ADHD-Find out what you are and be that

I was born two months premature at three pounds and five ounces. Although I was fully developed at 21 inches long, I was really skinny. As I got older, my mother, a top-notch psychiatrist had organicity tests run on me. These are tests to see if there are any organic, or congenital-from birth, dysfunctions, due to my early arrival.

Interestingly enough, there were no real problems except one. The testers said that I had “Minimal Brain Dysfunction.” Nice, huh? This was what Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was called when I was a child. Both diagnoses mouthfuls, neither very appealing.

The usual prognosis was given. “The child may have difficulty concentrating, focusing, and finishing tasks. He will likely have problems with impulse control, sitting still, and keeping his mouth shut.” Although these all panned out, not necessarily for the reasons they mentioned.

Furthermore, as was the prevailing wisdom then, if you can call it that, we were told that the condition would dissipate over time. Supposedly, by the time I reached adulthood, I would be “normal,” whatever that is. Those who know me know how many of these things proved true.

No, I could not sit still. My mouth ran incessantly. I had a tendency to run too many projects at once, and I had insomnia with boundless energy. Although medications were tried, none truly produced the results doctors sought-control or sedation. Yet some things did work as I got older.

Intense exercise and structured environments gave me room to excel. In boarding school and the military I always reached the top of the class without medication. Eventually I integrated these external controls internally. Now that I am older, all of my peers envy my boundless energy and ability to do multiple tasks at once. There is even a name for it, “Multi-tasking.”

Ironically, what is called a disorder and drugged away, is an asset to me in this fast-paced society. Medication calls my condition a “disorder,” while lifestyle changes make it an “asset.” In this same way, all of our special traits give us advantages. To use Business School lingo, all of our weaknesses are really strengths when properly applied.

The incidence of ADHD in our society is increasing. Is it any wonder with our technologically wired light-speed lifestyles? I am not going to debate the nature versus nurture argument. What I am going to state is that in the right environment everything is an asset. Life is about discovering what you are and finding your niche.

Please do not take my story to mean that medication or psychiatry is wrong. In concert with the rest of my philosophy, all things in this world are for our gain. We just need to learn how to use them appropriately. “Discover what you are, and be that.”
-G

The Three Gunas

In ancient Vedanta, and some other philosophies, the entire phenomenal world exists as a mixture of three major qualities.  These are known as the three gunas.  Each one represents a certain character.  They are Rajas, Tamas, and Satvas.

 

Rajas represents change.  It is the force of change in any situation.  For example, acceleration and deceleration are both forces of change.  Tamas represents inertia.  Like in Newtonian physics, a force remains the same in direction and force unless another force acts upon it.  Finally, Satvas is equilibrium.  Modern physics finds that these three forces exist at a molecular level as well.

 

Great.  Molecular forces affect our lives.  How is this useful?  In regular everyday life, they help one to read and manage the different forces acting in one’s experience.  We are confronted with a variety of situations in our daily lives which demand our attention.  The mixture of gunas in your life affect how you react.  Some examples help.

 

A predominantly Tamasic person explains everything in such a way that nothing is required.  These are the people who often say, “It has always been that way,” or, “One person can’t change anything.”  Whereas, the more Rajasic person tends to describe things in a way that motivates action.  They say, “This needs to be fixed,” or, “That really makes my blood boil.”

 

Finally, the Satvic person usually characterizes things in terms of how they sustain the status quo.  For them, all is good, or right in the world.  Here, one may become confused between satvic and tamasic.  Remember the tamasic requires no action, while the satvic encourages sustaining of what is right action.  For the satvic, “the world is just and fair and reasonable, one must have patience to see it and encourage it.”

 

Thus, the satvic person may appear like the others at any given time.  What is different is the intent.  The satvic person only wants to act in harmony with the universe.  An example will help.  Rajas, Satvas, and Tamas all work in an office.  The boss issues a directive that all TPS reports are to include a new cover sheet.

 

Tamas just ignores the directive.  He waits for a personal invitation or reprimand.  Rajas aggressively supports the new reports and tells all of his peers to use the new forms.  Satvas quietly puts new cover sheets on the reports.  Another way of describing these qualities is Dissipate, Change, and Sustain.  Tamas dissipates the force, Rajas changes it, and Satvas sustains it.

 

Now we come to the interesting part.  How can one use this in his or her life.  Whenever we encounter a situation we have a choice of how to view it and how to react.  If we want to change our lives, we look at the event as a disruption.  When we are indifferent, we view the occurrence as relatively meaningless.  And finally when we want things to remain the same, we see the situation as a continuation of the past.

 

The best example I can think of is a relationship.  One who is tamasic never wants to do anything in the relationship.  He or she just explains everything away as the same.  The rajasic person always wants to improve the relationship.  Everything is always a motivation to act.  This person constantly seeks to change him or herself, and the partner.  Finally, the satvic person wants to sustain the relationship.  He or she is happy with the partnership only seeking to keep it flowing.

 

When you are in a situation, determine what your motivating factor is, do you wish to sustain, change or dissipate?  Then look at the situation in a way that lets you express your individuality.  For example in many relationships I have been completely rajasic, always wanting to improve myself or my poor partner.  In others, I have been tamasic, letting the relationship expire naturally.  I seek the satvic relationship, as I would guess, we all do.

