Merkabah

[Kgal]

....

On Self-Knowledge
Kahlil Gibran
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.


And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.


Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.

I've not read this one by him before today. This is beautiful....and gently infuses my heart with peace and calm and joy.

I especially resonate with the line ..."I have met the soul walking upon my path."


Something I learned many months ago about Ego has helped me embrace my intuition and act upon it.

It is the job of the Ego to retain data (memories ....thoughts/emotions/experiences/knowledge learned) in order to protect and help the body survive in a harsh world.

It makes it's decisions based upon the past (data).

It uses the past data of your life experience to predict your future actions.

If you want to change your future - you have to stop relying on the ego's past data patterns.

We - as humanity - will never move forward to that which we intuitively know is better for us - unless we stop focusing on the past (data) patterns. This is why science alone will not show the way. This is why belief systems alone will not show us the way.

Sit back and have a conversation with your Ego. You'll hear it telling you all sorts of things and they will all be based upon what it already knows...

 

[Kgal]

[MENTION=6917]sprinkles[/MENTION]

Sometimes arguing with another helps keep us grounded. Perhaps you needed to have a tug war here to help stabilize and let off some pent up steam?

I love how you and the others backed away from arguing and allowed each other room to throw out ideas.

 

[Kgal]

I've not read this one by him before today. This is beautiful....and gently infuses my heart with peace and calm and joy.

I especially resonate with the line ..."I have met the soul walking upon my path."


Something I learned many months ago about Ego has helped me embrace my intuition and act upon it.

It is the job of the Ego to retain data (memories ....thoughts/emotions/experiences/knowledge learned) in order to protect and help the body survive in a harsh world.

It makes it's decisions based upon the past (data).

It uses the past data of your life experience to predict your future actions.

If you want to change your future - you have to stop relying on the ego's past data patterns.

We - as humanity - will never move forward to that which we intuitively know is better for us - unless we stop focusing on the past (data) patterns. This is why science alone will not show the way. This is why belief systems alone will not show us the way.

Sit back and have a conversation with your Ego. You'll hear it telling you all sorts of things and they will all be based upon what it already knows...

Synchronicity.

I opened up a video I downloaded and began listening to it while wrapping my sister's bday presents. This gentleman has been making short videos while he reads from a book written back in the 1980's of channeled messages from Seth. If any of you have read the book Oversoul #7 - you were introduced to Seth via a fantasy like novel.

Anyway - here he is talking about how humans have developed our societal views around "thinking" only and how important it is for the imagination must be used to remain sane and whole.

[video=youtube;GkKLLb-Rw9w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkKLLb-Rw9w[/video]

 

[Rift Zone]

Some also argue that science a product of religion (another form of philosophy). Without it, we likely wouldn't have science.

Do you think without religion/philosophy we wouldn't have science because we wouldn't have the questions that they pose, thus the desire to answer the unknown?

I think we would have science no matter what. My perspective is a science, philosophy, and religion are all born from the same cause: trying to understand. I think our species has just recently gained sentience, gained the capacity for discovery and understanding on these levels. I personally feel that all sentient species would be compelled to understand themselves and the world around them. We want to know who we are, where we came from and what we're doing here. Science, philosophy and religion are our attempt to know. The mysticism that grew into religion was really a modest form of science, to the extent they were merely trying to make sense of natural phenomena. At any rate, I feel true science would be inevitable.

The craziest thing about all this is there's a term that captures our inclination toward this type of understanding: spirituality.

 

[ThomasJ79]

Some also argue that science a product of religion (another form of philosophy). Without it, we likely wouldn't have science.

Do you think without religion/philosophy we wouldn't have science because we wouldn't have the questions that they pose, thus the desire to answer the unknown?

I think that's true. Science built upon sytems of thought that had its origin with religion and philosophy. I'm saying this intuitively and not in any factual sense.

