WillSpirit!

Where Will meets Spirit
∞ Love, Clarity, Balance, Peace, & Bliss ∞

A science, mental health and spirituality blog written by a physician.

Disclaimer
- Dear Visitors:
  Although I trained and practiced as a physician, my background does not include formal instruction in psychiatry beyond basic medical education. This journal presents ideas about treatment philosophy, but must not be considered therapeutic advice. Abrupt changes in one's psychiatric medications can trigger profound cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Consequently, pharmaceutical agents should not be increased or decreased without supervision by a mental health clinician.
- ON THE OTHER HAND, your brain belongs to you, and your opinion counts. If you decide that changing your medication regimen will serve your best interest, then I believe your providers have an obligation to help you try to achieve your goals. I want everyone to be educated about their options, and do what will be most helpful for themselves. No one should feel pushed around by dogmatic and/or limited viewpoints, whether those of psychiatrists, anti-psychiatry advocates, or myself.

The Hungry Love of Life

Every once in awhile it pays to look within.

Deep inside our cells, there is a great deal of hollowness. This isn’t the emptiness that Buddhist meditators seek to apprehend directly, but simply a surprising lack of substance. For instance, if we enlarged the nucleus of a carbon atom up to the size of a basket ball, the nearest electron would orbit several miles away. So an accurate model of a DNA molecule, with its carbon, nitrogen, and other atoms spiraling in a helix, would look like myriad tiny dots very widely separated. The same with every other biomolecule that comprises our bodies.

Yet these specks are arranged with stunning precision in complex molecular machines that perform all the functions a lifeform requires. Proteins slide along DNA strands and copy them so our cells can regenerate, or so we can mate with the opposite gender and generate a new being. Proteins form enzymes that convert the sugars we eat into energy that allows us to perceive, move, and live. Proteins form receptors that detect hormones and neurotransmitters to sculpt the way we feel.

All these fabulous processes occur in cells, which in our bodies number trillions. Microscopic in size they are specialized as muscle cells, nerve cells, reproductive cells, skin cells, immune cells, and so on. All of this life orchestrated by ceaseless neural, hormonal, and sensory signals that we can’t begin to track consciously. At our best we might be aware of a tiny fraction of the activity that affects us from within and without.

And yet here we are: me writing, you reading, feeling very ordinary about it all. We hold notions about history. Perhaps we believe the universe to be random, and our presence here merely the result of happenstance. Perhaps we believe in a creative deity that formed us all. Perhaps we don’t know what to believe, or don’t care about origins, but we know our names and our families and our personal stories. So much information, so much interpretation, so much conjecture, our minds mulling things over but seldom stopping to look at the miracle this all represents.

For make no mistake: no matter how we came to be, we are miraculous. And so is the tiniest single-celled organism whirling about in a puddle outside. This is the beauty of biology, the stunning complexity and fecund activity of living.

My high school sweetheart’s mother was a research biologist. When she found out I shared her passion, she bought her daughter contraceptives. In her opinion, every life scientist starts out interested in sex, then moves on from there. Of course, that also describes the average teenaged boy, but I’ve never forgotten what she said, because yes, sex was one of the aspects of life that drew me in. But so did maple trees, dragonflies, ant colonies, turtle eggs, and mold.

Life is so miraculous, so utterly sublime, that it is worth remembering that we don’t just observe biology, we experience it. The next time you hear a meditation teacher guide you to follow your breathing, picture the inhalation bringing air into your lungs, and imagine the gases diffusing into your blood. The red cells extract oxygen while your heart pulses the soupy fluid through your body. Some of it races to your brain, powering acts of noticing, meditating, and loving.

Why did I choose to write about this tonight? Because of desire. Not only my yearning to highlight the majesty of the biosphere, but also my own bodily stirrings that make me want to breathe, eat, copulate, and ponder. All these urges propel me through life, as I stumble to make sense of it all and not hurt anyone in the process.

How could something as ancient and natural as desire be a bad thing? Hunger, and the striving it stimulates, are the bases of survival.

But don’t forget that unmanaged desire does lead to problems. It seduces us into bad decisions. It leaves us panting with frustration. It angers us.

