Category: science

The Constancy of Change

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NICOLE RAGER FULLER / NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

Cynics say that “the only constant is change.” And there is a certain amount of truth to that. Take for example the ever-changing weather. Summer heat gives way to autumn and changing colors. This then gives way to winter cold and snow, which turns into spring and blooming flowers. All these changes occur within a year, and then the cycle starts all over again. On another front, we are exposed to around 100,000 words a day—equivalent to 20 plus words per second through texting, email, the internet, television and other media. This avalanche of information and noise may be the basis for the turmoil in our politics and the topsy-turvy nature of our personal lives. Because change is everywhere, we are more than willing to accept the characterization that it is the only constant in our lives. However, like the turbulent ocean breakers during a stormy day, the apparent turbulence is only on the surface. Diving into the violent sea, the calmness of the deep waters is surprising. Similarly, if we go deeper into the origin and development of the universe, we realize that there is a level of existence where constancy is the rule. In fact, without the unchanging nature of entities, units, values, and interactions, the universe of change would be impossible.

This is the surprising conclusion arrived at by physicists and cosmologists. They point out that many fundamental factors in this universe do not change – EVER. And such stability provides the basis for the turmoil. Physics tells us that it takes 26 dimensionless constants to describe the Universe simply and completely. The similarity in numbers to the 26 letters of the English alphabet is fascinating, for the analogy is useful. These basic units represent the foundational elements, the cosmological primitives, from which EVERYTHING arises.

In 2018, the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) held a meeting where they agreed on new definitions for the base units of all weights and measures, like the kilogram and the second. The goal was to create standards for measuring things based on fundamental universal constants. This would allow such measures to withstand the test of time and not lose accuracy through contaminations and degradations. These definitions went into effect on May 20, 2019, and most of the world did not take notice of this profound change in our lives.

The newly defined measures include the speed of light in a vacuum (299,792,458 meters/second). It includes Planck’s constant = 6.62607015 x 10 -34 J s, the elementary charge = 1.602176634 x   10-19 C, the Boltzmann constant = 1.380649 x 10 -23 J/K, and Avogadro constant (NA) = 6.02214076 x 1023 mol-1. Not only are these measures more accurate than ever, but as I am describing, they are constant and unchanging.

It is interesting to note that no one really knows why these specific factors are constant in our universe. Nonetheless, constancy is important because it makes the universe possible, predictable and not truly chaotic. Despite how messy and disorganized the world may seem, if we know what forces and factors are involved, we can predict the outcome. Although most of the time we do not know all the forces and factors involved, we can imagine how much wilder and confusing it  would be if one second, for example, would be a changing variable. But in this universe, one second is now defined in terms of a universal constant as “the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.” Assuming we understand this, we can breathe more easily that this will NEVER change. At least not until we discover a new physics and a new universe.

Other relevant fundamental universal constants in our universe:

  1. The fine-structure constant (Aα)
  2. Electric constant (ε0)
  3. Mass of six quarks, six leptons, the W, Z, and the Higgs boson
  4. The mass of the electron (me)
  5. Ratio of proton to electron mass (mu)
  6. Gravitational constant (G)
  7. The ideal gas constant (R)
  8. Absolute zero
  9. The Schwarzschild radius (Sch. R)
  10. The Chandrasekhar limit
  11. The Hubble constant (H0)
  12. Omega (Ωω)
  13. Strong interaction
  14. Weak interaction
  15. Electromagnetic interaction
  16. The cosmological constant (Λ)

The Good Monkey Mind-Chapter 3

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Attached is Chapter 3 of my new book. I am sincerely looking for your feedback to improve it. Anything from typos to whether more should be explained or something removed that doesn’t make sense would be appreciated. I am trying to have each chapter stand alone, so if you find yourself saying, “I wish I had read the previous chapter” please let me know what explanation is missing. If it’s too academic, esoteric, or worse do let me know that as well.

The best way to provide feedback is to download the Word file, edit it directly with tracking on, and return to me via email (jpineda@ucsd.edu). Thank you for your time and effort. Know that any and all your comments are highly appreciated.

One positive bit of news. Academic Press has expressed interest in publishing the book, although no contract yet. Wish me luck.

Also, I have added a place on my webpage (https://the-unencumbered-mind.com/book-in-progress/) where you can go and easily download all the chapters I have written.

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The Good Monkey Mind-Chapter 2

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I am attaching Chapter 2 of my new book, The Good Monkey Mind, so that you can read and provide feedback. Whether it is finding typos or other grammatical errors, commenting on the graphics, or on the readability, it is all appreciated.

