourselves if we ignore the potential influence of vested interests in all such studies. What results will encourage further finance? What results will assist the researcher's career? When a scientific study has been carried out, it doesn't have to be published if the researchers don't like the results. And if they only like part of the results, they don't have to publish the rest. On top of which, of course, there's a lot of scope for different interpretations - the way the results are presented can have a significant effect.

It would be ridiculous, of course, to dismiss the value of scientific research entirely because of such factors - or to ignore the immense benefits which science has brought us over the years - but we the general public are fooling ourselves if we think that our science is based upon absolute certainties. It does not equate to our world. It is, at best, an incomplete and often inaccurate model.

When set against this, it is perhaps not so ridiculous to place emphasis on what our own experience and intuition tell us. What do we feel inside? Do we detect a voice inside us which sometimes seems to speak with absolute confidence? Is it possible that we are connected to some source of intelligence which transcends the shortcomings of the scientific model? That if we trust ourselves, we will find inside a knowing?

The next time I jump out of a plane, I'm still going to take my parachute. After all, it feels right to have something to hold on to. But bear in mind that I didn't discover gravity in a book. I did a lot of research as a child: falling over and painfully scraping my knees.

The 'Left Brain - Right Brain' Dancer

One of my Deeksha givers, Ed Harpin, forwarded me some information on last week's lunar eclipse:

"During these times, people can tend to be more emotionally expressive. Often untruths can come to the surface and whatever part of our lives is not in sync with our life's purpose can show the most change. Old realities crumble away, and there is a feeling of freedom as we let go of the past and take a step into the new, the fresh, and the magical unknown."

This turned out to be very true in my case! Last week, over two days, I was due to attend meetings on three separate projects, none of which I wanted to be involved with. They were things I had taken on because I thought I 'should'. But there are times when something just has to give, and this was one of them. I got so stressed out with everything, I almost ground to a halt altogether. I really didn't want to be doing these things and I couldn't pretend otherwise any longer. Changes had to be made. So I've managed to get rid of two of the projects and I'm working on dumping the third. These were worthy enough endeavors but they didn't really need me - and I certainly didn't need them.

In one of my responses to the comments on my previous post, I wrote: "it's like my underlying 'program' still isn't reading my blog" - and last week brought it home to me how true this has been. Way back in January of last year, I wrote here: "in our present state, it is as though we are all carrying an enormous statue of ourselves on our shoulders, a statue which we believe is of enormous interest to everyone else around us, all of whom are constantly studying the statue and seeking to identify some deficiency in it". I went on to point out that this isn't actually true, but that it is a deeply ingrained misapprehension which most of us have: we are so preoccupied with the face we present to the world.

And yet here I am, all this time later, still seeking validation for what I am doing: still judging each day in terms of its achievements instead of simply Being. As my Mentor-in-Chief, Sue Ann, has been telling me on her blog: "we're all busy seeking a sense of validation from the world outside of us, instead of recognizing the substance of what's within us". Well, last week showed me that the time has come for me to make that change. I've written about my need to reduce my level of stress. I had intended that this would start in April, when I visit the clinic in London (as I explained in the previous post). But it's going to have to start now.

I don't think it's a coincidence that my computer problem has slowed down my blogging, because The Secret Of Life is going to have to change too. Or - to put it more accurately - my attitude to this blog is going to have to change. I'm going to spend less time worrying about sticking to a 'regular' schedule and less time checking the Stats. I'm going to write when I feel the need to write and trust that whoever needs to read what I've written will duly find it. If you would like to be one of those readers, that'll be great - it may help to put me on one of your favorites lists so you can check when I've posted. And who knows? You may not even notice much difference here - it'll be me that's changed.

So under the circumstances, I make no apologies for the fact that I still haven't finished those posts on 'the ultimate truth' which I mentioned last time. But ultimate truths always take a bit longer than ordinary truths, after all. And in the meantime, here's an interesting video. Look at it for a while and see what you see:

I don't know how this thing works. It originally came in an email - forwarded,  synchronistically enough, by another of our growing band of local Deeksha givers, Heidi Fawkes. It came as a GIF file and it looked fine in image viewing software but when I tried to post it, the motion mysteriously disappeared. So I managed to find this You Tube version instead. Here's the text that came with the original email:

If you see this lady turning clockwise, you are using your right brain. If you see it the other way, you are using your left brain. Some people do see both ways, but most people see it only one way.

