I graduated in Medicine from The University of Edinburgh back in 1978. During my medical education and training I was taught about the heart. I remember we were taught about the heart muscle, the system of electrical conduction which produced the rhythm of beats, about the heart valves and how to diagnose different valve problems according to the sounds we could hear when we listened through our stethoscopes. I learned how to administer and read an “ECG” – that series of spikes and waves you see on heart monitors and printed out on long strips of paper.
I didn’t learn that there was a neural network around the heart, nor what that might do. Back then if we thought about it all, the heart was a sophisticated pump for keeping the blood flowing around the body, and phrases like “heart felt”, “broken heart”, “having a heart to heart conversation”, and so on, were considered flowery or poetic metaphors.
I know better now.
We now know that there are sophisticated networks of nerve cells around all the hollow organs of the body, but especially around the heart and the gut. We also know that there is a LOT of communication between the heart and the brain, and that, contrary to what we used to believe about those connections, most of the flow of information is from the heart TO the brain, not the other way around.
We’ve also learned that the beating of the heart creates electromagnetic waves which radiate out around the whole body, and can even be detected outside the body. Those rhythmic waves seem to have a role to play in co-ordinating, or “integrating”, a wide range of functions of the whole body, and even connect with, influence and can be influenced by the waves radiating from other peoples’ hearts.
It turns out that those metaphors we use have a biological, neurological, physical basis in the person. We have a certain kind of “heart intelligence” which allows us to “know” and to “communicate” from one heart to another.
Isn’t that amazing?
Since I came to understand all that I’ve realised just how important it is for we humans to have a “heart focus” – to try to connect to others and communicate with others “from the heart”, not just from the rational brain.
We all love to find heart shapes in Nature, don’t we? Like this little flower in today’s image. Or in the bark of a tree, the shape of a stone, or in a work of art. Why is that, do you think?
I think it speaks to the core importance of everything we think of when we use these heart metaphors in our language, in our poetry and in our songs.
After all, who thinks it’s a good idea for someone to act in a “heartless” way?
This is another of my most favourite photos. I took it one day from where I was living back then, just outside of Stirling, in Central Scotland. The largest mountain here, whose peak is hidden behind the dense, black cloud, is Ben Ledi. I’ve taken many, many photos of Ben Ledi because when I lived there and looked out towards it every morning I realised it didn’t look the same two days in a row, and that surprised me. I suppose I thought of mountains as unchanging, or, at best, as changing very, very slowly over millennia (although maybe they formed over extremely short periods of time as the Earth’s crust heaved and shook, and deep layers of ice flowed down from the North Pole).
When I was struck by just how different Ben Ledi appeared to me every single day, I realised that “the mountain” wasn’t just a piece of rock sticking up above the rest of the land. I realised that my experience of looking at the mountain was formed by all the elements…..the rocks, the plant life, the sunlight, the rain, the wind and the clouds. That realisation brought about a new understanding for me about the embedded nature of everything that exists. We don’t see “any thing” in isolation. We see whatever we are looking at in its dynamic, complex web of interactions and relationships with the rest of the world in which it exists. And we see whatever we are looking at within a relationship too – the relationship between me and the mountain – and that as I changed each day, so did my perception of the mountain.
This particular day we had pretty dramatic weather. You can tell from the colour and density of that cloud which fills the top half of the image that it was a day of rain and storms. The cloud base, as you can see, was low. It completely obscured the top of the mountain. But then suddenly the Sun broke through and sent these searchlight beams of intense, vivid light, below the cloud, and yes, even below the mountain……It looked as if the ground itself had caught fire!
How unusual – to see the sunlight BELOW the mountain! To see the sunlight BELOW the heavy black clouds!
That inversion of the normal reminds me of the famous image printed on the classic tarot cards – the image of the “Hanged Man”. I’ve read that some think that image relates to the Norse myth of Odin hanging upside down. Here’s a passage I remember about that myth (from Rachel Pollack’s commentary on Haindl’s paintings)
As an older and wiser version of the God Odin, the Hanged Man sacrifices the Emperor’s desire to dominate the world around him. He reverses his previous beliefs, and so gives up what other people find important: success, power, pride, the ego’s sense of being unique and special and separate from the rest of the universe. He gains understanding, peace, union with the Earth, the joy of life.
