Niels van Gogh ~ Pulverturm (Intro)

THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR PRESENCE

KIND REGARDS
THE CONSCIOUS COLLECTIVE

Ola

From a conscious perspective there is a lot to be said for having a sunny disposition, and everyone knows that there is nothing that beat the rosy hue of a positive point of view.

Though the notion of feeling good may sound like elusive ideals in the minds of most people I know there is more than enough evidence that happiness is a presumption within everyone's reach, not to mention how much objective proof there is in the proverbial pudding. But with reason being the ultimate objective, you'd be surprised how little people seem to care to change for the better.

For those who can admit to the possibility that that their view may be biased, and willing to try something new there is more than enough evidence to satisfy the curious, and if you are serious about knowing more there are even graduate and post-graduate studies available on the science of being happy.

So next time you find yourself in a bad mood ask yourself this: "Why?". If you can come up with a good enough reason, remind yourself that your mood is clouding your reason, limiting your perception, and confusing your perspective, whatever the reason.

 

Have a nice day!

Reason to smile

Have a nice day!

From a conscious aware there is a lot to be said for a sunny disposition, not to mention not to mention the obvious advantage of a mutual presence point of view. 

From a present sense perspective nothing beats the rosy hue of feeling good. And given that feelings are subjective by any MEASURE, it's good to know that scientific evidence is in full support of the notion.

In fact as far as research concur we've come as close to curing the foulest of mood as reason would allow. And with reason being the ultimate objective, you'd be surprised how little people seem to care to change for the better.

For those who can admit to the likelihood that their view may be biased and willing to try something new there is more than enough proof to satisfy the curious, and there are a number of graduate and post-graduate studies on the science of being happy for the studious.

So next time you find yourself in a bad mood ask yourself this: "Why?". If you can come up with a good enough reason, remind yourself that your mood is not helping the situation, whatever the reason you've come up with.

Have a nice day!

The expression of fortuitous happenstance

I must confess I'm often blessed in serendipity, and happy to share my blessing in the ebb and flow of resonance.

I've recently happened to chance up on PATH, a non-profit global health organization that: 

... dare to believe that innovation can change the world

As luck would have it PATH's vision is "a world where innovation ensures that health is within reach for everyone." You'll see the synchronicity if you read my recently updated app manifest for Stardeck, my own take on the age old public health conundrum of how to package the whole idea of "... improve the health of people around the world by advancing technologies, strengthening systems, and encouraging healthy behaviors."

As fait de compli I'd like to present you with the last of my app objectives, to monitor personal health with easy-to-use, app-on-board, state-of-the-art, clinical measuring instruments that would

• detect when you're stressed and advise you on a choice of stress reduction techniques
• suggest ways of managing stress when the app detect any chronic stress metrics
• inform you on how to eliminate stress completely by enrolling as a rookie in my no-patent-pending, open source, loads of gratuitous 
• public health goodness Stardeck Bootcamp Habituary.

I must admit I might even be a tad superstitious, some would even say obsessive about the whole experience of synchronicity, ascribing to the universal point of view that if a venture doesn't hum in harmony, it's a foregone conclusion that its not going to resonate, and if it doesn't resonate then it's most likely an idea that's just biding it's time to fortuitous happenstance.

Much like PATH above, and Lylith below, if you see what I mean.

101 I Ching

The universal principle of opposites isn't a quality much revered  in the cultural West, but it has a long and glorious history in the mindset of the East. One that stretches back as far as the 6th Century BC when a man named Lao Tsu reputedly wrote the Tao Te Ching. 

The original tome is still pretty much available as then, but there are many interpretations, interpretations of interpretations and re-interpretations  to assist any querier (a person that want to consult the I Ching) to interpret the Oracle's response, i.e. looking up the corresponding hexagram and reading what Lao wrote.

Given that there were only 64 hexagram variations described by Lao Tsu, you may well wonder and question the wisdom of the Oracle. How is it possible that such a simple act as throwing three coins result in such a non-deific divination, and why would anyone in their right mind believe in such an ungodly practice you may think?

Believe what you may but the truth as they say is in the pudding. The reason why belief in the I Ching has endured through ages hence is in the glaring view of hindsight, and the clear and present proof of endearing the value in truth, and conclusive evidence after the matter of fact.

As with most of the classic philosophers, Laozi uses allegory and metaphor throughout his book, but the pompous austerity of his language, and the decidedly royal nature of his illustration in the manner of an advisor to the Imperial Court has no relevance to its widespread use and common utilisation as a tool to choose, or decide on the best course of daily action to take.

In fact, the whole book can be read as a perspective on perception, a example of the value in harbouring a universal point of view, a deceleration of reason to endear harmony, and the auspicious nature of cultivating a Dao that defy the gap between reason and belief.

