TO DANCE WITH THE ANGELS

To what purpose are we enlightened? A religious person would correctly say: “To know God in Heaven.” An unbeliever would say “To truly know yourself in the cosmic order of things.” Many other explanations exist. All of them are right. All of them say the same thing using different metaphors of explanation that makes the most sense to them.

This series of essays can at this point take two separate branches both compatible with the other. The first and most likely is that of explaining existence as it fits into the cosmos of which it is but an infinitesimal part.

This has been the subject of many religious discourses and one more is not really needed here. What is far more interesting is that second branch which can be entitled, “There Is More To See Than Meets The Eye!”

The Cosmic Interface:

What needs to be said of the first branch is this. Looking at the process, the accumulation, the analysis and the modulation of it all by this wonderful capacity we have as human beings to do it. It becomes undeniable that there is more than just death ending it all. It seems eminently clear there was more to us before we started with birth or even conception. The Buddhists taught me this most clearly however building on a sound Christian and Jewish foundation I already had.

This is covered in my book From AA to AD a Wistful Travelogue and is not in need of repeating here. Whatever it is it is unique. It is unique because we consciously seek transcendence beyond ourselves. In the process of this life we learn we are capable of doing this.

The evidence is apparent studying the process. We are efficient as we accumulate, as we learn, we pass up so much more that could be accumulated and learned. This occurs by reason of the way we exercise our talents for discovery. Whether or not intended this way it is the way we do it.

When we name something it goes into our data bank under the classification of name and links to whatever else relates to that name. When we learn how to do something we make formulas of the process of doing it. Once done that is filed in our data bank in the “How-To” category, we give a name to identify the known formula of how to do that something we have gone to the effort of learning to do.

Once done the name and the formula are the shortcuts to remembering them and remembering the data learned to perform them. However, there is much about the material we have learned making the formula and giving the name to it.

Only the process we worked through while learning how to do it is retained along with the formula for doing it and the name given it. The knowledge accumulated getting us there is discarded. The name and the formula remain in the memory forefront linked to the method of doing it a step back in memory. This becomes a shortcut.

What knowledge is not important or relevant to the identity or the necessary How-To instructions are let go. These over time are placed in a more remote category of our data bank and ultimately forgotten altogether.

The purpose we have in acquiring it determines that which is accumulated and thought about. With our finite talents we accumulate, store, then determine its status and relevance. That which has no utility, has no purpose, is then determined to have no need for retention. This then passes out of the orbit of our consciousness.

That does not mean it ceases to exist. It succumbs to the category of “Don’t Use it, Lose it.” Eventually it is lost to us for not using it.

It is error on our part to believe all we know is all there is. It is in our senior years that we reflect a broader view of our knowledge base. It is nonetheless initially limited to our pragmatic process for learning it. 

LIFE: THIS FINITE WONDERFUL PLACE IN TIME

In this wonderful time, this fabulous place, finite as it is, we can come to know our reason for being here. Our world where I am writing this and, if I am lucky, where someone of you is reading this we are existing consciousness, a soul if you will, limited in its entire propensity in order to perform purposefully.

Life is like a reality show on TV. We are put down on this island, given this conflicting task to perform in a setting and with others. In this world there is much to impede us in our task, many things making the task hard to do and other factors that facilitate getting the task done. This is all in a situation with other people associated with you and your task there to help and to hinder.

Look at life as a reality show; it helps to understand the character of it and the impermanent nature of it. What I mean by its impermanent nature is this:

We are born.  We live in a place over the passage of time, and then bang, it’s over. We are conscious of events while we live. We were not retrospectively conscious when we were born and who know what happens when we die?

We know nothing other than the absolute finality of death? Life stops, there is no forwarding address.

When we are born, wham, all of a sudden we are here! We cannot communicate, we cannot care for ourselves, we pop out of a body which has nurtured our life to its point of entry sending us out into this expanse naked, hungry, dependent and oh so interested in everything about us.

As we grow we discover our talent to make contact with what we see in this world. We see, we touch, we feel, we hear, we smell, we add our own affects so others about us can hear, feel, smell, see us. It is all interface. We give we get.

Soon these talents teach us how to work with all of this extraneous material. We make noise we get response. We formulate that noise turning it into words through which the response becomes the give and take of communication. We start to receive information created by another. This is more than the information we take in by sensing it.

It is at this time we learn, already using this wonderful mind that is ours and start expanding the function of it. Its first function is inputting all the datum we evoke, than categorizing it, analyzing it, storing it, and linking it to all information heretofore stored by us and all that is encountered by us after this.

This process of assemblage continues to the point that we see and know beyond the individual pieces of datum, or its categories, or how one piece of datum relates to another. We start looking at it as data, looking at it as a singular whole.

When able to see it as data and then doing the same cognitive processing of it as data, and not but datum, this begins our thinking.

It is in the process of thinking we then start seeking the meaning of what we know from what we have thought about all of the information we have acquired. This is when the right brain function kicks in and we see the shooting stars.

In all of this process we see in the way we have learned to see starting out as infants just having popped out of the womb. As we start exercising our talents in each step of the way we evoke this wonderful place going through this wonderful corridor of time. In it we aggregate all we have encountered into our life process.

