Tattoos & Trails

Expressions of Proficiency

 Lately I find myself pondering the idea of a collective mind. This leads me to the questioning of proficiency or expertise. Just how do we become adept at any one physical or mental skill? Practice, putting in your time, hard work and repetition … these would be our simple answers. But then, why does this act of “doing” and then doing it again and again and again make anything easier?

So what if it’s something completely different that we’re practicing and honing? What if it’s not the skill itself but the access to some pure archetype of that skill?

This idea that there is a collective mind full of all past human experience and all of our mass memory and exploits … this keeps nagging at me. We get this sense of interconnectedness, it comes on stronger at times and then falls to the background; at our core I think we all know there is far more going on than the individuality that we so very dearly cling to. We’re all building towards a greater whole in some strange way. It seems to become easier and easier to access what was once considered to be astounding, the impressive becomes average and in turn a new level to aspire to is created.

We speed up the process by starting at a far higher level than those generations behind us and thus have the potential to keep pushing the boundary. From a biological standpoint we go through millions of years of evolution in a nine month span. Beginning as a single cell organism, multiplying, going through reptilian stages (tail included), then mammal, and then finally human form. The process of evolution still happens but this unspoken or “unminded” intelligence speeds it all up at an astounding pace. We are extraordinary pieces of machinery spit out into the world at a bizarrely high level of complexity, ready to become more and more complex. It can be difficult to gain perspective on this process since we are staring it directly in the eye, since we are the embodiment of the experience of compounding complexity. Herein lies the crux of so much human questioning … how does the result question itself? How does the answer know what the question was to begin with?

So we have tangible biological examples of starting at higher and higher levels. Add to this our ability to access and disperse information at a faster and faster pace. Language and the notion of using symbols to convey ideas, this was a huge step. This allowed the ethereal use of ideas to become a tool with which the complexity could build even faster. In the grand scheme of “time” we’re suddenly at the point where the internet is in our pocket, virtually all information is accessible at any time and most any where. Again, this process seems to be speeding up and aiming towards something grander.

But let’s get back to my original thoughts about becoming an expert in a field. Perhaps by practicing, focusing, putting energy towards any one thing, all that we’re doing is creating a more concrete and direct path to the perfection of that one activity. It’s as though a high level of proficiency exists almost autonomously from the participant and all that we’re doing is accessing portions of that higher level. In this way, an expert in one field would have a direct (or more direct than most others) path to the collective greatness of that field of consciousness. Said expert would not only be experiencing his or her own knowledge, they would be accessing all of the knowledge we’ve collectively gathered on that one point. Of course there would be degrees of access and some are far more honed in on the direct route … rarely (or perhaps never) does one have the perfect access but it seems as though very high degrees are quite possible. We can go back to the quote heard time and again by the genius in their creative field … the idea that they are but a receiver of the information and they are a conduit for that information to be released into the world. I’m sure anyone who has a bit of creativity in them (or has become adept at any one sport) has had the experience of feeling as though they’ve stepped aside and the action is just flowing through them. That feeling of being so in the moment that “I” don’t exist; eventually you can look back and wonder where it came from. Did I make that? Did I do that? It’s a beautiful place to be, humming along outside of time and outside of self.

Ultimately I guess I’m wondering if we’re just becoming more in tune with a certain aspect of the whole by partaking and focusing our energies towards that certain aspect. Are we ourselves are just an expression of the whole? And by focusing more and more on any one thing are we simply becoming a better/more refined expression? We are like the fruiting body of the fungi, the grand network of mycelium hidden from view but very much in existence. Our interconnectedness seems so very real at times but we do most everything we can to distract and deny its existence. In no way does this dismiss the act of becoming proficient, in my mind it enriches it. To become the best example of one aspect of the whole, this is a great aspiration. Perhaps we just need to address and be grateful for that whole on a more regular basis.  

