Pondering the soul, and what it means to have one. Also, assuming I do.

All I can see is land and sky.  That seems like a lot, even everything, I suppose, but when it's just the land and the sky, a horizon way off as far as I can see, and nothing else, now that's something.  Yeah, that's something.  No houses, not any buildings to block the skyline, make it irregular.  Not even any plants.  No trees, or shrubs, or even grasses.  I can see forever.

But obviously I can't; if I could see forever I'd see all the buildings and trees on the other side of that horizon.  And I can't, because I'm gloriously alone.  I can see the sun in the sky; it's big and yellow, hanging there like it's got nowhere else to go.  Well, it doesn't really.  It's stuck in place, because what's going to move the sun?  Objects in motion tend to stay in motion; objects at rest tend to stay at rest, or some such thing.  It's sitting in space, a big, fat, lazy ball of simmering plasma, and it's not going to move, dammit.

Like this guy.

But me, I move.  I move all the time.  I can't stay still, and this is not just me.  Animals have to move all the time.  Stop moving, and you're dead.  Not just that you'll die, but a state of immobility is the definition of death.  I guess.  Yeah, that works; death is just you being still.  Your heart doesn't beat, your diaphragm doesn't contract or relax, your blood doesn't circulate, your neurons don't fire and the ions don't dance around the synapses.  You're still.  Your soul doesn't move you, because it's not there anymore.

Every living thing has a… soul… for lack of a better term.  The fifth element.  Life.  We are all made up of the five elements: water is in our blood and our breath and our cells; earth is in our tissues, muscle and bone, tendon and ligament; air is the stuff we breathe, and it fills our bodies, allows them shape; fire is in the chemical processes that keep us alive, in thought and movement.  The fifth element, I'll call it the soul, is in everything.  Those reactions, that fire, that moves us and keeps us, don't have to work.  They do work, but nothing except some force means they have to do so.

If I was so inclined, this is where I'd find God. Or gods. It isn't though; they come in elsewhere. Because they have to be made of something, too, right? Even if they're just some pseudo-corporeal manifestation of energy, like particles of light. Sure, two hydrogens and an oxygen are attracted to each other, and they form this molecule called water, but nothing really says they have to. I mean, why? Why is the question of the hour, isn't it? Sure, glucose goes through the chemical process of respiration, and it involves oxygen, and the atoms and electrons dance and we get ATP, which holds energy in the bonds in its phosphate tail. But why? Ask a biologist, she'll start talking about metabolic pathways and evolution, if she is so incline. Ask a chemist; he'll just go back to electron transfers and oxidation numbers and electronegativity. Ask a physicist; he'll talk about the laws of thermodynamics, and matter and energy. Ask a philosopher; he'll probably spout some nonsense about JCGod or a greater power, or if he's a Marxist he'll probably just say something about the good of the whole (note to self: find a Nihilist and ask about why chemical reactions work). But none of them get to the root of it, and this is where human finds religion.

.

Nope, not here.

Or faith; I have faith.  Religion (see definition #2) is such a deplorable word.  Burdened with the pain and hatred and guilt and sorrow and zealotry and filth of ages of men and women.  I choose to believe (and I know this is right, but I recognize that my knowledge is reached and accepted in the same way as a priest thumps his JCBible (but he's wrong, I know, for isn't that the basis of faith)) that this fifth element is natural in origin, as the other four.  But what is natural?  JCGod (the god of Christians and Jews and Muslims, and many others I suppose) is a manmade thing; a creation of short-sighted minds fumbling in the dark abyss of space (where they oughtn't be).  They seek an answer where there is not one that is solid, that men can cling to like the slick board tossed in a feral sea.

My fifth element, life, soul, is not concrete in the sense that the JCBible is.  Well, to point out the obvious, the JCBible is an actual book, that I can go to Barnes & Noble and purchase and hold in my hands.  And, may I point out, write in.  But even more than that, there is an intelligence, a design behind those words, those ideas, that I just cannot find in the world.  I reach my faith from observation and long hours of introspection, not from the fantastic (albeit entertaining) ramblings of some random dude(s).

It's not kool aid; whatever are you talking about?

