Week Seven; Chaos!

"Ordered Chaos"- Does this sound familiar?

Absolutely. It all depends on how you perceive order. Many things that upon observation appear to be chaotic actually may possess a grand element of order upon further reflection. One example of this is a chaotic moving mound of ants in an ant colony. Upon first look, it may seem like the ants are a pulsating jumbled brown mess. If you begin to look at the ant colony more closely, you will start to see an ordered hierarchical group of creatures moving in quite a sophisticated manner. Each ant is communicating with other ants using pheromones, creating bridges, carrying large items and searching for food. There is a collective intelligence that is created out of all that seeming chaos. 

Fractals as patterns of complex systems

Fractals are beautiful displays of ordered chaos. They are a visual display of a pattern set in motion by a small variable in the initial stages of formation. As I did more research on fractals I got more interested. It seems that you can find fractals on display in many parts of nature. For example, fractal patterns are seen in coastlines and mountains as well as parts of galaxies. These complex, contained patterns are beautiful and interesting to look at. It makes me wonder about the infinite variety of patterns that potentiate our universe giving rise the inherent creativity we see all around us. 

Consciousness out of Chaos?

How does consciousness emerge out of chaos? Or is chaos inherent to the creation of consciousness? Is chaos the variable that infuses creativity into the universe giving rise to this complex system of life?  

Consciousness and creativity are what give rise to my set of questions above. As it was stated in one of last weeks articles, "Systems in advanced states of order become inflexible and relationally dead." Of course, to balance this out was also the statement, "Systems in advanced states of chaos become limp and relationally incompetent."

Consciousness is a creative expression of the universe because consciousness allows for reflection, which allows for more creative expression as we ponder this grand mystery. I imagine that consciousness must have emerged from a chaotic system with just enough order to maintain the integrity of the system's relational creativity. This is the balance of yin and yang at its highest expression. 

Week Six; Vibrations

Are all vibrations good?

 

Not all vibrations are good. Earthquakes are an example of a not-so-good  vibration. I would also categorize the vibration that emits from a 12-inch car woofer as it rolls down the street as a not-so-good vibration. Although the deep vibrating bass that rattles my apartment windows every now and then is much preferred to the vibration of an earthquake.

 

Some examples of good vibrations are the purring of my cat on my lap right now and the soothing delicate sound of ambient music coming from my speakers.

 

I notice how dramatically these different vibrations affect my mood. The not-so-good vibrations stimulate my coritsol levels and disrupt my nervous system in a way that makes me uptight and irritable or downright afraid (earthquake!). The other good vibrations soothe my mind and body in a way that is good for me. It makes me understand and appreciate the ability of sound to heal.

 

Resonance in my world

 

I never quite understood what the word “resonance” really meant until Larry explained it in class. I had of course used the word to describe relationships between people or things, “I really resonated with what he was saying”, or “the watercolor painting really resonated with me.” But I had never really thought about the scientfic or concrete meaning of the word. I actually feel like I had a little breakthrough in my understanding of the basis of homeopathic medicine when I did a little bit more research in to the idea of resonance. I always heard homeopathic effects described as the “energetic properties distilled down to just the vibration”, or “the vibrational properties of the remedies are matched to whatever symptoms the person  has.” I had never actually explored this meaning beyond what is termed “energy medicine.” But as I delved a little bit further, it was exciting to learn about the actual tangible evidence of homeopathic effects. It made a lot of sense to me intuitively and I definitely have more appreciation for the concept of resonance. 

Week Five: Symmetry and Sacred Geometry

Week Five

 

My Asymmetrical World

 

Asymmetry is important for the success of life. There are many different aspects of matter competing and struggling with one another to form every part of life as we know it. It started with the big bang and fortnately not enough anti-matter to annihilate everything but enough matter and CP violation to set everything as we know it in motion.

 

What is CP Violation, really?

 

This definition was very hard for me to figure out. Basically, CP violation is when a particle called a kaon decays at a different rate than expected. This means that radioactiv e decay timelines are different for this particle, implying that this may be the key to understanding why matter was able to dominate the universe. It basically says that matter and anti-matter are not symmetrical. This allows for the dominance of matter in the universe.

 

 

Sacred Geometry and Physics

 

There are many examples of Sacred Geometry like the I-Ching, Tibetan Mandalas, the hundreds of Muslim and Hindu temples of India, etc…There are also many examples of it in nature like the Nautilus, Spiral Galaxies, the 64-codon structure of DNA, the molecular structure of geological formations, etc…Based on this, I believe that physics and sacred geometry are definitely connected. 

Week Four; E=mc2

How  has E=Mc2 affected me?

