At different times in my life I would have answered either yes or no to that question. Then I had some very powerful experiences after which I could no longer answer no, but it still made me uncomfortable to answer yes. Why does the question, "Do you believe in God," make me so uncomfortable to answer in the affirmative? Because, according to the way that I now experience the world, the question makes no sense.
"Do you believe in God?" is a question posed by either a material materialist or a spiritual materialist. The question is asked to determine whether the responder is in agreement or out of agreement with the asker. If one believes in God, they also believe in a world of tangible things; they believe that the material world is not composed merely of the attraction of forces masquerading as solid particles, but that there are actual and everlasting things and actual and everlasting solid particles out there. And somewhere in the cosmos, among those myriad things, is God. Even if they claim to think that God is immaterial, they do not truly understand what that means. Something that is truly immaterial, has no boundaries, because there is no 'thingness' to separate 'it' from anything else. If God is truly immaterial, then God is everywhere. There is no place where God is not. That means that what we are, and what every creature is, at their essence, is consciousness; and our consciousness, which is us, has chosen to experience this life through the filter of a particular organism and a particular brain and culture; and although our consciousness is involved in all sorts of idiotic things, as we wend our way back to Divine consciousness; is still, in its pure essence, which is one's true self, an aspect of the Divine.
Why would we do such a thing? Why would we go from being totally unattached, omniscient and loving; knowing, not only how everything works, but how to subtly alter those workings to shape this universe as we see it; to a limited being who is working its way through this illusion, with a limited awareness and a tiny segment of actual knowledge? Because that is the experience that that being has chosen to live out. That is the drama that that being wants to go through, with it's pains of separation and its joys of union, with its frustration of disappointments and its satisfaction of fulfillments.
Being God is an existence of total service. God is one hundred per cent committed to this universe. Not committed to providing a perfect universe, in a cliche Garden of Eden way, but providing a perfectly challenging universe, where passionate people can have dreams and can struggle to realize their dreams, and can have the experience of fulfilling their dreams, or not. And for people to see that, ultimately, there is no pleasure left in their selfish dreams, that the only true pleasure is in providing happiness, or the chance for happiness for others. Not the total denial of personal pleasures, but the hungry pursuit and passionate desire for selfish pleasures, especially at the expense of others, yields not happiness, but isolation. All of this is part of the journey back to God consciousness.
Meanwhile, our self, not our impulses that can lead us anywhere, but our true self; the one that authorities refer to when they say "watch your self," because they know that if you would just take a moment to drop back into yourself, and observe the situation you are in from that perspective, then you will always do the right thing. Or when a therapist asks you to find a way to step back, when you are in the process of falling down a habitual rabbithole of negative emotions, and 'watch yourself,' or give yourself a story or a breathing exercise, or some kind of reminder, because the instant you are out of being reactive to the moment at hand, you are back in touch with your 'self'; and your true self, unencumbered by the heated up passion of the moment, will know exactly what to do.
To say, "Do you believe in God?" is a little like asking a fish if he believes in water. He will probably say no, because after all, he has never encountered anything that could be called 'no water'. Water is the context of every moment of his life. So he cannot experience it. If we were a species that never slept, we would have no concept for being awake. 'Awake' would have no meaning because we don't have an experience of not awake (of sleeping) to compare it to. Not that it's not there. It's everywhere. For a non-sleeping species it is the context of every moment of their lives. So they can say, I enjoyed going to the movies today, or I enjoyed lunch today, but they cannot say, I enjoyed being awake today because that concept cannot exist in their vocabulary.
When a fish is cold, it moves to where it's warm. But it doesn't have the experience of moving from cold water to warm water. Just cold to warm. It has no experience of the medium which is the context of all it's experience. Things are salty or not salty enough; things are forceful or not forceful enough; but they have no thought about the water being too salty or too fresh, or the tide pulling the water forcefully or not forcefully.
Catch a fish and let him flap around on the dock for a few moments, unable to breathe and quivering in a terrified panic, and it will then have an experience of 'no water,' Then you can release him back and he suddenly gets water as the context of his life; suddenly gets the great gift of water and his utter dependence on it. He not only knows it, but is forever and profoundly grateful for it.
I will not answer that question anymore. I will not say whether or not I believe in God. I will say that I am a spiritual spiritualist and your question makes no sense. A question that does make sense is, "Ultimately, do you think there is anything else but God?" And to that question I would answer comfortably and resoundingly, "NO!"
I welcome your feedback.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Sunday, October 14, 2018
A SPECIES
It's getting harder and harder for me to write these blog posts. The more I think about things, the more I see that they are connected and the harder it is to talk about any one thing without bringing in everything else. I also have been preoccupied with writing another play which will be produced in January. It's called 'A MISUNDERSTANDING' and it's very much about the themes of this blog, but it is also, I strongly believe, a compelling and funny and moving play. The last one I did on these topics was called 'DISINHERIT THE WIND.' It received some reviews like, "one of the most compelling plays to have ever been staged," "I wish I could give it ten stars but I am compelled to give it a maximum of five," "Come to the Ruby theater to find out what really great theater is all about." Now there were also criticisms. Everyone appreciated it, but some, especially those who were not very concerned with these big issues of 'Who am I,' What is life,' and 'Why we are here,' thought it went on a little too long. If you've never thought much about these big questions, being exposed to them, even in dramatic life and death arguments, may be more than you can handle. So, this new play is more accessible. The characters go through more interesting changes and it is just as much about relationships between people as it is about theories and facts. Also, importantly, it's quite a bit shorter. So here it is:
I know this blog is read in Jakarta, Helsinki and Buenos Aires, so it may not be convenient for you to make your way to the Ruby Theater in Los Angeles in January (it runs thru the beginning of February). But.....if you can make it and you are ordering tickets, use the code 'SEEKER' and you will get a half price ticket.