It also reminds me of the Leonard Cohen line – “there’s a crack, a crack, in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Finally, as I thought of a title for this post, I came up with “The Sun under the Mountain”, which immediately sounded like a hexagram from the I Ching. I looked it up – “Ken” is the trigram for the mountain, and “Li” is the one for the sun or fire. Ken over Li gives the hexagram number 22 – which goes by the name – “Grace”.
Isn’t that fabulous?
Maybe this image brings up other stories, lines from poems or songs for you. Maybe it evokes other memories or sensations. Does it?
Here’s something which I reckon is part of the daily experience of the vast majority of us…….the weather changes all the time. This weekend, it’s mid Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, but I read on both the UK and French weather forecasts that it will be more like Autumn than Spring today. There’s obviously one of those big weather systems active over Western Europe and its bringing lower temperatures, rain and wind. But yesterday afternoon we sat outside in the garden, in the sun, and chatted with one of our neighbours, and, earlier, we hung out a washing on the line and it dried in no time.
I know that we can hit a run of days where the weather seems much the same, but, mostly, it changes every day, and it changes all day long.
This photo I’m sharing today shows rain falling on the next village across the other side of the vineyards. Sometimes it’s like that. We can see the rain coming, or passing us by. We can see the storm gathering, or the sky clearing. We can see the sun’s rays making their way across the Earth towards us.
My point is……change is an inherent characteristic of reality. We live in a dynamic, lively, changing, evolving universe. Our lives don’t stand still (even when it feels like that). The communities of cells which constitute a human body are alive, growing, dying, developing or being replaced, minute by minute. The human mind doesn’t stand still. Our neurones fire constantly. Even when we are asleep.
How are we going to respond to that?
Get angry, frustrated and upset that reality won’t bend to our Will?
Many spiritual teachers have taught that there lies the root of human suffering.
But it often doesn’t feel good to be constantly reacting to circumstances and bending to the Will of others does it?
Is there an alternative?
I think there is. It’s in adapting. It’s in flexibility combined with integrity. It’s in making the time and space to allow response rather than reaction. It’s in knowing that we have freedom. Freedom to choose, what Victor Frankl, said was the ability to decide how we wanted to respond in any given situation (I strongly recommend his “Man’s Search for Meaning”)
Do you ever decide, at the start of a day, to look out for a certain colour?
It’s an easy practice and these days when most of us have cameras included in the phones we carry around with us everywhere, it’s pretty easy to take photos of whatever we notice.
I enjoy doing that. The decision to look out for a particular colour sets the intention, and heightens awareness, so, once set, I find, I see that colour everywhere.
I don’t take photos of absolutely everything that particular colour that day, because that’s too lacking in discrimination for me, and I like to select my subjects for photographs a bit more mindfully, or deliberately, than that. But once I’ve decided which colour I’m going to look out for I can then turn the practice into a three step exercise.
Step one is to be aware and to notice that colour whenever you come across it.
Step two is to choose to photograph some of what you notice. You don’t need “criteria” for that, just take the photographs intuitively. If you think, I’m going to take a picture of that, just do it.
Step three, at the end of the day, is to browse the photos you’ve taken.
I find that when I do this I live more easily in the present, and that I magnify and multiply my moments of wonder and joy.
How do I decide which colour to look out for? Usually by noticing something at the start of the day……either something in my immediate environment, or one of my photographs which has caught my attention.
This photo is one of my most favourite green photos! I mean, just look at those greens!
Meditation in a huge variety of forms has become incredibly popular in recent years. “Mindfulness” seems to be marketed as the solution to almost everything, perhaps because it has contextualised the original Eastern teachings for a Western, twenty-first century audience, and removed the references to spirituality and belief.
However, I think there’s an equally ancient “classical” practice stretching right back to Greek philosophers. It’s the combination of slowing down and observing.
“Sitting and looking” is one of my favourite “activities”. Since I retired and moved from Scotland to South West France, I have spent many, many more hours outside than at any previous time in my life. Sometimes I’m outside to tend to the garden. I’ve discovered the delights of growing, harvesting and enjoying a wide range of fruits and vegetables, and I get a huge amount of joy from seeing the beauty of different trees, shrubs and flowers. But oftentimes I like to just sit on a chair in the garden and look.
