Two years ago we brought my mother home to live with us. She had been in a perpetual lockdown for the nearly a year in an assisted living facility. It had been a loving place for my mother until the world was gripped by the ‘pandemic’ and then became a prison in the name of her safety. At the age of 97 my Mom suffered from dementia, and although remarkably functional for her age she would tend to get stuck in thoughts that were circular in nature. And the key word here is ‘stuck’, in thoughts disconnected from reality, caught in a loop of thinking from which she is has difficulty escaping. She would attempt to resolve this narrow band of thought from within the thought or the resulting series of thoughts, which all related back to the primary delusion.
Looking closer at what is considered dementia, it may manifest as degenerative brain function, but primarily, it is a long standing state of mind, not the brain, founded in a deep sense of limitation, lack and the fear of death, the obsessive or fixated thought about an imaginary separate self. If we zoom out on the life of someone suffering from this so-called ‘dementia’, what we find, it’s actually not the source of this circular, closed loop of thinking and suffering, it is the result. It is the outcome a lifetime of a living within limited construct of thinking and acting, like a spider who spins its web and takes up residence in it. With this construct, we may seem to be capable of large and intricate webs, worlds, comprising what is believed to be ‘the world’, but they exist only as fragments within fragments of mind or overlays of mind that represent a simulated, synthetic existence. Our suffering is born of this closed loop thought form.
Definition of closed loop: an automatic control system in which an operation, process, or mechanism is regulated by feedback [from within the closed loop]. This ‘inside’ thought world manifests as an independently existing ‘outside’ world, but all within the same self-referential world or loop. Much like the ‘autophagous loop’ of AI which leads ultimately to nonsense and madness.
The imaginary pandemic is a perfect example of an obsessive closed loop, appearing to manifest ‘outside’ us, in our culture, world, and endlessly propagated in ‘the news’, but all part of projected thought, a lie replicating itself. This world, this lie, has no independent existence or reality outside of the imaginary separate self that imagines it.
Wow, what an insightful comment. I agree, dementia is as much a cause as a result of closed loop thinking. When I notice myself thinking the same thoughts again and again, wearing deeper ruts in my mind, I can see how I too might someday experience "dementia".
Well, we all recognize these tendencies in ourselves, but knowing this we just let them go, opening to that which we truly are, always already open, empty. Of course whatever the rut we find ourselves in, it's purely imaginary. The shift really takes place when we see we are what is seeing, knowing, not what is seen or known. Dementia is the disease of the known. In time the mind just wears out trying to keep it all straight.
I really resonate with this Ed. I work with people with dementia by creating Montessori inspired environments and materials as windows into self. It is very helpful, offering back some dignity. Yet I do agree that dementia begins with a disconnected mindset. One that doesn’t question what one ingests....food (seed oils that fuel inflammation), water (fluoride), medications ( adjuvants in injections which are coerced to the elderly to avoid seasonal colds, media (constant fear porn and false narratives). The neurologist Dr. Dale Bredesen (thanks to his Functional Medicine wife) has created a protocol in which he has successfully cured over 300 people of Alzheimer’s through mainly intermittent fasting, super clean diet, mindfulness and exercise. Is the AMA interested? No. Or probably, only as a potential threat to a booming business. Dementia is predicted to triple by 2050. How do they know this? you may ask. Why aren’t they searching for what is driving this instead of a “pharma cure”? I was doing some reading on PubMed, and came across an paper where the researchers talked about their trying out different medicines on mice. They didn’t realise their blunder, but I caught it. They wrote: “...first we had to give the healthy mice dementia.” So, they do know how to do that. And this is what we see happening the world over, that is all the places that follow the standard American diet, and global schedules. It is worth a look to see where dementia is not happening.
Yes, the first step always the willingness to embrace the unknown, the window into the self as you say is the answer. My father suffered from Alzheimers and given early experimental drugs. The side effects were horrible, but his faith in the docs was unshakable. My efforts to suggest alternatives were useless. He was surrounded by people stuck in the same rut of thinking totally obedient to the medical system and its priesthood. I remember when he had been shunted off to Special Care the last stop to drugged oblivion, and visiting him at dinner, seeing the bleakest plate of meat, potatoes and peas he was served which he could hardly eat. The philosophy was to give these patients food they are accustomed to for their comfort. But it was the worst, chemically laden food imaginable, utterly dead food. Very sad, brings tears to my eyes. This is the pathway that millions are on right now as you point out, like lemmings over the cliff. What will it take to wake us up?
I have no expertise or facts to support this, but it seems to me that neurodivergence in children (autism etc.) also probably has some links with food, water and environmental contamination.
Thank you for so eloquently describing my father’s present condition and the limited, self-encouraged way of operating his thought process throughout his life. Although I am much younger than him, I see these patterns in me, that I may have picked up from him since childhood and/or inherited them from my lineage. I don’t blame him, he very clearly picked his ways up from my grandmother. She never ended up with true signs of dementia even though she lived into her 90’s, which is interesting to me. The rigid, stuck in her ways kind of a mindset is an obvious shared thread. Dad, on the other hand, is very clearly displaying signs of dementia now in his 70’s .. such an intriguing topic… for me, personally, I am doing my best unlearning these patterns. We shall see.
