Reading time about 6 minutes
Developing beautiful minds
Ancient Greek ‘Eunoia’ meant “well
mind, beautiful thinking” (and of course, this facilitates bridging between
speaker and listener).
One of the late Edward de Bono’s lesser known
and read books, How to Have a Beautiful Mind, develops this thought and
addresses conversational questions on how to agree, disagree differ, be
interesting, polite, responsive, listen, question, reframe, handle diversions,
interruptions. He also delves into concepts, parallel thinking, emotions,
values, information and knowledge, opinions, attitudes, nature of topics.
De Bono acknowledges that it is very challenging
to find points of agreement given our built in, limited ‘logic bubbles’ and our
need to be right. He advises the development of these skills and enjoying the
use of the mind in conversations. (de Bono, E. 2004)
Consciously attending to, placing emphasis on,
aligning our intent and energy with an idea, feeling, cause that is meaningful
and worthwhile, is “as important in the handling of our lives as in learning
to walk or how to talk” (Keyserling, H. 1938)
The nature of our thinking defines our world
and meditating on an idea keeps the mind thinking beautifully (including
subsequently in our unconscious). We can choose to focus on higher purposes and
qualities. (Ferrucci, P. 2004)
At this point an important understanding is that “thought emerges not merely in the context of, but rather through personal relations”. (Hobson, P. 2004). This leads us into exploring the deep, inspiring concept of the mind developed by Dan Siegel:
How should we describe and define the ‘Mind’?
If the mind is where we process choice and change (based on our relationship to past, present and future) then for ourselves, our planet we should have good knowledge of what the mind is. Dan Siegel pushes the boundaries of our understanding by proposing this working definition:
“An embodied and relational, self-organizing emergent process that regulates the flow of energy and information both within and between”.
It is not confined to the brain, the body, the self - but a dynamic, complex, driving-to-be-integrated, living (social and neural) system. By nature, mind is part of David Bohm’s quantum explicate and implicate realities, enabling us to be conscious (insightful and aware); the basis of our health, well-being, resilience and compassion; and “arises in part, from a social field outside of one’s control”.
In a 2017 book I referred to Dan Siegel’s Wheel of Awareness that explains our incredible self-organising and integrating energy and information flow system, the mind. We have amazing capacities to:
· perceive and experience the world ‘outside’
of ourselves
· monitor, use and regulate what is happening
in our body, and its wisdom - heart rate, hunger, respiration, joints,
oesophagus (interoception)
· make full use of our senses - sight, hearing,
smell, touch, taste and our prioceptive sense of motion
· tune into our mental activities - thought,
feeling, belief, memory, images, attitudes, hopes, dreams, desires, imagination.
We are reflective beings.
· be aware of and experience our sense of
relatedness (to other people, strangers, all of humanity and life– past
present, future). We are social beings.
Without engaging with this wheel of awareness how on earth can we manage ourselves moment to moment and over time, begin to understand our own realities, connect with and intimately relate to others, play our part in interconnected life at large?! (Williams, G. 2017)
One of the ideas invoked for me by the Wheel
of Awareness is what Louis Cozolino calls the “social synapse”. He
draws an analogy between people and neurons in the brain and the spaces
between. In the same way that synapses connect neurons throughout (the wider
‘brain’ and as in Siegel’s Wheel of Awareness and all the senses,
activities, interconnections we enjoy) so are people connected by social
synapses – that connect, ‘tune in’, communicate, inform, experience
reciprocity, stimulate, develop and regulate the individual and shared mind. “When it
comes right down to it, doesn’t communication between people consist of the
same building blocks? When we smile, wave, and say hello, these behaviours are
sent through the space between us. These messages are received by our senses
and converted into chemical signals within our nervous systems…which
generate…new behaviours that, in turn, transmit messages back across the social
synapse. The social synapse is the space between us – a space filled with seen
and unseen messages and the medium through which we are combined into larger
organisms such as families, tribes, societies and the human species as a
whole…” (Cozolino, L. 2006)
I came across this Chinese character for listening. Whether this is accurate or not doesn’t matter. For me the notion does capture the power of awareness, the realm of consciousness, the breadth of the concept of ‘mind’, and causes us to think of listening in a much deeper way:
click to enlarge
In a lost and lonely world, where people are more disconnected than ever
before, the power of deep, compassionate listening assumes incredible
importance. Listening is an act of love.
The mind operates top-down (existing mental models) and bottom up (new sensing, experiencing in the present moment)
The mind also allows for both left-mode
perceptions (categorising, case-effect logic) and right-mode (bigger picture,
interconnections, context, concepts) and is quantum and can accept that space
and time, matter and energy are not different in many ways. In terms of
relationship and the ‘between mind’ the flow of energy and information allows
us to (non-logically) “feel felt” when another is attuned and present – akin to
noosphere – and shaped and changed both neurologically and socially.
