Galileo’s Error

July 12, 2020 5 Comments


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Finally made substantial progress with Philip Goff’s recent offering on the subject of consciousness, and as someone equally intrigued by the advancements of science and their implications for both neuroscience and the efforts to develop a science of consciousness, I must admit that I find myself in agreement with many of Goff’s assertions, even though I’m not quite completely convinced by all of his arguments. His review of the variety of approaches to understanding the nature of human consciousness and his fairly even-handed treatment of views which differ from his own is especially encouraging, since this approach is less evident in other treatments of the subject.


Justus Sustermans Uffizi Gallery, Florence

One of the most interesting general starting points in Goff’s approach is when he pointed out Galileo’s idea to separate our subjective experience of objects from the objects themselves: “Just as beauty exists only in the eye of the beholder, so colors, smells, tastes, and sounds exist only in the conscious soul of a human being as she experiences the world. In other words, Galileo transformed the sensory qualities from features of things in the world—such as lemons—into forms of consciousness in the souls of human beings.”

This “error” led to the scientific revolution where mathematics could describe the phenomenal world like never before. Galileo also was able to deduce through reasoning alone that objects, no matter how much they weigh, fall at the same rate, by revealing the contradiction in the idea that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. Goff takes great pains to point out the value of philosophy in this way:

“It is sometimes claimed that the scientific revolution, and the great progress which followed it, have rendered philosophy impotent as a tool for understanding the natural world. And yet the father of the scientific revolution is in fact the great vindicator of the philosophical method. Galileo is one of the few philosophers to have produced a philosophical argument which nobody has ever disputed; and with this argument he transformed our understanding of the physical world.”


NASA.gov

As we know, Galileo’s idea that all objects fall at the same rate was demonstrated by Apollo astronaut, David Scott, who dropped a hammer and a feather during his mission on the moon, and they both hit the surface at the same time. While waking consciousness is made coherent by our ability to remember each moment as it happens and becomes the next moment, our dreaming consciousness, while often remembered, as explained by Goff, may not follow logically in the same way:

“Even in the dreams we do remember when we wake up, what is experienced from moment to moment is often not so tightly bound together by memory. One moment we’re back in high school being taught French by Miss Clarke, and the next moment we’re on top of a mountain without noticing anything has changed. Memory is still recording the dream (if it weren’t we wouldn’t be able to remember it upon waking), but it is not binding moment-to-moment experience into a coherent whole as it does in waking life.”

After reading through this section of the book, I awoke suddenly twice that night from two elaborate dreams: Many of the exact details of the first dream escape me, but realizing that it was quite elaborate in its details surprised me upon waking. Briefly recalling such details after having a dream of such length, made me wish I had gotten up and written it down.

In this dream, I was a teacher or an instructor for a relief agency in a third world area and responsible for helping a large community build relationships for local cooperation between groups. I remember answering questions in a group setting, as well as having one-on-one conversations with individuals in a teacher/student situation. I was definitely enjoying the process and feeling a sense of accomplishment in serving this community. Upon waking, I was surprised at the level of detail within the dream, and how long it seemed to go on. There was barely a hint of light evident in the windows, so it must have been near dawn…

The second dream involved an elaborate journey through a large city. My GPS located the vehicle I drove into the city, and after my activity in town was accomplished, the signal on the GPS screen showed the way back to the car, which took me over a much more elaborate return path, including several buildings, an indoor mall location, a large concrete structure which I had to climb down, and past street vendors with colorful framed images displayed. As I approached the destination, the screen of the GPS showed a network of red boxes connected by red lines. I was frustrated and anxious that I was having so much trouble locating my car, right before I was awakened by someone grabbing my toes.

As the room slowly brightened with the morning light, I was reminded of Emerson…

“I see the spectacle of morning…from daybreak to sunrise with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of clouds float like fishes in a sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind.”

Emerson belonged to the Transcendentalist Movement which expressed the values of “idealism, nonconformity, self-reliance, free thought, and the divinity of nature.” I often find myself in accord with these values in spite of experiences with a fair amount of resistance or push-back from others I have encountered along the way.

Like Carl Jung, who described “a curious resistance” and “an almost total unwillingness to understand,” his choice of psychiatry when he was preparing for his future career, my own experiences with conversations regarding subjective experience as an indication of a non-physical component to human consciousness, which clearly invokes free thought and the divinity of nature, often met with a similar “unwillingness,” even to suppose that such elements exist at all.

As I awaited the fullness of the morning light to brighten in the room, Emerson’s words echoed in my mind, stirring memories of my own struggles with coming to terms with a number of extraordinary experiences in my life. Reflecting on them now, in my maturity, they seem more clearly to embody the transcendentalist values, and re-enforce my resolve to pursue the path I have actively explored these many years. Reading Philip Goff’s book, “Galileo’s Error,” has also provided additional encouragement to persist in my explorations.

