Bow... to Dr. FeelGood

Alas, it looks like the natives are growing restless…

There is NO such action as “thinking.” You have never had a “thought” in your life. Just electrochemical synaptic firings experienced in, and by, a brain. We refer to this electrochemical processing as "thought" or "thinking." But you can call it whatever you want.

Instead of “thinking,” why not call it “yodeling”? You could say, “wait! I’m yodeling about what you just said.” Or how about “kipockling”? Or maybe “stupencracking”? You could say, “wait! let me kipockle about what you just said” or “let me stupencrack about that for awhile.”

What is a “thought,” if not a circuit linked up to other circuits giving an experience you refer to as “conceptual”? Why make it anything more than this, unless you want some thoughts to have particular relevance? Unless you want some “thoughts” to have special significance?

Unless you want some thoughts to lead to your “awakening”?

And they will most certainly set up the circuits that lead to your "awakening," whether "awakening" is real or not.

What I write here, on this very page, is the domino effect of a billion neural circuits rapidly linking up and firing off. This provides a “linguistic” experience in specific centers of the brain (they’re electrochemically lighting up like a xmas tree right now!). From that I tap, tap, tap away, through the use of other circuits involving movement and hand/eye coordination. And all this is happening in a separate, individual brain, protected by a cranial shell atop a bipedal frame.

Nothing “sacred” about it. Nothing special.

However, it is “emotion” that drives the cranial machine. Limbic system synapses are what you seek and what you live for. You want to “feel” your “thoughts” and so, you seek out the guru or enlightened master who will give you the “thoughts” that make you “feel” good.

This is all pretty simple when you break it down….

So you bow at the feet of the one who gives you the “thoughts” that jazz up the limbic centers of your brain. Doesn’t matter if “awakening” is real or not. Doesn’t matter whether “enlightenment” exists or not.

In the moment, you “feel” good and that’s basically what it’s all about.

And these circuits will have you chasing more. You think it’s because it’s “true.” But truth doesn’t matter to the brain. What matters is how you “feel” when certain synapses fire. What doesn’t make you “feel” good (like this blog) you avoid (and may even attack). But that which allows you to fire-off ("think”) positive “emotions” you bow to and keep coming back for more.

It’s not rocket science, folks.

But, as you can see from the comments on other posts, reading these words may tend not to make you “feel” good. In fact, some are processing “fear” through the amygdala (you can tell by the ranting and shouting, which is processed through the limbic system).

You want your "thoughts" to be special. So you've fixated on stringing together particular "thoughts" so you can "feel" good.

Nonetheless, since you have NO control over the circuits in your head, everything is to be expected to occur exactly as it does.

So who cares?

Now.... doesn’t that make you “feel” good to “think” about?
 

War of the Circuits

I tread on hallowed ground because, as you can see from some of the comments left in here, there are those who want their brain states to remain sacred. Yet, this is merely how they’re wired up. Hence, they give attention to what the brain directs and filter out what does not conform to the socio-culturally conditioned pathways.

For them, “enlightenment” is sacred and they will chase that tail to the grave. What are they chasing, but a concept that someone taught them is a higher state of the “I-Me” then what they have experienced up to now. Yet, keep in mind egocentricity must lower itself in order to lift itself up by its 'sacred' bootstraps. There must be a dissatisfaction with your “self,” in order to seek a greater satisfaction with your “self” through the sacred concepts you've learned.

But the postmodern “masters” are finally coming to their senses. They realize that there is NO end to egocentricity and it cannot be done away with entirely. This requires some subtle back-pedaling.

After centuries of teaching that you must completely transcend your “self,” ("self is suffering") the "enlightened masters" finally see that you cannot ever exit your cranium and, hence, can never NOT be ego-centered.

Now what they teach is that you can’t totally transcend your egocentricity, but you must make it into a “faint” ego-self. Now you must transcend Big Self so you can become tiny Little Self. You must become a Little Big Man and demonstrate to your "self" how “faint” you really are as Little Self, rather than the Big Self you once ‘thought” you were.

The way to do this is simply to stop thinking. But you can’t totally stop thinking. Your brain won’t let you, cause you'd die. Now, you just need not identify with the thoughts that make up your Big Self story and identify with a Little Self story. 