I entertained the idea of a "cult" of sorts, mostly to screw with the norm, though.  I do think it would be fun, certainly interesting, to tell other people what I know.  I mean, I'll tell people what I know, and if they then know it too, that's cool.  But I think there should observation and introspection involved in formulating your own faith.  Faith is very much an individual thing.  That is not saying that there are not aspects for sharing.  Feasts and celebrations are great times for sharing, and in this way I understand the attraction of a church.  In a church, or a temple, or any other sort of religious community, people can find just that: community.  There is a comfort to being with people who believe in the world the same way as do you.  I understand that completely; I wish there was just such a community that I could be part of.  However, there is one basic difference in the formation of community and shared celebration, and in a church-like community: faith is not at all a group endeavour.  Religion is a group endeavor, and, as we have already discussed, I view "religion" as a word not to be spoken without full comprehension of the weight and meaning behind it.

And that's where religion goes wrong; people believe these things that they do not know (and in this statement, I hope you've been paying attention, because in the context of these ramblings of mine, "know," as well as other key words, mean something other than they normally mean in everyday conversation).  It's kind of ludicrous.  There is no truth but one's own; what may be true for you may not be true for me.  This is hard for many to grasp; I myself have struggled a lot with this one.  But I have finally come to the conclusion that truth, like time and perception (and because of perception), is relative.

No, you can't blow up pineapples with your mind, but thinking happy thoughts doesn't hurt, either.

I know I just bashed positive thinking, so what I want to talk about today might seem a little hypocritical.  I could spend a paragraph (and I just might) telling you about how it's not (hypocritical, that is) but that would be a waste of words.  You're going to decide for yourself, whatever I say, and that's the beauty of being an individual.  But what are words for if not wasting, so yeah, there's a bit about why this is different than my rant on positive thinking.  Just roll with it.  Anyway, here I go...

Last night I had what you might call a revelation.

The night began with business as usual; I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to find a position that was comfortable for more than two minutes, and generally feeling horrible.  While most people (I presume) are able to drift into a vaguely comforting and blissfully thoughtless pre-sleep state in a timely manner (read: not two hours) after they get into bed, "sleepy-time" does not translate for my brain.  My thoughts do not slow down and I am not able to turn them to counting sheep or visualizing numbers 1-100 or floating in a void.  Most of what I do is worry.

I have resigned myself to the fact that I am a worrier, like my mother and my grandmother.  I try not to worry about what I can't control, of course; for the most part it works pretty well.  I would even suggest that I sometimes adopt a rather devil-may-care attitude.  However, all bets are off when I go to bed.  It's not that I worry about things I can do nothing about, but the opposite; I worry about things I would normally have a hand in but don't because I'm trying to go to sleep. Key word: trying. When you're in bed it doesn't do you any good to think of what clothes you're going to wear tomorrow or that the due date for your next tuition payment is coming up or that you have to read 100 pages for class in two days, because you're in bed.  It's like these things pounce on me when they see me mentally vulnerable, because there is one thing I worry about that I don't really have control over: getting enough sleep.  It's my very own encyclopedia illustration of "The Vicious Cycle."

So I was lying there listening to my classical music when I thought, "what if jI just eliminate "should" from my thoughts?"  So I changed every "I have to..." and "I should..." and "I need to..." to "I want."  And it worked.

Instead of "I should get up early and go to the gym tomorrow," I thought "I want to get up early and go to the gym tomorrow," and with that small substitution I felt better.

My worry about getting enough sleep was mostly coming from that, so instead of listening to classical because "I should listen to something quiet so I'll go to sleep soon" I changed my ipod to pop rock because "I want to go to sleep but I don't have to so I want to listen to the music I feel like listening to."  My mom always says, what's the worst thing that could happen if you don't go to sleep?  You're tired the next day.  Eventually, you're going to be tired enough (probably the next night) to go to sleep.

I do want to go a little bit into the difference between this and the positive thinking I was talking about earlier.  I feel like this whole "power of positive thinking" thing is way out of hand.  I see people expecting job prospects and other people's ideas and even actual physical realities to change just because they wish really, really hard on that star or believe everyone is born with an angelic conscience.  This is delusional.  Jobs will open up to you if you do the legwork, and a lot of the time even after that they don't pan out.  You have a chance of changing someone's mind if you argue your case convincingly, but even then it's like that person is an arbitrary judge with the final "yea" or "nay."  And influencing physical things with your mind?  Even now psychologists and physicians are undecided as to whether your thoughts influence your biochemistry or it's the other way around.  Influencing things outside your own body: forget it.  Delusional.

