Among other things, living in a new country always entails discovering new brands of my favorite ingredients — which can be good or bad, depending on what I find. Presently I have three different brands of butter in my fridge. Lately I eat a lot of butter because it’s better for your brain as well as your heart. And I only buy real butter, no blends, “light” butters, or margarine.

Today while making my eggs I noticed that, even while cold, an Italian butter labeled burro prateria (“grassland butter”) by Brazzale S.p.A. smells incredibly sweet and fragrant. That inspired me to smell another brand I bought in a pinch last week, an Irish butter by Kerrygold, which entirely lacks that sweetness and frankly has overtones of manure, once I stop and smell it closely.

I am fascinated by the difference. I had never even paid much attention to the smell of butter. I would assume the sweet brand smells sweet for a reason — and not because they added sugar (which they didn’t, and it wouldn’t change the smell even if they did). I wonder if it was made from cows raised on a healthier free-range diet, for example. In any case, I take the smell as a very good sign of its quality.

This inspired me to actually taste the butter directly, by putting a small slice in my mouth rather than just using it as a way to cook other stuff. And the Italian Burro tastes incredibly clear and creamy, while the Irish Kerrygold tastes strong and faintly unpleasant. In fact, the Burro tastes so good I can eat it straight from the package. The actual flavor isn’t that sweet, just very clear, smooth, pleasant. It’s a minor kind of delicacy, and reminds me of the first time I tried cocoa nibs or unsweetened licorice tronchetti.

So what does the butter in your refrigerator smell like? For fellow butter connoisseurs, what is your favorite brand of butter and why?

I would assume that, like me, you have consulted many doctors and they aren’t able to do much to help. In this case, one of the most powerful therapies is what we might call “radical acceptance.”

The basic premise is that we often don’t realize how much of our suffering is of our own creation, created by how we react to the pain in our body. Sometimes the core of pain itself can be like a grain of sand in an oyster; but through our irritated reaction, it grows and grows and grows, like a painfully hard pearl, into something large and hard that impinges on our ability to live.

I use the word “radical” acceptance because normally we think of acceptance as a sort of trivial cognitive process: I know I’m in pain. OK, I accept that — but it’s not going anywhere.

On a more influential level, though, real acceptance is not just cognitive but also emotional, and has roots deep in the body and the unconscious mind. And so the process for those of us who experience constant pain is to learn to look deeper than our thoughts, deeper than our surface emotions, and observe our own reactions to the pain in a very intimate way. Instinctively, it is often the last thing we would think to do, since we just want the pain to get out of our way; but if we become skilled at looking deeper and with greater compassion, it can help a great deal.

One of the first steps, especially for those of us who tend to get caught up in our thoughts, is to learn to be more deeply present with “the now” — and not just when we sit down to meditate or do yoga, but as a way of life. In this area, I know of no better teacher than Eckhart Tolle. His book The Power of Now is perhaps the best instruction manual for learning to get more deeply into the present moment and stay there.

I particularly recommend listening to the audiobook version of The Power of Now, so you can hear his voice and join him at a psychological level as he models the quality of consciousness of which he speaks.

When it comes to more intensive meditation and personal inquiry, another teacher I’ve learned from immensely is Adyashanti. His True Meditation audiobook is particularly incisive, even though the recording quality isn’t great. For anyone with some prior exposure to Buddhism, I would also highly recommend his Spontaneous Awakening recordings.

Adyashanti’s basic teaching is very simple. He teaches that if we want to reach our true potential, we must learn to stop trying to manipulate our mind into artificial states, wishing for our experience to be different, always longing, striving, aching for reality to be other than it is — wanting to get somewhere faster, to gain more insight, to overcome our struggles, to change the way we feel, to improve the way we think, etc. This striving creates a conflict in our minds, so that we do everything from a place of effort and tension, rather than ease.

And so his basic spiritual teaching, regardless of your level of meditation experience, is to simply let go of control and allow everything to be as it is.

In my own meditation practice, I often sit on a small bench, put my torso in a nice relaxed upright posture, get in touch with the feeling of my in-breath and out-breath, and then start paying attention to the tension in my body. As I see my emotional tension, I notice where it is at in my body, observe it as intimately as I can, and then let go of it.

