Magblu featues Magnesium bisglycinate which is the same thing as magnesium glycinate and sometimes called magnesium diglycinate. Mg bisglycinate is highly bioavailable. However, Mgblu also has Mg Oxide, a buffering agent, which is about 4% bioavailable. They do this to kick up the “elemental % of Mg,” which is misleading.
Increase testosterone (both free and total) levels in men and helping women balance their own sex hormones
Control blood sugar and protect against type 2 diabetes
Mg lactate, malate, and citrate are the other highly bioavailable forms of magnesium. Mg oxide is 4% available. Mg from food is about 50% bioavailable and is fond in few foods — pumpkin and chia seeds, nuts, spinach, soy milk, black beans.
Magnesium L-threonate is the most effective form for crossing the blood brain barrier. It also works for other organs, so is likely the best form to take. Daily dose for me: 420 mg. Best deal: https://tinyurl.com/43pruxeu
Naturally available in…
Dark Chocolate–64mg of /0z which is 16% of the RDI but remember 50% so you would need to eat 2 pounds. Apart from that, dark chocolate is also rich in copper, iron, and manganese as well as prebiotic fiber.
Avocados– this tasty and nutritious fruit can provide you with 58mg of magnesium which is about 15% of RDI. The fruit is also rich in vitamins B, K, and a great source of potassium.
Nuts–one of the best Magnesium L-threonate natural sources. 1-ounce serving cashews possesses 82mg magnesium which is 20% of the RDI.
Legumes – peas, lentils, chickpeas, and soya beans are rich in different minerals, including magnesium. For instance, one cup of cooked beans contains 120mg of magnesium, and that’s 30% of the RDI.
About the time I got back from Vietnam and found a running Indian motorcycle, 300 hippies jumped in 25 buses and left San Francisco to find a farm. They landed in Nashville. This was a cohesive group of young people. Steve Gaskin, their charismatic leader, preached stoic values like honesty, fairness, respect for the land, and staying inside your own hula hoop. They used the Bible for guidance. They weren’t Jesus Freaks. Those came later after Good Christian Children started dropping LSD. These were honest kids looking to get outside of the corporate trap, grow enough food to feed themselves, and just keep on having fun. Their journey, what they learned, spread to the whole youth culture. It represented a bolt of cosmic lightning that clove me in two. A side: The biker. B Side: The Hippy. As time wore on, The Biker entered into a social construct nightmare. Early feminism diluted his essence. After all, when you’re 24, you got to …. several times a day, so you had to please the ladies. The end of Macho should be characterized as an Amazonian victory.The B side, The Hippie, played out until one full moon night at the edge of a Kentucky Burley field, the Devil struck a chord on an old fiddle. This hippy turned down the offer and chose the woman in black. She was headed for the theater. But, that is another tale.
In 1990, Cousin Charles Raymond came to visit me in The Haight Ashbury with an armload of floppy discs. “We’re going to put Wordstar on your computer,” he said, “And I’m going to teach you Harvard Graphics and how to program in DOS and Basic.”
Wordstar I understood. I was writing articles before the turn of the century, and the term Word Processor was the big buzz. CR showed me how to use <ctrl> and <alt> + [whatever] to format lines, paragraphs, bold, etc. Harvard graphics was a little tougher. But when I discovered I could manipulate photographs with it, the motivation to learn overcame my fear.
Programming was different. I told CR that if I had known algebraic thinking would be lucrative someday, I would have paid attention instead of throwing spitballs. I missed that boat. Suddenly nerds were turning up with boatloads of cash because they could type long strings of jibber-jabber without errors and arrange it in logical, efficient patterns because they had paid attention in algebra class.
My girlfriend’s brother-in-law and his lovely wife were eeking out a living in Berkeley. Just before she had triplets, Nat’s software, a DOS/Apple converter called Tip-Top, hit big time. They raised those 3 boys in comfort.
Another fin de siècle ushered in another new era. In the Gay 90s it was electricity and light bulbs. In the post-cold war ‘90s, the dharma came to the householders along with the personal computer. Young millennials grew strong thumbs playing Pokémon. Their Gen X brothers and sisters wrote code. We Boomers entered our 40s with the first glimpse of the vampire Lestat’s warning, “Immortality is not for everyone. After 200 years or so, things change so much we can’t stand it.” Anne Rice was a visionary.
