Towards a New Synthesis

week 9

My E-Prime Day

 

Standard English:

Today I had to cut class to catch up with my assigned homework.

English Prime:

The choice that I made today was to arrive late to class because I was behind on homework that I should have completed at another time other than when class was in session.

 

In language as in law (including the laws of science) nothing is absolute and just about every statement can be expanded on for the purposes of making the statement more clear, or perhaps, more confusing depending on what your intentions are.

Can I synthesize East and West?

 

It is my belief that the East and West has to be synthesized and that this will happen if it hasn’t already been happening for millennia.  The East learns from the West and the West learns from the East.  Since it is innate in our nature to want to create more things, ideas, etc.  When we run out of new materials with which to create from, we pause for a moment and observe what else has been created which is surrounding us constantly, waiting for a new idea to come.  In this way we are always borrowing from what has already been created to make a new creation (we hope).  Even though there are definite distinctions between the sciences and philosophies of the East and West I don’t think it is so important to differentiate between the two because ultimately the approaches came from the same place and ultimately are traveling towards an end point which will also be the same.  The two are intimately connected like Yin and Yang and perhaps the difference of approaches is the thing that keeps the balance of all things in harmony.  

The Classics

Week 8

Newton’s 3 laws and me

Independent of Space and Time, which is not absolute, Newton’s 3 laws:

1. momentum = mass x velocity
2. force = mass x acceleration
3. mass1 x velocity1 = mass2 x mass2

are inescapable realities.  I keep traveling in one direction until a force is applied to change the state of my motion.  I move at the rate of whatever force is applied onto me (pressure).  And my energy is constantly met by the energy of the things that surround me, sometime slamming us together, sometimes repelling us apart.

Our “Energy Efficient” culture

Our cultures use of energy has become centralized, organized, hyper controlled, and thus it is not efficient at all.  We use this term “energy efficiency” to make ourselves feel better about our dependency on the vital resources that we cannot seem to stop using.  I think an energy efficient culture is a culture that uses what is available to them naturally, the flows of water, the blow of the wind, the solar rays of the sun, the calories of our bodies as we ride our bicycles to our destinations.  When all people are dependent on a small handful of resource options, they are headed in a dangerous direction.  The more we move towards only using energies that are truly sustainable the better off we will be because  “Everything that exists, according to Albert Einstein, is some form of energy, although there are many different types.  Whatever energy is, we can’t seem to make any more of it or get rid of it, it can change to a different form, but the amount of it can’t change.” And what the wasted energy from our current modes of energy use changes into is heat that is overheating the planet, which will be the cause of our demise if we don’t get off our energetic addictions to oil and natural gas…

Descartes has a lot to answer for!

Yes, HE does!

The world is not a rational and mechanistic universe, it is not ordered by rigid laws of cause and effect, and we are not separate from nature, not even slightly above it.  I don’t know where we would be without Descartes, but I sure don’t appreciate all of the straight lines, box like architecture, and reductionistic thinking.  My experience of taking things apart is that they just don’t work as well as they did before I messed with them in the first place.  I wonder what my childhood would have been like if the current trend in our culture wasn’t obsessed with trying to take everything apart and instead it was about learning to observe and respect the ways of nature without thinking we had to do anything to change the course that things were already on. 

Week 6 - Vibrations

Are all vibrations “good”?

People have a tendency to refer to the Tao and other religions when things become difficult in their lives, by saying things like “all things happen for a reason” or “all things are created in the light and love of god”.  In this way I have to say that all vibrations are “good” because in this way of thinking all things are “good”. Referring to some of the articles that we read in week six, though, I see that sometimes vibrations can become problematic.  For example, the resonances reacting in catstrophic ways like in the cases of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and the Mac Carther Maze collapsing.  Also, I think we have all had experiences where someone we come into contact with has “vibes” that disturb the vibration we carry on our own.  These examples could be described as “bad” but on a deeper level, isn’t there a reason why we are being presented with a different vibration or frequency?  Perhaps “bad” is just a word we use to describe something different that we are afraid of because we haven’t yet learned how to integrate it, and thus it is really holding the potential to be “good” because it offers us a chance to grow and change (or rebuild a bridge or freeway!).

