The Magic of the Mind Summary
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR “THE MAGIC OF THE MIND”
Amen, Daniel G., M.D.;
Making a Good Brain Great
Amen, Daniel G., M.D.;
Change your Brain, Change your Life
Begley, Sharon; Train your Mind,
Change your Brain
Bloom, Floyd, E., M.D., editor;
Best of the Brain from Scientific American
Bolte Taylor, Jill, Ph.D.;
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey
Corpnews.com, 11/29/06; “Violent Television Effects Linger in Brain”
Dalai Lama;
The Art of Happiness
Dispenza, Joe, D.C.;
Evolve your Brain: the Science of Changing your Mind
Doidge, Norman, M.D.;
The Brain that Changes Itself
Elias, Marilyn; USA Today, 12/24/08;
“Older Brains Filter Out the Negatives in Life”
Ferguson, Marilyn;
The Aquarian Conspiracy
Grossman, D. and DeGaetano, G.;
Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence
Harlow, John and Montague, Brendan; The Sunday Times, 1/4/09,
“Love is Love and Not Fade Away”
Kalning, Kristin; msnbc.com 12/8/06;
“Does Game Violence Make Teens Aggressive?”
Nisbett, Richard; New York Times, 2/8/09;
“Education Is All in Your Mind’
Phau, Don; Executive Intelligence Review, Dec, 2002;
“Studies Show Violent Videos Damage Brain”
Sacks, Oliver;
Musicophilia
Schmid, Randolph; Yahoo.com, 2/13/09;
“Kisses Unleash Chemicals that Ease Stress”
Schwartz, J.M, and Begley, Sharon;
The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and Power of Mental Force
Talbot, Michael;
The Holographic Universe
PART I: INTRO
“What we are today comes from our thoughts from yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.” These are the opening lines of the Dhammapada, the wisdom of the Buddha, who clearly realized that “We are what we think.”
Quantum physics has confirmed the Buddha’s observations. Our own thoughts collapse the wave functions of probably reality and make them real.
Futurist Willis Harmann said that the fact that we create our own reality was the most important discovery of the twentieth century.
But such total responsibility is both incredibly powerful and frightening.
Up until fairly recently, even if we accepted that we are what we think, we could always shirk some of the total responsibility by falling back on the limitations of our own brain and “genetic determinism”—that there is a gene for every excuse. The brain, this hard-wired computer in our heads, is what produces the mind, and if our brain is missing a few chips, then our mind can be excused for being something less than enlightened. This reasoning was backed up by the notion that the brain stopped developing in early adulthood and that it was all down hill from there, with synapses deteriorating and neurons disappearing for the rest of our lives.
In 1906 neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon y Cajal won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his analysis of the structure of the nervous system. He wrote near the end of his treatise: “In the adult…the nerve paths are something fixed, ended and immutable.” And this conclusion was accepted for most of the century as the accepted description of the brain.
Well, it turns out that this isn’t the case. In the 1990s, the so-called decade of the brain, numerous experiments and studies began to prove that the brain exhibits a great deal of neuroplasticity, which means that it can be molded and made anew by our thoughts. Says Antonio Damasio, head of Dept. of Neurology and the U. of Iowa: “More may have been learned about the brain and mind in the 1990s than during the entire previous history of psychology and neuroscience.”
If many neuroscientists had bothered to read Ramon y Cajal’s treatise carefully, they might have remembered that after he concluded that the nervous system was fixed, ended and immutable, he did also say: “It is for the science of the future to change, if possible, this harsh decree.” Thankfully, the science of the future has now arrived, and it has lots of news for us: the Buddha was right. We are what we think. Let’s take a look at how the mind and its computer the brain really work.
PART II: HOW THE BRAIN WORKS AND THE CHALLENGES IT FACES
IMAGE #1. EVERY THOUGHT WE HAVE PRODUCES A BIOCHEMICAL REACTION IN THE BRAIN.
So be careful what you think. Think of it as if you had a physical notebook in which to record your life experiences. Every time you think something you write it down. It fills up pages—pages that are real. The mind in this sense is not a Word document where you can go back and delete or edit. What’s done is done, and what is thought is thought. So, just as we should think before we act, we also need to think before we think.
But that’s not as easy as it sounds, because we often indulge our brains in doing exactly what they feel like doing.