A recollection of a professor chastising me using a quote from a French philosopher more than 50 years ago has prompted me to look into this philosopher. And so, I begin to read the essays of Michel de Montaigne.
The introduction to this new edition by James Atkinson and David Sizes gives me insight into just who Montaigne was. Plutarch and Seneca were his two major influences. Plutarch, a Greek Platonist, was known for his biographies of Greeks and Romans. Montaigne follows Plutarch’s example of illustrating his points with quotations from the classical period. Seneca, a contemporary of Jesus Christ, was a Stoic. His writings, very popular in the contemporary Stoic revival, bear remarkable resemblance to the New Testament.
This morning I’m fascinated by Atkinson’s view of Montaigne’s take on nature. He never explains exactly what nature is, even though the word appears in every one of his essays.
Nature
One of Montaigne’s fundamental distinctions is between the natural and the artificial. In the essay Experiences, Montaigne celebrates nature as a general guide, not gentle but wise and just, but doubts our prospects for following its directions. “I see its traces all over; we have muddled them up with artificial trails. Despite our best intentions then, will we be able to get out of our way?” This doubt hovers over his whole intellectual life.
Here’s an interesting thing from the essay Physiology. “I have quite simply and bluntly taken this long-standing rule for myself: we cannot go wrong to follow nature; the cardinal rule is to conform to her. Unlike Socrates I have not corrected my natural tendencies by dint of reason, and I have never purposely fought against my inclinations. I let myself go along just as I came, I do not at all struggle.” This is a bold claim, but do we find that Montaigne has avoided the Socratic failure of correcting his gut instincts by dint of reason? Apparently not. Moreover, in his avowed conformity to nature, does he tend to follow an easy direct and clear path or a difficult, meandering and muddled human path? As I read the essays, my impression is that Montaigne’s path is meandering because he illustrates each idea with quotations from antiquity, which are often muddled.
The upshot of Montaigne’s take on nature is that society has succeeded in overturning the normal order which is natural in favor of the artificial. He laments that truth and reason have also succumbed to the artificial.
“We have so overburdened the beauty and richness of her works with our inventions that we have completely stifled her. That is why whenever her purity shines forth, she puts to surprising shame our vain frivolous undertakings.”
The limitations of our reason
Fortis imaginato generat casum. “A powerful imagination produces the event.”
Montaigne locates corruption not in the natural ways of what we would call barbarian people, but in the products of the human mind such as the rules of governance in society.
Nature forces all human beings to view matters through faulty, partial if not corrupt lenses. This introduces his second nature theme: The limitations of our reason. Because of our tendency to model nature’s trails, he believes that reason has a difficult time gaining the upper hand with us humans. For example, in the essay “Imagination,” he suggests that hares and partridges turn white in the winter because of the power of their imagination.
He brings his point home and a quotation from a Latin poet Tyrtaeus, “Let each man know his own way.” Knowledge derives from experience, which is not the same as a reason, and might in fact oppose it. Shaping a path that conforms to one’s own nature by following the rules of reason is tricky stuff.
The process of becoming
“Our world is nothing but a perpetual swing. Everything within it is endlessly swinging. I cannot pin my subject down. He goes along drunk by nature blurred and wavering. I take him at this point as he is just when I happen to look at him. I do not paint his being, I am painting his passage.”
The subject of Montaigne’s essays is not our static being, but our process of becoming. We are all as ephemeral as the wind.
Montaigne’s value today
Atkinson ends the introduction with four quotations that epitomize his value to the present time.
The greatest things in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. (1-39)
Knowing how to enjoy one’s condition to the full and be satisfied with it is essential to a fulfilled life (1-31)
Life should be its own aim for itself, its intent, its proper study is how to govern itself, to behave and to be endured. (III-12)
It is an absolute, almost divine, perfection to know how to enjoy one’s being in good faith. We seek other conditions because we do not understand how to use our own, and we go outside ourselves because we do not know what goes on inside.
In the contemporary world, dozens of factions compete to declare their version of Budddhism to be correct.
In fact, each of us carries a mixture of beliefs based on our experience of the world, things we’ve read, and what we had for dinner last night.
Here, I supply a summary of my findings, so you can locate your position in the land of the Buddha.
