Quantum Living - Part One

The borderline between Science and Religion is becoming paper-thin. This is to the great discomfort of many, on both sides of the divide, and it is to the joy of the few who can grasp the vision of a single unitary mental model of Life and the Universe.

In delving below the surface of the physical world, a seething cauldron of energy is found, where probability rules, and the infinitely large merges with the infinitely tiny, to become one elegant system of particle/waves. At our current stage of knowledge, we now know that the observer and the observed are not separate, but form a single system, centred around a singular event - the observation itself. The Event turns out to be the essence of Reality - and our response to events constitutes our experience.

The wave, now revealed to be the stuff of creation, is half in our Universe and half in some mathematician's no-man's land, oscillating between electrical, magnetic, and some interdimensional potential. This is the energy that Einstein found to be the alter-ego of all matter.

So where does Religion fit in this picture? The starting point of all religion is Creation, and the intelligence behind it. This intelligence, traditionally pictured outside of the stuff of the Universe, has logically been seen to be within it. Whether it is outside as well, we cannot say, since our experience cannot under any circumstances extend outside of the observed Universe. However, it is reasonable to assume that the Creative Power exists independently of the created, but has contributed Its own substance toward Its creation.

With the development of new forms of mathematics, such as chaos and catastrophe theory, there appears to be an argument for the innateness of creative potential in the Universal stuff itself. It has been shown that any random, chaotic mass of matter will inevitably form itself into clumps of material with an ordered pattern, given time. The example applied to the atmosphere is that of a butterfly sneeze causing a tornado. This can be modelled by computer; a screen-based chaos theory model will, given the tiniest of perturbations, resolve itself into a complex pattern over time. It turns out that the quantum fluctuations in space itself are enough to trigger the process, meaning that a fully steady, stable state of randomness cannot be sustained.

This says to us that order is the normal state that all material moves to, and that it is chaos or randomness which is the unstable state which cannot persist. Prior to this, the thermodynamic theory of entropy was used to bolster the assumption that all the Universe must 'run down' like a clock spring, and revert to random chaos, assumed to be the only stable state. There appears to be more to things, to partly borrow a phrase, than is contained in our philosophy.

The suggestion can be made, therefore, that all material (presumably energy as well, since that is the material equivalent) is innately endowed with some form of goal-seeking natural intelligence. This intelligence can be imagined to be the force behind all evolution, whether of galaxies, planetary systems, or eco-systems. If there is an inherent force toward greater complexity, then we are its local culmination, and this force represents the power which we know as God.

Lest this seem impersonal, I hasten to remind the reader that this Power can and has assumed billions of personalities, and can presumably do so at will. It behooves us to use the Power to look both inward and outward from our viewpoint, and learn what we can about the Universal Mind which gave us birth.

Aging, Ailing, Weeping, Wailing...

As we grow older, at some point we seem to notice that pain has crept into every task. In my case, shoulders, hips, knees, all start to creak and ache at the slightest hint of use.

Our body becomes much more of an issue. Somebody said, "If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself!"

Taking care of ourselves is a form of self-love. Love is caring, among other things. Jesus said there were really only two commandments - "Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and soul - and love your neighbour as yourself." We tend to forget that last part - we tend to neglect ourselves until either body, mind, or soul cry ouch. When it comes to your neighbour, you can't give away what you haven't got - so it starts with you.

I find myself keeping in better touch with relatives than I used to in the days when we had young children and I was in mid-career, pursuing what I thought was my mission in life. Now that I phone or e-mail my cousins once in a while, we often end up sharing our health woes. So far, the score is: two with eye problems, one with cancer, one with heart problems, one with sciatica - then there's Arthritis, fibromyalgia, and swellings of ankles, tendonitis, and so forth. If not that, there is depression, anxiety, premature baldness and toenail fungus!

We think a lot about our bodies when we don't have greater things to think about. I suspect that those who are bent on a greater life mission tend to forget the ailments of age and simply get on with life. That doesn't mean the usual hurts aren't there; just that their focus is on a higher issue.

Whether it's food for the hungry, homes for orphans, health for the children of the third world, there are things bigger than your aches and ailments.

I plan to pursue some of these, just as soon as my knees and hips let me get up out of this chair!

Reincarnation and Past Lives

Today we had a discussion workshop on past lives. I have met so many people who claim experience of past lives that I think we must treat these as genuine experiences. However, our experiences are effects of our thought process, and we must treat them as such. Causes, or CAUSE, is another matter.

The metaphysical teaching is that there is One Power, One Mind - one First Cause, and that all is contained within this one. This One has created all things within its own Being. This means that we are all connected at a level of being which underlies our material existence. Our minds are individualized within a Universal field of Mind.

What does this mean?

It means that there are levels of consciousness, the highest being unitary - our personal or individual level gives the illusion of separation and the potential for separate action.

When our consciousness shifts toward the universal, or what we would view as the subconscious mind, we can tune into other individualities which resonate with ours. This occurs independently of time and space, since those are features of the lower, or material level of awareness.

Whether it is past lives, or simply other lives, there is a consciousness statre in which we can experience these, and since experience is always in the first person, we have the impression of being there - and in a manner of speaking, so we are.

It is not that we have lived certain past lives - it is that we share in the consciousness of all lives lived, as part of the Oneness of Being. Those particular life experiences which we are able to access are those which we relate to most fully.

What is the meaning of natural disasters like the California fires?

Many people are trying to see past the disasters such as Katrina, or the fires that have plagued California this week.

Let's be clear what these things mean - each individual brings meaning to the events of their life. We speak about finding meaning in it, but really we are finding the meaning in US. Events occur, but our experience is born of our interpretations, our judgments, and so experiences vary, and each one decides what their experience is going to mean to them.

Each person must claim responsibility for what is in their life; but that is not the same as taking blame. Response-ability is the way to look at it - the ability to respond to whatever is going on.

In the news, I can already see different people taking responsibility in various ways. Whether they gather together their family and move on; whether they begin to rebuild, or whether they step into a funk for the next ten years, each person and each family will make a series of serious choices.

Response-ability is made up of choices. Some people will see no choices in front of them. Others faced with the same trauma will choose to overcome it and work at reclaiming their lives.

Many people have joined together to work at making things easier for those who are waiting in shelters for news of their homes. Some will not get good news.

This is not easy. It is very hard, and it is also a pivotal test of what each person is made of. There are a lot of cliches available which fit the situation:
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
"Tough times call for tough decisions."
"Tough times don't last, but tough people do."

At a time of grievous loss, people deserve more than these platitudes. People deserve our prayers and the full depth of our understanding. At this time, let's lend our hearts to the Californians who have lost so much this week.

Ghosts, and Angels, oh my!

Angels are experienced by many perfectly sane and stable people - so are ghosts, on occasion. Even more common are people who hear a voice with a clear message that resonates with perfect sense. Joan of Arc heard voices, as did many saints and mystics down through the ages.

Apparitions are a phenomenon that many have experienced. Many have also ignored them or put them out of their mind, for fear of questioning their sanity. Others, however, have embraced their voices or their visions and tried to learn from them.

So what in the Heaven is going on? First, are these things real?

