4am Musings on Consciousness & Trying to Lose It

The Strange Link Between the Human Mind and Quantum Physics
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics

I logged onto Facebook to say happy birthday to a friend and instead got sidetracked by the article above, which a different friend and fellow super-nerd posted on his page. The article talks about the link between consciousness and quantum mechanics (if you have a basic understanding of physics and quantum mechanics, no need to read the first part - scroll/skip down to where they start talking about Roger Penrose - he's on the Fibonacci spiral staircase). Just some light reading before bed to try to fall asleep - HAHA. This kind of thing has the opposite effect of shutting off my brain, but I knew if I didn't read it right now, chances are I would forget to read it tomorrow, and since I've spent the day thinking about energy and consciousness and such, off I went down the rabbit hole for some more. I mean really, what's a couple more hours when I already know I will have to sleep away half the day to catch up with myself? Stupid clocks.

I am proud (and a little surprised) to say that as soon as they started talking about the quantum superpositions of molecules involved in neural signaling, I was *instantly* at entanglement as a solution - which they outlined further down the article. :) (All Tom Swifties/puns intended.) In fact, I was just talking about entanglement and resistance today to a different friend, and even used plants as an analogy, so it's a bit quantumly freaky that this article pops up and mentions the same things tonight, although why am I surprised given the subject?

The problem I see with the direction Matthew Fisher is going with measuring phosphorus spin in Posner molecules is that he will loop back around on himself and find out that you can't determine a measurement on anything that we are creating ourselves - as described in the double-slit experiment, we (our consciousness) change the outcome based on our observation no matter how you try to measure it.

(And I seriously don't know why they think the idea or study of quantum consciousness is anything new... people have been discussing magick for eons. They've just slapped a different label on it lately.)

There is no perspective available from outside our own brains, which are making this up as we go along (and they already said in the article that they're considering solipsism, so duh). In order to create a definition, you have to have something to oppose what you are defining. In other words, you cannot say what is without saying what isn't (at least not in this realm). Consciousness and quantum mechanics both seem to deal with the space between - they are neither what is or what isn't, it always comes down to the cloud of possibilities, which is infinite and always affected by our choices.

One thing I disagree with in the article is:

"With the exception of people with visual impairments, we all know what red is like, but we have no way to communicate the sensation"

Wrong. In the movie Mask back in 1985 starring Cher (the one about Rocky Dennis, who had craniodiaphyseal dysplasia), there was a brilliant scene where Rocky helps his blind girlfriend understand visual concepts such as "red" and "billowy clouds" by using a warm rock and cotton balls (respectively) to stimulate the senses she has access to in order to create a definition of qualia previously unavailable to her brain. (In fact, it's the only thing I took away from that movie.)

However, I will give them this: proving that the mind affects the outcome of measurements (which we've already done) does not mean we can prove what's "real" (which is subjective anyway), but could give credence to the theory that we create our own realities. But again, that will loop back around on us because if we are creating everything as it happens, and it's only a product of our own minds (individual or collective), then consciousness and quantum mechanics is the same because there is no way for our brains to form an opposing definition of either one. It is, and we are, all one.

And now I really must sleep for pete's sake. The sun will come around the corner any minute. You know what would be really useful? Sleep mode in our quantum brains that you can select from a menu and click...

Oh shit. And I have to go back and say happy birthday to my friend!

A Perfect Reflection

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, we're just reflections after all. 

~*~

My stress level was through the roof tonight due to two jobs, several freelance projects, no sleep, and lots weighing on my mind for the weekend, plus I encountered a complete jerk on the road while driving home — like a rotten Ford cherry* sitting on top of a junkyard of frustration.

Yay.

NOT.

I was having such a hard time letting go of all that crappy emotion. I knew I needed to, I really wanted to, I was even desperate enough to flip through my mental rolodex of "tools" I've learned in various seminars, books, CDs, etc. (Aside from pure gratitude, I mostly liken those tools to glow sticks: fun in the moment while you're all playing together, but not terribly useful after twenty-four hours.)

Didn't matter - what I really wanted to do was just destroy something. It's all I could picture. It was insane - like my brain was warring with itself. The emotional side was completely flipped out while the logical side was observing and thinking how ridiculous it was that common sense and reasoning couldn't make me any less emotional.

Fortunately I can never bring myself to actual violence even if it would be let out in a constructive way (my beliefs lean too far toward Animism), but this negativity HAD to dissipate. (And I'm sorry, but punching pillows? That does NOT work. And the pillows will get you back by sticking your face with feather ends all night.)

For whatever reason, I took five minutes to check up on a few Facebook pages of people that always make me smile. Who knew that would be like a flood of Samadhi Advil for Off-the-hook Hormones?

I've met all the people I'm talking about, but some probably wouldn't know me. Just thinking about them though was like an instant hug (and only one is famous, smartypants friends who think they know who I'm talking about). People have no idea how truly far-reaching their calming, peaceful presence is. There's nothing (and everything) extraordinary about them. They just are who they are, but in their Being is this amazing gift to humanity. I am so grateful for their gifts.

As I scrolled pages and clicked on a video or pictures, this came to mind:

When I look at you, I see the part of me that is Love.

Sounded like truth, so I'm writing it down and sharing it.

Who does that for you?† Send some gratitude their way now.

No, really. I'll wait.

I hope maybe sometimes I offer that to others. (Can't say I'm confident about being that these last couple months tho. Working in an office creates a lot of stress for me. Still trying to resolve that.)

Some people's light just shines so bright it can reach through any conjured darkness and once again illuminate what's happy in yourself, bringing things back into balance. Thank goodness.

(Photo by Bill Bell)

* Yes, it was red, and I just now got the irony of the fact that it was a Ford Focus. Well played, Universe.

† In re-reading I realized how you hear that sentence in your head probably says a lot about your emotions. Did you read it "who does that for you?" or "who does that for you?" I meant it in the latter expression.

I Am Grateful For People Like Frank Sinatra

There aren't too many articles I read that pull emotions from that deep place where such things hide, but this one did. I am already a Sinatra fan as it is, but this... wow. Loyalty like that is a rare find anymore.

I couldn't have written the story better myself so you'll just have to read it on CNN. I wish there were more people like Frank and Sal in the world today. Seems they are an endangered species.

What a PERFECT way to put it too...

Frank Sinatra's Lesson in Loyalty
Some people are so big during their lives, even death doesn't seem to entirely take them away.

THAT is the kind of immortal I want to be!

I Am Grateful for An Abundance of Thoughts

I've been trying to decide on one idea to focus on for a book proposal, but settling on one subject seems an almost impossible task. There are SOOOOO many thoughts that run around my head, it's like the proverbial herding of cats. Mental Cat Herder... that's my next job title, I swear. In fact, I might just go order business cards from Vista Print with that on it right n...

...crap! One thing at a time! Must focus on blog writing!!!

This is also why I haven't been posting many blogs lately... there is simply SO MUCH I want to post I have three thoughts about other things I want to share while I'm working on posting the first one. (You have no idea how many partial blogs I have saved that I haven't posted.) Blog posts sometimes honestly take me hours to write, short as they seem, because I am too much for editing and re-editing, and not enough for just GET IT OUT THERE.

I would like to accept *what is* more often and worry less about how it comes across to others.

I know I cannot please everyone all the time, even tho I have apparently made it my life's mission to try. I believe my obsessiveness when it comes to expressing myself clearly is born of a lack of adults' understanding when I would try to communicate as a child. Looking back, I see where I would often try to relate to adults on their level, but because I was a child they weren't expecting that (or didn't take me seriously, which I assure you I very much was a serious kid), therefore they would misunderstand, hence I rarely got the results I was after. But that's just one of my charming neuroses readers probably need not concern themselves with. Like how I combine eight ideas in one sentence through the abuse of parentheses and too many commas.

So about that book proposal (SEE?! HERDING CATS!!)... I try to placate myself by thinking, "Well, it's not like you'll only have the chance to write ONE book." I would hope anyway. Although if you're trying to gain a certain target market, writing about nine different non-related subjects from separate corners of the Universe is probably not the ideal way. Unless you're doing memoirs (which is perhaps the answer for me).

Not to be conceited, but I think my writing is pretty well done and the idea has been confirmed by others, so if I DO get a book deal then look out Best Seller List (and my apologies in advance to my future editor... and her shrink) and if I don't, well, I'll just have to learn how to make more noise about it and keep writing until something sticks I suppose. As I said, it's not like I lack for subjects - well, technically I do lack subjects, but only as a noun, which is why I'm not famous yet. Oh geez, now I'm making bad grammar jokes and it's only 11:30pm.

Moving on...

Tonight, a friend posted this article on her Facebook about Crowdsourcing and the graphic design industry. Having worn the graphic designer hat in the past, of course I was interested and of course I had an opinion, which I posted in a comment on Facebook after much careful thought and editing and re-editing to make sure I was understood by the adults. Which I then felt I wasn't, so I had to post again. Oh well. (More *what is*... more *what is*... serenity now...)

