Awakening

Our brain is a beautiful wonderful thing. Our brain.. brains have grown up to be what they are, these amazing learning, consciousness providing dealies, over all this time for a purpose.

The needs of our extraordinary ancestors molded and streamlined our brains for the purposes of survival and also of society. We became expert learners. We became excellent cooperators. For so much of our history we lived as small tribes of hunters, camping out in the elements. This is what our brains are specialized for.

So much has changed for us humans so very quickly. It's interesting to me how little our brains have changed though, really. We still have this tribal mindset, this need to belong. We have all these hard wired needs and tendencies that help us live and thrive (like that amazing release of oxitocin that bonds mother to baby, and all the rest of us to our special loved ones). Sometimes we don't exactly thrive if we fail to cater to these tendencies. Think about how devastating it can be when we are isolated and disconnected.

It's kind of cool how we have (knowingly or unknowingly, I'm not sure) built into the scaffolding of society things to help cater to our brains deepest needs. Artificial tribes, like sports or organizations to which we feel we can belong. Institutions like marriage and family to help raise children.

Our brains work well enough in this world that it's easy to think that this is all there is and that things are as they should be. We believe everything we are told and everything we think. We think that what we believe is the truth.

Our brains are amazing for another reason. They have the ability to look back upon themselves. I think this is the key to awakening!

There are a lot of things we can do to help our brain look back upon itself. Things we spend time practising that use our physical bodies like dance or sports, but especially things like Tai Chi and Yoga, can bring us some degree of awakening. I think because they bring us increasing attunement to our own bodies. So do creative things like art and music. Bringing us attunement to our brains in a different way. Working with animals and being around nature I believe awakens another important primitive part of our brain, bringing attunement that a lot of us have forgotten. It's like awakening a whole other part of yourself.

The one I am most excited about though, is mediation. When we practice mediatation we become attuned to our own mind. With the awareness of mind comes a whole different kind of understanding of self and others. I could write for hours about how meditation has changed my perception of things, but for now just let me say, meditation changes everything!