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Mixing Solar Energy with Summer Melancholy

July 1, 2020 8 Comments

 

There was a curious mixture this past week of 21st century technology and the pleasure one can only experience in a natural setting, surrounded by nature’s greenery. While I sat out in the backyard, sipping on my morning coffee, a half-dozen men set siege to the roof and commandeered our electric service in the kitchen pantry, in the process of installing an array of solar panels on the front of the house.

 


It’s been a curious mixture in the sense that I often spend time amongst the summer greenery in the backyard when the weather is agreeable, but most often it is a solitary and almost meditative experience of quiet contemplation, with an occasional interruption of birdsong or the rustling of the trees all around me, which is predictably pleasing in its own way.

 


This particular morning introduced an assortment of unfamiliar interruptions and various other forms of strangeness as a professional crew of electricians and installers intermittently initiated a barrage of grinding, drilling, and hammering sounds as they progressed through the installation process.

 


Most of us tend to gain an appreciation of our decisions and choices in retrospect generally, as the consequences become more apparent, but for several mornings over the past week, I watched as the drama unfolded in front of me, and it was a much more immediate visceral response that captured my attention—right as I sat there observing the process—when I realized I was no longer only an investigator or an observer of the technological revolution, but truly a participant in it, taking the deliberate step to install the state-of-the-art equipment necessary for harnessing the power of solar energy.

 

 

Ninety-three million miles away, the sun is radiating its light energy directly toward the Earth, and after some eight minutes of travel at the speed of light, that energy will now be captured by an array of solar panels on the roof, generating electric power through an astonishingly simple process, converting sunlight into electricity by “exciting electrons in silicon cells using the photons of light from the sun.”

 

 

I checked out the science of solar cells on miro.medium.com and found this fascinating explanation:

 

“Solar panels, also known as modules, contain photovoltaic cells made from silicon that transform incoming sunlight into electricity rather than heat.


(“Photovoltaic” means electricity from light—photo=light, voltaic=electricity.”)


As the photons of sunlight beat down upon these cells, they knock the electrons off the silicon. The negatively-charged free electrons are preferentially attracted to one side of the silicon cell, which creates an electric voltage that can be collected and channeled.  This current is gathered by wiring the individual solar panels together in a series to form a solar photovoltaic array.”

https://jjhiii24.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/c9849-1ywtau6iog8c2cqs-h_ah1a.gif

 

 

The introduction of a very robust and noisy process of implementing 21st century solar science into my normally sedate and quiet morning routine brought out the philosopher in me, as I considered just how interconnected we all are by virtue of our common experiences of sunlight in one sense, but also unique in our perceptions of new experience, which can unfold before us in unexpected ways, while still containing common elements, and inform our thoughts and help us to assimilate that which is uncommon.

 

In a bittersweet almost melancholy moment, I took notice that the view from the ground on this day still included an over-the-rooftop view of the uppermost branches of the tree out in front of the house, which for some reason seemed to me to appear much taller than they did last summer, and it wasn’t lost on me that this would be one of the last opportunities to enjoy such a view, since the tree is slated for removal shortly. While I have been aware of the inevitability of all of these changes for some time now, actually having witnessed the predicted events as they unfolded prompted me to appreciate the gravity of the decision to go forward with them in real-time.

 

While contemplating these changes I was inspired to respond poetically to the “melancholy moment,” and decided to include it with this post. You can listen to my recital of the poem at this link:



 

 

Filed under human nature, Nature, Personal, Philosophy, Poetry Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

A Moment of Repose

June 13, 2020 Leave a comment

 

After months of hibernating, like many of us, when the travel restrictions were eased, I took the opportunity to visit a nearby East Coast location called Moore’s Beach, which is a landmark on the Delaware Bay, currently being restored after enduring damage from Hurricane Sandy. It also happens to be a protected area since it plays host to a number of migratory birds. Since it was during the time frame when the birds were present, we weren’t able to walk as far as we normally do, but it still provided a satisfying walk in the spring air, and an opportunity to capture some images of the natural beauty available along the coastline.

 

 

According to the official website, Moore’s Beach has an important role in supporting a variety of bird species during their annual migration:

“A migratory stopover for arctic nesting shorebirds must provide each bird the energy necessary to get to the next stopover or to the ultimate destination, the wintering or breeding area. Delaware Bay stands out among these shorebird refueling stops because it delivers fuel in the form of horseshoe crab eggs giving birds options. Our telemetry has shown that Red knots, the species we best understand, may leave Delaware Bay and go directly to their Arctic breeding areas or stopover on Hudson Bay.’

http://www.restorenjbayshore.org/moores-beach.html

 

 

Walking along the weathered roadway leading up to the beach was a welcome change from our typical hike through our limited range of neighborhood streets, and when we arrived at the shoreline, we were met by several signs explaining the reason for the limited access. This image captured hundreds of small birds and several other varieties flying by in formation—a formidable sight!

