SELF COMPASSION x GUT SA 3K SQ FT X

 

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KRISTIN NEFF 

This kind of compulsive concern with “I, me, and mine” isn’t the same as loving ourselves . . . Loving ourselves points us to capacities of resilience, compassion, and understanding within that are simply part of being alive. —SHARON SALZBERG, The Force of Kindness

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What is this self inside us, this silent observer, Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us And urge us on to futile activity And in the end, judge us still more severely For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us? —T. S. ELIOT, The Elder Statesman

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Self-criticism appears to have a very different effect on our body. The amygdala is the oldest part of the brain and is designed to quickly detect threats in the environment. When we experience a threatening situation, the fight-or-flight response is triggered: the amygdala sends signals that increase blood pressure, adrenaline, and the hormone cortisol, mobilizing the strength and energy needed to confront or avoid a threat. Although this system was designed by evolution to deal with physical attacks, it is activated just as readily by emotional attacks—from ourselves or others. Over time increased cortisol levels lead to depression by depleting various neurotransmitters involved in the ability to experience pleasure

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RBR

Richard Martini

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January 13

Author, Director "Flipside" "Architecture of the Afterlife"

How can we, as reincarnating souls, be able to live according to our 'planned' life if we can't recall ever planning it? The amnesia bit tricks me..

Bugged me too. Why “choose to incarnate” to learn lessons, if we can’t recall the previous times we’ve been here?

Then the concept of “filters” jumped out of the research. In Dr. Greyson’s YouTube talk “Is consciousness produced by the brain?” at the end of a mountain of medical evidence that “it is not only produced by the brain’, he mentions how 70% of UK hospice workers report that dementia patients spontaneously recall memories. Just prior to passing - sometimes hours, days, weeks - but “It’s as if the filters on the brain have died along with the brain.”

He notes that the post mortem autopsies show that the brains had atrophied. And that people shouldn’t have been able to remember anything - let alone everyone and everything. (Or seeing people and friends long since departed.) And yet they do.

The point is “it’s as if the filters had died.”

In the work of clinical psychologist Dr. Helen Wambach, she notes in “Reliving Past Lives,” her work on 2750 cases of people recalling previous lifetimes (with historical accuracy) she said “It’s as if the right brain is the receiver for this information, and the “hypervigilant left brain” prevents the person from knowing the information for physiological reasons.”

That observation - that the information would be “detrimental the life of the person” is something to contemplate. Think about it for a moment - if we could recall all of our lifetimes, then the barrista, whom we recognize as our poisoner in the Roman era, wouldn’t be able to serve us coffee. Or running into someone who owes a debt in a previous lifetime would be problematic - knowing that one’s spouse acted differently in another era as well. “Oh, you again!?” It would be chaos for the mind to differentiate between worlds. Not very conducive to survival of the species.

The layers appear to come into play around the age of 8 - that’s when people report that their “gifted children” stop seeing things that aren’t there, or talking about previous lifetimes. It may be related to the thickening of the skull at that age - (and the shrinking of bone structures at an older age) or it may be something that is part of the brain structure. People who work with Ketamine on PTSD patients (as one has reported to me here on quora) report that drug as a method to bypass those filters.

Stereo receivers or TV sets use filters to parse information - sound or visual waves. That move the information into different areas to be broken down or translated into pictures or sound. In like form, it may be that these filters on the brain come into play that prevent that information from being accessible. Allowing certain things in (dreams to be sure) and blocking others out.

However, seeing a hypnotherapist is a method of actively bypassing those filters, of seeing those previous lifetimes, of seeing why we chose them, and how they relate to the current lifetime. (I recommend licensed hypnotherapists trained by the Newton Institute as I’ve filmed many) The simple act of saying “Where are we?” is a way of bypassing those filters.

As I demonstrate in the book “Architecture of the Afterlife” that it’s not necessary to use hypnosis to access this same information - as I do with 50 cases.

So one answer is - if one isn’t aware of their previous lifetimes, or why they chose this lifetime, they can be. They don’t have to be - not everyone signs up for a lifetime to know how the play ends - but people can seek out this information if they feel the compelling desire to do so. My two cents.

When you count all the little folds, the total surface area of our gut is about 3,000 square feet.

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FIBER X BUTYRATE 

But what if we don’t eat enough fiber? Remember, our good bacteria use fiber to create butyrate. So, if we don’t eat enough fiber, we can’t make enough butyrate. We could have lots of good bacteria, but if we don’t feed them fiber, they can’t make butyrate. And when our body senses low levels of butyrate, it thinks our gut must be filled with bad bacteria and reacts accordingly. In other words, our body can mistake low fiber intake for having a population of bad bacteria in our gut.

Our body doesn’t know about processed food—it evolved over millions of years getting massive fiber intake. Even during the Paleolithic period, humans ingested 100 grams of fiber a day. So, on fiber-deficient Western diets (Spam on Wonder Bread, anyone?), when our body detects low butyrate levels in the gut, it doesn’t think low fiber. As far as our body is concerned, there’s no such thing as low fiber. So, instead, it thinks bad bacteria. For millions of years, low butyrate has meant bad bacteria, so that’s the signal for our body to go on the inflammatory offensive. That’s one reason why fiber can be so anti-inflammatory and one of the reasons it’s said that “[f]iber intake is critical for optimal health

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PRE INDL DIET - 100 GM FIBER A DAY 

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UPNSD X STOICISM 

 The Upanishads present an idea of socially-engaged, “detached action” that inspired no less than the likes of Ghandi.  Like the Stoics, moreover, they suggest that our natural human emotions and senses—while not ultimate goods in themselves—are meant to help inform and motivate our actions toward moral excellence

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the famous Stoic emphasis on the primacy of practice over theory is strongly mirrored in the Upanishads.  And while their metaphysics and epistemology appear very different on the surface—with the Stoics emphasizing reason, argument, and materialism, in contrast to the Upanishads‘ meditation, non-cognition, and universal Self—I found that the mystic emphasis on consciousness as the fundamental property of the universe feels quite similar, on some level, to the Stoic fascination with the Logos that structures the cosmos and underlies our human capacity for thought.

