Spiritual inquiry | Contemplative Inquiry

June 13, 2024

STOLEN FOCUS: SPEED, SWITCHING AND FILTERING

“I went to see the Mona Lisa in Paris, only to find that she is now permanently hidden behind a rugby scrum of people from everywhere on earth, all jostling their way to the front, only for them to immediately turn their backs on her, snap a selfie, and fight their way out again. On the day I was there, I watched the crowd from the side for more than an hour. Nobody – not one person – looked at the Mona Lisa for more than a few seconds.”

Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention (1) explores states of attention, how culture shapes them, and the implications of this shaping. I like Hari’s insistence that this is a collective issue and not just a matter of individual willpower. In this book, Hari identifies 12 causes of ‘stolen focus’. I plan to write a review of Stolen Focus soon. This post is about the first cause, which he describes as an increase in speed, switching and filtering.

Speed

According to Hari, modern culture overvalues speed. “People talk significantly faster now than they did in the 1950’s, and in just 20 years, people have started to walk 20% faster in cities” and “the original Blackberry advertising slogan was ‘anything worth doing is worth doing faster'”. But, argues Hari, “if you go too fast, you overload your abilities, and they degrade”. He reminds us that if we engage in deliberately slow practices, like yoga, or tai chi, or meditation … they improve our ability to pay attention by a significant amount.

Switching

Cognitive speeding has been made worse by the myth of multitasking, a term taken from 1960’s computing, when machines began to have more than one processor and could literally do two or more things at once. The human brain doesn’t have that capacity. It is naturally single-minded and isn’t going to change. So when we ‘multitask’, we are actually switching between different tasks, though we may not notice our switching.

The cost of switching is a degradation of our ability to focus, and a decline in our performance. Hewlett- Packard looked at the IQ of some of their workers in two situations. At first they tested their IQ when they were not being distracted or interrupted. Then they tested their IQ when they were receiving emails and phone calls. “The study found that ‘technological distraction’ – just getting email and calls – caused a drop in the workers’ IQ by an average of 10 points … twice the knock to your IQ that you get when you smoke cannabis”. Overall, if you spend your time switching a lot, the evidence suggests “you’ll be slower, you’ll make more mistakes, you’ll be less creative, and you’ll remember less of what you do”.

Filtering

“Think of your brain as a nightclub where, standing at the front of that club, there’s a bouncer. The bouncer’s job is to filter out most of the stimuli that are hitting you at any given moment – the traffic noise, the couple having an argument across the street, the cellphone ringing in the pocket of the person next to you – so that you can think coherently about one thing at a time.” The bouncer in our brain is the pre-frontal cortex, and it is becoming overwhelmed. There are too many stimuli and in many environments noise pollution in particular is interfering more insistently with the flow of our thoughts.

The crisis in attention that Hari outlines is a threat to our quality of life. It weakens our ability to think creatively or deeply. It tends to make us agitated as well as distracted. This is not a good place from which to build healthy relationships or solve complex problems at either the personal or the public level. I experience my contemplative inquiry as a valuable antidote to ‘stolen focus’. But it doesn’t get me everywhere, because loss of focus is a pervasive cultural problem. Beyond writing a review of the whole book, I intend to delve more deeply into the questions that Stolen Focus raises from a personal and a collective point of view.

(1) Johann Hari Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022 (Kindle edition 2023)

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June 3, 2024

INSIDE LOOKING OUT

I spend time inside looking out. The sky changes a lot. Its shifts are rapid and dramatic. The trees change too, but over longer periods of time. The high levels of rain this year have encouraged an exceptional verdancy and abundance. Looking out, I can almost forget that I am in a block of newish flats in an old urban area. The person walking on the pavement below seems dwarfed by the splendour of the leaves. The road is very quiet for a late morning. The wheel of the year turns, approaching its summer zenith in this part of the world.

I am settling in to a higher number for my official age. In social gerontology, there are (or have been) three kinds of ‘old’: young-old (50-64), middle-old (65-74) and old-old (75+). I am now old-old and statistically immune from premature death. These classifications don’t quite fit my lived experience, but they are a sort of landmark all the same.

Elaine and I have been together for nine days following her repatriation and subsequent stay in a local hospital. We are learning how to live a new phase of our relationship where she has high needs and is housebound, and I am in a ‘caring’ role in the institutional sense of that term. We are learning as we go along and doing our best to be conscious about our experience as well as practical in an ‘activities of daily living’ sense. I think we are doing OK. We are establishing new patterns of day to day life and Elaine’s capacity is increasing.

