Science Meditation

I had a friend recently say that, "Creativity is the combining of ideas in a new way." (Jamie Riley paraphrase)  I think he's on to something there.  Creativity is the game "Apples to Apples"--making new connections between disparate ideas.

What I'd like to do is consider how two ideas--meditation and science literacy--might intersect.   Let me give a greenhorn's understanding of some meditation practices and then discuss how science can fit hand in glove with your own practice of meditation.

First, a story on how meditation saved my butt!!!

I was at a local meditation event listening to a guided meditation and my mind unprompted went where it often goes in these situations--to imagining the invisible electro-magnetic/atomic world around me.  I was imagining the atoms around the room bustle in Brownian motion, interact with photons, change quantum states, vibrate synchronistically through sound, circulate around the room in zyphers of wind and conviction currents, etc...and...suddenly...O SH%#!!!  I forgot to turn off a heating plate at my job at a chemistry lab!!!  Luckily I was able to call over and have it turned off, but I was so scared since I had it on for a few hours!!  Yikes!  Meditation saved my butt!  haha!

Ok, back to an over view of meditation so we can see how science meditation can fit in!

Types of meditations (as I understand it)

• Mind Scape Meditation
• Idea/mantra
• Focusing deeply on a central thought.  Learning about it. Thinking through it.  Applying it. Making it real within your mind. Reveling in it.
• Person
• Meditate on a person you truly admire.  Why do you admire them?  What can you learn from them?  How can you honor their lives with your life?
• Object
• Symbolism
• Essence
• Function
• Feeling
• Become self aware.  Not necessarily judging what you're mind is feeling, just only observing, analyzing.  Becoming mindful of your brain--the vast expanse of neural experiences within.
• Problem solving
• Taking time to work through a problem--reviewing past actions, considering future options.
• Thankfulness
• Counting  one's blessings.
• Bodyscape
• Become aware of your body
• What is your body feeling?  Pain?  Boredom?  Fatigue?  Why?  Analyze, don't judge.
• Motion
• Walk
• Be mindful of the motion, the muscles, the action, the intention.
• Surroundings
• Become aware of your senses.
• What sounds do you hear around you?  See?  Feel?
• For a challenge, see if you can observe more than one occurrence at a time.  Can you do three?  It's supposed to not really be possible to pay attention to three things with any real level of depth.

Now, within these three realms of focus--the mind, the body, the world around us--how can the teachings of science inform and empower our meditation?  My understanding of meditation centers around awareness, mindfulness and science has empowered human awareness to a degree that former generations could not have comprehended--so revel in it!  Become mindful of the universe happening around you right now!

• Mind
• Consider the crackle of electric impulses within your mind--100 billion neurons buzzing, humming, communicating, resting, their amoeboid arms stretching out to form connections totaling 100 trillion
• Consider the micro ocean of neurotransmitters chemically setting into motion the thoughts, sensation and actions of the body--just slight parts per billion that manifest huges changes

• Body
• Go from head to toe considering all the functions that are taking place in your body
• Blood
• Red blood cell oxygenation
• White blood cells capturing invaders and consuming dead or defunct cells
• Heart and its molecular muscle motors reacting to the power of ATP
• Lungs filling, oxygenating, dispursing CO2
• Liver, kidneys, pancreas, gall bladder, intestines, muscles and on and on!!!

• Surroundings
• Consider sound.  Become mindful of the sources of the sounds around you.  Consider the waves emanating from the source--the compression pulses of wave in the form of concentric circles growing larger and then reflecting and bouncing off the other objects in the wall.  Much like a 3-D version of the surface of a pool of water that has been disturbed.  Become aware of how that sound hits the curves and bowl of your ear, traveling down your ear canal to the ear drum, the three ear bones, the inner ear, the cochlea, the fluid and hairs within the cochlea, the impulses traveling from ear to brain, etc.  

• The Electromagnetic world around you
• The process of seeing
• The invisible spectrum

I have benefited greatly from these lectures by Dr. Feynman and really do hope you'll click on this link if for no other reason that to see that they exist.  Feynman has a brilliant way of bringing the invisible reality to life.: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+feynman+fun+to+imagine&aq=f

• Neutrinos
• There are billions of neutrinos flowing through our body every second flowing from the Sun.
• Geographic location
• Consider the forces that created the land around you.  Reverse, in your mind, time to undo the weathering forces, plate tectonics, igneous forces, etc.

• Elemental  history
• Consider the history of the elements around you.  Their age in billions of years.  Their star ancestry.

• Evolution
• If you're walking, consider an animal.  In your mind go through their evolution history, the epochs, bio-geography, the predators and prey its ancestors encountered.

