Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

Steve Clark (my co-host on Above The Fray Podcast) and I post independently of one another. I get to read his blogs the same way you do which is when they’re published. Yesterday, when I read his post titled “We’re All Drug Addicts” I knew I had to write my own thoughts on a topic about which I have first-hand knowledge. In fact, when Heath Ledger overdosed, I was contacted by several media outlets to weigh in on the subjects of addiction, suicide and drug overdose. (A fully developed interview of me following Ledger’s death can be listened to here.)

Anti-depressants are proven to lead to and/or increase incidents of suicidal thinking. In my twenties I battled depression and anxiety. A physician put me on anti-depressants and tranquilizers to combat the condition. When I realized I was addicted to the medications I decided to stop taking them. Shortly thereafter, I tried to commit suicide and came very close to succeeding. It was a turning point in my life as it awakened me to the realization that I  had to either do it again and succeed or begin to live my life differently. I choose the latter.

It is now decades later and I live a joyful and rewarding life. In no small part it’s due to a different addiction. I mediate daily. Your reaction may be “Well, that’s stretching it a bit since mediation is hardly an addiction.”

But it is.

I need to meditate every day. I’m at a loss when I don’t get my “fix” of that meditative state. Without those feelings of peace, joy, calm and clarity that I receive from meditation I feel tense, discontent, frazzled and off my game. So you see, I am addicted. But I’ve also consciously chosen my addiction because it enhances rather than diminishes the quality of my life.

The point is that it may just be human nature to be addicted. Some choose alcohol, drugs, pornography, chocolate, gambling, serial adultery, masturbation, twitter, clothes shopping…whatever. Regardless, we humans have Free Will and so get to choose that to which we are addicted.

For me, the contrast is no contest. On drugs, I was sedated, slow of thought and harming vital organs with unnecessary and toxic side effects. On meditation, I am sharp of mind, peaceful of spirit, accepting of life and creative of soul.

So to paraphrase Steve, if we’re all addicted remember: You get to choose to what.

I live in two worlds…the physical and the metaphysical. We all do to some extent. The physical world is what we can see, hear, smell, touch and sometime prove with objective means. It is a world evaluated and acted upon by our Conscious Mind. The metaphysical world is less easily defined but no less real. It is comprised of the branch of philosophy that treats the underlying theoretical principles of a subject.  It studies the relation of universals to particulars, and the teleological doctrine of causation. Its scope is broad enough to include the theologian, the philosopher, the mystic, and the fortune teller.

Some people, like myself, acknowledge and live in both of these worlds in a more or less balanced degree.  It wasn’t always so for me but I have worked deliberately, and at times accidentally, to achieve that balance…that harmony.

Others, such as Nikolai Tesla physicist and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of alternating current (AC) electrical supply system said, “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

So what is our resistance to that beginning?  What is our fear around opening up to the unknown? Again, Tesla leads us in the direction of the answer. “If the genius of invention was to reveal tomorrow the secret of immortality, of eternal beauty and youth, for which all humanity is aching, the same inexorable agents which prevent a mass from changing suddenly its velocity would likewise resist the force of the new knowledge until time gradually modifies human thought.”

We are living in a time when such “genius of invention” is opening up new ways of perceiving the physical and the non-physical, relating to one another and healing the body. We are being gifted the opportunity to open the heart frequency to receive more enlightened information than the mind frequency has the capacity to receive.  But remember what Tesla said about the resistance “mass” puts up to “sudden changes in its velocity.”  We humans are mass and as such, are not immune to the natural actions and reactions of matter.  However, the Universal Laws of Change and Movement that affect all matter also subject us to that “gradual wearing down” of resistance Tesla identified.

Nature is The Answer because it holds all the answers. I live by the same desire that drove Tesla when he said, “The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind.”

Dogs cannot see color but colors exists to all who can see them.  There are worlds around and within us operating under the same Universal Laws that apply to the reality science studies and relentlessly pursues. If you want to know those worlds, if you want to see where others cannot, relinquish the grasp your mind has on the physical world and open your heart to those worlds that are beyond its grasp.

 

There are two kinds of chaos. One works in your favor and one against. As we go through personal and global change on so many levels, it’s helpful to be able to distinguish them so you know which one to embrace and which to avoid.

I’ll call one “natural chaos” and the other “staged chaos.”