But don’t leave out the thoughts that help you stay alive. Oh, and you might want to attend to those thoughts that help you take care of your children. And, come to “think” of it,  it’s probably a good idea to hold onto the thoughts that get you to work in the morning so you can make the money to pay your bills. But all those other thoughts, you don’t need them, so just stop thinking about ‘em. Or, if you do ‘think” them, just pretend they’re not in your brain but in somebody else’s. Just put on your tin foil hat so that the members of the Galactic Federation can no longer implant thoughts in your head.

It’s simple! All you need do now is construct the neuro-circuits that aid in ignoring other specific neuro-circuits. Big Self circuits must be overwhelmed by the Little Self circuits. Make the loud ones quiet and the quiet ones loud. Make the big one’s little and the little one’s big.

There is a battle in your brain. A battle for control. 

It is The War of the Circuits and the modern gurus will teach you how to win by making bigger more powerful neuro-circuits. But these powerful circuits must be weak and “faint” because, as we all know, the meek shall inherit... the brain.

Now, when your lion roars, you respond with a mousey…

...squeak.

All you need do is differentiate between true and false neuro-circuitry produced "thoughts." Unfortunately, ya still gotta ‘think” ‘em, though. But you can think of them "faintly," making them weak and puny thoughts, rather than the big thoughts they used to be before you read Jed McKenna or saw Scott Kiloboy’s vids.

Obviously, this war is not winnable, but you must participate in the battle anyway. You have no choice and must become the veteran of a thousand psychic wars.

Unless, of course, you no longer pick a side, because if the war cannot be won, why bother?

But then, that might mean that there is no right or wrong thought. No good or bad neuro-circuit. No need to meditate or contemplate. No need to seek “enlightenment.” No need to become “awakened.” No need to do anything other than what you’re doing right now.

Damn! That would suck….


Artwork by TLBKlaus - "Veteran of the Psychic Wars"

AWARENESS: The Constancy of Electrochemical Synaptical Stimulation

“Awareness” is a concept for which is attached all manner of transcendental mystical kumbaya. But, as many “master” practitioners of the meta-spiritual have proselytized, you are already aware.

However, to maintain fixation on their metaphysical teachings, they rely on "levels of awareness," with the additional claim that they are experiencing a higher level of “awareness” to which you are not yet "aware," but for which they can teach you how to become "aware."

Every time a neuro-circuit fires it is an electrochemical experience in the brain. As long as the brain is still electrified then there is never a time you are NOT aware, because there is never a single solitary nano-second in which some circuit somewhere in the brain is NOT firing at some moment.

And that, my friends, in a nutshell, is “awareness.”

What the brain is giving attention to in any moment, through electrochemical stimulation is “awareness.” What you're not aware of is simply unstimulated neuro-circuits. Only the most powerful circuits cause the most awareness so, essentially, what the "enlightened masters" teach is how to construct circuits more powerful than others.

Yet, we still cannot deny circuitry. Awareness cannot be extracted out from any specific electrochemical synaptic stimulation, because awareness IS... electrochemical synaptic stimulation.

The concept of “awareness,” in other words, my writing or talking about "awareness," is the same neuro-stumulation as if I were in deep meditational bliss. My conceptualizing “awareness" has a circuit all its own, linked up with numerous other socio-culturally conditioned circuits to give a linguistically based concept for engaged communication with others . Meditational bliss also has a circuit all its own, linking up with billions of other circuits.

But, what you loathe to hear is that you are nothing more than neuro-circuits and I am truly sorry for informing you of such (not!).Yet, in realizing "thoughts" are nothing more than electrochemical neuro-circuit firings, you no longer need to struggle for control. Let them fire off and disappear, rise and fall, because you can no more control your brain circuitry then you can control the weather.

So it makes no difference (except to the pseudo-gurus and pretenders who want your attention and, more likely, your money) what kind of awareness one experiences, because awareness itself will attend you to your death and you have NO choice in this.

No matter what other neuro-circuitry you link up to awareness as conceptual, in your efforts to construct more circuits such as “pure awareness” or “direct awareness, it is still nothing more than electrochemically stimulated brain circuitry. You could drop some great acid or ride the worlds tallest roller coaster and both would give you a neuro-circuit experience that would seem more than just... awareness. But it is still just... awareness. However many ways you wish to slice and dice it through conceptual interpretations (additional brain circuitry), it is still brain-centered and synaptically stimulated and it has no other basis but that.

