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Archive for May, 2014

Mystery

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on May 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »

light tree

kaleidoscope

the moon

Don’t you love a good mystery?

For me, I love mystery not only in fiction, or in movies, but in life.

I am regularly amazed by the every day, and I know now that the future emerges from the present in ways which are always surprising, always mysterious.

So, I was delighted to find these lines in a Mary Oliver poem, “Mysteries, yes”

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answer.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

 

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How deep?

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on May 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

poppy field

The local robin

a wish

daisy
I came across this phrase of Emerson’s the other day

Tis curious that we only believe as deep as we live.

And the first thing I thought was “Tis curious that we only live as deep as we believe”! But then I decided to track it down and see it in its context. It comes from his “The Conduct of Life” in the section where he writes about beauty. There are some real gems in that piece of writing.

Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know. What a parade we make of our science, and how far off, and at arm’s length, it is from its objects! Our botany is all names, not powers: poets and romancers talk of herbs of grace and healing; but what does the botanist know of the virtues of his weeds?

Can we really know about plants only by treating them as objects to measured, weighed and classified? And what happens when we apply that approach to human beings too?

We should go to the ornithologist with a new feeling, if he could teach us what the social birds say, when they sit in the autumn council, talking together in the trees. The want of sympathy makes his record a dull dictionary. His result is a dead bird. The bird is not in its ounces and inches, but in its relations to Nature; and the skin or skeleton you show me, is no more a heron, than a heap of ashes or a bottle of gases into which his body has been reduced, is Dante or Washington.

“The bird is not in its ounces and inches, but in its relations to Nature”. Wow! How true is that? And isn’t that exactly where our present approach often falls down? We fail to see what we are studying in its “relations”. 

The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science. These geologies, chemistries, astronomies, seem to make wise, but they leave us where they found us.

and

Science in England, in America, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love and moral purpose. There’s a revenge for this inhumanity. What manner of man does science make?

These last two passages raise a subject we don’t hear much about, but I think we are beginning to hear more now, and will hear even more in the years ahead. It relates to Einstein’s famous question about the Universe….

Is the Universe friendly?

And it also relates to Iain McGilchrist’s point about the two different approaches to the world from our two different cerebral hemispheres. If it’s true, which I think it is, that we create the world we live in through what we pay attention to, what our values and beliefs are, then what kind of world do we create from this detached, materialistic scientism?

What is life like for someone who sees things that way? And what’s life like for someone who sees things the way Emerson is suggesting? Do you think the Universe is a hostile place, that everything happens by chance, and nothing has any meaning?

What I share here in this blog is just my experience, just snippets from the life of me, how I experience life, what stimulates my thinking, my passions, my imagination. But it’s the way I approach the world which creates this particular world I’m living in and sharing with you.

 

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Swans

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth, photography on May 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Swan cruising

 

Mary Oliver’s poem, “Swans” (which you can read in full here) ends……

What we love, shapely and pure,
is not to be held,
but to be believed in.

Does that resonate with you? “Not to be held, but to be believed in”? That has echoes for me of the “witnessing not measuring” I woke with the other day. It speaks to the subjective world of values over the objective world of things which can be possessed.

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Maslow’s hierarchy – becoming fully human

Posted in books, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth, psychology on May 6, 2014| 1 Comment »

I’ve been familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for some time, but I’ve recently discovered I was only aware of part of his schema.

His idea was that we have many needs which motivate us to act and to choose how to act, and those needs are, to some degree, prioritised with the more basic needs demanding attention before “higher” needs emerge.

His most basic needs are those related to physical security – the needs for food, drink and shelter. Without food, without drink and without shelter we are unlikely to survive.

All human beings need love. We need relationships. If you think that’s not true, pause for a moment and ask yourself why solitary confinement is used as a punishment in prisons, or why “sending to Coventry” ie enforcing social exclusion has historically existed as a community punishment. These love and relationship needs are about emotional security. In Maslow’s hierarchy, first you need to attend to your physical security, then your emotional security.

However, he isn’t finished there. Next up is self-esteem, without which we don’t feel we matter. This is closely bound up in our sense of identity, our “worth”.

So far, so good, and this is where my familiarity ended. But in fact there is a whole other level above these needs in Maslow’s description.