The good thing about the second comment though was that it forced me to reorganize my thoughts and more stuff came out of my head. Interesting stuff, even to me. In fact, it may have even given me an inkling of something that MIGHT turn out to be a life's passion as well as focus for a book, but I'm not putting too much light on it yet for fear of chasing it away. Some things are better to let come to you in their own time. I've spent 42 years trying to figure out something I might be passionate about, but so far nothing has moved me for long. Plenty of things I'm interested in, but nothing I can really say I have a true passion for. If this turns out to be something long-winded (as most of my writing is), I certainly don't want to kill it with premature zealousness. (That is so a word. Look it up.)

When I read the Crowdsourcing article, my thought was that I agreed with the author's assessment that crowdsourcing as a business practice creates a decline in the quality of design and allows an opening for cheap, unskilled labor to take over yet another industry. This is a wee bit ironic since altho I am not cheap (and will not participate in crowdsourcing), I would probably be grouped in with the people the designers are complaining about because I didn't go to design school, yet I can and have made designs and logos just as well as anyone else because I've picked up some skill and understood the principles along the way. Oops.

The deeper thing I was thinking though, is that crowdsourcing is not a real problem in itself. It is a symptom of a much larger problem - the collapse of American society. Here is the answer I posted... I know it's a bit out of context, but in the interest of GETTING IT OUT THERE and not overediting, I'm just going to post it as is.


Oh I agree! I do graphic design too and the prices people want to pay - it's stupid. In fact, I've pretty much given up finding another "normal" job at this point and have decided I will either have to find a new career or find a new lifestyle.

I didn't express myself very well before... I don't see the crowd/cloud thing as the problem. I see that as just another symptom. The problem is corporations always wanting to improve profits because they're not in the business of helping humans find love/happiness, they're in the business of making money (which is an *illusion* humans subscribe to - that money will make them happy :). Just like everything else, companies don't care where the designs come from or the quality of them, they just want to improve shareholders' dividends every quarter, so if the market is such that they can't sell enough to improve profits, they cry about inflation and start cutting costs. Employees just bend over and take it because what are you gonna do? You're already addicted to your lifestyle and that lifestyle costs a certain amount. Are you going to give up your job and risk losing your house or not feeding your kids? Not likely. Even if you (or even a group of you) quit on principle, there's 20 more people out there to take your place before you can pack your things, so the companies still win - they don't even feel the wind from the door hitting you in the @$$ as you leave.

You can apply this to ANY industry or product. (Ikea for furniture, any brand name label for clothes, Walmart for general items...) Nothing is a problem until it's the boss' problem, which means nothing will get fixed until Big Business feels the effect of no longer having an unending supply of humans to exploit. The last time Americans tried to say hey, we want better compensation, Big Business (read: Our Lovely Former Bush Administration) just said "No problem, we'll just get cheaper people in India and China. Let us know how that better compensation works out for ya America." And the human race just keeps cranking out more bodies to saturate the market and work for less money, so I don't see how anything is going to correct itself until the supply no longer meets the demand and the pendulum heads back the other way. Eventually it will happen, and honestly it makes me afraid to think of HOW that might happen but worrying about that too long will drive you insane.

Unless the people pull together and take a stand as a larger entity than Big Business, we'll just keep heading towards the cliff until we're over the edge. The neat trick Big Business has pulled is that they've programmed us to think it's an impossible task to motivate enough people for a mutiny. But organizing something like that only appears overwhelming because when we think in terms of "one person" we're thinking of each of our individual selves. If you think of "one person" as the human race in general, it's really just a change of mind. Group mind, mind you, but still one mind.

Apply the 100th Monkey Theory and suddenly Group Mind doesn't seem that terribly hard to access. Except it still kind of is because of the rate of growth of the human population… you're chasing a runaway train. But that's a whole other story and now what I really really really want to thank you for is the catalyst you gave me to write all that because I believe I have the basis for my book proposal that I've been looking for - or at least a good start. :)

YOU ARE AWESOME!

My friend said I was awesome too and went back to discussing crowdsourcing as the root of the problem. I guess it IS the root of HER current problem as an individual, but this just totally illustrates my point... everyone is so focused on being their individual selves and figuring out how to solve their own individual problems that they forget the power they have to change as a larger entity, be that a small community, or a large company, or the entire globe.

What I failed to do right there in that entirely too-long dissertation on the troubles of the capitalistic world was instill in her the idea that she is not just one lonely raindrop adrift on the ocean... she is part of that ocean. She may not be able to change the tides as one lonely raindrop, but certainly if enough raindrops get together the wave will have an effect. I believe the popular description of this theory is:

Think globally, act locally.

or to relate it more closely to the individual:

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

That kind of thing. The choices each of us makes in our individual lives EVERY DAY... from where we live to how we live to what we say and especially what we spend our money on... affects the Whole. No one is exempt. We pay these ideas plenty of lip service, but how many of us actually make the effort to walk our talk? (And don't think I'm ignoring the three fingers pointing back at me when I say that.)

If we shift our minds to focus on the Higher Good of the Whole in all our decisions, then the lot of the individuals improves exponentially.

I don't know where this is coming from as I'm usually a details person, not so much about the Big Picture, but there it is... I'm GETTING IT OUT THERE.

Now who do I talk to in order to get paid to do this every day?

(And by the way, if there are grammatical or other errors in here, deal with it because I'm not going back to edit it again or I'll be here ANOTHER two hours!)

There. I am taking the Johnny Depp approach to my work! (He never goes to see his own movies after they're done.)

(Damn... this is hard!)

I Am Grateful For So Many Choices

Jason Mraz posted today to promote help for organizations who are trying to end the underground slave trade that still survives in our society. I was going to just make a short comment on his blog post as I usually do, but I ended up writing so much I figured I'd post it here instead for anyone caring to read all that verbage. I don't like to fill up his comments with really long dissertations of my thoughts.

So the original post he made is HERE.

I put the first two paragraphs below in his comments, with a link back to here in case some wanted to read ALL my thoughts. I guess if you're not a fan of Mraz's blog, it's best to read his post before reading the rest of mine so you're not lost!

My complete reply is:

I agree with you, Jason, that education is so important - through education the slave trade will end itself. I believe it's better to get at the root of the problem to stop the growth, rather than simply alleviate the symptoms.

I am grateful for people who have the resources to do both - support education, AND support those willing to reach into the fire to extract the souls that may truly desire change - those that request help in switching directions on the path they're walking and then follow through. Thank you for being you and for using your voice wisely. :)

I know this will probably not be a popular opinion, but the girls that were "rescued" had a choice in the beginning to walk away from anything the pimps may have offered them. Why didn't they? I don't believe anyone enslaves anyone else. I believe people allow themselves to be enslaved, and then get in so deep they need help to get back out. It's like falling in a hole.

After reading/watching/hearing so much research on why people make "bad" choices, I have formed an opinion that perhaps it's a reaction to fear. Fear of lack, fear of non-survival, fear of non-acceptance from society. Except what our society doesn't really teach us in school is that we are not the ONLY society on this planet - our money-based lifestyle is not the only way to survive, and indeed is not even necessarily the "best" way (if there is one). There are plenty of indigenous cultures that live close to the Earth, without money, and they survive just fine (if we'd quit being such mega-land consumers!), and they are generally happier, more disease-free, and more balanced in their minds than our society is. Imagine that. The only reason our society doesn't see it this way is because they are different from us, and we have become intolerant to those that are labeled "different." So when people in our society turn to things like drugs or prostitution thinking this will fix their lives or their money problems, is it because they fear living closer to the Earth? Do they fear being different? Are they fearful of non-acceptance from the rest of our money-ridden society? Do they think they won't survive at all?

Fear is the disease. Gratitude is the cure. In the meantime, education promotes healing. Just my opinion.

To alleviate fear, I apply education. Book learning and internet research is great, but nothing beats real world experience. If you can't get real world experience, guess what? Imagination works just as well and sometimes even brings new things into existence! :) Experiencing how other societies live, learning what's good (or not) for your body & mind, knowing what practices promote health and which tear it down and then actually having the self-esteem to DO the things that make you happy and say no thanks to the things that lead down a fear-filled path - I wish that with a healthy dose of imagination for EVERYONE on Earth.

When I look at things like slave trade - or people we label as criminals in general - from another perspective, I find I am grateful to those folks because they show me a path I do NOT want to go down. They are the signposts that say "Here, there be dragons." (And seriously? When did dragons get such a bad reputation? Maybe they were just misunderstood! :) I've had some unfortunate experiences with criminals... I'm not saying it's fun, I'm saying if you lose, don't lose the lesson. Often I find the reason people have put on their victim t-shirt and continued spreading a negative story is because they forget to find what they wanted to learn from the experience, therefore they keep drawing negative experiences to themselves. There are no victims on our globe. We all have free will and we all make choices that affect our path. Even as children. Our choice may be as simple as deciding to change perspectives. Once I see any "bad" experience I may have from a learning perspective, it's easier to tuck away the knowledge and move on in my life to something better and happier.

