The Wisdom of Patterns and Flow

We are fluid, cyclical, rhythmic. We flow.

Physiologically we do not need to breath in, we just need to breathe out fully and the in-breath follows as natural as the body's natural wish to go on living. We are tidal creatures; always giving and always waiting to receive; always arriving and always about to say goodbye: we begin in some form of silence, live through the breathing exchange of a given life and end again in another form of silence. We are here and we are somehow not quite, a coming and a going, and in every religious inheritance, breath is the essence of that understanding, of our passing through, of our poignant transience, the way we appear and disappear. Breath is the essence of prayer.

From the book Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte.

I am fond of saying "cooperation is self-interest." I have shared that statement often in many contexts on this blog, shared many books and articles that support its truth. I absolutely endorse this idea and believe it needs to be loudly proclaimed--particularly in our current context, where competition is held in especially high regard.

I have also shared here a number of books I've read that are based on or support the notion that competition and inequality are due to the change in human lifestyles brought on by the advent of agriculture. While I appreciate the logic, it's never sat quite right with me; it seems overly simplified and idealistic.

This article offers an insightful counterpoint.

We Cooperate to Survive, But if No One's Looking we Compete

An age-old debate about human nature is being energised with new findings on the tightrope of cooperation and competition

[Of "the modern dispute about whether humans are fundamentally cooperative or competitive"] . . . Our collective predilection for exploitation, deceit and competition is equally important to cooperation in the story of human evolution. We evolved not to cooperate or compete, but with the capacity for both – and with the intelligence to hide competition when it suits us, or to cheat when we’re likely to get away with it. Cooperation is consequently something we need to promote, not presume. . . . 

Put someone in a game where identities are hidden and consequences are explicitly ruled out, and you remove many of the ordinary pressures that govern cooperation – reputation, ongoing relationships, the possibility of retaliation, the cost of being seen to take too much. What you end up measuring, in other words, is not ‘how cooperative this person is’, but how they behave in a stripped-down context where cooperation and betrayal carry very different risks.

That basic insight runs through decades of work on the biology of cooperation. . . . Cooperation, from this perspective, isn’t something we can simply assume; it’s something social life must make possible – and worth sustaining. . . . 

Much as any person might cheat a partner when the likelihood of being discovered is low, so are we wrong to assume that anyone who cooperates in one game is likely to cooperate in every game. Cooperating is not the same thing as being a cooperator. . . . 

There are plenty of examples of people dodging moral responsibility through credentialing (touting past good deeds), rationalisation, and plain opportunism. In aggregate, the belief that you’re a moral person because of the principles you profess or the good things you’ve done before can make it easier to rationalise seizing the opportunity to act unfairly now. . . . 

The egalitarianism so often noted in small-scale societies . . . may then represent a lack of opportunity for free-riding, rather than an evolved propensity for fairness. Knowing everyone in your camp, choosing to live with relatives, and a collective expectation that people will follow local norms, maintains cooperation . . . 

The idea that we lived in a state of equality until the invention of agriculture is mostly a myth that I think helps us feel better about human nature. . . . 

Rather than attributing our problems today to competition between groups and the structure of our societies, the governing rule for any social system is to expect exploitation where it is possible. Every group, society and culture, no matter its size, has weaknesses that some people will try to exploit for personal benefit. The question is how those weaknesses affect culture more broadly, and whether we live in a society that rewards fairmindedness – or cleverness, subtlety and opportunism.

In the modern world, as with our evolutionary past, the answer is the latter. All that’s changed since the advent of agriculture is the number and varieties of opportunities for free-riding and exploitation. Consequently, as technology improves and groups increase in size, we should expect people to develop creative ways for defecting more effectively – with evolution favouring those who do it best. . . . 

This requires adopting a realistic perspective about the kind of animal that Homo sapiens is. First, we are not inherently cooperative but have the capacity for cooperation – just as we have the capacity for exploitation and selfishness. What matters at the individual level is the way we choose to behave towards others.

Second, just as there is no such thing as a cooperator, there is no such thing as a free-rider. These are behaviours that we apply in models and experiments for convenience. How people behave – and critically, how we describe social behaviours – is a matter of circumstance. The same person who behaves ethically in one circumstance may not do so in another, as research into moral credentialing shows. Our behavioural plasticity, or ability to adapt the way we act to context, is one of our defining features. The evolved psychological processes driving our decisions cannot be captured by simplistic models or games. Anyone can be an invisible rival.

