#663 Open Minds Open Doors

"The greatest discovery of my generation
is that human beings can alter their lives
by altering their attitudes of mind." 

William James

WisdomAtWork.com

Akos Stiller   www.stillerakos.com

#507 Business as Usual?

     Each of us is deeply conditioned by our genetics, past & present life circumstances to perceive, think & behave in the unique, individual way that we each do. Though it may not look like it from others' perspectives, we're all literally doing our best, given all the varied complex inputs into our life.
     If we were to see a drowning person flailing away, we'd immediately - objectively - see how ineffective this was compared to a skilled swimmer's efficient, relatively effortless strokes & kicks. The drowning man's strokes don't measure up, yet he's surely doing his utmost best under the circumstances. He hasn't chosen to look ineffective, nor to be drowning. Were we to yell out instructions on how to improve his strokes, he'd ignore them, and get mad at us for not helping to pull him out.
     Most of us do a lot of flailing in our life! How many of us consistently engage daily life with graceful ease? How many of us consistently employ mature judgment, good humor, bringing about decreasing suffering & increasing joy for ourselves and all those around us for the long haul?
     Ineffectual, draining reactivity to life's challenges is the result of our unexamined conditioning. It's not our fault. But, how long we put up with this primitive "operating system" AND when we commit to upgrading to our more evolved "operating system" is ENTIRELY OUR CHOICE.
     Recognizing reactivity, accepting it, letting it go, and learning to stabilize in our more mature operating system needs to be experienced to be appreciated. Welcome to mindfulness practice.

Steve McCurry   stevemccurry.com

#373 How Free is our Free Will?

     In the introduction to his short book “Free Will” (Free Press, 2012), Sam Harris writes: 
    “The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: 1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and 2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present. As we are about to see, however, both of these assumptions are false. 
     But the deeper truth is that free will doesn’t even correspond to any subjective fact about us – and introspection soon proves as hostile to the idea as the laws of physics are. Seeming acts of volition merely arise spontaneously (whether caused, uncaused, or probabilistically inclined, it makes no difference) and cannot be traced to a point of origin in our conscious minds. A moment or two of serious self-scrutiny, and you might observe that you no more decide the next thought you think than the next thought I write.”

     When we devote no more than the odd moment to contemplate who we are, and how we relate to our environment, Harris is correct, we do remain locked into being thoroughly conditioned by our past history, genetics, etc. Conditioning powerfully, predictably programs specific responses to specific stimuli. Our default mode is indeed primitive conditioned reactivity - we live much (ALL according to Harris) of our lives on autopilot. Sadly, most of us behave based on the complex cocktail of causes & conditions of our past - our future 'set in stone' by our past - with no chance of creatively carving out new, qualitatively better possibilities. 

     The timeless exhortations to "Know Thyself!" and "A Life Unexamined is Not Worth Living" point to the power of conditioning to enslave, BUT ALSO to the fact that there is A WAY OUT of an otherwise pre-programmed, robotic existence.
     Einstein said, "We cannot solve the problems of today at the level of thinking at which they were first created." Since our "normal" level of thinking is conditioned, it cannot solve the problem of conditioning. Contemplative practices such as mindfulness meditation are designed to free us from the prison of conditioning by cultivating a more evolved level of awareness that leads to wisdom.
     "Wisdom is a function of deep insight into, and mature understanding of, the central existential issues of life, together with practical skill in responding to these issues in ways that enhance the deep wellbeing of all those who the responses affect." 
       Walsh R. The varieties of wisdom: Contemplative, cross-cultural, and integral contributions. Research in Human Development 2011; 8(2): 109-127.

eaglevshawk   www.dpreview.com