• Solar Power
• Become mindful of how a seething ball of magnetized gas 93 million miles away is heating itself to astronomical degrees--27 million in the core-- by the crush of gravity as new heavier elements are created and releasing prodigious amounts of energy.  Electron motion becomes wavicle photons that travel through a void of space to a spinning ball held in rotation by the gravitational bending of space time.  This energy causes photosynesis, which powers plants, which power the animals we see and ourselves.  Everything is solar powered.
• Space
• See through the Earth and the physical features around you.  See in your minds eye the position of the Sun, the moon, the stars through the atmosphere and through the Earth.   See the core of the Earth, the upside down walking of people on the other side of the Earth, consider the distances of how far they are, imagine birds flying upside down, water being pulled "up", kangaroos hopping upside down in Ausatralia, the thousands of people in the air in planes being ferried from place to place, etc.

So, why bother?  Why spend the time?  Why expend the energy?

To me that's almost like asking, "Why love?"  To connect.  To realize.  To become one.  To stretch.  To unbound yourself.

"The desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality--we are connected; not in the trivial ways that Astrology promises, but in the deepest ways." --Carl Sagan

Later note: There are two main kinds of meditation--focused attention and open monitoring.  Focused attention finds holds an object in conscious attention.  Open monitoring allows the mind and senses to wander, allowing thoughts and perceptions to come and go as they will.  Open monitoring with science might include being in nature and simply soaking up the sounds, sights, smells, and sensations.  

Consciousness Raising Events

Good science education is providing experiences or information that raises people’s consciousness of the universe around them. It expands minds. Opens doors of understanding. Removes the scales from our eyes.

That got me thinking.

What are events in my life that didn't change the world around me, but did change the world within me--my perception of reality?

At this point, I should be clear in what I mean by ‘consciousness raising’. I don’t mean a synonym for enlightenment. I don’t mean anything like Gnosticism or Buddhism.

I think the distinction between learning and realizing is a helpful one. ‘Learning’, as I’m defining it, is the accumulation of dispassionate information--largely irrelevant factoids. ‘Realizing’, however, isn’t the addition of a new bit of information so much as it is that fact being real, personal, vivid, 3-D, palpable, first person, high def--experienced rather than just known about.

In no particular order here’s a list of thing that raised my consciousness (often much later looking back on them). I really, really, really want to hear yours. Please comment. Please message. I am fascinated by this topic (for the time being, hehe).

Self

• My appendix rupturing: It was there I accepted I shared a common ancestor with the great apes. This has changed much of how I see myself, psychology, my body, religion and who I am. 
• Puberty: Feels weird to talk about it, but going through puberty was eye opening. I realized then what so many jokes, songs, movies, novels and TV shows were talking about. My body and my understanding of relationships forever changed.. 
• Running marathons: This has shown me a number of things. It’s shown me how much eating right, resting, and exercise really does affect one’s body, health, mind and mood. I had known that, but with running I could feel it. What I did directly affected what I’d do on the track. Also, exercises has given me so, so much more energy and elevated my baseline mood. Didn’t know there was such a connection with what you do and how you’ll feel. 
• Morphine Hallucinations: So, after coming out of appendix surgery I was on some pretty trippy stuff (I was really bad off. I have a six inch scar and was in the hospital for 8 days). It’s kind of a stretch to say that hallucinating raised my consciousness, but it does help me understand why people do drugs. I saw: a room filled with cotton candy, a bowling ball, cat/dog headed people, and I got trapped in a mushroom castle. Crazy. 
• Had a seizure: Just one. I was watching Batman the cartoon as a kid and then suddenly my muscles seized up and I tried to call out, but my parents say that I was just moaning and sticking out my tongue. Haha. That experience helps me relate to people with brain conditions. So weird it happened just once. 
• Teaching: I can think of a couple of times that I was so keyed up from teaching afterwards that I had trouble sleeping. Those events helped solidify what I want to do with my life. 
• Kids: There was a time when my employer asked me to do as a volunteer what I used to be paid to do. Accepting the offer even though I felt insulted made me realize how much I really do love working with kids. 

