By Amanda Moreno
I have a long-term fascination with the evolution of human consciousness. What better way to understand our current situation that by giving it the context of thousands of years of evolving thoughts and traditions? Nothing exists solely in a microcosm.
Consciousness studies can be difficult to discuss, engage or explore in our present paradigm, however, due largely to claims that they are speculative in nature. And it’s true — it’s hard to categorize experience in any definitive way. But doesn’t science exist to explore speculation? Our failure to acknowledge and explore consciousness limits the general population’s ability to dialogue about these themes, and therefore the ability to imagine and implement possibilities.
The scientific method is great. I’m so glad science exists. What’s more, I’m so glad that people exist who actually want to and are able to study science. They make my job a lot easier — I can just let them do their thing over there while I do my thing over here.
I’ve never been all that interested in ‘empirically’ proving the experience of my psyche. If I awake from a dream feeling anxious, out of breath and emotionally raw, you can’t tell me that the dream ‘didn’t happen’. My proof lies in the response. When an idea hits and is then brought to fruition, I’m not that concerned with whether or not it was a burst of inspiration or a synaptic response — I’m just excited that something came through that has value and use. Again — glad people will study the mechanics behind it, but not willing to dismiss it because current science can’t ‘validate’ the experience.
What am I trying to say here? Well… I have felt my more nihilistic, cynical side encroaching in the past few days. Every once in a while, my faith in humanity threatens to abandon me completely. This time, it was due to a succession of conversations with friends who are practicing as or wanting to practice as counselors, healers, activists — general consciousness shifters — who are trying so hard to make a difference or lead a life with meaning. And they’re struggling — with burn out; with bill-paying; with lack of recognition or gratitude. And so on.
One of the cruelest tricks we ever played on ourselves was to invent a system in which you have to have money to have food, drink and shelter — three things absolutely essential to survival. That trick is right there alongside the decision to separate the mind, soul and body. Silly, silly humans.
Bless the Scientific Revolution. But the concept that consciousness — which makes up about 2/3 of the human experience — is irrelevant because it cannot be scientifically studied is absolutely maddening to me. My very basic understanding is that quantum physics is beginning to take this on, but the fact of the matter is that the collective by and large still buys into the idea that if you can’t ‘replicate’ an experiment exactly, or strip something down to a mechanistic function, it is irrelevant. You know your emotions and instincts? Let’s relegate those as pejoratively irrational byproducts of brain chemistry and then treat them with a pill. A pill that is extraordinarily helpful to some, but that just represses the vital creative energies of others.
I’ll never understand the idea that there is something wrong with someone who feels like they can’t sit at a desk for 40 hours per week. Seems like a healthy response to me. But I digress. And I also realize it’s not simple to find the balance of what works for someone.
I think shifts in consciousness are occurring that can hopefully lead to a marriage of science and spirituality, or science and consciousness studies. When I’m at my most cynical, I tend to lean on the work of Joanna Macy, which has the basic premise that we are undergoing a shift from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. As part of that shift, there are three dimensions to keep in mind. We need people to participate in actions to slow the damage to the Earth and its beings, analysis of structural causes and the creation of structural alternatives, and shifts in consciousness in order to help all of this take root.
I hope that science and consciousness studies start to merge even more in the days and years to come. There’s a lot of wisdom in the spiritual systems that have been around for thousands of years, both of the speculative and non-speculative kind. It seems like the evolution of our consciousness could really use a marriage of the two at this point in time to determine how to use this wisdom in the most life-enhancing way.
Ah, gumbybug – always a joy to see your name pop up on PW! I’m so very sorry to hear about your mother. It can’t be an easy time for you, and my thoughts are with you and your family.
Thanks so much for your excellent advice, and for taking the time and trouble to write about it here. I would very much like to investigate that aspect of my mother’s treatment, however, as I’m sure you know, I live quite far from my family for most of the year, so it’s not easy to manage these things from afar. Right now, I’m concentrating on keeping my mother off that wretched pill – but I will certainly bring up your ideas with my sister, once I’m through this difficult patch.
Much love and hugs to you my dear.
Amanda, sorry for taking this so off topic – but your great article has served as a real catalyst!