Enter Rant:
At a very general level, science as we know it was a product of technology and rational principles from Enlightenment. Much of what we take for granted, what we call progress and Science, is built upon a culture that uses energy stored in the form of fossil fuels to extend our ability to observe and manipulate our environment as we've seen fit. Without the energy, there wouldn't have been the advanced we've seen. It is no coincidence that fossil fuels subsidized the Industrial Revolution, from which modern science stemmed. I'm not saying this to denigrate science, I support science much more than I do religion or philosophy. My point is merely that science is an outgrowth of culture, unique to our time and place, build upon the past, and its future is uncertain. As long as we have the available energy, science will thrive, but as soon as the energy becomes depleted, religion and philosophy will become more useful to everyday life, but that is perhaps a century away, if not more. What I like about philosophy is that a lab is not needed to think through problems, science is expensive! Anyways, praising science over the "lower" systems of thought is a bit like chiding a chimp for not becoming a human. A chimp and a human share a common ancestor, as science and religion have one rooted in language and culture. One isn't superior than the other, just different; they serve different purposes.

Sorry, I ranted. This is one of my favorite topics of discussion

Exit Rant

 

[54192&#cmy]

Synchronicity.

I opened up a video I downloaded and began listening to it while wrapping my sister's bday presents. This gentleman has been making short videos while he reads from a book written back in the 1980's of channeled messages from Seth. If any of you have read the book Oversoul #7 - you were introduced to Seth via a fantasy like novel.

Anyway - here he is talking about how humans have developed our societal views around "thinking" only and how important it is for the imagination must be used to remain sane and whole.

[video=youtube;GkKLLb-Rw9w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkKLLb-Rw9w[/video]

I could see how losing your imagination could affect you. I think I am suffering from losing mine. I got to the point that I cannot dream of a future. I cannot bear to dream again and lose it all. Even-though I will eventually lose it all anyway. You get into a type of paralysis. Where you can only look back but never forward. You are stuck in time really. Still moving forward but always looking backward. I can see myself doing this the last few years. Life in the present was not as good as life in the past. So I stay in the past more than the present. I feel I have broken free of this though. I look at photos now and smile at my good fortune. And I know that better days are ahead. Whatever days they are it does not matter. ​

 

[sprinkles]

I think that's true. Science built upon sytems of thought that had its origin with religion and philosophy. I'm saying this intuitively and not in any factual sense.

Enter Rant:
At a very general level, science as we know it was a product of technology and rational principles from Enlightenment. Much of what we take for granted, what we call progress and Science, is built upon a culture that uses energy stored in the form of fossil fuels to extend our ability to observe and manipulate our environment as we've seen fit. Without the energy, there wouldn't have been the advanced we've seen. It is no coincidence that fossil fuels subsidized the Industrial Revolution, from which modern science stemmed. I'm not saying this to denigrate science, I support science much more than I do religion or philosophy. My point is merely that science is an outgrowth of culture, unique to our time and place, build upon the past, and its future is uncertain. As long as we have the available energy, science will thrive, but as soon as the energy becomes depleted, religion and philosophy will become more useful to everyday life, but that is perhaps a century away, if not more. What I like about philosophy is that a lab is not needed to think through problems, science is expensive! Anyways, praising science over the "lower" systems of thought is a bit like chiding a chimp for not becoming a human. A chimp and a human share a common ancestor, as science and religion have one rooted in language and culture. One isn't superior than the other, just different; they serve different purposes.

Sorry, I ranted. This is one of my favorite topics of discussion

Exit Rant

Interestingly though, many of the fundamentals came before fossil fuels. Discovery of vacuum, chemistry, Newtonian physics which is still a fairly useful approximation of applied physics in daily life - all these were laid down before fossil fuels came into use. They had to be for fossil fuels to even be discovered and used.

 

[say what]

I think we would have science no matter what. My perspective is a science, philosophy, and religion are all born from the same cause: trying to understand. I think our species has just recently gained sentience, gained the capacity for discovery and understanding on these levels. I personally feel that all sentient species would be compelled to understand themselves and the world around them. We want to know who we are, where we came from and what we're doing here. Science, philosophy and religion are our attempt to know. The mysticism that grew into religion was really a modest form of science, to the extent they were merely trying to make sense of natural phenomena. At any rate, I feel true science would be inevitable.

