Reconciling Science & Spirit: The Imperative of Cultivating Cultural Wisdom

Since the beginning of the modern era, the scientific exploration of the world has dissociated from the quest for self-knowledge. We now understand the workings of the body and the cosmos with greater depth and complexity than ever before, but our understanding of what makes life meaningful and profound remains as mysterious as ever.  Our surfeit of scientific knowledge has become divorced from wisdom about what makes life intrinsically valuable. In other words, one could read an entire psychology textbook and know everything about perception, emotion and psychopathology but have no clue how to sympathize with a suffering individual. One entails objective knowledge, a static collection of facts. The other requires a complex interplay of emotional and social awareness that adapts to life’s uncertainties—simply put: one is knowledge, the other is wisdom. We can find examples of this split everywhere, and I believe that this autistic divide between IQ and EQ, between sense and soul, between science and philosophy, or between truth and meaning is arguably the greatest crisis of our time.

What the world lacks is not more data, but more meaning. Science can only provide facts about the quantitative universe, but not everything in life can be measured. In fact, most meaning and purpose comes from relationships with others and inner awareness, both things that are invisible to the gaze of science. MLK Jr. said if we are to go forward, we must also go back and rediscover the precious values and moral foundations that give life deeper meaning and purpose. These values have always existed and will always exist. But I feel they have been displaced by our myopic endorsement of the material world over the intangible little things that make life special. Reconciliation between what is (science) and what should be (philosophy) and could be (imagination) is absolutely necessary if we wish to create a future that aspires to the highest of human potential.

I know this may all sound like a hippie reiteration of “Why can’t we all just get along? Love triumphs all!” Although admittedly I’m idealistic, I’m not calling for political revolution or a fairy-tale utopian society. What the world needs is a transformation in consciousness: a change in the way we live and engage with the world. There’s a growing sentiment that the continuation of life as is, that is to say scientific progress without equal development of consciousness, is a perilous path for humanity. As the philosopher and visionary Ken Wilber says, “The predicament of modernity is that for the first time in history we have both the knowledge and awareness to overcome our ignorance, precisely at the same time we have the means to make this ignorance absolutely genocidal on a global scale.”

We see that if we continue mining, drilling, and polluting our Earth, we will face serious ecological consequences. We see that if the developing world continues to use resources at the same rate as the developed world, it is simply untenable. A recent study by SAMHSA (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) revealed that approximately one-in-five American adults suffer from some form of mental illness. Moreover, according to a recent Gallup poll, Americans are more pessimistic than ever about what the future holds for today's youth.  Less than half of adults believe that the current generation will have better lives than their parents, the lowest number on record since 1983. And the list of social ills goes on and on. Although I do not claim that mental disease is a product of the dissociation of science and spirituality, I feel strongly that widespread social malaise and loss of meaning among today’s youth is largely a product of this rupture in the internal organs of today’s global culture.

I don't want to sound like a radical railing against American culture and the progress of science. The modern era has spearheaded material development with spectacularly tangible results—in many parts of the world lifespans have doubled, calories are in surplus, housing and transportation are ubiquitous, communication technologies are cheap and readily available, and so on and so forth. None of this would have been possible without the amazing scientific discoveries and technological advances of the last hundred years. I don’t think we need to simply replace a goal of outer progress with a goal of inner progress; we need to integrate the two in a way that’s acceptable to everyone.  Actually, when people see the complete truth, they will realize that inner progress is outer progress. They are inseparable.

For a truly integral solution to this divorce of truth and meaning, we need an internal science to complement the external science. We need a science that develops the capacities of the mind and the virtues of the heart in the same way we have developed a better life through chemistry. This is where I believe Buddhism and other spiritual practices have a lot to contribute. They are sciences of inner-life in which the apparatus is contemplation, the inquiry is the nature of the mind and the aim is greater self-knowledge. Although not testable by scientific standards, their ability to help people attain greater awareness has been repeatedly proven for thousands of years. Thus, I believe a judicious integration of sciences of the mind and sciences of nature has the restore balance to our incomplete worldview.  By integrating the two, we can humanize our technoscience culture into something that is both physically comfortable and spiritually meaningful.

In addition to bringing the scientific disciplines and spiritual traditions onto mutual ground, I am passionate about changing the way people are educated. Having taught and studied in classrooms around the world, I have seen how schools emphasize cognitive skills while ignoring deeper personal development. We have naively assumed that filling people’s minds with better information will inevitably create better people. This is not only mistaken, but it is dangerous.