By noting the fall of the toss of two coins with a question in mind, and repeating the process six times to construct a hexagram the query may be answered in the interpretation of a symbolic result. Part science, part ritual, part chaos, part flow, the I Ching has been in use ever since Lao Tsu cast his first yarrow, thousands of years ago. Based on the principle of balance between chaos and order, the I Ching is a reminder that we are but a part of a bigger whole.

Neither science, nor magic, the Tao is an interpretation of reality. An awareness that flows from understanding, and a universal perception that follow from a conscious perspective. 

The deception of perception

Future perfect

Reality is quite literally what we make it, which sadly these days doesn't seem to be much. Based on the weight of evidence against people having a good time I'd venture the reality we all share in media orchestrated synchrony probably compare well with Mankind's darkest yet.

Not that it is mind you, not by a long shot, but since mood is a consequence of attitude, and nothing but a choice, then your guess is as good as mine how bad it really is. That or headline news, if you care for an opinion with colloquial value for what it's worth, evidence abound that the world as we know it is worse for the wear. 

As you will see it is not a point of view that I share, or one that I care to suffer gladly. Though the state of affairs may seem to advise to the contrary I see a future of wonder ahead, a future I share with like minded kin of conscious awareness with the same dare'n do attitude I have. Where positive mood is a token belief, and working together for the greater good is a shared intention. Where reward is nothing more than a dividend of deed, and success  nothing less than the tired satisfaction of a day we done well. 

Much like the day as it was I suppose, blessed with adventure and fun, shared in the company of friends, embracing each moment, elated by what we may find.

RU losing your mind?

Image via Wikipedia

Contrary to popular belief, a mind is not a terrible thing to waste. You get what you use and you lose what you don't. Just like the rest of our body, our mind works according to the design principle of probability and potential in servitude to our instinct to survive and our will to thrive.

In one of the more encouraging scientific discoveries from recent years it was suggested that our mental ability could be saved from the rising incidence of senility by using our mind. At first it seemed as if certain mental activities worked better than others, but as research continued we found that our brain adapt to just about anything we put our mind to, even if it means rewiring a part of the brain, as it is commonly found in people learning to use cellphones for the first time.

I suppose it is easy to see how our morbid fear of getting old turned fact into a general belief that the brain is a muscle that can be strengthened, indeed must be strengthened should we want to save ourself from the permanent loss of faculty and reason, or even worse, drifting slowly off to land forgot and into the obscurity of Alzheimer's.

Easy too to understand the all too eager helping hand of those who saw a market gap, and before you could say snap, had just the remedy to guarantee the clarity and mental agility you last had as a teenager. It's an assumption that has spawned a multi-million-dollar computer-game industry of electronic brainteasers and memory games, and according to the research findings of a recently published paper, it seems that it may be an assumption that is wrong. According to the article in TIME:

 in the largest study of these games to date, a team of British researchers has found that healthy adults who undertake computer-based "brain training" do not improve their mental fitness in any significant way.

As you may expect, the research was immediately met with a barrage of doubt and disbelief, particularly from the companies making a lot of money with their mind enhancing schemes. It remains to be seen who will win the battle for our sanity, but to me it seems that a simple review of the facts on hand suffice to show what we have always known as true, not only of our mind, but nature all around.

Use it, or lose it

But that's just me I guess. If you have a different point of view I'd love to hear from you. (Even facts are welcome too!)

Tune your brain

"Binaural beats or binaural tones are auditory processing artifacts, or apparent sounds, the perception of which arises in the brain independent of physical stimuli. This effect was discovered in 1839 by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove." This is according to the wikipedia entry on the subject, and if it all feels a little Geek to you, don't worry... This is far too interesting not to understand.

What this means is that listening with earphones to two different frequencies in each ear, instead of hearing two sounds, we hear a beating third sound. This beating sound is created by the brain itself and bears no resemblance to any of the two sounds from the earphones. Much in a sense like magic.

Due to the design of our brain, the frequency of our thought patterns change to the frequency of the magical beating sound that we hear. The sound that is being created by the Binaural tones that we are listening to in our earphones. By listening to these tones, the frequency of our brain pattern that determine if we are alert, dreamy or focused can be influenced by something that isn't even real!

In technical terms wikipedia describes it as "a naturally occurring phenomenon where the human brain has a tendency to change its dominant EEG frequency towards the frequency of a dominant external stimulus." I prefer to describe it as magic! The magic of H.W. Dove.

Magic that can tune your brain, and never loses its charm as long as you keep tuning in.

