interference patterns, pt. 3

One of the reasons i'm skeptical of the Law of Attraction is that my own life is concrete proof that it doesn't work.
Okay, that thought only bounces into my head in moments of amused, ironic loneliness. The truth is more complex, contrary...even beautiful (or am i just saying that because i refuse to stop projecting beauty into the universe, even in the face of Attraction failure, because to do so would be the death of everything i am?).
At an early age, i embraced Attraction in psychological terms. I felt that the energy i manifested would attract like energy. Like-minded people. Start with the simple truth that a smile is contagious, and everything flows from there. I set out to be a Peter Pan, juicing the world with my easygoing, childlike eagerness. And in very humbling ways, i've succeeded. Personally, with adults and children, i've been at times one of the most hugged people in the world. Professionally, as actor and director, i've touched sublime levels of achievement. Platonically, i've had friends. Romantically, a fair number of the most attractive women i've known, have been interested in me.
I eventually entertained the thought that the Law of Attraction works on a level of universal consciousness. I maintained a healthy skepticism, but decided to approach it as if it were true...which was exactly how i'd been living anyway. I've experienced things that push the boundaries of "coincidence", but nothing yet that absolutely defies current science. I've been waiting for a tender love affair, to explore whether two who are "entangled" can manifest a subconscious connection, even at a distance.
At some point, i began to realize that Attraction, whether based in psychology or universal consciousness, is a complicated thing, because despite the fact that i've attracted love, the fullness of it has eluded me. Most of my best friends have lived far away, so i've never had the close circle i've dreamt of. Romantically, i've had my moments, but they've been few and far between. The dreams i've projected into the universe, to be loved and held everyday...i've lived much closer to the opposite end of that spectrum.
Intellectually, i know why my path might be a lonely one. Most people have no clue how to be present, in the living moment. If you have one foot in the past and one in the future, you've got nothing in the now (unless you use a cane). Most people are locked in behavioral cycles, unable to rise above "themself", so the odds of finding someone like me, free of that (mostly, anyway), are not great. Our society is manacled by psycho-sexual repression and Disney nonsense...we're ashamed of our bodies, and dream of being "rescued" or "completed". Our society only sanctions physical intimacy in the context of sexuality...which denies an amazing spectrum of physical love any two individuals (or three or four) might express.
In many ways, i'm one of the most humble people you'll ever meet. I'm a listener, and in personal interactions, i almost never give advice. I don't think there's an immortal, invisible boogey-person who thinks i'm more neat-o than atheists, Jews, or chimpanzees. But at a certain point, someone like me has to put down the temptation to false modesty, and be comfortable with one's own exceptionality. I think i've perhaps erred on the side of being too modest and unassuming, in my life. Oh, i've no skill in advanced mathematics, and i've never conquered Rubik's Cube. Are there really people who look at that thing, and "see" the solution? Hot damn, that's impressive. I have no specific brilliance, except possibly in literature or self-awareness...and movie trivia, i'm hell on movie trivia. All that aside, i know how vain and full of shit i can be...but that very awareness is also what separates me from the herd. I was hardly ever treated as the smartest kid in class, though maybe sometimes i was. When Mom told me, in seventh grade, that my Principal had made her promise to not tell me i had the highest IQ in the history of the school (or the district?), it didn't really affect me. Of course i remembered it, that's not the kind of thing one forgets...and i know it's had some effect on my life, but mostly, upon being told, my reaction was "Okay...that's fine".
The point of that semi-tangent isn't that "i'm so advanced, i'll never find my equal" (in truth, i've actually wanted to write about that "exceptionality" stuff for some time, but devoting an entire article to it felt a touch too self-indulgent). In practicality, it hasn't been hard to find people i feel basically on par with...although when i read personal ads, i do say to myself, "Jumping fucking Jehosaphat, is the average person THIS fucking stupid?" The point is that, okay, i'm exceptional, and so yes, need someone exceptional to love, and by the very definition of exceptionality, it will be harder for me to find that someone (or someones).
But long before i read about interference patterns in quantum theory, i understood how they might function in personal relationships. Humanity is still such a mass of conflicting desires, within us and between us, that if there is universal consciousness, the ability to manifest any specific reality is immeasurably hampered by the conflicting hurricane of desires and negativity all around us.
Mind you, i've always been testing myself, to make sure i wasn't full of shit, that my loneliness isn't something i've been attracting to myself all along. My best answer is that i'm 99% sure i don't...i don't sabotage my desire for happy intimacy and love. Of course, the difference between 98 and 99% is tiny, while the difference between 99 and 100% is somehow larger.
Enough for now...i have to go, i feel someone coming who has been searching for me her whole life. Or maybe some goofy friends. How's that for Attraction?

