Open your mind

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. 

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!)

The science of walking on fire

According to Wikipedia:

Walking on fire has existed for several thousand years, with records dating back to 1200 B.C.[3] Cultures across the globe, from Greece to China, used firewalking for rites of healing, initiation, and faith.[3] Firewalking became popular in America during the 1970s when author Tolly Burkan began a campaign to demystify the practice. He offered evening firewalking courses that were open to anyone in the general public.

Where firewalking used to belong to the realm of mystics and magic it suddenly became within the reach of anyone with the mental ability to change their perception. Those who have experienced it find it liberating and empowering to bear witness to the power of mind over matter, while those who witness it cannot help but stand in awe of a feat that defy logic in direct opposition to our instinct to survive.

Even though it is a practice that has been around since the time of Genesis, the actual physics that explain why people do not get burned during the experience can only be found in some very recent scientific discoveries about the nature of water. And while you may think that the molecular properties of something as common and important like water would be old news, fact is we have only recently begun to understand its nature.

Water has a highly crystallized structure, even when it is in a fluid state. , and this affinity to form crystal lattices is one of the main reasons why proteins all have a specific three dimensional structure. It is the structural variety of proteins that give them the ability to combine and interact with other proteins in what can almost be described as a molecular dance. A dance that expresses itself in the infinite variety of life that share our planet.

When protein molecules are exposed to increasing temperature, it is the collapse of the supporting water molecules that causes proteins to lose their structure, but water is also known to exhibit a period of latency between the time that it reaches boiling temperature and the time it eventually begins to boil. It is this natural ability of water that provide the scientific explanation why it is physically possible to walk on fire.

Thus the belief that the fire walkers express as part of the ritual of walking on fire seem to be translated to a force that allow water molecules to maintain their crystalline structure under the extreme duress of temperatures that can be as high as a thousand degrees centigrade. It also supports various other experimental findings that intention can influence the crystal structure of water, and bears testament to the incredible ability of human consciousness and the power of intention.

The story of water

Water is the most common molecule found on the earth, and at the same time also the most strange. Water is the only molecule that was created by the word of God, and while most people accept water for what it can do, very little ever give a second thought to what it does.

When I was in school someone used the example to illustrate how much power water has, by saying that it was the flow of water in rivers that will eventually erode all the rocks there are on earth and carry the sand back to the sea. When I did some research 30 years later I found a reference to something similar that explained how the expansive quality of water when it freezes is responsible for cracking open rocks and granite. Both examples are quite mind blowing in their scope, but they still do not even come close to the real power of water on our planet.

A very good example of what water does can be found in the way it provides the scaffolding for the structure of biological molecules, molecules like the proteins in DNA that are the building blocks of our human existence.

Proteins are also used as messengers across the complex hormonal networks in our bodies. It is the structural form of these proteins that determine what function they have, and that allow them to communicate across the various receptors that can be found throughout our bodies. Messengers that switch things off or on and regulate things like our immune system and memory.

Water is as much part of you and me as it is part of everything in nature. We can observe the way that it has formed our land, we experience it in the constant cycles of our weather patterns, we marvel at the infinite variety it expresses in every single snowflake, and we drink it to keep us alive.

Water is part of us and who we are.

Water is life.

Rewards, rewards, rewards

(Eulogy to a man I never new, but greatly admire)

I recently heard of a man that lamented the loss of his soul, not that he had you see, but then neither did he. He thought that life was void of reward, and as a result he was ever depressed and always grumpy and pessimistic. So pessimistic in fact, that he became known as the biggest pessimist the world had ever seen.

He died alone, not because he thought he lost his soul, but because he was such a foul mouth sourpuss. No woman who deemed herself respective, indeed no person who had any drop of self respect would ever want to be seen near the old geezer. Of course there was a couple of friends, but they where the lucky souls that knew of him, before they knew him. The rest of the people never got a chance before he ignored, insulted, harassed or pissed them off so badly that they were at pains to make sure that their paths never crossed. That is, if they didn’t go to the police and demand that charges be laid.

In fact, somebody did in his early years. a woman he had harassed went to the police and opened a criminal case of assault against him. Assault against her personage and dignity was the charge, and she won the case. The court awarded her damages that the acclaimed philosopher had to pay for the rest of his life.

He was a pessimist because he believed that humanity will never be satisfied, no matter what the reward. In his eyes you see, life was not worth the effort it took to be alive. In fact, he was often heard to comment that the he could never understand why he continued to live himself. It was secretly guessed that he only did so to piss off a few more people before he died.