Of course they are real. When you see a movie, was it a real movie? Sure it was. Did it tell a real story? Sure it did. But it was a different KIND of reality from the reality of your morning coffee, or the pants you pulled on this morning. It was a real experience, and like any other experience, it has the validity and the meaning that YOU bring to it. What does it mean to you?

I once was told of a SHARED apparition - a man in a slicker waving a lantern on a foggy coastline road. Both driver and passenger saw it clearly, but as they approached it simply vanished. They stopped and circled the vehicle with no result. I can't help wondering if they avoided some danger by stopping!

Since there is only the One Mind, One Intelligent Power, within which we all have our existence, then to the extent we share consciousness with each other, we can also share the forms and projections of this One.

We all inhabit shared spheres of consciousness in addition to our own individuality. In addition to our individual thoughts and attitudes, we are likely to be part of a family with certain shared thought patterns. We live in a community where people share certain attitudes and expectations. Our city, provice or state, is home to certain shared attitudes, as is each nation. We hear this talked about all the time. We belong to groups which share a common consciousness.

A marriage is a shared consciousness between two people, layered onto their individual consciousnesses.

A family is a more complex shared consciousness (a gestalt mind) with some shared experiences, values, habits, sayings and stories. So is a community or a nation a set of shared beliefs, values and stories. In this century we are beginning to build a shared global consciousness, with the United Nations, air travel, and the internet as the physical means. Many of our world disputes are arising out of the attempt to form a common set of values and attitudes.

We draw forth our experience out of the gestalt consciousness of our environment, as we apply our own judgment to it. Experience is called forth from the demands of our unconscious as well as our conscious thoughts about events. Sometimes in answer to our fears or concerns or other dominant thinking, an apparition may become the answer to our hidden questions.

Most people deny such experiences. No one wants to have to defend their sanity!

Have you had an inner voice, that you didn't recognize as your own, whisper directly to your mind? Have you seen or interacted with a person, who simply vanished? Was it at some crisis point in life, or was there a message in it?

If so, it is your own inner mind, your own Higher Power, trying to reach you with a message of Truth. You have projected it outward from yourself because you were not sufficiently tuned inward to 'get it'. Angels are truly God's messengers, but not from somewhere 'out there'. They come from somewhere 'in there', in response to our unconscious thoughts - in my opinion.

Finding Flow in the Present Moment

Spiritual practice is intended to lead to a state that might be called unconditional acceptance. This involves acceptance of the good that comes our way, acceptance of the foibles and shortcomings of self and others, and acceptance of the experience of the moment, even while knowing that things change all the time in this physical experience.

It sounds similar to what Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi calls 'Flow'. His book "Finding Flow" is a classic.

When you are 'in the flow', upstream and downstream become irrelevant to you.

Only if you stand still in the stream and resist the flow does there become an apparent significance to 'upstream' and 'downstream'.

I suspect it is the same in the 'stream' of TIME. When we go with it, then past and future have no meaning. When we fail to grasp the moment, then past and future become apparent.

Most of us are prisoners of our past - we remember far too much, and we base our current judgments on that remembrance. By recalling our past limitations, we project those limitations into the future.

Some of us are prisoners of our imagined future, whether hope and confidence (faith) is lacking, or whether due to our extrapolated past. We ignore opportunities as if they weren't there - which, for us, they are not.

The present moment contains none of that. If we could keep our consciousness in the moment, we would see only what IS, and not what WAS or MIGHT BE.

It is only in the present that we can DO anything, DECIDE anything, or EXPERIENCE anything. Now is really all there is.

CREATING YOUR LIFE, DAY BY DAY, MOMENT BY MOMENT

Have you ever been driving along the highway on a long trip, and after about thirty or forty minutes you just realized that you hadn’t thought about the road or seen it in all that time? You were thinking about something else. You subconscious mind took over and handled the car, dodged the traffic, just ran your life, while your conscious mind was re-living that argument with the boss or planning that vacation trip to Mexico.

Your subconscious also kept your lungs breathing, your heart beating, your temperature stable, and your body upright in the seat. Can you imagine doing all those things while driving your car too, if you had to think about it all consciously? The conscious mind is not up to tasks of that complexity – it hasn’t the processing power. It’s all in the subconscious.

Your subconscious thoughts also tend to hold your beliefs, and your faith. They can be programmed from the conscious level, but only over a period of time, and only by real effort. So as you believe, your whole life is done unto you, little by little.

The Science of Mind is about programming that subconscious by starting with the conscious mind. It is done using a process called Spiritual Mind Treatment. It is really an affirmative form of prayer that is modelled for us in many parts of the Bible, and in the works of other faiths as well.

COMPONENTS OF 'TREATMENT':

We are taught that this programming requires several components. There is a beginning phase which is contemplative, consisting of the Recognition of a Higher Power that is Unitary, encompassing all things. Then there is a sense of personal Unification with this Power, allowing our sense of individuality to become merged with the Universal Oneness. Then, there must be an idea; a thought which contains the essence of the Prayer. It must be clear and it must be positively stated. Then there must be an emotion which accompanies that thought, one of gratitude, and the power of that emotion drives the idea into the unconscious and anchors it there. Finally the process concludes by releasing hold of the idea, accepting that once it is placed into the unconscious realm, a Higher Intelligence takes it over and deals with it.

Emotion changes the chemistry of the body; it sets up chemical pathways in the brain, locking things into our memory. Ernest Holmes taught that the two-fold force of idea and emotion is the key to realizing our desires. This is not unique; it is taught under many guises and with many different names.

So why doesn’t it always work? I’m sure there were times when you had the idea, you felt the emotion, and still it didn’t happen. What was wrong? Why didn’t it work as a formula?

There are a lot of possible reasons. Maybe the idea was unclear. Did you ever have an idea that was fuzzy, like it was something you thought you wanted but you hadn’t ever really thought about what you would do if you had one? Would you like to own a yacht? Could you afford the repairs? The fuel? The docking fees? Would you really take time out to sail it? Would you go broke buying gas for a Rolls-Royce? Would you really want to do the housework on a twenty-room home, or to pay the maids? Are you ready to become an employer, and handle payrolls and deductions and health benefits?

Many an idea is not ready to form into anything, and so it doesn’t. Often your subconscious is smarter than your conscious self – it knows when there isn’t a full-grown idea - when the desire is half-baked!

The nature of your emotion is another issue. There are really only two basic types of emotions; fear and desire. They cancel each other out. If you have conscious desire but unconscious fear, guess what happens? Nothing happens. If the fear outweighs the desire, you could even move away from your goal.

Until you identify the source of your blockages and deal with them, things may not unfold as you think you want. Wise people will end up doing multiple prayer treatments for each small roadblock, rather than just one BIG treatment for their great goal in life.

Remember what a prayer treatment is. It is the idea positively stated, plus the corresponding emotion, done in a feeling-state of unity with a Higher Power. Why is it called 'Treatment'? What you are doing is psychologically treating your own mind to enhance belief – to build your faith, in other words.

Religious Science is so named because this is believed to be a scientifically sound process. It is a ‘soft’ science in the same way that psychology is a soft science. The results are provable when applied in a statistical manner, but that does not mean it will definitely work for you in a single instance – that would make ours a formula religion, and it isn’t.

When you treat to enhance your belief, to build your faith in what you desire, eventually it will tip some inner scales to provide you with a certainty. Many individual circumstances will combine to allow this to happen. Because prayer is statistically sound, you will build up the odds in you favour. You treat to enhance your belief until it becomes true faith.

