Month: September 2020

Our Intrinsic Sense of Unity

Posted on by japineda

Romain Rolland, French dramatist, novelist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915, and all-around mystic coined the term “oceanic feeling.” He used it to describe a sensation of eternity and unity, a perception of being one with the external world. Rolland studied Hindu Vedantic philosophy through the works of Swami Vivekananda and was likely familiar with the Vedantic notion of nondual awareness. Like nondual awareness, Rolland’s oceanic feeling describes an overwhelming experience of non-separation, compassion, and love. It is, for some, the ultimate unification of heart and mind.

A friend of Sigmund Freud’s, Rolland wrote him concerning his ideas about nondual awareness. He construed it as a deeper reflection of religious feelings than Freud had considered in his book, The Future of an Illusion (1927). Unfortunately, Freud could not identify with the feeling and viewed it in more psychoanalytic terms, as a vestige of an infant’s consciousness that had not yet differentiated itself from others. He described it as a sense we have at birth but lose very early on as we develop our egoic personality. In his next book, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud appeared open to the possibility that a similar feeling could occur to someone who has fallen in love. In love, a person has a sense of ego-dissolution and merging with another.

Science, unfortunately, has failed to rigorously or systematically study this feeling of unity or nondual awareness. For most of us, identifying with it is difficult since it is the rarest of experiences associated with mysticism or love. Yet, a few people never lose the sense of connection to everything. Many others regain, recover, or re-experience it through the practice of meditation, doing inquiry, falling in love, or with drugs. The sense of unity resembles the experience of synesthesia (such as the ability to “hear” colors as sound or “see” sounds as colors) in that a small percentage of us experience synesthesia. But this transformative experience occurs under unusual circumstances, in autism or with LSD.

There is compelling evidence that nondual awareness is real and the perception of unity is recoverable. One can return to this original undifferentiated beingness, if not permanently then temporarily. Perhaps this is the implication of what Jesus meant in Matthew 18:1-5 when He said: “Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” During development we lose the ability to recognize this intrinsic unity experience. An agnosia (Gr. for lack of knowledge) develops to it.  Agnosia refers to a rare condition involving one (or more) of the senses. For example, losing the ability to recognize objects through touch or what we call tactile agnosia, or inability to recognize faces or prosopagnosia. I call our inability to recognize nondual awareness okeagnosia (from the Gr. okeanos or ocean and agnosia).

One key characteristic of okeagnosia is the inability to create a general percept or understanding of the whole from the individual parts. In the 1995 book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks describes a patient with prosopagnosia. This person can describe individual facial parts but is unable to recognize the person or even his own image in a mirror. Similarly, we experience the individual parts that make up our world but not the sense of how they are unified, as an ecosystem, a oneness. We now know that brain areas in the occipital-temporal stream of visual processing (or ventral stream) are associated with prosopagnosia. Specifically, the fusiform gyrus, in the temporal lobe, plays a crucial role in the ability to assemble together a recognizable “face.”

A logical hypothesis is that our capacity to sense unity is also located somewhere in the brain. Whether it involves a specific area like the fusiform gyrus, or a distributed network. The fact that unity isrecoverable through meditation, love, or drugs implies it is inactive temporarily, perhaps under active inhibition. Or, equally likely, disuse has weakened the functional connections and activity does not reach the threshold of awareness when the network is activated. Drugs potentiate such a response. While other explanations exist for okeagnosia, it begs the question of why science has dropped the ball on this most important of senses. The responsibility falls on each one of us to do what we can. For, recovering the brain area or circuit that provides a unitive experience foreshadows an unimaginable well-beingness that humanity can use. We are, in this moment in time, in dire need of recovering our intrinsic sense of non-separation, compassion, and love.

My next blog will describe the path to recovering our unity experience.

Political Kirajutsu: The Cleverness That Kills

Posted on by japineda

Jujutsu is a Japanese martial art that originated as the “gentle art” of manipulating an opponent’s force against them rather than confronting it with one’s own force. In the world of politics, many in high office have become experts in the opposite form of this art – what I call “kirajutsu” or “killer art”. Another description of this ability is that politicians fall prey to the cleverness of their own argument. By trying to manipulate their opponents, they end up manipulating and deceiving themselves and the country. Politics is no longer the art of the possible, but the art of benefitting oneself.

Like any good lawyer, politicians learn to argue both sides of an issue, using whatever small rationalization is necessary to buttress their argument and score points. It’s an excellent skill that provides insight into how someone else, say an opponent, views the same set of facts. That gives insight into the weakness of that opponent. But in developing such a skill, politicians forget the moral aspects of their arguments. Instead of living and speaking with both the head and heart, they shelve the heart. The useful skill then becomes a dangerous tool-it becomes kirajutsu. Thus, one year a politician can justify waiting to nominate a supreme court justice because there “are only 88 days to election” and we must “let the people decide.” Four years later, and with a straight face, he argues vehemently that we must nominate a Supreme Court justice even if it’s “only 40 days to election” because it’s “constitutional.” It is the finest of kirajutsu moves.

Like most intellectual martial arts, kirajutsu and the cleverness of the combatants become an intellectual game of superiority. What such blatant arrogance produces, however, is cynicism and reduction in trust from those observing these hijinks.  Citizens are not stupid and see through the politician’s cleverness, and in the long term the toxicity of their game erodes our belief in democracy. Unfortunately for us, both political parties, Republicans and Democrats, practice kirajutsu because for them it’s about power, not about doing the right thing for the country. Their selfish desire to benefit themselves or their affiliates becomes an inexorable force. When such a game is only about power, the country loses in the long term.

