The Continuum Exhibit Redux: An interdisciplinary and multi-
culture exploration of consciousness, human capacity, and the
continuity and interconnectedness of life.
WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS OR MIND,
AND WHAT IS REALITY?
This exhibit is a remake and update of the original Continuum Exhibit, first on display in 1978 at
the LA Museum of Science and Industry where it broke attendance records with over 2 million
visits in less than a year. It came to MN in 1979 for a 10 year tour through host sites including top
of the IDS Center, Pillsbury Center and Calhoun Square.
Exhibit Redux Themes:
• Consciousness or mind is more than ‘what the brain does’
and is not reducible to brain chemicals and neurons
• Consciousness can exist separate from the brain and
interconnects all of life
• Reality is more than can be publicly observed, physically
measured, and repeatedly tested (the Cartesian scientific
method)
• Societies and their institutions based on inadequate
assumptions about consciousness and reality will lead to
the divisiveness, mental/emotional disorders, and systems
failures we see today
“Directly and indirectly social values depend on whether consciousness is
believed to be mortal or immortal, reincarnate or cosmic, localized and brain-
bound or essentially universal.”
Roger W Sperry, 1981 Nobel Neuroscientist
Note: “Man” is part of the colloquial language used at the time of many quotes. Women created the
original and the redux, and took or meant no offense.
For thousands of years -
From Egypt to Einstein -
human minds have tried
to understand the living universe
and the relationship
of human conciousness to it.
The Egyptians
had a deep respect for their science and realized that knowledge of natural forces
gave power. The secrets of science and of life and death were whispered to the
priest-kings and a few chosen initiates.
Horus
guarded the doors to the inner temples and is often seen with his finger to his lips
in a gesture of secrecy.
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHER-SCIENTISTS WARNED THAT
OUR 5 SENSES DECEIVE US
AND THAT THE PHYSICAL, MATERIAL, 3 DIMENSIONAL
WORLD IS AN ILLUSION.
DO OUR 5 SENSES
DECEIVE US?
ALBERT EINSTEIN:
"A human being is a part of the whole, called
by us "Universe". He experiences himself, his
thoughts and feelings, as something separated
from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of
consciousness. This delusion is a prison restricting
us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us. We must widen our circle of
compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature in its beauty."
DID YOU KNOW OUR EYES CAN
SEE ONLY A TEENY FRACTION OF THE
LIGHT SPECTRUM? JUST A SLIVER.
ANCIENT VEDIC TEXTS SPOKE OF MAYA,
THE ILLUSION OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD.
WHAT DOES ALL THAT MEAN?
TOUCH ME. I’M SOLID AREN’T I?
BUT…I’M MADE OF ATOMS AND ATOMS ARE 99.9% SPACE!
I LOOK AND FEEL SOLID…
BUT IS THAT AN ILLUSION? I’M VIRTUALLY ALL SPACE!
AND I’M SEPARATE FROM YOU, RIGHT?
OR NOT?
We perceive separation,
but that’s an illusion too!
We are fundamentally interconnected, yet our limited
5 physical senses perceive a different reality.
Complementary Brain Hemispheres
Left Right
Separate parts Interconnectedness
Logic Imagination
Analysis Intuition
Sequential Non-linear
Verbal skills Imagery
Space-time perception
Outward focus Transcendent perception
Facts Introspection
STEM Context
Logistics
Probabilities The arts and humanities
Rational Dreams
Possibilties
Paradoxical/Non-rational
Education and our sensory conditioning are very left brain,
focused on the physical, material dimensions of life.
They’re very important, but what if we’ve been
missing half of what adds up to fully human?
And what if – as so many physicists say – there are more than just these
3 dimensions (height, width and depth) plus time?
Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, a Harvard brain scientist, had a stroke that shut
down her left brain hemisphere for 8 years. Unhindered, her right
hemisphere allowed her to sense and experience the fundamental
interconnectedness of the universe:
For eight years I did not exist as a solid; I existed as a fluid entity in a fluid environment.
When I lost that perception of “solid” and that defined boundary of my body, I became
at one with all that is. This was a marvelous experience—to be that enormous in
the absence of the distraction of language that has to label everything in my world.
Our academic system is designed to reward extreme left-hemisphere gifts and
behavior. If you look at our level of aggression in society, it tells us what is going on in
the left hemisphere. It gets stressed out; it is on a timetable, so it’s always urgent and
always late and behind. To the left hemisphere, everything is either right or wrong;
It is all about hierarchy, so I know where I sit on that ladder and fit into my little box.
The left hemisphere is verbal, focuses on separate parts and pieces, and
analyzes and labels them. Very important, but… is there a fundamental
interconnectedness we can learn to perceive?
Are human beings - and all of life - wired for unity that’s deeper than
and transcends the physical appearance of being separate?
Malidoma Somé, PhD Dagara Elder (West Africa):
“What we see in everyday reality is not nature lying to us, but nature encoding
reality in ways we can come to terms with under ordinary circumstances. We could
not live our lives on the ecstatic level...the daily business of life would never get
done. There does, however, come a time when one must learn to move between
the two ways of “seeing” reality in order to become a whole person.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the
same and to all of the same. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
In the meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the
universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal
ONE... the act of seeing and the things seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject
and object, are one.”
Jonas Salk, PhD (developed polio vaccine):
“…the most highly evolved form of existence is seen in the human consciousness.
It is expressed in its highest form in those who are the most developed with
respect to their relationship with all else in the cosmos near and far. Those most
highly evolved would also have the greatest capacity for adapting to changing
circumstances. They would be the ones with the greatest capacity to resolve
difficulties... to find ways to survive even under intolerable circumstances... our
minds are linked and interrelated.”
Chief Seattle:
“All things are connected like the blood that unites one family. All things are
connected. Man did not weave the web of life he is merely a strand in it. Whatever
he does to the web he does to himself.”
