I have a friend who used to have OCD.
Obsessive compulsive disorder. He's had it since he was a youngster; it may or may not be related to a car accident he was in as a youth. I have relatives who have variations of the same - inability to throw stuff away is one of them, I know it's part of who I am as well. But in this case, I'm here to examine the genesis of "states of mind."
We all know people who have this "disorder" as medicine calls it - it's where the brain is firing willy nilly across a part of the brain, misfiring is more accurate - where a "loop" can be created and it causes them to wash their hands obsessively, count money obsessively - and a whole host of phobias, including not being able to get out of the house. Or perhaps is causing a "tic" that can be identified as "tourette's" in extreme cases, as a twitch in those less so.
One could argue that we all have varying degrees of this "disorder" - which would make it not a disorder, but a natural example of how the brain works - like many flowers in the garden - it's why some of us can't stand crowds, can't stand certain foods, can't stand not being able to not stand something....
But today we were having this discussion, and some of the flipside notions discussed here began to line up.
While discussing "partitions" in the mind - Dr. Bruce Greyson notes (in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" and in his public talk "Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain?") that in the reports from the British Health system, 70% of the Alzheimer care givers reported a moment when their patient's memory would come back to them just prior to passing.
It could be "a few minutes, an hour, sometimes months" where people whose brains have atrophied - suddenly rally and remember everyone around them, and it's as if they've come back to say farewell. Come back to say goodbye to their loved ones.
But when the patient dies, autopsies show that the brain should not have been able to function - it's as if the "partitions" that kept us from accessing our higher consciousness - or past memories - have fallen, or died as well. The brain was dying, so perhaps the partitions died as well.
And for that brief moment, we're able to access some form of higher consciousness which appears to retain those memories.
So in discussing OCD today, my pal was talking about his own "partitions." And pointed out that when he was a young person, he'd "created" an alternate persona - someone who didn't have OCD, someone who could handle navigating the world. He said that he knew a "tough guy" at work - and while his mind was worrying about the smallest details ("did I count that person's change correctly?" "Maybe I'm responsible for someone getting sick when I served them food...") he adopted this "tough guy" persona to be able to navigate the world.
He says he borrowed another person's persona, someone at word he knew that was tough, and didn't care or worry about the small things he normally worried about during an OCD event.
Then he pointed out that at another time in his life, he had another persona that would appear - and this person was entirely selfless, would literally give the shirt off his back to someone in need, invite homeless people over to stay who needed a place to sleep. Then he'd wake up and wonder "what did I do? I let this homeless person in my house, am I crazy?"
I pointed out that perhaps that the selfless fella, was actually giving him a glimpse of what it's like "between lives." Because back there, people report (consistently) a place of selflessness, where we give and share love equally, without judgment. That when he was acting without judgment, but just out of love, he was actually tapping into the nature of who we are when we're "back home."
I pointed out that perhaps his brain was giving him a glimpse of another side of himself (and not what psychiatry might categorize as an illness.)
In like form, adopting the tough guy persona was a way to deal with issues of the brain - and if someone could figure out to do that, how to actually get the brain to compartmentalize, or create partitions from the parts of it that cause problems (auto immune illnesses, viruses, OCD, things that occur as a result of certain pathways) then whoever figured out how to do that would win the Nobel Prize for medicine.
So let's look at some people who can do that.
Tibetan Monks for example. They've perfected the art of meditation in such a way as to change the body's reaction to pain, to cold, to any number of things that cause problems. (see "tummo" on youtube for examples.) They've also perfected the meditation that directly affects the amygdala in the brain, which regulates serotonin release. (see Richard Davidson's work on it at the University of Wisconsin.)
Davidson's work is monumental, because he shows that a single meditation session (and the one he used with Tibetan monks was "Tonglen" but a "non specific version" which he told me at a conference at UCLA years ago.)