The unspoken credo of our formal education system is that learning can occur without self-reflection. We think that information can be absorbed without anything of importance changing in the learner’s mind. Syllabi delineate what is required for the test and letter grades measure the outcome of a class. Whether the class impacted you on a personal level and encouraged you think and act in a new and improved way is of little relevance to most educators. Even schools that use Bloom’s taxonomy to guide lesson plans can rarely ascribe to true higher-level thinking. I can attest that most classroom interactions remain firmly in the surface realm of ‘remembering’ and ‘understanding,’ while inner reflection and open-ended evaluation of potential outcomes remains an infrequent afterthought. 

Although educational reformists are quick to point fingers at teachers or schools for the lack of critical thinking, we must concede that the use of scripted, lock-step curricula undermines the judgment of teachers and ensures mediocrity. Moreover, our shallow and egocentric popular culture has also devalued deep learning and wisdom. We idolize celebrities not for their trenchant insight or intelligence, but for their ability to entertain and amuse us. Just look at the Jersey Shore (enough said). The superficiality of the media begets superficial social interactions. Conversations center on spectacles of opulence and fame rather than substantive discussions of peace and virtue. To create lasting change in the way people engage the world, we need a mainstream culture that nudges people towards evolving into better human beings rather than distracting themselves with trivialities. 

                At this point you make think this is stupid, foolhardy or even elitist. Maybe Jeff has just completely lost touch with reality? He thinks he’s living on a pedestal high up on Mount Olympus. Undoubtedly, a call for a new global consciousness is a daunting undertaking. Some might even say it is impossible. However, I strongly feel that we cannot truly understand the universe without understanding ourselves. This understanding will not come overnight, nor will it come individually. We need both a transformation in individual consciousness and behavior as well as a shift in the social institutions and worldviews that support our ways of living. We need leaders with strong personal integrity and a worldcentric mindset. We need systems and institutions that empower people to act virtuously instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator and incentivizing mediocrity.

We need a culture that embraces discomfort and allows people to fail—trial and error, attempting, failing, and learning from those mistakes. This is a crucial part evolution. Unfortunately, our developed world has become so predictable, so comfortable, that many people are never challenged in such a way that builds character and deepens awareness. If necessity is the mother of all invention, then discomfort is the mother of all personal transformation. But what are we to do in a society that goes to every possible extent to minimize even the minutest suffering from our daily lives? If the pain of not changing is never greater than the pain of change itself, then why bother? It was the Dalai Lama who said the problem is that the majority have lost, or ignore, the deeper human values—compassion, a sense of responsibility. That is our big concern. So my question is how can we reinstill this sense of compassion and responsibility into the system we have today? Where do we even begin reconciling and integrating the fracture of between the inner spiritual life and the outer scientific life? I have some ideas, but I’d like to hear yours.

The Burden of Should

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes and the grass grows by itself”

- Zen Proverb

Sitting quietly in the park, doing nothing, mind wanders to what it should be doing.

“I should be working on that paper due next week.”

“I should have taken those clothes to the cleaners.”

“I should have responded to her email.”

This list of thoughts about what I should be doing continued on and on. I call this compunction the Burden of Should.




The Burden of Should is an infectious meme. It permeates through workaholic societies and can unleash havoc on minds that are predisposed to rumination and anxiety. The Burden of Should is like a nagging mother or overbearing boss: when you least desire, they materialize to remind you of all the things you should be doing. Such incessant and intrusive thoughts of should can rob even the greatest moments of joy and tranquility. Therefore I purpose we do whatever we can to eliminate the Burden of Should from our lives. We need to free ourselves from its constraints and transform the guilt and anxiety it creates into a resolute affirmation and acceptance of our present moment.

To make such a radical break from our inured ways of thinking may require eliminating the word “should” entirely from our vocabulary. Why do I call for such extreme measures? Firstly, the word “should” denotes some action that must be completed because of duty or obligation. In other words, something we have to do but would rather not if given the choice. We often say things like, “I should spend more time studying.” Or, “I should eat healthier.” Such statements express reluctance and unwillingness even if we understand there may be some benefits.

So I ask, why do something if our heart is not truly in it?

