Expand Your Awareness, See the Big Picture

Much of our lives nowadays are increasingly preoccupied with small-scale micromanagement of information and control of information technologies like email, instant messaging, cellphones. In order to keep track of this vast information flow we often end up multitasking: doing lots of separate tasks at the same time. Recent research shows that we only hold a maximum of four separate things in our minds at once (New Scientist, April 7^th, 2007) . Yet, many of us try to do even more than that. This can cause a loss of perspective, context, and holistic thinking. Our attention becomes fragmented and we can potentially lose our deeper connection to our subconscious mind and non-local awareness. We face the danger of losing sight of the bigger picture and our relationship to the larger environment. We become like race horses with blinders on. Focusing on small-scale events, without seeing the macrocosm, can lead to a loss of perspective, an overinflated idea of the importance of detail, and a preoccupation with trivia. Once in while, take time to see the big picture. Use your imagination to see your place in the whole universe.

Seeing the bigger picture isn't something you actually “see.” It's more of a feeling of connection, an inner knowingness which is often in short supply these days. In the works of Carlos Castaneda, his mentor Don Juan Matus often talks about “stopping the world:” that is, stopping the voices of our inner dialog. By quieting our “monkey mind,” the chattering voices in our heads, we can regain a sense of wonder, mystery, and awe. Deeper perception requires stillness, like the quiet waters of a lake reflecting the image of the moon.

One exercise I like to do is to attempt to imagine my geographical place on the Earth as it spins around the solar system. Imagine that you can see yourself and the planet spinning around at the same time. This can allow you to almost feel the motion of the Earth and the universe: to feel yourself moving, even though your eyes tell you that you are standing still. You can even imagine that you are on your own spaceship Earth hurtling through the cosmos at lightening speeds. By every count, we are moving in 11 different directions at once. We are nestled in a constellation of planets, stars, and galaxies. To see yourself in this vast cosmological nexus is the essence of planetary intelligence. By doing so, you can regain your cosmic heritage as an infinite being and galactic citizen.

Grow Your Planetary Intelligence--The Butterfly Effect and the Power of Your Attention

The Butterfly Effect is a concept from chaos theory that postulates that even small events can have big effects. In this case, according to the laws of chaotic dynamics, a butterfly flapping its wings over the Amazon rainforest can effect the weather in China. This is because under the right conditions, even small changes in a system can lead to big changes somewhere else in that system. Tiny perturbations can lead the system to rapidly change its entire form and structure. The Butterfly Effect reminds us of the subtle effects of all the decisions and actions we take on our larger environment. This goes contrary to our modern mindset that respects sheer power over subtle quality. This encourages us to ignore little details that we think don't matter so much. However, one only has to recall to mind recent disasters of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia both of which suffered fatal damage from seemingly innocuous and minor defects such as O-ring design or heat tile adhesion. In both tragic cases, these tiny defects cascaded together to become catastrophic failures. In sociological speak, these technologies are known as “tightly-coupled systems:” the parts are all closely connected and interact in non-linear ways. Nowadays, our whole planet is a tightly-coupled system. Every action we take has the potential to create effects larger than we ever anticipated. And similarly, seemingly irrelevant relationships and processes can have important consequences on distant parts of the system. By paying attention to our own attention, on the silent spaces and empty passageways between seemingly more important objects and events, we can cultivate our planetary intelligence and learn to observe the entire life process, not just the outcomes that we have been trained to look for or expect to see.

Grow Your Planetary Intelligence--Pay Attention to Subtle Forces and Empty Spaces