When you achieve faith, the emotions that you should look for are joy and gratitude. When these are genuine, they are signs of a successfully completed prayer. But in the gospel of James 2:17, he says “faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself.” We have a different saying for this; “Treat, and then move your feet.” The proof of your faith, finally, is in your willingness to take action.

You treat to enhance your belief until it turns to faith. Faith is described in the Bible as “The substance of things unseen.” You are giving substance to those things that you have dreamt of.

Maybe - Maybe Not!

I have been reading Robert Fulghum's book titled "Maybe - maybe not".

This is a great read, and it addresses one the key elements that puzzle us in life - the vagaries of chance.

While we teach that thoughts become things, and that our dominant thinking will result in our overall experience, it is obvious that an element of chance remains in all aspects of life. Fulghum explores that in his book.

Here's my take on the operation of chance versus directed thought-experience. I believe that when we operate unconsciously, there are two kinds of unconscious thought-trains that govern our life. One is made up of the automatic 'tapes' that play in our unconscious all the time; placed there by our past judgments about events and inputs involving family, friends, community, and past experiences. This is our life on autopilot, leading wherever our programming is taking us. The other thought train is random noise, like the noise we hear when a radio is tuned partly off the station. This is the random nature of the universe, feeding the element of chance into our daily equation.

In the absence of our clearly directed, conscious decision-making, these two unconscious elements will determine our experience. Since the first element is made up of our past decisions, it will keep our life on a fairly steady and familiar path. In fact, the more we are programmed - the more we live by rote - the less randomness there will be.

It could be argued that this is more like existing than living. The consciously goal-directed human, I suggest, tastes more and gets more out of life.

However, there is always that element of chance that creates an experience in life that we do not expect. And if we are drifting on autopilot, we will not be awake enough to steer quickly back towards our goal. Only when we have gone far off track will we be forced to pay attention.

Maybe we have clear goals in life - maybe not. Maybe we can still reach those goals - maybe not. Autopilot has its risks.

The Illusory Nature of Space - and especially Time

We live this life within two major illusions - Time and Space.

Space, as Einstein showed, is relative to the observer, and so lacks objective reality. We perceive it as distance in three dimensions, but always we assess it relative to ourselves, or relative to some arbitrary standard.

In the end, there is only experience. What we experience as large when we are toddlers becomes very small when we revisit it as adults. Both experiences are valid, and both are matters of perspective.

Time is a function of our physical reality - it does not exist except as a way of accounting for motion and change. All the ways in which we 'measure' time are really measures of motion and change, whether the orbits of planets, the earth's rotation, the movement of clock hands, the vibration of atoms, or even the appearance of wrinkles as we age. When we try to eliminate change and motion from the definiton, we find that Time eludes us completely.

Again, as Einstein showed, time is relative, but linked to space.

Our experience of time is variable. The Greeks called measured time Kronos, but our perceived time they call Kairos. When we sleep, we may dream what appears like half a lifetime, or we may wake with no sense that time has passed. When we are bored, time drags - when we are busy, we say time flies.

Or as some wag pointed out....:
"Time flies like an arrow...... fruit flies like bananas."

Letting the One Mind be your guide

The Science of Mind and other metaphysical teachings tell us that there is one Mind, that consciousness is not divided, except in our perception of it. Our individuality, which we have in complete freedom, is really a spiritual fiction, the reality being the Oneness of all things.

Many people have trouble accepting that they are truly one with the Greater Consciousness.

Too bad Jesus didn't make it even plainer for us (he made it plain enough) and say "You and the Father are one", and not just "I and the Father, etc." However, others around him had not yet achieved that awareness of Unity, and the Unity occurs when we are aware of it, as Holmes says.

People are caught up in their illusion of separation. People that manage to contact the One Mind are liable to invent an intermediary personality from which they then receive 'revelations'. These may be voices, or they may be complete visualizations. They are projections engendered by and through our own consciousness.

It may be Spirit Guides, it may be Angels, it may be voices (like Joan of Arc), or it may be a so-called 'channeled' personality in full bloom.

After all if the mentally ill can have multiple personalities, surely the mentally healthy can create them just as well?

There is no problem in any of this, except for the sad inability to acknowledge one's own achievement; connection with the One Mind.

I judge that it is a reluctance to accept one's own power of thought, or the level of one's own accomplishment.

We have Troward and Holmes to thank for showing us that we need not turn to imagined sources for our revealed wisdom.
Spirit is the only source, and while we may be more content with the thought that various personalities are communicating with us, they are either products of our need for false humility, or else they are ways of claiming a certain exclusivity, as in "Why should my guides talk to you; they speak only through me."

Much of this comes about because of the culturally embedded idea that only Jesus could be so favored, even if he told us otherwise.

None of this in any way invalidates the wisdom which is being imparted. But all 'channels' lead to a single source, no middleman required.

Some have accepted the teaching that they must go through a specially trained person to seek spiritual wisdom. This may have had greater validity in the days before public education, when illiteracy and true ignorance held sway. It is to be hoped that we are moving away from this.

If we do not use a visible priest or bishop as our channel for wisdom, why do we think we need an invisible intermediary?

There is an argument to be made that all revelation, large or small, is filtered through the individual consciousness. The judgments and biases of channelers, saints and shamans alike will color their ability to be clear about their intuitive messages. We are all channels of our higher selves, and the less opinion we bring to it, the clearer we we be guided.

Speaking of being guided - you can reach inward to your Higher Self for help with any issue:

In my book on creativity, MAXI-MIND, I provide a useful three or four stage process. Leave all logic and judgment aside while documenting a plethora of ideas, some useful, some nonsensical. Then examine each idea in turn, especially the ones that don't make sense - see if any of them can be turned around to be useful. These wild ones are the ones that let you think outside of the box. Discard any that can't be turned into valid ideas. Only then do you apply logic and judgment to each one remaining, rank them. and choose a workable option. This is how you can capture the innovativeness of your personal inspirations.

The Problem-Solving Level of Consciousness

The essence of spiritual teaching is as follows. All creation is inherently, spiritually perfect.

"God saw that it was good."

However, we experience creation through our own thinking, and that can often be flawed. Through errors in our thinking, through worry, doubt, greed, (all forms of fear), we end up distorting the perfect operation of the world and producing wars, dis-eases, and stresses of all kinds.

As we iron out the wrinkles of our thinking, and release anxiety and fear, we become healthier, we attract more abundance, and we experience less and less strife. The kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus taught, lies within us, and it is at hand, right here, right now, once we can access it.

Sometimes this happens individually, and sometimes it happens collectively, even on a world scale. There are layers of consciousness, or Mind, within the person, the family, the community, or the nation. All could use some healing.

I have made it my business to teach this stuff.

After a career of 36 years in Engineering, I am acutely aware that I am trained to be a problem-spotter and a problem-fixer. Quite apart from the natural male social conditioning to 'fix' things, Ifind the urge hard to suppress at times. This gets in the way of seeing the inner perfection of the situation, which is what I am supposed to do as a Practitioner of the Science of Mind®.

My compromise has become this - so far:

People are perfect but don't know it.
They have their own answers but aren't acknowledging them
It must be my job to remind them.
If they refuse to acknowledge, at least I did my best.
How dare they ignore my obvious wisdom! :-))

Not quite a perfect approach - is it? Oh well, I'm still working on it.

