Paradigms of Interdependence

Paradigms of Interdependence

I once had a friend who was dean of a very prestigious school. He planned and saved for years to provide his son the opportunity to attend that institution, but when the time came, the boy refused to go.

This deeply concerned his father. Graduating from that particular school would have been a great asset to the boy. Besides, it was a family tradition. Three generations of attendance preceded the boy. The father pleaded and urged and talked. He also tried to listen to the boy to understand him, all the while hoping that the son would change his mind.

The subtle message being communicated was one of conditional love. The son felt that in a sense the father's desire for him to attend the school outweighed the value he placed on him as a person and, which was terribly threatening. Consequently, he fought for and with his own identity and integrity, and he increased in his resolve and his efforts to rationalize his decision not to go.

After some intense souls-searching, the father decided to make a sacrifice – to renounce conditional love. He knew that his son might choose differently than he had wished; nevertheless, he and his wife resolved to love their son unconditionally, regardless of his choice. It was an extremely difficult thing to do because the value of his educational experience was so close to their hearts and because it was something they had planned and worked for since his birth.

It would take more nobility of character - more humility, courage and strength - to rebuild one relationship than it would to continue putting in all those hours for all those people and causes. Photo by Elena.

The father and mother went through a very difficult rescripting process, struggling to really understand the nature of unconditional love. They communicated to the boy what they were doing and why, and told him that they had come to the point at which they could say in all honesty that his decision would not affect their complete feeling of unconditional love toward him. They didn't do this to manipulate him, to try to get him to “shape up”. They did it as the logical extension of their growth and character.

The boy didn't give much of a response at the time, but his parents had such a paradigm of unconditional love at that point that it would have made no difference in their feeling for him. About a week later, he told his parents that he had decided not to go. They were perfectly prepared for this response and continued to show unconditional love for him. Everything was settled and life wen along normally.

A short time later, an interesting thing happened. Now that the boy no longer felt he had to defend his position, he searched within himself more deeply and found that he really did want to have this educational experience. He applied for admission, and then he told his father, who again showed unconditional love by fully accepting his son's decision. My friend was happy, but not excessively so, because he had truly learned to love without condition.

(Some of the details of this story have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved).

(The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Paradigms of Interdependence. By Stephen R. Covey).

It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses (Dag Hammarskjold). Photograph by Elena.

Understanding the Individual

Understanding the Individual

Really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit. You simply don't know what constitutes a deposit to another person until you understand that individual. What might be a deposit for you – going for a walk to talk things over, going out for ice cream together, working on a common project, might not be perceived by someone else as a deposit at all. It might even be perceived as a withdrawal, if it doesn't touch the person's deep interests or needs. One person:s mission is another person's minutiae. To make a deposit, what is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you. You may be working on a high priority project when your six-year-old child interrupts with something that seems trivial to you, but it may be very important from his point of view. It takes Habit 2 to subordinate your schedule to that human priority. By accepting the value he places on what he has to say, you show an understanding of him that makes a great deposit.

I have a friend whose son developed an avid interest in baseball. My friend wasn't interested in baseball at all. But one summer, he took his son to see every major league team play one game. The trip took over six weeks and cost a great deal of money, but ti became a powerful bonding experience in their relationship.

My friend was asked on his return, “Do you like baseball that much?” - “No”, he replied, “but I like my son that much.”

The little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Illustration by Elena.

I have another friend, a college professor, who had a terrible relationship with his teenage son. This man's entire life was essentially academic, and he felt his son was totally wasting his life by working with his hands instead of working to develop his mind. As a result, he was almost constantly on the boy's back, and, in moments of regret, he would  try to make deposits that just didn't work. They boy perceived the gestures as new forms of rejection, comparison, and judgment, and they precipitated huge withdrawals. The relationship was turning sour, and it was breaking the father's heart.

One day I shared with him this principle of making what is important to the other persons as important to you as the other person is to you. He took it deeply to heart. He engaged his son in a project to build a miniature Wall of China around their home. It was a consuming project, and they worked side by side on it for over a year and a half.

Through that bonding experience, the son moved through that phase in his life and into an increased desire to develop his mind. But the real benefit was what happened to the relationship. Instead of a sore spot, it became a source of joy and strength to both father and son.

Our tendency is to project out of our own autobiographies what we think other people want or need. We project our intentions on the behavior of others. We interpret what constitutes a deposit based on our own needs and desires, either now or when we were at a similar age or stage in life. If they don't interpret our effort as a deposit, our tendency is to take it as a rejection of our well intentioned effort and to give up.

The Golden Rule says to “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you>. While on the surface that could mean to do for them what you would like to have done for you, I think the more essential meaning is to understand them deeply as individuals, the way you would want to be understood, and then to treat them in terms of that understanding. As one successful parent said about raising children, “Treat them all the same by treating them differently.”

Small discourtesies, little unkindnesses, little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. In relationships, the little things are the big things. Illustration by Elena.

Classical Behaviorism and Little Albert

Classical Behaviorism and Little Albert

By the beginning of the XXth century many psychologists had concluded that the human mind could not be adequately studied through introspective methods, and were advocating a switch to the study of the mind through the evidence of behavior in controlled laboratory experiments.

John Watson was not the first advocate of this throughgoing behaviorist approach, but he was certainly the most conspicuous. In a career cut short by his marital infidelity, he became one of the most influential and controversial psychologists of the XXth century. Through his work on the stimulus-response learning theory that had been pioneered by Thorndike, he became regarded as the founding father of behaviorism, and he did much to popularize the use of the term. His 1913 lecture, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, put forward the revolutionary idea that “a truly scientific psychology would abandon talk of mental states... and instead focus on prediction and control of behavior.” This lecture became known to later psychologists as the “behaviorist manifesto.”

Before Watson's research at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, the majority of experiments on behavior, with the results extrapolated to human behavior. Watson himself studied rats and monkeys for his doctorate but (perhaps influenced by his experience working with the military during World War I) was keen to conduct experiments using human subjects. He wanted to study the stimulus-response model of classical conditioning and how it applied to the prediction and control of human behavior. He believed that people have three fundamental emotions – fear, rage and love – and he wanted to find out whether a person could be conditioned into feeling these in response to a stimulus.

Anyone, regardless of their nature, can be trained to be anything. Photo by Elena.