That is precisely why local social norms matter so much. If cooperation isn’t a fixed trait but a fragile, context-dependent outcome, then the real question is what kinds of environments make it easier to do the right thing – and harder to get away with quiet defection. . . . Just as organisms evolve immune defences against selfish cells that quietly undermine the whole, societies need norms – and the institutions that uphold them – that can detect and restrain rivalries that flourish out of sight.

Fostering community-level interdependence – and the norms that evolved to help them function cooperatively – is therefore essential for combatting the exploitation that results from invisible rivalry. Never try to enforce cooperation from above. Instead, just as the economist Noreena Hertz argues we should replace ‘greed is good’ maxims in the capitalist framework with a community-oriented, cooperation-promoting mindset, appreciating that we are all better off when we work together is the critical insight needed for building a prosocial and equality-focused environment for the future.

Education is where this begins, not as moral uplift but as collective self-knowledge: it helps us see our own temptations clearly and translate that insight into practical scaffolding – laws, schools and civic rules that reward cooperation and raise the costs of exploitation. Cheating will never vanish, and some people will always look for an edge, but our distinctive intelligence lies as much in recognising exploitation and organising against it as in exploiting in the first place. Invest in that knowledge and in the local institutions that make fairness both appreciated and rewarded, and we will widen the space in which cooperation and equality can endure.

The bolding for emphasis is mine; those are the key ideas I want to highlight, and provide the rest for context so they make sense.

I've requested my library purchase the book this author wrote expanding on these themes, Invisible Rivals: How We Evolved to Compete in a Cooperative World by Jonathan R Goodman, and hope to read it soon.

I find this an extremely helpful framing. Often we debate whether humans are more fundamentally good or bad, cooperative or competitive. The answer, of course, is that we are both in equal measure and that we constantly alternate between them. It's always, in every moment, a choice which way we lean. We decide based on mood, needs, context, and other changing circumstances.

So if we want to see humans be more cooperative, make more benevolent choices, we need to create more circumstances and structures that encourage it.

I find this idea a freeing one--we don't need to focus on what is fundamental to human nature and thus out of our control and unchangeable, we need to focus on choices and contexts, moments and environments--all things that are more permeable and within our power. "Make good choices," not "be a good person." "Good person" isn't even a thing; only what you do moment to moment. Neither is "bad person" a thing, merely an accumulation of bad choices--but always still open to change and redemption.

It feels to me how I felt after learning about the theories of Ibram X. Kendi when I wrote Ideas Make Me Happy in 2019. A part of what I shared:

The Anti-Racist Revelations of Ibram X. Kendi

[Kendi] thinks “racist” should be treated as a plain, descriptive term for policies and ideas that create or justify racial inequities, not a personal attack. Someone is being racist when he or she endorses a racist idea or policy. . . . 

In Kendi’s analysis, everyone, every day, through action or inaction, speech or silence, is choosing in the moment to be racist or anti-racist. It follows, then, that those identities are fluid, and racism is not a fixed character flaw. “What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what — not who — we are,” he writes. In studying the history of racist ideas, Kendi has found the same person saying racist and anti-racist things in the same speech. “We change, and we’re deeply complex, and our definitions of ‘racist’ and ‘anti-racist’ must reflect that,” he told me. Those who aspire to anti-racism will, when accused of racism, seriously consider the charge and take corrective action. They will not claim to lack any racist bones.

We don't have to worry about whether a person "is" or "is not" a racist. That's not a thing. All we need to consider is whether each choice, idea, or action is racist or anti-racist. Everyone contains some of both and will implement some of both. The goal is to tip the balance in the right direction.

Don't worry about whether you are good or bad; focus on trying to choose more good than bad. What matters at the individual level is the way we choose to behave towards others. Try to make more prosocial and equality-based decisions, take more prosocial and equality-based actions. That's all that matters.

We are tidal creatures; always giving and always waiting to receive; always arriving and always about to say goodbye. We are here and we are somehow not quite, a coming and a going, and in every religious inheritance, breath is the essence of that understanding, of our passing through, of our poignant transience, the way we appear and disappear. Our behavioural plasticity, or ability to adapt the way we act to context, is one of our defining features. We are fluid, cyclical, rhythmic. We flow. Choose to flow benevolently.