The craziest thing about all this is there's a term that captures our inclination toward this type of understanding: spirituality.

I agree that they're all products of man's curiosity!

I think that's true. Science built upon sytems of thought that had its origin with religion and philosophy. I'm saying this intuitively and not in any factual sense.

Enter Rant:
At a very general level, science as we know it was a product of technology and rational principles from Enlightenment. Much of what we take for granted, what we call progress and Science, is built upon a culture that uses energy stored in the form of fossil fuels to extend our ability to observe and manipulate our environment as we've seen fit. Without the energy, there wouldn't have been the advanced we've seen. It is no coincidence that fossil fuels subsidized the Industrial Revolution, from which modern science stemmed. I'm not saying this to denigrate science, I support science much more than I do religion or philosophy. My point is merely that science is an outgrowth of culture, unique to our time and place, build upon the past, and its future is uncertain. As long as we have the available energy, science will thrive, but as soon as the energy becomes depleted, religion and philosophy will become more useful to everyday life, but that is perhaps a century away, if not more. What I like about philosophy is that a lab is not needed to think through problems, science is expensive! Anyways, praising science over the "lower" systems of thought is a bit like chiding a chimp for not becoming a human. A chimp and a human share a common ancestor, as science and religion have one rooted in language and culture. One isn't superior than the other, just different; they serve different purposes.

Sorry, I ranted. This is one of my favorite topics of discussion

Exit Rant

No- rant away!! I find this very interesting as well! I do think that science is over valued, when you compare it to it's sibling philosophy! Even theoretical sciences aren't as popular or promoted as much as the hard sciences.



I guess on this same line of thought....

An increasing number of mainstream commentators are now seriously questioning whether our ability to innovate — to develop science and new technologies — has fundamentally slowed down. Exemplifying this “innovation pessimism” was a leading article in The Economist (January 12th 2013) with the title “Has the ideas machine broken down?”, which states that, “a small but growing group of economists reckon the economic impact of the innovations of today may pale in comparison with those of the past.”

From : http://www.marxist.com/technology-innovation-growtn-and-capitalism.htm

This isn't something new- our ability to be innovative (at a societal level) seems to be on a decline...do you think this might have anything to do with the dismissal of humanities and arts as credible sources of innovation?

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION]

There's a bit of a cap on innovation in a practical sense. You just run out of things to invent eventually unless you start forcing novelty.

Most of the innovations we can do now are with new materials and ways of working with electronics. Mechanical innovation is just about done to death - gears will always be gears, wheels will always be round, and so forth.

Even electronic devices are hitting a cap. What are we going to do? Make them smaller? Too small becomes unusable for a lot of people. I mean how many ways do you need to communicate and send pictures and use the internet? They end up trying to force innovation, such as Google glass and Oculus Rift. Is that the best they can come up with now? "A new computer! FOR YOUR FACE! How novel!"

 

[say what]

[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION]

There's a bit of a cap on innovation in a practical sense. You just run out of things to invent eventually unless you start forcing novelty.

Most of the innovations we can do now are with new materials and ways of working with electronics. Mechanical innovation is just about done to death - gears will always be gears, wheels will always be round, and so forth.

Even electronic devices are hitting a cap. What are we going to do? Make them smaller? Too small becomes unusable for a lot of people. I mean how many ways do you need to communicate and send pictures and use the internet? They end up trying to force innovation, such as Google glass and Oculus Rift. Is that the best they can come up with now? "A new computer! FOR YOUR FACE! How novel!"

