Archive
MONDAY’S POEM
I wrote this in keeping with this concept I explored Friday: that our brain is a repository for not only all past events but all future potential as well!
Time Machine
What if we could travel
Back in time,
Access all of history,
Learn from their stories?
What if we could travel
Far ahead,
See all that we become,
Learn from their stories?
Would we change a thing from them
Or learn to forgive?
Would we change a thing for them
Or forgive ourselves?
We are that time machine
Holding all of history,
Holding precious seeds of then.
Our human brain can travel far:
Back and forth and home again.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Our Brain May Be a Record of the Future
I have been reading Dr. Joe Dispenza’s first book, Evolve Your Brain, The Science of Changing Your Mind, with great enthusiasm since Rosemary’s encounter with him two weeks ago. And my blog themes, apart from Rosemary’s posts that I share here, have been revolving around this whole notion of Change Your Mind to Change Your Life!
I have also been writing about creating your future, and bringing it into the present, a bit of a twist on the whole Secret/Manifestation/Law of Attraction theme. Recall that I wrote earlier in the year that my “visitors from the future” spoke of time and the importance of pulling future strength, character, structure into the now in order to create the future. And I wrote how time seems to behave like an echo-chamber so we need to have a vision of the future in order to manifest what we are looking for in life, even now!
Then I came across this from Dispenza as he writes about the incredible amount of unused brain capacity we humans have: “Do these latent neural nets represent undiscovered regions of human potential? Could selection turn on these latent areas? Might these neural areas be activated, developed, and refined, given the proper knowledge and instruction? Could we occupy or activate these areas so that we can reach a new, greater level of mind? If so, we could be looking at our evolutionary future, and our brain may be a record of that future, not just the past.”
I love this notion that our brains may be a record of the future! It is exactly in line with the notion of time being circular and always present right now. The future is now! And it is recorded in our brains, in those latent neural networks just resting there ready to be turned on!
This concept comes with incredible responsibility and power. Both Rosemary and I have been writing how we have to be very careful with our thoughts! Thoughts become things, right? And thoughts become the future for us! Every new thought we have fires up a new set of neuron connections; a new neural network is established. And if one such thought extends into some latent region to kick off a whole cascade of network connections then we may be recreating ourselves for the future!
The more I look at this, read about it and think about it we are future creatures in the making. We no longer have to wait for the Darwinian evolutionary process of ponderous natural selection to create the New Human. We are constantly becoming the New Human as we generate new thoughts and those thoughts get laid down as new network pathways through the uncharted territories of our latent mass of neurons!
Humans seem to have evolved much faster than most species. This has been a criticism of evolutionary theory and feeds the notion of “divine creationism.” But what if our extra brain capacity was the latest evolutionary driver that sped the selection process beyond the pre-consciousness rate? And once consciousness is achieved it seems there is a built-in reinforcing feedback loop to further accelerate the process. For example our tool making leveraged our survival odds. Better tools increased the survival rate and set up new neural pathways which expanded our brain capacity. Our consciousness, capacity for memory, language, dexterity, all fed this loop to continue to extend our neural nets beyond any creature before us.
And we are still evolving. New thoughts, concepts, theories, discoveries, explorations, all take us into the future. Even bad ideas may open up new connections that may trigger something good. And what about art, music, songs, poetry, stories? Might these also be keys to unlock these “undiscovered regions” that Dispenza addresses?
Much has been written about our huge brain capacity and potential compared to what we use. What if we could put even a small portion of it to good use in our lives? What if we found the key to unlock this treasure? Could it be the door to our “evolutionary future”?
I’m planning to continue this exploration, find the key, change my mind and create my future! How about you?
Is Your Life Reflecting Your Values? — Richard’s Commentary
Rosemary always asks these pointed and difficult questions! Yes, I know they are good for me to reflect on, to answer, truthfully, for myself. And I actually thought this one would be reasonably easy for me to reply to and write this commentary. Then I took a second look!