Culture

• Worship: I was radically affected by an experience of feeling what I perceived to be the presence of God. I truly felt at the time that I had my consciousness raised to a spiritual realm. 
• China: Like no other place I’ve been to, China rocked my world. Everything is different there--toilets, door nobs, locks, side walks, curbs, tonal language (their entire language is one syllable words pronounced in strange ways--up, down, diphthong, flat inflections), pictorial written language (where you have to know ten thousand characters just to be able to read the news paper), they form questions by adding a tag word of ‘ma’ instead of bringing the tone up at the end like we do, the communist government, electronics, drastically different religion, vegetables, smells (When we walk into a store we’re used to smelling synthetic lavender or synthetic vanilla etc. but they have totally different flowers and fruits there so nothing seems normal. You walk into a store and it smells like a synthetic lychee fruit or some asian flower your nose has never experienced. Very weird.) and people just act, think, are motivated differently. The kicker is China is almost a quarter of the world’s population. Also, it was a big deal to me to experience that those 1.4 billion people don’t share my religion. I had known that, but seeing it was different. 
• Language: Language is shaped by reality, but language also shapes our reality. You’ve heard of these examples--some cultures only have four numbers (one, two, three and many), some cultures only have two words for colors (hot colors and cold colors), and some cultures have something like 40 different words for the different types of snow (based on texture, appearance, temperature, etc.). Those are simple examples, but it can get much more complicated when languages have limited tenses, gendered nouns, verbs that describe whether the event happened once, repeatedly or a process over time. There are tribal languages that don’t have different tenses. That has to affect how they think of reality. Taking a Spanish and Greek opened my eyes to their world and by seeing theirs I saw my own. Words create worlds. 

Life

• Love: Loving another changes you. You want to be a better person. 
• Mexico: I went to Reynosa, Mexico in high school to build homes. It was the whole, “I went there to change their lives, but they ended up changing mine,” experience. I had never seen that level of abject poverty before. The family that we built a house for lived in what couldn’t even be described as a shack. It was a accumulation of boards, scrap metal, sacks and tarps. It was dirt floor. They had no electricity. If they wanted water they had to walk 2 miles to a nasty river--the Rio Bravo. They used an out house. They couldn’t even afford the nominal fee the government charged to get a birth certificate so that their child could go to school (he was around ten and had never gone to school). Seeing that affected me. Made me realize that every American is rich. I was rich. Ever since then I have a personal conviction to never complain about things like gas prices or to take for granted the food, water, and electricity that I enjoy every waking moment of my day. 
• Volunteering at Give Kids the World and going to a special needs foster home: I was probably around ten or twelve when a home school group my family was a part of went on a field trip to a special needs foster home. That was the first time I was around children my age with severe mental handicaps and severe disabilities. We were getting a tour of the facility and I remember the care taker taking us to one room where a young man spent the entire day moaning and screaming. Another room where a girl was nearly brain dead and who had no eyes. If there was any doubt as to whether she had eyes or not the care taker cleared that up by gently cradling her head and lifting one of her eye lids with her thumb. You could see the capillary filled back of her eye socket. That image was burned in my mind as a kid. It definitely affected me and until this day I remember it vividly. Subsequent volunteering at places like Give Kids the World, which give a magical vacation experience to families with children with terminal illnesses, cemented into my consciousness both the beauty of the people that give their lives in the service of loved ones and the level of suffering so many in the world experience. I’ve got it good. Really good. 
• Tallahassee: This isn’t as big as many of the others, but still worth mentioning I think. It’s been great to move to Tallahassee, figure some things out about myself and see that I can support myself and make a great life on my own. That’s felt great. 

Nature of the Universe

• Microscope: Seeing an amoeba for the first time collected from the scum pond water near my house was a transcendent moment for me as a kid. There’s a whole invisible world that is all around us. All the time. Right now. Look around. They’re there!! hehe 
• Plane: I hope you can remember looking out the window of a plane for the first time. You realize how very, very, very, very, very small you are. And how the world is big than you can imagine. Yet also very small, too... 
• Boat: It’s powerful to go so far on a boat you can’t see the shore any more and then realize that most of the world--70-75%ish--is exactly like that. Dirt and land are the minority exception. 
• Snorkeling: When I can’t sleep and my mind is whizzing with thoughts I’ll often transport myself to my happy place--snorkeling off of Fort Lauderdale. There’s a whole new world down there and seeing it first hand has affected how I understand the Earth. 
• Telescope: I was greatly affected by seeing the moons and bands of Jupiter and Saturn’s rings. Eye opening. Also, solar flares in a solar telescope. There’s just something about seeing it live and without a whole bunch of computers and processors; just seeing it with lenses and mirrors. 
• Limestone quarry: I’ve been lucky enough to go to two limestone quarries. One in Aurora, NC and one near Arcadia, FL. It’s amazing to think about what is below our feet--billions of years of history, countless remains that whisper secrets of the past. It’s one thing to read that in a book; another thing to see the layers before your very eyes. 
• Dissecting: Ya, it’s smelly and gross, but I unconsciously x-ray under my skin when I look at my body or have an ache or ailment. I owe that largely to dissecting as a kid with my mother’s biology class. 
• Microbiology lab: I recently swabbed my own skin and then inoculated a petri dish with the critters that were growing on me. Wow. Just to see the different colors and growth patterns of the stuff on you is freaky. Really freaky. But also really neat. We’re never alone!

