Iain McGilchrist

 

I find it hard to believe I’ve lived my life and never even heard this man’s name. I am in love with his ideas … 

 Written by Iain McGilchrist:

“I believe that we are engaged in committing suicide: intellectual suicide, moral suicide and physical suicide. If there is anything as important as stopping us poisoning our seas and destroying our forests, it is stopping us poisoning our minds and destroying our souls.

Our dominant value – sometimes I fear our only value – has, very clearly, become that of power. This aligns us with a brain system, that of the left hemisphere, the raison d’être of which is to control and manipulate the world. But not to understand it: that, for evolutionary reasons that I explain, has come to be more the raison d’être of our – more intelligent, in every sense – right hemisphere. Unfortunately the left hemisphere, knowing less, thinks it knows more. It is a good servant, but a ruinous – a peremptory – master. And the predictable outcome of assuming the role of master is the devastation of all that is important to us – or should be important, if we really know what we are about.

Even if we could, by some miracle, reverse the course on which we are set, unless we change our way of thinking, of being in the world – the way that is destroying us as we speak – it would all be in vain. This is why I have written the last long book I will ever write: The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World.

In it I search out what it is we have lost sight of, all that is there for us to see, if only we were not blinded to it: an inexhaustibly, truly wondrous, creative, living universe, not a meaningless, moribund mechanism. By bringing to bear up-to-the-minute neuropsychology, physics and philosophy, I show not only that these are in no way in conflict with one another, but that they all lead us, time and again, to the same insights. And that this is not in opposition to, but rather corroborates, the wisdom of the great spiritual traditions across the world.

All this converges on a vision that is necessary if we are to survive; and, even more importantly, if we are to deserve to survive. What I hope for my readers is that, if they are willing to accompany me on this adventure, they will never see the world in quite the same way again.”

 Iain McGilchrist

“This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 96:12-20

“Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is. The power of decision is our own. Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now.⁵And it will take the place of self-deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son.” 

A Course in Miracles W-152.8:1-5

Differing Outcome in Powerful Men

 

Two men, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Actor Will Smith, have had a number of similar experiences in their lives, with differing results. Both of these men were raised attending Catholic schools, both had violent father-figures in their lives, and both had ah-ha moments with regard to racism. Judge Thomas was going to Holy Cross seminary when Martin Luther King was killed. While hearing the comments made by his all-white classmates, he walked away from his family’s dream of his becoming the first black priest in Savannah. While in school, Will Smith realized that he could never be good enough, no matter how hard he tried. But he had his eye-opening moment while bagging ice in his family’s ice-making business. He was listening to the radio and hearing the top 100 songs of the year. He was lamenting the fact that he wasn’t in the top 100 when the #1 song came on and it was his! Everything changed for him in that moment. He said it was “the joy in being right about me”. While Will Smith was realizing how playful the universe is and how happy he was being a part of it, Clarence Thomas was plotting ways to get even with people who had treated him badly. Without delving into their lives more thoroughly, I dare say one of these men was able to process childhood trauma and one was not. May we all learn to work through fear and return to Love.

“Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious — as Life eternally is — can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not. Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 495:15-2

“Would you not go through fear to love? ²For such the journey seems to be. Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear not the call of hate, and see no fantasies. For your completion lies in truth, and nowhere else. See in the call of hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay you, but the call for help that rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator. Would He not answer you whose completion is His? He loves you, wholly without illusion, as you must love. For love is wholly without illusion, and therefore wholly without fear. Whom God remembers must be whole. And God has never forgotten what makes Him whole. In your completion lie the memory of His Wholeness and His gratitude to you for His completion. In His link with you lie both His inability to forget and your ability to remember. In Him are joined your willingness to love and all the Love of God, Who forgot you not.” A Course in Miracles T-16.IV.11:1-14

A Garden of Peace and Welcome

 

“Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.” 

Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden, 1886

“The holy instant is your invitation to love to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and to transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. Love’s answer is inevitable. It will come because you came without the body, and interposed no barriers to interfere with its glad coming. In the holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more.” A Course in Miracles T-18.VIII.11:1-4

“Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing them all, is the central sun of its own systems of ideas, the life and light of all its own vast creation; and man is tributary to divine Mind. The material and mortal body or mind is not the man.