Little Albert

With his research assistant, Rosalie Rayner, Watson began a series of experiments involving  “Albert B.”, a nine-month-old baby chosen from a local children's hospital. The tests were designed to see whether it is possible to teach an infant to fear an animal by repeatedly presenting it at the same time as a loud, frightening noise. Watson also wanted to find out, whether such a fear would transfer to other animals or objects; and how long this fear would persist. Today, his methods would be considered unethical and even cruel, but at the time they were seen as a logical and natural progression from previous animal studies.

In the now famous “Little Albert experiment,” Watson placed the healthy but “on the whole stolid and unemotional” baby Albert on a mattress and then observed his reactions when introduced to a dog, a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, and some inanimate objects, including human masks and burning paper. Albert showed no fear of any of these animals or objects and even reached out to touch them. In this way, Watson established a baseline from which he could measure any change in the child's behavior toward the objects.

On a separate occasion, while Albert was sitting o the mattress, Watso struck a metal bar with a hammer to make a sudden loud noise; unsurprisingly, Albert became frightened ad distressed, bursting into tears. Watson now had an unconditioned stimulus (the loud noise) that he knew elicited a response of fear in the child. By parting this with the sight of the rat, he hypothesized that he would be able to condition little Albert to become afraid of the animal.

When Albert was just over 11 months old, Watson carried out the experiment. The white rat was placed on the mattress with Albert, then Watson hit the hammer on the steel bar when the child touched the rat. The child burst into tears. This procedure was repeated seven times over two sessions, one week apart, after which Albert became distressed as soon as the rat was brought into the room, even when it was not accompanied by the noise.

By repeatedly pairing the rat with the loud noise, Watson was applying the same kind of classical conditioning as Pavlov had in his experiments with dogs. The child's natural response to the noise – fear and distress – had now become associated with the rat. The child had become conditioned to respond to the rat with fear. In terms of classical conditioning, the rat was initially a neutral stimulus eliciting no particular response; the loud noise was an “unconditioned stimulus” (US) that elicited an “unconditioned response” (UR) of fear. After conditioning, the rat had become a “conditioned stimulus” (CS), eliciting the “conditioned response” (CR) of fear.

However, this conditioning seemed to go deeper than simply a fear of the white rat, and appeared to be far from temporary. In order to test whether Albert's fear had “generalized,” or spread to other, similar objects, he was reintroduced to white furry things – including a rabbit, a dog, and a sheepskin coat – five days after the conditioning. Albert showed the same distressed and fearful response to these as to the rat.

In these experiments, Watson demonstrated that human emotions are susceptible to classical conditioning. This was a new finding, because previous stimulus-response experiments had focused on testing the learning of physical behaviors. Watson had discovered that not only can human behavior be predicted, - given certain stimuli and conditions – it can also be controlled and modified. A further check of Albert's reactions to the rat, rabbit, and dog one month later suggested that the effects of this conditioning were long-lasting, but this could not be proven as Albert was soon after removed from the hospital by his mother. It has been suggested that this was a sign of the mother's distress, but according to Watson and Rayner's own account, it occurred on a prearranged date.

(Excerpt The Little Book of Psychology).

Grown-up Little Albert. Illustration by Elena.

Changing Level of Conscientiousness

Can You Change Your Level of Conscientiousness?

Changing one's personality traits is never easy. They are thought to be enduring patterns that ultimately come from stable patterns of brain function, But in the Terman study, researchers found that people can indeed increase or decrease their conscientiousness over time. Many were able to do this and I have witnessed it in myself. As I have learned more and more about brain function and developed brain envy, I have personally developed better habits and my behavior has been more consistent. I feel much more in control of my own behavior than I did even a few years ago. I have seen others' conscientiousness deteriorate after a head injury, big drinking or drug use, being exposed to an environmental toxin, or at the onset of developing dementia.

Before discussing how to boost your level of conscientiousness, let's first define what it is. Conscientiousness concerns the way we manage our impulses. Impulses are not inherently good or bad. It is what we do with the, that makes them that  way. Sometimes we need to make a snap decision and cannot think about it over and over. Other times we want to be spontaneous and fun, especially when we are relaxing. But when it becomes a way of life, it can take a seriously negative too on your health. Giving in to immediate desires, like the doughnuts, often produces immediate rewards but undesirable long-term consequences. Impulsive behavior can lead to being fired from your job, divorce, drug or alcohol abuse, jail, or obesity, all of which have a negative impact on your health. Acting impulsively often brings regret because you failed to entertain all of your options. The accomplishments of an impulsive person are often smaller, more diffuse, and less consistent.

A hallmark of intelligence and what separates us from other animals is our ability to think about the consequences of our behavior before acting on an impulse. It is the internal dialogue that accompanies “Then what?” Effective decisions usually involve forethought in relation to your goals, organizing, and planning, which helps you not only live in the moment but to continue ten or even fifty years from now. “Being prudent” is another label for conscientiousness. It means being wise and cautious. If you are conscientious, you are more likely to avoid troubled situations and be perceived as intelligent and reliable by others. If you go overboard, of course. Others will think you are a compulsive perfectionist or a workaholic.

Your mind is powerful and it makes happen what it sees. Photo by Elena.

Six Facets of Conscientiousness

1. True Confidence. You have a true feeling of being self-efficacious. You know you can get things done.
2. Organized, but not compulsive. Keep an orderly home or office and keep lists and make plans.
3. A high sense of duty. You have a strong sense of moral obligation.
4. Achievement oriented. Drive to be successful at whatever you do and have a strong sense of direction.
5. Persistence. You have the ability to stay on track despite the obstacles that might come your way.
6. Thoughtfulness. You are disposed to think through possibilities and the consequences of your behavior before acting.