If you are lucky enough to have an iphone you can get the app at Rock, if not but would still like to experience the magic for yourself, check out some of the free samples available at HealingBeats.

The science of discovering ourself

The medical field is probably one of the most fast paced developing technologies, and in the past few years we have discovered more about our own bodies than we have about renewable energy sources.

One of these developments that are still making headlines since it was first developed is flow magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. While it was originally developed to aid the medical fraternity in their diagnostic ability, this technology is currently providing us with discoveries that are literally the stuff of dreams. By measuring the changes in blood flow through the brain during different mental activities, this device is able to tell us more than we ever thought possible about the functioning of one of the most mysterious organs in the body, the human brain.

This three pound of mushy Grey matter that give us abilities that are so unique in the animal kingdom that we have the power to subjugate nothing less than nature itself has remained clouded in a shroud of speculation, conjugation and even plain conjecture. This is in stark contrast to other scientific discoveries of the human body, where the absolute and exact is considered to be nothing less than standard. But with the use of fMRI imaging we are starting to understand how the brain makes sense of the input from our senses to provide each of us with our own unique view of a common reality. From understanding the difference between emotional and neutral memories, to finding why people in a happy mood will almost always choose the first of any available choices given, all the way through to the role of emotions in determining self bias and the shocking discovery that morals are nothing less than conclusions and deductions to defend our actions.

Take for instance the recent discovery that the act of imagination take place in the same region of the brain that involves memory, which challenges general convention that there is a big difference between fact and fiction. From the perspective of our brain the difference does not seem to matter much, although it does seem that these two thought processes could be distinguished through subtle memory references to sensory and kinesthetic memory patterns. Sometimes these subtle references are not so subtle, which explains for instance why many men can remember their wedding vouws, but they cannot recall asking the hand of their beloved. The answer can be found in their posture. Because many men stand on their knees when they propose marriage, that memory is encoded with the act of kneeling. Most men would recall that magical moment if they just went down on their knees!

Another recent discovery that sent shockwaves through the ranks of philosophers and preachers alike is that we seem to make choices before we arrive at a conscious decision. Through the use of fMRI it was shown that brain activity indicate what a respondent would choose up to 7 seconds before the respondent indicated that he has made up his mind on a choice, which questions previously held opinions regarding concepts such as free choice and accountability.

The ultimate impact of this diagnostic tool on our understanding of how we think and feel and act is far from being reached. Scientists are currently in the process of mapping the various regions of the brain that become active during various mental tasks, and it is a matter of time that the link between these various regions and how they interact with each other become apparent. As we learn more about the brain and its mysteries we learn more about why we think the way we do, and move closer to understanding who we are.

10 things you should know about your mind

1. You cannot lose it, unlike the neurons that conduct the electrical impulses that eventually combine to become your mind. Neurons seem to whither at the slightest challenge, like the pill you popped last night, or any binge that end in a hangover. Fortunate for us our mind display a high grade of plasticity, which mean that function lost due to neural death could be taken over by others.

2. You have what you use, and what you don't gets lost as quick as last season's fashion. Which is a bit of a shame as research continue to come up with surprising new and uber cool abilities that babies have. Take for example their efficiency in cross species facial recognition, and then compare it to "I think they all look the same".

3. No challenge is too big or detail too small if you believe it matters. Our brain just love a challenge and can even construct special neural thingamabobs to handle new technologies like cellphones. When challenged to survival it remembers even the minutest of details, like the drop of blood sliding down the blade of grass you saw while crawling away from a fatal explosion.

4. Memory is but a fickle thing, and nowhere near what some people want to make of it. For a start, our brain excel in pattern recognition. Most of our memory is scattered across various neural sites, each one specializing in its own sensory pattern recognition. When we think of something our mind will trigger a harmonious event across the different sections needed to build the memory we want.

5. There is no difference between reality and imagination, at least not to your brain. You may want to argue, but it is a scientific fact that what you think become. Take for instance recent findings that power make hypocrite's of those who play its game, or the curious observation that we model morals to our situation.

6. When emotion kicks in, your ability for objective reasoning go out the window. Lame excuses such as you were angryor upset should not be tolerated in the company of choice, any choice. When we become emotionally involved our brain literally changes to a different operating system where reasoning take a distant second place to feeling.

7. Your brain retain an embryonic stem cell capability that can differentiate to any of a wide range of specialized neural cells and structures. We still don't know exactly how to use it, but at least the farming of stem cells from dead babies will not be necessary to treat the growing number of mental diseases of age like Alzheimer and Parkinson's.

8. You can tune your brain to any mental state by listening to bin-aural frequencies in the range of awareness that you require. The effect depend upon a "frequency following" response, a naturally occurring phenomenon of the the human brain. So if you need to be alert you simply listen to a bin-aural beat that entrain to somewhere in the Beta range, between 12-30 Hz.