Scientists discover consciousness in the cellular structures of life and our bodies
Biologist Mae Wan Ho, PhD, documented coordinated acts between biological molecules that rule out
any explanation in terms of classical processes:
“The extracellular and intracellular matrices together constitute an excitable continuum... permeating
the entire organism, enabling it to function as a coherent whole. The existence of this liquid crystalline
continuum has been directly demonstrated in all live organisms… It constitutes a “body consciousness”
that precedes the nervous system in evolution.”
Do cells have consciousness?
Is there an information principle at work
in our bodies that directs and coordinates
physical processes?
“I am going to suggest that neuropeptides and their receptors form
an information network... we’ve got these information molecules. They’re telling the mind, which
is not in the brain, where to pay attention. They direct energy.”
Candace Pert, PhD - former Chief, Brain Biochemistry at NIH
Pioneered the field of psychoneuroimmunology
RESEARCH INDICATES WE ARE WIRED FOR INTERCONNECTEDNESS.
WE ARE WIRED TO SEEK CARING AND MEANINGFUL CONNECTION,
TO BE A MEANINGFUL PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER.
AT WORK:
COMPANIES WITH AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE HAVE HIGHER EARNINGS PER
SHARE. BUSINESSES WITH A CRITICAL MASS OF ENGAGED EMPLOYEES OUT-
PERFORM THEIR COMPETITION.
GALLUP.COM/WORKPLACE
“OUR DATA HAS PROVEN, YEAR AFTER YEAR, THAT THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF ENGAGEMENT IS
ACTUALLY FOUR TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN THE RATIONAL SIDE…ONE SPECIFIC FINDING IS
THAT WHEN EMPLOYEES MOVE FROM BEING DISENGAGED TO BEING HIGHLY ENGAGED, THEIR
PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVES 20 PERCENTAGE POINTS IN PERFORMANCE LEVELS.”
JEAN MARTIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CORPORATE LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
caring connection = compassion.
Good for the immune system that fights off infection and disease!
• In the 80’s, Harvard psychologist David McClelland,
conducted a study with 132 students which found that
watching a Mother Teresa documentary significantly
increased production of the antibody S-IgA.
• 94% of addicts who help other recovering addicts
reported a significant decrease in depression. (Project
Match 2004)
• Volunteering at least once a week increases longevity and
happiness. (Longitudinal Study of Aging)
Are we wired to care about
others and other forms of life
because at a fundamental level
we are all interconnected?
Thoughts and feelings
of giving and receiving love
strengthen our immune system.
Even responsibility for caring
for a simple potted plant
can reduce death rates by 50%
in a nursing home (Langer)
If interconnectedness is our natural state,
is the appearance of separation something the Greek
philosopher-scientists meant when they warned that the material
world is an illusion and our 5 senses deceive us?
Feeling another’s pain and wanting
to do right by others is something
that is “hard-wired” into the brains
of typical children. Youngsters
appear to be naturally inclined
to feel empathy and observing
someone purposefully harming
another, will likely trigger the sense
of wrongdoing, reports Jean Decety
of The University of Chicago.
Even further back, in animals and
mammals, compassion is innate.
Neurobiology research at the
University of Chicago (Mason and
Ben-Ami Bartal) found that, for no
reward, a rat would struggle until
able to unlock a door trapping
another rat inside a clear canister.
Furthermore, the rat would release
the other before eating (and
sharing) his favorite chocolate.
Peggy Mason, PhD:
“Helping is our evolutionary inheritance. Our study suggests that
we don’t have to cognitively decide to help an individual in distress;
rather, we just have to express our animal selves.”
Humpback whales surrounded
a boat to protect the people
aboard from killer whales.
A shelter rescue dog stood over a mound of ants until his
new human recovered an almost-dead hummingbird
underneath. The bird was nursed back to health and
didn’t want to leave its new family.
Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who
had a sanctuary in Africa, saved and rehabilitated
a herd of abused and violent elephants. When he
died, the elephants somehow knew
and organized themselves to walk
12 miles to his home and for two
days stayed there in mourning, then
returned to the refuge.
Connecting to and caring for others – who may be very different from you – is an
emotional gift from our animal/mammal relatives. We share an emotional brain
(also called animal/mammalian brain or limbic system) and could learn from them.
Compassion
does not mean no consequences or accountability
Did you know that the right hemisphere is more linked to the emotional brain
than is the left hemisphere? The right is more focused on the inner world - like dreams,
emotion, and intuition (which has rich emotional dimension).
Does society’s emphasis on individual physical parts,
instead of big pictures that are more than sums of
parts, undermine healthy development?
“. . . human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction.
If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find -- the whirr of a roulette
wheel or the prick of a syringe…So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.”
Johann Hari - The Real Cause of Addiction
In the 1970’s in Vancouver, the experiments of Professor of Psychology, Bruce Alexander, found that
• A rat in a cage by itself will choose and overdose on water laced with cocaine or heroin, but if
happily in a setting with friends will choose the drug-free water.
• While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had
a happy environment did.
• Rats who did fall into a state of addiction (after 57 days), once reconnected to their community
they returned to a normal life.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS?
Thoughts influence emotion and emotions influence thoughts but they are not the same.
Emotions come from the animal/mammalian brain or limbic system, which preceded the emergence
of the neo-cortex or “thinking” brain. Healthy emotions are a foundation for healthy thinking,
a healthy body, and addiction-free/positive behaviors.
Changing states of consciousness and mindset,
including emotions, changes your brain
chemistry and wiring.
NEUROPLASTICITY
“The adult brain can continue to form novel
neural connections and grow new neurons in
response to learning or training even into old age.”
Matthew Howard, PhD and Eric Garland PhD
“Current concepts of the mind-brain relationship involve a direct break with the long established
materialist and behaviorist doctrine that has dominated neuroscience for many decades. Instead of
renouncing or ignoring consciousness, the new interpretation gives full recognition to the primacy of
inner conscious awareness as a causal reality.” Nobel neuroscientist, Roger Sperry (causal not casual)
Eric Kandel, Nobel MD found subjective experience can even change gene expression.
