Category Archives: Consciousness
Disintegration
As Buddhists have been telling us for thousands of years, the self is an illusion. In neuroscience, the seat of consciousness can’t be localized in the brain, or even the body with any certainty. There are strong examples of some people who continue to be aware after death. People who are intimate experience ways of knowing when something is wrong with their loved ones who are far away. Carl Jung was convinced that there was a collective unconscious that stored and shared knowledge across all boundaries. New developments in theoretical physics suggest that everything we know as matter, space and time are built on misunderstandings of how the universe works. I have often felt that the me I see is not the real me, that thinks and dreams.
So what are we doing here and why do we exist? Who or what am I? Such big questions should have big answers. But I am beginning to think that the answer is actually very small.
In all of the hubris of the mechanistic model of medicine. the focus had been fighting a war on disease. The body is our battleground and pharmaceuticals and surgical tools are our weapons. Yet as hard as we try to attack, the ‘enemy’ keeps stepping aside and changing course so that we are often a step behind. While vaccines have created a dramatic reduction in some deadly and crippling diseases, so many other viral invaders have taken their place. Our sterile world of sanitized babies and aversion to dirt has robbed our bodies of the practice needed to build up a strong immune system. When some hostile bacteria do get a foot hold we rush in with antibiotics to save the day. Yet our hospitals are over run with resistant bacteria. About 100,000 people become ill each year from hospital acquired resistant infections. So what are we doing wrong?
Scientists are making inroads in explaining the ways in which gut microbes alter the effectiveness of certain medicines, influence our immunity and metabolism, and even affect our mood. Their findings suggest that modulating the microbial communities within us — perhaps as simply as through dietary modifications — could potentially address a wide range of conditions, including inflammatory diseases, obesity and anxiety. http://www.livescience.com/39762-microbe-host-dynamics-nigms.html
Our gut bacteria also play a role in the manufacture of substances like neurotransmitters (including serotonin); enzymes and vitamins (notably Bs and K) and other essential nutrients (including important amino acid and short-chain fatty acids); and a suite of other signaling molecules that talk to, and influence, the immune and the metabolic systems. Some of these compounds may play a role in regulating our stress levels and even temperament: when gut microbes from easygoing, adventurous mice are transplanted into the guts of anxious and timid mice, they become more adventurous. The expression “thinking with your gut” may contain a larger kernel of truth than we thought.
Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford, suggests that we would do well to begin regarding the human body as “an elaborate vessel optimized for the growth and spread of our microbial inhabitants.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Our bodies’ microbiome is home to around 100 trillion different organisms. More than 99% of the genetic material in our bodies is not human. There are literally pounds of these organisms in and on our bodies. Without them we would die. So did they evolve to serve us, or did we evolve to serve them? After all, they can control us, but we can’t control them. We act on emotion and our sense of ‘self’ but how do we really know what that self is? Maybe we are a colony without any meaningful existence as a single organism.
Could all of evolution be driven by the needs of bacteria to control their environment? Some researchers even think our genetic material has been rewritten multiple times by virus activity. Some comets may have seeded our planet with bacteria or viruses from other worlds. All human cultures say that we were made by the gods, and that the gods taught us the skills we needed to survive. So now we are diligently reshaping vast parts of this world, and taking our tiny overlords to all corners and beyond. Is the voice of god really the chemical signals from inside to serve and obey?
I wonder if the interconnections of friends and families goes beyond the bonds of affection. Once we share bacteria with someone, we may become intertwined in a larger network. The ‘spooky action at a distance’ described by Einstein and others could link back to the interconnected particles of matter that came from the same source. The shared state that entwined particles have is known to span vast distances of time and space. Are the paranormal forces at work in our lives, not our own but the product of other beings inside us? Do they somehow fundamentally shape our perceptions with their signals so that we can never see past the veil?
Messengers or monsters
What other beings exist among us? The Judeo-Christian tradition tells of many kinds of supernatural beings. Angels are God’s messengers and the demons are the fallen angels trying to lead humans to destruction. A literal reading of the Bible and other ancient texts identify many types of entities all in a massive power struggle. All traditions I am aware of also have similar stories of struggle, deception, corruption and redemption. Even our modern forms of entertainment paint the monsters’ portraits and tap our deepest fears. Somewhere inside us is a core that knows without seeing that something dark is out there. We try to reduce that fear with rationality, science and a materialist paradigm that tells us we are alone. But we are not alone.