I am 76. I have spent at least 50 years of that time, working deeply within. It has prepared me to meet now, ever deeper elements of my soul work that emerge as the body delivers what remains unloved. Now, that I have more capacity to do that, the more hidden layers feel safe to reveal themselves. It's humbling and profound to admit them. And, in particular to hold them as unloved parts. Without this consciousness, I can see why many aging people become terrified and disoriented with what has remained unattended within and want to dissociate even more because they fear becoming identified with what is emerging, rather than be able to identify it and hold it. Especially when the body somatizes what is asking for attention. For me, it is presently coming through an increasing sense of insecurity in my mobility. Ah....to love that one more deeply, the one in me wounded in her insecurity. To admit that one and to have her held by the one who is confident, secure and established in many ways!!!! To not be able to do that certainly tempts insanity in a world that deifies youth filled abilities!!!
My mother has dementia and going through it with her has again and again made me question my own surety in my constructs of reality, truth and memory. As you say in your conversation, it is all so contextual, so framed, so variously agenda-driven, so fluid in our memory and reconstruction/reappraisal over the years. "Reality" is just consensus, but that means nothing in truth. It's the most wondrous and unfathomable experience we find ourselves in, this life. I'm finding it works best if you can embrace the shifting sands.
My mother too was diagnosed with ‘vascular dementia’. It was a very slow process that we didn’t understand was going on for the first 5 years - but what a handful she was! By turns, angry, terrified and confused punctuated by times of deep lucidity and raw truths. Her often repeated ‘wish’ for the 60 years I knew her was “Forget it”. Her mother had died having her (she was #9 born in an Oklahoma sod house) and my father was her 5th of 7 husbands.
When she reached 90, she had become a toddler again. She didn’t know who I was but by golly, she knew she loved me and would come running to me with her bright, happy face on my weekly visits. She couldn’t speak anymore but we would sit in the sunroom silently holding hands. During these final 2 years of her life, her example showed me every unprocessed emotion I was still carrying and the urgent necessity of letting go into unconditional love. By the time she passed at the age of 92, I experienced deep joy and respect for both of us and what we accomplished with each other.
Charles has the right of it when he says maybe they aren’t ‘sick’. Indeed, maybe they become a invitation to light in a world of labels and suppression.
I'd like to hear Charles talk about how exactly we create that more beautiful world, when all around us, we see so much breakdown of culture, politics, our former "reality"--thing is, it's because we see the breakdown that we know we need to usher in a more beautiful world--and it's hard not to be cynical, hard not to say, this world is so full of shit, we MUST create something different. So the "shit" world is the one that gives us incentive to motivate towards creating a world that's more beautiful, that's more tender and caring and creative, more alive. Somehow the two worlds seem to both negate each other AND to help the other to exist. Can't have a more beautiful world unless we SEE it and CREATE it; but the reason we want to SEE it and CREATE it is because we know that other world that's crumbling...Not even sure this makes sense, but somehow I long for a more beautiful world, know that I must be a participant in creating it, and yet my propulsion forward for this seems to stem a lot from a cynicism of seeing the world that now holds so much that's just so effed up. And I don't want to contribute to the effed-up-ness, but it seems that that's what makes it possible for me to want to move ahead with more beauty, less falsity, more wholeness, less fracture...
The world is as we are. What we know of a world in crisis, in a state of breakdown is a simulated, synthetic overlay of materialism, not its reality. In fact its breakdown is a good thing. When we know our essential nature, what is natural, good , true and beautiful shows up for us more and more and we recognize this has been with us , in us, everpresent, all along. It's always up to us. It's an inside job first and foremost.
I would be careful in positing that hallucinations in Parkinson's as a good thing - these are not a natural consequence of the disease, but are the long term side effect of being on too much of the dopamine supplementing Parkinson's pharmacueticals, i.e very unnatural/exogeneously created, ps here is a different but related picture of dementia. https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/dementiaalzheimers-as-an-ancient
Charles and Benjamin, thank you for these dialogues, I am one of several care providers for my mom who has dementia and recently celebrated her 96th birthday. I am inspired by the depths of reflection that both of you share and the feelings that arise within me...this collaborative partnering is such a gift of BEAUTY. Thank you.
I'd love to hear more about beauty, seeing and feeling it as so significant in our every day, and how overlooked it has become. I do believe it is our reason for living but it seems to be an impossible ask in discussion, I find most people just don't get it at all, and some can only reach half way. You have a way of transcending impossible explanations and making them real.
I fully agree with the comment. Now, from experience, I can say that one can find such engagements, though they are difficult to find. It has required me to seek out such spirits, and also to search out my own spirit. Iyengar yoga is a boon in this regard. I wish you the very best finding your very own community of sister and brother mutually regarding communers. Namaste'.
"And that may be why people who meditate have a lower rate of dementia" I don't know this to be true. It sounds nice. I'd like to see some supporting evidence.
I am reminded of a story told by a neurologist about her experience of a stroke. The immediate affect on her cognition created a sense of fear and also peace through a dissociative feeling of 'oneness'. Does one's spirit or soul exist at the root of self-awereness or is this simply an illusion that arises from the physical properties of one's brain? From my perspective, our American culture engenders a lack of self and spiritual awareness. If our future generations do not reject virtualization of society and daily experience into centralized controlled platforms they will be imprisoned within a mind that is controlled and created by intelligent keepers of society (the Lords of reality).
Jill Bolte Taylor and the story of left brain malfunction having to navigate with right brain without the translator if the left brain. One of my all time favorite Ted Talks.
As more and more people become content within themselves the need for "more, more" will decrease. Things owned will be for their utility, not for social status. The thought of engaging in something that harms others will start to become distasteful. The seeking and recognition of actual reality versus the externally impressed narrative will change the world.