Your comments reminded me of this:

I do agree that we are just making the same things over and over again...but I think if we start asking different questions, and choosing different paths of inquiry, we might be able to begin to discover new things. I think that if we placed more emphasis on increasing creative thinking, and exploring concepts that are more theoretical, we could see innovation. Society is just stuck on innovation being an tangible product that they can use - like a super small cellphone - when innovation can be much more abstract than that.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION]
What exactly are we thinking about innovating abstractly that doesn't have a practical use?
[video=youtube;UmQ5LsNMXZ4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmQ5LsNMXZ4[/video]

 

[say what]

[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION]
What exactly are we thinking about innovating abstractly that doesn't have a practical use?
[video=youtube;UmQ5LsNMXZ4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmQ5LsNMXZ4[/video]

I guess I was using innovation and creativity synonymously, and I shouldn't be. Innovation at it's core is bringing things to life / creating something, while creativity is creating new ideas. I guess what I'm meaning to say is that we as society put to much emphasis on innovation, and should place more on creativity- without creativity, where is innovation?

I think I'm making sense...or am I?

 

[sprinkles]

I guess I was using innovation and creativity synonymously, and I shouldn't be. Innovation at it's core is bringing things to life / creating something, while creativity is creating new ideas. I guess what I'm meaning to say is that we as society put to much emphasis on innovation, and should place more on creativity- without creativity, where is innovation?

I think I'm making sense...or am I?

Ah yeah, that makes much more sense actually I'd be inclined to agree.

 

[say what]

Ah yeah, that makes much more sense actually I'd be inclined to agree.

YAY! I be smarts!!!!

 

[say what]

That could actually account for many many things that seem anomalous in our reality...ghosts for example, perhaps they are nothing more than a peek through to another universe...maybe we see them as being transparent or don’t see them at all because they do not actually exist fully here.
And we, in turn, may be doing the same in their reality...maybe when a ghost yells in a deep frightening voice “GET OUT!”, he or she is in fact perceiving you as a ghost haunting their house and have had it with YOU.

I have had several run-ins with what you could call a ghost...but I cannot be sure that is what it was...perhaps it was some kind of psychokinesis I myself was unknowingly creating...maybe it was indeed a lost spirit...maybe a break in our universe to another...I DO know though, that it wasn’t something that should have happened by any scientifically known reason.

Things are NOT just supposed to move by themselves...not once, not twice, not three times...but I put it somewhere around 4-5 times now that I think of it.
Oh, and I tried to find a reason...I even checked for earthquakes...lol...no logical or scientific reason....so there HAS to be something more to it.
I think you would be surprised to find, if you ask around, how many people have has similar experiences.
It’s culturally “taboo” to bring up, but once you get past the uncomfortable giggles and looks...people can relate.
There is a great website called the Global Consciousness Project run out of Princeton University - http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
If you go there, there is a map you can click on that shows you the locations of random number generators...they way it works it this -
whenever something of significance has happened around the world that would be shocking to our global consciousness they have shown that there is a correlation between the global events and the numbers randomly being generated...you can look up dates such as 9/11, and see that there was a huge match up between the numbers being generated by the RNGs have a probability of 2.508x10[SUP]-13 which indeed is highly significant.
[/SUP][SUP]So scientifically it has been shown to be highly probable that there is such a thing as a global consciousness.
So if we are all connected globally...then perhaps we are also connected across other dimensions, other universes....quantum physics has shown that it is possible for matter to be in two places simultaneously...so who is to say that there isn’t something we would describe as a “guardian angel” helping to guide us through our intuition...it could even be ourselves in a future state where time no longer exists trying to lead us along the correct path.
[/SUP]

---

[SUP]There are so many possibilities for us to explore...and I wouldn’t rule anything and everything out...that is what is so exciting!

[/SUP]

You mentioned the Global Consciousness project a few days ago, and I found this today about them creating an app ("There's an app for that!") to test it out

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-weinkauf/no-longer-science-fiction_1_b_4688935.html


[video=vimeo;83875420]http://vimeo.com/83875420[/video]


I think this is really cool! I think it could be really interesting- but I wonder how the data will be used...moreover, I wonder how that technology could be used to further gain control over the public. I don't want to double post this, but I thought it was also relevant to [MENTION=1871]muir[/MENTION] and his thread. In some ways, i see an overlap. On some levels, the one true thing we have left is our consciousness- it's something only we as individuals can control (although, there are theories out there on mind control!!).

