Our sense for Little Dopamine has been overwhelmed by the need for Big Dopamine. But Little Dopamine is still there, we just have to consciously ritual with it. Notice anything good with our senses, and then take a breath, or say “thank you,” or exercise some slight symbolic movement — to acknowledge what we notice with our body — and the brain will rewire itself to notice Little Dopamine in time.
Little Dopamine will start out as more of a feeling tone than an outright sensation. We won’t be sure of it. For instance, when we awake we have a connection to a dream, the images of which tend to disintegrate quickly, but the feeling tone of which remains — and it, too, dissipates soon after. We have, likewise at times, thoughts or ideas which occur to us, and attract us, but which are difficult to hold on to. Sometimes such qualia comes to us through stories, or movies; it is not, however, the particulars of the tale, but something archetypal which lingers, perhaps a character or a turn in the plot.
The Little Dopamine feeling tone may be vague, but we can choose to return to it, to the qualia, and to play with them in the mind, to try to make them more easily to retrieve, and to conceive. This is the qualiadelic nature of the inner landscape. Our feeling tone is tied to inner landmarks and pathways which exist there. These are the qualia of the mind.
Focusing on and consciously evolving such qualia, and becoming in tune with the feeling tones associated with Little Dopamine, is a compelling pursuit. An artist can sit for hours in front of a canvas, basking in the qualiadelic experience. A musician can practice songs or scales, but there is a moment when he or she falls into the magic zone of musicality. A master craftsman too may experience such moments of genius. What we often call genius is really nothing more than the ability to hold disparate concepts in the mind for extended lengths of time — time enough for them to realign and mix themselves in various ways until a truth is revealed, a theme is sounded, or a technique becomes artful. This is what it means to be qualiadelic, and this is one of the greatest of gifts life has to offer.
Being qualiadelic comes with a heightened feeling tone, perhaps rising to the point when Little Dopamine might be said to become Big Dopamine. But this is not the case; this is really just the point at which an individual is able to share their unique gifts with others. In this, the cave painter at Lascaux, France, 17,000 years ago, and Albert Einstein are equals, brothers of a species: Homo qualiens.
Tony Brussat