Here are some thoughts on synchronicity;
I've
had many personal examples of this phenomenon in my lifetime. It used to
happen a lot more than it does now. Probably, because when I was young
I saw the world as magical, and full of signs and portents.
One
day in my senior year, I turned on MTV after school and saw the video
for "Nothing compares to you" by Sinead O'Conor for the first time. I
felt strongly that this was a sign from the Universe, and as I watched I
knew that the high school love of my life was going to break up with
me, which he did, less than 48 hrs later.
Once I was
stuck in a van full of contentious hippies on the road between the Bay
Area and Southern Oregon, and I was desperately wishing I could get off.
We stopped to get gas at some random exit and I saw another group of
people I knew in a different caravan, and I gratefully thanked the
universe and split.
On the morning my grandfather died, I
woke up very early in the morning with the awful feeling that something
was very wrong and I needed to call home. On September 11th 2001, I
woke up out of a dead sleep at six am, ran down the stairs and turned on
the TV. Both of those occasions stand out because I never wake early,
for any reason. Except I did, and both times knowing that something
deeply strange and momentous was happening, and that I needed to do
something specific: call home, turn on the news. I never watch the news!
and only rarely call home.
My life is filled with
these strange coincidences and I can't explain them. My rational mind
thinks that human beings are very good at pattern recognition. I myself,
am very good at it. And yet the part of my brain that is hard-wired for
mysticism feels there's something to all this.
My
rational mind and my inner mystic don't always get along. I had an
experience with a stranger recently. She looked in my eyes, said me
she'd been waiting for me all night, and told me things about my life
that no stranger could know. She told me not to be afraid, to stop
wasting my gifts. What was interesting was that I was expecting her.
My astrologist and spiritual advisor had told me to pay attention that
weekend, and to look for signs. The mystic knows she was sent to let me
know I'm on the right path, that this next step is important. That
whatever I'm here to do, is important. My rational mind can only pretend
to be flabbergasted.
Tonight in my Tai Chi class the
clock stopped. It happens sometimes, when we all get into a serious
groove together. Does that mean time stopped too? Or did it only seem to
stop, because our minds were clear and focused. I genuinely don't know.
But its super fun to think about.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Friday, May 10, 2019
Physics Week One- the Meaning of Time
a brief bio
Where to begin...So many things have led up to me being here, the journey of a lifetime, or many lifetimes. I was born and raised in the outskirts of Philadelphia. I came to California when I was seventeen, and moved here when I was nineteen. Like a lot of kids who come here seeking refuge, I had not many prospects and few skills. I've worked jobs in retail, hospitality and food service. I've been a nanny and a housekeeper. I was twenty seven when I started college, and thirty five when I graduated. My plan is to never stop learning.
I've always had some kind of chronic pain, from scoliosis as a child, from a spinal injury when I was fourteen. Without support or resources those injuries can set quite deeply, and take a long time to work out. I've been actively seeking ways to treat my own pain for several decades. I've learned by experiencing the changes in my own body.
I've worked in health care as an RN for over a decade, and understand the strengths and limitations of allopathic medicine. I believe some of these limitations come from the way they treat the body not as a whole, but as fragmented parts. A cardiologist for the heart, a psychologist for the mind, a dentist for the teeth. I understand that there need to be specialists, but I also think that doctors should start to think of the person as one, and treat the whole person. This is what I like about TCM's approach to medicine.
I'm not sure if we are supposed to to post on the discussions as well but I will.
I think in some ways we can slow time down, if time is a thing that we experience. Like, if time is experiential, then our perception of time is how we relate to time, so slowing time, or speeding it up, is entirely based on the ways we experience the phenomenon of time as we are in it midstream. I think that meditation is one way we can slow the experience of time. Being somewhere else, out of our usual environment, whether its on vacation somewhere, or in the forest, or on retreat, all of those things that bring us out of our routines- our habits- contribute to a sense of time slowing down. Traumatic experiences can shape and alter our sense of time, and can speed it up or slow it down.
I do think ones culture profoundly colors ones perceptions of time. In the west we say things like, time is money. The idea that your time is a commodity that you sell or trade away for money, that then allows you to buy things like food, shelter, electricity and water, clothes, cell phones, what have you, this is deeply embedded in the west.
I watch a lot of travel shows. Westerners have an expectation that things will happen on a certain timetable. Like they expect that transportation will run on time. I saw an episode about Tonga where the bus ran on its own timetable. It got there when it got there, and at one point the driver got off and had an ice cream, much to the distress of the English backpackers on board. So culture definitely plays a part in defining ones expectations.
I like the idea of parallel universes, of the multiverse. The idea that time works in these miraculous ways, and every time you make a major decision or turn a corner, you're faced with a choice, and at that moment there's a split, and your two selves take different paths that are different but connected, and that this happens over and over, and we're all interacting with each other in this way simultaneously. So that each choice, no mater how beneficial or devastating is playing out with all of its consequences.
Where to begin...So many things have led up to me being here, the journey of a lifetime, or many lifetimes. I was born and raised in the outskirts of Philadelphia. I came to California when I was seventeen, and moved here when I was nineteen. Like a lot of kids who come here seeking refuge, I had not many prospects and few skills. I've worked jobs in retail, hospitality and food service. I've been a nanny and a housekeeper. I was twenty seven when I started college, and thirty five when I graduated. My plan is to never stop learning.
I've always had some kind of chronic pain, from scoliosis as a child, from a spinal injury when I was fourteen. Without support or resources those injuries can set quite deeply, and take a long time to work out. I've been actively seeking ways to treat my own pain for several decades. I've learned by experiencing the changes in my own body.
I've worked in health care as an RN for over a decade, and understand the strengths and limitations of allopathic medicine. I believe some of these limitations come from the way they treat the body not as a whole, but as fragmented parts. A cardiologist for the heart, a psychologist for the mind, a dentist for the teeth. I understand that there need to be specialists, but I also think that doctors should start to think of the person as one, and treat the whole person. This is what I like about TCM's approach to medicine.
I'm not sure if we are supposed to to post on the discussions as well but I will.
I think in some ways we can slow time down, if time is a thing that we experience. Like, if time is experiential, then our perception of time is how we relate to time, so slowing time, or speeding it up, is entirely based on the ways we experience the phenomenon of time as we are in it midstream. I think that meditation is one way we can slow the experience of time. Being somewhere else, out of our usual environment, whether its on vacation somewhere, or in the forest, or on retreat, all of those things that bring us out of our routines- our habits- contribute to a sense of time slowing down. Traumatic experiences can shape and alter our sense of time, and can speed it up or slow it down.
I do think ones culture profoundly colors ones perceptions of time. In the west we say things like, time is money. The idea that your time is a commodity that you sell or trade away for money, that then allows you to buy things like food, shelter, electricity and water, clothes, cell phones, what have you, this is deeply embedded in the west.
I watch a lot of travel shows. Westerners have an expectation that things will happen on a certain timetable. Like they expect that transportation will run on time. I saw an episode about Tonga where the bus ran on its own timetable. It got there when it got there, and at one point the driver got off and had an ice cream, much to the distress of the English backpackers on board. So culture definitely plays a part in defining ones expectations.
I like the idea of parallel universes, of the multiverse. The idea that time works in these miraculous ways, and every time you make a major decision or turn a corner, you're faced with a choice, and at that moment there's a split, and your two selves take different paths that are different but connected, and that this happens over and over, and we're all interacting with each other in this way simultaneously. So that each choice, no mater how beneficial or devastating is playing out with all of its consequences.
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