What's a specific version of Tonglen? I talk about it in "Flipside" and my other books. In essence it's imagining being a "mental physician" where you conjure up a vision of someone who is ill, you draw their illness into you as you breathe in, and then blast it with the "healing light of the universe" before you breathe the cured energy back into the patient. (In Richardson's study, he had the monks substitute the whole planet for a single individual - making it "non specific.")
So if its possible to mentally change the shape of the amygdala in one meditation session (according to Davidson's study) then that means that any one of us can do the same kind of work to change pathways in our brain.
You've heard of those cancer studies where a person helps the healing process by imagining a real "battle" against cancer cells. I've heard the same from a doctor who talked about teaching his patients to imagine a "loving affection" towards cancer cells, to isolate and eliminate them using "love." That doesn't mean that someone should stop doing traditional therapies - surgery, chemo, etc - but it does mean that there are ways that you can use your brain to affect healing.
It does mean that you can use your brain to change OCD behavior. It does mean that you can use your brain to eliminate phobias and other issues.
Because when you examine the mind more fully - you may find that the phobias are related to a past life experience - not a past life experience based on your DNA, as science is trying to prove that DNA has a "fear" memory - which may or may not be accurate, but is not necessarily the source of your fear - but being able to examine your previous lifetimes, and further, the life between lives, where you can access and understand all your lifetimes, and by doing so, pinpoint precisely when the phobia began, and more importantly...
Why you chose this lifetime to experience this phobia (again, or for the first time - it's really up to you.) Why you chose this lifetime to experience this problem or dilemma, or illness, or whatever it is that's the stone in your path.
It's hard to see that the stones in our paths turn to diamonds after we've overcome them. And it's hard to see that we may appear to be "crushed" by the stone in our path - and it actually may be in a future lifetime that we've overcome them - we can't think of our lives in that fashion, that each one is part of the overall journey we've signed up to take. That even the most difficult of stones, in this context, may be the stone we revisit over a couple of lifetimes in order to master it.
Which brings us back to states of mind.
If you can partition your mind to create a better happier healthier you - it doesn't mean you have to lose who you are to do so - it means that you've mastered the ability to see all your states of mind as what you've created to deal with your reality on a day to day basis. And realizing that everything is part of your consciousness dealing with what's in front of you on a day to day basis, is a path to an enlightening way to view your journey on the planet.
N'est pas?
 |
| The Universe is a state of mind. |
We all know people who have this "disorder" as medicine calls it - it's where the brain is firing willy nilly across a part of the brain, misfiring is more accurate - where a "loop" can be created and it causes them to wash their hands obsessively, count money obsessively - and a whole host of phobias, including not being able to get out of the house. Or perhaps is causing a "tic" that can be identified as "tourette's" in extreme cases, as a twitch in those less so.
One could argue that we all have varying degrees of this "disorder" - which would make it not a disorder, but a natural example of how the brain works - like many flowers in the garden - it's why some of us can't stand crowds, can't stand certain foods, can't stand not being able to not stand something....
But today we were having this discussion, and some of the flipside notions discussed here began to line up.
 |
| An unusual state of mind in DC these days. |
Bear with me.
While discussing "partitions" in the mind - Dr. Bruce Greyson notes (in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" and in his public talk "Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain?") that in the reports from the British Health system, 70% of the Alzheimer care givers reported a moment when their patient's memory would come back to them just prior to passing.
It could be "a few minutes, an hour, sometimes months" where people whose brains have atrophied - suddenly rally and remember everyone around them, and it's as if they've come back to say farewell. Come back to say goodbye to their loved ones.
But when the patient dies, autopsies show that the brain should not have been able to function - it's as if the "partitions" that kept us from accessing our higher consciousness - or past memories - have fallen, or died as well. The brain was dying, so perhaps the partitions died as well.
And for that brief moment, we're able to access some form of higher consciousness which appears to retain those memories.
 |
| Dalai Lama and Richard Davidson |
 |
| My film director persona |
He says he borrowed another person's persona, someone at word he knew that was tough, and didn't care or worry about the small things he normally worried about during an OCD event.
