Joys of J (ep.25)
Hope everyone had a lovely holiday. Albeit a little different this year, I hope you all found some joy in the uniqueness of your circumstances this year. Be it spending this holiday season alone or with an eclectic group that looks different than most years, I hope you’ve found some peace through it all. I have to admit that’s been one of the most interesting and cherished parts for me this year. To find myself in different situations with different people that simply would never have happened had we not been going through this pandemic. I for one am grateful for all the unexpected variety this year has presented.
On to my brain consumption these last few weeks.
As always, hope you enJOY and find some mental sparks during your scroll below!
🧠 What Book Has ALL My Attention
This is a top 5 favorite book of all time for me. Given that I have severe ADD when it comes to finishing any book this statement should perhaps then come with even more weight to those that know me well.. as I not only finished it but it looks as though my highlighter has vomited all over every single page <- to me, that is the signs of a really, REALLY good read.
“All the work from studies of cancer and trauma research to the flow and meditation programs demonstrate that even brief moments spent outside ourselves product positive impact, regardless of the mechanisms used to get there. Yet in each of these instances, the only people given permission to explore altered states were those, quite literally in some cases, left for dead…. if we’re interested in untapped levels of performance improvement and lasting emotional change, peak states of consciousness may provide the quickest path between two points: a shortcut from A to E(cstasis).”
“Our facial expressions are hardwired into our emotions: we can’t have one without the other. Botox lessens depression because it prevents us from making sad faces. But it also dampens our connection to those around us because we feel empathy by mimicking each other’s facial expressions.”
“The body, the gut, the senses, the immune system, the lymphatic system are so instantaneously and complicatedly interacting that you can’t draw a line across the neck and say ‘above this line it’s smart and below the line it’s menial’. In fact, we’re not smart and we have bodies — we’re smart because we have bodies. The heart has about 40,000 neurons that play a central role in shaping emotion, perception, and decision making. The stomach and intestines complete this network, containing more than 500 million nerve cells, 100 million neurons, 30 different neurotransmitters, and 90% of the body’s supply of serotonin.”
“To diagnose yourself while in the midst of action requires the ability to achieve some distance from the on-the-ground events. When we consistently see more of ‘what is really happening’ we can liberate ourselves from the limitations of our psychology. We can put our egos to better use, using them to modulate our neurobiology and with it, our experience. We can train our brains to find our minds.”
“Psychopharmacologists have spend the last few decades cataloguing the consciousness altering techniques of animals in the wild and have found plenty to document. Dogs lick toads for the buzz, horses go crazy for locoweed, goats gobble magic mushrooms, birds chew marijuana seeds, cats enjoy catnip, wallabies ravage poppy fields, reindeer indulge fly agaric mushrooms, baboons prefer iboga, sheep delight in hallucinogenic lichen, and elephants get drunk on fermented fruit. The pursuit of intoxication with drugs is a primary motivational force in organisms.
So potent is the urge to get out of our heads that it functions as a ‘fourth drive’, a behavior shaping force as powerful as our first three drives- the desire for food, water, and sex… But if mind altering substances are so dangerous, why would any species take the risk? If the goal of evolution is survival and propagation, behaviors that thread this. mandate tend to get edited out over time. But the fact that drug use is as common in the jungles of the Amazon as it is on the streets of LA suggests that it serves a useful evolutionary purpose. Researchers have been pondering this for awhile now and have concluded that intoxication does play a powerful evolutionary role — DEPATTERNING.”
“Siegel and Samorini have argued that animals consume psychoactive plants because they promote lateral thinking or problem solving through indirect and creative approaches. With our self forever standing guard over our ideas, crazy schemes and hare-brained notions tend to get filtered out long before they can become useful. But intoxication lessens those constraints… Michael Pollan argues that coevolution— when two different species come together, often without knowing it, to advance each others’ self interest— also extends to humans and intoxicating plants..But there are a couple limitations that have long kept this co-evolutionary force in check - geography and culture. Together, they have prevented us from fully expressing that fourth evolutionary drive - the irrepressible desire to seek non-ordinary states of consciousness… but pharmacology changes the rules of the game. It gives us access to more substances than ever before, and this provides us with more diverse data to consider.”
“For flow junkies who get their fix through action sports, ecstasis is instantaneous. Ecstatis only arises when attention is fully focused in the present moment. Psychedelics overwhelm the senses with data, throwing so much information at us per second that paying attention to anything else becomes impossible. And for action and adventure athletes seeking flow, risk serves this same function.”
