week nine

newton's three laws and me:

looking through this week's packet, the repeated use of the word "laws" is starting to give me the creeps. thinking about how laws are used to both define and limit our experience of life. i definitely appreciate the understanding that knobbier, fatter tires are going to make my bike a good deal harder to ride than my slick, smooth city tires, the force of friction impeding freedom of motion. but! i think people got a little carried away with their joy at the limitations defined by newton and his followers. i guess it felt comforting to them. but for some of us, the proliferation of their mechanistic way of thinking has left us feeling like aliens in what some part of us remembers as the formerly comfy human world.

our "energy efficient" culture: 

are we referring here to all the wasted heat and the first law of thermodynamics? our technology, though developing rapidly is still pretty limited here on earth when it comes to beauty and flow and intrinsic understanding and expression of the interconnectedness of all that is. we have so much to learn from the other beings with whom we share this earth about living efficiently. there was a great interview recently by caroline casey on kpfa of a woman who's all about nature-based design. check it out here:

https://www.coyotenetworknews.com/productcart/pc/radioshow.htm

scroll down to the oct. 16th show on biomimicry. click on listen.

descartes has a lot to answer for!: 

humans are separate from nature? this painful prescription has lead to much abuse and destruction of the vibrant living natural world of which we are actually an intimate part. i certainly respect anyone who explores the nature of our (many?) reality(s). but it's just so unfortunate that a mindset like this was allowed and encouraged to dominate the holistic understandings of all of our root cultures.

ps - "cool experiment #1" update:

from my 100% subjective viewpoint, i would say my actions in the experiment (see last week's blog) had little or no positive effect on the overall atmosphere of the class last week, which was very tired and low energy. (post-midterm blues, and "classical physics", maybe not the best combo to begin with...) anyway, the experiment did have a very nice effect on me. spending time envisioning, sending love, and connecting with the divine light in each person before class helped me feel good and happy to go to class, and gave me greater insights into the unique beauty of each person. fun! and energizing.  

week eight

"ordered chaos" sound familiar?:

ordered chaos sounds like life itself. the balance between expansion and contraction, the yin and the yang.  a beautiful, unpredictable, non-linear dance between opposites. making this life the great adventure that it is.

fractals as patterns of complex systems:

fractals represent the ways in which a variety of different inputs, some as small as a thought or feeling, can have great impact on the ever evolving outcome of everything. yes, everything. (we're talking about "systems", but is there anything that doesn't interact with some system?) kinda hard to believe it at first, but the concept is starting to infiltrate mainstream society. and this idea has great potential for refining human existence here on earth. raising consciousness. increasing awareness of the deeply interconnected and dynamic nature of all that is.

consciousness out of chaos?:

"every point in the space-time grid is conscious and the human brain is a neural structure permeated by these units. or...'consciousness is an active force that we can exercise in the universe and not simply a passive perception of that same universe.'" and this is coming from physicists now, not new age gurus in comfortable, pastel-colored clothing. anyway, i hope the physicists get to wear comfortable clothing too. just maybe not pastel...

chaos theory really addresses the wholeness of our existence. the oneness which we are. and given this vantage point, its easy to see how greater consciousness is not only something we are a part of, but something we interact with, which interacts with us. 

sooo, for a "cool experiment", i'm sending love and light to each member of this class right now, and envisioning a highly connected, lively, activating and enjoyable class this evening. (even though i'm super tired!) we'll see how it goes. if you happen to read this, you can join in the experiment too! 

"cool experiment" (#2):

i tried some of the low materials experiments. fun little stuff. i liked the scotch tape static charge one, where the two tapes did funny things to avoid each other, but were each very attracted to the ends of my other fingers. my monitor must not give off much charge, because it didn't affect them.

  

week seven

are all vibrations good?:

hmmm? is this like asking - is the world good? or evil? if everything is vibrating, then yes, fundamentally, all vibrations must be good. are the effects of all vibrations good? that one, i'd say - not necessarily. depends on the circumstances and the intention. one example is ultrasound technology. this is a potentially lifesaving and life-altering technology which is basically just waves, vibrations, projected into the body. usually between 2-4 megahertz, they're actually classified as radiation, not sound, which comes between 20 hz and 20 kilohertz. these waves are recorded as they bounce back and the resulting images tell us a lot about what's going on inside the body without opening anybody up. pretty handy.