So now, let's talk about a species and just what that means. First of all, and obviously, it means a group of creatures that share similar characteristics. This, in and of itself, is a powerful argument against Darwinian evolution. Some of these species have shared the same characteristics for hundreds of millions of years. According to Darwinian evolution, characteristics are retained because they give a survival advantage over other creatures. Supposedly, these characteristics have been arrived at by a series of random mutations, which just happened to give such a survival advantage. And as these tiny advantages accumulated, a new species was formed. The only such occurence to have ever happened, to our actual knowledge and experience, was the mutation that causes sickle-cell anemia in malaria infested countries. The malarial parasite, which breeds within red blood cells, cannot breed within a sickled red blood cell and with no place to settle and reproduce, is eventually eliminated. Sickled red blood cells are also poor carriers of hemoglobin molecules, so they cannot distribute oxygen efficiently through the body. A person with one sickle-celled gene has a mild case of anemia, but is also able to survive childhood malaria. A person with two sickle-celled genes has severe anemia and dies before he or she even has a chance to contract malaria. This is hardly a recipe for building whole new worlds of species and phyla and kingdoms of creatures. This mutation, like all mutations, is either a disability or a neutrality, not an improvement. The human organism is either unaffected or damaged by mutation. It just so happens, in the case of the malarial parasite, that this damage makes another and more deadly disease survivable.
What is the survival advantage to having a five pointed maple leaf? As opposed to a six pointed or four pointed leaf? Look around you in a field or a forest. You see a riot of shapes and colors. Do you really believe that each of these has a survival advantage over all the others and that is why they have been retained for millions of years? If survival were the only issue, we would all have settled on the most survivable shape, the most survivable covering for our bodies, the sharpest teeth, the strongest jaws, the fastest reflexes, etc. In other words there would be nothing delicate, or beautiful, or remarkably varied about our flora and fauna. It would be a very drab, efficient world of creatures who had no joy in life, but just were there because they had 'survived.' I don't see that. Except when corrupt human leaders make their subjects' lives so grim that their only issue and desire is daily survival, I see a world of creatures enjoying life. Yes, there probably is some algorithm that keeps birds flying in formation. And, also, birds fly in formation because they love to fly in formation. Flowers turn to the sun to get energy, and, also, flowers love the sun. How many creatures on this planet love the warmth of the sun? How many love the coolness of water, to drink or to immerse themelves in, on a hot day? How many carnivores love to hunt? How many creatures love their offspring, even for a short time? How many creatures love the act of reproduction? Our purpose is not to survive. Our purpose, the way our lives have been designed, regardless of what species one happens to be, is to enjoy, to love, to relish this experience. Survival is a necessary condition for us to continue having that experience, but it is not the reason for it.
If Darwin were right, each creature would proceed over the generations with their own unique set of mutations and everyone would be different. There would be no species with identifiable taxa, or characteristics, that have survived for thousands of generation. We would all be a mish mosh.
Species not only share taxa, they share an understanding of the world. A species is a way of experiencing the world, and each member of a species has some understanding of each other. That is part of the joy of these lives that were designed for us. We enjoy companionship, whether in the form of hanging out on street corners, or swimming in schools, or flying in formation, or working together on building a hive. The mutual understanding between species members allows each one to not die of loneliness.
Also, although we understand each other, we don't do so completely. We are all very slightly different from each other and, yes, that does help us survive various microbial invasions and threats, but it also means that we have the capacity to surprise each other. This capacity to surprise one another makes our lives interesting and our relationships exciting. So, yes, it makes us, as a species, better able to withstand environmental and microbial threats, but it also makes our lives more exciting. We survive microbes, but we also don't die of boredom, as we would if the behavior of each of our species mates was absolutely predictable.
Also, although we understand each other, we don't do so completely. We are all very slightly different from each other and, yes, that does help us survive various microbial invasions and threats, but it also means that we have the capacity to surprise each other. This capacity to surprise one another makes our lives interesting and our relationships exciting. So, yes, it makes us, as a species, better able to withstand environmental and microbial threats, but it also makes our lives more exciting. We survive microbes, but we also don't die of boredom, as we would if the behavior of each of our species mates was absolutely predictable.
As a species we also share a set of desires. A human child has a powerful desire to walk after about a year. This desire is connected by design to their developing eyesight and knowledge. The desire to walk correlates with their ability to identify objects that they know and that they would like to get closer to. This period also corresponds to an enormous growing curiousity about the world. But of course it would. This is the particular world that you chose to experience when you attached to this organism, so, of course, you want to touch and see and smell and listen to every part of it. This is where and when you wanted to be born and the family and the situation that you wanted to be born into.
As opposed to a human newborn, a horse newborn, a foal, has an overwhelming urge to stand up a few seconds after it arrives here. This is connected to its overwhelming desire to suckle its mother's teits, to drink its mother's milk. And those cannot be reached unless the foal stands up. So the desire, the design of the legs at birth, the level of muscular coordination at birth, the recognition of one's mother, the knowledge of how to suckle and the desire for horse milk over any other, are all part of the inheritance, above and beyond genes, that is part of the designed life of the species called horse.
And every species is designed as a particular way of life. Every mammalian species recognizes its mother and craves her milk. And the milk of each species is the absolutely perfect food, nutritionally, for that particular species. The adult members of the species seek out, crave, consider most delicious, the very things that are the most nutritionally beneficial for them. The dung beetle unwaveringly makes its way through the kitchen, past the smells of baking pies and roasting meats, to get to where the truly delicious smells are coming from, the septic tank. Dung, for the dung beetle, also happens to be its most nutritionally beneficial food. What we consider delicious and attractive, or dangerous and repulsive, with some individual differences, particularly in humans, is also part of the inheritance, beyond genes, of a species.