Personally I believe God (or whatever label you choose) only sends us angels. Some of them are dark angels, but they are all angels nonetheless. Criminals are dark angels AND they serve a great purpose to those of us not wanting to walk their path. They help remind us to stay focused instead on happiness. I am so grateful for that.

Everyone has the capacity to think like this. They only need to be shown that there is more than one path to choose from. That's where education comes in. :)

Again - just my two pesos.

I Am Grateful For Imagination

My habit of thought over the past couple decades has been that we have our salary rates all wrong in this society. We pay those in Hollywood or sports millions of dollars to create a couple hours of entertainment for us while our teachers and firemen and emergency response teams are doing their work mostly on good morals and shoestring budgets. It didn't seem fair.

However, today, I received a different perspective out of the blue. I was watching a YouTube video of a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and although I've realized this before, it was not quite in this way: science has created things that used to only be science fiction from Hollywood. Would they have created these technologies WITHOUT Hollywood first dreaming them up?

Einstein of course has the famous quote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I've always believed that to be true in my head, and now I realize perhaps it has moved down to my heart.

Is the economic pay scale of the USA not a perfect example of that quote? Who do we pay the most? The ones with imagination (Hollywood at least), or the ones with knowledge (educators and heroes)?

Scientists' minds generally lean toward logic and fact finding - they want to prove things work or exist or figure out why something is true. We consider them "at the forefront of technology" but are they really? Maybe scientists are actually the ones at the end of the line. What if the creative geniuses in Hollywood are the ones blazing the trail of evolution and we don't even realize it?

A logical mind that seeks facts is not normally the same type of mind that envisions things so far out that the majority of people on the planet hadn't even dreamed of it. (There are always exceptions of course - Tyson being one of them I think - and those are truly remarkable people with minds that are balanced in both creativity and logic.)

A specific example is another YouTube video I saw about a guy that created a machine to turn plastic back into petroleum. Most people in first world countries now have also heard of biofuel - breaking down what we consider garbage into usable fuel. Where do these ideas come from (at least some of them)? Most people from the 80s will remember the movie Back to the Future. Christopher Lloyd's crazy scientist character uses garbage to fuel the DeLorean time machine at one point. (I'm sure there are earlier examples, but that's the first one that came to mind.) That is now POSSIBLE in our real world (and actually has been for some time). It's not affordable for most, or prevalent in our society yet, but neither was TV when it was first invented. Or cell phones. Or cars. Or dozens of other technologies that have become commonplace perhaps because a scientist saw a cool, convenient gadget in a movie or a tv show (or in the case of 19th century inventors, perhaps heard an idea from a storyteller of some sort) and said, "I can figure out how to make that real!" And let's not forget the creative minds in companies like Apple who can come up with a product out of seemingly nowhere (iPods!) that we never knew we couldn't live without.

So perhaps our Hollywood staff is not as overpaid as I thought. I mean what value would you put on evolution? On advancing our thoughts and ideas? On education? Does it even really matter if we advance and get smarter and make new things? IS it even "getting smarter" or just becoming different? I guess it depends on the roads we choose, which is based on creativity, not always logic.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need... roads."

And in the opposite vein - what of our "heroes?" The firemen and policemen and EMTs that save lives (some would add soldiers to that, but war is a whole other subject I'm not getting into here). I'm always the first to admire and thank emergency response people for their "underpaid service," but is our ability to prolong our lives actually what's mucking up the planet? Should we be thanking the ones that save us? From this new perspective, I'm not sure.

Certainly I was grateful to everyone involved is saving my grandparents' lives when they had a car accident about a year ago, but then again maybe it's a selfish thing for me to want my grandparents to live forever. I don't think even *I* want to live in this particular body forever! How boring would that be? About as boring as only getting to read one book, or only watching one movie... forever. Why would I wish that on them? Forever is a VERY long time. (And if you get into the philosophical question of "why are we here" I can imagine only being able to "live" one story forever might have been the impetus for multiple lives... but that's a whole other blog!)

Perhaps we are playing God or not facing our fears by keeping people alive for so long, and the consequences are the typical collection of physical inconveniences that we now label "old age." Are years of incontinence and dementia something to celebrate? :\ Perhaps we have advanced in our physical technologies, and we pat ourselves on the back for our so-called advances in social sciences, but are we actually still in the dark ages about death and other lifetimes?

Who would we be if we did not fear death?

Perhaps my grandfather could've avoided all the indignities and challenges of emphysema and Alzheimers if he had not been wearing a seatbelt and was therefore removed from the trouble of dealing with all that for another several years. My grandmother was NOT wearing a seatbelt and would have died without the help of the Intensive Care Unit. It's really a miracle she survived. I am extremely grateful to spend a few more years pestering her over the phone (we live on opposite coasts), but was it fair to keep her here only to be trapped in the house with my grandfather who needs someone to babysit him like a child at all times due to the medical problems he has now? What kind of existence is that (especially for a woman that is still very mobile herself)? Obviously a car crash full of anxiety and fear as you transition into another state of being is not an ideal way to go (I am not saying I wish that upon anyone, especially not my grandparents!), but perhaps we've created the ways in which we most commonly leave this existence through our misunderstanding of death and consequential fear of it.

If you knew in your heart all deaths have the possibility of being peaceful and happy, would you be more accepting of it and therefore be okay when your loved ones take that journey? Many people pay lip service to the idea, but underneath their concept of death, and what they believe in their heart about it, is still based in fear. I believe it will take a shift in a majority of society's consciousness to change that.

Native American elders (from a century ago, before the casinos) would simply decide when it was their time to leave, and they would go out in the woods or plains or wherever and have a peaceful, purposeful death. Same with Buddhists. We don't have nearly enough movies about that. Instead the film industry makes the most money from perpetuating our imaginings of a violent death, which in my opinion just creates more violent deaths in our world. It's a vicious circle.

By the way, I still think our teachers are WAY WAY underpaid. They give us a basis for learning to survive in this society. The trouble with teachers is that we have a limited idea of who our teachers are. To me, EVERYONE on this planet is a teacher in some way to everyone they come in contact with. Should we all get paid appropriately for what we teach each other? Well actually, I think we do. We have a beautiful Earth as our school, friends and family to love and support us, and most importantly our imaginations which fill in all the space between. To me, those things are the best payment of all.

Well… now my thought associations appear to have come full circle in the edits, so YAY for that!

I still haven't justified sports - perhaps that's truly only entertainment - but now I can allow for the possibility that maybe we're not as screwed up as we think in what we put value on.

Life Reflections

I'm watching a free video series from Oprah that's available on iTunes. She calls it her Soul Series and one of the people she interviews is Eckhart Tolle. (Another one totally worth listening to is Byron Katie. I'd never heard of her before the Leadershift 2010 conference, but darnit, here is another person that has already put into a book exactly what I've been thinking for years! I've GOT to get on this author thing!) I loved Eckhart's book, A New Earth, and I highly recommend it.

In Part 2 of Oprah's interview with Tolle, she opens the phone lines so callers can ask him questions. The first caller asks him, "How do you embody what you talk about—you being free of the domination of ego? Can you please share your experience of being in the here and now."

He gives some explanation to lay out how he lives in the present moment and clarifies that he also lives with awareness of chronological time. He says the primary focus is always on the present moment. It makes life very simple (I'm paraphrasing) and can also be described as a state of surrender to life. He goes on to say if you live a life full of trouble, a very important question to ask yourself is, "What is my relationship to this moment? Am I making this moment into an enemy? Am I treating this moment as an obstacle that I need to overcome?"

Eckhart says he, personally, has a very friendly relationship with the present moment as he doesn't put the present in a negative light, as if it's something he has to endure or get through (again, paraphrasing) to get on to something happier. I can totally identify with that. I know I USED to be that way, and perhaps sometimes I fall back into it. However, for the most part since I've been in San Diego I've had plenty of challenging moments, but I've also found surrendering to them makes life easier, and friendlier (I like that description :).

Remaining present, and choosing what is happening *now* has kept my monkey mind from focusing too much on the past or future, thereby creating a problem where none exists. Problems can only exist in the future and past. There may be challenges in the present moment, but there are no problems because problems require time to build, and the present moment holds no time as we understand it, especially not enough time to build an entire problem.

So he says if you're living a stressful life, a tool to use for change is to stop and ask yourself several times a day, "'How am I relating to the present moment?' Because when you do that what you're really asking is 'What is my relationship with life?' because the present moment is essentially your life. You can only encounter your life in the present moment. So it's a vital question to ask yourself 'what is your relationship with life?' because if your life is one of hostility, which is when you make the present moment into an obstacle or an enemy, then life always reflects back to you your predominant state of consciousness."

