Super Brain (33 page)

Self-centered: Your thoughts and actions are dominated by I, me, mine
. You focus on specific things that you can achieve or possess—you set goals and meet them. The ego feels in control. Your choices lead to predictable results. The world “out there” is organized through rules and laws. External forces are powerful but can be reined in and managed.

TYPICAL THOUGHTS

I know what I’m doing
.

I make my own decisions
.

The situation is under control
.

I trust myself
.

If I need help, I know where to turn
.

I’m good at what I do
.

I like a challenge
.

People can depend on me
.

I’m building a good life
.

Mindful: Your mind is reflective
. It turns inward to monitor your sense of well-being. Self-knowledge is the most important goal. You don’t identify with the things you can own. You value and often rely upon insight and intuition more than logic and reason. Empathy comes naturally. Wisdom dawns.

TYPICAL THOUGHTS

This choice feels right, that other one doesn’t
.

I’m tuning in to the situation
.

I know just how others feel
.

I see both sides of the issue
.

Answers just come to me
.

Sometimes I feel inspired, and those are the best times
.

I feel like a part of humankind. No one is alien to me
.

I feel liberated
.

The mindful state is just as natural as any other. When we overlook it, we create unnecessary problems.

Some years ago, for example, Rudy was in a rush to complete some experiments, before making a seven o’clock flight out of Boston—he was scheduled to give the opening lecture at a major international conference. Caught in the city’s notorious rush-hour traffic, however, he ran out of luck and missed his flight. Standby was uncertain, but if he didn’t catch the last flight out, he’d have to suffer the embarrassment of being a no-show. Rudy became anxious and angry. Screaming at the counter agent would do no good, but he was tempted. Completely unaware of it, he was identifying with the intensely negative feelings that his brain was producing.

Of course, most people would consider these feelings completely natural in the situation. But the healthier alternative would have been for Rudy to experience his frustration for a limited amount of time and then become mindful. Standing back, he could have
observed how missing the flight triggered his instinctive/emotional brain, producing a full-fledged stress reaction in his body. Without mindfulness, the stress would run its course over a longer period of time, and unfortunately, as the years pass, our bodies become more easily stressed and recover more slowly from small incidents—letting the stress reaction run its course is not healthy. In the end, stress breeds stress.

By becoming the active observer of the negative feelings evoked in his brain, Rudy could have more proactively dealt with the situation and learned from it. Most important of all, he would not have been the victim of the reactive mind. This isolated incident summarizes the advantages of mindfulness:

You can handle stress better.

You free yourself from negative reactions.

Impulse control becomes easier.

You open a space for making better choices.

You can take responsibility for your emotions instead of blaming others.

You can live from a place that is more centered and calm.

How can you cultivate mindfulness? The short answer is meditation. When you close your eyes and go inward, even for a few minutes, your brain gets a chance to reset itself. You have no need to try to become centered. The brain is designed to return to a balanced, unexcited state when given the chance. At the same time, when you meditate, a change occurs in your sense of self. Instead of identifying with moods, feelings, and sensations, you put your attention on quietness, and as soon as this happens, the stress that was agitating you is no longer as sticky. When you stop identifying with it, stress has a much harder time taking hold.

The practice of meditation is not as alien to most people as it was three or four decades ago, and there are many advanced kinds. But
starting with the most basic techniques often produces a startling contrast. Sit in a quiet place and close your eyes. Make sure you have no distractions; turn the lights to dim.

As you sit, take a few deep breaths, letting your body relax as much as it wants to. Now quietly notice your breath going in and out. Easily let your attention follow your breathing, as you would if you were sitting in an easy chair listening to a gentle summer breeze. Don’t force yourself to pay attention. If your thoughts wander—which always happens—gently bring your awareness back to your breath. If you wish, after five minutes, put your attention on your heart, and let it rest there for another five minutes. Either way, you are learning something new: how it feels to be in a mindful state.

To go even deeper, you might use a simple mantra. Mantras have the benefit of taking the mind to a subtler level. Sit quietly and take a few deep sighs, and when you feel settled, think the mantra
Om shanti
. Repeat it as you feel like it, but don’t force a rhythm; this isn’t mental chanting. Don’t follow your breath. Just repeat the mantra whenever you notice that your attention has wandered away from it. There’s no need to think it quietly—it will grow quiet on its own—but certainly don’t think it loudly. Do this for ten to twenty minutes.

Newcomers will naturally ask how they are to know if meditation is working. If you lead an active life and expend too much energy, your body will so desperately need rest that you will spend many meditations falling asleep. This isn’t a failure; your brain is taking what it needs the most. But especially if you meditate in the morning, before you start your day, you will experience the quietness of awareness looking at itself. After ten to twenty minutes, you will notice how easy, relaxed, and comfortable it feels to be centered.

We said that meditation was the short answer, because there’s the entire rest of the day to consider. How can you be mindful outside meditation? The principle here will be familiar: change without
force. Staying centered and mindful all day isn’t something you can force. But you can gently favor the behavior of a mindful person:

Don’t project your feelings onto others.

Don’t participate in negativity.

When you feel stress in the air, walk away.

Don’t put your attention on anger and fear.

