Consciousness and intelligence

I've been thinking this week about the difference between consciousness and intelligence. As we veer into our new world with computers that are getting smarter every day, it seems like a good idea to be solid on what this difference is. Consciousness is awareness, and a particular kind of awareness that is not available to the machines we will be building. Unless we can build a machine that is capable of truly caring about another being's pain, it's unlikely that we will ever build computers that can replace us.

They can replace and even exceed our intelligence if we define intelligence as speed of processing and acting on information. They may even be able to replace and exceed our ability to liberate others from suffering, in that machines can be programmed to look at the facts and not be prone to faulty beliefs or perceptions.  It is indeed possible that self-driving cars will liberate us from accidents. But what machines cannot replace is our ability to care about or value life.  All life, not just human.

The technology that machines cannot replace is compassion, which I define here as the desire to liberate others from sufferings. Computers and robots cannot want others to be free of pain, cannot want others to be happy.

There are certain kinds of value decisions that computers cannot make. A machine will never be able to make the decision to be grateful for what it has, to hold life precious, to take to time to be struck by beauty rather than roam the world feeding a craving for more possessions, more sensations, more permanence.

And if we are able to offload much of our intelligence to computers, will intelligence continue to be valuable? Perhaps a natural intelligence will become more valuable as the more machine-like processes of intelligence are replicated.

The future is going to be harder and harder to predict because humans are more predictable in many ways that machines. As machines are given more control of the world it may seem that chaos will reign forever from now on.  But maybe not.  At a certain point, we may reach the limits of what machines can really do and we can come to a consensus on what to do with our newfound power.

Craving

Here is a journal that I wrote earlier this week:

I’m at the danger hour for craving 8 p.m. this is where I might normally plan what I’m going to eat while I watch TV. Instead, I’m going to describe the sensation of craving, the perceptions and the thoughts that hold it into place.

I start in open awareness. Resting comfortably in my sense of basic goodness. This is, of course, what I really want deep down, this feeling of being nurtured. But for some reason, I have mixed this up with an addiction to sugar, carbs and fat.

Now I recall it and quite quickly this painful feeling of dissatisfaction flows up to my head, and a voice now says, as I write this, “what’s the point, the craving is stronger it's going to win, it’s always going to win”  For the moment I’m not going to question this voice or perception. For the next few minutes, I rest in this craving, I rest in this belief and I consider the possibility that this craving is too far entrenched for me to change. I think of it as an old, dear friend, a spouse, a family member.  I consider how linked this craving is to my family, and how it feels almost like a betrayal to give it up. No, actually it does feel like a betrayal. It is a betrayal, there will be uncomfortable consequences if I walk away from it. Ben who is also addicted to junk food will be unhappy if I’m not a companion in that. My mother who needs validation through massive dinners. Then I think when I look at the odds, I’m probably not going to be able to let this craving go. Not in my lifetime, but maybe I can at least let it go tonight. Or maybe I can sit and feel a tenderness and warmth towards it.

That’s what I do, and here’s the interesting thing: the love and the warmth that I’m feeling toward the craving are the things I really want. Now I’m switching places, the craving is the loving force, and it loves that part of me that is pristine and free of cravings. At first pristine energy felt like a new friend, a guest, but actually I recognize it as well as a close and dearest friend, my parent, my legacy. Now it feels like both the pristine and the craving energy can merge. Of course, the pristine energy will win. How long is not within my control. Maybe another perception is maybe the pristine energy will win.

It comes down to a choice, being with the pain of craving, or being controlled by craving. It’s the same with all the other “defilements” I guess. Being with the pain of hatred, ignorance, envy, pride, or being controlled by them. But I like this process of liking them like old friends, or members of my mind family. Resistance towards them makes them hard and dull.

Right To Play

I sit here at the beginning of a work day watching my pride play. This weekend I gave a presentation with the Canadian-based NGO, Right to Play, and I’ve been thinking very much about the work-play balance in my life. Things are going well in my career, but as is so often the case I’m having a harder and harder time trying to maintain my self-nurturing rituals. I got on the scale this morning and, well….