Imagine, for a moment, that everything in your life felt wanted, exactly as it is. Imagine not worrying about expenses, or feeling frustrated with unreliable people, or irritated on the job, or wishing that your partner would act just a little more understanding. Imagine if you had no desire for anything to be different from the way it is in this very moment. I submit that would be true freedom.

But would it be true life?

Some day I hope to find ultimate peace and permanent, penetrating insight. It would be nice to never lapse into wanting anything other than what I already have. Until I find lasting grace, however, I will muddle along. I will montor my urges and aversions, my regrets and hopes, and I will try to make sensible choices. There is hope for realization, but in the meantime, there is life.

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Sinful Desire?

This will be my last word, for now, on desire. So far I’ve summarized the Eastern view on it and dealt with two of the questions that inevitably arise: How do we motivate ourselves if not by desire? and Are there not healthy forms of yearning?

To round out the discussion, let me point out that although one post was titled “The Road to Hell Is Paved with Desire,” I did not mean to imply that desire is sinful in the usual sense of the word.

We in the West are conditioned by Judeo-Christian theology. Within these religions, there is a presumption that God judges our actions and condemns our sins. Lust, greed, sloth, wrath, pride, gluttony, and envy are all related to desire in one way or another. When we yield to these “seven deadly sins,” and hence to our base hungers, God rebukes us. Or so we are told by the Abrahamic lineage.

This kind of thinking is at odds with the views of Eastern traditions. The Hindu God is a complex entity with many facets and manifestations. But if God appears in personal form at all, he (or she) is more a companion and neutral witness than a punitive judge. The Hindu and Buddhist concept of karma implies that we are free to choose and suffer the natural consequences of our choices. If we elect to cause harm, we will reap darkness in this or future lifetimes. If we choose compassion, we will receive mercy in kind, eventually. The emphasis is on inevitable cause and effect, not just desserts.

In spelling this out, I am not claiming that one view is necessarily right and the other wrong. Rather, my point is that both Divine punishment and Karmic consequence deal with ultimate effects, not immediate results. In contrast, these essays were not written to suggest that desire leads to a hellish afterlife or unhappy future birth, but to misery in the here and now. Craving creates hell on earth.

Desire causes suffering automatically. It is not sinful in the sense of leading to eternal damnation. Nor do we necessarily accrue bad karma if we choose to live by desire. But if we bank our happiness on satisfying wishes, on constantly adjusting our circumstances to meet our expectations, we are doomed to suffer disappointment. This is a utilitarian judgment, not an ethical one.

The many questions that arise when one proposes rejection of desire become less important when we see things this way. Those who prefer to live passionately, or who feel strong hungers and enjoy pursuing them, are perfectly free to do so. Such people are neither unworthy nor unspiritual. They are free to ride the stormy waves of yearning, satiation, and more yearning. No doubt they can, as much as anyone, find realization if they want it badly enough. They can choose ethically supportable desires and reject destructive ones; they can hunger for social justice and world peace; they can elevate their passion to mystical ecstasy and so counterbalance the grinding frustration of appetites.

But those of us who tire of the roller coaster, who seek equanimity, can find it by rejecting the promise of desire. We can see how pursuit of hungers leads to nagging dissatisfaction. We can transcend the yearnings of body and ego, and move to a deeper and quieter space within.

Yes, there will be a price to pay. Life will lose its power to stimulate and arouse. But we will gain steadiness and profound insight in exchange.

The choice is ours and ours alone. The universe will love us either way.

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The Healthy Desire for Righteousness

The last two posts argued that hoping for one outcome over another dooms us to suffering. Then what about the desire to escape desire? If our appetites lead to downfall, is it safe to hunger after realization?

Those of us who seek spiritual growth sometimes want very much to make progress. The Bhagavad Gita, mentioned last time, gives us an out by making an exception in the case of inclination toward righteousness. We even hear Krishna (God) equate his own divine presence as the source of such desire.

Even so, seekers understand that spiritual hunger can trap us just as easily as material wants. We see many leaders of churches, sects, and cults who have obviously lost their way by allowing their egos to claim credit for Grace. These are the ones who sleep with their disciples, accumulate fortunes, or incite destructive acts.

We can desire spiritual growth, but it is best to focus on the good of the whole world rather than the salvation of our individual souls. The Bodhisattva vows illustrate the safest stance: the seeker commits to remain engaged with the drudgery of material life until all beings are freed from the bonds of ignorance. If we pursue higher levels of understanding with altruistic motives, the web of desire cannot trap us.