The world would collapse without Mind, without the intelligence which holds the winds in its grasp. Neither philosophy nor skepticism can hinder the march of the Science which reveals the supremacy of Mind. The immanent sense of Mind-power enhances the glory of Mind. Nearness, not distance, lends enchantment to this view.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 209:5-15

Theory of Mind in Artificial Intelligence

 

Image from techicy

The term “theory of mind” was not in my sphere of knowledge before today. In case it’s not in yours either, it means: “the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them — that is, surmising what is happening in their mind”. Obviously, this is something we learn to do through experience and/or training. It is similar to, but not identical with empathy.  I heard this interesting term while listening to a youtube video called the A.I. Dilemma. It seems as though this thing called artificial intelligence has been learning things faster than predicted, and no one noticed until a couple of months ago. It now has the “theory of mind” of a nine-year-old child. We humans became alarmed a few years ago when social media began to feed us what we wanted to hear. There is currently a photo making the rounds which purports to be a baby peacock. It is extremely colorful and beautiful, and it is artificially generated. Many people don’t realize this and don’t want to believe it. This is a complicated, deep subject. We are being called upon to recognize truth, and to make every effort to be impeccable in our words, while having pure motives for our actions. Let’s start with the small stuff which is right in front of us. Do your beliefs take you to dead ends in thought? Let’s pay attention and grow deeper!

“Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. It is always there to be accepted, but its acceptance depends on your willingness to have it. To know reality must involve the willingness to judge unreality for what it is. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to let it go. Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and cannot be known by part of a mind.” 

A Course in Miracles T-10.IV.2:1-6

“Finite mind manifests all sorts of errors, and thus proves the material theory of mind in matter to be the antipode of Mind. Who hath found finite life or love sufficient to meet the demands of human want and woe, — to still the desires, to satisfy the aspirations? Infinite Mind cannot be limited to a finite form, or Mind would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible Love, eternal Life, omnipotent Truth.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 257:22-29

What a Wonderful World!

 

What A Wonderful World

Louis Armstrong

I see trees of green 
Red roses too 
I see them bloom 
For me and for you 
And I think to myself 
What a wonderful world

I see skies of blue 
And clouds of white 
The bright blessed day 
The dark sacred night 
And I think to myself 
What a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow 
So pretty in the sky 
Are also on the faces 
Of people going by

I see friends shaking hands 
Saying, "How do you do?" 
They're really saying 
"I love you"

I hear babies cry 
I watch them grow 
They'll learn much more 
Than I'll ever know 
And I think to myself 
What a wonderful world

Yes, I think to myself 
What a wonderful world 
Ooh yeah

Written by: George David Weiss, George Douglas

Album: What A Wonderful World

Released: 1968

https://youtu.be/rBrd_3VMC3c

Bees are Freeing the Light

 

Photo from Aaron Springston

At this time of the year, I love revisiting a documentary called “Queen of the Sun". In this film about bees, we are told that pollen is materialized light. We're also shown that this light is freed through blocks of honeycomb, beautifully shared with all as pure, sweet honey. And yet again, the light is freed in the goodness of beeswax candles. The freeing of light is cumulative with the bees, and it's something we can experience as we unshackle the light and peace and joy within ourselves. Another lesson from the bees is the importance of community. Watching them working together for a common cause is uplifting and inspiring to me. It makes me want to join with my neighbors and do something important! 

“Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing them all, is the central sun of its own systems of ideas, the life and light of all its own vast creation; and man is tributary to divine Mind. The material and mortal body or mind is not the man.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 209:5-9

“Your brother may not know who he is, but there is a light in his mind that does know. This light can shine into yours, giving truth to his words and making you able to hear them. His words are the Holy Spirit’s answer to you. Is your faith in him strong enough to let you hear?” 

A Course in Miracles T-9.II.5:8-11

Only Loving and Lovable

I have an old friend who feels like she’s drowning in sadness. A man she didn’t want to live without died, and she’s having a tough time going forward on her own. I can understand how she feels as she tries to remember how to be happy. The things we spoke of today led me to tell her about Mary Haskell, the woman who loved Kahlil Gibran. Although she was much older than him, he died many years before her. At his funeral, her friends were amazed that she was so peacefully happy and they wanted to know how that could be. She told them she felt closer to him than she ever had before. I talked to my friend about our unity in divine Love and our inseparability as the experience of God. I’m not sure if she felt better, but I certainly did!

“Today we see only the loving and the lovable. We see it in appearances of pain, and pain gives way to peace. We see it in the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid, who are restored to the tranquility and peace of mind in which they were created. And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life. All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves.”
A Course in Miracles W-124.4:6–5:4

"Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being, and [Its] reflection is man and the universe."
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 465:17-1