Deep Reading

Deep Reading

by James Patrick Kelly

telepathy

Of the many skills that you’ve learned over the years, one in particular is important to our relationship, dear reader.  And we do have a very intimate relationship, if you don’t mind my saying so.  You see, my thought, as embedded in the sentences that I’m typing at this moment,  will become your thoughts in the not-too-distant future.  Briefly perhaps; it’s likely that they will slide into your short term memory and then slip away  like the memory of what you ate for lunch last Tuesday, or who won the Hugo awards in 2012 or the names of the kids who came to your seventh birthday party. But for a few seconds at least, my thoughts will become yours.  

Reading and writing, our arcane system of symbolic telepathy, was invented in stages over many centuries, as Denise Schmandt-Besserat  discusses in her excellent survey, The  Origins of Writing.  Neither is an easy skill to acquire.  We tend to forget that illiteracy was once the norm for homo sapiens sapiens; any number of important historic figures couldn’t read.  The vast majority of the peoples of the ancient world, including many of the pharaohs of Egypt, the Aztec rulers and the royals of Mesopotamia were illiterate, as were William the Conqueror and Gheghis Khan.  Great teachers like Muhammad and Saint Peter couldn’t read.  Blind Homer if he actually existed, was unable to write down the tales he is remembered for.   And while there is some debate as to whether Socrates could read, he certainly was no advocate for literacy. In the Phaedrus dialogue he warns of the dangers of teaching the young to read, “In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. ... Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing.” 

At least, that’s what Plato says he said. 

Jumping ahead to the present day, while the world literacy rate hovers around 86%, that still means that some 757 million of our fellow citizens of Earth would be unable to read this sentence, according to Project Literacy.  Here in the US, 32 million people are unable to read and write; we’re just 125^th among all nations in literacy, behind the likes of Turkmenistan (22), Bosnia (60) and Venezuela (90).  

f this

Thank goodness that you, dear reader, are among the fortunate majority who can read.  But have you ever wondered how acquiring that splendid skill has changed your brain from that of your Bronze Age ancestors?   Or how reading has rewired your synapses from the time you struggled through Hop on Pop to when you read Bob Silverberg’s column here, just a few minutes ago?   

Because your brain does change over time.  Alas, it now looks as though you probably haven’t grown many new neurons since you reached adulthood.  However, research into neuroplasticity over the last thirty years demonstrates that there is continuous change to your cortical maps, or the ways your brain is organized, in response to your daily experiences.  This is how habits are formed.  It’s how you can pick up a smattering of Hungarian at any age, or learn how to craft what you need in Minecraft or recover function after a stroke.  And revisions to your cortical maps can happen quickly, in a matter of months, according to some studies. 

Which brings me to something that has been worrying me recently.  I’ve noticed changes in my reading abilities.  Perhaps you have as well.  Researchers tell us that our reading maps are  constantly being revised in reaction to our evolving digital environment.  For instance, have you ever heard of the “F pattern?”   In 2006 web usability researchers at the Neilsen Norman Group conducted a ground-breaking eye-tracking study and  discovered that you tend to skim a web page in a pattern that roughly resembles an F.  Say you’ve just done a Google search: You scan the entire top line left to right, drop down to the second and scan as much of that as you care to, then quickly drop your gaze down the left hand side looking for any other interesting bits.  That behavior, part utilitarian, part learned, can transfer onto other web pages and even to print reading.  If you don’t think that web designers have embraced the F pattern, check out What is the F-Pattern and How to Use It for Increased Conversions.  Modern life demands that we spend a lot of time looking at screens and this super-efficient skimming technique can help us get to the good stuff faster.

collateral

But at what cost?  Maryanne Wolf is known for her work in  cognitive neuroscience and developmental psycholinguistics.  She is also a gifted writer; I can recommend her latest book, Reader, Come Home, the Reading Brain in the Digital World.  You can get a taste of her research in Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound.  Wolf argues that the cortical maps that develop from learning to read print allow for “analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight.”  She calls these deliberative features “deep reading.” Researchers around the world have been looking at how we read across all media and their findings show that screen reading yields a different array of cognitive results than reading from the page.  

For example, The National Science Foundation funded a 2017 study that found that adults who regularly read from screens had significantly more trouble comprehending a series of science articles than those who used digital devices less frequently.   Ping Li, who authored the study, said, "There are a lot of positive uses for electronic devices and I'm an advocate of digital learning, but when it comes to understanding of science concepts through reading, our take is that it's not helpful."   Another study comparing student reactions to e-textbooks and print textbooks found that learning from e-textbooks was harder and took the students longer to reach the same level of understanding, even in a controlled lab environment.  Eye-scanning revealed “the scanning pattern produced when the student read a textbook showed consistent reading from line to line down the page. But the scanning pattern from reading on the screen was less intense.” And here’s a European study that finds that Kindle readers were less able to remember key events in a mystery story than print readers.  Believe me when I say that this particular finding sends a thrill of fear to all the hard-working plotters who publish in these pages!

