So, I'll share some from this morning from Dan Siegel's Developing Mind.
And see, now maybe it lines up with…
the sense that I hope we were getting yesterday throughout… Bachelor's since,
the Buddhists take, especially around the fourth link, Nama Rupa, And, name form.
In the sense that, you know, it's not mind and body, but it's form, feelings, perceptions, intentions, attention, and then something I left out yesterday, the four, elements, the four elements in the sense of…
Heaviness, wetness… Air and heat.
And so, you know, just that sense of very elemental…
Nothing… nothing up here about it. It seemed, like, really grounded in the body, the embodiment.
So… Siegel's definite, how he defines the mind.
A core aspect of mind is an embodied and relational… is a process that regulates the flow of energy and information.
He developed something called interpersonal neurobiology, which, you go online, you can find it.
He offers a lot of programs.
out of that.
Interpersonal neurobiology embraces everything from our deepest relational connections with one another to the synaptic connections that we have within our extended nervous systems.
It encompasses the interpersonal power of culture and families, as well as insights into molecular mechanisms.
Each contributes to the reality of our subject mental lives.
He says, this framework is organized around three principles.
A core aspect of the human mind is an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information within the brain and between brains.
The mind is an emergent property of the body, and relationships is…
Excuse me. The mind as an emergent property of the body and relationships is created within internal neurophysiological processes and relational experiences.
The mind is a process that emerges from the distributed nervous system extending throughout the entire body.
And also from the communication patterns that occur within relationships.
The structure and function of the developing brain are determined by how experience… by… how experiences within… especially within interpersonal relationships.
Shape the genetically programmed maturation of the nervous system.
Human connections shape neural connections, and each contributes to mind.
Relationships and neural linkages together shape the mind. It is more than the sum of its parts. This is the essence of emergence.
On the brain side of mental life, current neuroscience reveals the connection between brain structures and function, and provides us with new insights into how experience shapes mental processes.
By altering both the activity of the structure of the connection between neurons, experience directly shapes circuits responsible for such processes as memory, emotions, and self-awareness.
Studies of evolution suggest that our mammalian brains are profoundly social, and that relationships have a huge impact on neural function from the earliest days of our life.
On the relational side of our view of mind, we can draw upon a wide range of studies from development and family function.
To demonstrate the importance of patterns of communication between people to shape how the mind functions.
We can use an understanding of the impact of experience on the mind to deepen our grasp of how the past continues to shape the present experience and influence future actions.
Insights into the mind-brain relationships and experience can provide a window into these connections across time, allowing us to see human development in a four-dimensional way.
People can continue to grow throughout life.
The mind does not stop developing, even as we grow past childhood and adolescence.
Siegel says that he takes a broader view that perceives mental processes as emerging from neural functions throughout the whole body, not only the brain in the skull, and from relational processes, not only from one bodily self or nervous system.
The mind is embodied, not just in scald.
And the mind is also relational, not just in isolation.
These relationships include the communication as an individual has with other entities in the world, especially with other people.
We also have a relationship with nature, with this planet, the Earth, upon which we live.
That shapes our mental and physical lives as well.
The implications of this step… of this definition of mind are significant.
One is that we don't own our minds.
That we, our individual selves, are interdependent on
On others for the functioning of our minds.
This relational part of the definition makes some people uncomfortable.
It goes on to say, mind, brain, and relationships are not three separate elements. Instead, we are proposing that they are three aspects of one reality.
That is energy and information flow.
A self… and then he likens it and says it is a self-organizing process.
The mind is an emergent property of a system.
This process both arises from the intersection of the system's element, energy, and information flow within the body, and shared between people, and also regulates, in a recursive way, the very elements from which it arose.
This recursive re-entry property of the mind, typical of self-organizing emergent processes, means that relationships and brain shape mind, and mind shapes relationships and brain.
And more on the aspect of system. A living system must be open to the influences of the environment in order to survive, and the brain is no exception.
The system of the brain becomes functionally linked to other systems, especially other brains.
The brain is also dynamic, meaning that it is forever in a state of change.
An open, dynamic system is one that is in continual emergence.
With the changing environment and the changing state, Of its own activity.
