Coming To Attention
The following is an excerpt from a book I am currently working on.
This is an opportunity to see if others are also looking at the quality of our lives these days.
With life having become so full...
so fast...
so much of it impersonal, due to our ability to communicate without ever being face to face, it poses some questions - What are the things that you value most? How much of those things do you make time for in your life? What do you do to find that quiet place in your mind...
in your soul? It begins and ends our life, the process of change.
Moment by moment it is occurring and without it we cannot live.
Yet how we change determines the quality of our lives.
We even change when we are unconscious, yet conscious changing also determines the quality of our lives.
The process of change is inevitable and ageless, and paying attention to how we do it can create a place and a sense of agelessness.
How often have you looked in the mirror and thought, "If I could just slow down the clock.
" Guess what? You can! How often have you said, "I wouldn't be so stressed if I had more time...
there just isn't enough time".
Guess what? There's a way to have it! "Moment by Moment...
An Ageless Process" offers some ideas on how to re-connect with life; changing the quality of our everyday living to conscious, and with that, changing the perception and experience of our lives.
Together we will explore the subject of "core" consciousness and how unconscious living causes us to lose our life as we are in the very process of living it.
It offers us an opportunity to look at how most of us live our lives; how this impacts us physically and mentally, and how these responses affect our aging.
We're going to talk about how our brains turn our life experiences into memories, and how those memories continue to affect us, long after we think we have forgotten them.
More importantly, we are going to learn, together, how to recognize those emotions, understand how they affect us physically, and how we can intervene...
by returning to the present moment.
Going through my journals of the last thirty years has re-enforced my belief in how we can change the way we experience life.
We all share in this human journey, the highs and lows...
the light and the dark.
We all live with ourselves - and sometimes that is frightening and difficult to understand.
I'm hoping that through the story of my path of seeking to understand myself, you will gain an understanding of the influence we can have over our own lives.
July 9, 2006 "It's that old feeling of having remembered something I'd forgotten...
looking at the world with different eyes, even after a night of almost total wake-fullness.
It's remembering - recognizing...
again, who I am at my core; this child person - crone person who resides in this frail body.
These periods of "awakeness" are what my personal journey is about; this moment in time, sitting by the pond, hearing the sweet sounds of the water and the birds talking to each other.
This is what is real - my cat, sitting on a rock...
contemplating what? Just observing, as we are here to do.
" All our body systems our tied directly to our emotions.
Fear, anxiety, anger and agitation, all result in a flood of brain chemicals and hormones that speed up the aging process by causing cellular breakdown and death.
Rapid heart rate, increased blood pressure, rapid, shallow chest breathing; all these things occur as blood is shunted away from the other organs and fingers and toes and go to the large muscles preparing them for fight or flight.
During moments of intense agitation or severe anxiety, the release of adrenaline causes the body to break into a sweat and because digestion stops, we may feel nauseated.
At the moment I was sitting by my pond...
pondering, my brain was producing serotonin, a powerful neurotransmitter that can produce the same quiet alertness as actually meditating.
Momentarily I stopped the aging clock.
Dr.
Ira Glick, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, said: "Behind every emotion and piece of behavior, there is a change in a molecule.
"But...
every single cell in our bodies is also tied to our positive emotions of joy, satisfaction, contentment, tenderness, delight, love and so many more.
We are going to explore how we can consciously improve our cellular health by just being conscious.
In "The Feeling of What Happens", Antonio Damasio, one of the world's most recognized and respected neuroscientists, explores the mystery of consciousness.
He states, "The super-sense of core consciousness is the first step into the light of knowing"..
...
Interestingly enough, the first criteria, used by neurologists for evaluating core consciousness, is wake-fullness.
In Buddhist philosophy, becoming awake is the first step toward enlightenment...
"stepping into the light of knowing".
Core consciousness is our most basic level of consciousness.
It is awake, feels a steady state of back-ground emotions and is capable of both low level and focused attention.
Damasio believes that the core-self undergoes minimal changes through-out our lives, that we are conscious of the core self and that beyond "comes the awareness and appreciation of beauty and the recognition of truth.
" This is our highest level of consciousness.
Consciousness is a completely private phenomenon that takes place in the area we call our mind.
We are all unique individuals, with "selves" that are a result of our DNA, our mother's physical and mental health while we were developing within her body, our physical and emotional environment during our infant years and the myriad of experiences, both physical and emotional that have followed.
We are a composite of our past and the pasts of our ancestral histories.
This "self" is what Damasio refers to as our "autobiographical self", and it is added to every day.
We are "with ourselves" each and every day, no matter where we go or what we do.
We can become our own worst enemy or our own best friend.
In fact the title of one of Jon-Kabat Zinn's best known books is "Where ever You Go...
There You Are".
Our amazing brain carries all the stories that make us who we are, and without disease or injury our brain keeps the events of our lives safe for retrieval when we want or need them.
Our memories are created, sorted and filed away, yet the emotions re-surface each time we experience even a small resemblance to the original event.