Mostly I leave the flat only for shopping and other practical tasks and, because we are so well situated, these don’t take long. On Saturday Elaine and I both felt comfortable and confident with me going out on a one hour recreational walk. I continue with a regular practice and journaling. I still practice within a Druid circle (grove) and I find this healing and re-energising. At the same time my work has been referenced more to five personal commitments rather than to tribal membership, religious devotion or spiritual metaphysics. Recently I have been contemplating my commitments and checking out whether they still work for me. These are:

1. I will work from the stillness of the centre.

2. I will cultivate good will towards self, others, and the wider web of being.

3. I will cultivate positive health and well-being, within whatever constraints may apply.

4. I will cultivate discernment, creativity and wisdom, to the best of my understanding and capacity.

5. I will cultivate a life of abundance in simplicity, living lightly on the earth.

I do see a danger in lists like these: they can become a frozen and pious – an internal rhetorical performance. For me, contemplative inquiry keeps my commitments alive, suggesting revisions if necessary. This is my direction, going forward, in the unfolding chapter of my life.

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May 25, 2024

FESTIVE MOMENT

On 12 May I wrote: “I hope soon to get some sense of how soon Elaine will come home, and what resources we will need for our lives going forward. It’s my 75th birthday on 25 May, and my best present would be to have Elaine home by then.” (1) Today is 25 May, and my wife Elaine is indeed coming home from the Gloucester Royal hospital. It has felt like a long absence for both of us and we are glad to move into a new chapter of our lives.

Yesterday evening I went Alney Island, a Gloucester wetland, for a brief contemplative walk. The footbridge near Gloucester docks has been repaired and after many months the island is easy to reach again. Back on the island, I loved its sense of growth and abundance in the summer evening light. I felt care-free. I had almost forgotten how much experiences like this nourish me.

This is a festive moment in my life: a significant birthday, Elaine’s return, celebrating a moment in the year that makes me glad to be alive. I feel refreshed, heartened and re-energised.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/05/12/unsought-journey/

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May 16, 2024

SEEING BEYOND SIGNS

“A sign is what characterises the appearance of something, its form. If we recognise things based on their sign, we may think that this cloud is different from that cloud, the oak tree is not the acorn, the child is not the parent. At the level of relative truth, these things are helpful. But they may distract us from seeing the true nature of life, which transcends these signs.

” ….

“You are always changing form. You are browsing through a family photograph album, and come across a photo of yourself as a young child. Where is that little child now? You know that it is you. You have the same name, and yet it doesn’t look like you. Are you still that child or are you someone else? This is a practice of contemplating your own signlessness. Today you look, speak, act and think differently. Your form, feelings, perceptions and consciousness are all very different. You are not fixed and permanent. You are not the same person, but you are not a totally different person either. When you are no longer caught in specific images or appearances, you can see things more clearly. You can see that the little child is still alive in every cell of your body. It is possible still to listen and take care of the little boy or little girl in you at any time.” (1)

(1) Thich Nhat Hanh The Art of Living London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017

May 12, 2024

UNSOUGHT JOURNEY

Ego sets me up, in both a narcissistic and rational way, to be the hero of my own journey. But it’s at least equally valuable to have a support role in someone else’s. On Monday 8 April my wife Elaine flew to Gran Canaria with her sister Glynis for a restful and undemanding holiday. It worked brilliantly for nearly three days. On Thursday 11 April Elaine had a fall resulting in a fractured femur. Instead of a restful and undemanding holiday, they were in a health disaster overseas.

Elaine was duly admitted to hospital. Other health complications – a characteristic of we older people – meant it took 9 days for Elaine to have a successful operation: not ideal given the problem being addressed. Glynis was the support person and champion at this stage. But soon it became evident that Elaine would not be well enough for repatriation for some time. An original plan for me to be the person who organised things at home was ditched, and I flew to Gran Canaria on 28 April allowing Glynis to go home.

In a way it wasn’t hard. But I was knocked around by Elaine’s predicament, which might have been fatal, and by the culture shock of being in a new place where, but for the kindness of strangers, I had the verbal and communication skills of, at best, a chimpanzee. I also had to be, or at least appear to be, competent in managing (influencing?) the hospital and insurance companies’ relationship both with Elaine and each other. A completely unfamiliar situation for me, and not one that I would want to be in again.

We managed somehow. Elaine and I know and love each other. We supported each other in our respective roles. I liked my hotel though its amenities were largely wasted on me. Its great virtue was in being 15 minutes easy walking distance from the hospital. I spent several hours a day with Elaine, but also had several on my own. I needed to be away from stimulation for a good deal of time. I did enjoy the warmth, and especially at sundown, the sky over Gran Canaria’s south coast.

The repatriation, when it came, felt almost sudden. We flew back, together with a wonderful paramedic and minder sent over for the purpose, on Friday 10 May. Elaine, whose left leg is not weight bearing at all, was trolleyed and chaired both on an off a commercial flight where she got her own row of three seats. The cabin crew were great.