It begins
The Dhammapada, or the “Virtuous Path According to Lord Buddha,” probably written by Buddha, is considered to be the manual of Buddhist teaching. 423 verses divided into 26 chapters. The three main parts of Dhammapada are:
The four noble truths: There are many ways to express these 4 truths. My favorite comes from Plato, Not Prozac! : Applying Philosophy to Everyday Problems by Lou Marinoff, HarperCollins, (New York), 1999
All life is suffering
Suffering is cause by wanting things to be different than they are.
There is a way to end suffering.
Accept what is, and move on from there.
Lou Marinoff
The eight-fold path: A convention started by early translators of Buddhist texts into English, found within the 4th noble truth.
After the death of Buddha – about 400 to 800 years before Christ — two schools of Buddhism emerged. One was Theravada Buddhism, the original deal. Theravada Buddhism emphasizes personal salvation through one’s own efforts. The other was Mahayana Buddhism — we’re all in this together. Then, various cultures, various teachers split things up.
Xuan Zang, a 7h century scholar who traveled the Silk Road to India, where he gathered Buddhist texts and translated them into Chinese, said that Theravada is like a kayak; it carries the individual. Mahayana is like a boat that carries a tribe. Mahayana is like an ocean liner; it carries the entire community.
The Major Schools
Theravada: “The School of the Elders.” Theravada Buddhism emphasizes personal salvation through one’s own efforts. The fundamental principle of Theravada Buddhism is that an individual must rely on his or her analytical power to understand the world around him. Although a rational man is self sufficient with his logic, yet he needs a guide or a wise man to guide him. In order to break the cycle of misery and agony, man needs to free his mind from the defilements of the temporal world Theravada Buddhism is the oldest school of Buddhism. It was popularized in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, China and other Asian countries. An individual needs to abide by the basic principles of Buddhism strictly. Moral conduct, meditation and wisdom are the three basic principles of Theravada Buddhism. all worldly phenomena are subject to 3 characteristics.
They are impermanent and transient;
unsatisfactory and that there is nothing in them which can be called ones own.
All compounded things are made up of two elements – the non-material part and the material part.
They are further described as consisting of 5 constituent groups, namely
the material quality
sensations
perception
mental formatives
consciousness.
When the perfected state of insight is reached, that person is a worthy person, an Arhat.
Mahayana School of Buddhism: The main idea behind Mahayana Buddhism is that anyone can reach the stature of the Buddha by following Buddha Marga. Mahasanghika sect is believed to be the source of the Mahayana Buddhism. This school of Buddhism had a huge impact on China, Korea and Japan. Mahayana school is a huge umbrella under which a number of philosophies and principles are included.
Madhyamika Buddhism, literally meaning the middle path, was founded in the second century, during the early stages of development of Mahayana Buddhism. It was developed by the great Indian scholar and philosopher Nagarjuna who wrote the ‘Wisdom Sutras,’ a total of about 40 texts which have been collected under the title of Prajnaparamita (perfection of wisdom). All phenomena are devoid of intrinsic nature, and exist only due to the conditions created by other phenomena. It is referred to as the middle path because it rejects the two extreme philosophies of eternalism and nihilism. It is a dialectic school which, according to Nagarjuna, was founded by Lord Buddha himself. In the 11th century, Madhyamikas divided into 3 distinct schools: Prasangika, Svatantrika and the synthesis of later Yogacara and Madhyamika, referred to as Yogacara-Svatantrika-Madhyamika.
Vajrayana School of Buddhism: Indian tantric master Padmasambhava, the 2nd Buddha, founded Vajrayana in the 7th century. AKA The tantric school, a part of the Mahayana School, called Lamaism because at the center of the school lies the Lama. By practicing Vajrayana, a Buddhist follower can achieve enlightenment easily. Vajra is a symbol for thunder, diamond and lightning. The most prominent features of Vajrayana include the use of mantras; gives much importance to the teacher or guru; the significance of meditation, which also includes concentration techniques like; the visualization of bodhisattvas. The followers of the faith are brought in to these practices by initiation called empowerment. One of the salient features of Vajrayana is that it considers Mahayana and Theravada as the base on which the tantras could be practiced. The knowledge of these two earlier branches is absolutely essential to practice Vajrayana. It is more popularly used in Tibetan Buddhism.