Members of a species learn from their parents and other mature members of that species. What is remarkable is how well they learn. We know from our human experience that learning cannot take place if there is no interest in the learning. So each young species member is born with an interest, a desire, to learn the things that they will be taught, and a desire to do these things well, and a pride when they actually accomplish the goal of doing them well. You think otherwise? You have been taught, what? That instincts are a substitute for experience? Really? The instinct that we most often discuss is the fight or flight instinct. Yes, good fighting or good fleeing will help one's survival. But that depends on an accurate perception of a threat. The instinct is not randomly, or continuously kicked in. It starts, if it is to be effective, by an accurate assessment of a threat. Otherwise, the creature would be expending lots of wasted energy on imagined or exaggerated threats, which would take away energy from when he or she really needs it. Also, to be 'good' at fighting or fleeing, is a total act of consciousness. It means that you are reacting swiftly and accurately at each moment to what the prey or the predator is doing. Rather than a substitute for consciousness, the fight or flight instinct is an instigator of a hyper consciousness.
A species, then, is a way of life, a way of experiencing the world and perceiving the world, and is designed with a set of innate desires that are there from birth and unfold at appropriate times, that coincide with the tasks that are required of the species member and make the things that you do and the interactions that you have pleasurable and interesting. That's why you chose to be a squirrel in the first place. Why would you do such a thing? Because each of these choices has their own joys and dramas, each of them is very short lived in terms of our eternal lives, and each of them has something for us to learn in our continued development.
If you have any comments or questions regarding this post or the sanity of it's author, please let me know and I will try to address your concerns. Thanks.
And every species is designed as a particular way of life. Every mammalian species recognizes its mother and craves her milk. And the milk of each species is the absolutely perfect food, nutritionally, for that particular species. The adult members of the species seek out, crave, consider most delicious, the very things that are the most nutritionally beneficial for them. The dung beetle unwaveringly makes its way through the kitchen, past the smells of baking pies and roasting meats, to get to where the truly delicious smells are coming from, the septic tank. Dung, for the dung beetle, also happens to be its most nutritionally beneficial food. What we consider delicious and attractive, or dangerous and repulsive, with some individual differences, particularly in humans, is also part of the inheritance, beyond genes, of a species.
Members of a species learn from their parents and other mature members of that species. What is remarkable is how well they learn. We know from our human experience that learning cannot take place if there is no interest in the learning. So each young species member is born with an interest, a desire, to learn the things that they will be taught, and a desire to do these things well, and a pride when they actually accomplish the goal of doing them well. You think otherwise? You have been taught, what? That instincts are a substitute for experience? Really? The instinct that we most often discuss is the fight or flight instinct. Yes, good fighting or good fleeing will help one's survival. But that depends on an accurate perception of a threat. The instinct is not randomly, or continuously kicked in. It starts, if it is to be effective, by an accurate assessment of a threat. Otherwise, the creature would be expending lots of wasted energy on imagined or exaggerated threats, which would take away energy from when he or she really needs it. Also, to be 'good' at fighting or fleeing, is a total act of consciousness. It means that you are reacting swiftly and accurately at each moment to what the prey or the predator is doing. Rather than a substitute for consciousness, the fight or flight instinct is an instigator of a hyper consciousness.
A species, then, is a way of life, a way of experiencing the world and perceiving the world, and is designed with a set of innate desires that are there from birth and unfold at appropriate times, that coincide with the tasks that are required of the species member and make the things that you do and the interactions that you have pleasurable and interesting. That's why you chose to be a squirrel in the first place. Why would you do such a thing? Because each of these choices has their own joys and dramas, each of them is very short lived in terms of our eternal lives, and each of them has something for us to learn in our continued development.
If you have any comments or questions regarding this post or the sanity of it's author, please let me know and I will try to address your concerns. Thanks.
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
HOW IT WORKS
In an attempt not to be redundant, I will refer you back to all posts that discuss yin and yang: YIN, YANG AND BEYONG!, HIGGS AND CREATION, WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH MATTER,
PARTICLE FEVER, THE COMPLETE THEORY OF NOTHING, and UNDERSTANDING THE QUANTUM. It would have been more convenient if I knew everything that I know now when I first started writing this blog. Then, I could condense all this information in one long post and I wouldn't have to keep adding on. Convenience aside, fortunately one thing leads to another and the more I write and think about these topics the more insights I get. So here goes:
Every naturally formed object, from protons, neutrons, atoms, molecules, cells, multi-celled organisms, planets, stars, galaxies and the universe itself, is more yang at the center and more yin at the periphery. Yang is that force that contracts into itself. It pulls every part of an object toward the center (mass) and also pulls everything surrounding the object toward the center (gravity). Pure yang is a force, not a thing. Things emanate from forces, rather than forces emanating from things. Things, the physical universe, every observable phenomena, is a result of the interplay of yang with yin. Yin is expansive. Yin is also not in the physical universe. It moves at infinite speed, so is inconceivably fast and absolutely still at the same time, since it takes no time for yin to traverse the universe and return to the same identical space. There is also no matter, no thingness to yin; so there is no friction or inertia to impede its velocity, and no separation between one part of pure yin and another. Pure yin is everywhere that pure yang and yin and yang that is already bound (the physical universe) is not. It exists in all the interstices between yin and yang combinations that we call particles. It instantly surrounds pure yang whenever pure yang is unbound and keeps pure yang from contracting into itself and from combining with the nearest large pure yang. In the same way, pure yang at the center of an object keeps pure yin from dispersing at infinite speed through the universe. Yin and yang do not so much attract each other as they entrap each other. The real attraction is between smaller yang and larger yang. The seeming resistance between yang and yang, which in some cases is called 'Coulumb's Law,' is really the strength of the yin force surrounding each object and resisting their union.
