Sunday, September 12, 2010

The Mistake

The source of most, if not all, all human problems is based on a misunderstanding. Normally, we perceive the world as consisting of discrete entities. There is you. There is me. There is a dog. There is a rock. There is an oak tree, and so on ad infinitum. We have learned to perceive a world of separateness.

This is a mistake.

Reality, if I may be so bold as to use that word, consists of consciousness or spirit. There is only one of these. It is inclusive of all entities as well as all time and all space. It exists in the eternal now, the only time that is or can be.

I am this. You are this. my cat is this. The planet is this. The universe is this. There is no alternative because this is all there is. No alternative is possible.

The ramifications of this realization are immense. There is no distinction between animate and inanimate if there is nothing but consciousness / spirit. All humans are not merely brothers and sisters but, in fact, the same self. If I hurt you, I hurt me. To quote the Beatles song, "I am you and you are me and we are all together". Now, expand the scope of this idea and realize that it encompasses all that is! This is the basis of a true ethics.

The challenge with attaining this realization is that, being essentially spiritual, it can be accessed primarily through feelings, emotions, intuitions - what we humans call "heart". The intellect can process details, after the fact, but it cannot grasp the global reality of this core truth. That means that language, as a tool of communication and a child off the intellect, is relatively useless in any attempt to share this insight. It must be found, discovered, known in the silence of one's own self.

This realization of oneness provides the way out the horror show of history to a new maturity in human consciousness. Eventually, all humans will attain this realization and a new epoch will begin.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Propogation of Joy

Any activity that is infused with feeling contributes to the consciousness of the entire universe. When emotion drives a cherished thought, the core consciousness of the universe ripples. Tangibles manifest. The world is changed.

I am thinking about art making. This is an inherently pleasurable activity that engages intense involvement with the manifest world and with human creativity. It is a non self-conscious, more or less ego free, activity that allows the artist to become a conduit for deep levels of knowing. It is grounded in the moment and taps the full range of human abilities from the physical to the philosophical. Its background flavor is joy. The loving energy wave that it emits ripples across the universe.

Someone once told me that the world is beautiful only because there are yogis constantly meditating on the beauty of the world in caves in the Himalayas. An artist making art is, in spirit, one of those yogis. And, the world is beautiful.

Incidentally, every human is an artist. Everything that I have said about art making could just as easily apply to lovemaking or to any number of human activities. Whenever emotion drives a deeply held belief, the underlying consciousness of the universe is shifted. It's automatic, and constant.

I have chosen to emphasize the loving side of the emotional spectrum but the tremendous force of fear coupled with hateful, destructive beliefs shifts the consciousness of the universe as well. And. in that case, the world is hideously ugly.

We humans have the ability to choose our thoughts and observe and tune our emotions. With some effort, we get to choose the ripples we contribute to the whole. Why not choose those life sustaining activities that feel good? The feeling good is our tip off. That is how we can tell what kind of vibes we are giving off. It is a win win situation. We have fun and the universe gets nudged in the direction of loving kindness.

Why not choose life?

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Reality Is An Artifact Of Perception

As the title reads: reality is an artifact of perception. The reality that I am speaking of here is the reality perceived through or by the human senses. If one were able to adopt an absolute view, that seemingly solid reality inhabited by humans would be "seen" as a constantly shifting field of interrelated vibratory patterns. This field is holographic in nature. It is conscious. It exists now and only now.

Consciousness did not arise from life. Rather it is the other way around. "Life" is a feature of consciousness along with time, space and matter. It is an effect of human perception. We humans do not live in the universe. The universe lives in us. It is our creation. It is malleable by thought.

The universe is our sandbox. We play with ideas here and reap their consequences. The sandbox is the laboratory of being. We constantly refine our consciousness by shoving eternal concepts around in the sand and inventing new combinations of them. In this way, consciousness evolves toward greater sensitivity and more refined articulation of its essential nature which is loving kindness. Humans are the self-conscious tendrils of all of consciousness. Our job is to allow consciousness to know itself. This is all done for the joy of it and has no purpose beyond experiencing bliss.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Two Quotes By Physicists

I encountered a quote today that triggered my memory of another, similar one. Both statements were made by twentieth century physicists.

