I’ve been considering depression as it relates to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s amazing observations about the brain, which she developed as a result of experiencing a stroke.  As a researcher of the brain, she describes the two halves as existing and operating separately….independently….having separate roles….even separate personalities.  During the stroke, her left brain was “shut off”…. so she experienced the world as it is apprehended purely with the right brain.  She realized that the left half of the brain perpetuates our egoic reality….our sense of a limited self in space and time….our individual existence….while the right half gives us access to the Conscious Energy Field….she suddenly experienced being connected with everything. 

Being fascinated by what she said I tried to consciously choose which half of the brain I wished to listen to, or “tune in to”.  I found this much easier to do than I had expected….but then it is my brain….we are very close.  The left brain was quite willing to subside, and rest when asked.  It has been my experience that sometimes the left brain can be overactive….one cannot stop thinking…. Perhaps this is the case in dysthymia, the left brain never gives over to the right brain….a person with dysthymia would then constantly experience themselves as an egoic entity….an entity cut off from the Whole….and depressed….a perfect mechanism for the pain body!

Now, back to the magnetite which the Monarch butterflies use on their migratory flight.  I’ve recently learned that we have magnetite in all of our cells as well…..especially in the brain cells.  If these magnetite crystals, through vibration, are the link between the physical creation and the Conscious Energy Field, then access to their vibration could be very powerful.  Like a two way radio, the crystals can only either transmit or receive.  It seems that the left brain constantly transmits….describing the egoic reality ….telling us what we think….our feelings and judgments based on those thoughts….explaining to us who we are in the egoic world, while the right brain receives….information from the Conscious Energy Field. 

With the left brain overactive it is impossible to receive.  Useless thinking can be an immovable obstacle against all efforts when trying to meditate or access the more subtle vibrations of the conscious energy field.  Perhaps this information about the right and left brains is the key!

Have you heard about Eckhart Tolle’s concept of the “pain  body”…. a portion of our Self, the Universal Consciousness, which somehow gets cut off from the Whole….Eckhart explains that each of us has a pain body.  It is part of our egoic experience.  It exists to play out its separateness, and the anger, and grief that separation from the Divine embody, in myriads of scenarios in our lives.  We get into an irrelevant conflict…we feel depressed…we get all worked into a lather over something and then wonder why….that’s the pain body.

 As many of us believe, as sensate extensions of the Conscious Energy Field we exist here to experience Life.  But the pain body takes possession of our “mind/body complex” and uses it to play out its agenda.  It cleverly induces us into situations where we will experience pain….the pain of disappointment, of hatred, of frustration….and then it feeds upon that pain.  The pain body is the embodied belief that we are separate from the Universal.  Therefore, by making us believe that we are separate, and making us experience the pain of that separation, the pain body perpetuates itself. 

If I think about it, it seems that all of my negative emotions can be traced to a belief that I am not Whole….that I need something….that this limited “mind/body complex” is all I really am….all egoic beliefs….all beliefs the pain body wants us to hold.  Because as Eckhart Tolle tells us, the instant I exist here and now….in the moment…. and cease to believe that I am this egoic individual that I constantly identify with…. I am not in pain….I am experiencing life.  Then the pain body comes to an end.  It cannot exist if we are in the moment….Whole.  The moment we cease to identify with it, it loses its hold.  But the pain body doesn’t want that so it fights.

I thought about this as it relates to depression.  Such a sad vibration….a vibration of loss, and disappointment.  That is the pain body for sure.  Eckhart says that some have a relatively light pain body and experience it infrequently, while a few have such a strong pain body that they experience it all the time, and are never free of it.  Could this be the case with dysthymia….chronic depression form birth?  If so….this is the most hopeful thing I have heard.  Stop identifying with it and it loses its hold.  In fact once released, the pain body returns to us as the Life Force it once was before it was cut off from Us!  We are actually energized by it!

The Puzzle

I am the quintessence of a human being: 

I know myself…I know what I think…what I feel…what my values are…all those together make up who I am.   And yet….if I look carefully….I notice that I often behave in ways that are not what I expected….I intend to be patient…and then I am impatient…..I say things….but not in the way I intended.  I know exactly who I am and what I believe….until that changes.  I’m sure of how I feel….yet I feel different about the same thing at different times.   Strong one moment….vulnerable the next….depending on what’s happening….or the perspective I take.  Fraught with doubt and insecurity….doubting I am good enough….wondering if I am loveable.  The quintessential human being. 

So can I say I really know myself?  No….and I don’t feel like I have much control over it either.  But I am learning that this is because my egoic self….the self I identify with as “me”….is actually just a projection of the idle play of the mind.  I just learned from Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor that the two halves of the brain work independently and actually have different personalities and different motivations.  So that, right there, makes it difficult to hold it together as a person.  The brain is a wonderful organ provided to protect us….but it is in no way who we are at all.  We are the dendritic, sensate extensions of the conscious energy field and as such….who we really are has nothing to do with the mind.