A couple of years ago I did an exercise to clarify my values, to align them with my thinking, my philosophy. I made a list and prioritized it. I took a deep dive into this analysis, writing at length about these values I had come up with, what they mean to me and how I live by them. At the end of much thought I distilled the set of values down to two key ones: Practice and Love. In fact I even drew a diagram, a schematic to relate these two primal values: Practice –> Love.
No, this doesn’t mean my practices lead to love and it doesn’t mean if I practice well enough I will learn love. Maybe these meanings are overlays here, but these are two distinct values for me. I truly value that I am able to practice my various approaches to live a conscious life. Meditation, yoga, qigong, pages, poetry, … and any other consciousness raising practice that comes along that has potential for me is a key value. And how much more can I say about Love? Self, family, friends, community, humanity, life, Planet Earth, Nature, food, wine, beer making, wow…so much to love in life! And, clearly there is a relationship between practice and love. I love my practices. My practices help me better understand this whole sense of Love. Love improves my practices. It is complex and I can’t say that I even fully understand it when I write, and I often do: Practice –> Love.
But Rosemary’s question goes deeper here. Yes, she asks us to review our values, but more importantly to review our lives as they reflect those values we reaffirm! This is the key analysis, the driving question.
And I’ve spent the last several days, as part of our retreat weekend, reviewing and refining my answer. My answer initially is “no.” Oh sure, I’m doing a lot of practice, and I’m pleased with this. I also love: I am partnered with the love of my life. I am part of a loving family. My kids really do love me (at least they’ve done an awesome job of showing it!). But there’s a deeper level here I am reaching toward.
My exploration begins with the word “unconditional.” This is the quality of Love I’m reaching to attain. And this would then truly be the goal of Practice –> Love, my core values. I am not practicing unconditional love at every opportunity and therefore, my life is not reflecting this value.
That said I am working on it. This is my new level of Practice I’m striving to achieve. I suspect it is a life-long pursuit! But I have begun. Last evening, after Rosemary and I had returned from our retreat, our daughter stated, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that she had been craving pancakes for breakfast and would I please get up to make her some next morning! Hmmm, on Wednesdays she leaves for work at 7:15; hey, I’m retired, and while I am working harder than ever before and enjoying it a whole lot more, my hours don’t include 7:15 am! I did not commit! But this morning I was awake at 6:30, wanting more sleep. I debated with myself for about 30 seconds, and then asked “what would I do if I held the value of unconditional love? Yeah, you guessed it; I got up and fixed daughter and two grandsons pancakes (two different kinds). And the surprise and smiles were well worth the few extra winks!
With this good experience as a launch point I have been challenging myself to come from unconditional love all day. I’ve failed multiple times! I had several errands to run which meant driving and encountering other drivers; always a stumbling block for me to keep my cool while driving, but at least I continued to pull myself back to my core value. I’m practicing!
How are you practicing your values this year?
Monday’s Poem: Retreat Time (Renewal)
Rosemary and I are away for a long weekend retreat. We are assessing values, making plans, adjusting and transforming. In anticipation of this activity I wrote this:
Retreat Time
(Renewal)
Deep Winter, cold:
Withdraw, pull in,
Retain, restrain;
Inside is warm.
Quiet time, ease:
Relax, go in,
Let go, let god;
Practice presence.
Retreat time, now:
Visions flow in,
Hear, smell, taste, touch.
New Mind, new you!
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Mind over Matter
Rosemary attended a LiveStream event with Joe Dispenza last week. She was very impressed and is now committed to Breaking The Habit of Being Herself: How to Lose Her Mind and Create a New One to paraphrase the title of his latest book. This is something right up her alley if you have been following The Scientific Mystic for any length of time. She loves the new brain science that is emerging and meshing so excitingly with quantum science. Of course she has been evolving her brain for as long as I have known her! We are both explorers and open to the unfolding wonderment of discoveries and advancements on our paths together.