Then I repeat that same process with any urgent thoughts that come to mind, any aching tensions in my body, any well-intentioned efforts to improve my state of mind, etc. The answer to each of these things, almost like a mantra or a psychological balm I administer to them in equal measure, is: Let go of control and allow everything to be as it is.

And I keep repeating the process. The first time notice some mental tension and let go, I might get 10% of the way there. But as I keep repeating it, with each tension in my mind and body, I get deeper into a state that actually looks like radical harmony with the way things are.

Amazingly, the more I let go of control, the more my mind and body are able to join this harmony, accomplishing things I could never have accomplished through deliberate effort: My mind is more clear, I have more energy available, I’m able to think more creatively, I feel more relaxed, and my aches and pains gradually shrink back to much more manageable proportions.

Lately I use this instruction-mantra not just when I’m on my meditation cushion, but when I’m typing e-mails, when I’m in conversations, when I’m doing the dishes, when I’m shopping, when I’m working, when I’m driving: Let go of control and allow everything to be as it is. It’s amazing how much it helps.

If you get to experimenting with these ideas, I’d really enjoy hearing how it goes. I know many friends who have been helped by them in one way or another. I wish you luck in your journey. Feel free to write if you have questions or want to know more about something.

I’d love to learn more about how he does it.

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) – The sun beams down on a warm Dutch spring morning, and the Iceman’s students look wary as they watch him dump bag after bag of ice into the tub of water where they will soon be taking a dip.

The plan is to try to overcome the normal human reaction to immersion in freezing slush: gasping for air, shivering uncontrollably, and getting back out again as soon as possible.

Instead, under the direction of “Iceman” Wim Hof, the group of athletes is going to stay in the water for minutes practicing his meditation techniques, seeking possible performance or health benefits.

Hof, 52, earned his nickname from feats such as remaining in a tank of ice in Hong Kong for almost 2 hours; swimming half the length of a football field under a sheet of ice in the Arctic; and making the Guinness record books for running a half-marathon barefoot in Finnish snow in deep subzero conditions.

Keep reading.

People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t.

Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.

In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That’s intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking cap, normally get thinner as we age.

“Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being,” says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. “These findings are consistent with other studies that demonstrated increased thickness of music areas in the brains of musicians, and visual and motor areas in the brains of jugglers. In other words, the structure of an adult brain can change in response to repeated practice.”

Keep reading »

Thanks for the link, Marsh.

UPDATE: Looks like this study has made the front page of Mudita Journal before. And from the same tipster. Perhaps if I meditated more, I would have noticed sooner.

This part is particularly relevant to our conversations today about the dangers of nuclear power:

To put it in perspective, in 2008 Next Big Future calculated how many people are killed per terawatt-hour of electricity generated. On average, there are 161 fatalities related to energy generation from coal for each one of those terawatt-hours, which comprise a quarter of the energy we use on Earth. 36 people die per TWh of oil energy, which is 40% of our energy use. Nuclear power has a deaths per TWh rate of only 0.04 while producing 6% of our energy, which makes it about ten times safer than solar power once you take into account how many people fall off roofs while installing it, and twice as safe as hydro power.

Nuclear power: Twice as safe as hydro, 10x safer than solar, and 1000x as safe as coal or oil.

Among energy idealists, solar power often gets credit for being safe — “We’re just capturing what the sun already gives us!” — but just imagine the environmental catastrophes if those incredibly toxic solar panels had washed out to sea during the tsunami in Japan.

I was particularly intrigued by this summary of the ten key conclusions in Gary Taubes’s book Good Calories, Bad Calories. Based on other information I’ve gleaned over the years, and what I’ve observed in my own dietary changes, I’m inclined to agree with these.

1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.

2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis — the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.

3. Sugars — sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically — are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.

4. Through their direct effect on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and the other chronic diseases of civilization.

5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not over-eating, and not sedentary behaviour.

6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter, any more than it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger.

7. Fattening and obesity are caused by an imbalance — a disequilibrium — in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism. Fat synthesis and storage exceed the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue and its subsequent oxidation. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this balance.

8. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated — either chronically or after a meal — we accumulate fat in our fat tissue. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and use it for fuel.

9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.

10. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity.

I rarely have time to read books lately, so I’m especially appreciative of good summaries like this.

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you a man and a program of stunning originality and practical results. The man is Jon Butcher and his program is Lifebook.