Well, E=Mc2 is the most famous equation in the world so it is burned into my subconscious somewhere with images of Einstein, chalkboards and nuclear bombs. I cannot readily trace this equation's affect on me in some direct concrete way other than the popular images is conjures up in my mind. The stars I see at night or the sun's rays as they shine down on me during the day are the most material experiences I can think of that are related to this equation. 

I did some research on this equation to try understand it in a way that would allow me to casually talk about it. I didn't quite reach my goal. Ok, so I understand that mass has energy, etc...but I get lost in the theoretical basis of the equation when fission and fusion start coming up. Maybe by the end of this class I will understand it enough to trace its real world effect on my life. 

The four forces; comparing them!

Ok, this is gonna be a challenge. Quick synopsis. The four forces are "the four discrete forces that govern the interactions of matter- gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force." Each force has its own messenger particle. 

Gravity is the weakest of all the forces. However, it has infinite range, as does electromagnetism. This means these forces exert themselves everywhere in the universe (i think?). Gravity is always attractive whereas electromagnetism has attractive and repulsive properties. The messenger particle of gravity is the graviton. The messenger particle of electromagnetism is the photon. 

The Weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force have ranges that are limited to subatomic distances. The weak force is responsible for radioactive decay and operates on very short distance scales found in the atomic nucleus. The strong force is responsible for keeping quarks together inside protons and neutrons and keeping them all inside the nucleus. 

Where gravity and electromagnetism operate within infinite range, the other two forces act only on the subatomic level. This is probably the biggest difference between the forces that I could find other than the fact that they have different strengths. 

Week Three; Synchronicity

What evidence can you find for synchronicity?

In my own life I have witnessed many times over what seem to be synchronistic events in my life. It seems that when I put a focus on some aspect of my life, wether it be health, money, or relationship, events seems to correlate with whatever my focus is in that moment. For instance, a couple of years a go I booked a month long trip to India. I realized that when I was several weeks away from my trip that I needed a very specific amount of money to make the trip happen. Within a week of this, a check came in the mail for this exact amount of money. My grandmother had just come into a little bit of cash and had decided to share her wealth. She had never done this before and she had no prior knowledge of my need for trip funds. 

I also have the strange phone phenomenon that many people talk about. It is not that I know who is calling me before I see caller ID, although sometimes that does happen sometimes. Its usually when I call my mom and stepdad's house. I pretty much always know who is going to answer the phone. Of course there it is always a 50/50 chance on who will answer the phone because only the two of them live there, but I always get a "feeling" its gonna be my stepdad before he answers. This happens almost every single time I call. 

Lastly, when I was in high school my father died of a terminal illness. We were told at one point that he did not have much time left. We didn't know if this meant weeks or months, but the day he died I was very aware on a psychic level of the event. I remember walking around that day with a sense of heaviness, as if I was living in slow motion. The only words I can put to this feeling is that "I knew." It was very strange. 

Based on what you know, how would you explain connectivity?

Connectivity is the alive, dynamic and permeable relationship that all things have with one another and the universe. Connectivity is the inherent indivisible nature of all things, the interdependence at the core of the universe.

Week Two; Quantum Mechanics

Reflections on Uncertainty

The idea that we cannot measure quantum particles with a degree of certainty must be unsettling for some. Perhaps if I were a physicist I would feel some measure of dissatisfaction with the Heisenberg principle as far as my right brain thinking goes. On a greater scale, it seems that anyone who derives a feeling of stability with every increment of certainty they obtain from the world would be feeling less stable with the idea that the Universe is inherently uncertain based on this principle. 

Yet, the entire idea of certainty is a little bit absurd if you think about it. I believe that when you measure something you must consider that your results are only certain relative to the tool you have used to measure this something with. I suppose I feel that the human mind can never be absolutely objective to begin with so we must always consider that we can only know what we are built to understand and all we know about he universe will be forever confined to how we have constructed the path to this knowledge. 

The word "certainty" itself puzzles me a little bit. When we use this word in the context of science, it seems to imply that we have found an answer and that answer has been achieved through very linear methods of application. This assumes that a linear mode of thinking is the superior method to access the truths of the physical universe. How can that be? How can we leave out an entire realm of thinking that considers the overall pattern or texture of the universe? 

I recently came across a science radio program that covered the area of cognitive processing used in decision making. It seemed that certain people who had experienced brain tumors in their temporal region had lost considerable ability to process emotions. These people had retained all of their other cognitive abilities and appeared very normal. However, given the loss of emotional processing you would think that these people would be brutally pragmatic and rational in the way they interface with the world. (Which uncovers our assumption that emotion and reason are divorced from one another). As it turned out, those who had this particular affliction had the hardest time making decisions about even the tiniest thing like which color shirt to wear. One man lost his job because he could not get anything done. He would spend hours deciding which pen to use at the office. It turns out that emotion fuels decision making even in seemingly inconsequential ways. 