The point is that even the teachers are working at ironing out their own wrinkles.

Einstein said that no problem can be solved at the same level of consciousness at which it was created. When we are living in our doubt, or our fear, or our pain, we are living right at the level of the problem - at the same level of belief that created it.

If we are not able to raise our awareness up (to lift up our eyes to the hills) then the only answer is to turn the matter over to someone who is not bound up in the problem. They can make the arguments for healing, and start the wheels of higher belief in motion.

You can check out the Science of Mind at:
http://www.cfplsaskatoon.ca/QandA.html
http://www.rsintl.org/

Universe, Order, and Intelligence

Never mind how big the Universe is; that is a red herring. The fact is, it is our human viewpoint that makes the Universe seem big; it would be just as great a mystery if it were really tiny- and maybe it really is. If it is tiny, then we are even tinier than we thought we were all along. We are still a mystery, and so is the Universe.

A more important fact is that the Universe has order. The real question is why should there be any order instead of chaos? Chaos would be random particles vibrating about here and there, having nothing to do with each other, except for bumping into one another every so often. Why don't we have that to this day?

It seems logical that we would have chaos unless something intervened. However, there is an argument that goes, "Here we are wondering about our Universe again. It is pretty clear that the Universe had to have order, because if it didn't, we wouldn't exist, and then we couldn't be here wondering about the Universe. So the only kind of Universe that could ever get wondered about, is one that has order in it, ipso facto, cogito ergo sum, and so forth." The problem with this argument is that it appears to put the effect before the cause, but causes and effects are time-related concepts, and who knows what time is anyway?

Since the Universe is thought to have started with a Big Bang, and since Bangs tend to be chaotic as a rule, one would naturally think that chaos would have stayed the order of the day.

The order in the Universe represents a pattern or several sets of patterns. Here is where I make my first assertion. Pattern IS intelligence. To the extent that the Universe is nonrandom, it has intelligence. Chaos theory, a kind of math that is too much for me, has suggested that order emerges naturally out of any chaotic system. This is like saying that a tendency, or bias, toward order is built into the fabric of the universe itself.

Intelligence is order - or the ability to create order. We think of intelligence as the thing it takes to create change - but surely it takes intelligence to keep things the same as well? All the matter of the Universe has the ability to maintain itself as matter; to maintain itself in form and in orbits and spirals. We know through quantum mechanics that such continuity of form is really the ability of matter to re-create itself instant by instant, as it vibrates in and out of our 'normal' space. Particles appear to 'remember', most of the time at least, where and what they were, and they return to that.

A rock has just enough intelligence, built into it's molecular patterns, to recreate itself as rock in each instant, like a continuous loop program, constantly running. This recurrent pattern represents the 'intelligence' of the rock. As a rock might say, "It ain't much, but it's all I've got".

We know there is intelligence in the universe, because when we look in the mirror, we recognize ourselves, and we think we're intelligent. We think wer'e pretty high on the scale of intelligence, but just try and stay the same for a thousand years or so. Can't do it? Ahh, too bad. A rock can.

Just maybe the whole universe exists not because of intelligence, but AS intelligence. I'm not saying it does, but it does make one think. If so, then we are seeing the face of God whether we stare at the woods, the sky, or the trash-heap.

On Sin and Perfection

I have to disagree with the common definition of original sin.  I do not believe we have a flawed nature at all, but our true nature is not properly understood.  It is our nature to perfectly manifest what the sum of our dominant thinking encompasses. We do this perfectly, and this is a Divine characteristic. We are said to be cast in the image and likeness of the Creator, and this is usually interpreted in some physical sense. But what is the nature of the Creator? Why, it is to create, of course. We perfectly create what our dominant thinking consists of - but what we are creating is not merely physical - we are creating our experience.

Just because we have not learned to use this ability fully does not mean we are imperfect - it just means that we can sometimes be perfectly wrong. This is a flaw in our action; it does not indicate a flaw in our basic nature. As we think, so the results - the fruits - of our thinking are outpicturing all around us.

There is another way in which we could say the physical world is less perfect than the invisible world of thought.  This is due to the existence of quantum energy levels in the physical, which make our  reality 'lumpy' compared to the 'smooth' nature of the corresponding idea.

For example, we can readily imagine a straight line or a perfect circle; but physically we cannot construct a perfect straight line, or a perfect circle, as any machinist would tell you. At the very best, we would still run into the dimensions of the individual atoms of whatever material we chose to use. Our world is built lumpy, not smooth.

Our minds can encompass far more in thought than our physical brain can allow us to handle at one time. That's why we invented paper, and later computers. We invent things to move past our limitations. So we know there is a discontinuity between the perfection of our imagination and our ability to deal with it in the world.

This is not sin, original or otherwise; t is just the nature of physical reality, but it still means that the world always falls short of our visioning - of our imagination.

Sin is an error is thinking; the inability to rightly connect our thinking with the consequent manifestation of it.

We steal, thinking it will make us richer, not comprehending where abundance comes from.
We lie out of fear of punishment, or for fear that the truth will diminish us.
Most sins are based in some sort of fear, which means that faith is not dominant in our thinking.

But as Job said, "That which I most feared has come upon me", as perfect a statement of Divine Law as you would ever find. We experience the outcome of our doubts and fears, and no matter what it may physically resemble, it is that ultimate feeling experience that is the fruit of our thinking - and 'by their fruits we shall know them'.

So Al Gore Won the Nobel Prize

As I visited my favorite online news sources this morning, the news was full of articles about Al Gore and the Nobel Prize award.

What I found even more interesting, however, was the comments posted by various members of the public which were connected to some of these articles. A minority of comments were reasonable and intelligent, some supportive or congratulatory, and some not. A majority of the commentary was childish, mean-spirited, and revealed a high degree of illiteracy, ignorance, and just plain bad manners. There was name-calling, there was vitriol, and there were verbal attacks on Gore, the Nobel committee, and on other commentors.

When I am tempted to comment on a news story, as I occasionally am, I look to see if the comment pages are filled with this kind of garbage. If they are, I don't want to toss what may be an intelligent comment (with any luck) into a cesspool of dirt.

Perhaps this is indicative of where our civilization is going - if so, I am saddened.

Note - this is not about Al Gore, or any particular stance on Global Warming. It is about our level of literacy, our sense of good manners, and our degree of human kindness toward one another. It is, in effect, about our level of civilization. Period.

Who is setting the standard for us? Who is painting a vision for a civilized world? If our leaders cannot do at least this for us, then we will lose any ability to pull together to enhance our lives.

Answers to the BIG QUESTIONS

Every once in awhile, life seems to hit a brick wall, and that's usually when a BIG QUESTION comes up. God often figures into these BIG QUESTIONS, and it reveals either our ignorance about God or about ourselves.

I decided to answer most of the BIG QUESTIONS for you today. Hmmm.. do I feel a new book starting up?

1. How do I know there's a God? It seems like superstition.

Depends on what you think God should be. The kind of God most people picture likely doesn’t exist. But Something exists, and we make guesses at what It might be like. How do you know something exists? Look in the mirror. Do you exist? Are you something?