Lifebook launches you into its world by inviting you to deeply examine 12 separate aspects of your life that, in reality, are not separate at all.

In each category you are stimulated and inspired to clarify your beliefs, identify your goals and define what needs to be done to actualize them. You capture and document your thoughts and feelings along the way using the Lifebook software.

This step-by-step, highly structured process results in your own, self-authored Lifebook — a detailed description of the life you want to live and a strategic plan to guide you as you move toward it.

Although it does borrow from my work, this program is not psychotherapy. It is about self-actualization. As you work through the 12 categories, you get to know yourself in inspiring and challenging new ways. Consciousness, energy, and self-responsibility rise together. The future is experienced as unobstructed. You are witness to your own transformation.

The Lifebook Program is a 4-day seminar experience, held monthly in Chicago. Normally $2995, Lifebook has agreed to extend a $1000 savings to admirers of my work. (For the record, I have no financial stake in this offer — I pass it on to you because I believe you will find it to be a truly extraordinary experience, as I did).

To learn more about this special offer, please CLICK HERE.

I simply cannot recommend this program highly enough. If you wish to become the author of your own life, Lifebook may be exactly what you have been waiting for.

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Branden

If any of you have been to one of these seminars, I would be very interested to hear what you thought.

Thanks to Kirez for the tip.

I was impressed not only with what he made — a weight rack that’s both more ergonomic and more safe than what you find in gyms today — but also with his idea of making a video to demonstrate its use.

I’m just starting to climb aboard the video-marketing revolution myself, so it’s timely for me.

Valhalla weight rack from Kirez Reynolds on Vimeo.

But really, who wouldn’t trust a man in knee-pads and flip-flops?

Criticisms of mindfulness are particularly interesting to me, partly because I experience mindfulness, at root, to be a simple increase in awareness — and not even at the “synthetic” level of thought, but rather at the even more basic level of perception.

Since the practice of mindfulness is virtually synonymous with an increase in perception, or elementary awareness, I often find myself wondering, “How on earth can raising awareness be bad?”

So that is, perhaps, a philosophical bias I bring to the table, from the outset — I don’t understand how awareness can be bad. Ever. Not in principle, as a way of living.

Occasionally I get the impression that mindfulness is being criticized because the critic has something akin to a religious phobia, and their criticisms of mindfulness are just a by-product of that, since mindfulness therapies are derived, historically, from Buddhism.

I get that vibe, for example, in this quote from critic Scott Lilienfield in the article:

“What concerns me is the hype, the talk about changing the world, this allure of the guru that the field of psychotherapy has a tendency to cultivate.”

I personally attended a training in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (the gold standard in mindfulness as a clinical intervention) and I don’t recall anything about gurus or changing the world. If anything, the approach being taught seemed systematically stripped of it cultural underpinnings in Buddhism and the various Zen traditions from which it originated.

So I wonder where this concern of his is coming from; does it relate to the empirical treatments being offered, or is it something he picked up elsewhere?

Also, sometimes people criticize mindfulness meditation because they do not recognize the difference between mindfulness meditation (which involves increasing one’s awareness of reality) and transcendental meditation (which involves entering a trance and, essentially, temporarily decreasing one’s contact with reality).

The latter was quite popular, and controversial, in the 1970s, but is fundamentally dissimilar from mindfulness meditation.

On the other hand, there are certain criticisms of mindfulness that appear to have undeniable empirical merit — assuming the results upon which they’re based can be taken at face value:

A case in point is mindfulness-based therapy to prevent a relapse into depression. The treatment significantly reduced the risk of relapse in people who have had three or more episodes of depression. But it may have had the opposite effect on people who had one or two previous episodes, two studies suggest.

Why would mindfulness help people with three or more episodes, but hurt people with two or fewer?

Understanding the dynamics involved, it seems to me, could do much to increase our grasp of the human mind, as well as mindfulness therapies.

Could it be that, for patients with two or fewer episodes, the mind’s natural defense mechanisms are more safe or useful, at least in the short term, than an increase in awareness?

I would enjoy hearing theories from anyone with some grasp of the dynamics involved, and preferably some first-hand personal experience with mindfulness practice.

Why would mindfulness — even when removed entirely from any religious trappings — help certain patients, while hurting others?