“You know your emotions and instincts? Let’s relegate those as pejoratively irrational byproducts of brain chemistry and then treat them with a pill. A pill that is extraordinarily helpful to some, but that just represses the vital creative energies of others.”
Yes, what a great statement! And thanks to all of you who offered your comments–love the insights.
Lizzy: I’ve been trying to keep up with your posts regarding your mother’s dementia and your honest and heartfelt descriptions of what you and your family are feeling, experiencing, and trying to do in the midst of that. I learned from a distance from you and took in your struggles for the past 18 months or so. My mother died 6 weeks ago from dementia and related issues and I just wanted to see if, in addition to monitoring her medications (as you seem to be really trying to do in spite of some of those around you) have you thought about things like electrolytes and/or metabolic things like: magnesium levels, as well as calcium, potassium, sodium? Anemia and decreased kidney function can also contribute to homeostasis being way out of kilter and those can certainly affect cognitive function. Please take good care of yourself and keep breathing and posting!!
Jude: yes, thank you for your comments and I hope I wasn’t too off topic here, but wanted to add to yours.
Thanks Amanda, I very much appreciate your thinking about the evolution of consciousness I discussed another way with my last article on super full moon located be revealing in awareness
Yes I can affirm it this Super full moon is magical has any point of view 🙂
I have always believed that physics and metaphysics are two sides of the same coin…describing the same phenomena from different perspectives. I also believe that the empirical science of the Age of Reason has digressed to become the Age of Unreason…because science IS life and life is our experience of and interaction with science…and there is no separating our experiences out of the equation, however “inexplicable” they may seem to be. Perhaps quantum physicists are only now finding the language and “proof” to explain what has long been known by shamans.
Thank you for your wonderful and compassonate comment, dear Jude! Am greatly consoled by your solidarity. You’re right, dementia is terrible and totally wears down the carer. I love this! ” they’re just rattling bones and howling at the moon”. Yes, I did check out the particuar medication that seems to provoke these terrible states in my mum – but it doesn’t mention any of those side effects. That’s why I feel so helpless in arguing the case with my sister The only thing I can imagine is that there is a chemical reaction with the other drugs she’s taking, which you also refer to, that must be so common.
Lizzy, I’m interested in knowing if you have done any research on the drug in question. If you have the name, you should be able to locate the contraindications on-line, which might including agitation and/or some of the aggression you’ve written about so powerfully, here. We still — so effortlessly, it seems — give our power away to those in the medical profession, seeking the magic pill that will fix everything — when we really MUST be canny consumers with Western medicine, or pay a dear price.
When you’re in the thick of care giving, of course, you might be a little panicky about NOT doing everything you’re told to do, but that’s what “observers” are for, and you qualify in this situation. I applaud your compassion to try to deal with this (and I have some experience dealing with dementia, it is the ABSOLUTE worst, in my opinion … just exhausting! Blessings on all involved!)
If you were to find that the meds in question had the possibility to make Mom’s condition worse — and if Mom’s behavior changes appreciably during this period without them — would Sister reconsider your observation?
I’m particularly disturbed by the way these ‘end of life’ issues are playing our here in the US, because we’re held captive to mainstream medicine, that discipline invested (for profit) in the Age of Specialists — and I’m convinced they rarely, if ever, talk to one another. The old GP who used to orchestrate these things has gone the way of the Dodo, and I’m watching the seniors around me struggle with powerful chemical cocktails for heart or cardiopulmonary issues that … at first … seem to work, then don’t, then get tinkered with, then work, then don’t, then require hospitalization resulting in a new cocktail to tinker with, yadda ad infinitum — and these are all part of an expensive (and frustrating) spiral downward toward the eventual Exit, Stage Left.
I first noticed this with my Dad — who must have had at least 10 MRI’s and cat-scans in his last few years, all to no avail. I swear, these people DO NOT know what they’re doing, they’re just rattling bones and howling at the moon (while raking in the dough!) I’m not suggesting all medical professionals are unprincipled or in it for the money, but that’s how the system is designed and that, itself, is a downward spiral into a kind of mindless lethargy of “what we know.” Which isn’t enough, obviously.