Creation of meaning, including spiritual meaning is developed by the mind
One purpose of our mind is to integrate is Siegel’s view, the ‘why?’ of mind, which fits with our questing to discover who we are, why we exist, what difference we may make, a consciousness-raising means to us becoming aware of a sense of the lived life and meaning, the emergence of kindness and compassion in our being. Information and energy flows regulated by the mind is “a fundamental part of a complex system bounded neither by skull nor skin”. Nine functions of integration identified by Siegel, that inform our being and doing, are:
1.body regulation
2. attuned communication with self and other
3. emotional balance
4. response (pause) flexibility
5. soothing fear
6. insight (connecting past, present and
future with self - understanding)
7. empathy
8. morality (higher than ourselves)
9. intuition
He sees integration as the basis of our health, well-being, and of the world’s wisdom traditions. (Refer to the overlap with Louis Cozolino’s thinking outlined above). That may be fostered by mindfulness training. Be a bridge between science and spirituality. The way we learn to live together – or interpersonal integration. (His new book, launched in September 2022 delves deeper into how we are "intraconnected" within our individual bodies, our human family, and within all of nature. (Siegal, D. 2022))
There is inexplicable power in the between and within mind. “In some cases, research has now revealed that if the timing of an experience is right, we can actually pass such changes on to the next generation by way of our eggs and sperm (Yehuda, et al 2014; Youngson and Whitelaw, 2012; Meaney, 2010)”.
A trauma experienced by a mother induces
trauma in an infant in the womb and also facilitates natural adaptive
behaviours. (Siegel, D. 2017)
Escaping our normally limited notions of self, time, spirit/ energy, the physical brain, individual mind and so on – Siegel’s concept of the mind – an emergent, self-organising, embodied, relational process that arises from and regulates energy and information flow within and between – is hugely liberating, inspiring and healing!
If the soul or essence of a person lives on
when a person dies, an aspect of the relational, deep interconnectivity. Siegel
suggests that we “may have an ‘eternal imprint’ and that we can imagine
“that energy is the fundamental essence of the universe”. This means
that there is huge spiritual possibility and importance in his view of Mind. I
love the heading of one of his chapters: “Humankind: Can We Be Both?”!
Can we be both human and kind?
As “integration of the self enables the
differentiation of an individual ‘me’ with an interconnected ‘we’”, being
accepting, respectful, kind, compassionate are natural outcomes. Not
anticipating and being anxious about the future, and not regretting nor
resenting the past, but being aware of the present facilitates these
characteristics. If we let go of having a fully separate identity, we must
surely become far less prone to narcissistic, self-serving behaviour. Have a more
beautiful mind.
Siegel cites Einstein:
“A
human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’, a part limited in
time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something
separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This
delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and
to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free
ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all
living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to
achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a
part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security”.
(Einstein, 1972)
Joseph Campbell gives one of the best views of our inner struggle/ journey to reach a point of being fully conscious, which parallel’s Siegel’s approach to full understanding, awareness and integration. A consciousness shared with humanity, animals, plants …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE8ciMkayVM (Campbell, J. 2022)
PANEL QUESTIONS
1. Do you think that the pressures of living in our society today society (fragmentation, technology leading the way, bad political behaviour, breakdown of supply chains, scarcity of essentials, conflict, trauma, lethargy and withdrawal) have the effect of steering us to a place where we ‘live down to the expectations of others’ and diminish our own power and willingness to act proactively?
2. How do we change that mindset?
3. How do you believe Dan Siegel’s notion of the mind can enhance the way we see, feel, understand and do things, relate to others, reimagine and shape the future? For example, by using and leveraging his Wheel of Awareness?
REFERENCES
Campbell, Joseph (2022) Interviewed by Bill
Moyers: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth Episode 1 ‘ The Hero’s Adventure” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE8ciMkayVM
Cozolino, L (2006) The Neuroscience of
Human Relationships: attachment and the developing social brain Norton
& Company, Inc. NY
de Bono, Edward (2004) How to Have a
Beautiful Mind Vermilion London
Einstein, E. (1950) Letter in the New York Times
(29 March, 1972) and the New York Post (28 November, 1972)
Hobson, Peter (2004) The Cradle of Thought:
exploring the origins of thinking Pan Books
Ferrucci, Piero (2004) What we may be:
techniques for psychological and spiritual growth through psychosynthesis
Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Penguin NY
Keyserling, Herman (1938) From Suffering to
Fulfillment Selwyn & Blount, London
Siegal, Daniel J. MD (2022) IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) W.W.Norton & Company
Siegel, Daniel J, MD (2017) Mind: a journey
to the heart of being human W.W. Norton & Company
Siegel, Dan J, MD (2017) http://www.drdansiegel.com/resources/wheel_of_awareness_thanks
Williams, Graham (2017) Building Your
BounceBackAbility Porat Jacobsen
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