Chinese Schools of Buddhism: An integral part of the Chinese culture, this school of Buddhism is further divided into 10 more Buddhist schools. Their way of expression may differ but the basic doctrines of Buddhism, such as the Eightfold Paths, Four Noble Truths and others are the same. The Chinese monastic community is an extension of the order of the monks that Buddha had established. The Arahants here are known as Lohans. The 10 Chinese Schools of Buddhism are:-
Reality School. Also known as Abhidharma School or Kosa School
Satysiddhi School or Chengse School
Three Sastra School or Sanlun School
The Lotus School or T’ientai School
The Garland School or Avatamsaka School. Also known as Huayen School
Intuitive School or Chan School or Dhyana School
Discipline or Lu or Vinaya School.
Esoteric or Chenyien School or Mantra School
Dharmalaksana School or Fasiang School
Pureland School, Sukhavati School or Chingtu School
Nichiren Buddhism: Nichiren propagated the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren was a Tendai monk but he left the establishment to pursue his own path. Followers need to recite the Lotus Sutra to realize the Buddha nature in them.
Pure Land: Amida Buddhism. It teaches the salvation tradition of the Amida Buddha. Amida Buddha is an incarnation of Buddha. He refuses to accept his enlightenment unless he has achieved it for his followers. Pure Land Buddhism gained popularity in Japan during the Kamakura Period. This school opened Buddhism for the lower classes as well as for women.
Shingon Buddhism: This school was established by Kobo Daishi. This is the tantric school of Buddhism in Japan. During the Heian Period it came into prominence. Till date it is one of the popular forms of Buddhism in Japan. The main doctrine of Shingon Buddhism was to realize one’s own nature with the celestial Buddha. This is can be achieved by following a secret doctrine that is transmitted orally fro the teacher to the disciple.
Tendai Buddhism: This is probably the most important Japanese School of Buddhism. This school is based on the Lotus Sutra. This sutra is considered to be the supreme mixture of Buddhist doctrine. It became popular in the Heian Period.
Zen Buddhism: This is the most popular Japanese School of Buddhism. It is closely associated with the art and culture of Japan. The origin of Zen Buddhism is in India. All the traditions of Buddhism are followed in this Japanese School of Buddhism.
I’m out of coffee. I grab a can of artificial buzz juice from my prepper stash in the fridge. The label touts 120 grams of caffeine. I wonder how that compares to a cup of coffee? By the time I feel the buzz, I have discovered 5 things about coffee.
1) There are over 100 different coffee species in the world. Two types stand out: Arabica and Robusta . Arabica tastes better. This is the Arabian coffee first discovered by by Kaldi, a 9th-century Ethiopian goatherd, when he noticed how excited his goats became after eating the beans from a coffee plant. Robusta, or Coffea canephora. has more caffeine. But, it can taste nasty. Robusta is typically used for instant coffee, esspresso, and as a filler in coffee blends. Biohazard Coffee, a top brand of Robusta, has 928 mg of caffeine per 12-oz cup.
2) The amount of caffeine in a cup depends upon how you make it. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) supplies generic guidelines. Note that this varies with the type of roast. The rule of thumb: The longer you roast the beans, the more caffeine gets burnt off. Light roast has more caffeine, dark roast has less.
3) Different brands have different amounts of caffeine in a single cup. I didn’t know this when I talked to my riding buddy Ren Doughty when we met up with a bunch of hooligans to view the solar eclipse. Look up your favorite brand here.
4) Chlorogenic acids and caffeine shape the flavor of coffee. Chlorogenic acids, like all polyphenols, are biological antioxidants. The acids control the “tang,” or the level of metallic taste. Caffeine controls bitterness.
5) Coffee is good for you. Yes, mamma told us coffee was bad for you, but modern research proves the opposite. Today, coffee is considered a functional food with antioxidant properties. It reduces the incidence of cancer in certain organs, diabetes and liver disease, protects against Parkinson’s disease and reduces mortality risk. My Doc told me that three cups of coffee a day will flush my liver better than milk thistle or Carters Little Liver Pills.
Men of a certain age love their ginseng. Ask a ginseng user, and he’ll tell you it gives him more energy. It’s like a cup of coffee without the screeching violins. A health nut will tell you that ginseng is good for the immune system, it increases your concentration, and it’s good for the heart. An old cowboy will tell you it makes his dick hard.
What makes ginseng tick?
Until recently, scientists considered Ginsenosides (ginseng saponins) to be the active ingredient in ginseng. During the past two decades, pharmacists have found another active ingredient called Gintonin, a glycolipoprotein – a protein with bonded carbohydrates and lipids, or fats.