Natural chaos is the byproduct of anything, or anyone, moving from one state of existence to another. All life exists as a pattern or series of patterns. (In fact, we know that when a pattern is detailed and self-repeating it’s called “fractal”). When an existing pattern is caused to change any aspect of itself, the period of re-organization or self-organizing is chaotic by definition. This is because in the absence of one pattern, and in advance of the formation of a new pattern, a period of uncertainty ensues.  Natural chaos is internal in origin, whether internal to a single organism or a society. It is also a necessary and natural phenomenon indicative of dynamic transition.

Staged chaos is externally driven by applying excessive pressure or strain upon an existing condition for the purpose of confusion and disruption leading to disintegration and/or destruction. It is artificial in origin and manipulated to affect a given outcome. Staged chaos is man-made. It is most often and easily seen in the breakdown of a society where a few individuals band together to create conditions that ultimately benefit them at the expense of the many. Staged chaos is also generally accompanied by force and/or violence.

We humans periodically go through evolutionary leaps in knowledge (information) and conscious awareness (spiritual insight). Such leaps are natural and re-occurring. We are in just such a leap now and so we are experiencing the resulting natural chaos both personally and as co-inhabitants of a global community. The leap is tenuous and fraught with challenges but it will lead to new understandings of both our physical and spiritual existence.

However, it’s important to distinguish between what natural development is causing us to do and what political agendas, powerful financial organizations and tyrants would cause us to do.  The way to make this distinction is to ask yourself if external force and artificially generated pressure are the means to the end. If the answer is “yes” then avoid such chaos. Refuse to participate. Refuse to be manipulated. When the mob says “Go” make certain you remain very, very still.

When you are able to make this distinction for yourself, and when in each situation use your Free Will to choose your response, you will remove yourself from the effects of staged chaos. You will no longer be the puppet dancing to someone’s pulling of the strings.

So, now, which type of chaos is accompanying the Trayvon Martin saga?

And how will you respond?

 

I’m not a scientist so you have to consider that admission as you read on. But I am a thinker, and a mystic, both of which are the basis for my statement that science has just proven what thinkers and mystics have known for a very long time.

Just because you can’t see something or someone, doesn’t mean it or they don’t exist.  In fact, worlds may be occurring all around us that we simply cannot see.

It appears (no pun intended) that scientists at Cornell University have discovered a “time cloak.” Generally, occurrences are seen as light from them reaches our eyes. Usually it’s a continuous flow of light. Cornell scientists, however, have been able to interrupt that flow for just a fraction of an instant (4 trillionths of a second)…long enough to prevent observation of an occurrence that does, in fact, occur. It just isn’t visible! The time cloak moves the light beams away in the traditional three dimensions, altering not where the light flows but how fast it moves, changing it in the dimension of time.

As I read about the discovery, the thinker and mystic in me say, “Well, it’s about time” (again no pun intended).  If it is, in fact, possible to alter light in relationship to time, thereby obscuring from sight that which is occurring in time, then occurrences and things of any magnitude that existed but were not in the path of light, so to speak, wouldn’t be visible either. Like worlds.

There is a plethora of spiritual and psi literature on alternate realities as well as beings that supposedly exist simultaneously with us and all around us. Up until now such subject matter has been explored mostly through metaphysics and spiritualism. Now, slowly, that may begin to change.

Several years ago, in the middle of a divorce, I was heading upstairs to go to sleep when I fell down a flight of steps and landed with my leg tucked under me resulting in a nasty torn ligament in my ankle.  I remember precisely the moment I lost my balance and began to tumble. I described it then, as I can vividly recall now, not so much as an accident as it was as if I was suddenly pushed down the stairs.  At the time, no one was in the house but my teenage daughter who was sound asleep.

Perhaps the scientists at Cornell have opened the door to not only new knowledge, but literally, new worlds.  And perhaps, just perhaps, I could have avoided that torn ligament had I been able to see what was going on all around me.

I’m just saying…

“Where the rubber meets the road” is an expression used to make the point that whatever is being referred to constitutes a moment of truth.  I suggest, along that same line of thought, 2012 is where reality meets spirituality. At least it’s where these two aspects of ourselves must meet if we are to survive and prosper beyond where we are now.