“Ecstatic technology isn't limited to silicon chips and display screens. As John Lilly's early research established, it's the knowledge of how to tweak the knobs and levers in our brain. When we get it right, it produces those invaluable sensations of selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness.Experiencing the selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness of non-ordinary states of consciousness can accelerate learning, facilitate healing, and provide measurable impact in our lives and work. But we have to revise or tactics and upend convention to make the most of those advantages.”
“That’s the paradox of selflessness—by periodically losing our minds we stand a better chance of finding ourselves.”
“So, when we do experience a non-ordinary state that gives us access to something more, we feel it first as something less—and that something missing is us. Or, more specifically, the inner critic we all come with: our inner Woody Allen, that nagging, defeatist, always-on voice in our heads. You’re too fat. Too skinny. Too smart to be working this job. Too scared to do anything about it. A relentless drumbeat that rings in our ears. This was Silva’s monologue too, but he stumbled onto a curious fact—altered states can silence the nag. They act as an off switch. In these states, we’re no longer trapped by our neurotic selves because the prefrontal cortex, the very part of the brain generating that self, is no longer open for business.”
“The Altered States Economy totals out to roughly $4 trillion a year. That’s a sizable chunk of our income that we annually tithe to the Church of the Ecstatic. We spend more on this than we do on maternity care, humanitarian aid, and K–12 education combined.” It’s larger than the gross national product of Britain, India, or Russia. And to really put this in perspective, it’s twice as many dollars as there are known galaxies in the entire.”
“Burners are particularly skilled at functioning during chaotic crises when normal services — running water, electricity, communication channels and sanitation systems- are not available. Burners don’t just survive in such an environment; they create culture, art, and community there.”
“At Burning Man, we’ve found a way to break out of the box that confines us. What we do, literally, is take people’s reality and break it apart. Burning Man is a transformation engine— it has hardware and it has software, you can adjust it and tweak it. We take people out to this vast dry place, nowhere, very harsh conditions.. it strips away their luggage, the things they’ve brought with them, of who they thought they were, and it puts them in a community setting where they have to connect with each other, in a place where anything is possible. In doing so, it breaks their old reality and helps them realize they can create their own.”
📱 What App I Love
Next Big Idea Club Curated by Malcom Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain and Daniel Pink
Next Big Idea Club
If you, like me, have a running book list that seems to grow exponentially every week and need a little help prioritizing the most groundbreaking ones, this app has got you covered.
“Created by the people who are all too familiar with thought-provoking, research-backed insights, Next Big Idea Club aims to expose you to the next nonfiction book set to take the country and world by storm. Every three months, the curators hand-select two books in psychology, business, happiness, and productivity that they deem the most exciting and groundbreaking.”
If I haven’t convinced you to commit to yet another monthly subscription, give their instagram page a follow for a few gems in your feed daily, their newsletter a subscribe for some more info, and their podcast a little listen.
📝 What Post I Loved
For many who know me, you know how much I geek out for all things music, emotion, and the brain.
Each of these topics consume much of what I like to listen and read. Throw them altogether, and you’ve cooked up my favorite mind recipe.
Maria Popova curates a beautiful list of must reads that fulfill this trifecta for those that enjoy the same brain feedings as I!
7 Essential Books on Music, Emotion, and the Brain
“Last year, Horizon’s fascinating documentary on how music works was one of our most-liked pickings of 2010. But perhaps even more fascinating than the subject of how music works is the question of why it makes us feel the way it does. Today, we try to answer it with seven essential books that bridge music, emotion and cognition, peeling away at that tender intersection of where your brain ends and your soul begins.”
Musicophilia- Oliver Sacks
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession - Daniel Levitin
Music, Language, and the Brain - Aniruddh Patel
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century - Alex Ross
Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination - Robert Jourdain
The Tao of Music: Sound Psychology - John Ortiz
Music and the Mind - Anthony Storr
❤️ What Product I’m Digging Right Now
A $20 milk frother has given me more joy than I could have ever imagined. I’ve always looked forward to that first morning coffee sip however, this guy takes it to the next level.
🎹 What Movie I Enjoyed
Put simply, this film is lovely.
A story of an Indian family that travels to France to rebuild their lives. They open up their own restaurant across from a Michelin Star French cuisine restaurant and seek to inspire the community to challenge their taste buds with the authentic flavors of India.
The story showcases that beautiful (and tasty) things come from the blending of two cultures.