Even if there are intellectual justifications for doing something, unless we really care about it, we will never be wholeheartedly engaged in what we are doing. We will be acting entirely on the basis of should with no interest, pride, or love in what we do. I find that a terribly sad way to live. Such half-assed, perfunctory behavior is not only the cause of so much mental strife and dissatisfaction, but also a mockery of the human capacity to live with an engaged and compassionate mind. I believe “should” is only good for breeding discontent. It shifts one’s motivation from intrinsic to extrinsic and diverts attention from the present to all the things we are not currently doing. In my humble opinion, we are better without it.

I’m sure at this point you are saying, “Hold on a second. Aren’t there things that we need to do, that we should do, even if we don’t really want to do them?” My response is both yes and no.

Eliminating should from our lexicon is not a matter of abandoning personal responsibility. I am not advocating that we all become hedonists and do whatever pleases us with complete disregard for later consequences and other’s wellbeing. Nor am I suggesting we stop doing things just because they are inconvenient or unpleasant. Rather I believe we need to change our attitude towards things that we initially labeled under the Burden of Should. Instead of feeling like we should be doing something, we need to want to do that thing for its own sake. We must transform statements like, “I should be studying” to “I want to be studying.” “I should finish that work” to “I want to finish that work.” “I should be more sensitive to my partner’s needs” to “I want to be more sensitive to my partner’s needs.” This subtle shift in how we phrase our statements can create dramatic shifts in our perception and interpretation of events and make life more fulfilling.

If all we have is the present moment, why expend the mental energy living with the Burden of Should. Just think how much happier we could be if we took great pleasure in everything we did. If we never felt like we should be doing anything, but truly wanted to do everything. Then every moment of everyday can be filled with joy and delight. No longer will we need to feel guilty thoughts that we should be doing something else. The truth is that there is nothing else. This is what I’m doing now, and I’m doing it because I really want to be doing it. When I’m sitting in the park, the only thing I should be doing is enjoying sitting in the park. It’s so simple that we often fail to grasp its importance. As yogi Ram Das said, “Be Here Now”.

So this is my recommendation. The next time you catch yourself saying, “I should…” stop and reexamine your statement. Consider the reasons for doing or not doing said action. If you determine that it is truly something that must be done, then shift your attitude from “I should…” to “I want to…” “I’d love to…” “I would take great delight in doing…” If you are mindful and put care into what you doing, you might find that this task is actually more enjoyable than you first imagined. The more you do this, the easier it becomes. Slowly you can stop trying to avoid the unavoidable, and in doing so, you free yourself form the Burden of Should.

Thoughtless Minds - Refashioned

    I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately: thinking about life, thinking about happiness, thinking about the future, and indeed thinking about thinking. Out of all this thinking I was hoping to find some answers, some meaning I could take with me and share with others. But the problem is that thoughts have a persnickety tendency to get more complex, more convoluted unless under the tutelage of a supremely focused mind. One thought leads to another which leads to another and another and another; it is a never ending stream of run-on ideas, parenthetical additions, and dialectical digressions (see fantastic picture right). The end result of all my mental meandering was something that resembled graffiti on a bathroom stall more than a carefully constructed concept worthy of telling another person.

While nearly drowning in my own sea of thoughts (that would be quite a way to go),  a thought emerged that stated thinking is not the answer. This was quite a peculiar thought, I thought to myself, sort of like a stop codon in a transcribing RNA. Such a self-sacrificing thought says nothing lies ahead, terminate thinking process here. So I did what any sensible person would do, I obeyed the thought which told me to stop thinking. And there among the sunshine and sands of a pristine Thai beach, I tried my hardest to suspend all thought and just be.

This is not the first time I’ve stopped thinking. In fact I do it quite regularly when I’m meditating or exercising. The truth is that cultures have been cultivating the art of “non-thought” for centuries. Meditation centers around the practice of moving beyond the thinking mind to a state of higher awareness. Similarly, Taoism and the Kabbalah teach that we should strive to flow mindlessly in the currents of life. Despite such traditions, the ethos of Western society places such a tremendous value upon thinking, specifically scientific, analytical thought, that we often overlook the benefits of a thoughtless mind. Although we might take a long stroll to “clear our head”, such acts of thoughtlessness are scarcely scattered between our preferred mode of operating--utilizing the medium of thoughts. Just listen to our language. “Let me think it over and get back to you.” “I’d like to share a few thoughts.” “Oh, how thoughtful of you.” In today's world if you don’t bother to think about it, you may as well forget it all together.