Any questions so far?
Is there any genetic who plays any role in this, or… Genetic? Yes, and DNA? Yeah, genetic, it's,
You know, so we were born with our, you know, Our genetic makeup.
And a lot of that genetic makeup, you know, has to do with,
sort of like… I forget the word now, it's like genetic activation. If the experience is right, then there's going to be the genetic expression. If there's… pardon? Epigenetic?
Not yet.
What's that? Not yet. Oh. Not yet.
There's the, the, the, you know, if there's…
The genes need certain conditions for them to express.
And then… And so, what he also talks about here is that conditions…
Can change, can alter the genetic expression.
Now we're getting into epigenetics.
So the changing of genetic expression and going forward.
Okay.
So…
Another way to look at that, and I'll get into it, you know, coming into it, is a lot of…
Yes? Well, just… So we're used to… I'm driving.
I'm jogging along with you.
There's a book, Finding the Mother Tree, by a forester, a lady forester in Oregon, which he found out that
You know, when there's a tree, there's no one tree. They're all, you know, connected.
Is that somewhat what you're saying? Like, in terms of mind.
It's just not… I think that's a good image.
Yeah.
So, siegel's work arises from what's called attachment theory.
And, you know, that started back in the early part of the last century, after World War I.
When a guy by the name of John Bowlby
Notice that there are, you know, a lot of orphaned children after the war in his care in a hospital.
And these children were fed, they were… Clothed, cared for, cleaned, etc.
But there was… they were in these rooms in these cribs.
And… but there was not very much human touch beyond just the feeding and changing of diapers and stuff.
And then what he noticed was that some of them, you know, a fair number of them died.
Even though they were getting all that they needed from Food, clothing, etc.
And what they died from was,
Lack of attention. Failure to thrive.
And so that sparked this whole thing about attachment.
And then a protege of his, Mary Ainslie, did this.
What she called it, you know, the attachment study, where she,
She put… she had a mother and her child in a room with toys.
And a child was playing, and they were engaging, and then a stranger walked in. This was a strange experiment.
The stranger walked in and sat down.
And then, after a while, the mother would get up and leave.
And then, when the mother came back, then they noticed the child's reaction.
Sometimes the child would… Be, you know, be upset, but when the mother came back, would be easily soothed.
And they determined that that was, you know, this, you know.
A pattern of secure attachment, easily being soothed.
Sometimes, when the,
The mother came back, and the child was upset, and then the child go to the mother and push the…
Push the mother away. Go to the mother, push the mother away.
And that was a symptom, you know, a sign of what they called ambivalent.
Attachment.
And then, sometimes the child would come, you know, when the mother came back, the child would act like nothing at all.
Not even act like the mother was there.
But when they did heart, you know, when they measured the child's heart rate and everything, it was beating just as fast as the secure attachment child's, you know, heart… you know, so the upset was there.
But it wasn't showing, and that was called avoidant attachment.
And then as these experiments went on, it was replicated hundreds of times.
As these experiments went on, a fourth attachment pattern came up, and that was mixed.
So that was generally the result of a traumatic childhood.
Or…
The sense, the child sensed that there was an adult here in the family to take care of them.
And so the child takes on the adult role.
So then, you know, then you begin to see how that later on shaped our relational patterns. These patterns are shaped, you know, shaping our relational patterns going forward.
What they call our attachment patterns.
Okay.
And then, in the 90s, the late 90s, they started doing the neuroim brain imaging.
attachment.
And one thing they found out is that the brains of children of anxious mothers.
Mirroied their mother's brains.
And then…
A guy by the name of Alan Shores, I heard him speak one time, and he was talking about
In utero.
Little girls develop faster than little boys, which I found.
And then… and then… but that leaves… that leaves little boys, because of that slower development.
That leaves them at risk.
Of some… when a certain something happens with the mother.
And then the child is born, and then, you know, the,
And later, about when the child is maybe around 9, 11 years old, these behaviors start to show up, which are often diagnosed like an oppositional defiant disorder, or something like that.
So that linkage to later behavior, to what happens in the home.
