~a column by Colleen O’Brien
A quiet revolution is under way. The quietness of it is a relief in this age when there is only so much ballyhoo we can deal with before turning off all media. If the tenets of this revolution are adopted and practiced, perhaps it will be just in time to save a homo sapiens-dominated Earth.
The field of psychology has been busily curious about human thought, behavior and relationships since a psychological word was first recorded a couple of thousand years before Jesus, when the problem of “depression” first hit the papyrus sheets.
In the recent past, psychological researchers concentrated on behaviors such as how supercritical people appear to be smarter than those who give the benefit of the doubt. Those who are kind were thought of as “undiscerning but affable, plodding but friendly.” This statement was attributed to Dr. Teresa Amabile in the early 1980s. Newcomers to the field are now interested in relieving rather than just observing the myriad twists of our brains that sponsor anxiety, grief, revenge, self-doubt and maniacal ego. Old timers like Amabile continued to publish and are now up there with the newest in the field who offer help rather than mere observation.
More and more scientific study by these folks, reported across the media, supports the benefits of meditation, the powerful anxiety reliever that:
• promotes quiet amid chatter in the brain
• cools the hot-headed, jealous, get-even amygdala
• extends life by conquering diseases and rewriting genetic code
• expands IQ (intelligence quotient) and EQ (emotional quotient – this latter the one really needing study); if both of these quantities are on high frequency, it makes for easier learning amid better relationships
• makes for an acute memory as it harnesses the deep mind
• frees depression and sleep deprivation – a good night’s sleep!
• inspires focus and creativity
• coordinates both sides of the brain, syncs them, so to speak, making for less time wasted trying to figure how to do things that make for happiness
Anyone can practice and learn meditation – if from nowhere else, through Mrs. Google, who shares hundreds of meditation suggestions, practices, books, classes, histories of, anecdotal tales….
Aside from the soothing and succoring of meditation practices for common folk like us, think of the possibilities of its mental aid in the halls of Congress and the wings of the White House, not to forget in the much-maligned newsrooms here and there.
If the leaders of the world got serious about solving problems instead of making them, their adoption of the practice and spread of meditation could turn us around.
Prayer hasn’t seemed to work; maybe meditation will.
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A cautionary note: “Not only do experienced meditators often look decades younger than their “true” age, but they also live much longer lives than the rest of us mere mortals. And the reasons why are nothing short of incredible. The most fascinating age defying studies making news headlines tell us and why Meditation is the very best way to freeze father time.”
Damn. Is everything huckstered? This is an informational meditation site on Mrs. Google. Read carefully all info on meditation (or anything), for, like everything else in our world today, it could be real, it could be fake, it could be as solid as the rock so often cited…. Try it, you’ll like it? Try it, you won’t.
What is real? Nothing that has bold print words every other line nor a common noun like meditation capitalized, not to mention anything in quotes {“true,” above].
And what isn’t hyperbolized in these ways?
With Mrs. Google, with NBC, with Faux News, with this column…all readers are on their own.