My grandmother had dementia and I remember visiting her when she had a clear vision of little green men on the roof. I was 33 at the time and she was 97. I wrote it off to old lady gone mad. She died soon after. At nearly 70 I have revisited that scenario many times when I had occasion to be in the presence of the mother of a dear friend who had early onset Alzheimer’s. She was only a year younger than me, 59 at the time and was quite advanced. She had been a child social worker of kids who were autistic. Without realizing it her mind was being exposed to an alter reality and her gift was to communicate with them on their level to allow them to communicate in this “reality”. I befriended her and watched as she struggled to remember the name of her dog and become so frustrated that she would go into panic. I watched other people treat her like she was a child or like she wasn’t in the room. Brought her to my home and set my cat in her lap. I made her comfortable and when she would start to slip from lucidity I would tell her that the name of her dog didn’t matter to me but what she was experiencing did. Once she stopped struggling to communicate in the “accepted” reality that everyone else was trying to force upon her she was able to let her soul speak without having to find the proper words in the proper sequence because they just came. Her conversation flowed unhindered and absolutely flawless. The consciousness with which she existed was unchanged from years before she started her decline. When people talked to her like she was a child or talked over her she was fully cognizant of them and the way they were treating her she just could not communicate because her brain, her processor, her mother board was broken. But the data banks were still there accessible on a level far above the broken left brain rational, accept able behavior. Jill Bolte Taylor was mentioned in these comments of how the left brain is what allows us to function in “reality” but is only the translator. The right brain deals in images the left in words and numbers on the page that quantifies and qualifies the image. So Charles the images that you were reviewing weren’t bringing that time into this reality, they were struggling with the left brain translator as it related to your current emotions that are activated by the image of the past. To quantify or qualify. Someone with dementia we think as sick yet only by the left brain standards our society has deemed acceptable to function. When they see an image whether a photo or in their imagination they are forced to try to qualify it or quantify it to bring it in to this accepted reality. In the past few years I have been subject to migraine that takes out my ability to communicate. I try to think of simple words and they sound wrong. I try to type or speak and the words that come out are wrong. It was very scary at first but now I know it is temporary and ride it out. While I can’t think of my sign on password I can play online solitaire with lightning speed. Evidently solitaire is a right brain thing, who knew. My point is when in these episodes I am fully cognizant. To others there is something wrong with me. This is what it is like to be stuck in this hell where there is no communication on this level. The only thing I regret is not asking my grandmother to tell me about the little green men. Which may well have been real in her dimension that we are now getting a glimpse of.
My takeaway is that we are constatnly being tricked out of our own direct experience of reality. Coincidentally I just wrote a piece called 'Taking Pictures'. It's called 'taking' for a reason. Some of my native elders as recently as 20 years ago still believed that too much image making stole pieces of soul energy from whatever one was taking pictures of. I believe this is true. I especially see this now with digital photography where one can take literally hundreds of photos a day. Taking pictures gives one an illusion of ownership of the thing, or person or moment. The mountains are gorgeous here right now and thousands of tourists are taking pictures every moment of every day. Walk, stop, take out the cell phone and photograph;; repeat dozens of times. Or they are lined up with serious camera gear on tripods all along the road. They take literally thousands of photos of the same thing, click click click click click. Today I had a very strong wish that all the cameras on the planet would just magically disappear. Even if they are not harming the soul of the mountain, they are , imo, completely missing the point of being there. It is a real grab and take kind of energy and from my perspective, it is sucking the spiritual force out of nature.
I do agree. The scientific explanation of how “we see” is 95% assumptions and 5% biochemical hypothesis, no spirit involved. A wise person told me: “when you see, you go out of your body and the object of your gaze comes in you.”
I remember growing up with my great grandmother in my home. As an adult I learned she had had dementia, but as a child I had no reference for that. She was simply my great grandma. Who cried in her easy chair, got angry often and couldn’t find her money, held reign in the upstairs bedroom and gave me candy peanuts and loving snuggles. As a little child I thought she was my companion. Who needed my love when she cried and wanted me to bake Swedish cookies with her and walk with her to the corner store. When I learned she could read I was flabbergasted-wow! That was surprising. When she would reveal her imaginary gun to me and tell me who she was going to shoot, I listened unafraid, feeling compassion for her distaste of certain individuals and feeling her sincere love of others. When she moved into an old home I would sing to her...I was 5years. “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”. She would see cows in the farm yard outside her caregiving facility window, but when I looked all I’d see was highways. It didn’t concern me much, and I knew she needed me to fall asleep by her for some sweetness and peace. She held a stuffed animal and called it her baby. As I look back on life with her I realize there was so much more complication in her dementia than I had perceived. I took everything she did at face value with an inherent trust and absolute love of her. I hope that if I’m blessed with old age, if I get dementia, that I am deeply connected by the natural unfolding of proximity and familial ties with a child’s unabashed love and tenderness. She is one of the greatest gifts of my life. A pillar of sweetness and grace.
I seemed to have lost what I was typing in response to some of the points your conversation covered.
Then as a former journalist I often felt inadequate in my attempts to capture a story. Perhaps an oral tradition is more honest, more truthful, even the word capture implies some kind of imprisonment of sorts. Similar to the point you raise about nomadic cultures who don't cling onto possessions but live so much in the present.
On dementia, I'm now a homeopath and have treated many elderly people some of whom had been labeled with the word dementia. What I observed is many people who'd lived their lives as successful high flying CEO's returned to a childlike existence, playing with children's toys which perhaps they had "put aside" too soon in their haste to become a successful adult.