In the end it becomes what we think about it.  There is however an intriguing twist to all of it. What we see in our mortal way is not all there is to see. It is only what we have learned to see by how we have learned to see. There is more, so much more that we cannot see.

As the saying goes, “There is more than the eye can see!”

Our process of learning has been a two edge sword. It cuts one way but cuts the other too. As we learn some things we close off learning other things. We become bound by the way we have learned to do it and can’t break out of the barriers that creates. As a result we are denied the knowledge, the information, and the sight of what is obviously there.

This is the reason we spend so much time in the early years and more effort in the middle years learning and holding on to what we acquire by our learning. We work so well at the task that any foreknowledge we might have had or peripheral knowledge observed is absolutely forgotten. What we know becomes all there is in our way of believing that is what is, namely our reality. It is what we think it is. It is not what it really is. There is simply more to it than that.

It take life, it takes the frustration caused by the emptiness of each material end that has been ours that brings us to look for something more. It is at this time we start trying and hopefully become able to see beyond ourselves. Up until now we have been blinded by the wonders of the materiality in which we have functioned.

This seems to be the design of life. To come into it we are blind. To start in it we are blinded by what we see. We then are blinded further by trying to see more of it. At some point we see that which is blinding us is but its sparkle. Behind the sparkle it is all transparent. What blinded us has been a vast illusion preventing our see beyond the sparkle. When we do finally see beyond forced through the illusion we see what we were designed to see.

It is a process, a process through which we are enlightened. Our enlightenment comes when we look beyond our material consequence and try to see what might be more. Doing this we are looking through the shade of sparkle which is transparent. It is at this time, in this way, that we transcend our material consequence. The design of our lives is intended to get us to this point and to work on it, even before we leave our material consequence.

Working To the Endpoint

In that essay I posted in my archive entitled It's All in the Learning, that is Plus and Minus I finished with the following paragraphs:

Many Make it Here, Others do not!

·       It is in this function (Right Brain) that we as mortals transcend ourselves as animals. We are able to create ideas from our right brain, forge concepts, hear music, dance with the angels and suck in all the beauty presented by it. It is in this function that we exercise our known power of intuition, whatever prescience we might have and know things not otherwise available to be known from the material consequence we are in.

·       It is in this sphere we touch our hearts; we love others and know gods.

·       Life in its concourse seems to be taking us through our amalgamation of experience to find the door to this wonderment, to open it and allow us to enter into it.

·       If all goes as it ought it is a wonderful encounter this life we live getting there and entering into it. I certainly feel blessed by my AD for having done so. Painful as it has been getting here it is worth every twist and turn I have taken in finding it.

·       Anything that impugns that reality diminishes us personally. We are so invested in what we are, what we have, what we’ve become that we are capable of believing that is all there is. This puts us at risk of losing our way. This can cause us to remain stuck in the endeavors of our mid-life, never able to go beyond.

If we are fortunate it is during our senior years that the needs and the drives of the middle years lose their importance.

We reach the point that making our way does not have the attraction that it did when we were younger. Simply being who we are gains priority. It is this state of who we are that doesn’t need feeding to sustain it, it’s already been fed by all the experience of the years before it.

If we are sufficiently blessed to make the transition, it is our time to sum up all that was and see who we have become.

It is at this time that Senior Life can be the Dance of the Spheres. We are able to look out through all of the clutter and crap our lives have seemed to be and see things are better, more meaningful, have greater purpose and satisfaction than we’ve ever had or knew to be possible.. I speak of that in my recent post on happiness. HAPPINESS IS YOURS, YOURS TO FIND, YOURS TO RELISH... 

I must however strike this caveat! In our world with the bells and whistles we bring into it at birth namely, our talents, in league with the world, both elements conspire against us in finding our proper end. It is the contest, this tension between our talents and the world’s attractions that fuels our being in this life.

From infancy on we are delighted with the world and all that we can learn about it. We immerse ourselves into the learning process and thereby immerse ourselves into this world. Accomplishment in the learning process becomes an end in itself. The excitement of process, the love and grasp of what we acquire by it, becomes our only end. We do this by being alive and more so living to the fullest. The rewards are many, most boil down to the pleasure of it.

Before we know it, we are so caught up in what we do. So much so that it becomes all we see since we are so focalized in the endeavor of doing what we do. A child is caught up in being a good child, caught up on exercising independence and becoming self-sufficient, being a good student, doing what he/she is told to do.

Soon we find ourselves working at being a good husband/wife, then mother/father, all along a contributing member of our community. We do what we become and strive to do that well, whether that be job, career, current involvement, always, we strive to do it better.

We become pleased with the rewards of having done each undertaking or fulfilled each task. The sense is that of accomplishment. Often that sense of doing or completing takes on the form of monetary reward, or precious gift, or adulation by others. The worst of the benefits borders between recognition by others or power over others. We are such communicable beasts.

In those of us, we who are common and ordinary, it becomes this: Simply being a good mother, raising your children well is the objective. The father or mother may add being a good provider and being good at what is done to provide.

