The Somatic Foundations of the Dharma

It acts as a buffer for stimuli obtained through the five senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch that are accurately, but very briefly, retained. For instance, with just a second of observation, the ability to look at something and remember what it looked like is an example of sensory memory. Studies have shown that during the encoding phase, attention significantly affects memory, but hardly at all during recall. Thus, during initial learning, distractions or divided attention can severely impair subsequent recovery success, while distractions at the time of retrieval may slow down the process a little but have little or no impact on its accuracy. All seeming events present learning opportunities. Q: How, then, should one best relate to the world? A: To be in it but not of it. The world is a means and not an end. Practical Applications In this section, Dr Hawkins applies the Map of Consciousness to three areas of vital human interest: physical health, success, and addiction recovery. One key teaching is: What we hold in mind tends to manifest. Another teaching is the all-important practice of courtesy to others, which he says we cultivate in this way: In traffic, always let others cut in front of you. Herein, he promises, lies the secret power of success! In article 6, on recovery from addiction, we benefit from Dr Hawkins's decades of clinical experience with the Twelve Steps and his close relationship with Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. If nothing else it is a harmless fiction, but one that gives a sense of broader purpose and social responsibility to our motivation. It may help you to consider this theory, because it helps you respect your search for personal fulfillment as part of a larger picture. My own belief is that our inspirations and motivations are never lonely, selfish acts, but are responses to our deepest connections with the rest of humanity. Helplessness May Just Be InexperienceInexperience can give us an unrealistically hopeless view of the future. Learn to tolerate the helplessness of inexperience as a necessary step on your way to growth. Taking a walk one morning, I heard the sound of a bird chirping insistently for food.

I slowed down and looked around, and there in a neighbor's yard were two full-grown robins. The chirping was coming from the slightly larger robin, which still had the light orange breast color of a juvenile bird. This adolescent bird was hopping after the mother bird, chirping his head off, while the mother looked and listened for insects. He was fixated on getting something from her and yet the food supply was obviously there for him just as it was for her. The stimuli that our senses detect can either be intentionally ignored, in which case they almost instantly disappear, or perceived, in which case they enter our sensory memory. This requires no conscious attention and is, in fact, generally considered to be completely outside of conscious control. The brain is intended to store only information that will be useful at a later date and to allow the rest to slip by unnoticed. When information is interpreted, it is also stored spontaneously and unbidden in sensory memory. Sensory memory cannot be prolonged via rehearsal, unlike other types of memory. Sensory memory is an ultra-short-term memory and degrades or decays very rapidly, usually after an item's perception in the range of 200-500 milliseconds (1/5-1/2 second) and certainly less than a second (although echoic memory is now considered to last a little longer, maybe up to three or four seconds). Indeed, it lasts for such a short period of time that it is often considered part of the perception process, but it still represents an essential step for short-term memory storage of information. For visual stimuli, the sensory memory is sometimes referred to as the iconic memory, the memory for aural stimuli is referred to as the echoic memory, and that for touch as the haptic memory. In fact, the smell can be even more closely connected to memory than the other senses, possibly due to the olfactory bulb and olfactory cortex where smell sensations are processed are physically close to the hippocampus and amygdala (which are involved in memory processes), separated by just 2 or 3 synapses. Thus, smells can be associated with memories and their associated emotions more quickly and more strongly than other senses, and smell memories can persist for longer, even without constant re-consolidation. Traditions such as anonymity as a spiritual foundation, principles before personalities, and attraction, not promotion keep a group in right alignment. He also suggests that the Twelve Steps can be applied to any human problem, including overcoming our addiction to the ego itself. Overall, the journey of healing is to let go of the negative energies that block the expression of our innate happiness and joy. When the clouds are removed, the sun shines forth is one of Dr Hawkins's favorite axioms. Here is a story he tells as an example of the process: The more we let go, the more loving we become.

More and more of our lives will be spent doing things that we love to do, with people for whom we feel increasing love. As this happens, our lives become transformed. Love is the most powerful of the emotional energy vibrations. For love, people will go to any lengths and do things that they would never do for any amount of money. The young bird actually had good motivation, but he was just going after his food in the way he had come to expect it. He simply thought his nourishment had to come through his mother or it was not food. We have the same expectations. It is not just our old learning that scares us and keeps us back; Like the teenaged robin, we may not have looked for our own food in this new place before. Just because we can see that the neighborhood is full of other robins making their way each day, it does not prove to us that we can do it. Naturally we are unsure, and we may keep chirping after our version of the mother robin, because we are afraid to put our ability to fend for ourselves to the test. Of course, our own personal mother robin in adult life might masquerade as our spouse, boss, parent, or even a job we've outgrown. You never know up front how well you can make it on your own. Nevertheless, you are placed in the world and expected to pull your living out of it the way the robin pulls the worm from the earth. George Sperling's early 1960s experiments involving the flashing of a letter grid for a very short period of time (50 milliseconds) indicate that the upper limit of sensory memory as different from short-term memory) is almost 12 items, although individuals often reported that they seemed to 'see' more than they could actually report. Through the process of attention (the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things), information is passed from the sensory memory into short-term memory, which effectively filter's the stimuli to only those who are of interest at any given time. Short term working memory For temporary recollection of the data that is being processed at any point in time, short-term memory serves as a kind of scratch-pad and has been referred to as the Post-it note of the brain. It can be taken as the capacity to simultaneously recall and process knowledge. For a brief period of time (typically 10 to 15 seconds, or occasionally up to a minute), it keeps a limited amount of knowledge (typically about seven things or sometimes less) in mind in an active, readily accessible state.