But the path requires vigilance. The ego is persistent and cunning. It will seduce us with visions of personal gain that may appear selfless. No doubt there are wandering Indian mendicants clothed in rags, owning nothing and thin as rails, who believe themselves superior to others precisely because they have renounced comfort. They remain nearly as entangled in egotism as the billionaire industrialist flying overhead in his personal Gulfstream.

The more desire aims to improve the condition of self, whether by material, social, or transcendent measures, the more base its motives and destructive its effects.

The true saint cares little for his or her own welfare, but weeps when confronted by the pain of others. The tears may flow even amidst the understanding that life is ever ebbing and flowing, misery and ecstasy alternating in an endless dance, in a cosmic field devoid of lasting impact on the eternal and incorruptible soul. The saint understands that grief and joy are both optional, but chooses to weep and laugh anyway, in sympathy with the swirling ocean of life.

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Desire and Grace

The denial of desire that I mentioned in the last post might sound inhuman if looked at incorrectly. What about passion? What about beauty? What about love? Should we seek none of these and live instead in a bland state of emptiness?

More troubling still is social injustice. Should we not insist on equality and fairness? Should we not fight for the rights of the disadvantaged? Should we cease working toward peace?

Such concerns have caused many to see Eastern philosophies as overly detached and even heartless. How can we build a better world if we don’t desire wars to end, environmental destruction to be reversed, and inhuman conditions to be improved?

Part of the problem is semantic. To plan for a better world is different from wanting a newer car. The word desire can be used in ways that emphasize ethical standards rather than greed and materialism.

But this isn’t the whole answer. In fact, the spiritual path can lead to states of mind where happy and tragic times are seen as equal and necessary counterparts. Ease and hardship are recognized as two sides of the same coin. Going further, the entire drama of human life can appear empty of substance. It can look like an artifice to be observed without emotional distress.

These deeply resonant mind states are educational, and they calm the troubled spirit. But life should still be engaged. It seems wrong to refuse to participate simply because strife is built into the cosmos and material existence is empty. Yes, such understanding helps us release desire, but most people still feel the pain of life’s drama, and most of us need help. The sage who abandons the world to its own confusion may be wise, but he is not compassionate. True saintliness requires both understanding and concern.

So we return to the problem: how do we participate without desire? How do we engage the world when we know that sorrow and joy carry equal weight and are ultimately empty? How do we motivate our actions once we’ve learned to live without preference?

I can’t claim absolute clarity here, but I have a few ideas. First, it is poisonous to desire personal sensual gratification, but it can be edifying to help others feel better. Second, we can work toward a beneficial outcome but remain at peace whether we succeed or not. Third, we can recognize that preventing cruelty and injustice aids the disadvantaged but also helps the souls of those who would perpetrate harm; there may be a vast neutrality in the cosmos, but there are karmic consequences on the human scale. Finally, the universe may be inherently empty, but it is all we have; we should question whether abandoning it reflects ultimate wisdom or mere avoidance. We may not care about winning anymore, but we can still play the game.

This post grapples with deep questions that have been pondered by realized beings for ages. My amateurish thoughts won’t settle the debate, but I hope they show that one can reject desire without rejecting life.

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The Road to Hell Is Paved with Desire

At long last I’m reading the Bhagavad Gita. This classic Hindu text has been suggested to me many times, but I’ve never picked it up before. Although I’ve long felt familiar with its themes through various lectures and reviews, there’s nothing like actually working with the book itself.

For one thing, it shows me how much of Buddhist philosophy was built on Hindu principles. “Krishna” teaches about human afflictions and their mastery with meditative practice in language that sounds quite similar to the Buddha’s. For some reason, reading the Gita is helping me absorb some important truths that I’ve resisted before now, despite having heard them in Buddhist contexts for years.

The Buddha spoke of desire, anger, and ignorance as the major obstacles to realization. The Gita brings up the same three afflictions and identifies their close relationship. It explicitly points out that anger is the natural outcome of desire, which after all gets thwarted more often than satisfied. Psychologists studying infants have found that at the earliest ages of human life a baby will display what looks like anger if you keep him or her from reaching an enticing toy. And so it goes throughout life: we become angry, even enraged, when the world prevents us from enjoying what we want.

