They say that we don’t use all of our brain, and it kind of feels like that might be true. I don’t know how you test it and find out but we can do a little few little things with ourselves to get an idea about it.
Is there a more vast capability in our brain than we normally use?
It kind of makes sense that there would be because in our particular culture, we mostly train the critical part of our brain. School teaches us that. Even when we’re very young, we get toys that teach us how to use critical parts of our brain. In school we have tests, IQ tests, to see how good we’re doing with that.
Is there more capacity available to us? Let’s try a little experiment. It’s one of my funnest experiments in non-duality studies.
Let’s think about nothing.
I don’t mean don’t think about anything. I’m not saying to stop thoughts; that usually can’t be done. Instead, I want to actually think about nothing, about the idea of zero.
What’s it like to have nothing? This is like the Zen koan: What’s the sound of one hand clapping? That’s exactly what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to expand your mind from your habitual need to think about something and instead think about actual nothing.
What’s the sound of one hand clapping? There’s no sound, right?
Here’s one little experiment that I like to do to quickly get to the point of nothing: Imagine a table, and on the table are three grapes. Take one grape away, you’ve got two grapes. This is in your imagination, right?
Take another grape away, you’ve just got one grape. Now, take that one grape away. You’ve got nothing. No grapes. Go further. Take the table away, take the floor away, take the walls away, take the Earth away, take the universe away, and there’s nothing.
When you do that, and when you hit that, “Oh, nothing,” then really feel what nothing is like, you can feel it.
I feel that my consciousness just expanded, that there is something beyond my ability to count grapes, right? There is a more expansive part of myself that’s able to be in that nothingness spot. The more you play around with this, the easier it will be to get to that point of nothing and see things from that angle.
Now, think about how this affects our relationships. When you read the Native wisdom Keepers (I have lists of books on this website), when you read about the native worldview, you’ll find out that it’s all about relationships. They talk about how vastly interconnected and complex any kind of relationship is.
I have a relationship with you, you have a relationship with me, and with all of our friends, and with the plants and the trees and the flowers and the birds.
Relationships are vastly complex.
The urge of our critical mind, the part of our brain that’s being taught most, is to take things and simplify it so we can put it in order and understand it. But the world really can’t be simplified like that. It’s a vast interconnected place.
We evolved to have this huge brain that’s able to be involved in these complex relationships in a way that is way more intimate and interconnected than the critical mind can ever even put a label on.
So now. Go back to that place of nothing and let the complexity of everything, without any labels, float through this level of consciousness. According to the native worldview they say we need to get into this place where we’re able to really, really see these complexities if we want to fix the environmental problems that we have going on in the earth.
As long as we think everything’s all tied up and in order, we’re going to try to fix the pieces. We need to become connected with this vast complexity in order to be able to live sustainably within this complexity.