A 2010 research from the University of Stirling indicated a potential link between weak short-term or working memory and depression. In the study, the 10 to 15% with the worst working memory appeared to think things over and brood too much, resulting in a risk of depression. On the other hand, people with a strong working memory are more likely to be self-assured and confident and more likely to lead a happy and healthy life. For instance, the beginning of the sentence must be taken into account in order to comprehend this sentence, while the rest is read, a task performed by the short-term memory. When the negative blocks and I can'ts are removed, whole new areas of life open up to us. Let's take the example of a young woman with a lot of natural musical talent who was spending most of her time at a boring job, which she felt she had to stick to for financial reasons. What she really liked to do was play musical instruments when she was alone at home. It was something she did strictly for personal enjoyment. Because of the lack of self-confidence, she seldom played for other people, even close friends. After she began to let go of her inner limitations--all the low-energy feelings that were blocking her self-expression--her abilities and confidence grew so rapidly that she started to play in front of public gatherings. Her talent was well received, and a busy musical career ensued. She made a professional recording that was sufficiently successful that she could cut back to working part-time, and she began to pour more time and energy into what was now a blossoming career that brought her great joy and satisfaction. Although she had known nothing about business, she now started her own musical business and, within a year, was distributing the recordings across the nation, then in Europe. To her delight, she found that she was very successful by doing what she liked to do best. When you finally perceive that this is the way life is, believe me, you will look for food or fulfillment in such a way that you have a great chance of finding it. However, if you have never done it before, you may not have the confidence that you can. This is the lag-time of inexperience calling for sustained motivation in the absence of real faith. Brand new robins have to do it every spring. Your efforts at fulfilling your motivation may not bring you the results you want right away. You may feel like the effort is not working, because you have never acted on your dreams before.

You may feel hopeless and lost not because of past emotional injuries, but because you're simply unfamiliar with this new way of living. This kind of helplessness and hopelessness is nothing more than the anxiety of inexperience. After all, you have not had much practice with living your dreams yet. You have no proof they can succeed. The temporary keeping on to a piece of knowledge to complete a task (eg carrying over a number in a subtraction total, or recalling a convincing statement before another person finishes speaking) and simultaneous translation (where the translator must store knowledge in one language while verbally translating it into another) are two typical examples of short-term memory in action. However, what is currently kept in short-term memory is not full concepts but rather connections or pointers that the brain can flesh out of its other acquired information (such as terms, for example). However, unless we make a deliberate effort to maintain it, this knowledge will easily fade forever, and short-term memory is a critical step toward the next level of preservation, long-term memory. It is possible to promote or enhance the transfer of information to long-term memory for more permanent storage by the mental repetition of the information or, even more efficiently, by giving it significance and associating it with other knowledge acquired previously. Motivation is also a factor in that information is more likely to be stored in long-term memory concerning a topic of strong interest to an individual. New research at the University of Michigan indicates that the surroundings and environment of an individual directly influence attention and short-term memory processing. On their attention and working memory results, two groups of individuals were tested, one group after a relaxing walk in a quiet park and the other group after navigating busy city streets. Those who walked the streets of the town scored much lower on the exams. The term working memory is also used conversely with short-term memory while working memory refers more technically to the entire theoretical system of systems and processes used for temporary information storage and manipulation, of which only one portion is short-term memory. In short-term and working memory, the central executive portion of the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain tends to play a fundamental role. Her increasing vitality and happiness were apparent to everyone, and success spread to other areas of her life. Success stems from doing what we like to do best, but most people are tied down to what they imagine they have to do. As limitations are relinquished, whole new avenues of creativity and expression become available. In the example of the musician who was willing to let go of her fear and self-doubt, you can see how this single inner shift opened up her outer life in ways she had never imagined. HEALTH AND HAPPINESS As is obvious from the principles already discussed, real change occurs from within as we own our inner power via alignment with powerful attractor fields such as Courage, Acceptance, Love, and Generosity.