There is another film, too, just very, very quickly, that I think, I don't know if Shor showed it or somebody else. There's this video of a mother and a child. They're interacting, it's a very warm, loving thing. The child is maybe a year old, maybe not.
And there's this back and forth going, and then the mother is told to stop interacting. The mother just goes stoned.
And you see the child is… it's jarring to the child, and the child becomes upset almost immediately.
So, and then the mother goes back to the way she was.
And, and everything is restored.
D.w. Winnicott, the British psychoanalyst who started out as a pediatrician.
Says that mothers get… a good enough mother gets it right about 30% of the time.
And, the rest is repair. Repair is important.
So in that incident, you know, there was this interruption
But then there was a repair.
Is there anything coming up for you as you're hearing this right now?
Yeah, I feel like I'm getting a little lost in, like, the terminology and, like, the theory?
Like, what would be, like, one of the takeaways from… Could you speak up a little bit, please? Like, yeah, I'm getting, like, a little lost in the theory and the terminology you're saying. Like, what would be one of the takeaways you feel like…
I should get promised.
What you're saying?
Oh.
Well, very simply, what Siegel says, experience shapes our brain.
It shapes our mind, and the mind is… extends throughout the body. It's not just the brain, it's the autonomic nervous system. So experience is…
the, you know, how that, you know, shapes the neural pathways, etc. And then it shapes our storylines, our emotional patterns. It also very fundamentally shapes, you know, the way the brain communicates with itself and with the rest of the body.
And how that, you know, with a healthy setup, there's this regulation going on. The system takes in information that may be startling information, but it quickly reaches, you know, stasis, equilibrium again.
But if this is off, that doesn't happen.
Okay, and then how does that shape our… the way, again, our interaction, our behavior, and things like that?
Would that be, like, at Sasheen, I feel, like, way more connected with my body.
Like, things kind of feel a little more in sync, and then outside of the sheen, it lasts for a little bit, and then eventually.
It kind of fades away.
And then the old habit's kinda like…
Yeah, so I think you should permanently stay in Sasheen.
Yeah.
So, what you were saying with the mother and child, wouldn't that be very confusing for the child? To have her present, and then all of a sudden…
Not present.
How would that… What's the consequences of that, say, later on?
Well, like I said, if there's repair, then there's little chance of negative consequences.
Although, if it happens a lot.
You begin to wonder. But if it's not repaired…
You know, there is… Winnicott talks about a client he had, a woman in her 20s, who, whose mother just didn't respond to her, was not responsive to her, and the child actually lost her voice. The woman had no voice. I mean, she could speak.
But no sense that she had the right to speak, because Nobody listened to her.
How can you see that set up? So it's like a dissociation?
Not quite, not quite. It's just the sense that what I have to say is not important.
Yeah, no validation. No support. Yeah.
Yeah.
And the reason… the bottom line takeaway from this is to show that…
you know, the… this… when we look at this, is there an I or a U in there?
going back to what the Buddha said, when he's looking into the…
form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. There's no I in there.
You know, and it's in this creation of what we call self.
Is not just something that…
You know, it's our… we do on our own. It's a joint project, and it's ongoing.
So as we're sitting on the cushion, yeah, you know, we're doing our effort, but we, you know, it, you know, is, it's…
Let me back up a little bit. I'm coming back into relationship.
you know, what our practice does, I think, with the thinning of the self-membrane.
When the self isn't… when we're not, as Dogan says, when we're not carrying self forward.
We're not the center of our attention, we're not filling up the room.
then, there's an attuning that's going on. We've become more attuned.
Right? In our relationship.
And in pointing this out, I want to, you know, I want to emphasize how important relationship is into this dynamic of self.
And that passage I read from Siegel yesterday about just simply what happens in hearing.
It was very intimate. No separation.
We think we're separate, but there is fundamentally no separation.
And we become, in our practice, Enlivens us to that.
We become more attuned.
Right?
To this exchange of energy.
I think that's very important.
I think that's the beauty of it.
Too stupid.
Take it to a different level. Could you speak up just a little bit, please? Just to take this to a different level, you're talking about the interpersonal relationship, that everything is connected, right? Yeah. And this is in your…
immediate environment. The mother, the father, the family.
Now, I was thinking about this last night.
