CONSTELLATIONS IN THE BRAIN

Words by Dr. Nidhi Kaur Bagga

Beneath the surface, a cosmic nature beckons our attention. An ever-evolving energy that ebbs and flows through the animation of each cell in our body. Be here now it coos. Playful and spirited, it reverberates in our hearts if we pay attention. In the wilderness, the cosmos within is dynamic and echoes through us in an unmistakable way. Symphonic renderings of the earth and sky tickle our ears. Landscapes take our breath away. Worries dissolve as we occupy time with our complete attention.

We experience presence as we bear witness to magnificence.

What is presence?

Presence is a product of awareness. Do you remember the first time you skidded down what seemed to be an incredibly foolish slope to have clambered up in the first place? Knees clattering about while flesh bubbled in your boots. Your mind and senses buzzing as every detail of your experience was amplified. You felt alive because you were fully aware of your own experience. Awareness is how we manage to harness this elusive feeling of synchronization—of harmony flowing.

Let’s try an exercise. What do you smell, taste, feel, hear, and see in this exact moment? As you read this sentence – how is your posture, the tension in your jaw and between your brows? Can you feel air passing through your nostrils? Can you hear your breath move up through your lungs and out your mouth? What do you see? Do you notice color the way you notice bright white snowcaps on blue mountain landscapes? Are you enchanted by your own existence as you are by waves of dewy grass sparkling in the early morning sun? Do you appreciate the brilliance of your iris with the same awe you experience the first bloom of wildflowers?

Our awareness dictates our thoughts. Exploring our relationship to awareness means observing how we think. For most of us, we think hard about our future and what we want. We think hard about our past and what we’ve learned. We think about all the ways our worth is tied to what we do. We skew our memories in favor of emotional safety. We warp the future in favor of our desires. Ultimately, we treat our present as a means to an end. But if we can drop into the present moment, that gap in the continuum of past and future, maybe we could discover the same awe we savor on the trail—off the trail. Within a large margin, maybe we could even realize that it’s not our thoughts, but our reaction to them, that determines our happiness and our overall sense of well-being.

What we think, we become.

Our brain is continually wired and re-wired by our response to our thoughts. First, let’s talk about the differences between the mind and brain. The mind is our consciousness – the thoughts, emotions, and awareness of the world around us. It is likely how we see and define ourselves. The brain, on the other hand, is a physical structure and source of the mind. In order for us to experience a thought, a series of electrical impulses must fire in our brain for it to exist. Neurons must pass signals off to one another in the brain to produce a complete thought in the mind. What happens in the brain manifests itself as the mind and what happens in the mind can determine how neurons send signals in the brain. What we think, we become.

Let’s break this down a little more. Think of our brain as a collection of celestial spheres and the neurons as constellations. Positive and negatives thoughts carve specific paths, or star patterns in our brain. How strong, or bright, any thought and its associated pathway is, depends on how many times we practice thinking it. The process is not unlike the trails we blaze in an uncharted wilderness. The more we walk along the same dirt, the more beaten the path becomes —a trail, defined—or in this case, a celestial sphere, defined.

Traversing these neuronal paths—or thoughts—is nothing short of tackling a series of switchbacks—exhaustive and often frustrating. Each time that voice tells us we can’t make it past the next ascent, a figurative and literal change of pace and perspective must happen for us to move forward. When we’ve come too far to turn back, dropping into awareness without judgment, becomes our only way out. In other words, the only way out is through and it’s where neuronal re-wiring takes place. With each rigorous climb and torturous trek, our internal circuit board changes. Celestial spheres transform as negative thoughts fizzle out and positive thoughts draw brighter constellations. This is of course dependent on us.

How do we re-map constellations in the brain?

Mindfulness, or bearing witness to the present moment without judgment. Notice how you react to thoughts like I am not enough. I cannot do this. This is too hard. If I don’t succeed, I’ve failed. etc. Do you support them, encourage them, and allow them to define you? Can you acknowledge them, watch them, and let them pass through? If you’ve always cut switchbacks and worn the convenient trail of negative thinking up the middle – you’ve likely struggled to let difficult thoughts pass through.

Know that you’re not alone. Human nature is to prefer what feels easy or familiar. But how we treat our mind determines how we approach our life.

The mind is the instrument of our existence.

Kabat-Zinn explained that it is our responsibility to fine-tune our mind before taking it out into the world. Just as the Philadelphia orchestra, an ensemble comprised of the best musicians in the world using the finest instruments available, must tune their tools, so must we. What if the orchestra played Beethoven’s symphony without ever tuning their instruments first? A masterpiece would be played out in complete anarchy. For us, our mind is our instrument. We must tune our thoughts so that we don’t lead our lives in utter dissonance. Practicing awareness to fine tune our thoughts is similar to how we take on the trail – one step at a time, or in this case, one thought at a time.