9. Babies are born with minds that are messy, and exactly what it is that prevent it from tripping in a massive electrical short circuit is still unknown. What we do know, is that exposing babies to certain auditory stimuli, such as Baroque music before and after birth give them a significant and overall advantage above their peers. The metered beat of the music seem to provide a natural rhythm that order and accelerate the mental development of babies.

10. Most of the actions that you perform daily are not the result of your intention, but a carefully calculated flow of expected events. Our minds are constantly busy predicting the future to provide us with normal motion and fluid movement, allowing us act and play with minimal attention. Once mobile, our senses only monitor events for anything unusual or out of place, while the rest just happen without the need of thought.

In celebration of our global consciousness

It all started when F made the song Celebrate!, by Kool and the Gang his theme song for November 2010.

I then asked: & why is that

To which F replied: Democrats will be out of office by then

And I replied: hahaha lol, im from europe.. i dont care about the situation your corrupted government is in

To which F replied: At least you know the key word,"corrupted," nice.

Then, from the sideline C said: If the gov't is corrupted now, what was it under the previous Regime...straight evil?

And T, defending F said: hey I - you dufus - ever heard that if the "US sneezes the whole world catches a cold"?  Well, it's true. And by the way, your government, whichever one it is, is just as corrupt as ours. You're an arrogant,snobby jerk, and you should care more about your brothers across the ocean anyway. We're all in this together.

Then M, defending I said: Why exactly should he give a shit about your government? And how was he even being rude or arrogant? He was just stating his opinion. He didn't say anything negative.

It seems as if this “new” consciousness still has a long way to grow before it will be of any real use to the world, and it illustrates quite nicely how easy it is to trigger conflict.

Lies, lies, lies

Take for instance the book of revelation. A book that was written by a spirit that had been preaching a message of peace and of love, and when he was banned by the authorities he retreated to a cave. It was the only shelter he could find, but then again the only shelter he would need to tell us of the things to come.

The author of the book of Revelation was John, but not the Baptist, although they did share a common bond. John was a spiritual teacher, much like many you would find in a man of his time. And to his fold and followers he spoke the word of God, interpreted it for those who were lost and searching for their soul.

And the word of John would bring peace. He would answer people’s questions about God and good and evil and forgiveness and salvation, for you see John was a man of God. A man that had, either by luck or suffering, been given a glance beyond the horizon of perspective to see the full plane of our existence. John was a man that had seen God, and with that been blessed to understand that we are much more than this, much more than we could ever understand. And that the reason for our existence would be pain and suffering if we would choose it such, or beautiful and bliss if that be what we worth. And low behold, it was.

If he was giving the people things that work, or things that made sense; if John was professing a word that’s true and pure and good, then chances are that he’d survive and even thrive. As well he should for giving people what they need. But then again, this is exactly the reason he was removed and banned from his own town.

John was only telling the truth, and giving people what they asked of him. And if people receive more good from a man like John than what they get for their taxes, you can see the reason why he was removed. Why, he was starting to cause unrest in the neighborhood and people were starting to refuse to pay their legal due. In a sense the man called John had inadvertently reached the delicate tipping point where the spirit comes face to face with establishment and people start to choose. Spirit always comes up trump.

In the face of such a show-off the establishment always get nasty and vindictive, and the spirit goes on doing what it always does in happiness and bliss. And such was the case with John, who moved into a cave and lived a hermits live of contentment and serenity. But such is the nature of the light, that once you meet the vantage point of life and what there is beyond, your life and everything makes sense. And in that sensibility there is nothing left but for you to tell of what you find.  And tell he did, the book we all know as Revelation.

My question now, and considering this, is do you think the Book of Revelation is anything but true? I think that we would all have to agree it is, at least to John it is. And John was a man who spoke of things that the people of his time considered more valuable than taxes.

Then lastly this: “Do you think the Book of Revelation is a prophesy of the end?” Do you think that he was sitting there in all his joy and love and kind, and thinking to find something that he could do in the happiness of the enlightened world he lived. And then in a flash of inspiration, and with all the creativity that tend to flow from being in a place as this, he then decides to write the horrors of apocalypse?

In time before time it was known that the truth shall set you free. Thank you for reading me, and do spend some time to make up your own mind. It is something I could highly recommend.

Just like the Mona Lisa this painting illustrates the concept of perspective. If you focus on the left side of the face it is clearly a female, while focusing on the right side of the face it is a male.

This duality can be found throughout reality and does not mean that there are different realities, it only means that your reality changes according to your point of view. Perspective changes perception which alters our view of reality.