Do you believe in cause and effect? Everything is caused by something, and that cause is caused by something, until eventually there is a Something that was the first cause of everything. That’s what we call God, but we only guess at what It is, or what It is like.

We have different belief systems and religions in the world because different groups of people have made different guesses about the nature of that First Cause. It is far beyond us, and so we will never grasp It fully.

2. Where is God, anyway?

Where is First Cause? Because It existed before anything else existed, everything must be made from It, within It, and the complexity we see around us is actually the complexity of It’s thought. God is all around us, through us, and in us. We are not God, but God is us, right here, and right now.

We are like fish trying to figure out the water, except that unlike fish, we can’t jump out of it, or touch the bottom.

3. Where was God when I needed her?

The energy and intelligence, which we call God, is busy being You all the time. When you look outside of yourself for answers, God must wonder what’s wrong with you.

4. How can I trust God?

God does not have human characteristics, except as humans. Can you trust yourself? God doesn’t have any need to manipulate or trick you – It is beyond any of that. Can you trust the sun, the air, and the water? Can you trust gravity, or electricity? These are forces of nature that are independent of any humanlike fears or failings.

When we don’t trust ourselves, or other people, or the world around us, it leads us down a path to an unhappy life. We waste enormous amounts of energy trying to trick the world into giving us more of what we want. It’s less trouble to take the straightforward route, ask for what you want, and listen for the answer – but that takes faith, and if you don’t trust, you don’t have the faith you need to live the easy way.

The biggest problem with lack of trust is that our mind automatically works so that we seek out the things that confirm our belief system. Believe that people and things are untrustworthy, and your unconscious mind seeks out betrayal with every step you make.

5. How come God didn't answer when I prayed?

While I don’t really know if there’s a wrong way to pray, certainly some ways are better than others. Many people pray for something when they’re really not clear if that’s what they want, or they haven’t really thought it through. Your mental impression of what you are praying for is the template for what you get. A fuzzy template brings an uncertain result.

This Thing we call God doesn’t answer so much as It responds, and it responds by corresponding to the belief you have. If you pray for the moon but seriously don’t believe you will get it, the Divine Power responds to your sincere belief by not giving it to you.

Some people are good at ‘asking’ but not good at ‘accepting’. The answers to prayer often come in a form slightly different than we have in mind. We need to be open to alternatives. Ask for a new car, and a second job comes available. Your new car may be hidden in the job offer. See?

6. How do I know God's will?

You’ve heard “Where there’s a will, there’s a way?” YOU have the will and God has the way. God’s will for you is your will for you, but not at the shallow surface level. At your innermost level, there is pure Spirit with a desire to express Itself in the world, as you. That desire lies within you at your deepest level, and you can contact it if you simply be still and listen…. and listen…and listen. This is called meditation.

It is said that prayer is talking to God – while meditation is listening to God. Do you want to learn something? Listen.

There are countless styles and types of meditation – one of them will work for you. It can be a formal type, or it can just be long walks in the park. I prefer sitting in the dark and listening to jazz. You can try this and that and find out what works for you.

What’s it all about? The key is to get your conscious ego-mind to shut the heck up, so that the unconscious can bubble to the surface with images, sounds, or ideas that speak to you at a soul level. The idea of meditative practices is the either put your surface mind to sleep or to distract it for a while.

7. If God is so great, how come there's evil in the world?

We have a habit of misusing Power and then blaming the source. It’s like saying “If electricity is so good, how come there’s static on my radio?” The Power that made the world is everywhere in the world, right now, making everything happen. It’s not good or bad; It just IS, in the same way that electricity just IS in your wall socket. Misuse it, and it shocks you – maybe kills you. That doesn’t mean that evil was in the electricity, it just means that our relationship to it was incorrect.

This Power and Intelligence that we call God just is. That’s what God told Moses, when Moses asked, “Who are you?” The answer was “I AM THAT AM” or “I AM THAT WHICH IS.” So if Power just is, and the ocean just is, and lightning just is, and we just are, then it’s our job to treat it right and treat each other right. The Power works through everything, including us, and we are free to misuse it, or else we wouldn’t be free at all.

The word Sin, apparently, is an old archery term meaning to miss the mark. We miss the mark on a lot of things, but if we start looking for some evil lurking in the woodwork, we don’t just miss the mark, we miss the point. The point is that we are responsible for finding out how things work, and then placing ourselves in proper relationship to things.

I like to think of the word responsible as made up of response – able. We are able to respond to the forces and events around us. We can let go of guilt, shame and all the lurking emotions which people have been saddled with. Just assume responsibility – your ability to respond. That will let you bring out the best from every situation, even if the situation is one you don’t like.

8. If God is everywhere, why do we bother with churches?

Good question. Churches are human institutions, built to fulfill an inner human need to band together. Somehow there is an energy that is built up and released, an enthusiasm, when we not only group together, but together go through a ritualistic kind of action.

We need help to keep our focus on the answers to big questions, and we need reinforcement when the circumstances of life pull our attention away from the Good and onto life’s problems. Other people can help to pull us back on track.

Having said that, the kind of church we belong to will depend on our fundamental beliefs, about whether we believe in freedom and flexibility, or authoritarianism. So long as there are people who believe in different ways, there will be a need for different kinds of churches.

There likely are people who have no need for churches. That’s OK. But for most people, they seek a church that will reflect their beliefs, and their prejudices, back to them. That may feel comfortable to them, but most people do not progress away from their rigid patterns of thought until they start to examine the kinds of things that are being reinforced in their chosen group.

In the office cafeteria, most of the complainers will sit at the same table. They reinforce each other. People with rigid and inflexible viewpoints also gather, to reinforce each other. It goes without saying that people who want to keep a positive outlook, who want to learn and to grow, should also join together to reinforce one another.

The New Thought movement tends to attract spiritual ‘seekers’ who resist dogma, but who have a burning desire to understand the spiritual Principle that underlies all existence. My particular affiliation is Religious Science International (RSI), which can be found at: www.rsintl.org. There are also some interesting things at: http://newthoughtalliance.org and even more at: http://www.websyte.com/alan/, which is a reference page for numerous New Thought organizations.

The Importance of Giving Awards

It may be tempting to put off or ignore the issue of recognition, particularly the conceiving and granting of awards, prizes, trophies, or plaques. I know it is said that our actions are their own reward – and this is true for the individual. But there is another side.

Awards are not given just for the sake of the recipient. They are given so that others can participate in the success of those who are deserving of praise. Like so much that we do in life, we do it for ourselves, as part of the whole of our community.

What is it that we get out of giving an award?

We live in a world where we are bombarded with negativity in the media and one in which our economy is driven by continual one-upmanship (or one upwomanship?).

We may be used to the idea that everyone (other than perhaps our closest family and friends) has an agenda; intending to persuade us, to sell us, to gain from us or use us in some way. We encounter this from organizations, from the media, from merchants and from many of the people we meet. Over time, we build up a defensiveness, a cynicism, that cloaks us like a shroud and shuts us off from the pure joy of being alive in the human experience.

To counter this, it is necessary to undertake activities that uplift the human spirit; that take us away from our focus on material issues and into the world of pure kindness, generosity and compassion. We enter this ‘world’ simply by shifting our attention, and setting our intention.