Konrad Finagle said: "Space is what keeps everything from happening in the same place."

Richard Feynman said: "Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once."

Einstein referred to these as "spacetime", a single continuum.

I am not going anywhere with this. I'm in pondering and study mode. I just thought that I'd pass it on.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUES

Emotional Freedom Techniques, or "EFT" as it is called, is a meridian based healing technique with very broad application to human fears, phobias, psychological distress and related physical symptoms. Its full potential has not yet been grasped. I suspect that it holds a key to reprogramming the subconscious mind. This is something that I am now probing.

The energy meridians located within the human body were first charted in China about five thousand years ago. Blockages of energy in those channels is held to be the cause of many, if not all, illnesses. Therapeutic interventions like acupuncture or acupressure are methods used to clear these blockages. Although the efficacy of these techniques is well established, the existence of the energy meridians themselves has not yet been validated by Western science.

EFT involves tapping on endpoints of energy meridians that are located near the surface of the skin. It is fast, simple and easy to learn yet its effects can be lasting and profound. I do not intend to attempt to teach it here. Rather, I direct your attention to the source of this technique at www.emofree.com. You may view introductory videos and download a manual detailing EFT free of charge from this site.

I intend to refer to the use of EFT in future posts but will leave the teaching of it to those more qualified than myself. I encourage you to become familiar with EFT.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Subconscious Mind

While we are aware of the powerful activities of our conscious minds, the relatively immense power of the subconscious mind functions silently in the background. It regulates a cornucopia of bodily functions while monitoring our sensory inputs, regulating our attitudes and behaviors and providing a bridge to the cosmos through universal mind. Our total sensory inputs alone account for roughly three million bits of data per second. In contrast, our conscious mind is capable of processing about sixteen bits per second.

Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief), using a computer analogy, refers to the subconscious mind as a hard drive that stores all of the programs that run our behaviors. He points out that most of these programs have been downloaded
uncritically into our subconscious minds during a long window of impressionability in early childhood. This open window of malleability begins at conception and extends through early childhood until independent judgment arises in the young mind at about age ten. It accounts for the profound ability of young humans to master languages and learn an entire culture in a very short time. It also accounts for the internalization of the attitudes, behaviors and total world view of adults in the immediate vicinity of the child. These are swallowed whole and accepted as truths. These "truths" become the programs that control the attitudes, choices and behaviors exhibited throughout an entire human life. This is the basis of the Jesuit boast:"Give me a child to the age of seven and you may do whatever you wish with him afterward." The essential conditioning of the child's life has been laid down by that time.

Our ego consciousness resides in the conscious mind. We think that our identity lives there as well. We think that our choices are made there. We think that "we", as the ego self, are directing our lives. If we are relatively sophisticated about the role of thought in creating our world, we think that this conscious mind is the seat of that process of world making. We think that we can control our thoughts and therefore control our outcomes in life. This is a nice intellectual theory. It certainly feeds our ego. It is partially true but fatally incomplete.

Who is driving? The programs running in the subconscious mind, that's who. The ego-directed conscious mind is chattering away about "me, me, me" and my importance, my choices, my achievements, my control, blah, blah, blah, while the subconscious mind is silently, invisibly calling the shots from the background. So who are you anyway? You are the content of the various programs hardwired into your subconscious mind with a veneer of rationalizations overlaid by your conscious mind that smooth over the rough edges of your "self". Sorry.

This is pretty insulting to my big important "self". Beyond that, it leads to a feeling of hopelessness that sticks in my craw. Apparently, the realization of the control of human lives by subconscious programming has come to the attention of plenty of other people. This goes back into antiquity and extends to the operators of the self-improvement industry. It has become obvious to many that positive thinking doesn't work. It's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's purely a conscious mind activity that doesn't really touch the roots of behavior so it's partly delusional. So, what is to be done? We'll reprogram the subconscious, that's what.