Here are steps to optimize both your PFC and level of conscientiousness to boost the control you have over your life:

1. "Then what?" Always carry this question with you. Think about the consequences of your behavior before you act.
2. Protect Your Brain from Injury or Toxins. This should be obvious by now.
3. Get Eight Hours of Sleep. Less sleep equals lower overall blood flow to the PFC and more bad decisions.
4. Keep Your Blood Sugar Balanced Throughout the Day. Research studies say that low blood sugar levels are associated with lower overall blood flow to the brain, poor impulse control irritability, and more unfortunate decisions. Have frequent smaller meals throughout the day that each have at least some protein.
5. Optimize Your Omega-3 Fatty Acid Levels by Eating More Fish or Taking Fish Oil. Low levels of omega-3 fatty acids have also been associated with ADHD, depression, Alzheimer's disease, and obesity.
6. Keep a “One-Page Miracle”. On one piece of paper write down the specific goals you have for you life, including for your relationships, your work, your money, and your health. Then ask yourself every day, “Is my behavior today getting me what I want?” I call this exercise the One-Page Miracle, because it makes such a dramatic difference in the lives of those who practice it. Your mind is powerful and it makes happen what it sees. Focus and meditate on what you want.
7. Practice Using Your PFC. Self-control is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. This is why good parenting is essential to helping children develop self-control. If we gave in to our eight-year-old every time she wanted something or threw a temper tantrum, we would raise a spoiled, demanding child. By saying “no” and not giving in to tantrums. We teach the child to be able to say no to herself. To develop your PFC you need to do the same thing for yourself, practice saying no to the things that are not good for you, and over time you will find it easier to do.
8. Balance Your Brain Chemistry. Illnesses such as ADD, anxiety and depression decrease self-control. Getting help for these problems is essential to being in control of your life.
9. Try to use willpower to control your behavior when you sleep or brain chemistry is off, or when your omega-3 fatty acids or blood sugar levels are low, is nearly impossible.

(From Use Your Brain by Daniel G. Amen, M.D.)

Try to use willpower to control your behavior. Toronto, view from the 17th floor on 50 Hillsboro St. Photo by Elena.

Inner Child vs. Inner Adult

Boost Your PFC to Rein in Your Inner Child and Boost Conscientiousness

This information is designed to help you win the war in your head between the adult, thoughtful part of your brain (the PFC), which knows that you should do, and your pleasure, which are run by a spoiled, demanding inner child who always wants what he wants whenever he wants it.

Your brain's pleasure centers are always looking for a good time:

• They want to jump off a cliff.
• They love going fast on a motorcycle in the rain.
• They crave the ice cream.
• They want the double cheeseburgers.
• They will stand in line for the fresh cinnamon rolls.
• They focus on having the second piece of cake.

Left unchecked, your inner child is often whispering to you like a naughty little friend:

• “Do it now...”
• “It's okay...”
• “We deserve it...”
• “Come on, let's have some fun...”
• “You're so upright...”
• “Live a little...”
• “We already had one bowl of ice cream. Just one more won't hurt...”
• “We'll behave better tomorrow. I promise...”

Without adult supervision, your inner child lives only in the moment and he can ruin your life. I have a friend who shared her daughter-in-law got sick with the flu and had to remain in bed upstairs. Her four-year-old son decided to “take over” the house while his mother was otherwise occupied with a pounding headache, fever, and vomiting. When his father came home, there was ice cream melting in puddles on the kitchen countertop; the pots and pans were arranged in a pyramid formation in the middle of the floor; cartoons were blaring on TV at full volume; and clothes, toys, and blankets (made into tents and forts) were strewn everywhere. Absolute anarchy and chaos This is a great visual of what happens to your life when your PFC is not functioning: Your inner child takes over while your inner adult is napping. The resulting mess is something to behold.

To balance your pleasure centers, and tame your inner child, the PFC helps you think about what you do before you do it. It thinks about your future, not just about what you want in the moment. Instead of thinking about the chocolate cake, it is the rational voice in your head that helps you:

• Avoid having a big belly.
• Remember that “food is medicine” and that you'll be in a sugar-induced, cranky, sleepy mood an hour after eating that cake.
• Remind your inner child of delicious but healthier alternatives that will both taste good and nourish your body.
• Be concerned about your bulging medical bills.
• Say “no” and meant it.

When your PFC is strong, it reins in your inner child, so that you can have a fun, passionate, meaningful life but in a thoughtful life, measured, conscientious way. To live a long healthy life, it s critical to strengthen your PFC and put your inner child into time-out whenever he acts up.

It is also critical to watch your internal dialogue and be a good parent to yourself. Dr. Daniel G. Amen have taught parenting classes for many years and the two rods that embody good parenting, even for your inner child, are “firm” and “kind”. When you make a mistake with food or with your health, look for ways to learn from your mistakes but in a loving way.

(Use Your Brain by Daniel G. Amen, M.D., excerpt).

Inner Child and Inner Adult. Photo by Elena.

Dinosaur Syndrome Revisited

The Dinosaur Syndrome Revisited:  Big Body, Little Brain, Become Extinct

Over the last decade there is growing evidence that shows the harmful effects of too much fat on your body. In a study of 1,438 Japanese men, researchers found significant decreases in brain size in the PFC and temporal lobes (learning and memory). Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug abuse, and colleagues found that in healthy adults a high BMI (body max index) was inversely correlated with activity in the PFC. Elevated BMI has also been associated with myelin abnormalities in the PFC of healthy normal and elderly adults.

The goal of our study was the test the hypothesis that an elevated BMI is associated with lower blood flow to the PFC in a healthy group of people on brain SPECT imaging. To that end, we compared our group of “healthy” subjects who had a high BMI with people in our “healthy” group of normal weight. The results of our study were very clear. The high BMI group had statistically significant lower activity in the PFC compared with the normal group.

Obesity is becoming a worldwide epidemic and is a risk factor for many chronic condition, including cardiovascular disease, depression, and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. It has recently found to be worse for your liver than alcoholism.

We were not able to determine if problems in the PFC led to increased impulsivity and subsequent obesity or if being overweight or obese directly caused brain changes. Both scenarios may be true. The fact that we used a healthy-brain group and specifically excluded ADHD or other behavioural disorders argues against the premorbid hypothesis, but other studies have shown an association between ADHD and obesity. Still other authors report that fat tissue directly increases inflammatory chemicals, which likely have a negative effect on brain structure and function.

One of the major problems with being overweight or obese is that there is evidence that it damages your PFC, which we know is the major decision-making part of the brain. So if you do not get your weight under-control, it will become harder and harder to use get your own good judgment over time to get and stay healthy. Now is the time to start enhancing your health and longetivity, not at some arbitrary point in the future, which most likely will never come.

The Day of the Flowers. Photo by Elena.