I love how he put this particular thought - that life always reflects back to you your predominant state of consciousness. I wanted to make note of it for myself as well as share it with whoever might be reading here because I feel this is a really great way to get the idea across that YOU are creating your life. Not some guy behind a curtain or an angry old man on a throne in the sky - it's all YOU baby.

What are you reflecting today? Right now?

And what are you reflecting NOW?

How 'bout now?

How 'bout now?

Yeah, I know, I could go on with that forever. If you have trouble remembering to stop and ask yourself this question throughout the day, set a series of alarms on your phone's calendar (or something you refer to frequently to keep track of your day) to bring your focus to the present for at least those few seconds each day. Eventually you will find yourself anticipating the reminder, therefore it is already being brought to the front of your consciousness, and it will become a *good* habit. (The word "habit" has definitely earned an undeserved reputation as something negative.)

The best time to ask that question tho is *every* time you encounter change, which for most humans, is A LOT during a 24 hour period. Change can encompass something as common as a car moving into your lane on the freeway, or as large as news that changes your life. Good or bad, change creates a lot of stress for us meat suits because we are forced to adapt and evolve to fit the new situation, sometimes very quickly. It is a survival instinct to be able to do so. If your automatic reaction to change is resistance, hostility, anger, sadness or anything less than acceptance, imagine the percentage of the day you spend feeling yukky! Are you sure you want to live that way? Wouldn't you rather be happy NOW?


I hadn't really thought about how I reached the state of peace I currently enjoy 90% of the time, but looking back I suppose I just kept asking myself, "What am I feeling in this moment? Do I want to be this or happy?" I kept choosing happy until the answer was "I'm already happy and it don't get better than that!" a good majority of the time. It's a matter of continuing to bring your focus back to RIGHT NOW.

That picture of the outdoor banner over on the right side of this very blog that says,"You are here, but are you present?" That is the wallpaper on the front of my phone. Even when I'm looking at it without really seeing it, I think it taps my subconscious and says, "Pssst. Are you really present to this moment?" Like I said... it's become a habit.

I think since we're all human there will always be some times when we're less than happy, so for those perfectionists out there (me included) I have also come to realize that acceptance also means life will not be perfect 100% of the time. How boring would that be anyway? I would be surprised if even Eckhart said he's in a state of bliss 100% of the time.

I've said many times that I have gratitude for the lows because without them, how would we define and enjoy the highs? So even in sadness or anger or whatever, I realize somewhere deep down it's ok to have that too. The word AND is so much more powerful than that word OR.

Well, my thoughts are starting to fly all over and no doubt it has something to do with it being 5am. Just wanted to put that out there tho because the reflection is beautiful. :)

C'mon People - Wake Up Already!

I was reading this article from a post on Facebook today:

Co-Founder of Veterans Group Not Surpised by Army Vet’s Rampage

I get the saying that "in order to retain peace, you must be prepared for war." But no one wins in war. NO ONE. Governments perpetuate the need for violence to serve their own purposes under the guise of serving the people. But how is it serving the people when veterans are treated like expendable property, asked to commit crimes against humanity, then left to deal with the demons created by the acts they are forced to perform? And yet, if we laid down arms, it doesn't mean Global Peace because we live in a bi-polar world where in order to define "good" we must have "bad." And each individual thinks the only "good" way to live is our own way, which means anything other than that individual's way (or group's way) is "bad." (How narcissistic.) The only solution to the problem is for all humans to transcend history and live only in the Now - acceptance and tolerance of all ways of life (live and let live, what a concept) - but how do you get 7 billion people to wake up at once? Until they do, you have situations like this. It's just a microcosm of the macrocosm.

Choose What's Happening Now

What would all the do-gooders worry about if suddenly all the bad guys became reformed and the world was at peace? Not that I would mind finding out, but sometimes I have to wonder if we "suffer," or view others as "suffering," simply because we are not being present in the moment, choosing whatever our life looks like right then.

Time to Speculate

What would happen if everyone could choose, individually, how much time their day consisted of? For instance: you choose 30 hours for today and your friend chooses only 10, but both of you have the perception that your days are the same length.

At some point in our lives, we've all said (or at least thought): "there's not enough time in a day..." or "I wish I had more time..." or "what I would give for just another hour to get this done..."

Well what if you really could have all the time you wanted before bedtime? What if you could stretch or shorten your day as much as you wish? Would you ever sleep again? Would you ever wake up? Would it be like the Twin Paradox where you've only aged a day but everyone else aged years or decades?

Just a fun thing to think about. I'm sure there's an episode of Twilight Zone or something out there with this idea. Or perhaps this is already how it is and that's why some people are more productive in their days than others!

What's In A Name?

I'm proofreading a book on Oceanography. I love doing this stuff because you learn inane bits of trivia that make you much more interesting than you really are at random parties. For instance...

Early Mediterranean cultures envisioned that marginal bodies of water similar to the Mediterranean Sea surrounded most of the continents. The name “Earth” describes the portion of the planet that is inhabited by man in spite of the fact that the majority of the planet’s surface is covered by water. Our planet was named before ocean exploration began.

Which says to me that if fish had developed the ability to talk before they could walk, the third rock from the Sun would be called Water and perhaps Mars would be Earth. And they would've all drowned before evolving onto land due to an inability to keep their mouths shut. Oh wait...

Terminal Velocity

I am dog sitting in Rainbow, CA at a house that sits on top of a large hill surrounded by grapefruit and orange trees. It’s very peaceful up here. Adding to the awesomeness is an enormous front porch that looks out over an incredible view. I am so grateful to have this change of scenery, and get paid to be here too!

The owners are into bird watching so there are feeders all along the front porch and if you sit in the large, comfy wicker chairs you’ll get buzzed by hummingbirds and orioles as they come in looking for a snack. The hummers are especially fearless and will come right up to check you out face to face.

Hummingbird food is sticky, sugary stuff, as you might know, and yesterday when I went outside to enjoy the sun I saw that ants had amassed to form an amazing number of marching lines up the banisters, across the roof, and down onto one of the feeders. It looked like the entire hill had come to party. They were everywhere! (I wonder if that’s what aliens think when they look at our planet… “OMG! They’re EVERYWHERE! Get the hose!”) The second big red restaurant had no such problem.

I found it especially interesting to see that inside one of the plastic “flowers” the ants had actually lined up like cars around a lake and were gulping it down (one would have to assume since you can’t actually see an ant gulp). I wish I had a better camera for these kinds of things. They looked like DNA all side by side like they were.

After a quick assessment of the two feeders, I realized the reason one looked like IHOP after church was that the owner neglected to fill the little upside-down umbrella at the top of the hanger, which creates a water barrier the ants won’t cross. Amazing piece of technology, really — so simple and so effective. A three-inch moat that keeps thousands of ants from being thieves. Maybe Arizona should try that. Oh wait…

I retrieved a glass of water to remedy the situation. As I poured it into the umbrella (apologizing for my “act of God”) there was panic, confusion, and drowning. A few good swimmers made it to the edge. I realized that those stuck on the part of the feeder under the umbrella would have no way off the fixture. I wondered if they would just wander around until they died of starvation or what. How long would it take those with an escape route to pack their things and go home? Would there be stories of ant heroism on the Local Insect News that night? Would web sites be set up to list the missing ants and hopefully connect them back with their families? Would this go down in history as the Great Flood of Saturday? What’s the average ant lifespan anyway? Would they even have time to do all that?

Then I realized that all the ants stuck on the wrong side of the water could easily escape if they had the mind to. I knew this because I remembered there is no terminal velocity* for an ant. Well, there IS technically since “terminal velocity” means that fastest rate at which an object will fall – for ants it’s 4 MPH. (You’re welcome.) What I mean is ants don’t die from falling off high places like people do. Actually no one dies from the falling, it’s the sudden stop at the end that gets you. An ant, however, has so little mass that it can hit the ground from any height and walk away unscathed (or perhaps with a slight headache). No parachute required.

All they had to do to return to safety was LET GO.

Imagine that.


~*~*~*~

*A 180-pound man has an approximate terminal velocity of 125 MPH if his arms and legs are spread out. If he's rolled into a ball, the T.V.** is 200 MPH due to less drag. (No, that does not mean homosexuals fall slower. :P)

Does the soul have mass?

**Perhaps "TV" is also the fastest method to fall out of consciousness. Coincidence?

I Am That I Am, or Am I?

My mother and I had an interesting conversation in email yesterday. She sent me a link to an article published by Telegraph.co.uk asking the question, "Do We Want Brain Scanners To Read Our Minds?" You can read the full text here. (This is what happens when you proofread college-level science textbooks for extra cash - you are no longer interested in reality TV, late night hosts and guests [unless it's Jason Mraz of course], or CSI-type dramas. Thank God.)

The article covers testing of a new neuro-technology that uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to track brain activity in people in an official Persistent Vegetative State (different from a coma). It has allowed doctors and researchers to communicate (or so they believe) with a 29-year-old man that's been vegging out since 2003. (Oh c'mon, how could I not go there?) The disturbing news is that if the communication is real, many people in this state could be conscious and literally unable to move a muscle. The prior belief was that these people were "awake but not aware."

