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Archive for the ‘science’ Category

Co-creating reality

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on February 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I took this photo many years ago at a waterfall in Scotland. I’ve long since been fascinated by the interplay between water and rocks in streams, rivers and, especially waterfalls. I suppose in waterfalls the power of the water to sculpt the rocks is at its greatest as the water roars down the hillside.

In this particular photo you can see how the water has smoothed the surface of some of the rocks to the extent that they actually look like water streaming over them. It’s as if the water has fashioned the rock in its own likeness.

One of the other rocks is revealing its multilayered structure in such a way that it, too, resembles, the flow of water, and reminds us of the often hidden depths that lie beneath the surfaces of what we see.

What shape is the water?

That’s a strange question, isn’t it? Because water always seems to assume the shape of whatever contains it. Certainly the rocks, whilst not permanent in their forms, create the boundaries or limits against which the water can flow. When there is no clear, solid container, water evaporates, disappearing into the air, rising upwards to form clouds, or staying close to the earth to make mists and fog. But even then it’s contained within the atmosphere. It doesn’t disappear away out to the rest of the universe (at least not in significant amounts, I don’t think).

So water is the shape of what contains it. But that statement doesn’t quite capture reality does it? It assumes that both the water and the container are passive…..that neither changes the other……but we can see, even in this photo, how the water constantly changes the rock and how the rock constantly changes the water. In fact, that interaction carries on at microscopic levels which we can’t see with the naked eye, as minerals and micro-organisms are exchanged between the water and the rock, changing the actual composition of each moment by moment, year by year, aeon by aeon.

That’s the nature of reality, isn’t it? A constant flow of co-creation. Nothing exists in isolation. Nothing lives outside of everything. Connections, interactions, relationships and co-creation are at the heart of universe. They are the fundamental, inescapable basis of reality.

And that’s both beautiful and wondrous, wouldn’t you agree?

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Life force

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on February 11, 2021| Leave a Comment »

My consulting room at the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital had a glass wall, half of which could slide open to let you step out onto wooden decking and from there into the garden. Each of the five consulting rooms in a row had that same design, and each of them were separated outside by a wooden trellis with clematis and wisteria growing up towards the upper level of the building.

A few years after the hospital opened and the gardens were laid, I noticed what this climber had done to the woodwork of the trellis as it wound its way upwards. I was astonished. I knew that climbers had great powers to reach out, connect, hang on even, but I hadn’t imagined that these plant stalks could become both so thick and so powerful. You can see this one has actually broken the wooden straps in several places.

Of course, I didn’t notice it happening. We’re not that great at noticing the reality of the present moment, are we? But I sure noticed it this day…..still don’t know why….don’t why it was this particular day and not one of surely many others which preceded it where I might have noticed. Oh well, you can see why I use “heroes not zombies” as my blog title, can’t you? We really do pass through life on autopilot, reacting to overt and covert stimuli which move us this way and that, allowing our attention to be grabbed by the loud, the dramatic, and the shocking. Living, but not fully.

It doesn’t have to be like that, does it. We can wake up, become more aware of the here and now, more mindful, more conscious of life and being alive. We can notice when our attention is caught, when our passions are stirred, and we can choose what we want to do with that knowledge. We can write a new story, our own, unique story, with ourselves as the main character……moving from a zombie existence to a hero one.

When I do that I find that the so called “ordinary” day is filled with what seems to me to be quite “extraordinary”. I mean, just look again at this photo. Think of the Life Force, of the drive to exist, to survive, to grow and to thrive which runs through every living being. And look how it overcomes every flimsy structure, every material object, which we humans fashion and build.

I’m sure you’ve noticed something similar in the surprising appearance of a wild flower, or “weed”, pushing its way up through a pavement, cracking apart the tarmac, or concrete.

Isn’t it astonishing, this “Life Force”?

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The singular

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on February 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

This little ice crystal mesmerises me. It’s beautiful. Look at the intricate branching structure of each little bristle of ice. It’s almost like a tiny tree, or, at least a snowy leaf. Look at the way it catches the sunlight and sparkles like a jewel. But maybe the most astonishing thing about it is how it is attached to the iron bar from which it is hanging. Can you see? There is a single icy spike holding the entire structure onto the metal. In an instant you can see that this little piece of frozen water is not only incredibly strong, but that the entire crystal has grown from that single point. Isn’t that amazing?