 

 

Standing on the edge of the beach, inhaling the cool spring air and enjoying the benefits of a gentle offshore breeze, I closed my eyes and focused momentarily on my breath, feeling like an essential part of the landscape, and allowing the moment to refresh my spirit, grateful to have even a few moments of communing with nature.

 

 

With hope in our hearts, and with gratitude for the opportunity to experience our natural world, we can glean a degree of optimism as we move forward toward the future.

 

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100,000 Page Views – An Appreciation

May 25, 2020 7 Comments

Appreciation Video

Click the link above to view my appreciation video!

 

 

It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge a new milestone achieved here at John’s Consciousness.com – the accumulation of 100,000 page views by more than 50,000 unique visitors. It has taken me almost ten years to get here, and while I understand that it is still a modest achievement in view of how long I’ve been writing, and in consideration of having reached this level as a result of the many efforts of both individual visitors and an equally modest loyal fan base, even just enduring these many years in order to accomplish the task feels like a reasonably sufficient reason to express my gratitude and acknowledge the important contributions of my readers over that time.

 

 

On the way to achieving this milestone there have been many wonderful people who have stopped by here at johns-consciousness.com, and hundreds of thoughtful and interesting comments posted over the years, from people all over the world. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be highlighting some of the most popular posts from nearly a decade of effort in this regard, and sharing some of the behind-the-scenes stories about how they came about and, in some cases, provide some follow-up to the stories I’ve shared from years past.

 

 

I encourage my readers and visitors to share their favorites if they are so inclined, and would be glad to respond to any genuine query about any of the subjects I’ve written about along the way.

Thank you all so much for your support, and I look forward to sharing more as we move forward!

With kind regards…John H.

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Intelligence, Cognition, and Consciousness

May 25, 2020 3 Comments

Vitruvian Man

 

Conventional wisdom these days isn’t much help when we look ahead to the future of life on earth, since life is fairly unconventional these days by most reckonings, and even what might previously have been described as common sense hardly seems common at all anymore. If there is any consolation to the currently prevailing uncertainty of it all, it is that with so much uncertainty there’s still a chance it might all turn out okay. That doesn’t sound like much of a chance until you consider the alternatives which include a clearly downward spiral toward the abyss.

Life itself arose in our little corner of a minor galaxy in an astonishing confluence of matter and energy and environment in our solar system, but took billions of years to produce significant results of the sort that permitted intelligent life to unfold. Once established, intelligent life progressed rapidly by comparison, and we see human progress increasing exponentially as the years pass.

 

 

When you consider the unlikely way in which life itself sprang into existence on Earth, our own uncertainty in the 21st century starts to look far less daunting. In the earliest epoch of humanity, the first truly useful and meaningful awareness of human consciousness in our ancient ancestors could only have appeared once the hominid brain finally possessed the necessary prerequisites for cognition and awareness. No matter when the architecture of the brain and the physiological structures within the body finally became mature enough to allow heightened sense perception and cognition, possession of these talents alone could not have produced significant results right away, and consciousness must have taken an enormous amount of time to develop into a recognizable phenomenon.

 

One can see in the parallel of our modern development from human babies to functional adults, that the ability to utilize the brains’ miraculous capacities requires an accumulation of knowledge and experience over many years before becoming notably useful beyond basic skills. Modern children normally have the advantage of being surrounded by already functional and accomplished human beings with a fully developed language and plenty of knowledge and experience from which to learn. For our ancient ancestors, who were starting from scratch, there was no such advantage. Of course, increased intelligence isn’t necessarily a harbinger of good news for humanity.

A recent article in Time magazine expresses this idea well. Ray Kurzweil’s predictions of what has been described as the “singularity” (Time magazine, February 21,2011, pg. 42), “n: The moment when technological change becomes so rapid and profound, it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history,” points to a sort of tipping point in the progress of artificial intelligence. According to this theory, by 2023 computers will surpass human brainpower, and by 2045 they will possess “super intelligence,” or brainpower “…equivalent to that of all human brains combined.

While the author of this article, Lev Grossman, admits that such a “Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, he also believes that “…it’s an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.” The problem for me, aside from equating artificial intelligence with the human variety, is his assertion that when “All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is that our brains are doing when they create consciousness…then all bets are off.”

