Posted inHappiness Neuroscience

There’s nothing wrong with negative emotions and bad feelings. Evolution gave them a purpose.

I used to be inspired by religious/spiritual books that pointed to a reality beyond everyday life. Now I'm inspired by scientific/worldly books about the life that surrounds each of us, right here, right now. My new favorite book is The Opposite of Happiness: How Bad Feelings Make and Break Us by George Loewenstein. Lowenstein is noted for his work in behavioral economics. He says that to economists, he is too psychologically oriented, and to psychologists, he is too economically oriented. Which is fine with me. I enjoy creative minds who aren't confined to traditional boxes. I'm just 47 pages into…
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Posted inBuddhism Neuroscience Reality

We need a philosophical and spiritual Copernican revolution

The Copernican Revolution in astronomy corrected the mistaken belief that our Earth was the center of the solar system. Instead, the Sun took its rightful place there in the minds of humans. That was one step in understanding our correct place in the cosmos. Another came when astronomers realized that what seemed to be objects within our Milky Way galaxy actually were other galaxies, each containing tens or hundreds of billions of stars. Now we know there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. All that should make us feel very small in the grand scheme of things.…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness Neuroscience

Epilepsy and meditation: two paths to “everything is as it should be”

So, I was reading along in In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, which I've been blogging about recently, and came to a passage that reminded me of a post I wrote a few weeks ago, "What if everything is okay just as it is?" I described the feeling: There are moments when we look upon life not as a series of problems to be solved, but as a complete answer lacking even the need for a question. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. These can lead to such moments. So can meditation, nature, exercise,…
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Posted inAwareness Mindfulness Neuroscience

Past and future are optional concepts, since some cultures lack them

Most of us worry a lot about both our past and future, even though the past is gone and the future has yet to occur. We do our best to live in Now, the present moment, but often the past and future occupy such a big part of our mental real estate, the present gets squeezed into a relatively small corner. One reason I'm liking In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant so much (the subject of several recent blog posts) is that the book points to some provocative ideas about our usual sense…
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Posted inNeuroscience Spiritual practice/meditation

Everyday awareness isn’t optimal. Psychedelics are one way to improve things.

Continuing with my posts about In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, my reading of the book brought me to a subject that was dear to my heart back in my college days: how psychedelics like LSD and mescaline can open the mind to an expanded view of reality. Marchant had been describing how what seems to be the present moment actually is infused by the brain with both our past experiences and predictions of the future. I shared some passages about this in my previous post about In Search of Now. She then…
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Posted inNeuroscience Reality Uncategorized

Reality is different from how we humans perceive reality

In my previous post about In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, I focused on her totally scientific observation that according to Einstein's extremely well proven relativity theory, the past, present, and future are all the same -- in the sense that each is part of a single "block universe" in which every event, from the motion of a single particle to the movement of a gigantic galaxy, is captured in a four dimensional space-time continuum that simply is. Of course, this perspective is utterly unlike how the world, and our life, appears to…
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Posted inMindfulness Neuroscience

Cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness

I recently finished writing in a ruled 8 1/2 X 11 pad of paper that I've used for various purposes, turning over a page to start writing on a fresh page without discarding what I'd written before. I was about to throw the pad away, or rather, recycle it, when I decided to look at the first pages and see what was there. Which was... 3 2/3 pages of scribbled notes that I'd taken titled "CBT & Mindfulness -- Waking Up." That made me recall listening to a series on the Waking Up app that featured a subject that interested…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Claude, my new AI friend, just wrote a guest blog post about intentions, regret, and free will

Showing my age, through all those years I still distinctly remember a central lyric from the 1965 Animals song, "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood Maybe that's because as a junior in high school, I often felt that I was being misunderstood. By friends, my mother, by teachers. That's part of teenage angst. The lyrics hold up well, as regret is a feeling that is timeless. Baby, you understand me now?If sometimes you see that I'm madDon'tcha know that no one alive can always be…
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Posted inConsciousness Neuroscience

If A.I. is thinking, this argues for the materialistic nature of human consciousness

In my last post, "Landscape of Consciousness is an amazing web site that maps 350 theories of consciousness," I said that I strongly believe that materialistic theories where the brain is viewed as the source of consciousness make the most sense and are the most likely to be true. A couple of letters in New Scientist about the above-linked article provide some reasons for materialism. From Andy McGee,  Adelaide, South Australia Further to your exploration of the wide variety of ideas about consciousness, biological consciousness is the only one we know exists. It is most likely to have come from…
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Posted inAwareness Neuroscience

“Myself” is a thought, just like other thoughts. Impermanent. Everchanging.

Most of us feel like sometimes, or often, we're at the mercy of thoughts. They arise when we don't want them to, like when we're trying to silence the mind in meditation. They fail to show up when we need them to, like when we're trying to remember where we put our reading glasses. But there's a basic assumption here that could be mistaken: that the "we" in the two sentences I just wrote isn't separable from "they" -- thoughts. This puts the problem of thoughts in a different perspective. Not as something that happens to us, but is us.…
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Posted inArtificial intelligence Neuroscience

The real danger of A.I. isn’t that it becomes like a human mind, but that the human mind already is like A.I.