I love this.

World Politics Is a Shared Myth, One We Can Change from the Bottom Up

Stories become myths not because they lack factual accuracy but because they convey significance. They meet a human need for order, transform chaos into cosmos, and offer coherence in moments of uncertainty. They are collective stories, told and retold across generations, subtly shifting over time and place. All narratives convey meaning, but only myths convey the significance that shapes our understanding of the world, explaining we live as we do and helping us make sense of the world around us. Political myths are powerful because people act as if they are true, whether or not they are.

Myths are not new. They have shaped human societies since the first civilisations and remain central to religion and politics. Consider ancient Greek myths, from the age of heroes to the Trojan War. These events did not unfold as recounted but this is not what matters. What matters is that the telling of those stories, those myths, shaped political imagination and action for contemporary audiences. They conferred legitimacy on some authorities, justified certain actions, and delegitimised others. Social, religious, and political life were ordered within a cosmos defined by myth. Crucially, myth is not a thing of the past. Human beings, as existentialist Hans Blumenberg argues, have never overcome the need for significance and are unlikely ever to do so. From the audiences of Ancient Greece to those of today’s overwhelming media landscape, people seek to understand their world through the stories they tell and retell. Myths persist, even as their form and content change.

At this interregnum, where we see many of our seemingly long-established global norms beginning to falter, our concern lies with political myths about the international realm . . . What is unusual today is that the formal institutions remain, yet the myths that gave them meaning have eroded, and new ones have yet to form. . . . 

A new age of myth is taking shape. The global order is being reinterpreted through a profound shift in its symbolic foundations. . . . 

From Donald Trump’s talk of territorial acquisition, whether Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, or Gaza, to Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine, imperial aspiration has returned to public discourse with force. These developments signal the erosion of long-standing commitments to equality, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, alongside the collapse of liberal myths that once shaped global politics. . . . 

These stories do more than describe the world; they shape it. . . . Contemporary narratives of imperial resurgence and liberal decline are not neutral observations. They participate in a wider process that gives collective meaning and direction. . . . 

Talk of a new age of empires does more than describe events. It reshapes global politics. It makes territorial expansion seem reasonable and revives older ways of imagining space and power, such as spheres of influence and buffer zones. These ideas belong to the vocabulary of nineteenth-century imperial politics, and their return signals a deeper shift in how power is conceived today. . . . The power of this story comes not from its truth but from its capacity to shape imagination and guide action, much as Cold War myths once did. . . . 

They are not simply top-down narratives; they are collective stories that confer meaning and shape the world we inhabit. . . . within this void lies the possibility of creation. We are called to decide, to assert new myths that give form to the chaos, to will new values into being, and to prevent the logic of great power politics and the age of empires from setting the horizon of what is possible.

If we want structures, environments, and contexts that support more beneficial cooperation and less destructive competition, we need myths that lead to them.

A glimpse into current events via Rebecca Solnit.

When Love Thy Neighbor Is a Cry of Resistance

At the very heart of almost all our crises is a conflict between two worldviews, the worldview in which everything is connected and the world of isolated individualism, of social darwinism and the war of each against each. . . . 

Really the contemporary right would like to divorce cause and effect from everything. Theirs is an anti-systemic worldview in which they deny that, for example, poverty and poor health are very often the result of how the system is organized rather than personal failure, so they preach personal responsibility while denying collective responsibility and their own responsibilities, deny the collective overall. Margaret Thatcher famously said "there is no such thing as society," but we now know that societies exist even in the absence of human beings as forest ecosystems, ocean ecosystems. . . . 

At the very heart of the conflict raging in the United States is a conflict about human nature, a deep moral and philosophical conflict. I believe the isolationists will lose in the long run because they are not only out of step with the majority but they are out of step with reality and because theirs is an impoverished version of who we can be, walking away from the possibilities of love and joy and the sense of abundance and connection from which generosity springs.

In the opposite of the ideology of isolation, we recognize that everything is connected. . . . this cosmology of interconnection has grown more powerful and influential over the past several decades, thanks to many forces seen as separate but that all move us in the same direction . . . 

Responsibility sounds dismally dutiful, but reciprocity begins by recognizing that nature has given so much and therefore responds with gratitude and love, which makes the work not just giving, but giving back, a beautiful and natural response to abundance. (You can contrast that with the sense of scarcity and the manufacture of scarcity that underwrites capitalism's logic.) . . . 

