500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider
A change of pace this week as I continue thinking about Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind and relate it to my own experiences in India this past winter.
Daniel Pink believes that left brain tasks requiring logic, analysis and speedy thinking will be either outsourced to smart and inexpensive labor in India or performed by tireless computers. He advises everyone who wants to get or keep their job to start pumping up their right brain processes – the creative, nonlinear stuff – in order to make themselves indispensable. I have no doubt that he’s right, but when I was over in India I saw little evidence of its linear left brain.
In Rishikesh, India’s yoga center, I was expecting a serene place filled with people whose feet only rarely touched the ground. What I found instead was a narrow bridge called Lakshman Jula alive with humanity and aggressive monkeys. The sacred Ganges was like Times Square, so packed it was with bathers, boats and garbage.
It wasn’t long before the chaotic nature of the place started to close in on me. After my wife got sick (suspicious masala chai we think) I was craving left-brain linearity. I wanted to get some of that in an American hotel near the airport. I’d like to pause for a moment to remark that I work in television for a living, so I have an intimate understanding of chaos and even outright insanity. What made me crack in India?
On the way to the airport in our air-conditioned car we saw motorcycles carrying more passengers than you’d think gravity would permit, and all manner of cargo – wood, entire trees, cooking oil, chairs, more people. I was expecting India to give me something of a balance between spirituality and left-brain IT computer geeks. Instead I got wood smoke, rickshaws and cows. I got noise, loud music, suspicious food and drink and people just trying to survive who hoped I would finance them.
I found little calm on the trip until we got to Mumbai, a jumpy, jangly city of 13 million people. In a temple dedicated to Ganesha, the Hindu god of success, and also in another dedicated to the goddess of prosperity Lakshmi, something happened. I felt that I grasped the spiritual world I had been seeking.
There are seeker/spiritual right-brained friends of mine who tell me that since I was expecting chaos and bad food in India, that’s what I got. Therefore, I created that universe. But I found that in Mumbai, the place that was closest to the cities I know, Los Angeles and New York, I was able to connect with both left and right brain. Too far to the logical side of things and there’s no access to intuition. Too far to the right, too much chaos. I found the balance in Mumbai, if only for a day.
If you’d like to see a slightly different video slideshow version of this story, you’ll find it on Lonely Planet’s website. Stay curious and see you next Thursday.
Written by Lee Schneider, founder of DocuCinema.
Spiritual seekers may spend decades working to detach from their ego. Buddha meditated under a Bodhi tree for 49 days when he did it. But I think I’ve managed it in just .2 seconds. All I had to do was Google myself. There are 8,900,000 different results for Lee Schneider. I can already feel my sense of self slipping away into 8.9 million little pieces. In yoga we’re often reminded that it’s a good thing to surrender the ego. Buddhism teaches that the self is only an illusion. But what does that really mean?
As I examine myself under Google’s microscope, I can verify that I was once a writer of “ThunderCats” cartoons. How did I juggle that with my job as project manager at the Computer Sciences Corporation in Dallas/Fort Worth? It seems like a good living, I just don’t remember going into the office this morning.
Then again, I do move around. This week I’m living in Alexandria, KY, Morrison, CO and Batavia, OH all at the same time. Perhaps, upon dissolution, my ego is now able to be in several places at once. In his book “Autobiography of a Yogi,” Paramhansa Yogananda described one Swami Pranabananda who was able to do this. That seems like pretty advanced yoga and I don’t think I’m there yet. I’m not even doing handstand anymore.
When I started this blog I said I would never join Facebook. But it looks like I have anyway and I really like horses. 
I also like to Twitter, have 124 followers and live in Boston. Whole chunks of my life are kind of different from the life I thought I was living. For instance, I married Elyssa Korez on December 20th, 2008. Sorry, I don’t remember that wedding at all. 
Thing is, I’m getting married again in Los Angeles on June 20. Could I be practicing polygamy? I don’t remember being Mormon but then I don’t remember signing up for the Navy Reserves in Auburn, Washington either. 
I don’t know how I fit the Reserves in with my job as a photographer of tall ships. I published a calendar of them in 2002. It’s for sale at Amazon, anyway, and it has my name on it.
In Buddhism it’s said that attachment to ego leads to suffering. Right now, I’m getting the opposite effect. As my ego splits apart I’m hyperventilating.
If people are looking for me online, they might connect with one of my other selves instead of the one typing this right now. What is my name good for if so many others are using it? I need to run an online background check on myself to get back in touch with who I really am, but that costs $39.95.
Maybe finding myself isn’t as easy as clicking on a link. Maybe I’m not ready to completely surrender my ego, but if I nudge it out of the way a little I might have better access to the interior life that goes on whether my Google ranking looks good or not.
Written by Lee Schneider, founder of DocuCinema.
Hello and welcome to my blog. This is volume one, number one, paragraph one, sentence two, so you might discover right away that I am writing with assurance or wandering in the wilderness with only a metaphorical flashlight to show the way. Both scenarios are true. That’s the reason I’ve decided to write this. Right now, we’re at a crossroads where the usual definitions melt away. It’s an intersection of science and spirit. There are some curious discussions happening out there. So each week, on Thursday, I’ll offer you 500 words about the questions people are asking.
Can you really think your way into better health? Are there any limits to human consciousness? Does the laying on of hands heal people? Will time ever go in reverse? What is the deep power of chance events? If you do enough yoga, do you go insane? (Probably.) My friends from New York will read this as proof that after twenty years Out West I’ve finally gotten Out There. My Los Angeles friends might wonder why I am holding back. I admit that it’s hard to exactly locate Around the Bend on your GPS, but I see this blog, and my role, as observing and facilitating the connection between two worlds. Can a language be forged that works for both the science talkers and the spirit seekers, without diluting the intent of either?
I’m amazed at the number of organizations springing up to study the connections across the divide. Just a few: The Center for Spirituality and Healing, The Rubin Museum of Art, Bravewell Collective, John Templeton Foundation, Life Science Foundation, Center for Mindfulness, Society for Science and Religion, Columbia University Center for the Study of Science and Religion, the Zygon Center, Adrian Wyard and the Counterbalance Foundation, Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, the Mind & Life Institute, and the Institute for Noetic Sciences. Researchers and scientists like E.O. Wilson, Bruce Lipton, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Ernest Rossi are stretching the boundaries of how we perceive science and spirit, mind and consciousness. Louise Hay and Dr. Mona Lisa make us wonder how we can direct our own wellness by our intention. Two conferences are coming up, one in Washington, DC, the other in Minnesota, to talk about complementary and integrative medicine. That’s a kind of healing practice that can blend East and West and makes mindbody one word. It’s pretty busy out there in the crossroads.
From time to time as a filmmaker and media guy I have the pleasure of meeting science-spirit leaders and I’ll write about those encounters here. I’ll keep you updated on our DocuCinema projects that go to this territory. I promise to veer terribly off course sometimes to rant about Youtube and also India, explain why I’ll never be on Facebook, write about what scares me, reveal who my heroes might be, throw in a movie review and some foodie talk, show why marriage can increase your Google ranking, why there are too many Lee Schneiders already and why videos of cats riding motorcycles are always good.
That’s about 500 words right there. If you’d like to add some, post a comment! Stay curious and see you next Thursday.
