B. Alan Wallace 'Cultivating mental and emotional balance ' at Mind & Its Potential 2012

I've been asked to speak about the cultivation of mental and emotional balance which I imagine many of us perhaps even all of us here are interested in already but I'm quite sure that everyone is interested in having a clear mind have a mental well-being emotional well-being a sense of health and the implication here in the title is that balance is a key to both mental and emotional balance so how do we go about cultivating that I was adjust the key is attention I think we all know from our own experience at our own minds can be our worst enemies they can drive us mad they while sitting quietly in a room with no stimulus no stimuli from the environment at all we can be objective just by the rumination the thoughts going through our minds getting caught up snared in the grip of my psychologist called rumination in other words we know we can be miserable all by ourselves with no help from outside it's an inside job and many of it perhaps not all people know that it's also possible to be sitting quietly in your chambers quietly in a cave quietly in a serene place in nature and with little or no stimulation from the environment to have a sense of being truly well happy and you look around and think what's making me happy and you can't find anything outside the sense of well-being is coming from inside so we should all be sure help Sherlock Holmes here tracing this to the source now in this marvelous presentation I had the the luck of being able listen to offstage causation the agent was uniformly attributed to the brain and there's no question the brain is implicated in all of our subjective experience but the notion that the only true explanation is a neurological one and I never heard the speaker by Professor Ramachandran say that I think is limited sometimes we may have a brighter light shed on what's going on in subjective experience by looking into subjective experience itself looking for a psychological explanation so I suggested that attention is the key a person who can control his attention his or her attention can control the type of reality that person has a sense of experiencing and living for after all as William James a great pioneer of merit of modern psychology stated for the moment what we attend to is reality we take seriously we count as real only that which we attend to so when our minds are caught up in attention hyperactivity whether or not it's clinically diagnosed I think we all know what it's like when the mind is like an outlet that runaway train like our elephant in rut to use one of the great Indian classic metaphors it can give us enormous amount of grief especially when this rumination this obsessive compulsive flow of thinking is negative dwelling on past misfortunes the misbehavior of other people negativities of one sort or another and they just catch us in their claws we really become victims of our own minds so negative rumination if we're looking for mental balance emotional balance insofar as our minds are still prone to such negative rumination such attention hyperactivity where the mind really is out of control and we're contes being dragged along in its wake then as long as we're prone to that Oh to the extent that we are prone to that mental and emotional balance will be an unreachable ideal I call this OCD D this tendency not to be confused with the OCD obsessive compulsive disorder which is clinically diagnosed the OCD D will not show up in the current version of the fifth version of the encyclopedia of mental diseases DSM probably because all of the editors of DSM haven't as - most if not all of us here in the audience and so I call that obsessive-compulsive delusional disorder but see how familiar it sounds obsessive and in a sense that when you would like to be just quiet there's really nothing you do you think to think about nothing you need to think about you would like to be quietly present simply attending to your body your mind the environment another person you can't because the mind is like a chatterbox it's always got something to say obsessively thoughts are flowing out one after another and as much as you would love to turn it off at least have a brief respite once in a while a bit of quiet in the chamber of your mind it does not give you that option it always has an answer you want to be quiet good let's talk about it it's obsessive if you think you have control try to not think for one minute while you're still awake it's obsessive well as if that's not enough it's also compulsive that is the thoughts arise but they don't simply arise like images on a television screen they arise and we generally are compulsively drawn into them as if there's a siphon it sucks our attention in and our attention is focused off to the reference of the thought we are there and then thinking about this and that there's a really awful image it was in that movie Little Miss Sunshine remember where they tied the dog to the back of the station wagon and then forgot yeah it was the comedy so don't worry no animals were harmed in that sequence but nevertheless were the dog and the nation is a stationwagon it draws us in it drags us along do you does that resonate with your experience but it's worse than that obsessive would be bad enough compulsive is even worse but it gets worse it's delusional and that is when we get caught in the vortex of this kind of flow of rumination the general