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