This cosmology of connection comes from many directions. . . . the resurgent power of indigenous worldviews . . . Buddhism has come to the West in a big way and brought us many visions of interconnection . . . 

Contemporary biological sciences, from planetary ecology to botany, zoology, and neuroscience, have documented that we are all in dependent co-arising, that we are all part of systems and relationships, that each of us is not so much an individual but a node on a network, a plural being whose body is made up of billions of microorganisms as well as what we call human. There's a wonderful new field of biology called processual biology that looks at the world as made up of processes rather than objects, as phenomena forever flowing and changing and thereby exchanging with each other and changing into each other. It proposes that it is more useful and accurate to think of ourselves and most of what we call things as events. . . . 

For the survival of our democracy and our planet, understanding that interconnectedness, that capacity to relate and the abundance, joy, love that spring from it, are no longer abstract topics but an urgent political matter.

Myths, worldviews that cultivate cooperation. Reciprocity.

Wonderful analogy and imagery for understanding a complex idea.

Can You Rewire Your Brain?

The metaphor of rewiring offers an ideal of engineered precision. But the brain is more like a forest than a circuit board.

‘Rewiring’ is a risky metaphor. It borrows its confidence from engineering, where a faulty system can be repaired by swapping out the right component; it also smuggles that confidence into biology, where change is slower, messier and often incomplete. The phrase has become a cultural mantra that is easier to comprehend than the scientific term, neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change and form new neural connections throughout life. . . . 

Unlike electrical wiring, which follows rigid, fixed paths, the brain’s connectivity is dynamic and constantly changing. Neurons form and prune synapses – the connections between them – in response to activity and environment, a process governed by complex biochemical signalling rather than simple rerouting. Even when we can map the parts, the picture doesn’t explain the self. . . . 

The logic of neuroplasticity isn’t the same as swapping one wire with another. It’s more like a living forest where paths are gradually worn or abandoned based on use. It involves changes at the cellular level and can occur in response to learning, memory, sensory input and trauma. Importantly, while neuroplasticity is a lifelong feature of the brain, it is more robust during youth and becomes more effort-dependent with age.

This capacity allows the brain to adapt to new experiences, recover from injuries, learn new information and compensate for lost functions. Neuroplasticity is real, but it’s not magic. It has limits. It requires effort. And it doesn’t always result in perfect recovery or transformation.

Unlike rewiring a machine, plasticity is not as simple as replacing parts. It’s a gradual process and is often inefficient. Synapses, which pass signals between neurons, strengthen or weaken. New dendritic branches – neurons’ treelike extensions – grow while others retract. Entire networks shift their activity over time, but only under the right conditions, and these changes accumulate to support new patterns of function while overall mechanisms become less efficient across the lifespan.

Plasticity happens throughout life, but it’s shaped by many factors: age, environment, repetition, rest, nutrition and emotional state. . . . 

The old pathways aren’t necessarily erased. They remain in the background, potentially reactivated under stress. The idea that the brain is ‘rewired’ to function in a healthier way may offer hope, but it oversimplifies the reality. We build new trails, but the old ones don’t necessarily disappear. . . . 

The fact that neurons can expand their reach means that, if some of them die, others may broaden their territory to make up for lost processing. In general, the more connections a neuron has, the more it can shape behaviour. . . . 

While neuroplasticity resists shortcuts, it does respond to sustained engagement. Across the lifespan, brains that are challenged – cognitively, socially, physically – tend to retain greater flexibility than those that are not. This is not because any single activity ‘rewires’ a specific circuit, but because varied, effortful experiences repeatedly recruit overlapping networks: attention, memory, movement, emotion. Learning a new language, for example, activates distributed regions across both hemispheres, linking auditory perception, working memory, and executive control. Playing a musical instrument does something similar, coupling fine motor coordination with timing, prediction, and emotional recall. Over time, these demands encourage structural and functional changes that support what neuroscientists call cognitive reserve: the brain’s ability to compensate when injury or degeneration occurs.