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INDRA X PRAJAPATI

one of the longest and most famous of the Upanishads—the Chandogya Upanishad—no less than the god Indra himself gives voice to such skeptical concerns. Each time Indra repeatedly approaches the god Prajapati to become enlightened, he comes away dissatisfied by Prajapati’s answers.  Finally, when Prajapati tries to tell him that realizing Brahman is like “sleeping soundly, free from dreams, with a still mind,” Indra has had enough (8.11.1):

The state of dreamless sleep is very close to extinction.  In this knowledge I see no value.

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closely related to the initial objections that people often have (starting with Crantor’s famous objection to Stoicism in the 3rd century B.C.E.)  to the Greek doctrine of apatheia.  If pursuing philosophy means suppressing our natural human emotions and instincts, then that sounds like the opposite of healthy flourishing!   Both traditions handle this objection in part by agreeing with it:  suppression of human nature is indeed unhealthy, but that is not what we advocate.  Whatever you may need to sacrifice to follow our path, great, genuine happiness and flourishing is nonetheless to be found without the attachments and passions that we have rejected (via, say, the eupatheia, or the lasting joy found in moksha).

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YAMA X NACHIKETA

remarks that Yama (the god of death) makes after testing Nachiketa in the Katha Upanishad:

Perennial joy or passing pleasure?
This is the choice one is to make always.
Those who are wise recognize this, but not
The ignorant.  The first welcome what leads
To abiding joy, though painful at the time.
The latter run, goaded by their senses,
After what seems immediate pleasure.
Well have you renounced these passing pleasures
So dear to the senses, Nachiketa,
And turned your back on the way of the world
That makes mankind forget the goal of life.

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 can find true happiness by seeking something that we carry within us already.  “Seek and realize the Self!” says the Chandogya Upanishad  (8.7.1):

Those who seek and realize the Self fulfill all their desires and attain the goal supreme.

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The Stoic image of the inner citadel is comparable to the comforting role that the “city of Brahman” plays in the Chandogya Upanishad (8.1.5).  Just like the Stoics use the ultimate value and invulnerability of virtue as the basis of their consolations, the Upanishads emphasize the permanence and supreme value of the Self (Atman):

Never fear that old age will invade that city; never fear that this inner treasure of all reality will wither and decay.  This knows no age when the body ages; this know no dying when the body dies.  This is the real city of Brahman; this is the Self, free from old age, free from death and grief, hunger and thirst.

Something very similar to the Stoic “dog and cart” metaphor appears in the Chandogya Upanishad (8.12.2):

In that state, free from attachment, they move at will, laughing, playing, and rejoicing.  They know the Self is not this body, but only tied to it for a time as an ox is tied to its cart.

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Katha Upanishad also uses a vivid depiction of a chariot and horses to describe the parts of the Self

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death meditation.  Notably in the Katha Upanishad (1.6):

like corn mortals ripen and fall; like corn they come up again .

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SATWIK KARMA YOGA = MIDDLE WAY 

Upanishads and the Baghavad Gita respond to this challenge by emphasizing the need for a combination of detachment and action.  The basic argument is that we are wretched if we neglect either one.

An especially stirring statement of this principle is found in the Isha Upanishad.  Mahatma Gandhi famously considered the Isha, which is one of the shortest of the Upanishads, to be the most important summary of Hindu philosophy.  Here is what it has to say about action:

In the dark live those for whom
The world without alone is real; in night
Darker still, for whom the world within
Alone is real.  The first leads to a life
Of action, the second to a life of meditation.
But those who combine action with meditation
Cross the sea of death through action
And enter into immortality
Through the practice of meditation.
So we have heard from the wise.

This suggests that the life of an enlightened Sage assumes the form of a middle way between total detachment and totally attached action.

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moral habituation, which is absolutely fundamental to much of Greek ethics (from Socrates and Aristotle to the Stoics), makes an appearance in the Upanishads as part of the explanation for how the law of Karma operates (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.5):

As a person acts, so he becomes in life.  Those who do good become good; those who do harm become bad.

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 Rather than a cosmic “scorekeeper” that somehow tracks our actions and pays out rewards, the Upanishads describe Karma as the natural results of a process of moral habituation:

We live in accordance with our deep, driving desire.  It is this desire at the time of death that determines what our next life will be.  We will come back to earth to work out the satisfaction of that desire.

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Cosmopolitanism and Ahimsa

The Upanishadic case for universal love is based on the idea that we love others because the universal Self (Atman) lives in all of us (the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 2.4.5):

Everything is loved not for its own sake, but because the Self lives in it.

And again in the Chandogya Upanishad (8.7.4):

When you look into another’s eyes, what you see is the self, fearless and deathless.  That is Brahman, the supreme.

This tradition is what gave rise to the famous concept of ahimsa (nonviolence), so prevalent across Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism

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Mundaka Upanishad also draws an interesting distinction between “higher” and “lower” knowledge (1.4–5).

The illumined sages say
Knowledge is twofold, higher and lower.
The study of the Vedas, linguistics,
Rituals, astronomy, and all the arts
Can be called lower knowledge.  The higher
Is that which leads to Self-realization.##

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You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. —JON KABAT-ZINN, Wherever You Go, There You Are 

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We are a verb not a noun, a process rather than a fixed “thing.”

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SELF COMPASSION EXERCISE

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The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? —KAHLIL GIBRAN, The Prophet

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