Imagine being buried alive and you'll start getting the idea. You can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel everything - but you are absolutely unable to communicate or do anything about the sensory input you receive. Actually, being awake six feet under might be preferable since you could at least scratch an itch and scream if you wanted. Those things are not possible if your brain has become this ambiguous. Suddenly rush hour traffic on the 5 pales in comparison to that kind of lesson in patience.

Mom asked for my thoughts on the article, and I thought you might find it interesting too. I wrote back to her:

I actually read something in that book on the brain [I've been reading] just the other day that was relative and also blew me away. Check out this paragraph:

Pain and body image are closely related. We always experience pain as projected into the body. When you throw your back out, you say, "My back is killing me!" and not, "My pain system is killing me." But as phantoms [limbs] show, we don't need a body part or even pain receptors to feel pain. We need only a body image, produced by our brain maps. People with actual limbs don't usually realize this because the body images of our limbs are perfectly projected, onto our actual limbs, making it impossible to distinguish our body image from our body. "Your own body is a phantom," says Ramachandran, "one that your brain has constructed purely for convenience."

If this is true (and I believe it is), think of how that relates to being dead - would the body image still be projected even tho there is no longer a living physical body, and that's why we get "ghosts" that stick around for three days (or more) then finally move on? Does it take some designated time period in this continuum (perhaps specific to the individual) for the projected image to fade? And if so, the million dollar question would be what IS projecting that image then? Cuz at that point it wouldn't be any physical part of us like the brain. This begs the question: What is the (or is there a) difference between mind and soul?

The book goes on to talk about distorted body images, such as how people who are anorexic literally "see" themselves as fat. That leads me to tie into the article you sent me... if the vegetative state means consciousness is still working but the body is not, is that a physical impairment or a body image impairment? Is this why some of them "wake up?" Hmmm!!!! Perhaps the plasticity of the brain finally repairs the neural networks enough to allow them to "wake up" and move?

As for the last couple paragraphs of the article - I love how often Descartes is coming up these days. I think Science is finally shedding the last of the "machine view" skin. There is just too much evidence of the plasticity of not only the brain, but all our functionality here in this realm, both physical and otherwise. I think a more accurate statement these days would be "I am therefore I am."

The dark side of all this info, of course, is the old adage about once you open the door, ANYONE can walk through, good or bad. (Reference the atomic bomb, right?) Therefore, yay for us advancing technology and science, but NOT yay for what the government could then justify using it for.

There was another article I was going to post in a separate blog, but it's kind of related so at the risk of really giving y'all a time sink (if you're interested enough to read both full articles), I will include the link now.

It's published by MIT News and covers another budding technique using MRI sensors to detect dopamine's progress through the brain, thus giving a look into our thoughts regarding motivation, reward, addiction, and possibly even some new clues to Parkinson's disease. The full text is here.

I received the link to this bit of info from a friend that is into nanotechnology and "directed evolution." He was interested in the error-prone PCR methodology, which is WAY above my head, but I found the news interesting nonetheless. As Switchfoot says, those genetic engineers are the most high tech!

All thoughts and comments are welcome. I love discussion on this type of thing!

The Shoeless Man

Yesterday as I drove through Walmart's parking lot late in the evening, I saw a man tiptoeing (literally) across the pavement. He looked a little rough - probably one of Oceanside's homeless - and he had on no shoes. It's pretty warm here in Southern California (as I keep reminding all my northeastern friends who are buried in snow drifts), but at night it can easily reach 40° F and that is no time to be barefoot. I actually circled the block and drove back through the parking lot to see if I could find him. I wanted to ask him if I could buy him a pair of shoes and socks. He had already slipped into the shadows tho, so my efforts were for naught.

A friend who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty thinks I'm nuts for handing five dollar bills to homeless people as often as I do, but my way of seeing it is if five dollars makes THAT much difference in my life at that moment, then I need to get my butt in gear and fix that problem. I may be unemployed these past several months, but I am not destitute, nor do I plan to be. If I can still afford to drink Starbucks and I have a place to sleep that night, I can afford to give someone with nothing a bit of my change so they don't go hungry - or perhaps shoeless. I have had times when $5 was a lot of money to me, and they sucked. I am grateful that is no longer the case, and I believe what you want more of, you give away. So $5? Is not a lot to spare to make someone's day.

Tonight I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few items. This store was in the same shopping center I was at yesterday. My peripheral vision took in someone sitting off to the left of the door, but it was only after I was inside that my brain processed the image of shoeless feet. It had to be the same guy. When I came out of the store I looked for him, but once again he was gone. I felt like I had failed a test.

I had to go to Walmart for lightbulbs so across the parking lot I went. As I was walking in, out came the shoeless man. His manner of movement actually reminded me of an illustration in a Shel Silverstein book I once had.

No, he was not naked, nor was his beard that long. It was the hurried-ness (and shoeless state) of both man and cartoon that matched.

The Shoeless Man held out a steaming bag in front of him like a serving tray as he scurried by. "Good," I thought to myself. It must be food; at least he's eating. Since he was so intent on finding a place to sit and consume his prize, I didn't approach him. I went into the store and bought what I needed, feeling a little guilty for having yet another opportunity to speak to him and avoiding it consciously this time. I considered just buying the shoes and socks while I was in there and offering them on my way out, but how was I to know what size he was? Did it matter? Would he even accept my gift? It's one thing to help someone out that needs it, it's another to throw money away carelessly, especially when your income is limited.

Somewhere in the past I heard someone speaking about homeless people (or perhaps I read it, always hard to remember), and they pointed out that for many, homelessness is only temporary, but it is a very stressful lifestyle that holds no joy. When these people ask for a handout, they're not just looking for money but for some glimmer of acknowledgment of their existence. They long for something as simple as a kind word or a smile, or just to be treated humanely. They may be down on their luck, but they are still one of us and we could easily be in their position tomorrow. Most of us just rush by without even seeing them and if we do stop to hand them a coin or bill, our eyes pass over them with little or no emotion. Imagine how you would feel being so ousted from community. I think of this every time I see a homeless person, and those that I don't hand a five to, I at least offer a smile. The trouble is not all of them are honest, but that's another story.

As I exited the store, I saw my barefoot guy down the side of the building, still eating. He was picking apart a roasted chicken like he hadn't had food in a week, which could've easily been true. His animal-like mannerisms made me nervous, but I forced myself to walk up to him.

"Aren't your feet cold?" I asked, trying to sound friendly and open a conversation. "No." He mumbled, not even stopping the shoveling of food into his mouth. He glanced around but looked past me, not at me. His eyes were a bit crazy, but then I guess severe hunger will probably do that to you. His toes were crooked and rough, and his feet had a blue tinge, but it could've been the lights. Everything about him said he'd been on the streets for a long time though. Much longer than I thought. This was not someone who was just temporarily homeless.

I wanted to continue with my original mission of providing footwear, but I walked away without another word. I was scared and I didn't even know of what. Once I got in the car I thought to myself, "Well you didn't handle that very well, did you?" My ego tried to justify my flight, pointing out that he was clearly not all there and to continue a conversation with him may have even been dangerous, but something else in me said I didn't try hard enough. Sane or not, how was he supposed to infer from my singular, vague question that I wanted to help him out by putting shoes on his feet?

As I mentioned in a prior post, I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, What The Dog Saw. This book is a compilation of favorite columns published in The New Yorker magazine over the past several years. One of the chapters is titled Million-Dollar Murray. Click here to read the original article on Gladwell's web site in its entirety. It's worth your time. (Read all of it - section two appears to be a different subject because it describes problems with the LAPD, however, it all ties together in the end.) The subject of the article is: Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage.

The article starts by describing one particular homeless man named Murray. He was a stereotypical town drunk, and the cops arrested him regularly, but people loved him because he was a happy drunk and usually had a positive outlook despite his condition. In 2003, the police department decided to do something about the most chronic panhandlers in the area, and when they did the research adding up the cost of jail time and police reports, hospital stays and such, Murray was at the top of their expense list. As Gladwell's article states, it would cost Reno taxpayers a million dollars if they did not do something about Murray. And that's just ONE guy.

Gladwell goes on to describe statistics about the homeless issue across America, citing Bell Curve vs. power-law distribution principles, and explaining how homelessness does not follow a normal distribution as most people think. In Philadelphia, a majority of transient people are only homeless one or two days. The number of acute offenders is much smaller; Gladwell says specifically in NYC in the early 90s, only 2500 people were considered chronically homeless, but those are the ones with mental problems or physical disabilities, or like Murray, the incurable drunks.

He goes on to describe how some cities have found it more economical to actually SOLVE the problem of homelessness by giving the worst delinquents their own apartments for free - it doesn't seem fair, but in the long run it is actually saving the taxpayers money. But that's beside my point.

