Solving Stress through Nutrition

There have been so many big changes in the world this summer.  Now we're giving ourselves some time to get-together and consider the opportunities we have for a new kind of society and a better world.
We need to ensure we take good care of ourselves to be effective in the world.


Our featured speaker:

Dr. Olia Filina, a doctor of naturopathy, helps solve issues of stress and anxiety.  Dr. Olia uses many forms of treatment including nutrition.

Come to the Columbus Centre, the Italian community's cultural centre, Tuesday September 29, 2015 from 7 to 9pm.

Columbus Centre is conveniently located near Highway 401, and the Spadina subway (a walk or short bus ride from Lawrence West subway station).

Location: The beautiful boardroom along the corridor to the right of the ground floor restaurant.  

This free event is held in conjunction with the Social Creator network's Universe City of Toronto.  We will look at expanding Universe City as a place you go to get the skills and experience you need for today's economy of creativity, sustainable development and learning.  Universe City is organized in seven movements.  One movement is about Food Affordability & Quality Assurance for increased food security.

We are looking forward to getting together with like-hearted individuals.

Let Nick D'Aleandro or I know if you plan to attend.  Bring a friend.

Send us your email if you want to know about our events.

Changing to a Culture of Mutual Fulfillment

We are all heavily influenced by the various cultures we move within and perpetuate: corporate culture, industrial  culture, popular culture, media culture, school culture - you name it.  Cultural activity is ongoing at the office, in factories, homes, and schools.  This activity reinforces what we believe, think, do - and ultimately, what we have been taught to value.

There is a crisis in society currently.  So many of the things we have been programmed to like and want can be immediately satisfying but we soon find that these things do not fulfill our longings.  This crisis can be addressed as we change the culture.

In the same year as the first moon landing, Swiss philosopher and child psychologist, Jean Piaget said -

"The principle goal of education is to create men (sic) who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done."  

So education is key to breaking from our programmed behaviour instilled in us by the dominant cultures.  The goal of education can be to get us outside or 'see beyond' our cultural conditioning.

The tendency in institutions when changing a culture is to focus on, or emphasize instilling new values in people.  People are instructed on 'how to place more value' on things that were less important to the institution in the past.

However, different values are somehow registered in the heart of each individual.  We formulate our values, perhaps based on individual life experiences or heart-felt longings from childhood.

No-one can dictate what we value and the longings that we strive to fulfill.  We can only agree to promote or espouse values that we may not actually hold deep within us.  We can talk in terms of values we don;t necessarily hold if we want to justify establishing new goals and strategies.

There is little evidence of education fulfilling the goal of changing the industrial culture of the 20th century.  Offices and schools are still run like factories within an industrial production line culture.

Offices and schools are still laid out with separate facilities depending in what someone decides should be produced there - a product, service, or a young mind.  Each facility is run based on different standards of what is acceptable not what is going on in our hearts.

To make a shift in a culture we change our habits of thinking and our observable habits in terms of how we interact with others.  We also positively influence the effects that a prevailing culture has on us by changing the physical surroundings where we learn and do things. 

Within effective approaches to cultural change we observe a cycle of steps (a, b, c, d, a, b...):

b. Beliefs

                                                 a. Habits                            c. Heart-felt values

d. Physical
surroundings

This goes against the traditional approach of starting with c, focusing on changing other people's values.  This is instruction, literally 'to strike', 'build with' or in order to impose or leave a deep impression.  It comes from Middle English, and from Latin in- + struere to build.

We influence or change a culture when we begin to focus on our habits.  This means looking at beliefs that we take for granted.  Hence the important role of eduction which literally means to educe or draw from within, or from 'our hearts'.

The more we focus on our habits the more likely we are to examine our beliefs.

To change our habits, first we examine why we are doing things.  For example, in education, endless attention is given to deciding how we educate ourselves.  Little if any time is spent on time questioning why we educate ourselves.

Are we educating ourselves to prepare for fully benefiting from today's economies, or are we still caught up in the old manufacturing economy?  Is education meant to promote making healthful food choices and well being?  Is it to make ourselves resourceful and imaginative people?

d. What kind of physical surroundings would contribute to questioning our habits in terms of why we do the things we do?

a. What kind of new habits in education can draw out our current beliefs?

b. What new understanding can support getting in touch with our heart-felt values?

c. How can we find people who share individual values and express them within our surroundings in ways that remind us to adopt new heart-felt habits.

Is this how we develop a culture of mutual fulfillment in our lives rather than short-term satisfaction.

Fulfilling deeply held longings

My sense is that, in Toronto, we are transitioning away from meaning and becoming more in touch with our core values.  

First I want to explore the effects and conditions of this transition to soulfulness as individuals.  Then I want to look at how to adjust socially to a new mood that’s rising up in the city.

We can identify our unique values by what we do on a Saturday afternoon - family, community, or hobbies.  Though we may have a sense of what our values are, we don’t necessarily give them the importance they deserve as indicating what we have to contribute to society.