If you have a negative reaction, let it run for a little while; then as soon as you can, step back, take a few deep breaths, and observe your reaction without indulging it.

When you are having a reaction, don’t make any decisions until later, when you are once again centered.

In your relationships, don’t use arguments to vent your resentments. Discuss your issues when you both feel calm and reasonable. This is an easy way to avoid delivering unnecessary wounds in the heat of the moment.

In practical terms, being mindful is self-monitoring without casting blame or judgment. When you don’t monitor yourself, you can fall prey to a wide range of difficulties. “I don’t know why I did that” is the most common complaint when people aren’t mindful, along with “I was out of control.” In the aftermath of impulsive reactions, they feel remorse and regret.

From the brain’s perspective, when you self-monitor, you are introducing a higher state of balance. The primitive reactions of the brain are rarely appropriate in modern life. They persist as if humans still needed to fight predators, fend off raiding tribes, and run away from threats. In the course of evolution, the higher brain has evolved to introduce a second response, which is more suited to the situation’s actual level of threat. But for most people most of the time, there is no threat at all. You don’t need the lower brain’s primal reactions, even though they will keep springing up—they are biologically wired in.

When the lower brain acts inappropriately, you can defuse it by reminding yourself of reality: you are not being threatened. That awareness alone is enough to reduce many kinds of stress reactions. Mindfulness goes further, however. After spending some time meditating, you will find a higher balance—you will start to identify with a peaceful state of restful alertness. That will open the doorway to the sort of spiritual experience that would be out of reach otherwise. A lovely passage from the
Mandukya Upanishad
of ancient India describes how necessary the mindful state is:

Like two birds perched in the same tree, who are intimate friends, the ego and the self dwell in the same body. The first bird eats the sweet and sour fruits of life, while the other bird silently looks on.

As you become more mindful, both sides of your consciousness will be recognized, and then they can become the intimate friends described in this passage. Ego, the restless, active
I
, no longer must act on its drives and desires. You learn that the self, the other half of your nature, is content simply to be. There is immense fulfillment in finding that you are enough within yourself, needing no outside stimulation to make you happy. We call this fusion the true self.

SUPER BRAIN SOLUTIONS
MAKING GOD REAL

We want to shed light on the age-old dilemma of whether God exists. Mindfulness can help here, because when it comes to matters of faith and hope, awareness is crucial. There’s a huge gap between
I hope, I believe
, and
I know
. This is true of everything that happens in your awareness, not just with God. Is your spouse cheating? Can you handle being made a supervisor at work? Are your kids going to take drugs? In one way or another, the answers lie in the vicinity of three choices: you hope, you believe, or you know that you have the right answer. But since God is the toughest of these choices, we’ll focus on him (or her).

In spiritual matters, faith is supposed to be the answer, but its power seems limited. Almost everyone has made a personal decision about God. We say God doesn’t exist or he does. But our decision is usually shaky and always personal. “God doesn’t exist for me, at least I think he doesn’t” would be more accurate. How can you tell if deep spiritual questions have an answer you can trust? Does the same God apply to everyone?

As children, we all asked the most basic spiritual questions. They came naturally:
Does God look after us? Where did Grandma go after she died?
Children are too young to understand that their parents are just as confused in these matters as they are. Children get reassuring answers, and for a time they suffice. If told that Grandma went to Heaven to be with Grandpa, a child will sleep better and feel less sad. When you grow up, however, the questions return. And thus you discover that your parents, however well intentioned, never showed you the way to find answers, not just about God but about love, trust, your life’s purpose, and the deeper meaning to existence.

In all these cases you either hope, believe, or know what the answer is: “I hope he loves me.” “I believe my spouse is faithful.” “I know this marriage is solid.” These statements are very different, and we find ourselves awash in confusion because we don’t differentiate between
I hope, I believe
, and
I know
, as if they were the same. We just wish they were. We shy away from seeing where things really stand.

Reality is a spiritual goal as much as a psychological one. The spiritual path takes you from a state of uncertainty (
I hope
), to a somewhat firmer state of security (
I believe
), and eventually to true understanding (
I know
). It doesn’t matter whether the specific issue is about relationships, God, or the soul, about the higher self, Heaven, or the domain of departed spirits. The path begins with hope, grows stronger with faith, and becomes solid with knowing.

In these skeptical times, many critics try to undermine this progression. They claim that you cannot know God, the soul, unconditional love, the afterlife, and a whole host of other profound things. But the skeptic scorns the path without having set foot on it. If you look back at your past, you’ll see that you have already made this journey, many times in fact. As a child you hoped you would be a grown-up. In your twenties you believed that it was possible. Now you know you are an adult. You hoped someone would love you; you believed in time that somebody did; and now you know that they do.

If this natural progression hasn’t happened, something has gone wrong, because the unfoldment of life is designed to lead from desire to fulfillment. Of course, we all know the pitfalls. You can say to yourself “I know I’ll make it big,” when in fact you are only hoping. Getting a divorce may mean that you didn’t know if someone truly loved you. Children who grow up resenting their parents usually don’t know who to trust. A hundred other examples of broken dreams and lost promises could be offered. But far more often the
progression works. Desires are the things that drive life toward fulfillment. What you hope for, one day you will know.