Our topic this evening is "Thinking and Feeling", facilitated by Ian Grayling and Kevin Commons, from the Serene Reflection Group.
We begin with a quick recap of the course so far, in small groups. We share our varied experiences, listen to diverse understanding and appreciations of what has happened in the previous five sessions. One of the most interesting, from my point of view (or perhaps, one suited to my taste) is how the practice of mindfulness brings an enhanced awareness of the body, an acceptance of the physical. It's not an attempt to deny our bodily nature or flee the material world. We spoke about how mindfulness may be seen as a state of reverence toward creation and our place in it. This appears to sum up our first four sessions and offers a bridge into the second part of the course. So far, we've been trying to be mindful of the world around us, mediated by our senses. Now we're going to begin to look within.
Ian asks us to consider how we think: "What is the stuff of thought?" Why is it so hard to express in terms that are comprehensible or meaningful to ourselves or to other people the nature of our constant experience of thinking?
Is it visualising - seeing images inside our head? Is it hearing a voice or voices? Is that voice our own, someone else's or does it vary? Do ideas exist independent of words? Are they in a place that is somehow pre-langauge? If so, then by what means do we access them? Do different people think in different "sensory modalities" - an internalised version of the senses that mediate our external experiences? Is it all random and uncontrollable?
We try a number of thought experiments, imagining some everyday sensory experiences. While some of those present appear to be reacting as if they are undergoing those experiences inside their heads, to me they are felt at arm's length. It's not too hard to imagine my favourite song (the one that leaps up, unbidden, is XTC's "Life Begins at the Hop" - never miss an opportunity to plug XTC!) or to see a nice garden, but I can't feel the taste of lemon juice, the touch of sandpaper on my skin or the smell of freshly cut grass. This leads us back to something we discussed at the last session, how the senses of taste, touch and smell or invasive, how they take place inside the body, as distinct from sight and hearing, which show us things that are "out there". Other interesting questions arise from this exercises: when you imagine a piece of music in your head, are you the performer or are you listening to a performance? Are you originating something or remembering something - and what's the difference between the two?
Arguably, there are only two ways in which people can think: through "internalised senses" and verbally. Once we become aware of how we think, we become more aware that we can be the author of what we think. This reminds me of that phrase in the Council of Faith's Buddhist leaflet: "that mind can be cultivated".
We're asked to go back into the small groups in which we started the evening and to make a list of as many emotions as we can. We come up with 34. Ian starts to make a list of some of these on the flipchart (no more than half a dozen though) under two columns: "good" and "bad". But that's too simplistic, too value-laden (deliberately on his part, I'm sure). We plump for a list of emotions that we like to have and emotions that we wouldn't like to have. But there's general agreement that we can't have the former without experiencing the latter. That would be like never being able to experience the pleasure, contentment of satisfaction of eating if we hadn't known hunger or emptiness.
We spend the last quarter hour or so considering the triune model of the brain, which we touched on at the end of session four: the reptilian part, which deals with the basic functions of life, is rigid and compulsive; the limbic, shared by all mammals, which deals with memories and emotions, is the basis of value judgements in humans and has unconscious influence over behaviour; and the neo-cortex, which deals with language, thought and imagination and is the seat of planning and intentional behaviour and problem solving.
I know it's still winter so I probably shouldn't complain, but I must say it's bloomin' freezing tonight! I'm wearing two jumpers, that's how cold it is. The walk from my house to Clarendon Park Road and back is crisp!