tendency and see for yourself I'm not trying to tell you what your experience is like I'm making a generalization here see whether the shoe fits that we take that we tend to take seriously or whatever we're thinking even though we're not really thinking it it's thinking us the dog is not driving the car but is it not true that when we're thinking about something fixating ruminating obsessing about something that there's a general tendency to think I think therefore it's true psychologists call that a refractory period where the mind gets caught in the grip of an emotion a memory a desire and we can't see outside of that filter system if I'm ruminating negatively about some person resentment is arising maybe contempt or disgust as arising towards that person insofar as it's for a lot as long as I'm in the flow of that rumination that obsessive compulsive delusional disorder I cannot imagine that person has any good qualities or even any neutral qualities the neutral look bad and the the good are simply invisible whereas the bad oh they come out in three three-dimensional high-def vivid in fact exaggerated off-the-charts so obsessive-compulsive delusional that sounds pretty bad and if it weren't so ubiquitous it would definitely be in the DSM but there it is attention hyperactivity that's the nice short term for it not a sign of mental health we've gotten used to it but that's the only reason it's tolerable a lot of things are you but you are tolerable if you simply get accustomed to it sexism racism and many many other aberrations of the human mind and spirit seemed to be tolerable simply because we're habituated to them well it's exhausting we all know what that's like just being caught from one rumination another takes away our happiness during the daytime and when we're finally tired we can't fall asleep because we don't know how to turn it off it keeps on going and going I know you're tired but that's breaks I'm dragging you until you are unconscious and even in the course of the day it's just exhausting isn't it we've experienced it's it's fatiguing it's stressful that's why there's mindfulness based stress reduction there is massage there's various types of therapy to just give it a rest be able to recover at least a bit of first aid to all the damage we're doing ourselves and of course we're not doing it to ourselves otherwise we'd stop it's just sheer habit I'm sure their neurological correlates but I'm not sure identifying those are really gonna help so when we get exhausted then we fall into attention deficit where we may be at a board meeting maybe maybe students in a classroom maybe be at work we may be driving and so forth and so on watching television reading a book and you all know what it's like don't you attention deficit you'd like to be focused and the mind just isn't up to it your attention isn't up to it it's just sitting there spinning its wheels not engaged you can even have it be having a conversation with your spouse and your spouse's what do you think you'd say what what a wall unreality and if sheer exhaustion not a sheer exhaustion so even though ADHD is clinically diagnosed and of course the medical profession is very keen to drug it into submission that doesn't secure it I know it to be very helpful and it's necessary for some people but wouldn't be marvelous if from childhood arm for our own children our children's children if given the the hectic pace of modernity the multitasking the sensory embarkment bombardment the information but embarkment of cellphones in internet and television a radio and text messaging and everything else even the entertainment is almost like sitting getting in the ring with a prizefighter getting beaten into submission wouldn't be marvelous if our children since my generation even the next generation down and their generation has created this world this is kind of like an ADHD world wouldn't it be marvelous if we could provide our children with kind of a psychological immunization to help prevent them from falling into ADHD succumbing to that was the whole environment is screaming for entropy of the mind so how drugs like ritalin adderall treat the symptoms which makes you drug dependent and you get into the habit maybe even from the early age if you have a psychological problem just find the drug in other words when it comes to drug just say yes just say yes think of yourself as a brain and think of any a psychological problem is a brain disorder and you've got the conclusion the way to treat it is just say yes to the drug I find that as valuable as psycho pharmaceutical drugs can be I find this a mind-numbing limitation to think that's the only way remedy if we're really looking for mental balance emotional balance with I think we all are or at least well-being how can we train this wild beast of attention to bring balance to it so when we'd like to be quiet we have that option when we'd like to be just going to free flow daydreaming we have that option like to think creatively analytically like to dwell on the past anticipate the future we have that option and when we like to be just quiet attentive receptive in a conversation with a child a friend a spouse business meeting education and so forth just do like to be totally silent I don't mean zoning out I mean present discerning ly but just taking in reality rather than insisting that it be a dialogue at all times how as we had the M&M professor Ramachandran from India background