It always intrigues me when so-called “experts” attempt to simplify “human consciousness” as being some sort of evolutionary adaptation easily explained by brain physiology or cognitive functioning. It’s a “no-brainer” that our development of a complex and integrative cerebral cortex gave us access to a level of cognitive function (as yet unmatched by any other species to our knowledge) that permits an exceptionally keen awareness of BEING conscious, but consciousness itself is a much larger and expansive subject than brain physiology or cognitive science and any attempt to explain consciousness in a comprehensive sense clearly requires a much broader understanding.

I recently encountered the writings of Julian Jaynes, a Princeton professor who wrote extensively about the origins of consciousness in humans, and his theory posits that humans did not immediately develop into conscious creatures fully until around 2 B.C. when a fully developed “metaphorical language” provided the necessary requisites for the achievement of a fully functional human consciousness.

There can be no doubt that our awareness required the development of metaphorical language for our apprehension of consciousness to be expressed, and for meaningful thought to formulate ideas and concepts necessary for recognition of the existence of consciousness, but it seems much more likely that consciousness exists as a “fundamental feature” (Chalmers) of existence and that, as consciously aware creatures, we are “aware” of consciousness in the same way that we are aware of electromagnetism.

Whatever sort of result comes from technological progress in artificial intelligence, what we will no doubt find, as we look toward the uncertain future, is that no matter how intelligent we or our machines become, no amount of fiddling or advanced technology will change the fundamental features of existence.

Pen and ink drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, showing how a man’s body fits into a circle and a square by adjusting the position of his arms and legs, called Vitruvian Man.

“Vitruvius was an ancient Roman architect who wrote a series of ten books on architecture – one of the few collections of books of its type that survived into the Renaissance. In the third volume, which is on the proportions of temples, he states that these buildings should be based on the proportions of man, because the human body is the model of perfection. He justifies this by stating that the human body with arms and legs extended fits into the perfect geometric forms, the circle, and the square. “– excerpt from article © Robert M. Place 2000

http://thealchemicalegg.com/leotaroN.html

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The Blossoming of Consciousness

May 22, 2020 Leave a comment

Contemplating recent comments about what it means to be a conscious human, I began to consider what really distinguishes us from all the other inhabitants of our planet. There are some distinctively human traits to be sure, but it seems more like a combination of several important capacities and foundational characteristics that sets us apart.

Most living creatures with an adequately developed brain and functional central nervous system, given sufficient stimulation in the appropriate circumstance, will generally demonstrate a fairly predictable response in their behavior, including, many times, human beings. The familiar “fight-or-flight” response when in close proximity to a dangerous carnivore would be a good example. Under most circumstances, depending on the degree of danger and the creature’s inherited abilities and previous conditioning with regard to facing such danger, if adequate motivation was present for either running away or standing up to the danger, most organisms would instinctively tend to select the behavior which provided the best option for survival. While this behavior could still ultimately result in the demise of the organism, in spite of whatever resources may be available to them, when the behavior is instinctively chosen, no judgment or further implication can be inferred.

Conversely, as cognitive creatures, with both instinctual and volitional capacities, humans can not only deliberately override instinctive tendencies, but can also consciously review the available behavioral selections, calculate the likelihood of success of any choice, contemplate previously untried alternatives, innovate extemporaneously with available resources, and even in the face of very low probabilities of success, choose behaviors which instinct alone would generally not permit. In the human brain, with all of its genetically inherited and deeply-rooted predispositions, as well as a variety of involuntary and unconscious functions, we observe mitigation of this sort by virtue of the capacities provided by our distinctly human version of the cerebral cortex, particularly from activity within the frontal lobe. The capacity to deliberately alter or mitigate our instinctive responses, and purposefully alter our environment and behaviors is a characteristic of our species, and one of the distinguishing hallmarks that separates humans from all other living creatures.

One might wish to argue that humans respond instinctively all the time, or that we tend to confer deliberate choice to our actions far more often than is actually the case, but we cannot easily disregard millions of years of evolution simply because we now have a sufficiently sophisticated cognitive capacity. We are, by most cosmic standards, a fledgling species, whose progress from being primarily impulsive creatures with a survival instinct to the more modern self-aware variety has spanned less than a hundred thousand years. Whatever degree of cognitive skill might have been adequate to qualify the earliest version of modern humans as “conscious” or “significantly self-aware,” the earliest evidence of such characteristics being demonstrated seems to fall during the Upper Paleolithic period, which saw the coexistence of the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon.

In the waning years of survival for the Neanderthals, some evidence of expanding skills with tools has been found, and examinations of Neanderthal fossils show that the skull architecture would have supported the ability to produce language if they were able, but the available fossil evidence is not adequate to support a definitive conclusion in this regard, and there is a fair amount of speculation and disagreement as to what exactly constitutes a fully developed and meaningful vocal communication. However, the capacity and ability with language is another one of the predominant characteristics of modern Homo sapiens, and represents a significant evolutionary survival advantage.