Another might have led a life of strict celibacy only in their dementia, become a person who discarded their clothes attempting on some occasions to engage one of their carers in some sexual activity. Are these aspects of parts of an unlived life, a suppressed part of themselves which earlier had not been developed? I saw this pattern in many cases of people with dementia.
I'm a working class person who grew up with very few photographs and no videos as my parents couldn't afford the technology. My memories are within with no photographs to create a different narrative. Interestingly, my memories are so very different to those of my five siblings, so photographs or none, perhaps there is no fixed objective captured truth anyway.
I suppose I'm closest to what I would call Buddhist and have spent time meditating and employed micro meditations which allow me to have a light touch relationship with life. Obviously sometimes massive events prevent this light touch method. Hard to have a light touch when dealing with the death of a dearly lived friend or family member.
Sorry I'll stop rambling now but end by thanking you for the rich tapestry your conversations unfurl for me.
Thank you for sharing your experience with folks who have dementia. I too have noticed that whatever has been repressed seems to manifest when folks get dementia. I wonder if anyone has done a formal research 'study' on this aspect of dementia. It seems a very clear pattern in my limited experience and now you are confirming it for me.
Yes it would indeed be fascinating. I am now remembering a nurse I met a couple of years ago who worked in a nursing home that specialized in treating dementia patients. She shared she had noticed a similar pattern but didn't seem to think this was being investigated at all by the 'specialists' in the field.
I loved the first simple and obvious sentence! "We're in the midst of a house move right now." It immediately brought to mind Gaia's household move right now. After all, She is responding to our desires and activities. I cannot remove from my mind the question: why do we continue electing peeps who insist these top-down-imposed activities will make us soon own nothing, be homeless, and love such seemingly immutable facts? I hope each of you continue trusting your respective gut. You are charting a course we urgently need charted!
Beauty seems so subjective to me. More than once you and others have stated it to be closely connected to the meaning of life. I have a hard time with that. Whose concept of beauty? I'm exhausted by "beautiful" European architecture that glorifies war, it's everywhere. An insect or slug I find beautiful, others are repulsed by. A snake as the image of evil (so many people kill them, immediately) is silly. Your tapestry used as background for many talks doesn't do much for me (if it does you, that''s wonderful!). I see images in ads of faces that appear beautiful, yet if I knew the person I might think them "ugly". Surely so much is more important than beauty. In the definitions I read, the only one that might work is "the best aspect of something", but then again, what's best for you might not be best for me.
I agree. If we're using the standard definition of beautiful: "having qualities that delight or appeal to the senses and often the mind" then what's perceived as beautiful doesn't just vary between individuals; it also varies within any individual from day to day. To a large extent it's dependent on what a person is missing in their life at any give time as well as what they have too much of -- essentially what's best for their health. If you're really hungry, a well-made stew can be very appealing to the senses and the mind. If you're full, it might not evoke any significant sensation. Quiet can be beautiful to someone who has spent too much time around noise and noise can be beautiful to someone who has spent too much time around quiet. And different people and even moreso different animals can have persistently opposite ideas of what's beautiful, yes. A fish out of water would probably really enjoy the idea of being tossed into a river; a cat out of water, on the other hand, would probably not.
But maybe there's no need to find an objective interpretation of what's beautiful for it to be a useful orienting principle. Simply trying to arrange things in such a way that everyone's subjective experience of beauty is improved could be good enough. Make sure there's a river for the fish to swim in which is what they find pleasing and make sure there's land nearby for the cat to live on which is what they find pleasing.
With that level of generalization it almost seems childishly simple, like "Why don't we try arrange things so everyone is happier?" or "Why don't we try to arrange things so everyone is healthier?". But I suspect a significant part of what Charles is going for by favouring the word beauty over happiness or health is that the things people find beautiful are often things that seem superficially useless or at the very least have a sort of usefulness that isn't easily explained, so measures intended to increase beauty don't have to justify themselves based on any reductionistic understanding of ourselves or the world. It allows for the possibility that we collectively know what's good for us even if we can't explain why.
Beauty also allows room for teleology. Maybe you find something beautiful even if there truly is no reason it's good for you. In that case, maybe it serves some purpose outside yourself. Altruistic forms of self-sacrifice in small ways and big ways appeal to a lot of people even though they aren't good for the individual's health. They're appealing because it's good for humanity as a collective for individuals to want to engage in them on occasion. And maybe some things humans find appealing don't even serve to benefit humanity but other species or some even more expansive purpose.
All the cells in the human body have inborn behaviours that are "intended" to work synergistically with all the other cells to ensure that your body can function, but the individual cells might not understand that. They don't have to. If one day they all decided to abandon their activities because they didn't understand why they enjoyed doing them and start only making decisions that they could understand the benefit of, the system would fall apart.
If you take things like the Gaia Hypothesis seriously, which I believe Charles does and then some, then it's not unreasonable to suggest that humans are like cells in a body and that the things we value despite them them appearing useless could actually be some of the most useful things of all in the grand scheme of things. Or many of our values are just random nonsense arising from the quirks of natural selection. That's possible too. But Charles usually leans toward the former view from what I've read.
Two years ago we brought my mother home to live with us. She had been in a perpetual lockdown for the nearly a year in an assisted living facility. It had been a loving place for my mother until the world was gripped by the ‘pandemic’ and then became a prison in the name of her safety. At the age of 97 my Mom suffered from dementia, and although remarkably functional for her age she would tend to get stuck in thoughts that were circular in nature. And the key word here is ‘stuck’, in thoughts disconnected from reality, caught in a loop of thinking from which she is has difficulty escaping. She would attempt to resolve this narrow band of thought from within the thought or the resulting series of thoughts, which all related back to the primary delusion.