Our cultural penchant for thinking is either the cause or symptom (I’ve yet to decide which) of our industrious work ethic. Americans idealize hard work, and idleness is synonymous with laziness. In fact when I look up idle in the thesaurus, the overwhelming majority of synonyms are negative: redundant, indolent, futile, pointless, worthless, useless, empty, etc. In other words, idle is bad; work is good. If we’re not constantly thinking or keeping busy, we feel guilty. Even when we have some downtime, there’s a nagging notion that we should be somewhere else doing something else. As a result, even our leisure time is a carefully doled out activity that must be scheduled in advanced. We have successfully demonized any state of inactivity; as a result, we’ve forgotten the joys of quiescence and thoughtlessness. In Alexander Green’s blog post In Praise of Idleness he says: “Hebrew sages taught that when you are first welcomed into heaven, a record is revealed to you of all the many times in your past when you could really have been happy and enjoyed some moment but failed to do so. And then you are called to repent of each and every one of those moments.”

In a similar vein, Eric Weiner the author of the wonderfully witty travelogue The Geography of Bliss, describes himself as a thoughtful person prone to fall into the trap of thinking just to avoid idleness. In a chapter he wrote while (coincidentally) in Thailand, he discloses: “I’ve spent most of my life trying to think my way to happiness, and my failure to achieve that goal only proves, in my mind, that I’m not a good enough thinker. It never occurred to me that the source of my unhappiness is not flawed thinking, but thinking itself.”

Sometimes thinking, or more likely over-thinking and over-analyzing are sources of discontent themselves. For that reason, I’d like to make a plea for all the over-thinkers in the world to occasionally let it go. Just live without questioning, scrutinizing, and evaluating every act of living. Be aware of how this state of being makes your feel, but please try not to think about it.

At this point some of you who have read my first post may point out that the initial reason for naming this blog Thoughtless Minds was to mock the thoughtless existence our routinized, mechanized, and computerized society. If anything I was proposing that we need to do more thinking, not less. However I was specifically advocating deep thinking about human nature, consciousness, and how we can evolve to become better people. Such meaningful discourse is much different than the typical superficial thinking that society promotes. Thus I am not reneging my initial words, simply amending them.

I have come to recognize that analytical thought can only take us so far. While thinking is a wonderful place to begin dissecting and illuminating difficult questions, there are times when we are prone to drown in our own analysis and must stop, step back, and let the situation rest. These moments of thoughtlessness are often moments of intense creativity and enlightenment. Thus a truly wise person understands that the balance between a thoughtful and a thoughtless mind is an essential part of achieving what can be called nothing else than peace of mind.

Perhaps the ideal embodiment of this balance between thinking and non-thinking is in the Taoist sage. The sage perceives and understands all opposites as part of the same system; thoughtful and thoughtless should not be opposed to one another but brought into harmony and balance. Thus the Taoist sage acts without action and thinks without thinking. In other words, the sage acts in a manner that is spontaneous and effortless, aligned with the Tao and no longer in need of the deliberate part of mind that busies itself guesstimating and evaluating various courses of action.

So if possible, the next time you find yourself in a state of frustration, confusion, or despair, don’t try to think it through, but do as a Taoist sage would and try being without thought. Ted Kardash writes in his online reader on Taoism, “We must learn to rely on more than just our intellect and logical mind to gather and assess information. We [should] develop and trust our intuition as our direct connection to the Tao. [When] we heed the intelligence of our whole body, not only our brain…we get action that is spontaneous, natural, and effortless.” This is the highest aim of a Thoughtless Mind: acting so naturally that no thought is required.

Go forth and don't think about living without thinking. Embrace contradiction. Love paradox.

The Human Antipathy to Change: The Mind's Search for Meaning

Take a look at this set of lines. What do you see?

Do you see anything? Or does it just look like random lines? A face maybe? Here, try this time.

Still nothing? Alright one more time.

What do you see now?

Is it the letter “E”?

Why do you now see a meaningful image while before you saw nothing but “just lines”? Aren’t these still just the same black lines on a white background? Yes, nothing has changed except the relative configuration of these lines. However, the configuration in this final image has symbolic significance because it is a pattern we have encountered before. Over time we have learned to associate this arrangement of lines with the letter “E”. It is important to remember that the lines in the final image are no less arbitrary than the lines in the ones before (think about how many different types of "E's" exisit E,E,E,E,E)  yet the final “E” seems to be the only recognizable pattern. In other words (or letters), this is nothing but an ‘e’lusion of the mind as it attempts to find meaning in a world that really just random lines.