While yang is referred to, variously, as mass or gravity; there is little acknowledgement in Western physics for the yin force. Expansion is seen as a residue of the Big Bang. Yet the expansive force was there in an extremely contracted form prior to the Big Bang. The Big Bang did not create the expansive force, it liberated it. The expansive force, yin, is spread everywhere. We function within the yin force, yet it is so dispersed and ubiquitous that we do not notice it. Everything grows out from the center. So we are born in a yang state with yin forces bounded by yang and holding yin back. When yin gets strong enough it bursts through and we get rapid expansion. This is true in all explosions including the Big Bang and in the explosive growth of every living thing.
When yin and yang combine they form spirals. Experientially, we are a combination of yin and yang. When we are too yang, we are too concentrated, too focused, too tense. We are obsessed with time and have little patience. We urgently want to accomplish things, but in our urgency we may create difficulties for ourselves by offending others, or lacking the flexibility to deal with any obstacles to our goals. When we are too yin we cannot focus, have lots of circular thoughts and laziness. When we do manage to entertain a goal, we cannot accomplish it because we are quickly distracted by whatever is happening in the space around us. A balanced person is one who achieves her goals by staying with them and, at the same time, having the flexibility to adjust to whatever stumbling blocks there are along the way. The goals one chooses are also reflective of yin and yang.
The real attraction in the universe is not yin to yang, but small yang to larger yang. When yang is liberated, it is instantly surrounded by yin. Yin keeps yang from combining with the nearest stronger yang and keeps the strongest yang from twisting into itself and disappearing into an alternate universe. Yin and yang entrap each other, rather than attract each other. The balance of yin pushing away from yang, but unable to escape the power of yang, and yang pulling in against yin, but not able to contract everything into itself because of the power of yin; this balance creates the illusion of particles and larger things. Things have dimension because of yin. Things have boundaries because of yang.
Yin is too dispersed for us to notice. All noticeable force is yang. What we call mass is yang, the inward pull of an object. Mass is not a function of matter. Matter is an illusion of yang force bound by yin force. There is a space between the inward pull of yang and the outward push of yin. The inward pull of yang is too strong in this space, so anything that enters it is crushed into yang, which combines with the central yang that is already there, and yin, which either becomes bound by the peripheral yin of the object, if more yin is needed to make balance with the yang core, or is expelled. We cannot observe this expelled yin unless it is attached to some yang. The smallest amount of yang that could be attached to expelled yin is that which is found in electro-magnetic waves and light. This tiny amount of yang is too weak to be detected in our atmosphere, but it is the reason that light bends when passing larger stars and the center of galaxies.
Yang is also not a thing. At the center of black holes is nothing, no thing. The yang force is so strong there that all atoms and molecules are crushed into their yin and yang elements. There is a black hole at the center of every galaxy. The galaxy is the yin periphery of the central black hole. At the center of the universe is a black hole. All the galaxies of the universe are the yin periphery of this central black hole. That is why the universe is over 95 billion light years in diameter. Everything moves at light speed, but yin, which is not a thing, moves at infinite speed. The event horizon of the central black hole of the universe is a sphere 67 billion light years in diameter. The physical universe surrounds this event horizon and is the outer layer of this sphere, fourteen billion light years deep.
Negative particles, like electrons, move at light speed, and keep moving in all directions until they come upon an imbalanced particle with which they can make balance, like mosquitoes frantically moving in every direction looking for something that they can eat. But negative does not attract positive. Negative is attracted to positively imbalanced particles. Once the yin buffer is balanced with the yang center, then yin tries to pull away from the yang center.
Pure yang is the source of all energy. It is also the hand tool of the Atman, the cosmic consciousness, Infinity, or whatever you prefer to call it. I will use God. God places a certain strength of yang and a certain shape of yang and a spiral of yin instantly surrounds it. We know a sub atomic particle is there because we can identify a certain spin, a certain mass and a certain charge in a discrete area. This measurement is a result of whatever instrument we are using to make this measurement, which has the power to collapse a wave (which is a particle in its more yin state) into a particle (which is a particle in its more yang state). There is no wave/particle duality. Everything is a wave until we particularize it with our measuring devices. Our measuring devices include the tandem of human brains, eyes and nervous systems. We collapse waves into particles. Every species has their own way of doing that. So every species sees a different universe, and defines the objects of the universe in a species specific way. A species is a way of experiencing the universe.
The embryological development of any organism is a system of moving yang objects from the center toward the periphery. Every organism has their own ways of organizing yin energy to carry these yang objects away from the center. Once they are moved away, they are surrounded by their own yin periphery and the organism becomes more complex. With the consumption of more yin and yang energy (nutrients) the embryo then has enough yin energy to move the new added yang energy even more toward the periphery where it is again surrounded by a yin buffer and new outposts are formed.
Everything is spinning. Take a weighted rope and spin it in your hand so that it makes a circle. You can feel the centrifugal force of the spinning rope in the palm of your hand. But you are keeping the rope on its circular path by exerting a countering centripedal force in your thumb. The spin of an object, as measured, is the spin of the yin periphery. But it is held in place by the centripedal force exerted by the yang center. This is not measured as spin. It is measured as mass. Without a physical rope or a physical hand, this is exactly what is happening in every atom and subatomic particle, every solar system, every galaxy, and in the entire universe.
There is no dark matter or dark energy. These are two constructs to try to explain the discrepancies between calculations based on a Big Bang explosion and the actual movement of matter. What is neglected is the enormous black hole in the center of the universe. The great pull of that black hole slows down the expansion of every galaxy near it. That is the explanation that eludes the scientists who created 'dark matter.' Every galaxy much farther away from the central black hole moves away much faster, which is the explanation that eludes the scientists who created 'dark energy.' All our calculations, including the speed of light, are made from our perspective, feeling the expansive force as we feel it, as measured against the contractive force of the central black hole, as we feel it.
