The Quickening. Gregg Unterberger

a crisis. Nor does it mean that if we do not feel peaceful or calm when things are difficult then we are a failure. It does mean that peace really might be possible even in our most painful moments.

      That is good news, because life is going to hand us a lot of crap.

      Oh, I am sorry, what I meant to say was “opportunities for growth.”

      Yeah, right.

      But it means something even more powerful than that. If peace is possible during times of trial, then we can train the mind, with practice and effort, to catalyze that state. And, by extension, this means we can live in the world in such a way that, increasingly, we are not the emotional victims of our circumstances. Instead of all the frenetic, anxious, exhausting, and crazy things we do to control the uncontrollable in our world so that we can feel okay, we could give that up. We could begin to really “accept the things we cannot change” and experience that peace that we all aspire to. Right now.

      It is a revolutionary, radical way to think that is as ancient as Buddhism and as fresh as the latest Eckhart Tolle bestseller. Now, this does not mean we don’t have goals and preferences, sitting listlessly about. It does mean that, en route to those goals, we are not relegating our experience of peace or happiness to something that will happen someday in the future “when I [fill in the blank]” but instead bring more enjoyment to the moment right now. As the T-shirts say, “The journey is the destination.”

      Strangely, I remember one incredibly successful individual saying to the media, “Getting here was a lot more fun than being here.” If that is true, aren’t we missing a great ride on the way to the top?

      I think traditionally when we talk about cultivating a quiet mind, we think in terms of endless meditation or centering prayer. In the Cayce tradition, we think of the readings that advise us to “watch self go by,” meaning we step back and create a conscious awareness of the flow of our crazy thinking. The notion of “mindfulness” has become integrated with newer forms of cognitive behavioral therapies and is changing the way people think, literally. But still . . . it takes time.

      To be sure, it would be nice to have the peace that passeth understanding twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But, if you are like most people, that seems to be something that would take years of meditative practice. Maybe, at present, you can barely sit still and say, “There’s no place like OM” for five minutes. It would be nice to have it right now. Too bad there is not some mental switch we can flip that would kick us over into Guru Consciousness.

      As it turns out, there is a switch, and we can learn to flip it. And relatively quickly, too.

      First, we would have to know—qualitatively and quantitatively—what was going on at a neurological level for someone who was experiencing a deep peace, so we could figure out how to reproduce it in others. It would be wonderful if we could look into the head of a Tibetan monk, who has been meditating hooked up to a Peace-O-Meter, and find out how blissed out he is . . . and then figure out how the heck he got there. I wonder what that would look like. Cue the harp music as Gregg strokes his bearded chinny-chin-chin, his eyes looking heavenward . . .

      Futuristic computers flash and beep nosily in a control room that overlooks—through a plate-glass window—an experimental station straight out of the Jetsons. A slender monk in ochre robes is seated in a single futuristic tubular chrome and leather chair illuminated by a solitary down light and hooked up to electronic dealie-bobbers, while other monks solemnly chant long “Ooooms” in a semi-circle behind them with one of those big-ass horns blowing a long low note, filling the room with harmonic resonance. Our experimental monk, deep in meditation, smiles ever so subtly and as we gaze at him . . . is that a soft light gently emanating from him? Meanwhile, behind the plate glass, uber-geeks with pasty complexions in starched white short-sleeved shirts and skinny black ties intently monitor scores of screens and winky-blinky lights. They gaze dumbstruck at the read-outs until one head honcho, sporting a burr haircut, a pocket protector, and black horn-rimmed glasses (sounding amazingly like the pilot on your last trip to Atlanta with his mouth too close to the microphone) ominously breaks the silence.

      “Uhhhhh, Mission Control . . . I’ve got Thupten Rinpoche here hitting an 8.9 on the Dalai Lama Scale. Uhhhh, yeah, he’s red-lining right now. Roger that, we’ll keep monitoring him, but at this rate, we anticipate an ETE [Estimated Time of Enlightenment] of about ten minutes. He’s gonna start bending the needle and may well vibrate out of his body. Affirmative, we are talking about a total Celestine wave dispersion here. He’s throwin’ an awful lot of low Theta waves here and kicking up some Hypergamma besides. Let’s move to Yellow Alert and have chanting monks and the horns stand down and the Reiki Masters on deck to attune him so he doesn’t Nirvana outta here. Uhhhh, Stand-by RMs to energetically ground the subject on my mark: In three . . . two . . . one . . .”

      Okay, okay, you’re right. I’ve seen too many Star Trek reruns as a child. Okay, I’ve seen too many Star Trek reruns as a child and as an adult. But the truth is these kinds of experiments have been done extensively, just without the Ken Adam movie sets. Through an EEG, we can measure the electrical activity of the brain, and we can recognize various states of focus as they correlate to certain kinds of brainwave activity. Our brains actually generate enough electricity to light a ten watt light bulb, which, I guess means we are all pretty dim, if you take that at face value. But, as it turns out, it’s the kind of electrical activity that counts. After decades of research, studies have demonstrated that different brainwave patterns directly correlate to different states of being. According to sound researcher Dr. Jeffrey Thompson at the Center for Neuroacoustic Research, although there are no universally accepted standards for where one state breaks into another, science on our planet has traditionally divided brainwave activity into four major states:

      •Beta (13-30 Hz) Concentrated mental ability, concrete problem solving, speaking

      •Alpha (8-13 Hz) Calm and relaxed

      •Theta (4-7 Hz) Deep meditation, dreaming, creative states, access to the unconscious

      •Delta (½-4 Hz) Sleep state, access to intuition and psychic phenomena

      Now, if you are not a sound engineer, don’t let the “Hz” throw you. Hz simply stands for “hertz” which means cycles per second or how “energetic” the electrical activity is. Once again, imagine that you are at the beach. Déjà vu, huh? When you watch a wave, you identify it by seeing the trough immediately before it, which then rises to a peak and then goes back down again. From trough to peak to trough again is one cycle. Simply put, a higher Hz level just means choppier waves, going by faster: more waves per second. And a low number of cycles per second would be like those subtle slow swells in the waves that you see farther from shore. It really just reflects faster or slower electrical brainwave activity, which makes sense when you think about it. When we are anxious or excited, we are thinking “lots of thoughts” and when we relax, our brains “slow down” and our thinking feels more spacious.

      Of course, at any moment, you have lots of different kinds of waves in your head, but one range of wavelength is typically more dominant than others, so if you have a lot of activity in the 13-30 Hz wavelength (i.e., a lot of waves going by), we would say you were in a Beta state with your mind and body alert and engaged with life. You are probably talking or shopping or thinking analytically about that loser you went out with last night and how you are beginning to wonder whether you should have spent all that money on online dating after all.

      Now, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and exhale, saying the Universal Mantra of Relaxation: “Ahhhhhhh.” You are now beginning to generate slower alpha waves.

      Did you do it? Feels nice, huh? See, you are more like the Dalai Lama already. Look at you, leaping ahead on your spiritual journey, even before you finish reading this book, you rascal, you.

      If we had you hooked up to the electrical spaghetti swim cap wired to the Univac that they call an electroencephalograph or EEG, we would see more activity in the 8-13 Hz alpha range. Enough alpha waves that you will find yourself feeling relaxed, but focused. This can be useful for light meditation,