I look up at the blue sky and watch a few buzzards soaring effortlessly on warm air currents swirling so high above me that the birds are just little specks, and their high pitched cries sound far away and near at one and the same time. I look up and see kestrels hovering on a single point in the air, their wings beating so fast I can’t see them, then watching them drop like a stone to the earth when they spot some prey far below them.
On cloudy days I get lost in the ever-changing tableau of characters which I can see in the clouds.
Throughout the year I see the seasonal changes in the long parallel lines of vines stretching from here to the horizon.
Sitting down makes me slow down. It allows me to pause, to take a few deep breaths (without even thinking about my breathing), and to become more present. It allows my awareness to open up and come alive, so that I notice what would otherwise pass me by.
It’s a great, life-enhancing, combination.
Sitting and looking.
I recommend it. (Health warning: too much sitting is bad for you health. Use it in moderation. Movement, walking and other forms of exercise are also necessary!)
I saw this lying on a pine forest floor recently and stopped to take this photograph. I don’t know if this is a kind of moss, or a lichen, or what. It’s the colour of lichen, but the shape of moss, but its structure is more open than I’ve seen in either moss or lichen before. If you know what this is please leave me a message in the Comments section below.
Although my eye was caught by the pale green ball, after taking the photo and looking at it once I got back home, I found that the image was way more attractive than I had even thought when I took the shot……because of the mass of brown pine needles on the forest floor on which this structure is lying.
That took me by surprise, but, then again, it doesn’t surprise me. It took me by surprise because I was focused on just this pale green ball of interlaced fibres. I thought, and still do think, it’s almost like a model of the neural networks which make up our brain. Not that I’m saying I looked at this and thought, oh, look, a little brain! But I looked at it, found it beautiful, found it sparked my curiosity and drew me in, and thought that it was a good example of the complex inter-connectedness which is at the heart of universe.
It doesn’t surprise me to find my pleasure and interest both increase once I notice the ball is lying on a carpet of brown pine needles. Because I have learned over and over again that seeing whatever I am looking at in its contexts and environments pleases me and interests me in equal measure.
I can look at this and because of the pine needles instantly remember my walk in this particular pine forest. I remember the smell of the pine needles, the heat of the sun, the roar of the Atlantic Ocean just metres away. I get an enhanced, lived experience, which is specific to me. But then maybe you can see this too and remember a similar time when you, yourself, wandered through a pine forest. Maybe you also noticed mosses and lichens and enjoyed the scent of the pine needles. Or maybe you’ll decide now that one day you’ll have a walk in pine forest because this photo and these words inspire you.
You see, we all live in this vast, complex inter-connected network, this beautiful Planet Earth, in this mind-boggling Universe. And from the scale of a single pale green ball on a pine forest floor, right up to our web of relationships, to our shared life on this living planet, to the unfathomable depths of the universe stretched out in the night sky above our heads……..it’s all one vast, inter-connected web.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about since this pandemic began is money. Not my own personal finances, but money in society. Since the last big economic crash in 2008 a lot of governments brought in austerity measures because they said things like “there is no magic money tree”, and “we have to balance the budget”. But then once the pandemic took hold all of a sudden there were billions, literally billions more dollars, pounds, euros etc spent….and that huge increase in spending looks set to continue.
What’s happened?
Did somebody find the magic money tree after all?
It was thinking about things like this which led to me to explore a bit of economics and, no, I’m not about to deliver an economics lecture here, and reading a few books hasn’t made me an expert. But I thought I’d just share some of the more useful insights and ideas that I’ve discovered. Maybe I should also say that most of the economists I’ve read who have seriously impressed me are women. People like Kate Raworth, whose “Doughnut Economics” model makes it easy to see how there is a sweet zone between failing to deliver on the needs of human beings, and over-taxing the environment, and so threatening the existence of all life on Earth.
People like Mariana Mazzucato who describes how we can rethink the role of government in society and orientate our decisions around a sense of public purpose.
But I started with Stephanie Kelton, and read her “The Deficit Myth”. This single book turned my thinking about money upside down.
However, all I want to share with you today is to prompt you to ask yourself the question “Where does money come from?”
I took the photo I’ve posted here in Japan many years ago. It was in the grounds of a temple, and it shows lots and lots of coins which people have thrown into the water. We humans have a tendency to do this in many cultures – throwing coins into fountains, into wells, or into ponds, and making a wish. When I look at this photo I realise that I think of money as something physical – either coins, or notes.
