Your Wise Brain is my blog, posted at Psychology Today, Huffington Post and other major websites.
It’s about how to take charge of the caveman brain in the 21st century by using practical methods from the intersection of psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice.
With a new post every week or so, I’ll showcase cutting edge research on the brain, present new and powerful methods for healing and transforming the mind and heart, and share fascinating insights from the world’s great paths of contemplative practice.
My focus is on news and tools you can use to manage stress, keep your wits about you in turbulent times, heal the psychological bruises and cuts no one escapes in this life, keep your heart open no matter what others do, assert yourself with strength and dignity, steady and quiet your mind, and open to liberating insight.
The historically unprecedented meeting of the modern sciences of psychology and neurology, with the ancient contemplative traditions, offers wonderful ways to change your brain and thus change your life, and even the world.
I hope you’ll join me on this rich and rewarding journey.
Feeling safer is a tricky subject, with complications that can be both personal and political.
(This topic and others are explored in depth in my interview with New Dimensions.)
Yes, there are real threats out there, but evolution and other factors have left a lot of us walking around in a kind of paranoid trance. I’ve been there myself, and the results include feeling less peaceful and hopeful, and more worried and cranky, than is right.
So I hope you find this post helpful.
Is There Really a Tiger in Those Bushes?
Consider these two mistakes:
1. You think there’s a tiger in the bushes, but actually there isn’t one.
2. You think no tiger is in the bushes, but actually one is about to pounce.
Most of us make the first error much more often than the second one, because:
· Evolution has given us a paranoid brain. In order to survive and pass on genes, it’s better to make the first mistake a hundred times rather than make the second mistake even once; the cost of the first mistake is fear for no reason, but the cost of the second mistake is death. [read more …]
My recent posts have highlighted two very powerful, yet opposing forces in the human heart: in a traditional metaphor, we each have a wolf of love and a wolf of hate inside us, and it all depends on which one we feed every day.
On the one hand, as the most social and loving species on the planet, we have the wonderful ability and inclination to connect with others, be empathic, cooperate, care, and love. On the other hand, we also have the capacity and inclination to be fearfully aggressive toward any individual or group we regard as “them.” (In my book – Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom – I develop this idea further, including how to stimulate and strengthen the neural circuits of self-control, empathy, and compassion.)
To tame the wolf of hate, it’s important to get a handle on “ill will” – irritated, resentful, and angry feelings and intentions toward others. While it may seem justified in the moment, ill will harms you probably more than it harms others. In another metaphor, having ill will toward others is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned.
Avoiding ill will does not mean passivity, allowing yourself or others to be exploited, staying silent in the face of injustice, etc. [read more …]
Empathy is unusual in the animal kingdom. So empathy must have had some major survival benefits for it to have evolved. What might those benefits have been?
Empathy seems to have evolved in three major steps.
First, among vertebrates, birds and mammals developed ways of rearing their young, plus forms of pair bonding – sometimes for life. This is very different from the pattern among fish and reptile species, most of which make their way in life alone. Pair bonding and rearing of young organisms increased their survival and was consequently selected for, driving the development of new mental capacities.
As neuroscientists put it, the “computational requirements” of tuning into the signals of newborn little creatures, and of operating as a couple – a sparrow couple, a mountain lion couple, that is – helped drive the enlargement of the brain over millions of years. As we all know, when you are in a relationship with someone – and especially if you are raising a family together – there’s a lot you have to take into account, negotiate, arrange, anticipate, etc. No wonder brains got bigger.
It may be a source of satisfaction to some that monogamous species typically have the largest brains in proportion to bodyweight! [read more …]