Awards such as the one proposed are tools to focus our attention on things that are beyond material issues. By such a focus they also remind us how desirable it is to lift ourselves out of the societal rut and contemplate those things that allow our humanity to shine.

Many of us will never get such an award - the busyness of everyday life lures us into a sort of mediocrity and the signals of the modern world keep us there. It is the few that manage to hold their heads (and their hearts) above the crowd and these serve as a beacon to the rest of us.

By finding and recognizing these people, we bask in the reflected glow of an open human heart. By giving an award to those deserving, we resonate with their energy, like a piano string takes up the frequency of the tuning fork. This is because in each of us there is that small spark, though it may be hidden, that glows through recognition and attention to its likeness.

We ignite our own spark by honoring the flame we see burning in the best of us, and by so doing, we become better ourselves, and so the glow becomes a light to the country and the world.

Why not give ourselves the gift of awarding a prize to another who deserves it?

I think we deserve to do it.

RevDarrellG

Anniversaries

Today I went to a 50th wedding anniversary.

There is something almost magical about two people who have made such a lifelong committment. There is a myth that we have gotten away from this kind of committment, but even in young people, I still see what I think is a bond that goes far beyond the little disagreements and issues that will always arise between two people.

50 years is a great milestone. Personally my wife and I are at 41 years, so 50 begins to look like a certainty. (The first 40 years are the toughest??)

The pair celebrating today now number 36 among themselves, their children and grandchildren. I find that impressive.

They say geese mate for life, so it shouldn't be a surprise if people do. What sets people apart is the capacity for choice that allows us to break away from instinctive behaviour. Once choice becomes embedded into culture, then culture assumes the role of a new instinct.

In parts of our societies, culture has led to this new instinct, in this case one of easy divorces and temporary relationships, even casual relationships. I don't want to judge this as necessarily good or bad, dependent on circumstances, but I cannot help thinking of that 50 year committment and what it means to all 36 people in that family group. It means stability, and a kind of love that goes far past the momentary anger and occasional frustrations that we all feel as members of a household.

Blog Flux Directory

'Large and Small' versus 'Right and Wrong'

'Large and small' are physical judgments which we usually base around a relativistic view, using some idea of 'normal' as our base. 'Normal' is usually the size of our physical body, so that 'large' is large compared to us physically, and 'small' is small compared to us. Sometimes we use other comparisons, as in a 'small planet' would somehow be referenced to our earth, or to one of the smallest planets in the solar system. It is always our own experience in which we locate the reference.

'Right and wrong' are moral judgments, and so do not have a physical reference - the reference is in the realm of thought. Here there are two schools of thought, because some think there are moral absolutes, usually defined by some scriptural reference or other. Others think that there is a more subjective reference, which would be more similar to the 'large and small' case. I suspect it might be easier for two people to agree on what is 'large' than to agree on what is 'wrong' in a moral sense. This is assuming that 'wrong' here is not used in the context of 'incorrect'

However, if we refer the matter to Jesus, he said "It is by their fruits ye shall know them", which I think argues for a definition based ultimately on results and consequences. This is not that different from the old saying, "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins." This is a more flexible and relativistic definition of right and wrong, and comes closer to the way we tend to treat 'large and small'. So just as you can tell a tree by its fruit, so can you judge an action or an idea by its intended or actual results.

The difference is that 'large and small' are definitions which I can make for myself without involving anyone else, for the most part. If I think that Pluto is a large planet, and you don't, so what? No harm is done. But moral issues tend to involve interactions between people and groups. If I think you are wrong in a moral sense, unless I can point specifically to adverse consequences, I am on shakier ground, because my judgment is directed at another person.

Both things are based on 'appearances', and it is hard to remember that appearances are not truth. Appearances can mislead, because they may depend as much on the observer as on the thing being observed. 'Judging Righteously' is a challenge. Here we ought to remember the caution we are given, to "...not judge as the world judges", because normally the world judges by appearances.

When it comes to appearances, we can think of a boil or infection beneath the skin. It forms with no outward appearance, and so does not attract our attention. Doesn't this remind us of world affairs, where problems that frustrate entire peoples get ignored? (Think of the festering of resentment across the Middle East, or think of the crushing weight of German poverty after World War I. ) Then the sore erupts through the skin, and the ugly appearance of it cannot be ignored. ( In world affairs we see this as either war, revolution, or terrorism.) In reality this point is when the situation cries out to be healed. That which we do not pay our attention to, will emerge in a form that cannot be ignored.

We tend to see this emergence of chaos and ugliness as the beginning of the problem. If we judge righteously, we could see it as the ending stage of the problem, and the beginning of the solution. Just as the infection we spoke of begins to heal once it erupts (sorry for the ugly example!) so the problems among families, nations, and whole peoples are ready for solution once they reach our full attention.

Using Human Imagination to Understand the Miracle of Creation.

Using Human Imagination to Understand the Miracle of Creation.

Imagination is at the heart of human creative ability. Therefore imagination must be the key factor that has been imparted to us to enable us to be creative.

We can use our imagination to help us understand the Mind and the motivation of our Creator. This is one way that we can gain insight not only into the nature of our own creation, but into the purpose of it.

To start with, let us imagine the pre-universe (our universe not having been created yet) in which there is only One Thing – that is, Creative Intelligence and Intelligent Substance, one and the same thing. That which Ernest Holmes called The Thing Itself, meaning something which cannot be described by a name, is outside of time and space as we know it, since both time and space are aspects of our created universe. Therefore, there is timelessness; and there is no sense of dimension. There is only a Mind together with undifferentiated substance.

Why a Mind? We can infer a mind, because creation flows from thought. The very act of creating is a movement of thought. Thought provides the definition of form, and it is form which defines created things. Created things are only identifiable by their separation from one another, by their differentiation in shape, color (reflectivity), and other material behaviours. In the absence of created things, there is no differentiation – therefore no thing, which is identifiable.

Prior to creation, Mind is unconscious. Why? Because consciousness requires an object, it cannot exist prior to the existence of separated objects, or created things. There must be something to be conscious of. Even to be conscious of nothing must mean the identification of nothing as compared to – something. So in the absence of any created thing, mind remains unconscious.

Mind cannot be conscious of Itself, unless there is a reference, a point-of-view, from which to regard the self. Humans regard each other from a particular point-of-view; a reference point that we think of as somehow in our head, an imaginary point behind our eyeballs, from which we imagine ourselves looking out at our world, and down at the ‘rest’ of ourselves. Self-consciousness, for us, is the creation of that point-of-view.

The miracle of consciousness occurred when the Master Intelligence, the Universal Intelligence, developed that point-of-view. To do so, It had to separate itself, from a unitary consciousness, into a subsidiary consciousness, which then regarded Itself from an external viewpoint, just as we do. God Itself had no externality, nothing outside Itself, until the miracle of creation.

In the Bible, water, and sometimes air, is used as a metaphor for Spirit. The intent is to convey something fluid, something that penetrates all things, which dissolves the hardest things, which lies calmly upon Itself; there are varieties of useful parallels, as we can see.

In the first lines of Genesis, we are told, “The Spirit moved upon the face of the deep”, and “The waters were divided from the waters” by a “Firmament”.