We want respect and the world ignores us; we get mad. We want love and our partner seems distracted; we get mad. We want money and financial institutions drain the system dry; we get mad.

If we never wanted the respect, love, and money in the first place, we’d sidestep a lot of frustration.

The connection between anger and desire seems clear, but the ultimate source of misery is ignorance. We mistakenly believe we can create happiness by getting everything to work out the way we want. Once we find a satisfying relationship, a spacious home, an exciting job, financial security, a happy family, good friends, and worldly recognition, we’ll finally settle down and enjoy living. Problem is, we can seldom get all those planets to line up and stay in place. One or another of our precious spheres will inevitably wobble, gyrate, or escape us completely.

So a life driven by desires is doomed to feel unsatisfying. The world simply does not feed our every whim. And even when a hunger gets sated, the nagging feeling of want returns before long. Seeking happiness by following desires leads to frustration, not happiness.

We should remember that desire can make us ache for many things, material, interpersonal, and philosophical: for possessions, for food, for sex, for love, for power, for conformity, for freedom, for politeness, for justice, for equality, for safety, for health, etc., etc. Some of these hungers are more ethically defensible than others, but the world cannot be expected to consistently satisfy any of them. The failure to recognize this inescapable truth is the base ignorance that underlies most of the world’s problems.

This is all spelled out clearly and poetically in the Gita. It especially resonates with me right now because of my recent inner conflict about writing a book. The main motivation for that project was a need for recognition, not a calling to help others. Both aspects were at work in my psyche, but the egoistic hunger for accomplishment was dominant. I was being driven by desire.

This wish for approval runs very deep in me. As a schoolchild I was often complimented on my intelligence. In college and graduate school, professors continued the flattery. Even though I had few friends, I could always use my supposed intelligence to bolster my self-esteem. But the accolades placed expectations on me that I internalized over time. I began to desire greatness.

One world-renowned surgeon signed a personal note in a copy of his book predicting that my accomplishments would eventually eclipse his career. Very heady praise that now sounds rather poignant, seeing how my climb toward success first stalled and then became a tailspin.

I wanted very much to be a recognized authority, to be acclaimed as brilliant. It was a desire that drove me into fields that promised status but not satisfaction. It kept me from following my truer calling, from finding my essential bliss. It was not my friend.

Desire never is a friend of the soul. It is an outgrowth of animal hunger and the shiny bauble of human ego. It leads to endless cycles of craving, transient fulfillment, and recrudescent craving. It is the engine of addiction and the wellspring of hell.

Of course, recognizing desire’s toxicity doesn’t make it go away. That requires lots of meditative work and deep introspection. It takes time and commitment. I have a long way to go down that road but today, with the words of the Bhagavad Gita ringing in my mind, it seems like I might just find true freedom someday.

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Complex Change

Is spirituality complex? Not in the usual sense of the word, perhaps. Most deep truths seem pretty simple once grasped. But the path to realization is fraught with turmoil, since we don’t give up our conflicts easily. We resist straightforward peace in favor of complicated discord. But there is a pearl of hope within the murky waters of confused living. And once we find it, we can keep it forever.

Complexity theory offers insight into a great many phenomena, from embryology to cultural anthropology. It sounds like something based on modern physics, but it is actually an observational field largely developed via painstaking work with computer simulations. Modern digital technology enabled researchers to run simplified models over thousands of iterations to get a sense of their behavior. Such work demonstrated that many systems self-organize on their own. After simulations showed us what to seek in the real world, spontaneously arising order is now suspected to operate in biologic evolution, technological development, and social progress.

In some recent reading about the behavior of complex evolving systems, I saw a parallel between spiritual growth and certain principles in this theory.

In brief, a complex system consists of numerous individual units that interact to varying degrees. In the case of the mind, we might have conscience, reason, emotion, sensation, memory, intuition, drives, choices, and much more. All of these modules interact and sometimes compete with one another.

It’s important to remember that each of these mental functions can be further broken down. For instance, memory consists of working memory (holding a phone number in mind while you dial it), episodic memory (remembering your last vacation), procedural memory (your body’s knowledge of how to ride a bike), and so on. And each category of memory obviously holds large numbers of individual traces (all the vacations of a lifetime, for example). Dissecting further, we might eventually get to the level of networks of neurons, or even individual cells, interacting in highly complex ways.