But your thoughts are all words; try to think of the last time you didn't have a spastic inner monologue (or dialogue, or poly-logue) continuously running through your mind?  Bet you can't.  The human experience is defined by language.  And before you protest, when you were a baby (without language) your thoughts and experiences were still framed with communication (probably, because it's not something we can really know).

So if words make up your mind and, by extension, your perception (which is really what we're talking about, because perception is reality and experience and emotion and thought), couldn't you affect your own mind through control of words?  Words and language have an intimate power, and since emotions are thoughts (perhaps unconsciously) and thoughts are words, then you can control (or at least shape) your emotions with words.

Okay, so in theory it works.  Try it with me. (I honestly have no idea if it'll have an effect on you.)  Pick something that stresses you out: impending exams; looming bills; that report you have to get to your boss by next week.  Phrase it with an "I have to" or an "I should," eg "I should study for my test next week."  Ugh, even knowing I don't have a test next week, that makes me feel all slimy inside.  Okay, now change it to "I want to."  eg "I want to study for my test next week."  Maybe add a "because," like "I want to study for my test next week because I want a good grade."  Look, another "I want."  We're on a roll.  Now, does that make you feel better?  I feel better.  Now, even though my test was hypothetical, I feel better about it and better about hypothetically studying for it.

I just wanted to share this with y'all, because I think it's so awesome.  I didn't necessarily go to sleep faster after that, but I am an insomniac...

Anyway, to finish up I just want to emphasize that this is not what I would call "magical" positive thinking.  As my parents have always told me, you can't change anyone's mind but your own.  In the same vein, you can't get a new car through wishing, Dad's Alzheimer's isn't going to go away even if you pray, and $30,000 isn't going to appear in your bank account just because it would be really, really awesome.

It would be awesome.  Oh well.

NB The title reference is from "Accepted."  Good movie.  I recommend it.

I Don't Mean To Suggest That I Think There Are Only 5 Elements...

Being a science major, I have learned quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.  However, I only call Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Spirit "elements" because, well, I haven't got a better name for them.  That means I don't classify my 5 "elements" with other elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and the like.  I'm not that crazy.

I was going to post these as a series, but I thought the task might be better served if I just bunched them together in a page (see top navbar) along with Multiverse and Triad.  That way I can mention them with indiscriminate abandon in my posts from here on out and y'all can refamiliarize yourself with what I mean as you see fit.  Thanks!

The Fallibility of Positive Thinking

As expected, school is severely curtailing my writing; be not afraid, because I'm still here!  I'll post at least once a week, when I find time.  And on that thought...

Words have power, as do emotions and ideas.  These things can influence others and even the world around us in ways we cannot comprehend.  But wishing will not always make it so.

Along the lines of "Smile or Die," too often we put faith in the power of reason or right.  "It'll all work out in the end," we assure ourselves.  We (at least, people my age) grew up with Disney princesses who were beautiful and just and always got the guy in the end while saving the kingdom, Power Rangers who were granted magical powers to do righteous battle with the slimy forces of evil, and our parents and teachers telling us "you can be anything you want when you grow up;" even Pokemon is a story about an ordinary kid beating the odds and saving the world from injustice.  And because we were kids the adults around us would have been foolish to let on that the world isn't always shiny and fair, because we would have thrown hissy fits.

But now I see people my age and older buying into the childlike delusion that "everything will be alright."  I don't mean to sound pessimistic; there is good in the world (I suppose depending on how you define "good"), and most people could benefit from a little positive thinking.  I accept the evidence for the placebo effect, and I believe that the right attitude can help you fight disease.  Well, its effectiveness has been demonstrated.  Many forms of Eastern Asian medicine talk about chi.  I call it the fifth element.  But if you have chronic bronchitis, or stomach cancer, or hepatitis, it's not a miracle cure.  Just thought I'd mention this.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you wish on that shooting star and click your heels together and imagine a better world, the world is not going to get better unless you get up and do something about it.

More thoughts on positive thinking (no pun intended)...