What I love about something like this is that no matter how much you describe water and its behaviour in cold temperatures, the singular, the actual, the specific, particular ice crystal you encounter takes you beyond the limits of your expectations.

I find that everywhere in life, but, especially so in the practice of Medicine. No matter how much general knowledge I had of diseases, their origins, their life histories, and their likely consequences, I never had enough to know precisely what this individual patient today was experiencing, nor how this disease had arisen in their particular life, nor how their illness would progress. On top of that, no matter how much general knowledge I had of therapeutics, I could not predict, with 100% accuracy, what this individual patient would experience as a result of what I was going to prescribe today.

You might say that sounds like a lot of uncertainty, and I guess it is. A GP’s job, after all, has been described as dependent on his or her ability to cope with, and manage, uncertainty. But there was nothing to despair in there. It was a simple recognition that we have to be humble, because there is always more we don’t know, than there is that we know.

More than that…..it meant, and continues to mean, that the individual can never be encountered, understood and helped as a mere example of the recorded experience of groups. That’s another way of saying that statistics are never sufficient to replace stories. Only this unique, singular human being can tell you what they experiencing, what has happened in their life, what sense they have made of it, and only this unique, singular human being can tell you what effect your treatment has had.

The singular can never be replaced by the averages or “norms”.

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What are you waiting for?

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on February 5, 2021| 3 Comments »

This little flower caught my eye. She’s growing, and flourishing, in a small cavity on a rock face. I’ve zoomed right in to see the flower better, but, take it from me, this was a long way up! Frankly, I was astonished. I mean a seed must have blown in there, or been dropped by a bird, and, goodness knows there must have been precious little soil way up there on a rocky cliff face. And yet….not only did that seed germinate, but it grew right up to an adult stage of life, finding sufficient nutrients from who knows where, and has produced these beautiful yellow flowers at the top of the plant. Not only that, but it seems to have grown to a size which exactly fills the size of the cavity.

The first time I saw this, and every time I look at it, I get thinking about the incredible drive of the Life Force….how Life seeks to exist, express itself, and flourish, in a myriad of forms and in more than imaginable habitats across the surface of this planet. Then I marvel at the capacity of Life to be opportunistic….to make the most of whatever conditions it finds itself in and to thrive.

How often do we procrastinate? How often do we tell ourselves we’ll pursue our dreams, we’ll live the life we want to live, but just not until all the conditions are right? How many of us spend our lives waiting for those right conditions to appear?

I think this little flower teaches us a different lesson. Call it “seize the day” if you like. Call it “make the most of today”. It’s a teaching which says “you already live on this Earth with all the conditions you need to flourish”. It’s a teaching about abundance. A teaching about the underlying benevolent, supportive flow of the universe, which has enabled Life to exist, and continues to supply what it needs to grow and to flourish.

You don’t have to wait. Imagination truly has no limits, and loving attention nurtures growth…..starting with the loving attention of self-care, nurturing the desire to exist, to grow, to express your uniqueness, and to flourish.

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Bridges, mountains and more

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on February 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Many years ago I did a road trip to Skye, and as I travelled up through the Highlands, around the island for a few days, then back down to the Central Belt again, I was stunned again and again by the beauty of the country. There’s no doubt that Scotland is a beautiful land. It isn’t best known for blue skies, sunshine and beaches, but, actually, on the right day, all of that is there. However, it’s always seemed to me it’s easier to find the darker, moodier, and I might even say, richer, atmosphere in Scotland. On that particular road trip I think it rained every day, and I got some of the most beautiful photographs I’ve ever taken.

This image captures so much that delights and inspires me. The first thing I notice is the bridge. It’s a traditional, old, stone, single arch bridge. There are dozens like it in the Highlands, and no two the same. I think it’s beautiful and I’m a big fan of bridges because I think they are the technology we humans invented to allow us to do two of the things closest to our natures – explore and connect.

We are insatiably curious creatures, we humans. Some of us more than other I’ll grant, but I still think the desire to explore and discover is as core to us as the Life Force. In fact, Jaak Paksepp, who is so important to an understanding the fairly new discipline of affective neuroscience – the neurological science of our emotions, identified seven core or “prototype” emotions, of which SEEKING is perhaps THE most basic and important. SEEKING is connected to the basic motivational arousal state of all forms of life, and we humans probably access it, and use it, more than any other other creatures on the planet.

Bridges speak to me of that SEEKING, that desire to discover what lies on the other bank of the river, what lies on the slopes of the opposite hillside.