Most evolving systems are robust in the sense that change to a small number of components does not lead to any large scale shift in behavior. Think of United States politics for a moment. If a few dozen people in a historically Democratic state (say Massachusetts) shift to the Republican party, the state probably won’t elect a Republican governor. Only when a substantial fraction of individuals change sides will the behavior of the whole transform. The system is robust to minor fluctuations. (This means it is not chaotic, in the technical sense of the word. A butterfly in Rio won’t change the next election in this country.)

On the other hand, if enough individuals adjust their attitudes, the system could dramatically alter its course. The election of Barak Obama as the US president in the last election seems like a good example here. At first it seemed unthinkable that he could ever win, because so few people believed in him. But a tide swept the country and a historic election occurred.

For a robust entity to alter its behavior in a fundamental way, it is necessary that a large number of its component parts change their ordinary reactions. Whether a ‘large number’ means ten percent, a simple majority, or ninety percent varies from case to case. It depends in complicated ways on the details of both the system and its environment. But seldom will a dramatic alteration occur without change in a substantial proportion of the subunits.

In the human animal, this means spiritual transformation will not occur if we alter one aspect of our mind and nothing else. For instance, simply changing our beliefs about the existence of Universal Consciousness will seldom be enough. Reading an occasional inspirational book won’t do it either. We must work on our ethics, our habitual thoughts, our lifestyle, our emotional maturity, our intuitive awareness, and everything else we can change. Only by shifting our patterns in many different realms of behavior and thought will we finally emerge onto a higher plane of realization.

The good news is that once enough elements have shifted, the complex system jumps into a new and stable state of existence. In this new condition, it is once again resistant to perturbation. In technical terms, it has settled into the basin of a new attractor, and it will not be dislodged without changes (as before) in a large number of subunits. (The photo that heads this post shows a computer simulation with two nearby attractors. The system orbits one repeatedly, until a sufficient perturbation dislodges it into the adjacent basin.)

After we achieve a new plateau of spiritual and emotional maturity, we will remain in an elevated state. We won’t need to worry about accidentally falling back into our old neurotic behaviors and fixations. We can solidify our relationship with the world using our new understanding and begin working, yes, on reaching the next higher level.

I realize this was an abstract discussion. It may not sound too useful. But I wrote it down because it seems so hopeful. Sure, it is hard to accumulate enough change to transform, but once we make our breakthrough we will be robustly settled into a more peaceful and accepting frame of mind. We will have found enduring Grace.

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Feeding My Family

Last night, for the joy of it, I slept outside under the dazzling arm of the Milky Way. Here on the rising edge of mountains, with clean air and no urban electric glare, stars innumerable float suspended in the ink-black night. It might have been restful, but in fact I slept little. Partly, the awesome sight of our galaxy overhead kept me stimulated and awake. Even more, the intermittent buzz of mosquitoes brought me out of drowsiness and into sharp awareness.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, as they say. From the infinite and eternal cosmos hanging above to the tiny bloodsucker hovering by my ear. Around three in the morning I retrieved a citronella mister that kept the little critters at bay. But until that time, I dispassionately witnessed my physical and mental reactions as each insect flew near. I admit feeling tempted to swat, but I didn’t. Sometimes I waved my hands vigorously in vain and silly attempts to chase away the hungry females (all blood feeding is done by the female mosquito, not the male–she’s the one who needs the protein for eggs). Most of the time, I just laid still and waited for the animal to alight. If I felt her on my skin, I gently waved her off. If not, well, I got bitten. Even as I sent my consciousness into the vastness, I lent my blood to the cycle of life in the foothills. It wasn’t pleasant, but I felt strangely at peace with my fate, despite the risk of disease and the promise of itchy inflammation.

The thing is, my awareness of mosquito consciousness seemed surprisingly real. It seemed like I felt the hunger of these delicate creatures who yearn to procreate. It was my own hunger, my own yearning, writ small but potently in the instincts of another life form. At some time in the far distant past the mosquito and I shared a common ancestor; something vaguely like an earthworm laid eggs that yielded embryos that ended up diverging into the great animal phyla of Arthropoda and Chordata. The mosquito shares many of my enzymes, lives by similar hormonal drives, and buzzes through its short life not all that differently from how I walk through mine. She and I are one family, one LIFE.

