Revisiting the Delusion of Separation in the Brain

Earlier this week I posted a blog entry called "The Delusion of Separation," and in that post I shared a moment in time when I felt a profound feeling of separation: early motherhood soon after I stopped breast feeding.

Ironically, later in the same week, I attended a lecture by a Harvard Psychiatrist from the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine who spoke about the neuroscience--the brain science-- that exacerbates and colors the human perception of separation not only in humans, but in all mammals.

It was a fascinating talk to say the least, but especially in consideration of what I personally have been reflecting on in my own private life: the power of the delusion of separation.

In many ways, a scientific explanation that involves a residual legacy of millions of years of brain evolution that sets off an alarm in the limbic system--an evolutionarily old and deep area of the brain-- around any perceived threat of separation is quite validating of my struggle to live in a deeper truth of interconnectedness.

It is paradoxical as well.

This is because, although according to this scientist our human brain evolved from an amphibian brain to a mammalian brain through attachment as a survival strategy in the limbic system, I have internalized the myth of  detachment as a survival strategy.

Another point of interest for me, and maybe you as well, was this Harvard professor highlighted the role of the stress response (the sympathetic nervous system) in the human experience of separation.

Specifically, he said the amygdala (the emotion center of the brain which is part of the limbic system) sends out alarms (in the form of glutamate) to the brain when the experience of separation is being triggered by something in the environment because this ancient area of the brain still views attachment as a primary survival strategy.

Yet, it seems, it is also possible that the amygdala could misperceive a threat of separation and/or not factor in the many other areas of safety and protection that could be equally present, but blinded from view due to the brain's hard-wired hyper-focus on separation.

Furthermore, other normative types of separations like ending breast-feeding in motherhood, or traumatic separations like a family member dying in a car accident, could prompt an even greater reaction from the amygdala that requires other areas of the brain like the prefrontal cortex (the most evolutionarily modern part of the brain) to help the individual turn the separation alarm off.

So what does all this neuroscience mean on the ground level where we are practicing the dharma and living out our own spiritual lives?

The truth is, I don't entirely know.

Maybe though, it gives more power to the practice.

Because if neuroplasticity--the theory that our brains can change and evolve throughout our entire lifetime--is true (and by all of Dr. Richard Davidson's scientific evidence at The Center for Investigating Health Minds it is), then the very human experience of being overwhelmed or even physiologically alarmed by the delusion separation is not only scientifically valid, it is also completely workable.

As in, "Yes, I can work with this."

So it would seem, just like the storm cloud in the sky, that the delusion of separation is in fact not a problem at all, it is just a part of the practice.

Fascinating!

The Delusion of Separation

Like many people, I struggle with the most profound delusion of all, the delusion of separation. 

And even though Albert Einstein reminds me again and again in his historic quotation:

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty,

I've still found this delusion to be the toughest of all to fully get rid of in a single lifetime.

Having said that, I will add, I do try.

I do put in actual effort to challenge the feeling that I am separate.

I do this by intentionally noticing points of connection, similarity, interdependence, and on that rare occasion, interbeing.

Take this past weekend for example.

On Sunday I did one of my favorite activities which is putting in my vegetable garden.

Now, anytime I am dealing with plants and soil and water, it is all but impossible to not surrender to the theme of interdependence that runneth over in the natural world. 

But this year, I had an additional point of connection while I planted my tomatoes, lettuce and mint.  That connection was with Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh as I had just recently read this passage in his book The Sun My Heart (1988):

I don't know what job you do every day, but I do know that some tasks lend themselves to awareness more easily than others. Writing, for example, is difficult to do mindfully...That is why I have been doing more manual work and less writing these past few years. Someone said to me, 'Planting tomatoes and lettuce may be the gateway to everything, but not everyone can write books and stories and poems as well as you do. Please don't waste your time with manual work!' I have not wasted any of my time. Planting a seed, washing a dish, cutting the grass are as eternal, as beautiful, as writing a poem! I do not understand how a poem can be better than a peppermint plant. Planting seeds gives me as much pleasure as writing a poem. For me, a head of lettuce or a peppermint plant has as much everlasting effect in time and space as a poem.

The experience of holding these words, and this monastic, in my mind and heart while I mindfully placed each small plant into the ground was a complete antidote to my dis-ease of separation.

Another practice I enjoy that helps me work with this sense of disconnection, is to lead others in a guided meditation called "Just Like Me."