But these studies need to been read in context, as a paper by The Dana Foundation points out in The Truth About Research on Screen Time.   A judgmental rejection of screen reading , particularly by parents of young children who are acquiring this fundamental skill, has yet to be justified by the research.  Many of the current studies are survey-based, and reflect correlation rather than causality.  And when we say that Americans spend more than ten hours looking at screens every day, what exactly does that mean?  Is reading the New York Times or Asimov’s on a Kindle the same as watching the NFL or The Big Bang Theory on television or playing Fortnight or Super Mario on a gaming console?  The research into the effects of screen time on the reading brain is just beginning, according to neuroscientist Abigail Baird. “We can’t say with any certainty that new technology is bad for brains. The only thing we can really say is that it’s a new experience for brains. Because of what we have come to understand about neuroplasticity, we now know that most experiences make changes to the brain—and that includes technology. But I don’t know that we’re even close to understanding whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing or maybe even just a neutral thing.”

While Maryanne Wolf is concerned that attenuation of our deep reading processes could become the unintended “collateral damage” of our digital culture, she is not calling for a wholesale retreat from screen reading.  “We possess both the science and the technology to identify and redress the changes in how we read before they become entrenched. If we work to understand exactly what we will lose, alongside the extraordinary new capacities that the digital world has brought us, there is as much reason for excitement as caution.”

exit

Longtime readers may recall that in columns I wrote during the first days of the ebook (2001-04) I was an unabashed cheerleader for the coming digital print revolution.  That should come as no surprise; one of the reasons I got this gig in the first place is that I’m an early-adopting technophile.  And I have no regrets for predicting here that ebooks would change publishing – because that happened.  Big time!  

I will note that my enthusiasm tempered over time.  For instance, in 2011 I devoted several columns to  Nicolas Carr’s prescient The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. In my exit from one of those columns “New Brains for Old” I wrote, “We don’t know whether our new brains will be better than the old ones.  What we do know is that they are constantly adapting to the cognitive environment we live in.  Maybe it’s time to take charge of that environment?  Otherwise it’s definitely going to mess with our heads.”  

Dear reader, it has messed with my head.  I can no longer give unpublished manuscripts their proper and thorough reading, either my own or those of my writer pals or students, unless I print hardcopy.  And I absolutely refuse to read a novel from a screen; the telepathy just doesn’t work anymore.  In fact, I have some difficulty reading novels on the page, although I still enjoy stories in print. These days I much prefer listening to books; almost all my pleasure reading is audio.  What’s the attraction?  Well, the performances, that’s for sure.  But more important?

I can’t skim an audiobook.