Along with the ability to communicate through language, modern humans were finally able to associate temporal objects with symbolic representations of those objects, as evidenced in the ancient cave paintings in Ardeche, France in the Caves of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, now believed to have been placed there some 34,000 years ago by the Aurignacian culture. However the actual progressive skills of Homo sapiens unfolded, it is clear that when it finally became possible for our ancient ancestors to make significant and meaningful use of their cognitive skills, human beings were profoundly altered, and were no longer simply another primate species struggling for survival in the ancient world.

If we begin with the idea that truly modern humans had finally achieved a significant degree of useful and discernable “consciousness” around this time, it would take another 30,000 years for the first appearance of “writing” to occur, when the Sumerians created their “cuneiform” writing system, and by definition, the beginning of “recorded history.” Everything that happened in between these two landmark developments represents a period of “blossoming” of our human consciousness, within which both language and culture flourished and expanded into what would become a global phenomenon.

Methods for communication have also been documented among other species on our planet, and we have observed a whole range of behaviors which could be described as an indication of various degrees of “consciousness,” in those life forms, including astonishing achievements in the construction of habitats, particularly tenacious species surviving unimaginable adversity, and mind-boggling evolutionary adaptations within species, over the millions of years of evolution. As amazing as they are, these accomplishments pale in comparison to what one lonely branch of primates has managed in the last 50,000 years.


Overcoming instinctive behaviors, deliberately and “consciously” choosing our path through the millennia, as disastrous as some of those choices have been and continue to be, distinguishes humans from every other known species. Whether we are able to survive and thrive in the future, could very well depend not just on our progress toward understanding human consciousness, but also on our willingness to transcend both our history and our narrow view of what might possibly explain “consciousness.”

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Inner Experience

May 17, 2020 3 Comments

inner experience

“Artwork by Daniel B. Holeman ” http://www.AwakenVisions.com

“The inner self is not part of our being, like a motor in a car. It is our entire substantial reality itself, on its highest and most personal and most existential level. It is like life, and it is life: it is our spiritual life when it is most alive. It is the life by which everything else in us lives and moves. It is in and through and beyond everything that we are.” –Thomas Merton from his book, “The Inner Experience.”

merton

“We are not capable of union with one another on the deepest level until the inner self in each one of us is sufficiently awakened to confront the inmost spirit of the other.” — Thomas Merton from his book, “The Inner Experience.”

Confronting the inmost spirit of another requires a very particular set of circumstances. According to Merton, unless we are reasonably awakened to our own inner self, we cannot hope to unite with that same inner self in others, at least in any sort of deeply meaningful way. He also suggests that our inner self is not just one part of our being, but rather “our entire substantial reality,” while still existing “beyond everything that we are,” as temporal human beings. What an intriguing thought it is to suppose that our entire substantial reality might transcend all that we are as human beings.

The idea of our inner life being the source of “the life by which everything else in us lives and moves,” seems to suggest the existence of a clear connection between our inner spiritual lives and our temporal lives. If we consider this to be valid as a way of accurately describing the phenomenon within us, then surely the connections we feel to others, whose inmost spirits are equally transcendent of our human nature, must also represent a connection to that same nature.

second gitl song2

http://absolutefractals.com/?page_id=709

Connecting to our own inner life, awakening to the inmost spirit within us, is not a simple matter for many of us. Life in our century has accelerated in so many ways, and the demands of daily life, combined with the deluge of stimuli from every form of media and communication in our day, leaves precious little time for contemplation and the work of awakening to what is both essential and insubstantial within us. As anyone who has been reading along here can see, my own process of awakening has been tumultuous and burdensome, many times requiring what felt like Herculean efforts to sustain my momentum, and there have been many periods when I was desperate to climb up and out of a feeling of despair which nearly drained me of any hope for success and forward movement.

Equally evident, though, appearing often at precisely the moment when I needed it most, throughout many of the years in which this struggle took place, was the almost miraculous presence of other vital spirits. The more I searched and struggled to awaken to my entire substantial reality, the more profoundly the arrival of such spirits seem to affect me, often becoming a lifeline or a saving grace that helped me to hold on, to push forward, or to reclaim lost hope.

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Upon my return to Massachusetts in the spring of 1975, shortly after my experience in the forest, (Deep Forest Vision, 4-11-2014), I encountered another vital spirit, whose arrival in this period of my life sparked the beginning of a flame of awakening, propelling me forward toward an awareness that I still carry within me as I write. As can be true with many such encounters in our lives, I didn’t fully grasp the significance of the connection right away, nor did I have any sense of how it might impact my process of awakening at first. It was clear, though, that this was a compelling spirit, and I became swiftly entangled in a web of emotion and desire that was impossible to ignore. We spent much of the early time together in long, penetrating conversations, exploring the worlds within us, imagining the possible futures that might lay ahead, and, as time progressed, in close personal proximity which became increasingly difficult to conclude when the time came to part.