This can be taken to mean that Spirit acted to divided Itself from Itself, and place the limitations of form upon Itself (the firmament), so that virtual copies of Itself would be created. This would enable the creation of:
1. Two or more points of view
2. Recognizable forms
3. The Physical world
4. Subsidiary intelligences linked forever to their origin

In this we can recognize most of the significant roots of our metaphysics.

We can also recognize in it the findings of our science; the ‘quantum energy’ of space lying at the core of everything, while superstrings provide the means for our physical universe to exist, while not separate in any way from the underlying cosmos.

Thus, at least in our imagination, we can picture the how and the why of fundamental creation. How – being the virtual separation of consciousness through creation of form, into which the fundamental intelligent substance of the Cosmos separates Itself. Why- in order to permit the Universe Itself to become conscious – having multiple points-of-view, and to therefore regard and presumably to appreciate Itself.

Our consciousness, looking out at our surroundings, our very experience as we move through life, is the Creator Itself, experiencing Itself through us.

Our purpose in life is to make that experience a positive one, a joyful one; by so conducting ourselves that we achieve not only personal happiness, but help provide it for others around us as well.

We are given the complete freedom to do this, because without it our viewpoint would be restricted and conditioned. It would not be truly independent, and would be suspect, just as we doubt the word of someone who is overly beholden to us, or who stands to gain from shading or coloring their communication with us. Freedom of thought is the Creator’s gift to us, is order that we be true and clear observers of life.

On Biblical Fundamentalism

Within most books that are written by the same person within a time frame of weeks or months, there are inconsistencies; so I think it is reasonable to expect inconsistency within a book by many authors spread over many hundreds of years.

What makes no sense is to believe that Divine Inspiration is somehow less available to people today than it was centuries ago, and therefore only the most ancient of books represents Spiritual Truth.

It makes far more sense to learn the working of Spiritual Principle, and use that to interpret the various writings expressed over the years, whether Biblical, Buddhist or any other, recognizing that all people, authors and priests included, are invariably not transparent channels of spiritual inspiration, but receive what wisdom they can given their internal prejudices, and pass that on. No finite mind grasps the infinite except partially, like viewing a room through a tiny porthole.

I try to explore a variety of ideas, beliefs and practices, but what I am primarily concerned with is Principles. Principles are universal laws which govern the relationships of mind and of matter, and thus must apply to any given situation. It is reasonable to suppose that anything describes in or out of the Bible must be adherent to the Laws of the Universe, whatever those may be.

I have no great interest in attacking, debating, or defending anyone's viewpoint, including mine. However, our use of the Bible, if taken literally, is contradictory and perhaps hypocritical.

Unless you want to begin stoning some of the women in your neighbourhood, or smiting the odd infidel, you have to decide which passages you are going to follow. To do that, you need some set of Principles by which you will choose. Learn these, and then you can read any text, ancient or modern, knowing that the proper interpretation must align with the Principle of Truth.

Research Into Mouse Intelligence

Some time ago, we were treated to a flood of questionable articles on the subject of goldfish versus dolphin intelligence. Apart from the fact that no one knows what would qualify as intelligent behaviour in the wilds of the ocean, I was recently witness to an incident that provided at least the appearance of intelligence, and of interspecies co-operation of a sort.

Our garage heats up during the summer afternoons; so that we normally raise the overhead door about four or five inches late in the day, to allow airflow through to the windlow at the back. This leaves an element of vulnerability; little wild critters could, in theory, move in during the heat of the day.

Several months ago, a grey mouse was seen scuttling between the many storage boxes which clutter our garage, and which seem to multiply there while our attention is on other things.

Noise did not flush the critter, but instead made him/her hide all the more, and I knew it would do no good to persist.

It did leave somewhat of a dilemma, because leaving the door up in hope the mouse would leave, could simply invite mousely friends and neighbours in to enjoy the comfort of my ample stash of cardboard.

I pursued the militaristic course; I bought a mousetrap. It was not the kind I was used to - instead of the wood platform with hinge and spring, it was a foldable bit of cardboard with a pad of sticky material inside, smelling of peanut butter or some such, and intended to entangle the poor rodent in fragrant goop. It seemed more in the line of chemical weaponry than good honest spring-loaded artillery; I felt rather like Saddam in setting it up in the garage.

Three days later, the trap remained empty, while the garage became very hot in the afternoons with the door shut. There was no sign of the mouse, and I began to wish our cat had not died of old age and cancer some years ago. 'Fluffy' does not have a ring of fierceness about it, but she would have sorted this matter out very rapidly.

In the wee hours of day four, I went to the garage to lock the outer door, and to check the trap with weakening optimism. Turning on the light, there was the mouse, poised by the overhead door, like a pet waiting to be let out. It did not scurry off, but waited by the door, even as I pushed the wall button to raise it. As the door rose four or five inches, it calmly moved about six inches as well, putting itself in the driveway as I quickly lowered the door again. It felt much like putting out the cat.

I don't know whether I can comment on dolphin or goldfish intelligence - that particular South African study was funded, I understand, by the Japanese, who wish to eliminate dolphins from their waters without incurring too much bad press. However, I can vouch for mouse intelligence, having paid for an empty trap, and having served as butler of sorts - to a mouse.

My first post

I have done a lot of writing, but I have stayed away from Blogging until now. I ask myself why that is, and I'm not sure, except that I wonder if I can really fill up much blogspace on a regular basis; I tend to work in spurts.

Anyway, here I am, and my blog name, Go For Whole, is the same as my little publishing company, which I have used to place 5 books into print, so far.

You will find my books on www.lulu.com, by going there and entering my name into the search box.

I will definitely have more interesting things to write about, once I have finished creating this blog site!

Darrell Gudmundson
RevDarrellG

Information and Meaning

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Information and Meaning

Information and Meaning
Hermeneutics and Global Culture
RevDarrellG


The mechanism of our mind is described in my small book, “Turn the World on Its Head” (GFW books – lulu.com)

We begin early to learn about the world around us. As we interact with objects within reach, we explore them with our vision, our touch, taste and smell, until we form a sense of repeated recognition and the ability to ‘predict’ the nature of the things we perceive.

While we are doing these things, we also begin to attach ‘meanings’ to things which go beyond the things themselves. Some shapes and touches we will associate with Mother’s love, some smells are linked with Father’s strong arms. These emotion-linked associations will stay with us for life.

The result is to make food more than food in our eyes, fabric more than fabric. To us they may mean Love, Safety, and Caring; or perhaps, sadly, Cruelty and unpleasantness. Linkages work both ways, engendering attraction or aversion based on an emotion-linked, unconscious memory.

Over time, we build up a finely detailed mental picture of our world and our place in it. Each item added to our ‘model’ is anchored there by a dab of emotional glue, happy, sad, relieved, or afraid.


Each item or event is anchored in our mental model by a feeling, with which it is forever associated. The feeling constitutes the caring which led us to remember that individual item. Without caring, there would be nothing to make that item stand out from the background of a thousand things around us. We simply fail to notice the things we do not care about.

As we mature, we increasingly interact with our mental model of the world, and not with the world itself. We still look at, touch or taste things in our environment, but in the act of perceiving them, we substitute the mental image we have, along with the meaning we carry, for the thing we are seeing. We taste the apple pie; but in our mind, we are thinking of the pie Mom used to make, and today’s pie is contrasted, compared and judged. Whenever we judge (as we usually do), we are replacing the external observation with an internal perception. This substitution is so commonplace, so normal to us, that we seldom realize it is happening.