(COMING TOMORROW: NO MORE ARTICLES ON INTERFERENCE PATTERNS!)

interference patterns, pt. 2

Yikes!!! My membership in the R.E.L.* is under review. You yourself might wonder how a post like the last one could escape from me. Has the weight of being the only sane voice in this wilderness (or being, um, continually wrong) finally unhinged me, my brain gorging on foofery in response to the existential agony of life, and the fact that my back hasn't been rubbed in 219 days? Sit back and hear a tale, about a confluence of events...
1) I watched a movie. No, not bleeding STAR WARS! It was WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW!?, a bizarre pseudo-documentary about quantum mechanics bridging the schism between science and religion, and arguing for a theory of universal consciousness. It has Marlee Matlin and John Astin in it. I love Marlee. Marlee would never lie to me.
2) There have been strange moments in my life, like thinking of calling someone i hadn't thought of in years, only to receive a call from them first. People i trust tell strange tales too, of mind-reading with a loved one, or thinking they were having a heart attack the day their brother died of a chest wound, a continent away.
3) A couple years ago, someone i love very dearly sent me "The Secret". I couldn't get through the entire thing, but my love for this friend has been a sacred part of me for many years. I wanted there to be a seed of truth in "The Secret"...partly because i genuinely wanted it, and partly because of this friend. Perhaps in some way the last post, and this one and the next, are a continuing conversation with her.
4) I sometimes think about writers who claim that the source of their inspiration comes from outside themself, that they're just the vessel through which the words flow. A part of me has always dismissed that as masturbatory nonsense. But another part of me was intrigued...so that yesterday, i decided to just let my response to WHAT THE BLEEP flow through me, letting go of intellectual reservations. If there actually were something to this theory of universal consciousness, why not let it use me for a day? Perhaps i could come up with some idea, some little sentence, that might shift someone's perceptions for the better...make them think about being responsible for the well-being of the entire planet.
So what's the final word? Did i ride the gullible train, as many scientists and critics of the movie would insist? Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps i finally got some comeuppance for very loosely hinting that some religious folk, just one or two of them, might be gullible flaming idiots.
I can live with that...particularly as the aliens on Polyquatra-7 in the Dwingeloo 1 galaxy are whispering to me that it's okay.

*Rational Empiricist League

(COMING IN PT. 3: MY LIFE AS CONCRETE REFUTATION OF THE LAW OF ATTRACTION!)

interference patterns, pt. 1

(WARNING: CURRENTLY UNVERIFIABLE PSEUDO-SCIENCE)

