Why Work on Yourself? Your Brain Wants You to Know.

No matter what approach any of us takes in service to self-improvement, all of it must involve a change to the brain, and inevitably, the body. That change essentially involves either learning and practicing new thoughts, speech and behaviors and/or unlearning and abandoning old thinking, speech and behaviors. And for that to happen, new cells and new wiring connections need to appear in the brain, or old cells and old wiring connections need to disappear. Or both. My favorite video depicting the former part of this process can be found HERE.

What you’re essentially viewing in the above one-minute video is a fundamental life process that humans have given a name to. We call it … learning. Learning comes in all varieties and unfolds continuously across the lifespan. Whether it’s discovering and remembering the new name of a body part – the Pollex*, for example – or deciding to become a neurobiology autodidact in one’s 60s – it all involves learning. And the brain has great reserves of Silent Synapses to accommodate lifelong learning. To make maximum use of the knowledge we acquire, it’s often skillful to learn to practice and apply that learning in the real world. Ideally for the benefit of ourselves and others. If we apply our learning to the detriment of others, we ignorantly operate in opposition to how healthy human beings were designed and are arguably evolving.

Spiritual Pre-Puberty

Shortly before I went through puberty, I first learned about this thing called … sex. I was 11 years old and one of my friends, Peter Talarczyk, told me about things he saw his mother and stepfather doing in their bedroom. We also explored the topic together in the World Book Encyclopedia. What I mostly remember at the time is being incredulous that such a thing happened between people. While I had an intellectual understanding of what was involved, I lacked the neural circuitry and the developed physiology to actually have a direct experience of sex. I believe something similar is the case with authentic spirituality. Until we grow the neurophysiology – sufficient cells and connectivity – that will permit a direct experience of “spirit”, our understanding can only live at the “World Book Encyclopedia” stage. Until then, what many of us are only afforded is what controversial Tibetan Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche called, Glimpse After Glimpse.

On the Road to Find Out

So, what is the nature of this growth and learning that can take us beyond the World Book Encyclopedia stage of learning involving spirituality and what might be the best way to go about it? Jill Bolte Taylor, the famed TED-talking Harvard neuroanatomist, in her recently published book, Whole Brain Living, believes that learning needs to somehow increase the cells and connectivity across the whole network. The disparate parts must become more whole, more integrated. In that regard, she has this to say: “Perhaps gaining insight into Whole Brain Living (integrating networks) is humanity’s collective Hero’s Journey and how we will evolve as a species to live our lives with purpose. (pg.132)

If neurobiological integration – Whole Brain Living – is one of the purposes of learning, what might the integration … be for? Brainscans from recent research into entheogens (“God Drugs” like ayahuasca, psilosybin and LSD) would seem to offer us a possibility – increased connectivity allowing greater ease in processing of energy and information with respect to Pro-social activities – as opposed to antisocial – in our lives.

Whol-ing Wants to Happen

Jill’s not the only one who makes this assertion. In her book, Being a Brain-wise Therapist, neuropsychologist Bonnie Badenoch offers THESE nine ways that a fragmented neural network might become more integrated. Of the nine, currently I find myself most actively working with the last: Temporal Integration – the fact that I very likely have more days of life behind me than I have ahead of me. How might I best serve myself and others in that remaining time?

Authentic spiritual teachers through the ages have been suggesting paths any of us might take. Buddhism is one that has long resonated most strongly for me. Or more accurately, Buddha’s own personal path is what has resonated most for me. For much of Buddha’s early life he was an itinerant seeker, trying on various spiritual approaches to see which ones he felt most harmoniously with in his own brain and body. Ultimately, he ended up becoming what Friedrich Nietzsche called “that profoundest physiologist.” I think if he were just starting out in 2022, Buddha would very likely be known as “that profoundest neurobiologist.”

Outlier, Outlier, Brain on Fire

In the new book Gabor Maté wrote with his son Daniel, The Myth of Normal, one central theme they provide compelling evidence for, is that most all of the citizens in the developed world are walking around with fragmented brains and bodies and few have little idea what it might be like to be fully integrated. In fact, we’re nescient (meta-ignorant) in the sense that we don’t even know that something so critical is absent in our lives. But even if we did, what might we do about it? Probably what spiritual seekers have done through the millennia – mount sufficient inner and outer resources to put us on our own personal paths, to be on our own Way to Find Out – in other words, work on ourselves, on doing our best to grow and integrate our own bio- and neurobiology.

*Pollex is the anatomical name for that appendage pointing down in the picture at the top of this post.