Have you tried this one?

I like to do this practice in small groups of patients or colleagues. 

It starts by asking each person in the group (including the group leader) to bring all of their attention to the person sitting to the left of them.  Then, each person is asked to silently consider for a moment all these qualities and experiences that she or he may share with the person sitting next to them.

Just like Me…
This person has a body and a mind, just like me.

This person has feelings, emotions and thoughts, just like me.

This person has in his or her life, experienced physical and emotional pain and suffering, just like me.

This person has at some point been sad, disappointed, angry, or hurt, just like me.
This person has felt unworthy or inadequate, just like me. 
This person worries and is frightened sometimes, just like me.
This person has longed for friendship, just like me.
This person is learning about life, just like me.
This person wants to be caring and kind to others, just like me.
This person wants to be content with what life has given, just like me.
This person wishes to be free from pain and suffering, just like me.

This person wishes to be safe and healthy, just like me.


This person wishes to be happy, just like me.

This person wishes to be loved, just like me. 

I've led this meditation many times, with a wide diversity of individuals, and it always surprises me every single time how overwhelmingly moving it is for me.  Something about the level of sincerity and integrity of the practice that seems to cut through all my many layers of separation and armor.

Sometimes though, unlike in a guided meditation or a purposeful activity, these moments of connection can seemingly come right out of the blue, and in those moments, my intention, my practice, is to just allow the mystery to unfold.

Take for example the moment I met my cat Billie.

 

It was August, 2010, and I was a brand new mother. I had just finished what turned out to be a very difficult  year of breastfeeding my new baby while returning to work full-time, and in that distinct window of time, the feeing of being alone was quite profound.

It was then, that I crossed paths with another new mother who came to be known as Billie. 

Billie was a rescue cat who had lived on the streets of a city for the first year and a half of her life- including while she was pregnant.  When we met, she was in the process of weaning her litter of kittens from her own mother's milk.

I can't explain why, but that chance meeting with Billie broke through all  of the barriers and blockades I had erected around me (some intentional, some unintentional) that had reinforced the power of the delusion of separation. I am so eternally grateful to her for that.

But, I hesitate to say, the delusion does persist.  Not as strongly to be sure--it used to feel like a veil of black tar all over my body, and now I would say it is more like a mosquito net--but still present nonetheless.

So, I will continue to practice. I will continue to intentionally notice those points of connection and interconnection that can cut through the myth that I am an island.

May it be so.

Notes from a Meditation Workshop with Sharon Salzberg

A little over a month ago I had the fortunate opportunity to attend a Meditation Workshop with Western Buddhist teacher and author Sharon Salzberg.

The event was held in a local yoga studio near where I live, and though there were over 200 people in attendance, the yoga studio set it up to create a feeling of intimacy as Ms. Salzberg sat in the center of the room.

The workshop itself was a combination of guided meditation practice led by Ms. Salzberg (including a loving-kindness or metta practice), and 2 dharma talks stemming from themes in her upcoming book Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection which is to be published in June.

As a long-time reader of Sharon Salzberg, and having spent time at The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts that she helped co-found, I was through the roof excited to attend this workshop.

So of course I took copious notes during Ms. Salzberg's two dharma talks--that included question and answer with the audience--in order to take some of the wisdom she was generously sharing for further contemplation in my own quiet moments.

As I know many of you also share my heart-felt appreciation for the work of this unique Western Buddhist thinker (and woman), I thought I'd pass on some of these notes from the workshop.

Enjoy!

(p.s. the dark blue words are my attempts at direct quotes)