Humans are mostly water with an electrical charge. Electricity and water both operate on principles of wave transmission. If all energy in the universe is connected, then each human consciousness is connected to each other and to, well, everything. Two people who live in close proximity are constantly interacting on the energetic level. They eventually manifest similar energetic signatures...they become "entangled", able to perceive each other subconsciously. This connection is there even when the two are apart.
When wave transmissions come into contact, they can overlap to form a larger wave, cancel out to form nothing at all, or deflect off each other to make a more complex waveform...an interference pattern.
The Law of Attraction, dismissed by many scientists, states that thoughts affect things outside the mind, and that by focusing on a certain desire, you "attract" that reality to you (just as you can attract an unwanted reality). If the Law of Attraction works, it does so in a way that is misunderstood by its adherents, for they neglect the presence of interference patterns in the world of energy.
You can dream of living in that house on the hill...but if seventeen of your neighbors have the same dream for themselves, all those thoughts bouncing around will create a maze of reinforcements, cancellations, and interference patterns.
You can focus your purest concentration on getting the lover you desire...but that thought, once you set it free, may be bounced around by the thoughts of others who desire the same lover, to say nothing of the thoughts of that person themself. Your thought-manifestations are also subject to the network of people you are entangled with...your ex-lover or mother may have a very different romantic fate in mind for you. Attraction can work on an individual level, just not in a simplistic way. Each one of us is but one thread in a fabric of billions...to say nothing of the as many as 100 million other species with less-developed frontal lobes. Plus the conscious energy that's currently alive in other parts of the galaxy, and in the universe.
Think about the "collective soul" of the human race. How many people on this planet want love and peace to reign everywhere? A lot. But how many are distracted from strongly manifesting that dream inside them every day, because they're sidetracked by fear, jealousy, and insecurity...to say nothing of peachy human inventions like roving death squads and paparazzi? How many of us manifest love not only to our friends, but to those who hurt us, or reject us? Or to both Osama Bin Laden and George Bush? Give them both a mental hug.
The average person in this world is a mess, psychologically. So how could the state of humanity be anything other than messy?
In the grand scope of things, it's hard not to be amazed that we've come this far...that sharing and tolerance and non-violence have bloomed as much as they have, when superstition and ignorance still hold us in a choking grip of barbarism.
Seen in that light, it's hard not to burst with joy at where we're going, and the speed with which we're getting there.
Come to think of it, that's the kind of thought that's gotten us this far in the first place.

(COMING TOMORROW: THE EXCITING EXPLANATION FOR PT. 1!)

@#~%ing catholics!

At a very young age, it was ridiculously apparent that religion was the nexus of worldwide mass psychosis. And no religion had a greater insanity quotient than the Catholics. Whoo, boy. The luniest tenet of this looniest of religions was the idea that all you had to do to commit a sin was to THINK about doing it. Think about it, and you've already done it. To my humanity-loving mind, that was about as hideously oppressive and soul-destroying as tenets get.
So a rather frightening thought i've been rassling with over the past few years has been...what if them Catholics were actually, gulp, RIGHT on that one?
Take a deep breath, don't hyperventilate, i'm just speculating a little.
Now when i was younger, i was the pinnacle of the intellectual cynic. The rational empiricist. Champion of coincidence and enemy of superstition everywhere! But over the past decade i've been exploring the possibilty of a connectedness that runs through life, on a level beyond the five senses. A connective energy that could account for intuition, coincidence, maybe even ghosts. I've had seemingly sane friends who swear by sympathetic pains felt across a continent...i myself have had moments of bizarre connectedness like thinking of someone for the first time in years, only to get a phone call from them later that day. I've sometimes seemed able to shape events with my mind.
Somewhere i hear my younger mind screaming "Don't be a sappy sentimental simpleton! It's COINCIDENCE! Sigh, a once-promising mind embracing foofery..."
It's okay younger mind, i haven't gone over to the dark side yet.
But suppose that our thoughts do exist on an unseen, energetic, connected level? Wouldn't that mean that if we think a hateful thought, that thought is as real an "action" as any physical act? There are heavy ramifications, if so. I've always prided myself on my alert driving style, in which i imagine everything that could go wrong. But perhaps I'm helping to "create" such possibilities, by focusing on them? To be fair, i've never had any kind of accident under such circumstances. Or suppose i'm in love with someone, but issues of responsibility or fidelity require her and i to be apart? Might it not be destructive to the fabric of the universe, and to the people involved, to focus on my unrequited love?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! The Catholics right? Truly, dark would become light and day become...well, okay it wouldn't be as bad as all that. And i'm still undecided about all this...there's a compelling counter-argument that says that denying your feelings is one of the surest paths to psychological/spiritual despair.
End of post.
What, you thought i was going to take a cheap parting shot at the trinity or original sin?
Too easy, we have bigger fish to fry.