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Light and shadow
The relationship between the darkness we face in both life and meditation, and the light we all so fervently seek.
When I saw these little meditating skeletons ornate with a Santa hat, a whole slew of complex feelings and ideas came to mind, inspiring me to use them for a Christmas blog. I wondered how Coca Cola, Santa, skeletons, meditation, Christ and festivals of light such as Christmas, Hanukkah and Diwali are all connected? Sit down with a tea as I did, as we embark together in reflection, leaving entrenched belief systems you may have at the door waiting.
We all live in this world:
At least in North America, our imagination of the archetype of a saint named Nicholas being kind to children and bring them gifts is inextricably shaped by Coca-Cola. “The Santa Claus we all know and love — that big, jolly man in the red suit with a white beard — didn’t always look that way. In fact, many people are surprised to learn that prior to 1931, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. He has donned a bishop’s robe and a Norse huntsman’s animal skin .” It was Coca Cola’s involvement that shaped our present North American Santa.
By all accounts, St. Nick’s story begins in the fourth century AD in what is now modern-day Turkey. A man named Nicholas became the bishop of a village called Myra. He was later canonized, and soon became one of the most popular saints in Christianity. That’s about all we know for sure, but much of the folklore surrounding Saint Nick speaks of his kindness and generosity toward children, in a world where those attitudes weren’t easy to find.
Present-day secular and commercial cultural phenomena are all inextricably interwoven into our tens of thousands of years old imagination, and deeply influence our neurofiring patterns and how our brains get shaped and our minds conditioned. Coca Cola represents the multitude of daily concerns and influences that tend to flood our consciousness, get us lost in making mountains out of molehills, and causes us to lose track of what is really important.
Christmas at the time of the winter solstice:
The winter solstice has captured the human imagination throughout the ages and inspired festivities, rituals and religious beliefs across cultural boundaries everywhere. Christmas is just one of those celebrations. History books can easily tell us all about how people’s imagination has digested this time of year with pomp and circumstance of various kinds.
This is the time around the longest night and shortest day, the time when one movement ends and a contrary one begins, where metaphorically new light is born into the darkness. Christ symbolizes not just new hope in a world of suffering, but the new spark of awareness lighting up the darkness of our ignorant autopilot mindless ways of living. We also find this theme of new light illuminating human darkness in Hanukkah and Diwali.
You can find the embodied form of this celebration right now in your breath. Release your tensions down into the earth in the following out-breath, and let go as best you can of all of you into the surrender of the long pause at the end of the out-breath. Remember that one day, on the last day of the form your energy flow took during this lifetime, you will expire one last time before the major transformation of ‘your’ energy flow into new flow patterns. Stay in this pause at the end of the out-breath for as long as it lasts. During those moments of absence of breathing movement, explore with your attention the vast darkness and spaciousness within the grain of sand of just those few moments, having given away all of you as best you could. Lightly rest in this deep stillness of Being that neither calls, regrets nor promises anything. For those few moments, if you have really surrendered all of you to this space where nothing seems to happen anymore, and you don’t need to go anywhere, achieve anything or improve anything anymore, the past and future have both vanished and you can rest in the timeless emptiness you may never have paid attention to before. Wishes, expectations, regrets, and all resistances are gone, and you wait for nothing while being everything. Suddenly, without your doing or planning anything, without a past or cause, from seemingly nowhere, a new impulse emerges from the unfathomable depths of darkness, a new arising from the open and vast potential of emptiness, lighting up your consciousness with a new inbreath, a new form that will unfold through endless cycles of becoming and disappearing, as it has done so countless times before. And time is born again, not for long, even if for an eternity until the next out-breath has expired, for eternity is still imprisoned in time. Thing is – all you need to do is be available for the ride, which means you need to be aware, and when you are aware, you wake up out of time into the timelessness of Being.
We are not of this world:
Not being of this world requires a bit of explanation: It means that we are not who we think we are and what our deluded belief systems want us to see. And so the skeletons are far from macabre!