The Eternal Present

As time passes, I grow, I learn, I hopefully move forward rather than backward. I find new tangents, new endeavours, new points at which to direct my energy and my thoughts. New people come in and out of my life, new experiences, new places. It’s all a very grand and intricate dance interplaying upon my sensory organs, processed by my mind, ordered and structured in a form which I end up calling “me”. I build this sense of self, I base it upon my past experiences and my future aspirations. We can get so very caught up in these aspects; past and future. The present ends up being compromised so very often. This is the strangest part of it all. The present, this instant, is all that truly is. The past is up for debate through interpretation, waning memory, or reshaping things in order to make them fit into our own little structure of truth. The future is a complete fabrication. We can form intentions and move towards them but the present is the one constant which allows that movement. This thought begins to shift my perception of time. We think of the present as fleeting and inconsequential whereas we think of the past as long a drawn out and the future as so very far away. Yet ultimately the present seems more concrete and constant, a solid point with past and future racing past.

This celebration of the present is not the current model, we live in a time where the present is becoming more and more fleeting. We sit side by side with other amazing humans, we put our heads down and escape to the world of past or future. Our portals to these other places more often than not are our phones. Making plans for later, seeing what someone else did in the past, thinking about what we want next … all the while not being present. We take for granted all that surrounds us. Not experiencing but simply documenting the experience in order to later post and repost and let the world know where we were and what we did. This city life. The one in which we are surrounded by more and more people but have less and less interaction. More direct link to information but dramatically less thought. More money, more work, less time and less living.

Don’t get me wrong. I particularly love my life right now. I have an amazing opportunity each day to create. I get to interact one on one with individuals whom I may have never come across. I get to connect with a lot of people in a much different way than most other people do on a daily basis. I also have an amazing partner in life. She challenges me, she helps me to grow and learn. She fills me with joy and has allowed me to rediscover the wonderful world of love and deep emotion. I also have two little balls of love who share their lives with me and give even more than they receive. I’ve had a wonderful upbringing, my parents are two of my best friends in the world. It’s all quite grand. But then, why do I consistently have this gnawing feeling? The sense that just behind the veil there is so much more. I tend to feel as though I get caught in the game, there are bright lights and beautiful objects to covet. There are a myriad of tangents to capture my thoughts and energies. Through it all I consistently get the feeling that I’m being diverted from truth.

I get glimpses of parts of that truth. I know that love is a major component of it all. Again, I cherish those that share that love with me. But there’s a disconnect somewhere along the line. I feel detached from nature so very often. Humanity has created this little bubble of safety, removed from the rest of life. We take more than we need, we view it all as ours to plunder, we give nothing back to the whole. It’s a very strange way of living when compared to every other species. These are far grander thoughts about a far larger scale I suppose. Ultimately I feel a yearning to simplify this life, to reconnect and appreciate the very small things. We take for granted in insanity which is life and living, the miracle that a small seed can sit inert and suddenly with water and light it becomes the most majestic of plants, magically transforming sunlight into other tangible energies. We forget that we are on a rotating sphere, circling a giant ball of fire, circling a giant ball of density at the centre of it all. It is viewed as mundane, the fact that by joining two humans and exchanging a few fluids we can recreate millions of years of evolution within a nine month span and suddenly a new little life pops out. It’s all utterly insane when you take a step back. But we divert our attentions. Focus on that new plastic or metal object, that one that will make you happy. Achieve that goal and move on to the next and the next and the next.

Slow down. Breathe the beautiful life giving air. Watch the trees sway, hear the birds. Appreciate the cycles of weather and nature. It’s all so awe inspiring. And this is where I end up. I feel that yearning to reconnect with nature. I feel as though there has got to be a happy medium. A way in which the comforts and amazingness of human innovation can still be enjoyed yet the connection with a natural life can also be realized. A shift in goals is necessary. I know there is far more life to be lived. Far more experiences to be shared. I really do love “now” and I simply want to create better and better versions of “now” as I move forward, grow, learn, and experience.

Infinity

Infinity as a concept, this is what keeps me up at night. Not always, but on occasion I get trapped in the never ending vortex of thought that goes on and on … almost infinitely you might say.

This idea of infinity troubles me. I’ve seen/read/heard enough that I know it’s not a subject without controversy. Some believe in infinity, others not so much. It allows theoretical math make all the more sense, it fits nicely into equations and is easily passed off when questioned;  the go to answer would be that our finite minds can’t actually grasp the full understanding of what infinity might be.