Resonance in my world

Sometimes I wish these questions were asking me about the life I wish I were experiencing instead of the one that I really am.  I would love to talk about the resonance I experience when I am living a peaceful harmonious existence.  Living in the city does not really lend itself to a frequency of peaceful harmonious resonance, for example, the house I just signed a one year lease for is less than 100 yards away from three different freeway over-crossings.  The overwhelming resonance is a minor shaking of the house with a major background of white noise.  It’s okay because I am studying something I really love and I just pretend that the cars in the background are waves at the beach and then it can be kind of meditative. 

Connections I can make between Energy and Qi?

Qi and energy are the same thing.  Qi moves in waves like water.  It is somewhat unquantifiable.  But in terms of relativity you can measure if there is too much or not enough in relation to the other forms of matter.  Qi and energy are the names we give to the “powers” that make movement.  Qi is a term that describes the potential energy contained in any living being.  Thus in their actions and functions they are so similar that I feel comfortable calling them the same. 

TOTAL CHAOS

Week 7

 

“ORDERED CHAOS” - does this sound familiar?

I will share an interesting quote from a collection of essays by Alan Watts as my answer to this.  Bare with me here, it’s really worth reading, and there is an intuitive connection to be made which really does answer the question. :

“…So this is why the Chinese recognize both sides of human nature, and a Confucian would say he trusts human passions more than he trusts human virtues: righteousness, goodness, principles, and all that highfalutin abstraction.  Let’s get down to earth, let’s come off it.  And this, then is why there is a kind of man in whom trust is put, because he recognizes the kind of nature that human nature is.  If you are like the Christians who don’t trust human nature –who say, “It’s fallen, it’s evil, it’s perverse” –that puts you in a very funny position.  If you say, “Human nature is not to be trusted,” then you can’t even trust the fact that you don’t trust it! And do you see where you’ll end up?

            Now, it’s true that human nature is not always trustworthy, but you must proceed that it is trustworthy most of the time, or at least 51% of the time.  Because if you don’t, what’s your alternative?  You have to have a police state, and everybody has to be watched and controlled.  But then who’s going to watch the police?  So, you end up the way they did in China just before 250 B.C. when there was the Ch’in Dynasty that lasted fifteen years.  The Emperor decided that everything would be completely controlled in order to make his dynasty last for a thousand years.  In the process, he made a mess.  So the Han Dynasty, which lasted from 250B.C. to 250 A.D., came into being, and the first thing they did was abolish all laws, except those about elementary violence and robbery. But all of the complexity of law was removed, and historically the Han Dynasty marked the height of Chinese civilization.  It was a period of real peace and great sophistication.  It was China’s Golden Age, although I may be oversimplifying it a bit, as all historians do.

            This marvelous reign was based on the whole idea of the humanism of the Far East, recognizing that although human beings are scalawags, they are no more so than cats and dogs and birds.  So you must trust human nature, because if you can’t, you’re apt to starve.”

 

Fractals as patterns of complex systems

Manifestation of ordered chaos, in the context of chaos theory: the notion of feedback creating repetitive patterns of smaller to larger gradiations.

 

Consciousness out of chaos?

Definitely.

Symmetry & Sacred Geometry

Week 5

 

My (a)symmetrical world:

My body is (a) symmetrical.  My feet are different sizes. My eyes and ears and nose are probably not exactly the same, but I do not spend much time or mental energy trying to quantify these things.  Generally speaking, in nature, things appear symmetrical until you examine them more closely.  I guess I just think that it doesn’t really matter.  Things are mostly symmetrical, or at least close enough, why scrutinize about it?  

 

Just what does this CP violation really mean?

Possibly if time could be reversed the neutral kaon would un-decay.  However as time reversing for any natural reason in the near future is probably not going to happen, I have a hard time understanding why scientists and students at Stanford university are spending billions of dollars trying to simulate the reversal of time.

 

Are there connections between sacred geometry and physics?

YES. 

Of course.

Energy, Matter, and Force - week 4

How has e=mc^2 affected me?