Ahhhh...now isn't that "liberating"? (also a circuit).

So what makes awareness, while alcoholically intoxicated, different from awareness of a "non-dual" state?

Nothing. They are both synaptical stimulation, just different electrochemical cocktails. One is stimulated through chemical ingestion, but both are brain-based in origin. The only difference is related to socio-culturally conditioned brain circuitry which superimposes different meanings upon specific brain-based experiences. Thus, achieving an experience of .10 alcohol intoxication does not help fire off positive limbic center emotions, the same as achieving the non-dual state, simply because you are wired to perceive alcohol intoxication as a less VALUABLE experience or for different purposes, although both employ the same types of chemicals, GABA, acetycholine, dopamine, seratonin, etc, etc.

But achieving the "non-dual" state is as electrochemically constructed as achieving alcohol intoxication. In either case, both experiences eventually wear off and you go chasing after it again.

I watched a video recently in which a scientist reported on the effects of the non-dual state ON the brain. This was a spiritual video, so he stated his research as if the non-dual experience affected the brain rather than the brain actualizing or generating the non-dual experience. In other words, out of the great universal cosmic consciousness, “non-duality” magically seeped through the subjects cranium (or up the “chakras”) and, thereby, interacted with the brain to cause electrochemical stimulation associated with a brain-centered experience referred to as the ""non-dual state (but is it? or just a great whizbang synaptical explosion?).

This helps keep the ancient texts alive and the mystical prognosticators of non-dual awareness can still write more gobbeldy goop in books that you’ll pay big bucks to read.

The brain is the cause of every experience “you” encounter as effect. There is no other cause and no effects exist outside your grey matter.

It is true that as long as you’re alive, you are aware and conscious. Levels of awareness are brain activated, but you will always return to your baseline level of awareness because that’s simply how you’re wired-up (a schizophrenic will return to baseline wiring, although we may interpret that as mentally ill).

Like me, I’m sure many of you can attest to such experiences. So you have to wonder how these “enlightenment” practitioners get away with perpetrating themselves as somehow different from you or I and as having something to teach you about awareness that you and I need to learn. Nah, what they are actually teaching you is their special concept of awareness, which you cannot achieve, since the ‘concept’ arose specifically from their unique brain circuitry. You cannot experience their concept. You can only experience your own concepts.You can have an ‘experience’ and then fire off a bunch more synapses to generate a linguistic understanding of that experience through a ‘concept.’ But you are experiencing words and the special emotional significance attached to the words are linked up with the emotion producing Limbic system.

Awareness was initially generated in the womb. Circuits then gradually linked up to other circuits causing a neuro-circuit superhighway of continuous awareness. If you wanted you could have large portions of your brain lobotomized in the desire to return to the very limited awareness prior to birth that would come from the reduction of circuitry. But a more important question is why is your brain circuitry what it is right now at this moment. What experiences imprinted upon the brain creating the circuitry that you are aware of right now? Why did you have the experiences you have had that formed your particular brain to "think" and "believe" as it does now? This was not WILLED by you. How could it, since you had no choice in your birth, parents or childhood experiences? Not one circuit in your brain, that you now experience as your “self” existing through a “life,” was chosen by you, but all circuits are “you.”

What brought you to this moment, to this very sentence you read right now? All the imprinted experiences of your life has constructed neuro-cicuitry that brought you to this very moment, only to lead you to the next and the next and the next.

So here you are….

Why?

Are you ever so slowly, gradually, unbeknowst even to your ‘self,” on a path to approaching...

…God?

Simply go where the circuits take you.

What other choice do you have?

Artwork by Adam Sicinski "How to Mind Map"

“You” are an Electrochemical Synaptic Feedback Loop

I know you want your thoughts to be more than just synaptical impulses in an electrochemical goulash. You want your big, bright ideas to be more than interlocking neuro-circuits lighting up specific lobes of fatty tissue based on genetic and socio-cultural conditioning.

You want it all to mean something and will struggle to keep the dendrites from redirecting into sputtering sparks of randomness. You want your spiritual beliefs to be more than neural firings along axon networks and you want all your years of seeking to "awaken" to be more than just electrochemical jolts of meaninglessness.

But the synaptical messages you've been repetitively sending are losing juice.