 

[ThomasJ79]

Interestingly though, many of the fundamentals came before fossil fuels. Discovery of vacuum, chemistry, Newtonian physics which is still a fairly useful approximation of applied physics in daily life - all these were laid down before fossil fuels came into use. They had to be for fossil fuels to even be discovered and used.

Excellent point, my friend!

While it is true that many basic scientific principles predated the widespread use of fossil fuels, it took fossil fuels to drive the technological advances which have greatly improved society, which has given science a place at the top, as the sole arbiter of truth.

 

[sprinkles]

Excellent point, my friend!

While it is true that many basic scientific principles predated the widespread use of fossil fuels, it took fossil fuels to drive the technological advances which have greatly improved society, which has given science a place at the top, as the sole arbiter of truth.

Yeah. I guess philosophers do a lot of talking and scientists do a lot of actual doing.

Some times it's like from a philosophers standpoint, perpetual motion is still OK. Scientists debunk that shit because they've already been there. Some YouTuber makes a machine that can spin for a very long time and talks about free energy - but never do they even power a lightbulb with it. Yeah ok the machine is spinning but the moment you apply additional load, it's going to stop like somebody yanked the needle off the record at the disco VVRRRRrrrRRPK!

Edit: moreover they usually know this too, which is why they never take that step.

 

[Skarekrow]

Quantum Mechanics is a curious area of study which began in the early 20th century when scientists began to discover that the theories of electromagnetism and Newtonian mechanics, which so elegantly describe the movements of normal objects, completely fell apart at extremely tiny atomic and subatomic scales. It soon became clear that a separate theory would be necessary to describe subatomic interactions, and thus Quantum Mechanics was born.The theory of quantum mechanics describes a tiny realm completely foreign to the one we observe normally. At quantum levels, matter exists simultaneously as particles and as waves (wave-particle duality), a particle's position and momentum cannot be precisely known at the same time (Heisenberg uncertainty principle), and the state of two objects can be intertwined, regardless of the physical distance between them (quantum entanglement). Niels Bohr, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, once said, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."
The predictions of quantum mechanics have never been disproved in any experiments in over a century of development. It has been studied by brilliant minds including Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, and though there is much disagreement about what it all means, there is little doubt that it is true. Some even think it provides us with a means to live forever.

Quantum mechanics is not in the business of exact predictions, rather it deals in probabilities when describing the position or momentum of a given particle at a certain time. This inexactness is not because the theory is incomplete, but because those qualities of a particle are inherently unpredictable with any precision; or to put it another way, because there seems to be some degree of randomness at play in the universe. Einstein was famously uncomfortable with this facet of quantum physics, asserting that "God does not play dice!" But despite spending a good deal of his life after 1925 trying to back up his assertion, he was never able to.
In 1957, a student named Hugh Everett suggested that perhaps the reason that a particle's outcome can't be predicted is not because of randomness, but because every possible outcomedoes occur. This idea led to the "many-worlds interpretation" (MWI) which postulates that at the quantum level, everything that can happen does happen, and that each possible outcome branches the universe into another which is at first identical aside from the alternate outcome. So the seemingly "random" outcome is actually just representative of the one possible outcome one's current universe happens to be based upon. The overlapping universes, between which no information can pass, would then continue to develop individually, each of them branching endlessly as well. Among physicists worldwide, this "multiverse" idea has become one of the most widely accepted interpretations of quantum physics.