So then there’s the issue that if infinity does truly exist then it makes sense that every possible outcome exists. The coagulation of molecules and matter and circumstance and so on, not only does it happen once to create this earth and this existence and this meat body that we call self, but through enough chance and time and circumstance then it has happened and will happen again and again and again. Not only that, but if we take it a step further, if the universe is truly infinite then it also all has to be happening exactly in this manner an infinite number of times concurrently. That’s too much for me. To think that this thought, this key stroke, this being called me is existing an infinite number of times doing the exact same thing, but also an infinite number of times doing every other possible thing. This is what keeps me up at night.

But then there’s the issue of matter. Maybe there’s only a finite amount of matter. But how does this make any sense? How could there be infinite space with only a finite amount of matter. If you zoom out far enough (infinitely) then that small speck of matter that would make up our known universe would be so inconsequential that it may as well not exist. And what of time? It seems somewhat agreed upon that there was a beginning, a big bang, a singularity. If time had a beginning then space had a beginning. If there’s a beginning point how is there no end point. The stars will burn out, the black holes will merge and grow and merge and grow and get more and more dense and gravitate towards each other … and then … a big crunch? Who’s to say. Such a grand theory and so much speculation about so many things we know so little about. At least the act of thought is a fun one, and perhaps that’s the main impetus behind all of this.

There’s the idea that thought is the basic building block of all existence. That we are a small speck in a unified mind. That matter is made up more of theory and thought than actual substance. The deeper and more theoretical we get the more that this might seem plausible. Consciousness and thought are being shown to have a direct effect upon the physical realm. From the collective mind focused on one event having an effect on random number generators around the world to the focus of attention having an actual/measurable effect upon the earths magnetic filed (during the 9-11 fiasco). I like this idea. We are beings of thought having a bodily experience. We are small facets of a greater mind/consciousness feeling and experiencing ourselves through this life. To be self-referential there must be something to refer to. Perhaps this is the universe at its core. A thought. An experiment through which the entirety of consciousness can experience itself and thus exist.  Perhaps we are dispersed and fragmented consciousness slowly coming back together and becoming self-aware … thus the move towards more complexity in most every aspect of life would be a move back toward the unified mind … the unified mind waking up once again.  Without matter, without time, without any of these fragments of our reality then no one thing would actual exist, just the potential to exist. If there is no experiencer then there is nothing in existence.

So perhaps this is my current stance, thought and potential are infinite but tangible existence itself is not. To take it down a step and focus on an individual, if you are having a thought that thought is finite. The potential of where that thought might go is infinite but that single thoughts has to be contained and focused. This brings about  the conclusion of one thought in the infinite potentiality of all that might be thought.

Something From Nothing

I’m going to continue to wax on the subject of creation for a while. Stay with me here, there is something I’m working towards. I’m not asking you to agree, just to come along for the ride and see where it goes. You may want to polish your power crystals as shit’s gonna get weird.

So, let’s suppose it all began from nothing. An unfathomable explosion of material and energy. Expanding at an unimaginable rate. Let’s just agree that magic occurred, just this once. Things cooled, coalesced, and expanded further and further apart. Cosmic dust formed stars, gravitational pull clumped elements together, things cooled, planets formed, and somewhere along the way the Earth came to be. To the best of our knowledge at the moment the universe it said to be 13.75 billion years old and the earth a mere 4.54 billion years old.

Then, about 3.8 billion years ago simple cells (prokaryotes) began to form. Suddenly we’ve got life on Earth. It took a while but about 2 billion years ago we end up with complex cells (eukaryotes). After another billion years we end up with multicellular life, 600 million years ago we jump to simple animals, 500 million years ago there were fish, 475 million years ago there were land plants. As you can see, this timeline seems to be increasing it’s speed. The jumps and changes start occurring more frequently. At 400 million years ago there were insects and seeds, 300 million and we hit reptiles, 200 million and finally we’ve got mammals. At 150 million years ago there were birds and roughly the same time flowers. The dinosaurs dies out 65 million years ago. 2.5 million years ago our genus came to be. Then, only 200,000 years ago anatomically modern humans arose. Only 25,000 years ago Neanderthals disappeared.

If we look at these figures there definitely seems to be a pattern of acceleration. Now that we’ve agreed that a magical explosion created all that exists can we agree that there is a constant drive towards complexity? I for one am going to agree with that. And, as that complexity gets more complex (for lack of a better word) the speed at which it evolves continues to accelerate. The building blocks get more and more complicated and can then help to create that next even more complex block at an even faster rate. Makes sense doesn’t it?