Ginsenoside and Gintonin
Ginsenoside is Yin. It acts as a negative regulator. Gintonin is Yang. It acts as a positive regulator.
Yin
At the atomic level, Ginsenoside blocks positive-charged ions and it enhances negative charged ions. In the amazing factory of our bodies, this atomic action relaxes the excitability of nerves, it relaxes smooth muscles, and regulates heart muscles. In plain language, the Yin property of ginseng is that it soothes jangled nerves, which increases concentration. It lowers high blood pressure and regulates the heartbeat. And because it dilates the blood vessels, it makes that old cowboy one of the favorites at the dance hall.
Yang
At the atomic level, Gintonin increases the calcium ions that play a role in signal transmission along those miles of nerves. In the amazing factory of our bodies, positive calcium ions stimulate neurotransmitter release, increase muscle contraction, and stimulate fertility. In plain language, Gintonin makes the brain and nerves work better, it makes muscles stronger, and yes, that old cowboy is smiling now.
Old Gumbo Jones wove his way through the garage, stepping carefully to avoid power cords, fiberglass body parts, and hardware that had fallen from one of his many on-going projects. He was looking for the 4mm T-handle Allen key. “I had it in my hand 3 minutes ago. How could it disappear so completely? I mean, it’s just gone. Vanished into thin air.” His eyes lit up. “There’s that damn Phillips head screwdriver!” He pulled it from under a bungee cord where he had tucked it next to a Barbie doll on the rack of the Oilhead. It dawned on him that an old nemesis was back with him. Conventional wisdom saw it as absent-mindedness. But it was something else. His mind was always present, but it was present in different dimensions at different times. He knew that he had set the 4mm down in a different dimension which would reveal itself in time. That knowledge allayed his anxiety, but it did nothing for the fillister head screw that needed to go up under the side panel. He edged his way back to the tool chest to find another set of Allen wrenches. He reached out to the side work bench to balance through a tight spot, and there, behind a plastic tub full of odd bits from the table job – or was it the Airhead fairing job or the rug shampoo machine job or the timing belt job, he saw the old O2 sensor coiled up like a snake. He lifted it to study the carbon-coated sensor, the kinked wires and the corroded connector. “Where should I put this?” A small skirmish broke out in the middle of his mind. The poverty rider saves everything, because you never know. But here he was, trapped in a jumble of tables and benches littered with old parts and new projects. He lifted the O2 sensor and flung it. It landed in the galvanized trash barrel with a satisfying thunk. He lay the Phillips down at the work bench. A smile filled his eyes. “There you are!” he held the T-handle wrench up like the Holy Grail and admired it. He remembered that he has set it there in a hurry on the way to the restroom. The urgent bladder always summons the old guy into a dimension that is walled off from anything else that seems important. It is the balloon payment that comes after coffee. Old Gumbo Jones stepped out into the April sun. He looked at the 4mm T-handle socket and wondered, “Now, what was I going to do with this?”
The old man kneels down on one knee. He bends over the ancient machine and tugs on the bent paper clip that used to bind a sheaf of papers from the Department of Agriculture. He slips the bend over the latch where the throttle cable used to nest. He tests the tension on the throttle spring. “That’s going to do her,” he mutters. He leans across the engine, probing with his index finger. He finds the priming pump, and fondles it like a beautiful woman’s belly button. A puzzled look steals across his face. For a moment, a cloud covers the sun. Then it drifts away. Or has the Earth rotated? He cannot be sure.
The old man rises to his feet and smoothes the wrinkles from his trousers. He turns toward the open door of the garage and marches forward. To an observer, his stride has purpose. What the old man feels is a marshaling of his separate joints and muscle groups, a conscious effort to control the pain that has settled into each of them. He smiles. “It’s working,” he says.
His eyes scan the concrete floor and he sees it. The red gas can with the jimmied spout. For five years he wrestled with that spout, sloshing gas everywhere. The 2 part safety lock required two hands, but the old man needed one of his hands to hold the can and tilt the spout into the opening of the tanks of cars, motorcycles, lawnmowers, and cans full of Japanese beetles. The safety lock had the net effect of creating danger. Once, the old man saw an ad for an open spout that claimed to be a solution for dangerous safety spouts. The price on the open spout was $11 plus shipping. “I paid $10 for the fucking gas can,” the old man said. “Why the fuck would I pay more for a fucking spout?” The old man remembered two poems by Ernest Hemingway. The poems cautioned readers to save the “f” word for circumstances where no other word would do. “Fuck Hemingway,” the old man laughed.