one questionable use for this technology is on babies in the womb. in certain circumstances, ultrasound may be helpful, like when there's bleeding in early pregnancy, when the baby's not growing, suspected multiple fetuses, etc.   even these situations are questionable, but when there is a legitimate medical reason for ultrasound in utero, many believe the risks outweigh the benefits. there's more debate, however, about the effects of routine ultrasound, especially repeated routine ultrasound, on the growing fetus. when ultrasound waves get into human tissue, they can heat up little pockets of gases to "several thousand degrees celsius, creating toxic products, some of which may be harmful." studies have shown numerous negative effects of ultrasounds, which many people consider safe. these include miscarriage, intrauterine growth retardation, low birth weight,  poorer condition at birth, dyslexia, delayed speech development, etc.    autism experts are now also tentatively linking this procedure to autism. so anyway, my feeling is most babies having a whole bunch of unnecessary ultrasounds are probably not coming out of the womb humming beach boys' songs - "good, good, good, good vibrations..."

resonance in my world:

resonance is a wonderful instant feedback mechanism. one way we can evaluate the safety of our world. feeling alive in the woods. feeling tense in the city. when my natural frequency is matched by my environment, human or otherwise, i feel at home, energized, activated, peaceful, good. when my natural resonance is a mismatch with my environment, i feel an automatic armoring or contraction of my being, slightly or greatly uncomfortable. an instinctual reaction, intended to prevent me from being destroyed or made impotent by hanging out too long in places and situations which don't compliment or support my existence here on earth. i also find it's possible to override these natural protective mechanisms, and most of us do it all the time in order to get along in the world, even at our own great, unacknowledged peril. (when was the last time you resonated with a plastic cup? or a gas pump? or hospital room?)

connections between energy and qi:

energy and qi both make up all that is. everything not only contains these, but actually is one of these, from either western scientific or eastern philosophical viewpoints. each of these is real as we know them, human explanations of phenomena that we encounter in our daily lives. each of us chooses to be more or less tuned in to the presence of both energy and qi, but they exist, regardless of our awareness of them. 

both energy and qi seem to be something everyone wants more of. "i need energy!"  in chinese medicine we spend a lot of time strengthening, tonifying, building qi. fortunately, although the world is currently at war over energy,   qi, though sometimes devitalized, remains free for the absorbing.

week five

my (a)symmetrical world: 

if you photograph the two halves of your face and put each together with it's own mirror image, you generally get two very different looking faces.  so i guess the notion of symmetry is a little odd to me. i mean, maybe we're kind of symmetrical from right to left, but from front to back and top to bottom there's a whole lot of variation.  seems like symmetry depends a lot on your vantage point. looking out across the hillside and the trees and mt. tam right now i see a symmetry in some of the tree shapes, but not a real equal balance in the overall design. anyway, i feel comforted and inspired by it. when i'm walking in nature, i find myself drawn to the beauty and grace that is the variation. the decaying and dying. the scarred, the cracked, the worn. i guess the innate symmetry and sacred geometry of the natural world goes way beyond surface appearances and resonates in my being in a way that a plastic laminate entertainment center never will, regardless of how geometrically balanced it might be. 

what does "cp violation" really mean?:

cp violation means change is possible. random variation exists. that even within systems where more than 99% of the time everything is completely routine, expected and symmetrical, there are moments of unpredictable asymmetry. well, "we" can predict that it will occur, but not when. 

this reminds me that i was talking with an elder friend last night. a man in his seventies who sleeps on the floor on a small mat, spends his days taking walks, having tea ceremonies,  and reading books on native cultures, poetry, and spirituality. always collecting and giving amazing little gifts like stones from the ocean.  he was telling me about early african peoples and how they valued that which was different. the deformed seed pod was more sacred, because it had encountered adversity and survived. the gnarled tree. the three legged animal. the physically different or deformed human. the mentally challenged human. these were all highly valued in terms of spiritual power. that which was different being a clear and divine expression of spirit. anyway, seems like cp violations would qualify. variations rare and inexplicable enough to be considered sacred. carrying the potential for all of us to change instantaneously and radically. a cool breeze. a sigh of relief.

connections between sacred geometry and physics:

hey! what about the aliens? i mean, how do you think all those ancient sacred geometric pyramids got built all over the world that have meaningful patterning when seen from above that you would never notice from ground level? made from distant resources for which there is no explanation? maybe it was divine inspiration. maybe they were a lot smarter then. maybe they were channelling. maybe humans used to fly. maybe i've read too many drunvalo malchizedek books... anyway, as the physical world comes in sacred geometric patterns, it seems that physics is inextricably linked to these templates. and it seems that whatever we are about to discover, it is not only already within us, but has been a working part of the human knowledge base in our ancient past.