And when I said it's a collection of collective experiences.
I was thinking that there was a pregnant woman in Africa who is suffering from AIDS,
I don't want to be political.
But someone in USA named Elon Musk decides to
Cut the USAID that provides the AIDS medication to that mother.
There's no immediate… Relationship, but still.
His action affects the future of that child that's being born.
Would that be part of this interpersonal relationship, although it's not immediate, it's not in the same environment, not even in the same continent?
But his action and the Doge action.
just affects a lot of people every day. Yeah. It's a delusion of self and others.
The sense of separateness.
The delusion of self and other. My, you know, not seeing the consequences of my delusion.
And Dogan says to, you know, carrying himself forward is dilution.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's intuitive to me that our mind is shaped by others, and shaped by relationship.
But one thing I still find a little difficult to digest was the definition of mind being consistent
Neural biology, like, phenomena inside the body, as well as relationship.
So that…
definition of mind is consisted of relationship, it's still not intuitive. To me, I think what we can say is it's influenced by, but…
I think there's, difference between being influenced by and being consisted of.
The difference between what again? Being influenced by, like, mine… I can understand that it is influenced by a relationship, but I still have difficulty grasping that mine is consisted of relationship.
Let me think about that one for a little bit.
Yes.
I have a… a different, but… Perhaps related question.
So the picture that's being… Presented to us.
is one where… Experience shapes the mind.
what Siegel… understands is an emergent property of the brain, so…
Experiences in my immediate environment, or far away.
Aquar's point.
effect on… This body… on this brain.
Positive, negative, neutral.
Could use other words.
And all of that… Is funneled through, or is shared with…
The mind, and it shapes how the mind is, and how the mind arises.
And what I'm wondering is if… the…
The causation goes in the other direction.
Definitely. Alright, so if what's happening in the mind… We'll also have an on the brain, also have
effect on the body, and also have an immediate environment.
Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, fundamentally what he's saying is, experience shapes neural pathways.
Okay? In the shaping of neural pathways.
it, you know, it impacts the functioning of the brain, the autonomic nervous system, and the interplay. And all those are, you know, you can't just separate one from the other, because they're always in motion with each other.
There's… it's called, what's the word?
It'll come to me here.
I'm stuck on epigenetics, and that's not it. But there's… it's this interplay between the gut, the autonomic nervous system, and the brain.
And so, very fundamentally, you know, right now is, you know, there's, there might be something happening when you're going, huh.
Just with the huh.
And here, and, you know, in this experience, you know, we may not, you know, in an environment.
This is the secret of Sashines, by the way, you know, the system gets really open and open to influence, so you have to be careful.
Yeah, I mean, we're really, we're really tender.
And so there's the, you know, there's this dynamic going on with, as it's happening, with neural pathways.
We may not realize it yet.
You know, it's very subtle.
And it's, you know, just the sound of the voice.
Just, you know, the… Just write my sound, my voice communicating with you, my… my…
My, my facial expression, my body expression.
And right now, there's something going on.
And it may not result in an intellectual shift in something, but there's something going on.
And the same thing back.
As I look at you, and I listen to your question.
And I see your facial expression. Something's going back. I can actually feel it.
Okay? There's actually, right now, I'm feeling really tender.
Okay.
And so it's, you know, it's that exchange.
And because, you know, the… it's…
I don't know how else to go explain it, but it is really shaping the neural pathway.
There was another question.
I was just reflecting on…
It might be speaking to your question, the…
I think that the guy who wrote the book, I think that the language that he used was the…
Movement of energy and information.
So it's… so I'm sort of…
Imagining, you know, if my neurons were able to communicate with your neurons with equal efficiency as they communicate with their own.
And I wouldn't have any distinction whether I was me or you, you know?
And so there… it's like we… the communication sort of slows down between us, because the… because it's not as efficient as…
Internally, right? But it's still happening, so there's still a system.
Yeah. And so that, like, where you locate the identity within that system is… kind of arbitrary.
Yeah.
So when we think about systems, there are about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 systems in the room overall.
And we can think of all the multiple systems within each system, right?
And we think of systems as self-organizing.
