Samskaras as Fractals

"Beautiful, damn hard, increasingly useful. That's fractals." - Mandelbrot

“Between life’s stimuli and our habitual responses exists choice.” - Integral Life Practice

Virtues have to be practiced until they become your nature. Friendliness, compassion and meditation should continue as practices until you realize that they are your very nature. 

The flaw in doing something as an act is that you look for a result. When it is done as your nature, you are not attached to the result and you continue doing it.

- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Fractals are increasingly complex patterns that reiterate themselves through feedback loops. An initially simple form is repeated to create higher order forms that reflect the exact same pattern. A classic example is the Sierpinski triangle:  

They are found throughout nature in river systems, snowflakes, fault lines, crystals, and soil pores. They are found throughout life in the structure of the trees, small intestines, blood vessel capillaries, heart rate, DNA and chromosomes. They are found in the mind as neural networks

Fractals are necessary and unavoidable, an integral part of nature. Their power lies in their simplicity, repeating the same geometric function endlessly requires only that initial pattern and creates enormously complex systems. For example, let's look at the small intestines. The whole organ is over 20 feet long but is able to condense into our abdominal cavity. Within the organ are villi or tiny folds. On each villi are microvilli that fold up even more. With each level of folding comes an increase in surface area, such that the lining of the small intestine is about 100 square feet. This is important since the small intestine absorbs vital nutrients for the body. The more surface area the more opportunity for absorption, increasing the fitness of an individual. Fractals work by maximizing efficiency while minimizing the work to achieve it.

If fractals exist in matter and life it stands to reason that they also exist within the mind. This brings us to karma and the Hindu notion of samskaras. Samskaras are grooves left on the mind with every action, experience, or thought. Every day we are bombarded with tens of thousands of stimuli, think thousands of thoughts, and perform hundreds of actions. Each and every one of those leaves an imprint on the mind. The more an action is performed, a stimuli is received, a thought is thunk the deeper those grooves get and most of us have no idea that it's going on. 

This is how habits are formed. You get up the same time each morning, you eat lunch at the same place each day, you react the exact same way your uncle brings up politics, etc. This is all in an attempt to make sense of the world, to be more efficient. Without our habits, processes, biases and beliefs it would be impossible to function in the world. 

Samskaras go deep into our subconscious and the more often or more powerful the stimuli, the deeper the samskara. This is why New Year's resolutions are such a bitch, they require uprooting years of habitually laid down behavior and require months to years to take effect. This is also why much of what we do is impulsive and unconscious. The brain runs a lot more efficiently on autopilot then it does on conscious control and autopilot is the culmination of processes the subconscious has accrued over time. It goes the same for good or bad habits, whether you're an alcoholic or a gym rat the more you grease the grooves of the mind the more automatic and necessary behaviors become. 

It gets more complicated. Samskaras that are related interconnect and become superstructures in the mind called vasanas. You wake up late... again (for some reason you just can never go to bed on time); you're tired and hungry; you race to work and realize that you forgot to turn off the light in the kitchen (again? that's the 4th time this week!), you're pissed, you bite your already bitten nails; you pass McDonald's, a feeling arises: a rumble in the belly, warmth in the chest, a dizzying pleasure in the center of your head; without thinking you pull up to the drive-through and order a mcgriddle with coffee; before you know it you've eaten everything; wait, weren't you supposed to quit fast-food as a New Year's resolution? Hadn't you gone a whole week without it? What's going on?

Well, the answer for many Hindus and Buddhists is simple: samskaras and vasanas. It goes back to karma: everything you do has a consequence, or "God said take what you want and pay for it". On top of that neuroscience is backing up what yogis have known for thousands of years. The brain basically works like a social networking site, making connections where they are relevant and strengthening those connections with repetition. This is neuroplasticity: the structure of the brain changes in response to its environment, or, "neurons that fire together wire together". While the brain has a definite structure and developmental track (no tabula rasa here) we are by and large just a collection of neural networks and processes that are subject to change throughout our entire lifetimes. These processes are largely unconscious and automatic.