When one sense is lost, the others become stronger. We have come to rely on sight, sound, touch, taste and smell as if they were the only senses. So we comfort our fears by turning on the lights and closing the doors, as if that would ever be enough to stop the monsters. Our ancestors left us warnings and tried to prepare us to face the unknown. Somehow, through the generations, we suppressed the abilities to sense and communicate with the other side and with each other. By denying the reality of unseen and powerful forces, we cut ourselves off from our own strengths as well.
Long ago, all members of a community believed in good and evil with powerful forces at work in our lives. That common belief gave the group unity and strength, but may have opened the door for both good and evil. Now that few believe and try to deny the other senses, we declare the world of our five senses to be all that exists. This new form of faith has closed many doors. But the darkness has not vanished. The struggles we face are inside. That is where the others still wait for us.
Do they have tooth and claw, with hideous faces and terrifying howls? Do they plot evil with twisted games and crimes of greed? Do they sneak up on us in the night and suck our blood? No, because those simple actions are all comprehensible to us and are only how we have tried to metaphorically understand elemental forces. Those forces are already here, inside us and everyone around us. By unleashing our own inner venom, greed, rage and hate, we continue to feed uncontrolled manifestations that can reach into our reality. I don’t know if there are other races of evil intent trying to break into our reality or if the essence of corrupted human souls continue to seek our destruction, even after death.
I suspect that our animating force or consciousness manifests many different ways in many different realities. After all, if we can reincarnate as humans or animals, as I know from experience we can, then why not as aliens or demons or any other entity? Perhaps our own inner creative forces actualize the entities that do reach us. Physics leaves open the possibility of many realities, with the role of observer as the defining force of creation. The others we vaguely sense may be our inadvertent creation as our fears are made stronger by denial and isolation. The doors inside that we lock in fear are also starving our souls of the meaning, connection, magic and mystery that we need to grow together.
The cosmic struggle that we are locked in is really a war of unity vs. discord. We are on a path of collective evolution into ever more integrated living systems. Yet, our material universe is in a state of explosive decay. Perhaps our consciousness is immortal but divided and immature, needing cycles of incarnation to grow and develop. I see us now like bacteria that must bind together to form a colony to survive the changing environment. Living beings have the potential to form webs of cooperation, caring and creativity. We need to fully develop both as individuals and as communities to reach the next level of development and evolution. There is an ultimate conflict ahead when our collective consciousness will either find a way to transcend or transform the material plane, or the cycle of life will finally draw to a close.
Downside Up
Last night I dreamed that I was traveling with friends on a train over a long distance. As we traveled, we would occasionally pass through a tunnel that would immerse us in total darkness. As we emerged into the light again, each time I noticed something else that was just a little bit different. One tunnel would change a companions hair, the next another’s pants, as it went on the results progressed in intensity. Eventually a whole person was replaced. I seemed to be the only one who noticed.
Then I shifted and I was a mother who had lost a child during one of the tunnels. I looked every where for my missing child. But as I asked, each person seemed more and more confused as they had not seen a child with me. Finally, I stopped asking and began to realize why. Although it felt as if all of these changes were happening in front of me. I eventually realized that the people around me are not changing places, instead I was the one who was sliding from one reality to the next.
Chicken and Egg
This morning as I was chatting at the playground with a grandmother I had just met, we starting talking about zoos. She felt that zoos which confined the animals in small enclosures were depressing. Although I agreed, I also pointed out that large open air zoos make it hard for the kids to see and relate to the animals. We sat quietly for a moment.
Then I thought, it would be great if there were tunnels with observation domes among the animals. So I started to speak, but she beat me to it. You know, she said, if there were tunnels under the animal enclosures, and you could pop up in a dome every so often to view the animals, that would be the best of both. I could only agree and let it go.
No one wants to hear that you accidentally read their mind. After all, I don’t know for sure if I read her or if she read me. Judging by how often this is starting to happen, I am guessing it is me. I wonder how often this happens every day with people all over the world. Maybe we all are constantly hearing each other’s thoughts but never know it.
As we move through our busy lives busting about, working hard, who’s will are we doing? Which of our impulses and feelings are really our own? Is there a puppet master pulling the strings? Or are we all part of a human hive fulfilling some greater purpose of which we known nothing? Perhaps deep within us all is a receiver that is tuned to the signals of a collective whole or an outside entity.
Considering the amazing research I have read recently on psi, I wonder if our conversation attuned us to the same channel and we then somehow collectively processed the problem so that we shared the job of finding a solution. The accumulation of evidence suggests that psi is a low level but common ability which can be boosted by multiple people focusing together. Athletes, performers, politicians among others work to focus the will of the crowd to support their goals. In what other ways are our abilities harnessed without us even realizing it? Are bureaucracies almost alive with the persistent effort and support of their members? Are formal ceremonies more than just a recognition of an event or are they actually a transformational experience? Are researchers around the world working on the same research actually functioning as part of a network of analytical capacity? Is inspiration a flash from our subconscious or is it really the output from shared thought?
