Everything Archives - Page 6 of 9 - Lisa Colón DeLay

Are you Skipping “Brain Pain” but picking the Plague?

Professor Bop via Compfight

Most of us don’t realize that we spend a bunch of time avoiding a familiar “Brain Pain”.

Just below our radar, but deeply connected with our emotions is an unsettling sense that something isn’t right.

That’s because it isn’t. Though it’s a normal sensation it’s not well-received.

We order and reorder things to avoid this feeling. But, it persists. And, it’ll make us do the strangest things.

Simply put: This “brain pain” happens when we try to hold two or more conflicting ideas together.

It’s officially called cognitive dissonance.

Unidentified, you don’t like it either.

But, in fact most of life and love is full of paradox and contradictions. All the great thinkers and spiritual masters speak of it.

The big problem?

Our cognitions don’t live together in a good jive and comfortable harmony. Our ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions have pointy and mismatched edges and we keep wanting things to piece together nicely like a glossy jigsaw puzzle.

Instead of feeling and living with dissonance, we try to avoid it or reduce it. Anything from changing our beliefs to be in keeping with the situation (to make it bearable), to reducing our regret through irrational justification, to reaffirming our bias even if a logical reason is absent. We are very irrational creatures and the more we think we are NOT the more irrational it is.

(It’s dissonant to be a partially rational creature, see?)

In wanting everything to “make sense” we pick fiction and live by figments instead.

You do it. I do it.

What’s worse?
The social pressure to relieve this sort of brain pain will blast toward us from everywhere. Maybe nowhere more powerfully than from our leaders. People in the pulpit, or the podium, power players in the board room or on news and media outlets they let the zingers fly that force you to inconsistently choice a faulty form of consistency. On cable television and radio of all stripes it’s a full-blown-plauge.

Everyone will try to sway you to give up the dissonance and see it their way (which they call “the right way”). It makes them feel better. But, the dissonance is part of reality just like it is part of jazz music. Not every note sounds just right or fits together seamlessly. It’s off-pitch and off-tempo. It’s very hard to predict.

How tricky! How disconcerting.

It is a mark of maturity to accept that reality is chock-a-block with inconsistency and incongruence. (That’s worth reading again.)

Though it can be unnerving, an abiding peace can yet remain in what seems a spongy place. This place is a good and useful tension of balance. It’s very hard to find and even harder to keep.

So, what about you?

Think about the things that create the discomforting feeling of dissonance for you.

• What are they? (relationships, finances, politics, tragedy, redemption?) Narrow it down to one or two big ones, for now.

• Have you been dodging logic or minimizing regret for the fantasy of consonance because you want to avoid the pain (and reality) of dissonance? Let’s be honest.

What could you hold in dissonance and balance that you haven’t been?

(Thank you for reading today. I would love if if you would share this post. Also great? If you would sign up for the next post in the sidebar.)

-Lisa

How New Advancements in Neurology are Changing our Minds

Reigh LeBlanc via Compfight

New 3D brain scan technology has changed even recently-held theories about how the brain works.

On the positive side, many brain injuries, learning disabilities, paralysis from strokes, mental disorders and addictions can now be treated with targeted exercises that cause brain re-mapping. The subsequent brain scans evidence the improvement.

Also proven: Things like prayer and meditation are verifiably shown to improve not only health and well-being but to alter brain mapping not just down to the cellular level but to the level of DNA itself.

The area of study is termed neuroplasticity.

Even into very old age, the brain now shows us its ability to continually adapt to the environment, and improve depending on how it’s utilized. Certain thoughts alter us. The proof is empirical.

On the negative side certain things the brain engages in make future change very difficult because chemical changes from events can permanently alter the brain’s structure. Nevertheless, the idea that the brain works like a computer or that it “hardens” like wet cement at around age 6 have been debunked.

Of course most of us already knew at some level. In spiritual formation we study this historically as well. The anecdotal evidence has always been there.

Proverbs 23:7a “For as a man thinketh in his heart [mind+will], so he is.”

In his book, Dr Norman Doidge gives us many case studies that appear simply miraculous at first blush. It’s worth the read.

• An eye surgeon paralyzed by a catastrophic stroke is give a rehabilitative treatment that allowed him to be a successful surgeon again.

• People born with congenital blindness are able to re-map their brains and perceive vision through through–of all things–their tongues!