If God interferes in your life, He/She/It/We makes a subtle adjustment to the yang energy at your center. That adjustment causes a shift in the entire yin periphery of your organism. Your energy is liberated, your love is liberated, and the things that you desire are no longer limited to the selfish dreams that you previously had. There is a name for this in every religion. In Christianity it is called, 'being touched by the spirit.'
God is not a thing, but if you prefer to think of God in a personal way, then yang is God's power, will and concentration and yin is God's love, beauty and compassion.
I am going to publish this article now, but I will be adding to it and updating it for some time.
Please feel free to comment.
PARTICLE FEVER, THE COMPLETE THEORY OF NOTHING, and UNDERSTANDING THE QUANTUM. It would have been more convenient if I knew everything that I know now when I first started writing this blog. Then, I could condense all this information in one long post and I wouldn't have to keep adding on. Convenience aside, fortunately one thing leads to another and the more I write and think about these topics the more insights I get. So here goes:
Every naturally formed object, from protons, neutrons, atoms, molecules, cells, multi-celled organisms, planets, stars, galaxies and the universe itself, is more yang at the center and more yin at the periphery. Yang is that force that contracts into itself. It pulls every part of an object toward the center (mass) and also pulls everything surrounding the object toward the center (gravity). Pure yang is a force, not a thing. Things emanate from forces, rather than forces emanating from things. Things, the physical universe, every observable phenomena, is a result of the interplay of yang with yin. Yin is expansive. Yin is also not in the physical universe. It moves at infinite speed, so is inconceivably fast and absolutely still at the same time, since it takes no time for yin to traverse the universe and return to the same identical space. There is also no matter, no thingness to yin; so there is no friction or inertia to impede its velocity, and no separation between one part of pure yin and another. Pure yin is everywhere that pure yang and yin and yang that is already bound (the physical universe) is not. It exists in all the interstices between yin and yang combinations that we call particles. It instantly surrounds pure yang whenever pure yang is unbound and keeps pure yang from contracting into itself and from combining with the nearest large pure yang. In the same way, pure yang at the center of an object keeps pure yin from dispersing at infinite speed through the universe. Yin and yang do not so much attract each other as they entrap each other. The real attraction is between smaller yang and larger yang. The seeming resistance between yang and yang, which in some cases is called 'Coulumb's Law,' is really the strength of the yin force surrounding each object and resisting their union.
While yang is referred to, variously, as mass or gravity; there is little acknowledgement in Western physics for the yin force. Expansion is seen as a residue of the Big Bang. Yet the expansive force was there in an extremely contracted form prior to the Big Bang. The Big Bang did not create the expansive force, it liberated it. The expansive force, yin, is spread everywhere. We function within the yin force, yet it is so dispersed and ubiquitous that we do not notice it. Everything grows out from the center. So we are born in a yang state with yin forces bounded by yang and holding yin back. When yin gets strong enough it bursts through and we get rapid expansion. This is true in all explosions including the Big Bang and in the explosive growth of every living thing.
When yin and yang combine they form spirals. Experientially, we are a combination of yin and yang. When we are too yang, we are too concentrated, too focused, too tense. We are obsessed with time and have little patience. We urgently want to accomplish things, but in our urgency we may create difficulties for ourselves by offending others, or lacking the flexibility to deal with any obstacles to our goals. When we are too yin we cannot focus, have lots of circular thoughts and laziness. When we do manage to entertain a goal, we cannot accomplish it because we are quickly distracted by whatever is happening in the space around us. A balanced person is one who achieves her goals by staying with them and, at the same time, having the flexibility to adjust to whatever stumbling blocks there are along the way. The goals one chooses are also reflective of yin and yang.
The real attraction in the universe is not yin to yang, but small yang to larger yang. When yang is liberated, it is instantly surrounded by yin. Yin keeps yang from combining with the nearest stronger yang and keeps the strongest yang from twisting into itself and disappearing into an alternate universe. Yin and yang entrap each other, rather than attract each other. The balance of yin pushing away from yang, but unable to escape the power of yang, and yang pulling in against yin, but not able to contract everything into itself because of the power of yin; this balance creates the illusion of particles and larger things. Things have dimension because of yin. Things have boundaries because of yang.
Yin is too dispersed for us to notice. All noticeable force is yang. What we call mass is yang, the inward pull of an object. Mass is not a function of matter. Matter is an illusion of yang force bound by yin force. There is a space between the inward pull of yang and the outward push of yin. The inward pull of yang is too strong in this space, so anything that enters it is crushed into yang, which combines with the central yang that is already there, and yin, which either becomes bound by the peripheral yin of the object, if more yin is needed to make balance with the yang core, or is expelled. We cannot observe this expelled yin unless it is attached to some yang. The smallest amount of yang that could be attached to expelled yin is that which is found in electro-magnetic waves and light. This tiny amount of yang is too weak to be detected in our atmosphere, but it is the reason that light bends when passing larger stars and the center of galaxies.
Yang is also not a thing. At the center of black holes is nothing, no thing. The yang force is so strong there that all atoms and molecules are crushed into their yin and yang elements. There is a black hole at the center of every galaxy. The galaxy is the yin periphery of the central black hole. At the center of the universe is a black hole. All the galaxies of the universe are the yin periphery of this central black hole. That is why the universe is over 95 billion light years in diameter. Everything moves at light speed, but yin, which is not a thing, moves at infinite speed. The event horizon of the central black hole of the universe is a sphere 67 billion light years in diameter. The physical universe surrounds this event horizon and is the outer layer of this sphere, fourteen billion light years deep.
Negative particles, like electrons, move at light speed, and keep moving in all directions until they come upon an imbalanced particle with which they can make balance, like mosquitoes frantically moving in every direction looking for something that they can eat. But negative does not attract positive. Negative is attracted to positively imbalanced particles. Once the yin buffer is balanced with the yang center, then yin tries to pull away from the yang center.