Looking closer at what is considered dementia, it may manifest as degenerative brain function, but primarily, it is a long standing state of mind, not the brain, founded in a deep sense of limitation, lack and the fear of death, the obsessive or fixated thought about an imaginary separate self. If we zoom out on the life of someone suffering from this so-called ‘dementia’, what we find, it’s actually not the source of this circular, closed loop of thinking and suffering, it is the result. It is the outcome a lifetime of a living within limited construct of thinking and acting, like a spider who spins its web and takes up residence in it. With this construct, we may seem to be capable of large and intricate webs, worlds, comprising what is believed to be ‘the world’, but they exist only as fragments within fragments of mind or overlays of mind that represent a simulated, synthetic existence. Our suffering is born of this closed loop thought form.
Definition of closed loop: an automatic control system in which an operation, process, or mechanism is regulated by feedback [from within the closed loop]. This ‘inside’ thought world manifests as an independently existing ‘outside’ world, but all within the same self-referential world or loop. Much like the ‘autophagous loop’ of AI which leads ultimately to nonsense and madness.
The imaginary pandemic is a perfect example of an obsessive closed loop, appearing to manifest ‘outside’ us, in our culture, world, and endlessly propagated in ‘the news’, but all part of projected thought, a lie replicating itself. This world, this lie, has no independent existence or reality outside of the imaginary separate self that imagines it.
Wow, what an insightful comment. I agree, dementia is as much a cause as a result of closed loop thinking. When I notice myself thinking the same thoughts again and again, wearing deeper ruts in my mind, I can see how I too might someday experience "dementia".
Well, we all recognize these tendencies in ourselves, but knowing this we just let them go, opening to that which we truly are, always already open, empty. Of course whatever the rut we find ourselves in, it's purely imaginary. The shift really takes place when we see we are what is seeing, knowing, not what is seen or known. Dementia is the disease of the known. In time the mind just wears out trying to keep it all straight.
I really resonate with this Ed. I work with people with dementia by creating Montessori inspired environments and materials as windows into self. It is very helpful, offering back some dignity. Yet I do agree that dementia begins with a disconnected mindset. One that doesn’t question what one ingests....food (seed oils that fuel inflammation), water (fluoride), medications ( adjuvants in injections which are coerced to the elderly to avoid seasonal colds, media (constant fear porn and false narratives). The neurologist Dr. Dale Bredesen (thanks to his Functional Medicine wife) has created a protocol in which he has successfully cured over 300 people of Alzheimer’s through mainly intermittent fasting, super clean diet, mindfulness and exercise. Is the AMA interested? No. Or probably, only as a potential threat to a booming business. Dementia is predicted to triple by 2050. How do they know this? you may ask. Why aren’t they searching for what is driving this instead of a “pharma cure”? I was doing some reading on PubMed, and came across an paper where the researchers talked about their trying out different medicines on mice. They didn’t realise their blunder, but I caught it. They wrote: “...first we had to give the healthy mice dementia.” So, they do know how to do that. And this is what we see happening the world over, that is all the places that follow the standard American diet, and global schedules. It is worth a look to see where dementia is not happening.
Yes, the first step always the willingness to embrace the unknown, the window into the self as you say is the answer. My father suffered from Alzheimers and given early experimental drugs. The side effects were horrible, but his faith in the docs was unshakable. My efforts to suggest alternatives were useless. He was surrounded by people stuck in the same rut of thinking totally obedient to the medical system and its priesthood. I remember when he had been shunted off to Special Care the last stop to drugged oblivion, and visiting him at dinner, seeing the bleakest plate of meat, potatoes and peas he was served which he could hardly eat. The philosophy was to give these patients food they are accustomed to for their comfort. But it was the worst, chemically laden food imaginable, utterly dead food. Very sad, brings tears to my eyes. This is the pathway that millions are on right now as you point out, like lemmings over the cliff. What will it take to wake us up?
I have no expertise or facts to support this, but it seems to me that neurodivergence in children (autism etc.) also probably has some links with food, water and environmental contamination.
Thank you for so eloquently describing my father’s present condition and the limited, self-encouraged way of operating his thought process throughout his life. Although I am much younger than him, I see these patterns in me, that I may have picked up from him since childhood and/or inherited them from my lineage. I don’t blame him, he very clearly picked his ways up from my grandmother. She never ended up with true signs of dementia even though she lived into her 90’s, which is interesting to me. The rigid, stuck in her ways kind of a mindset is an obvious shared thread. Dad, on the other hand, is very clearly displaying signs of dementia now in his 70’s .. such an intriguing topic… for me, personally, I am doing my best unlearning these patterns. We shall see.
Wishing you all the best.
I am 76. I have spent at least 50 years of that time, working deeply within. It has prepared me to meet now, ever deeper elements of my soul work that emerge as the body delivers what remains unloved. Now, that I have more capacity to do that, the more hidden layers feel safe to reveal themselves. It's humbling and profound to admit them. And, in particular to hold them as unloved parts. Without this consciousness, I can see why many aging people become terrified and disoriented with what has remained unattended within and want to dissociate even more because they fear becoming identified with what is emerging, rather than be able to identify it and hold it. Especially when the body somatizes what is asking for attention. For me, it is presently coming through an increasing sense of insecurity in my mobility. Ah....to love that one more deeply, the one in me wounded in her insecurity. To admit that one and to have her held by the one who is confident, secure and established in many ways!!!! To not be able to do that certainly tempts insanity in a world that deifies youth filled abilities!!!
