Don Salmon
Forum Replies Created
-
It’s interesting. The kinds of attention associated with the right and left hemisphere are “functions” of a greater awareness (what once upon a time was referred to as “Spirit” with a capital S.
If Mark stops by, I would be fascinated to hear how he relates the process or function of attention to that greater, boundless, luminous, vast, all encompassing, all permeating and all transcending Spirit (or Awareness, or Consciousness or Sat-Chit-Ananda, or whatever words you wish:>))
-
Well, this is unimaginably simple music, and the elitist music snob in me (classically trained composer/pianist) is concerned. But since it’s the non judgmental right hemisphere we’re connecting to, perhaps the simple C, G and F major chords will be acceptable:>))
This is a piece I improvised to my wife, Jan, reading Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things”
-
Hi, forgive me if I’m being overly simplistic – are you talking about working to create an environment (homes, workplaces, neighborhoods etc) to foster the kind of integrated, whole-brain (brain-body, brain-body-cosmos!) world Iain is taking about?
I wonder if you know of the work of neuroscientist Esther Steinberg, who has been conducting research for some years on the effect of “place” on our consciousness?
-
Thanks Zak.This is REALLY excellent. I’ve seen a lot of formats for online discussion and this is one of the best I’ve seen.
I’ve created a separate group oriented toward the practical implications of Iain’s work (it’s the one with the “BE” logo)
I hope others join in. I think it could be lots of fun as well as potentially profoundly transformative.
-
Here’s the music/videos we have up now: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrv6fVh9ph3_fDf_NihzlkA/videos
I’m in the midst of preparing over 50 new ones, some directly addressing the different forms of attention that Iain describes.
A few of the videos we already have up deal with different ways of attending. The “Attention Game for Greater Calm” is about evoking the Silence underlying BOTH kinds of attention. The video “How to Use Breathing Videos” has a section near the end where Jan (my wife) leads you through narrow and wide focus attention, typically correlated with left and right hemispheres.
I’d love to do more attention games. I have some speaking videos where I lead people through some experiments with attention. if you have any suggestions, let me know and I can make a video about it.
-
Hi Matt:
Thanks for your fascinating reply. looking forward to more of your writing (and if you have any videos please send us the URLs)
-
Hi Mark, my wife is in the same situation, so we’re both being extra careful about non-virtual contact.
nice to see you hear and look forward to more comments from you.
-
Hi James,
I’ve been making an effort to add a comment or so on each of the discussions. I also started a separate “group” to discuss practice, which I find is WOEFULLY lacking in Iain’s works.
I think you were at the last group zoom, where Iain made an initial comment to the effect that the idea of practice may be too “LH” then made a perfunctory nod toward mindfulness.
But contemplatives around the world, throughout history, have struggled with and come up with brilliant ways of integrating “Effort’ and “Grace” (which is really more the essence of the challenge of practice than LH or RH, which BOTH are involved in ALL contemplative practices)
If you go to “Groups” look for the “BE” logo and please join in. My favorite topic related to Iain’s work is attention, and the vast and varied ways Christian, Buddhist, Taoist and other traditions – as well as modern psychology and neuroscience – have found we can shift attention in a way that leads to profound transformations.
you may know the little Zen story? I think Iain should tell it every time he gives a talk!
A disciple has been studying Dogen, and Nagarjuna, and many others who have contributed to the Zen Buddhist tradition, and finds himself getting overwhelmed.
He asks his teacher, “Can you sum up the essence of Zen?”
The teacher replies, “Attention.”
Having hoped for a LITTLE more, the student responds, “Well, can you say something else also?”
The teacher responds, “Attention, attention.”
“But,” the student, now a bit irritated, “what does attention MEAN”?
The teacher responds, “Attention means attention.”
-
Hey Dan, quite beautiful. I’m all for lots of words as poetry for evoking the sacred and sublime.
At the risk of terribly oversimplifying, it seems to me what you’re doing is inviting us to the experience of God (a RH vs LH shift) in and as all things; what St Paul referred to as recognizing God as that “in which we live and move and have our being.”
What you’re doing also reminds me of lectio Divina, or “Divine reading,” inviting us to contemplate the text not so much to understand it intellectually but to read it as a way of diving into and dwelling more deeply into the Divine presence.
On the other hand, no words is good too. I attended the first ever “Centering Prayer” mass back in 1981 at a small church on the southern edge of Manhattan (NYC). Basil Pennington, one of the leaders of the contemplative Christian movement at the time, celebrated the mass.
After the opening songs and prayers, he stepped up to give his homily, but instead of speaking, he sat in silence for 20 minutes.
And then he spoke the Our Father:
I remember, hearing the “Our………Father…..” i felt I had never truly heard the Lord’s Prayer until that moment, every word, every syllable informed by that 20 minutes of deeply contemplative Silence.
-
Ok, thanks for the clarification. So if I understand you correctly, you’re primarily focused on external changes, which I think is great, but I wonder if it’s enough.
This brings to mind and anecdote from many years ago. in the early 1990s, a group of about 500 people got together to look at how spirituality and politics could inform each other.
I got into a heated conversation on the value of “inner” vs “outer” change with an avowed Marxist, who insisted only outer change mattered. We were getting nowhere when an image came to mind.
