How we got to where we are

In the beginning was the cosmos, fundamentally as incomprehensible to our human brains as quantum chemistry is to a dog’s brain.

What our human brains can understand is that our ultimate emergence from countless generations of less complex organisms can be largely explained by a  simple mechanism that tests the reproductive fitness of varying replicants.

Systems that try to predict the future and dictate whether to go for it or scram - from the chemotaxis of bacteria to the predictive processing of our humans brains - have proved to be more likely to survive and propagate.

Modern neuroscience has proved that our experienced perceptions of sensing and acting are these predictions.  They are fantasies, or illusions, as is our sense of having a self with agency that experiences value, purpose, and meaning. Everything we do and experience is in the service of reducing surprises by fulling these fantasies. An array of neuroendocrine mechanisms have evolved to support this process because it forms the bedrock of human culture and language.

We are as gods, who invent ourselves and our cultures through impersonal emergent processes rising from our biological substrate.

Personal and social dysfunctions can sometimes be addressed by insight into this process, as when interoceptive awareness of the settings of  our autonomic nervous system's axes of arousal, valence, and agency allows us to dial them to more life sustaining values and better regulate our well-being in each instance of the present.

We can distinguish this autonomic substrate from the linguistic cultural overlay it it generates, and allow  the latter to be viewed in a more objective light. This is a deconstruction that permits us to not only let awareness rest closer to the 'engine room' or 'original mind' underlying its transient reactive products, but also to derive from this open awareness the kind of succor or equanimity we once found in the imagined stability of an external world.

Hopefully the deconstruction that takes us into this metaphorical engine room makes us more able to discern and employ illusions that enhance continuation rather than termination of our personal and social evolutionary narratives. 

(The above is MindBlog's 10/25/23 post, repeated here and given a new title.)

Positive effects of aging on cognition and emotion regulation

After I returned to Austin Texas in late 2017 to live in the family house of my childhood I started a discussion group (The Austin Rainbow Forum) that meets on the first Sunday of every month at 2 p.m.  to discuss a contemporary topic or idea, with background reading usually provided before each meeting. On this coming Sunday, August 4, our topic is "Positive Aspects of Aging."  I thought I would share with MindBlog readers the background material I recently sent out to the group:

Here is an article that summarizes studies on factors that influence longevity :
The Key to Longevity is Boring

And here is the response to my asking ChatGPT 4o :

“Can you summarize and point to research showing that senior adult brains are better at some cognitive and emotional functions than younger brains?”

The bot’s response:
 
Research indicates that senior adult brains can outperform younger brains in several cognitive and emotional functions due to a variety of factors including accumulated knowledge, experience, and certain adaptive changes in the brain.

Cognitive Abilities: Older adults often have larger vocabularies and a greater depth of word knowledge than younger adults. They excel in tasks that rely on accumulated knowledge and experience, such as language comprehension and usage (https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/brain-health/how-aging-brain-affects-thinking) (https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/some-brain-functions-may-improve-age) .

Emotional Regulation: Seniors tend to exhibit greater emotional stability, experiencing fewer negative emotions and showing reduced emotional reactivity compared to younger adults. This improved emotional regulation is linked to better overall well-being and mental health (https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/brain-health/how-aging-brain-affects-thinking) (https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/cognitive-super-agers-defy-typical-age-related-decline-brainpower)

Attention and Distraction Management: Studies have shown that older adults can become more efficient at focusing their attention and ignoring distractions as they age. This ability, part of what is termed "executive control," often improves into the mid-to-late 70s (https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/some-brain-functions-may-improve-age) .

Judgment and Decision-Making: Older adults are generally better at making rational decisions and demonstrating improved judgment. This may be due to the brain’s ability to adapt and recruit additional neural resources to compensate for age-related declines in other areas (https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/brain-health/how-aging-brain-affects-thinking) .

Cognitive Reserve and Brain Maintenance: Some seniors, referred to as "cognitive super agers," maintain cognitive functions on par with much younger individuals. These super agers typically have slower rates of brain volume loss, and their brains show structural characteristics similar to those of younger people, such as a thicker cortex and a larger hippocampus (https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/cognitive-super-agers-defy-typical-age-related-decline-brainpower) .