This has several implications: 

The mind in order to maximize efficiency is always on autopilot

To process the infinite number of stimuli that come into our field of awareness at any given time the mind leaves impressions (samskaras) on the brain by strengthening neural pathways associated with those connections. This is the fractal nature of the mind. Nancy Reagan was unfortunately misguided with her "Just say no" campaign. Any attempt to simply "say no" to habitual behavior doesn't work because

Using willpower to fight habit is like fighting fire with hot air

Our habits are largely unconscious and the more rooted they are the more difficult they are to work against. It's blissfully ignorant to assume that a junkie who's been dependent on heroine for 10 years or a type II diabetic who has been resorting to fast food for nutrition her entire life is just going to wake up one day and undo years of learned behavior. But it goes both ways because

We can use samskaras to our advantage

Don't fight fire with hot air, fight fire with fire. If habits are a culmination of impressions left on our mind then by intentionally leaving impressions we can form new habits and discontinue old ones. While it may seem daunting to quit tobacco, regularly exercise or to floss our teeth each night these behaviors are only uncomfortable as long as they are novel. Most people think they need to start strong and set huge goals. No. Start small and don't worry about goals. Just do it every day, for a minute, then two minutes, then five minutes. Make a new behavior automatic and then strengthen it. Until it's habit any attempt to go strong and hard will likely overwhelm you, because

All we are is a collection of samskaras and vasanas

Yep, you're not anything but a construct of various processes. This may seem intimidating but the truth is that the notion of the "self" or "ego" is just a composition of lived experience that is subject to change at any point in time. Many people neglect to do things because they fall into "I'm bad at sports, I have an addictive nature, I just don't have enough time, I was born this way". These are processes that the mind has constructed in order to make sense of how it perceives reality but they are also processes that limit every one of us. Trying to forcibly change those processes is like uprooting a great oak. Therefore 

Behavior change is a matter of changing habits, not setting goals.

While setting goals is a nice way to benchmark progress, it's a means to an end. Life is all about the journey, not the destination and spending energy on external rather than internal objectives inevitably leads to failure. (Cue failed New Year's resolutions here). 

So in the face of the tsunami of habit ready to sweep us away into mindless behavior, what can we do? The yogis of past and present recommend just being non-judgmentally aware. If we know a samskara for what it is, it loses power over us. This puts us in a position to actually do something about it. The second part is even more important: non-reactivity. We tend to put a lot of emphasis in this culture on willpower and its power to change. Not only does this falsely sublimate willpower but it presupposes that if people can't change they have some sort of deficiency. 

None of us are perfect, it's what makes us human, it's what makes each and every one of us so fucking beautiful. Our imperfections and idiosyncrasies are an advantage, they are manifestations of creative spirit radiating out of us in unsurpassed splendor. By judging ourselves or others we don't accomplish anything, by accepting we put ourselves in a position to change. Not easily, noone ever said it was easy. But it is possible, step by step, day by day, samskara by samskara to become the best possible versions of ourselves. 

Life is a Puzzle

Life is a puzzle. Each part of your identity is a puzzle piece, a perspective on the real you. Life is the process of finding the puzzle pieces that create the best possible image of you. But the image the puzzle reflects isn't You. You are the tabletop on which the puzzle is constructed, forever observing the story of the puzzle unravel.

Respect

What is respect? Respect is awareness. If I respect you I will listen to you. Not stand there and look at you. I Listen. I drop my entire thought process to put full awareness on the words you say. That's respect. We have the greatest gift in the universe, the gift of awareness. It is precious, more precious than time because it transcends time. And we only have so much of either. How we spend our time is an indication of our self-respect. How we spend our attention is an indication of our respect for others. Life is a beautiful thing. Cherish it.

The Yin and Yang of the Autonomic Nervous System

To know the cock yet hold on to the hen is to be the valley of the world...

To know the white yet hold on to the black is to be the pointer of the world...

To know honour yet hold on to shame is to be the gully of the world.

Daodejing, mwd 72 - Laozi, translated by Edmund Ryden

The two fundamental "drives" of all [things]... show up in various fields as, respectively: time and space, coherence and correspondence, rights and responsibilities, metaphor and metonym, intrinsic value and extrinsic value, determined and probabilistic, necessity and chance, consistency and completeness, consciousness and communication-the list is virtually endless. But the central point is that these typical dualisms... are dual partners forever fated to battle it out with each other, . . . and never, never win. 

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, pg 531 - Ken Wilber

Yin and Yang is the Chinese philosophical concept of equal opposites, dualities that exist in the universe in an attempt to balance one another out. Each represents male (yang) and female (yin) energies*. All things have yin and yang energy because all things are simultaneous parts and wholes. That is, all things are autonomous wholes that are parts of greater wholes. For example, atoms are parts of molecules which are parts of cells which are parts of organs etc. Because all things are wholes and parts all things are simultaneously self-preserving and self-adapting.