We are very solidly wired for survival, and evolution has proven how powerful we are in ensuring the survival of our species – so far. Nature and evolution are mainly concerned about creating organisms that can make duplicates of themselves in the most predictably efficient way. Survival of as many specimens as possible under any, even if terrible circumstance, is the name of the game. That should not surprise you: Look around and make an educated guess about what percentage of people live a content, peaceful and serene life without undue worry, unhappiness or suffering; not many! The good life we all so passionately strive for is of no evolutionary concern. For such survival to be ensured, the organism has to be wired in a way as to not be able to interfere with whatever mechanisms it needs to survive. How does nature do that? By wiring organisms as sophisticated automatons with incredible capabilities for adaptation, and in our human case, what is included in the automatism is most of consciousness. Humans are thus automatons believing they make free decisions, when in fact most of their decisions is automatically wired into the system. There is a scientific word for this, and what I am about to tell you is by now recognized scientific knowledge: Human beings are algorithms, and the vast majority of all decisions we make, including what car we buy or what mate we chose, are automatically decided by the algorithm and not by ‘us’. Algorithms are methodical sets of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. A cooking recipe is an algorithm: You follow the steps and always come up with the same dish. Humans with their thoughts and emotions are just such algorithms – complex calculation automatons that ensure their reproduction and survival. It is both astonishing and humbling to realize how little say we have in ‘our decisions’.
You may now wonder where awareness, liberation, free will and the possibility to reduce suffering come in! Humans are also wired for the capacity to be aware of being aware, or the ability to reflect upon their own experience. However, this capacity is by far not as accessible as you may think, and as I mentioned above, also largely subject to the automatic algorithmic organization of our organism. What this means is that even when you think you are making decisions based on free will, they are mostly not. The decisions we believe we freely make are far more automatic and conditioned by evolutionary wiring and past experience than we ever imagine, and because algorithmic survival mechanisms only afford us a short-term view of reality (how to get food for tomorrow and escape the lion today), our decisions are short-sited and at this stage in our evolution woefully inadequate to ensure the species’ survival. All is not lost though. Through a particular attentional training that leads to the development of mindful states, we can mobilize a potential we are also wired for, and that we did not need with the same urgency when we were roaming the forests and savannas during our hunter-gatherer times. This potential allows us at least to some degree to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the algorithm and make more authentically free decisions with an expanded consciousness that allows us to have an overarching long-term view of the whole. In doing so, we actually broaden the contexts within which we understand reality, and with each broader context we situate ourselves in, reality looks much different than what it looked like when we were imprisoned by a narrow view. We realize we are not of this world, because who we really are transcends our limited view of ourselves as physical organisms.
The skeletons are thus far from macabre! At first blush they are symbols of death reminding us of our mortality. That is only true from the narrow perspective of having identified ourselves with the body as who we are. Who we really are is far more complex than that and transcends this narrow view as I have shown elsewhere. Contemplating our physical mortality has a great silver lining: We tend to take life for granted as we mindlessly sail through its circumstances, as if they were determined, certain and predictable. Reminding ourselves that nothing lasts helps wake up our middle prefrontal cortex for reflection and a more present life. When we look more closely, we are much more than our bodies, and the skeletons become a symbol of timeless being beyond what our blinders allow us to see.
So yes, we are both in this world, but not of this world, as Jesus is supposed to have said, and our skeleton sitting in contemplation during this holiday time of winter solstice is a perfect opportunity to reflect on our lives.
Light and shadow:
Light and Shadow by Franklin Carmichael
This picture of Franklin Carmichael hangs on the wall in our office. It has always inspired me to think about the relationship between the darkness we face in both life and meditation, and the light we all so fervently seek. What is so fascinating to me is how in our attempts at decreasing suffering, we search, strive and struggle to find peace, happiness, liberation or whatever we call God, not noticing that it all is already so naturally there, ready for the taking. When the days get shorter to approach the fall equinox, we mourn the summer; when they get really short to approach the winter solstice, we dread the winter. When they get longer to approach the spring equinox, we pine for spring; and when they get really much longer to approach the summer solstice, we rejoice and forget it will not last. Never are we there where the action is, always wanting something else than what we have or what is.