Pure yang is the source of all energy. It is also the hand tool of the Atman, the cosmic consciousness, Infinity, or whatever you prefer to call it. I will use God. God places a certain strength of yang and a certain shape of yang and a spiral of yin instantly surrounds it. We know a sub atomic particle is there because we can identify a certain spin, a certain mass and a certain charge in a discrete area. This measurement is a result of whatever instrument we are using to make this measurement, which has the power to collapse a wave (which is a particle in its more yin state) into a particle (which is a particle in its more yang state). There is no wave/particle duality. Everything is a wave until we particularize it with our measuring devices. Our measuring devices include the tandem of human brains, eyes and nervous systems. We collapse waves into particles. Every species has their own way of doing that. So every species sees a different universe, and defines the objects of the universe in a species specific way. A species is a way of experiencing the universe.
The embryological development of any organism is a system of moving yang objects from the center toward the periphery. Every organism has their own ways of organizing yin energy to carry these yang objects away from the center. Once they are moved away, they are surrounded by their own yin periphery and the organism becomes more complex. With the consumption of more yin and yang energy (nutrients) the embryo then has enough yin energy to move the new added yang energy even more toward the periphery where it is again surrounded by a yin buffer and new outposts are formed.
Everything is spinning. Take a weighted rope and spin it in your hand so that it makes a circle. You can feel the centrifugal force of the spinning rope in the palm of your hand. But you are keeping the rope on its circular path by exerting a countering centripedal force in your thumb. The spin of an object, as measured, is the spin of the yin periphery. But it is held in place by the centripedal force exerted by the yang center. This is not measured as spin. It is measured as mass. Without a physical rope or a physical hand, this is exactly what is happening in every atom and subatomic particle, every solar system, every galaxy, and in the entire universe.
There is no dark matter or dark energy. These are two constructs to try to explain the discrepancies between calculations based on a Big Bang explosion and the actual movement of matter. What is neglected is the enormous black hole in the center of the universe. The great pull of that black hole slows down the expansion of every galaxy near it. That is the explanation that eludes the scientists who created 'dark matter.' Every galaxy much farther away from the central black hole moves away much faster, which is the explanation that eludes the scientists who created 'dark energy.' All our calculations, including the speed of light, are made from our perspective, feeling the expansive force as we feel it, as measured against the contractive force of the central black hole, as we feel it.
If God interferes in your life, He/She/It/We makes a subtle adjustment to the yang energy at your center. That adjustment causes a shift in the entire yin periphery of your organism. Your energy is liberated, your love is liberated, and the things that you desire are no longer limited to the selfish dreams that you previously had. There is a name for this in every religion. In Christianity it is called, 'being touched by the spirit.'
God is not a thing, but if you prefer to think of God in a personal way, then yang is God's power, will and concentration and yin is God's love, beauty and compassion.
I am going to publish this article now, but I will be adding to it and updating it for some time.
Please feel free to comment.
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
DESTINY
My wife and I met at a natural food store called 'Erewhon' in California. I had a long history with Erewhon by this time. Erewhon started in Boston. It was begun by Michio Kushi and his wife Aveline Kushi. Their life long dream was to improve the mental and spiritual health of people through diet and the ancient understanding of yin and yang. I moved to Boston to study with Michio and in less than a year I had created a pushcart, which was really a steam table on wheels that sold natural food dishes, as inspired by the Kushis, on the street in front of Boston University and ,within the next year, also in front of M.I.T. and Government Center, a very busy commercial district in the heart of downtown Boston. Years later I was a frequenter of Erewhon in Los Angeles. Angela, my wife to be, had just arrived in town within the last week or ten days. She originally wanted to get a fill in job at the cafe next door, called 'The Nowhere Cafe.' When she went over there to apply she found out that the cafe was not hiring, but the Erewhon Store, which was a sister store to the Nowhere Cafe, (Erewhon spells nowhere backwards....sort of); that the Erewhon store was hiring. Anyway she was working there at Erewhon for about a week behind the soup counter when I arrived looking for a bowl of soup, which I found, and, also, looking for a life companion, which I also found. As I write this, Angela, that's her name, and I have been together for thirty-four years. The soup, of course, was dispensed with within the hour.
What were the chances of us ever meeting? I had gone back and forth about staying in LA or moving back to New York. Angela had her own back and forths about leaving the midwest and coming out West to California. Would I have gone into Erewhon if I didn't have a long history with it? Would she have been working there if the Nowhere Cafe, which I had never been to, had a job opening? There are so many seemingly serendipitous events that happen in the getting together of any couple. And yet, so many couples are convinced that the other was the one person that they were destined to meet. How could that be true? Yet how come that feeling of 'destiny' is experienced so strongly in so many people. Many widows and widowers are convinced that their deceased was the one person that they were destined to be with and that kind of 'rightness' in relationship and the feeling of seeking a shared destiny is no longer available to them after the death of their spouse.
I don't believe that we are receiving some sort of over arching guidance that determines all the specifics, going back for generations, that resulted in the particular, unique personality, that is you, to encounter and become enamored of that particular unique individual who, also, has been the recipient an endless series of seemingly serendipitous events, not only in her life, but in the lives of her ancestors, that resulted in her being the particular person that she is and landing in the particular place that she happened to be in at a certain 'special' moment.