Artificial Intelligence, A.I., is a big deal nowadays. I just heard a financial expert say that if the burgeoning investments in A.I. are subtracted from growth in the United States, that growth would be flat. Meaning, A.I. is driving the upturn in the stock market, as well as capturing the public's imagination. Much of that imagining involves fears that before too long, A.I. will surpass the human mind in general intelligence. And not by a little. By a lot. Then, who knows how super-intelligent A.I. systems will behave? Will they turn on their human creators once they attain a mind…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

No free will brings great news: You are innocent of your past mistakes

There's plenty of reasons not to believe in free will. The most important and basic reason is that free will is an illusion. Robert Sapolsky made strong arguments for this in his book, Determined. I wrote quite a few posts about this wonderful book. A summary of his arguments in Sapolsky's own words can be found here. But once we accept the reality that free will doesn't exist, a question arises: What does this mean for how we live? In one sense, not much. For the illusion of free will is so strong, even Sapolsky admits that almost always, he feels…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Regret seems useless to me, especially if there’s no free will

I regret quite a few things that I've done in my life. Everybody does. At least, everybody that I know. But recently it dawned on me that regret is almost always a useless emotion, whether or not we possess free will. (I'm convinced that free will is an illusion.) I'll illustrate why I feel this way with a simple example. This afternoon I left home a bit later than usual for the drive to our athletic club, where I exercise on Monday before going to my Tai Chi class in downtown Salem. I mildly regretted not leaving on time, since…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Thoughts and feelings arise on their own, so pride or shame in them isn’t justified

I'm a pretty good writer and speaker. Words are my thing. Or rather, one of my things. Musical and artistic ability -- that's decidedly not my thing. The same is true for all of us. Not in the same way as me, of course. We're all different, with unique strengths and weaknesses. But no matter what those may be -- what we're good at and what we're bad at -- there's good reason to believe that pride or shame isn't really justified when it comes to our thoughts, feelings, actions, and perceptions. In explaining why I feel this way, I'll…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience Spiritual practice/meditation

“I’m spiritual but not religious” is a stepping stone to “I’m living but not spiritual”

As I've noted before, am noting now, and likely will note again, my life seems to be a reflection of the lyric in a Donavan song, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." Reportedly this was inspired by a Zen saying. The meaning it has for me is that the first 20 years of my life were marked by a feeling that this earthly existence is the only reality we'll ever know. Then, for 35 years, I embraced an Eastern religion (Radha Soami Satsang Beas) that taught the physical universe is the lowest realm…
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Posted inNeuroscience

Manifesting makes sense, when it’s looked at scientifically

Last year I wrote a couple of blog posts about the scientific approach to manifesting: Mind Magic is a science-based book about manifesting what you want, and Manifesting comes in two varieties: scientific and New Age. I've just started reading another scientific book about manifesting. The author is a psychologist, Sabina Brennan, who wrote The Neuroscience of Manifesting. It'll probably cover much the same ground as Mind Magic, but the Introduction has an interesting perspective on the magical aspect of manifesting. Recently in a comment I mentioned how our conscious mind is just the tip of the mental iceberg, since…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience Uncategorized

The motive of Charlie Kirk’s killer will never be known, because free will is an illusion

Here at the Church of the Churchless we examine issues related to current events that are almost universally ignored by others. Some would say that's because I write about stuff that is so far out-there, so metaphysical, so divorced from everyday reality, nobody cares about it except people who similarly have their heads in the clouds instead of grounded in practicality. Not surprisingly, I have a different take. Ever since Charlie Kirk, a well-known right-wing political activist here in the United States, was apparently killed by Tyler Robinson, who has been arrested, I've heard many commentators on news outlets speak…
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Posted inKarma Neuroscience

Best to avoid magical thinking, even if you like magic

NOTE: I just checked, and it appears that the new WordPress version of my Salem Political Snark blog has gone live, thanks to the fine work by Glorywebs, the tech company that is handling the migration of my blogs to WordPress, since Typepad, my current blogging service, is shutting down on September 30. I've asked that Church of the Churchless be the next blog that they work on. If you want to see what this blog will look like fairly soon, check out the new and much improved Salem Political Snark. You click on the title of a post to…
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Posted inBuddhism Neuroscience

“Myself” is a transient thought, like all other thoughts

Who am I? Who are you? Who is anybody? These questions, which all point in the same enigmatic direction, are central to many different fields. Psychology. Neuroscience. Spirituality. Philosophy. Sociology. Anthropology. Broadly speaking -- very broadly, really -- there seems to be two approaches to answering the Who am I? question. I'll sum them up as the Hidden Pearl and the Flowing River. Hinduism is an example of Hidden Pearl. There's a divine Self lurking within the human psyche, Atman, which, when recognized, is closely related to Brahman, the Supreme Being. Another way of putting it is the true Self…
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Posted inHappiness Meaning of life Neuroscience

Happiness and meaning can trap us. Psychological richness, not so much.

A few days ago I wrote my first post about Shigehiro Oishi's book, Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. For a thoughtful review of the book by Sebastiano Mancin, click here. Here's a second post about Oishi's call for adding psychological richness to the commonly heard dimensions of a full life, happiness and meaning. He argues that while we all crave happiness, this longing can be a trap. The happiness trap has two faces. First, there is the pressure to be happy, which makes feeling sadness, anger, and anguish seem undesirable and…
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