They also inspire me to think of that equally strong drive which is central to our being – connecting. Iain McGilchrist, with his brilliant and detailed analysis of the human brain, shows us how the two halves of the cerebral hemisphere engage with the world in distinctly different ways. The right hemisphere is especially interested in making and exploring connections. Just stop to ponder for a moment – absolutely everything we encounter, everything we experience, everything we think, we connect to whatever else we know and imagine. It’s impossible for us to really consider anything at all as utterly and completely isolated from everything else. We are connection-driven creatures.

But there’s more than a bridge in this photo. There is a river too, which runs under the bridge, and this particular river has very stony banks. Stony banks with small shrubs and bushes growing in it. Rivers never stay the same. The water which flows down from the mountains doesn’t follow the exact same path every day. Some times the river will swell and all those stones will be hidden. Other times it will reduce to a trickling stream revealing vast stony banks. I love the river as a symbol of constant flow and constant change.

There are the mountains too. Tall peaks, so tall here, that the cloud base is hiding their higher regions. I love mountains. They inspire me to remember times I’ve climbed such hills in the past, struggling to get to the top, then finding myself utterly filled with delight at the views laid out before me once I get there (being careful not to go hill climbing on a day like that shown in this photo!) They inspire me too to think of the old philosophical practice of “the view from on high” – how helpful it is to stand back from the busy cluttered flow of the everyday, ascend to a height, and contemplate the bigger picture, change your perspective, and see how life changes as a result.

And then there are the clouds – clouds which hide tall mountains, clouds which dissolve into rain which then trickles down the hillsides to form the rivers which all run off to the sea again. Clouds which merge seemlessly with mists here – hiding trees, rocks and bushes, soaking them all as they pass on by. Mists which drift across the face of the glen like ghosts of clans from the distant past. Yes, I find that mists stimulate my imagination. They lead me to contemplate the invisible, and the traces of the past which still soak the present, the lives from the past which are still with us, carried by us in our genes, our memories and our stories.

Really, I can get a lot of enjoyment out of a scene like this. This is what I mean by “rich” experience, multi-layered, entangled, connected, inspiring……

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Where does all the energy come from?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, science on January 29, 2021| 2 Comments »

This glowing leaf reminds me that all the energy which supports every single life on this planet comes from the Sun. We don’t get energy from anywhere else. Plants are much better at capturing the Sun’s energy than we animals are. They have chlorophyll in their cells and can turn sunlight directly into sugars to sustain them and to use to turn the carbon dioxide and water which they capture into the structures of their stalks, leaves and flowers. We humans, like other animals, have to eat something which has already done this part of the work – ie plants – or other animals further up the food chain which have taken the energy from plants, and even other animals by consuming them.

It does make me realise that the most direct way for us to get the energy we need to stay alive, healthy and growing, is to eat plants. Yeah, we can eat animals too, but, for the most part, that’s a more indirect and expensive way to get the energy we need.

I wonder if we are anywhere near making the kinds of devices which capture the Sun’s energy directly, the way that plants do it? Imagine if that was our primary source to meet ALL of our energy needs? No more need for carbon based fuels, nuclear power plants and so on. Wouldn’t that be good?

That idea is typical of a whole way of approaching new technologies – it’s called “biomimetics” – learning how Nature does something, then seeing if we can invent a way to either do the same, or to develop technologies using the same principles. I think that’s one of the most exciting potential routes forward for we humans. After all, Nature works on the basis of using all the possible connections, and never producing any waste. The lessons of millennia of evolution are lessons which are surely worth learning….

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Flow

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on January 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

For me, this is a photo of flow. It’s a still image, and you might say if I wanted to illustrate flow I’d be better sharing a video but I like the juxtaposition of stillness and movement which this single frame shows us.

There’s a lot of advice to live in the present moment, to “be here now”, to draw your attention into the current time and space. I know, I’ve shared such advice many times. I get the value of it. But there’s a paradox at its heart which we often ignore.

Life, time, and reality, is not divided into neat frames. It doesn’t exist as a series of isolated, bounded, limited, even disconnected pieces. So when we stop to think about what we actually mean by “the present” or even “this moment”, it rapidly becomes hard to pin down. Does the present moment last for a minute? Does it last a few seconds? Does it last only for a fraction of a second? Isn’t it the case that the very act of reflecting on the present turns into a reflection on the past……ok, maybe the immediate, very close, past, but the past, all the same. And where does the future come from? If it isn’t sitting waiting for us like the next train station along the line (and I don’t think it is), if it is, rather, “emergent”, that is created out of the present moment, then, again, as we stop to reflect on this moment, we pretty quickly find it’s being changed by the future unfolding before our very eyes.