The circuits are shorting and dendrite branches are in retrograde. Without current, how can the circuits fire? Without the right neurons, how will you ever “awaken”? How can "awakening" happen if your not imprinting the correct circuits upon the neo-cortex, if you're not adequately mapping your journey to "awakening" within the neural network?

The joyful experiences of your big beliefs are into diminishing returns. You’re starting to recognize a lack of purpose to all your seeking (which can only mean another damn circuit!)

Because reality owns you and neuro-circuitry gives reality to you in living color.

Everything you do, every action you initiate and every behavior you engage in, is fired up by the Mother Board. You can’t even shove your pinky up your hairy nostril unless the brain sends that precise signal (and you never can tell when that urge will fire up, can you?).

All your goals and dreams are nothing but neuro-circuits that have as much meaning as does the urge to pick your nose. The electro-chemical impulse to seek "awakening" is made of the same neural material as the impulse to pick your nose and neither one is under your control (Funny, though, how we want to "awaken" publicly, but only pick our nose in private).

“You” are an aggregate composite of electrochemical impulses all going off randomly based on other impulses resulting in further impulses stimulating ever more. You think you’re in control. But the chaos of the cortex is outside the realm of control and always has been.

You want to be more than a tangled mass of brain circuitry in 3 lbs of fat and, through your spiritual practices and study of the ideologies (especially your intense readings of Jed Mckenna), you’ve managed to actualize numerous neuro-circuits igniting an electro-chemical experience of having wonderful ‘ideas’ and ‘concepts.’

These experiences link up with the limbic system and, for a couple of days or so, you feel really good and uplifted about what’s going on in your brain. For a couple of days life takes on new meaning and your perspective seems "happier," more positive.  You believe you're finally getting close to the  “awakening” you’ve been seeking all these years. It seems you’re finally ready to achieve the “enlightenment” you’ve always wanted.

But then, eventually, as is always the case, the circuit fades and fizzles. The juice peters out and the limbic system disengages, while the amygdala of fear comes rushing in, never letting you forget the actual predicament your in.

This is because Reality Circuits require constant stimulation (cause your boss is a jerk, your kid’s on dope, your two months behind in the mortgage and your cholesterol is way too high). All the electrochemical synaptical impulses, that allowed you to experience your bright ideas and beliefs and facilitated your processing all this “spiritual awakening” data (that you’ve been diligently studying for decades), must fade against the immediate and undeniable power of reality.

The reality of your brain.

But you were oh so close to ‘awakening’ weren't you? You could feel it, right up in that emotional limbic system. But nope, no “awakening” yet, and with that thought, guess which circuits light up the grey matter?

The not-yet-awakened Seeker Circuits extend axon/dendrite branches further into the grey matter, linking up with other circuits and constructing additional synaptic relay stations to maintain the current and engage the actions and behaviors of your incessant need to ‘seek.’

This pathway builds up its own electro-chemical momentum and everyday that you fire up a neuron with, “I guess I’m not awakened yet,”or "geewhiz, maybe Jed McKenna's the way to go?", the circuit strengthens (no doubt reading about all these “awakened” dudes also helps jack up the electrochemical juice even more, cause you soooo want to be one of those dudes, eh?)

Everyday, Reality Circuits reinforce Seeker Circuits and vice versa. Back and forth and back and forth, the dualistic current flows, each impulse one way jets another in reverse, with a feedback loop reinforced by the momentum of the two poles, of what's real and what you want to be 'real,' (so that you can finally escape the bullsheit of whats real)

Each thought-circuit pumps up the volume just a little bit more. Each day reinforces the neuro-circuits that will determine the next day and the next and the next…

This feedback loop is “you” and whether you’re seeking to “awaken,” or get laid tonight, it is the constant neuro-electrochemical actualization of an “I-Me” that seeks to have something it wants against a reality that informs it that it is lacking. However, you may certainly get laid tonight and relieve the electrochemical juice of that current for a time. But you will never "awaken" to any experience but what the brain provides and it will NEVER provide an experience outside what it is wired to provide. You can seek to alter the circuitry through neuro-plasticity, but you will never be completely free from the wiring that allows experience in the first place.

Many of the circuits that provide the "I-Me" experience are genetically hard-wired, auto-reinforced and give you the experience of an “I-me” that owns its brain...

....but is actually owned by its brain.