 

One final caveat.  No one person or situation is ever completely one guna.  They are always a mixture of the three.

A Visit to the Zoo

 

This morning on our daily walk, my child and I went to the zoo.  We hold annual memberships to local museums as well.  Once we arrived there, we took our usual rounds.  First there is the noble horse, then the courageous lion, finally the cowardly rabbit.  Yet there was a new animal today.  This bipedal primate was in its own enclosure with the highest security.  It had its own alarm, heat sensor, armed guard, and razor wire.

 

Once we passed the weapons and bomb search, we approached the warnings:

 

DO NOT FEED THIS ANIMAL

KEEP ALL APPENDAGES AWAY FROM IT

DO NOT ALLOW ANY TECHNICAL DEVICES INTO ITS POSSESSION

KEEP PENCIL AND PAPER WAY FROM THIS BEAST

NEVER LOOK INTO ITS EYES…

 

The list went on.  We had to see this formidable menace so dangerous that it could not even have writing implements.  Was it hideous?  Was it maimed or destructive?  What was it?

 

Slowly we approached the double-paneled Plexiglas enclave.  Hmmmm….It did not look very dangerous.  No claws.  No armor.  No horns or thorns.  Nothing seemed to justify the menacing warnings and extensive security.  It had soft skin and soft hair.  In fact, it was quite disappointing.

 

My child barely gave it two glances, saying, “I thought this was the most ravenous and dangerous beast in the zoo?”  “It does not look very scary or threatening to me.”

 

I answered, “The sign says it all”

 

‘This is man.  His seemingly innocuous and non-threatening demeanor is what makes him so dangerous.  It always starts simply, but he consumes and destroys everything he touches.  His penchant for generosity is only matched by his insatiable appetite for consumption.’

From Inspiration to Perspiration-Right to Left

In this dual universe everything exists only as paired with an opposite.  Positive and Negative.  Good and Bad.  Masculine and Feminine.  At any given time in history one force obtains and holds advantage over the other.  This is the natural ebb and flow of life which produces the endless variation which we experience as the phenomenal world.  When things are in perfect balance, we have stagnation.

It is only through imbalance that we experience movement or change.  Imagine a tank of 0 degree water.  Now imagine a tank with a partition in the middle; it now has two halves of negative 100 degrees and positive 100 degrees respectively.  Remove the partition and watch the center.  Here at the convergence zone all kinds of kinetic energy and motion exist.  Our everyday life is this convergence zone.

From moment, one side holds the dominating aspect.  For most of our modern recorded history, the masculine energy has held the initiative.  Projects were undertaken due to their logical and conceptual value.  Thus they were first conceptualized and then built.  In earlier history there are cases where the feminine held sway.

The masculine reasons things through then develops them, while the feminine can be thought of as the right-brain, or the initiator which comprehends things as a whole, only to analyze afterwards.  Some of the world’s greatest left-brain thinkers, Einstein, Bohr, achieved their crowning ideas through dreams.  This is the quintessential right-brain gestalt.

Thus, the masculine has clearly ruled from the age of reason and enlightenment until the present.  Now it is time for the feminine to take the lead once again.  This involves the right-brain receiving an idea complete and whole through an intuitive process.  It then directs the left-brain to analyze and develop the idea.  The left-brain masculine generally seeks to break things apart and to rebuild them in its logical framework.

Our world has had enough division and now seeks cohesion once again.  Here the right-brain feminine excels.  It seeks to unite and connect things into organic and harmonious wholes.  The quote below describes how this shift in thinking affects the way we see and analyze the world and our place in it:

“The realization that early humans were the hunted and not hunters has upended traditional ideas about what it takes for a species to thrive. For decades the reigning view had been that hunting prowess and the ability to vanquish competitors was the key to our ancestors’ evolutionary success (an idea fostered, critics now say, by the male domination of anthropology during most of the 20th century). But prey species do not owe their survival to anything of the sort, argues Sussman. Instead, they rely on their wits and, especially, social skills to survive. Being hunted brought evolutionary pressure on our ancestors to cooperate and live in cohesive groups. That, more than aggression and warfare, is our evolutionary legacy.” (Begley 2007)

The article quoted above illustrates in multiple layers how the complex dance between masculine and feminine occurs-the divine intercourse of everythinig in our galaxy.  On one layer, the masculine mind sought a single advantage which accelerated humans to dominance.  Anthropologists’ studies reflected this inherent bias.  Yet on another layer, as the thinking changes so do our explanations.

Now we see that it may be our social skills that gave humanity the edge.  In other words, it is the human system that levers the species to dominance.  From a leadership perspective, these are the most valuable skills to possess and the most difficult to find.  Like in the famous basketball movie, “Hoosiers,” flowing together as a team wins games, not single stars shining brightly.

Now humanity is about to shift again.  This time to more feminine driven reasoning.  In other words, it will be inspiration driving perspiration versus perspiration creating inspiration.  Think less, feel more,  Yet never surrender logic at the door.  It is only through integration that humanity will reach the next stage in human evolution without destroying itself.

References:

Begley, Sharon, “Beyond Stones and Bones,” Newsweek March 19, 2007.  Retrieved from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17542627/site/newsweek/

Gouthum Karadi