Meeting the Walrus is a ‘Profound Whatever’!

This video is so astounding for me. Not just for the visual element but for the wisdom that John was espousing all the way back in 1969 and the insight from the 14-year-old Jerry Levitan. Two points in particular I would like to talk about.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmR0V6s3NKk]

The Power in Being the Change

The first point begins with the current context of the US involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq military campaigns. As Lennon so rightly acknowledges the large groups that have a major influence over the government don’t want peace. America’s Military Budget is consistently as much or more than the rest of the world (Ref 1 & 2).  War is good for the institution of the USA. Smash it down, build it up again and hang onto it to become the establishment. To hear this realization from a time long past is inspiring and sad. Sad, for the fact that this knowledge has been in the public mind for many years and still we have not been able to eradicate such useless violence bred from greed and corruption. It is inspirational, however, because we are reminded that there were great people back then willing to stand up and talk about ways to eradicate violence through non-violent means.

It is the power in protesting non-violently that enables a change in the current regime. The governments are all well versed in using forceful resistance but they don’t have a weapon to use against non-violent action. It has worked time and time again, with Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. and onwards. But it is not just about non-violence it is the same for anything you want to create in the world. It is about giving what you get. It is about being the change you want to see in the world. Which part of yourself will you feed. That which resists the world or that world which that you can flow with. It is by resisting something that we make it more real. Giving is the best way to receive. So if you want to see the change in the world, be that change, encapsulate it and without expecting it from others but doing for the love of what you believe you will inspire people through your leadership.

We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.

– Mahatma Gandhi (1869 –1948) Indian Political Leader and Social Activist

Don’t sit there and just blame people who are doing the “wrong”, but instead, act in a way that promotes a greater harmony.  It is not their fault that an evil has been begotten because they knew not. The same way a child breaks something, even with malicious intent, it is not their fault. It is simply an unconsciousness that we must work to educate in how to behave in a more conscious manner. Our governments are not to blame, we put them there, and if there is something that acts in discord with the evolution and sustainment of the world then there is an opportunity to educate but being that education.

The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.

– Edmund Burke (1729 –1797) Irish Philosopher

The world is in a natural entropic cycle. It is part of the laws of thermodynamics, in which there is a constant move to a state of chaos however we can choose to be the carp that swim upstream. It takes more effort but we have the ability to insert some energy into the system and from that point we can move into the opposite direction of a chaos state and instead towards a more organized, evolved and harmonious state. One stroke at a time. And that’s the point, no great person went out with the intention to be great instead they try to do the small things as great as they can.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

– Lao Tzu quotes (6th Century BCE) Founder of Taoism


The Power of Tuning in to Broadcast out

The other “profound whatever” that John talks about are that messages are there on all levels. Many profound philosophers, over the millennia, have realized that the same Truths or Laws of the Universe exist on many different levels, simply operating at different scales. But these Laws are one in the same they just are aimed at affecting the relevant elements at the scale of force of which they are operating, whether it is a person, a planet or an abstract concept like Love. These Truths are all the same.  It just takes time to open your heart to the greater scope of life to further awaken your consciousness and realize how connected it all is. I will talk about this further next week.

It’s the same in a flower it’s just there, and if you look long enough all answers are in it, same with the music.

– John Lennon (1940-1980) Songwriter and Political activist


Tuning in Exercise

An exercise I recommend is that in each interaction you have with a person or event, ensure that you are Giving. Feel in your Heart earnestly that in every action you are giving to the occasion and not just taking. Taking can include only partially giving yourself to an action. In fully giving you are fully present to your actions, because you are fully giving of yourself and hence your attention. From this you will open yourself to receiving greater understanding about your actions and the dynamics of your interactions. In an interaction that you are fully tuned into you will be able to get the most out of. It’s like listening to a song on the radio. You have to be properly tuned into the right frequency to be able to get the most out of the song. And that frequency is the frequency of Giving.

“This is the sum of all true righteousness: deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt by. Do nothing to thy neighbor which thou wouldst not have him do to thee hereafter.”