Self-preserving refers to something's tendency to "want" to maintain itself, to keep order. Atoms attempt to stay in their most stable form; our bodies are in constant homeostasis; a country will defend its borders and protect its citizens, etc. Therefore all things work to hold onto their autonomy, their yang energy. It manifests as self-sufficiency, agency, activity, and control.

Self-adapting refers to somethings tendency to "want" to give itself up, to work with others. Cells interact with other cells to keep our bodies functioning; families come together to build communities; we constantly change as we interact with our environments. Thus all things seek communion and interaction, this is yin energy. It expresses itself as compassion, passivity, and letting go.

So all things are dynamically and constantly trying to both preserve themselves while adapting to everything else. In other words, yin and yang are necessary and complementary, are agency-in-communion, are interdependent. This creates a lot of tension! And when the tug of yin or yang is too great pathologies occur.

Too much self-preservation dominates. A cell becomes cancerous and begins to take over the body; Big Brother establishes an oppressive regime; a rogue atoms becomes radioactive; someone definitely wears pants in that relationship, etc. When agency becomes too powerful it oppresses. Likewise, too much self-adaptation negates. When something adapts too much it loses itself in the crowd. The over-expression of communion sucks the autonomy out of that thing until it has no identity whatsoever. Think of the person that tries so hard to please that they garner no respect. Or the person who never says anything because they're afraid the group will reject them. Or the fly on the wall. When adaptation becomes too powerful it represses. In short, hyper-preservation dominates and oppresses; hyper-adaptation negates and represses. Neither is good.

When it comes to the physiology of our own bodies the duality of yin and yang is present in the autonomic nervous system.** This is a regulatory complex that helps maintain homeostasis and prime the body for whatever it may face. It has two branches: the sympathetic (yang), or fight-and-flight; and the parasympathetic (yin), or rest-and-digest.

Both systems are active in the same places at different times and affect things like heart rate, blood pressure, pupil size, organ function, hormone release, waste disposal, and sex in order to divert energy to bodily systems in a context-dependent manner. For example, if there was a sudden zombie apocalypse and you had to run for your life, adrenaline and cortisol would be released, blood pressure and heart rate would go up, you'd start sweating, and blood would be taken away from organ function to be used for go-fast muscles. But if you're sitting eating a donut and reading this post then your blood is likely aiding digestion, you're (hopefully) not sweating, metabolism is relatively low: you're calm. This is good because your body has opportunity to do maintenance and nurture itself.

Together both systems are dualistic, that is, equal and opposite. Neither is good nor bad and both are absolutely necessary for the health of the individual. The issue that arises is when one system gets too much air play. Over-activation of the parasympathetic nervous system is akin to being in a coma. If you have no stress in your life then you're either an enlightened yogi or a bum. Over-activation of the sympathetic nervous system is a stressed filled life, doomed to be constantly fried and on edge, like an egg about to slide out of the skillet.

But if these are part of the autonomic nervous system then how can we "control" these systems? To activate the sympathetic nervous system exercise is the easiest way. There are plenty of other ways to positively stress the body (cold showers!) but exercise is the funnest and arguably the most beneficial. To activate the parasympathetic nervous system just breathe. Breathing is both autonomic and controlled. Via a reverse feedback loop you can activate all parts of the parasympathetic nervous system (it's non-discriminatory) by controlling just that one aspect. The art of breathing alone is perhaps one of the most underrated and powerful mechanisms available for transforming experience. But don't take my word for it, try for yourself.

Coming back to the point, the autonomic nervous system is a fundamental part of our gross body but it has the curse of duality. It is constantly running back and forth in order to keep us in tip top shape for whatever we do. But if we run part of it too long or too hard problems occur. Which is an indication that all of us can benefit from settling within the golden mean and making sure we have just the right amount of stress.


*These are by no means exclusive to males and females, they are just associated. Both are necessary for all individuals.

Intro

My name is Chris Davies and I like to consume information. This blog is the culmination of the information that I take in and the connections that I see as a result. My goal is to take in knowledge from all fields and perspectives and integrate them, providing connections and trends where I see them.

The name of the blog, "Age of Consilience", refers to the current age were in, where knowledge is openly flowing and freely available from everyone to everyone. Most new ideas are just variations on previous themes, the convergence of paradigms, the integration of perspectives. Most new ideas arise from consilience, or the multi-disciplinary culmination of knowledge. Thus none of these ideas are really mine, I'm just acknowledging what I find through my journey of self-education.

My hope is that readers see and understand the connections I make and add my perspective to their own, empowering their own pursuit of knowledge and contributing to the ever-expanding pool of ideas that proliferates our post-modern world.

Enjoy.