Defund the Police

Most municipalities spend most of their money on their police departments. Most arrests are for drug related charges, only five percent of police responses are necessary for violent crimes. The police, as weapon wielding would be warriors colonizing our cities and towns are consuming the lions share of our resources and in turn providing us with fear an intimidation in order to enforce ‘law and order’, to strip civilians of their humanity and to deprive people of color from safe environments.
Many people are underserved, particularly the mentally ill or chemically addicted (which is a manifestation of mental illness) or over served, such as communities of color or the homeless. There have been studies done in many countries showing that homelessness is best addressed by giving people homes to live in and social support. There is an entire country (Portugal) which has made a study of decriminalizing drugs and providing counseling and rehabilitation and shown that by so doing the likelihood of serious crimes or negative outcomes from drug use can be significantly curtailed.
There is no reason to continue to live in a society where the truncheon and gun are tools used to enforce the subjection of a people. This is supposed to be a democracy that we live in in these united states. It is not, it has been an oligarchic slave state, especially lately, in my own lifetime. 
The documentary 13th makes the point very clearly that since the end of the civil war and the emancipation of slavery, the state and those who profit from their ability to coordinate and control state actions have migrated slavery into servitude by ‘criminals’ and continues and has significantly escalated since the end of the Jim Crow era a culture of imprisoning people into a new form of slavery.
There is fear, fear that equality of justice and opportunity would deprive the wealthy of their place in the sun. There is fear of the loss of power. Those who control the resources, who make the decisions or dictate the norms of society with their intrenched greed have made us all a mockery of humanity. 
There is abundance in this world without greediness. In order to realize and share this abundance, the way we allocate our resources: material, monetary, mental and manipulative must be redressed.
The good and services, material and manipulative ( work done with the hands ) can and ideally should be geared in a way that meet the needs of those whose needs are greatest. Monetarily, we should choose to allocate our collective funds (pooled as they are in taxes of various forms) towards promoting the welfare physical mental and spiritual of our fellow humans. We should set our minds and hearts (as these two are intricately linked and interwoven) towards seeking true justice and reconciliation between all those who have been aggrieved or are marginalized in this culture.
There is no reason that people exercising their constitutional rights to assembly and speech should be met with the weapons of war criminals. Those meant to protect and serve should do just that. 
We should defund the police, reallocate the fund that are given to them to social services and sectors of action in local communities that lift people up and promote their health and wellbeing and meet their needs. Instead of holding them down under the oppressive sense of punishment for acting awry when they cannot conform to a cold calculating machine of profit that lacks all humanity and empathy.
Police lack empathy. They want you to be afraid of them, they want to scare or beat or kill you into conformity with the culture of violence and fear into which they have been indoctrinated.
Their culture must die. All police forces should be disbanded, their culture of intergenerational bullying and ‘blue silence’ the wall behind which they keep their secrets and sins and hatefulness growing in its own petri dish must be cleansed. There is no reason any person should carry a weapon that doesn’t have man unarmed counselor and reporting member of the community riding along with them. A camera that can be turned off, a system of surveillance that is designed by and for white men to identify themselves and dehumanizes people of color is wrong.
Defund the police, end the old regime of policing, let communities have access to the resources that are being wasted on these punks. They are not soldiers, they should not be soldiers, they do not need the weapons of soldiers, we do not need or want occupied streets designed to herd us into the factories of oppression.
The time for a new way of being in our cities and towns is past due. This is the moment. It is time for true justice, no longer ‘law and order’ enforcing the laws of the racists greedy oligarchs, but ‘liberty and freedom for all’!

The Bride

Is awaited and attended to by all with loving complete attention. Is willing to be free of ego so much as to surrender its individual identity Is open, extending the capacity it has to love as much as it can Is free of blemish by giving and opening into the present moment Commits freely and enthusiastically to the union before it

Prayer

In the midst of the times in which we live, many topics seem ever so important. One though, which is perennial and powerful, is the topic of prayer.

To consider prayer as a topic though, perhaps it would be best to understand what prayer is.

According to the dictionary, prayer is a request for help or an offer of thanks to an object of Worship.

I personally was raised in the Catholic church, and during my childhood, I did something radical. I read the Gospels. I learned from those books things which I did not learn in church or in church groups as an adolescent. I can recall at a group of my ‘peers’ a discussion about prayer and how different people were sharing different prayers for specific things.

I took a harder line to the topic. In the Gospels, Jesus, when asked how to pray gives us one prayer, which we know as the ‘Our Father’

Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.'

And that’s it. An acknowledgment of the ineffible and awesome power of the Divine, and a recognition of our part in manifesting that divine truth into life as we know it. An acknowledgment that we are provided for, and recognition that we must take part in the cleansing of sins through our own capacity to forgive.

Not wish fulfillment. Not the secret. Not manifesting our reality. But surrender.

As commonly known the prayer acknowledges, ‘Thy will be done’

The release of our individual, perhaps petty, desires for certain things and acknowledgment that a greater will, can and will guide the course of our lives if we can be the conduit for it’s awesome power and allow a more perfect reality to present itself.

Years ago, I was inspired with the following ‘poem’ on the topic of prayer itself. It is not something I consciously wrote, it just fell onto the page one day as I finished a nap.

‘Prayer is for desire

Sincere prayer is not concerned with the self or things of the world

A more perfect prayer is to the Lord, so that we may learn love and truth

In this, and every way, God seeks our enrichment.’

But, let’s take a moment and consider prayer as a topic away from such lofty heights of idealism. What is prayer simply? It’s mental activity, it may be spoken as well, but it doesn’t need to be. As a mental action it is an expression of a being to share a wish or express a thought, be it for healing, for peace, for love, for clarity, for insight, for answers. Or for thanksgiving.

To take the time in one’s day to harness our mental energy to spread a pattern of concern, giving thought towards others, wishing for their wellness, towards the divine or ideal or perfect and connecting to and collecting from the deep pool of infinite wisdom. This is an activity worthy of the time engaged.

Certainly compared to many of the pursuits of the modern age. The vapid monster that is medium; video, or video game especially. Taking the time to acknowledge a powerful center, within or without of our general sphere of awareness. Transmitting wishes or intentions into it, or simply allowing for, successfully or unsuccessfully the peace to receive information or sensations is a powerful use of one’s time.

