blinded by enlightenment

“Some advanced students say that they don’t conceptualize, that they don’t calculate, nor compare, that they don’t identify themselves with sound nor shape, and that they aren´t attached to the pure nor impure one. To them, the sacred and profane, illusion and enlightenment aren’t more than void and point out that inside the great light those things don’t exist. Those devotees, nonetheless, aren’t more than non curable ill persons blinded by light and obsessioned with wisdom” (Master Foyan)

To speak about transcending the mind is easy because… in fact, there’s no much to speak about this. The same book is published with different covers, and changing the name of the fashionable author each time. One can memorize quickly the lesson about “leaving the mind out”, and “to act from the heart”… You quickly learn that is really effective to dialectically knock out any person that try to make any argument against yours: “¡You are in the mind!”. It can be really complicated to exit from such a gummy sentence, unless you can fall in the apparent infantilism of answering: “You are even more there”. One better silence oneself, if you’ve got a little bit of spiritual honesty, and pretend to look like, how not, with a certain degree of humility.

It’s such a mistake to believe that to transcend the mind mean to null it, misunderstanding that we can unplug that machine that help us to distinguish between the wall and that we call “door”, (and furthermore, telling us if it’s open or close!). To bit a rotten fruit and spit it when you taste its disgusting flavor… ¿does that mean that we are not being a neutral observer? Jump a puddle and calculate the distance so that you don’t get wet… would be better to do it with the eyes closed? To enjoy vibrant conversations about the nature of mind and heart… because, is the “heart” less concept than the “mind”?

We’d like to see all as sacred, and to don’t make a distinction with the profane. To pray and enter in spiritual communion when seated at the w.c., at home or in an highway restaurant… Nonetheless, the major part of the ones who bet vehemently for transcend the distinction between the sacred and the profane, refuse to follow the proper rules and rituals of each space constructed with the formal intention of that sacred function… they say that “our liberty is beyond believes”… but actually what they reveal is no more than an immature lack of respect and decorum.

When, in mystic terms, we speak of the fusion between the observer and the observed, what is pointed out is a strong confusion between the observer and the observed… a confusion more characteristic of a poor cooked mind, a prepersonal one, than of a transcendent one. The one who express that he/she doesn’t see differences between things, and intend to make us feel bad for seeing them… is no more than a blind person that wish to get us one-eyed and guilty for still having one sane eye.

The issue is to don’t stop maturing, and to see more clearly the reality that surround us. If a path doesn’t give us the lucidity of the discernment, it would only try to dazzle us with its supposed enlightenment. 

José Miguel Sánchez Cámara

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Deepening in depression

As far as science and industry endure its bet for making people feel content (it is probed that when we are content, we buy and produce more), with Coca-Cola as main actionist of that “Science of Happiness”, organizing congresses, and taking advantage of the “spark of life”… each time we have less chances to unhappiness. Happiness instead of being an option appears to be a must, for the sake of our own health and harmony with people whom we relate. Nobody wants to enter in contact with those ill “toxic” emotions. There’re no longer four hippies following the Dalai Lama the ones who speak about being happier. Everybody, including bankers and enterprisers have wonderful receipts in order to be happier, and presents themselves as new gurus or coaches in their closed environment, filling their fridges and social networks with “positive thoughts”… How much it cost to remember the keys of happiness to others! (and to remember them to oneself as well).

The economic depression of this decrepit Europe led us to look with envy the eternal american tv-show smile, or maybe the more photogenic smile of the tribes at the heart of Africa or at the Amazonic forest. As far as we have a greater aspiration to be happy, getting around with Buddhist monks calendars with such smiles blanked with Himalaya teeth paste, more tragic appears the unlucky that keep us messed in the deepness of our solitude, we don’t really know yet what cause that pity… Would it be caused for a past pain not resolved? Anything that hasn’t been enough explored in our childhood life? Any trauma that would be blocking my access to the perennial bliss so wished?

