A talk with Joseph Chilton Pearce

1. Posted by The Monroe Institute: Digital Media Library | Wisdom-Series no1: A Talk with Joe Pearce May 1, 2009, 4:06 pm Reply to this comment

   

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2. Posted by animarising June 13, 2009, 3:48 pm Reply to this comment

   

   God is A Verb – an article in Balanced Life Magazine, June/July 2009

   “We are shaped by each other. We adjust not to the reality of the world, but to the reality of other thinkers.” I listened as one of my personal heroes, Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Crack in the Cosmic Egg and eight other books on human consciousness opened the Wisdom Series of lectures at the Monroe Institute in Virginia.

   The 84 year old Pearce shared the latest research in developmental neurobiology. He told us, for example, that toddlers needed several hours of non-structured time for what he called “wide-eyed staring”. Toddlers are organizing their world, and will stare and then point, asking for names. Sometimes, they will seem to be pointing at nothing. As the caretaker supplies names: book, tree, dog, and so on, the child moves into agreement with his or her cultural reality. I thought about the Eskimos and how they had so many words for snow, and wondered how much more those little children might be “seeing” that gets closed off to the rest of us.

   Pearce is a champion for letting a child be a child, and for paying attention to the biological stages of development for our kids. For instance, age 7 has long been regarded as the “age of reason”, and Pearce says that schooling before this age is biologically premature. Pearce says that at every step in its development, the organism asks itself, “Is it safe to evolve, or do I need to protect myself?” Creating a secure bond between caregiver and child starts in the womb, and all mammals need this sense of safety to fully develop the higher centers in the brain.

   Pearce shared new findings that the human forebrain does not develop until the baby has been born, and that a loving environment with lots of bonding touch is essential for development. He suggested that the human species is biologically evolving to a larger forebrain. He showed pictures of babies and toddlers evidencing this development. These kids had rounded foreheads, not flat like mine! He was right – I saw such a child on the plane ride home. The little girl peered through the cracks in the seats two aisles ahead of me. When our eyes locked, she extended a hand through the seat, and I reached forward to grasp touch her little fingers.

   What hope might she be bringing to the planet! I thought. Pearce talked about more research coming out suggesting that the forebrain is the part of our neurology that connects with the resonance coming from our heart. Pearce talked about findings from the Heart Math Institute showing that the electromagnetic energy radiating from the heart is 300 times stronger than that coming from the brain. When we humans feel safe and secure, our higher cognitive centers check in with the electromagnetic energy signals coming from the heart before reacting to our environment. When we feel threatened, on the other hand, we’re at the risk of being emotionally hijacked by our “fight or flight” centers. He said that if we can quiet this reaction for just a second or two before reacting, the neocortex has time to modulate our instinctive reactions.
   I thought of the old “count to 10 before you react adage” and thought how much folk wisdom is now being supported by science. Maybe these youngsters with the rounded foreheads herald a new age, one supported by love instead of dominated by fear. Pearce showed us a picture of a normal brain alongside that of a violent offender. The latter’s brain seemed to be diseased, riddled with dark holes. Pearce suggested that the offender’s very biology contributes to his violence, and that attention to child development is essential to our future.

   Pearce asserted that every fiber of our being has intelligence. God is a verb, continually coming into being, not an old man with a beard in the sky. I thought back to another great mind, Joseph Campbell, telling Bill Moyers in the PBS series, The Power of Myth, “We are how the Universe becomes Conscious of itself.” A slight chill crept up my spine and spread out into goose bumps as I considered that we are Intelligence itself formed in light and matter.

   http://balancedlifemagazine.com/grfx/full_magazine/Balanced%20Life%20JJ09.pdf

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