ADHD, PFC Problems, and Early Death

ADHD is associated with low activity in the PFC. Initially, ADHD was thought of as a childhood disorder that most kids outgrew by the time they turned twelve or thirteen. The hallmark symptoms of ADHD are short attention span, being easily distracted, disorganization, hyperactivity (trouble sitting still), and poor impulse control. People with ADHD, like Jose, often exhibit excitement-seeking or conflict-seeking behavior; they also tend to have trouble with time (they are often late and turn in assignments at the last minute). Over the last three decades it has become clear that many ADHD children continue to have debilitating symptoms for the rest of their lives. They tend to outgrow the physical hyperactivity but not the problems with disorganization, inattention, distractibility, and impulse control. Untreated ADHD has been associated with a higher incidence of:

• Drug and alcohol abuse (impulsivity and to calm feelings of hyperactivity)
• Relationship problems (impulsivity and conflict seeking)
• School failure (attentional problems and impulsivity)
• Job-related problems (problems with time, attention, and impulse control)
• Medical problems (associated with chronic stress, plus more head trauma with the excitement-seeking behavior)
• Obesity (lack of impulse control)
• Depression (chronic failure)
• Lack of conscientiousness (all of the above).

In the book Daniel G. Amen wrote with noted neurologist Rod Shankle, “Preventing Alzheimer's, the authors argued that ADHD is likely associated with Alzheimer's disease because of its connection with many of the illnesses that put people at risk for it, such as alcohol abuse, obesity, depression and head trauma. This is very important, because when ADHD goes untreated, a person will not be able to control his or her impulses, setting him up for significant health problems, poor decisions, and earlier death. If you or someone you love has symptoms of ADHD, it is important to be treated. Natural ways to treat ADHD include intense aerobic exercise, a very healthy diet, a multivitamin, fish oil, and supplements (such as green tea, rhodiola, L-Tyrosine) or medication (such as Ritalin or Adderall) to enhance PFC function.

Once you realize the absolutely critical role of the PFC to longevity, you then need to do everything possible to protect it and rehabilitate it if necessary.

(Use Your Brain by Daniel G. Amen, M.D. Excerpt).

Way to healthy live. Photo by Elena.

Change is Continual and Transactional

Change is Continual and Transactional

Third, a dialectical perspective holds that, if you look deeply, change is continual even though it may be so incremental it is hard to notice. A seed place in the ground is in constant change – swelling, germinating, growing into a flower and decaying to become the nutrients that nourish the next seed. Despite this continual change, our predominant experience is of continuity. We experience the continuity of our physical bodies, when in fact all the molecules in our bodies have changed. These incremental changes at times coalesce in sudden change. A concrete overpass freezes and thaws, infinitesimally changing with each truck and car until suddenly it fails and collapses. The assumption here is that the whole of nature is in motion: you can never step in the same river twice (Heraclitus). Our minds see mostly unchanging continuity, but from a dialectical perspective, continual change is more primary. The impression of static continuity is an artifact or misperception.

Identity, too, is seen as relational and in continuous change. The only reason he looks old is because she looks younger; the only reason I look rigid is because you are flexible. If a new, more rigid person joins our team then, suddenly, I look quite flexible by comparison. Taking a dialectical perspective means that words like “good” or “bad: or “dysfunctional” are snapshots of the person in context, not qualities inherent in the person. My favorite examples come from watching consultation teams or skills training groups over time. Someone is always “a problem”. Whoever happens to be the most (pick your adjective: negative/positive, task-focused/ process-focused) drives the rest of us crazy. Yet, if people are forced to stay in the situation, something always happens and they change, sometimes radically. Once in a skills training group a client was “a problem” offering constant negative comments and harsh but whip-smart criticism. By contrast, the lead skills trainer looked like a defensive Pollyanna. When a new co-trainer rotated into the skills group, he shared the same style of sarcastic humor as “the problem client”, but instead of being harsh, he had a delightful wry smile. He admired and was found of the lead skills trainer.

The group chemistry turned criticism into banter and created a lighter but still pointed feedback loop. Released from the siege mentality and genuinely seeing the humor in it all now, the group leader became more creative and likable herself. The “problem client” has less to criticize and could learn more easily. Things settled down (until the next “problem” person arose!)

Continual Change. Photo by Elena.

Reality is Complex

Reality is Complex and in Polarity

A dialectical perspective holds that reality in complex, oppositional, and in polarity. Again, we intuitively recognize this from our lives and clinical work. Say a 12-year-old runaway (built like a 15-year-old) is admitted to a psychiatric unit by police. The file shows he's had horrible physical abuse as a child and mild developmental disability. As you interview him he appears to have manic symptoms with extreme irritability. Multiple drugs show in the tox screen. He's admitted for observation. At this point you think, “Huh, there is this and there is that, and then there is this other piece, wow, this is complicated.” But then he physically threatens the petite, beloved social worker in a sexually graphic way; now there is high emotion among the staff. 

As soon as someone on the inpatient unit takes the position of being flexible on program rules, it elicits someone else's description of why in this case no exceptions to the rule should be made. One person thinks the client can be reasonably discharged, which prompts someone else on the team to give reasons why that is not a good idea. We often respond to complexity in oppositional or polarized ways. The existence of “yes” gives rise to “no”, “all” to “nothing”. Maybe it is the nature of reality or may be simply the nature of human perception or language. 

Whatever the reason, we often fall into processes in which oppositional elements are in tension with each other. When applied to human conflict, often both opposing positions may be true or contain elements of the truth (e.g., there are valid reasons to discharge and to delay discharge). Taken together, these first two dialectical assumptions mean no one ever has a “whole” perspective on a client. Therapists are like the blind men each touching a part of an elephant and each being certain that the whole is exactly as the part they are touching. “An elephant is big and floppy,” “no,no, long and round and thin,” “no, no, no, solid like a wall.” Each has an alternative perspective. Each is true and each is partial.

From this view, then, smart, reasonable, people will disagree. Polarized divergent opinions are seen as inevitable when problems are complex. Nothing is wrong: the client isn't pathologically splitting the team; the therapist isn't (necessarily) naïve or narcissistic. It is simply the nature of the phenomenon. No one person on a treatment team has a lock on important. Therefore, DBT puts a large emphasis on dialogues that lead to synthesis. How does the piece I hold fit with yours to make a more complete, coherent, or workable whole? Together we search for what is valid and polarized or divergent positions rather than striving for a unified front. Rather than artificially resolve a conflict by dropping one end of the dialectic or fighting only for one position, effort is made to stay engaged without appeasing, capitulating, dominating, or accepting the invalid.

Doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy (A Practical Guide by Kelly Koerner).

Reality is complex... Photo by Elena.

Dialectics in Behavior Therapy

Dialectics in Balancing Goals

Maintaining a dialectical stance can be hard for therapists because the pull is to become locked into a concept at either end of the pole rather than directly experience how two truths stand side by side as part of a larger synthesis. This can be particularly difficult for two of DBT's main goals enhancing client emotion regulations and decreasing priority targets such as self-injury. For this reason, DBT therapists view both these goals in dialectical terms.

Dialectics of Emotion Regulation

DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) proposes a dialectical goal regarding emotion regulation. Clients learn skills to change emotion and to accept emotion as it is. In the abstract, these positions seem contradictory, a mixed message about how to respond to private experience. Yet we examine our actual experience, the paradox resolves. The most difficult moments of our lives often require both downregulating (changing and mindfully experiencing (accepting) our emotional responses..

Consider a clinical example. A client, in bitter divorce proceedings, lost primary custody of her 2-year-old daughter. The husband's lawyer built a humiliating account of her repeated psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts, successfully negating her more recent treatment progress. Anyone would feel anguished at losing custody, especially when one's own transgressions contributed to the decision. However, for this client, her emotions were at an unrelenting, all-consuming intensity. She was crazed with pain. Contact with her ex-husband, both in real life and imagination, was like a match to gasoline. Her pain would ignite into rage and revenge fantasies. She loathed herself, certain that his claim she was a terrible mother was true and her daughter would be better off without her. She sobbed, grief-stricken each time she imagined a future without living day to day with her daughter. She had urges to capitulate and give up visitation rather than endure the pain. She sat in shock, detached and numb for hours.

She had little time, however, to sort out these feelings to inform her next set of actions because the court required that she begin mediation to determine visitation privileges. To establish credibility and best negotiate terms for visitation the client needed to demonstrate her competence. In these emotionally challenging interactions with the court or her ex-husband, her mind was in an uproar. Yet if she displayed even a whiff of emotion dysregulation, her husband would use it against her. Her goals in the situation demanded exquisite emotion regulation.

Dialectics in our beliefs. Photo by Elena.

Based on the chain analysis, the therapist and client identified shame as the primary emotion that led to the most escaping into problematic responding. This was especially the case when the client heard or thought she was a “bad mother.” In one extended session, the client and therapist looked in an unflinching way at how this criticism was true; that is, the client listed all the ways she had failed her daughter and failed to meet her own standards. The therapist used validation to hold the client in informal exposure episodes so that she could experience shame without escaping into problematic secondary responses.

Validation also cued adaptive emotion: the reason for her hurt and shame was how desperately she loved and wanted the best for her daughter, how terribly she longed to be a good mother. The client and therapist practiced the Dialectical Behavior Therapy skill of radical acceptance, looking at the causal web that created all the conditions that led to the failings as a mother, without sugarcoating the harm the client had done. Both spontaneously and with the therapist's help, the client experienced how shame transformed into deep regret and the healthy action urge to make amends and repair the damage. She found a kernel of pride at how fiercely she was using this therapy to change to do better by her daughter.

The client also struggled with rage at her husband, Here the therapist helped the client actively downregulate anger and avoid anger cues in order to avoid physically or verbally attacking her husband or his property (which she had done many times in the past). For example, the client's friends loyally sided with her, and fueled her anger by doing things like using the husband's picture as a dartboard, plotting to ruin his reputation at work, and talking endlessly about how unfair he had been. In the lead up to the mediation meeting, the client recruited her friends to change tactics with her: they either talked about the circumstances in a completely low-key nonjudgmental manner (e.g., “divorces are really hard”, “there are things about this situation I don't like”) or they avoided the topic and focused on areas where the client was building a new life.

Balancing therapy and life. Photo by Elena.

Further, the client and therapist identified the two most anger-provoking things the husband did and practiced drills where the therapist presented the cues and the client deliberately altered her breathing to calm herself. She inhaled for a count of 3, held her breath for a count of 2, then exhaled for 5, slowly and fully, pausing for 2 counts at the end of the exhalation. In this practice, she actively imagined picking up each thought or emotion about her situation and putting it in a box, gently saying “later”. She practiced this exercise and radical acceptance of shame on her own while gazing at a picture of her husband holding their daughter. She repeatedly put the picture into an envelope and then brought it out again to gaze at the picture and practice. The client learned how to control her attention in order to make fuller contact with emotion cues. She also learned to distract from emotion cues in order to down-regulate emotion. From a dialectical perspective, both approaches are valid and the focus was to help the client discriminate when either strategy did or did not fit her goals in the moment.

Dialectically Balancing Strategies

Using strategies dialectically keeps the therapy moving through impasse.  Validation strategies are dialectically balanced with behavioral strategies such as orienting, commitment, chain analysis, and problem solving. Three other important strategy sets are used dialectically to prevent rigid polarization: stylistic strategies, case management strategies, and specific dialectical strategies. Stylistic strategies  offer a practical dialectic in how the therapist communicates, balancing being warmly reciprocal and irreverently confrontive. Case management strategies concern how the therapist helps the client to navigate his or her social environment, balancing consulting to the client with direct intervention on the client's behalf in some limited cases. Specifically, dialectical strategies directly target polarization. In each case, the aim is to create the appropriate mix of acceptance of the client's vulnerability and change that recognizes the client's strengths.

Doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy (A Practical Guide by Kelly Koerner).

The last leaves. Photo by Elena.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy

 

Natural contingencies are the powerful natural consequences that occur within each therapeutoc interaction that are also similar to how things work in nontherapy relationships. Self-involving self-disclosure is one way the DBT therapist uses natural contingencies to benefit the client.

Interactions with the therapist or aspects of the therapy itself (e.g. Session frequency or length, payment) may evoke some of the same behaviors that trouble the client in other relationships. For example, the client takes an angry, demanding tone when he makes a request of the therapist that is an imposition of the therapists's time. Others in the client's life are turned off and withdraw from him when he does this to them; his angry tirades inhibit others from giving him feedback; he feels lonely and incapable of keeping good relationships. This is a key place to use self-involving self-disclosure to help the client see the contingency between his behavior and its effects. The therapist might say, “Your voice tone sounds quite angry and demanding as you ask me to do this for you. Were you aware of how your tone comes across? When you ask me in this way, it makes me feel less like doing it. If you asked in a way that showed you realize it may be an imposition, you'd get more of what you want from people.”