To pvore tihs piont futrehr, I wlil bgien to tpye uinsg mexid up lteerts. Isn’t it aziamng? Eevn wtih all the ltetres out of odrer you can sltil raed the txet and unerandstd its’ manieng. Tihs is the mgaic of the mnid leadis and genemtlan. Low and bhelod the pwoer of mnetal costnrtucion! 

This example clearly illustrates that what we see is structured by the mind’s drive for a logical ordering of the universe. As the French anthropologist Levi Strauus put it, our thought patterns are highly disciplined intellectual structures designed to give the world coherence, shape, and meaning. What’s more is that our consciousness represents a selective simplification and ordering of nearly endless possibility. (Think about how many different ways those eight black lines can be interpreted.) Consciousness is a “reducing-valve” that protects us from being overwhelmed by the incessant onslaught of stimuli. Consciousness allows us to select, focus and make real a specific event out of a continuum of possibilities; otherwise we would be caught in an impossible deluge of potential configurations and constructs of the world.  Thus we are dependent on this editing process of mind to create a common denominator, an agreement which can cement us in reality.

This fundamental process of mind is the origin of our antipathy to change, the root of what I call “psychological inertia”. In a world that is characterized by change, we seek that which is familiar, stable, and unvarying to help us cope. That is why we can only see the letter “E” and are unable to accept the other configurations as equally valid or meaningful. Our mental construction of reality, our weltanschauung, is adapted to mitigate the inherent entropy of the universe. It is only through agreement upon a common worldview which we can have a subjective experience of consciousness, let alone a functioning society. In other words, our worldview is fundamentally based upon diminishing change and randomness to the point where a common “objective” reality can be upheld.

Every culture’s worldview is different; in fact every person’s worldview is different. I’ve barrowed the picture below to show how people with different worldviews arrive at different interpretations of the same image.   

If you had to describe what was going on in this picture, what would you say? Most Westerners, who are used to seeing boxlike architectural structures, interpret the picture as a family sitting indoors. They see the shape above the woman’s head as a window with a view of plants outside. However, when scientists showed this sketch to certain East African peoples, they all assumed that the shape above the woman’s head was a box or metal object that she was balancing. Moreover they thought the family was sitting under a tree since their culture contained few visual cues to indicate perpendicular walls. Whose interpretation is correct? I would aver that they both are.

Now let us consider someone under the influence of LSD. How might he or she see this picture? Would there be colors? Would the lines be moving and flowing into each other? Would people melt and reform into other shapes? The real question is whether such an interpretation of the picture is any less valid that what you or I see. Although my reality adjusted thinking tells me this is a picture of a family sitting in a room, this is just one interpretation of nearly limitless possibilities. For me this image is akin to the set of lines that form the little “E”, it has recognizable meaning. However, a person on LSD may see this picture as nothing more than squiggly lines with no associated meaning.This illustrates that regardless of what's on the paper, our minds are providing (or not) the meaning.

Since drug use provides us with a special case of consciousness, I'd like barrow the words of author Joesph Chilton Pearce as he comments on the topic in his book The Crack in the Cosmic Egg:

“ To shatter our working models of the universe does not lead to a ‘true picture’ of the universe…our concepts are to some extent arbitrary constructs, but to disrupt or dissolve them with drugs does not free us into some universal knowledge ‘out there’ in the great beyond. There is instead the loss of meaningful structures of agreement needed for communion with others. This can lead to the loss of personality definition itself…any worldview is a creative tension between possibility and choice. This is the tension that holds community and ‘real’ together. This is the cohesive force of our own center of awareness, the thin line between the loss of self to autistic disillusion on one hand, or slavery to broad statistics of the world on the other.”

Our consciousness is rigged with a catch; namely that in order to survive we must limit our interpretation of events to give the world structuring, yet at the same time doing so negates one of the greatest human assets—the ability to imagine alternatives and creatively synthesize novel ideas.

Just because we have arrived at one "reality adjusted" mode of thinking does not mean it is the only valid  approach to conscious thought. Autistic savants and other creative geniuses typically lie at the boundaries of what we consider “normal” thought. But rather than ostracizing and marginalizing those who have adopted a less “agreed upon” configuration of reality, we should seek to learn as much as possible from their unique worldview. It is sad that one mode of thinking has come to predominate the globe when so many varieties of consciousness are possible.