The list of what we do and the rewards we get is endless and it changes every step of the way. The end we seek changes with each step we take from childhood to adulthood. It grows in adulthood leading to later years and then our senior years. What is important say in the middle years can seem kind of meaningless in the senior years.

How we see the ends we seek keeps changing on us. To exceed at sport is very important in one part of our lives, meaningless in others. What we have accumulated can become and end in itself. This can include holding unto what we have, seeking more, or, flaunting it as ourselves in such things as style of life, homes we live in, cars we drive, clothes we wear.

Simply striving to be a success can be an end in itself blinding us to all else about us. This is a complication if not a disease of the middle years. Too many of us succumb, becoming blind to love, family, friends, any other of the elements of life available to us at the time.

This can be excused by the crunch of time in the style of life we live when we are at that mid-age time busying ourselves with all of the responsibilities we are trying to keep in balance. Unlike the pastoral life of the farmer who has the time to think as he rides the tractor in the field, the organization urbanite is not given this time. She/he must scoot from one thing to the next, never look up, look out or over, just concentrate on what is at hand and move along with it.

All there is for the middle-ager in this society in which we live is to keep up with what must be done to become what she/he has chosen to become and/or maintain wherever it is they are at.

It is during this time and as we are in this process that we lose sight. We become completely what we are. We forgett who we are. What we are, what we are about and what is about us becomes all there is. This becomes our reality and we believe this is all there is.

If we have trusted the plan to carry us through this period we are then delivered to our senior years where we again have time. We have time to simply be. It is with this new found time that our self-assessment of our life can begin. It is at this point we learn “Why” and build on it for our last transition which is out of this life to another state/dimension.

HAPPINESS IS YOURS, YOURS TO FIND, YOURS TO RELISH

We all search it out, some even find it. We enjoy it when we have it and spend the rest of our time trying to get it back. For us mortal men it is goal, something at which we grasp, seeking it out in the way we conduct our lives.

What is it? Millions of words attempt to describe it, few do. It is known when you truly have it; often we delude ourselves into believing “Yes, this is it!”

I know it because I have it and it seems here for the duration so long as I honor it. Can I put it into words to explain it? Perhaps!

But first, before trying I am posting three articles on my Archive, each taken from the Opinionator column of the New York Times. They are:

The Spoils of Happiness

Happy Ending

Happy Like God

(Click on the title of each to go to it on the Archive.)

The first article has this to say of happiness:

Happiness is not a state of mind… Happiness isn’t just up to you. It also requires the cooperation of the world beyond you… Happiness is more like knowledge than like belief... Knowledge is not just up to you, it requires the cooperation of the world beyond you — … happiness isn’t just up to you. It also requires the cooperation of the world beyond you. Happiness, like knowledge, and unlike belief and pleasure, is not a state of mind.

One especially apt way of thinking about happiness — a way that’s found already in the thought of Aristotle — is in terms of “flourishing.”…. The sense of the expression is not just that they feel good, but that they’re, for example, accomplishing some things and taking appropriate pleasure in those accomplishments.

It’s enjoyed after you’ve worked for something, or in the presence of people you love, or upon experiencing a magnificent work of art or performance — the kind of state that requires us to engage in real activities of certain sorts, to confront real objects and respond to them

The second article the writer believed he faced death only to survive. He describes happiness in this way:

This is the paradox death imposes upon us: it grants us the possibility of a meaningful life even as it takes it away. It gives us the promise of each moment, even as it threatens to steal that moment, or at least reminds us that some time our moments will be gone. It allows each moment to insist upon itself, because there are only a limited number of them. And none of us knows how many.

I prefer to think that the paradox of death is the source not of despair but instead of the limited hope that is allotted to us as human beings. We cannot live forever, to be sure, but neither would we want to. We ought not to mind the fact that we will die, although we really would rather that it not be today. Probably not tomorrow either. But it is precisely because we cannot control when we will die, and know only that we will, that we can look upon our lives with the seriousness they merit. Death takes away from us no more than it has conferred: lives whose significance lies in the fact they are not always with us.

Our happiness lies in being able to inhabit that fact.

The third article has this to say:

Happiness is not quantitative or measurable and it is not the object of any science, old or new. It cannot be gleaned from empirical surveys or programmed into individuals through a combination of behavioral therapy and anti-depressants. If it consists in anything, then I think that happiness is this feeling of existence, this sentiment of momentary self-sufficiency that is bound up with the experience of time

….  one feels neither the pull of the past nor does one reach into the future. Time is nothing, or rather time is nothing but the experience of the present through which one passes without hurry, but without regret… eternal life is given to those who live in the present.”

What I can describe of what I know as happiness is this:

I have repeatedly asked the question throughout my life “What’s it all about?” To search an answer to that question some years ago I started writing a memoir accordingly entitling it: “So, What’s it all About?” I did not expect to answer my question but surprisingly got the answer!

And what a blessing it is to learn and recognize what I sincerely believe to be happiness as a result.

In the memoir I stated I know there is more I must do in my life. I do not know what that is. I learned to trust my life leads me to outcomes and I believe I will learn what more I have to do.

