AWARENESS TO THE POWER OF N – Finding Our Place In Infinity

Have you ever seen this amazing video by Danail Obreschkow that attempts to show, in just three minutes, the vastness of the known universe? It starts with a close-up of a woman’s face. The camera then begins to draw back. The woman, lying on grass, gradually becomes a small dot in a complex of buildings. The scene soars continuously into ever-broader panoramas: the whole city, then rivers and mountain ranges, sea coasts, the recognizable outlines of continents.

PHOTO: NASA

Out and out the eye travels. Soon the earth itself shrinks to a pin point; then it’s the solar system lost in the distance; then the Milky Way; then other galaxies. And, finally, at about ten billion light years away from the woman’s face, we’re looking at a fine mist each of whose nano-droplets is a galaxy.

This has all happened in 60 seconds. Then the process reverses; the camera starts back toward infinitesimal Earth. Falling, falling…until once again that apartment complex appears, that little speck on the lawn, and finally the woman’s face.

As if that weren’t enough with the perspective thing, the view now moves seam- lessly into the woman’s left eye and navigates a comparable journey into inner space—from cells, to molecules, to electrons…all the way to quarks.

PHOTO: IBM Zurich

     
     Why, one might wonder, do we keep wasting 
     the effort to measure something we all can be 
     quite sure is immeasurable?

A CHALLENGE TO TERMINOLOGY
How stunning, for a visual learner like me, to see this perspective illustrated so graphically. But a few numbers I've come across recently can also make the point.

Yes, our world—this earth—is immense...to us. But in terms of its place in the solar system, meh, we’re just another of eight apples in the sack. (Nine, if one accepts the presence of the as-yet-unseen “planet nine.”)

And the solar system? Our all-powerful sun is just one of at least 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and who knows how many of those twirl their own planets around them?

So you think we’re rhetorically zoomed out far enough to maybe begin grasping the vastness of the universe? Not quite. Take our little galaxy with its billions of stars…and multiply it by another 200 billion. That’s how many galaxies astronomers were thinking existed.

Hubble took this 100-hour exposure of a spot in space previously thought to be virtually empty.
PHOTO: Robert Williams and the Hubble Deep Field Team (STScI) and NASA

That was a decade ago, when the NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was providing its earthshakingly clear examination of the universe. Current research suggests even that number is at least ten times too small.* Does anyone at all believe that these wild stabs at enumeration won’t just keep growing?

It’s like economic hyperinflation; the currency of classification becomes so worthless that we keep having to issue new, ever-larger “denominations” of terminology. So now, acknowledging the futility of counting even galaxies, scientists are beginning to think in terms of a “multiverse,” comprising numerous universes.

Why, one might wonder, do we keep wasting the effort to measure something we can all be quite sure is immeasurable?

It’s beyond me.

         We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, 
         but perhaps more important… the universe is in us. 
         Many people feel small, because they’re small and the 
         universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came 
         from those stars. ~ DR. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

* NASA galaxy count    

LASERED IN THE BACK – The Price of Infinity

We all, I daresay, wonder about the universe. Always have. Gazing up into an unfathomable, starry sky, we can’t help asking ourselves, how far does it go? And when you get to the edge, what then? What lies beyond that?

     Shoot an unflagging, perfectly-focused laser 
     beam straight out into space and it will never, 
     ever, reach the edge of anything.

Now I’m no astronomer, and the notion of infinite space can get pretty impenetrable (not to mention that its explanation likely involves the existence of multiple parallel universes). Part of the problem is that we human earthlings and our limited, linear ways of thinking are poorly equipped to understand stuff like this.

But something quite simple that I heard decades ago helps me at least begin to grasp even these inscrutable truths: there is no such thing as a straight line.

That’s right, shoot an unflagging, perfectly-focused laser beam straight out into space and it will never, ever, reach the edge of anything. And how will you know this? From the intense burning sensation…in the middle of your back. Everything—space, time, truth, life—comes back, ultimately, to itself.

So with nothing more than this rudimentary understanding, even some of the veiled mysteries of what it may mean to exist among other, parallel universes begin to peel back. Like what? Like knowing that:

      ...there may indeed be no limits other than those we impose on ourselves.

      ...something we always supposed lay ahead of us, always just out of reach,
      might actually be right behind us.

      ...because there’s always a part of “them” in “us” and “us” in “them,”  it’s
      always about Us.

      ...we could be only just barely separated (if at all) from the ideal, the sacred,
      the timeless.