And… but there's this interplay among systems. There's this interplay among the systems in your body. It's just happening, and how they inform each other, their expression.
You know, so that's… it's the same dynamic. It's kind of hard to take in, but it's easier to think of, well, the system of the heart in conjunction with the system of the lungs, and the air, and, you know, all of that. It's easier to take in, I think.
But as beings sitting here apart from each other, that there's this
This is the dynamic going back and forth, it's hard… it's hard to take in.
It's not a natural sense.
And,
Yeah.
So… You brought up exactly where I was thinking, too.
I, I love this.
Definition of… Energy and information flow.
Because…
when you think of, sometimes we describe the relative world versus the absolute, right? And the relative is the one where you get in your car and you get on the road, because if you're in the absolute, you're gonna run into something.
But both things are equally valuable. The tendency, of course, is always to be in the relative.
And in the sense of the energy and information flow.
I think, generally, we're in the information flow.
You know, we understand… How to have conversations. We understand, you know, rules and regulations, that sort of thing.
But we don't generally understand the energy flow.
And so, what happens in Sushim…
Or in any small group that's together for any length of time is.
That percentage that you were talking about.
increases.
Our ability to communicate in the energy way.
Gets…
wider and deeper, so that by the end of Sashin, we're all standing up together, we're all turning at the same time, we're all bowing in the same way, whereas when we first arrived, we were all doing our own thing.
So, that's a really helpful way for me To think about.
how… Not only is my experience changing me, but it has the opportunity to change everything.
Thank you. Thank you.
Goodbye.
And I'm thinking, you know, that yesterday,
Like, there's this, like, there's no mo… there's…
nobody in charge, in a sense, but I was thinking, well, there must be some agency, and it seems like, just like you were saying with hunger…
Like, some kid who's feeling alienated watches the Karate Kid and then decides to take karate because he wants something.
There's something in us, like a hunger, for connection.
That brings us to the Zendo and stuff.
almost like… So there's, like, an agency here.
But I think what you're saying is it may not happen
Free will on some level, but it, just like in hunger.
There's a… there's an urge for wholeness, or urge for connection.
Yeah, just as Sego says, the brain is a relational organ.
Yeah, it's been, you know, it's evolved to… in relationship. It's very important. Relationship is very important to us.
You know… I think I'm gonna… You know, so…
But coming back to Bodhi Dharma's statement, you know, Minus 30 minus… Bodhi Dharma's statement.
If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality.
If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both.
You do understand both?
You understand both, or you don't?
I have a sensor.
And,
So, I don't know if I'm gonna try to hit the nail on the head, because that won't do you any good.
So… You know, just very quickly. So, Siegel also says… Awareness.
Awareness.
Reshapes neural pathways.
This practice reshapes neural pathways.
Relationship, again, relationship.
Can reshape neural pathways.
the… And where does he go with this?
It goes to mindful awareness.
He also has a book called The Mindful Brain.
I'll leave you with this.
Being mindful involves a way of paying attention, On purpose.
To present experience as it emerges moment by moment without being swept up by judgment.
When we speak of awakening the mind, this often refers to the way in which we can become alive and attend to the details of ordinary experiences, if it were extraordinary.
Mindful awareness can enable our inner sense of knowing and subjective experience of being alive to attain a new sense of vitality, detail, and clarity.
The study of mindfulness explores both inherent traits and intentionally created states.
Is that what we've been talking about?
Mindful traits include being aware of what is happening as it is happening.
Being non-judgmental, not being taken over by prior expectations.
And non-reactive, coming back to emotional baseline readily.
Being able to label and describe the internal world, and having self-observation.
So he's saying that mindfulness here is helping us navigate this ever-changing flux that we're in.
Right?
I'm going to… before you all, we close for this.
If we could just pass these around.
Keep them.
Keep them under 2 there,
you know, one is about the brain, one's about emotional. Keep them with you, because we're going to come into them this afternoon. It's about another aspect of the brain.
And it's, it's, it's, I find it fascinating, and I find it…
You know, it helps us understand what we do.
So, bring them with you this afternoon. If, if in your, you know, in your rest, just sort of, you know, if you're during a break or something, just glance at it. Sort of become familiar with it.