Given the general fruitless nature of most endeavours on the human time scale given the frame of geologic shifts in time and the reconstruction of matter in this realm. It could be one of the greatest uses of time available.

Entering into a still place of love and wisdom, transmitting and receiving with it.

Watching and praying. Stepping into eternity, the realm in which time is a meaningless concept.

The place in which truth transcends words. No report can accurately encapsulate the feeling that we must forget to live here, while we live here, scrambling to reconnect to that which empowers our every breath.

Vipassana, my experience

The purpose of this entry is to describe to you in a reasonable but hopefully not excessive detail what my experience with my first meditation retreat was like.
If you don't want to read the intro what's it all about scroll down to where I've put SKIP TO HERE

First some general information, through an essay like this that my sister shared with me, that a friend of hers wrote, I learned about the ten day meditation retreats that occur at different centers located worldwide where the technique of vipassana is taught. What that means I will shortly explain. Going into it, all I really retained was that for ten day's I'd not be to communicate with anyone around me and learn how to meditate.

Once I arrived at the Dhamma Siri meditation retreat center in Kaufmann Tx (outlying southeast of Dallas) on March 11th, I began to learn. Some mundane details may interest you, the facility is nice and doesn't seem all too foreign especially from the entrance. There is a pagoda building on the property but even it isn't extravagant in appearance. The dorms are single occupant rooms with a bed and a hanging rack and shelves for laundry and a twin bed with small bedside table and alarm clock. There is a quarter mile or so walking path through the woods and there is a large building that is the meditation hall, where the work takes place. Men and women are segregated throughout the retreat and while you are living in close quarters with a lot of other people, you accept to work in Noble Silence, not making communication with your peers even in eye contact, thinking of yourself as completely alone in your work. If you have pressing needs there is management staff that can help you, and as you need help in developing your work there is an Assistant Teacher to answer questions at appointed times. So it's not like your larynx is going to seize up.

The silence though really, isn't that big of a deal in the scheme of what one goes through in the ten days.

Now, I'll give you some groundwork into the principles of the practice, but to make it all more robust in your understanding you can check out dhamma.org which can really fill you in and help you find a center that you could work at if you were so interested.

Dhamma, or in my interpretation of what that work might mean, The Natural Law, is a living force, you could thing of it as a spinning wheel begin spun by our effort and by the vibrational power underlying all things.

The dhamma is come to by a path that has eight principles, but they are divided into three groups, essentially; morality, concentration, and wisdom.

There are five precepts that establish morality during the practice, not to kill, steal, lie, no sexual misconduct, and no intoxication.

The no lying is the most likely issue since genders are segregated, the food is provided and if you're silent you can't tell a lie.

Concentration is developed during the first three days using anapana, essentially keeping your eyes closed, sitting erect, focusing on your breath and the feelings of your breath in your nose.

Wisdom is developed on days four through ten by the practice of vipassana, essentially moving your concentrated awareness along the surface of your body and feeling the physical sensations that connect your mind and body.

That's the groundwork, now for my experience.

SKIP TO HERE

On day 0 I talked with some of the people there who were coming into the retreat, the silence doesn't fall until the first meditation session at 8pm, so while talking to a few people that were returning students, they told me that the first time they did this it was one of the most challenging experiences in their life. What, exactly am I getting myself into? I won't know until I know.

That night through lessons provided by recordings made of a man S N Goenka you learn to begin by focusing on the breath. You can adjust your posture as need be and you aren't overwhelmed with details, given just enough to work with and to begin to learn what this is all about. Each following evening there is an hour or so long discourse video during which Goenkaji explains more and more and answers the questions you've been silently dwelling upon each day.

You go to bed and lights out are at 10.

4am wake-up, from 4:30 to 6:30, meditate in my room or in the hall.
6:30, breakfast then rest until
8:00, group meditation for and hour
9:00 meditate in your room or in the hall until
11:00 lunch
12:00 you can ask the assistant teacher questions if you like or rest or walk (i napped hardcore almost every day)
1:00 meditate in the hall or in your room,
2:30 group sit meditation in the wall
3:30 meditate in the hall or in your room until
5:00 very light dinner
6:00 group meditation in the hall
7:00 listen to discourse
then from 8:15ish to 9:00 you meditate in the hall, then go to bed.

Now that's the basic schedule from all 10 days, only day 4 is a little different. and day 10, but if I can do basic math (if) that's like 11 and a half hours of meditation each days if you really put all the effort you can into it!

This is a lot of time to mentally watch air passing through your nostrils.

