Brainwaves Realism, Metacognitive Bliss
And Presupposition Of Loneliness
There is something about science, which makes so many people feel uncomfortable about it. No doubt, at times, when we are faced with so much of raw objectivity, served by many scientific perspectives, we think it is so very unromantic and rough edged. It happens especially when we talk about our own bodies and mind, as we are culturally trained to accept ourselves as something very subjectively, often with a romantically hypothetical ways, which gels well with our arcane sense of beauty and bliss. Science often is unemotionally objective.
That is why accepting ourselves as a system of neurons and chemicals is a bad imagery, not symmetrical to our romanticized imagery of the self. Science however accepts that we are essentially what our brain is and our brains are essentially a neuro-chemical mechanism. At the root of all our thoughts, emotions and behaviours is the communication between neurons within our brains. Brainwaves are produced by synchronised electrical pulses from masses of neurons communicating with each other.
This concept of brainwaves is very new and hugely helpful in understanding so many very crucial things about us, our lives and life realism. When we understand the brainwaves and use the notion in relation with loneliness issues, we shall see that how brilliantly it is unravelled to us that loneliness as a life-living choice lands us in a very beneficial state of our brain positioning, empowering us in so many ways.
You too may be already aware of brainwaves and therefore we are not going into details here about brainwaves but just focus about their role in our lives. It is just a straightforward acceptance that our brainwaves change according to what we’re doing and feeling. It is all about at which speed our brain neurons connect with each other, while doing different things. When slower brainwaves are dominant we can feel tired, slow, sluggish, or dreamy and the vice-versa. The higher frequencies are dominant when we feel wired, or hyper-alert.
We have five brainwaves categories known as beta, alpha, theta, delta and gamma. It has to be accepted that at any point of time, whatever our brain is busy with, all five brainwaves are present but any one of the five may be dominant. The important idea is; science accepts brain as the cornerstone of our very existence and survival. It is very much the core identity of what we popularly accept as self or ‘I’. That is why it is a critical hypothesis that our brains have been designed by millions of years of evolution in such a way that it has everything, which are essential for our survival.
The brainwaves of all five types are also there in our brains for equitable use for different life-living situations, so that we have ease in doing well in all aspects and dimensions of our lives. However, when we are not aware of it, or we in contemporary clutter culture use only a part of the brain facilities, we are bound to land ourselves in troubles. We have already talked as how important it is for our wellness to hit the road to poise and equanimity. We have talked as how most of our life-living troubles in contemporary times are life-styles/choices problems, emanating out of our lasting failure to maintain this poise. Brainwaves concept also hints at the same.
The five brainwaves categories actually pertain to five key states of our life-living roles that we have to perform for our overall wellness. Naturally, our brain does it all and it has been designed for that. The life activities have a chain of works to do and all must be performed for our wellness. So, we are in our daily chores and the beta brainwave does the basic auto-mode action/behaviour roles. We relax and sleep then alpha and delta brainwaves are dominant. However, in our daily routine, we seldom process what in a day’s routine we have received in our brains. Every second loads of neurons are sharing information and we have little time and leisure to organize them. The brain does it when we are in sleep. In the light sleep stage as well as in REM dream stage sleep, theta brainwaves are dominant and it does the rumination and retrospection task for us. However, the most crucial is the gamma brainwaves, which are important for our wellness and is usually missing in our lives. We talk in detail about theta and gamma brain waves.
Science says, theta brainwave is the realm of our subconscious mind. A sense of deep spiritual connection and oneness with the Universe can be experienced when theta brainwave is dominant. Vivid visualizations, great inspiration, profound creativity, exceptional insight, subconscious creativity and intuitions, etc are associated with theta brainwave realm. When in theta brainwave, our senses are withdrawn from the external world and focused on signals and communication originating from within.
Gamma brainwaves are the fastest of brain waves and associated with lateral as well as vertical processing of information from different brain areas. In normal routine activities of beta brainwaves realm, brain processing is usually vertical with little emphasis on lateral thinking. Gamma brainwave passes information rapidly, and as gamma waves are the most subtle of the brainwave frequencies, the mind has to be quiet and in poise to access it. Researchers discovered only recently that gamma brain wave was highly active and dominant when we are in states of universal love, altruism, and the higher virtues. Gamma rhythms modulate perception and higher consciousness. Gamma is also above the frequency of neural firing. This means, it is not the usual role of the brain but an extra ordinary function. The presence of Gamma relates to expanded consciousness and spiritual emergence.
Now, given the description above of the two very important brainwaves – theta and gamma, there is little doubt about two critical facts –
In simple and clear terms, we can accept that our brain has all facilities for our wellness and happiness but there has to be a balance between external and internal attainments. We have been insisting on the poise within for pleasures outside. It is our mechanism, which requires us to have quality and positive lonely time for ourselves. Being lonely is a hugely beneficial facility, which our brain cherishes and values a lot. If we deprive this critical lonely time and space to our brain, we are annihilating our own homeostasis. When we disturb our poise, we face the calamitous consequences. The important thing is, we unlearn this populist belief that loneliness is detrimental for our wellness.
