Is the Universe Wierd?

Hahahahahaha! The Universe is weird if you view it that way, or perfectly natural and normal if that's the way you're seeing it. Wave or particle. Yes. If we are our animal selves and let the innate knowledge of the Universe wash over us and accept that in wordless ways, there is nothing weird, nothing unknowable. Everything that is and will be has happened, is happening, and will happen all over again. Nothing new under the sun. If we are human minds without our animal selves to guide us, then everything is weird and unknowable. Everything is a surprise and a mystery. Everything is uncertain and bound to change from beneath us every time we think we have our footing.

Causality

Causality, synchronicity, intuition, premonition. It makes me want to watch the X-files. I honestly don't know what is real and what's not (except fire and police, always ALWAYS real). Is it a wave because I observe it as a wave, or a particle because I need it to be a particle to keep the elevator door open? Does my need for a photon to be or act a certain way make it so, or was it that way already? Yes and yes. Yes, it was a sign from the universe when everything in the world came crashing down on what I assumed was my "path" only to find that when I turned to tuck tail and run, and much better bigger path lay in front of me and set my fitful mind to rest. Yes, it was my intuition working when I delayed a trip that proved to be disastrous for others. What came first, the electric impulse through the phone line or the electric impulse from my brain to pick up the receiver. Or was it simultaneous? If everything is connected, and everything touches each other, and a butterfly in South America can ruin the vacations of thousands on the French Riviera, then it's really not a stretch to say that the second someone thought to call me, on some level I knew and picked up the phone.

Uncertainty

I love that the only certainty that exists is uncertainty, and you can even give that a bit of an argue, proving that it's true! One of the things we discussed in our "eastern" minded group during class was the yin/yang nature of the universe and how well that applied to the discussion of uncertainty. There is certainty and uncertainty that exists and they are opposites. One cannot exist without the other. As certainty grows, uncertainty diminishes, and vice verse. And, interestingly enough, one always becomes the other. Like on game shows when someone is asked a trivia question, and they totally know the answer. Once asked to confirm, that seed of uncertainty that lives in their vast ocean of certainty grows until they aren't even sure about what they knew so well seconds before. Such is also true for all things that exist, like the photons. Folks were so sure, so positive that they were a wave. If it looks like a wave, acts like a wave . . . a wave, right? But wait! If we look at it another way, it looks like a particle, acts like a particle . . . must be a particle? Everything that has been proven has also been disproven, or will be once someone figures out how. Or maybe not . . .

The Meaning of Time

Can We Slow Time Down?

Well if Superman can do it . . . I do believe that we can slow down time, and even more than just one person's observation of time, which we already know it totally malleable. Since we know that adding time to our atomic clocks is necessary because the earth is slowing down due to friction, than we can assume that friction on some level would be one way to slow time down. We also know that people can manipulate matter around and inside them. By focusing their minds, practitioners or Tai Qi and Qi Gong, and many many other disciplines are able to generate heat from their bodies, around their bodies, etc. Generating heat is a manipulation of matter, creating friction. If it's possible for one person to do it on a small scale, you can assume that many people can do it on a large scale. If enough people were able to create enough friction, you bet they could slow time down, right?

What Are the Cultural Implications of Time?

I think that time in regards to cultural implications can be observed, not only between different cultures, but in the different sub-levels of a single culture as well. It seems that the western culture assumes that the more you are pressed for time, the more that FILLS your time, the more important you are. You'll see people in high ranking positions in the business world flying from appointment to appointment, and all the new cool-guy expensive toys are all geared at being able to fit more into your time. Pocket day planners that allow you to put in hundreds of appointments per day, with 80 different alarms to tell you that your late, late, late all the time while you're rushing from place to place. Those people are considered important, busy, and productive. For wearing themselves to the bone and giving themselves colon cancer and ignoring their family and friends, they are given honorable mention and are the role-models for all magazines and television ads for pocket planners and nano tech time savers. In other parts of the world, people like that are considered crazy for never taking time to sit . . . r e s t . . . and be quiet with their thoughts. Spend time with their family, take four hours to eat one meal. Those things are considered good things in other parts of the world. Here, it's lazy and unproductivebecauseyouhavetosqueezeinasmuchaspossibleintoeackmoment!

What About Parallel Universes?

What about them? Like, if I were able to punch a hole into another dimension, that's right on top of this one, would I see myself playing with a major symphony orchestra, because I did indeed go to Julliard to study music performance? Would I be in a street gang with tattoos on my neck if we hadn't moved from Salinas? Are those things happening right now, in another dimension? Yeah, they are. If it occurs in my mind as a possibility, does that make it real at least on some level, in some place? Every time I make a decision to do this or that, does a fork appear in the road, and then there is that other road that I didn't take. It has to go to somewhere . . . did even just a little part of me take that route instead? How can we ever know or prove something like that? Or maybe if the Chinese did discover the Americas I may still be studying TCM, and so would everyone else, right? Only maybe then 95% of the Native Americans wouldn't have died from infections and we would have integrated study of TCM and TAM. Who knows? Maybe in yet another parallel universe we made advances much sooner and those people are able to see through dimensional portals to watch us flounder on such simple questions. What fools these mortals be!

Week 1 Quiz

1. What attracts me to Chinese Medicine?

I have been a patient of Chinese Medicine my whole life. I feel very comfortable with healing viewed in a holistic way. My father is a chiropractor and my brother is a massage therapist. I also have Chinese herbalists in my family. I have always felt a draw to healing and nurturing as a path and a way of life. My most satisfying moments are those spend helping people with their bodies and improving their quality of life.

2. What do I honestly think of physics, really?

I honestly do not think of physics, ever. I never had to take physics in school and have never been particularly drawn to the study of physics. I experience physics, and I accept physics as applies to me and my existence, but I honestly don't know anything about it.

3. Now that I think about it, have I ever experienced time "slowing down"?

As we discussed, time is really subjective. I have experienced the changing of time and it's passage on a daily basis, I'm sure. As a child, I had many instances of experiencing time at a different tempo than those around me. As a teenager and adult I rediscovered being able to control the passage of time by altering my consciousness in various ways, using internal and external methods of consciousness manipulation. It just reaffirmed my previous feelings of viewing time as a relative thing.