Some time later in the memoir I wrote: I have now learned what it is I have yet to do.

What I learned and what I have been doing is this:

I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Overwhelmed I thought why me? In answer I applied that already learned in the AA program in which I have participated these past 37 years. I learned in recovering from alcoholism, the occurrence of which was the watershed of my life, that the only way to cope with the kind of misfortune that alcoholism is you must embrace it entirely, doing so accept it fully, turn it over to the care of a higher power outside of yourself and make the best of it.

I did that, it worked. It continued to work in all I encountered or confronted thereafter.

It proved no different with AD. Diagnosed more than 4.5 years ago, living and grappling with the effects of this terrible disease, I am happier than I have ever been for the previous 69 years I lived before diagnosis.

Why?

When all is lost, there is nothing more to lose. This is one of the more liberating sensations of living.

I had lost all I was striving to be; all I wanted to have; all I wanted to attain or continue in my life. All I had done seemed for naught. All I had done was certainly over and done with.

The paradoxical thought of finding yourself in such a predicament is “It is just not so bad!”

No longer would I have to be anything, go anywhere, get. All of those doors closed on me. The doors also closed on the obligations that attended all those life baubles I spent such effort acquiring.

The best part of this awful turn was this: I knew what I had left to do. I was being called on to accept this excoriation which AD is and do something positive in my life for others. The formula’s application was simple enough.

I chose to commit my life to AD. To acknowledge it openly, to advocate in its favor, to speak about it, above all to write about it, all in the hope that it will help others.

This has been my dedication this last more than four years. During this time I have been at peace and blessed with serenity. For the first time ever in spite of many pleasurable events, my successes and acquisition of much, I feel fulfilled.

I have not felt this once at anytime in my life before this. I have always been conscious of an open bottomless hole in the heart and soul of me.

For the first time in my life I am about what I was born to be about. 

It's All in the Learning, that is Plus and Minus

Learning language helps us learn the truths offered in this world. Conversely it starts the process of modulating truth to make it similar to that truth understood by the teacher and those around us.

We think through each thing we identify by assigning a word to it. We use words that we have learned apply to the object named. This takes place as part of learning to talk and continues the rest of our lives. We do it in the same way as we encounter new things to learn.

We follow a process in doing this. We encounter a thing, an object, some subject with in our observation, recognize it to be different than others known by us. Concluding we have not seen it before nor classified by name a similar object, then we examine, analyze, review our knowledge bank for similarity with others, then, if still new and different we then discern all there is about a certain thing. Doing so we name it and couple the name with all we have learned about that certain thing.

On coupling all we have learned about it with the name, we then file it in our memory bank under that name. We take an additional step to link it to all other names and things about those names that have been filed before. We also continue to link that name to all other new names we learn in this process we call thinking and remebering.

This is an interesting process by which we educate ourselves in the things of this life.

Its start is described in an article taken from the New York Times entitled Understanding ‘Ba Ba Ba’ as a Key to Development. I have posted it in my Archive, click on the title to go there and read it.

The article describes the start of this process of learning we undertake as infants. This process continues all of our lives. We learn with those talents we discover we have in this life. We evoke the world about us for information using those talents which are ours. We receive the information in the style presented or encountered by us, using the talent we have to receive the transmission of it. We store it in the style we have learned it.

This goes on and on, building into this beautiful databank called our minds. Once discovered we use our minds in this process, using it in the style we have learned it works. We learned it acts in a variety of ways.

It can take an item we encounter, measure it, classify it, and analyze it. It will then start comparing it to other things we know, have encountered, named, classified and stored. We then name it and classify it by its name where it fits and link it to all of that which it is similar and/or comparable to.

This bank we are creating grows and becomes more intricate. At some point, having learned to do so generally, we will find our mind reflecting on some portion of this data and will look beyond what is known about it. The purpose of this is to learn what we can from it.

It is in doing this that our minds step out of the data keeping function and into the conceptive intuitive function of which it is capable. It is in this function that the data we have flowers into an altogether different realm.

This component is often referred to as the right brain in action, as compared to the left brain, which is the more mechanically functioning part, more computer like, viz: our data keeper.

The reference to right brain left brain, not wholly accurate from a pathological-neurological standpoint, serves to distinguish the functions by reference to body part.

As such it serves us as a reference point.

The function of the right brain is wholly different from that of the left brain.

The left brain seems designed for us to operate within the limits of this space time dimension of which we as human beings are a part of its material makeup. It is serial; it is sequential, passes as time passes, and separates by classification the data it stores. It builds on itself and changes as it works for us.

The right brain is not sequential. It operates in the now, in the absolute present, in the immediacy of our cognitive connection with all there is at the moment it is engaged. It uses that talents it has, applied from the foundation of data we hold from our left brain function and interpolates all of that as evoked from the moment in which it is engaged.

It is in this function that we as mortals transcend ourselves as animals. We are able to create ideas from it, forge concepts, hear music, dance with the angels and suck in all the beauty presented by it. It is in this function that we exercise our known power of intuition, whatever prescience we might have and know things not otherwise available to be known from the material consequence we are in.