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The intensity of the training assignment at the military base made for a formidable obstacle to distractions outside of the school. Engaged in the principles of cryptography and decipherment of encoded transmissions, the daily grind of regimented and focused learning took all of my energies to maintain and absorb. The numerous technical details and methodologies employed in this training were designed specifically to engage the students as analysts of complex information, and there were no computers or digital devices to assist us. The tools of the training were pencil and paper, statistical analysis, and hard-won experience from years of development and intense efforts of operators in the field before us. The image above is the door to the high security areas, that I stood in front of every morning before entering the hallways to the secret classrooms. It was a sight I would never be able to forget.

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Each morning, we would pass through the security checkpoints, being smartly reminded by the officer in charge to keep our viewpoint looking forward and not to stray from the designated path to our classroom. This was not open for discussion. “Eyes front and keep moving,” was the standing order. The covers on the windows have long since been removed in this image, but the memory of standing at my station at attention until directed to “take seats,” in the cramped and musty rooms of the training areas is still vivid in my memory. This was serious business and you had better keep your focus on the task ahead.

When the class was dismissed at the end of the week, so long as you weren’t required to report for other duties, the local area had many points of interest and options for a young soldier to explore, but for me, the first order of business was to fly to nearby Clinton, Massachusetts to visit the vital spirit who lived there. These encounters seem to break through every barrier placed in the way, and even though they sometimes ran in opposition to virtually every practical and temporal circumstance outside of that “oasis in the forest,” they frequently contained some of the most powerful intuitive experiences of my life up to that point. I was occasionally overwhelmed by their intensity, and very quickly identified and was drawn toward this kindred spirit. There was almost a hypnotic effect to being in her presence. It felt as if I was only truly alive in her presence, and in some sort of suspended animation in between visits.

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One afternoon driving back from a week of especially intense training, I was overcome by a keen sense of her presence spiritually. It seemed so unlikely to my rational mind that there could have been such a connection between us, and I supposed my reluctance to accept that it was even possible was part of my unconscious doubts, but there I was nearly gasping with a sense that she was in some sort of distress. I had always been fiercely empathetic and sensitive to distress in others, but generally those experiences took place in their presence. This was something altogether different. The pain in my heart on this night was unlike any other I had known. Intellectually I had to acknowledge that I was experiencing it, and emotionally it felt as though there might be some purpose to it, but spiritually where the effect was most severe, I was totally without even a shred of a hint as to how to proceed.

I attempted to call the house, but there was no answer. We had arranged to meet the following day, and I hadn’t expected her to be home that night, but didn’t know what else to do. By this time, I had begun to record my thoughts and feelings in a notebook when compelled by circumstances to do so, and on this night, I wrote the following:

“How shall I begin to describe such immense feelings as those which fill my soul this evening. How indeed, can one put into words, the images and sensations which flow across the chasm of thoughts and emotions? Truly, how could my words do anything but fall short of precise expression? So many times I have struggled to free myself from the grasp of this journey. How many hours have I passed between knowledge and ignorance, retention and loss, comprehension and failing to understand? My heart swirls in a sea of indecision. My heart seems to beg for fulfillment and yet my consciousness warns with each step forward. Never before have I felt such complete hesitance to make a move. The path that beckons is my very life force, yearning to rise and follow.”

That evening, as I reluctantly closed my eyes to sleep, I felt a lessening of this sensation, but awoke during the night from a powerful and disturbing dream. Exhausted and worried, I drifted between wakefulness and sleep for the remaining hours until dawn.

….next time….the dream and the movement forward….

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Preparing for the Unknown

May 9, 2020 8 Comments

In a recent review of my writings from my time in Europe as a young soldier, I was prompted to reflect upon how the events prior to my departure from America set the stage for my experiences in that time frame, which sparked additional reflection on what has been a lifelong concern–taking the initial steps on a journey toward the unknown.

 

 

As a young boy, without fully understanding the cause or having any clear explanation for certain personal experiences, or being able to associate those events with any sort of sophisticated theory or philosophy, I still somehow seemed to know that what I had experienced at certain times contained elements or aspects outside of normal temporal boundaries. I could not yet describe them as such when they occurred, and was profoundly naïve about the world in a number of ways, but I accepted that the nature of these happenings were true and real, even though they did not fit well into the narratives I was being taught during a strict religious upbringing.

