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Saturday, October 27, 2018

Linear Thinking

Most of us grow up in a close-knit social environment, rarely if ever experiencing anybody or anything outside of it. How many people do we meet and have meaningful interactions with? If you think about it, the number is relatively small: our immediate family, neighborhood or school friends, employers, coworkers, and significant others, all of whom are inside our insulated social group because we naturally gravitate to people who are like us.

Of that small group, how many of them have a chance to show us something completely outside of the norm? An even smaller number, because we rarely engage in any conversation deeper than the weather, current events, gossip, and mutual interests. Religion, science, education, and our cultural and social structures erect roadblocks that cause us to self-censor our thoughts, experiences, and imaginings that are too far outside of the norm. We don’t even seek out or allow ourselves to view new things in books, on the internet, or on social media.

The result of this naturally occurring situation is that most of us never even see, much less experience, anything outside of what we call normal. It’s not that “normal” is defined as one set of concepts and experiences; but rather that every group has its own.

Because we have a natural tendency to stick to what we know and recognize, people and concepts outside of our normal are foreign irritants. We are uncomfortable with the homeless panhandler on the street corner; certain political platforms, personality types, and religious beliefs; different skin colors or lifestyles; and even our spouse for leaving hair in the sink. We don’t usually have the desire to experience things that aren’t already known. What is known is safe, secure, and comfortable. What isn’t can be frightening—equivalent to jumping off a cliff.

The inclination to stay within our norms creates and supports linear thinking, which we use to categorize and judge all that we experience. This paradigm of linear thinking leads to the mental concept that there is one set of truths to which everything in our normal universe must conform in order to be acceptable. All else is unacceptable and must either be made to conform or be eliminated from contact or existence.

Linear thinking is defined like a line: two points in space. Conceptually, this translates to good and bad, right and wrong, high and low, truth and lies.

We can use geometry to describe the four basic dimensions of thinking that affect our perceptions of the world around us:

1. a line, two points in space: good/bad, right/wrong, high/low, a one-truth reality (single dimension)

2. a plane, two dimensions: recognition of the existence of other truths (two dimensions)

3. a solid, three lines, or the addition of depth to a plane: the recognition that other truths are as valid as our own and can coexist peacefully and in mutual support (three dimensions)

4. time: the fact that truths change over time, are transitory, and gradually lose their effect on our interactions with others (four dimensions)

The above list shows that the underlying problem with linear thinking, or one-dimensional thinking, is difficulty in getting along with others. Creating a harmonious living environment isn’t about converting all to one truth (history teaches us that this only results in a lot of bloodshed on all sides); it’s about allowing others’ truths to be right for them, accepting their truths as having the same value as ours, and acknowledging their truths’ inherent right to exist. The result of making this conversion is conversation and negotiation . . . and a lot less conflict.

Friday, June 15, 2018

Going Mental

During the counterculture’s religious experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s, I was introduced to the old Sikh gurus’ recipe for health and happiness: vegetarianism, fasting, yoga, and meditation. Over the ensuing decades, my use of these disciplines led to the discovery of how food energy affected my personality.

Vegetarianism, fasting, yoga, and meditation are all energy manipulation techniques. Vegetarianism and fasting go hand-in-hand with yoga and meditation because they reduce one’s energy, allowing for a calmer personality facilitating yoga and meditation’s mental discipline aspects. The basic conceptual metaphor is that when water flows through a garden hose (relatively lower energy), it is easier to manipulate than when it flows through a firefighter’s hose (relatively higher energy). With the flow of energy reduced, one’s mind, body, and personality are easier to control. By altering our energy level, we can change how we mentally and emotionally react to everyday situations, and we can build a personality of our own choosing.

The energy level that we sustain creates certain types of thought patterns and emotional responses. For example, increasingly higher energy levels will result in a progression of high energy personality traits: high mental noise, low patience, frustration, anger, rage, closed mindedness, elitism, paranoia, refusal to submit to authority, and sociopathic and homicidal tendencies. Lower energy levels will also result in a progression of associated traits: timidity, fearfulness, lack of enthusiasm, depression, low self-esteem, insecurity, lack of independence or self-respect, purposelessness, and suicidal tendencies.

Various energy levels elicit certain responses from others, depending on the surrounding cultural norms and morals, and therefore affect the quality of our lives. As we lower or raise our energy, we experience various stages of altered reality or consciousness that affect not only our own lives but the lives of those around us as well.

Higher energy levels are harder to control but can manipulate physical reality to a greater extent. Lower energy levels produce observational qualities such as prescience, empathy, intuition, and precognition. Lower energy levels can manipulate reality to the same extent but in a very different, much more subtle manner. Whereas high energy tends to tear down and rebuild reality in its own image, low-energy reality manipulation creates a space for new, spontaneous co-creation; it works with, around, and from within to alter reality. High-energy personalities tend to be very restrictive and controlling, whereas low-energy personalities tend to be more accepting and open to new things.