This is an interesting task, this programing of the subconscious mind. There is very little actual contact between the conscious and subconscious compartments of the mind. The subconscious does not respond to ideas, that is, to talk. It responds to environmental inputs and to emotion. Environmental cues can directly trigger defensive action to protect the life and wellbeing of the individual. An observed pattern of movement might suggest the presence of a predator and cause the subconscious to trigger a fight or flight reaction. In addition to the train of physiological changes that are part of the fight or flight response, the conscious mind would register an emotion, fear, that corresponds to the perceived risk to the organism. The conscious mind in this case has shared in the biochemical arousal of the organism in response to a perceived threat. This demonstrates the existence of a functional link between the conscious and subconscious departments of mind.

This link between the departments of mind is a two way street. If the conscious mind perceives a threat in the environment and responds with fear, this fear is communicated to the subconscious mind which mobilizes the same fight or flight responses that are triggered by a direct environmental stimulus. This is an indirect, slower path to the same physiological changes. The subconscious mind, then, responds to signals from the conscious mind if they are emotional in nature or, at least, driven by emotion. Otherwise, it seems to pay no attention to the constant babblings of the conscious mind.

An interesting aspect of the subconscious is that it cannot seem to distinguish between its direct perceptions of the world and imagined perceptions of the world created by the creative conscious mind. It will respond to the imagined perceptions, that is the inventions of the conscious mind, as if they were actual perceptions as long as they are accompanied by emotion. In this way, it can be fooled. We can lie to it and it will do its best to make that lie a reality. This is a double edged sword. Worriers cause harm to themselves, both physiological (internal) and by the manifestation of negative outcomes (external) through this mechanism. At the same time, this is the key to changing the programming of the subconscious mind and, therefore, the manifested world of the individual. This is the path of breadcrumbs leading out of the forest.

Throughout history, people have devised a number of methods for reprogramming the subconscious mind. Some have been discovered unintentionally. Others have been the product of analytical, focused thought. Any number of variants of these schemes can be devised and practiced according to personal taste and inclinations. To the extent that they conform to the true nature of the conscious and subconscious departments of mind, they will all work. We are free to choose any that we are most comfortable with or to invent our own recipe based on our own intuitions. In any case, the proof of any method is in its outcomes. It must be personally tested. I suggest that we apply the test of Jesus:"By their fruits Ye shall know them".

I will return to this discussion in future posts. In the meantime, I invite you to help me to clarify my understanding. Talk back.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Gratitude

Life is a gift. It must be savored minute by minute. It must be cherished.

No one knows what paths it may take or when or how it will end. It is a good operating procedure to appreciate the gifts it brings and to say "thank you" often so that one is always feeling full and content. When the end comes, no regrets will be needed.

If you are living in a way that generates bitter regrets of unfulfillment at the thought of leaving, change your life. Do everything you can to get on a better road.

Look, we all want more. Life can be addicting that way. It's not a bad thing to leave the table with some appetite left. That's lively. Lively is good.

Our life path and conditions have been freely chosen by us in the superconscious interval between incarnations. We are, after all, spirits having a human experience. We are here to evolve toward universal loving kindness and oneness. Our universe is a benevolent one. Relax.

Obviously, I have a lot of explaining to do. I've made a lot of unsubstantiated claims. I'd like to explain how I got to this place in my mind without leaving the bounds of sense. And, I will, bit by bit, over time. Stick around and, please, talk back.

In the meantime, look up at the sky, take a deep breath and say thank you.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Monday, April 26, 2010

We live in a world that contains no accidents. Everything that exists in our perception is there for a reason. There is no excess. Nothing is lost - ever. Every choice has a consequence. There are no free lunches.

The world is a teaching machine. It mirrors back my beliefs, my convictions, manifested in the "outer" conditions of my life. If I wish to know the content of my convictions, I merely need to examine those conditions. Those conditions are what I get for what I believe. Here is the point of power. I can change my beliefs. When I do, the conditions of my life will change.

Right there is a concise statement of the practical utility of philosophy. My world view creates the world I live in. What I give out comes back. Expectations invoke outcomes.