It is in this sphere we touch our hearts, we love others and know gods.

Life in its concourse seems to be taking us through our amalgamation of experience to find the door to this wonderment, to open it and allow us to enter into it.

If all goes as it ought. It is a wonderful encounter this life we live.

I feel blessed in that I suffer Dementia It has forced me to stop and smell the roses; to cope and understand why I have it; to contemplate how my entire life now at its end comes together in this learning process.

Painful as it has been getting here it is worth every twist and turn I have taken in finally finding this insight.

Many Make it Here, Others do not!

It is in our functioning Right Brain that we as mortals transcend ourselves as otherwise animals. We are able to create ideas from it, forge concepts, hear music, dance with the angels and suck in all the beauty presented by it. It is in this function that we exercise our known power of intuition, whatever prescience we might have and know things not otherwise available to be known from the material consequence we are in.

It is in this sphere we touch our hearts; we love others and know gods.

Life in its concourse seems to be taking us through our amalgamation of experience to find the door to this wonderment, to open it and allow us to enter into it.

If all goes as it ought it is a wonderful encounter this life we live getting there and entering into it. I certainly feel blessed by my AD for having done so. Painful as it has been getting here it is worth every twist and turn I have taken in finding it.

Many Make it Here, Others do not! If this were true for everyone Senior Life would be the Dance of the Spheres. All of us here know it is not. Some of us having made it here look out through all of the clutter and crap we see things are better, more meaningful, have greater purpose and satisfaction than we’ve ever had. I speak of that in my recent post on happiness. HAPPINESS IS YOURS, YOURS TO FIND, YOURS TO RELISH... 

I must however strike this caveat! With the inchoate abilities we bring with us into our lives at birth, namely: our talents, in league with the world, coupled together they conspire against us in finding our proper end. It is the contest, the tension between, that fuels our involvement in this life.

From the time we are infants we delight in what we find we can in the world and all that we can learn about it. We immerse ourselves into the learning process and therefore immerse ourselves into this world. The accomplishment in the learning process becomes an end in itself. The excitement of the process, the love and grasp of what we acquire by it becomes our only end. We do this by being alive and more so living to the fullest. The rewards are many, most boil down to the pleasure of it.

Before we know it, we are completely caught up in what we do. So much so that it becomes all we see. We are so focalized in this endeavor we lose sight of all there is around us but that which we are doing. A child is caught up in being a good child, caught up in exercising independence and becoming self sufficient, being a good student, doing what he/she is told to do.

Soon we find ourselves working at being a good husband/wife, then mother/father, all along a contributing member of our community. We do what we become and strive to do that well, whether that be job, career, current involvement. Always, we strive to do it better.

We become pleased with the rewards of having done each undertaking or fulfilled each task. The sense is that of accomplishment. Often that sense of having it done takes on the form of monetary reward, or precious gift, or adulation by others. The benefit can also be abused by us when working and getting it become an end in themselves and not such as to lead to higher purpose. Recognition by others or power over others stand out on the list of benefits that can become burdens. We are such communicable beasts.

In those of us in the common and ordinary level it becomes simply being a good mother, raising your children well. The father or mother adds being a good provider and being good at what is done to provide.

The list of what we do and the rewards we get is endless and it changes every step of the way. The end we seek changes with each step we take from childhood to adulthood. It grows in adulthood leading to later years then senior years. What is important say in the middle years can seem kind of meaningless in the senior years.

The ends we seek keeps changing on us. To exceed at sport is very important in one part of our lives, meaningless in others. What we have accumulated can become and end in itself. Holding unto to what we have, seeking more, or, flaunting it if we believe it is all there is or all we are. We do this in such things as style of life, homes we live in, cars we drive, clothes we wear, money we have or earn they can become our object in life.

Simply striving to be a success can be an end in itself blinding us to all else about us. This is a complication if not a disease of the middle years. Too many of us succumb, becoming blind to love, family, friends, any other of the elements of life available to us at the time and go no further enlightening ourselves with the world.

This can be excused by the crunch of time in the style of life we live. I refer here to the time we are at that age busying ourselves with all of the responsibilities we are trying to keep in balance. Unlike the pastoral life of the farmer who has the time to think as he rides the tractor in the field, the organization urbanite is not given this time. She/he must scoot from one thing to the next, never look up, look out or over, just concentrate on what is at hand and move along with it.

All there is for the middleager in this society in which we live is to keep up. Keeping up with all there is to do take all the time and energy we have. In middle age we are driven in this way to be what we have become, then to hold on and fulfill the responsibilities of whatever that is. That becomes all engrossing.

It is during this time and as we are in this process that we lose sight. We become completely what we are. Doing so we forget “Who We Are!” “What We Are”, what we are about and what is about us becomes all there is. This becomes our reality and we believe this is all the reality there is.

Anything that impugns that reality diminishes us personally. We are so invested in what we are, what we have, what we’ve become that, and that is all there is.

This puts at risk of losing our way. This can cause us to remain stuck in the endeavors of our mid-life, never able to go beyond.

Is There More That We Might See?