I am an animal, and I know, according to the Sapiens books I’m reading, that once we didn’t think of ourselves as better than animals. But we do now. And we’ve created this crazy thriving mess of a shared story. Part formal religions, part quasi-religions, like humanism and capitalism. I wonder if at any point it will really alchemize into a promised land. I think of Pico Iyer after his years of traveling making the decision to spend the rest of his life sitting still in Japan. I think of my own exploits in consciousness. Sitting here feeling the energy play in my body. Expanding, contracting, floating around like a balloon. I am tired, but I’m also elated, in a grounded and creative way, not in some hypomania, trapped in my head way. I am surfing a very interesting spiritual dynamic in my body these days. For the first time in a while, I’m able to stop my thoughts at will. I’ve had this power in the past, but I didn’t think of it as a power and then I lost it. It is the power to think of the future and past as what they really are, wispy nightmares and dreams. And because of this the power to stop thinking of the past and the future.

This is not power in the way that we have defined it in our liberal humanist society as the power to cure disease and stimulate economic growth. It is power over our own mind. It is not the power to craft long-lasting stories about our historic achievements. It is probably closer to the way it has been defined by formal religions, as the power to maintain a spiritual balance in the body. As the power to nurture those things that may be truly sustainable and renewable, wisdom, kindness, compassion. May I build this psychic muscle, stretch it, keep in working. Throughout the nerves of my body. May I taste my self-aversion every day and I know that I can watch it dissolve bit by bit over time. May I spend the next while living off the fat of my body until I become lean and healthy. May I discover once again the pristine consciousness that is and will always be home.

The Forever Loop

This week I’ve been working on a tutorial for children that teaches them how to code with Scratch, a programming language developed by MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group. The rudimentary algorithm puts an animated cat into a loop that repeats forever, running back and forth across a beach.

This image is now etched in my brain and calls up memories from my many summers walking the mile long length of beach outside our family cottage. There was so much emotional chaos in our household, but once I started walking that beach I knew that no one would come and get me. So began my own journey in the forever loop of reparative escape. I’m feeling more and more, recently, that this escape is mostly giving strength and presence to the chaos. What does it matter if I spend two hours in a state of flowing electric bliss if I can barely muster the energy and motivation to do the dishes?

What would it take to switch the parameters and default settings so that I would be in a forever loop of thriving, growing powerful calm, like the ocean waves I assimilated on those walks? What would I have to repeat every day to be in a forever loop of focus, order, and peace in my physical and emotional environment? I know it’s possible, I know there’s a path there, but I can’t seem to stay on it. Why?

In the last week, I’ve been revisiting the practice of opening various “energy gates” in my body. The plan is to spend three days at each gate. There are too many to name here, but I’ve been working through the first two, the crown and the third eye area, and on Saturday morning I started meditating on the area behind the eyeballs. I did a bit of research on the anatomy of the eyes and learned that there are two important points, the macula, which modulates our sharp forward-looking focus and the optic nerve through which information travels from the eye to the brain.

Another algorithm I’ve been working for the kids is a reset sequence. Something that will return the Sprite to its default position whenever it goes off the grid or gets stuck. Center stage, eyes facing forward, 90-degree angle to the x plane. I don’t know the answer to the above questions, beyond pressing my own mental reset button, stabilizing my vision and starting once again.

Small actions, many times. That is the pith instruction that was handed down to Mingyur Rinpoche from his father, it’s one that I have a very hard time believing in, but when my life returns to the default state of chaos, it’s the only thing that helps me make my way out. This week I will go about remembering the one-two or one-two-three sequences in my life. Gathering, washing and drying the dishes. Choosing and clearing a hotspot. Setting a timer and picking up stuff off the floor. Perhaps the greatest challenge for me is to keep it small and to feel the moment of having finished.

Ignorance

One of my greatest challenges in life is maintaining an awareness of my ignorance. To some extent I do this "naturally" by feeling stupid and incompetent now matter how much I read and write, or how many people tell my I'm smart.  But feeling stupid is a different thing from being aware of one's blind spots, skills deficits and rationalizations.

