BrainDao: Can We get Beyond Either~ Or Thinking?

As some of you may know, I’ve been writing a book for many years now. My practice, my health, and Life seemed to keep getting in my way. But now that I’m (semi-)retired, I’m working again on finishing it. 🤞

Play in the Between Place

The second chapter of my book — Play in the Between Place — talks about the importance of the "between-place" in moving beyond our typically either~or thinking. One of my clues that I’ve been taking WAY too long to finish writing this book is that more and more writers are now arriving at (or re-discovering) this same notion. Today, it’s a brief article from Atmos introducing their next issue, which apparently will be on just this topic.

Dusk Till Dawn | Atmos

So what?

My first chapter talks about why our human brain tends to do Either ~ Or thinking. It’s a strong tendency, a pattern of thought we can’t (and probably don’t really want to) avoid entirely - when it’s working for us.

But when it’s not working, we find ourselves creating dilemmas, getting “stuck between a rock and a hard place”, or finding ourselves at odds with people or positions around us. (Ahem. Politics, anyone?)

So recognizing the importance of finding a way out, around, through, between, beyond the polarities is critical. And it’s amazing what our brain can do when we use one of these ways and let it discover new perspectives.

So., a spoiler….Yes, we can. We must know when and how to get beyond Either~Or for our personal and social growth and wellness.

Do you have ways you get Between and Beyond Either~Or? Or a time when it spontaneously happened with an interesting outcome?

#BrainDao: When is a Brain Not Just a Brain?

Learn how to govern your own mind, Chuang-tzu says, and the universe will govern itself.

- from The Second Book of the Tao, Stephen Mitchell

I love this notion. But I bet most people reading it will think of self-discipline as the route to governing one’s own mind.

But self-discipline isn’t such a great tool for governing ourselves most of the time, especially when it comes to mental behavour — what we think or what we feel. And it seems pretty hopeless to me to think that the world will “govern itself” if we just force self-disciplne on everyone. Really? Is that going to happen??

I’m going to ask you to let go of that notion.

In my nearly-finished book The Way of the Brain, I write about the importance of understanding the principles behind how the brain~body works (the Ways it works) and recognising that these are exactly the same Ways as the Way the rest of Nature works. One of those Ways is that the brain~body is a self-regulating, self-organising system. It governs itself.

So, looking at this quote from that #BrainDao perspective, I see the message being that if we can learn the Ways we work — the core principles underlying our brain~body as a complex system — and really respect those Ways, then we can also start to understand and apply those Ways to the larger world we all together make up as a yet-larger system.

If each of us lived by those Ways, then the world really would be more likely to be able to just Be and better self-regulate and self-organise — in a word, to better govern itself.