The brain is a funny thing. Firstly, It’s a weird shape. Secondly, it’s chosen a poor color to represent itself IMHO (pale purple/bubblegum/gray?).
The brain is also not exactly you. It has a life of it’s own. The old bean is doing calculations you aren’t aware of…Zoom backgrounds you didn’t sign off on…emojis you’ve never even heard of.
Why aren’t you being invited to these upper level meetings? I’d like to float the idea that sometimes our brains don’t trust us. I’ll explain in bit, but first let’s pop the hood on that noodle of yours.
Did you know when you’re watching someone talk you aren’t seeing and hearing the event as it happens? You get an edited version that your brain assembles on the fly. This crazy effect is due to the difference between the speed of light (what you see) and the speed of sound (what you hear).
What you see with your eyes is virtually instant, but with your ears you’re actually getting the audio about a second later. So, to keep you from seeing some wacky lip-syncing, the brain is hard at work merging the two and then showing you the smooth final cut.
The brain does a lot of stuff you’re not aware of. Memory is just a scam our minds sell us. To save space the brain only saves key impressions from any event in the past. So when you recall that moment again, your gray matter pulls up the CliffsNotes and proceeds to fill in the blanks as best it can to create a full reel.
The process can quickly create errors. And to top it off, the next time you remember that event, you don’t pull up the original memory, you actually recall the memory as you reconstructed it the last time you took it down from the shelf. The discrepancies get so rampant you may even be tricked into thinking you once enjoyed Brendan Fraser movies! Beware!
Back to my point on the brain not being you. YOU or your soul or your inner being is actually a combination of your brain and your body. Where they meet. Because your brain and the body aren’t the same thing. Your brain is the mother board that operates the equipment that is your body.
Your brain looks out and experiences the world through your body. It operates your legs and hands like piloting a spaceship or a Buick Enclave to explore the surrounding universe using all the sensors and equipment that come standard. Your consciousness is the strange vapor that results from this partnership. That’s why meditation works.
The brain can get caught up in its functions and duties and forgets it’s on a team with your legs, arms and heart. Meditation reconnects the brain to your body. It keeps the brain from flying off on some tangent in a virtual world, bringing it back to earth and tying it to the physical world again.
Ever feel like your brain is a runaway train hauling crazy thoughts and there’s no Denzel to slow it down. Meditation can be your Denzel. You have to remind the old noodle of the physical processes it monitors every day. The simple act can pull the brain out of the echo chamber of fear, worry and anxiety.
I have no proof, but I’ve always felt directing attention (your brain focus) to parts of the body that might be diseased or hurting can have healing benefits. Sometimes your brain forgets too. You have to remind it where you need the attention of the body’s defenses.
Why is the brain my topic today? I guess I feel we need to respect it more. Be aware of all the computing it’s doing. So that if we don’t like a certain memory or current situation and we decide not to face it honestly (to tell ourselves a lie) consider what that does to your brain.
Those little lies our brains abide begin to warp the entire hard drive.
-Scott Sentell (this is something I predict he’ll say in a few paragraphs)
The brain is programmed to keep you up and running and protect your fragile state. So what happens if you choose not to face a problem or choose to call it something else. Pass the blame. Sugarcoat a problem. Your brain must accept this new truth in order to guard you. In order to balance the equation.
But this invites an error into your code. The next time you need your brain for some high level thinking, guess what? The brain can only calculate while including this errant data you’ve forced on it. So don’t be surprised when the results it gives you start to skew.
Not to mention the effect that little error can have in a decade…or two? Pretty soon, you may not be able to trust any of the results from your think tanks. And we only have ourselves to blame. Those little lies our brains abide begin to warp the entire hard drive.
We all do this. Sometimes the obfuscation is even necessary when faced with a crisis. We need the extra layer of protection. Yet, at some point, we must remember that we’ll have to return to the issue again, when we’re stronger, and this time fix it permanently.
Because any problem we fix without honestly facing the problem will return. If the data you use to solve the equation contains an error, your solution will always contain an error. Let’s avoid these snags and face them head-on before they infect other systems in the network.
Save the brains! (unless you’re a zombie)
Overheard on a Mountaintop 