All of these needs so far can be thought of as “deficiency needs”. They are based on “lack” and meeting them is useful to us, so they can be thought of as “utilitarian”, or as about “getting” things.

Above this, Maslow describes “being needs”, which are ends in themselves. They are about “giving”, and are more creative than utilitarian. Being needs are those related to purpose, value and meaning. These needs, he says, “express an overflow of our own being”.

It is these “being needs” which make us “fully human”.

When we recognise that animals occupy only the lower rungs of Maslow’s ladder of needs – those for sustenance, shelter, and some form of social life (but of course not all animals belong to groups) – we can see what this means. We are only fully human when we pass beyond these, as the being or meta-needs that lie ahead can be pursued only by us, or by beings like us ……. As far as we know, no animal wonders why it exists. Or, to put it another way, we are the only animals that do, and that wonder is precisely the threshold between our being only animals and being fully human. (Gary Lachman)

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From the top of the mountain

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on May 5, 2014| 1 Comment »

sunset over ben ledi

 

I look out at this mountain every day (It’s called Ben Ledi), but how different the world might look to me if I actually climbed to the top of it (I haven’t done that….yet!)

Climbing a mountain for aesthetic reasons was, apparently, a defining moment in the development of human consciousness. The famous climb was that of the Italian poet, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) in the fourteenth century. He was the first to record climbing a mountain to see the view.

We can say that the origins of our modern appreciation of nature go back to 26 April 1336, when the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), better known as Petrarch, made his famous ascent of Mount Ventoux in France. This event has gone down in history as the first time someone climbed a mountain solely to see the view. Clearly people had scaled heights before, but Petrarch claimed he was the first to do so solely out of curiosity, for what we might call aesthetic reasons. He recounted his excursion in one of the letters making up his Epistolae familiares (1350)

That’s a quote from Gary Lachman‘s “Caretakers of the Cosmos”. He points out that several thinkers and writers reflected on this famous ascent.

Ernst Cassirer saw in Petrarch’s ascent of Mount Ventoux ‘testimony to [the] decisive change in the concept of nature that began in the thirteen century’ and which led to nature becoming a ‘a new means of expression’ for human consciousness, as well as to a ‘desire to immediately contemplate nature’.

Cassirer wrote brilliantly about how human beings create a world of symbols. Unlike other creatures which live on their instincts and sensory organs, we humans use symbolism to create a richer world and to live in it quite differently from other forms of life.

what began with Petrarch’s ascent, for Gebser, was the age of what he called ‘perspectival consciousness’, the perception and representation of the world from a unique human vantage point.

Jean Gebser’s “Ever-Present Origin” describes an evolution of consciousness from the archaic, to magical, to mythical and mental, and up to the present evolution of  an “integral” form.

I’m sure you can discover many other references to Petrarch’s ascent, but as I look out again at Ben Ledi, I’m able to imagine being at the top and to see Scotland from there. That profoundly influences my sense of who I am and my place in the world. I wonder what it’s like to live in a country without mountains?

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The A to Z of Becoming. R for reflect

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography on May 4, 2014| 2 Comments »

Untitled

Mirror, mirror

 

In the A to Z of Becoming, R is for reflect.

What does it mean to reflect? I think reflecting has a number of elements. There’s a pace to it. When we reflect, we slow down. Instead of reacting, or “pressing on” with busy-ness, we temporarily stop, pause, take a breath. So taking a moment to reflect acts a natural break, creates that “necessary distance” the neuropsychologists talk about.

There’s an element of checking yourself out too isn’t there? The way we do when we look in a mirror. We see how we seem. We look at how others might see us. Or even without mirrors, but in conversation, or with the help of a journal, we can consider how we are living, what choices we are making, what habits we have acquired. We can think about our direction, our goals, hopes and fears. We can take a moment to reflect on how decisions we’ve taken are working out.

I think reflecting is something I do every day as a doctor too. In psychotherapy and counselling students are taught to reflect someone’s words back to them. This might even be called “mirroring” and when it’s done mechanically, or clumsily, it can feel a bit annoying (“What I hear you say is……..[insert clients own words here]”) but when it becomes a natural conversation, it lets the person reflect on the words they are using, the phrases they are repeating, and the beliefs which are underpinning their current state of mind or body.