These findings illustrate that while certain cognitive functions may decline with age, other areas can improve or remain stable, leading to a nuanced understanding of cognitive aging. For further reading, you can refer to the research conducted by the National Institute on Aging and other related studies (https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/brain-health/how-aging-brain-affects-thinking) (https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/cognitive-super-agers-defy-typical-age-related-decline-brainpower) (https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/some-brain-functions-may-improve-age) .
 

Nuances of non-dual awareness - progress after "waking up" ?

I want to share clips from a recent exchange at the Waking Up Community that I found very useful.  "Sam,":who is mentioned several times, is Sam Harris, whose WAKING UP App offers theory, lessons, and exercises on non-dual awareness. 

From a questioner's post:

I accept, understand and find great peace in the fact that the self is an illusion.

    [...] Once non-dual awareness is accepted, is there nothing else to “find”? (or not!)

    [...] Is there an advanced course for those for whom non-dual awareness is now an accepted reality?

And from a respondent's comments:

Spoken language is notoriously imprecise and unreliable for discussing and communicating nonduality. So, my genuine apologies if I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, and I do not mean to make assumptions! From your descriptions (e.g. the quotes above), it sounds like you may have arrived (primarily) at a conceptual acceptance of no-self so far. Such as from examining the "no self" logical arguments and/or examining your own firsthand experience for evidence or lack of evidence of a self. Then, after careful inspection of this evidence, confirming and re-confirming that the inescapable conclusion is that there is no self (at least not in the way most people believe). Speaking of "accepting" this truth, as you do in your post, implies to me some (non-superfluous) role that your mind is still playing in recognizing this truth. And if that's true, that is all wonderful! And can be very beneficial. However, if that is primarily what you mean, then since you specifically asked...

From the questioner:    I kind of want Sam to guide us into something beyond that acceptance. Or is that it?

Froml the responder:   No, that (what I described above) certainly is not all of it! There is so much beyond this if you are interested (and it's 100% ok if you're not interested!). Experiential recognition of nonduality goes deep, but it's also hard to describe with words. Here are a few (far from comprehensive) descriptions I'll attempt. All of these are to be understood as being part of your normal life (e.g. just going about your normal day doing normal activities, and not just while meditating or in some "special" mental state), and also as being somewhat persistent rather than fleeting.

    Feeling as though the boundaries separating you from your environment have completely dissolved such that your direct lived experience is that of a delocalized awareness.

    Seeing your environment (e.g. your computer, or the trees) and viscerally feeling that it is all exactly no more and no less "you" than your body is. Literally no meaningful distinction. This can also feel like an immense "expansion" of you. An oceanic vastness. The opposite of contraction.

    Seeing that your thoughts do not belong to you. They belong to the same indivisible happening that is also all sights, sounds, sensations, and other direct raw experience that's happening.

    Related to the above, seeing that there is actually nothing here that your self-referential thoughts refer to. And seeing how this must necessarily be the case in any imagined future (and must have also been the case in the past). Thoughts are just another part of the impersonal happening that is constantly happening (this is not a poetic or metaphorical description, but a plain observational description of the way existence actually is). And as a result, nothing can feel personal.

And again to clarify since this can be so slippery to talk about, all these descriptions can become self-evident experientially. They do not require any thought, conceptual recognition, or reflection to feel and know. Put differently, imagine I gave you an acute amnesiac drug so that you temporarily forgot everything you know about science, about logic, and about "waking up" and anything and everything you've learned so far from this journey. This knowledge wipe would not in any way decrease your immediately experienced truth of these self-evident descriptions. You would not need to reference any understanding of waking up, observations or insights from meditation, or past knowledge of any kind to instantly recognize these descriptions in each lived moment as simply being what your subjective experience of existing is (granted, if I actually did temporarily wipe out all that knowledge while you were still recognizing nonduality, you might then say something like "Oh holy f*ck what's going on? This is super trippy and weird! Why am I everything?!" haha).

None of that is supposed to be a checklist of "experiences you're supposed to have." And you might already be experiencing every day precisely as described. But since this is often not emphasized (and I don't see Sam talk explicitly about it too much), I wanted to mention some of it to ensure you knew it was available in case that sounds like something that would be both new and of interest to you :)