My mother has dementia and going through it with her has again and again made me question my own surety in my constructs of reality, truth and memory. As you say in your conversation, it is all so contextual, so framed, so variously agenda-driven, so fluid in our memory and reconstruction/reappraisal over the years. "Reality" is just consensus, but that means nothing in truth. It's the most wondrous and unfathomable experience we find ourselves in, this life. I'm finding it works best if you can embrace the shifting sands.
My mother too was diagnosed with ‘vascular dementia’. It was a very slow process that we didn’t understand was going on for the first 5 years - but what a handful she was! By turns, angry, terrified and confused punctuated by times of deep lucidity and raw truths. Her often repeated ‘wish’ for the 60 years I knew her was “Forget it”. Her mother had died having her (she was #9 born in an Oklahoma sod house) and my father was her 5th of 7 husbands.
When she reached 90, she had become a toddler again. She didn’t know who I was but by golly, she knew she loved me and would come running to me with her bright, happy face on my weekly visits. She couldn’t speak anymore but we would sit in the sunroom silently holding hands. During these final 2 years of her life, her example showed me every unprocessed emotion I was still carrying and the urgent necessity of letting go into unconditional love. By the time she passed at the age of 92, I experienced deep joy and respect for both of us and what we accomplished with each other.
Charles has the right of it when he says maybe they aren’t ‘sick’. Indeed, maybe they become a invitation to light in a world of labels and suppression.
Peace.
I would love to hear more about:
- A deeper exploration of beauty as an orienting principle for civilization.
-resuscitating and reclaiming leadership
Thank you 🙏🏻
I'd like to hear Charles talk about how exactly we create that more beautiful world, when all around us, we see so much breakdown of culture, politics, our former "reality"--thing is, it's because we see the breakdown that we know we need to usher in a more beautiful world--and it's hard not to be cynical, hard not to say, this world is so full of shit, we MUST create something different. So the "shit" world is the one that gives us incentive to motivate towards creating a world that's more beautiful, that's more tender and caring and creative, more alive. Somehow the two worlds seem to both negate each other AND to help the other to exist. Can't have a more beautiful world unless we SEE it and CREATE it; but the reason we want to SEE it and CREATE it is because we know that other world that's crumbling...Not even sure this makes sense, but somehow I long for a more beautiful world, know that I must be a participant in creating it, and yet my propulsion forward for this seems to stem a lot from a cynicism of seeing the world that now holds so much that's just so effed up. And I don't want to contribute to the effed-up-ness, but it seems that that's what makes it possible for me to want to move ahead with more beauty, less falsity, more wholeness, less fracture...
The world is as we are. What we know of a world in crisis, in a state of breakdown is a simulated, synthetic overlay of materialism, not its reality. In fact its breakdown is a good thing. When we know our essential nature, what is natural, good , true and beautiful shows up for us more and more and we recognize this has been with us , in us, everpresent, all along. It's always up to us. It's an inside job first and foremost.
Thanks, Ed, for the reminder--which I know to be true!
I would be careful in positing that hallucinations in Parkinson's as a good thing - these are not a natural consequence of the disease, but are the long term side effect of being on too much of the dopamine supplementing Parkinson's pharmacueticals, i.e very unnatural/exogeneously created, ps here is a different but related picture of dementia. https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/dementiaalzheimers-as-an-ancient
That's a really interesting article.
Thanks Charles!
My husband went on the Terry Wahls diet and was drug free and mostly symptom free with Parkinson's.
Charles and Benjamin, thank you for these dialogues, I am one of several care providers for my mom who has dementia and recently celebrated her 96th birthday. I am inspired by the depths of reflection that both of you share and the feelings that arise within me...this collaborative partnering is such a gift of BEAUTY. Thank you.
I'd love to hear more about beauty, seeing and feeling it as so significant in our every day, and how overlooked it has become. I do believe it is our reason for living but it seems to be an impossible ask in discussion, I find most people just don't get it at all, and some can only reach half way. You have a way of transcending impossible explanations and making them real.
I fully agree with the comment. Now, from experience, I can say that one can find such engagements, though they are difficult to find. It has required me to seek out such spirits, and also to search out my own spirit. Iyengar yoga is a boon in this regard. I wish you the very best finding your very own community of sister and brother mutually regarding communers. Namaste'.
"And that may be why people who meditate have a lower rate of dementia" I don't know this to be true. It sounds nice. I'd like to see some supporting evidence.
I am reminded of a story told by a neurologist about her experience of a stroke. The immediate affect on her cognition created a sense of fear and also peace through a dissociative feeling of 'oneness'. Does one's spirit or soul exist at the root of self-awereness or is this simply an illusion that arises from the physical properties of one's brain? From my perspective, our American culture engenders a lack of self and spiritual awareness. If our future generations do not reject virtualization of society and daily experience into centralized controlled platforms they will be imprisoned within a mind that is controlled and created by intelligent keepers of society (the Lords of reality).
The TM people have studied this. Also there is some evidence from Kundalini yoga. Or so I've been told.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Stroke_of_Insight
Jill Bolte Taylor and the story of left brain malfunction having to navigate with right brain without the translator if the left brain. One of my all time favorite Ted Talks.
As more and more people become content within themselves the need for "more, more" will decrease. Things owned will be for their utility, not for social status. The thought of engaging in something that harms others will start to become distasteful. The seeking and recognition of actual reality versus the externally impressed narrative will change the world.