It is beneficial when the client engages in behaviors with the therapist that are similar to those that cause problems in other relationships because a well-known aspect of reinforcement is that the closer in time and place the behavior is to its consequences, the greater the effect of those consequences. The key is to be aware, from chain analysis and formulation in advance, of what you are trying to strengthen and what you do not want to reinforce. For example, in one case, others would not respond to an emotional pain of a person unless this person became dramatically upset and made extreme statements such as “I'm going to kill myself if she says that again!” The contingency in therapy should be different: you would want to tune in and respond to distress with plenty of help without in having to escalate.

Loneliness. Photo by Elena.

Therefore, warmth, care, and attention should be at a good baseline frequency so that low-level requests and expressions of difficulty regularly produce appropriate help. You would closely monitor the client's current vulnerability factors and antecedents so that when the chain to the pattern is triggered, you can quickly attend to emotional pain but block extreme statements. For example, when this person begins to tell you about an interpersonal conflict similar to those that have led to extreme statements and suicide threats, you might say “I'd really like to help you get things to go the way you want in this situation, so that you do not have to escalate but instead really get what you need.” You would stay responsive and warm to the client's appropriate expression, and become cooler when extreme statements are made, even actively blocking them. “When you threaten suicide, it makes us have to assess the risk. To me that takes a lot of time and distracts from what's most important, which is that you are upset by a real problem – could you tell be about it without the threats.

What happens close in time to the incident is more likely to affect the behavior's future probability. Treatment effects will be stronger, therefor, if client's problem behaviors and improvements occur during the session, where they are closest in time and place to the available reinforcement that the therapist can provide. Nowhere is this more visible than when the therapist and client negotiate solutions to problems in their therapy relationship by by explicitly discussing how each person's responses reinforce our fail to reinforce the other's motivation and engagement in therapy.

Some people have objections to contingency management, as if deliberately responding in a contingent way is harmful or deceitful. This objection ignores the fact that we are all responding contingently all the time with everyone anyway. If I am sharing something about myself, you are either responding in a way that makes me more likely to continue to share or less likely to continue to share; this happens whether either of is is aware of the effects or not. As therapists, we want to be as aware as we can be so that we harness our responses to the client's benefit rather than simply responding to alleviate our own discomfort. A good base rate of genuinely noncontingent positive regard is a prerequisite to effective use of contingency management. Unless the client experiences you as genuinely invested in his or her best interests, contingency management feels manipulative or coercive.

Doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy (A Practical Guide by Kelly Koerner)

Oblivion. Photo by Elena.

Cognitive Modification

Cognitive Modification

Effective behavior is sometimes inhibited by faulty beliefs and assumptions. In DBT cognitive modification is based on logical consistency or consistency with one's true or wise-mind beliefs (e.g., “Is this belief what I believe in my wisest moments?”) and on effectiveness (“Is this this belief useful to meet my goals?” This emphasis on finding what is valid is due in part to clients' sensitivity to invalidation. Focusing intervention on what is wrong with the client's interpretations, especially through Socratic questioning, is too evocative and aversive for many. Although the DBT therapist may sometimes challenge problematic beliefs with reason or through dialectical persuasion – conversations that create the experience of the contradictions inherent in the client's position. For example., in the last chapter a client described getting immediate relief from emotional pain when she burnt herself with a cigarette; she said it was no big deal. The therapist the asked the client would she burn her little niece's arm to help feel better, if the child was in great emotional pain? The client replied, “I just wouldn't do it. It's not right.” The conversation heightened the client's emotional tension and discomfort of holding a double standard. In dialectical persuasion, the therapist highlights the inconsistencies among the client's own action, beliefs, and values.

In addition, the therapist helps the client develop guidelines on when to trust and when to suspect her interpretations. For example, the skill “check the facts” distills many basic cognitive modification strategies into a self-help intervention. Further, in DBT, the therapist actively teaches the client to become better able to discern contingencies, clarifying the if-then effects of their behavior in the therapy relationship as well as in the client's other relationships. Clients learn to observe and describe their own thinking style, and implicit rules, to notice when their thinking is ineffective, and to confront and challenge problematic thoughts in order to generate a more functional or dialectical sense of truth. The client leans to increasingly rely on wise mind, an intuitive knowing that.

Yet change interventions can be experienced as highly invalidating. The therapist's attempts to help can  feel critical and can seem to confirm that the client has not tried hard enough – just as others have always said. Clients with histories of pervasive invalidation can be exquisitely sensitive. For this reason, active, disciplined, and precise validation of what is “right” or “correct” about the client's current responses in required to motivate emotion regulation and thereby create conditions for other change.

From Doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy (A Practical Guide by Kelly Koerner).

Reflections about our life... Photo by Elena.

No End to Science in Sight

No End to Science in Sight

We often hear that the end of physics is just a few years away – to be described as Michio Kaku once said, “with an equation less than one inch long.” Similarly, Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg published a long essay in the New York Review of Books describing his “search for the fundamental principles that underlie everything.” He added, however, that “science in the future may take a turn that we cannot now imagine. But I see not the slightest advance sign of such a change.”

Scientists have been saying this sort of thing for more than a century. For example, in the late 1800s Lord Kelvin made the now-famous statement that physics was complete, except that “only two small clouds remain on the horizon of the knowledge of physics.” The two clouds were: first, the interpretation of the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment (which did not detect and effects of the widely hypothesized “aether”), and second, the failure of then-contemporary electromagnetic theory to predict spectral distribution of black-body radiation. These little clouds led to the discovery of special relativity, quantum, mechanics, and what we think of today as modern physics.

In 1975, at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the same Steven Weinberg declared, “What we want to know is the set of simple principles from which the properties of particles, and hence everything else, can be deduced.” Then, at Cambridge University in 1980, revered astrophysicist Stephen Hawking told his audience, “I want to discuss the possibility that the goal of theoretical physics might be achieved in the not-too-distant future, say, by the end of the twentieth century. By this I mean that we might have a complete, consistent, and unified theory of physical interactions that would describe all possible observations.” Not only did this not happen, but I posit that it is unlikely to happen. As I write this, physicists are still struggling to explain newly discovered dark matter, dark energy, and the very surprising accelerating expansion of the universe (or, is it a change in the supposedly constant velocity of light?”).