Have you noticed how the themes of Unity and Connection have me fixated? This is the fifth consecutive post that touches on them. To be inspired by these topics seems like a good sign. To feel so connected to everything feels healthy. Not that I’ve shed my neuroses or become a saint, but I feel less lonely now. I am not an isolated, struggling ego fighting for its share. I am life itself. I am the mosquito and the mosquito’s prey. I am the galaxy and the sky in which it turns. I am extended by all that exists even as I type here in my little human body, with my little human hands.

So I send these glyphs into cyberspace. My insignificant data stream gets reconstructed on a small handful of computers. One of those machines presents these words to you, reading them in this very moment. You, who are also me. For indeed we, and all, are one.

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One and Only

In an earlier post, I mentioned the transcendent state as consisting of three great realizations: unity, love, and rightness. When we feel the world aligned in this way, are we delusional, or are we finally awake in the truest sense?

Let’s consider the deep experience of cosmic unity. Many Eastern spiritual traditions revolve around awareness of interdependence, and Western religious systems emphasize fusion on one or more levels: union with God (always), union with humankind (often), and union with nature (sometimes). But unity is not just a mystical concept; it is a verifiable principle that spans the full spectrum of reality, including physical, ecological, structural, social, and spiritual realms.

On the physical plane, we are immersed in a sea of powerful forces. We adhere to the surface of Earth by the mystery of gravity, while our biological cycles are determined by planetary rotation, tidal fluctuations, and seasonal shifts. Cosmic rays stream through our bodies, and solar radiation supports life on earth. We look like independent entities walking around, but ambulation belies our utter immersion in the physical matrix that surrounds us.

Ecologically, we breath oxygen generated by plants, drink water molecules that have cycled through countless bodies over eons, and eat food produced by the ceaseless engine of life on Earth. We live in a thin organic envelope that wraps around the vast mineral globe. Our bodies are infiltrated through and through with microorganisms, and we would not survive long without the bacteria that live within us.

Structurally, we rely on other people for every aspect of modern life. Safe in our solid buildings, we forget the contractors who erect dwellings and workplaces. We rarely consider all who labor to develop irrigation systems, grow crops, transport food, and prepare it for sale. We turn on the light switch without giving thought to the workers who design and maintain the power grid. We roar past road crews on the freeway without considering how quickly our transportation system would fail without constant effort by others.

Socially, we act within a web of relationships that spans the globe. Even something as inconsequential as this blog extends the network incrementally. Closer to home, we depend on our acquaintances and loved ones to keep us feeling engaged and optimistic. Without relationships and social support, we’d have far greater trouble enduring the many frustrations of life.

Spiritually, we feel connected with all living creatures, all humans, and divine forces that are simultaneously subtle and awesome. Although religion is embattled in this largely secular world, cutting edge science is vindicating the age-old belief that important but veiled currents, essentially mystical, run through our lives. Quantum mechanical influences once believed restricted to subatomic realms likely connect our minds continuously with a vast global consciousness.

So profound feelings of unity are neither fictions nor delusions. Even if one prefers to discount mystical and global quantum influences, the interpenetration between lives is undeniable. We depend on the biosphere and one another in ways that become obvious during times of breakdown. For instance, when climate change threatens our lifestyle or natural disasters decimate infrastructure, we quickly wake up to our dependence. The deep feelings of connection with life, humanity, and the cosmos that come during ‘peak experiences’ are actually the times when we are most in touch with our true condition.

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Points of Spirituality

This is another post written for my acupuncture site, but although it is obviously written for the other venue, it makes some larger points about spiritual growth. It seems like it belongs here on WillSpirit, too.

Many sectors of our health care system now recognize acupuncture as an effective treatment for a variety of physical and mental problems. Less well known is that the technique also works well as a support for spiritual growth.

There is more to wellbeing than physical and mental health. A person can feel unwell in a sound body. It is also possible to suffer without emotional turmoil, but simply from feeling purposeless and cynical. Some people enjoy spontaneous spiritual contentment and readily embrace their path in life, but many of us need to work to attain such equanimity. Acupuncture can help patients connect with their inner senses of unity, rightness, and love, which are the touchstones of spiritual health.