Does that make me a cynic. Not at all. I believe that we are all moving back to Oneness. That we are separate aspects of One being and we chose to experience this world of separation, but that we are ultimately destined to return to the Oneness from which we came. This journey back to union, which can and often is experienced with another person, but can be experienced with oneself and one's God, or with a cherished activity, or with an environment, a culture, a pet, a hobby; this feeling is so special, seeming to be the experience that we were born for; this feeling that we were meant to be in this relationship and the more we explore it, the closer to Oneness we get, is the most profound movement that we make in this life. And it is our destiny to travel this road with whomever or whatever we are travelling it with. We were lucky to find this person, or activity, or subculture, where we had enough compatibility to begin this journey. But the journey itself, that is a destiny that we share with all creatures and the journey itself, can be made in many ways and with many people. I am not undervaluing it, at all. It is every bit as special as you think it is. And I believe in monogamous relationships, through which an understanding can deepen between two people and oneness is realized over time at deeper and deeper levels. Yet, it is not exclusive. We have this capacity to take this journey with anyone else and with whatever else is open to take this journey with us. Our destiny, which we feel so strongly, is to move back toward Oneness; and we experience that with anyone that we are compatible enough to feel it with.
The comment lamp is lit. Let me hear from you.
What were the chances of us ever meeting? I had gone back and forth about staying in LA or moving back to New York. Angela had her own back and forths about leaving the midwest and coming out West to California. Would I have gone into Erewhon if I didn't have a long history with it? Would she have been working there if the Nowhere Cafe, which I had never been to, had a job opening? There are so many seemingly serendipitous events that happen in the getting together of any couple. And yet, so many couples are convinced that the other was the one person that they were destined to meet. How could that be true? Yet how come that feeling of 'destiny' is experienced so strongly in so many people. Many widows and widowers are convinced that their deceased was the one person that they were destined to be with and that kind of 'rightness' in relationship and the feeling of seeking a shared destiny is no longer available to them after the death of their spouse.
I don't believe that we are receiving some sort of over arching guidance that determines all the specifics, going back for generations, that resulted in the particular, unique personality, that is you, to encounter and become enamored of that particular unique individual who, also, has been the recipient an endless series of seemingly serendipitous events, not only in her life, but in the lives of her ancestors, that resulted in her being the particular person that she is and landing in the particular place that she happened to be in at a certain 'special' moment.
Does that make me a cynic. Not at all. I believe that we are all moving back to Oneness. That we are separate aspects of One being and we chose to experience this world of separation, but that we are ultimately destined to return to the Oneness from which we came. This journey back to union, which can and often is experienced with another person, but can be experienced with oneself and one's God, or with a cherished activity, or with an environment, a culture, a pet, a hobby; this feeling is so special, seeming to be the experience that we were born for; this feeling that we were meant to be in this relationship and the more we explore it, the closer to Oneness we get, is the most profound movement that we make in this life. And it is our destiny to travel this road with whomever or whatever we are travelling it with. We were lucky to find this person, or activity, or subculture, where we had enough compatibility to begin this journey. But the journey itself, that is a destiny that we share with all creatures and the journey itself, can be made in many ways and with many people. I am not undervaluing it, at all. It is every bit as special as you think it is. And I believe in monogamous relationships, through which an understanding can deepen between two people and oneness is realized over time at deeper and deeper levels. Yet, it is not exclusive. We have this capacity to take this journey with anyone else and with whatever else is open to take this journey with us. Our destiny, which we feel so strongly, is to move back toward Oneness; and we experience that with anyone that we are compatible enough to feel it with.
The comment lamp is lit. Let me hear from you.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
IMPERFECT WORLD
I will be using the word God in this post. Don't get nervous. By God I mean the Atman, the cosmic consciousness, Infinity, etc., not an old white man with a beard and a big brain.
People ask, if God made the world, why did he/she/it/we make it with such imperfections? These people are understanding God as separate from themselves. Dawkins wrote a book called 'The God Delusion.' There is a God delusion, but not the one that Dawkins writes about. The real God delusion is that there is anything else but God. Everything else, the entire physical universe and everything that separates us, physically, emotionally, and spiritually from God is a delusion, or rather, an illusion. And it is that very illusion, that is God's creation, that allows people to live exciting, creative, adventurous lives within it.
God is within us and without us. What we observe is only one part of God. So is the observer. Should this world that we observe be perfect? The Garden of Eden is a retirement home. There is literally a retirement home by that name on Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn. In a "perfect' world, in a Garden of Eden, there is nothing to do; everything is already perfect and there are people (staff) there to return it to perfection when it is not. But perfection is a very dull affair, indeed. There is nothing that could be improved upon, nothing to accomplish. Therefore, no drama, no excitement, no passion, nothing to live for.
Yes, there are imperfections in the observable world and those are in perfect balance with humans that are born with powerful but unobservable passions to rectify those imperfections. We have exciting lives fighting for justice in a world where injustice exists. We struggle to create beauty in a world where ugliness exists. We fight to unfold and disseminate knowledge in a world where ignorance exists. We labor mightily and inspirationally to bring health to a world where physical suffering exists. And if these innate, divine passions are not enough to solve all the world's problems, there are also humans born with a passion to inspire others to greater passion. And what they accomplish, these passionate people, is never enough, and that is perfect, because there are future generations of people bursting into life at every single moment, and these people are hoping to lead passionate lives, themselves; something that they could not do being born into a world where everything was already perfect, i.e. a retirement home.
And don't think I am talking about an elite few brilliant and passionate politicians, artists and scientists. I am also talking about the billions of people who struggle to make this world, or the world of their families, or the world of their neighbors, a little better. Creating a family is hard work. If it wasn't, if your children were already perfect, if you had hired help to change their diapers, you had enough narcotics to sleep through the birth of your child, without suffering, born into enough money to support your child without working, etc., etc., then you would still struggle to find a way to make your child even happier and more secure in that context. But if your child were perfectly happy and perfectly secure already, with no input from you, then you didn't really have the experience of parenting, which has to do with the efforts we make to improve the lives of our children and the deep, abiding satisfaction that we get and love that we feel, after making that investment, in seeing them turn out, not perfect, but fine, loving, people, ready and passionate to make their contribution to a world that still needs it.
