NeuroSpirituality

I recently came across an interesting article in Science Daily about new research into the link between brain activity and religious or spiritual attitudes within individuals. It has been established that spiritual attitudes, like all other feelings or opinions, must originate from the brain somehow, but there has never been actual empirical evidence of the link until recently. Scientists, using neuroimaging technology, had established a general idea of the area of the brain whose activity they influenced spirituality. In a recent study of brain tumor patients, researchers were able to pinpoint it further. In the study, scientists measured the levels of spiritual activity (which they called self-transcendence or ST) of the patients before and after they underwent surgery to remove their tumors. They combined these tests with an advanced technology designed to record exactly where in the brain the surgeons made their incisions, and from these two pieces of data, they were able to build a quite the precise picture of which areas of the brain effected ST and how. The main discovery that they made was that selective damage to the left and right “posterior parietal” regions of the brain induced a dramatic increase in ST levels. From this they postulate that other abnormalities in personality traits (like the ones that cause personality disorders) may be caused by damage or dysfunction in other areas of the brain. This research could conceivably lead to new treatments or diagnoses for certain forms of mental illness.

I found this study to be fascinating and potentially very useful, but I feel like the scientists involved in this research were possibly looking at their discovery in the wrong light, or at least not seeing all of its implications. The thing that I found most interesting about the experiment was the researchers’ concept of “self-transcendence”. It is defined in the article as: 

“a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole.”

This concept, quite frankly, strikes me as a desirable characteristic in human beings, and one that has been generally on the rise in the early part of the 21st century. With the recent boom in information technology, global connectedness and awareness is higher among individuals than it ever has been. Various social networks have essentially become barometers for how the (developed) world is thinking and feeling at any given time. I associate this ST concept with ideas such as empathy and global consciousness, ideas that have become buzz-words in the realms of politics and global activism in recent years. Almost every world-wide issue from global warming, to energy reform, to chronic poverty (or chronic greed depending how you look at it), can be solved or at least helped out by the general rise in ST across the population of the world that seems to be taking place. 

However, the scientists who are researching the origin of this particular trait see its increase as a chemical imbalance just like any other in the brain. They put it into the same category as other known mental illnesses and disorders, thus unconsciously giving it a stigma of being harmful and undesirable. What if instead of associating ST with other personality traits, and possibly making assumptions about it that are not necessarily true, they treat it as its own distinct trait associated with its own distinct portions of the brain? This should be the case anyway in my opinion, since most personality disorders have distinct behavioral characteristics while ST seems to me to be a completely internal, mental concept. What if these scientists tried to find reasons why ST levels would fluctuate naturally and look into ways that they can help or hurt humanity on an individual and global scale? I am in no way saying that we should seek ways to artificially alter our brain chemistry for the sake of global warming or any other societal issue. I am merely suggesting that maybe we all (or at least our world leaders) could use a couple of incisions in our posterior parietal regions..... at least for the next 50 years or so until we as a species, for lack of a better term, get our shit together.

        Another article that explores similar concepts like (the need for) increased global consciousness and awareness and its implications for the future of civilization can be found here. It is an interview with author Jeremy Rifkin about his new book The Empathetic Civilization. In this book he argues that to solve the imminent problems facing humanity, more than the tangible changes that we must make in our lifestyle, there must be a massive shift in the prevailing global concepts of human nature and human relations throughout all of civilization. In the interview, he explores ideas of what this change should entail and how it could actually happen, realistically and convincingly. He is much smarter and more eloquent than I am and this interview is much more worth your time (albeit much longer) than what you just read.

Trifecta

HELLO WORLD:


Hello world, and welcome to my blog. The purpose of this blog, like many others, is to make its readers think, give them different perspectives on things, to entertain them, in that order. The subject that my posts will center around is conceptions of spirituality and its role in peoples lives, focusing on people in my age group (late teens to early 20s). I chose this age group, not only because I am a part of it, but because I think that we currently inhabit a unique position, both in our lives and in the scope of human history as a whole. We are right at the age where we are beginning to think about and try to make our own personal conclusions on spiritual and psychological issues. These decisions that we collectively make now will probably have major sway in the direction that the entire world goes in the coming decades as we are currently next in line to become the “adults” of the world. Besides that, I also think that people within that age range have had a unique experience with regard to spiritual and psychological issues.