The same principle applies beyond formal learning. Singing engages breath, rhythm, language and affect in ways that ordinary speech does not, which is why it can support recovery in some stroke and Parkinson’s patients. Physical activity – especially aerobic exercise – improves cerebral blood flow and is associated with changes in the volume of the hippocampus, a region critical for turning short-term memory into long-term memory. It’s also one of the few brain regions where new neurons are generated in adulthood. Social interaction recruits emotional and linguistic circuits simultaneously, offering a kind of neural cross-training that solitary exercises cannot. Even seemingly modest skills, such as learning to juggle, have been shown to induce measurable changes in grey matter after weeks of practice. None of these activities function as targeted neural ‘fixes’. Their value lies instead in repetition, novelty and sustained effort – the slow conditions under which plasticity operates. They do not override biology but work with it, nudging the brain toward adaptation rather than transformation. . . . 

If not ‘rewiring’, then what? Perhaps the better metaphor is not a machine being repaired but a landscape being reshaped. Neuroplasticity resembles erosion and regrowth: some paths deepen, others fade, and change unfolds unevenly over time.

Neuroplasticity is a remarkable capacity. It offers real hope for recovery, adaptation and growth. But it requires patience, structure, repetition and support. It is not a quick fix. It is a lifelong process that demands sustained engagement.

I made reference to this article recently in a conversation about early childhood literacy and the development of young brains, that some activities and practices lay the foundations for the paths that ultimately become reading.

Your nature is not inherently competitive or cooperative, you are not fundamentally good or bad. You are constantly, in every situation, making choice after choice to be more one or the other. Those choices accumulate. They shape the neural landscape of your brain. The choices that occur most often, repeatedly, grow and strengthen certain mental pathways; the ones that occur less have pathways erode and fade. You are not all good or all bad, all cooperative or all competitive, but what you choose most often reshapes your brain in ways that make it more likely to happen again.

It is a lifelong process that demands sustained engagement.

When you realize you are never going to be your ideal self that you will always be a mix of good and bad choices, you are able to plan for it.

Want things to go well? Plan like a defensive pessimist

So often we underestimate the time and effort required to reach our goals. You can avoid that trap with realistic planning

So often, we plan as if every day will be our best day. We plan as if we’re the non-procrastinating, energy-filled, mind-like-a-steel-trap people we want to be, and when the time comes, it turns out that we’re just our normal, well-intentioned but fallible selves. . . . 

Even those of us who believe that planning is important could often use some help doing it more realistically and effectively. Fortunately, psychological research has identified some of the most common planning pitfalls, as well as effective strategies for overcoming them. . . . 

Defensive pessimism is a strategy that involves assuming that things will go wrong (that’s the pessimism part) and thinking through what might go wrong in concrete and specific detail (that’s the defensive part). . . . 

What defensive pessimists do for themselves fits with what other research has shown about goal-setting and planning processes. . . . 

Key points:

• Optimistic plans often go awry. There are many planning pitfalls, but you can avoid them by being more strategic and considering how things could go wrong.

• Start with setting clear goals. Break abstract or vague goals into smaller, more concrete pieces.

• Give yourself a chance to make easy progress. Often, getting started is the hard part, so make the first steps of your plan easy to take. Then you’ll have momentum on your side.

• Write down your plan, if you can. Describe the steps, on your phone or on paper, to offload cognitive effort and highlight your progress.

• Think about how long your plan will really take. Avoid the ‘planning fallacy’ by envisioning what each step will actually require.

• Get feedback on your plan. Ask someone who knows you – and understands what you’re trying to do – whether your plan seems realistic.

• Anticipate obstacles and make backup plans. Ask yourself what could get in your way and have alternative courses of action at the ready.

• Remember who you are. Make plans that account for your preferences and limitation, rather than pretending they don't exist.

When you make plans for your realistic self, you are creating situations that are more likely to produce the choices and results you want. You are shaping your environment in ways that help shape your neural landscape.

Of mental landscapes.

It Pays to Be a Space Case

Are our moments of distraction—the daydreams and memories, the anxieties and reflections—really such a bad thing?

I called up my old colleague, neuropsychologist and author Ylva Østby, to find out. “Mind wandering is the opposite of control: It’s free,” she explains from her home in Norway. “In some situations, it is important to be able to control your mind and to focus on the task at hand, but that does not mean that mind wandering is in itself a negative thing. We just don’t recognize the situations where mind wandering is useful.”  . . . 

Studies find that mind wandering can play an important role in planning for the future and solving challenging problems, for example. Some psychologists have even found that it can help solidify memories, much like sleep does.  . . . 