In her excitement about Dr. Dispenza’s presentation her natural response is to order books! Yes, we already have both of them (we are unrepentant collectors of books!). And as is my response I immediately absconded with his first book: Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind (she already got this material through the webinar, right?). And now I’m plowing right through it; I do have to keep pace with Rosemary to be sure I still love this new person she is becoming! Oh, and while I’m at it I had better “create a new mind” for myself so that there’s a better chance she’ll love me back!
Seriously this is all good stuff and right in line with what Rosemary has been writing about and what I’ve been responding to after crossing the threshold of 2012 and into the new territory of the Transformation of 2013. For some of you Dispenza may not offer a lot of new material in his books, but it is presented in a very accessible way and backed up with wonderful stories.
The essence of this work is, in fact, Mind over Matter (Mom) – and yes, my Mom did say this to me a lot. In yesterday’s post I quoted Mike Dooley: “Thought becomes things” and other authors, including Rosemary: “Thoughts are things.” We certainly can all agree that thoughts are energy, and Einstein clearly knew energy and matter are tightly bound. Our thoughts are incredibly powerful energy sources. And just as energy is preserved, never lost, so too our thoughts have lasting effect, both on ourselves and others who may be the recipients of our projected thoughts!
Rosemary’s admonitions, “be careful what you think” and “think new thoughts for 2013” are certainly worth attention. And this attention comes from the meta-mind I wrote about in yesterday’s post. Go meta; monitor your thoughts; just practice this awareness as a first step. There is no judgment required here, only assessment, conscious observance of the thoughts that run through your mind and conscious recall that these thoughts are energy and become things!
When we get a firm grasp on the characteristics of our thoughts and this practiced ability to monitor them with our meta-mind, we can then begin to consider their value, whether they are supporting the life we want to live, whether they are helping us, if they are helping others, and, in general, if they tend to be positive or negative (here I might rather say “yin or yang” to keep the judgment out of the evaluation.)
And when we have a good grasp on our thoughts we can then begin to make choices on how we want to think. And this is where MoM (Mind over Matter) comes in. Our higher intelligence as humans gives us the freedom of choice. And through the highest form of that intelligence, our higher or meta-mind, we can sift through all the possible choices open to us and decide consciously which thoughts manifest the life we want for ourselves. And this is not to deny obstacles, other matter (even other people’s thoughts!) out in our pathway, that may disrupt our journey. These are lessons; they are opportunities to refine the choices, or even change them if necessary to learn what we are here to learn. And this is when mind over matter becomes most powerful. Not only are we free to choose, we are free to continue in that choice, despite all odds and obstacles, or we are free to re-choose and refine the very vector of our life-story!
Rosemary and I are constantly refining our stories. It’s an exciting trip! And we know we can always trust that our minds are powerful enough to overcome all matter.
And so is yours!
Thanks, MoM!
“Think New Thoughts for 2013” – Richard’s Commentary
“Thoughts become things” according to Mike Dooley. They are things according to many current authors linking quantum fields and our brains (or should I say “minds”?). Our thoughts are certainly energy that is detectable, measurable and effective! The so called “new age” construct that we create our own reality through how we think and act, imagine and project our thoughts, ideas, visions into the world is becoming main stream science for those who are open and willing to explore these not-necessarily-self-evident concepts.
Then whether we believe this approach or not would seem not to matter; it’s not a matter of faith but a matter of science. We don’t believe in gravity; it’s a fact that objects near the earth respond to a force by falling to the earth. “Thoughts are things” is not a belief system but as real as gravity. There’s a lot of empirical evidence to back this up.
Therefore we really do have to be very aware of our thoughts, to monitor them, to assess and characterize them and to channel them in the direction we choose if we want to live a certain way. And this is particularly true if we want to change, improve the way we are living – evolve!
The way I look at this we need to be of “two minds.” We need our “active mind” to get us through the day. Part of this mind keeps us alive, running our physical bodies and responding to external stimulations as they pop up. And part of this mind is making decisions on a myriad of inputs; some decisions are almost automatic, based on habits and some are actual choices we are motivated to make based on priorities and plans. Then there is the second mind, the observer mind that assesses our life from another level. This could be called the “meta-mind” because it operates at the meta-level lifting out of the routine operations to passively monitor how we are doing. This could also be called the “mindful mind.”