The repatriation process ended with an ambulance journey to the Gloucester Royal hospital, where our paramedic had organised Elaine’s admission in advance and Elaine was wheeled straight onto the orthopaedic ward where she now is. This is also in walking distance from our home. At the moment she is largely being monitored and tested. A new phase will begin when the physiotherapists show up on Monday. I hope soon to get some sense of how soon Elaine will come home, and what resources we will need for our lives going forward. It’s my 75th birthday on 25 May, and my best present would be to have Elaine home by then.

This post has been a simple story, without much obviously contemplative, reflective or overtly ‘spiritual’ content. But I don’t in my own life and practice make much distinction between the spiritual and mundane, and I do know that this has been a life-changing event. A pilgrimage, of sorts.

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April 14, 2024

AN TUAGH: SONG OF AMERGIN

The Song of Amergin, here sung in Old Irish Gaelic, is the oldest known extant song in the Atlantic Archipelago*. The performers here are An Tuagh, whose core focus is the Gaelic-Norse traditions of northern Scotland. They have a YouTube channel, a Facebook page and an Instagram presence. The Song of Amergin is featured in their album Bard and Skald, as is a Beith-Luis-Nun Ogham chant. If you subscribe to the An Tuagh YouTube channel, there are commentaries on both pieces. The one for the Song of Amergin includes both Irish and English texts. However versions vary widely and An Tuagh have copyrighted theirs. I have included an open source English version below, to give some impression of what is being sung.

I am the sea blast
I am the tidal wave
I am the thunderous surf
I am the stag of the seven tines
I am the cliff hawk
I am the sunlit dewdrop
I am the fairest of flowers
I am the rampaging boar
I am the swift-swimming salmon
I am the placid lake
I am the summit of art
I am the vale echoing voices
I am the battle-hardened spearhead
I am the God who inflames desire
Who gives you fire
Who knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen
Who announces the ages of the moon
Who knows where the sunset settles

I have listened to An Tuagh’s rendition of the Song of Amergin a number of times, sinking into a sense of shared presence with something preciously archaic and other. An Tuagh are the intermediaries, helping me to catch an after echo of that time. I don’t have fully to understand it, but simply respond. I am grateful both to the old culture, and to skillful modern bards.

*British Isles until all too recently

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April 11, 2024

IMAGES FROM A TOWN GARDEN

Tumbledown gatehouse

Unbothered to impress:

You draw my eyes.

A single bloom

Among spiky grasses

Insists on beauty.

Six hundred years

In the life of this carving:

How much has changed?

Across the road,

Restrained elegance.

Here, a bursting life.

The lushness of spring:

Who can resist

Its fleeting appearance?

NOTE: At the beginning of April I discovered Hillfield Gardens – a little outside the centre of Gloucester, yet still in easy walking distance (or an easy bus ride) from where I live. Originally the gardens of a large house, Hillfield Gardens are about 1.6 hectares in extent. They are managed by a Friends Group on behalf of Gloucestershire County Council. For me the gardens are a tranquil space, different in feeling-tone from other local parks. Beyond that I don’t yet have a narrative about the gardens – more a set of discreet impressions. The pictures and words above are an attempt to share these impressions. The third picture is a detail from an 18th century gazebo using architectural details from a 14th century market house in Westgate Street demolished in 1780.

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April 1, 2024

GREEN RESURRECTION

I am walking among trees, feeling refreshed and renewed after a long winter. This feeling is anchored by the return of leaves. I am present in, and to, the presence of new green. It comes every year, at slightly different times. I’m noticing the beginning of a beautiful verdant period. It’s re-appeared a little early this year and I experience this as a great blessing.

Where I live, the early spring has been wet and windy, often with dull skies. Nature has been alive and active throughout this period, but I have remained wintry in important respects. This weekend has changed me. I am aware of new green leaves and a strengthening sun. The latter may be visually dimmed by frequent of heavy cloud, but the leaves reassure me of its power in the rising year. Although we are still far from a full canopy in the woods, the life-force – in modern Druidry often called nwyfre – is strong. It’s a time for celebration.

March 25, 2024

MENTAL HEALTH UNDER SIEGE

“In Gaza, there is no ‘post’ [traumatic] because the trauma is repetitive and ongoing and continuous.” Dr. Samah Habr is Head of Mental Health Unit, Palestine Ministry of Health. She wrote these words in 2021, after the 11 day Israeli day air assault carried out in May of that year. It was the fourth war since the beginning of the blockade of Gaza in 2007. Recently I attended a Zoom event, predominantly for Amnesty International volunteers (1). Dr. Habr gave a presentation about mental health in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, with a focus on Gaza from 2007-2021, where there is good enough data to process scientifically. Clearly the situation is much worse today.