Artwork by Shadowtuga - "mind control"

The Neuro-Circuit of Destiny

If all experience is brain activated and brain-centered, why have you had the specific experiences you have had? Why has your "life," as experienced in your brain, unfolded specifically as it has? Could it have been experienced differently?

If every single experience "you" have is processed in your brain, and no where else, why did you have, and why do you continue to have, the electro-chemical brain-centered experiences that you have?

The neuro-circuitry of your brain was sculpted by specific experiences that happened only to you at the moment they occurred and those experiences constructed the sense of “self” your brain now provides. Other than genetically based circuitry, all the meanings and interpretations that you superimpose upon your life experiences were taught to you through life experiences. You are who "you" are because of a lifetime of moment to moment neuro-circuitry connections. Billions of axonal arms and tiny dendrite branches linking up in a neuro-circuit synaptical super highway of electro-chemical connections.

Where is it taking you? Where are you going and why?

Even more fascinating is that earlier formed neuro-cicuitry has determined later experiences, which are also imprinted and linked up with other circuits which take you to other experiences. From the moment of conception and birth, experiences construct neuro-cicuitry that directs thoughts/behaviors that lead you to additional experiences, constructing additional circuitry leading to subsequent actions, which also direct actions that lead to more experiences and more circuitry and more experiences and more circuitry.

We call this “destiny” and it was activated upon the very moment of your conception. You had nothing to do with it at all. It just happened and will continue to happen.

You had no choice in that first moment and you have had no choice in each subsequent moment that followed, because the brain-directed action in each moment followed from the previous moment (but you do have a neuro-circuit that provides an experience of choice, thereby, giving you an illusion of control). If you could trace the formation of neuro-circuitry back to the very moment the first neuronal cell was formed in your developing brain matter, you'd be amazed at how it all brought you right here and right now.

You'd see that it all happened exactly as it was supposed to...

Why the hell are you reading this drivel? What experientially constructed circuitry brought you to this very moment of reading and interpreting these specific l-e-t-t-e-r-s? What circuitry construction, originally initiated upon your conception, directed you to other experiences and the subsequent circuitry formation from that experience that lead you to other experiences, finally bringing you to this moment right…

…now.

If you have never had control, never had free-willl, then what is there to fear? If from the moment of conception your tiny brain began forming circuits which would lead you to actions that would form additional circuits leading to additional actions, on and on, ad infinitum, what control have you ever had over your destiny? What struggle need be maintained? What choices must be made?

It's already written....

All your joys and all those moments of grief and depression and those times of incredible pain and suffering. Everyone you fought with and everyone you loved. All those moments of sexual passion and those moments of rage. All those times of incredible pleasure and of intense dread and despair. Your addictions and your personality quirks. All your fears and anxieties. Each and every moment you laughed out loud or shed a single solitary tear.

All of it had to happen and could NOT have happened any other way or at any other time for any other person. And it will continue to happen. You need do nothing, because it will continue to happen and unfold regardless of what you do, but by nature of your brain.

You really have nothing to do with it and never have and anything you do will have had to be done.

If you have never had control over your destiny, why not just let it unfold as it will…as it must…as only it can? What is there to suffer through? Why seek something different than what you are experiencing right now? (unless, of course, you must). Why become victim to “meaning,” or morality and value, circuits when you had no choice in the formation? (unless neuro-circuitry requires your victimization at this point in time). How can anything be “wrong” with your life? (unless the neuro-circuitry demands you see it in such a way).

But if you had no say, no choice and no control, in the neuro-circuitry formation that provides the experiences you have had since conception and that have brought you to this very moment…

…who or what did?


All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel.
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All you save.
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say.
All that you eat
And everyone you meet
All that you slight
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon. 
(Pink Floyd)


Artwork by Kosmur - "assemblor"

TRUTH NEURONS: The Manufacturing of Neuro-Circuitry

The constantly fluctuating brain neuro-circuitry of confusion can only result in firing up withdrawal circuits. The cortex can only experience paralysis, when action-circuits become overloaded and you finally have NO idea what the point is anymore.

The amygdala processes fear, actualizing additional circuits of pacification and complacency, coupled with limbic system emotions of hopelessness and helplessness. Too much outside stimuli results in the construction of filtering circuits and filtering circuits exist to maintain the circuitry of status-quo security.

