Galactic Voyages
posted by jm at 8:55 PM
Friday, August 21, 2015
About Me
- Name: jm
I am a brilliant creation of the universe formed from the cosmic protoplasm sailing into eternity. I have two hands, two feet, a couple of great ears, and I'm clipping through life at a moderate pace; minding my p*s and q*s, crossing my t*s, dotting every i.
Previous Posts
- Beleaf
- A Frightful Night in the Suburbs
- Good god, Jm. You're getting old.
- 1000 light years from here briefly I am
- Begone-ia
- The Seat of Confidence
- The Vastness of Empty Space
- Modern Technology
- Party Time Again
22 Comments:
Ah, yes. The seeing I. Active. Intrepid. "Building your own adventure", for seeing may not be as passive as it may seem. It does remind me of the time I fell through the looking glass.
You are right. Seeing is far from passive. There is a large amount of musculature around the eyes. All of the face, actually. So seeing and facial expression are under personal control. It's quite amazing to think about how much we can direct our focus. I wonder if the outer is different from the inner control wise. I also wonder how much we can cultivate willful focus. A certain amount of automatic vision is required to see where we are going. The eye(I) is the ultimate seeker, always trying to go beyond what is right in front of it. Above, below, and behind, too. It's a busy little thing.
Your trip through the looking glass?
"It's quite amazing to think about how much we can direct our focus."
To the point of developing blind spots, as stage conjurors well know. Given a choice between two equally qualified candidates for the position of security guard, one should hire the dyslexic over the avid reader. Reading skills suppress certain natural abilities — such as the ability to notice details that most will miss owing to their habit of narrowly focused attention.
"Your trip through the looking glass?"
Oh, yes. Did I never mention this? Well. I will return on the morrow and say more.
Excellent.
Now here is a tall tale for you, but I like to think it full of true facts as sure as our black-haired mother's name is Snow and our father's name isn't Charming (though he was widely acknowledged to be as handsome as one could wish).
As I once explained to my brother's amusement, his heart was on the wrong side of his body (like Ian Fleming's "Dr. No") because, as an infant, he had tumbled through our mother's looking glass. When he had a full checkup before entering school, the doctors were thrilled to see firsthand a case of dextrocardia situs inversus in their examination room. It was an extremely rare occurrence, odds of 1 in 12,000, they delightedly informed our parents.
What really happened, I told my brother, was that he had fallen backwards into the glass, rolled himself over onto his belly and crawled off. I had to follow quickly without blinking or looking away for help because, well, one can't trust a looking glass to tell a story the same way twice, as they say. (Or is it "tell the same story twice"? Well, no matter.)
Then the glass, too, was knocked to the floor when in my haste my elbow momentarily caught its frame. It did not shatter, you may be surprised to hear, despite that glass in those days was not made as strong. But near one edge, marring its surface, was the faintest new scratch from striking a tin toy, and the glass remained solid thereafter.
And everything was the same and yet different. The whorls and parts of hair on our heads were opposite to the norm. People thought the Earth swung around the Sun like a child's ball on a string tied to a paddle; they (except perhaps for some philosophers and scientists) seemed not to suspect that when they thought themselves into moving through, for example, their apartments, it could be considered that their apartments moved around them. They also didn't notice how the interior awareness, of the so-called autonomic, continually exchanged places with the outer awareness formed around their exteriorly focused senses. They seemed hardly aware of the distance between their heads and their feet. It was all a bit like living on the surface of an inflated balloon where everyone took roundness to be fundamental and completely overlooked that the balloon was a thin plane stretched very badly out of shape.
But for small differences in perspective, all seemed well enough so we went on as we were, as children do. It was probably for the best that I decided against pushing my brother through other glasses (to test them) lest it compounded matters. Then sometimes I was half-convinced that certain memories were no more than dreams. Still, I remained wary of looking glasses, the uncanny things, for many years after.
Thank you for the learning. In all these years looking at the taijitu I never knew its name. My education has holes.
The yin yang swirls in the celtic designs are amazing, as is the appearance of the taijitu in the log. It certainly seems to be a universal experience, possibly a reminder of the "mirror" image we are always facing. The one we slip in and out of continually.
The taijitu is neat and precise. And thoroughly suggestive.
I suppose we always long for the opposite as a natural condition of living and balancing. The inner outer switch can be maddening to keep up with.