I have a little photograph of the mushroom cloud that the bomb on hiroshima produced hanging above the computer in the law office I work at.  I like to look at it because it reminds me of the terrible atrocities that human beings are capable of.  I look at it because I like to pray that no one would be dumb enough to pull a stunt like that again.  I think of the amount of mass devastation and death that bomb caused, not just instantaneously, but over the years that have followed, how the bomb still holds responsibility for that state of the environment surrounding the bomb site in Japan.  Although I wasn't directly affected by that bomb, it is the best example that I could think of in regards to this famous equation.  I doubt that einstein would have permitted that sort of use of his theories if he had a choice in the matter.  And now here's the next story in a serious of "how science is used against us"!!!  

How would I compare the four "forces"?

The four forces definately have a spectrum of strength from stronger to weaker, this is shown in the chart which has measurements for the "relative magnitudes" of each of the forces.  But as far as comparing them goes, I don't know what to say.  I feel relatively aware of gravity and electromagnetic force, but i cannot say that I associate any particular feeling with either the strong nuclear force or the weak nuclear force.  Can anyone tell me what a nuclear force feels like exactly?

 

What is the function of gravity?

To keep things that belong to the planet connected to the planet?

Week 3 - Synchronicity

What evidence can you find for synchronicity?

I just spent a really long time trying to look up the name of a psychological term which 

is used to explain when the energy of en emotion becomes present in a group therapy

setting.  I remember it being described as feeling palpable like water filling up the room.

This feeling is the evidence I want to explain for synchronicity.  It never fails, when I open

the subject of people talking about dreams or coincidences of events that seem to correlate

with each other, there is a certain inertia or excitement, and energy that i become aware of.

If there wasn't anything to this synchronicity thing, I feel like people wouldn't release so 

much mental / emotional energy when they talk about it.  I believe in synchronicity because

it seems like people as a general rule get really excited when you get them talking about 

"unexplainable events" that line up as omens or signs or explanations for ones personal life experiences.  

How would I explain connectivity?

I wrote in the margin of the article on quantum mechanics "how information travels in the body".  Connectivity seems mysterious when you think about it, how can you know something when it happens on the other side of the world?  How can you feel what another is feeling? How can one seperate event cause a different seperate event somewhere far away?  Connectivity reminds me of how the nervous responses work in the human body.  You don't have time to cognitively think about it when you are burning your hand on a hot stove.  The sensations in the nerves send a message to the brain and the brain shouts "oh, shoot" and quickly your hand moves from the hot surface.  The response happens almost before you can think about what is happening.  I think connectivity works like that.  We are all parts of a bigger being, like cells within the body, connected in a way our individualism probably doesn't want us to understand.  When something happens to another person, especially one with whom we acknowledge a connection, we can sometimes feel what they are feeling or are at least be called to think about the person.  The mystery of this psychic message seems to function just as mysteriously as how the nerve responses are transmitted throughout our human vessels.  Faster than we can comprehend.  

Quantumplations - week 2 blog responses

Reflections On Uncertainty:

 I respond instinctually:  For a while I have been practicing non-action. Consciously I decided not to make any decisions for a period of time.  I wanted to see what would happen if I stopped exerting my intentions and expectations upon things, people, situations.  So far it has been working.  I found two subletters without going on the internet once, qi-gong patients have been seeking me out, and I have begun the mastery of not freaking out when the fear surges and urges me to take reactionary actions.  I have noticed that when I have to decide something, immediately, my anxiety rises, and my state of peacefulness subsides.  I see the concept of uncertainty as a grand metaphor representing a balance of what we are at the same time as it represents what we aren't.  Ego vs. the Divine Consciousness.  The way the atom has a mysterious way of uncertainty - so do we.  We know who we are no more than we know what else we could possibly be, so often attached to what we think we are, we don't surrender long enough to observe the other potential realities that are available to us, which just like the specific location, path, or nature of the quantum particles is uncertain.

Comments on Causality:

This sort of connects to the response above.  Our intentions/expectations play a part in causing reality.  What we think is.  Therefor when conducting an experiment it is almost impossible not to impose our belief of what will happen thus influencing the results.  This is part of why I have decided not to decide.  I wanted to observe what would happen to my life if i could resist my desire to control it, what would naturally organically come without me exerting any power or control over situations.  (it's the closest i've ever come to living in the tao)   

Is The Universe Weird?:

What to do with this question... Hmmm. The universe does seem to be incredibly weird.  It takes lifetimes to crack the code, but the code is always changing so you never really get to an endpoint.  The way we see and understand things is constantly subject to all of our strange minds that are compelled to try and explain it all.  In the end, the psychological experience of living in the Universe is just like the nature of the universe itself, constantly in flux and engadged in a process of integrative evolution.  