– The Mahabharata, c. 150 BCE

Flow is for everyone in everything

Here is a video that is not only inspiring to the point of tears but teaches us something about how connecting to our passion allows us to realise the highest sense of our selves.  This is currently being explored in modern science under the term “Flow States”, however it is more commonly known as being “in the zone”.  In this state people are able to perform at their optimum level along with experiencing a series of other impressive phenomenon. The amazing thing about Flow is that it is accessible in any and all activities that people undertake. Its simply about finding a way to truly connect to the moment, where you are completely immersed in the activity and all your resources are being focussed on that task in only the moment of now. Watch this video and see how the power of Flow can help us overcome any limitation.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek1iIOTsiRo&feature=search]

After watching this and other films on Autism as well as my own personal experience interacting with autistic kids, it makes me think that while we can all have limitations in expressing our true selves, there is always an avenue that can overcome them and truly tap our connection to life. It’s just about finding what makes that connection flow.

HUMANS ARE AN INFINITE SYSTEM

The human organism is made up of a system of cells working together to make a grander system. This system develops from two primary elements: Cultural and Hereditary. Hereditary elements are when the system’s ancestors have donated a part of themselves to help discern the type of system that will develop. This gift will lead to the development of its traits, dispositions and strengths, creating how the system functions as well as its inevitable purpose in life. However there is the cultural element that is also needed to be taken into consideration. This Culture relates to the external world and its influence on the individual cells. The cells are required to adapt and evolve to their changing world. Culture has shown to have a major impact not only on the content but also the structure of the new system. This is evidenced by a group of American researchers who have recently shown how the brain develops differently due to different cultural upbringings. But it is quite intuitive to understand that, by this larger system (or human) living its life, it learns and develops, as it goes to different places and experiences different emotions, understandings, germs, foods and all matter of experience. This experience is what the body needs to learn from and adjust to, in creating new combinations and understandings (or thought technologies) to deal with its evolving world.

The Evolving System

To gain an understanding of a larger system I like to first understand the constituent parts which help make up that system. The benefit in understanding these preceding systems is that they are quite similar to the ultimate functioning of the greater system at hand. For example, we are for the most part an evolved system from our parents. They contained certain physiological and intellectual matrices which they had developed and advanced from their forebears and passed them onto us. We (who are reading this) are now evolving our physiological and intellectual systems to surpass where our parents have developed. While we can look at the ontological story, or the evolution of the individual system, we as humans also develop as a species and share a grander story of a collective advancing system. We started off having evolved from a system of single cell life forms into multi-cell life forms and from there the system has kept on evolving all the way to humans as we know it and inevitably beyond. All systems evolve from systems preceding it and therefore you can gain many understandings of the current system by delving back into the past and looking at where you have come from. You can’t see where you are going without knowing where you came from.

Where it began

So let us look at what we can learn from the single cell – where it all began. The way I best find to understand this is through analogy. What I found interesting is the likeness of the human cell to bee colonies. These share very similar operating systems in that they both have a central nucleus, which in the case of the bee is the queen, as well as many other constituent parts to keep the system running such as membranes, receptors, messengers and so on. Contrary to popular belief the nuclei in the cell and the queen, are not the central processor but instead more similar to the sexual organ. They contain and retain the genetic history of the colony and feed the updated information collected from the male messenger counterparts to understand the true needs of the system or colony. This central unit then proceeds to direct the creation of the necessary elements of the cell that will best serve the system. I would like to reiterate that the reason why I use the term ‘system’ for the cell here is because as the cell is part of the human system, so too is the human part of a larger system like a community or country, and thus the individual parts make up the system of the cell itself. We are therefore an outward expansion of complexity based on ever-increasing layers of symbiotic simplicity. Each advancing level corresponding to its previous simpler counterpart as well as many counterparts before. The human, as part of the global system, feeds back into a national system, a cultural system, a communal system and so on. These parts still feed out into many other systems well past the next advancing stage of the system. Thus again we see the importance of understanding the system from the simplest levels.

So if the queen and the nucleus are not the brain of the system then what is, and how are these systems aware of the changing external world. Bruce Lipton talks of the cell membrane as the main processing unit. (My next blog will be on Lipton’s ideas expanded). He says the membrane (or outermost shell of the system) is that which experiences the external changing world and perceives it, deciding and sending back the relevant information to the entirety of the system which best realizes the reaction, not just a central nucleus but the entire system. Therefore he purports that the membrane, that which is connected to and assesses the outside world, may be the central processing unit. However as the central processor, it is not necessarily that which experiences as the Mind. The Mind is separate from the brain. It is all-pervasive and the culmination of the system which is able to experience itself.