It’s the time to start doubting about the concept of happiness that is being shared, as a sort of “moving to the house of joy”. The great carrot used to sell us drinks, furniture, and personal development workshops. An illusory carrot that is empty and rotten. It is necessary to make clear that happiness is not an emotion, and therefore it’s not equal to joy. It’s just impossible to be always joyful. If we could be always joyful, we would quickly stop to appreciate it: emotions surge in contrast, and they are in constant transformation, in contact with the changes at the environment. Nonetheless… Can one be sad and feel happy at once? It’s emerging a new concept of happiness, more mature, that don’t try to kill any line of our wide human emotional spectrum.

Longing sadness can lead to depression. Depression don´t guide us outside, but inside, to the deepness of oneself. This is a enormous chance to discover oneself, and to have a light and plenty life. Depression only endures more time that the one necessary, contributing to suffering, when we fight against it, closing our heart. Hidding our vulnerability. Refusing to feel sadness… Refusing to feel. Stopping every distractory activity… going deeper… crying if necessary… but first of all taking time to be in solitude with the very sadness that we pretend to avoid, running from it.

When we listen our heart we can even reach to comprehend that in fact we are depressed because we haven’t allow ourselves to feel anger in the past. In the loss implicit in every mourning, there’s anger for the frustration… But getting angry is even worst seen than crying and getting sad. Studies 20 years ago reflected a great disproportion between women and men affected by emotional disorders, being the last ones “healthier”. The feminine gender has been educated specifically to repress its anger, and to apply in careful tasks, whereas the masculine gender has keep, till now, the possibility to express its anger, as well seen. Nowadays, when aggressiveness, luckily, is each time worst cultural seen… depression rates begins to be equal en men and women. One thing is to contain aggressiveness, where we are reaching a higher level of civism, and a very different one is to deny the possibility to feel anger.

“Depression starts at the moment when we feel guilty of not being capable to keep suffering in line, and then we can being glad to be alive (John Welwood). Life as it comes is not accepted… and ideals about happiness deepen the gap of that lack of acceptation.

Deepening, through meditation, in depression allow us to realize of the emptiness of existence… a void that brings great liberation, and that fill us with humility. A void that cannot be bared for the one who deny that, in fact, we are not so important and that we are not going to change the world… just a little bit is in our hands. The ego has been constructed to deny the reality of the impermanence of everything, and the lack of essential reality of what we consider to be. Depression get us naked of everything that is accessory, of everything that we will lose sooner or later.

A deep depression can even led us to wish to get closed to the boundaries of death… to see with curiosity what we would be there… and we can realize that actually we would end being the same that we are now: nothing essential, at least in what is referred to things that couldn’t surmount that barrier. We are not our beauty, nor our possessions, titles, achieves, couple, family… nothing or that will be carried.

As far as I allow myself to be dragged in meditation to the deepness of depression I touch the bottom of my own existential void. And there, contemplating that despair of that vacuity I still feel… I feel sadness… I feel my heart… I feel warmness in my veins… I feel life moving inside of me… and suddenly I allow myself to be filled with new desires. I recover the urge to live, through that “reseting” that depression has done in me. I feel that my hidden anger gets liberated, and that it fills me with a golden sensation of “being alive” in my belly…. The heart heats even more… and blood led me again to action.

Happiness therefore flows from the space where I am a privileged and empty spectator of all this performance of dance of life in my body, and of the emotions… that goes up, down, and transforms themselves… A performance where nothing remains, nor joy, nor sadness, nor anger. The only thing that remains is myself, in my very nudity. I am the happiness that bares the sort longing states of misfortune, observing them with compassion, accepting its function inside of the great performance in the drama of life.

José Miguel Sánchez Cámara

Welwood, J. (2002) Depression as loss of heart in Psychology of Awakening. Buddhism, Psychoterapy and personal Transformation. Kairos

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Mirror neurons and emotional intelligence

The child stares astonished at the world… he /she observes and then imitates. A capacity empowered by neurons especially active at first years of life: mirror neurons. Neurons that are activated in the same way when they observe an outside movement and when it is done by themselves. Human development leads to a unconcius process of tons of information, emotionally reacting to it. Information expressed in the face, body and facial and gestures, that we started to imitate internally.