Now is the time to let nature inspire our fundamental mindfulness principle: Embrace the darkness. Darkness is not the absence of light, but the chrysalis stage of transformation from one energy pattern to another. Darkness means creative fermentation below the visible surface, while everything on the surface seems frozen. Darkness is the lively activity of growth inside the grass we watch and can’t see growing. Darkness is the recognition of blindness before anything else can pierce through it. Like the pause at the end of the outbreath, surrender to it completely. Relinquish all grasping to an old, well worn and familiar view of who you are, and embrace the transformative chaos of the dark. Only then can what’s really novel be recreated and resurrected into a new form, a new temporary identity, like the phoenix rising from the ashes or Christ from the cross. This universal archetypal theme of rebirth is found cross-culturally in many traditions. When we embrace it, learning to ride the phases of transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly over and over again without resistance, our transcendent, timeless and nameless Being beyond all cycles of becoming and vanishing radiates through the cloud cover of our ignorance and illusions, as it always has beyond time immemorial.
Much suffering starts with the abhorrence of the darkness, which takes many forms in everyday life. But without honoring the darkness, no breakthrough ever leads to transformation. There is no light without the shadows of its source. The darkness is the fermenting potential, where everything begins, unseen within its protective womb. The deep meditative path is a training in recognizing the call of the dark, and join its source for renewal and transformation. This time of year inspires this introverted orientation towards the stillness of Being.
Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
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Forgetting that we have a mind.
Before you worry about symptoms such as depression and anxiety and how to improve or get rid of them, before you get your blood boiling arguing with people who can't deal with anything beyond their own viewpoint, before you develop and become ensconced in your own opinions, before you vilify who disagrees with you, before you shake your head wondering how seemingly obvious facts cannot be agreed upon, before you assume you have no blind spots, before you despair that crowds never learn from history, before you become bitter at humanity's collective stupidity, before you get passionate about religion, mythology, and archetypes, before all that, wouldn't it make sense to inquire into the source of all of it - these symptoms, views, opinions, thoughts, actions, distortions and, frankly, miseries?
While it does not take rocket science to realize that the source of it all is the embodied human mind, for most, embarking on its exploration is at best a big challenge, at worst insurmountable, non-sensical or incomprehensible. How many times have you heard nonsense like “I don’t believe in psychology”, as if the existence of the moon were a matter of belief? How often do patients enter their physician’s office complaining of being anxious or depressed, and are sent home with a prescription without one question that would try to understand how their mind creates such suffering? Many people, including professionals who should know better, live and act as if they had no mind.
The mind is the source of all subjective phenomena and experiences, and we are astoundingly unaware of it. Our mind’s task is to ensure survival and the propagation of our species, not to ensure we live our best life. To this end, it needs to be efficient, rather than concerned about maximizing its potential. Efficiency results by pairing down information processing to the bare minimum. Embedded in the way mind functions are mechanisms that cause reality distortions, delusions, wild beliefs, and a profound obliviousness of one’s own ignorance. Whether we like it or not, our mind drives our lives like our heart pumps blood through our veins. The universe's natural processes have caused us to evolve that way, and for better or worse, we are stuck with a mind that functions sub-optimally as it creates profound reality distortions that seem at first blush to have successfully allowed us to multiply and propagate towards earth dominance. In the long run, however, it turns out that humanity may end up stampeding dangerously close to extinction. To thrive both individually and as a species we must come to terms with our rather dangerous mind and train ourselves to use it beyond its basic survival mode by accessing its inherent potential evolution has graciously also built into it. That takes work, training, effort and patience.
Our human mind provides the capacity for reflection. The mirror reflects what’s in front of it, meaning that as reality beams itself onto the mirror’s surface, the mirror beams it back to us as an image we can then examine from the outside. Notice how what gets examined by looking at the mirror is not reality itself, but an image of it. Our brain provides a similar process in the form of consciousness, whereby it maps reality in a virtual form we then can observe and manipulate. However, while the mirror reflects reality exactly as it is, the virtual reality consciousness creates is not only a map of reality, but that map is modified into a new creation. The brain as mapper functions as our central relationship organ that enables us to reflexively develop a relationship to reality and ourselves by having access to a virtual, mapped and modified reality we can ponder and manipulate. This is how we are self-aware.
