Being in the Cemetery at Two O'Clock PM

I was running in the cemetery this afternoon, was at my parents' and my mother's parents' graves a little before two P.M. I let my attention focus on my breathing, but my mind wandered to why I was there this time. It was to celebrate my humanity, my biology even, with my Collective Conscious Breath at two o'clock. Warm and slightly cloudy.  I always let my imagination take over while in that sacred spot.  I let them know why I was there, what the Collective Conscious Breath is about.  I have the idea that a significant part of their Heavens are in me, in my mind, in whatever goodness they might have instilled in me. Not only in me,but also in everyone they have loved. I included them in that breath. I could imagine the happy sounds of their breathing.  I had to remind my grandmother not to hyperventilate. I endowed the event with Holiness.  I imagine myself with the authority to do just that!

Collective Conscious Breath Event

My friend Shawn Puller had an extremely significant experiencing of a particular idea a few days ago:  The Collective Conscious Breath. You may find understanding of his inspiration at his Facebook page.  You might plan to participate; moreover you might decide to spread it around, even all over the world if you have access to contacts abroad!

What comes to my mind about the Collective Conscious Breath? The word spirit and the words respire, admire, aspire, conspire and inspire spring from the same root, what Carl Gustav Jung called the rhizome of the 1 million year old collective unconscious, which he spent most of his life making us conscious of the importance of making conscious. It is still a work in progress, both the concept and the grasping of it. 

The Collective Conscious Breath is not only a symbol; it is an actual collective activity which can spark a further process: not only an end in itself, but also a means toward the end of an animated collective loving and healthy universal mind, a Collective Spirit.

R. W. Emerson in his essay entitled Love said:

“For it is a fire that kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generous flames.”

So, might we have other thoughts as we breathe together, maybe even sneak in another breath?  I plan to start my mindfulness of my breath a couple of minutes or longer before 2:00 pm on the 26^th of January, and treat each breath as though it is the  breath we are all anticipating! . The idea that we are breathing together will influence and morph my breathing into an interval of mindfulness meditation, which I already do on a regular basis. Even in anticipation I can enjoy this coming event, the joy of being as a part of something deeply meaningful and infinitely larger than I am, The Mysterium Tremendum of Rudolph Otto.

Even if we don’t capture the heart of everyone the first go round, word of mouth will ensure that we will before long touch the strong possibility of an all inclusive epidemic of trust, respect, goodwill, intimacy and healthy judgment.

How Dangerous an Idea, the Apocalyptic One?

What might one predict for the health of our planet and all its life forms were a significant fraction of our human population convinced that the end of the world is upon us? How important would it be to budget money and hold on to necessary possessions? To learn about our environment and preserve its health? Or brush and floss our teeth?

How many people having faith in, and living out, the apocalyptic idea in their behavior, would it take to destroy our planet? Why bother if I can expect to have a “perfect body” in the afterlife? How fulfilled might I expect my earthly existence to be? What might I anticipate my human body to resemble as I age here on Earth? Won’t I begin my experiencing my eternal bliss sooner if I just let myself deteriorate and die?

Thanksgiving: Do People and Others Need it?

Having a special day for giving thanks is, in a way, implying that giving thanks is not an everyday thing. Usually folks think it is about giving God feedback for His/Her blessings.  I don’t think the Deity needs that nearly as much as dogs, people, horses and cats do. I don’t want to jump to conclusions about the Deity, so I plan to give thanks to It too! An idea that comes to mind is that if we say thank you a lot on Thanksgiving Day, then it will give us practice for saying it more often every day.

At any rate, day after tomorrow it is hereby permitted for us to be more open with letting our closest dearest ones, absolute strangers, and everyone in between, know that we are thankful that they are, to whatever degree, in our perspective, even if only by venturing a smile. 

One thing I have noticed, since over the years I have been more inclined to look strangers in the face, is that often the other person is also looking me in the face. Then we both light up at the same time. It is a really big deal to me when that happens. I call it a healthy connection.  My theory is that healthy connections between us lead to healthy connections within us. Many relatively small healthy connections can add up in a day’s time! 

Sometimes just being acknowledged, being appreciated for who I am, even merely for being a creature, not necessarily for doing a good job, is all it takes to make my day; however I don’t want to minimize hearing about it if I have done a good job.

I like to look at myself in the mirror mornings, hair all scraggily, face overloaded with wrinkles yet, and remind myself that I am Holy, Sacred, Precious, Divine, just like everybody else, just like the dogs and cats and Canada Geese. Being a part of something bigger than I am, something that I consider Holy, makes me relish existing, infinitely small might I be! What an intimate early morning encounter!

Thank you for reading this.  Thank you for being in my life. Happy Thanksgiving Day.

On to Alpharetta GA to be with my big family and friends.

A Perspective of Hope

This I wrote tonight, not only because  my great nieces are interested  in astronomy, but also because the because the temperature and humidity are becoming just right for getting out my old Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrainian telescope:

There is so much to see and wonder about out there! And superficially and deeply inside the here-and-now and there-and-then! The theologian, Rudolph Otto was blown away with the immense mystery of the "out there." He sophisticated the tremendous mystery by calling it the Mysterium Tremendum! I don't know of more graphic ways to experience this, but by probing the universe at the most extreme limits of dimension: macroscopic, microscopic, telescopic, and so on: from the smallest to the largest, most immediate to the most remote, and everything in between. 