We share the emotional brain, limbic system, or animal
brain with animals and mammals. It developed before the
higher human “thinking brain” or neo cortex. If the animal/emotional
brain is not well developed, it distorts other functions of the brain.
Emotions affect brain chemistry, physiology and influence your
thoughts and your behavior. They can get buried and be hard to reach
(even if their effect on your mood and thinking is constant).
Animal Therapy is effective. The animal brain is the
emotional brain - animals (including birds!) can reach
humans directly, heart to heart. That connection provides
comfort and infuses hope, strengthening our foundation
for the process of change and many forms of healing.
Emotions are a powerful force.
Emotional health is a key to mental and behavioral
health and meaning is a key to all of them.
Humans can choose their meanings, but too often just accept others’ meanings.
YOUR MEANINGS MATTER MORE THAN YOU MIGHT know.
Placebo is the mystery of how meaning, mindset, perception, consciousness, and
subjective states affect one’s physical response to a fake medicine like a sugar pill, or a
pretend procedure.
Does a certain pill or procedure mean you will get better - even if it’s fake?
Since the 1950’s placebo has shown a significant
impact on pain, recovery rates, nausea, even surgery.
New England Journal of Medicine (2014) reported that surgeons in Finland discovered
placebo surgery patients had the same improvement as those with the actual knee
surgery. Harvard and Baylor confirmed the findings.
Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel biochemist (with Gall), discovered a
protective” cap” on chromosomes, called telomeres. Each time our cells
divide and DNA is copied, they get shortened. Telomeres protect but
also wear down, affecting cells’ ability to divide. Feeling stressed can
shorten one’s telomeres and advance aging by ten years.
Ellen Langer, PhD: Mindset can reverse aging.
Langer demonstrated that mindset can reverse the signs of aging. Elderly
men, put in an environment retrofitted to their decades-younger days,
left with greater dexterity, range of motion, flexibility, sat taller, and even
spontaneously played football while awaiting departure.
A 2010 study filmed by the BBC found
the same results. One participant who
came in a wheel chair left with a cane.
Some have claimed there is no research to support hemisphere spe-
cialization. There is plenty and we are happy to provide some here and
more at our website www.continuumcenter.net
Though the brain can learn some compensation, this doesn’t negate
hemisphere specialization. Just because we could learn to open a door
with our foot, doesn’t mean that our hand is not specialized for it.
Yes the brain operates as a unit with some coordinated processes, AND
there specialized functions. A soccer team plays as a unit AND there are
specialized functions for goalies, centers, etc.
Though there may be a baseline activation of many areas, it doesn’t
mean that there aren’t greatly varying degrees or content of activation
beyond simple on or off. Brain states while lying in a tube may bear lit-
tle resemblance to the same brain doing any number of more complex
activities.
“...Several neuroscientists have accordingly revised and expanded the ear-
ly right-left dichotomy to see the right hemisphere as preferential in pro-
cessing form, structure, and perhaps, direct links to emotion, while the left
hemisphere handles complex, rapidly changing stimuli, in which discern-
ing the specific sequential order is critical…” July 12, 2011 Martha Burns,
Ph.D, The Science of Learning
“Story-telling is emotionally/experientially engaging and research showed
students’ brains lateralizing to the right hemisphere when students went
from looking at an unemotional image and devising a story about it, to
hearing a story with emotion.” 2012 Kevin Bohm, Yale Scientific
The right hemisphere developed first. The right keeps a more accurate
record of events and has more connections to the emotional/animal/
mammalian brain. The more emotionally engaging your imagery is, the
greater the physical, physiological and behavioral impact.
With all the majestic complexity of the human body and brain, it
doesn’t make a lot of sense that a whole half of the brain (the right
hemisphere) is not worth developing in school. That’s a lot of prime
real estate to waste.
11
Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, a Harvard brain scientist, had a stroke that shut
down her left brain hemisphere for 8 years. Unhindered, her right
hemisphere allowed her to sense and experience the fundamental
interconnectedness of the universe:
For eight years I did not exist as a solid; I existed as a fluid entity in a fluid environment.
When I lost that perception of “solid” and that defined boundary of my body, I became
at one with all that is. This was a marvelous experience – to be that enormous in
the absence of the distraction of language that has to label everything in my world.
Our academic system is designed to reward extreme left-hemisphere gifts and
behavior. If you look at our level of aggression in society, it tells us what is going on in
the left hemisphere. It gets stressed out; it is on a timetable, so it’s always urgent and
always late and behind. To the left hemisphere, everything is either right or wrong;
It is all about hierarchy, so I know where I sit on that ladder and fit into my little box.
The left hemisphere is verbal, focuses on separate parts and pieces, and
analyzes and labels them. Very important, but… is there a fundamental
interconnectedness we can learn to perceive?
Are human beings – and all of life – wired for unity that’s deeper
than and transcends the physical appearance of being separate?
I once had a roommate who had been hit by a car and bounced on the
right side of her head and, to be expected, had difficulty moving the
left side of her body, and difficulty with her right brain. She was a very
cold and calculating, almost robotic, person. I didn’t know her before
the accident but she seemed to be a real-life demonstration of left brain
dominance and low self-awareness/emotional IQ. Living with her was
an unpleasant and fortunately brief experience.
To graduate beyond everyday reality, many Indigenous cultures have
initiations to forge a new personal experience of and relationship with
nature and the universe. When deprived of the physical pillars of food,
sleep, and water, the grasp that physical reality normally has on one’s ex-
perience and perception of the world loosens, and the right hemisphere
is unobstructed in its interacting with life.
Doesn’t it make sense that the two halves of the brain would be comple-
mentary? The left brain capacities are what computers can replicate and
artificial intelligence can mimic. It can be cold and calculating, good
for strategy, and goal-oriented. But the right brain capacities are the
meaning oriented human-only capacities of imagination, intuition, and
vision to guide strategy.
