Back to the Future, Forward to the Past

My brother is always coming up with interesting fringe ideas about reality which inevitably suck me in to a dialogue (I can't resist the fringe, you know). The last one was about The Past.

He said, "I would anticipate that once a certain percentage of correction is made in the past (by re-framing it), it would translate into future events, putting you in control of future outcomes. The body would recover from past damage because you changed the memory of the original incident in a way that removes the repeated memory, allowing the body to return to a state prior to the injury be it mental or physical because, as far as your body is concerned, it never happened the way you repeatedly created it."

I like that viewpoint. I commented back:

"I fully agree. We construct the past as well as the present and the future. Reconstruction of the past (as church and government historians will tell you) is a great way to soften mass traumas. The constant search for what "really" happened is a red herring. What happened back then happened to a different person than you are now, so there is no way to recreate the past "accurately" without physically going back there.

"Andy Basagio, NASA chrononaut, makes this point. When a person does physically go back in time, they become part of the events objectively and subjectively. There is no way to "correct" an "error", because if it weren't for that "error" you would not have gone back to "fix it" in the first place, therefore, you were always part of the event. So changing the "past" from right now is something done subjectively and emotionally. That is what the DNA is responding to--your reaction to the past--not the past events themselves. That reaction energy is always in play, or active, until the energy of the reaction is dissipated (using any number of modalities).

"A 'negative' (or positive) reaction is always caused by a judgement and conclusion about a past event. Remove the judgement and conclusion, and you've removed the energy from that event and the DNA will be unburdened."

In quantum reality, there is no past or future. These are constructs of the mind. What we use as the past is simply a way of categorizing perceptions of experiences in chronological order because it's become easy for the mind to operate that habitual way. Quantumly, however, everything is happening at once.

We say we have "memories", but what we are actually referring to is a state of being within which we perceived certain things. That state of being is then categorized as a "past" event because current perceptions don't match the perceptions in that state of being. We just say something "happened" that is not happening now. The quantum truth is that, yes, it is happening now--it's all happening now--it's your mind and brain automatically categorizing what perceptions go with what states of being across what we arbitrarily classify as the Past and the Future. We call that "time".

We set up all sorts of scenarios and mechanisms to make time "real" to us: aging, property ownership, relationships, consequences, calendars, holidays, maps, news, TV, Newtonian physics... anything on a schedule or in a certain chronological order, usually cause = effect, that builds creative consensus with the society in which we live.

In the quantum world, time has no "flow" from past to present to future. In fact, quantum time can run backwards, skip around and do a mobius strip--of course, all from the reference of our arbitrary viewpoint of what we classify as a past or future event.

Play with this quantum truth in order to free yourself from time-based frustrations and upsets. Consider a "past" event. Now, reassign it to the future. It hasn't happened yet, or it may or may not happen. Consider that event happening to another person, or consider it as having happened to everyone.

This can be a little disconcerting when you realize how fragile our house of time cards is. And, it allows for more possibilities to show up for you. You can consider something you would like to see in the future, and look back at it as it has already happened. You can step into completely other realities in this way, simply by untethering yourself from the consensual matrix of time.

I believe exercising the mind and brain in this way will open up new abilities and super-powers dormant within our DNA--activating new areas of perceptions and experiences; new areas of joy and well-being.

Make Life a Meditation

I somewhat cynically used to say in my youth that unconscious meditation--the kind we all do when we are obediently serving The Matrix--is the single most untenable problem in human history.

I'll agree with that now in my mature years with the exception that "obediently serving The Matrix" is not "untenable". Why? Because it's a matter of choice. It's one thing to point out how we are all victims of our own unconscious behaviors (which is a victim statement in and of itself), it's entirely another to transcend that victim mentality with the freedom of choice.

I call the obedience to The Matrix hypnotic compliance. And meditation is the "red pill" available to you anytime to wake up from the trance.

I go further down the rabbit hole by claiming that the whole conscious-subconscious model of human psychology is a myth. We say that a person is "driven by subconscious motivations" when they misbehave or fall victim to depression, criminal activity or insanity. No. Why? Because if it were truly subconscious we wouldn't be conscious of it, and once conscious of it, it is no longer subconscious. I know, I know...sounds like semantics, but is it really?