We have made advances in science and technology that were thought to be inconceivable 50 years ago, with greater advances yet on the horizon. But in our blindness, or our arrogance, we refuse to acknowledge that other cultures, other civilizations came before us leaving remnants of their own inconceivable technological advances as well and yet, they vanished in totality from the face of the Earth.

The most important lesson we should take from their disappearance is that it isn’t enough to be scientifically or technologically advanced. It is also necessary, in fact critical, that our spirituality…our humanity…be equally developed and advanced. Without common, life affirming values and core ethical principles to act as a framework to contain our creations we will find ourselves also relegated to the dust bin of history.

Which is why the 2012 Presidential election is so important.

It may seem almost ludicrous to write about concepts so daunting and then tie them to something so charged with corruption and greed as politics.  But the import about the 2012 election isn’t about the process or even the candidate.

It’s about you.

This next election is when each of us must step up and take responsibility for what we do with the right to vote. We must look for a candidate to support who stands for those life-affirming values and core ethical principles upon which our future rests. We must not follow the pack or allow someone else to do our thinking, and our concluding, for us. Each of us must realize the crucial transition we, as a species, are passing through and the pitfalls inherent within.

2012 is when the rubber meets the road. Now is the moment each of us must go within and reconnect with our spiritual Selves, allowing that light to illuminate our way forward.

Take this election very seriously. It’s way past the time for complaining about corruption, greed and victimization. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Do that and we may just find our way out of this fire swamp.

 

You’d think we were wiser, or at least smarter, than to believe that everything is fine just because Thanksgiving sales were up and the DOW Jones reacted positively to that fact. You’d think.

It astonishes me how many people remain asleep…unconscious…unaware. And how many others are living in a world of denial. I understand the tendency to bury one’s head in the sand, so to speak, in the face of so much bad news and uncertainty. Admittedly, these are trying times.

But denial never gets you anything other than delayed truth. It doesn’t obliterate it.

Here’s my latest take on fear. It’s been the tool of choice for controlling the majority of people on earth for, at least, the last 5000 years. I think it’s time we stopped buying into the illusion that energy is scarce and costly, that remedies for illness are limited to choices predetermined by a few and sanctioned by government, that politicians need be corrupt and we need to accept this as a given, and that corporations and banks need to be insatiable entities satisfying their endless hunger for money and control at the expense of those who reply upon their services and trust in their good intentions.

Energy is free. It’s in the air…the “space” all around us and extracting it has gotten everyone discredited who ever proved that to be true. Buddhism, and even physics, assert that out of “no-thing-ness,” or the void, came everything. Well, if there is nothing in the void, then it’s devoid of light, also. So light is not the Source of all that is… darkness is. And darkness is not a bad thing. Its no-thing and holds the potential from which every-thing manifests.

For these past 5000 plus years we have been living under the fear-based illusion that to break the rules gets you cast into hell (the abyss), or prison, or just plain outcast from mainstream society. As if the abyss is bad. I would ask you consider that the very thing we have been told to fear… the dark, the unknown, the “other”… is, in fact, the Source of true power. And those who have known this truth, in both religions and governments worldwide, have used that illusion to manipulate us with fear-based thinking for most of human history.

Wake up! Now! Fear is a tool to control you. That’s why there is so much “bad” news. That’s why economies are collapsing. The insatiable individuals and companies that have run our reality by fear are panicked. They are desperate and the only way they can hang on to their power is to make certain you are more frightened than you’ve ever been in your entire life.

It’s a game. Its not real. Refuse to play. Step outside the box. Follow your own inner guidance. Link up with like-minded people and stay the course. We are on the threshold of a brave new world and it’s not one ruled by one world government. It’s a world imagined by billions of individual, creative, compassionate souls who have awakened to say:

Enough.

 

Phew. It’s going to be a busy week!

Palestinians plan to seek United Nations approval for an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and pre-1967 borders by brining the proposal to a vote in both the General Assembly and the Security Council despite the United States having made clear its intention to veto such a proposal in the Security Council.  Israel is shoring up its internal defenses in anticipation of possible pro-Palestinian marches or, worse, terrorist activity.