However, the truth is that for me, and I suspect for most of you, most money isn’t physical at all any more. I’m retired so I my income is a government pension. The government don’t send me coins and notes each month. They use a keyboard to tell my bank to increase the size of my bank balance. Most of that balance is spent on things like rent, energy and telecoms, and food. Pretty much all of that spending doesn’t involve my handling any coins or notes at all. I set up a regular instruction to my bank, or I use a plastic card at a till, and the number in my bank balance goes down, while the number in the landlord’s bank balance goes up, or the number in the energy company’s bank balance goes up, or…..you get the picture.
Now I didn’t really think about that much till I read Stephanie Kelton’s book. But there has been a huge shift in the world, away from what was called “the gold standard” where the money created by the government was linked to the amount of gold they had their vaults, to what is now termed “Fiat currency”. The dollar and the pound, for example, are “fiat currencies”. Only the issuing government can create that money, and it does so by using a keyboard to change the size of various bank balances.
I used to think the government spent the money they raised – in other words they tax us and use those taxes to spend on Public services etc. But I hadn’t thought it through. Stephanie Kelton makes it clear that it’s the other way around. The government can’t take in tax any money other than the money it has already created. In other words, nobody creates new money apart from the government. Well, if you do, it’s called forgery or fraud!
So, when the government wants to spend some money on, say Covid tests, hospitals, supporting businesses, then it does that by creating money on the Central Bank computers. That’s the magic money tree that seems to have been discovered.
But wait, I thought, you can’t just keep creating more and more money, can you? Well, it seems you can’t. You can keep creating more and more money until society’s resources are fully engaged. Beyond that, inflation occurs. What then? Take some of the excess money out of the economy through taxation is the suggested answer.
Huh! Well, honestly, I had never thought of it that way.
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is that government finances are NOT like family finances. And the big difference is….we can’t print money when we want it, but the government can.
OK, there is an awful lot more to learn and understand about all this, but Stephanie Kelton’s book is a great starter.
Does this interest you?
Maybe not, but it interests me because it seems as clear as clear can be that our current economic and political systems are not working. Covid has exposed our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses and our true deficits. If we don’t address those then this isn’t going to be the last pandemic to wreak havoc on us all.
Here’s a nice little summary of the key points in The Deficit Myth
Honestly, money isn’t something I’ve given much thought to in my life….well, apart from my own family finances that is……but the new ideas of Kate Raworth, Stephanie Kelton and Mariana Mazzucato are a total revelation to me, and they actually make me believe a lot more is possible than I had realised. They give me hope.
My daughter, Amy Palko, who produces a knitting blog on youtube, entitled “The Meaningful Stitch” did a poetry advent in the month of December with one of her online friends from the knitting community, Jackie, of Cady Jax Knits. You can find their videos here –
One of the things they discussed was creating a personal anthology of your favourite poems. I thought that was a great idea and got out this handmade notebook which my wife, Hilary, had created and given to me, and started writing some of my favourite poems in it.
I think it’s important to actually write the poems in, not to print them out from the internet and paste them in, though, if that would work better for you, then go ahead. I find that taking the time to hand write each poem enhances my experience of the poem itself.
I keep this notebook on my desk beside my computer and from time to time I read a poem or two, or I copy in another poem that I really love.
I really recommend this. It’s one of those practices which takes something meaningful and enjoyable – in this case poetry reading – and increases the time and attention you give to the poems you select. In the process you create a unique collection of exactly the “best” poems for you.
If you’ve read a few of my posts on this blog, I’m sure you’ll be aware of how Iain McGilchrist’s thesis on the differences between the left and right cerebral hemispheres. Well, if he’s right, which I think he is, then there is an imbalance for each of us, and for our wider societies, between the approaches, the world views, or the ways of engaging with reality, which each hemisphere offers us. We have become left brain dominant, and it would be much better to use our whole brain more, and re-set the balance, to put the right brain back in its rightful role as “The Master” and use the left brain “Emissary” to do what it does best. Since I came to understand that thesis, I’ve been more aware of trying to support and develop what the right hemisphere can bring to my life.
Well, there are many ways to do that, but I’ll just share three with you here.