This is a particularly critical chapter since it develops the idea of how the monkey mind comes about. Please let me know if the argument is convincing or needs work.

Thanks to all those who have provided feedback on previous parts of the book. Remember that if your feedback is incorporated, you will be cited in the acknowledgment.

Touching Stillness and Responding Creatively

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I am attaching Chapter 1 of my new book, The Good Monkey Mind, so that you can respond creatively and provide whatever feedback you deem appropriate.

I truly appreciate it.

In a previous commentary, I encouraged everyone to practice stillness during this new year and assured you that touching such stillness, even for the briefest moment, would help you gain a feeling of contentment. It would also likely lead you to want to continue practicing. Today, I want to describe how touching stillness affected me in a positive and creative way.

Stillness is the attitude I adopted that “life is perfect as it is” or more prosaically that “life is what it is.” Not perfect in an ideal or Platonic sense, but as the only outcome out of a set of possibilities given the history and circumstances of each moment. I accept this reality in a willing, loving manner, and doing so from moment to moment gives way to a stillness of mind. Accepting the reality of the moment does not mean I am resigned to what life brings. The mystery is that within this acceptance lies the enormous creativity of the universe to engage and provide solutions that lead to wise change.

Like any skill, practicing mind stillness requires effort. This means keeping the “perfection of life” top of mind, especially when negative things occur. As I continued the effort, it became less conscious and more automatic – until the openness and acceptance remained without conceptual mentation. One of the first things I noticed as my practice grew was how less emotionally reactive I became to the surrounding turmoil. My emotions did not disappear or become muted—I actually felt more. The difference consisted in my response to those feelings. I did not immediately become anxious, fearful, or lash out in anger. I had the space and time to consider the unfairness or sadness of the circumstances, to feel them, but then consider how I could do something about it.

More than anything, the practice of stillness produced a joy that was totally unexpected. This joy is a fullness, closer to contentment than to happiness, even as the world seems to be more and more chaotic. Again, it isn’t a defeatist or resigned attitude but a perspective that says, “ok, this is how it is, now, what can I do about it?” This viewpoint leads me to not only follow the masking and distancing recommendations but also to volunteer to take part in the Moderna vaccine trials or be a volunteer to vaccinate people. The outcome of the vaccine trials has proven it was the correct decision. Hence, the more I practice stillness, the stronger my confidence grows about the intuitions that arise, and the more faith I place on those intuitions. It is a positive feedforward, self-fulfilling, and satisfying process.

I have asked myself about this “faith,” which has echoes of an early religious upbringing. It is a kind of faith my skepticism as a neuroscientist had displaced. My increased openness to it is something that developed as I continued my stillness practice. I struggle with it, in the sense that I  resist it, something I relate in my autobiography, Piercing the Cloud. In the end, however, I see using the scientific method and intuition as complementary strategies to know and engage the world. Both are powerful yet distinct ways to approach and know truth. At our best, our brain-mind accommodates and uses both strategies to respond to life creatively.

Faith, Reason, and A Contemporary Synthesis

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Human thought at the beginning of history likely resembled a cauldron of ideas with little foundational grounding. These ideas were susceptible to change and control by external, unknown, and mysterious forces. In what we now call the Age of Faith (A.D. 325-1300), magical thinking, supernatural ideas, and religious beliefs found fertile soil in this intellectual turmoil.

Then, in what is considered the long 18th century (1685-1815) thinking became radically reoriented by a new-found skepticism and questioning of traditional authority. It led to an embrace of the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. This Enlightenment Era, known as the Age of Reason, was specific and somewhat definite in its self-understanding of what it meant to be “rational” and “modern.”   For one, the term modern conveyed an understanding of “liberal” or “progressive” and linked with “reason” and “rationality.” 

Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences, and related scientific advancement to the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favor of free speech and thought. Yet, a great philosopher of those times — Friedrich Nietzsche — suggested that intellectual prowess and true “rationality” involved a sense and quality of rhythm, deliberateness, restraint, balance, and proportionality. Rationality, he argued, is not a mere quantity or calculation, it is more like dance or music. He rejected the notion that there is any such thing as a ‘rational truth’ or a ‘universal morality.’  It was Nietzsche’s clarion call for a new and much-needed synthesis.

