Monday, March 22, 2010

The condition of condition


"I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in." Granted, we are conditioned beings. The question is, how much objectivity is it possible garner to see what the conditioning is? Science is supposed to do that. Yet how conditioned is science itself?

To observe requires an observer, a means of observation, and an object. Any one of these three can be heavily conditioned. As human observers our consciousnesses are wildly different and in varying states of receptivity. Any means of observation will inherently leave out as much as it magnifies: for instance, a telescope or microscope. The unaided sense organ has its narrow range of reception. And the object of perception is inherently conditioned as the result of the interaction of the observing consciousness and the observing lens. Especially on the quantum level, even down to the chronology of events, reality is heavily determined by the action of these factors. And this makes turning to the world of our minds particularly interesting when it comes to considering the effects of conditioning, because much theory and experimentation points to the fact that thought is a quantum phenomenon.

Because the act of observation is fundamental to assessing the situation before we even formulate a hypothesis, and as we have seen, the act of observation is rife in all its elements with conditioning, scientific observation can dangerously heighten the conditioning through which we see the universe. Rather than filtering out subjective differences it can reinforce incorrect assumptions based on consensual, "common sense" conditioning, which tends always to remain unchallenged.

So the mindfield of life is where the observational process is paramount in conditioning the result, and it is that Everest which we must first assault in achieving the first base of deconditioning.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Money pressure

Money represents stored energy and as such is a huge source of stress for most people, because this compression of energy is taking place not only into a material form but these days, more and more, into an abstract mental form. Numbers on a page or a computer screen have increasingly come to represent the medium of exchange rather than, say, a gold coin or even paper currency. Therefore money becomes primarily a mental phenomenon, a introversion of active, dynamic free-flowing energy into a symbolic and highly constrained form. The pressure of holding this force on the mental plane creates an unusual and intolerable strain on the psychology.

Capitalistic and socialistic economic systems alike are showing cracks due to the pressure from this high compression factor. Just as we have pushed the earth to the breaking point in terms of environmental stresses, it could be argued that the global economic system, increasingly precarious as it now seems to be, is suffering because the human beings at its basis, which include everybody, are not able to quite comprehend or psychologically support the huge energetic payload borne by that system.

Rather than packing more and more energy into money as a way of increasing its potential, more energy needs to be released into intelligence. That will increase human potential and realize the goal of money which is to increase provide a medium for the flow of energy into new and more useful forms. How does this happen? By increasing the consciousness around every process involving money. And that will become the basis of an enlightened financial system. By increasing consciousness I mean transcending negative stereotypical  attitudes about money, such as that it is the root of all evil. In and of itself it is neutral. Instead of investing all our hopes and fears in the means to the end, we need to invest our free and stored energy into activating our intelligence towards its fullest expression. That process will use money among many other possible means as part of the carrier wave for our fulfillment. In so doing the pressurized situation that is causing all of us grief may finally be harnassed for the greater good.

Friday, March 05, 2010

If and when

Grammarians have no doubt pointed this out before, but the phrase "if and when" (or "when and if") is totally preposterous. "If and when I ever make it to New York, I will definitely go see the Yankees play." Okay, if you go, there is no question of when, because if you don't go, there is no when. There is only a when if you do go. And when you do go, there is no if. You go a certain time and there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

And you can't really say "if or when" because that's either redundant or contradictory. It's not an either/or situation. If you go, there will be a when. If you don't go, no when. You could have an intention to go when, but then if you don't go, there is no when. So just say "if." Or "when."

Except that doesn't sound as good as "if and when," does it? The naked if or naked when doesn't quite do justice to the contingent nature of existence on this paradoxical planet. On the quantum level, a particle can appear at two places at once. Or two particles separated in space at a distance farther away than they could reach at the speed of light can still communicate with each other instantaneously. Light can be both a wave and a particle. And so on. Therefore, let us wallow in our indeterminacy and speak the preposterous. When and if we actually do arrive at clarity in terms of who we are and why we're here, our linguistic formulations may magically rearrange themselves anyway so that we babble in algorithms that comprehend all the mysteries of n-dimensional reality.