IMAGES #2-4. THE BRAIN IS A CREATURE OF HABIT. (Talk thru five slides)
Our thoughts establish neural patterns in our brains that we get used to and we want to keep using those same old patterns because it is easier. Like ruts on a muddy road or a path forged through fresh snow, the more we walk over the same route the easier it is to traverse and the less likely we are to take a different way. But those ruts and routes may get too hardened or icy and cause more damage than it would to take a different path. Even though our brain tends to become neurologically a couch potato that does the same old things, remember that our mind is still ultimately in control and sometimes the brain needs to be told what to do in order to break its habits.
FIRST MAGIC TRICK
Wouldn’t it be nice if just for once we could change the rules and delete all the junk in our minds? Well, we can, in a way. Our brain may have neurochemically recorded all of our thoughts, but our minds can work a little magic if we exercise our will to do so. “It’s as if our mind were a tissue, originally a clean slate that has been soiled over time with all kinds of messy thoughts. (blow nose). Wouldn’t it be great if we could just torch all that junk away and transform it into something totally new?! (and playful)”
Well, we can, but it takes some work, because there’s an ocean of danger out there in which our poor mind could drown…
IMAGE #5. OUR ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE ARE THE SEA OF THOUGHT IN WHICH OUR MIND SWIMS, AND ITS CURRENTS PHYSIOLOGICALLY SHAPE THE BRAIN.
As a sociologist by trade, I am always amazed at how much denial there is about the influences of our environment and culture on our minds. We are so often convinced that we are right, or more often, that there is nothing wrong with the way we do things because that’s the way we have always done them. All I can say is beware what you see, sense and feel, because mirror neurons in our brains make the same thing literally happen to ourselves.
As an example of cultural confinement, we have Janet Jackson, Superbowl 2004, and the Federal Communication Commission.
Studies on violent video games such as “Medal of Honor: Frontline” and “
IMAGE #6. BRAIN SCANS OF VIDEO GAME PLAYERS
There is no question that our culture tends to focus on the negative. When I began to research this topic, I was surprised to find so much about disorders of the brain—Alzheimer’s, anxiety, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc.—and so little about the positive potential. Indeed, I found out that over the last 30 years there have been 46,000 scientific articles written on depression and just 400 on joy. It would seem that our science and our culture assume that “normal” is as good as it gets. In transformational thinking, however, joy is a cultural phenomenon not to be ignored.
So, every thought we think produces a biochemical reaction that starts to establish a pathway of habit that gets reinforced by our cultural environment.
Our minds are slaves to the habits of the brain and the limitations of our cultural conditioning, and our minds control all of our thoughts, which are responsible for the state of our poor brains to begin with. It does seem like we are on a downhill track into the dead end of the brain.
So how do our dumb brains and stressed out minds get from this “normal” state of quiet desperation to any kind of hope for transformation? Let’s take a look at some of the research that has been done which indicates that there is hope for a change of mind in the human species.
PART III: WHAT CAN WE DO TO TRANSFORM OUR MINDS?
1. First, it is extremely important to understand and believe that our brains do produce new neurons. The mere suggestion of thinking positively about the power of the brain can make a big difference. Black and Hispanic students who were simply given a lecture on how the brain works and consequently told that they had the ability to make themselves smarter suddenly cut the distance between their scores on achievement tests compared to whites by 50 percent.
Advanced technology, including the use of thymidine, which indicates the growth of new cells by creating a radioactive spot on new DNA, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and positron-emission tomography (PET) and EEGs have all contributed to making bran scans to find our what is going on in the brain.
In the 1980s, scientist Fernando Nottebohm used some the new technologies to study songbirds. Most birds sing the same songs over and over again throughout their lives, but some types of canaries, chickadees and finches sing all kinds of songs, and create a whole new repertoire every spring. Intrigued by this, Nottebohm was able to demonstrate that the section in male canaries’ brains that generate song doubles in size each spring to incorporate the list of new songs and then recedes to its previous size in the fall.
“A Brain for All Seasons” was a major jolt to the long held assumption of Ramon y Cajal
2. In the 1990s, an increasing number of studies proved that neurogenesis does in fact happen in the human brain. One of the obstacles to accepting this belief was that we do know that neurons do not divide like other cells in our body do. Thus it was concluded that we do not generate any new neurons. It turns out, however, that our brains have a reserve of neural stem cells from which we can grow neurons and other cells of the nervous system.
What’s more, we can grow these new neurons by just thinking about them. In an experiment with playing the piano, a group that actually played piano exercises increased the area of the brain involved by 30 percent more than a control group that did nothing. But a third group that just thought about playing, but never touched a piano, increased the same brain area by 22 percent! Our original hypothesis, that we are what we think is now validated by science.