If you try to see it the other way and you do see, your IQ is above 160, which is almost a genius. Then see if you can make her go one way and then the other by shifting the brain's current.

Both directions can be seen! This was proved at Yale University over a 5 year study on the human brain and its functions. Only 14% of the US population can see her move both ways.

Just to provide a bit of context: experiments have shown that the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for logical, analytical thought, while the right hemisphere is associated with a more intuitive, holistic approach. This would suggest that meditation, for instance, would be a right brain function.

When I first got the email, I tried this out, and the results seemed to bear out the theory. Most of the time, I saw the dancer rotating anticlockwise, but as I managed to relax and still my mind, she changed direction. Today, the results are less well defined. Most of the time, she's clockwise, but if I look away and look back again, she sometimes changes direction for no apparent reason. Maybe I'm more relaxed today.

Or perhaps my IQ is falling...

Let me know what you see - and if you can make the figure change direction!

P.S. I've just found another, 'cleaner' version here.

Philip Pullman - A Process Of Evolution

Reading an interview with author Philip Pullman in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, I was reminded of a post I wrote a few months ago, in which I argued that a wholesale change in human consciousness will be needed if we are to survive the approaching environmental crisis. Here's what I wrote at that time:

"Only when we come to think of ourselves as first and foremost an integral part of the human race and the universe at large, rather than as separate entities in competition with each other, will we have the perspective needed to sit down as one and work together to find a way out of this mess."

To some extent, Pullman appears to echo this in his Daily Telegraph interview:

"I think we've evolved in such a way that suited conditions on the savannah 500,000 years ago, a way of life that was acquisitive, territorial and combative. The degree to which the processes of civilisation, or socialisation, can overcome that depends on the timescale. In the long term, I back evolution - if we can survive this crisis that we're in...

"It's like going down a river, and about mid-century we're going to go through the rapids, and it's going to be terribly difficult for all of us. But we can survive and if we can get through this... it's going to be wonderful."

How exactly Pullman thinks that this necessary process of evolution is going to happen isn't entirely clear - but then with evolution it rarely is. Don't get me wrong - I'm no creationist - but the small print of evolution has always puzzled me. How did those fish come out of the water exactly? Gary Larson's explanation (in one of his Far Side cartoons) that the fish were playing baseball and evolved legs in order to get their ball back when it landed on dry land seems about as convincing as any other.

All Pullman seems to suggest is that the environmentalists' storytelling skills need to evolve so that they can better communicate the message about what people can do to help the planet. He says:

"People feel helpless when they see pictures of devastated forests cut down and the glaciers melting and the poor polar bear sweating on its bare rock in the sea. 'What can we do, what can we do?' People need to be told what it is that they can do."

I wish I shared his optimism that this will be enough to make a difference.

Pullman, of course, is widely known for the anti-religion stance of his fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, an ancient, authoritarian 'God' being unceremoniously killed in the final volume. Personally, I kind of like these books, such misgivings as I have about them having a lot more to do with the shambolic plotting than with any underlying agenda. I doubt that Pullman would view this blog in such a kindly light however. He has been quoted as saying "I don't think it's possible that there is a God: I have the greatest difficulty understanding what is meant by the words 'spiritual' or 'spirituality'".

So I assume that Pullman would be fairly horrified - or at best bemused - by my belief that the necessary evolution is going to be a spiritual one, a process of evolution in which we come to realize that all of us are One, that all of us - including our planet and all the life forms upon it - are part of something which some might describe as 'God'.

Yet Pullman goes on to say in the interview:

"I suppose the real story, the basic story, the story I would like to hear, see, read, is the story about how connected we are, not only with one another but also with the place we live in. And how it's almost infinitely rich, but it's in some danger; and that despite the danger, we can do something to overcome it."

Are we really so far apart, I wonder, the 'spiritual' me and the 'secular' Pullman?

I hope not, because it seems to me that it is a gap which is going to have to be bridged in our forthcoming process of evolution...

(You can read the Telegraph interview with Philip Pullman here. This in turn is an edited extract from the forthcoming book Do Good Lives Have To Cost The Earth? by Andrew Simms and Joe Smith.)

IONS - Free Download Offer

I'd love to write more often here at The Secret Of Life about the intriguing interface between science and spirituality but the honest truth is that most of my time I can't get my head round it! Fortunately Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell foresaw my shortcomings and created IONS (the Institute of Noetic Sciences) to carry out research and provide information in this fascinating area, which it describes as "the frontiers of consciousness".