My grandmother had dementia and I remember visiting her when she had a clear vision of little green men on the roof. I was 33 at the time and she was 97. I wrote it off to old lady gone mad. She died soon after. At nearly 70 I have revisited that scenario many times when I had occasion to be in the presence of the mother of a dear friend who had early onset Alzheimer’s. She was only a year younger than me, 59 at the time and was quite advanced. She had been a child social worker of kids who were autistic. Without realizing it her mind was being exposed to an alter reality and her gift was to communicate with them on their level to allow them to communicate in this “reality”. I befriended her and watched as she struggled to remember the name of her dog and become so frustrated that she would go into panic. I watched other people treat her like she was a child or like she wasn’t in the room. Brought her to my home and set my cat in her lap. I made her comfortable and when she would start to slip from lucidity I would tell her that the name of her dog didn’t matter to me but what she was experiencing did. Once she stopped struggling to communicate in the “accepted” reality that everyone else was trying to force upon her she was able to let her soul speak without having to find the proper words in the proper sequence because they just came. Her conversation flowed unhindered and absolutely flawless. The consciousness with which she existed was unchanged from years before she started her decline. When people talked to her like she was a child or talked over her she was fully cognizant of them and the way they were treating her she just could not communicate because her brain, her processor, her mother board was broken. But the data banks were still there accessible on a level far above the broken left brain rational, accept able behavior. Jill Bolte Taylor was mentioned in these comments of how the left brain is what allows us to function in “reality” but is only the translator. The right brain deals in images the left in words and numbers on the page that quantifies and qualifies the image. So Charles the images that you were reviewing weren’t bringing that time into this reality, they were struggling with the left brain translator as it related to your current emotions that are activated by the image of the past. To quantify or qualify. Someone with dementia we think as sick yet only by the left brain standards our society has deemed acceptable to function. When they see an image whether a photo or in their imagination they are forced to try to qualify it or quantify it to bring it in to this accepted reality. In the past few years I have been subject to migraine that takes out my ability to communicate. I try to think of simple words and they sound wrong. I try to type or speak and the words that come out are wrong. It was very scary at first but now I know it is temporary and ride it out. While I can’t think of my sign on password I can play online solitaire with lightning speed. Evidently solitaire is a right brain thing, who knew. My point is when in these episodes I am fully cognizant. To others there is something wrong with me. This is what it is like to be stuck in this hell where there is no communication on this level. The only thing I regret is not asking my grandmother to tell me about the little green men. Which may well have been real in her dimension that we are now getting a glimpse of.
My takeaway is that we are constatnly being tricked out of our own direct experience of reality. Coincidentally I just wrote a piece called 'Taking Pictures'. It's called 'taking' for a reason. Some of my native elders as recently as 20 years ago still believed that too much image making stole pieces of soul energy from whatever one was taking pictures of. I believe this is true. I especially see this now with digital photography where one can take literally hundreds of photos a day. Taking pictures gives one an illusion of ownership of the thing, or person or moment. The mountains are gorgeous here right now and thousands of tourists are taking pictures every moment of every day. Walk, stop, take out the cell phone and photograph;; repeat dozens of times. Or they are lined up with serious camera gear on tripods all along the road. They take literally thousands of photos of the same thing, click click click click click. Today I had a very strong wish that all the cameras on the planet would just magically disappear. Even if they are not harming the soul of the mountain, they are , imo, completely missing the point of being there. It is a real grab and take kind of energy and from my perspective, it is sucking the spiritual force out of nature.
I do agree. The scientific explanation of how “we see” is 95% assumptions and 5% biochemical hypothesis, no spirit involved. A wise person told me: “when you see, you go out of your body and the object of your gaze comes in you.”
I remember growing up with my great grandmother in my home. As an adult I learned she had had dementia, but as a child I had no reference for that. She was simply my great grandma. Who cried in her easy chair, got angry often and couldn’t find her money, held reign in the upstairs bedroom and gave me candy peanuts and loving snuggles. As a little child I thought she was my companion. Who needed my love when she cried and wanted me to bake Swedish cookies with her and walk with her to the corner store. When I learned she could read I was flabbergasted-wow! That was surprising. When she would reveal her imaginary gun to me and tell me who she was going to shoot, I listened unafraid, feeling compassion for her distaste of certain individuals and feeling her sincere love of others. When she moved into an old home I would sing to her...I was 5years. “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”. She would see cows in the farm yard outside her caregiving facility window, but when I looked all I’d see was highways. It didn’t concern me much, and I knew she needed me to fall asleep by her for some sweetness and peace. She held a stuffed animal and called it her baby. As I look back on life with her I realize there was so much more complication in her dementia than I had perceived. I took everything she did at face value with an inherent trust and absolute love of her. I hope that if I’m blessed with old age, if I get dementia, that I am deeply connected by the natural unfolding of proximity and familial ties with a child’s unabashed love and tenderness. She is one of the greatest gifts of my life. A pillar of sweetness and grace.
Beautiful. I could feel all of this as I read your words. What a gift, fir both of you ❤️❤️
I seemed to have lost what I was typing in response to some of the points your conversation covered.
Then as a former journalist I often felt inadequate in my attempts to capture a story. Perhaps an oral tradition is more honest, more truthful, even the word capture implies some kind of imprisonment of sorts. Similar to the point you raise about nomadic cultures who don't cling onto possessions but live so much in the present.
