Enjoying life

It is said that the problem of dementia is growing. 20 percent of western people are said to be facing a future with dementia - which is a very, very large number. Investigations into populations in which dementia is rare, and in social and educational groups in western society that show little dementia at an old age will make clear where the causes for the growing risk of dementia lie.

Investigation of the self is not seen as a reliable research method. As soon as the self is involved in an investigation, the objectivity is doubted. But there is a kind of self-observation and self-knowledge that is the objectivity per se. I have written a lot about this kind of self-knowledge, and in these blog-texts, too. I will not repeat it here, everyone can find it.

This objective self-observation leads to an observation of the inner processes while thinking, feeling and acting; but also leads to a growing observing ability of the processes of the body - inwardly. Someone who develops such abilities can observe himself while working on the PC, for instance, or while using the smartphone, and examine what happens.

During my researches – on the internet - of evidence-based measures to prevent dementia,  I found a Flemish investigation, where it is said that certain developed exercises that are composed like computer games could prevent dementia. I looked up the site: Brain HQ. It is very interesting to experience what happens, while doing such exercises.

For instance: there is a circle of, say, twelve birds to be seen, and one differs from the others. You have to click the field containing this different bird. Then another circle appears, and you have to do the same. The speed of renewing the circle increases rapidly. So it is a training of perception and reaction.

In another exercise the game generates a short, very ugly, sound that is either rising or falling in pitch. You have to listen and click the correct symbol for either up or down. The zeal is to do it as perfectly and quickly as possible. Every fault sets you back on the progression-line. Here also, perception and reaction are trained.

Now, what happens, while doing such exercises? First, let me say that by doing this it became clear to me that it truly brings the mind to the senses, it can be experienced with certainty. But the stimuli are ugly and dumb, mechanical or, rather, digital. One can feel how one becomes imbued with electric impulses,  it produces a nervous stress throughout the soul and the body, although there is a kind of awakening. There is nothing whatsoever of nature, art, feeling or beauty in what one is asked to concentrate on. So the only thing that awakens one, is the hurry to do it right. Conclusion: The mind is carried to the senses, but there is no human aspect, it is pure technical.

Still, it offers a possibility of experiencing how the intellectual mind is stressed to keep up with the senses, with eye or ear. And if one can feel that, one can practise it with beautiful sense perceptions, with life experiences, in conversations and so on. But I would not advise this system anyway. In the prevention of dementia it is certainly not only the intellectual part of the human being that should be trained. Far more important is the heart, the feelings, the compassion, the love and joy of life - and this all in a pure ‘mating’ with the head, with the consciousness. So what should we do from the age of 35 onwards?

I could say: “Enjoy your life with all your senses and all your mindfulness and all your positive thoughts!” But if you are a melancholic, somewhat paranoid and sour person - who nevertheless searches for the good and the conscientious - you will not easily succeed in following this call... And if you are a lighthearted and superficially interested person, while also looking for love and compassion, this call will also not be so easy to follow.

And there is another problem. It is absolutely not sufficient to train the mindfulness of the senses and leave the development of thinking disregarded. It would lead to a fixing of the mind to the body and to shape it to material forms only. The other side should be developed as well. That means that there should be a training of thinking deliberately, a thinking that becomes so powerful, that it can be perceived as well. Then we would live between the mindful perception and the mindful thinking, two pillars that can bear the mind to fit free-ness up to a grand age!
So on one side there has to be an exercising of the attentiveness in all life-events. On the other side there should be an exercising of the attentiveness and activity of thinking itself.
And in between it would be necessary to train the self-observation of the feelings and to develop the power of enjoying life. There exist well-defined exercises to reach this state. These three sides of effective prevention of dementia I will try to explore in the coming lectures in Amsterdam and Bern. Maybe there will be a possibility to write about this afterwards.

As a symbol I give the image of a hexagram (Diederik van Leeuwen)


Enjoying life by Mieke Mosmuller