We were born at the end of the 20th century and spent our childhood in a world that was still on the upward climb of industrialization. Mechanization and secularization were the main themes of the world in our childhood. However, around the turn of the century, (the beginning of my pre-teen and teenage years) computers took over and these were quickly replaced with digitalization and globalization. Before high school, we had already experienced the peak of the industrial age and the birth of the digital one. This digitalization created new networks of instant communication, at first simply for practical reasons, but these new technologies soon discovered their most beneficial (and profitable) uses: human to human contact. Due to the digitalization of information, networks of human connections have grown to a scale that has never before been seen in all of human history. Now, like minded individuals can communicate their ideas no matter where they are. I want to explore these connections and see what effect they are having upon the collective consciousness of humanity and the basic assumptions that we make about the universe and our place in it. Being born in 1988, I experienced first hand the growth of these technologies and was among the first to use them socially. Instant messaging became text messaging, morphed into myspace, upgraded to facebook and has now reincarnated itself as twitter. Me and my peers are first generation users of all of these social networks, and at times have influenced how they were refined and developed. I look at my generation right now as either the youngest adults or the oldest children.

The issues that I will cover on this blog will come from any relevant source such as news, class, personal experience or that of a friend or even simply from my own head. Of course, much of what I saw on the blog will be subjective, but I will try to back up any claims I make with evidence. I will also make sure to draw the line quite obviously between what I consider fact and what I know to be simply my opinion (no matter how strongly I may believe it). Some posts will include historical data, when necessary, to back them up, but I will mostly be looking forward and predicting rather than retracing what has already happened. A lot of the blog will be dedicated to the music industry and how it is unfolding in this increasingly digital world. This is because, I am studying the music industry in school and a lot of the issues that it is going through can be applied to other industries and the world as a whole. The digital revolution hit the music industry abruptly and unexpectedly, causing it to make radical changes, the better of these may be indicators of the path for other art forms. However, although I will speak a lot about music, I want my blog to be accessible to people with no particular interest in in music specifically, simply with an interest in humanity and how we grow and adapt to rapid, radical, self-imposed change.






PROFILE

The blog that I have chosen to profile is called “Astrological Musings” and is written by professional astrologer Lynn Hayes. She has basically devoted her life to the study of all things spiritual, from Tarot cards to meditation to non-western healing practices. As her day job she is currnetly a consultant and writer about anything related to the stars and planets and their significance to our terrestrial lives. On her blog, she tracks the heavenly movements and comments on meaning of them. She posts daily (or at least every other day), with a long post every 2-3 days. Her blog seems to be fairly popular (rated 425 on technorati.com), especially since it is hosted by a website called beliefnet.com whose tagline is, “Inspiration. Spirituality. Faith”. She speaks somewhat academically when detailing specific astrological movements and their meanings, probably to ensure her audience of her knowledge and authority on the subject. However, her goal is definitely to connect with readers on a personal level, so she never writes in a way that puts herself on a higher level than her readers. For example, she will often use the term “we” instead of “you” or “I”, stressing her opinion that her and her readers are one in the same. Especially when she turns her astrological interpretations into real world advice, which she often does, she employs a friendly and colloquial voice. An example of her colloquial voice is in one post when she quotes a sentence from a public internet forum and then writes “this quote is so Saturn/Pluto”. She is constantly attempting to portray astrological information as a normal part of her readers’ every day life, just like it is for her.

In her blogging content, she focuses mostly on the moods and feelings evoked by the positions of the stars and how they can be understood within the context of one’s personal conception of reality. The most interesting aspect of her blog to me is when she occasionally brings up issues from the news or pop culture and applies to them her own astrological interpretation. Like most of her writing, these deal with the influence of astrological events on personal psyche, but in the case of pop culture issues she talks about the collective psyche of large groups of people. An interesting example of this is a post she wrote about the film Avatar and its effect on people. Apparently, there were internet message boards popping up in the wake of Avatar’s popularity where people were depressed, and in some cases suicidal, because of the emptiness of our own world compared to beauty and bountifulness of life of the one depicted in Avatar. Hayes explains a potential astrological origin for these feelings. The gist of her analysis can be summed up in the following paragraph:

“As I wrote last October, the conjunction of Chiron (wounding and healing) to Neptune (yearning for spiritual connection) in the sign of Aquarius (idealism and a desire for social justice and revolution) has been inspiring deep experiences of old grief to erupt into our conscious mind where they can be resolved and released.  Chiron and Neptune are nearing their exact conjunction for the first time since last summer.  With Chiron in Aquarius, the experience of wounding that Chiron reveals has its origin in the disappointment of our ideals and our yearnings for the perfect world - the Age of Aquarius of myth and legend.  The addition of Neptune adds a layer of delusion and magic as well as a powerful awareness of where we are disconnected from our souls.”