(And, by the way, I’ve been watching “Knick” on Cinemax — a story about a fictionalized New York hospital at the turn of the century — and it’s really extraordinary, I think. Because life is a hologram, I’m both horrified at how little we knew then (treating with vaporized mercury, for instance, and using cocaine liberally) and, extrapolating, how little we know now. Pretty amazing — and a terrific argument to explore alternative methods.)
My dear Fishin’ Jim has CP issues and sees three different specialists “up in the city” as they say here, along with his primary here in the Patch. Since his daughter is a physician (in the city) I don’t accompany him when he has these appointments, assuming she’s got his back — and she does — but when he gets home, there’s a kind of dead space about what, if anything, was said … or what might help … or where we go from here. But there’s always a new prescription and a new appointment in a few weeks. Feels like the 21st century “take two aspirins and call me in the morning.”
Like everything else, health is much about cause and effect — doctors seem to spend most of their time on effect. Cause? That IS a consumers issue, and within our own hands, but I’m also reminded that there are cancers and diseases out there that have pharmaceutical solutions that are either not covered by insurance, too expensive for the average soul to purchase or not sufficiently produced because the market is too slim.
And yes, life is ‘chemical’ and our body chemistry responds to those cocktails — I get that. But it’s good to remember that if you put the wrong combination together, you get an explosion, and no matter how healthy our choices, we are bombarded with toxins and chemicals on all fronts these days, which undermines our ability to protect ourselves. And I’d feel a lot better about all this if I thought the doctors themselves had a handle on what they’re doing, besides floating a financial bottom line. Very distressing for us ‘observers’ … and a cautionary tale for (if and when) it’s our turn.
Sorry to be off topic — but it plays. Thank you, Amanda, for another thoughtful and thought-provoking read!
The current pendulum has been swinging ever wider since the “awakening” in the 60s-70s. Polarizing us as much as our human rights, economy and politics. We have witnessed the extremes of both. Who’s to say? That’s the unsettling bit.
Yes indeed, the cognitive mind is both arrogant and easily fixated. Much of what claims to be “science” these days is more like a religious cult, filled with superstition and fear of going outside known “facts.” That and the inability to trust anything beyond what a machine can measure, that’s not science, that’s pure lunacy.
Your blog touched me so deeply, Amanda – because I was faced with some of these issues while back home in August, taking care of my mother, who has dementia and hasn’t left her bed for a long time now – though is convinced she is up and about, still running the house, and that my dad is stil a lazy oaf who does nothng round the house – while he is her principal carer. Some weeks before I arrived she’d been waking up every night with terrible panic attacks, hallucinatory dreams and violently hostile towards my father. As you can imagine, the doctors are giving her a merry assortment of pills. One of these pills mysteriously disappeared while I was there, and I noticed a real ightening in her mood and the night panics stopped. I pointed this out to my father, who ony half listened to me. The pills were found again and administered, and that night, my mother literally kicked my father out of bed, and he was forced to sleep much of the night in the lliving room next door. My father finally listened to me, and actualy experimented the last night I was there by not giving her the pill. She slept the night through like a baby and was serene and calm when I said goodbye to her the next morning, for the first time in years. My sister is convinced that it’s not because of this drug that my mother has got worse, because she believes that it’s impossible that it could work so quickly, and is adamant that she continue taking it, as it is supposed to slow down the dementia. Luckily, a psychaitrist came to see my mother early last week and decided to take her off the drug, but only because she believes it’s causing the stomach aches my mother suffers from!! They’re giving it a month’s trial and if the stomach problem isn’t resolved, she could be back on it again. My father paid attention and listened to me – but he too is elderly and forgetful and exhausted, poor love. For my sister I’m the woo woo sister, who has ‘feelings’. I don’t know what I’d do without her magnificent support and strength – but right now it feels as if I’m screaming behind a thick pane of glass, like in one of those awful films. The problem is, that my mother has been depressed much of her life – and has dementia, so people say it’s dementia and depression, while I know that some of the terrible suffering she experiences can be avoided. My hope is that they’l keep her off the pill and that if they don’t, my father will listen to me once more. Thank you, dear Amanda, for giving me the opportunity to share this here.
Thank you for Joanna Macy, inspired reading.
it’s happening: have been more and more individuals and groups involved in making the shift happen. but it won’t be easy and it be a slog. until it reaches critical mass?
cheers!