Light the Fear

C'mon, Let's Get "Real"

What is real? and what is not real? 

Surely the people, places and things around us are real.  We can touch them, feel them, and they have mass and physical dimensions and/or biometrics we can sense.  They exist outside of us, and they are perceived by and interact with others who can confirm their reality with us.

What about ideas, things like freedom, love or justice?  Are they real?  By the above definition, they should be because they exist outside of us and we all perceive them as concepts, embodied perhaps with different memories and symbols specific to our own life experiences and knowledge bases, but still a shared reality of ideas.

What about your mind?  Is it real?  We can touch and feel your brain, your neurons and supporting systems that our best science suggests is the seat of the "mind," but we cannot point out a definitive, finite biologic structure that is one's "mind."

Your mind also does not exist outside of you, and is not independently perceived or interacted with by others.  They talk or email you, and they can see that you have a mind but they cannot independently access it without going through you. 

So is your mind real?  Maybe, maybe not.  Could it be an illusion brought on by self-awareness, or is it the seat of self-awareness>  What if your mind is not contained in one organ or system like our brain and nerves, but is somehow anchored in every part of you, from small to large?  Are cells the basic unit?  are atoms?

What about thoughts; are thoughts real?  Thoughts are both the input and output of your mind, and once, somewhere real shared ideas like freedom, love and justice began as thoughts in the mind of one or a few humans.  If they are now "real," then must not all thoughts also be "real?"

"But Chris, what you're saying is that if someone, anyone, anywhere, EVER thought of something, no matter how casually or in passing, then that thing is real?"

Yes: perception, expectation and intention create reality, constantly and always.  Every thing any conscious life thinks about becomes a part of reality, whether shared or not, whether initiated from outside stimulus or simply from thinking within. 

Thoughts are real.  Good or bad, "right" or "wrong," each exerting an influential force on our selves and our world.  Some grow, mature and attract more and more attention, get practiced over and over, by more and more people and those thoughts become beliefs and values and principles like freedom and love and justice.

Clearly, something the mind does to thought, something our collective minds do to shared thoughts, makes them more real, more concrete and more powerful in our lives.  Yet one new thought can always change the way we think, and thus change the world.

Perhaps our mind's are the true and only limits of reality.  Perhaps our shared part of the collective whole is such that no one mind truly exists without the infrastructure of all the minds together, and it is not just all of our body that is our mind, but all of everything, everywhere and everyone.

We are each a "real" individual body and mind, and yet that reality only exists, only finds meaning in the context of our collective minds.

We think, therefore I am

Hug Me Wire Mommy

"From the least to the most important, the affection and respect of others are vital for our happiness." --the 14th Dalai Lama

We covet our individuality, strutting like meticulous birds-of-paradise preening and posing for some unseen constantly watchful potential mate, without realizing that it is the communal aspects of our own being that are both our mate and muse.

We cannot be happy without others, and yet we only want them to come close to us under our own conditions and permissions.  From first meeting to groove-n-move to family-status and beyond, all relationships impact individual happiness, which is dependent on relations with and relation to "others" for a fulfilled daily experience.

The need for interaction and the special power of both affection and respect is physics-driven, expressed in our biology and complex systems of behavior, related or tied in some cases to reproductive instincts and in others, mixed with all instincts as part of the whole of the being--a critical self-development process resulting in positive expressions of affection and respect or their negative analogues of violence and contempt.

Interaction changes us, whether great or small, whether we like it or not, time is change and motion is change.  We already hurtle millions of miles per hour in multiple dimensions due to the rotation of our planet, the revolution of our solar system and the relative spin and speed of the Milky Way.

So change is constant, and yet the POWER of attention to direct change is astounding.  Beyond simple coincidence and into the realm of constructive relational interdependence, modern physics is learning the power of the observer and observed merge in a unified field of something.

Affection is a powerful operator in that unified field, call it whatever you want, e.g. "dark energy" or "consciousness."  Negative affection and disrespect, e.g. "violence" are also a powerful operators, but I think the data shows that affection has a stronger multiplier affect, a stronger creation-enabling resonance than the hollow energetic echo created by violence.

Affection and especially intense, passionate affection is perhaps the most powerful, most desired drug known to us as social-bio beings, and yet affection exists along a spectrum and balance among the types of affection seems also to be a multiplier increasing behavior. We can be affectionate in action, but also in word and thought.  Affection of thought is in fact the foundation for all true respect.

Closing down any port of giving or receiving affection, from lover to friend to kind stranger mode will damage the individual and effectively infect their self-esteem operating system with constant glitches due to the lacking positive and needed impact of the missing affection in a person's life.

Affection is different in every context, among all beings, and yet it seems to me that one's supply and balance of appropriate affection one's life is directly proportional to the amount and consistency of their respect for others.  The more our needs for affection are met, the more respectful of others we can be, and alternatively, the more our needs for contact, giving and receiving, are not met, the more we seem to almost lack conscious bandwidth to "afford" respect of others, or we use disrespect as an excuse or explanation for our unmet needs.

Perhaps this is because lack of affection often manifests itself by diminishing self-respect, and without respect of the Self, no alleged respect of others comes of free choice from an unconditional heart.  Affection is vital to our ability to grow, respect is vital to our ability to flow, and both depend on our interaction with others.

We are all in this together.