No, the truth is that life, time and reality are more like flow than frames.

I’ve wondered about that too when looking at a river. Exactly what is a river? If it’s the water in it then that water is constantly flowing right by. It doesn’t stay. If it stayed, it wouldn’t be a river, it’d be a stagnant pond. (actually even stagnant ponds don’t stay the same!) So is it the course of the flow of the water? In other words the actual path which the water traces out? The banks of the river? Not so sure about that either, because if you look at old maps, or even some aerial photographs, you can see that the so-called “same” river changes its shape and direction continuously, sometimes in small ways, and at other times in starkly dramatic ones!

The Italian physicist, Carlo Rovelli, says that

A stone is a prototypical “thing”: we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an “event.” It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.

In other words, the way out of this dilemma is not by trying to pint down our experience, label it a and stuff it into separate boxes. Instead, we just need to think of the world being made up of “networks of kisses”. Life is “made” of “events”.

Events are happenings. The don’t have terribly easy start and finish points, and even those points which we can see turn out to be inextricably bound up in networks of other relationships and happenings. Nothing exists in isolation.

I like this view of life. I like the practice of becoming more aware in the present by becoming more aware of the flows of energy, information and forms around me. I like the focus on “becoming not being” – as you’ll see at the top of the blog.

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Lovingly connected

Posted in creativity, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on January 26, 2021| 1 Comment »

When I came across these trees in a forest I was stopped in my tracks. The forest was quite a wild one, and I don’t think these two trees were grafted together artificially. What I mean is I don’t think there was a human hand involved. Which makes it all the more remarkable, because it looks like these two trees got really close to each other, starting kissing and never stopped!

Whatever the mechanisms involved I just love this image. It speaks to me of that most essential natural drive – to connect…..not just connect, but connect lovingly.

There is a key phenomenon which underpins all of evolution. No, not competition, which is what you’d think from the dominant orthodox view. Competition plays a role, but without integration, there would be nothing….no growth, no development, no evolution. Integration is the creation of mutually beneficial bonds between well differentiated parts.

Let me say that again. Integration is the creation of mutually beneficial bonds between well differentiated parts.

How did Life progress from single celled existence to the vast, diverse, web of complex multicellular organisms? Only by the individual elements getting together to make bonds which would be beneficial to both.

This drive towards integration is a loving drive.

It’s a movement based on “bienveillance” – on meaning and/or wishing well. It’s a drive to support and be supported, to nurture and be nurtured, to love and be loved.

Without these loving connections, we simply wouldn’t exist. Maybe it’s time to put competition into its proper place…..and that’s not THE most important place. I think we have to learn to live by loving instead of dominating, by co-creating rather than trying to come first. If we are going to compete let’s put that competition into the context of improvement…..of supporting all of us to grow, to become stronger, more resilient, to improve. Not to destroy, dominate, control, and grab the most for ourselves at the expense of the wellbeing of others. That old way just isn’t working.

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The art which shapes our lives

Posted in art, creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on January 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Can you think of any works of art which changed you? Any which changed your worldview? Changed how you understand yourself, your life, your world?

I was reading about Stendhal Syndrome the other day, which is the phenomenon of overwhelming emotions and physical symptoms experienced by some people in front of particular forms of art. Stendhal described it in relation to his visit to the Basilica of Santa Croce –

I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty … I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations … Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call ‘nerves’. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.

What grabbed me about this concept is how art can have a profound impact on us – not just on the way we think, the emotions we feel, but in changing our inner physical reality…..speeding up the heart, releasing a whole cascade of different hormones, causing us to feel a little breathless, a little light headed, to give us butterflies in the stomach, to make us weak at the knees…….but it actually does something else too….

Every experience we have sets off patterns of activity in the neurones in the brain. In neuroscience there is a phrase used which is “what fires together, wires together”. That’s a description of how these patterns of activity, when repeated, actually change the shape of the microstructures of the brain. Art, literally, can sculpt our brains. No wonder it can change us!

Well, this image here is of Anthony Gormley’s work entitled “The Field”. I saw this for the first time in Inverleith House, in the middle of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. I stood in the doorway and looked at these thousands of little creatures, all looking up at me, all the same. Then, as I looked a little more closely I realised that each and every model was different. Not only were they not all the same, but every one of them was unique.