speaking paradigmatically from the Western scientific perspective with its great strengths emphasis on understanding the objective physical the quantifiable now I will just turn the tables as a Anglo and speak from the classical Indian perspective how do you develop attention skills how do you develop attentional balance India I think is actually the foremost civilization on the planet in terms of Jesty centuries of research they've done and it's called Samadhi not as some sense of some kind of a pinpoint my new tunnel vision not at all it's just useful occasionally it's like looking through a telescope but rather attentional balance what's the first step first step is can you learn how to relax it's a skill it's a skill to be cultivated to set your body at ease to set your mind at ease to unwind so many of us are like an overinflated tire you know how can you just get a pin and put it in the valve and go relax baby it'll be okay but you need unwind first if you take that wound up tense driven strained ego driven goal-oriented mind and say okay give me some meditation I'll suck it you know get that little bugger I'll master that too I'm gonna be really good at meditation I'll just give it my best shot well master that little sucker or whatever it is you know well lot's of luck with that the first thing is actually not to master anything is actually let go it's not to acquire anything or to achieve anything the first thing is to let go release all the rumination as much as you can breath by breath every out breath let it be a surrender a happy surrender a release of the breath a release of bodily tension a release of rumination breath by breath Morini awareness back to the present moment not with a tight-fisted miss but with a relaxation a release it's a skill to be cultivated we should be teaching it to our children from preschool long because they are already being undocumented how to seize up and they will learn it well how to get the job done but with tension with gripping with effort with ego they learn that less is for sure we need some immune shots for them help imbalance out for them for us perhaps too the first point is relaxation loosening up releasing into the present moment and then once you've kind of come they're like oh hello reality because after all the past is no longer exists the future doesn't yet so if you're interested in reality you know where to find it it's in between is what hasn't yet passed and hasn't and isn't the future what is happening right now that's where the goods are and so to release into that and then to stabilize to find that little literally a presence of mind and then stabilize there defines an inner stillness stability composure collectiveness where the Sanskrit and Samadhi which is now part of English language also unification of the mind get your act together in the present moment focused stable relaxed for all teachers in the room wouldn't be able marvelous if you when you stepped into the classroom to begin a class if all of your students were prepped relaxed stable the teacher is entering the room they might actually learn something so far so good relaxed stable still but not enough has to be some clarity their clarity vividness high acuity brightness of the mind so attending clearly and closely to whatever we wish to direct the attention to whether it's studying whether it's creative whether it's driving a car whether it's talking with a loved one or talking with the person who's not settle upon but being totally attentive there's a key they can all be cultivated and there is a sequence to it first relaxation then stability and then vividness there's a some prizes in store when you actually venture into that kind of practice and anybody can do it religious not religious you don't even really have to be interested in meditation let alone in the Tibet Tibetan Buddhism Hinduism and so forth you don't need the image entities in all over any of that if you like - that's cool all you need to be interested in is finding a sense of inner well-being of tensional balance which then you can apply to every other endeavor that you engage in including following falling asleep that when you lie down in bed you're tired you're ready for sleep that actually is an option because when you then you relax you let your mind come to stillness and then you can release the clarity as you drift off into sleep so finding peace of mind an inner peace of mind predictable predictable because we know it is the opposite is when - karna caught up in rumination obsessive compulsive delusional thinking the refractory period it's just it's not pleasant but there's a surprise in store big surprise a discovery that I think if it's been made at all it's been marginal in terms of modern mine Sciences but it's perhaps one of the most important discoveries yet to be made scientifically about the nature of the mind and that is when you find just attentional balance let alone the other aspect mental balance and there are others but simply by finding cultivating attentional balance while the collation is stability clarity it's not only a sense of peace and inner calm that arises lo and behold you start to enjoy the practice it could be just mindfulness of breathing which is not intrinsically some pleasant act it's serving quite neutral sensations but it's not that the breathing itself becomes pleasurable it's the quality of awareness that is arising to this neutral task and a sense of well-being