To Dream, Perchance To Sleep

Ever feel tired but not sleepy?  How about--immeasurably more vexing--sleepy but not tired?  This is what makes me an insomniac, because I'm pretty certain that I fall into that [vast and ill-defined] category.  Hmmm, categories...  I am led to believe (from sources such as Stephen King novels) that most insomnia is actually just the sufferer's inability to get to sleep and sleep well.  The Mayo Clinic says that insomnia is that and waking in the night and not feeling rested in the morning.  Um, bingo.  I think it's some sort of disconnect between my brain and my body (perhaps my autosomal and somatic nervous circuits) that leads to my autosomal systems gearing down (heart rate, breathing, smooth muscle...) while my brain is a barely contained maelstrom of discordant thoughts, tumbling over each other to escape my head into the tangible world.  I try to write stuff down, get it out, and hope it will be gone, but it is summarily replaced with a new stream of consciousness.  That miscommunication seems the most likely culprit.

Mind Control: Who's Really in Charge?

I often wonder: who's running the show?  Is it me, or my mind?  Or are we the same?

I don't think we are.  I mean, if we were, there would be no issue of control.  If my thoughts were intrinsic in myself, I wouldn't have to school them.  This lends to my thoughts on the separation of the mind and body; our bodies do stuff we don't want them to do, so our bodies must not be intrinsic, in a sense.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I think of a person (or really of any living thing) I think of the cooperation (or not) of three separate entities: body, mind, and (*grimace*) spirit.  Soul.  Whatever you want to call it.  It's the fifth element (fire, air, water, earth, spirit).  All five elements (and no, I'm not one of those wackjobs that denies the existence of things like calcium and helium) are in varying amounts in every living thing, so yes, every living thing has a soul.  My soul is me.  I am my soul.  The body is a shell, and to an extent the mind is, too.  We tack a possessive adjective in front of these things: my body, my mind, my thoughts and feelings and ideas.  I know the possessive thing doesn't always work, because we say things like my soul, but my point is that I can have/own/possess a body and a mind, but I am a soul.  (Incidentally, next time someone tells you you're soulless, you can agree with them.  Just a thought.)  Think of old sailors talking about seafaring; you know how when a ship sinks they talk about how many souls were lost?

Enough semantics; semantics and arguing about words is so much fun I often get carried away. (sarcastic: "Really?")  This is important to me, so much so that I've spent many an hour lost in my head, thinking about the separation of mind, body, and soul.  Theoretically, if something (like spirit) was me, it would be completely under my control.  (Better:) I wouldn't have to tell it what to do.  There are a lot of things going on in my body and my mind that I don't know about or at least aren't consciously controlling; if you think about it that way, it's extremely fortunate for us that our bodies and minds aren't us.  For instance, I'm a biology major and so I have to learn about all the millions of molecular and cellular processes going on in our various tissues at any given time.  On many occasions I've thought to myself: "Isn't it a good thing that I don't need to know how my body works in order to live?"  Essentially, I'd have to understand every single cellular process and remember everything perfectly if I was going to go about consciously controlling my body.  Think of it like a construction site; if I was the foreman, I wouldn't want to have to know everything, and I probably wouldn't.  I'd have a few electrical engineers, some lumber specialists, and some guys who know all about building the framework and struts, and I wouldn't have to micromanage because they'd be able to operate independently, but in concert with all the other workers.  Read: I'd be totally screwed if my bodies was me.  So try to wrap your mind around the statement that our bodies and our minds are just that: our bodies and our minds, not us.  (I'll wait.)

Ready?  Okay, next question: am I in control of my mind, or is it the other way around?  My answer: both.

What an answer, right?  But psychologists and doctors and the guy down the street acknowledge the existence of two minds: the conscious and the unconscious (okay maybe not the guy down the street, but he also wears tinfoil hats, so...).  And the unconscious mind is defined [in some cases] as the stuff we don't even know about, much less control.  So wouldn't it be reasonable to jump from "I don't control it" to "it controls me?"  I think so.  That of course assumes that there has to be some controller somewhere in the equation, and I think that it's mine (not a part of me, as we already went over).

Well sometimes it is me, I think.  When an issue is under the purview of my conscious mind, it's in my control.  Therefore I--the soul--am controlling it.