"It was all a bit like living on the surface of an inflated balloon where everyone took roundness to be fundamental and completely overlooked that the balloon was a thin plane stretched very badly out of shape."
Yes. What is this thing called roundness? It's highly popular.
Holograms are riveting and beautiful.
"The 3D nature of our world is as fundamental to our sense of reality as the fact that time runs forward. And yet some researchers believe that contradictions between Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics might be reconciled if every three-dimensional object we know and cherish is a projection of tiny, subatomic bytes of information stored in a two-dimensional Flatland."
Amazing concept. A collapsible universe like putting away toys.
So they're working on proving it.
"It seems that for now, we’ll have to wait for the physicists doing the hard math and shooting the lasers to tell us whether our lives are just a very sophisticated illusion. In the meanwhile, the big question on my mind is, how the heck will such a revelation affect us?"
Probably not much. Then again, maybe it could, like the good old light bulb did.
"It would force us to fundamentally alter our perception of reality."
I've already done that. But holograms really are attractive.
"The taijitu is neat and precise. And thoroughly suggestive."
From my perspective, the implied progression speaks to the fine imbalances that permit action and mobility, and therefore consciousness. There is a sense of overall coherence to the composition that is not static but allows dynamism to continually emerge and to individuate — much like your geraniums and petunias growing in the garden.
So the circle is not a bound but a field of action. The taijitu, while an encompassing figure in itself, has also been seen in the context of three powers: a white circle above symbolizing a power known as Sky, a black circle below symbolizing Earth, and the taijitu, between them, symbolizing Humanity blending the other two powers. Its students gradually shift from identifying with bounds and poles to identifying as action.
"What is this thing called roundness? It's highly popular."
Why, it seems to be some sort of "virtual reality" thing.
"Probably not much. Then again, maybe it could, like the good old light bulb did."
Often these things take a few decades to unfold their gifts. Maybe they'll figure out practical teleportation by editing the underlying space-time coordinate data; the result may terrify cherishers of tidy boundaries. By editing space-time, we could construct a building whose interconnected rooms are actually distributed across many worlds and political regions. Or maybe, in some sense, we've always done that.
"Amazing concept. A collapsible universe like putting away toys. So they're working on proving it."
I feel that they may, eventually, find more than they suspect. Imagine that the everyday reality that we see is like a projected movie, but the movie is alive and develops depth and extent beyond the screen.
Suppose that this, or something like this, is analogous to all experiences, whether of reincarnational existences, dreams, astral projections, imaginative episodes, or a single thought. Then, we were already, have always been, intrepid colonizers of new territories. And the I that forms about the act of perception discovers that it is an expedition in itself.
"I wonder if the outer is different from the inner control wise. I also wonder how much we can cultivate willful focus. A certain amount of automatic vision is required to see where we are going."
Yes, indeed. Well, the outer awareness that rides on, emerges out of, the interior awareness is not equipped to process and micromanage everything. I think that if it did become aware of everything that sustained its focus and its privileged position, it would not then be the outer awareness — or not only the outer awareness.
It can learn its own role well, and if it grows it will expand its range to take in more perception and energy. Territory (whether "inner" or "outer") that at first seemed alien (and "out of bounds") will be incorporated into its developing identity. It can call upon, and direct, the energies of the cast members.
Much stimuli does not reach conscious awareness as you know. The condition known as blindsight, where there is a lack of integrated perception, is instructive. In the video, a seemingly blind man navigates around a number of obstacles in his path. This is rather analogous to the workings of gut-level intuitions.
I love the idea of the taijitu as a field of action with freedom from bounds and poles. As I come into my Aries identity the peace and balance of motion is of paramount interest. Motion for its own sake, with destination being secondary.
I think blindsight is a vital navigational tool for all humans. Objects give off heat, cold and other perceptible sensations outside the field of vision. We have motion sensors built in.
I've talked about Neptune and the blessed blindness that occurs under that influence, and the subsequent development of alternate pathways. Feeling one's way into consciousness. Musicians use that skill in improvisation.
"As I come into my Aries identity the peace and balance of motion is of paramount interest. Motion for its own sake, with destination being secondary."