To my mind, the most shocking example of a brilliant man saying something truly silly is a quote from A.A. Muchelson, after he showed that there was no aether, but before the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics. Expressing the spirit of his time, he said, “The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.”

I believe that these “end of physics” statements are not only untrue, but misleading and logically impossible. Illustration by Elena.

The hubris of brilliant and famous scientists is still with us today. The issue is very important, because it shows what terrible trouble we can get into if we are totally lacking in awe, wonder, or spiritual questioning.

Great visionary scientists such as Einstein, Newton, and John Archibald Wheeler had no such lack. At ninety, Wheeler was still asking, “How come the universe?” In his writing, Einstein said that we “use our intellect to solve difficult problems, but the problems themselves come from another source.”

We may well ask: Will there be an end to mathematics? To biology? To history? Will the human mind withdraw from science? Does curiosity ever achieve completion? I think not. A thousand years from now, our current views of physics will seem as primitive as the phlogiston theory seems to us today. (In the eighteenth century, pholgiston was believed to be an element that caused combustion or was given off by anything burning; the notion has long since been discarded.)

Ancient spiritual and philosophical teachings with their roots in India and Tibet assert that consciousness has existed since the beginning of time. However, this consciousness has been unrecognized because of our ignorance of our own true nature. This seemingly radical idea of nonlocal connections is finding increasing acceptance in the data of modern physics, of all places. Thus, it seems appropriate to discuss the ways in which contemporary physics shows that there are “nonlocal” connections called quantum interconnectedness – that is, an instantaneous spanning of space and time. We can relate these data to similar ideas from Buddhism and other ancient mystical teachings, all of which claim that “separation is an illusion.”

Remote viewing is an example of nonlocal ability. It has repeatedly allowed people to describe, draw, and experience objects and activities anywhere on the planet, contemporaneously or in the near future. Although we do not yet know how tjis works, there should no longer be any doubt that most of us are capable of experiencing places and events that appear to be separated from our physical bodies by space and time. We can present the evidence from remote viewing experiments – our own as well as our colleagues' – showing the reality of these psychic abilities. We can describe how you can discover these abilities in ourselves and incorporate them into our lives, including detailed exercises from our remote viewing workshops.

The practice of remote viewing may reveal more to you than simply what's in a paper bag in the other room; it may reveal the nature of your limitless mind – who you really are. We can explore precognition, including what I consider to be the most important scientific fact from psychical research: It is no more difficult to describe an event that is to occur in the future than to describe an event occurring at the present moment – casting into doubt our understanding of causality itself.

We can also describe the data and techniques that people use to intuitively diagnose illness. Psychic diagnosis goes beyond the doctor who can make a correct “snap” decision as soon as the doctor sees the patient (some of them have the ability in certain cases to diagnose illnesses without ever seeing the patient, and in some other cases, distant prayer and distant healing, categorized as Distant Mental Influence of Living Systems or DMILS can be cited, as there exist the relationship between remote viewing and spirituality.

(Excerpt from Limitless Mind, a Guide to remote viewing and transformation of consciousness, by Russell Targ, author of Miracles of Mind. New World Library, California, 2004).

Remote viewing does exist. Photograph by Elena.

What Is a Good Night's Sleep?

What Is a Good Night's Sleep?

Let's define the perfect snooze. Like many people, you may be so used to your own sleep patterns, however imperfect, that you don't know what you might be missing.

For most people, the best sleep takes eight hours, runs from dark to dawn – ideally from ten p.m. Or earlier to six a.m. or so – and leaves you feeling great. You should actually start to feel sleepy within about three hours after the sun sets as your sleep-promoting brain chemicals are triggered by by the reduced light. When you actually hit the pillow, it should take only a few minutes for you to get to sleep. Once you get to sleep, you should stay asleep through the night (without bathroom trips!). Ideally, you'll go through a series of vital sleep sequences that take at least eight hours to complete (children need twelve hours). At least six of those hours should be ininterrupted.

There are five stages of sleep that constitute a sleep cycle, and you need to go through four to five sleep cycles in one night. You'll usually pass through the first two superficial sleep stages in your first half hour of sleep. Then, hopefully, you'll drop into two progressively deeper sleep stages and stay there for most of the next few hours. This first half of the night, literally between ten p.m. and two a.m., potentially provides the most restorative sleep, because only while you sleep deeply can your immune system, your growth hormones, and other repair crews emerge to heal your body from the day's ravages. Finally, you dream in the REM (rapid eye movement) stage, which seems to be designed particularly for psychic repair. These five stages repeat throughout the night, though the second half of the night has more rapid ups, downs, and dreams than the first half.

If you sleep poorly, your mind and body are deprived of crucial cellular repairs that can be made only if you sleep long and deeply. You know what happens when you can't bring your car into the shop for its routine maintenance? You run it into the ground and shorten its “life span”. Same thing here. So you should find out what's really keeping you up. But first let's get clear on what your particular sleep disturbance looks like.

In desperation we look into the hoary old idea of remote-controlled mining. Photo by Elena.

What is your sleeplessness like?

Do you sleep habits include any of the following basic flows?:

Are you a night owl? If so, like many people, you may not think that you have a sleep disturbance at all. You may actually consider your late nights a blessing. It can be fun – you get things done, you get some time alone when everyone else is asleep (unless you've spawned some baby night owls). But it's not fun in the morning if you need to get up so early that you can't get a full eight hours of sleep. Chances are, you are chronically undersleeping and feeling out of sync with your spouse – and the rest of the world. Being a night owl is a key symptom of either abnormally low serotonin or excessively high stress-coping hormones.

On the other hand, you may lie awake in frustration most nights for too long. Do you go over and over worries about the past day or the next day before you can finally get to sleep? Or do you just lie there? Do anxiety, pain, panic, or disturbing dreams wake you up in the night or too early in the morning? Or do you take too long to get back to sleep or not get back to sleep at all? Are you a restless, thrashing sleeper or a light one? Do you wake up at the slightest sounds?

Are you proud to call yourself a “morning person” who wakes up very early no matter what time you get to sleep?

Do you rarely get more than six hours of sleep a night? Do you wake up worried or anxious and have to get up and exercise or work on whatever is bothering you? Finally, are you one of the four million poorly adjusted shift workers who try to sleep during the day? Whatever part of your night's sleep you're missing, you should think about it.

Why aren't you getting enough sleep?