The most severe effects are on trust and truth. Our trust toward leaders to tell the truth decays, assuming they ever told the truth. Kirajutsu makes truth a relative value, based on circumstances. While politicians fool themselves that they are concerned with pragmatic truth, their conscience, in a futile attempt, tells them otherwise. That there is a different truth, one that is durable, not a function of circumstances and changing desires. But their kirajutsu cleverness swamps their small inner voice. The touchstone to a truthful life evaporates amidst the weaknesses and temptations of their human nature.

How do we get out of this democracy-destroying political kirajutsu? How do politicians recover their ability and courage to do what is right? The only way out is for everyone to recognize the truth. We must recognize that we are all one and what hurts others hurts us. We must remember the importance of morality, of eternal truths, of the ones we learned in kindergarden. Additionally, we must recognize we are one nation which can only survive together, not apart. And that kirajutsu, while fun and temporarily satisfying, is tearing us apart.

Why Males Should Embrace The Feminine Principle

Posted on by japineda

“The feminine principle is an archetypal energetic expression alive in both men and women and in every aspect of creation. It represents the very energy of creation itself, the creative force from which all things are born.”

                                                                              M. Montealegre

Maleness and femaleness are like two substances that blend, but with neither element ever disappearing in one individual. These feminine and masculine “principles” are of corresponding value in both men and women, but distributed differently in each person (some individuals are more male, others more female). While the feminine principle (not necessarily identical to femininity) is strong, rather than being cherished and encouraged, it has generated fear and been the object of persecution for as long as human history. The male need for power suppresses, ignores, and distorts our feminine side. Emotionally, psychologically, and culturally, we have all been living under a paternal social order.  Over the years, we have associated specific characteristics with maleness and femaleness to the point of exclusivity. We associate maleness with authority, and femaleness with meekness. What is unrecognized is that similar to the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy, maleness exists in the female and femaleness in the male. We are blends of both.

And yet, the faulty thinking persists. We perceive the energy of the mother, as it embodies the qualities of love, compassion, intuition, receptiveness, openness and vulnerability as feminine. As if it cannot exist in a male. In Jungian psychology, they see the self as the ‘being’ aspect of personality and as the feminine principle, while the ego represents ‘doing’, the masculine principle. From this perspective, a “normal” psyche is one in which neither ego nor self dominates but shows mutual interdependence, interplay, and synergy from the interaction.

Since the Age of Reason (1685-1815), logic and the intellect, characteristics associated with the male principle, have held sway as the essence of human values. This contradicted the emotional and intuitive aspects of beingness, the female principle. To our own detriment, favoring one excluded the other. But full human capabilities include both. Fortunately, this recognition is changing, although slowly. Nowadays, more and more people realize that intellectual logic by itself cannot be the sole basis for our reality. We recognize that integration of reason and the intellect with intuition and heart is no longer an option but a necessity if humanity is to survive. There is, then, a rising energy, an ascendency, in the feminine principle. Similar to a small flame in a hailstorm, it has not disappeared and deserves protection, encouragement, and room to grow.

The feminine principle is not original to our age, but is ascendant in a way that is modern and hopeful. We are beginning to recognize the privileged and unique position of femaleness in our mythologies, histories and evolution. Just a few examples: In the Book of Genesis, Eve showed the courage to make the choice to obtain the knowledge of good and evil over obedience. It’s a remarkable act symbolizing the darker side of the feminine. Choosing the forbidden fruit resulted in both male and female being exiled from Eden, but it was the female who opened our eyes to knowledge and wisdom. In evolution, sexual selection is a misunderstood and misrepresented concept more than any other idea in evolutionary biology. Overwhelming evidence supports the notion that females “choose” mates, while males “compete” to be the chosen. The feminine once again holds the power of choice. In most mammals, the Y chromosome determines the sex. Without this chromosome, femaleness is the default. During development, women control raising of the young and teach us most of what we need to know before we enter school. This continues in public schools, where women make up to 80% of the teachers.

There are benefits to this recognition and reintegration of the feminine principle. Opening up to it can take many forms and expressions. On the positive end, it results in freeing our emotions, allowing us to be vulnerable, opening our hearts with compassion for others, guiding us toward service for the greater community. We become more receptive, intuitive and creative. It frees us from our inhibitions, and from the mental constructs of who we are. Allowing the principle to flow freely opens up a connection to the source of life, to the ever-flowing stream in the universe, to God, Buddha-nature, or being. 

In Singing Woman: Voices of the Sacred Feminine, Elizabeth Eiler has written, “This is the age of the ascendant Feminine Principle. In such times as these, women are able to look at themselves with new concepts of value and brilliance. However you inhabit and express being Woman, embrace yourself in that way today!” This rallying cry holds for men as it does for women. Likewise, Albert Einstein said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Recognizing that our bodies blend feminine and masculine aspects and being receptive to this principle is the answer to many of the problems and imbalances we produce. Acknowledging and freeing the inner feminine gives way to the love in us. And it returns us to the sacred and original mind once obscured by ego, in a manner that brings unity and reconciliation to all.