This question intrigues me. Things we observe, experiences we have, the inexplicable we encounter and all the other odd things seen prompt wonder; I wonder what more there is, what more that we can tune in?

We know things exist for which we have no capacity to sense. The scientists and cosmologists talk about atoms, electrons, neutrons, particles, quarks, waves, any number of things we certainly don’t see some of which we can connect to by microscope, x-ray, ultra violet & infrared lens or some other physical measuring or observing device.

Ever see a particle pass through never really touching you? No? But we accept they do. They are doing this constantly every day in fact. We accept there are planets so far away we have no ability to contact or see them. We conclude their existence by the extenuating circumstances in that part of the universe we see, measure and otherwise calculate the existence and placement of them.

They tell us there is dark matter that occupies the greater percentage of our universe than does the material stuff we can see. Also we are told about black holes that exist. We are told space is curved by reason of which passage of time is relative to motion of that observed and that observing it. In this way time can be shorter or longer in duration for a moving object then for the object observing it.

The existence of matter is said to depend on the observation of it. Without a conscious observer it has no reality in either space or time, at best it has the potential to be if happened on by an observer and consciously observed.

Sound wild? Take a look at Schrödinger’s Cat. This cat is famous in science. It is in a box, which at first is alive then it is dead, then it is there alive again. It is in fact dead or alive when observed to be one or the other.

It is surmised there are channels available to pass thru time and place to other times and places, forward, backward and laterally. For lack of a better term describing them they are called “Wormholes” the forward and backward feature of them could amount to time travel, lateral movement could be travel from one universe to another.

Oh yes, I forgot to say the same musing suggests there has to be more than one universe in existence to accommodate choice and change as naturally exercised by us. The explanations range around the topics of the exercise of free will, the results of choice, the relative nature of existence that is within our exercise of consciousness of it, like Schrödinger’s Cat. This is then extended from the act of consciousness coupled with the act of choice of one alternative in the exercise of free will, or predetermined will in some cases, the choice of Yea demands the generation into reality of its partner Nay.

The yea and nay being mutually exclusive it is then reasoned that the other happens, exists, in another universe. The effects of this kind of generation of course wears out the non-concept we have of infinity.

It was bad enough to think of radio transmission as we discussed it in earlier parts of this set or essays. A transmitting device sends out a signal electronically powered that somehow travels through the air from the point of transmission to any point within a radius around the transmitter. Within that radius it can be picked up by receiving device. The receiving device has to be designed in such a way that it can receive the signal transmitted in the format it is transmitted. To do this it needs sufficient power, frequency modulation and placement to catch the signal anywhere within its radius that the signal has been sufficiently powered by the transmitter to reach. With the motive power given it at the transmitter and the power of reception built into the receiver it can pick up and take the signal into the receiver.

In all the time from transmission to reception this radio signal is not heard; it is not felt; it is not smelled; it is not seen. It remains invisible to perception of it as it passes through much of the matter it encounters without any diminishment other than the diminishment of power over the distance it has traveled. You can stand in front of the radio in most cases the signal passes right through you as particles do.

We travel from place to place in our cars; we turn on the radio in our car and listen to music or news emanating from it. How did that music or news get in there? How does it get out? How can it be heard coming out but not going into the radio, and only when we turn the radio on? Our knowledge of that is so rudimentary it merits no repeat.

The wonderful machines behind the transmission will take a sound, convert it to a digital fingerprint and transmit it in the digital format in electrical impulses of binaries, -1+1, on-off, placed in such distinct order as to be recognized for the sound it represents at both transmission and reception. The receiver of course takes that which is received and known by it and converts it back into the same sound which initially was placed into the digital format able to be transmitted.

This is a thought-full! Do we accept it as true? Do we know it to be real? Do we pay it any mind?

What's the Relationship Between the Brain and the Soul?

The Alzheimer’s Reading Room                           

 By Rudolph Tanzi

The reason why that's very empowering is because if you are having a tough time in life mired in depression or mired in some negative mood, we're hoping that people read this and say, "I have this amazing partner in my head, this amazing organ, even cooler than my stomach, and it's mine to use."

"You're taught that you're born with a certain number of nerve cells, you lose them, and you don't get them back.

Well, guess what, that's wrong.

Now we know that new nerve cells are made exactly in the region of the brain where Alzheimer's hits.

We also know from research in my lab and other labs that if you induce nerve cells to divide in the short-term memory part of the brain, you can improve the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in animal models." -- Rudy Tanzi, Director, Genetics and Aging Research Unit, MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease

Deepak Chopra and I are writing a book called Superbrain. It's Deepak's title.

Deepak and I spoke at the same TEDMED last year, and afterwards we met for the first time. We started talking about the brain, and we realized that me coming from the neuroscience side, thinking about cognition and nerve cells and synapses, and Deepak coming from the consciousness side, in a series of e-mails after we met we realized that we agree on just about everything, but I think about it in terms of neurophysiology and neuronal processes and how synapses form, and Deepak is thinking of it in a metaphysical way in terms of consciousness, using Vedantic literature.