When we perceive events or experiences as endangering our status, our self-esteem or our dignity, there often is no action we can take, yet the feelings produce the same sequence of responses that prepare us to fight, flight or freeze.
It is the un-recognized and un-checked emotions that we feel that can take an event from small and unimportant in relationship to our lives, and turn it into a life-threatening force...
literally! We can become so directed by the emotional self with all its history and our fear of not measuring up, that we spend precious time and cellular energy trying to "fight, flee or ignore emotions that are linked to our past rather than experience and understand them in the here and now.
Aging anyone?Yet the beauty of our amazing brain is that we have the capacity to take those memories and associated emotions and generate new ways of reacting to situations, so that our physical response is a positive one rather than harmful.
Those stored memories are layered, creating our autobiographical self.
Who we are today is multiple layers more than the person we were when we were young.
We no longer need to react to life from a place of fear.
This knowledge gives us enormous power over our own lives.
We can re-create the way we experience the past.
In 1993 Depak Chopra wrote," The human body exists in utter defiance of entropy (the breakdown of the energy of a system), since it is incredibly orderly and capable of adding to its order with even more complexity.
" "As seen from the level of intelligence, your cells want to be new at every moment.
" "We are no longer in doubt about the fact that invisible wisps of thought and emotion alter the fundamental chemistry of every cell.
" Several weeks ago I was buying groceries, and the store had a beautiful astromeria on sale in their garden dept.
I love this flower and buy it often for a bouquet in the house because they last so long.
I thought nothing about my purchase until I got home, and placing it in the bird garden by the house, I remembered I live in the middle of deer area and they visit my yard every night.
But the child in me stubbornly refused to accept the fact of my spontaneous purchase and I left it in the yard for show.
It actually lasted through the first night, lulling me into a false sense of security, but as you might have guessed was nothing but some stubs of green by the second morning.
I felt horrible...
like a neglectful mother.
I was mad at my mistake of poor judgment and feeling sad that I had killed a beautiful plant.
A great example of how past emotions can control us.
For weeks I have looked at it guiltily each time I walked by, so last week I dug the whole thing up and set the clump of dirt with the root-ball and the green stubs in another place in the garden, thinking I would re-plant it where it might be safe.
It has sat in blazing hot sun and gotten only the fringe of sprinkler water every couple of days.
A constant reminder of my old belief that I don't do things right, I don't think things through, etc.
, etc.
This morning as I took my watering break, lo and behold there are three perfect blossoms stretching upward off of short, stubby stems...
testimony to the life-force that exists in the universe; the incomparable intelligence and patience of nature.
I smiled all the way back into the house.
This is an opportunity to see if others are also looking at the quality of our lives these days.
With life having become so full...
so fast...
so much of it impersonal, due to our ability to communicate without ever being face to face, it poses some questions - What are the things that you value most? How much of those things do you make time for in your life? What do you do to find that quiet place in your mind...
in your soul? It begins and ends our life, the process of change.
Moment by moment it is occurring and without it we cannot live.
Yet how we change determines the quality of our lives.
We even change when we are unconscious, yet conscious changing also determines the quality of our lives.
The process of change is inevitable and ageless, and paying attention to how we do it can create a place and a sense of agelessness.
How often have you looked in the mirror and thought, "If I could just slow down the clock.
" Guess what? You can! How often have you said, "I wouldn't be so stressed if I had more time...
there just isn't enough time".
Guess what? There's a way to have it! "Moment by Moment...
An Ageless Process" offers some ideas on how to re-connect with life; changing the quality of our everyday living to conscious, and with that, changing the perception and experience of our lives.
Together we will explore the subject of "core" consciousness and how unconscious living causes us to lose our life as we are in the very process of living it.
It offers us an opportunity to look at how most of us live our lives; how this impacts us physically and mentally, and how these responses affect our aging.
We're going to talk about how our brains turn our life experiences into memories, and how those memories continue to affect us, long after we think we have forgotten them.
More importantly, we are going to learn, together, how to recognize those emotions, understand how they affect us physically, and how we can intervene...
by returning to the present moment.
Going through my journals of the last thirty years has re-enforced my belief in how we can change the way we experience life.
We all share in this human journey, the highs and lows...
the light and the dark.
We all live with ourselves - and sometimes that is frightening and difficult to understand.
I'm hoping that through the story of my path of seeking to understand myself, you will gain an understanding of the influence we can have over our own lives.
July 9, 2006 "It's that old feeling of having remembered something I'd forgotten...
looking at the world with different eyes, even after a night of almost total wake-fullness.
It's remembering - recognizing...
again, who I am at my core; this child person - crone person who resides in this frail body.
These periods of "awakeness" are what my personal journey is about; this moment in time, sitting by the pond, hearing the sweet sounds of the water and the birds talking to each other.
This is what is real - my cat, sitting on a rock...
contemplating what? Just observing, as we are here to do.
" All our body systems our tied directly to our emotions.
Fear, anxiety, anger and agitation, all result in a flood of brain chemicals and hormones that speed up the aging process by causing cellular breakdown and death.