Another common expression these days is “change your mind and change your life.” This could be the corollary to “thoughts become things.” These are easily expressed phrases, quickly becoming platitudes. But underlying their seemingly obvious simplicity things get a bit dicey. How many of you are sticking to your resolutions for 2013? That mind that runs on autopilot and habit consumes a huge percentage of our waking mental activity. It is not until we begin to assess how we are spending this “mind time” that we realize how much thought-energy is wasted. Don’t feel bad if you are already falling short on those resolutions. The routines you were living through in 2012, while not “hard-wired” into your brain, are a set of well worn pathways through neural networks laid down years ago. They are difficult to rewire!
The endless loops that play and replay in our minds are wasted energy. The knee-jerk emotional energy we expend on all the little, and sometimes big, annoyances in our lives is pretty much wasted – this emotional energy seldom accomplishes anything!
This is where the second, meta-mind comes in. We cannot change our minds, change our habits, change our responses unless we monitor, assess and evaluate the rightness and usefulness of those responses in the first place, when they occur.
A perfect example happened to me today. I was practicing qigong. My meta-mind should have been in high-gear, right? I was present, mindful, deeply into the practice. There were some people in the neighbor’s backyard talking and I could ignore them. Then our Lhasa Apso, Tara, came on the scene. At first she was attentive but quiet. Then as she detected the outside disturbance she let out a piercing bark. I almost jumped out of my skin! Then I scolded her for disrupting my practice. It took me several moments to re-collect myself and get back in my rhythm. Later as I was reviewing this I realized my reaction was not only out of habit but also unfair. Tara’s breed is from Tibet where Lhasas were raised as temple watchdogs. Their job was to alert meditating monks and masters if there was an intrusion into the monastery! Well, Tara was doing exactly what she was bred and raised to do! And she doesn’t have a meta-mind (at least as far as I can tell) so I had no right or reason to scold her! I’m the one with the meta-mind but it didn’t wake up until after my unfairness.
Exercising this meta-mind is no easy thing. This is why it is called “practice.” And it is through this practice that we can begin to “think new thoughts.”
How’s your 2013 practice coming along?
Monday’s Poem: Seed of the New Human
Seed of the New Human
The seed holds the infinite,
All future generations of
Its kind within its
Hard shell.
The hard shell must burst
To give way to the sprout,
The shoot, the stalk, the
Leaves and flowers and seeds.
The brain holds the infinite,
All future thoughts and
Possibilities within the
Neural nets of habit.
Old patterns must burst
To give way to the thought,
The path, the net, the
Impossible, the New Human.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
PS: To start 2013 off with incredible guidance from The Divine Feminine you can get the 8 recordings Rosemary made at the end of 2012 during her Wisdom of the Week (WOW) calls.Get them here.
Yoga and Diet
I worked with a new yoga teacher tonight using a style unfamiliar to me. This teacher, (whom I’ve known for 30 years!) has been studying, practicing and teaching Svaroopa® Yoga for the past nine years. He is a gentle teacher and the yoga is a somehow gentle and at the same time strenuous approach to “strengthening the core” and aligning the spine. And the real result is a “stilling of the mind” – the goal of any yoga and certainly one of the reasons I am interested in continuing to study this style and approach.
I have practiced yoga off and on for more than 30 years. And I have been more disciplined recently working through a morning routine which also includes Qigong. These practices are enjoyable; I am feeling good about the stretching of my sometimes tight body and the easy motions through the Qi-field as I move through the 5-element form of qigong. So, why a new practice?
Do you ever feel stuck in a routine? Do you sometimes wish things would change, that something new would come in to shake things up? Or maybe you are reaching to take a next, deeper step. I’m feeling like this at the beginning of 2013; and this year is all about the process of the transformation, right? How do we expect to transform by sticking with our customary routines?