She then concludes her post with the following statement:

“The purpose of these planetary cycles is not to make us miserable but to cause us to go deeper.  Life may have lost its meaning for us, but that's because we are being urged to seek beyond the superficial; beyond the mundane and ordinary.  We don't need to go to Pandora for this experience - the magic lies within.”

 As you can she she provides an interesting astrological framework with which to understand the issue, and from this framework she gives some advice as to how to deal with it. Read out of context, these quotes may sound like psuedo-spiritual gibberish, but when applied to the point that she is making, the astrological insights are actually quite realistic and logical (this was probably a little bit of what I was feeling when I decided to write this blog in the first place). Not every post is based on giving spiritual advice, as one could possibly expect from an astrologer’s blog. In this next post, she tracks the career and recent controversy surrounding Senator John Edwards in conjunction with astrological movements and the way that they apply to his specific astrological chart, which she had previously calculated.

I plan to have my blog be similar to this one in some ways but there will definitely be obvious differences. First of all, I am not an expert in any field of spiritual study, so I will not be able to give the academic level of insight and advice that Hayes provides in most of her posts. The main thing that I can take from this blog, however, is the way that she treats spiritual issues as real, significant entities in the universe, and not as vague musings with no tangible connection to reality. I want my blog, like hers, to explore spiritual issues and how they directly influence people’s perceptions, decisions and actions, not just their thinking. I also like the way that she puts herself on an even plane with the readers, which will be even easier for me since I have no training and any background knowledge that I do demonstrate in my writing will mostly be gathered through internet based research. The third and final thing that I will take from this blog (and probably expand on) is the wide range of subjects that she covers through the lens of astrology. I plan on writing about just about any issue or story that I find interesting, just as she does. This will apply not only to the news stories that I mention, but to very spiritual issues that I write about as well. Since I have no training in any specific one, they are all the same to me, what I write about is simply a matter of what I find and what I find most interesting.

VOICE CRITIQUE

The blogger whose voice I have decided to analyze goes by the name ofDee Sunshine. His blog of the same name is one of the most personal blogs that I have yet seen within the realm of my own. He posts every 2-5 days on average and the subject of each post is always something that he has experienced directly; he never posts articles or comments on popular culture. From the personal experiences that he shares, he attempts discover and illuminate any spiritual or general advice that he discovers. Or, in other cases, he simply explores the issues that he deals with in an almost rambling, musing kind of way. The way I am describing the blog, it may seem like it comes off as preachy or arrogant that he thinks his own specific, personal experiences are worth the attention of others. However, the way that he composes his posts is so personal that it does not seem like that at all when read; it reads more like a private diary than a public blog.

The most striking aspect of Dee’s voice is his overall tone. He seems to focus every aspect of his writing, from word choice to punctuation, first and foremost on giving readers the sense of hearing his words rather than reading them. He designs his sentences with a distinctly poetic rhythm built into them, forcing the reader to digest his words with a specific cadence.

“India! I love this mad, beautiful, smelly, fragrant, gentle, noisy country. It is the best place I have ever known. It is my home, my OM, my bone, my blood, my soul.”

This is one of the better examples of Dee’s poetic sensibilities, from a post entitled “Full Moon Perambulations”. There really is only one way to read this quote out loud, and its specific rhythmic pattern is re-enforced by its punctuation. The first exclamation point forces a full-length (half-note) pause after the word India. The next sentence is then broken down by commas into two syllable phrases, roughly a quarter-note for each (with the exception of the word “beautiful” whose last two syllables kind of blend into one). This gives the sentence an almost iambic pentameter-ish feel in the first half. This pattern is then broken with a firm statement of fact “It is the best place I have ever known.”, followed by another wave of flowing adjectives. These follow a similar pattern as the first set, but are even more connected to each other since each phrase starts with the word “my”, followed by a word whose main vowel is “O”, and the first three even  rhyme with each other. This sentence, like the blog in general, is meant to be read (or at least imagined) out loud. Of course, there is no way that this particular sentence was initially written with as much detail in mind as I have just identified it as containing. However, my point is, that the unmistakable flow of these words denotes some sort of deliberate action on the part of the writer to give it a specific sound. Dee must have been at least mumbling this to himself as he wrote it. However, the sound of his words is not the only thing that makes Dee’s blog writing poetic. Although he rarely breaks grammatical rules in his writing, he will sometimes put words together in ways that are not technically correct in order to help the reader better grasp the emotion that he is attempting to portray. An example of this comes at the end of a post entitled “Anniversaries of Sorrow”, where he takes an intimate look back at a past (failed) relationship.