Day 1 wasn't too big of a deal from my perspective.
Day 2 was a little bit more challenging but not terrible and you learn to focus more on the feeling of the breath on your skin
Day 3 was harder because you have to feel the sensation of the breath on your upper lip and and other sensations (what does that mean???)
Day 4 is Vispassana day; so in the afternoon you sit on your own from 1p to 2, then from 2 to 3 you have a group sit, then from 3 to 5 you learn vipassana.
this is VERY VERY PHYSICALLY DEMANDING My back hurt so bad and I was convinced afterwards that they must use experiences like this to train CIA agents how not to crack under interrogation techniques.
Day 5 was the first time I had a nonlinear unexpected experience, I felt things on my skin jumping like crazy and my awareness of this sensation all over my body was wild!

Now, it's really important to stop and say that everyone goes through their process differently, we're all unique and feel things in our own way and have our own lives to sort out. And my experiences didn't follow the linear sense of learning along with the teaching, I didn't have a controlled awareness of subtle vibrations on the surface of my body until day 9. What I had on day five was more intense and it wasn't "my" conscious awareness moving the scanning of my body at first.

Also, what does feeling tingling on your body have to do with wisdom? Well, a lot as it turns out. because practically speaking, wisdom is patience, awareness, and balance, or equanimity. And going through this process of connecting your mind and body through the concentrated awareness of physical sensations teaches you a LOT about your personal attributes of patience and emotional balance and how to learn to observe and not react to the world, and the nature of reality its self as constantly arising and passing away. Just like how movies and TVs have a frames per second, and so you are watching the ever changing flow of visual still images. Every trillionth of a second is a static moment that arises and passes away, and our sense of awareness is of a continuity. This process allows you to feel your motion in the subtle vibrations that make up everything.

Or something like that, I don't know exactly, I just started this man!

To a certain extent, I think my very personal experiences that followed in the days between 5 and 9 won't tell you too much about what you will go through, but in general it was so hard for me, because sometimes I felt a lot and a lot more often I felt nothing.  And it's really hard to find balance with that, and until you can learn to let go of your desire to have pleasant experiences, and not have unpleasant ones, you're never going to be balanced. And I was not. But I have become morseo.

Also a big part of what you are learning about is how the active role of wisdom is in not reacting. Not letting craving or aversion and your knee-jerk reaction to them run your life, instead you begin to master your self control over how you do with what you feel.

I'm going to close shortly with an analogy that I drew in a conversation I had this afternoon. Talking with a fellow mediator here on day 11, out of the retreat and post processing before I go back in. (Planning now to serve for two more ten day retreats and sit for another one. The serving is less hours of meditation and a lot of active work experience and is a meditation in motion or so I've heard.)

My analogy is this.

The way I saw a lot of things in my life is like a painting that I painted over a window. I started scratching some of the paint off in chunks and realized that there is a clear window under the painting, now I need to wipe the glass completely clean until it looks like there isn't any glass there, and then from what little I think I know I'll reach through to the world on the other side of the glass and find out if what I think I see there is what is there, and who is looking through the glass?

I don't know, it doesn't matter now, I'm just learning how to be balanced enough to wipe a window.

As for 'getting enlightened' that isn't what this is, the work for me is just learning how to see what is, as it is, but you can't cut a butterfly out of it's chrysalis, if you do the wings wont have developed properly and it will never fly. All I can hope is to see the caterpillar eat a leaf, or watch a shifting sensation on the outside of a chrysalis until something else....

In the meantime, there is plenty to do each day, just being with the fact that every trillionth of a second is arising and passing away.

And vibrationally, we are all connected in a field of love, and the more I can become in tune with the love and compassion, and not get caught up in running from hatred or fear or pain in anger by running towards sensual gratifications and get beyond the gross reality to the subtle. The more loving feelings I can feel, share, and be.

When you have an hour, you could listen to this, it encapsulates the work so well
http://heartwisdom.libsyn.com/jack-kornfields-heart-wisdom-episode-15-the-awakened-heart

Fundamentalism

I found myself thinking about fundamentalism. The challenge lies in trying to make something complex operate by a certain set of simple rules. One could never make enough rules to make everything fit or work.

in my own way, i am a fundamentalist.

love God(the divine, pick the name that makes you feel good) with all you've got.
love your neighbor (everyone) as you'd like to be treated.

'nuf said

Ignorance

Ignorance is a common and natural mental state, it is simply the act of ignoring one set of information in order to focus on some other set. Everyone does this. Many people have not had the time or the guidance or the curiosity to focus on what others may consider meaningful data sets. This does not entitle one to ridicule another, this is an opportunity for us to learn about the information that engages them, and also an opportunity for us to share new realms of knowledge with them.