With an ecological perspective I am ever on the alert for what is connected to what, in what ways, and in what most significant and practical ways. Telescope, microscope, electron microscope, animations such as we may experience at xvivo.com and worldwidetelescope.com, can take us right there if we are not averse to awe. What a wonderful ride to have available to take, even more so lately, with the network of connections we have available, and may tote in our pockets and purses.

We are being continually invited to experience wave after wave of discovery, of exhilaration, of uplifting of spirit, of "mojo." So much is staring us in the face that we can't see. How long did it take Pythagoras to discover that a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared? How many centuries until the mentally ill Sir Isaac Newton took that and ran with it: discovered stuff that a normal person would not be capable of seeing? I was six weeks into my calculus course, with zeros on every weekly exam, before I began to see the light.

Emerson starts his essay, History, "There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent."

I like the idea, "inlet." I also notice that Emerson was to not a small extent "culture-bound," since feminism had yet not been discovered. I might just let him get by with that this time, since there is much to redeem him in this essay.

My main point, my take home message, is that I am exhilarated by the idea that I can think what great men think. They are great because they make sense to people who will carry them on and will not let them die.  In a sense one might say that this heritage of hope is their heaven!

All Saints

For All the Saints! An inspiring hymn. Today is indeed All Saints Day. I like to think of everyone as having at least a streak of saintliness in ‘em, despite whatever mischief they got into, often by their imagining in retrospect that they were merely “In the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson discovered that punishment and crime spring from the same roots. Poverty fits in there also. At least the poor are less likely to have the slickest attorneys. Then there’s the judge in, believe it or not, Texas, who won’t allow DNA testing on a death row prisoner. In my opinion killing people is murder, whether a person formally labeled criminal is doing or it, or a government.

It is easier for me to grieve the loss of my father when I shine the light on the times he was loving toward me and other people. Sub-carpeting (sweeping under the rug) my memories of his carrying me on his shoulders for the Gasparilla Parade when I was about 2 1/2, feeling the pain of guilt, easily done compared with the pain of loss (I was guilty because I hadn’t convinced him not to smoke) had isolated me from my heart. Maybe I wasn’t able to cry when he died because he had often threatened me when I was a kid by saying that if I didn’t stop crying he was going to give me something to cry about. I don’t think he made that saying up! At any rate, as of this date he is a Saint.

I hope I continue the dream I had a couple of nights ago of his running a long distance race with me.

Where My Mind Is

An ecological sense of self and of mind might be helpful. It is for me. To me "mind" is nature's system for processing information. From the standpoint of the entire universe each person is a tiny speck, but nevertheless has a mind, as do all other living instances and collections of life.

Each individual human can conceive if itself as the center of a personal universe. I don’t know of another species that has the capacity to do that. We are biological creatures, vulnerable in so many ways. Our individual minds are centered and coordinated in our brains. They don't as far as I know function unless they are each connected with the rest of our bodies, moreover with the outside world. We are connected with the outside world through distance receptors like eyes and ears, which receive information encoded in patterns of light waves and sound waves, respectively.

These patterns are codes that we evolved culturally to be able to receive and eventually make sense with. What I am writing is PATTERNS like ink on paper, which stand for words that stand for things and concepts. The black on white text is not the things it stands for. Korzybski pointed out the obvious, “The map is not the territory!” Information, the mind, rides into my being, for example on patterns of matter and energy in the form of light wave and sound wave frequencies and amplitudes.

The information is not, itself, the matter and energy, but a code that changes its form as it travels into, and around, in specific areas of the brain, where it makes dynamic loops. The processes where the changes in form of impulses occur, such as the retina or the eardrum, are called signal transduction. The key words are CODE and PATTERN. Sensorimotor loops occur at the speed of neural impulses, considerably slower than the speed of light or sound, down into the rest of the body, back up into the brain, and are reflected back into the outside world through how we behave. All sorts of dialogues are possible.

Possibly the most neglected aspects of these loops are those that bring into play our endocrine and autonomic nervous systems. They provide one of the most primitive and valuable aspects of who we are and can be. They are an integral and necessary element of a healthy mind. When neglected or battled against they contribute to depression, anxiety disorders and poor social and other judgment. Adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, serotonin and other neurotransmitters can arouse us spiritually. They can also frighten us, especially if we have been taught that sad is bad, or that fear is weak, or that assertiveness is aggressiveness. Patterns of nuances of feeling that stand out sharply clear a path for memory of what is important: what is safe and nurturing, what is dangerous.

We loop with ourselves and the world through thinking, feeling, and behavior in dynamic ongoing fashion. It is a profoundly aesthetic experience for many who are able to accept sense of self as depending on healthy connections with the world outside and the world inside.

These examples are just a scratching of the surface of the processes of mind. We might conceive of Nature as a SuperMind, of which each living information-processing entity is a part. We are all connected, either by what we have in common or by the messages we send and receive.

Ortega y Gasset said, "I am myself plus my circumstance." Our connections with our important others are mental. I include healthy integrated emotional experience as an essential part of my own mind. Only when that exists is my judgment optimal.

We might extend our mind's sphere by including, inserting into it, devices that are mechanical or electronic. We might use them to connect with people, like I am doing now.

Or consider the Tom Hanks character in Castaway who was marooned for four years on an island with no people. He had no iPhone or other electronic device. He got blood on his hand doing a dental procedure on himself, then had the bright idea to paint a face on a volleyball with his bloody hand. Many were the conversations.