“Slowly, slowly, over the last 16 months, my heart has been healing, and I've been piecing myself together again. Slowly, slowly... but still not fixed, and still not immune to anniversaries of sorrow.”

His repetition of the word “slowly” causes the reader to literally get through the sentence slower than otherwise, highlighting the plodding, slinky-like pace with which his heart is apparently healing. He then takes this idea even further by repeating the phrase “Slowly, slowly” once again in the last sentence, this time even adding a “...” at the end to make the pause even longer. This subtle wordplay really brings the reader to his emotional level more effectively than any extra adjectives could have.

Overall, I find Dee’s writing to be interesting, albeit somewhat dramatic at times. He is extremely effective at getting his emotional point across weather or not the reader connects with his actual ideas. He writes with a personal voice; it definitely sounds like a person talking to another person, yet it is also distinctly formal. It is almost as if these blog posts are actually long lost love letters to someone..... possibly to Dee himself.

Voice Analysis

The blogger whose voice I have decided to analyze goes by the name of Dee Sunshine. His blog of the same name is one of the most personal blogs that I have yet seen within the realm of my own. He posts every 2-5 days on average and the subject of each post is always something that he has experienced directly; he never posts articles or comments on popular culture. From the personal experiences that he shares, he attempts discover and illuminate any spiritual or general advice that he discovers. Or, in other cases, he simply explores the issues that he deals with in an almost rambling, musing kind of way. The way I am describing the blog, it may seem like it comes off as preachy or arrogant that he thinks his own specific, personal experiences are worth the attention of others. However, the way that he composes his posts is so personal that it does not seem like that at all when read; it reads more like a private diary than a public blog.

The most striking aspect of Dee’s voice is his overall tone. He seems to focus every aspect of his writing, from word choice to punctuation, first and foremost on giving readers the sense of hearing his words rather than reading them. He designs his sentences with a distinctly poetic rhythm built into them, forcing the reader to digest his words with a specific cadence.

“India! I love this mad, beautiful, smelly, fragrant, gentle, noisy country. It is the best place I have ever known. It is my home, my OM, my bone, my blood, my soul.”

This is one of the better examples of Dee’s poetic sensibilities, from a post entitled “Full Moon Perambulations”. There really is only one way to read this quote out loud, and its specific rhythmic pattern is re-enforced by its punctuation. The first exclamation point forces a full-length (half-note) pause after the word India. The next sentence is then broken down by commas into two syllable phrases, roughly a quarter-note for each (with the exception of the word “beautiful” whose last two syllables kind of blend into one). This gives the sentence an almost iambic pentameter-ish feel in the first half. This pattern is then broken with a firm statement of fact “It is the best place I have ever known.”, followed by another wave of flowing adjectives. These follow a similar pattern as the first set, but are even more connected to each other since each phrase starts with the word “my”, followed by a word whose main vowel is “O”, and the first three even  rhyme with each other. This sentence, like the blog in general, is meant to be read (or at least imagined) out loud. Of course, there is no way that this particular sentence was initially written with as much detail in mind as I have just identified it as containing. However, my point is, that the unmistakable flow of these words denotes some sort of deliberate action on the part of the writer to give it a specific sound. Dee must have been at least mumbling this to himself as he wrote it. However, the sound of his words is not the only thing that makes Dee’s blog writing poetic. Although he rarely breaks grammatical rules in his writing, he will sometimes put words together in ways that are not technically correct in order to help the reader better grasp the emotion that he is attempting to portray. An example of this comes at the end of a post entitled “Anniversaries of Sorrow”, where he takes an intimate look back at a past (failed) relationship.

“Slowly, slowly, over the last 16 months, my heart has been healing, and I've been piecing myself together again. Slowly, slowly... but still not fixed, and still not immune to anniversaries of sorrow.”

His repetition of the word “slowly” causes the reader to literally get through the sentence slower than otherwise, highlighting the plodding, slinky-like pace with which his heart is apparently healing. He then takes this idea even further by repeating the phrase “Slowly, slowly” once again in the last sentence, this time even adding a “...” at the end to make the pause even longer. This subtle wordplay really brings the reader to his emotional level more effectively than any extra adjectives could have.

Overall, I find Dee’s writing to be interesting, albeit somewhat dramatic at times. He is extremely effective at getting his emotional point across weather or not the reader connects with his actual ideas. He writes with a personal voice; it definitely sounds like a person talking to another person, yet it is also distinctly formal. It is almost as if these blog posts are actually long lost love letters to someone..... possibly to Dee himself.