That’s it, I thought! This is the paradox at the heart of my work as a doctor. Every single patient who I meet has some characteristics, some symptoms, some signs of change in their body, in common with other patients I’ve met before. That’s why I needed to learn anatomy, physiology, pathology, the natural history of disease. That’s why I had to learn how to make a diagnosis. But, at the very same time, every single patient who I meet is unique. Every single patient has a story to tell me which I’ve never heard before because nobody has lived an identical life to them. The diagnosis of the “pathology” or “disease” isn’t enough. I need to understand it in the context of a life story, and a present life. What exactly is this person, today, experiencing? How has this present experience and change come about? What sense do they make of this “illness”? What does this “illness” mean to them, mean in their life, mean to the others in their life?

Well, that became the core of my understanding of the Practice of Medicine.

But it went further than that, because I realised, just as quickly, that this insight wasn’t relevant only to my work as a doctor. This is the essence of what it is to be a human being. We share a lot, you and I. But we are also unique, you and I. We can’t be reduced to a single characteristic, demographic, or “data set”, but we can be gathered into those groups…..we can find some common values, beliefs, desires in those features and factors. But we can never, ever, stop there. We can never rest in our understanding of a person by summing up their data, by figuring out what group we want to put them into. We have to discover the individual. What makes this particular person different? What is distinct and different about this person’s life story?

Even as I write this today, I find this excites me. It delights me. It moves me. It activates my thinking, my feelings, even my body.

Art really can be that powerful.

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Attraction/repulsion/connections

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on January 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I managed a trip to the coast this week, for the first time in months. Walking along the sandy beach listening to the sound of the breaking waves and breathing the salty, fresh air, was a real tonic.

There were hardly any other people on the beach, and that particular beach is so big that you can have a couple of hundred people on it and it still feels almost deserted.

One of the things a lot of us like to do at a beach is to look for shells, driftwood, and whatever else the sea might have thrown up onto the sand. But something else which always catches my attention is a pattern. I love to see the patterns left in the sand by creatures who have moved across it, trails left by rivulets of water as they run back to the ocean, impressions imprinted by seaweed and shoes……you name it.

This photo today shows you one of the patterns I stumbled across. Actually there are three elements on this sandy canvas. There is the little piece of red seaweed, demonstrating the classic branching pattern of trees, plants, our lungs, our blood vessels, the way streams gather together to make rivers…..and so on. Then opposite that are the marks left by what? Water trickling away back towards the ocean? Seaweed which has been washed away? I’m not sure. Actually, when I look at it in this photo, that pattern is strangely convex. It seems to be sticking out of the sand. But when I was there it looked convex, grooves imprinted into the sand. The third element is the trace of a shoe. Someone before me stood here. Perhaps. Stood and looked at this very pattern. Or else they were just walking by and only by chance did they miss standing on the patterns in the sand. (I think it’s the former because I looked and couldn’t see other prints to the right of the pattern, so I saw no evidence that someone had just walked right through it. Besides, I like to think that someone else also experienced that “stopped in your tracks” effect of this piece of natural sand art!)

It’s the first two elements which really interest me. There is a sort of symmetry between them. There is an echo, a mirroring almost, between the red seaweed and the tracings on the sand. The similarity is so striking to me that I can even imagine that the sand and the seaweed are reaching out towards each other…..stretching out long thin fingers to almost touch each other.

I see this and I think “attraction”. Perhaps the most basic characteristic of the universe. There is a universal movement of elements, particles, and objects towards each other….to connect, form bonds, make relationships, to become attached to each other.

Curiosity is one of my strongest features, and what is curiosity other than an attraction to whatever it encounters? A drive to get closer, to understand, to connect, to make a bond?

Yes, I know, some of you will be thinking, hey, wait a minute, what about repulsion? Because don’t a lot of things repel each other, rather than attract each other? That’s true, repulsion too, is a fundamental characteristic of the universe. In fact you could say there’s a dynamic, constant balance between attraction and repulsion, which lies at the art of all the phenomena of the universe. Everything that exits is held in an ever changing, constantly moving tension between attraction and repulsion.

But if you stand back a little from that ongoing dance of attraction and repulsion, you can see what holds both of those opposites together…..a relationship. It’s the fact that they are connected which enables the interaction. Or the fact that they interact which enables the connection!

Either way, here it is, right in front of us, in the sand……..the essential nature of reality…….connections.

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