I am not interested in idle speculation. My investigations into the nature of reality eventually inform my behavior. There is no more practical field of study.

Check this out for yourself. Each life is an experimental subject ready to reveal wisdom to its observer. Each of us must find their own truth. Every bit of truth that is discovered changes the world. You do not contribute to the world by what you do but, rather, by what you are.
We humans are in the middle of a paradigm shift. We are transitioning from a materialistic, atomistic world view to one which is characterized by wholeness. Our ego-based, rationalistic approach has emphasized separateness: animate opposed to inanimate, person against person, species against species, belief against belief, species against planet. We see differences and distinctions and hold our selves as the center of the universe. Our attitude tends to be,"hooray for me, to hell with you."

We have enjoyed unprecedented material success by applying the mechanistic world view. We have also brought our species to the brink of extinction.

Science, one of mankind's crowning achievements, has provided the major conceptual tools for our conquest of the planet and all that lives within it. Now science, in probing the deep nature of matter, is beginning to expose a nature that deviates from the materialistic, deterministic model of reality that was formerly upheld. Now scientists are making discoveries that mirror statements found in mankind's most ancient spiritual texts.

We live in a time when diverse descriptions of the nature of reality are beginning to merge and to reinforce each other. We live in a time that will see a major shift in the consciousness of humanity as a whole. The beginnings of this epochal shift have long been underway. The pace of related changes is accelerating and becoming more apparent daily.

We humans are progressively realizing that all of existence is intimately interrelated. We are realizing that objectivity is a myth. We are realizing that the world resembles a great thought more than it resembles a great machine. We are recognizing the premier power of thought in the shaping of our world. We are realizing our kinship to all that is. In short, we humans are undergoing a rapid evolution of consciousness.

It is my goal to discuss the changes that I see and to hear about what you are seeing. It is my goal to connect with people who are, in some sense, like minded. Jump in, the water's fine.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

INTRODUCTION

Here is the introduction to my upcoming e-book. I thought that it might serve the same purpose here.

I’ve always had a hunger to know the inside of reality, to see what makes things tick. This hunger expressed itself in curiosity about toys, tools and devices as well as people and animals and how they work. I’ve been a reader since early childhood and that has provided me with windows into other people, places and times. I had a chance to rub shoulders with ideas that I did not encounter in my immediate surroundings. I’ve been a tinkerer and a hands-on tool user since I was a mere twerp. I picked this up from my Dad. One of my early childhood toys was a truck carburetor that he gave me to tear down and put back together. All of this fed my analytical turn of mind.


By profession, I am a sculptor and a teacher with a fondness for art schools. Being an artist, I am no stranger to examining and inhabiting philosophical worldviews. I’ve delved into psychology, spirituality and consciousness in general through my ever-present reading as well as through meditation and experimentation with states of consciousness. Like all of us, I know things that came from personal experience that I am not able to explain to anyone else.


A few years ago, I began to write rants, articles or essays (whatever you want to call these things) about ideas that are important to me. I did this for my own pleasure and to clarify my own thinking. I have rarely shared any of this stuff with anyone. I was writing for me.


Gradually, I began to suspect that my writings, my thoughts, might have some utility for other people if only as grist for their mills to be used in clarifying their own thoughts. I determined to get this cluster of articles out into the world in the form of an e-book.


I flatter myself by thinking that I have figured out the nature of reality and the place of humans within it. I think that I have solved some human problems and found some broad guidelines about how to live out our human destiny.


Try these ideas on for size. Kick the tires. Take them out for a spin. If any of these thoughts are useful to you, you are welcome to them. If they are not, throw them out. Better yet, propose an alternative.


These articles are written in a kind of personal shorthand. They are suggestive rather than authoritative. I have not taken the time to lay out tightly reasoned arguments so you may have to connect the dots in places. It is my hope that it will be worth your while to do so.


In my heart of hearts, it is my wish that these thoughts can contribute in some small way toward the global evolution of human consciousness that is now underway. When the consciousness of a critical mass of humans shifts, the consciousness of the whole of humanity will flip over as well.


Here’s to a more loving world!