Standing outside of Walmart with other people looking on, trying to make a connection with a ravenous, seemingly slightly-insane person, I guess my fight or flight mechanism just said no, this is out of your league. This is one of the chronic and is best left to authorities to figure out what to do with him. I'm a sucker for a rescue case, but I also know what's over my head.

In contrast, a couple weeks ago another guy came up to me in a parking lot asking if I could spare some change. He had on shorts, but was wearing a decent coat and hat, and carried a backpack. Normally these are the types that could be professional panhandlers that don't really need your money, but something made me stop and give him a five. As I was digging in my purse thinking how stupid I was because it was already dark and altho there were plenty of cars around, there weren't many people, and isn't this just exactly how you hear of rape/murder cases starting out? he mentioned that he was unemployed. I said, "Ha, so am I!" He laughed and asked me what I used to do. I gave him my former titles, and he told me whatever it was he used to do, and that he was having a hard time finding another job. I agreed that the market is tough, but told him to hang in there. He seemed like a really nice guy. Simple in the head maybe, but happy and just trying to get back to whatever his situation was before. (The only reason I believe he really was homeless is because as soon as I went to my car, he walked into the pizza place and bought food with the money I gave him.) If I had walked up to THAT guy and asked if his feet were cold, chances are I would've ended up buying him shoes and we may have even had a decent, if remedial, conversation.

Is it wrong that I had such an easy time helping out one guy and not the other? Well, things are only wrong that we make them so, but you know what I mean. The guy that obviously could've really used my help I backed down on. Should I feel bad for that or just scrape my bleeding heart off my sleeve and put it away already? Hmm. I dunno.

Both of these encounters inspired an idea for a web site to help out the millions that are NOT habitually homeless though. How would a homeless person access the web? Libraries across the nation have free computers that can get on the web and even without cars, these people seem to get around ok on mass transit. I also anticipate people that work at the shelters would be able to use this service.

There's a web site called Couch Surfing that has had some success (1.6 million members representing 232 countries around the globe). The idea of the site is to connect people with a spare bedroom or open couch with people that need a free place to sleep for a night or two while they travel, instead of spending money on a hotel room. After you sign up, the site owners verify your identity to provide a measure of security. Hosts leave a rating and description of what you were like on the site after you leave so other people know what to expect. Obviously when you're new to it, it takes finding people that will take a chance on you, but once you're established in the community it would seem as long as you're a good guest, you're welcome just about anywhere. Lots of people have made friends around the world this way as well.

Considering how crowded shelters get, especially in the winter, and knowing Gladwell's researched statistics on most people being homeless only a short time, why couldn't we use the same concept to connect those that can provide with those that need a roof over their head the most? People may already even be using Couch Surfing to do this very thing, but I think a site specifically for shelters to access would help. The people that work at the shelters can often see who are the chronic offenders and who is just down on their luck, and could possibly make decent judgment calls on who would be a good candidate to send to someone's home as opposed to staying in a shelter for a couple weeks. Well, it's an idea anyway. I've been doing so much thinking about the homeless situation lately I may even act on it. I have NO CLUE where to start of course, but I think it's something worth pursuing. I just hope I don't ever have to use my own idea due to not finding a job fast enough!

I Broke Facebook With Thoughts

The other day my friend Ray posted a video on his Facebook page of Carl Sagan explaining the fourth dimension. You should watch it before reading the rest of this post (only 7 minutes):

I LOVE Sagan's analogy because it makes it so easy to understand the idea of why we have trouble seeing/experiencing other dimensions. (And listening to him talk just cracks me up.) The video started all kinds of quantum wanderings in my head. I intended to blog about my mental musings, but Mark gave me the perfect opportunity to post them first on Facebook by making his status read: [Insert Profound Thought Here]. I obliged with what was forming in my head, and accordingly he replied with his own thoughts and questions.

The odd part is that after I submitted my second long post in response to his counterpoints, Facebook lost the entire thread. It wouldn't let me post any more comments and even the ones that appeared previously are not viewable. I had no trouble viewing or posting on anyone else's page, but this particular conversation was OVER. I dunno if I blew Facebook's brain or the aliens were like, "Oh no you didn't!" but the entire discussion is gone.

However... smart pirates have backups. :) Yarrrr. Internet gremlins be damned! Since I was going to blog about it anyway, I was saving the convo elsewhere, so the following is the discussion we were having...

Him: Status: [INSERT PROFOUND THOUGHT]

Me: Ok... if Carl Sagan can hold up a clear plastic cube and create a shadow of it on paper thus illustrating how 3D becomes 2D; then he shows us a clear plastic 3D representation of a tesseract and says that's like a shadow of 4D becoming 3D; and if the 3rd dimension is defined as the directions of back/forth, up/down, side/side, and the fourth dimension is measured as adding the element of time to the 3D directions, then considering all that should the element added to 3D to create 4D actually NOT be time, but "within/without" instead (I mean look at how the "shadow" of a tesseract looks - one cube within another), and if so, how do we measure "within/without?" By an emotional scale? Is that profound enough for you?

Him: I don't believe time was considered one of the dimensions in a tesseract, however. It's four spatial dimensions that it represents. The questions is, if there are more than three spatial dimensions, how many objects that are four dimensional (+) intersect our three dimensions and defy explanation by their behavior because we are unaware of the activities taking place in the other spatial dimension for them?

Me: That's what I'm saying - time SHOULDNT be considered in measuring or describing a tesseract (because what is describing something in our world besides measuring it?). Time is always considered in measuring distance (distance = the time it takes to get from A to B, yes?) and MATHEMATIC tesseracts involve measurements of distance through the spatial relationships of one cube to another. If the distances of the vertices are not all equal then it's not a tesseract but some other poly-shape, right? So time is involved in some way through the measurement of distance when describing that particular form mathematically. But since (as Ray said) time is only a human thing then it only exists in the dimension WE live in - the 3rd dimension, yes? Generally, we cannot extract ourselves from the use of time/distance as a measurement of our world. Just like a 2D creature could not imagine up/down as a direction in their world. So in order to properly describe a form that lives in a dimension outside of our own, should we not remove time as a means of measurement? (Oh yes, I want to delete math from the equation - what a surprise. haha) Perhaps things in the fourth dimension are measured on some kind of emotional relation scale and what WE see as a tesseract here in this dimension is only a 3D representation of it just like a drawing of a cube is a 2D representation of the real cube in 3D. The trouble for us is comprehending how to measure or describe a form without a scale we're familiar with. Even when we say "on an emotional scale, how do you feel?" we tend towards numbers (like 1 being I feel icky and 10 being I feel great) because distance and numbers and time is what we use to measure and describe the 3rd dimension. I think this is why yogis can do what we would consider "magic" - their relational thinking involves different kinds of spacial relationships - they do not bind themselves to the means of measurement of the 3rd dimension like most of the rest of us do. It's all in how you THINK about it. Your perspective. Hence, my idea of measuring with emotions, not math. Geez, I'm not even sure I understand all that now. haha

You know what's really sad is that spell check on FB can't recognize the words "mathematics" or "tesseract." (Or "vertices" for that matter.) You'd think this site was built by 20-somethings... oh wait...

Him: I forgot how integrally time figures into distance equations... yeah. Without the time it takes to get "there," "here" and "there" have no meaning since you are everywhere all at once.

Me: And to answer your second question about how many objects intersect our three dimensions and defy explanation by their behavior... I'd guess somewhere just under 7 billion and counting. :)

Matching the Vibe

For the past month and some I’ve been VERY lazy and only doing what I feel like doing at any given moment. Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me! Yes, yes, eat your heart out because right now I am enjoying a lifestyle most people only dream of. (And this ain’t the first time.) I’d like to say I have no idea how I get so lucky every now and then, but that’s not entirely true. I know the laws of the Universe and how they work, and I know I’ve unconsciously created my current situation, which is great (whether it’s the “right” thing to do or not). The trouble is, as usual, I have difficulty feeling worthy of a break.

I realize how incredibly fortunate I am, and I do humbly offer my extreme gratitude to the Universe many times a day for this opportunity to continue my Blissful Insanity. I try not to worry, or wonder how long I can keep it up. I try to relax in the moment and just enjoy it. But reality is a nag and deep down I know I still believe that somewhere in the not-too-distant future the money is going to dry up. And I know because I believe that, it will happen if I don’t do something like stop being a bum and look for a steady source of income. I am the cause and the effect. And I don’t want to be caught unprepared. And in worrying about being unprepared, I will create exactly what I fear. I get it. I’ve seen enough rabbits in my path lately to wonder if the Easter Bunny was doing a bit more than hiding eggs a couple months back.

I’ve also had the thought that if I decided to just be a pirate until I’m homeless, perhaps I can find joy in being homeless too? What a lesson that would be. You’re closer to nature for sure, but I dunno if I’m ready for that kind of prolonged intimacy with the planet. I DO keep saying I want to reduce the number of material possessions I have, and I know how the Universe likes to twist my words, then point and laugh. However, I’m also pretty darn sure I don’t want to find out if I can take my positive attitude that far. Hence, the vicious thought spiral. Joy.