On a larger scale, MWI would mean that everything which canhappen will happen in at least one universe. Based on this, Max Tegmark at Princeton University suggested an experiment to prove that the many-worlds interpretation is correct, where one points a loaded gun at one's head, and pulls the trigger. If you were to try this test, it is highly unlikely that you would survive... but if the gun failed to go off, and continued to do so in subsequent tests, you could eventually become reasonably confident that you're in one of the branched universes where something caused the gun to misfire each time. Of course only the "you" in those "miraculous survival" universes would know this, the others would all be dead from gunshot wounds to the head.Obviously this ridiculous test is not recommended, but if MWI is true, wouldn't that mean that there are universes where I decided to try this for myself, and in at least one of those universes I survived miraculously? This article is probably much more exciting in those universes. Incidentally, in this branch, my brain is currently trying to gnaw its way out of my skull in self-defense.
In such a way is the argument for Quantum Immortality made. Some say that regardless of the cause of death, if the many-worlds interpretation is true, then there will always be at least one branch where the "miraculous survival" scenario is realized, and that version of "you" will never die. Of course the odds are overwhelmingly against the possibility that anyone in this universe is a perpetual miraculous survivor. Although the whole idea is wildly speculative, quantum immortality violates no known laws of physics.

 

[Rift Zone]

Quantum Mechanics is a curious area of study which began in the early 20th century when scientists began to discover that the theories of electromagnetism and Newtonian mechanics, which so elegantly describe the movements of normal objects, completely fell apart at extremely tiny atomic and subatomic scales.

The thing about QM is everything is energy. -Everything! There is nothing solid in this universe. The "solid matter" we've grown familiar with is an illusion. At our scale, it is very easy to think of things as things. We see lots of things. We can build things with things. We can dissect things into smaller things... We think of an atom and we have a tendency to think of more things: perhaps a little ball orbiting another little ball. The imagination has a tendency to render atomic structure as having some sort of solid nature because we've adapted to that perception. Rightfully so, except our world looks nothing like what we find on atomic scales. It's important to realize the "proper" perspective (if there is such a thing) is at the atomic scale. That is to say just keep in mind there's really nothing solid in this universe, everything is a concentration of energy.

If we could see an atomic nucleus in the every day sense of the word at a comfortable scale we would not see "things". We would see energy. Imagine the schematic for the propagation of light:




Waveforms writhing through eternity... Imagine rather, that the waveform isn't going anywhere. It's sitting still, writhing. "Particles" are a concentration of a lot of energy so imagine many, many waveforms there, writhing. It looks crazy. Not too dissimilar from a tesla coil to the power of googolplex. Also, not too dissimilar from how DNA curls up on itself. Imagine that mess, writhing. It looks seriously $&@#%^ crazy! That is matter.




I personally don't believe in multiverses/many world scenarios. I do believe we will get much better at quantifying the behavior of the subatomic realm as time passes.

 

[Skarekrow]

The thing about QM is everything is energy. -Everything! There is nothing solid in this universe. The "solid matter" we've grown familiar with is an illusion. At our scale, it is very easy to think of things as things. We see lots of things. We can build things with things. We can dissect things into smaller things... We think of an atom and we have a tendency to think of more things: perhaps a little ball orbiting another little ball. The imagination has a tendency to render atomic structure as having some sort of solid nature because we've adapted to that perception. Rightfully so, except our world looks nothing like what we find on atomic scales. It's important to realize the "proper" perspective (if there is such a thing) is at the atomic scale. That is to say just keep in mind there's really nothing solid in this universe, everything is a concentration of energy.

If we could see an atomic nucleus in the every day sense of the word at a comfortable scale we would not see "things". We would see energy. Imagine the schematic for the propagation of light:




Waveforms writhing through eternity... Imagine rather, that the waveform isn't going anywhere. It's sitting still, writhing. "Particles" are a concentration of a lot of energy so imagine many, many waveforms there, writhing. It looks crazy. Not too dissimilar from a tesla coil to the power of googolplex. Also, not too dissimilar from how DNA curls up on itself. Imagine that mess, writhing. It looks seriously $&@#%^ crazy! That is matter.

View attachment 19595


I personally don't believe in multiverses/many world scenarios. I do believe we will get much better at quantifying the behavior of the subatomic realm as time passes.

I agree...it’s amazing to me how there really are infinite possibilities that exist in the field of quantum mechanics....I have been a big fan for quite some time now.

I wonder if any poor crazy sap has tried shooting himself in the head to prove the theory of multiverses...if not now, then someone probably will...lol. Better them than me.