Hmm, balance of motion. Well, we could look at the body's balancing act. Everyone knows that it is more tiring to stand still (without exterior support) than it is to walk. As you probably know, walking is a form of controlled falling. Refining the art of standing improves walking too; the dance of managed instability underlies the overall stability of both. Body balance is sustained by sets of muscles working cooperatively in opposition to each other.
The stability of the pelvis affects more than 80% of the accuracy of footsteps. It's been long known to practitioners of movement arts such as tai chi that the pelvic area is key to effective movement, and that the larger movements of extremities are cued or initiated from the core of the body. Some read these and other insights in the shapes of the taijitu.
"It certainly seems to be a universal experience, possibly a reminder of the 'mirror' image we are always facing. The one we slip in and out of continually."
Well, thinking now about symbols and mirrors, it occurs to me that each symbol is a mirror reflecting aspects of ourselves back to us. Like the Tarot trump The Magician, human consciousness plies multivalent symbols having inner power. And one can slip through the mirror.
When I contemplate your marvelously antic notion of the lively galactic probe, imagining its movements accompanied by charming sound effects, I realize how altogether appropriate it is that the seeing I — the consciousness that experiences from a first-person perspective and finds subjective meaning and significance in the objective — has an active eye.
Because, as my gaze traces it, the taijitu suggests that awareness fundamentally has Siamese twin aspects of receptive perception and active engagement. The dual in the diagram fractally seed and emerge holographically from each other, and hint at the necessity of asymmetry within symmetry and how the motive, flexible qualities of the parts sustain the stability of the whole.
At a higher level, the diagram can represent tension and synthesis. In it, some will automatically see opposites where others see complementarity, and beyond both those levels is another where the yin-yang pair is both opposite and complementary. It brings to mind the introduction of subject, object and verb, and the emergence of individuation, narrative and the variability of interpretation.
And maybe it is my own inclination to consider the taijitu, with its implied motion, as a condensed visual referent for the beginning and end that is always Now; the origin and destination that is ever Here; and the spiral, that is neither point nor circle, of the ever-emerging self with its nonlinear evolution.
And then I see that this is also the complex, experiential movement in — and the embrace of paradox in — metaphoric symbol systems such as alchemy, astrology, I Ching and the Tarot as they have developed historically. Beyond conventions, maps, and here-there-be-dragons, spirituality is the authentic motion of the psyche, actualized in the individual trail that you blaze and that no one else can walk for you.
"Managed instability"
That about sums it up.
Hey jm, Pluto continues to mystify and confound, with apparently more geographical features than we ever imagined.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/completely-wild-pluto-close-ups-new-horizons-boggle-astro-minds-n425181
A clip: "With wide plains, mountains and valleys, deltas implying moving liquids, and a dozen other features, Pluto has a far more complicated surface than many astronomers and geologists expected. This complexity offers a hint at Pluto's past. There may even be dunes — which implies strong winds, which no one expected to find on the dwarf planet."
"That about sums it up."
As opposed to unstable management, which divides to be defeated!
Ha Ha! Unstable management is a good summation too.
Joe! Good old Pluto never ceases to be dramatic. How funny. They said reaching Pluto released 15 years of pent up emotion. Another excellent summation.
" I realize how altogether appropriate it is that the seeing I — the consciousness that experiences from a first-person perspective and finds subjective meaning and significance in the objective — has an active eye."
Nice. That forms the basis for the love of my life -- The study of
metaphysical/emotional/psychological causation of disease. And the connection to good functioning as well. I think all organs are linked to an "I" of some sort.
How wonderful. The constant dialogue between body and consciousness and the beautiful or ugly objective manifestations.
"marvelously antic notion of the lively galactic probe"
That's exactly how I felt. Good word choice. I usually use the word whimsical to describe these creative flights but I like your phrase equally.
I'd like to hear those charming sound effects. There's another one. The ear as objective outlet. The porus acusticus.
"The study of metaphysical/emotional/psychological causation of disease. And the connection to good functioning as well."
That's a very interesting and deep area of study, with many connections. It brings to mind how two artists working from similar, or even limited, palettes can use them to very different effect.
"The ear as objective outlet. The porus acusticus."
From jaw to ear, a chamber of evolutionary secrets for curious catsups.
Regarding Pluto, we all knew Pluto would be pretty cold but who knew Pluto could be so cool. Montage with percussive music
Great ominous music for Pluto. Flowery schmaltz wouldn't do.
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