• When you 'evaluate' your meditation practice: look at your life as a whole, not merely the quality or experience in the actual 20 minutes that you sat.
• Meditation means 'cultivation' which is why garden metaphors frequently accompany discussions of meditation.
• Do not start your meditation practice from a feeling state of 'deficiency.'
• In meditation we are making a 'home.'
• Your breath is very portable...With a breath you return to yourself, you return to the moment, you return to your values.
• In meditation 'rest' your attention on an object.
• When your mind wanders, and you return your attention to the object in meditation that's the place where we learn to begin again.
• Meditation practice is both resiliency training and self-compassion training.
• It's not easy to start over without some kindness for oneself.
• Meditation helps us because the same stressors can be happening in our lives, and we can still be free by relating differently to them.
• Look for ways in which we add more pain to the moment by 'adding-on' a narrative or story about the painful moment.
• During meditation [or life], when you realize 'I'm not here,' gather that scattered energy and return.
• Only when we pay attention do we have a sense of connection- like our lives have something to do with one another.
• The Buddha said: if you truly loved yourself, you'd never harm another.
• The best kind of generosity comes from a sense of inner abundance...a sense of inner resource which allows us to extend.
• You have this huge aspiration, you forget it, and you begin again.
• Lucy (from the Peanuts cartoon) is the name Sharon Salzberg has given to her 'self-critical voice' in her own head.  In the workshop Ms. Salzberg asked: do I believe Lucy 'utterly' or can I let her be or bring lightness and humor to her.
• Having a sense of sufficiency, a sense of abundance and inner resource, is loving yourself- it is not narcissism.
• It may be helpful to ask yourself: is this behavior 'onward-leading?'
• Think of 'letting go' as a muscle to be exercised and strengthened.
• Consider this: what if everybody is included and everyone is consequential?
• A loving-kindness practice is a wholehearted heart energy.
• The universe is not yours to control.
• Individuals, and especially caregivers, have a need for balance and a need for replenishment.
• Despair does not serve anyone.
• Loving-kindness is a practice for the transfiguration of our own minds that changes our motivation for action.
• When giving a gift, you cannot decide how someone else receives the gift- it must be freely given.

Poetry 112: Death Before Dying

Death Before Dying

Lying in savasana,
the end before the end,
I feel the death
before dying.

Somewhat mysterious
in its subtly-
a life both alive and gone.
An inner dialogue of 
devastation and long awaited relief.

As always,
I look to nature for clues
for how to skillfully proceed.

The rotting log.
The budding leaf.

Yet,
I'm fairly sure,
nature's steadfast wisdom
still cannot comprehend
the heart-breaking grief
that is orchestrated in our human soul.

(Can it?)

I believe You bestowed
that Gift to us alone.

Yet this aching Gift consumes me,
forcing me to crave the resurrection.

Now.
Please.

I do not want
to experience this death until
its painstaking end-
god knows how long that will be...

You pause.

Sweetheart,
You whisper,
with all the tenderness
of a Beloved,
it is still too soon.

Some things cannot be rushed.
Some things cannot be glossed over.

I take a breath.
Long and slow this time.

Okay, I say, on the exhale.
I will stay 
a little while longer.

Another death before dying.
Another glimpse
into the really real;
where You and I will intersect
in the ashes once more.

-Me

Kindred Spirits: Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,
in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I
minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.  Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune...This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting.

   ― Henry David Thoreau, 19th Century American author and naturalist, from Walden

Poetry 111: A Meditation for Thoreau

A Meditation for Thoreau

Sitting for hours
in the doorway.
Darkness rising to dawn.


Seems every bird song in
New England has been
sung.

The sunlight ebbs and flows,
making the dew drops
shimmer.

A wind passes through
the maple leaves and pine needles,
creating god's own lullaby.

What else could I possibly do today?
Where else
could I possibly be?

Watching the clouds move across the sky-
forgetting me for this one forever moment.

Closing my eyes-
when the sun falls right upon my face-
feeling the glowing heat
move across my skin.

Am I dissolving or belonging?
Is there really any difference?

Maybe I will linger for one more
minute.

The doorway won't mind.

-Me

Reimagining Generosity



Growing up, I was not taught how be generous.  It was just not something that I learned. 

To be sure, I was taught many other human virtues that revolved around giving such as: charity, reciprocity, equality, responsibility, and accountability.  But not, generosity.

I don’t think my lack of education on generosity is that unusual though in the white Western world of my background.

I first became aware of my lack of experience with generosity on the last day of my first 5-day Mindfulness Meditation Retreat one year ago at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.

We were all gathered in the main meditation hall, and silence had already been broken.  Everyone had already cleaned out their rooms, and luggage was packed. We were in the home stretch minus the final talk on Dana, the Eastern spiritual practice of generosity, that many meditation centers maintain for the payment of their meditation teachers.

According to Wikipedia (aka the source of all truth), Dana is:

a Sanskrit and Pali word that connotes the virtue of generosity, charity or giving of alms in Indian philosophies.

However, as I learned the hard way when trying to speak Spanish to a native speaker, the problem with a direct translation from one language to another is it sometimes loses the cultural context for a word, which leaves the larger meaning of the word literally lost in translation.