Rapid heart rate, increased blood pressure, rapid, shallow chest breathing; all these things occur as blood is shunted away from the other organs and fingers and toes and go to the large muscles preparing them for fight or flight.
During moments of intense agitation or severe anxiety, the release of adrenaline causes the body to break into a sweat and because digestion stops, we may feel nauseated.
At the moment I was sitting by my pond...
pondering, my brain was producing serotonin, a powerful neurotransmitter that can produce the same quiet alertness as actually meditating.
Momentarily I stopped the aging clock.
Dr.
Ira Glick, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, said: "Behind every emotion and piece of behavior, there is a change in a molecule.
"But...
every single cell in our bodies is also tied to our positive emotions of joy, satisfaction, contentment, tenderness, delight, love and so many more.
We are going to explore how we can consciously improve our cellular health by just being conscious.
In "The Feeling of What Happens", Antonio Damasio, one of the world's most recognized and respected neuroscientists, explores the mystery of consciousness.
He states, "The super-sense of core consciousness is the first step into the light of knowing"..
...
Interestingly enough, the first criteria, used by neurologists for evaluating core consciousness, is wake-fullness.
In Buddhist philosophy, becoming awake is the first step toward enlightenment...
"stepping into the light of knowing".
Core consciousness is our most basic level of consciousness.
It is awake, feels a steady state of back-ground emotions and is capable of both low level and focused attention.
Damasio believes that the core-self undergoes minimal changes through-out our lives, that we are conscious of the core self and that beyond "comes the awareness and appreciation of beauty and the recognition of truth.
" This is our highest level of consciousness.
Consciousness is a completely private phenomenon that takes place in the area we call our mind.
We are all unique individuals, with "selves" that are a result of our DNA, our mother's physical and mental health while we were developing within her body, our physical and emotional environment during our infant years and the myriad of experiences, both physical and emotional that have followed.
We are a composite of our past and the pasts of our ancestral histories.
This "self" is what Damasio refers to as our "autobiographical self", and it is added to every day.
We are "with ourselves" each and every day, no matter where we go or what we do.
We can become our own worst enemy or our own best friend.
In fact the title of one of Jon-Kabat Zinn's best known books is "Where ever You Go...
There You Are".
Our amazing brain carries all the stories that make us who we are, and without disease or injury our brain keeps the events of our lives safe for retrieval when we want or need them.
Our memories are created, sorted and filed away, yet the emotions re-surface each time we experience even a small resemblance to the original event.
When we perceive events or experiences as endangering our status, our self-esteem or our dignity, there often is no action we can take, yet the feelings produce the same sequence of responses that prepare us to fight, flight or freeze.
It is the un-recognized and un-checked emotions that we feel that can take an event from small and unimportant in relationship to our lives, and turn it into a life-threatening force...
literally! We can become so directed by the emotional self with all its history and our fear of not measuring up, that we spend precious time and cellular energy trying to "fight, flee or ignore emotions that are linked to our past rather than experience and understand them in the here and now.
Aging anyone?Yet the beauty of our amazing brain is that we have the capacity to take those memories and associated emotions and generate new ways of reacting to situations, so that our physical response is a positive one rather than harmful.
Those stored memories are layered, creating our autobiographical self.
Who we are today is multiple layers more than the person we were when we were young.
We no longer need to react to life from a place of fear.
This knowledge gives us enormous power over our own lives.
We can re-create the way we experience the past.
In 1993 Depak Chopra wrote," The human body exists in utter defiance of entropy (the breakdown of the energy of a system), since it is incredibly orderly and capable of adding to its order with even more complexity.
" "As seen from the level of intelligence, your cells want to be new at every moment.
" "We are no longer in doubt about the fact that invisible wisps of thought and emotion alter the fundamental chemistry of every cell.
" Several weeks ago I was buying groceries, and the store had a beautiful astromeria on sale in their garden dept.
I love this flower and buy it often for a bouquet in the house because they last so long.
I thought nothing about my purchase until I got home, and placing it in the bird garden by the house, I remembered I live in the middle of deer area and they visit my yard every night.
But the child in me stubbornly refused to accept the fact of my spontaneous purchase and I left it in the yard for show.
It actually lasted through the first night, lulling me into a false sense of security, but as you might have guessed was nothing but some stubs of green by the second morning.
I felt horrible...
like a neglectful mother.
I was mad at my mistake of poor judgment and feeling sad that I had killed a beautiful plant.
A great example of how past emotions can control us.
For weeks I have looked at it guiltily each time I walked by, so last week I dug the whole thing up and set the clump of dirt with the root-ball and the green stubs in another place in the garden, thinking I would re-plant it where it might be safe.
It has sat in blazing hot sun and gotten only the fringe of sprinkler water every couple of days.
A constant reminder of my old belief that I don't do things right, I don't think things through, etc.
, etc.
This morning as I took my watering break, lo and behold there are three perfect blossoms stretching upward off of short, stubby stems...
testimony to the life-force that exists in the universe; the incomparable intelligence and patience of nature.
I smiled all the way back into the house.
Source...