When you can spend some time with someone who cares about you and will listen to you without judging you, you can gain some very fruitful insights as you reflect together.

So, here’s your verb for this week – reflect. Try it out and see what happens…….

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Pace, time and the enjoyment of life

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography on May 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Booksellers lunch

 

When I was in the South of France recently, I visited the coastal town of Sète. Just before lunch time we found a booksellers market in one of the town’s squares. After browsing the bookstalls, we sat down at one of the tables outside a little restaurant and ordered what might be one of the most delicious salads I’ve ever tasted in my life. It came with a little bowl of gazpacho in the middle of the plate, and, honestly, I couldn’t recommend it more highly!

As we ate, I noticed that the booksellers were gathering some spare tables together in the middle of the square. They then ordered up lunch from the little restaurant and all sat together over the next hour or so chatting, sipping wine, and eating the tasty salads.

I mean, is this what they call “quality of life” or what?

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May – the month of blossoms and new growth

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on May 2, 2014| 1 Comment »

In my twelve monthly themes, May is the month of blossoms and new growth.

I wonder what is beginning to blossom in your life?

I wonder what new buds of opportunity are appearing, reaching for the sun?

I wonder what new direction your life will take this year?

DSCN1149 DSCN1152 DSCN1099

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Who are you?

Posted in books, from the living room, from the reading room, life, neuroscience, personal growth, philosophy on May 1, 2014| 1 Comment »

It’s very common for us to say something like “My head is sore”, or “My stomach aches”, or even “I have a rash” when we experience one of those symptoms. So who is it who has this head, stomach or rash? This way of talking confirms our feeling that we “have” a body, but that our bodies are not us. Stop and think about it for a moment. Are you your body?

You might answer that your body is part of you but it isn’t YOU. That the you who has this body is maybe your mind?

But then we do the same thing with our minds too, don’t we? We say “I’ve lost my mind”, or “I’m out of my mind with worry”. Who is the “I” who is referring to this mind?

So your body isn’t you. Your mind isn’t you. But both your mind and your body are a part of you.

The physicalist approach to this claims that this “you” which you experience is an illusion. It’s just something your brain makes up.

But stop and think about that one for a moment. If “you” are an illusion, who is having this illusion?

This is what Mary Midgley is exploring in her latest book, “Are you an illusion?”

I highly recommend you read it. It’s short, and it’s an easy but deeply thought provoking read.

She asks of those who write the books claiming that only the physical is real, and that the subjective sense of self is an illusion

Unkind observers sometimes enquire who, in that case, actually writes the books that expound this doctrine? Do the brain cells really do this work on their own?

She quotes the neuroscientist, Susan Greenfield, saying in an operating theatre, “This was all there was to Sarah, or indeed any of us…..we are but sludgy brains” and Colin Blakemore saying “The human brain is a machine which alone accounts for all our actions” and she responds

Thus if we want to understand why (for instance) Napoleon decided to invade Egypt or Russia, what we need is not – as we might think – some knowledge of the political background and of Napoleon’s state of mind, but simply facts about the state of his brain, which alone can account for his action.

Does the claim that you are only your brain cells, or only your DNA, ring true for you?

The materialist credo rules that thoughts, not being physical, cannot cause physical events. And as we know from every activity of our lives that thoughts actually can and do affect those events – that they are often all too effective, producing practical results in the world even when we wish they wouldn’t – this doctrine puts materialism into a radical conflict with reality.

This is the nub of it for me. These materialist beliefs don’t only not ring true, they don’t adequately explain reality. So why are they so prevalent? One of the authors she draws on to answer this is Iain McGilchrist who has shown us how the left and right hemispheres of the brain work together to produce and integrated understanding from their two very different ways of approaching reality. She quotes him saying

Mind has the characteristics of a process more than of a thing; a becoming, a way of being rather than an entity

This is almost identical to the way Dan Siegel and the Interpersonal Neurobiologists put it – “the mind is a process of regulation of energy and information flow”.

She hits the nail on the head time and again. Let me finish with this one

The bizarre anti-self campaign which is the main subject of this book is surely intended, among other things, to put us off taking notice of everybody’s inner life: to persuade us that this is a trivial, contemptible subject by the simple device of pretending that it isn’t there.

 

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