This week, Friday to be exact, NASA’S Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), launched in 1991 and weighing 61/2 tons is due to breakup as it burns through the atmosphere and land somewhere on earth. While some of the pieces are expected to survive the burn and impact earth, scientists have estimated that with 70% of the earth being covered in water, the likelihood of any of those surviving pieces from the bus-sized orbiter impacting a person is 3600 to 1. I know that totally eliminates any concerns I have.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, along with the Bank of England, Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank have decided to “provide dollar liquidity” (read as print more money) to help stabilize the highly unstable banking system in several EU member countries.  This “international stimulus” seems like a tried and true approach given the apparent success of the two stimulus efforts here by this Administration and its economic geniuses guiding monetary policy.

Finally, malcontents and other assorted groups with a variety of issues but an apparent common goal… to bring down Wall Street and/or the U.S. government… have begun pitching tents in New York’s financial district this weekend with the intention to stay put until their goal is achieved. Soon, they will be joined, in spirit, by those organizing October 6^th as a national day of protest wherein they will begin sit ins at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C.

Phew. I’m tired and it’s only Sunday morning. The week hasn’t even begun.

Assuming the Palestinians and other Arab nations do not react violently to a negative outcome to their quest for statehood via the UN (my 18-year-old daughter is in Israel for 9 months)…and NASA’s UARS doesn’t fall on me (or anyone I know) as the “1 in 3600,”, …and someone in this Administration wakes up before we can’t even afford to buy the paper to print more money on…and those sitting in on Wall Street and the Capitol go home realizing they have neither the spiritual motivation of Gandhi nor the political will of Martin Luther King…I’m still left with a pounding headache at the possible wrong turn any of the above might take.

So what’s the solution?

Its faith and trust. I have faith and trust in a Divine Pattern of love and unity. Does that mean I can sit back and silently wait? No, I’m part of that pattern and, as such, have to hold my space. My space, as I see it, is to be an individual standing for what is good and true:

To say out loud that Palestinians should have a state of their own but not at the expense of the State of Israel and not by appropriating, through threat of violence, what is not theirs.

To say out loud that The Federal Reserve, and its very secretive members, seem to be clueless about our current financial situation. Given their repeated errors in judgment they should be stripped of their power while we open the discussion to alternative ways from alternative minds.

To say out loud that it is right, just and necessary to speak out against greed and corruption and to become active in changing course…but not when destruction is the only goal and where no plan exists for rebuilding anew from what remains following the breakdown.

To say out loud that NASA… well, what can I say? They meant well. Besides, there are physical laws and one of them is “what goes up must come down.” I just hope with everything else going on this week that 70% ocean and 3600 to 1 turn out to be sufficient odds.

 

 

 

 

Two seemingly unrelated news stories caught my eye. The first, concerns the “entertainer” Prince praising the virtues of countries run under Sharia law, especially the “order” and “simplicity” of having women wear burqas.  The second is about a gender neutral approach to everything from education to child rearing.

Where’s the connection?  Well, that’s the first question.

The second is “Where’s the real harm?”

The obvious answer to the first question is that both stories speak to how we perceive and respond to sexuality.  While that is certainly a big topic that deserves its own post, we need to be much more concerned with the answer to the second question.

For several thousand years, male dominated governments, religions and societies in general, have institutionalized the marginalization, even the near obliteration, of the Divine Feminine aspect of Creation.  It isn’t necessary to go much farther than Genesis 1:26, “And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness…” (emphasis added). Everywhere you look in Nature, you find the interaction and cooperation between polarities… the necessary, and dare I say equally important contributions, of what those polarized aspects bring to the perpetuation of all things natural.

Not so mankind.

Man, literally man, has spent thousands of years and squandered countless resources in efforts to deny the Divine Feminine role in Creation and to imprison the female in one of three roles: mother, whore or object (a/k/a property).  We need not look very far beyond this perversion of Natural Law to explain thousands of years of aggression, war, and imbalance.

This is not a feminist rant.  This is a call to mankind to awaken to the reality that the Divine Feminine is resurrected and, undaunted, has embarked upon a return to Her rightful place alongside the masculine aspect of Creator.

It is through this re-balancing of male and female energies that the world will be set right and by no other means.  No secular legislation or religious dictate will end this breech until the hearts of men are open to the love and inherent value of all living beings… a lesson learned only through recognizing, accepting and acknowledging the Wisdom that is the Divine Feminine role in Creation.

 

You’ve heard the expression a thousand times. “Follow the money.” It’s used when one is looking to trace back to the origins of how something has occurred.  What if I told you that the expression “follow the money” is actually a perversion and a deliberate distraction of a much more powerful and accurate expression?

Curious?  Good!