Sum of the Parts

The Mind is a collective of all the parts in the system. A system can be a system in itself (a cell), but it can also be a part of a system (a neuronal cell). Each system connects into other relevant systems to feed and share information and understandings. As a collective sum of all these systems, a level of consciousness arises. With each advancing level of systems connecting into each other, comes greater functionality, and thus greater tools to interact with and understand the world. The tool, or functionality, that we most recently developed as humans is metacognition ,which is the awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes. This has taken up much of our philosophical understanding and religious explorations with names such as the soul, the ego and as many other forms. It is important to remember that each system has its own level of mind. The mind or consciousness of the cell is much less conscious than the Mind of a human as there is a smaller complexity and functionality to the system due to a limited sum of the parts to make such an advanced whole. But the wisdom and functionality of mother earth and the human collective is much greater than the individual human.

One amazing idea that we can draw from this is that as an individual we may be great, but as part of a larger system we are amazing. Many of the world’s great leaders, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., have created revolutionary change not because they were great men but because they were acting for a system much greater than themselves.  It is why when people work together to make change they will be so much more effective than if they tried to do it on their own. When we look at our lives as an individual many people become overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy but when we look at ourselves as part of the greater system and a contributor untoward that we find a sense of peace and satisfaction in what we have given. The same way a multi-cellular life form has much greater capacity, and therefore potential to make greater change, so too are humans as collectives in comparison to individuals. That is where our greatest power comes from by working together.

Through the Mind’s Eye

So the Mind exists as the sum of the system and we can therefore make use of this by looking at the ways in which the mind perceives the world. It does it physically through direct contact as in an external element that is touching up against the sense membrane and the system then responds to it accordingly. Whether it be air waves, light waves or a more tangible element, the system registers through the sense organ and responds appropriately. However we are beginning to understand that there is another form of communication in these systems known as indirect communication. We see this in bees that communicate through a special dance to denote what is happening at far distances away from the system and we see this in cells that communicate electromagnetically. It has also been recorded by researchers that our heart has an electromagnetic field that stretches out and can be recorded several feet outside of our body. Over the last few years scientists have been considering the role of quantum mechanisms, in which it has been shown that it is possible for the mind to exist, communicate and perceive from distances outside of itself, through processes such as entanglement, that allow it to still perceive its external world. In its simplest sense it is most probably a combination of the quantum and electromagnetic processes of the system which help to explain some of those intuitive feelings people have like sensing someone’s presence in a room, danger to a loved one and other intuitive understandings that the human system is able to determine outside of the sole control of direct communication.

Intuitive wisdom can ultimately be considered a product of whole body functioning and therefore cannot be understood solely through the brain but by feeling how your body reacts to situations. It depends on the subtle messages and signals that the individual systems in your body are attuned to and how they translate that for your brain to understand. This can occur through gut feelings, dreams, reoccurring themes in your life, etc. there are many different ways that the greater wisdom of your whole body system will be able to communicate with you. Therefore it is important take time, to find stillness in which to feel the movements in your body. Notice the way that the subtle feelings in your body move with the ebb and flow of life. Synchronicities are thus multiple whole body systems operating on a harmonious frequency, communicating and interacting to create greater understandings. A space of stillness is crucial in best creating for your life as it not helps you to better act but also stops you to react. Finding space in your actions and not being so quick to react will mean that your decisions are based on your own consciousness rather than feeding into another persons. Often we also act from a place of the subconscious, when you react; you are simply perpetuating the inherent cycles of your life and not allowing for a space in which to grow. It is by taking a breath and connecting with how you feel in stillness of the moment that you may be able to break non-serving trends in your life and instead sense actions that may create actions that serve you as you create anew.

Mind is the Master-power that molds and makes, And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes the tool of thought, and, shaping what he wills brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: — He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass: Environment is but his looking glass. – James Allen “As a man thinketh”.