Blog Profile

The blog that I have chosen to profile is called “Astrological Musings” and is written by professional astrologer Lynn Hayes. She has basically devoted her life to the study of all things spiritual, from Tarot cards to meditation to non-western healing practices. As her day job she is currnetly a consultant and writer about anything related to the stars and planets and their significance to our terrestrial lives. On her blog, she tracks the heavenly movements and comments on meaning of them. She posts daily (or at least every other day), with a long post every 2-3 days. Her blog seems to be fairly popular (rated 425 on technorati.com), especially since it is hosted by a website called beliefnet.com whose tagline is, “Inspiration. Spirituality. Faith”. She speaks somewhat academically when detailing specific astrological movements and their meanings, probably to ensure her audience of her knowledge and authority on the subject. However, her goal is definitely to connect with readers on a personal level, so she never writes in a way that puts herself on a higher level than her readers. For example, she will often use the term “we” instead of “you” or “I”, stressing her opinion that her and her readers are one in the same. Especially when she turns her astrological interpretations into real world advice, which she often does, she employs a friendly and colloquial voice. An example of her colloquial voice is in one post when she quotes a sentence from a public internet forum and then writes “this quote is so Saturn/Pluto”. She is constantly attempting to portray astrological information as a normal part of her readers’ every day life, just like it is for her.

In her blogging content, she focuses mostly on the moods and feelings evoked by the positions of the stars and how they can be understood within the context of one’s personal conception of reality. The most interesting aspect of her blog to me is when she occasionally brings up issues from the news or pop culture and applies to them her own astrological interpretation. Like most of her writing, these deal with the influence of astrological events on personal psyche, but in the case of pop culture issues she talks about the collective psyche of large groups of people. An interesting example of this is a post she wrote about the film Avatar and its effect on people. Apparently, there were internet message boards popping up in the wake of Avatar’s popularity where people were depressed, and in some cases suicidal, because of the emptiness of our own world compared to beauty and bountifulness of life of the one depicted in Avatar. Hayes explains a potential astrological origin for these feelings. The gist of her analysis can be summed up in the following paragraph:

“As I wrote last October, the conjunction of Chiron (wounding and healing) to Neptune (yearning for spiritual connection) in the sign of Aquarius (idealism and a desire for social justice and revolution) has been inspiring deep experiences of old grief to erupt into our conscious mind where they can be resolved and released.  Chiron and Neptune are nearing their exact conjunction for the first time since last summer.  With Chiron in Aquarius, the experience of wounding that Chiron reveals has its origin in the disappointment of our ideals and our yearnings for the perfect world - the Age of Aquarius of myth and legend.  The addition of Neptune adds a layer of delusion and magic as well as a powerful awareness of where we are disconnected from our souls.”

She then concludes her post with the following statement:

“The purpose of these planetary cycles is not to make us miserable but to cause us to go deeper.  Life may have lost its meaning for us, but that's because we are being urged to seek beyond the superficial; beyond the mundane and ordinary.  We don't need to go to Pandora for this experience - the magic lies within.”

 As you can she she provides an interesting astrological framework with which to understand the issue, and from this framework she gives some advice as to how to deal with it. Read out of context, these quotes may sound like psuedo-spiritual gibberish, but when applied to the point that she is making, the astrological insights are actually quite realistic and logical (this was probably a little bit of what I was feeling when I decided to write this blog in the first place). Not every post is based on giving spiritual advice, as one could possibly expect from an astrologer’s blog. In this next post, she tracks the career and recent controversy surrounding Senator John Edwards in conjunction with astrological movements and the way that they apply to his specific astrological chart, which she had previously calculated.

I plan to have my blog be similar to this one in some ways but there will definitely be obvious differences. First of all, I am not an expert in any field of spiritual study, so I will not be able to give the academic level of insight and advice that Hayes provides in most of her posts. The main thing that I can take from this blog, however, is the way that she treats spiritual issues as real, significant entities in the universe, and not as vague musings with no tangible connection to reality. I want my blog, like hers, to explore spiritual issues and how they directly influence people’s perceptions, decisions and actions, not just their thinking. I also like the way that she puts herself on an even plane with the readers, which will be even easier for me since I have no training and any background knowledge that I do demonstrate in my writing will mostly be gathered through internet based research. The third and final thing that I will take from this blog (and probably expand on) is the wide range of subjects that she covers through the lens of astrology. I plan on writing about just about any issue or story that I find interesting, just as she does. This will apply not only to the news stories that I mention, but to very spiritual issues that I write about as well. Since I have no training in any specific one, they are all the same to me, what I write about is simply a matter of what I find and what I find most interesting.