Now that we know for sure that Ramon y Cajal was wrong and that we really do produce new neurons…
IMAGE #7. HOW DO WE BREAK OUT OF BECOMING NEUROLOGICAL CREATURES OF HABIT?
1. Evolution means that we should include and transcend--evolving beyond our habits rather than “breaking” them. Stop being the victim of the effect of your brain’s habits and start being the cause of new effects.
And what mechanisms does our brain have to help form new habits? Well, a lot. Primarily, we can put our frontal lobes to work.
IMAGE #8, THE FRONTAL LOBES
The size of our prefrontal cortex (or frontal lobes) is the key difference between humans and other species. This is the seat of our will, our judgment, or action plan, our sense of self. The frontal lobes of a dog’s brain makes up 7 percent of the higher brain anatomy, and it is 11 percent in a chimpanzee, whereas in the human brain the frontal lobes take up 30-40% of the of the neocortex.
The frontal lobes are where our sense of self is located, and as such, where we derive all the critical brain functions associated with creating our self: intent, will, planning. The frontal lobes are the master, or CEO of our self.
Joe Dispenza, author of Evolve your Brain, says: “the biggest reason most people cannot utilize the frontal lobe is because we are addicted tour emotions and feelings. In a very real sense we have self-lobotomized our own brains by relying solely on the hardwired, oft-repeated neural networks that require little or no thought to initialize… Unless we can break the habit of “self,” we are destined to endlessly repeat these cycles. Our uniquely different personality becomes predictable because we have consistently memorized the state of our “self.”
It’s a good idea to use mental rehearsal to practice for the part of your new self.
We need to pay attention! (A study with monkeys on changing rhythms of sound and touch. Their brains only showed interested in what they were paying attention to in order to get food.)
So, we need to put the frontal lobes back in control so we can get creative. Here are some suggestions for unlocking the keys to creativity:
Physician and science writer Ulrich Kraft says: “Originality is not a gift doled sparingly by the gods. We can call it up from within us through training and encouragement.”
1. What if we tried Divergent rather than Convergent thinking (Explain the two hemispheres of the frontal lobes, their differences, and give the example of WWII pilots.) Too much specialized knowledge can stand in the way of creative thinking.
2. Suppress some of your latent inhibitors (our brains have to block out a lot of information because we receive 400 billion bits of information every second, and we are only conscious of about 2,000 of those bits).
3. Give your right brain more say in matters.
4. Reprogram your self as a free-thinking genius. (As Dispenza says, “mental rehearsal and the actual doing are one and the same.”
Thomas Edison, author of 1,093 patents, said: “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an action, but a habit.”
IMAGE #9. HOW DO WE CLEAN OUT THE CLUTTER OF CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN OUR MINDS?
Then, wherever you live, improve your environment. An improved living environment is one of the most important elements related to neurogenesis. Experiments with mice have shown that mice with running wheels and tunnels in their cages will generate 15 percent more total neurons than a control group that have no play things and generate nothing new. So, the next time you are running on a treadmill, remember how much mice like it. Life isn’t a rat race, it is an on-going process to evolve our brains through the will power of our minds. Neuroscientist Fred Gage says that the best way to augment brain function does not involve drugs or cell implants, but lifestyle changes: diet, proper sleep, exercise. We do continue to create loads of neurons throughout our life, and the more stimulating and free our environment, the more we create. And the more creative we are, the more our brain grows. Our creativity creates a positive feedback loop between the brain and the mind.
IMAGE #10. TRAVEL AWAY FROM YOUR SAFE SPACE
Strip yourself culturally clean if you can. Travel helps. I’ve made a point of immersing myself in traveling because cultural cleansing is an on-going process. Stay anywhere too long and a culture starts clinging to you like some kind of moss on your mind. Even if you can’t travel physically, you can travel in your mind and find a neutral base within any culture that is comfortable enough to live in.
PART IV: MAKING A NEW MIND WITH UNIVERSAL COMPASSION
As we become more creative about changing our lifestyles, we can use our minds to build a brain that helps us live a life well beyond “normal.” Maybe we can even pursue joy, happiness and compassion.
A news article last week, just in time for Valentine’s Day, described how kissing reduces the stress chemical “cortisol” in our brains. Kissing for 15 minutes produced far better results than in a group where they just held hands. Another recent study using brain scans has shown that at least 10 percent of couples are able to maintain the same level of limerance (the effects of emotional love) after 20 years as would be present in a new relationship of romantic love. The previous assumption on love was not dissimilar to Ramon y Cajal’s view on brain cells, it was assumed that limerance began to significantly fade after 15 months and would totally disappear within 10 years. It’s not always so. And I can vouch for that. “Love is love and not fade away.”