I can vividly recall moments in my youth when I felt, what seemed to me at the time to be, the presence of another life-force or energy that was somehow influencing my responses to the unexplained events, and thought of them as either some kind of guidance or warning. As a five year old child, coming home from school, I once narrowly missed being struck by a car as I was about to run out from between two other cars. For some reason, I suddenly stopped myself and hesitated just long enough to witness the fenders and side panels of a passing car go whooshing by me. There were other moments too, just as vivid in their own way, when I recall expecting to see particular individuals who suddenly appeared, and when anticipated events inexplicably unfolded right in front of me.

 

 

In several other especially troubling moments, I felt as though I was outside of myself, witnessing events from a short distance away from my body, alternately experiencing moments of dread, as well as moments of incredible lightness of being or delight, for no apparent reason. Even though I did not yet have the vocabulary to express these events in those terms, in retrospect, I now understand that many of them were simply moments of synchronicity with the environment I occupied at that time, without truly understanding how it was possible.

All of these indications slowly began to make more sense as I struggled to come to terms with my experiences during my military training in Massachusetts. Whatever the explanation actually might have been, it was clear that I needed to attend to exploring these matters with some urgency, since they seemed to be accelerating in frequency, and increasing in intensity.

 

 

For a time, they would occur almost daily, and it took me by surprise on a number of occasions to find myself “zoning out,” during Morse code training, typing the dots and dashes on a manual typewriter, when I noticed that the coded groups of random characters suddenly dropped off the page to become words and sentences. Had I not been most often in voluntary sessions of practice, it might have become more noticeable to my instructors. There were times when I had to take off my headset and walk away briefly in order to clear my mind so that I could return to copying the required code.

Sadly, I was not always able to retrieve these sheets in a timely manner, and was only occasionally able to hide them in my pocket and take them with me. Classroom protocol prohibited such actions, and papers from practice sessions were routinely burned afterwards. Often I would simply have to memorize as much as I could of key phrases or of particular passages in order to write them down afterwards.

 

 

Once I had completed that phase of my training, I knew that I was on a path leading me somewhere important to my well-being, and I discovered that once I began to be more accepting of these “eruptions,” I seemed to have more control over them. Resisting them had only led to an increased difficulty in managing them, so I decided instead to embrace the process and not to resist the flow of this energy through me. That decision, in turn, facilitated a more balanced response when I encountered these events and increased my ability to retain the spirit of those episodes until a more advantageous opportunity came to record them.

By the time I had completed my training in Massachusetts, I was in the running to graduate at the top of my class. There was an intense competition for that top slot and on the day of the final exam, I was in a head-to-head battle with my associate, Marilyn, who had matched me grade-for-grade through most of the course. As the test progressed, the senior instructors were all standing around our positions at the mock equipment stations, meticulously recording our every response to the preplanned scenarios that had been fed into the machines, mimicking a live mission in the field. Others who had already been disqualified eventually joined in the intense monitoring of the two remaining operators—myself and Marilyn.

 

 

When the exercise was completed, we had both obtained the correct result, and the report which printed out matched the requirements precisely. The instructors began conferring like referees trying to decide on a controversial call on a close play. Much to my dismay, one of the instructors had noticed that I had not set one of the standard controls for ensuring a clear signal, which required the operator to set a knob on the control panel to boost the RF gain to maximum. In this case, that boost wasn’t necessary to get the correct result, but it was the only difference between the two competitors, and since it was a standard part of the procedure, the win went to Marilyn.

I protested briefly that the goal of the test exercise was to capture the signal precisely, which I had accomplished, but the senior instructor insisted that under different conditions it might not have been sufficient, and that the standard was set for that reason. Our fellow students applauded as I shook Marilyn’s hand and congratulated her on her victory. She smiled widely at me and thanked me for being so gracious in defeat.

 

 

It was an exceptional moment at the apex of my military training in Massachusetts, and even as I watched her receive her reward, a promotion and a bonus weekend of leave added to her record, circumstances were already swirling around a sudden change in the trajectory of my journey, which would have a profound effect beyond anything I could have anticipated.

Filed under human nature, Personal, The Human Spirit Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

The Silence In My Room

April 26, 2020 5 Comments

 

The silence in my room hangs over me
Like a wet towel draped across my legs.
It feels heavier than it should since
The song about you that used to play
Repeatedly in my head finally stopped.

 

I don’t remember exactly when it stopped.
Distracted so long by chaos and confusion,
I had to pretend not to notice
When my heart would prod me to remember
What it felt like to clasp your hand in mine.

 

So many years have passed now that even
My brain seems not to mind anymore.
Nothing feels the same even when
I glance backwards over my shoulder,
Still somehow looking for you.