The IONS web site has a wealth of material, some of it always freely available, some of it normally accessible by subscription only. As a special offer, however, the entire library is now available on free download until 24th December 2007. There are audios and videos from a wealth of contributors including Neale Donald Walsch, Rupert Sheldrake, Deepak Chopra, Bernie Siegel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Marianne Williamson, Ervin Laszlo, Lynne McTaggart,  Dean Radin, Candace Pert, and Edgar Mitchell himself. The only thing they don't seem to be able to provide is the time to listen to it all...

(If you'd like to take a look at my own explorations of science and spirituality, please check out these previous posts: The Nature Of The Universe and What The Bleep Do We Know?)

Earth Doomed! (see page 53)

More 'Heart Of The Secret' to follow soon but first of all I'd like to draw your attention to the UN Geo-4 report on the 'global environment outlook', which was published last week. According to The Times, 'the report was drafted and researched by almost 400 scientists, all experts in their fields, whose findings were subjected to review by another 1,000 of their peers'. The report warns that 'the speed at which mankind has used the Earth's resources over the past 20 years has put humanity's very survival at risk'. We are warned that 'the point of no return' is fast approaching.

What causes me greatest concern is not the report itself, chilling though it is, but the low degree of priority it has been assigned in the news media, at least here in the UK. I heard about it last Thursday morning in a brief bulletin on BBC Radio 5 Live but as the day went on, the story seemed to slide down the news agenda. When I searched on Google News in the evening it appeared at number 9 in 'world news'. When I checked the papers the following day, I found that of the four 'quality' UK dailies, only The Times and The Independent chose to put it on their front page. To their credit, both ran it as their sole front page story, clearly believing that it deserved maximum publicity. In The Telegraph, by contrast, it appeared on page 16.

I also checked the Daily Mail, the 'popular' UK daily which does so much to inform our population about the threat to our national way of life from immigrants and other minorities. But they didn't seem to believe that the threat to our national way of life from the destruction of the planet warranted so much as a mention. At any rate, I couldn't find anything about the report in the paper at all, and I got as far as page 56.  I could have actually bought a copy, I suppose, and checked more thoroughly, but that would surely have been taking things a bit too far.

OK, so we already knew that the planet was in a bad way, but we're talking here about an authoritative, well-researched international report which clearly states that the survival of the human race is in imminent danger. The fact that it has been given such a relatively low profile in the news media says much about the capacity - or rather, incapacity - of humanity to respond to this crisis. An immense concerted effort from us all is required if planetary disaster is to be averted, yet not only can't we be bothered to make such an effort, we don't even feel it's necessary to make sure that everyone knows it's needed.

If you read this blog regularly, you may have gleaned from the occasional comment I've made that I believe - or at any rate hope - that the human race will shortly undergo a subtle transformation, that we're in for a consciousness upgrade, from a mindset in which we care mainly about ourselves and our own selfish needs and desires to one in which we come to perceive ourselves more as an integral part of the human race and the universe, in which we 'widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty', as Albert Einstein put it. For as Einstein presciently warned: 'we shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive'.

The reasons why I 'believe' in this transformation are several:

1) Starting with what some might see as the 'wacky' side of things: there are numerous prophecies - including the fact that the Mayan calendar ends mysteriously in 2012 - which suggest that either the end of the world or a new golden age will occur at this time. Being a natural skeptic, I wouldn't give much credence to these were it not for the following:

2) So many resources are now available for personal transformation. I've talked about Deeksha and other resources on this blog. I shall talk about more in the future. Most of these have only emerged in recent years, some having apparently been guarded secretly for millennia, waiting for this time in history to arrive. It is not unreasonable to ask why all these resources have suddenly emerged. Could it be because we are going to need them?

3) And finally, the most compelling reason is the one which echoes the words of Einstein. A transformation is surely required if humanity is to survive.

In a recent article in The Sunday Times, the science fiction writer Brian Aldiss asked the question: 'is human consciousness fit for purpose?' As it stands at present, the answer is clearly  'no'. Our perspective is too self-absorbed and short-termist. We are so entrenched in our present lifestyles that it would take a tsunami and California-style fires on everyone's doorstep to grab enough of our attention to prompt us to take the action that's needed to save ourselves. And if such a thing happened, it would probably already be too late...