On dementia, I'm now a homeopath and have treated many elderly people some of whom had been labeled with the word dementia. What I observed is many people who'd lived their lives as successful high flying CEO's returned to a childlike existence, playing with children's toys which perhaps they had "put aside" too soon in their haste to become a successful adult.
Another might have led a life of strict celibacy only in their dementia, become a person who discarded their clothes attempting on some occasions to engage one of their carers in some sexual activity. Are these aspects of parts of an unlived life, a suppressed part of themselves which earlier had not been developed? I saw this pattern in many cases of people with dementia.
I'm a working class person who grew up with very few photographs and no videos as my parents couldn't afford the technology. My memories are within with no photographs to create a different narrative. Interestingly, my memories are so very different to those of my five siblings, so photographs or none, perhaps there is no fixed objective captured truth anyway.
I suppose I'm closest to what I would call Buddhist and have spent time meditating and employed micro meditations which allow me to have a light touch relationship with life. Obviously sometimes massive events prevent this light touch method. Hard to have a light touch when dealing with the death of a dearly lived friend or family member.
Sorry I'll stop rambling now but end by thanking you for the rich tapestry your conversations unfurl for me.
Thank you for sharing your experience with folks who have dementia. I too have noticed that whatever has been repressed seems to manifest when folks get dementia. I wonder if anyone has done a formal research 'study' on this aspect of dementia. It seems a very clear pattern in my limited experience and now you are confirming it for me.
I wondered the same. But my experience is I understand anecdotal and very limited. Would be fascinated to see some research in this area.
Yes it would indeed be fascinating. I am now remembering a nurse I met a couple of years ago who worked in a nursing home that specialized in treating dementia patients. She shared she had noticed a similar pattern but didn't seem to think this was being investigated at all by the 'specialists' in the field.
Such research may shine a whole new light on what is dementia really about.
Exactly!
I loved the first simple and obvious sentence! "We're in the midst of a house move right now." It immediately brought to mind Gaia's household move right now. After all, She is responding to our desires and activities. I cannot remove from my mind the question: why do we continue electing peeps who insist these top-down-imposed activities will make us soon own nothing, be homeless, and love such seemingly immutable facts? I hope each of you continue trusting your respective gut. You are charting a course we urgently need charted!
Beauty seems so subjective to me. More than once you and others have stated it to be closely connected to the meaning of life. I have a hard time with that. Whose concept of beauty? I'm exhausted by "beautiful" European architecture that glorifies war, it's everywhere. An insect or slug I find beautiful, others are repulsed by. A snake as the image of evil (so many people kill them, immediately) is silly. Your tapestry used as background for many talks doesn't do much for me (if it does you, that''s wonderful!). I see images in ads of faces that appear beautiful, yet if I knew the person I might think them "ugly". Surely so much is more important than beauty. In the definitions I read, the only one that might work is "the best aspect of something", but then again, what's best for you might not be best for me.
I agree. If we're using the standard definition of beautiful: "having qualities that delight or appeal to the senses and often the mind" then what's perceived as beautiful doesn't just vary between individuals; it also varies within any individual from day to day. To a large extent it's dependent on what a person is missing in their life at any give time as well as what they have too much of -- essentially what's best for their health. If you're really hungry, a well-made stew can be very appealing to the senses and the mind. If you're full, it might not evoke any significant sensation. Quiet can be beautiful to someone who has spent too much time around noise and noise can be beautiful to someone who has spent too much time around quiet. And different people and even moreso different animals can have persistently opposite ideas of what's beautiful, yes. A fish out of water would probably really enjoy the idea of being tossed into a river; a cat out of water, on the other hand, would probably not.
But maybe there's no need to find an objective interpretation of what's beautiful for it to be a useful orienting principle. Simply trying to arrange things in such a way that everyone's subjective experience of beauty is improved could be good enough. Make sure there's a river for the fish to swim in which is what they find pleasing and make sure there's land nearby for the cat to live on which is what they find pleasing.
With that level of generalization it almost seems childishly simple, like "Why don't we try arrange things so everyone is happier?" or "Why don't we try to arrange things so everyone is healthier?". But I suspect a significant part of what Charles is going for by favouring the word beauty over happiness or health is that the things people find beautiful are often things that seem superficially useless or at the very least have a sort of usefulness that isn't easily explained, so measures intended to increase beauty don't have to justify themselves based on any reductionistic understanding of ourselves or the world. It allows for the possibility that we collectively know what's good for us even if we can't explain why.
Beauty also allows room for teleology. Maybe you find something beautiful even if there truly is no reason it's good for you. In that case, maybe it serves some purpose outside yourself. Altruistic forms of self-sacrifice in small ways and big ways appeal to a lot of people even though they aren't good for the individual's health. They're appealing because it's good for humanity as a collective for individuals to want to engage in them on occasion. And maybe some things humans find appealing don't even serve to benefit humanity but other species or some even more expansive purpose.
All the cells in the human body have inborn behaviours that are "intended" to work synergistically with all the other cells to ensure that your body can function, but the individual cells might not understand that. They don't have to. If one day they all decided to abandon their activities because they didn't understand why they enjoyed doing them and start only making decisions that they could understand the benefit of, the system would fall apart.
If you take things like the Gaia Hypothesis seriously, which I believe Charles does and then some, then it's not unreasonable to suggest that humans are like cells in a body and that the things we value despite them them appearing useless could actually be some of the most useful things of all in the grand scheme of things. Or many of our values are just random nonsense arising from the quirks of natural selection. That's possible too. But Charles usually leans toward the former view from what I've read.