From the time our brain begins forming in utero, it begins orchestrating a great neural symphony. Those first activities are primarily driven by our genetic inheritance, as enzymes and signalling proteins begin contingently communicating commands, instructions and directions to cell after cell, telling them what form to take, what route to travel to get to which location in the brain and what other cells to form connections with. It’s an astonishing, unparalleled performance, elements of which, continue throughout our whole lifetime.
Most all of the connections my brain makes are performed in service to insure my body’s survival. And in order to accomplish that effectively, my brain has to pay extra attention to real or potential threats that show up in my daily environment. So, for example, if my mother becomes excessively stressed while she’s pregnant with me, her HPA Axis will begin flooding her system with stress hormones to help her deal with whatever is showing up as a threat in her world. At the same time, my own developing brain will be impacted by that stress and will begin making brain connections and generating its own stress hormones in response to my mother’s stress, even though I may be in very little actual real danger in the moment. My mother may have simply received an emotionally disturbing email.
Regardless, my little in utero brain has now made an associative connection in response to my mother’s stress. These kind of stress-generated neural connections will be made over and over again millions and millions of times in my life. In behavioral psychology, the positive or negative associations and connections our brain makes results in operant conditioning. Those associations and connections are absolutely needed to insure my survival. Or so the design, structure and function of my brain would have me believe.
Lifelong Stress-Rebalancing Act
To begin to step outside of what our brain would have us believe, we can add creativity to karma. We can begin to set about cultivating a radical willingness to see what’s actually happening in any present moment – our brain is most often generating a narrative – making stuff up in an attempt to make sense of feelings arising in our body that we have forever associated with threats to our survival, most often outside our conscious awareness.
If it’s me actually receiving that poopy email and not my mother, by simply beginning to pay close attention to what’s happening in my body in response to the email I’ve just received, I can begin to “unlearn” – basically disrupt and unravel the connections formed by earlier conditioning (early neural connections formed in response to stressful events). When we recognize that in almost every moment of our lives no real threat to our survival is present, we stop time-traveling in our mind. We stop making up fearful stories about the future and we stop recalling painful stories about the past. This growing awareness starts us on the road to real wisdom. All that’s left then is … practice, practice, practice.
Ripe Fruit for the Juicer
Practice Make Different
When we take up such practice, my recently departed friend and colleague, Kathleen Singh reminds us: “Such creativity, capable of altering the direction of blind karmic habits, is evidence of grace’s evolutionary impetus toward ever-deepening realizations. Relentlessly inquiring into such karmic patterning can free attention from its habituated orbit, just as an electron with a quick infusion of energy, can break free from an atom. Wisdom – clear seeing – provides the energy needed to make the quantum leap.”
One useful aim is to pay increasing attention to when stress hormone imbalances raise feelings of aversion – the impulse to turn away from something that makes us uncomfortable. It could be a video depicting violence, a pet in pain, a homeless person on the street we avoid making eye contact with. But our practice needn’t start with big stressors. It need not involve monumental change. It can be small things done mindfully in creative ways that have little to do with threat or stress. Brushing our teeth with a non-preferred hand. Backing the car into the driveway the next time we come home instead of pulling in front first. Initiating a conversation if we generally wait for others to initiate. Listening instead of speaking (here’s a list of 52 other possibilities). Anything that changes things up and makes a positive difference in our lives and the lives of others that we might not ordinarily undertake is ripe fruit for the juicer. Juice on.
“cultivating a radical willingness” – I love that, Mark. I think I’m doing just that, with practice, practice, practice… and more practice.