“[Mind wandering is a] fundamental aspect of how we think,” says Smallwood. “People do this all the time and are permanently using it to think about the future, or other people in their lives, or goals they haven’t completed.” . . . 

 . . . he’s fascinated by the relationship between mind wandering and creativity. Much of his work has centered on the idea that losing control of our thoughts is not only normal, but desirable. . . . 

When our minds wander, they generate thoughts that are relevant and useful—at least to ourselves. We reflect on our actions from the hours gone by and ask questions about the days ahead. We think about our families and loved ones, our goals and personal challenges. And sometimes—if we’re lucky—we come up with solutions that are truly original. “If you want to do anything different in your life,” says Fox, “you need to create space for ideas.”

Studies that connect mind wandering with creativity often center on the idea of the incubation period. The concept is simple: by taking a break from a difficult problem, we can give our minds time to work through our challenges unconsciously—to let our ideas “incubate”—while we focus on other things. When we finally return to the problem again, we often find that the solution has suddenly become obvious.

Importantly, though, these incubation periods seem to be most helpful when they allow our thoughts to drift. . . . 

Indeed, many of history’s most revered artists and inventors had daily routines that incorporated periods of mental rest.

It's not better to mentally focus or mentally drift; it depends on the context and circumstances. Sometimes one is right, sometimes the other.

Of cooperation and interconnectedness.

Spirituality Can’t Be Reduced to What’s Happening in the Brain

Spirituality wears many faces. It can emerge in the awe one feels during a walk in nature, in the stillness of a secular meditation, in prayer at a church or mosque, or even through intense and painful rituals like walking on fire. Each of these practices is, in its own way, an attempt to transcend the ordinary – whether the goal is closeness to God or simply a deeper calm and harmony with life.

Researchers increasingly recognise that spirituality is a vital part of human wellbeing, whether or not one identifies as religious. Understanding this dimension of life isn’t just an abstract pursuit; it could help people better harness the benefits of spirituality for their mental and physical health. . . . 

Neuroscience provides remarkable insights into spiritual experiences. It has revealed, for example, how meditation affects neural networks associated with attention and self-awareness, and how these experiences alter the activity of the brain’s default mode network (DMN). It has demonstrated that contemplative practices can literally reshape brain structure over time. . . . 

Brain-imaging studies, despite their contributions, often strip away the cultural and contextual richness that gives mental life its meaning. . . . Moreover, brain-centred approaches promote a narrow focus on what’s happening in an individual brain, apart from the body and world in which it is embedded. . . . 

Scientists and philosophers have developed alternative formulations of the mind that extend beyond the confines of the skull. For example, the 4E cognition framework proposes that the mind emerges through dynamic interactions between the body (embodiment, the first ‘E’), the environment (embeddedness), our actions (enactiveness), and even the tools we use (extended cognition). Each of these aspects is needed for experiences, including spiritual ones, to come alive. . . . 

The 4E cognition framework and similar perspectives, such as ecological psychology and enactivism, suggest that transcendent spiritual experiences are not simply a product of neural activity but are deeply intertwined with bodily sensations and the surrounding world. From the perspective of ecological psychology, humans experience the world like a radio tunes into signals. A radio works through alignment: it resonates with the electromagnetic patterns already present in its environment. In much the same way, perception and experience arise through a bodily attunement to the world – a dynamic resonance between our senses, our environment, and the people around us. . . . 

From an embodied, ecological standpoint, these experiences are not confined to the brain but extend into the lived reality that we share. Just as a trained musician can detect subtle harmonies that others miss, a spiritual practitioner may perceive traces of the divine or the sublime in situations where others might overlook them. . . . 

What we found is that this spiritual practice is inherently collective, with coordinated bodies playing a crucial role in accessing the spiritual state. During the ritual, participants are advised to lower their gaze toward the ground rather than look at others. Yet, the entire structure of the ritual – the rhythmic recitations, the sound of voices rising and falling together, the subtle feeling of movement in those nearby – draws them into a powerful synchrony. It’s not only that their bodies move in unison; even their heart rates begin to align with one another and with the imam who’s leading the prayer.

Like a group of radios all tuning into the same frequency, the individuals engaged in prayer aren’t simply generating private, internal experiences. Instead, they are resonating with a shared, embodied and communal rhythm. We can see this kind of resonance in other rituals where people move and feel together, and their rhythms and emotions become intertwined – rituals that appear across various religious and spiritual contexts. Brain scans alone cannot offer a complete picture of what’s happening here. To truly understand spiritual experiences requires looking at all dimensions of cognition: our actions, our bodies, our tools and objects, our relationships, and the environments we inhabit. . . . 