He unscrewed the cap from the rusting tank, tilted the spout, and poured. When gasoline ran down the outside of the tank onto the mower’s deck, he stopped pouring. He fastened the cap, and turned toward the garage. He took half a step and turned it into a pirouette. He bent over the engine and reached for the oil cap. There was some resistance to the twist, but it popped off. He stared at the dipstick and was satisfied. The gas can went back to its place under the work table. His eyes scanned the high shelf and he saw the green container with 30 wt oil. He would not need that today. “Now,” he say, wiping his hands one on the other, “Let’s see what we got.”
He poked at the primer and felt the resistance of fluid forced though the line and into the carburetor. He pumped 6 times, for that was the effective measure that he had discovered the first time he got his engine started, after replacing the spark plug and dumping ancient clots of debris from the carburetor bowl. He could not recollect how many years ago. It did not matter. Now is now, as it always is. He grasped the fading black handle and twisted back, pulling the rope in an easy, measured stroke. The engine sputtered, then roared to life. “First pull,” he smiled.
Now,, the same passage from a short story:
He started the lawnmower.
If this were an essay, I would belabor you with structural theory. I would insult your intelligence by pointing out, in minute detail, the richness of the longer passage. I know you are busy, so I’ll let you go with this:
If I’m such a spiritual giant, why do I get so worked up over bullshit?
We know that love can build a beautiful world. We know that our own fear and anger can only destroy it. Let’s take a look at one theory of the brain, and how it relates to this dilemma.
Was it Karma or did my parents do it?
Neither. We did it to ourselves when we programmed our Reptile Brain. The Reptile Brain crowns the spinal column like a knob in the middle of our heads. This is the involuntary brain that keeps our hearts pumping, that keeps us breathing. It is the seat of knee-jerk responses like flight or fright. The Reptile Brain is the repository of all our basic instincts. It is programmed by what we make of our very early childhood experiences. It sends electronic impulses to other parts of the brain in response to stimulation from what is outside of us, and in response to what is going on inside of us. These impulses carry no meaning. They are just energy. The patterns we stuff into our own little Reptile Brains are set for life. What other parts of the brain make of these patterns can change.
The energy of impulses from the reptile brain change as they travel through higher portions of our gray matter. The first area the impulses hit is the Mammal Brain, the seat of emotions. During the first year of our lives, before we develop language, the reptilian impulses register as feelings. Sucking on a nipple, whether of flesh or soft rubber, the gush of warm milk, feels good. That hot nasty thing in our diapers feels bad.
The sweet embrace of our mother, the loving cooing of our daddy feels good. When mommy abandons us to be with daddy, it feels bad. This little story is the basis of Freudian Theory. Oedipus wants his mommy and he wants to kill daddy. Electra wants daddy and she wants to kill mommy. Sweet romance.
Before we develop language, none of this has a story yet. We are programming ourselves with basic instincts, storing energy patterns into the Reptile Brain in response to their effect on our middle brain, the Mammal Brain, also called the limbic system, which scientists have discovered is located in the cerebellum. The field of human development calls this “early patterning.” We develop patterns of behavior that, in later life, will serve us well and drive us mad. Good instincts gone awry.
As we grow toward language, we learn how to exercise our will. Crying, we learn, will tear mommy from daddy’s embrace, bringing her to us to change our diapers or stuff a nipple into our mouth. Making bright eyes and gurgling sounds makes daddy coo and smile at us. We learn the power of a smile. We learn the power of a frown. We learn how to work it.
The Reptile Brain is territorial. It is the seat of the will to power. The Mammal Brain changes these primal instincts into basic instincts. These instincts are good, but they go awry. This is the basis of Country Music, The Blues, and all of their popular derivatives.
The shit hits the fan
When we develop language, the shit hits the fan. We begin to make up stories about the things that cause little electric currents to jump from the Reptile Brain into the Mammal Brain. When the language centers of the higher brain come on line, we begin to make up the story of reality. We are so convinced that our story of reality is true, that we are willing to die for it. All forms of life share this illusion.
In the Triune Brain scheme, this higher brain is called the Human Brain. The part of the Human Brain that makes up stories about reality is located in the pre-frontal cortex. To be fair to our beloved pets, they also have a pre-frontal cortex, but ours is 40% larger. This is why humans can invent complex things like politics and economics, but a dog can find a bone n a forest and be perfectly happy.
