The Blink

This month I've been reading the new book by Daniel Coleman and Richie Davidson, Altered Traits. Their research supports the idea that in mature meditators many of the altered states they experience in meditation, over time, become emotional traits. The fidgety default mode seen enough times in meditation gives way to calm and clarity. 

I consider myself a mature meditator, and I can certainly say that I have felt neurological changes over time.  I am able to invoke certain states of calm and detachment far more easily now than I was able to ten years ago when I started this blog. 

This does not mean that I live in a constant state of joyful calm, however much I would like to.  Sometimes it means that I'm able to get down to deeper states of suffering.  And so it begins again. And of course the progress of life brings deeper states of suffering.  My parents are entering the last years of their lives, and experience all the grief that goes with that.  My son is going through those intense anxious states that I experienced at his age. 

Along with this I also have to ready myself for the challenges of success.  This month I sign a generous contract, not for the book I hoped to write, but for a job that I never expected to have.  I have spent all month travelling  through one of the beautiful places in the world, British Columbia, and I'll be making a great salary, at least for the foreseeable future. 

But I know from these journals that success is sometimes tough for me to assimilate.  Making sure I put aside the time for meditation, writing and reflection, will probably be hard, and if I can't do that I won't be able to enjoy what I've gained. 

One of the studies that I find most interesting in Altered Traits, is one in which subjects are asked to search for an object within chaos.  Once the moment of recognition happens, the brain usually takes some time to process its dopamine reward, and during that time the brain is not usually in a state to notice anything else that is happening. This is refered to as "The Blink," the time when the brain has a blind spot.  Mature meditators, recognize the object, but don't get distracted by the feeling of accomplishment. Their brains stay open and they are able to go back to a state of alert awareness with more ease. Their blink is shorter. 

One of the distinguishing features of the aging brain is that it takes more time to "recover" from insight.  The blink is longer. 

Meditation can correct for this.  And I hope it does, because my middle aged brain has a lot of learning to do in the next ten years!