Certain people have the ability to quickly recognize how may feel people that they observe. Given that it’s been investigated that people with autism show a dysfunction in this kind of neurons, we could argue that there may be a relation between empathy and this neuron development. As they function automatically, it seems to indicate that, in a unsuspected way, emotional education may be exercised in the first years of life, trough psychomotoricity imitation playing.

This capacity, linked to mature emotional intelligence, could be developed paying conscious attention to the facial expression of whom we’re speaking with. A relaxed attention, without intention of “analyzing”, allows these neurons to function properly, and allow us to feel what inner emotions surge. We have learnt to defend on our own empathetic capacities. It’s uncomfortable to cry when we’re watching a dramatic film. It’s uncomfortable to feel the despair of whom ask us for money at the street. We come to learn, in this way, to be insensitive.

The intelligence of heart leads to a wiser management of our empathy. An intelligence that we can exercise and develop, as far as we can observe our emotions. A step forward that allow us to feel, at the same time that we realize the external origin of that emotional reaction. Generally speaking, we avoid people who share their sadness, because it connects us with memories congruent with that emotional state. The key to wisely join the other emotional stat is to realize that what we are feeling is actually a glimpse of what is feeling that person. We can see them as “borrowed emotions” for we don’t have to feel responsible. In this sense, the sadness I feel when I speak with a sad person, it’s not “mine”. If I speak to a angry person, I can feel the typical angry reactions in me, but I can realize that that anger it´s not of my own.

This observation and attributional shift is linked with a sort of “emotional prophylaxis”. In situations of emotional contagion, like a panic situation, one can observe how one is breathing those emotions of people around us, without acting in a automatic and reacting manner. The choice of keeping calm and serene, at the same time that feel empathetic, makes that nonetheless our actions can be more congruent with what it’s being felt by our conversational partners. In this way, we wisely use our emotional biologic mirror, when we can be conscious that it’s a mere reflection. We realize that the knife reflected in a mirror, although can frighten us, is not going to cut us. We stop being afraid of that borrowed emotions, that as internal radars, give us relevant information from the environment.

To live disconnected of our capacity of observing our emotions, sum up to the fact that don’t wanting to listen them, can make that this reflexive mechanism start to function inversely, coloring and distortioning the reality perceived. We see then our own emotions in the mirror shown by other people. That sad face you see… is a reflection of your own sadness? The ability to discern between our own emotions and the one projected to others, and the ones that come from other people and resonate in my perception field, counts for a balanced emotional life, and gives support to the emotional intelligence development.

José Miguel Sánchez Cámara

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day-by-day mindfulness (1)

I want to learn to eat slowly. To learn to taste and value what i have ahead on the plate, and that i know that in the space of some hours is going to be part of me… a component of my organism. My emotions will surge from the energetic level of the body. My thoughts will surge from the state of my emotions. Some thoughts will give me the choice to wake up from the automatic dream, and will remember me the importance of observing.

I have discovered that is easier to attend to what i eat if i cook it by myself. Just for the cost and attention paid at its preparation, one feels angrier in finishing in a few minutes with that that has need time in doing it. What is worth a few, ends to be worthless

I switch on the vitro that substitutes the ancient burner. Fire… a symbol of transformation. It appears in the vitro, giving a clean transformation, uniform, tidied up in the shape of a labyrinth. The food that i select with love, getting rid of what i don’t wish to be part of me. I contemplate how it moves when boiling. It jumps in joy when know that its death is worthwhile, they’re going to bring back to life inside of me. I honor food, and food honors me.

The labyrinth in the vitro is connected to one which would have to go through in the digestion, passing through the intestines. The final point of the process where each component come to blood. Everything that is hard to assimilate in mind is symbolized at the digestion process, and the great Odyssey implied in each part of the process. I would function automatically, so the only thing that i can do is to set a calm ambient, not tense… that allow me to be mindfulness in what happens.