Following the money may get you a very limited revelation about a specific occurrence… but if you want a greater understanding of how everything in your life occurs “follow your feelings.”

Your feelings are the fuel that drives the engine of your beliefs and your beliefs are the basis for your thoughts about what is true for you. Whether you realize it or not, what you think about yourself and the world in which you live actually manifests as your reality.

We are always thinking.  What we think we create.  What we think most often is what we most often create.  This concept is the basis for all of the self-help and self-actualization teachings that have become so widespread in the past several decades.  But if you have difficulty grasping either the philosophical or spiritual basis for this concept… how about a scientific one?

At the quantum level, the conscious presence of an observer affects matter, literally.  What this means is that when a conscious observer is present to observe an experiment, the mere presence of that observer changes the outcome of that which is being observed!  Consciousness… thoughts… matter.

We humans are actually transmitters and receivers of vast quantities of information.  We perform this exchange of energy by way of frequency.  Not unlike radio waves.  I like to think of it as AM, FM and… well… add whatever letter works for you.  I prefer “CM” as in Consciousness Modulation.  The more conscious, or aware, you are of your feelings, beliefs and thoughts the more power you have to create your own experiences.

This brings me to the point.

True power lies within.  Fear acts to “jam” the vital information you need to send and receive on CM.  Refusal to recognize this, or to take responsibility for it, traps you in a powerless, pessimistic, victim consciousness.  It’s a lower frequency wherein very little else can be accessed other than fear.  It’s also a frequency that has been broadcast and used for millennia to keep you from realizing and actualizing your own power.

You have Free Will.  Today, as you make choices about everything from what to wear to what to eat… remember to make the most important choice of all.  Choose to follow your feelings all the way to your beliefs so that you can consciously choose what you think about life, its possibilities and your role in it all.

I assure you that what you tune into on CM is light years (a deliberate choice of words!) beyond anything you’ll ever be able to access on any other frequency.

 

Lately, there is much talk of personal responsibility.  Perhaps nowhere is this concept more relevant than when applied to our thoughts.  As we look around the globe at social, economic, and political conditions it seems appropriate to ask, “What are we doing, or not doing, that is directly related to what we are experiencing?”

But what if the same question is equally relevant to the escalation of violent weather conditions we are experiencing worldwide?  What if we are causing those conditions, not by global warming or disregard for natural resources, but by our thoughts?

At the quantum level, physicists have proven that the conscious presence of an observer affects and changes the outcome of the event being observed. Consciousness, awareness, is energy that affects matter. “Pay attention”… that admonition you often heard repeated as a child… now takes on new meaning.  Your attention is energy.  How you use it, where you place it, matters. Literally.

We have the freedom, Free Will, to place our attention on anything we choose. When millions, maybe even billions, of people place their attention on the same thing, the effect is likely to be profound.

Which got me thinking.

It’s often said by environmentalists and others that Earth and weather upheavals in the form of volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, warming, hurricanes and the like are “Mother Earth” telling us, in her own inimitable way, that She has had enough.  But what if Earth and Nature are not reacting to our behavior, but to our thoughts?  What if as we think imbalanced and violent thoughts we create  imbalanced and violent Earth conditions?

What if the more people who think violent thoughts then the more extreme and widespread are manifested Earth conditions?

Maybe President Obama and others want to rethink encouraging “revolution” across the globe.  Change need not be violent unless we choose it to be.  Maybe we ought to rethink how we communicate and apply certain words and concepts.  Maybe thoughts are things which, once given voice, are made real. Maybe all the violent change humanity seems to be experiencing globally starts in our minds.

Perhaps starting today we each can be more circumspect around what we think and say.  Perhaps there is good reason to put an end to watching, and thereby energizing with your attention, the violence the media loves to disseminate.

A Native American proverb makes the point.  A grandfather talking to his young grandson tells the boy he has two wolves inside of him struggling with each other. The first is the wolf of peace, love and kindness.  The other is the wolf of fear, greed and hatred. “Which wolf will win, grandfather?” asks the young boy.  “Whichever one I feed,” is the reply.

Today, by your thoughts, starve violence and feed peace.

Personal Responsibility starts there.

 

For a new way to think about personal responsibility, language and global change see my new book The Lightworker’s Handbook: A Spiritual Guide to Eliminating Fear. CLICK HERE to learn more.