As an aside, the mind is more than the creator of a virtual adaptation of reality we can reflexively relate to and have a relationship with. It can transcend self-awareness, and knowingly experience reality and awareness without the detour of mapped mirroring duality. That is the shift from observation to being, from knowing we exist in a universe to realizing we are the universe. More about that in another context.
The eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina, but you don’t see it. You have the impression of enjoying a seamless field of vision without two black holes in the middle, even though the holes are there. The brain manages to fill in the missing information to make the field seem seamless. Extrapolate that to the whole brain to realize that to function effectively for everyday survival our brain adapts our field of consciousness in two ways: It fills what’s missing to provide a sense of continuity and simplifies available information to not overwhelm you. It hides blind spots from you to provide continuity and withholds information to ensure efficiency. Both these mechanisms distort reality to ensure survival, while simultaneously laying the foundations for ignorance and suffering.
We each have many blind spots, but the core blind spot affecting us all is the proclivity to live as if we had no mind. We use our minds without realizing the extent to which our experience of reality is created by our mind. Without our conscious knowledge our brain creates the reality we experience. We don’t notice that the reality we experience is our brain’s creation. We mistake our brain’s constructions for reality. This results in a dangerous situation, in which we ignore the fact that our experience is subjectively constructed. We mistakenly believe that what we see and experience is automatically true, and because it seems true it seems real, and because it seems real it cannot be changed. Our primordial blind spot towards the brain’s constructions robs us of freedom of choice, of the power of clear view, wise discernment, and respectfully compassionate mutual understanding.
Our mind’s constructions seem so real that we hold on to them for dear life and want to shove them down other people’s throats without exploring their veracity. We get strongly identified with what we believe we know, emotions take over, and the capacity to hear each other vanishes. Identification with mind processes is the single most destructive problem in the way humans use their minds. Emotions suffocate the mind’s spaciousness to freely consider, question, doubt and explore, and before we know it, we are in conflict. If we cannot agree on facts, emotions drive us to use force to impose our views instead of inquiring more deeply into the divergent realities, and if necessary, compromising to try to resolve complexities. Force can take the form of yelling and screaming at each other, or legal and physical action.
The reality our mind constructs and we can have a relationship with, is in fact threefold. We first have objective reality, which is what happens in the universe independent of whether we know about it or there is anyone around to witness it. This reality consists of energy flow that is independent of how our brains and minds construct reality, and therefore as far from information as energy flow can get. The black death virus killed thousands of people without them knowing what viruses are or being able to see them. Although this is the easiest reality to agree upon, like in the case of flat-earthers, emotions still manage to cause distortions of objective facts.
Subjective reality is our own private experience nobody else has access to. This energy flow is entirely within as a construction by our own brain and mind. Although it is largely independent of objective reality, it is profoundly shaped by interactions with others. Even if everyone denies that I am in pain, if I experience pain, it is totally real for me. That is a difficult reality to agree upon, because seeing it from the outside requires trust and our capacity for empathy.
Then there is intersubjective reality, which is the reality of stories. This energy flow is deeply symbolic in the sense that language and stories are symbolic, therefore experienced as information flow, and a mutual co-creation with others. It is the reality that emerges through mutual narrative construction and is neither objective, nor subjective. It only exists in the interpersonal realm containing people who are willing to participate in it by accepting the shared reality. One such reality is money, but there are many others such as all collective ideas we can share. Money means nothing and has no reality unless it is shared in the interpersonal space. This is also a difficult reality to deal with, because it depends on the mutual capacity to regulate the multilayered energy flow between our intuition, our emotions and our intellect. When that occurs, empathy and clear insight become possible, allowing a degree of harmony within the intersubjective dance of energy and information flow to emerge. Any dance couple may dance a Tango, but those in conflict will not be able to present a harmonious dance.
To manage these three realities we each have a relationship with, requires a good deal of self-awareness and emotional regulation many people don’t have. Much of the time, the mind remains transparent like air to our eyes, invisible or not known, yet profoundly determining how we relate to real reality and live our lives. Like children playing in a house on fire, we remain oblivious to the many ways our ignorance of mind causes suffering and destruction all around.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
Silence and stupidity are the foundations of mental health.