Don’t try, do
I have been reading about the research by Russel Tarq into remote viewing. His research among others, clearly found the best results came from learning to step aside from the analytically part of our thoughts. To me it seems automatic to try to name and categorize everything I experience. Remote viewing seems to be a way of learning to hover in a drifting state of mind to receive information, without trying to make sense of it. I find letting go and just opening up to be the hardest skill of all. So perhaps it is a more animal, instinctive part of our mind that taps into the intangible.
Yet, unlike remote viewers, I consistently get warnings without preparing but rarely get visual input. If I could get both the heads up warning and the visuals, my extra sense might be a whole lot more useful. I wanted to see if this was a skill I could develop. Since I clearly have to deal with the unknown anyway, why not learn to be intentionally part of the process.
I found some online randomized psi training tools that replicate the classic card guessing lab tests. After trying them out a few times, I was discouraged. Then I realized what was wrong. I was trying! Duh. So in that one moment of clarity, I just started clicking as fast as I could go on the cards in a 50 card set. When I had been averaging the expected chance results of about 25%, the results this time were 38% or far above chance. But as soon as I started feeling cocky, the results on the next few runs were back to chance. I was trying again. So I stopped the exercise in discouragement.
Later as I was playing a very simple fishing game on my tablet with my toddler, I was getting frustrated at how hard it was to get the timing right to catch the fish. You have to anticipate the vector of the fishing line and the future location of the fish so that they meet up exactly to be successful. To make the game even more difficult, if you miss the time it takes to reset will often cause you to miss a chance at another fish cruising by. I was only catching about 10% of the fish. Heeeyyyyy, light bulb! I closed my eyes and stopped trying. I left myself open to feel a very subtle kind of shift in my mind with no concrete thought or focus. Shift, tap, fish. Shift, tap, fish. For about three minutes, I was almost continuously catching virtual fish while keeping my eyes closed. Once again, as soon as I felt like I was the bomb, the effect disappeared.
As much as I would like to think I have got this whole thing figured out. It is clear that there is more than a lifetime of discipline needed to reach the open, serene, receptive state of mind needed to hear everything the universe has to say.
Passing Through
You don’t have to be from another planet to be an alien.
I used to find it very odd that unwelcome visitors from other countries were called aliens. Since I read so much sci-fi as a kid, I would get the two kinds mixed up. When I heard a news blub that mentioned aliens crossing the border, I would picture in my mind hordes of little green men invading from outer space. Ridiculously, since I most often heard about ‘wetbacks’, I usually embellished my inner news clip with amphibious frog-like Kermit aliens. This left me somewhat confused as to what the panic was all about as a herd of muppets couldn’t be all that dangerous.
Clearly, I was not properly indoctrinated into the local phobia regarding the most recent immigration wave. In the world of right wing politics and culture war hysteria that I grew up in, there were rigidly defined camps. You were either right or left (wrong) or rarely center (wimp). Given the available options, I wasn’t even on the map. If anything, I was vertical. All I wanted was out.
Perhaps if I could travel to the stars like the characters in my books, I could find the people like me. Over the years, I avidly followed the development and launch of the shuttle. I was sure that by the time I was an adult, star travel would be as common as flying across the country. Then came the Challenger disaster and years of cautious rebuilding. I watched and I waited, but it seemed that I would never find my way home.
Then one day, in my own backyard, I looked up and saw something that seemed impossible. A strange craft in the sky, flying above my house. It had a flat triangular tip in the front, a long narrow fuselage, and ended in narrow wings where the tail should be, but they bent up vertically in the middle. It moved like a plane, but it did not look like any plane I had ever seen on TV. Were the aliens finally here? I ran and grabbed my Kodak 110 and took as many grainy, low res photos as I could. I was ready for first contact!
Alas, this was not an alien craft, but instead an experimental plane designed by Burt Rutan. When years later, I heard that his team was competing for the X-prize for the first private craft to reach space, I was ecstatic. I followed his progress to victory in Space Ship One. Thanks to him and many other pioneers who have helped the private space race to finally begin, we are a few steps closer to reaching the stars. For some, it will be the final frontier. For others like me, it may be at last a place to belong.