Due to hard-wiring, reality will always overpower your wishful thinking. Your dreams and aspirations are merely axon-dendrite wisps of dwindling electro-chemical current that reality circuits often redirect when necessary. Closely examine the directions you’re life has taken and notice how little was activated by you. You can never know what’s around the next corner, you can only follow the neurons wherever they take you and the brain is always going somewhere.

Do you sometimes feel confused about your purpose? Do you sense a persistent dissatisfaction with the world and your role in it? Do you sometimes notice a desire to dissociate from society? Are your “meaning” circuits shorting out and do you worry they may NOT be stimulated again? Does sleep often seem the only relief for the thoughts you wish to avoid? Circuits of “right” compete with “wrong," while “truth” conflicts with “false” and “good” battles “bad,” and all these electrochemical currents flip-flop back and forth like a carnival ride.

Is there a neuro-circuit in your brain that can electrochemically induce an emotional experience of non-existence?

Some neuro-circuits guide us gently to sleep, while others drive us into war. Some deliver sadness, while others lead to madness. Some nurture and love, while others are involved solely with pain and suffering. Such electrochemical impulses can change in an instant, love to hate, hate to love, sleep to war. The brain circuit that hates is inadvertently linked up with circuits that love. Is it sometimes hard to tell the difference between love and hate? Do you really think you have a “choice” in which way the electrochemical current flows? Which neuro-pathways rule your “thoughts”?  Has it ever been under your control?

But, of course, there must be circuits to hide the truth.

The electrochemical circuit of “right” can only exist when “wrong” is an alternative pathway. Brain circuitry is dualistically stimulated and electrochemical currents fluctuate from output to input, excitatory to inhibitory, stop and go, red light, green light.

Do you own your neuro-circuitry? Did you “think” that you had control over the electrochemical messages being fired through your grey matter? Did you “believe” you have a free and unfettered, uninfluenced, unprovoked choice in the thoughts generated by brain neuro-circuitry? Of course, there is a circuit for that too….

Do you “think” you know what the truth is? If you rely on “thought” then you rely on socio-culturally designed wiring. Is there another way of “thinking” external to conditioned circuits?

Do these “ideas” make you “think”? Or simply confuse already muddled circuits?

Does your brain need to experience a circuitry meltdown before it can ever comprehend anything like truth? Until then, do you simply rely on “wisdom,” which is nothing more than the best “thought" circuits firing up till a better path is imprinted? Is “truth” the total cessation of all electrochemical firings? But then, isn’t that also death?

The brain circuitry of compliant obedience is directly related to “mirror neurons” or the '”monkey see, monkey do” neurons that have, and continue to, construct the brains electrochemical channels and networks. You have nothing to do with it, as it happens day to day, without your knowledge. But you do experience the effects and this you refer to as your “life.”

The brain demands that you “see” and that you “do,” and you conform as directed.

Do you sometimes recognize how everything seems to be repeated? How wars and conflicts just seem to be exact duplications of previous wars and conflicts? Is war genetically programmed in grey matter? Is the brain circuitry of greed and corruption growing in electrochemical power?

The control of brain neuro-circuitry is the current post-modern agenda and it’s a very uncomplicated process. Your media/government seeks not to control you, but simply to conform to the status quo neuro-circuits that you live by and seek to conserve. Why would you ever be concerned about the government controlling your brain? Have you ever been in control of the electrochemical impulses that course through your cortex? Or does it just feel that way?

“Peace” is a lonely neuro-circuit in the brain that has been losing electrochemical stimulation for some time. Fear is an amygdala circuit that seems to be growing in power. Some circuits must be disenfranchised in the name of progress. “Peace” has never had a chance when it comes to genetically constructed, socio-conditioned neuro-circuitry. It has tried for centuries, but it never seems able to intensify the electrochemical processes necessary to overcome the circuitry of fear. Notice the neuro-circuitry of every “peace” demonstrator and you will also witness the synaptical firings of “rage.”

All spiritual/religious practices rely on brain plasticity to redirect circuits of pain and suffering.  Can you delete neurons like obsolete software? But if hate circuits are interconnected with love, how can you disconnect one without disturbing the other? Can we build a brain that will only think of peace and love and never fire off neuro-circuits of hate or fear?

Is neuro-plasticity a means to the awakening you seek?