Even in the halls of higher learning, where much may be tolerated and offered before the altar of thinking and learning and human advancement did he find himself an outcast. After completing his thesis, a brilliant piece of work about the corruption and power of man’s will, only 5 students enrolled in the course he offered at the University of Berlin. He promptly refused to continue the class and cancelled the course in his signature style, ending the matter with a lengthy and public and pompous discourse on the knowledge and wisdom that accused the whole of the student body, in fact, the whole of the faculty, and indeed the institute of higher learning itself of corruption and sloth. He then added that he had walked through these hallowed halls long enough to see the fester that rots in this institution!” He made ‘institution’ sound dirty when he said it.

His public protest did fire the belly of some very bright and young upstarts, and not by his want or his will, but by divine intervention he became 'friends’ with some very talented people.

People like the quiet and demure scientist that struggled to get a tenure in academia, and ended up working in a patent office as an assistant examiner. He was passed over for promotion because he had not fully mastered ‘machine technology’, but ten years after his diploma he had produced such a body of knowledge that he was appointed “Professor Extraordinaire” for his theory of relativity. A theory that reconciled the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field, and introduced us to the field of quantum physics. In doing so he unleashed our own curiosity on itself, allowing us to peek into the hart of the universe, and some to venture all the way to our very soul.

People like the flamboyant composer that changed the face of music forever by abandoning the ‘happy tune’ that was then in vogue and brought to our hearts and our ear a new sound. A harmony that is richer and deeper and fuller and bigger and overwhelmingly loader than anyone could ever imagine. A symphony that reaches deep within our soul, and drags it kicking and screaming from the misery and evil that it hides, and exults it to to glorious heights of divinity where it belongs.

People who, even today are still known and revered for their contributions to the worlds of art and science and humanity. People who challenged the status quo of our existence and permanently altered the course of history. People like Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud.

And so the man who is known as the greatest pessimist in the history of human thought, the man who searched for 72 years but could not find a single reason to live left behind a legacy that bared our collective soul to our very own eyes, and then showed it to us in all it’s glorious magnificence.

That man was Arthur Schopenhauer, a grumpy old geezer who spent his whole life searching for reward and who was answered through the life’s and the work of the people he tolerated in his life.

Wherever you are old man, I would like you to thank you and let you know that you did good. And I guess since you died you already know the reason for life, but just in case you’re still out there searching for reward, I’d like to invite you to take a look at the legacy you left through your word. And if you’re still wandering somewhere alone in the misery of your own existence, then may I suggest you try a little love? It is after all the quality most often attributed to spirit, the very last of mysteries still left to man and the heart and soul of the legacy you left to us.

Love and Communication

If we take a close look at how we communicate between ourselves, and even how we communicate with ourself we may be surprised at how ineffective this communication sometimes is.

Many people do not realise how emotion changes our perception, and there are still people that believe they can present a logical argument when they are emotionally involved.

Science tell us that we cannot, and it is something that centuries of heated argument has proved with experience. Logical ability and emotional involvement are mutually exclusive.

The exact reason for this is not quite clear, but it probably has something to do with the way that emotions activate a wide range of brain areas, areas that not only change our perception, but also influence our rational ability.

The question which begs an ansewer now is, what about love?

That day

I wonder if this would be that day. You now, the day you sit somewhere with a long cold drink, your feet pushed into the warm hot sand. Laying back on the cool white sand and languid sun and thinking this is it. This is what it means to be living!

And then you hear the wrinkled age of someone fighting with their lover, arguing about love. and though you'd rather not you hear the voices clear. You hear the desperate pleading tone of love misunderstand. Love that does'nt reach the depth of seperation. Love that doesn't stand. Love that doesn't know that stand is only the first step.

No wait, that is the next!

And in the heartbreaking silence that follows you see the couple part in silence, you hear their braking hearts and know that this is over.

The end however, it is not. Not by a long shot.

You are the person that will make the difference. You can make a difference how it ends. You can decide the end. This time you have control and you can mend these hearts. And it has nothing to do with how it ends, but how it begins!

Five years earlier this was you. And you want shout and say fuck it all will you two stop!

Just stop and listen to yourself. Listen to the pain you cause. Cant you see the pain you cause. Cant you feel the pain. I can see it clear and plain like it was Yeasterday, and in your mind you see yourself shout stop!

You hear the rage that fills the space between you now and then, and feel the hopelesness of love that burns with the endless yearning of passion and desire.

And then you burst out in a laugh. You pick a pebble and throw it in the sea.

Life is but a breeze.