Without TV. Without external nor internal conversation. Being alone with the food. The first part would depend on my will if I make it conscious. I observe the colors. I smell the odors. I know by intuition the textures before tasting them. Each bite deserves a mindfulness taste sample. I enjoy each bite, and with it, the bliss of every moment that happens in my life. I chew carefully… as a sign of being glad. The path will be easier if the peaces are smaller… if they are good salivated.

Oops, i have left the vitro switched on!

I breath, and before starting to feel bad switch it off with violence… I prefer to take the time to observe the beauty of the wonderful mandala formed by the incandescent heat-proofness on its surface.

José Miguel Sánchez

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Serenity at the hustle

“If your intelligence and capacity are correct, you don’t need listening the aphorisms and tales of the ancient Zen masters. Keep mindful since the very moment you wake up, still your mind, keep watch carefully everything you say and do, and contemplate where all the phenomena came from. If you can go through every situation, what would be the need to change them? Then, you can only go beyond “Zen”, overcome every convention and discover a temple of purity, serenity and effortless at the middle of the hustle” Zen master Zen Yuan Wu (1063-1135)

It is said that Yuan Wu was close to burn his own aphorisms, when he realized that his pupils didn’t appear to understand anything in them. There is a phase in the growing path that implies to surround oneself with people who encourage our growing process: friends, couples, masters… and good books. This phase leads to get a “intelligence and capacity” correct enough to leave the importance of the ‘learning contents’ behind.

Once we can close the books and start living with the new look that they has lend us, everything appears with a refreshed character. Even though you see the same every day… you realize that there’s never exactly the same. You appreciate the details, the small differences. You taste them just as they present themselves, with no urge to change them in order to fit our likes or interests.

The contemplative attitude towards life appears, and begins to get rid of the predator an control attitude which we usually function as habits. Using that control attitude we can intend to create artificial paradises in which we can meditate without being disturbed. Resting spaces, free of working… relaxed… vacational.

Zen was never about creating parallel realities. All those soul retreats, so necessaries in a lot of parts of the path, lead us to learn to calm our emotions, and to still our mind. The process is about to finish when, from observation, we can keep calm at the middle of the hustle, and the daily bustle of the hundred-of-things to do. But… who is the one who do? Is it really necessary such stress to do it? Drop it… and life makes itself. We don`t life a live… we are life indeed.

José Miguel Sánchez Cámara

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Learning to think with the heart

Historically emotions have been seen as evolutionary inferior to thoughts, more related to other mammals than the “homo sapiens sapines”. The human being has being thought basically as “man”, atribuiting him the logical and rational qualities that so much effort has needed to claim for the superiority of masculine over feminine. Rational over emotive.

In psychogical terms, the feminine has been called histeric, emotionally unbalanced… The issue is that from the times of Dr. Freud, psychotherapy appears to give support to those women so willing for a masculine that contain and listen to them. But the first function of psychoanalisys, which obtains its social success by naming the unnamed, the sexual taboo (in order to rationalize and define what is sane and unsane…), was to cut the “histeric” attempts of feminism to change the social order and structure.

Inside the actual couple conflict, a drama historically unsolved is reproduced: access and sharing of public power, reserved till now to the masculine. The actual women is overwelming, and get rid of the shocked man. ¿Why is it so? First, by the influence of education, so cleverly denied to them, regarding to the supposed lesser intelligence level. Man cannot actually stand over woman using logic argumentation.

But more important, is the enormous emotional intelligence that woman has developed as far as see has kept in contact with her feelings and vulnerability. Emotion is more complex and characteristic of human beings, even more than though. Human emotion cannot be compared with the rest of living beings. Whereas thought only refers to that cold, cognitive component of mind, emotion is composed of cognitive, affective, energetic and behavioural elements. To get to know that one feels sadness, is a more complex process than we suppose. To reach to recognize the label “sad” is in fact a cognitive process. Before that a number of no-word processes has been displayed, processes that imply to feel… Exactly what men have avoid in the whole history of patriarchy, to keep his natural vulnerability safe.

Studies reveal that the subjective experience of emotion, the feeling, is even more intense in men. Something that they are not going to express, nor know how to express it in a number of cases… Given that emotional language is learnt in social interaction. Emotions aren’t a men’s issue. The emotional intelligence developed by women, results in that they are more efficient and successful both at home and at work.