Out of the blue
For me the awareness of a psi event happens when a focused thought enters my mind that does not fit the flow and pattern of what I had been thinking about. People refer to the ‘stream’ of consciousness, which can provide a helpful metaphor. As my internal ruminations drift along gradually flowing from one topic to another by association, at times something else will intrude. The new thought does not fit the flow and usually has a more defined substance than the usual aside thoughts. To me, it seems like an outside thought, but some have proposed that it is a deeper part of the self getting attention. Regardless of the source, it feels like a rock has fallen into the stream and created ripples that disrupt the smooth flow. A big event creates a big splash of awareness and completely displaces my prior thought process. A minor event barely is noticeable. After a long process of trying to ignore these irritating interruptions, I have learned that they are warnings I should pay attention to.
I have sometimes described the minor warnings as a feeling of ‘uh-oh’ when I do something that will soon create a problem. Being stubborn by nature, when I first became aware of the distinct sense of warning, I felt that I was being micro-managed or supervised by something. I did not like the idea of having something looking over my shoulder uninvited and telling me what not to do. I have issues with authority and being directed by anyone or anything. To me it seemed my independence of will was being impinged. I am not implying that there is a separate entity behind the warnings, only that they have a feel of otherness, rather than me-ness to them. So for a couple of years, I would argue with the gist of the warnings and go out of my way to not respond. My contrary Scottish heritage must be to blame. But time after time, as I tried to convince myself that the warning was silly and made no sense, it would in fact be valid. Finally, a warning came that could have been a matter of life and death, unfortunately I did not listen and could not have prevented the event, even if I had. I will tell that story in my next post.
Oddly enough, most of the warnings are so minor as to be more irritating than useful. For example, not long ago I was getting out of the car in my garage with a half full soda. I got an ‘uh-oh’ thought that I would spill it. So I decided to put the can down on the garage floor where it would be out of the way, while I got the rest of my stuff out of the car. As I moved around the car, I bumped into something that rolled across the floor. You guessed it. Right into the can and it tipped over. Arrrrgggghhhhhh! to quote Charlie Brown. What is the point! I can’t even begin to express how distracting, frustrating and useless it is to feel that sense of ‘uh-oh’ and then have to try and avoid something when I don’t know exactly what it is I am trying to avoid. Not to mention, who the heck cares if I spill soda on the floor of my garage. Surely, this is not the work of some supreme being or paranormal entity. If so, I have had the extreme misfortune of being ‘protected’ by the most nit-picky, OCD, over-eager guardian that ever existed. If there are non-human guides and guardians, don’t they have more important work to do?
Learning to use my earth suit
I always knew I was different, but did not know why. I felt like a changeling who had been switched at birth with a human child. I did not feel any form of kinship with the people around me. These odd, volatile people could not be my family. Although there were minor physical resemblances, I was nothing like them on the inside. My life felt wrong. It was as if I had an internal compass that pointed somewhere and I needed to get away. I could feel the pull of it every day. But I had no idea where I was supposed to be. I kept waiting for my real family to show up and take me away.
When I looked in the mirror, I could see a face but it did not feel like me. I could see a body, but it felt remote and I still have no emotional attachment to it. I often bump into things wherever I go because I don’t sense where my body is in relation to the stuff around me. This body continues to feel like a suit of clothing that I am wearing temporarily.
As I was trying to fall asleep one night in my teens, I felt a peaceful sense of drifting. It felt a little like falling asleep but more focused and aware. As I drifted, I had a memory of drifting similar to this, but no idea of when or where I remembered it from. I began to re-experienced a hyper-clear memory of gradually letting go. It felt so good, like a kind of relaxation only more of the mind than body. The peacefulness was complete and felt wonderful. I drifted further and further while holding just a tiny attachment to myself. Then finally I chose to let go completely. I left the body behind and became only peace. I knew with utter certainty that I had remembered dying. I could choose to leave again if I wanted. This was my freedom to experience this life only if I choose to.
So I understand why I am not attached to this body. It is not my first one and I will someday leave it behind. The body is not truly me. It is an incarnation of me and will serve it’s purpose. These human bodies are adequate, but do not come close to being enough to house our entire existence. Being human feels like a larval stage of development. Somehow we must complete this part of the cycle before emerging transformed in the next.
Having an earth suit is useful and I value the ability to experience the colors, textures, food, music, conversation and snuggles. But often all that input is overwhelming and distracting. Only in the calm and quiet of my own inner world do I ever feel like I am my true self. Maybe it is only the inner awareness that will continue past this life that is the truest part of me.
I have recently learned that there is a label for people like me. I am just beginning to explore what I am, and it has given me a new perspective. I know who I am and always have been. Finding a label could not change that. But it has given me some way to finally begin talking about my experience and what my place in this universe could be. Someday, I hope to have a homeland and a people. Until then, I will consider myself in exile and dream…
Visionary Explorer 