So that's the principal reason why I 'believe' in the coming transformation: not because of the prophecies or because there's  a 'new age' category in the bookshop, but because  I'm at heart an optimist and I can't see any other way ahead.  It's as though the prophecies and the planetary crisis are converging synchronistically into the only possible future for the human race: a future of transformation.

Only when we come to think of ourselves as first and foremost an integral part of the human race and the universe at large, rather than as separate entities in competition with each other, will we have the perspective needed to sit down as one and work together to find a way out of this mess. Even then, the road ahead will not be an easy one.

But at least we'll be in with a chance.

How To Deal With Difficult Emotions - 2

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the most popular posts on The Secret Of Life has been How To Deal With Difficult Emotions. Now a new piece of research gives me a good excuse to return to this important subject.

A study at UCLA has shown that labeling emotions - saying "I'm feeling angry," "I'm feeling sad" and so on - helps to make them less intense. Apparently when people see a picture of an angry or fearful face, they have increased activity in a region of the brain called the amygdala, but this activity is reduced when the emotion is labeled.

Why should this be, I wonder? The study does not suggest any explanation, and maybe we don't need to know. Maybe we should just put it into practice and see for ourselves what happens.

Even so, it is interesting to speculate about what is happening here, not least because this may point the way towards additional strategies for dealing with emotions...

First of all, it is worth pointing out that in many cases you may not even need to feel the emotion, let alone label it. If we feel anger, or any other difficult emotion, then perhaps our first response should be to ask ourselves where it is coming from. Do we really need to feel it or are we simply doing so out of habit? Are we responding to an event or simply to a story we are telling ourselves about the event? In such cases, simply changing our perspective on what is happening can be enough to jolt us out of the emotion altogether.

Something else we may need to look at is whether we can take some action to resolve whatever situation may be triggering the emotion. If so, then this may be another way of defusing it.

But if after all that, we are still left with the emotion, then we have to deal with it in some way. Suppressing it - simply pretending it isn't there - can be unhelpful. If the emotion is not expressed, it will simply surface again at some future date. Indeed, the emotion we're feeling now may be one that has been previously suppressed but has now been brought to the surface, triggered by some present event. If we are feeling anger which is out of proportion to whatever has just taken place, then this is probably what is going on.

At this stage then, perhaps we should do what the research suggests and label the emotion. But why should this help? Here are a few explanations which occur to me:

• Putting a label on it limits the emotion. It's like sticking it in a box. "That over there is the anger - this over here is the rest of my life." This is helpful, because when we are in the grip of a strong emotion, it can seem like it is taking us over entirely. This is a way of acknowledging its existence yet putting it in its place.
• And a slight variation on the above: in order to label something, we have to step outside it. So now we are observing the emotion from outside. Rather than being entirely overwhelmed by the emotion, we can clearly see what is happening and get things into perspective.
• And finally, in saying "I am feeling anger" or "I am feeling fear", we are focusing on what we know to be true. This may be the only thing about the situation which we know to be true. Anything else we might have been telling ourselves, such as "she did this to me because she hates me" or "it is always me that has to suffer" or even "these people are a load of incompetent b*****ds!" may be untrue, and will only serve to feed the emotion and make things worse. By contrast, focusing on the mundane truth that we are feeling a particular emotion helps to defuse it by getting it into perspective.

This reminds me of the use of the Sanskrit expression "netti, netti" or "not this, not this", which is a way of reminding ourselves that we ourselves are very much greater than whatever emotion we might be feeling. This, again, is a way of putting things into perspective. (See more about this in this previous post.)

The UCLA researchers also found that the use of "mindfulness", described as "a technique in which one pays attention to his or her present emotions, thoughts, and body sensations, without passing judgment or reacting" reduced the activation of the amygdala, so that the emotion was less intense. What is described here sounds remarkably similar to Nick Roach's technique for dissolving emotions, which I talked about in the original How To Deal With Difficult Emotions post.

You can read more about the UCLA studies here.

One of the researchers, David Cresswell, remarks: "This is an exciting study because it brings together the Buddha's teachings - more than 2,500 years ago, he talked about the benefits of labeling your experience - with modern neuroscience."

This is all very interesting - and it's great to have scientific evidence for some of these techniques - but I'm not so sure about that last bit. Have you heard of Buddhists labeling their experience? Would any passing Buddhists care to comment?