So, up until a certain point this creation/change/move towards complexity was all very unconscious. Even at its ever increasing pace it still took very long periods of time (by human standards) to make leaps from one point to another. Then there was a shift from unconscious creation to conscious creation.

At some point our minds made the leap that we could shape/change out surroundings to better our situation. This must have been monumental. For the better part of 4.5 billion years things progressed and moved forward without cognitive guidance. Then, if we are to use tools as the benchmark, about 2 to 2.5 million years ago the changing of elements to fit our needs came into being with certain Homo habilis specimens. There’s no definite date or occurrence but at some point someone made the leap from just being a part of the process to actually influencing the process. From there the acceleration gets bizarre.

A shift occurred. From unconscious evolution through extreme lengths of time to consciously manipulating the world around. Is this what the drive toward complexity has been aiming at? And we are not the only species to be doing this, crows and primates are great examples but dolphins, elephants, octopus, and many others have been witnessed using tools and manipulating their environments. Perhaps we just got there first, there may be more on the way.

This, in its essence, is an act of creation. Changing your surroundings. Using the mind to figure out how to change those surroundings and think ahead to how this will benefit you. A rudimentary form of creation by our current standards but it was a major step to be sure. The first acts of creation were for the betterment of survival. Eventually we reached a point of comfort wherein creation could become a pastime. Be it the creation of myths in attempt to explain this wild ride, to cave painting, to adorning the body … these all seem like acts of creation motivated by something else. Creation for the sake of creation rather than the sake of survival. I hypothesize that the act of creating is an integral part of what makes us “human”. Without it where would we be? In the grand scheme of things, from the prokaryotes of 3.8 billion years ago to our complex human brains I see a straight line aiming toward instilling the drive to create.

As the human brain has evolved even further we are no longer bound by the physical restraints of evolution. With the creation of language we’ve dissolved the synesthetic boundary. We can create images and sensations in others just by making sounds with our vocal chords. I can describe an event, an image, something you’ve never seen, and you can create a mental image based on my sounds. I can transfer what’s in my brain directly into yours. I’m doing it right now with these words. Take a moment to digest what we take for granted most every moment of most every day. Language, both spoken and written, is awe inspiring when you really think about what’s going on. We can transfer ideas to each other, there is no material here, just the transfer of information. But we can also take that information and create objects in the physical realm. Plucking objects from the ethos and manifesting them into this realm. If we look at what we’re manifesting and the rate at which its complexity is increasing the whole concept seems limitless. In my short lifetime the changes that have occurred are mind boggling. With the advent of the internet we can now communicate and exchange ideas with most anyone in most any location. A hive of thought has been created and we’re all plugging into it. The pace increases, the complexity accelerates. The acceleration gets compounded to the point where it almost seems instantaneous. As the growth curve moves ever towards vertical it will eventually verge on a point of singularity wherein as soon as it’s thought it is manifested into physical reality.

And this is where I make an even greater leap. We, in our rudimentary human mind state have the ability to create all that is around us by beginning with a thought. A thought, which has no physical form and is essentially “nothing” somehow turns into a computer, a car, a building, all of which are astounding creations. Of course there are many steps between the thought and the final product but those steps get faster and the creations get crazier. So what are we doing here? Essentially we are creating “something” from “nothing”. Does this sound familiar? Kind of like what we describe as the beginnings of our universe? All that exists began as nothing at all and by some magical factor came into being. Could this magical factor be based on a thought and an act of creation? If we look at the pace in which our minds have evolved it’s not as though that pace will slow or that the pinnacle has been reached. A lot of us like to think that the goal has been scored, it’s done, we are the ultimate. We may be the top of the heap on Earth, but that’s just at this instant in time, it’s not as though 13.75 billion years of movement towards complexity had the end game set at 2012 the land of iPhones and internet porn.

So, would it be so preposterous to think that the end game of our ever evolving minds and mental capacity to manifest the immaterial into the material realm just might be the creation of universes? Why would it be unfathomable that this ever increasing complexity and ability to manipulate reality may not eventually reach a point of wherein creation gets so very grand as to bring into being other dimensions/universes/realms in which the thread of creation and complexity can then grow and move forward in a never ending fractal miasma of thought and love and creation? I’m not proposing that you or I have this capacity, but as the mind evolves, given enough time the possibilities are truly limitless.