The left brain is the logistical side that deals with the here-and-now box
of material circumstances. Just as imagination can take you away or in-
tuition tells you something the rules of the box say you shouldn’t know,
humans are wired for transcending that material box. Sadly, right-brain
dominate children are told they are dumb if they don’t fit the left-brain
box. Some children may need transcendence or detachment from the
box, but are not taught how, so may then turn to drugs.
13
Malidoma Somé, PhD Dagara Elder (West Africa):
“What we see in everyday reality is not nature lying to us, but nature encoding
reality in ways we can come to terms with under ordinary circumstances. We could
not live our lives on the ecstatic level...the daily business of life would never get
done. There does, however, come a time when one must learn to move between
the two ways of “seeing” reality in order to become a whole person.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the
same and to all of the same. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
In the meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the
universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal
ONE... the act of seeing and the things seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject
and object, are one.”
Jonas Salk, MD (developed polio vaccine):
“…the most highly evolved form of existence is seen in the human consciousness.
It is expressed in its highest form in those who are the most developed with
respect to their relationship with all else in the cosmos near and far. Those most
highly evolved would also have the greatest capacity for adapting to changing
circumstances. They would be the ones with the greatest capacity to resolve
difficulties... to find ways to survive even under intolerable circumstances... our
minds are linked and interrelated.”
Black Elk Ogala Sioux:
“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls
of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe
and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells
the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere and is within each of us.”
Albert Einstein is featured throughout the exhibit. Here he gets his
own page.
“I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational
thinking.”
“There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the
order lying behind the appearance.”
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
“And certainly we should take care not to make the intellect our god; it
has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead, it can
only serve.”
“These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think
in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words
afterward.”
“Anyone who becomes seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes
convinced that there is a spirit manifest in the laws of the universe, a spirit
vastly superior to that of man.”
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our
humanity.”
“I am absolutely convinced that no amount of wealth in the world can help
humanity move forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker.
The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that can lead
us to noble thoughts and deeds.”
“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for
development accorded the individual.”
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained
through understanding.”
15
Continuum Center first hosted Candace Pert, PhD in the early 90’s, as
part of a Speaker Series. I remember her saying that consciousness is in
every cell of the body. That was fascinating because we assume it’s just
in the brain.
Scientists are looking in new directions and delving deeper into the
evolutionary process.
“It’s becoming clear that there’s an interaction between the parts and the
whole which is far more complex and multidirectional than people used to
think. Cells act in what I call a cognitive way or an information processing
way. Some people like to say “computational.” The only reason that I don’t
use the word computational is that it doesn’t include the sensory aspect
of how cells operate. And the sensing and its molecular bases are all very
firmly established scientifically. There’s no question about it.
What we don’t understand is how everything is integrated, how the infor-
mation is processed and how the cells end up doing the appropriate thing.
We know a lot about the components involved in signal transfer and deci-
sion-making, but we don’t know how the whole system works. That I think
is the key frontier in the 21st century.” James Shapiro, PhD - Biologist,
University of Chicago
“The biological sciences increasingly recognise that life isn’t simply a ge-
netically determined programme but is centrally a matter of information
and communication systems nested in larger communicative systems. The
latter include both internal and external, and natural and cultural envi-
ronments. But ‘information’ is an under-unanalysed term in relation to
living systems.” Wendy Wheeler, PhD - Emeritus Professor of English
Literature and Cultural Inquiry, London Metropolitan University
17
“Mind rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has
existed always…the source and condition of physical reality.” George Wald,
MD - Nobel biologist
“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has
monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there
are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one cal-
culates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion
almost beyond question.” Fred Hoyle, PhD - astrophysicist
Denis Walsh, PhD is a Professor of philosophy at the University of Toron-
to specializing in evolutionary biology. His research includes the relation
between life and mind, and the concept of agency: organisms as natural
purposive entities, agents of evolutionary change, not simply its objects.
“The individual organism is not computed, or decoded; it is negotiated.”
Negotiated…not computed and not imposed. That’s Nature’s way of rela-
tionship.
Relationships, respect, and integrity are central. Are you motivated by ego/
self-protection? Do you care only about serving your own agenda of per-
sonal desires and sense of security? Do you negotiate or do you try to con-
trol and manipulate? Persuade is one thing. Manipulate is another.
BTW. There’s a difference between “using” and “abusing”. We are all re-
sources to be shared and used, but not to be taken advantage of, not to
be lied to or manipulated and treated without regard for our own needs:
physical, mental, and emotional.
Many confuse fear with respect, and control with security.
19
RESEARCH INDICATES WE ARE WIRED FOR INTERCONNECTEDNESS.
WE ARE WIRED TO SEEK CARING AND MEANINGFUL CONNECTION,
TO BE A MEANINGFUL PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER.
AT WORK:
COMPANIES WITH AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE HAVE HIGHER EARNINGS PER
SHARE. BUSINESSES WITH A CRITICAL MASS OF ENGAGED EMPLOYEES OUT-
PERFORM THEIR COMPETITION.
GALLUP.COM/WORKPLACE
“OUR DATA HAS PROVEN, YEAR AFTER YEAR, THAT THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF ENGAGEMENT IS
ACTUALLY FOUR TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN THE RATIONAL SIDE… ONE SPECIFIC FINDING IS
THAT WHEN EMPLOYEES MOVE FROM BEING DISENGAGED TO BEING HIGHLY ENGAGED, THEIR
PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVES 20 PERCENTAGE POINTS IN PERFORMANCE LEVELS.”
JEAN MARTIN – EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CORPORATE LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
I have worked with Continuum Center since 1984 on an average yearly
salary of $16K. I spent four years working for no financial compensation
(2013-2017) in North Minneapolis at North High, bringing the Discov-
ery of Self curriculum to a struggling basketball team at a struggling
school. I was married or cohabiting for about half the years since 1984,
though I often heard the complaint from my husbands - who could be
very generous - that they carried the financial burden. I drove older
used cars and had little or no discretionary funds, but I had meaning in
my life. I made a contribution to many who knew I really cared because
I obviously wasn’t doing it for the money.