This is the game of life. If the world ever achieved perfection, it would end. When, and if, that should ever happen, then we would return to the cosmic consciousness where the only thing left to do would be to create a new universe which, by necessity, would have to include the imperfections needed to make it a truly exciting, challenging place for humans to live in.
What of those victims who do suffer and do not, themselves, have the where with all to improve their situation? You have to think bigger and wider. They are there to offer you an opportunity to do something for them. They are there to teach you to deepen your compassion They are there for parents to broaden and deepen their understanding of love. And they are there to learn something about this experience themselves, which is that it still can be transcended by love, that you still have innumerable blessings beyond the few that you are lacking. You can think and, miraculously, your brain throws up to your consciousnes, from somewhere hidden among a hundred billion neurons, the very things you want to think about the moment you want to think about them. Now that is miraculous, whatever else your body can or cannot do. Every movement you make, even if your movements are limited, are made possible because of millions of neurons linking to millions of other neurons in a precise path that sparks the contraction and release of billions of muscle molecules that are instantly responsive to your moment to moment desire to move. Whatever you can do with and within your body, is miraculous and you have never lost the capacity to love. And if you are alive, in whatever condition, you have not lost that most cherished of abilities, the ability to experience.
And of course consciousnes is not generated. Consciousness is. So these lives that we lead are not our only shot. We are here to learn something and we will get many more shots as we learn how to overcome challenges, how to find the love within the challenge, and how to discard the passions that lead us to further isolation and selfishness, and keep or develop those which lead us to greater love and connection.
The understanding of a transcendent God does not lead us to passivity. We too are God's creations and we have a passion within us that God has placed there and a world around us that is the perfect external environment within which to lead our passionate lives.
The Comment Lamp is lit. Please let me know what you think.
People ask, if God made the world, why did he/she/it/we make it with such imperfections? These people are understanding God as separate from themselves. Dawkins wrote a book called 'The God Delusion.' There is a God delusion, but not the one that Dawkins writes about. The real God delusion is that there is anything else but God. Everything else, the entire physical universe and everything that separates us, physically, emotionally, and spiritually from God is a delusion, or rather, an illusion. And it is that very illusion, that is God's creation, that allows people to live exciting, creative, adventurous lives within it.
God is within us and without us. What we observe is only one part of God. So is the observer. Should this world that we observe be perfect? The Garden of Eden is a retirement home. There is literally a retirement home by that name on Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn. In a "perfect' world, in a Garden of Eden, there is nothing to do; everything is already perfect and there are people (staff) there to return it to perfection when it is not. But perfection is a very dull affair, indeed. There is nothing that could be improved upon, nothing to accomplish. Therefore, no drama, no excitement, no passion, nothing to live for.
Yes, there are imperfections in the observable world and those are in perfect balance with humans that are born with powerful but unobservable passions to rectify those imperfections. We have exciting lives fighting for justice in a world where injustice exists. We struggle to create beauty in a world where ugliness exists. We fight to unfold and disseminate knowledge in a world where ignorance exists. We labor mightily and inspirationally to bring health to a world where physical suffering exists. And if these innate, divine passions are not enough to solve all the world's problems, there are also humans born with a passion to inspire others to greater passion. And what they accomplish, these passionate people, is never enough, and that is perfect, because there are future generations of people bursting into life at every single moment, and these people are hoping to lead passionate lives, themselves; something that they could not do being born into a world where everything was already perfect, i.e. a retirement home.
And don't think I am talking about an elite few brilliant and passionate politicians, artists and scientists. I am also talking about the billions of people who struggle to make this world, or the world of their families, or the world of their neighbors, a little better. Creating a family is hard work. If it wasn't, if your children were already perfect, if you had hired help to change their diapers, you had enough narcotics to sleep through the birth of your child, without suffering, born into enough money to support your child without working, etc., etc., then you would still struggle to find a way to make your child even happier and more secure in that context. But if your child were perfectly happy and perfectly secure already, with no input from you, then you didn't really have the experience of parenting, which has to do with the efforts we make to improve the lives of our children and the deep, abiding satisfaction that we get and love that we feel, after making that investment, in seeing them turn out, not perfect, but fine, loving, people, ready and passionate to make their contribution to a world that still needs it.
This is the game of life. If the world ever achieved perfection, it would end. When, and if, that should ever happen, then we would return to the cosmic consciousness where the only thing left to do would be to create a new universe which, by necessity, would have to include the imperfections needed to make it a truly exciting, challenging place for humans to live in.
What of those victims who do suffer and do not, themselves, have the where with all to improve their situation? You have to think bigger and wider. They are there to offer you an opportunity to do something for them. They are there to teach you to deepen your compassion They are there for parents to broaden and deepen their understanding of love. And they are there to learn something about this experience themselves, which is that it still can be transcended by love, that you still have innumerable blessings beyond the few that you are lacking. You can think and, miraculously, your brain throws up to your consciousnes, from somewhere hidden among a hundred billion neurons, the very things you want to think about the moment you want to think about them. Now that is miraculous, whatever else your body can or cannot do. Every movement you make, even if your movements are limited, are made possible because of millions of neurons linking to millions of other neurons in a precise path that sparks the contraction and release of billions of muscle molecules that are instantly responsive to your moment to moment desire to move. Whatever you can do with and within your body, is miraculous and you have never lost the capacity to love. And if you are alive, in whatever condition, you have not lost that most cherished of abilities, the ability to experience.
And of course consciousnes is not generated. Consciousness is. So these lives that we lead are not our only shot. We are here to learn something and we will get many more shots as we learn how to overcome challenges, how to find the love within the challenge, and how to discard the passions that lead us to further isolation and selfishness, and keep or develop those which lead us to greater love and connection.
The understanding of a transcendent God does not lead us to passivity. We too are God's creations and we have a passion within us that God has placed there and a world around us that is the perfect external environment within which to lead our passionate lives.
The Comment Lamp is lit. Please let me know what you think.
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