As biological beings we function in analog mode, shifting from one physical and mental state to another, using intelligence to solve problems and consciousness to guide our intuition to make the best possible choices. In contrast to intelligence, which we also find in AI (artificial intelligence), consciousness involves both feelings and the capacity to self-reflect, resulting in the ability to resist reality and by extension suffer. Our biological organism functions naturally as a continuous energy and information flow changing with time through an infinite number of states (like the grandfather clock that shows the whole flow of time), while AI is digital, based only on two discreet states, 0 and 1, from which it organizes information (like your digital watch that only shows the exact time it is now). AI as an information processing system is completely alien to our organic nature. AI is an algorithm that like a table has no feelings and never sleeps, never needs a rest, never feels anything, and is incapable of ethical consideration (if it seems to have ethical reflections it is because it has been programmed to imitate ethical views, not because it feels anything). In social media it is programmed to make money by eliciting user engagement through emphasis on information that activates feelings in human beings, such as anger, awe, attraction, joy etc. The AI algorithm just chugs along as a soulless, emotionless information process like robots or zombies if you prefer the world of fantasy.
Humans, in turn, need rest, sleep, and the cultivation of various mental states through play, intimacy, physical activity, problem-solving, daydreaming and meditation. Within that richness of mental states lies creativity, and at the core of creativity is silence and stupidity. The cultivation of silence, and by extension unknowing, is paramount for the discovery of contexts within which all knowing is embedded. Stupidity relates to the fact that a majority of thoughts we have are crazy, non-sensical, false, deluded, unintelligible, and mysterious. Like a tree spreading millions of seeds, only a few of which will thrive into a new tree, our mind spews out millions of thoughts and fantasies, only a few of which are reflective of truth and conducive to living the good life. Nevertheless, that prolific productivity is the bedrock of creativity and requires skillful management. If we want to be healthy, we need to create a safe, private space for those thoughts to live, evolve, and be processed within the entirety of the mind. That space is the silence of contemplation and the safety of intimacy. Under the incessant barrage of the AI algorithm through social media we have been robbed of such a space, because we are swept away into the algorithmic stream of likes, dislikes, approvals, disapprovals, comparisons, competitions etc. The energy of stupidity then, is used to feed our narcissistic nature and flow unchecked into the public domain of the internet, with really nefarious results.
We are far from having developed the full potential of mind. More often than not we succumb to our internal algorithm of conditioned reflexes, behaviors, reactions and mindless activities that cause untold suffering. If mind has a choice between easy and difficult, it will always choose easy. Easy is what can be manipulated in the concrete world; it is easier to control the body and fast, for example, than to practice mind concentration. We have a certain command over the body and the external world, but not over our mind. Faced with the challenge of mind exploration, we must engage in a rigorous mind training and learn to observe it without judgment.
Most importantly, non-judgmental inquiry requires the privacy of our own intimate space with ourselves and a few chosen people we trust, where stupidity can have full latitude of manifestation. Caring for stupidity requires free private and intimate time, which should be a basic human right. Stupidity and silence are gold mines guaranteeing mental integration and expansion of awareness towards larger contexts. Once we have incorporated such mind hygiene into our lives, we are better equipped to meet the demands and responsibilities of reality, including social reality, and wisely chose what we responsibly allow into the public domain. The non-judgmental attitude of intimate and private investigation needs to give way to the discerning attitude of social manifestation and public expression. In the public domain it has catastrophic social consequences if anything goes and the first thought that enters one's mind is spewed out. Social authenticity in the public domain has nothing to do with spontaneously spewing out whatever stupidities and unformed thoughts fly through one’s mind. It is rather based on one’s capacity to cogently and responsibly express what is relevant to the demands of any life situation after having sifted through the chaos of one's thoughts. In that sense, opinions must be carefully crafted if we want a society that functions wisely.