THE ONION: “Search for Self Called Off After 38 Years”

Artwork by Malgorzata Jasinski

The Itsy Bitsy "Circuit" Climbed up the Water Spout...

Hey! What’re you doin’ here???? Why are you here? What brought you to this blog, this page, this post, these words, this moment?  Why are you reading this? Why are you right here, right now, at this very moment?

If you look back in time you will see an unfolding stream of events, thoughts and action that brought you here, but that “you” had no control of and all choices were influenced beyond any “free-will” you might wish to claim for your “self.”

You woke this morning and a cascade of uninvited thoughts competed with intentionality circuits as to what you WILLED to think and do. Even thought that you consider intentional provokes unintentional counter-thoughts and contrary ideas.

Maybe your first thought upon waking was that "it’s Saturday," which then initiated thought-experiences of actions to be performed and this circuitry activated motivational circuits with Limbic based emotional circuitry interacting from frontal cortex circuits all working together to institute movement towards specific goals (the brain is all about 'movement'). The lawn must be mowed, but the game is on TV, which generates circuits that seek to manage "time" based networks and circuits that engage interactions with your wife and circuits that must take into consideration your kids, but then suddenly your eyes send messages to the visual cortex which must include the dog and memory circuits engage the need to walk the dog, generating circuits that inform you that you have to hurry or the lawn will not be mowed before kickoff time, which engages negative amygdala electrochemical spurts causing bodily changes requiring your wife to ask “what’s wrong,” which engages linguistic centers processing speech and centers processing facial muscles. But the tone was wrong (based on her circuitry) and you perceive that she perceives you’re angry with her, engaging stored memory of your resentments toward her, but these conflict with other circuits generating positive “feelings” and circuits that require more conciliatory gestures and circuits that fire off other circuits firing other circuits firing off….

…and here you are now at PeacefulSelf.com, from a web search you initiated because you feel your life is often out-of-control and suddenly other circuitry made you desire “peace of mind” and number 15 in Google listed a blog called “peacefulself.com” and that must provide some ways to a more peaceful life….

Now you think, "damn what a stupid choice this was. This blog sucks!" based on meaning circuits engaging meaning circuits engaging additional meaning circuits...

For chrisakes dude, you are all over the place! Get focused. Control yourself. Get it together…

But then at what “place” should you be…but all over the place.

So why does that bother you so much? Why struggle to control your brain? Why do you sometimes "think" it's in control of you?

So just stop THINKING!!

"If anyone could enter my head," you THINK, "it would blow their mind?"

WELCOME TO NEURON HELL.

"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "

Do you actually realize the work required to stay fixated on one solitary thought, when 100 billion neurons are firing off in your brain and sending messages through a quadrillion dendrite connections?

Is it any wonder people get drunk? Is it any wonder people become addicted to TV? Is it any wonder people gravitate to any number of distractions to get the hell outa they’re HEAD.

But if you could only accept the chaos of your brain. If you could only accept that you have NO control over it. Because what you avoid through distraction will only engage the periphery nervous system and the body MUST accept the consequences. It has no choice. Brain controls it.

But go ahead and spend your lifetime attempting to terminate the actions of neurons. Go ahead and seek a way to shut off the biological processes of neuro-circuits. Make attempts to rearrange 100 billion neurons and a quadrillion dendrite connections. Pick and choose the circuits you want and shut-off those you no longer desire. Continue on with your precious self-development, which is nothing more than constructing additional circuits for which to conflict with other circuits that you can't shut off if your very life depended on it.

One day you will surrender your illusion of control (thereby, constructing a new circuit, which will activate circuits you forgot you had).

But the brain cannot be denied. It cannot be escaped. It cannot be “thought” away or cajoled into non-existence. Nature will NOT be denied. Nature must be accepted and the chaos of the brain… is natural.

But there is one tiny itsy-bitsy circuit that is a problem. One circuit that is cause of all your distress, all your pain and all your misery.

That circuit is called “I-Me” and it has a tendency to claim all electrochemical activity as its own. It’s a circuit that demands all activity, thoughts and actions, belong to it…. alone.

But like one audacious wave in the massive ocean, claiming ownership of the whole ocean, it is only one tiny circuit amidst trillions in a sea of interconnected neurons and dendrites.

Pay it no "mind."

The itsy-bitsy circuit
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And shorted the circuit out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy-bitsy circuit
Climbed up the spout again