Sometimes, unconsciously, women get involved in subtle battles that intend to revenge the memories of pain of her mothers and grandmas… unless her own life. Men have been educated to don’t compete with women… and get absolutely disarmed to the first “you make me feel bad…”.. so, slowly, they lose spaces in studies, at work, and at home. If they intend to compete, don´t stop to miss the thing… actually, they don´t know how to act in a coherent way with what their couples are feeling.

We can finish this history being relegated to the position of drones at the hive, unless we start to learn to thing with the heart. To explore fields where a more sustainable motivation would appear, and values to guide our behavior beyond the materialistic and rationale of the cost-regard logic, and we open a new field of feelings that lead to altruism and general interest.

But not only man has to learn to think with the heart. Women have tended to get confused between heart and hunch, impulsive acts, passion… what makes that their choices keep at a low conscious level. Captured by evolution automatisms that express emotions such as jealousy, possession, envy, insecurity… that make the emotional system unstable. Then the pure physical presence of the masculine is needed, just as a security and stability totem. Actually, women could learn from men to control impulsiveness, to observe, to take distance… to breath.

To make a couple function (and to make that the whole society function) is so necessary to learn one of each other. We learn to feel and to express it. They learn to observe what they are feeling, and to make a wise management of their emotions. The more we get independent of each other, the more space start to surge so that we can unit by love, and not by emotional dependence.

José Miguel Sánchez Cámara

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Mindfulness: Leaving DMN (Default Mode Network)

I’d like to think that we get one´s strength back when you are asleep and, for a moment, you stop focusing at the serious tasks of job and family, in order to have a rest and let the fantasy roam. We imagine that neurons take in such events holidays, and that we can leave the brain machine functioning at slow motion.

On the opposite of this popular believe, neuroscience is showing that the major part of the brain energetic consumption is given at that kind of rest state. Near 70% of the energy that is consumed by the brain is spread in neuronal networks that aren’t related to conscious events. Certain parietal areas (above the head, at both sides) are suddenly activated communicating information in an automatic way. The background noise of that “dark energy” appears not only at the conscious state, but at light dream and even with anesthesia.

When we pay attention to something, making a focused and conscious activity, the energetic consumption increases only in a 5%. Otherwise, it’s been discovered that the basic energetic activity of these areas (linked to personal memories) drastically disappear. Before discovering that they actually form such a network system, it was called “mysterious medial parietal area”.

A system that has priority over the rest of data processing, till that one has to pay attention to the new or unexpected sensorial signs. You can even get to predict when someone is going to get absent minded, according to the activity of the DMN. When its activity increases, is very much more likely to get absent minded and therefore to make a mistake. It seems that people with Alzheimer disease start to function only with this default system, and that people depressed have enormous difficulties to exit from it. It´s such the feeling of “being in his own world” that nowadays research data is pointing out at this dysfunction at the basis schizophrenia disease, with no concluding results yet.

To the mathematic and philosopher Annie Marquier this neuronal network, so associated with personal biographic memories, would correspond to the robotic behavior of the so called “personal ego”, a prediction and control program install in fear, that has let us survive as human race. As the studies reflect, all the work made in increase conscious attention, at the core of mindfulness, would be the only way to give a rest to brain to that unfocused activity. In line with the studies of the Heartmath Institute, Marquier sees the heart as the seat of a kind of conscious coherence that let us to scape from the claws of the unconscious and automatism, with wisdom and compassion.

A consciousness of higher quality is add to attention, as result of the coordination of the network that constitute 60% of heart cells, which allow us to conduce and order even the unconscious and frenetic activity of the memories shot automatically from DMN. The key, therefore, is in keeping alert and compassive to what happens in our mind, which starts deprogramming low quality ideas and beliefs, that led us to take low quality decisions in our lives.

Mindfulness allows making more coherent and conscious decisions, integrating more media information, in a efficient way in energetic consumption terms, in lower time. We are then in the arms of the enormous intelligence of intuition.

José Miguel Sánchez Cámara

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