Isn't it more accurate to say that a person chooses to give up their own power or self-determinism and that's what we're calling "subconscious motivations"? We choose to shut off our awareness of some things and then classify it as the "subconscious", which has a definition that includes "beyond our control". This is a myth. At some point there was a choice. Of course, we can also forget what we chose, but that's forgetting something on purpose in order to dodge responsibility for our actions.

There's a type of hiding in forgetfulness of our choices that got somehow mixed up with victim advocacy. When a person is a victim, others with control issues advocate for them, saying, "This person is not in control of their actions. They need me to help them live." This is all a master-slave crock of shit.

I got into a debate with a Caucasian friend of mine on Facebook who was bemoaning the fact that she felt she was--somewhere down deep inside--a racist. Despite the fact that her grandmother was black and her mother was brown, she saw something in herself that she labeled as "racist"--a kind of resistence or unwillingness to empathize with another person of a different skin color.

I said that it was a matter of choice, whether or not to be racist. And if there were racist thoughts and feelings coming up for her, that she could practice mindfulness meditation--a type of meditation that allows undesirable thoughts and feelings to simply float on by like clouds in the sky, and from this, infinite options show up to choose something different.

Well, this got her dander up. "I love meditation, but I find it incomplete as a means to address issues of social justice. There's more to do. And ingrained subconscious beliefs are not so easy to release... I worry about hiding behind spiritual concepts." Then don't hide. These "spiritual concepts" you speak of are what make the world go 'round. The thoughts we create that lead to the feelings and actions we do out there in the "real world" are all driven by our own choices. Failure to choose is at the heart of complacency and victimhood.

This discussion illustrated for me, once again, what I refer to as the "Quantum Reality Gap", which I've written about before. It's the perceived difference between what we desire to see in the world and what we think we see in the world. I'm saying that there really is no difference. It's just that everything is happening just as you've chosen (or not chosen) it to be. There's just time in there to make you doubt yourself.

Life can be a living meditation every moment by simply paying attention to your thoughts and words, allowing them to flow, and choosing something different when you want to change things. There is no powerful "subconscious" that is causing all the ills in your life--that's victim behavior. Choice is more powerful. Choose to be happy. Choose to be healthy. Choose to be the very best of who you are.

Pain is not Suffering

I posted this as a meme on Facebook from Teal Swan: "The circumstances you are experiencing are not the cause of your suffering. The cause of your suffering is the thought that what is happening should not be happening, or is not supposed to be happening."

It's an expansion on the old Buddhist saying I heard in yoga class frequently: "Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."

The Facebook post got several comments mainly about physical pain. One friend wrote, "Well, then, whoever wrote that was never severely burned in a car accident." Another wrote, "I really resent those who say you can control everything with your thoughts. You can control some things, but we live in a physical world." Still another commented, "They're talking about emotional pain, not physical pain, right?"

In all cases, the people completely missed the message of the meme. It was not saying that your thoughts caused the pain. It says that your thoughts about the pain and/or its causation is causing the suffering.

In my own case, in the past, for several years, I had debilitating lower lumbar disc inflammations that would put me in bed sometimes because I could not move without extreme pain in my back and down both legs. I suffered greatly because I kept judging how unfair it was, and why me, an active, professional musician who ate right, exercised, took good care of himself should be burdened with this disability. Sometimes I cried. Not so much because of the pain, but because of the circumstances of it--and the situation I was in because of it.

I finally just decided to stop suffering and do something about my condition. I began yoga classes, and within a year, my back was completely healed. Yes, it was very difficult to do the yoga, and there was a lot of pain along the way, but I was convinced that it would work, and I had the drive and determination to get out of pain. This is the remedy for suffering: change the circumstances. Do something different. Get out ahead of the situation. Allow the pain, allow all the inconvenience, all the gripey thoughts and emotions, and just soldier on.

Anyone who has a serious disability, for example, Stephen Hawking, absolutely could not be in suffering and do the things he's done. Sure, he's probably in a lot of pain, but his vision, will, and determination to live his life cancels out what could be certainly the best of reasons to suffer.

What Hawking has done, and anyone overcoming any sort of painful disability, is to focus on what is working; the things in life to be grateful for, because that's where the energy is. That's where the inspiration lies, and that's where LIFE is. Life is not in the suffering, because suffering is a mental construct of victim behavior. It defeats hope, it neutralizes motivation, and rips the color right out of life and living.

So above all, my friends, gratitude trumps suffering, and will certainly lead to ease, joy and a zest for life.