The DMN and the DMZ

In case you were one of the few unfortunate stragglers who missed last week’s Disintegration Group, one of the topics that came up was the difference between how we perceive the world on psychedelics and the sober everyday world of regular life. Even though it’s in the same location, our regular world is less interesting, less hypnotically fascinating, than the world we see on psychedelics, and maybe we are less interesting too – less curious, less innocent. We are not, in the words of Eleanor Farjeon, (brought to most of us by Cat Stevens) living in a world where:

Morning has broken like the first morning

            Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.

            Praise for them singing! Praise for the morning!

            Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.

No, our home is more like A Day in the Life, released just a few years earlier:

            Woke up, fell out of bed

            Dragged a comb across my head,

            Found my way downstairs and drank a cup

            And looking up I noticed I was late.

            Found my coat and grabbed my hat

            Made the bus in seconds flat…

So, since I have to spend time in that Beatles’ world dragging a comb across my head, and I really like Cat Steven’s world, and maybe I even think my soul’s destiny lies in there someplace, it is frustrating that I can’t cross from one world to the other according to my choice. Once I have done all my functional tasks for the day, or as many as I could stand doing, what is it that gets in the way of me seeing the newness and the glory of the world all around? What the – ?

I can’t answer the second question, but as to the first one, the culprit lies my alert problem solving style of consciousness, more particularly, as we decided in group, just in case you weren’t there, in the DMN. (No, not the DMZ, that’s in Korea and it has problems of its own.) I mean in fact the Default Mode Network, that system in the brain which is humming away when our thoughts are just ticking over, and we are focusing on nothing special at all.

We related this brain-in-neutral DMN to our ruminating minds, the little voice that endlessly entertains itself with stories whose content generally boils down to the theme of, boy did I show them! Whether that ‘them’ was the boss I never much liked, or imaginary people with stupid ideas, I will always find my own personalized straw man, built to highlight my own cleverness, assertiveness etc. The cast is predictable, the scriptwriter is dreadful, and sadly, the show is on endless repeat.

This voice, besides being so annoying, is almost entirely self-protective. In some space in my brain, whether I choose it or not, my DMN is checking out every hierarchy, evaluating my status, just trying to make sure that I don’t accidentally slip down the social league table, and preparing me to win future arguments – just like everybody else is doing. It is remorseless, and it even seems a built-in feature of us, but are there no escape routes?  

Wondering about this as I wandered through my podcast app, I came across two guys, Zindel Segal and Norman Farb, talking on the 10% Happier podcast. (Don’t ask me what I think about podcast titles with meaningless numbers in them, my DMN has a prepared speech.) Anyway, they have just finished a book called Better In Every Sense, which is all about DMN escape techniques. The first six minutes of the podcast are bromantic introductions and mutual praise. After that they are describing the DMN, which is useful, and then at around minute 19 they get to describing the proposed escape routes, and the major one is: paying attention to the senses. Noticing your skin, the color of the trees, or the bus stop, or the washing powder box, and so on. And though the inner chatter may have no plan to stop because you are staring at the Tide carton, the power of the DMN must be diluted to the degree that you are paying attention, because you can’t have your attention in two places at once. Segal and Farb go on in a lot more detail over this connecting with the senses business – a bit too much at times – but as a low threshold method for holidaying from the thrall of your tyrannical inner monologue, they are well worth the listen.

Of course when we’re tripping that the DMN gets switched off, and the brain starts connecting neurons that had never had much been introduced before, and out of that somehow, we get to perceive the divine inside the so-called ordinary. That ruminating voice cares deeply – embarrassingly deeply – about our standing in all the various social hierarchies around us, and another way of diluting it is to care deeply about something different, that actually is important. When tripping, I am able to care about what T.S. Eliot calls, ‘the drawing of this love and the voice of this Calling,” the spiritual world that I am a part of. As a matter of fact, in my heart I care about it so much more than the products of my interior bullshit machine. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin puts the impressions of the senses and the impressions of spirit together in this way:

The Diaphany of the Divine at the heart of a glowing Universe, as I have experienced it through contact with the Earth – the Divine radiating from the depths of a blazing Matter: this it is that I shall try to disclose and communicate.

                                                                        The Heart of Matter

“The Divine radiating from the depths of a blazing Matter.” Nice! And that is what psychedelics do for us, concentrating our attention so much that we notice blazing depths inside of Matter. It’s a joy to behold. When you are high, seeing the wrinkles on the surface of an orange or the bark of a tree becomes the spiritual event it should always be.

We are so used to our regular world and its DMN ruminations that we call the more mystical side of things “other-worldly.” Too bad! But a way to describe the work that takes place between one psychedelic experience and the next is that having seen the glory, we can now make the decision to turn our attention towards the divine that is blazing through the heart of matter, and we can do that as well as we may, as often as we can! I’ll have what Eleanor Farjeon was having please, if I can only place the order:

            Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning

            Born of the one light Eden saw play.

            Praise with elation, praise every morning

            Spring’s re-creation of the First Day!