Ideally meaning and money aren’t mutually exclusive, but often one
must choose. I had confidence the money would follow, I just didn’t
know how long it would take! Through this process I had to develop a
lot of patience, persistence and faith that I was on the right path.
As humans evolve, feeling that your work is part of something mean-
ingful, becomes increasingly important. Companies have to under-
stand the non-material dimensions of employee development and en-
gagement.
Workforce engagement isn’t getting any better, and employees are ac-
tively searching for new jobs. China Gorman April 3, 2017
Gallup State of the American Workplace Report (2018) reported 37%
less absenteeism, 90% less turnover, and 28% less safety incidents in
organizations with higher employee engagement scores.
Survey says nearly half would forgo a pay raise of $9K to do work they
consider more meaningful.
“Millennial workers want their jobs to hold meaning, and nearly half of
them would trade a lucrative raise for a position where they could make
a greater impact, new research has found. In addition to wanting to find
work meaningful, millennials say they care a lot about learning and grow-
ing on the job.” Brandie Weikle CBC News Mar 30, 2019
21
CARING CONNECTION = COMPASSION.
GOOD FOR THE IMMUNE SYSTEM THAT FIGHTS OFF INFECTION AND DISEASE!
• In the 80s, Harvard psychologist David McClelland,
conducted a study with 132 students which found that
watching a Mother Teresa documentary significantly
increased production of the antibody S-IgA.
• 94% of addicts who help other recovering addicts
reported a significant decrease in depression. (Project
Match, 2004)
• Volunteering at least once a week increases longevity and
happiness. (Longitudinal Study of Aging)
Are we wired to care about
others and other forms of life
because at a fundamental level
we are all interconnected?
Thoughts and feelings
of giving and receiving love
strengthen our immune system.
Even responsibility for caring
for a simple potted plant
can reduce death rates by 50%
in a nursing home. (Langer)
IF INTERCONNECTEDNESS IS OUR NATURAL STATE,
IS THE APPEARANCE OF SEPARATION SOMETHING THE GREEK
PHILOSOPHER-SCIENTISTS MEANT WHEN THEY WARNED THAT THE MATERIAL
WORLD IS AN ILLUSION AND OUR 5 SENSES DECEIVE US?
We need connection. Is this why we were warned not to fall for the
illusion of separation?
“I feel that the essence of spiritual practice is your attitude toward others.
When you have a pure, sincere motivation, then you have right attitude
toward others based on kindness, compassion, love and respect.” Dalai
Lama
“Societal choices, more often than not, are the result of expediency, statis-
tical fallacy, sentiment, political or media pressure, or personal prejudice
and vested interest. Because societies lack the necessary reality base for for-
mulation of effective problem resolutions, they fall back, over and over, on
a resort of force (in its various expressions)…Unfortunately we’ve become
so used to an atmosphere of fear and violence…” David Hawkins, MD
“It is necessary to recognize that acts of extreme violence and cruelty do
not represent merely an odd or marginal and private retreat into barba-
rism. On the contrary, warlike values and the social mindset they legiti-
mate have become the primary currency of a market-driven culture that
takes as its model a Darwinian shark tank in which only the strongest
survive. At work in the new hyper-social Darwinism is a view of the Other
as the enemy.” Henry A Giroux – Paulo Friere Distinguished Scholar in
Critical Pedagogy
“Conscious inner evolution is the particular phase of evolution that we
are currently passing through.” Peter Russell, MD - psychology, physics,
computer science
23
Feeling another’s pain and wanting
to do right by others is something
“hard-wired” into the brains of
typical children who appear to be
naturally inclined to feel empathy.
Observing someone purposefully
harming another will likely trigger
the sense of wrongdoing, reports
Jean Decety, PhD - Social
Neuroscience, University
of Chicago.
Could compassion be innate in
non-human mammals too?
An intriguing experiment:
Neurobiology research at the
University of Chicago (Mason and
Ben-Ami Bartal) found that, for no
reward, a rat would struggle until
able to unlock a door trapping
another rat inside a clear canister.
Furthermore, the rat would release
the other before eating (and
sharing) his favorite chocolate.
Peggy Mason, PhD:
“Helping is our evolutionary inheritance. Our study suggests that
we don’t have to cognitively decide to help an individual in distress;
rather, we just have to express our animal selves.”
We are born with the instinct for compassion but it gets conditioned out
of us while competition is reinforced. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
“Our whole educational system suffers from this evil: An exaggerated com-
petitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship
acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.” Albert Einstein,
Monthly Review (1949)
We need a better balance.
Could we develop, within the education system, our instincts to share,
empathize, and have compassion? Can emotional pain be a teacher?
From the broken heart comes a heart that can recognize and identify
with the pain of others. A wound such as that must not be wasted or
buried in self-pity, but brought into the light and examined, reflected
upon, and used as a lens through which the lives of others are better
understood.
Unfortunately, we seem conditioned to use our pain as a shield or we
project it onto others like a weapon to hurt them. We could grow from
our pain, to follow it to that deep stomach clenching place that multi-
tudes feel, and be moved to want to lessen such pain for all people –
even people who seem so different.
We inherit emotions from animals (and even birds and some reptiles
have a primitive emotional brain). They demonstrate loyalty, uncondi-
tional love, gratitude, the urge to protect and have compassion - even
towards other species, while humans tend to care about only those in
their circles of familiarity and similarity. What are we taught? By the
way, animals also have some right and left hemisphere …some of what
we call the human “thinking” brain.
25
Humpback whales surrounded
a boat to protect the people
aboard from killer whales.
A shelter rescue dog stood over a mound of ants until his
new human recovered an almost-dead hummingbird
underneath. The bird was nursed back to health and
didn’t want to leave its new family.
Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who
had a sanctuary in Africa, saved and rehabilitated
a herd of abused and violent elephants. When he
died, the elephants somehow knew
and organized themselves to walk
12 miles to his home and for two
days stayed there in mourning, then
returned to the refuge.
Connecting to and caring for others – who may be very different from you – is an
emotional gift from our animal/mammal relatives. We share an emotional brain
(also called animal/mammalian brain or limbic system) and could learn from them.
COMPASSION
DOES NOT MEAN NO CONSEQUENCES OR ACCOUNTABILITY
We use phrases like “You’re behaving like an animal” to express disgust
or disdain, but animals only behave badly if they’ve been abused. Ani-
mals kill to eat or to protect themselves. They don’t torture or play cruel
games with the intent to humiliate.
Animals, without hesitation, will sacrifice their own well-being or even
their lives to help another animal or human.
Have compassion – and forgiveness – but hold people accountable for
hurtful or disrespectful behaviors. Compassion doesn’t mean being a
doormat. We can choose to maintain boundaries, perhaps not see or
spend time with someone who has hurt us, and still have compassion
for them.
27
Did you know that the right hemisphere is more linked to the emotional brain
than is the left hemisphere? The right is more focused on the inner world – like dreams,
emotion, and intuition (which has rich emotional dimension).
DOES SOCIETY’S EMPHASIS ON INDIVIDUAL PHYSICAL PARTS,
INSTEAD OF BIG PICTURES THAT ARE MORE THAN SUMS OF
PARTS, UNDERMINE HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT?
“. . . human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction.
If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find – the whirr of a roulette
wheel or the prick of a syringe… So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.”
Johann Hari – The Real Cause of Addiction
In the 1970s in Vancouver, the experiments of Professor of Psychology, Bruce Alexander, found that
• A rat in a cage by itself will choose and overdose on water laced with cocaine or heroin, but if
happily in a setting with friends will choose the drug-free water.
• While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had
a happy environment did.
• For the rats who did fall into a state of addiction (after 57 days): once reconnected to their
community they returned to a normal life.
Do we struggle in silos when we need an interdisciplinary perspective?
Do we not see the forest for the trees? We try to understand the universe
by studying ever smaller parts and pieces, but can’t see how they fit to-
gether or the implications of the bigger picture.
“The dream of mechanism washed over Western thought. Humanities
strove to become sciences, each science to become physics. Biology chased
after chemistry, chemistry after mathematics - the ultimate destination in
every field being always that final elementary particle.” Allan Wheelis,
PhD – psychoanalyst, writer
“There is a reductionist tendency in this model to explain life by looking
at DNA, at the physics or chemistry of molecules and atoms. Similarly, if
people study the brain in psychology, they look at the biological structure
of the brain, at the nerve cells and how nerve signals propagate. Each
level is explained in terms of a lower level through physics mathematics
and logical principles. It is an ideal but in practice new discoveries some-
times force us to modify the principles.” Piet Hut, PhD - professor of
astrophysics and interdisciplinary studies at the Institute for Advanced
Studies at Princeton
“First of all and at a minimum, the reductionist view of the human person
has to go. A human being is not simply a rational animal. A human being
is not simply a tool user. A human being is not simply a linguistic being.
A human being is poetic and aesthetic, is capable of sensitive responses
to an ever-expanding network of relationships within the human world
and beyond, even with the distant stars. Human beings are social beings,
with an emphasis on relationship and connectedness. Human beings are
co-creators.” Tu Weiming, PhD - professor of Chinese history and phi-
losophy at Harvard and director of the Yenching Institute
29
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS?
Thoughts influence emotion and emotions influence thoughts – but they are not the same.
Emotions come from the animal/mammalian brain or limbic system, which preceded the emergence
of the neo-cortex or “thinking” brain. Healthy emotions are a foundation for healthy thinking,
a healthy body, and addiction-free/positive behaviors.
Changing states of consciousness and mindset,
including emotions, changes your brain
chemistry and wiring.
NEUROPLASTICITY
“The adult brain can continue to form novel
neural connections and grow new neurons in
response to learning or training even into old age.”
Matthew Howard, PhD and Eric Garland PhD
“Current concepts of the mind-brain relationship involve a direct break with the long established
materialist and behaviorist doctrine that has dominated neuroscience for many decades. Instead of
renouncing or ignoring consciousness, the new interpretation gives full recognition to the primacy of
inner conscious awareness as a causal reality.” (Causal not casual) Roger Sperry, Nobel neuroscientist
Eric Kandel, Nobel MD found subjective experience can even change gene expression.
There is the mistaken belief in conventional schools of thought that
emotions are nothing more than thoughts, and in any case, neither are
anything more than chemicals. With that belief, emotional issues are
approached cognitively, rationally, and/or with chemical treatments.
The emotional brain emerged in evolution millions of years before the
higher neo-cortex, which means that emotions were there first. Emo-
tions are a foundation for thoughts. Negative emotions that have been
unresolved or unhealed will affect perception. For instance, a man who
grew up with an unhappy and angry mother, who placed unreasonable
blame and consequences on him, may later perceive a strong woman
that holds him accountable (for something he did do or say) as a dom-
ineering person to be resisted at all costs. While this man could be
very successful in his professional life, for example, he may struggle in
romantic relationships with females. The perceptions formed around
his early childhood experiences, along with the unexamined emotion-
al impact of said experiences, may unconsciously impact him in his
current life.
Emotions affect perception and thinking. Emotions affect brain chem-
istry and brain wiring (neural-networks). If childhood patterns of
“stimulus-response” are hijacked by negative emotions, affected brain
chemistry and wiring gets further entrenched and advanced with time.
If we are conditioned emotionally to feel unsupported, we will perceive
threats of withheld support and we will feel the need to protect ourselves
by either “throwing in the towel” or trying to control the situation. We
will interpret the “stimulus” along a well-worn neural-network.