Part of the reason behind the contemporary emphasis on meditation is our overemphasis on the brain. Spirituality is often treated as a project of mental control – as if the goal were to calm, train or rewire the wandering brain on its own – which often downplays the roles of the body, the environment, and the people around us. This may actually make spirituality feel harder to access. . . . 

By widening the lens, we open the door to more creative, inclusive and meaningful ways of understanding spirituality and living spiritually. One can dance ecstatically like the whirling dervishes of Sufi tradition, or find release through crying in collective mourning rituals like in Shiism. These practices, rooted in different cultures, show that there are countless ways to have transcendent spiritual experiences, including ways that, for you, might feel more natural, more emotionally resonant, and more aligned with who you are.

To truly understand spiritual experiences requires looking at all dimensions of cognition: our actions, our bodies, our tools and objects, our relationships, and the environments we inhabit.

We can shape our choices by shaping our landscapes, both internal and external.

While the science behind the MBTI is perhaps questionable, I've always found the descriptions of my type, INTJ, elucidating and useful. This came across my feed in an INTJ context and it resonates.

What I bring to the table:

• Ungodly pattern recognition
• Aggressive active questioning
• Silent observation
• Real-time theory building
• Behavioral analysis
• Micro-expression decoding
• Post-conversation autopsy

I share it here particularly because it relates to the quote I want to share from a book I enjoyed recently.

My thoughts about Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi:

This book is patient. Patient, detailed, deep, immersive, and enthralling. It's a story of intrigue and manipulation set in a world of intrigue and manipulation. A world modeled after the banking families of Renaissance Italy, their extra-governmental influence and empires built on concealed, indirect power. It's the book, I imagine, Machiavelli would create were he given to storytelling. Nothing in this world is as it seems; all is lies, misdirection, deception, and subterfuge. Success--no, even survival--depends upon one's ability to never give a clue to one's true thoughts, feelings, and aims.

Davico's father is an undisputed master of this game, of faccioscuro (a loosely Italian word Bacigalupi coins to loosely mean "face-obscured"). Devonaci di Regulai heads the di Regulai family's international banking business and, through it, controls the city of Navola--though not with ease, as his enemies are many. This is the coming-of-age story of Davico's early years, growing up in his father's house as the sole heir, trained by the best minds and tutors to inherit the family empire. And of, despite that upbringing, Davico's inherent gentle nature and inability to master faccioscuro. Davico is at odds with this world he is meant to dominate and doesn't sit easily with the role that is pressed upon him by everyone, friend and foe alike.

The story itself is not a gentle one that would suit Davico; it is dark and twisted and deadly. There is much hardship and suffering. I don't think it's a spoiler to say, since he is the one narrating the tale from it's inception, that Davico manages to come out of it alive at the end. Much changed in ways that no one--not he, his father, or anyone else who tries to influence him--would have anticipated (this is, remember, not historical fiction but fantasy), but alive, so the story can carry on. For, regardless of the book's impressive length and depth, this feels like the foundation for a larger story that will follow. And I, for one, can't wait to experience the rest of Davico's story.

This is masterful storytelling.

This excerpt from the book doesn't particularly represent the book or give insight into its story and themes, but I appreciate it in isolation:

These were the patterns of men, I realized.

This was not something I knew, it was something the dragon knew. The dragon had watched empires rise and fall. It had listened to thousands of conversations of men as they made caravans and marches through its demesnes. It had seen a thousand betrayals and a thousand loyalties.

This was not the knowing of the mystical, it was the knowing of patterns. Simple humanitas, observed for millenati. Wisdom. This was wisdom. Wisdom such as the philosopher kings of ancient Ebezzu could never hope to achieve, for they lived a single short lifetime, where the dracchus had seen all of humanity, for all of time. It had seen our petty human dramas and comedies too many times for anything to surprise it. It knew the intentions of a man perhaps before the man himself knew them.

And now, while we were bonded, I knew these things, too.

The mystical wisdom of knowing patterns.

The patterns, cycles, rhythms, and flows.

Shape the patterns, cycles, and rhythms to help you flow into the choices you want to be.