Our mental model includes every single item we have encountered from birth to the present. Some…. suggest that impressions from before birth are stored as well. Much of this model is, by now, unconscious to us - our conscious mind cannot retain any but the most recent or the most emotionally impactful experiences. This model is very large, for most people, and for most, it suffices for nearly all our decision-making, so that we ‘sample’ the actual world less and less. In effect, it is like deciding on purchases without going to the store; and is that not what we often do?

Our model is there to help us interpret our observations - but more and more it substitutes for them. Not only that, but it begins to govern our process of observation, so that ultimately we see only what we are ‘programmed’ to see. Anything which does not fit with our model will either be ignored or explained away. If a truly new thing is observed in such a way that it is ‘in our face’, so to speak, so that we cannot ignore or explain it, then we are forced into one of two ways; outright denial, or a paradigm shift in our thinking. Studies have shown that up to 70% of people may use outright denial of what they saw or heard. A paradigm shift, on the other hand, results in the creation of a new pattern or element in our model - and along with it goes all the emotion that is required to anchor that into our mentality.

Our mental model serves as the basis of a double filtering process. First we filter our observations of events, screening out the ‘obviously’ impossible or the irrelevant; then we take the remaining ‘permitted’ observations, and we interpret them based on the model, shaving the square pegs to fit round holes.

This gives us comfort and stability, in that our world is made more predictable. We feel safer. We sense a continuity of behaviour in our surroundings. Our mental system is geared to creating this sense of stability; superimposing order on a world that might otherwise seem chaotic. We seem to need that comfort.

That it bears only a passing relationship to actual occurrences does not bother us one bit. We stick to the rule and ignore the exceptions. Thus we enhance our feeling of ‘safety’ while tuning out on a great deal of life.


From the world all around us, our senses are flooded with impressions. In the parlance of information theory or cybernetics these impressions represent potential data. We fail to notice most of these, because our mental programming provides a filtering action. We notice only what we have been taught or have ourselves judged to have meaning for us. What comes through our filters is the data upon which we operate.

This data represents the first layer of our ‘reality’. Those data which have been filtered out may still be out there – but they do not represent reality for us.

We now apply a second layer of judgment to this data, perhaps using the same sets of filters, perhaps others. These judgments are made by comparing the data to our internal mental models –comparing against expectations, against memories of the past, such as our fear-based ideas of what represents safety, or memories of past pleasures. This judgment process is mainly unconscious, and occurs in a split second. The process is automatic.

Finally we come to apply to the data a sense of meaning. Only now does it cease to be data and become information. Information is data placed into a context.

When we speak or write so much as a coherent sentence, we are attempting to convey what we believe is information.

The words that fall onto another’s ear or greet the eye are no longer randomly generated data; they are organized data with intent. However, the recipient will need to apply the same process of filtering, judgment or comparison, and application of meaning, if the words are to be understood as intended.

This requires the existence of a common set of meanings before any communication can be successful. If my words mean something else to you than they do to me, communication will not likely satisfy the intent.

Commonly held meanings are the glue that holds together a social or societal grouping, whether it is a tribe, a community, or a nation. What we understand as culture is a large group agreement as to meanings of symbols, behavior, and other factors. This includes not only words, but flags, uniforms, badges, street signs, traffic lights, and political borders.

The nations and societies which are culturally uniform, such as some in Scandinavia or Asia, may also have the greatest social cohesion, with all that holds; such as lower crime rates, political stability, and socially programmed customs and manners. Those countries which have had more recent immigration will find that their diversity of personal meaning-making may cause occasional friction.

The activity of globalization has led to this kind of friction in whole segments of several cultures, as the products of corporate culture, especially those of the information and entertainment industries, are spread in a world wide dissemination of Disney and McDonalds.

Such recent actions as the eviction of Starbucks from Beijing’s Forbidden City are signs that the outward pressures of globalized brands are being resisted at the local level.

The mental model which each of us carries is our template against which we weigh all input. It is loaded with the prejudices of our family, community, and culture. This associative database is more than the basis upon which we evaluate all input – it is also intelligent enough to define our personality. It is not only a model (a working model) of the world (even the universe) as we know it, but it includes our ego, which is our model of our self, and all the relationships we have to the world.

Our decisions are made by playing out the scenario within our model. We picture the drive downtown, the landmarks along the way, and the task at the destination. In a split second the entire errand is planned. Then as we undertake the drive, our reticular activating system, a component of the brain, causes us to ignore that which is the same, and to notice significant differences. These differences represent potential danger, and so the mechanism is by nature fear-based.

This is the ego at work.

To suppose that our internal chatter will tell us about ourselves is to suppose that the ego-construct, and larger model within which it operates, represents our place in the world with accuracy. In fact this model is not the self, but it is the limit to the self, the prison compound we have made for ourselves. It defines what we consider safe or dangerous, it circumscribes our sense of capability.

The self is much more vast than the ego-model would have us believe. We cannot map our world by measuring our bedroom, and we cannot map the self by analyzing the chatter of the ego. This is what the masters of meditation have taught us; by silencing the ego-chatter we allow new insights to come forth.

Being fear-based, the ego reacts strongly, and unconsciously, to any efforts to change the personal or cultural paradigm. This is why globalization has led to the rise of global terrorism. Cultures that felt threatened before, that felt isolation and rigidity was the only was to preserve their way of life, these are lashing out today. We feel unable to communicate rationally with them, and rightly so. Meanings are at odds, as are the words with which we try to convey them.

These cultures include not only the Arabic ones which we have been focused on for so long. They include Orthodox Judaism, Latin-American native cultures, and to a milder extent, our own aboriginal cultures. All of these feel threatened, not just by modernism – that is the least of the threatening factors, but by a culture that includes electronic entertainment, large corporate franchise business models, imposition of the language of international trade (English) and likely many other factors.

Hence, whether in Montreal, New York, or Israel, orthodox Jewry is digging in its heels. Pan-Arabic Islamic extremism is finding converts daily, while across Latin America, native Mayan leaders are uniting in a new wave of socialism.

These behaviors are linked to the international pressure to change the societal paradigms. They are an unconscious, egoic reaction which surfaces in the form of mass movements here and there.


We construct our reality by forming meaning from the information we receive. The result becomes our filtered view of events. Most of what occurs is ignored; therefore our reality is a selective view.

Since each person will have their own filters and their own mental model of self and world, then each event, though it generates the same data, will produce in each person somewhat different information, and a different set of meanings. This will form the limits of communication to begin with. Much discussion will be required before it is understood that two realities are being examined. Once this is realized, it will be the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom is the ability to develop a meta-view in which one realizes that all reality models are unique. This requires letting go of the expectation that those to which you communicate are processing your information in the same way. Wisdom is to information and meaning what the football team manager is to the players and coach. While they are focusing on the plays, he may be thinking of player trades! Getting above and beyond the game at hand provides a wider perspective.

The hierarchy of the scope of our mentality, then, may range from data to information, to meaning, and then the wisdom to know that meaning is arbitrary. We each decide what things mean to us. We may accept a shared meaning from our culture, or we may adopt one of our choosing.

As for the next step, from wisdom to enlightenment, that is a subject for another day.


Darrell Gudmundson