Spirituality gets discussed so often it has lost definition, but we know it when we find it. Whenever we feel peaceful despite tragedy, injustice, and chaos, we have found a deeper center. Whenever we realize our hearts will grow no matter what fate brings, we feel profoundly healed. This is the Health of Spirit.

A person can be gravely diseased in body and severely buffeted by circumstance, but remain at ease in that still, small refuge at the center of the storm, where divine light shines. The rational mind may seek to explain this abiding comfort: Is it the hand of God or a bracing mix of neurotransmitters? Logic cannot answer this question, but fortunately the words we use to describe Grace are less important than the peace we find when we accept it.

Acupuncture stills the mind and opens it to larger horizons. The needles stimulate deep energies in the body, brain, and spirit. At times, a fuller realization of one’s purpose, one’s loyalties, and one’s wholesome desires can result. The ordinary pains of life can be transcended as they are understood as enlightening lessons rather than meaningless torments. Tectonic shifts in perspective may occur.

Such earthshaking changes do not happen every day or for every patient. But acupuncture works a bit like meditation and prayer, awakening the heart and mind to forces latent in the human being. When a person is on the verge of a paradigm shift, acupuncture can be the catalyst to bring it about.

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The Circle of Life

An ant milking aphids. Is this a mindless robot?

Since I took the plunge and signed a lease for an acupuncture office, my blogging has again tapered off. Whatever writing I’ve managed has mostly been directed at filling my business website with content. Today my plan is to write a short piece to keep my blog alive, and I’ve decided to discuss an interesting factoid that came my way.

Although I’ve long been fascinated by invertebrates in general and insects in particular (both my undergraduate and graduate studies emphasized learning about these creatures, first their ecology and then their neurophysiology), an unusual feature of ant colonies never caught my attention until a few days ago. In their subterranean nests, ants establish separate chambers for garbage and for dead colony mates. Both types of compartments are positioned far from more active areas of the colony, and far from each other.

Why does this strike me as significant? Well, it may not be the most profound fact to base a post on, but it reminds me of how corpse burial in prehistoric (and Neanderthal) societies is considered an indication of spiritual sensibility. It is presumed to show an awakening of consciousness to the predicament of mortal life. Of course, in such interment the deceased is often surrounded by totem objects that obviously suggest a belief in afterlife or at least an attempt to assuage grief. The ants don’t take things so far, but there is no biological reason why their dead bodies shouldn’t just be tossed on the garbage heap with everything else. What evolutionary advantage accrues from separating dead companions from detritus?

This isn’t an observation that can be taken very far. I’m not suggesting that ants have deep spiritual awareness, but they do seem to view dead ants differently broken twigs or decaying leaves. Ants are highly attuned to pheromones, and their corpses no doubt smell significant. It makes sense that they would note the difference and segregate, but only if we grant that they have a certain affinity for members of their tribe relative to other organic debris.

This counters the view prevalent during my graduate days, when invertebrate nervous systems were analyzed as if they were hard-wired processors for biological robots. The idea that these animals might have quirky or even sentimental behavior was not considered. I wrote a piece last November about a spider’s will to live that touched on the same point. It seems to me that we were wrong back in the eighties when we failed to grant invertebrates a modicum of consciousness.

Perhaps all life is imbued with sensibilities similar to our own, though less elaborately developed. Perhaps care and concern arose very early in the history of living things. It might even be that an incipient love permeates every ecology as life forms interact. Perhaps the biosphere resonates with it.

Yes, this is a stretch. But with all the scientific proscriptions against anthropomorphizing, I think we have gone too far the other direction and denied sensitivity to too many living beings. Maybe if we humbled our view of humanity to admit that we are not fundamentally different from other creatures, even insects, we would also admit that we are not too different from one another. Maybe we would offer greater compassion to all other life forms, including humans far outside our local circle.

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« Older Entries Newer Entries »

WillSpirit!

The Hungry Love of Life

Sinful Desire?

The Healthy Desire for Righteousness

Desire and Grace

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Desire

Complex Change

Feeding My Family

One and Only

Points of Spirituality

The Circle of Life

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