• Wounded soldiers with phantom limb pain find relief for the first time.

(and much more)

Re-mapping is not science fiction nor is it fluffy positive thinking. Re-mapping just requires effort and specific therapy.

So if you could re-map your brain what would you like to change?
Don’t give up.

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Fear is Jail

Fear is jail.

The world has so much information to offer.

Libraries, schools, experts, and the troves of resources on the internet make learning almost anything possible.

But is success probable? Only sometimes.

Education and information don’t create success. If it did, success would be simple and assured.

Since it’s not, there’s always some psychology to understand first.

Namely, fear.

Despite the resources, we hit bumps. We stagnant. We get discouraged. We give up too soon.

We are both afraid to fail and afraid to succeed. We fear the unknown and the too familiar. We fear change and we fear sameness.

Just knowing this can take a few teeth out of fear and can give us a cell key.

Information can help us through our fear. It’s a tool, key. But, we can sit in a cell whose door is wide open.

We assume information is the solution sometimes. It’s certainly not.

That’s why when you make resources and opportunities available to a frightened population success is still rare.

People–whether they know it or not–get stuck being afraid. Jailed.

But, back to the key: Information.
We live in a time were we can pick so many things for ourselves. The rich and powerful used to corner this market. Not just recently in the Industrial Age, but in every age. Social classes, gender, skin color and many other inescapable factors determined what you could accomplish in a lifetime. No more.

But so much will stop us. So, back to fear. It must be tamed. Always.

A path, a formula, or expert advice make wading through a bit easier. But here is the best key: As we utilize our resources we sill have to be honest that we are fearful and it affects us greatly.

If you sense that you aren’t moving forward, or you’re distracting your self routinely, ask yourself some hard questions about what you fear.

Armed with those answers you can push through if you get brave. Fear will be back of course, but you’ll be more prepared for it. You’ll do battle again and again. Know your enemy. Use your tools. Work your key.

Right-side up? (crucial thoughts on perspective)

North is not “up”.

The sky is “up”.

North is “that way” or “over there”.

(Maybe your maps have been all wrong and you just haven’t realized it.)

I thought I lived “up” in North America. If I lived in Australia, though, I would NOT think of North America as “up” at all.

Depending where you are in the world North can be to the left, to the right, to the back, or to the front…but it’s never “up”.

Sometimes you have to turn everything on its head to see better. When you do, the switch may be more “right-side up” or rather “proper-side up” depending on where you are at the time.

Don’t believe every map you’ve been given; be that an actual globe of the planet Earth, or some sort of path someone or some culture has told you to take.

(click photo for source)

Bargaining with God and life

I get into this thing sometimes and I catch myself trying to cut a deal.

It’s bargaining. I do it with myself and in prayer.

I’ve noticed that the 5 stages of Grief are also the same as the Stages of Change.

If you’ve ever started something new that should be a good thing and then felt conflicted?

It’s because there is a loss of something involved. Maybe something familiar. Maybe dream. Maybe a place. Maybe a group of people or a person. It’s a process of grief to move through, even for seemingly simple things. Change and grieving are linked.

Stage 1: Denial

(Nothing’s really changed. Nothing big really happened. Everything is normal.)

Stage 2: Anger

(I really don’t like this. I feel frustrated and upset. I want to lash out or numb out.)

Stage 3: Bargaining

(How about if I do this, you can come through for me in this way. Or. If I do this, maybe this other thing will happen.)

Stage 4: Depression

(I don’t want to deal with this. I’m going into my shell. Go away.)

Stage 5: Acceptance

(It’s going to be okay.)

I wonder what would happen if we prayed with each stage in mind. Like a roadmap. When we got to the bargaining part, we might just smile, because the script is already there. How funny. Maybe we don’t even have to do it. Or we can do it and in the ritual of it we could heal.

Then, perhaps, in the depression stage we can just sit in silence with God and not feel so alone. Then–I’m guessing here–the Acceptance is more thorough and includes not just accepting the newness but feeling accepted where ever you are too. If only I could catch the stages before they get to me.

However it works, the process will happen again and again. They don’t tell you this stuff when you’re a kid. You stumble into knowing that most of life is like reincarnation in bits and pieces of us. The same patterns. The same stages repeated. The same getting there again and again. For the first time and repeatedly.

What change are you in right now?

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photo source