2 posts tagged “psychology”

In my previous post, I spoke of my own mystical or spiritual experience. Now, briefly, I want to say provide some theoretical context for events like this.

There's a great deal of work being done by neurologists on brain/experience correlation, which is all fascinating stuff. So we can point to how the feelings evoked by an opening, are reflected in the brain chemistry, and blood flow and so on. It's difficult to deny the very real physical effects these have, and also the effects of spiritual practice, like mediation.  None of this is really very surprising, if you have  done a lot of mediation, you will probably notice that this affects your experiences of being in the world, how you think and feel and so on. And given where we currently stand in biology we'd expect to see these changes reflected in the brain.

There are a couple of interesting questions around for me at the moment, the first is simply this: although we see brain changes that correlate to experiences (spiritual or otherwise) - how do we bridge the gap between mechanics and our felt experience, our sense of being in the world? This is the classic 'hard problem' of consciousness studies.

There are lots of theories floating around, for example, the functionalists, Dennett and so on, say there's nothing to bridge, what we expiries is simply the result of brain activity, chemistry biology and physics.  Dr. Marshall, who presented a paper on Saturday, briefly mentioned another - that experience, or consciousness, is fundamental to this universe - as something happens, it is experienced, and the more complex the mechanism (like a brain) the more complex the experience. I quite like this, although there is little evidence to support this.

There really is no consensus at the moment.

What's more interesting to me is how we make meaning of our experiences; (again, spiritual or mundane)  do particularly powerful moments change our lives? Change our understanding of the world? Or do we use them to support our existing metaphysic?

From the BBC

The key to a happy relationship could be accepting that some miserable times are unavoidable, experts say.

Therapists from California State University, Fresno and Virginia Tech say accepting these problems is better than striving for perfection.

And they blame cultural fairytales and modern love stories for perpetuating the myth that enjoying a perfect relationship is possible.

The report was published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

The pursuit of relationship nirvana can be potentially damaging Jan Parker

The authors, Dr Diane Gehart and Dr Eric McCollum say it is a "myth that, with enough effort we can achieve a state without suffering.

The pursuit of any nirvana, if by which you mean perfection in this world, can be damaging. Sound familiar? This is the First Noble Truth, that all the discomfort in life is ultimately unavoidable and that running away form this causes even more suffering.

For more on the noble truths see:

The Feeling Buddha

David Brazier