I am also a person on the verge….having enrolled myself in the school of the spiritual path as a little girl, my desire to “awaken” as Eckhart Tolle speaks of in his books, is I think sincere; yet, I am not awakened….I live as I described above — a huge proportion of the time identified with my egoic existence….my “self” in the worldly dimension.

This is perhaps true of all of us quintessential human beings….we’re good people, spiritual people.  We are not evil, not doing anything wrong in our daily lives…mostly being helpful to our fellow man.  Most of us are aware of a higher meaning in life….a spiritual goal….we are trying to reach our essential self….to live in the moment….to connect with the conscious energy field….to reach our awakening.  But we’re not “there” either. 

Perhaps this is our time.  Perhaps the Universe sends helpers for those such as us…. humans on the verge of awakening into momentary consciousness.  We walk the edge….finished, in some ways, with the world….but unable to awaken into Universal Consciousness.  Everything seems to be changing in the world around us right now….but perhaps it is us….perhaps it is the moment for our journey….through the portal into present moment consciousness.  The journey that is not a journey….because we are already there….Maybe this is our time to realize it.

The question is: 

will I awaken? 

And notice the word “will” in that sentence. 

I will have to will it to make it happen.

It is my choice.

I am told that our world is in a precarious place now, a possible impending end to the beautiful Planet Earth’s biotic layer, the end to human beings as a species, as we apparently destroy ourselves through various actions… inevitable given human nature.  Some think that humans have so tormented the Earth that she will slough us off in her death throes.  Some think that a big planetary event will just put an end to everything…like an asteroid, or sun storms while the magnetic field is low.  Many think these events are being drawn to us by the intensely negative vibrations of the human world.  Many speak of 2012.

But I have also heard that we can avert the disaster.  The wise tell us that by awakening to our true existence as, you might say, expressions of, or intentions of the Conscious Energy Field, we can live differently…bring peace…save the Earth…prevent the destruction….bring life.

Yes!  I want to awaken…I want to avert disaster…I don’t want to harm the Earth…I don’t want the living things here to suffer.  The question is…what do I do?  Me, the small, insignificant, so they tell me, child of the Earth, and of the Universe.  What do I do? 

The wise tell me that the day to day reality we live in and experience around us is a creation of the Collective, Egoic Mind.  Wrap your mind around this for a moment…we are all creating our shared reality here on Earth collectively, simultaneously, with our individual egoic minds.

To explain a bit further…Some of us have known for a long time that all is vibration, whether you talk physics or ”new age”.  Our thoughts have characteristic frequencies…our mental state emanates out into the energy field as a vibration at all times…joining all other vibrations from the inmates of the planet…creating the vibrational state of our world…this is the Collective Egoic Mind…. So it is us…We are manifesting —  

The Poverty

The Wars

(there are currently 30 or so in the world)

The Suffering in Myriads of Forms

The Insecurity of our Economic Systems and Governments

The Destruction of our Planetary Mother, the Earth

Have I left anything out???

When I felt sometimes that I couldn’t understand the phenomenon of the Collective Egoic Mind, I asked myself…”who is creating the reality we live in?”, and the answer was clear to see — we are.  Look around…is there anyone else here?  If it is hard to think of thoughts as vibrations…perhaps it is easier to see that all actions come from thoughts, yes?  And all of the violence and misery in the human world come from the actions of human beings.

But we don’t want any of those things.  We don’t like evil and destruction.  And yet they continue to occur.  How can we be responsible for this?  What can we do?  Many of us live peacefully.  Many have walked the spiritual path all their lives…for a while I thought that was enough…beyond that what else can anyone do???

Well recently I have learned that the problem is…that as long as we are identified with our ego, and our egoic self…we are contributing to the egoic world.  We must ask, “Am I really free from my identification with my egoic reality?”  If we get angry, if we feel that we want or need things, if we are sad…if we experience anything negative, we are living in identification with the ego. 

Yes, I cannot necessarily go out and change events….and I cannot change my self….that has been tried.  But I can stop identifying with myself and this egoic life.  Paradoxically, although existing in momentary presence is instantaneous, there seems to be a journey that we take to reach a point where we realize this.  A journey through life and the teachings of our wise ones.  This journey is what I would like to blog about….perhaps we can help each other find the way.

Just now I stepped outside on my veranda and saw seven hawks circling in a group.  Usually loners…wonder what they’re all doing together?  It’s a sign I thought…starting to write here is auspicious.  They formed a lazy single file line and flew away one by one to the south. 

 The other amazing thing in the sky today is the monarch butterflies fluttering overhead on their long journey from the U.S. to their winter home in Michoacan, Mexico.  It is easy to mistake them for sparrows at first as they fly  pretty high.  They travel individually, each carefully riding their own tiny stream of the air current — sometimes swirling around in an eddy, sometimes floating sideways, but all heading in the same direction.  One swooped down and went right by my window!  How incredible these determined little creatures are, and how delicate!  Today as I watch hundreds go over, they are flying through the rain!  I fear the hawks were there to eat them.

They use magnetite in the cells of their body to find the way….matching it’s field direction with that of their destination.  I will write more about what I have learned about magnetite in the future.