This dialectic between internal freedom for stupidity and silence and external responsibility for wisdom and perspective requires a difficult ingredient – the capacity to face the truth. Information and truth are not the same, and most information is not truth. We are flooded daily with plenty of information, but truth is a rare and costly kind of information integration process that requires hard work and time to be discovered. Truth is costly because it demands research and investment. Fiction and fantasy (not as literary genres) are cheap and don't require any investment; they can be made as attractive as you would like them to be. They are simplistic, deluded and disconnected from reality. Truth on the other hand is complicated and complex, often painful and unattractive, and the hallmark of our mind’s connection with reality.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
Important changes to the Mindsight Intensive program 2024-25
1. Administrative introduction:
In order to accommodate divergent needs of individual students in the group, I am considering modifications in the group's process. After the first 10 weeks of the fall trimester, during which we lay foundations together as one group, we might explore the possibility of giving students the opportunity to continue through the winter and spring in one of two separate streams of their choice depending on their perceived needs. The decision to continue as one group or split into two will organically emerge from a process of discussion within the whole group when the time comes.
Here are the two streams:
- There are those who primarily feel the need to develop and consolidate the scaffolding of meditative technique as their main objective.
- Others feel generally quite confident in their mastery of meditative technique, and are therefore more focused on exploring the psychodynamic, socio-political, existential and spiritual implications of embodying the daily meditative attitude their mastery of technique affords. This includes the expansion of awareness into the modes of nothingness and emptiness.
These two interest streams are paradoxically both complementary and potentially conflicting. On one hand, mindfulness practice invites the student to cultivate beginner’s mind in a non-striving, non-hierarchical fashion. On the other hand, there is a sequential evolution of skill in one’s ability to apply meditative techniques, much like when one learns to play an instrument, creating a hierarchy of skills and stages the meditator walks through over time. Mixing students from both streams in one group is important as it allows for mutual fertilization of experience, expertise and wisdom. By the same token, this differentiation of needs sometimes requires different teaching approaches and emphases in the material that is taught. Naturally, I always endeavor to navigate those two streams within the group as a whole in a way that allows for integration of the two.
2. Long-term commitment:
Students who are interested in the Mindsight Intensive already have mindfulness experience. Therefore, they are all familiar with how challenging it is to embody mindfulness as a way of life. It is therefore assumed that everyone signing up seeks immersion into the hard work required to meet defenses and avoidances head on that can sometimes arise during practice. This can only be achieved through the long-term effort that facing our mind’s complexity deserves and demands. The program is thus structured to run through a whole academic year of thirty sessions, and students with different, more short-term needs who might want to leave after a trimester or two should not join. The work’s intensity requires group cohesion and safety, as well as a shared sense that we can count on each other to work through tough challenges and moments together.
3. Session structure:
Every session will have the following elements:
- A meditation guided by me of at least 1/2 hour.
- Time for processing individual students’ journey through the trials and tribulations of their practice. This is the difficult part, because it requires from each student to honestly take on and address difficulties, defenses and avoidances that may arise during their practice and their daily lives. Ignoring these challenges invariably causes the journey to falter and shrivel back into the automaticity of the monkey mind.
- Theoretical considerations necessary to make sense of our mind explorations presented by me, and sometimes elaborated through group exercises and processing.
4. Immersion at home:
- In every session I will suggest homework. By diligently following and practicing the homework, the student can enter a path of transformation that will automatically and effortlessly unfold.
- Before starting the program, please make sure to rearrange your schedule so that you can dedicate around an hour/day to formal mindfulness meditation practice. This may vary at times depending on both external circumstances and internal mental states, but aiming for that amount of time will ensure rewiring and transformation. Although formal practice time can occasionally be broken up throughout the day, what ensures penetration of depth (see my blog ‘Depth in Mindfulness’) is the long uninterrupted stretch of time that inevitably causes deeper conditionings and unconscious forces to emerge into the light of awareness.
- Throughout the duration of the program, students can request ad hoc individual sessions, should they feel that the available group time has not provided the opportunity to address important issues that arise. For this to be covered by OHIP, you must have been seen by me in consultation through your family physician’s referral within the last two years. If you are not a regular patient of mine, ask Reena whether you must first get your doctor’s referral to see me or not.
Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.
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