“True culture is in the mind, the mind,” he said, and tapped his head, “the mind.”
“It’s in the heart,” she said, “and in how you do things, and how you do things is because of who you are.”
Flannery O’Connor, Everything that Rises must Converge
Tag: mind
Nothing new here: Stress is bad for you….
A new study confirms what most of us already know. High stress is bad for us and is linked to cardiovascular death even if we do not have a pre-existing cardiovascular problem. The study, published in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), shows that the stress hormone cortisol is released when we speed up and are under pressure and its purpose is to help the body recover from stress and regain a state of balance. However, when the stress is persistent, ongoing and chronic, an elevated level of cortisol is maintained and this, paradoxically, is associated with cardiovascular risk factors. In other words, as we learn about in the MBSR Programme, the body’s own stress response system can become a problem when it remains switched on in response to deep ongoing stress.
Nicole Vogelzangs, from the VU University Medical Center in The Netherlands, states: “Previous studies have suggested that cortisol might increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality, but until now, no study had directly tested this hypothesis“. The results of our study clearly show that cortisol levels in a general older population predict cardiovascular death, but not other causes of mortality.”
So creating a gap in the ongoing rush of your day and paying attention to your life is not just a nice option, but is crucial for your ongoing health. Then, developing adaptive ways to work with the stress in your life, rather than simplistically wishing to escape to a stress-free world, is the next step. These ways could include looking at your diet, doing exercise such as walking or yoga, structuring your week so as to get some time in nature, making time just for yourself, and developing a meditation practice. If you click on the “Stress ” Category in the blog or on the “Effects of Mindfulness” you will find more posts or research on this subject.
How to remain calm
You will soon find that thoughts are like the wind; they come and go.
The secret is to not ‘think’ about thoughts, but allow them to flow through the open mind.
Soygal Rinpoche
Meditation is pointless
A friend of mine – who ironically is starting a meditation retreat this week in the US – expressed the opinion not so long ago that sitting meditation was just pointless. I knew what she meant at the time, but knew also that she had to discover its real value for herself. In one sense she was right – sitting practice is waste of time because it is a dedicated period of non-doing. On an outward level it appears to achieve nothing. Another aspect which she drew attention to was the fact that nothing really changes day to day: you sit, you get distracted, you return to the breath, you get distracted, day after day.
One difficulty in meditation is the the results are not immediately tangible while the actual practice can be difficult. The point to meditation, however, is precisely by doing “nothing” and slowing down, gaps are created between activities and we work on our capacity to be aware of what is going on. And it seems that when one is aware, things tend to fall as they should.
However, we can probably find scientific backing for stating that this “pointless” activity is, in fact, achieving something simply while we are sitting. It has been shown that people who meditate activate a different part of their brain that is associated with less anxiety and a better outlook on life. By not activating the anxious parts of the for dedicated periods of each day, our bodies are less likely to be tense, less likely to trigger well-conditioned patterns when faced with difficulties.
Daniel Goleman & Tara Bennett-Goleman*, suggest that meditation works because of the relationship between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Simply put, the amygdala is the part of the brain that decides, among other things, if we should get angry or anxious, and the pre-frontal cortex is the part that makes us stop and think about things. However, the amygdala is prone to error, such as seeing danger or exaggerating anxiety where there is none. Because there is roughly a quarter of a second gap between the time an event occurs and the time it takes the amygdala to react, the slowing down practicing in meditation may allow us be able to intervene before an automatic response takes over, and perhaps even redirect it into more constructive or positive feelings. In other words, meditation seems to develop emotional brain fitness and therefore this pointless activity may not be pointless after all.
Bennett-Goleman, Tara, 2001. Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind can Heal the Heart, Harmony, (2001).
Our substitute life
The essence of the basic human problem is that we live a substitute life. From our basic human need for protection, security, and comfort, we’ve fabricated a whole maze of constructs and strategies to avoid being with our life as it is. And as a consequence of believing in this substitute life we are disconnected from awareness of our true nature, our naturally open heart.
Our substitute life is made of many different constructs: our identities, our self-images, our concepts of what life is, our opinions and judgments, our expectations, our requirements. All these we take as reality. As a consequence of these tightly held beliefs, we develop certain habitual behavioral strategies to deal with life as we interpret it.
All these strategies are based on core decisions that we made early on, about who we are and what our life is about. They are decisions we made to help us cope with the many inevitable pains of growing up.
Ezra Bayda
Happiness is found within
A
ll experience is preceded by mind
led by mind, made by mind.
Speak or act with a troubled mind, and suffering will follow, Like the cart-wheel follows the hoof of the ox
Speak or act with a peaceful mind,
and happiness will follow, Like a never departing shadow.
Dhammapada, The Way of Truth, I, 1 – 6
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