To be fair, the rational, analytic mindset the has predominate the last few hundred years was and is an invaluable asset to our growth and evolution. It took us through an incredible period of science and empiricism which served humanity in countless ways. But as I have quoted before, the problems of the world today cannot be solved at the level of thought which created them. I'm almost certian we cannot take the next step towards a brighter future if we have people who cannot think outside the confines of their inherited worldview.

To truly evolve, we need to buck this trend of limiting our creative potential and push the boundary of what we consider possible. This is especially pertinent in areas of eduction, where most teaching imposes limits on what we think and know.  Tests will never stimulate creativity and innovation because the questions asked presuppose an answer congruent with the question, and most questions are closed-ended and retrospective in nature. Novel ideas aren't likely to arise when people's success is based upon their ability to answer within the established parameters. As a teacher, I don't want you to tell me what I want to hear; I want you to tell me what I've never heard before.  But the problems of today's educaiton system is a topic for another time, so i will resist the urge to mount my soapbox and return to the main discussion. 

A lot of ideas have been tossed around (since I'm prone to digress when excited), so let me reiterate the main point in different words. Our conscious mind is designed to see just one version of reality. The version of the world we see is a product of our genetics and our unique experience: our culture, our early childhood relationships, our values, our learned responses, our semantic knowledge, etc. The diagram at right illustrates our worldview as an onion with different layers that shape our perception and understanding of reality. This onion, which we’ve built up throughout the course of our lives, is the world as we know it; it is what we see and practice day by day. Moreover, it is how we know the world (i.e. how we relate to the thoughts and feelings that run through us.) This onion is our comfort zone, our familiar ways of being. And while our onion worldview will always be undergoing some mutation and change, there’s nothing more threatening than peeling away its layers thereby tearing down the matrix that grants us a first person experience of reality. To protect our onion (our worldview, our ego, our consciousness perception of reality,) we tend towards stasis over variance and seek to preserve the status quo rather than include difference and unfamiliarity. It is easier to accept the one story we've been told since birth than embrace a new one. This is self-preservation on the mental level.

This drive for self-preservation and stasis causes ways of being that I will outline below and hopefully discuss in greater detail at a later point.

·         The habit of wanting certainty: being more interested in the familiar than the unknown.

·         The habit of wanting to feel safe and secure. Although most of us could say that we feel most alive when taking healthy, creative risks, how often do hesitate and take the easier, less risky path. 

·         The habit of wanting to keep everything the same rather than evolving and changing. This entails a willingness to let go and step into the unknown, but too often we are afraid of what’s around the corner.

·         The habit of adhering to a familiar life even if it is unhealthy. On the flip side is the failure to pursue a more attractive future out of fear of uncertainty.

·         The habit of looking to the past when we confront new challenges and problems rather than opening ourselves up to new possibilities that are outside of things we’ve seen or considered before.

·         The habit of avoiding difficult truths that might hurt or disturb our worldview.

·         And perhaps most importantly, the habit of thinking small and short-term rather than thinking in a larger context. This is the habit of living an egocentric life driven by petty fears and desires rather than embracing a world-centric outlook that pursues our highest virtues.

The Human Antipathy to Change (part 2)

“How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?

 Just one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.”

 

Cliché light bulb jokes aside, we all recognize the truth in this saying. Significant and lasting change must be of our own making; otherwise we will revert back to our original mode of thinking/behaving once external pressures are removed. Take this image to the left as an example. Upon first glance you might see beautiful young women in a fur coat looking off into the distance. At the same time, others might tell you that it is actually an image of an old hag with a large nose and long chin. Sure, you might be able to force yourself into seeing the old lady. However, without a genuine internal change, you’ll continue to see the beautiful young women because seeing otherwise requires effort, energy, and reorganization--things that individuals and molecules alike tend to minimize at all costs. The inability to see the other meaning is nothing more than inertia at work in the mental realm.


So why is this “psychological inertia” so important; moreover, where does it come from? Well, Newton ascribed inertia as a property of matter back in 1687, and the last time I checked inertia still exists and we are just highly organized lumps of matter. Hence, there’s no reason inertia should not hold true for our thoughts and behaviors, especially if we accept the modern scientific paradigm that the brain is the physical seat and/or correlate of the mind (a quandary which is still hotly debated.) Nonetheless, there are many other reasons why our minds resist change, mostly having to do with the very function of the mind itself. So to help understand the nature of the beast in question please click the link and check out the famous turning dancer illusion .