However, fewer of us are willing to live based on meaning alone – like getting a salary, getting ahead of coworkers, or waiting for our boss’ job.  Meaning was an important motivator from the ‘60’s – ‘90’s.  Now we want work activity that fulfills our deeply held values and longings.  

People in the arts and self-expression are in touch with, and must express their values each and every day.  We express our values when we decide what is important, gracious, lovely and essential to a course of action.  

We attempt to glimpse the wholeness in situations.  Our values are what indicate the way forward after taking any number of factors into account.  

Decisions made based on values, wholeness and inclusion are not logical or about taste.  They are decisions made based on love and a higher pragmatism.  Pragmatism beats what’s achieved with logic and thinking about a limited number of things we’re able to measure.  Pragmatic action is based on a realistic big picture.

Our values are our means to the things that we live for.  Our values are like gas in the tank, and a map.  We need a course of action or some idea of a destination that will fulfill an inner longing. But values and a course of action without engaging in community limit what we can achieve to express love. 

We know there is strength in numbers. Working in organizations goes further.  It is powerful.  In fact corporations and the military are incredibly powerful.  They’ve become the most powerful things on the planet.  

However we leave many of your values at the door or in the office lobby before starting work each day.  We limit the number of factors we consider.  We think in polarizing, competitive and disheartening ways.  We can be working to pull the social fabric apart.  We must adopt policies and an agenda set by someone else.

My second point is about society and our complete empowerment as individuals.  Complete empowerment comes when we combine our values and our direction on a map with the resources for moving forward.  We readily find help and resources to use in an organization.

However, once you are in touch with your core values the last thing that you want is someone else telling you what to do or setting a course for you.  That is why so many of us who have gone inwards and found our souls stayed away from corporations and group activities.  We want to be proactive in response to inner promptings and be free to do our own thing.

What’s been missing is a form of organizing that allows us to respond to whatever values we have registered in our souls.  That is partly why the Markham Street MuSE is very significant to you at this time.  It’s a form of organizing able to support the new mood in the city.  

A muse is defined as ‘the function of deciding among ourselves through ongoing distributed decision-making across a network of developing or emerging connections’.  

Compared to what’s produced when people get together and assume power after politicking among themselves, a muse leads soulful people to full empowerment with shared roles that make things more fluid and practical.

The function of a muse in organizing does not consider only one location.  It is meant as a source of inspiration for organizing across neighbourhoods and organizing in any local area, no matter how small.  I recommend that you check it out and look at the degree to which we are free to do what we want once we’re connected with our values.  

It allows for all our multiple, diverse visions.  These are the courses we chose individually on a map of a creative era.  

If you are in touch with your core values and aim for full empowerment, then you don’t have to wait for society to change completely.  Find out more about how to use a muse to get from where society is now to where you want to be.

Science and Buddhism

oThe following quote by Einstein is sometimes abbreviated or misquoted to make it sound like Einstein was promoting Buddhism.

"The beginnings of cosmic religious feelings already appear at an early stage of development, e.g. in the early Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned from Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling."

The Dalai Lama wrote an Op-Ed article, “Our Faith in Science,” published in New York Times, before he talked at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, November, 2005.  It is a well-grounded, not so spiritual article that contains the following quote: 



He takes the view that science and Buddhism both search for truth and for understanding reality.

"By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview."

"...Through the Mind and Life Institute, which I helped found, I have had the opportunity to meet with scientists to discuss their work. World-class scientists have generously coached me in subatomic physics, cosmology, psychology, biology.
"It is our discussions of neuroscience, however, that have proved particularly important. From these exchanges a vigorous research initiative has emerged, a collaboration between monks and neuroscientists, to explore how meditation might alter brain function." 

Later in the same article he writes,

"... I am not advocating a fusion of religious ethics and scientific inquiry.

"Rather, I am speaking of what I call "secular ethics," which embrace the principles we share as human beings: compassion, tolerance, consideration of others, the responsible use of knowledge and power. These principles transcend the barriers between religious believers and non-believers; they belong not to one faith, but to all faiths."

It would take a lot of work to see whether scence can enrich a Buddhist world view.  Is it realistic to expect Buddhists to change?

Last Sunday I went with a friend to hear a talk by Tulku Lobsang at the Native Centre.  Lobsang was born into a farming family in the Himalayas in 1976 and enthroned as the reincarnation of 'the Speech of Nyentse Lama' (not the body or mind), at age 13.  

Two years earlier the male oracle of the monastery advised the monks that Tulku Lobsang was the eighth reincarnation of their Nyentse Lama, once head of their monastery.  When Lobsang did not stay to become the new head amazingly another monk was identified as the reincarnation of 'the Mind of Nyentse Lama' and stayed to lead the monastery.



Tulku Lobsang's website says that he mostly lectures in medicine, Buddhism, and astrology.  During his talk, with a qualifying remark, he gave the abbreviated quote from Einstein to suggest Buddhism was the religion best suited to become universally adopted one day. 