Then he pointed out that at another time in his life, he had another persona that would appear - and this person was entirely selfless, would literally give the shirt off his back to someone in need, invite homeless people over to stay who needed a place to sleep. Then he'd wake up and wonder "what did I do? I let this homeless person in my house, am I crazy?"
I pointed out that perhaps that the selfless fella, was actually giving him a glimpse of what it's like "between lives." Because back there, people report (consistently) a place of selflessness, where we give and share love equally, without judgment. That when he was acting without judgment, but just out of love, he was actually tapping into the nature of who we are when we're "back home."
 |
| Literal states of mind. |
I pointed out that perhaps his brain was giving him a glimpse of another side of himself (and not what psychiatry might categorize as an illness.)
In like form, adopting the tough guy persona was a way to deal with issues of the brain - and if someone could figure out to do that, how to actually get the brain to compartmentalize, or create partitions from the parts of it that cause problems (auto immune illnesses, viruses, OCD, things that occur as a result of certain pathways) then whoever figured out how to do that would win the Nobel Prize for medicine.
 |
| The seat of consciousness in Tibet, the Potala Palace |
So let's look at some people who can do that.
Tibetan Monks for example. They've perfected the art of meditation in such a way as to change the body's reaction to pain, to cold, to any number of things that cause problems. (see "tummo" on youtube for examples.) They've also perfected the meditation that directly affects the amygdala in the brain, which regulates serotonin release. (see Richard Davidson's work on it at the University of Wisconsin.)
 |
| Davidson with his pal HHDL |
What's a specific version of Tonglen? I talk about it in "Flipside" and my other books. In essence it's imagining being a "mental physician" where you conjure up a vision of someone who is ill, you draw their illness into you as you breathe in, and then blast it with the "healing light of the universe" before you breathe the cured energy back into the patient. (In Richardson's study, he had the monks substitute the whole planet for a single individual - making it "non specific.")
But hang on.
So if its possible to mentally change the shape of the amygdala in one meditation session (according to Davidson's study) then that means that any one of us can do the same kind of work to change pathways in our brain.
You've heard of those cancer studies where a person helps the healing process by imagining a real "battle" against cancer cells. I've heard the same from a doctor who talked about teaching his patients to imagine a "loving affection" towards cancer cells, to isolate and eliminate them using "love." That doesn't mean that someone should stop doing traditional therapies - surgery, chemo, etc - but it does mean that there are ways that you can use your brain to affect healing.
 |
| No longer the lovable losers. They earned that. |
Because when you examine the mind more fully - you may find that the phobias are related to a past life experience - not a past life experience based on your DNA, as science is trying to prove that DNA has a "fear" memory - which may or may not be accurate, but is not necessarily the source of your fear - but being able to examine your previous lifetimes, and further, the life between lives, where you can access and understand all your lifetimes, and by doing so, pinpoint precisely when the phobia began, and more importantly...
Why you chose this lifetime to experience this phobia (again, or for the first time - it's really up to you.) Why you chose this lifetime to experience this problem or dilemma, or illness, or whatever it is that's the stone in your path.
It's hard to see that the stones in our paths turn to diamonds after we've overcome them. And it's hard to see that we may appear to be "crushed" by the stone in our path - and it actually may be in a future lifetime that we've overcome them - we can't think of our lives in that fashion, that each one is part of the overall journey we've signed up to take. That even the most difficult of stones, in this context, may be the stone we revisit over a couple of lifetimes in order to master it.
Which brings us back to states of mind.
If you can partition your mind to create a better happier healthier you - it doesn't mean you have to lose who you are to do so - it means that you've mastered the ability to see all your states of mind as what you've created to deal with your reality on a day to day basis. And realizing that everything is part of your consciousness dealing with what's in front of you on a day to day basis, is a path to an enlightening way to view your journey on the planet.
N'est pas?
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