I may have found a practice that is going to take me deeper. Even in this first introduction I felt my body release, relax and go deep. More importantly, I felt my mind quiet. I don’t think I have experienced such a rapid alignment of body and mind into that space of peace and silence since I was first initiated into TM (transcendental meditation) in 1969!
And here’s where diet comes in and links back to my post yesterday about that mirror my vegan friends hold up for me!
Before my class tonight Rosemary and I had a quick bite, early dinner, at a Chinese bistro. One of my favorite dishes there is a spicy Korean dish that I usually get with beef. True to form I ordered that about two hours before class. And it was delicious. I didn’t even finish the serving, packing up the last bit for a snack later, maybe after yoga. On our way home I remarked to Rosemary that I had thought to eat light, remain vegan for the whole day leading up to this new class. But habit tripped me up as I ordered my usual.
And it was OK. But I did wonder as I relaxed into the asanas if I could have released even more if my early dinner had been lighter. Next week I’ll be more conscious of my food intake before class!
But is it only before class and other similar activities that I’ll be “more conscious”? Isn’t my goal in life to grow in consciousness at all times? Isn’t this the goal for humanity? That mirror is reflecting some serious thought-forms that are beginning to press back, hard.
Rosemary and I have discussed vegetarianism over many of our 40 years of knowing one another. We have both curtailed our meat intake but we have not eliminated it; and we both enjoy a moderate level of dairy. Rosemary, as an incredible intuitive, looks for the “light content” in the food she prepares and eats. If I take this literally I would choose foods as close to the sunlight as possible. This would mean eating a lot of green vegetables, right? And I do love the greens! But isn’t grass-fed beef only one step removed from the sunlight of green grass?
My dilemma remains. I am not ready to go vegan. But I am certainly thinking about it. I have a lot to think about!
I do know I like Svaroopa Yoga. And I do know that I can go deeper in that practice if my digestive tract is clearer and lighter. So, at least one day a week I’ll be vegan.
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: “The I’s Have It” – Richard’s Commentary
Speaking of taking care of yourself first so you have the energy and resources to serve others, I’ve been thinking a lot about veganism and vegetarianism lately. I know a number of people who are and have been for years. In fact my son has been mostly vegetarian since his college days after reading “The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.”
And recently I have begun to know people who are not only very strict in their discipline around a vegan diet but are also strong advocates of such, recommending it as a way to eat to save ourselves and the planet in the process. In fact some folks become so enthusiastic about their lifestyle and dietary choices that they almost become zealots, fundamentalists in their beliefs and political views on the subject.
I could say that some people even push my buttons on this subject. And I ask myself, “what are they mirroring for me that I need to examine closely?”
Examining this question took me all the way back to my childhood. I grew up on a small family farm in Wisconsin; and yes, it was a dairy farm. But we raised pigs, chickens, and sheep as well. For the most part we were a self-sufficient farm growing and raising much of our own food. Milk was the primary cash commodity and it all, but what we saved out for our personal use, went to a local factory that made cheese. Everything was pretty local in those days. We traded the eggs to the local grocery store for credit toward the things we didn’t raise or grow ourselves. We ate the extra roosters. We ate our own meat from pigs and steers we raised. So, I grew up with a lot of meat, milk, cheese, eggs; and when the local hunters helped thin out deer herds during hunting season we had venison as well.
I look back on this childhood with a great deal of fondness; I feel blessed to have been raised in the country with what then would have been the nearest thing to non-GMO, organic food we could have had from any source at any price – and it came from our “back-yard”!. We knew exactly where it all came from and what went into it.
Fast-forward about 60 years and it is hard to believe how things have changed! While some of the family farm remains right there in Wisconsin where I left it, much of the land has been sold to a “giant farm” following the trend everywhere to big-agri-business; the family farms of my youth are mostly gone. And I now live on the east coast with just enough garden for a few tomato plants. The nearest thing to small farming is the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) approach we have supported for the past few years. At least this way we are sourcing some of our produce locally; it’s fresh and organic and supporting a healthy way of life and a healthy planet!