“Imagine,” I said, “you have a magic wand. With one wave of the magic wand, all institutions, laws, constitutions, etc would change to maximize peace, harmony, justice, etc (ie the perfect RH as master type world). All people would immediately have all their material needs met, sufficient housing, clothing, food, all wars would be ended, all workers given full rights, no more racist, sexist laws, policies etc.
“Do you think it would even take 24 hours before people started exploiting things, changing things such that all the old inequalities, injustices were back in full force or even worse than before?”
“now, imagine a 2nd wave of the wand. NO external changes are made, but all minds are filled with wisdom and all hearts filled with love and compassion. Do you think it would take even 24 hours before everyone on the planet would start working to ensure that all institutions, laws, constitutions etc would change to maximize peace, harmony, justice, etc?”
To my amazement, he got it. It’s not that we have a magic wand, and another objection, that well, human nature will never change.
The purpose of the magic wand thought experiment is simply to see as clearly as possible that inner change HAS to take precedence, and as to the objection that human nature will never change, that eliminates the value of changing environments and building special buildings as well.
I love your proposal and your vision, but I don’t see it being effective without an equally powerful vision of how to make inner change more accessible to all.
-
Hi Mary,
Thanks for letting me know. I just thought maybe a little “hello where is everyone” might get something more started!
Hopefully over time, the conversations will pick up.
-
Hi folks,
I love this group – the more we focus on attention and experience, the more real-world applications we’ll find.
The first time I was aware of the intuition/analysis distinction (I prefer the psychological to neurological terms – I’m assuming, of course, folks realize intuition = RH and analysis = LH) was as a teenager.
I had started improvising/composing music when I was 11, but did not start formal study until I was 17. My teacher had me write a fugue. I was pretty good at the technical stuff, but when I tried to put it together into a composition, it sounded dull as dishwater.
If I ignored technique, and just improvised something sort of fugue-sounding, it sounded very pretty but the structure was almost entirely absent.
I remember struggling with this for months, and one day it just happened by itself. The music flowed, the intuition was powerful, AND the structure was precise. I could not replicate this at will, but it has stayed with me lo these many years, and I realize just about in any moment of the day, it’s possible to step back BEYOND BOTH intuition and analysis to that place of quiet Being (God, if you wish) from where intuition and analysis can flow effortlessly.
not that it’s easy, just that it’s possible.
-
Ah, I see they just implemented the ability to upload a document. Let’s see:
Ok, it worked!!
-
TESTING AGAIN:
(pasted from our website: https://www.remembertobe.life/research
Dr. Edmund Jacobsen was one of the early pioneers in the field of mind-body medicine (then known as psychosomatic medicine). In the 1920s, using one of the first machines ever available for measuring electrical activity in muscles and the nervous system, he demonstrated that there’s a connection between tension in the body and tension in the mind. Studies of Jacobsen’s particular ‘tense-relax” practice have shown that it can improve sleep as well as reduce anxiety, tension, high blood pressure, the likelihood of seizures, and more.
WONDERFUL: Thanks Ralph, evidently the webmasters fixed it.
-
Hi Elsbeth:
Thanks for posting here. I read the linked article – LOTS of fascinating observations, and I’m trying to find a way to honor the richness of what you have written yet zoom in on a particular point.
You wrote: “When you say non-duality it appears to mean a logical opposite to Descartes type of duality,”
So let me see if I can clarify this in a way that illuminates the theme of this particular group, practice.
AWARENESS AND OBJECTS OF AWARENESS
I believe it’s correct to say that even including Bohm’s notion of “implicate order,” this is still all in the realm of objects of awareness. “Objects” is perhaps a very misleading word as we tend to associate it with perceivable physical objects. it might help to add that “objects” includes the archetypal “ideas” that underlie everything in the universe. To go deeper – at least, as far as I understand it – than Plato, Jung or Bohm – even Christ as the “Word” which brings all things into existence “lives and moves and has its being” in that transcendental Awareness.
The “non duality” of Awareness and Objects of Awareness is God.
Now, “G_d” is perhaps among the most misused words in the language. So let me see if I can bring that back to practice.
Jan (my wife) and I studied with a quite brilliant, if deeply problematic, non duality teacher, Andrew Hewson, between 2019 and 2021. He made a very interesting distinction between what he referred to as “Pure Awareness” and – his term for “objects” – ‘Conscious Presence.”
What does this point to in our immediate experience?
PURE AWARENESS: There is something that might be called a “Silence” underlying all experience. It is not an experience, but it can be recognized (I know that sounds paradoxical – when you recognize it it’s like a fish suddenly realizing it’s been swimming in water all its life – but that is only a metaphor)
CONSCIOUS PRESENCE: This is more difficult in a secular context, as it refers even more directly than “Pure Awareness” to a Divine, Infinite Reality. What it “feels” like is something alive, shimmering, vibrant, radiant, which not only permeates the entire Field of experience but which actually CONSTITUTES that field. In that sense, there is nothing but Pure Awareness and Conscious Presence.
Initially, when either is recognized, it seems like a bifurcation. But as they become more and more familiar, it is seen that Pure Awareness is nothing more than Conscious Presence aware of itSElf. And Conscious Presence is always “purely Aware.”
I think, if I understand your writing clearly enough, everything you describe as polarity or duality or non dual duality is within Conscious Presence.
I hope that helps!