If you answered yeas to any of the above questions, you are likely to ave at least one deficiency in your body's sleep-producing chemistry. Let's start with the most common cause of sleep disturbance. It has to do with the brain chemical serotonin. But serotonin is an antidepressant, you might be thinking, what does it have to do with sleep? What you may not know is that this extraordinary biochemical mood marvel is also the only substance from which your brain can produce its most potent knockout drop: melatonin.

Your sleep is supposed to be induced by a biochemical concert that features gradually increasing levels of melatonin, starting in the afternoon and reaching crescendo at about ten p.m. Melatonin is produced out of serotonin by your pineal gland, a pea-size structure embedded deep within your brain. The pineal gland, which consists of pigment cells similar to those found in your eyes, is light sensitive. Very gradually throughout the afternoon a and evening, as light gives way to darkness, the transformation of serotonin into melatonin is supposed to increase until it lullabies you to sleep. But here's the catch: Melatonin can be produced in adequate amount only if you have enough serotonin on hand from which to make it.

(From The Mood Cure, by Julia Ross, m.a. Author of the Diet Cure).

We can't appreciate the condition of sleep. Photo by Elena.

Timeless Existence

Timeless Existence

As we learn to open our hearts, we have the opportunity to reside in love, compassion , joy and equanimity – what the Dzogchen masters call “spontaneous equalness.” Heart-opening leads to the experience of freedom and the “truth of the heart.” Dzogchen is profoundly in favor of heart-opening and experiencing this transcendent flow of loving awareness, but it also recognizes that one has a head, a brain, a mind, and, above all, limitless awareness. It is this awareness (which is who you are) that will not be peaceful and satisfied until it has achieved its potential, satisfied its inner need and drive, and expanded into the spaciousness of timeless existence.

Other forms of Buddhism are-heart-centered and emphasize, first, the teachings of the “Four Noble Truths” and the “Eightfold Way” to escape suffering and achieve liberation or freedom, as taught by Buddha in the Deer Park. And, secondarily, the Bohisattva path comprises emptiness and compassion for the removal of suffering for all sentient beings. Dzogchen offers a third path where we have the opportunity to experience the truth of the heart in addition to the ultimate freedom, the truth of the universe. I am finally learning to travel that blessed path each night at bedtime, and each morning as I awaken, in gratitude.

I am convinced that timeless awareness and spaciousness is our goal. If that is too big a step, however, there is always gratitude, which is everyone's salvation. If we can awaken in the morning and, instead of feeling fear or resentment, give thanks to God – or the organizing principle of the universe that gives us our good health and our good minds – we are well on the way to peace and freedom. We are actually giving thanks for grace – the unsolicited gifts we have all been given. I have found that while I am in a state of gratitude, it is impossible for me to be unhappy.

While we cannot always control the events around us, we do have power over how we experience those events. At any moment, we can individually and collectively affect the course of our lives by choosing to direct our attention to the aspect of ourselves that is aware and, through the practice of self-inquiry, tl awareness itself. We can as, “Who is aware?” and then, “Who wants to know?” The choice of where we put our attention is ultimately our most powerful freedom. Our choice of attitude and focus affects not only our own perceptions and experiences, but also the experiences and behaviors of others.

(Excerpt from Limitless Mind, a Guide to remote viewing and transformation of consciousness, by Russell Targ, author of Miracles of Mind. New World Library, California, 2004).

Timeless awareness is our goal. Illustration by Elena.

Spiritual and Philosophical Traditions

Spiritual and Philosophical Traditions

In addition to the theories of physicists, the writings of poets and philosophers (some of which originated before biblical times) have articulated the idea that physical separations are more illusory than real. Buddhist teachings, following from the earlier Vedic tradition of 500 B.C., propose that human desires, judgments, and attachments, which arise from distinctions such as “here and not here,” “now and not now”, are the cause of all the world's suffering.

Aldous Huxley describes the many levels of awareness associated with the “perennial philosophy,” a term for the highest common factor present in all the major wisdom traditions and religions of the world. The first principle of Huxley's perennial philosophy is that consciousness is the fundamental building block of the universe; the world is more like a great thought than a great machine. And human beings can access all of the universe through our own consciousness and our nonlocal mind. This philosophy also maintains that we have a dual nature, both local and nonlocal, both material and nonmaterial. Finally, the perennial philosophy teaches that the purpose of life is to become one with universal, nonlocal, loving consciousness that is available to us. That is, the purpose of life is to become one with God, and then to help others do likewise.

In this worldview, through meditation one experiences increasing unity consciousness as one passes through "the great chain" of physical, biological, mental, spiritual, and etheric levels of awareness. Through meditation, one experiences the insight that one is not a body; one has a body. Even the idea of “one” is eventually given up in favor of the experience of expanded awareness.

The lesson that separation is an illusion has been spelled out by mystics for at least 2,500 years. Hinduism teaches that individual consciousness (Arman) and universal consciousness (Brahman) are one.

Ewin Shrödinger considered this observation to be the most profound statement in all of metaphysics. In the Sutras of Patanjali, written 100 years after the Buddha lived, the great Hindu teacher taught that a “realized” being achieves a state of loving awareness in which “the Seer is established in his own essential and fundamental nature (self-realization).” The view of life in which we are all connected with God, and in which the “Kingdom of God” is within us, waiting to be realized and experienced, is part of both the Jewish and Christian traditions – especially in the Thomas gospel. We learn that the loving source we are seeking is immediately available when we make contact with the great “I am” within each of us.

In Judaism, the local community of spirit is often referred to as HaShem (the word), while in Christianity it is called the Holy Spirit, or Emmanuel (the immanent or indwelling God of all). This view of a community of spirit probably arose from mystics on every sacred tradition, whose meditations led them to have oceanic, mind-to-mind feelings of oneness. These realizations may be fleeting or lasting, spontaneous or the product of religious practice, but they are an enduring feature of human life. (When I write about “realizations,” I am describing a state in which a practitioner has wisdom of who she or he is and he embodied that wisdom; it has become integrated into daily thoughts and activities, We often view “awakening” as a first step toward such realization. Awakening can occur in the blink of an eye...).

(Excerpt from Limitless Mind, a Guide to remote viewing and transformation of consciousness, by Russell Targ, author of Miracles of Mind. New World Library, California, 2004).

Memories from the Future. Photograph by Elena.