This is why last May, I so much enjoyed the following definition of Dana or Generosity that was provided by the retreat staff:

It is having joy before, during and after giving.

To which I had to pause right where I was, and think to myself, “Hugh, I don’t think I was taught to do that…”

I thought: “I was not taught to be generous as a means to my own happiness.”

No, growing up I was taught to give and share because it was special, good, moral behavior. 

To be a “good person” you give and share with others, and particularly those less fortunate than you.

But this is not generosity from the eastern perspective.  This is charity from the western perspective.

In doing a little internet research on generosity through the University of Notre Dame I learned that the western use of the word generosity has its historical roots in an understanding that to be generous was to be noble- at first noble in the aristocratic sense, and then noble in the sense of spirit (http://generosityresearch.nd.edu).

The word “generosity” that we inherit and use today entails certain historical associations which may still inform, however faintly, our contemporary cultural sensibilities on the matter. Generosity has not long been viewed as a normal trait or ordinary, or of all people, but rather one expected to be practiced by those of higher quality or greater goodness.

In other words, the emphasis in the western perspective is on the giver herself, generosity as an adjective. In the eastern perspective, the emphasis is arguably on the giving, generosity as a verb. 

I’ll give an example.

Several years ago I was out to brunch with my husband celebrating our wedding anniversary.  The brunch and restaurant were quite nice, and more on the expensive side.

Midway through our meal, our attention was called to an elderly couple sitting close by. 

The couple shared with their waiter that they too were celebrating their wedding anniversary, their 50^th wedding anniversary!  “Wow,” we thought, and then offered a “Congratulations” to them.

Toward the end of our meal though, our attention was again directed to the elderly couple as they were finishing eating and preparing to pay for their meal, and their waiter brought over their bill, but said to the couple, “No need to pay.  Another diner in the restaurant who was sitting nearby heard that it was your 50^th anniversary, and paid for your whole brunch.”

Ahhh, love that story…I still get warm fuzzies every time I re-tell it…

The thing is, until recently, I only conceptualized that experience from my western view of giving.

I saw the anonymous diner as an extra-special “good” person who was worthy of praise and admiration.  I also believed his “good” deed would leave him off the hook for the rest of the year in terms of more giving since it was so “good.”

I never once considered the possibility that the role or function of giving could be to create greater joy and happiness in the giver because even to consider that from a western perspective (or as a hardcore New Englander, a puritanical Christian perspective) leaves you looking selfish and self-centered- more guilt, more shame.

The other pitfall of this western understanding of giving, is the inherent dichotomy it creates.  If there are special “good” moral people who give and share, then there are also more ordinary “bad” selfish people who hoard and stockpile. 

So if you had a moment of giving, it was not joy that was felt- it was righteousness and self-importance.  And if you had a moment of keeping to oneself, it was not neutral or even sadness that was felt- it was shame and guilt.

Joy before, during and after giving…

What would that even look like?

Western Buddhist author and teacher Sharon Salzberg tells us in her book Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness that generosity, or Dana, was thought to be so important in the path of enlightenment that

The Buddha himself always started with new practioners by teaching them dana, the practice of generosity…Generosity has such power because it is characterized by the inner quality of letting go or relinquishing…When we practice generosity, we open to all these liberating qualities simultaneously.  They carry us to a profound knowing of freedom, and they also are the loving expression of that state of freedom. (pg 154-155)

A couple of months ago I posted a blog entitled “Spiritual Democracy: A Cultural Philosophy,” and since that time I have continued to wonder about the qualities or practices that would be necessary to cultivate this type of global reality. It seems to me, one of those qualities may be generosity.

Take, for example, the political and cultural debates going on at this very moment in the United States about the on-going possibility of an antiquated world where an owner of a bakery can refuse to make a cake for a couple based on a religious objection to the fact that the couple is gay.

(Which as a sidebar I must say is grotesquely reminiscent of the Racial Integrity Act of 1925 in the state of Virginia.)

If we stay in the narrow confines of western dichotomy to address these historical moments, then we will continue to only perceive a reality in which to preserve my right you must concede your right or vice versa. 

This dualistic universe of us vs. them, heterosexual people vs. LGBTQ people, white people vs. Black people, white people vs. immigrants, Christians vs. Muslims, will continue to painfully (and sometimes cruelly) lock our democracy in a limited and purely legal view of democracy that always leaves righteous winners and bitter losers. 