Like evolutionary theory, which has life moving from the swamp to crawling snakes to mammals on all fours and eventually an erect form, Homo Sapiens, the human brain has evolved to an erect state.
The erectile brain and the making of the new world
Before the modern world happened, the culture we were born into controlled the stories we made up about reality. People felt safe with a strong leader and a set of proscribed rituals that everybody practiced.. The theory of law came into being, and small tribes came together to form larger collective states. Like dogs, we were happy and secure when we were obedient to the laws of our culture.
Then things changed. I blame Genghis Khan. His will to power drove him to conquer much of the known world. He brought the best ideas of each culture into each new territory that his hoard swept into. Things got mixed up, and a new form of human mind evolved. Historians call it “the enlightenment.” The enlightenment brought about ideas of freedom that led to the greatest social experiment in history, The United States of America. Aamerican dieals of freemdom have spread to the rest of the world. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? As the Zen Master.
Erectile brain dysfunction
And, so we come back to the question, “If I am such a spiritual giant, why do I get so worked up over bullshit?”
A conservative might point to a lack of discipline. A liberal might point to an over-developed sense of constraint. A politician will analyze your zip code and credit card bills and tell you “the other” is to blame. Most spiritual gurus say it’s in the stories we make up about things.
Chances are you are intelligent, you have a cultured mind, and because of this you are aware that the same bullshit pops up over and over again.
So what is it, really? It’s quite simple. Things bother us deeply when we don’t create a space between the primal instincts of the Reptile Brain, the emotional reactions of the Mammal Brain, and the stories we make up in the Human Brain. This lack of space is called “habit.”
Doing the Jerk
We cannot change the knee-jerk instincts programmed into our Reptile Brain. When we react to them without thinking, we act like a jerk. That’s where the term comes from. We jerk each other around, but in our own minds, we are innocent, meaning we can be unconscious when we truly feel “I’m innocent. You’re the jerk.” This is the wonderful thing about drugs like alcohol, cocaine, opioids. We can remain unconscious but the feel-good neurotransmitters flow, so we act with impunity and feel great – until the hangover sets in, the remorse, the self-loathing. We can make the decision to stop using drugs and alcohol, but after a year or two we realize, oh dang, the same bullshit keeps coming up over and over again. This is because we cannot change the primal instincts we stored in the Reptile Brain before we were old enough to use the Human Brain.
The only thing we can do is to become aware of the causes and conditions that live in that bump on top of our spines, how they leap into the higher parts of our brain, the stories we make up in response. We can change our habitual responses.
Space, the final frontier
In 1974, a group of neuroscientists met with a group of Tibetan monks in Boulder, Colorado. The monks asked the brain guys what they would most like to develop in their field. The reply was, “We’d like to help people take four seconds between stimulus and response.” This is the space between the Reptile Brain and the rest of it that is required to change our habits. This is the space required to become a happy person.
My mother knew that. She taught us to count to ten when we were angry. Neuroscientists got it down to four. They were smart guys. While it is true, that pausing when agitated can prevent World War III, we still have the old problem of pain, terror, and uncertainty that wells up almost daily as we have our average of 66,000 thoughts a day. If you think you’re over it, drive out to get groceries during rush hour. Fall in love. Check your bank account. The Days of Our Lives, a soap opera, has been showing weekly since 1965.
The way out is the way in
The way out is through daily practice. The brain will revert to it’s original state if we don’t tune it up on a regular basis. The practice of creating space in the brain has many names. Those who were born into or who adopted religious cultures call it prayer. Eastern cultures and the new age call it meditation. Cultures that predate the common era call it contemplation. Athletes call if focus. Atheists and agnostics sometimes think of it as self-hypnosis. By any name, it is Love. Turkish poet Yunnis Emmri wrote, “Love, you have taken me away from me.”
Then things changed. I blame Genghis Khan. His will to power drove him to conquer much of the known world. He brought the best ideas of each culture into each new territory that his hoard swept into. Things got mixed up, and a new form of human mind evolved. Historians call it “the enlightenment.” The enlightenment brought about ideas of freedom that led to the greatest social experiment in history, The United States of America. Aamerican dieals of freemdom have spread to the rest of the world. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? As the Zen Master.
Piriformis Syndrome: the anatomy of a pain in the butt 