This morning I went to a meeting of a business networking community here in Asheville who meet every Wednesday morning at 8:00. They have an interesting concept, inviting one person of quality and integrity from each profession – one accountant, one realtor, one landscaper, one interior designer, and so on. Only one seat is available for that profession in this group. Each week they inform each other more about what they do, and all support each other, provide referrals, give recommendations, educate each other about business itself. There is a yearly fee and a requirement of attendance at these meetings for that time; if you can’t come you send someone to fill in for you and give your message. That’s the deal. It keeps the energy high and flowing, apparently. I saw it happening. I was invited and may become their psychologist if I choose to accept this mission.

Before moving on to what I feel interested to say about this experience, one bit of feedback I received after my presentation was notable. As I spoke I heard one woman whisper to the man next to her, “I like her!” I interrupted myself to say, “Thank you! I am really nervous talking to this group.” Meaning, I needed that feedback right now. Then I felt silly for interrupting myself, and for explaining that I was nervous. But after the session ended the woman who had brought me in told me that she thought the best moment of my whole delivery was when I said I was nervous. The rest of it, she said, comes and goes but that kind of authenticity spoke to people. She said she observed it.

Ok. I’m a psychologist exposing the machinations of the psyche, on-line, in the moment. I could breathe more deeply after realizing that actually was respected.

While there, listening to the various people speak – sweet, real, committed, passionate-about-their-work people, people who understand business, a language harder than Chinese to me – I thought I could feel actual cells in my brain re-orienting and readjusting. Maybe it was the 8:00 in the morning thing, as I am NOT a morning person, but something physical seemed to be happening inside my head. It was a sensory phenomenon.

I thought of David Bohm, the physicist’s, words. He explained that insight, new meanings perceived, actually change the physics of the brain, it’s chemistry and organization. In that, the physics of our world becomes a different reality. Something deep in the “implicate order”, as he described it, will shift which leads then to changes in the “explicate order” – external reality. Bohm explains at length how defended humans tend to be around letting this happen. He was a prophet, poet, meta-physician and philosopher as well as a scientist.

For me in this instance, people in suits who live in the real world to which I rarely feel adapted, being able to understand what I do, why I do it, want to help me, and that I might help them too, in business, not just in their heads – these new meanings were flooding my brain, changing it’s organization and chemistry. It was visceral.

Bohm said that “If the brain holds the old meanings, then it cannot change its state. The mental and the physical are one.” New perceptions re-create reality at a cellular level. He says we bring the “instincts of the jungle” to defend the old ideas, perceptions and reality. Why we do this is another subject, but he gets it.

Today, Wednesday May 18, 2011 – brain re-created. Check.
Now I am a depth psychologist and a business woman. Check.
Will I become a morning person? Can’t check that box yet.