Sum it up, you say?  Okay: I don't think anything can be put in a box.  I think that everything falls somewhere on a spectrum.  So any thought, any action is a blend of conscious and unconscious.  Nothing is certain.

The [Enigmatic] Nature Of Time

If this wasn't on the Psychology Today website, I'd think it was fake.  But it is.  On PT that is.  So it got me thinking about my perception and conceptions of time.  Humans perceive time as linear; events have chronology, ie one thing happens, then another, then another and so on.  But is time linear?

I believe the multiverse to be a collection of discrete moments (ie events, the time frame of which is the smallest unit of time imaginable [or more correctly, unimaginable]) that an entity (eg a human consciousness) follows in a random path (like connect the dots).  Because humans perceive time as linear, this path should be roughly linear (straight, zig-zag, wavy, it doesn't really matter as long as no moment is ever visited twice).  Hashing this out with my roommates a few weeks ago I came to the conclusion that time is probably a fourth dimension.  I thought of this when trying to consider where all these moments were.  I mean, they had to be somewhere, right?  Somewhere out of reach of all of us (as in, we can't jump out of our time-bubble moments to view the "big picture"); there must be another dimension, in addition to xyz that contains them all!  Brilliant!  Anyway, in this model time isn't linear, rather it's sort of like an amorphous gel that all the moments are suspended in.  Kind of like the plum pudding model of the atom.  Interesting…

I think this PT article lends credence to my floating moments model.  (I kinda like that name, too; I think I'll keep it.)  What this article is suggesting—that the brain can have some (limited) precognition—suggests that time is not linear but a substance(?) that pervades reality.  Not circular, I think, because then precog would only extend to a certain period of time (like thirty-two nanoseconds or five minutes or ten millennia or something).  Unless time circles were infinite and concurrent…

Just what kind of substance(?) is time?  Hmmmm…

To Do Or Not To Do, Because Is It Really My Decision In the End?

Not really a question, in my opinion.  Today I'm going to talk about: free will!

Hmmm... free will...  That's a tricky one.  No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist; I won't try to convince you that the government is controlling your mind through little chips they put in your feet when you're a newborn and they draw blood.  No Al-foil hats here.  I would venture to suggest that my views on free will are unique, because I base them on my view of the multiverse and multiple realities as discrete time-bubbles, or moments, and as of yet I haven't heard anyone else suggest this (although there is string theory, but I haven't heard anyone link it to free will yet).  Well, here goes nothing...

According to my concept of the multiverse (I really need to come up with a more concise name for "my concept of the multiverse") everything that will exist already does exist (as does everything that has existed and everything that does exist [which may seem redundant, but actually isn't]).  Life (/time/continuity/the path/whatever) is like a game of connect the dots; life draws a line from dot to dot.  If you prefer to think about things having an inherent chronology, you can picture the dots as lining up in the semblance of a straight line (or a wavy line or zig-zaggy, but generally going in one direction).  This is how I usually picture it, although I don't like the idea of organizing things into chronology.

Since each moment already exists, and each one will occur in a reality, at some point, free will is kind of a moot point.  The basic concept of choice is that something won't happen, and if everything is going to happen anyway, choice really doesn't matter so much.

Silver Lining Time! Somewhere, somewhen, somehow, something will always go "right."  Furthermore, something "good" will always happen to you (somewhere)!

Yeah, the silver lining doesn't really work for me, either.  So I thought a bit more, and instead of being totally defeatist, realized this: although free will as a whole does not exist, free will for the individual realities does.  Free will exists in an entity's choices that lead to each moment.  For instance, you may choose to take the right fork in the road, and that will lead you to one reality.  Or, you may choose to take the road less travelled [in a yellow wood], and that will lead you to a different reality.  Yes, both realities exist(ed) but you chose which one to move on to.  It's sort of like the road itself; both forks of the road exist [in a yellow wood] but you only experience one of them based on the choice you make.  Where the analogy fails is when you turn around on the road and backtrack to take the other fork.  NO backtracking! (Since we're still viewing this as a chronological line of dots, there is a "back.")

Since I don't feel like arguing with Augustine tonight, I'm just gonna leave it at that.  But you should definitely shout if you want me 'n Augustine to duke it out!