 

Forced by circumstance to abandon the dream,
Or at least to let go of its rounded edges,
It still persisted to float in front of me
When the house was quiet enough
To listen to the thumping in my chest.

 

Even now, I sometimes attempt to conjure once again,
That moment of superbly fashioned bliss,
When my heart would fill effortlessly at
The mere sight of your face as you approached
With that silly sensual grin beaming toward me.

 

The dream hasn’t ended completely just yet,
But the song seems to have fallen away;
I can’t seem to overcome its reluctance
Or to prod it to resume the dreamy tune
That once serenely filled the silence in my room.

 

© April 2020 by JJHIII24

Filed under Personal, Poetry Tagged with , , , , , ,

Time Passes Away, But Slowly

April 25, 2020 2 Comments

 

“Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.” ― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

 

As I wrote in a previous post, the time will soon arrive when the tree out front of the house will have to be removed, but with the pandemic slowing everything down, it has been postponed for the time being, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to photograph both the tree out front and the larger one out in the backyard. Reviewing the images, I was struck by the sense of how much larger they seemed to be these days, and decided to see if I could find some earlier pictures to compare. Much to my surprise, I was able to locate several from the day we moved in back in 1990, almost exactly thirty years ago. It seemed like a natural development to then place them side-by-side and the resulting images showed a degree of growth and expansion that is eye-catching.

Aside from the notable differences in the appearance of the house from the various improvements and replacement windows, the girth and height of the limbs is clearly visible, and several of the limbs from years of storms and wind are clearly missing in the recent images. Periodically, the power company trims the branches near the power lines as a matter of course also, but it’s usually just a few of the higher branches, and now the necessity of having to lop off so many of the larger branches has sealed the fate of our arboreal friend. We’ve accepted this necessity and understand that all lifespans are finite throughout the life cycles of every organism, but all life forms have their own unique value in the ecosystem and should be preserved and protected as far as possible. In this instance, we have acknowledged that there is sufficient cause for clearing the area, and will honor the importance of the tree by storing the wood for future use.

 

 

Digging a little deeper through the family archive, I was able to locate several images I took of the tree in the backyard, and again was quite surprised by the huge difference in the width and growth upwards that took place over the last thirty years. The backyard tree was one of the key selling points when we were first considering several of the homes in the area, not only because it would obviously be an asset as far as providing shade in the summer months, but also because it seemed to dominate the landscape in the yard in a way that gave me confidence that it would provide much more as a backdrop for all the future events that would take place in the years to come. We were going to be raising our children in whatever home we chose, and it felt like this tree represented a solid foundation for taking on that important task. Shortly after moving in, in the first Spring, I photographed our gang standing by the old girl.

 

 

They are all grown up now, but the backyard tree was a constant presence during every outdoor family event at our home in their young lives, and it has been a constant companion for us all. It’s especially interesting to look at the early image now, side-by-side with the recent one, to see the other changes that took place all around the tree. Even to my attentive eye, the tree never actually seemed to change at all as the years passed, but in fact, as the time slowly passed, enormous changes were taking place inside the tree, hidden from our eyes by the nature of such gradual exponential growth on such a small scale that it was virtually invisible. Every year the branches would come alive in the Spring, dropping the seed packs all over the yard and the deck, and every Summer the lush greenery would sprout predictably turning the view into a jungle of green and shade, and every Autumn, the leaves faithfully burst into vivid colors that could reliably astound.

 

 

Even in Winter, the tree became a vital part of the backyard landscape, and provided the same steady, constant, reliable presence, all throughout the blizzards and bitter cold.

 

 

 

 

 

There are many changes that take place in a lifetime, some are fleeting and some lasting, which can alter us in ways we did not expect or want, but which, nonetheless, result in forward movement toward the person we WILL be. We cannot always predict the consequences of change, regardless of whether we initiate the change deliberately or it is thrust upon us by circumstance. Ultimately, change will come, one way or another, and the only sensible role we can play in the process, once it takes hold, is in shaping our response to the change. The degree to which it can be said that we might actually be able to participate in directing the course of change when it comes, depends largely on the person we are when it occurs, and our level of experience in dealing with the changes we encountered in the past.

The very nature of life, as demonstrated over hundreds of millions of years of evolution on our planet, is to adapt to changing circumstances. We rarely consider this background of change over many epochs of time as relevant to our cosmically brief existence as sentient beings, but it seems clear that our lives today, even down to the changes that occur within our own sphere of influence over a single, human lifetime, are one of the many consequences of the countless changes that have manifested over the millennia, and by that reckoning, we must then suppose that our adaptive responses to the changes occurring in our own lives, in some way, affect the continuum of which we are all an essential component.

Filed under human nature, Nature, Personal, Philosophy, Poetry Tagged with , , , , , ,

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