He clarified that Buddhism is not a faith or cultural belief but all about nature and the science of how to align with nature.  This amplifies what the Dalai Lama wrote in the New York Times' article.

This strikes me as odd.  When you read pamphlets and books on Buddhism they encourage increasing or deepening our knowledge and experience of Buddhism.  They do not say anything about deepening our knowledge of reality.  Neither do books on science.  Science provides us with understanding of what's been discovered by applying the scientific method.  Buddhism and science are both cultural products that promote specific practices. 

Lobsang urged those in attendance to get rid of the self.  This is a major departure from science where a pattern called self-organization is how everything in the universe comes into existence.  The self is sometimes used interchangeably with the ego or a conditioned mind. 
Lobsang could conceivably have meant that we need to get rid, or get beyond our social and cultural programming. 

Without a scientific or spiritual practice that studies and reveres the self we have no way to apply an understanding of self-organization to attune society with nature.  We could be organizing society based on what we've learned about organization in nature.

The self has been big in psychology since the second half of the 20th century.  It is a little known fact that the Catholic Church counsels or ministers to the needs of its members based on Jungian understanding of the self.  

Understanding the self can perhaps lead to a more advanced science that engages more of our inherent neurological capacity to grasp wholeness.  This means moving beyond linear and analytical 'left-brain functioning' to explain nature.  It is our ego or socially and culturally programmed way of thinking at this time.  But linearity and sequence are blunt tools for understanding reality.

We were penalized in school and sometimes soon became economically marginalized if we could not think straight or function linearly day after day.  Now that society is desperate for innovation we are learning to think outside the box.  This is called insight, or holistic thinking which engages the 'whole brain', or at least more of the brain's functioning.

I found Tulku Lobsang's comments fascinating when he talked about how Buddhism starts to build an understanding of reality.  Buddhism begins with a concept of space and volume, the 'element' traditionally called ether.  I thought of how Newton started with explanations of cause and effect which are clearly linear.  

Science sets a cultural limit on what is of interest, or what scientists can study.  The ideal that is applied to restrict our thoughts is called determinism.  This is a big word that means putting your faith in what is predictable.  We are urged to believe in the 'element' traditionally called earth.  We give no consideration to what is free and unpredictable - like water, air, or fire.

Buddhism does not accept linearity.  It places a huge emphasis on the experience of freedom which follows from enlightened thinking.  It considers the traditional 'elements' as 'directions' that exist simultaneously as if on a plane.

Tulku Lobsang explained that ether is seen as enclosing everything and containing the other four 'elements' inside it.  Buddhism does not accept the idea of a beginning state, a sequential development where the four other 'elements' somehow build towards the formation of ether.

By way of contrast Newtonian science is a culture for studying things that are predictable.  This can never lead to ways of being free of consequences in our lives.  That is why linear thinking produces so many problems and why science is so effective in promoting today's culture of end-of-pipe solutions or EOP.  Science wont get us out of this civilization of EOP, or stop us from being conditioned pEOPle.  Its scary to think that science will prevent us from enjoying freedom from consequences.  Freedom lies outside the scope of this prevailing belief system.

Holistic thinking in terms of directions is definitely out of fashion in scientific inquiry.  And the notion of liberation and freedom from predictable or conditioned behaviour has never been within the range of interests prescribed for science by professional bodies of what amount to scientific initiates or a priesthood. 

Yes, this notion of volume and states existing simultaneously across an area is very interesting.  It could be very useful in revitalization of science and society.  Holistic notions can sometimes be explained linearly but this only limits our interest in the whole and encourages us to think unrealistically.

When Tulku Lobsang and I met I suggested that by using a model based on the seven levels present in the periodic table in chemistry we can now align with nature and heal society.  He did not engage in conversation but gave words of gratitude and one those great smiles of his.

With the motivation of a better, more inclusive international society we can look for ways to accommodate what we read and hear about in science, psychology and various spiritual disciplines.  We might find that these fit within a unifying framework that makes our enterprises for understanding of reality, or realities, less divisive academically and socially. 

We can discuss things within a scientific, psychological or spiritual framework without discarding the framework when we realize it needs to expand to embrace more of what we read and hear.  Any frameworks of reality can surely expand.  Discarding a framework altogether, whether it is spiritual, psychological or scientific, comes as a last resort.

At Social Creator events in fall of 2014 we will discuss whether a seven stage framework can be usefully applied to model how our neurological functioning develops.  Our neurology is the tool with which we perceive reality.  It must have some importance in how we understand reality.  

We'll take a look at a framework based on science, values and purpose.  Values could be similar to what the Dalai Lama refers to as 'the principles we share as human beings'.  As an artist however, I believe each one of us differs in terms of values.  A framework that acknowledges that we differ in terms of our views and values is important in an era for realizing a vision of everyone becoming increasingly fulfilled and free.