Inside Yoga 66 (22/1/13)
Now that the dust has settled from my computer crash, it is perhaps safe to share an aspect of the experience.
There I was just after the New Year ready to go – I had a New Year resolution to have everything in place and to get my business of teaching rolling again. Famous last words: I taught my classes but instead of getting down to promoting my work and so forth I was buried up to my electronic neck in IT problems with numerous calls to IT helpdesks at the end of a phone who were doing their best to help me.
When I worked as a journalist in a newspaper office, computer problems were easier to solve – we simply called the IT department for help and they came along and sorted it out for us. When at home with someone at the end of the phone it is harder. There I was staring at my computer not quite sure what was wrong, nor did the IT help know what was wrong – in the end, the solution was to reset my PC to factory settings, wiping out all my data and starting again.
Starting again from scratch proved not so bad because at least it was a success, as problem was solved even though I don’t really know for sure what was wrong! It proved time consuming, taking several days to get it back together. Rather like the Humpty Dumpty story except this time, the king’s men were able to put it back together.
Computers are a feature of our modern lives, where we put so much into them and trust everything works, yet most of us don’t know how they really work. And if you are like me, I look at a PC and think it can do so much more than I am asking it, but I don’t know how to access this vast ability nor do I have the time!
And this reminds me of my something I learnt while studying meditation and learning from various teachers. I learned that that we only use 10 per cent of our brain’s capacity. This is an amazing ‘fact’ as we might think that we already use our brains a lot. Meditators sometimes get glimpses of this larger capacity and some scientists have explored this and believe it to be true as far as I am aware.
In the modern world we are handing over so many of our brain’s functions to a computer, which we also don’t really understand! For example, in my local bank branch they have a new system which counts all the money you hand over, while in the past the cashier would count your money. As bank tellers were constantly counting their brains became good at counting and now they risk losing this ability as the machine now does it for them. The first time I saw this new technology, I asked the cashier if she missed the counting and feared losing this skill and stimulation for the brain – she agreed that she might not be working her brain so much, but liked the new software as it made her life easier.
Is making our lives easier always for the best? I question this view, as our brain is a precious machine which needs to be used… and exercised as much as our body does. Neglect it and it will lose its ability and vitality; let alone discovering how to access the 90 per cent of our brain’s capacity that we rarely tap into.
Just a thought!