What do you see? Is the dancer turning clockwise or counterclockwise?

Optical illusions like this are perhaps the best examples of how our minds shape reality: how our unique worldview adds that all-so-important layer of meaning to otherwise meaningless stimuli. The spinning dancer effectively shows us that our experience of reality (i.e. how we see the world) is more of an inventive synthesis than a passive intake of an objective “out there” world. In other words, what a thing is is to an unknowable extent determined or influenced by what we think it is. In the dancer example, the external stimuli never changes, yet a simple internal shift in thinking creates an entirely new reality, one where the women is spinning in the complete opposite direction!

Like in the young woman/old lady illusion, a change in what we see is caused by an unconscious paradigm shift, a Eureka! moment that restructures our representation of the world. I say unconscious because most of the framework which structures our reality is neatly tucked below our awareness, yet it is possible to bring aspects of this scaffolding into conscious deliberation.

Go look at the dancer again. Now look away for a moment and imagine her spinning in the opposite direction. Can you make her change directions? Can your formative powers of imagination will her into rotating to your liking? Doing so requires a top-down change of your mental precept, something that is difficult but certainly not impossible.

In his fabulous book “A Crack in the Cosmic Egg”, Joseph Chilton Pearce describes this phenomenon as Metanoia from the Greek word for conversion. He says,

“Metanoia is the process by which concepts are reorganized. It is a specialized, intensified adult form of the same world-view developing found shaping the mind of an infant. It proves to be the way by which all genuine education takes place…As we change our inherited representations of the world, the world we deal with changes accordingly.”

Metanoia is the intuitive, catalytic mode of consciousness that allows us to reshape our thoughts and behaviors; and if strengthened and enriched, it can provide the basis for transcending the logical confines of our culturally accepted world view and push our consciousness into new uncharted territories.


Pearce claims that  metanoia is the key to creative thinking. In fact he claims all great scientific discoveries from the illumination of E=MC2 to the double-helix postulate are a result of this freely-synthesizing aspect of mind which is untrammeled by harsh realities and cultural impediments.  In other words, most significant "discoveries" or breakthroughs have occurred via this opening of mind to encompass possibility beyond what is considered feasible by our reality-adjusted, social thinking. Only by transcending the logical barriers of our mental constructs can we introduce a new way of "seeing" the world. As I've said before, a new way of "seeing" is not only the end goal of personal change but is absolutely necessary if we wish move beyond the limitations of our inherited egocentric existence and evolve into higher levels of consciousness.

 The above discussion is meant to exemplify three things: Firstly that our first-person experience of reality is a synthetic process of mind, secondly that our mental constructs limit our interpretation of events to the exclusion of other possibilities (which is why we can’t see the dancer spinning both ways at once), and thirdly that these selective interpretations are arbitrary and can in fact be altered through metanoia, a process of radical reorganization. What does this all have to do with change? Well, as we asserted before, personal change is fundamentally a process of altering one’s mental landscape. Changing ourselves, our attitudes is simply a process of making the dancer rotate in a new direction. Of course large overarching change is more difficult to bring about because we are dealing with complicated, ingrained structures of mind; nevertheless, the fundamental process of reconfiguration is the same.

Hopefully, I’ve elucidated the influence of unconscious factors in how we perceive reality and shown the process by which changing our constructs of reality can occur. In the next post I will to go into more detail about why changing our interpretation of the world is so difficult. I ask and answer what makes our worldview so fundamentally averse to change, and what can we do about it.

Hypocrisy & the Human Antipathy to Change (pt. 1)

We are all hypocrites. Show me someone who practices what they preach to a “T”, and I’ll show you a hippogryph playing chess with a unicorn. There’s no avoiding hypocrisy; the chasm between what we say and what we do is an elemental part of the human condition. It is rooted in our split-mind: the bifurcation of reality between conscious and unconscious activity.

Jung and other depth psychologists have called the split of consciousness from unconsciousness the culprit of all human troubles, the “fall” in mythological terms. Everything from our impulse purchases to cheating on our diets exemplify our inability to shake-off the unconscious emotional urges that lay below the limen of awareness. Think about how many times we did something we know we shouldn’t have done or simply said yes when we really meant no? The answer is more often than we’d like to admit.