In the early 1900s a third radical change occurred in conceptual thinking that we now associate with postmodern thought.  The 20th century exploded with novel ideas about concepts such as quantum mechanics, cubism, modern music, and Freudian psychology. These novel ideas challenged the accepted notions of space, time, motion, nature and natural law, history and social change, and the basis of human personality. By the middle of the 20th century, science had demolished the bedrock ideas that it itself had established. For one, science had initially set matter as the fundamental substrate in nature, as well as the idea that all elements, including consciousness, result from material interactions.  But the same objective analysis investigating such realities questioned and shattered this foundation of materialism and of our basic identities.

In this postmodern world, scientists and intellectuals saw the negation of many Enlightenment or progressive virtues and values. The result was that many intellectuals imagined the main alternative to materialism as an absence or emptiness, or great void containing nothing. This absence or groundlessness conflicted with the existential longing for definition and individuation.

Before long, these attacks on foundational ideas of being produced individuals that Alan Watts described as “adrift without landmarks in a universe which more and more resembled the Buddhist principle of the ‘Great Void.’”  Furthermore, faced with such a possibility, the greatest wisdom of the West, its religious, philosophical, and scientific traditions, Watts argued, did not offer much guidance to the art of living in such a reality. To be nothing, immaterial, stand on nothing, and have no guidance on how to move forward can be psychologically disconcerting, paralyzing, and frightening. This is the postmodern sensibility.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we seem to be standing at another junction in which both faith and reason are being challenged. Although many attempts at synthesis have been put forth throughout history, including St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica and the recent Ludato Si of Pope Francis I, these arguments assume a synthesis that maintains the independence between faith and reason. This does not seem far-reaching enough.

From a perspective of unity, the nature of postmodern emptiness, absence, groundlessness, or void, or the battle between faith and reason, is much more sensible and positive. Emptiness in this viewpoint is not the absence of things, but a condition in which actions flow unimpeded and unobstructed by other actions. In such a universe, matter performs its own unencumbered role. This way, emptiness serves as foundational for matter to express itself in a natural and perfect way. If no emptiness condition existed, it might not be possible for the material world to exist and function. To understand and live within THIS perspective is to overcome the postmodern sensibility. It is to live a productive life in which one feels at home in groundless emptiness. And in which one feels no terror but a positive delight. This is the potential of the contemporary synthesis, of what Nietzsche’s called “true rationality.”

This is a very condensed essay about large themes. I welcome your thoughts.

The Essential American Character

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The historian Warren Susman discusses the changing views of character in Culture As History. He argues that the transformation we are witnessing in today’s culture is one from a culture of character to a culture of personality. We might note the prominence and value of character in presidential elections prior to 2016. Then, character became less important and personality more central when Donald Trump ran for president. The evidence suggests such transformation is happening throughout society. I would argue, however, that whatever is happening is not changing the essential nature of the American character, only obscuring it.

Character is a complex and multidimensional attribute that it is difficult to define and discuss. It is something we are strong in, or good at, or have a great deal of it. Most adults aspire for “excellent character,” but our current culture rarely emphasizes it beyond our childhood and adolescent years. We tend to confuse character with personality. Yet, these are distinct concepts. Character reflects deep-seated identification with truthfulness, idealism, morality, and orientation towards life. Personality, on the other hand, defines responsiveness to external events, such as how we respond to others because of how they view us. We might, for example, consider ourselves fortunate because people admire that we are rich.

As someone born outside the U.S. and integrated into American society, I have a unique perspective that may differ from native-born citizens. As an adolescent, I grew up with the idea that the U.S. was the land of Oz, with emerald cities paved with gold, and opportunities around every corner. As an adult, I became more cynical about these things, yet could not ignore my journey, which has been mostly positive. What I realized is there exists an essential core in the American spirit that is strong. This despite the winds of apathy, ignorance, and radicalism that are making a culture of character into a culture of personality.

What is at the core of this spirit? It begins with an openness that many around the world find unique and endearing. Americans are seen as transparent and friendly. They smile all the time, say visitors, and even say hello as they pass you by on the street. It is a remarkable openness characterized by warmth, friendliness, and humor.  It is one of the first things that strikes anyone coming from another culture or who has been overseas for a long time. This openness combines with a generosity of spirit that is the expected response of a sincere heart. How much and how often individuals give to charities and to those in need illustrates this big-heartedness. There is also a level of American volunteerism that has few parallels in the world. In the society, an infrastructure has evolved to help others that echoes this generosity. Aside from charitable and non-governmental organizations and innumerable private foundations, there are the governmental treasures such as the National Institute of Health. Government grants have been an invisible driver of American ingenuity, technology, and free enterprise.