But remember, Deepak's an M.D., so he knows the science side so he can appreciate what I'm saying, and I've always had an intense interest in metaphysics and the things Deepak talks about. I've read Deepak's books before I met him. So, it was just a very nice marriage there, and we said, "Let's write a book about the brain and let's talk about all the things that people don't know about the brain that makes the brain so amazing."

So, one part of the book is to say, "I bet you didn't know," to the average person, "that nerve cells actually divide. You're taught that you're born with a certain number of nerve cells, you lose them, and you don't get them back.

Well, guess what, that's wrong.

Now we know that new nerve cells are made exactly in the region of the brain where Alzheimer's hits. We also know from research in my lab and other labs that if you induce nerve cells to divide in the short-term memory part of the brain, you can improve the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in animal models."

So, things like this. A lot of people don't know about neuroplasticity, the idea that when you have damage to the brain, a stroke or brain trauma, that nerve cells around the damaged ones regenerate. They sprout new axons and dendrites. They try to regain the connections that were lost by the neurons that died. They try to maintain the neuro-network in some amazingly elegant way.

So, you're not just left out to dry after you have an injury. If you try to learn, seek novelties, stimulate yourself intellectually, force yourself to make new synapses, you can heal yourself. 

Now, of course, it depends on how traumatic the injury is. So, we want to teach people that the brain's an amazing thing.

The second point to the book is now that you know how great your brain is and how amazing it is and all these things you might not have known, guess what -- you are not your brain. You may think you're your brain. You're not your brain just as much as you're not your stomach. When you're hungry, you feel hunger in your stomach and you say, "I need to eat."

You don't identify with your stomach. Your stomach gave you a feeling that you needed to have so that you would eat food so that you can survive and function.

Emotions, intellect, serve the same purpose from the brain. Your emotions are serving you for survival and your intellect is serving you. It's your partner, your greatest ally, a very powerful tool. It's not who you are. 


The reason why that's very empowering is because if you are having a tough time in life mired in depression or mired in some negative mood, we're hoping that people read this and say, "I have this amazing partner in my head, this amazing organ, even cooler than my stomach, and it's mine to use."

So, in the book one of the first lines that I wrote -- and we'll see if it stays in it -- is "Say out loud: 'my brain.' My brain. Who said that? Who said 'my brain'? That's who you are.

The person who said 'my brain,' that's who you are. You used your brain to say 'my brain,' but the fact you can say 'my brain' and be self-aware says that's the real you."

Now, who the real you is, this is where Deepak comes in, because Deepak will talk about the soul and about consciousness and about the universe's consciousness and the metaphysics. So, Deepak will bring in who's the real you. I will bring in the real you as an incredible partner to survive on this earth and thrive, and it's your brain.

When you feel down, when you feel emotionally down, acknowledge it, OK? It's for a reason. Emotions serve a purpose.

Don't be Mr. Spock. Don't be the Star Trek generation, where emotion is useless, you know, you just use logic. No, be balanced. When emotions hit, pay attention, but don't identify with them.

When intellectual thoughts come, internal dialogue hits, use it; don't be it.

When intuitions come that are born out of your intellect and your instinct, pay attention to them. They're all serving you from your partner, the brain, but it's not who you really are. So those are the two facets of the book.

Obama to seek more Alzheimer's research money

By LAURAN NEERGAARD | Associated Press – Tue, Feb 7, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is increasing spending on Alzheimer's research — planning to surpass half a billion dollars next year — as part of a quest to find effective treatments for the brain-destroying disease by 2025.

In a two-part plan announced Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health immediately will devote an extra $50 million dementia research, on top of the $450 million a year it currently spends. The boost opens the possibility that at least one stalled study of a possible therapy might get to start soon.

Next week, President Barack Obama will ask Congress for $80 million in new money to spend for Alzheimer's research in 2013.

"The science of Alzheimer's disease has reached a very interesting juncture," with promising new findings to pursue after years of false starts, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told The Associated Press. "We would love to be able to come up with a way of bringing forward an even larger amount of support."

Patient advocates have long said the nation's spending on Alzheimer's research is far too little considering the disease's current and coming toll. More than 5 million people already have Alzheimer's or related dementias, a number that, barring a medical breakthrough, is expected to more than double by 2050 because of the aging population. By then, the medical and nursing home bills are projected to cost $1 trillion annually.

At a meeting last month, some of the government's own Alzheimer's advisers said it could take a research investment of as much as $2 billion a year to make a real impact. "Our country cannot afford not to make these commitments," Alzheimer's Association President Harry Johns told that meeting.

For comparison, the government spends nearly $3 billion on AIDS research; about 1.1 million Americans are living with the AIDS virus.

But Tuesday, advocates praised the administration for making a needed down payment in tough economic times.

"This is a positive step forward. It's going to take additional steps on the journey that's going to get us to the end of this," Johns said.

"There is no doubt that there is commitment that needs to be applauded here," added Eric J. Hall, president of the Alzheimer's Foundation of America.

The move is part of the administration's development of the first National Alzheimer's Plan, to combine research toward better treatments — the goal is to have some by 2025 — along with steps to help overwhelmed families better cope today. In addition to the biomedical research, the administration said it will propose spending $26 million for other goals of the still-to-be-finalized plan, including caregiver support.