This week in my insight meditation in on perception and reality at work.  Being aware of my ignorance, but also my wisdom is crucial as I go into some complicated  negotiations with a specialist from a schoolboard.

I know that I am still ignorant of how to stay awake, and avoid being at the mercy of my cravings and a lifetime of poor emotional and work habits.

And I feel that keenly as I see my son take on so many of my worst weaknesses.

Maybe that is the motivation I need to awaken and stay awake.

Easter 2017

So as I ask this question, "what do I really want," here are the paths it is taking.

Money, which when the question is repeated leads to a wanting a sense of security and also wanting a sense of adventure.  Ask it again and I'm lead to that place in my tailbone, which is apparently where our sense of security is either weakest or strongest.  And then from the energy awakening that would happen as it grows, the sense of adventure.

"What do I really want" also seems to be leading to "where do I really want." Do I want my desires to come from my head, from my gut, from my backbone?  These are all interesting questions.  Right now I'm feeling backbone.

Easter Retreat 2

Any sense of agency I have is illusory.  There is a self that has been programmed by my biology, my culture, my family.  I am stepping outside of it from time to time, but it is still driven by that programming and the central drive of that programming is anger.

I can feed the peace, the happiness and joy.  The mind is telling a story, a series of events.  If I watch it, there's a possibility it will settle into a different rhythm. The Buddhist story is that these are the natural and essential qualities.  I can't attest to whether this is true, but it's certainly a more pleasant story that the one where we are essentially angry and discordant.

In the meantime though, my most normal patterns are towards anger. And this anger is ultimately very rewarding, or I wouldn't keep going back to it like a rat on a wheel.  It's my quickest and surest path to dopamine.

After going for an hour long walk, my meditations are focussing on that energy in the tailbone. I had a couple of interesting hours sitting in this energy, feeling bliss, feeling my anxiety and aversion to bliss, trying to hold it in equanimity by shifting between the bliss and open awareness.  I started to feel that liquid warmth, even some uncoiling.

Is this what we lost from our Sapien past. This wonderful feeling around out pelvic floor back when we used to be more of a squatting sitting around species?

It didn't last. Eventually I started to feel a restlessness, a boredom, an urge to get it all done with. But the insight that remains is that this self really doesn't have as much agency as I want to believe. There is this self that is mostly motivated by angry parents, a greedy, hierarchical culture.  I will never know if humans are basically good or basically bad, but I do know that when I feel good I am more generous and kinder to others.

In one meditation today, I thought about my family, and felt such anger towards them. That dissipated and for a while I felt good. When I though of each and everyone of them I had an entirely different feeling towards them. When I was a different person, they were different people, I was willing to cut them more slack. My perceptions of people are changed by how I feel about myself.

Nearing the end of day 2.  I've watched a teaching by Mingyur Rinpoche on finding  basic wisdom in "defilements."  It feels like the entire weekend has been leading to this.  There are five defilements, hatred, craving, ignorance, pride and envy.  His meditation technique is to ask "what do I really want."  It's possible that the answer to this will often be surface and related to these states of mind, states he believes have been created by culture.  But if we keep asking we will find our true nature, our deep, true essence, which is pure, pristine, beautiful.  Down there we want happiness, love, peace.  And if we ask long, enough and deep enough we will get there  Don't grasp at it, just get there and be there.

This is what the last two hours of my meditation will be.

And after that, the insight.

Yes my superficial, man, woman or parent-made desires, are strong. Maybe even stronger right now than the desires of my wisest level of self.  But I am extremely fortunate to know that, and even more fortunate to have a reasonably well-worn path back to wisdom. I can look at my messy home and remember that this is happening because I'm letting my cravings take over again. I can sit with them and I can sit with my peace and get the energy and wisdom back that I need.  I can look at the scale and realize that I need to spend an extra hour a day sitting with my healthiest drives.  I know this.

And I know I can do it.