In all the endeavors I have engaged in since coming to this country, getting an education, becoming a scientist and an entrepreneur, and starting a creative writing career, I have always found a wealth of support and encouragement. This has taken the form of scholarships, grants, advice, and guidance that comprise the helpful culture that surrounds me. This leads to the other characteristics I find unique in the American spirit.  One is an adventuresome quality thatengenders entrepreneurial and give-it-a-go attitudes at once child-like and infectious. Adventuresome behavior is combined with a steely confidence of success, one that says, “I can do this.” Finally, there is an almost preternatural forward-thinking mentality that has given rise to new technologies like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and a thousand other ventures that have revolutionized the future of humankind.

We need to encourage such inimitable character. If we do not cultivate it as an important aspect of our identity, we are in danger of losing its meaning and significance. Fortunately, the essence of this character is in the ambience of the culture. While obscured by personality and social craziness, it is the default attitude children learn. It is up to us to become vigilant and identify those things that obscure this essential treasure. Then, we just need to get out of the way and let it express itself.

Thanks for reading. I am open to criticism so please respond if you don’t agree or have additional ideas about essential qualities of the American spirit with which you identify. I would like to compile a more thorough list.

The Dawning of Intimacy: Pathway to A Unity Experience

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Whether we call it nondual awareness, unity, oceanic feeling, or universal love, we have inadvertently placed such an experience out of reach and available only to mystics, saints, and special others. However, as I have written previously, we are born with this unique sense of being only to apparently forget it as our ego and individuality develop. The dark curtain covering our oceanic feeling, or okeoagnosia (from the Gr. okeanos or ocean and agnosia), is, however, overcome through meditation, prayer, inquiry, falling in love, paying attention, or with drugs. It is remarkably recoverable.

The argument I want to make today is that the news is even better than that. If we think of recovery from okeagnosia as a path, then such a path starts from the awareness that we already have a unity experience. We have it moment-by-moment since it is intrinsic to our human nature. What is needed is to “increase” that sense of being. One can do this by focusing on particular aspects of it, such as enhancing our emotional presence (heart) and unifying it with our intellectual presence (mind) (An Enhanced Sensory Experience). In the end, we gauge progress by the regained sense of joy, love, wonder and curiosity.

The following describes a path of recognition, realization, and appreciation that may be cultivated:

  • Attend to how you see, hear, feel, and think of the external world. Whether you see it as full of independent things with which you interact in a distant, objective, cold, or analytic way or as close, intimate, and loving entities.
  • Realize that your experience of the world (objects, feelings) is the result of your brain’s activity. You are a co-creator of that world and partly responsible for what you experience.
  • Realize that you see the world as individual parts but also holistically.
  • Recognize your care for this external, holistic world because what happens out there affects you inside in small and big ways, especially what other people do. Begin to see this common ground.
  • Recognize that caring can extend not only to others like yourself, but to animals, plants and everything in between. See the common ground in all.
  • Realize that the feelings of caring for all of life takes on a sense of intimacy and closeness. The coldness gives way to love and compassion.
  • Recognize that unity reflects an intrinsic sense you have but forgotten.
  • Recognize that this experience of unity is possible in others as in yourself (Trusting Stillness).
  • Recognize that it reflects a non-separation, compassion, and love knowingness (Unencumbered Original Mind).
  • Realize that you experience unity when you participate in some activity in which you lose track of things, of time, of yourself, etc.
  • Appreciate that you experience unity when in love or during focused attention where your ego disappears in the presence of someone special (lover, wife, husband, children) or something that interests you to the exclusion of everything else.
  • Appreciate that as you move down this path of recognition and realization, life becomes more joyous, your curiosity increases, as does love and compassion toward others.
  • Appreciate that as you move down this path, you begin to feel a greater connection, less distance and more intimacy between you and the world.
  • Appreciate that outside and inside are the same. What appears to be outside is also inside. Figure and ground are just different aspects of the same thing. They define each other but are the same. No greater intimacy than this.

In the rest of the blog, I only want to address the first and most important assumption: That we already have a unity experience. Many will undoubtedly balk and argue that it is not so and are not convinced. This is because we all have different notions of what unity means. We may not agree but let’s start by trying to define a common starting point. At the most basic level, a unity experience means that our perception of the world isn’t a jumble mess of sights, sounds, and emotions, scrambled in such a way that what we experience does not make sense.

In his 1890 volume Principles of Psychology, William James, the founder of American psychology characterized a baby’s experience as such: “The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.” Yet, developmental psychologists now know that James was decidedly wrong. Even at an early age, as we close and open our eyes, what we experience is not a scrambled set of sensations but a unified world that we understand and that makes sense.