Irrational Things Atheists Believe

We all believe irrational things--things that are subjective and not empirically testable.  

Is this such a bad thing? Is it even possible to live without the scaffolding of these ideas and many, many others? What would life be like without these kind of ideas? Can noticing these ideas give us humility and more level playing field when dealing with/thinking about/talking to people that believe things that seem utterly foreign and ridiculous to us?

• Epistemological Beliefs
• Reality is Coherent--As Einstein famously put it, "God does not play dice."
• How we live like reality is coherent: 
• Science invests billions of dollars into research.  Many of our expectations about what life will be like on a given day are met.
• Reality Is Not an Illusion--Is what you see what you get?
• How we live like reality is not an illusion: 
• We find love and life meaningful.  
• Continuity of Reality-- "We have no logical reason to assume that anything we've learned from science will be true tomorrow." --Cameron Green
• How we live like reality has continuity: 
• We act according to our experience.
• Causal Relationships--One thing leads to another--cause and effect. How do we know that when one cue ball hits another that the two events are actually connected? The philosopher David Hume wrote much on this conundrum.  
• How we live like causal relationships are determinable:
• We administer medical treatments.  We write and read history books.
• Memory Is Accurate--How do we know our most trust and dearly held memories are accurate?  How do we know our brain didn't just make them up and they seem real?
• How we live like memory is accurate:
• We go up to and kiss our loved ones when we see them again.  We cherish fond childhood memories.  We recall and use information like directions to get to work.
• Senses Are Reasonable Facsimiles of Reality--How do we know that we can trust our senses?  How do we know they correspond to reality at all?
• How we live like our senses are accurate:
• We follow traffic signs and lights.
• You’re Not Completely Crazy--Is it so crazy to think we're not crazy?
• How we live like we aren't completely crazy:
• We make decisions and live by them.
• Solipsism Is False--How do we know others are thinking, feeling, volitional beings?
• How we live like solipsism is false:
• We care for the needs of others.

• Existential Beliefs 
• Life Has Value--Funerals suck.  War sucks.  Abuse sucks.  Why?  Because life is precious.
• Life Has Meaning--What we do with our lives has some value otherwise we wouldn't keep doing it.
• Identity/Consciousness/Mind--We believe in ourselves and others as a whole, independent being rather than a talking set of individual neurons and atoms.  Attributing a volitional personality to a human is the same thing on a different scale to giving the random occurrences of 'life' and 'the universe' to 'God'.  
• Contiguity--Many have said (controversially) that every atom in your body is replaced every ten (or seven) years. Assuming something close to that is true, how can it be said that we're the same person? Yet we still believe it every time we see an old friend! 
• Free Will--Our choices are our own and not a mechanistic predetermined byproduct of things outside of our control. 
• Love--It's more than a hormone. It's more than a pre-programmed mechanism to create and rear young. We believe and behave like love is real.

• Justice Beliefs
• Virtue/Vice and Good/Evil--Every time we resist evil and do good we show that we believe in moral obligation/virtue/vice/good/evil.

Brenner Emmanuel Michel's "Hercules Between Virtue and Vice"

My point:


Of course all of the above has rightly been questioned and doubted by philosophical luminaries, but I bring it up to point out that both you and I have sacred ideas and that we all hold things true without proof everyday. That, by in large, is a very, very good thing. You may well cognitively doubt every idea above, but you still believe them functionally if you use them. Just as many believers deal with doubts about their religion's teachings so can an atheist doubt the list above, but still be counted as a believer on the basis of how they live--actions speak louder than words.


What is religion at its most very basic? Ideas. Ideas about life, morality, metaphysics, origins...etc. Just in the same way that believing life has value has existential and social utility so can other religious ideas--even if we deeply doubt their veracity. Ideas are tools--tools that can help improve our lives by being the scaffolding on which to build a life. What I'd like to show with the above list of things is that there is common ground between atheists and theists to discuss ideas, values and meanings. We all are subjective. We all are biased. We all operate with ideas that are unfounded. We all have memes.  It's a level playing field between atheists and theists in this regard. We all make assumption leaps and some of these ideas are vital to living a fulfilling life.

Pictures from here, here and here.