(This makes me think of Billy joking about being a superhero the other night when he did a show at Sky High Comics. He says his Superhero name is “The Visi-Tor.” He can clean out your frig in a single visit, sleep on your couch multiple nights…” I forget the rest but everyone laughed well and long because Funny is based in Truth, and Billy is nothing if not True and Funny. If you live in San Diego, check out his show schedule on his MySpace page. You won’t be disappointed.)

I’ve been laid off since April 22 and it’s now June. I’ve done the bare minimum to satisfy unemployment in “looking” for a job so they keep sending me money. I’ve been privileged to be offered side work that will pay well enough to make up the difference, and it’s actually enjoyable because it’s something I’m familiar with so it’s easy work, and I get to do it on my own time for the most part. (That money was supposed to be going toward paying off debts tho, and since no taxes are being withheld, it could come back to bite me next year. We’ll see.) The logical side of my head berates me with “WTF do you think you’re doing screwing around for so long?” while the connected side of my head says, “You asked to be paid to do nothing [I really did], and that’s exactly what you got, so what is your problem?”

(Side note: right palm is very itchy right now. Must remember to check mailbox tomorrow as so far this has meant a check shows up in there. Yay! I’m still amazed and grateful every time that happens.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I really want to do next, but the answers are troubling. The last time this question came up (when I was laid off by the same company in 2005), I decided I really wanted to do graphic design. I’d wanted to do that for 20 years. Getting paid to use Photoshop and learn Illustrator every day sounded like getting paid to play all day.

After deciding that’s what I wanted, I landed a project management job with Pearson Education, which led to a graphic design position. And it did, in fact, feel like getting paid to play sometimes, which was very cool. But once I was “forced” to do it for 40 hours a week, it slowly deteriorated from joy to chore. The untimely demise of that position (at only 6 months) came when I had to choose between keeping the work that I’d wanted for 20 years or moving to an area of the country that made me happier. I figured there is always another graphics job and took the leap. I’m sure I made the right choice because I am definitely happier in San Diego.

The job I was recently laid off from was a transition position—since I could do it from anywhere it guaranteed instant employment in California and steady income right away. Who would turn that down even if it wasn’t my next dream job?

Of course the Universe made SURE that street was as short as I originally intended it to be. Oh well. But now that I’m at another crossroads, I’m not sure continuing in the graphic design direction is something I desire anymore. When I think about it, it’s a “been there, done that” feeling, even if it was only for 6 months. My soul feels like “c’mon – what’s next? Do something new!” The trouble has been that I have no clue what I would enjoy (other than the complete freedom I've been swimming in the last couple months - but that's more like being a leech if you do it endlessly and contribute nothing to society). Certainly I don’t feel that I’ve “done it all” but what do I want to do? Sometimes too many choices are just as confining as too few.

Occasionally I feel my interests have shifted to the spiritual nature residing within, and when I ask my Self “What now?” I hear “Teach people how to find themselves, the same way you found your Self. And while you’re at it, do this new form of Lite Touch Reiki you’ve been thinking about.” But geezus, how does anyone earn a living at that (at the beginner’s level) without being all foofy-mystical about it? I can’t do foofy. Foofy is SOOO not in my nature.

It’s not that I don’t believe the concepts of—I hesitate to use this horribly abused term, but there is no label to describe my particular brand of weirdness—New Age beliefs (I can hear the running and screaming already), I just don’t believe you need all the foofy shit to learn how to find your Self. And those that know this don’t need help finding their way on the path so why would they pay me to tell them what they already know? Oh wait, isn’t that the definition of Consultant? Haha (Sorry Mom!)

For instance, rocks/crystals and Runes and Tarot and Medicine Cards are all magical, but not the “Oooo smoke and mystery and ghosts” (and mayonnaise! ...don't ask) magical way others present them. That’s the dog and pony show I won’t participate in. Mystical paraphernalia to ME is magical in a “Oh, how cool to be able to see that more clearly” way. They’re just tools to hear your Inner Self, like you would use hearing aids if you were mostly deaf (hmm, I like that analogy – consider it trademark pending :).

Robes and beads and gypsy-like dress are all fine and good if that’s truly what you feel beautiful in or if you steal naughty children, but personally I prefer my tees and jeans. In fact (this is such a no no!) when I see people wearing the “mystical” garb, my first thought is to wonder why they need a full-body mask instead of just a bit of something to shield their most private selves not meant for the public. They just look fake to me. So sue me for being human.

Hmmm… now that I think about it, I can’t picture one person at the top of this field that wears stuff like that. Does Deepak wear a gypsy suit? Does Louise Hay have cheap tye dye dresses made of rayon? (Which, hello, has a totally unnatural vibe because it’s man-made material… duh. Damn, there goes that judgment again.) Neale Donald Walsh looks like a total tshirt and jeans kinda guy. But how did these people get so popular without looking “that part?” That’s where I start stumbling around and The Light goes out. ::sigh:: (Except I know they're popular because it's just Truth and Truth does not need the flash and bling... I'm just running myself in circles here.)

I look around at the spiritual community that's making a living selling it, and I see people that dress, speak, act, and make every effort to look like a character to convince the general populace they have special powers or something. These are good people but there are no special powers in spirituality. Everyone has the same power and it’s all just YOU. (But perhaps I only see them most because they are designed to be seen.) I’ve never been one to put on a show so others will see what I see or believe what I believe. Believe whatever you want – I can only tell you my experiences on the path to improve my Self. However, it would seem in most cases that those who would offer money for the help need the show to grab their attention. I asked "Why IS that?" but in re-reading this I answered my own question. There is just so much sensory overload in our world right now, how can you possibly pick out what to listen to next? Am I not having this very problem myself over a different subject?

Or maybe that’s just ME thinking that. Well, of course it’s just ME, but as long as it’s ME believing it, it’s also all I will find in my reality. Bah. Sometimes this being aware business is a pain in the… nevermind. I don’t need any pains anywhere so I’m not going to program that.

Even so, I am unable to resolve in my head a justification to charge people to learn how to find out who they are and to help them move forward on their own path. And that’s really the crux of it too – just the nature of the word “help” does not imply a monetary exchange, or it is not truly helping, is it? I didn’t pay anyone to learn what I know, yet I definitely had help along the way. So how does one “help” people and still pay the bills? Too bad the power company doesn’t understand REAL power exchange.

Of course my intellectual side is like DUH. You already said it. Just think of it like consulting. Why do companies ask a consultant to help them figure out what time it is, pay them to borrow the company’s watch, then listen intently while the consultant says, “The time is…”?

Truly, somewhere inside I am terrified of success or else I’d already be there. So how does one get over oneself and believe “I am worthy”? I’ve had tons of friends tell me how awesome I am, how I should share this stuff, always they are supportive of me. I get it in my head, but it hasn’t made it to the heart yet. I have not yet mastered myself. And isn’t that a bit of a catch 22? Part of being a master is feeling worthy of everything in your reality, yet you must first feel worthy to become a master.

So what started this whole discourse was reading the phrase “Match the Vibration.” I knew what that meant innately. I’ve heard it said in plenty of other ways, but sometimes it just takes a certain combination of words to click I guess.

The Law of Attraction. Give away what you want most. Be the change you want to see. Get there by believing you already ARE there. Match the vibration. Same thing, all of it.

I’m sure most people would agree that when you are “successful” your being vibrates at a higher rate. Are successful people a different kind of human? They can certainly seem so when you’re standing in their presence; in MY experience the energy can be tangible.

If our physical realities are all about the relationship between particles of matter and the energy vibrations that cause the particles, then it makes sense to think of matter as just a certain level of vibrational energy. Denser objects have lower vibrations. (Think plutonium, or Sarah Palin.) The less “dense” you are, the higher your vibratory rate, and the more “enlightened” you feel. Yes?

If I understand correctly, this is what they’re looking for in the Higgs Mechanism theory. Scientists want to know “where is the point when energy becomes matter and vice versa?” I think of it as: where is the tipping point when small becomes so small we can't distinguish one thing from the next, therefore small rounds the circle to being large (or, dare I say, ‘massive’)?

In turn, where is the tipping point when your fears become so small or insignificant that you expand into that massive “successful” vibration? Is that even how it works? Just keep chipping away at vibrating faster and higher until you reach the level you're seeking? What causes a vibration to accelerate? More applied energy?

As usual, the more I think the more questions there are.

I recognize that there are so many ways I am already successful, but most things I'm successful at do not provide the modern form of currency. Some people may stumble across the doorstep to that higher vibe in the dark, but most of us need to turn on a Light. It would be nice to help people find the switch, and feel worthy of being paid for that. Surely I must be within five feet of the answer, but to match the vibration when you’re still feeling around for the lever yourself is a tough trick.

~*~

Ralph Marston's site really freaks me out. Here is today's inspiration, once again as if it was written for moi:

Let life come, without striving to force it. Let life come, and it will unfold with great abundance.