"Reducing the burden of Alzheimer's disease on patients and their families is an urgent national priority," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.

Given the nation's fiscal problems, it's not clear what the chances are in Congress for a boost in next year's Alzheimer's funding.

But for this year, Collins said Alzheimer's is such a priority that the NIH will shift some of its budget from other research areas to eke out an extra $50 million right away.

Among his examples: Some cutting-edge gene-mapping will be directed to concentrate on uncovering the genetics of Alzheimer's, including what protects the brains of some people in dementia-prone families. Collins also said he will determine whether the extra money is enough to start some clinical trials that otherwise would have to wait, including one to test whether an intranasal form of insulin might reach and protect the brain cells of people with early dementia symptoms.

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We Can't Wait: Taking Action on Alzheimer's Disease

Sec. Kathleen Sebelius

Secretary of Health and Human Services

2/ 9/2012 10:31 am

 Alzheimer's disease, which today afflicts as many as 5.1 million people in the United States, devastates the lives of individuals suffering from the disease and places tremendous physical, emotional, and financial strain on their families and loved ones. We can't wait to act. As the population of the United States ages, the time for bold action on the growing public health challenge posed by Alzheimer's is now.

This week, we proposed a historic $156 million investment to tackle Alzheimer's disease. This investment will:

Immediately Increase Alzheimer's Disease Research Funding: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will immediately dedicate an additional $50 million from its fiscal year 2012 funding to Alzheimer's research.

Sustain and Grow the Alzheimer's Research Investment: The President's fiscal year 2013 budget will include $80 million in new Alzheimer's research funding. Together, fiscal years 2012 and 2013 investments total $130 million in new Alzheimer's research funding over two years -- over 25 percent more than the current annual Alzheimer's research investment.

Support the Goals of the Preliminary National Alzheimer's Disease Plan: This initiative also includes $26 million to support additional goals in the preliminary National Alzheimer's Disease Plan. While the plan continues to be developed, experts have identified several high-priority goals that will be supported by the announcement, including:

·        Education and outreach to improve the public's understanding of Alzheimer's disease starting this year;

·        Outreach to enhance health care providers' knowledge of the disease;

·        Expanded support for Alzheimer's patients and caregivers in the community;

·        Improved data collection and analysis to better understand Alzheimer's disease's impact on people with the disease, families and the health care system.

These investments build on the President's commitment to fighting Alzheimer's disease. In January 2011, President Obama signed the National Alzheimer's Project Act, which calls for an aggressive and coordinated national Alzheimer's disease plan. The Act also establishes an Advisory Council on Alzheimer's Research, Care, and Services, which brings together some of the Nation's foremost experts on Alzheimer's disease to inform the development of the national plan.

The time to take on Alzheimer's disease is now. Without a cure or more effective treatment, Alzheimer's is expected to grow more prevalent as the population ages. Failure to invest now will place significant strain on our nation's health care resources in future years. If no effective strategies are found for Alzheimer's treatment or prevention, the number of people with Alzheimer's disease and the annual health care costs associated with Alzheimer's disease are projected to rise significantly in the coming years. Which is why -- we can't wait.

How Could The New Alzheimer's Criteria Affect My Care And Access To Services?

Proposed new criteria to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease could affect how many people have the condition and their access to services and government benefits. Individuals with mild and very mild Alzheimer’s disease could be categorized as having mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which doctors say is the stage between loss of mental function and dementia.

The National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association proposed the new criteria. If an individual can still do everyday activities, independently function, but has mild activity problems, they would have MCI. Currently, more than five million people in the U.S. have Alzheimer’s or related dementias. By 2050, these numbers are expected to double. But if the classification changes, millions of Americans could lose out on critical care in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Earlier this week, the Obama Administration announced plans to spend $50 million on Alzheimer’s research and develop a National Alzheimer’s Plan under the direction of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The funds will promote more Alzheimer’s research, treatment, and caregiver support. Alzheimer’s disease costs $180 billion annually for medical and nursing home care.

Opponents of the proposed diagnosis say that more than 90 percent of people would have their diagnosis downgraded. Some medical experts say that more effort should be done to help patients who have MCI to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. They hope that the proposed criteria will be modified and discussed more to help the aging population.

Checklist to ensure you are proactive as you receive a diagnosis of cognitive impairment:

–See a doctor early on to get answers and treatment options

–Meet with an elder law attorney to review what health services and government benefits you are eligible for

–Create documents for advance health care directives, power of attorney, and living will

–Work with an elder law attorney to create an asset protection plan, estate plan, and appropriate trusts

–Stay aware of changes that could occur due to the National Alzheimer’s Plan

–Stay updated with Alzheimer’s Association proposal for condition re-categorization

An appropriate diagnosis can help an aging individual and their loved ones plan for the future. Being proactive in the early stages can allow a person a chance to make long-term decisions about their care, living arrangements, finances, and legal concerns. This allows a person more opportunity to benefit from advanced medical care and support services so that the aging process and effects of the disease are managed better. To learn more about New York elder law or New York estate planning, visit http://www.elderlawnewyork.com.