Fortunately we can change our wiring if we change our consciousness.
31
WE SHARE THE EMOTIONAL BRAIN, LIMBIC SYSTEM, OR “ANIMAL
BRAIN” WITH ANIMALS, LIKE MAMMALS and other vertebrates
including birds and even reptiles who have a simpler version.
It developed before the higher human “thinking brain” or neo cortex.
If the animal/emotional brain is not well developed, it distorts other
functions of the brain.
Emotions affect brain chemistry and physiology and influence your
thoughts and your behavior. They can get buried and be hard to reach
(even if their effect on your mood and thinking is constant).
ANIMAL THERAPY IS EFFECTIVE. The animal brain is the
emotional brain. Animals (including birds!) can reach
humans directly, heart to heart. That connection provides
comfort and infuses hope, strengthening our foundation
for the process of change and many forms of healing.
EMOTIONS ARE A POWERFUL FORCE.
EMOTIONAL HEALTH IS A KEY TO MENTAL AND BEHAVIORAL
HEALTH AND MEANING IS A KEY TO ALL OF THEM.
Humans can choose their meanings, but too often just accept others’ meanings.
YOUR MEANINGS MATTER MORE THAN YOU MIGHT KNOW.
We share an emotional brain with animals…animal therapy works be-
cause emotional connection is a powerful force. Emotions are key to
mental and behavioral health, and time doesn’t always heal the hurt
ones.
Cognitive approaches to emotional problems will have limited benefit
because by definition, emotions aren’t rational. While talk therapy can
be effective to a degree, the contribution of feeling heard and making a
positive connection with the therapist may be just as important as the
verbal/intellectual aspect of counseling.
Animals connect directly heart-to-heart. For humans, the head can get
in the way. Rational cognitive verbal approaches can be helpful but they
can also block other significant avenues of healing.
Animals can teach us about emotions of bravery, compassion, gratitude
and the urge to protect others – even of a different species.
Education is only beginning to realize the primary importance of social/
emotional learning and that we’re wired to thrive with emotions like
compassion, gratitude, hope, and optimism. These emotions and ways
of being, in relationship with the world, can be taught and strengthened.
33
Placebo is the mystery of how meaning, mindset, perception, consciousness, and
subjective states affect one’s physical response to a fake medicine like a sugar pill, or a
pretend procedure.
Does a certain pill or procedure mean you will get better – even if it’s fake?
Since the 1950s placebo has shown a significant
impact on pain, recovery rates, nausea, even surgery.
New England Journal of Medicine (2014) reported that surgeons in Finland discovered
placebo surgery patients had the same improvement as those with the actual knee
surgery. Harvard and Baylor confirmed the findings.
Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel biochemist (with Gall), discovered a
protective” cap” on chromosomes, called telomeres. Each time our cells
divide and DNA is copied, they get shortened. Telomeres protect but also
wear down, affecting cells’ ability to divide. Feeling prolonged stress
can shorten one’s telomeres and advance aging by up to ten years.
Ellen Langer, PhD: MINDSET CAN REVERSE AGING.
Langer demonstrated that mindset can reverse the signs of aging. Elderly
men, put in an environment retrofitted to their decades-younger days,
left with greater dexterity, range of motion, flexibility, sat taller, and even
spontaneously played football while awaiting departure.
A 2010 study filmed by the BBC found
the same results. One participant who
came in a wheel chair left with a cane.
“In the past, some researchers have questioned whether there’s convincing
proof that the placebo effect is a real effect. But there are studies showing
that the placebo effect is real in some situations…. But even if a person
feels better after taking a placebo, it doesn’t mean the person’s illness or
symptoms were not real…. The placebo effect even plays a role in main-
stream medicine. Many people feel better after they get medical treatments
that they expect to work. But the opposite can also happen, and this seems
to support the idea of the expectation effect even more.” American Can-
cer Society, Placebo Effect, www.cancer.org
Our minds – consciousness – affect matter. It affects our body and
doesn’t stop there. What are your beliefs and expectations? Are they
healthy? Are they positive? You may not even be consciously aware of
them unless you take the time to be introspective and look within.
A wise woman once told me you don’t always get what you deserve, but
you might find you get what you expect.
35
THE FRONTAL LOBE, THE MOST RECENT AND
HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRAIN, HAS BEEN
CALLED THE SEAT OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTION WHERE
DECISION-MAKING HAPPENS TO HELP YOU GET
THINGS DONE…
... LIKE WHEN TO STOP TO FILL UP THE TANK OR
RECHARGE THE BATTERY. WHO TO HIRE AND WHO
TO FIRE, OR WHAT TO THINK AND DO NEXT IF YOU
ARE FIRED.
WHAT IF THE FRONTAL LOBE IS ABOUT MORE THAN PRACTICAL DECISION-MAKING?
What if it’s also about choosing Meaning?
• What does it mean if you get fired? The worst thing ever? A blessing in disguise?
• How much power do you give to the physical descriptions of circumstances?
• Do the meanings you choose (or unconsciously accept) affect
how circumstances show up and turn out?
“WHAT IS MAN THAT THE UNIVERSE
SHOULD BE MINDFUL OF HIM? … IS NOT MAN AN
UNIMPORTANT BIT OF DUST ON AN UNIMPORTANT
REGION SOMEWHERE IN THE VASTNESS OF SPACE? NO!
THE PHILOSOPHER OF OLD WAS RIGHT!
MEANING IS IMPORTANT, EVEN CENTRAL.”
PRINCETON PHYSICS PROFESSOR JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER
We ALWAYS have a choice of what meaning(s) to assign to ANY sit-
uation. Survivors of concentration camps could choose to succumb to
misery or choose to find meaning like Robert Fisch, MD who wrote
Light from the Yellow Star: Lessons of Love from Holocaust. Or Viktor
Frankl, MD, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, and said, “Decisions
not conditions are the key to mental health.”