I use this example to illustrate how interconnected our emotional and rational brains really are. They are coupled together in a beautiful display of interdependence. Just as Qi is the commander of Blood and Blood is the mother of Qi, is reason the commander of emotion and emotion the mother of reason? How does this fit in with the idea of certainty? Well, it just shows how complex and interdependent our process of thinking is and how even a concept like certainty must be questioned and considered when it comes to how we perceive the world. We are all conscious beings with incredibly expansive ways of looking at matter and the universe, but we must always consider the framework of the human mind and how certainty is only so relative to the tool with which it has been measured, including the human mind. 

Causality

Causality is a principle that we have a lot of faith in. We must. We must believe that events occur and respond to other events. In order to effect change we need to have faith that what we are doing is going to have a response. In medicine, we put faith in different modalities to remedy an affliction. In politics we pray that our guy wins so that we can see changes in the way our society runs itself. We put faith in causality on a small scale as well. We have faith that when we push a button on the elevator it will take us to a certain floor. 

I think where we get into interesting areas is when we place high importance on one link in a chain of events and call that the cause of the rest of the chain of events. We can get into trouble when we do this, for instance take a tomato. I think we get into a little bit of trouble when we reduce the benefits of a tomato (or any food) to a phytochemical. A tomato has a wonderful phytochemical called lycopene.  We have a tendency to say, "let's take the lycopene out of the tomato and put it into a pill and sell it as a anti-oxidant that fights DNA damage, aka cancer". We know that foods that contain lycopene have these benefits. But is the lycopene the absolute cause of these benefits? What about the rest of the tomato? What about the unifying matrix of the tomato that came into being out of the universe in a perfect form to feed the human body? 

Is the Universe weird?

Yes, the universe is weird. The universe is a strange, unpredictable, weird place. The universe is the embodiment of creativity, non-duality, and mystery.

Week One

What attracts me to Chinese medicine? What am I doing here?

It seems that my answer to this question changes over time. The more I learn about the medicine, the more I come to appreciate what it means, what it has to offer. If every journey starts with one step, my journey toward Chinese medicine began when I was 18 years old, the day I picked up a book on the 4 noble truths. It was a very simple book, one that outlined the life of the Buddha. 

This was a profound time in my life, not because of any spiritual or religious conversion, but because I had found a philosophy of life that matched something that was stirring inside me. I had found some words on a page that explained a very fundamental unease I felt about my culture. Something shifted in me and I wanted to learn more. So, I took a comparative religions class. I found all the religions fascinating but it seemed that the Eastern religions in particular captivated me, particularly Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. And of course, as we know now, Chinese medicine is a medicine of syncretism. It is a melding of these three schools of thought. Of course there are more branches that extend out from these particular religions but the body of the medicine is influenced mainly by these 3 philosophies.

And then came my experience with Western medicine. I believe it was Leon Hammer that said, "Western medicine does not have a unifying matrix." Well, this was clear from my experience and it bothered me. The disjointed world-view that defined modern culture and had contributed to my general sense of unease was the same world-view that created what we know as "western medicine". And it was dissatisfying to say the least. I wanted to do something about it. 

I was searching for a path that fit who I was. I wasn't willing to settle for something that did not satisfy my need for a holistic world-view. I wanted to contribute something worthwhile and help those who wanted a more global and unified sense of their bodies, their minds, their health. I loved herbs, I loved the "unified matrix" that TCM had to offer. So here I am. 

What do I think about Physics?

I think that Physics is a fascinating subject with a lot of potential to expand and boggle my mind. 

Reflections on The Meaning of Time

Linear time, subjective time, objective time, parallel universes where events take place at the same time, the time-space continuum, how much time it takes for light to travel, digital time, atomic time. And time is always on our minds... I'm never gonna be on time, what time is it?, did you have a good time? what time do you want to meet? etc...

Time is many things. Time is an agreement, a statement, a constraint, a dictator, a liberator, a friend. Time can be stolen from us, "borrowed", wasted, used. Time is what we give prisoners who need to be punished. Time is valuable. Time is money. Time is...just in time.

There are so many ways to view time. This subject completely fascinates me and I am overjoyed that we are discussing it in Larry's class. Time is such a strange concept that I feel transcends the capabilities of the human mind in many ways. Time is an invisible force that shapes our bodies, our minds, our character and the development of wisdom and reflection. From a spiritual aspect it is a great teacher if we pay attention to those patterns that repeat over time and we learn from them.  I believe that human beings experience time as a tool of reflection, as an opportunity to grow. Our goal I believe is not to necessarily know the literal meaning of time but to explore it, to dwell here in this mysterious place and ask questions. Human beings are a great way for the Universe to reflect back on itself, to ponder itself. Time offers the perfect tool for those that are willing.