Too high of an energy level can cause things to start breaking down. People won’t be able to stand being around us and we’ll push imperfect people out of our lives. We’ll grow angrier and more violent to the point we can no longer control our actions or think clearly. We’ll spend a lot of time and effort handling (or mishandling) our energy. Our excess energy will make us do or say things we’ll later regret or get us ostracized from the society we live in, and eventually we’ll recede into our own world. Unfortunately, many people who never take steps to reduce their excess energy wind up in jail or mental institutions or arm themselves in fortified compounds.

Anybody who has experienced alcoholism or drug addiction can attest to the life-destroying effects of extreme energy dissipation. The life we have created begins to break down our home, relationships, health, family, and job. People disrespect us and take advantage of us. We aren’t any fun to be around because we are constantly sick, injuring ourselves, depressed, or always the victim of our circumstances.

Our individual energy level ultimately determines the life we live through its interaction with others and the surrounding society and environment. By learning to use our energy and manipulate it consciously, we can decide what life we will lead and the quality of our experiences.

Friday, February 23, 2018

Energy: The Overlooked Human Commodity

Physicists seek to explain the universe through a unified field theory by observing the attributes of the smallest particle of energy. This is theoretically possible because everything is made of energy; our food, clothing, computers, galaxies…even we are made of energy.

Energy doesn’t ever get used up completely. It gets traded around, passed off from one thing to another infinitely. We expend our personal energy at work and get paid with money (which represents the energy we expended) and trade that money for items others have used their energy to produce (food, clothing, fuel, etc.).

Energy is used to build things which results in a static or stored energy state (our physical bodies, plants, wood, oil). Energy also exists in various dynamic energy forms, such as wave energy, particle energy, and forms that resemble both wave and particle. We don’t really understand just what energy is, but we observe its effects and how it acts, and can harness it for our own purposes based on these observations. Living things use its DNA pattern to create a life form out of the energy it consumes and absorbs. Even what we call inanimate objects of mineral composition, use a matrix pattern unique to its form to do the same thing.

The various types of dynamic energy affect us in different ways, positively and negatively. Sunlight has a mostly positive effect, whereas gamma ray radiation is mostly negative. We have created various devices to sense, measure, and set safe limits on the many forms of dynamic energy we are subjected to. A Geiger counter can tell us how many units of radiation are present. We know that X units of radiation is dangerous to our health because we have observed the damage caused by exposure to X. We know in the presence of X, Y happens.

Food energy is the same. We can burn food (outside the body) and measure how much that released energy will raise water temperature (units known as calories). This provides some relative measurement of the food’s energy when comparing different foods but doesn’t fully describe what the food’s energy effect is inside the body. We can’t watch the energy being released inside the body from the food we eat, we can’t watch the body react to it, absorb it, or use it. We can however, observe the results of food energy effects on the body and mind.

Food’s various externally measured qualities have been shown to react differently once inside the body. High acid content citrus fruit, for example, is acidic outside the body but creates an alkaline condition once it gets inside the body. Additionally, every food has a unique effect on our stored energy level (beyond its caloric content) which affects our strength, stamina, and internal systems (organs, immune system, regenerative system, mental processes).

There is only one instrument that can measure the effects of food energy internally and that is the human body through its senses and physiological reactions. The body can be seen as one big complex device that will indicate food related energy levels. With a little calibration through experimentation, attention to detail, and experience over time, we can learn to use this aspect of the body to our great benefit.

Just as too much radiation or sunlight can cause physical damage, so too can too much food energy harm us. Just as not enough sunlight can cause ill effects, so too can too little food energy. We can train ourselves to use our senses and observe that in the presence of X food, Y happens to our body, and take steps to correct the issue by removing, reducing, or increasing X.

All the little nagging minor health symptoms, many chronic symptoms, and even disease, can be a result of too high or too low food energy. Our immune and regenerative systems, the two main pillars of our health, are largely controlled by the energy we consume. They do not function properly without the right level of energy.

Consequently, we can explore and explain the universe of our body through the observation and manipulation of the energy we subject it to.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Dissipation

We spend most of our lives trying to dissipate our energy. Even if we don’t have enough energy we consume substances and engage in activities that dissipate what little we have. We do this because we live in a society that has an over-abundance of energy. Beef, dairy products, and salt are the foundation of our Western culture, all of which are high energy foods.

This diet has given rise to a sub-culture of dissipation: alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, the sex trades, partying, sitting in front of a TV or computer screen all night, and sugar and chemical laced convenience foods. It’s a standard of habits that we grow up in and get carried away with before we can gain an understanding of what we are doing to ourselves.

When we hit middle age, our body goes through drastic changes for various reasons. Our health begins to suffer because we have dissipated our supporting energy for so long that our organs begin to fail, we get cancer, and we become sickly shadows of our former selves. This condition is reversible if we are willing to put in the time and effort required.

The main hump to get over is that our habit of dissipation has trained us to be fearful of any kind of energy buildup. A healthy store of energy has become uncomfortable. Habit retraining and consumption of energy building substances while eliminating the dissipating influences will result in a healthier and more satisfying experience in our senior years.