The blockade itself created deep poverty, an ongoing water crisis and a severe curtailment of opportunities. A mental health study of children at that time showed that 80% of Gaza’s children had experienced personal trauma and 54% met the official diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Dr. Sabr describes this prevalence of psychological trauma as ‘the disaster of helplessness’ and identifies three forms of it at play:

chronic trauma prolonged. pervasive distressing events such as poverty and institutionalized discrimination
inter-generational trauma psychological trauma experienced by the descendents of a person who has survived a traumatic event
acute trauma an extremely distressing individual event

She goes on to use the word ‘humiliation’ to describe “the pervasive and fundamental experience of the Palestinian people as a whole, under occupation, underlying the varied military, social, economic, and human rights violations that have been imposed over generations”.

One of Dr. Sabah’s principles is that “we cannot treat what we do not acknowledge”. A psychiatrist herself, she says that the Western-based medical model of mental health, codified in the DSM series, is over-individualised. Palestine has few resources for mental health provision, and few mental health practitioners. (There have been some, even in Gaza – 12 of the 67 children killed in the 2021 action were participating in a trauma recovery program.)

Dr. Sabah introduces the concept of Sumud and defines it as a combination of of endurance and steadfastness, both individual and collective. A mental state as well as action oriented, it:

is prosocial and community oriented
fosters endurance and steadfastness
enables defiance against oppression
promotes solidarity
is committed to keep loving despite injustice

Dr. Habr suggests that historical/collective trauma needs to be reprocessed collectively. “It can be alleviated through cohesive and collective efforts such as recognition, remembrance, solidarity, creativity, community psychology and mass cooperation. In youth work particularly (the Palestinians are predominantly a young population), a suggested model is that trauma informed-teachers, medical staff and parents offer community-based interventions in safe spaces – open studios, symbolic expression, theatre of the oppressed).

Dr. Sabr concludes that positive mental health cannot be achieved without justice. “Human rights are the cornerstone upon which mental health flourishes. Without dignity, without freedom, without justice, our emotional well-being is torn apart, leaving us adrift in a sea of suffering.”

All of the crimes in Israel/Gaza from 7 October 2023 have haunted me. This is my second second post about ongoing destruction of Gaza and the deadly consequences for its people (2). Do such posts have an appropriate place in my contemplative inquiry? Yes. If I am held within interbeing (3), I cannot separate myself from these events. If they enter my head, heart and dreams, they are present anyway. I am asked to be conscious and mindful or I will be prey to disabling distress and unskilful ideation. In an outer ripple kind of way, they become an issue for my own mental and emotional wellbeing.

There’s not much I can do other than be conscious and bear witness. But that, at least, is something. On behalf of her people Dr. Habr has asked the people of the West not to abandon them. So today I am moved to write about an aspect of Palestinian experience even in ‘normal’ times.

I believe that Dr. Habr has also given a gift to us. Reading her account of Sumud, it seems to me that its population based take on mental health is portable. I am confident that it can be applied with appropriate cultural modifications in other settings with potentially emancipatory results.

(1) Amnesty International, as anon-partisan human rights organisation, does not take a position on what an eventual settlement in Israel/Palestine should look like. But it does advocate an immediate cease-fire, an embargo on military sales, and a dismantling of the apartheid system operating in the whole territory both for Arab Israelis and Palestinians living under occupation. The event I attended included presentations on possible pathways to peace and Jewish opposition to the current war. For general information about Amnesty in the UK, see https://amnesty.org.uk/

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2023/12/11/poem-if-I-must-die/

(3) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2018/05/10/the-notion-of-interbeing/

Picture Credit: Dr. Samah Jabr

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March 14, 2024

MARCH 2024: WIND IN THE WILLOWS

I’m walking in my local park. It’s a dull day in the first half of March. There have been many such days, and I could do with more sun. I certainly feel lifted when it comes. At the same time the days are longer and Mother Nature is busy with the work of spring: an abundance of willow catkins is testament to this.

I get my strongest impression of the strength and fecundity of willow when close up. The individual catkins are clearer, more prominent. The colours are stronger. There’s the sense of a rich and vibrant ecosystem, powerfully alive.

Still images don’t provide movement and sound, or indicate the presence of the March wind. I have tried to capture this in my short video below, illustrating another aspect of this moment in the year. It brought up fond childhood memories of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows which begins with spring cleaning and includes the gently Pagan chapter The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Willow became important to me in my early study and practice of Druidry. I began a special relationship with a particular willow in Bristol for many years (2), which continued after I left the city and continues sporadically to this day. I also developed a private tradition of following the wheel of the year through a mandala based on 16 trees, all in easy distance of where I lived, with Willow the focus from 17 March to 7 April, hence presiding over the spring equinox (3). Checking in with the willows is a continuing feature of my walks, though I was a little early this year.

(1) Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows London: Dean, in association with Methuen’s Children’s Books, 1991. (Ist ed. 1908. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard)

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2013/1/31/willow/

(3) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2021/03/17/tree-mandala-willow/

Tag: Spiritual inquiry