I recognize that there are many situations where we feel coerced to act a certain way, or at least the circumstances makes choosing another alternative impossible. However, even if we had the freedom to choose otherwise, would we? I’m not so sure and if you keep reading, you might agree. Also please note I’m using “we” since I am in no way above such insincere behavior. Moreover, I am convinced that most of us want to change in all the right ways. We want to be good people. We don’t want to be a slave to our primitive drives. We want to be transformed; and as a result, all this hypocrisy makes us uncomfortable.

Author Joesph Chilton Pierce describes the situation as an “underlying desperation in us, unstated and inchoate, that is nothing less than a split mind’s realization of its split world.” We long for a way out, yet we typically remedy this situation by lying to ourselves, feigning authenticity, and repenting when our behavior seems out of line. Sure this might assuage some negative self-talk and ameliorate cognitive dissonance, but does it really accomplish anything? No, the heart of the situation remains unchanged.

Let me use myself as an example. I have proselytized the need to live by one’s principles, be more real, more genuine. I’ve even touted myself as a free-spirit, open to experience, willing to go beyond a personal ego-centered worldview and embrace a globally-minded compassion. While my friends and family probably take my words to heart, little do they know that despite my self-assured talk, the very next moment I go and cower in my insular routine perpetuating all the things I say I’m not. We often make highfalutin claims about the things which we find ourselves most unable to change. Meanwhile our hypocrisy stares at us like a white elephant in the room.

I feel we make excuses that life is too busy, too complicated, and too problematic to do the inner work necessary to bring about change. We assume that if all the external obstacles to self-actualization are removed, we would soar into our fullest potential. Moreover, we take the misguided attitude that such hypocritical behavior is inescapable in today’s society.

A few weeks ago at my University’s conference on forging an ecological mindset through literature, the lunch break consisted of red meat on Styrofoam plates. I thought to myself “this is all wrong”, but what could I do? I could just not eat. Problem solved. But of course I gobbled away since ignoring a table full of free food would break with every survival instinct I have. I justified my behavior by saying that the next time I would act perfectly in accordance with what I know and believe to be right. Though I might say this with an air of certainty, deep down my heart is unconvinced—this is the realization of the split-mind: hypocrisy manifest.

I’m sure every one of us has had a similar experience. Whether it be a small thing like throwing a piece of litter into the street or a large thing like learning to act less selfishly, we all have personal issues we wish to improve. So I ask, what is holding us back from making the changes we want to make, from wholeheartedly adopting the worldview we wish to uphold?

What is holding us back? The answer to the question is plain and simple: it is not “them” or society, but ourselves, our ego, our unwillingness to let go of what is familiar, comfortable, and easy. This is the stark truth most of us are unable to accept.

We wish to shift to locus of control to an external power, but in reality we are the only ones to fault. For when it comes to achieving our higher self-evolution, most of us don’t want to change. Sure, we want things to change: we want to feel better, be happier, and have an easier life. But we do not want to have to change our deep habits of being, our habits of relating to others or identifying with the thoughts and feelings that run through us. Very few of us want to let go of the familiar ways of being and behaving that we’re accustomed to. Why? Simply put, because we do not want to get out of our comfort zone.

We all want to do what is best for the environment, for humanity, for the planet; but will you exchange your car for a bicycle? No. Will you give up your favorite food because farming it creates ecological havoc, emits greenhouse gasses, and causes needless animal suffering? No. Will we only change if the pain of not changing becomes worse that the pain of change itself? Yes.

I use the ecological example not because I’m a tree-hugging eco-nut, but simply because it clearly demonstrates how our desire to change typically cedes authority to a greater desire for maintaining comfort. Bringing about true fundamental change in our behavior, our worldview, is an extremely difficult process requiring extraordinary effort. Some people, I dare say, are even incapable of such change, having not the interiority or knowledge necessary to begin reformulating their behaviors and beliefs about reality. Others who have the genuine desire to change still may never achieve the transformation they desire because there is a host of other factors keeping our behavior and worldview static.

Change is uncomfortable, awkward, and perhaps even painful; but I believe it is absolutely necessary if we want to progress and thrive. As Einstein famously said, “the significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” We need a new way of thinking and a thorough understanding of the human antipathy towards change. In the coming posts I hope to expound in greater detail the dynamics which inhibit deep-seated change and theorize a new path for evolving past our “split-mind” archaic way of life.