Okay, if we can hang on to that limerance, I wonder what “true love” might look like. The Buddhists have some thoughts on this—the highest ideal being universal compassion.
Professor Richard Davidson, Ph.d. of the U. of Wisconsin has undertaken some of the most widely acclaimed studies of the effects of meditation on the mind. Buddhist monks and a control group were wired with 256 electronic sensors and told to meditate on compassion and unconditional love. The monks’ brains were far more sophisticated at demonstrating brain activity, especially in the frontal lobes. The monks who had meditated the most, up to 50,000 hours, demonstrated the highest amounts of gamma waves the researchers had ever found, which are the brain impulses associated with neurogenesis.
Brain waves: Delta (deep, dreamless sleep), Theta, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma
There were also brain impulses in areas of the brain associated with being prepared to act. These monks believe that universal compassion means being willing to act on it, and they take their compassion seriously. One of these monks who meditated had been held captive for the Chinese for 18 years. Upon his return, the Dalai Lama asked if he had ever been afraid and he said that once, after being tortured, he feared he would lose his compassion for the Chinese.
So, perhaps true love is more like universal compassion and looks something like this:
IMAGE #11. A MONK’S MEDITATION AND THE ART OF HAPPINESS THROUGH UNIVERSAL COMPASSION.
And one monk, a specialist in compassion meditation, showed an incredible amount of activity in an area of the left frontal lobe, which is the region associated with joy, prompting the researchers to label him the happiest man alive.
This research has helped to dispel another set idea in brain theory: the set point of happiness. Up until very recently a number of studies had verified the theory that we have a set point of happiness to which we return, no matter if we have won the lottery or lost a spouse. The problem was, none of the people in these studies were trying to change their emotional levels, or the set point of happiness. (Use Begley’s analogy of measuring the effects of aerobic exercise on a civilization of couch potatoes who had a “set point” of heart rate or blood pressure.)
In fact, research at the Stanford University Center for Longevity has demonstrated that the age group over 55 is much more adept at screening out negative images and focusing on positive ones, through use of the frontal lobes, than those aged 40-55, who are in turn better at it than those under 40.
But where or how, do we find these elusive gamma waves associated with happiness? Well, we also know that our brain produces very strong gamma signals when we have an “aha” moment, when we bring multiple sources of information into a new understanding. This also happens when we observe a sudden perceptual shift, as occurs when looking at the Necker Cube.
IMAGE #12, THE NECKER CUBE
IMAGE #13, TWO WOMEN & A MAN
When you see the cube shift, your brain emits the cherished gamma waves. We can also stimulate our frontal lobes and gamma waves by proposing a completely new complex “self” for ourselves, like the idea of becoming the superhero of your new self.
It seems like this might take a little magic, but Arthur C. Clarke said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
So it is just a question of taking mind technology to its outer limits to find that magic.
But where do we look? Perhaps at the hologram of complete consciousness.
Function is not entirely localized in the brain. (Use examples of Karl Lashley’s search for the “engram” of memory, the woman with only half a brain, people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and Jill Bolte Taylor’s account of discovering the right hemisphere in her book My Stroke of Insight.) Says Taylor: “I don’t want to stay any longer in the left hemisphere than necessary. It’s not a great place to hang out unless you need to do cognitive thinking.” She can now confirm that the brain is designed to heal itself, and she can also now sing in tune.
The human mind was born when individual, self-reflective consciousness burst from our brains. We thought of words, and words gave us a way to name ourselves, and suddenly we existed. Now that consciousness can combine with the universal joy and compassion in the quantum, Akashic Field. This will allow us to use both hemispheres of the brain, both hands of the mind to mold our lives into something beautiful. Life and its constant input of sensory perception is the potter’s wheel that endlessly spins through our brains. Our minds are the hands that we can put to work on the soft tissue of our brains and create a new piece of pottery, a work of our own art, our new, and unpredictable, self.
IMAGE #14, THE MAGIC OF THE MIND
Every thought we think creates a biochemical reaction in the brain.
IMAGE #15, THE ORIGINAL SLIDE WITH NO WORDS
And so we become what we think. Our life is the creation of our Mind. Let’s try to make it a Mind full of universal compassion.
SECOND MAGIC TRICK
It’s as if our mind were a delicate tissue, originally a clean slate that has been soiled and crumpled over time from all those messy thoughts and harsh cultural environments. Wouldn’t it be great if we could transform it by creating one magnificent “Aha!” moment and send out a rush of gamma waves to everyone?