      “There is a Collective Entanglement of the frequencies of all life's energy. It is this String 
      that ties the past to the future, one’s unconsciousness to another’s consciousness, from one 
      dimension to all the others, from here to the infinite.”  ~  SIMON CROWNE

THE FLAVORS OF FATE

In my continuing efforts to demystify the spirituality of awareness, I often find myself at what might be described as the back door of Buddhism. That is, I embrace ideas associated with Buddhism, but without paying the price of constant study and discipline.

One such theft is of the idea that happiness hinges on detaching oneself from expectations—those uniquely human constructs built on the past and future, but having nothing to do with the present moment.

That said, detachment does imply faith. Yes, you most certainly have plans and goals; yes, you apply yourself to the task at hand. But beyond that you believe the universe will steer you to exactly the outcome it—and you for that matter—needs.

MM-M-M-M, MENINGITIS!
An old friend of mine applied this tenet in his encounter, many years ago now, with cocci meningitis, a fungal infection of the lining of the brain. It was thought at the time to be a terminal diagnosis.

Walter—an aspiring Buddhist by the way—tried just about every alternative, new-age treatment you can think of. He meditated. He hung out with crystals. He traveled afar and dug deep within for answers. (The first thing one spiritual/medical guru, in Texas, asked him was, “So, Walter, why did you decide to get sick?”)

I’ll never forget when Walter announced to our men’s group that he’d come to a place of peace with the disease, come what may. As he put it, “It’s like ice cream; if having cocci meningitis is vanilla, then not having it is chocolate. Either way, life is delicious.”

Walter, twenty-plus years later, is still with us.

The trick is to handle these events the best we can, not let them handle us.

A GREATER REALITY
We all face events and decisions every day in which we vest the outcome with a value—from how the barista makes our latte in the morning, to whether the house we just bought is really as good a deal as we think it is, to coping with illness, even death.

And we always have the choice between seeing unexpected consequences as failings or misfortune, and seeing them as simply parts of a greater reality which can be labeled as neither good nor bad. It just is.

The trick is to handle these events the best we can, but not let them handle us. And, once we know we’re doing our best, as Walter did, we let go of the outcome.

It’s incredible how liberating this attitude can be. For it does not suffer fools gladly; useless emotions like disappointment, regret and fear are dismissed before they can utter a word.

This is how I want to live my life. But it’s not easy. Ever since I was three or four, nearly every lesson I’ve been taught, every message absorbed from the culture, every example held up to me, has been about investing all you’ve got in an outcome and never letting go of that expectation.

   It may be an outcome we could never have 
   imagined, one understood only by the boundless 
   wisdom of the universe.

JUJU BEINGS
Perhaps it’s the luxury of being an older, more independent man, but my instincts have been quarreling with all those do-or-die lessons. They're arguing—when they can get a word in edgewise—that the outward pursuit of success, happiness, faith…whatever…is a fool's quest.

Human beings are hard-wired for happiness. So, instead of looking outside ourselves for a certain result or to acquire some special juju, the real answer is to look within. It is a process not of acquisition, but of divesture, shedding all the garbage that has piled up on top of the perfect juju we already have.

So Walter's point—made, admirably, under the direst of circumstances—is well taken. Except that I'd add one thing. If the outcome we would have liked (before our conversion to quasi-Buddhism, of course) is chocolate, and the one we wouldn't is vanilla, there's a third option: a result that is neither—an outcome we could never have imagined, one understood only by the boundless wisdom of the universe.

As I ponder the deliciousness of all three of these possibilities, an odd thought sidles into my consciousness—a craving for ice cream. Not vanilla; not chocolate. Neapolitan.

                                 

BOUNDLESS WONDER – Extending Our Grasp of Beauty

The universe is immense beyond our comprehension. Yet this vastness is reflected literally at our fingertips. For there, in a single skin cell, exists another  “universe”—one of ever-smaller and smaller particles.

Human skin cells - PHOTO: CK-12 Foundation - about.ck12.org

Even an atom, which itself is a ten millionth the size of the period at the end of this sentence, is made up of components that are proving every bit as hard to count as the number of bodies in the celestial universe.

Here, at Nature’s extremes, is where perspective begins to get a little weird. It’s fascinating to ponder how the infinitely big and the infinitesimally small are equally incomprehensible. The same goes for relative time, value and other less obvious qualities.

And, as physicists venture into the realms of quarks and quasars, we’re learning that the rules governing those concepts are going to have to change.