Such an integrated, unified world has orderly physical laws that make prediction of events possible compared to a chaotic or random system. Because we live and are part of such a unified, orderly world, humans have evolved unique prediction algorithms to anticipate outcomes, understand the meaning of actions of others, etc. (Reducing Uncertainty in a Chaotic World and Our Predictive Brain).

Unified implies an experience of closeness, intimacy, and love. Each one of us comes into environments varying in love and acceptance. This can either extend our intrinsic unity experience or cause the dark curtain of okeagnosia to descend quickly. How thick that curtain is distorts and destroys our sense of unity. And it affects how we feel toward others and our environment. We become distant, cold, unemotional, fearful.

Now that you know, are you ready to step into the path of regaining the greatest gift you were born with, the jewel at the center of your being? Start by asking yourself, which sense did I display as a baby? What sense do I display now? How do I get from here to there?

Our Intrinsic Sense of Unity

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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.

Why Males Should Embrace The Feminine Principle

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“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.

Flexibility In Thinking Is Crucial For Survival

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Considering the billions of life forms present on planet Earth, there are several reasons why eusocial species, notably humans, have progressed to be a dominant force. Big brained, eminently social, collaborative in nature, able to communicate complex thoughts—these are just some explanations undergirding our achievement. From a cognitive science perspective, one significant outcome of these various factors, and a big reason for our success, is cognitive flexibility.  At its most essential, this refers to the ability to control the how, when, where, and why of thought. The human brain allows control, either automatically or deliberately, of what we think, how we think about it, when we think it, and why we are thinking of it. In an ever-changing world where circumstances vary dynamically from moment to moment, a thought-generating process that can adapt and respond equally fast is a decided advantage.

This type of mental flexibility incorporates the rapid analysis of circumstances, assessing of multiple channels of information, determining alternative solutions, eliminating those that do not work, recognizing errors, etc. More than anything, cognitive flexibility requires the “ability to resist the impulse to persevere and keep thinking in a previously active but no longer appropriate way.” Most times this requires the ability to assess the larger context in which such actions are pertinent.  Hundreds of years of neuroscience research have shown that our frontal lobes are the cortical regions critically necessary for this amazing flexibility.

What brought clarity to the role frontal lobes play in higher cognitive functions was the famous case of Phineas Gage. On September 13, 1848, the 25-year-old Gage was preparing a railroad bed using an iron tamping rod to pack explosive powder into a hole. He hit the powder to pack it in but the powder detonated, sending the long rod hurtling upward. The rod peneestrated Gage’s left cheek, tore through his brain, and exited his skull. Amazingly, Gage not only survived the horrific accident but could speak. He walked to a nearby cart, following the disaster so they could take him to a doctor. The injury destroyed an extensive part of Gage’s left frontal lobe. Or what we now consider the central executive region. In doing so, the injury changed Gage’s personality completely.

The chief functions performed by the frontal lobe include intellectual skills responsible for the planning, initiation, sequencing, monitoring, and overall cognitive control of complex goal-directed behavior. Friends of Gage did not recognize him following the accident, for he could no longer perform these skills. Professor of neuroscience Patricia Goldman-Rakic (1937-2003) advocated for the role of a special part of the frontal lobes called the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the building blocks necessary for abstract understanding. Abstraction is the unique human ability to uncouple thinking from environmental stimuli – the basis for symbolic deliberation. She showed that impairments in a subdivision of the PFC, the dorsolateral part or DLPFC, contributes to thought disorders, such as those observed in schizophrenia. 

Goldman-Rakic’s work, along with others, further showed that the frontal lobes are an important site for inhibitory control. It appears that executive control operates, at one level, in a top-down manner, with the PFC having a leading, controlling role over many lower-level structures. This control over other brain regions is exercised through response inhibition which involves circuits that use chemicals such as gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA), an inhibitory neurotransmitter.

Another remarkable discovery by Goldman-Rakic and others was that the brain matures in an organized way, starting in the back and moving to the front. And these maturational changes do not stop with puberty. It means that the frontal lobes, home to key executive functions like planning, working memory, and impulse control, are among the last areas to mature in the brain. Full maturity of these circuits extends well into the late 20s or 30s.  Thus, for the first two to three decades of development, the human mind is in a state of reduced efficiency. During this time, cognitive control is susceptible to impulsiveness (or lack of inhibition) and reduced flexibility. The personality has a high likelihood of developing antisocial tendencies, delinquency, spoiled mind syndrome and other early criminal conduct. What all this suggests is the undeniable importance of flexibility in thinking, as orchestrated by frontal lobe circuits, and how critical it is for our survival.