But, if we expand our sense of democracy to include the eastern view of generosity in which my own happiness is tied up with your well-being, then it might motivate individuals to embrace the type of wisdom that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to preach to America:

All I'm saying is this: that all life is inter-related, and somehow we are all tied together. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of all reality (1966).

May it be so.

Learning How to be Happy

(wishtree.info)

A colleague of mine shared this cartoon with me today...

I really like it because creating happiness is not something I was taught how to do.

Please do not misunderstand, this is not a critique of my upbringing per se. 

No, I believe what I was taught about happiness was exactly in line with the white, middle class western world of my time growing up in the last quarter of the 20th century.

The only problem is, in the last 10 or so years, it has become painfully clear to me that what I was taught about happiness was incomplete at best, but more often than not, just plain wrong.

I've had some time to reflect on this too since my 3 year-old daughter has become infatuated with The Trolls movie (2016).

Now, if you don't have a child under the age of 10, you may not have had to watch and re-watch this film complete with Justin Timberlake movie soundtrack- lucky you!

However, I will say the one take-away about this animated movie is a theme that I've been tinkering with for some time now: what is happiness?

Of course for those of you who have seen the movie, it is Princess Poppy who offers her own answer to this question:

Happiness isn’t something you put inside you. It’s already there. Sometimes you just need someone to help you find it.

Growing up in the late 1970's through the 1980's I absolutely took in all the standard messages about happiness being equated with consumption. 

This meant that happiness manifested only when you had the peak experience of a very particular person, place or thing in your life that would finally make you complete (for five minutes or less).

However, what may have been somewhat unique to my experience at that time (though I think it is actually much more common now) was an apparently contradictory edge to that algorithm of consumption=happiness that included a set of rigid morals.

In other words, there was no questioning that the way to attain happiness (because it was something extraordinary to be attained, certainly not something given freely to everyone and definitely not pre-existing) was through people, places and things, but they could only be certain people and certain places and certain things that were within our moral guidelines.

For example, my family would travel, but the trips would always be culturally enriching or we would sleep in a tent.  We would have things, but the things would not be anything remotely connected to a superficial fad or a best-seller which somehow created the illusion that our stuff was better, we were better.

I'll reiterate here what I said above: what I was taught about happiness was incomplete at best, but more often than not, just plain wrong.

So imagine my wonder and amazement when I began to be introduced to these ideas:

Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves...Mindfulness is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.

Mindfulness is the basis of happiness.

-Thich Nanh Hanh 1976.

To which I exclaimed: "Wait...What?!"

It would not be an understatement to say that my first encounter with mindfulness created a complete paradigm shift for me in regards to that question: what is happiness?

Whereas I had grown up to believe that happiness was an elite emotion reserved for just a select few (and even for them, happiness was exclusive to only those very peak experiences), along comes mindfulness that tells me happiness is completely egalitarian- literally available to everyone.

Everyone. 

Talk about democracy in action...

Mindfulness also said happiness is available now.  As in, right now.  This-very-moment.

Again, for me, fireworks- another huge paradigm shift.

I realized the myth I had believed for so long that happiness was scarce was just not true. 

Mindfulness said that happiness is not reserved for only the VIP, and happiness is not an endangered specie in the context of painful complicated lives, but rather happiness is in fact abundant.

To which I proclaimed again: "Wait...What?!"

It has been many years now since I began to unpack my early learning about happiness, and I feel so grateful for what I have learned about happiness as to transform my day-to-day, moment-to-moment, experiences in such profound ways.

This past week was one of those weeks where I found myself in deep gratitude for mindfulness and mindfulness practices as my mother was back in the hospital on a Friday and my mother-in-law was in the very same hospital the following Monday.

If I had held onto the cultural myths about happiness of my childhood, times like these would have left me feeling depleted and helpless. 

Which is not to say these types of moments are not stressful, painful and just damn hard- believe me, they are.  Yet I also think, with mindfulness, happiness is present too.

One of my favorite Western Buddhist author and teacher is Sylvia Boorstein who wrote a book called: Happiness is an Inside Job.  And I can say, growing up I honestly would not have had a clue what that title meant.

Now, I can say that I do, and I am so grateful for that.

As I go forward, and continue to explore and redefine happiness, I am interested in trying out other letting go practices such as generosity and renunciation that may prompt feelings of joy and in turn create greater happiness.  I am intrigued with the counterintuitive idea that letting go may yield greater happiness than consumption.

Here's to more seeking!

May it be so.