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January 29 - February 7, 2022
Wei Wu Wei when he writes, “Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn't one.”
Ramachandran found that the left brain's role is one of beliefs and interpretation and that it had little regard for reality in making up its interpretations
Your response time to identify the colors correctly will be significantly slower when the word and the color do not match—so much slower that it will be noticeable even without a stopwatch or other instrumentation. This slowed reaction time is what is known as the Stroop effect.
Researcher Martin Teicher has found that verbal abuse is at least as harmful as physical abuse and a strong risk factor for depression and other psychological disorders.8 In modern society, we often take words as seriously as the physical world they represent.
this person was simply sharing an opinion and expressing it via sounds emanating from their voice box. How is it possible that such a thing “hurt” you? Obviously you were hurt by your interpretation of it or the map that these sounds created in your left brain. Next, imagine for a moment if there were no self to hurt? Would words directed at this “you” ever be seen as a problem?
Maps leave out details which could be confusing if you were trying to navigate by every bird, plant, or car on the street.
Helen Keller, who lost both sight and hearing very early in life. It is particularly telling that she states that she only developed a sense of self after she learned language.
Gordon Ramsay's notorious rants. As he so emphatically put it, “fresh frozen . . . there's no such thing: it is either fresh or it is frozen.” But marketers know that writing the word fresh on the package will change our perception of the food. It is easy to be fooled by what words tell us, because we have put so much stock into language as a reliable map of reality.
the accident can be altered by words.10 If one group is asked, “How fast were the cars going when they smashed together?” they will report faster speeds than the group asked, “How fast were the cars going when they bumped each other?” Simply using the words smashed or bumped creates two different perceptions of the same reality.
The root of the problem is that many of us do not see language as a representation of reality, but confuse it with reality itself.
Categories are based on the left brain's ability to see differences and create opposites and are formed when things in the world that are continuous are grouped by some common feature and then treated as one unit.
As long as we remember that categories are mental representations (thoughts) only, they can be very useful; in other words, categories exist as “things” only in the mind and only in the act of perceiving them. Issues arise when we believe these “things” are real.
“Yes, I've seen this building and that building but where is the university?” I would have to point to the left side of my head and say, “it is only up here,” because it exists as a category and so it may change depending on whom you talk to.
Of course, I'm not saying the land or buildings disappear, but their division into categories depends on an observer and a judgment.
Sure, the physical entity of my body and my brain is there, but the “I” attached to it only exists as a thought—and only when I think it. Is it possible that you can't definitively answer this question because the “I” you are addressing isn't a thing?
It might be funny to title a book How to Not Think Categorically—which would be one end of just another categorical distinction: that is, categorical vs. noncategorical thinking. To think is to think in categories, and there is no way around this.
Categories are created by taking something continuous and drawing the proverbial line in the sand to separate one into two. The placement of this line requires a judgment.
Without judgment, categories could not exist.
To interpret is to judge things, and there is no way around this.
Exactly where along the continuum of temperature does cold become hot? When do you get offended? When does good become evil? When does something become a catastrophe? A failure? When does being poor become being rich? When does happiness become sadness? Where do you draw the line for any and all of these?
when you realize that everyone's brain is constantly interpreting, in ways that are subjective and often inaccurate or completely incorrect, you might find yourself able to grasp this as “just my opinion” or “the way I see it” rather than “this is the way it is.”
The left-brain interpreter also creates and sustains a collection of categorical thoughts based on judgments and groups them together as likes and dislikes, ideas of right and wrong, and mental models of how things are supposed to be. We collectively call these judgments our belief system.
But belief systems are like the university where I teach or the country of Canada: they don't exist “out there” in the world, but only in the left brain and only when people are thinking about them.
if everyone believes something different, then we cannot all be right.
The placebo effect occurs when a subject is given a placebo, but believes that they are taking the real medication. Because the brain believes that it is receiving medication for a condition, the subject feels the “effects” of having taken medication, even though nothing with an active ingredient has been administered.12
the placebo effect is one of the most powerful examples of the brain making the map/territory error.
The idea that we cannot control our beliefs is so fundamental to science that a placebo or control group (a group that is monitored and observed as part of an experiment, but upon which no experimental procedures are taken) is actually part of the definition of what constitutes an experiment.
Regardless of your efforts, you would not be able to will a belief into existence.
if you believe there is an omnipotent being that can read all your thoughts, you can't simply pretend or make something up like I do when my wife asks me which curtains I like and I pick one.
People die and kill for beliefs all the time, but not just any beliefs—only the ones they believe in without recognizing that they are only beliefs.
consider the left brain's ability to make up stories that have absolutely nothing to do with reality, as case studies have shown.
there is nothing wrong with a belief if you see it for what it is: the outcome of a process that goes on in the left brain maintained by a group of brain cells and neurochemistry.
The old Zen saying of “Right and wrong are the sickness of the mind” points to this dilemma precisely, as “right” and “wrong” are...
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it too much to imagine that the left brain uses all the aforementioned tools of language, categorization, and judgment to create the belief of an individual self?
“this is how I am,” and “this is how I want to be,” but this internal split is just more of the left brain doing its job to separate all things into opposing categories.
interpreter also works to separate and categorize the inner world into the conflicting beliefs of a controller (present self) and something else to be controlled (future self), creating an inner conflict that cannot be resolved. We are the only species that we know of that can believe in ourselves, lie to ourselves, convince ourselves, love or hate ourselves, accept ourselves, push and even pull ourselves. These beliefs are fundamental to the human story, as much a part of the dramas relayed by the ancient Greek poet Homer as they are playing out in the daily headlines today.
For instance, say that you encountered a billboard that simply read NO in bold letters. Your brain would likely have a reaction to seeing NO written out. On the other hand, consider if you saw a billboard that said YES.
Does yes have a positive feeling for you while no the other? This points to the power we give words.
Whether the billboard says yes or no in this foreign language is irrelevant—because you are unlikely to have had a brain reaction at all to a form of written language that you can't understand.
the emotional, mental, and even physical connection we have to certain words.
Maybe you believe that Democrats could run a country much better than Republicans or vice versa. Do you see this as a belief or do you believe it?
this is a good way to see it for what it is: a thought that exists in your left brain only.
Notice how consciousness changes when confronted with the following inconsistencies: “The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false.”
“This sentense containes three errors.” There are two spelling errors but then there is also the error that there are only two errors, which makes three, so there really isn't a third error. It can only be right if it is wrong, which blurs the right-wrong distinction.
Paradoxes like “What did you look like before you were born?” or “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” sound silly from the perspective of the interpretive mind, since they cannot be answered categorically.
Identity is merely a pattern of events in time and space. Change the pattern and you have changed the person. —Nisargadatta Maharaj
few of the tools of the interpreter: language, categorization, beliefs, and judgment.
To illustrate this, consider what language and categorization have in common: both of these functions are dependent upon one's ability to find and determine patterns.
most of us have completely forgotten that patterns only exist in the mind and not out in reality.
76 percent of the world's languages are structured as either subject, object, verb (“Jim the apple ate”) or subject, verb, object (“Jim ate the apple”).