Week One - The Meaning of Time

I am not going to say too much here on this first blog because I already answered these questions in class and in addition there is the fact that I consider myself in recovery from my intolerance of communicating via the internet.  I honestly think I might be allergic.  Even though I acknowledge it as a valuable resource for uniting minds all over the world.  There are a great number of things that really turn me off about it.  Like for one i really like face to face interactions, getting letters in the U.S. Mail, and phone calls on landline telephones, all of which seem to be endangered experiences with the booming trend of this alternative form of communication...

but here it goes:

REFLECTIONS ON THE FIRST WEEK OF CLASS:

I reflect on the experience of the first week of class living up to my every expectation. I feel invigorated by reading heady articles about physics with a group of like minded individuals that are not afraid of sharing there feelings of excitement, apprehension, inspiration, and confusion over the topics we are exploring.  I still feel myself pondering the big bang theory subject, totally in awe that i had never realized that before there was an explosion there was an accumulation of energy and matter that proceeded... I also find myself savoring the conversations about time, what it means, what we are "supposed" to think it means, and how we are "supposed" to interact with it, versus what it really is and how we really have a lot more control over how we interact with it than people (like teachers, bosses, credit card companies, hallmark, etc.) want us to think we do....  Ahhh,  the tastes of freedom and rebellion are so sweet...

WHAT ATTRACTS ME TO CHINESE MEDICINE?

I am ever so sent spinning in circles thinking of the yin and the yang, the opposites, and the balance that can be found in the rotations.  Like I said in class, I spent a number of years practicing Reiki, feeling like there was so much more to understand about the energy I was just being introduced to playing with.  And I've been trying to "help" people through my working at a law firm that focuses on class action lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies by recovering money for their losses (which is another endangered experience) and one day it occurred to me that perhaps there was a much bigger potential world of being able to "help" people that had been hurt by the corporate complex of contemporary western medicine.  Long answer short, after completing my first year of TCM studies and the Qi-Gong certification program, I have indeed confirmed that the "much bigger potential world"  of helping people just keeps getting bigger.  (Kind of like the Big Bang!)

WHAT DO I HONESTLY THINK OF PHYSICS, REALLY?

I am not inclined to the study of the western sciences.  It has always been more confusing than it has been helpful.  I do recognize the importance of understanding the theories and their implications over everything manifest... But I never felt like i fit into the academics of such, nor did the academics of such fit very well into my intuitiv-ity.  I do look forward to dabbling, and learning what i can understand to enrich my life in Larry's "cliff-note" version class.  And I absolutely love reading the new-agey texts that intuit-ize the concepts.  But REALLY, I wouldn't have signed up for a physics class if my current education didn't require it.  Thanks for the little things, huh?

NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT, HAVE I EVER EXPERIENCED TIME "SLOWING DOWN"?

Now that I think about it... I don't remember the answer that I gave in class for this question.

But I have two things I want to share now.  

1. Damanhur.  Damanhur is a place in the mountains of Northern Italy.  I visited this place which boasts of its schools of alchemy and astral travel.  I don't know how to put in words the things I saw and experienced in this community / temple - but i can say if you are going to italy and you have any inclination toward alchemy and astral travel - you should go!  I am happy to hold a discussion with anyone who wants to hear more, but it you find yourself curious, you should check out the web site, and maybe put your back-pack on and check the place out for yourself.  I do not think you will be less than amazed.  check it: www.damanhur.org

2. Death.  And possibly Birth.  I don't know.  I can't remember my own birth, nor have i witnessed one, but Death, I have.  I have witnessed 3 deaths - and if you want to experience time slowing down... there is no comparison to the timelessness that happens when you watch the final breaths of a spirit before it returns to the journey it was on before it found itself in a live form...  there is no comparison to how beautiful the clouds in the sky become when you look up and wonder where that spirit has gone, and how minutes can feel like hours and months can pass like days when you are holding the awareness of the journey that the spirit of someone you love is going to some place that you cannot comprehend.