The brainwaves phenomenon has been outlined here just for our understanding that our body and mind need different situations for the brain to perform different roles. It is just a reminder of the fact as how very important the theta and gamma brainwaves are for us. That means, if we are in the fast-paced life, multitasking and always busy connecting to the clutter culture, we are essentially a single stream brain persons. We are not allowing our body and mind the leisure and composed state, where our brains could generate theta and gamma waves, which are so very important for very crucial functions of introspection, self-analysis, self-awareness and most importantly the critical connect of the self with the cosmos.
It is therefore very clear that quality loneliness and positive solitude are not optional for our wellness. Our body-mind mechanism has been designed in such a way that we need quality leisure time for an exclusive audience with ourselves. This we are ruthlessly denying to ourselves. That is why we have a mind consciousness, which is chaotic, conflicted and confused. We are only loading our brain with huge bulk of information on daily basis, in our beta brainwaves life-living state and not allowing the brain the serene and secluded time for the theta and gamma brainwaves to organize them, analyze them for higher purposes and synchronize them for our poised life-living wellness.
We all know that so many people are opting for meditation and healing holidays. It is a popular belief that meditation is good for wellness. However, many have wrong notions about meditation and its techniques. Meditation is in fact a simulation of sleep utilities for the brain state, which helps it land at theta and gamma brainwaves, as we do in our sleep. This then heals our chaotic mind consciousness. Scientists have researched into this aspect and have found meditation very powerful tool in theta and gamma brain waves onset. We shall talk in detail about this idea in the next chapter, when we shall look into the very critical issue of neuroplasticity.
Now, it is easy for us to link the notion of brain waves realism with benefit and utility of loneliness. The theta and gamma brainwaves, which are very recuperative and restorative mechanism of brains, are essentially functions, which the brain does when we are in different stages of sleep. However, science has accepted that good practitioners of meditation can attain the theta and gamma brainwaves realms, through sustained mediations. Science has also accepted that most people are having sleep deprivation and sleep disorders in modern fast paced lives. This somehow disturbs the auto-restorative/recuperative function of our brains. That is why it is always very good for most of us to have this calm and secluded exclusive audience with ourselves, so that we can attain this missing wellness mechanism in our lives.
Of the two brainwaves, the gamma brainwaves are hugely rewarding facility for us. Loneliness opens the door for us to enter the domain of gamma brainwaves and attain something, which is surely very gratifying feeling. The gamma brain waves land us in the august company of greats of the world – those, who unravelled for us that all joys, all attainments are expressions of realism within. Science has now established the basis of this spiritual assertion by unravelling the brainwaves phenomenon.
Nothing outside our mind consciousness has any meaning for us. If we are not happy and poised within, even the best of things of material world, fail to make us smile and happy. There always has to be poise between external attainments and internal organization. This we have already talked about in homeostasis discussion. It is also easy to find connect between our emotions, hormonal homeostasis and brainwaves. It is easy to see why both tangibles and intangibles of life are equally important. Material wellness has to go along the emotional and mental wellness.
The poised mind has everything within – the joys and satisfaction. The poised mind consciousness takes you to awareness beyond normal cognition. This is what scientists call metacognition – that is, journeying beyond cognition. This is what we have been discussing all along in the book. The mind consciousness has the cognition, which is very subjective to our brain states. If we have a higher consciousness, we open the doors of different and novel domains of cognition, beyond the subjective cognition horizon. Metacognitive attainments are hugely satisfying and it lands us in a consciousness, where we are affected very little by outside excitations of the material culture. This happens as within us, the light has left no dark corners. The consciousness is lighted and all cognitions are bright and vivid in this light. We surely look beyond.
Science has researched this gamma brainwave state and its impact on human consciousness. Science says that gamma state is something above the usual mediation. Scientists say, sustained gamma-activity is not identical to meditation. They say, the simplest of the meditation practices is focused attention, or what is popularly known as mindfulness mode, where one concentrates on a single object; for example one’s breath. However, experiments conducted on long-term meditation experts, practicing a different type of meditation called open monitoring meditation, showed remarkable results.
Open meditation is a more advanced meditation practice, where the emphasis is not to focus one’s attention on a singular thing, rather to use one’s brain to ‘monitor the universe of mental experience without directing attention to any one task’. This meditation mode exhibited much more gamma-synchrony than that of ordinary meditation practitioners. This is the state of high and lofty order of happy loneliness. This we need to understand.
This simple looking word called meditation is not easy. It needs a lot of practice to perfect the art and science of meditation to keep the brain states in the dominant gamma brainwaves realm. Dalai Lama says that meditating is hard work even for him as he has to meditate for four hours every day. Naturally, we can understand how crucial it is for normal people to have qualitative and positive loneliness time and space for attaining the benefits of the brain states, which lead us to wellness and happiness. The primary step of course is to accept loneliness as an endowment and start the journey.
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