The right brain loves novelty and finding connections, so as I practise curiosity and the sense of “émerveillement du quotidien” I’m building up the right hemisphere.
The second thing is music. The right brain relishes music – both creating music and listening to music. I play music a lot. Mostly I listen to music, but I also try to play a bit of piano and guitar from time to time. Music is very personal and what I like, you might not like, but I’ve recently discovered Paradise Radio, a commercial free, internet radio station from the US, and I love, love, love it. You can select between “main mix”, “mellow mix”, “rock mix” or “world mix”. Check it out.
The third thing I’ve identified is poetry. We activate our right hemispheres a lot when we read and write poetry. More so than we do when reading stories, or articles.
So, there are my three daily practices, which I hope lead to development of a more whole brain way of living……curiosity, music and poetry.
There’s a tiny, beautiful little village on the coast about an hour’s drive west from here. One day while wandering down its medieval streets I saw this sign on a door.
It says, (in my translation), restaurant recommended by the Club of those who life a good life. Actually in French it’s much more elegant than that, but I had trouble translating “vivants” – “livers” would seem the obvious word but that looks like an organ in the body! “lifers” on the other hand makes you think of prisoners! “living beings” is closer, but doesn’t feel quite right, so I’ve opted for “those who live a good life”.
I immediately wondered about this “club” and looked it up online later. It seems to be a restaurant recommendation website in France. Perhaps not terribly exciting!
But I loved the name, and it stimulated my imagination.
Philosophers have wrangled with the question “what is a good life?” for hundreds of years, and it’s something which feels simple and obvious, but when you stop to consider it, it seems impossible to pin down.
I also suspect that we might all give different answers to the question. So, I thought I’d pose it for you today –
How would you describe “a good life”?
I was going to add something myself here, but I’ve decided to just leave this as a prompt for now…….for two reasons. Firstly, I think we can all benefit from taking a little time now and again to contemplate this question. It gets us thinking about our values, our beliefs and our desires, and it also challenges us to consider to what extent we are already living a good life, or whether we think that one day we will. If you think you’re already living it, how would you describe it? What makes your life a good one? And if living a good life is something you hope for one day, what do you imagine it will look like? Because if you don’t know what it will look like, you might not recognise it when it arrives!
Just answer this for yourself after reading this, or discuss it with friends or family. Or, if you like you can tell me – either by leaving a Public comment here, or, privately, by emailing me at bobleckridge@gmail.com
Look at this amazing pattern left on the sand by the action of the water after the tide has gone out again at the beach.
When you look at this you know immediately that the sand has been shaped by the water, although, to be honest, I don’t understand how water manages to make such intricate patterns like this on the sand. Maybe somebody does!
There are other striking patterns on the wet sand at the beach, some clearly made by plant material, seaweed I expect, and some obviously from the imprints of shells, some little worm-shaped piles caused by burrowing creatures throwing up the sand behind them, and often many footprints of birds which have run across the beach.
What impresses me most about all these patterns is that they are the traces left by some activities which occurred a little while ago. They are the evidence of the past imprinted on the present. That reminds me of how we are shaped by the events and experiences of our lives. Our encounters with others change us. Our experiences don’t just create memories, they set up patterns of chemical, electrical and cellular response in our bodies.
We can become aware of some of that in bodily changes, from tightenings of muscles, to changes in heart rate and breathing, to sweating and trembling, and so on, usually before we are even aware that we reacting to something.
I spent much of my career working with patients who had chronic, long-standing illnesses, and we could often make some sense of what was going on by teasing out the threads and themes which ran through their stories over many years. It certainly wasn’t always the case, but sometimes the actual disease and its precise location in the body was clearly related to the body’s responses to events or experiences long forgotten.
It’s pretty clear to me that just as the movement of the water shapes the sand in the way you can see in this photo, so do our experiences and relationships shape us. Realising that makes me want to be more aware of my own actions and words. It makes me want to choose to spread constructive, supportive and creative waves in the world. After all, whatever we do, whatever we say or write, has effects far beyond the limits we could imagine.
I welcome constructive criticism and suggestions. I will not, however, tolerate abuse, rudeness or negativity, whether it is directed at me or other people. It has no place here. ANYONE making nasty comments will be banned.
Heroes Not Zombies 