My diet has changed too: for several years I have made my breakfasts and lunches in my Vitamix “super-blender” by creating a concoction of nuts, seeds, fruit and vegetables; it’s all raw, as organic as I can find and it certainly qualities as vegan. I have lost a bit of excess weight, very gradually, while on this regimen, I have lots of energy, feel great and I believe I’m pretty healthy. And for dinner I often have a meat dish. I love cheese (here I don’t think I had a chance since from childhood I had more milk in my veins than blood!). And, while I’ve given up on chicken in my diet I still enjoy, now and then, a bacon-and-egg breakfast on a random weekend.
I am far from vegetarian, let alone vegan! And I am not sure I ever want or need to become a strict anything. I tend to avoid becoming a zealot about things in life.
That said I have asked myself if I need to look more closely into this mirror held up to me by those who are more zealous! Are we on an evolutionary path toward a meatless diet? Will this path, in part, be driven by realities of limited resources and over-pollution by the current approach by big-agri-business? Are we killing ourselves with GMOs? Can we rely on science and technology to continuously increase production of already strained resources?
And the real nagging question, because I want to think of myself as an evolutionary and cultural creative: “Is the New Human vegan?” I’d love to have your thoughts.
Monday’s Poem; and the I Ching for the Month
I have two offerings for today to start your week and your “moonth” as the New Moon from this past Friday begins to swell into our consciousness. First Monday’s Poem:
I wrote this as a reminder of three important virtues I want to hold firmly in mind as I work to transform my too often negative and troublesome emotions to these virtues to lift my consciousness and grow a healthier attitude.
Love, Forgiveness, Gratitude
Three acts for 2013:
Love, where it all begins
And ends.
The circle of everything
Turns with the tides
As the Moon loves down.
Forgiveness, in the middle,
The hinge.
It all turns on this act
Swinging round and round
As a gateless gate for passage.
Gratitude, the end,
No end.
Turning about the center
Where it all rests
As we give thanks and praise.
Love, Forgiveness, Gratitude:
Grace.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
The I Ching Gua I cast for the next four weeks, the last month before the Chinese New Year, February 10, is an interesting one. Using my yarrow stalks I cast five yin yao, all 8s, before I cast the final yang yao, a 7. The hexagram looks like this:
This is Bo and using Alfred Huang’s The Complete I Ching it means “Falling Away.” The lower trigram is Earth or Kun and the upper trigram is Mountain or Gen. So we have the mountain resting on a stack of yin lines which is pretty unstable. Think of a landslide as the mountain tumbles down to the low lands.
The Decision of this Gua is:
Falling Away.
Unfavorable to have somewhere to go.
For those of you interested in the I Ching you can pursue the meaning of this gua farther as you will with your trusted references. Here’s my take on the gua and the timing of it:
This is a good time to go inside, look inward for stability. This is the last month before the New Year. It is a good time to seek stability in this unstable time. Clean up, clean out, get organized. Sweep away the decaying underpinnings and get ready for the year of the Snake.
Contemplate all of those things that are not working. Let them go. Meditate on new things that might work better and bring some new stability. The mutual gua of Bo is Kun – Earth over Earth, Responding, Receiving. Again, look to receive some inner guidance.
Note also there are no changing lines in this gua. So the situation is stagnant. Again the message is to wait it out and seek inner guidance.
This is my interpretation of this gua for me at this time. It may or may not apply to you and your situation or the times themselves. But as our government seems locked in turmoil and stagnation this just might be an appropriate gua for others. In any case it is always good to go inside to seek guidance.
And this mid-winter time is a great time to just be with what is.
PS: To start 2013 off with incredible guidance from The Divine Feminine you can get the 8 recordings Rosemary made at the end of 2012 during her Wisdom of the Week (WOW) calls. Get them here.
Men and The Goddess 