The feeling you seek is already yours. If it was not, then how could you even know about it?

Allow that feeling to live and breathe and grow and flow throughout your life. The life you wish to experience is yours when you let go and let it be.

Listen to those little inspirations that quietly whisper. There is a reason why you hear them and feel their truth. Act in harmony with what you know is right and what you know is best. Instead of struggling against what is, ride joyously and successfully along with life's continuously unfolding possibilities.

Let life come. And live the beauty as each new moment is born.

Oh Snap!

I’ve always preferred to read books cover to cover, one at a time (as in finish one before you start another), but in the last few years I’ve become lax on that policy after discovering many times that if I had read the next chapter in a book when I “thought” I should, it would not have had nearly as much meaning as it did when I finally got around to it. (This doesn't apply to fiction of course.)

I think this is just another way the Cosmos communicates with us – or at least with me. Nothing is constant in this world but change, so your collection of knowledge in this moment will be different than what you know even an hour from now. We are ever expanding, just as the Universe is.

The book I picked up for the hundredth time this morning was Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. I’ve been reading this book since before I left NJ in June. I’d really like to finish it, but I’ve not dedicated a lot of time to reading lately (at least not books - the net can keep me busy for hours!), and when I have, other books have been more appealing in the moment.

I’m still not sure this was the right choice for this morning as the first several pages I thumbed through had no impact on me at all and I had to go back and read many paragraphs twice when I realized my mind had wandered even as I continued reading the words. Eventually I reached something that grabbed my attention, and as often happens, I had to write about it before I even finished the chapter. (Another reason it takes me forever to finish a book. Distraction is my middle name.)

It’s towards the end of the book and he’s talking about the Three Modalities of Awakened Doing: Acceptance, Enjoyment, and Enthusiasm. He states:

Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do…

This reminded me of Mary Poppins, of all things. After Mary becomes the nanny for Jane and Michael, she decides they need to clean up the nursery. The children groan at the task ahead, as all children (and many adults I know) do when faced with cleaning up their messes. Mary sings that “In every job that must be done there is an element of fun, find the fun and snap! The job’s a game.”

This is precisely what Tolle is talking about – letting joy flow into what you do, rather than looking for what you do to bring joy to you. Find the fun.

It totally amuses me when I think I'm learning something new as an adult, then I remember the same lesson in a more childlike version from long ago. I guess the universe never gives up on us, and some lessons we need to learn several times before they stick.

Yeah... that's all I've got today. Too much work and not enough ocean makes Trayce a dull writer. :sigh:

The Evils of Being Awake

I just got finished filling out yet another profile to yet another site I want to be able to post comments on. In the profile it asks you to list your likes and dislikes. For likes I put Cognitive Awareness. For dislikes I put Willful Ignorance.

I then realized I'd had more coffee than food today, which could explain the nervous difficulty of my fingers constantly jumping on the wrong parts of the keyboard, so I went downstairs to make some lunch. While in the kitchen, Haagen Dazs sung its evil siren song to me from the freezer. I don't even know how I hear it when the bottom half of the frig is the only part open. I think it has special Godly powers to transcend the door seals.

Ice cream is a beautiful thing, and as many of you know, I harbor an enduring devotion to coffee in any form as well. If left to my own devices, I would worship at the Church of The Bean day and night. Therefore, in the World of Trayce, coffee ice cream is very much considered the marriage of perfect foods. Haagen Dazs Coffee Ice Cream is like the heavenly appeal of Brangelina - so much pretty in one place, you can't help but imagine the taste. (Uh, yeah, that's not what I meant. Get your mind out of the gutter.)

Unfortunately my particular biochemical composition does not like to play in a polyamorous relationship with coffee, ice cream, or any combination thereof. My Body often reminds me of its zero-tolerance policy for sugary edibles by sending all unapproved substances back out through my skin. My Mind chimes in by circulating a Guilt Memo among the neurons. Ego tells them both to piss off, then sulks in the corner promising to behave better next time while I apply extra makeup to hide my transgressions.

As I was spooning delicious illicitness into my mouth like a drunk sucking down cheap wine (before eating the much-healthier-sandwich I might add), I witnessed through my window one of my neighbors towing a defunct Jeep back to his garage (poor thing! The Jeep, not the neighbor) with just a rope between the vehicles. The Jeep stopped short a couple times with a screech of tires, barely avoiding the rear bumper of the truck ahead.

This is the same neighbor that was offended that my mother wanted to move her car to avoid it being hit while he was trying to unsuccessfully back a boat into his garage, subsequently hitting the corner of a building next door which caused significant damage to both truck and edifice. As far as I know he never reported it to anyone, least of all the owners of the end unit he hit.

My God-What-An-Idiot-He-Should-Know-Better Attitude bristled up and proclaimed, "This is exactly the kind of Willful Ignorance I can't stand. It's no wonder he has a McCain sticker on the back window."

Almost immediately the Cosmos reached down to tap my shoulder, looked me in the third eye, and said, "Hey, Miss I Dislike Willful Ignorance, are you enjoying that ice cream?"

Be Kind, Unwind

Sometimes I feel like the most magnificent failure ever as a parent. My daughter recently went to McDonald’s (EWWW!) to obtain some bit of chemical swill they pass for food (she refuses to eat healthy no matter what example I set or how much I hound her about the crap she puts in her body and the effect it will have eventually – youth is wasted on the young - can I have my AARP card now?) and when she returned, she told me a Mexican guy came up to her car and persistently begged for money while she was in the drive-thru. Her story was not narrated in a compassionate “I wish I could’ve helped him” tone, this was told in a completely indignant, angry “Why the hell are there so many illegals here and WTF business do they have accosting ME?!” Princess tone. :sigh: Who raised this kid?

I have to admit, I’m not wild about the thought of so many foreigners coming into our country and not playing by the same rules everyone else has to, but still having some benefit from our system. I also don’t agree with how they pop out babies one after the other when they can’t even feed the first one they had (although that happens plenty right here at home too). It’s certainly a drain on our nation.

However, when I expand my awareness beyond the details, these are still PEOPLE – they’re HUMAN. They get hungry and scared and need shelter and love just like the rest of us. Most are just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. And how awful must it be where they come from that they’re willing to risk that kind of journey, and stoop to begging for food, because it’s better than where they were. Think about that. A lifestyle we avoid at all costs, the one viewed as bottom of the barrel – THAT is a step up from where these people lived.

Is that lazy? Is that contemptible? Is that not a shining example of hope, and the ultimate faith that the Universe will provide for you? Isn't it possible we could learn something from that?

Sure, I know the stereotype, and it becomes a stereotype for a reason. But it’s not everyone. And you have to give some benefit of the doubt at some point. Again, these are still HUMANS. There are always going to be those who fit the worst description our imaginations conjure, and then there are those that are truly trying to make a difference in their lives. How do you know which is which in the ten second interaction that takes place when someone asks you for a handout? You don’t. So give the benefit of the doubt. And even if you can’t offer anything more than a prayer for that person to have a better day tomorrow, BE KIND. That's all I wanted my daughter to be.

So I heard Katy’s story, and in the moment I felt like I failed to pass on any compassion at all to her. I argued with her that these are still people, and on paper we’re not that far removed from the dude at her window when I’m down to $10 cash and don’t get paid for a week. She didn’t seem to care, and stubbornly stuck to her disgust. Ego – Open All Night! AAGGGHHH. Somehow I don’t feel I can write that off as naiveté as easily as the eating habits, and I’m not sure how to correct it now. I feel like I failed to impress upon her that yes, there may be cases where righteous indignation is appropriate (witness 8 years of Emperor Rove... I mean Bush... I mean Cheney), but that still doesn’t make it okay to treat someone less fortunate like dirt. Perhaps if more people felt this way, there would be less crime and poverty and bullshit going on in the world.

You know, in the past few days I’ve been worried I don’t have enough compassion. I’m often opinionated and come across cold or elitist about certain subjects. I’ve told my share of racial jokes (but I like to think I pick on everyone equally, like Carlos Mencia who touts himself as an "Equal Opportunity Offender"), and surely I feel like everyone should be pulling their own weight and/or cleaning up their own messes no matter what walk of life they come from. But under those cold, opinionated, ego-filled comments and diatribes, there is still Love. And sometimes people need a little help. None of us can exist completely alone because we are all intertwined - part of a Whole.

The good thing that came from her tale is my own gratitude. I look around my house and see there is food in the pantry, and electricity in my walls, and a clean bathroom, and an awesome bed to sleep in tonight, a computer connected to the internet, and so many things I don’t even look at every day because I don’t need them, and I’m like geez, even when I’m down to pennies in my bank account with creditors breathing down my neck, I’m a WORLD away from that guy. That guy would give anything to have my problems. And maybe I’m not the one to change his fortune, but I’m thankful he exists, and I'm even thankful he chose my daughter to bother (since it was harmless!), because it makes me grateful to be where I am. I just hope someday Katy sees the Light too.