PHOTO: Sish Advexon - sishadvexon.com

Two things you might think would fall at opposite ends of a scale of time, size or space might, according to these new realities, actually lie right next to each other or even coincide. In these latitudes, large encompasses small; bad includes good; beauty has its ugly side. In everything lie the seeds of its opposite. And the astounding Intelligence that designed it all, at once everywhere and nowhere, looks on kindly as we endeavor to understand. 

       Wherever you may be in body or in 
       spirit, I hope you’ll choose to see beauty.

NEW REALITIES
So the worlds I continue to explore around, within and beyond me are ultimately the same world. It’s all one, and it’s all good—the beginnings, the endings and everything in between.

What this means is that the extent of life’s wonders and mysteries is bounded neither by our skin-and-bones frailties nor even by time. No, the miracles we experience are limited only by our curiosity, our imagination and our faith. I hope you’ll choose to explore those boundaries. And, wherever you may be in body or in spirit, I hope you’ll choose to see beauty.

I’d consider it a great honor to join you for a leg of whatever boundary breaking you've undertaken, be it a walk in the woods, a quest for ideas or a journey of faith. Let me know the limits and barriers you've overcome. I have so much to learn.

THE STUFF OF STARS – What Every Human Wants

The other day one of my Facebook friends shared a video that’s got me thinking like very few social media posts do. It is astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s response to this question from a TIME Magazine reader: What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the universe?*

EVERY SINGLE ATOM
In brief, what astounds Tyson most about the universe is that every single atom of everything that comprises life on earth—or anywhere else for that matter—originated in certain high-mass stars that exploded some fourteen billion years ago and blasted gas clouds through the galaxy. Every ingredient necessary for life was in those gas clouds, which eventually condensed, collapsed and formed the next generation of planets.

       We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more 
       important… the universe is in us. Many people feel small, because they’re 
       small and the universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from 
       those stars. ~ DR. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

At our very core, isn’t this what every human being wants most? To know where we came from; that we’re part of something bigger and more enduring than ourselves or our self-devised institutions; that, in fact, we’re connected—to each other, to all life, to the earth, to all of creation?

             At our very core, isn’t this what  
             every human being wants most?

I suggest that this is why we experience such profound joy, such awe, beholding the Grand Canyon, the birth of our child, or perhaps the rescue of a person or animal from grave harm. This is why I felt my spirit deepen and soar at the same time when a 50-foot Pacific gray whale cow, just twenty feet away from my dinghy, swam under her calf, lifted it gently and pushed it to my outstretched hand.

These wondrous moments are, necessarily, rare. But there are countless smaller, everyday wonders that surround us every day. We knew how to see them and let ourselves be affected by them when we were children, but too many of us have lost that ability. Too much other stuff competing for our attention—distractions, pressures, expectations.

LIGHT YEARS OFF THE MARK
It’s sad enough to see how many of us have lost that innate, childlike sense of wonder, that feeling of belonging, in its deepest, truest sense—to Nature, to each other, to life. But what’s sadder still is seeing how seldom we seem to realize it, or, if we do, how little that bothers us.

Still, the loss must hit home at some level, judging from how desperately we struggle to compensate.

      I’m afraid...we’ve come to actually think 
      that virtual reality is the best we can do.

I’m not about to say that this age of instant gratification, of crowd-sourced truths, of virtual connections, is entirely without redeeming value; that would make me a hypocrite. But the degree and the sheer amount of time consumed by these illusions of “reality” and “connectedness” is nothing short of astounding.

According to Nielsen's annual Social Media Report, in just one month, Americans spend 121 billion minutes on social media sites. That’s more than 230,000 person-years we spend “staring into the glaring screen of so-called sharing”—and remember, that’s just in the United States, and in just one month!

I’m a great believer in the notion that if something looks bizarre or over the top, it’s quite likely more than a fluke; there’s often a good reason for it. In this case, I’m afraid that reason may be that somehow we’ve come to actually think that virtual reality is the best we can do.

It isn’t.

This brings me back to Tyson’s inspiring words. When we hunger for something to inspire us, for a sense of belonging, for a purpose, there will never be a shortage of answers flying up at us from the ten-diagonal-inch screen sitting in our lap.

If all you want is an answer, that’s fine. But for those of us seeking THE answer, that can only be found by turning that thing off and looking up at the stars.
* MOST ASTOUNDING FACT - Neil DeGrasse Tyson