Animals make decisions (yes, they have some of the left and right hemi-
spheres) based on what a situation means to them but humans have the
unique capacity to be able to choose what something means to them.
We are meaning-assigning creatures and our meanings matter. Humans
are wired to seek meaning and create stories or “narratives” which in
turn influence our circumstances/reality.
What needs to shift is our awareness that we consciously or uncon-
sciously adopt our own narratives. If you do it unconsciously, those
narratives will be colored by impulses from foundational emotional and
reptilian (nervous system) brains…too often fear and anxiety.
A compelling story about this comes from my work with a high school
boys’ basketball team in the high crime, violence, and poverty rate
neighborhood in Minneapolis, MN. Edo Walker was a sophomore at
the time, and failing math. He had turned in less than half his assign-
ments and his instructor told him it was impossible to catch up. He used
what he learned to decide for himself “That’s her reality, not mine” and
became so motivated that in five weeks, he caught up on all his math
and passed the class with a C. He chose his meaning regardless of what
the “expert” had to say and worked hard to create a better reality.
37
“As with energy and matter, mind and matter may be equivalent even though they
appear completely different. And just as energy and matter are related through
a third entity, the speed of light, mind and matter also may be related through a
third entity, meaning.” Larry Dossey, MD
If we have a deep drive and a brain center for meaning, but have a scientific paradigm
that says it’s a vast, cold, meaningless and indifferent universe, then hopelessness and
despair are bound to affect the psyche.
“Science is complex and chilling… The vistas it presents
are scary – a universe ruled by chance and impersonal
rules, empty and uncaring…” Isaac Asimov
“Man at last knows he is alone in the unfeeling immensity
of the universe, out of which he has emerged
only by chance.” Stephen Jay Gould
The Onion (a satire newspaper): “The universe, long known as a
bleak and unforgiving place where essentially nothing matters,
is in fact even crueler and more heartless than previously thought,
“… shockingly, our most recent findings indicate that the brutality,
coldness, and meaninglessness are far, far more extreme than we
ever realized” said Dr. Susan Doname, head of the research team that
conducted the comprehensive five-year study.”
ETAS Theory – Evolutionary Threat Assessment Systems: beliefs
about the world are an indicator of our mental wellbeing. Beliefs of
the threatening nature of the world increases psychiatric symptoms.
QUANTUM PHYSICS DESCRIBES A UNIVERSE FAR MORE MAGICAL
AND RESPONSIVE… MORE LIKE A MIRROR THAN A MACHINE.
The generally accepted view or paradigm seems to be that the universe
started with the Big Bang. No one knows how the Big Bang happened,
but it was assumed to be a random accident that occurred about 13
billion years ago, setting in motion a clock-like universe in determined
and predictable movements.
“Dramatic developments in cosmological findings and thought have led
some of the world’s premier physicists to propose that our universe is only
one of an enormous number of universes with wildly varying properties,
and that some of the most basic features of our particular universe are
indeed mere accidents—a random throw of the cosmic dice.” Alan Light-
man, PhD – physicist
Many other esteemed scientists have come to a very different conclu-
sion – with more than conjecture behind it.
“We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished
group of creatures. If the universe had not been made with the most ex-
acting precision we could never have come into existence.” John O’Keefe,
PhD – NASA astronomer
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe created out of nothing,
with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions
required to permit life, and which has an underlying (one might say ‘su-
pernatural’) plan.” Arno Penzias, PhD – Nobel Prize in physics
Mind or organizing principle, this quantum interpretation, neither re-
quires nor refutes a personified Deity or religion. This quantum inter-
pretation neither requires nor precludes religious beliefs. If we are wired
for meaning and connection does the accidental random meaningless
separate-parts-and-pieces machine-like and dangerous-world theory
contribute to anxiety, alienation, depression and suicide? “If a society set
out to design a creation myth that would scare the living daylights out of
everyone, you couldn’t have done a better job than the [materialist] west-
ern scientific paradigm.” Roger Jones, PhD – retired physics professor
39
We are conditioned to assume that circumstances are a reality that ex-
ists separate from us “out there,” and we are also conditioned to believe
that circumstantial realities have meanings automatically and inextrica-
bly attached. Born with half arms and half legs? Well, clearly “the reality
is” that’s horrible and incredibly negative…not much could be worse
than that, right?
Someone with half arms and half legs who wants to be a state wres-
tling champion – competing against full-bodied wrestlers – clearly is
delusional because “the reality is” you can’t be a state wrestling cham-
pion beating full-bodied wrestlers if you don’t really have arms and
legs. Well, Kyle Maynard created his reality, and CHOSE his meanings.
When asked in a televised interview with Larry King if he felt like a
freak (yeah Larry went there), Kyle said that no, actually he felt blessed
because how many people get to inspire millions on a daily basis?
When we can separate the physical description of circumstances from
any set meaning, then we are free to assign our own. Accepting consen-
sus meanings deadens the frontal lobe and limits people to a narrow
range of possibilities.
41
You are the observer, the person who second-by-second has their
attention somewhere and is evaluating (consciously or unconsciously)
whether it’s good or bad… Thereby influencing outcomes?
“We used to think of the universe as “out there,” to be observed as it were from behind the screen of a
foot-thick slab plate of glass, safely, without personal involvement. The truth, quantum theory tells us,
is quite different… the observer is inescapably promoted to participator. In some strange sense this is
a participatory universe.”
John A. Wheeler – theoretical physicist and Princeton professor
The act of observing an atom changes its direction, location and charge. It is not the
instruments used that prompt a change, it’s the choice of what to measure,
where to put attention… what to look for.
“We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity.
We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage
on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us.”
Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power
“Regardless of what branch of inquiry one starts from, all avenues of investigation
eventually converge at the quest for an organized understanding of the nature of pure
consciousness. . . advanced thinkers went beyond the parameters of their respective
fields and began to ask questions about the relationship between the universe, science,
and consciousness...”
David Hawkins, MD, PhD