beyond peace serenity a sense of real happiness a sense of flourishing that's not coming from what you're getting from the world is coming from what you're bringing to the world quality of attentional balance the first step towards mental balance and the Greeks had a term for this Socrates Plato Aristotle they called it eudaimonia genuine happiness human flourishing Aristotle Aristotle called it the being at work of the soul in accordance with virtue and should there be more than one virtue in accordance with the highest virtue eudaimonia sense of well-being that it's not stimulus driven but you don't need a companion you don't need you don't need to entertainment you don't even need a word you don't even need happy thoughts to keep you perky it's a quality of awareness itself it's actually a symptom of mental health as a symptom of physical injury or disease is you feel bad and a symptom of mental imbalance is you feel bad as you should it's really good that you feel bad when your mental when your mentally imbalanced otherwise you'll have no incentive define mental balance don't kill the messenger and that's my gripe against the overuse of psycho psycho pharmaceutical drug kill the messenger that'll do it enriching the pharmaceutical industry but impoverishing everybody becomes drug dependent so you don't wanna a sense of well-being that arises from within that comes from what we bring to the world rather than what we derive from it so the questions one of the questions I was asked to address is how do our desires and impulses how do they affect our well-being our psychological stature and I would suggest that insofar as we are investing almost as if we had a bank port léo or investment portfolio insofar as we're investing our time our energy and creativity our aspirations and goals purely into hedonic pleasure the good life equals being really lucky everyday achieved by way of greater and greater acquisition wealth and everything that money can buy achieved by acquiring other people's esteem they regard their acknowledgement their respect their appreciation their love achieved by achieving status power influence knowing you really are somebody insofar as our life's agenda is focused single-mindedly upon the pursuit of hedonic pleasure the pleasure that we can get from the world around us from wealth from other people from work from this and that from the environment around us then I think any kind of durable emotional balance of once again will be out of reach for a very simple reason the world is largely out of our control other people's behavior even our own spouses I don't want to control my spouse's behavior but if I tried I know it's not gonna be an option there's a spouse strong commitment between two people for years in more than two decades now but I don't control her behavior she doesn't control mine that's part of the delight of having a meaningful relationship so what is there in terms of aspirations desires goals one can even say apart from the hedonic the good life equated with affluence and so forth and to factor into one's a life's vision certainly there's a role for hedonic well-being meeting your material needs food clothing shelter medical care when you need it education for your children all these very important but also envisioning where in lies my genuine happiness how can i cultivate such a wealth a sense of well-being that is not contingent upon the world going my way according to my desires I think factoring that into one's vision of one's own flourishing the good life what will truly make me happy it's actually together with attentional balance a key to emotional balance in other words mature mature in terms of your desires we no longer have childish today we don't wish for a new shuttle firetruck I want to be a cowboy when we grow up not at our age I presume unless you're a really good cowboy but let your aspirations mature into wisdom like the wisdom of Socrates the Buddha Shankara Chong sir and so forth all the great wisdom traditions of the world religious and non-religious Aristotle's not known as a religious man purse a great philosopher Socrates the same all the great wisdom traditions of the world all have with variations to be sure a vision of eudaimonia that is more than simply stimulus driven pleasure and I'm not kicking stimulus driven pleasure it's just that we don't have that much control right even the wealthiest may die early death because of some disease or have an injury or have a marriage that cracks up and leave them in misery marriage edgy wealth fame do you can control it with that don't think so so to envision how can I transfer myself and will the book will there be brain coordinates yes they will tag along they will tag along the brain correlates but how you actually bring about such maturation a growth of wisdom a growth a ripening experience of eudaimonia it's not by interjecting things in your brain because that frankly is meaningless if somebody just lets a drug in your brain that's not a meaningful activity but lead a meaningful life well that's meaningful because your life is meaningful because your actions are meaningful because your attitudes are meaningful neurons aren't meaningful they're chemicals very complex to be sure but there are still chemicals there's nothing inside the brain except for chemicals electricity so we should avoid the kind I think sometimes mythologizing the brain its chemicals electricity with incredible complexity