There you have it, a thought experiment encompassing all that exists and all that may exist. No big deal, just figuring out the unexplainable here. Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, like it or leave it, at least I got to put ideas directly from my mind into yours. Keep on creating in your own way, you might just be participating in the essential act of existence, or maybe not, but it’s definitely fun to think about.

Creation, Complexity, & Living the Imagined Life

Lately I’ve had a few thoughts that continue to rattle around in my head. I’m definitely not the first to have such thoughts but maybe I can add something, pass it on, and keep adding to a larger/expanding bank of people having similar thoughts This may not be related to either tattooing or biking, but it is my blog and I’ll make the rules around here.

I keep thinking about the act of creating something, creating absolutely anything. We’ve reached this evolutionary point in which we can have a concept, a thought, something that has no physical form, and we can manifest that non-physical idea into the physical world. This simple concept blows me away when I really think about it. We are living in a world created by our imaginations. For the most part we’ve separated from nature and live in these small thought experiments known as cities and towns. Within those cities are our homes, within them are all of our belongings … all of these objects/structures began as nothing at all; nothing more than a firing of electrical pulse somewhere within our little brains. Through all of our human ingenuity these ethereal ideas are now existing in the physical realm. What is going on here?

We take it all for granted. We pass things off as “oh, it’s just your imagination”. What does that mean? It’s all “just our imagination”. And now we’re testing the waters and manipulating nature on a more intricate level. Modifying plants and animals. We’ve taken control of our immediate human environment, what comes next?

There’s been a long standing idea of separating humanity from nature. We can be down on humanity all that we want but it all pushes towards more and more complex systems. Our human brains are by far the most complex creation of nature on this planet. We’re taking the abstract and making it physical. We’re evolving at a bizarrely fast rate. The gene is no longer the quickest form of coding out there. The thought has taken over. The idea of Dawkins’ meme as the vehicle for transferring information is a far more direct and explosive passage of information than the physical process of reproduction. The gene is the physical transfer (which takes generations), the meme is the non-physical transfer (which takes the time for light to reach your eyes or sound to reach your ears). And the ideas can be passed on quicker and quicker (through all forms of media) to an ever expanding audience, which continues to speed up the process exponentially. We take it for granted and just accept these changes but let’s take a step back and look at life ten years ago, twenty years ago … could we have imagined where we are now? We can communicate our every thought instantaneously to people on the other side of the earth through text messaging, the internet, the telephone, facetime, and so on. We’re all getting more and more connected, the hive is buzzing at an ever increasing rate.

Still, our technology is cumbersome in comparison to nature but we’re getting smaller/faster at an ever increasing rate. Nature has it down far more than we usually give credit … DNA is by far the greatest information storage device out there. A single human contains an astounding 200,000,000,000,000 meters of DNA (that’s 2 x 10 to the 13^th power). That is the equivalent of nearly 70 trips from the earth to the sun and back. We usually feel as though we have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on but truly we only understand 2 or 3 percent of what that DNA is coding for. The other 97 – 98 % is known as “junk DNA”. Our technologies unconsciously mimic the structures seen in nature, the patterns are eerily similar. It all seems to be heading somewhere. Not in the sense of a master plan orchestrated by one mind which is conscious of all the results/possibilities. We all play out little role which ends up adding to something far greater.

The idea of humans versus nature is a common one. Ultimately we are a creation of nature. The ever increasing complexity, the manifestation of physical forms stemming from non-physical thought patterns, the speed of transferring information. These all seem to be the unconscious aims of humanity, they also seem to be the unconscious aims of nature. Of course there are uncountable ills created by our incessant urge to move forward … in a lot of ways we are destroying our planet. It all starts to seem like a race. The evolution of our thoughts is racing against the greed for resources (which out thoughts have created). The optimistic view would be that at some point our knowledge will surpass out greed and we’ll be able to exist in whatever utopia our thoughts create next. It’s a stage of transition and it all seems to be ramping up at an ever increasing rate. This life things continues to get more an more interesting.

Having said all of that, I’ll go back to creating on my own very small, very personal scale. From mind to paper, it’s such a perfect and rudimentary example of all that I’m talking about.