the mind is no less a wondrous thing and it's there is no evidence yet that the mind a train are the same if the reason I'd love to see it so in terms of finding emotional well-being balancing a hedge fund that is we still need to give as in the Christian tradition give under Caesar Caesars do attend to the hedonic as much as necessary and it is necessary but then what was the point st. Augustine Dakota st. Thomas Aquinas another Christian mastermind said the whole point of the political life that is all pursuits of hedonic well-being are all for the sake of the contemplative life or for the sake of a meaningful life cultivation of genuine happiness now in the midst of this it's not enough simply to refine one's attention skills to develop the kind of contemplative technology relaxation stability vividness but then we need to bring this to life to attend closely to pay attention to give reality our best and this means to let that bright light of attention shine upon our own minds so that we are we are aware when thoughts images desires emotions arise we have this metacognitive awareness which gives the option the possibility of making wise choices when an impulse arises that were not simply sucked up into every impulse every desire every thought that comes up and acting robotically but actually we see an impulse coming out and then we can make a choice is that a wise impulse is it a beneficial impulse will it be good for me and others or not and have the option of making a wise choice so cognitive balance we can understand cognitive balance by identifying cognitive imbalance cognitive hyperactivity is where we are attending to a person a situation even our own mind with such Priebus presuppositions such projection such interpretation / interpretation that we cannot hardly see what's going on because we are over interpreting hearing things that aren't said seeing things that are not displayed we're living in our own little world are projecting on reality it's delusional cognate hyperactivity cognitive deficit once again we're just withdrawn we're disengaged we're not attentive we're not present but with our children with our spouses with our colleagues we're just not present so to be clearly present attending to other people's body language their facial expressions what they say how they say it the quality of voice the speed with which they speak attending closely friend of mine Lawrence Freeman dear friend Benedictine monk said the greatest gift we can give another person is our attention the word attention comes from the latin root means - 10 - to care for watch over and look after says we tend to others 10 closely let them become real for us naturally in inevitably a sense of empathy arises in the neural correlates jolly good mirror neurons but you don't cultivate empathy by knowing about mirror neurons it's very useful I'm sure but you called cultivate empathy by attending closely to others until they really become real for you not as a means to your own end but they are real each one is real each one is a worthy each one is precious each one aspiring for happiness and freedom from suffering just as we are so we bring this mindfulness this close attentive in this cognitive balance inwardly to clearly experience our own bodies the sense the experience of being embodied attending closely to our own minds you won't see your brain there but you will see you an amazing array of mental phenomena which are correlated in a mysterious way because I don't think there's a scientist Ally who yet knows the exact nature of the mind brain correlations it is a mystery sometimes shrouded in assumptions which I think doesn't serve the scientific community or anybody else well to simply assume that they are the same because that's never been demonstrated the quarrel is our brilliant and scientists of the eminence the ingenuity the genius one could say ever ever professor Ramachandran they are highlighting these amazing correlations but what we don't know is what's the nature of the correlation so until we do why don't we just hold that hold that in space and attend closely inwardly attend closely outwardly developing a real sense of empathy towards ourselves which is just the opposite of low self esteem attending closely to ourselves which is just the opposite of narcissism attend closely to others which lays the cognitive basis for empathy and empathy being the basis for truly caring about others as we care for ourselves and that's the basis for loving kindness and compassion as we attend to those who are near those who are far we find we can't tell it we just start caring more a sense of wish of the longing for others well-being that they may be free of suffering just arises naturally simply because we're attending closely and there's the key to emotional balance have a big mind big space of the mind that everyone around you near and far they're all real to you and there you find emotional balance so your own well-being is actually inextricably linked with a well-being of all of those around you and there's the key to mental balance emotional balance I'm finished [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Happy & Well

Views: 89,723

Rating: 4.9092627 out of 5

Keywords: Mind & Its Potential, B. Alan Wallace, mindfulness, emotional balance, emotional intelligence, mental balance, meditation, inattention, emotional imbalance

Id: 6t2sWDYgJFE

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 12 2012