The mechanistic paradigm, the idea that the universe is a huge machine, teaches us that big causes create big effects, and small causes create small effects. This is the idea of linear causation or proportionality and is the foundation of our modern world-view. It encourages us to focus on “bigness:” that is the importance of material things over energy, size over quality, speed over completeness. From this perspective, you might as well spend your energy accumulating as much stuff as possible because the winners are “those who die with the most toys.” However, one of the discoveries of research into zero-point energy is that empty space has substantially more energy than objects or solid space. In fact, it is said that a single cubic meter of empty space has more potential energy in it than all the objects you can see around you for 20,000 light years. This gargantuan quantity of potential energy lies in the vacuum between sub-atomic particles and we don't yet have the technology, at least not officially, to harness it. Yet zero-point energy is visible all around us in the behavior of liquid water. What makes water fluid yet “sticky” is the attraction of zero-point energy between the hydrogen atoms in different water molecules. Without this subtle zero-point attraction, life as we know it wouldn't be possible. So this subtle, “weak” vacuum-effect creates the conditions for biological life. Similarly, weak forces all around us create attractive forces that allow for communications, information, and self-organization. Instead of focusing your attention on the loudest, the biggest, and most energetic phenomena around you, take time to look at seemingly irrelevant things, objects, and processes. Focus on the space between objects rather than on the objects themselves. This will give you another perspective on the living energy fields around you and how to use your intelligence to interact with them.

Grow Your Planetary Intelligence--Slow Down

One of the easiest ways to connect with planetary intelligence is to deliberately slow down your pace of life so as to experience more detail and information in your surroundings from moment to moment. Our modern pace of life is so fast now as to create a condition of “information overload” in our sensory awareness. Coupled with a constant barrage of interruptions from email, cell phones, and instant messaging, our attention is subject to fragmentation. This mental interruption has been shown to result in a greater effect in lowering IQ than smoking marijuana (New Scientist, June 28, 2006). Being constantly interrupted is one way that a large, macro-view can be supplanted by an overly narrow, micromanaged perspective that is so common in our contemporary culture. This is similar to what I call “fractal flattening:” a condition whereby the natural variability of nature is condensed into smooth, predictable systems favored by our mechanistic, rationalistic mindset. The result of fractal flattening is the we may, collectively, gain efficiency but lose information and a larger, broader perspective. Intelligence is not only an analytical, logical skill: it is the ability to sense and understand the “whole picture” and to be aware of all the subtle relationships in every living system. To see the big view we need to “stop the world” of our inner dialogue and see the hugeness of the totality of our universe. Therefore, spend a few minutes a day just slowing down and paying attention to whatever is right in front of you. The vastness of your intuitive attention will naturally reveal itself to you.

Alienmind and Undermind--Is there a difference?

In the process of reading Opening Minds aloud, in preparation for the upcoming audio version of the book, I was struck by the encounters of "Bob" and several others mentioned in the text, who reported alien contact of one form or another. Some individuals reported seeing 7-foot tall reptoids near them. Others reported having different varieties of sexual encounters. Looking back at these reports several years after writing about them I began to wonder: What causes people to have these weird experiences? Since I don't think that any of them are making it up, I can only assume that our minds are much more mysterious than we care to admit. Yes, on the surface it seems that science can come up with a fairly coherent explanation of what our minds do from moment to moment. But at another level, there is a degree of pure strangeness to the whole affair. Perhaps there is a continuum which at one level includes ordinary waking-state experience, and at the other, a connection to other life forms and broader universal consciousness. Since we don't have a lot of formal training in dealing with the later, it may across as feeling as if it were distinctly "other." Thus, we project those seemingly bizarre feelings and sensations outside of ourselves as "aliens." But in another way, the aliens are portions of our own undermind, that we haven't integrated very thoroughly in our daily experience. They emerge from our consciousness, and then appear as if they came from "out there." In this sense, the alien mind and our undermind form a continuum and to some extent are the same thing.

Broadminded Perception vs. D-Mode Mentality

In Guy Claxton's Hair Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, he points out that our education trains us for precise, logical, rationally-defensible thought: what Claxton calls the "D-Mode" way of thinking. While this mentality is very good for generating exact solutions for things liking sending people to the moon, it interferes with creative thinking processes. That is, the ability to work with vague situations with multiple possible solutions: situations where you don't have all the information you need available to you. This is what life is usually like for most of us. Deliberating creating vagueness and uncertainty therefore is a way to create broadmindedness and contact with the "undermind." Why would we want to do this? It's because we all face challenges that go beyond the social programming we grew up around. Our planet is facing challenges it's never faced before, like global warming. Our nation seems as if it were in a stage of "critical confusion" with respect to foreign and domestic policy. And personally, our lives get increasingly complicated. Broadminded, diffuse, unfocused thinking can offer a way to new possibilities and styles. And who doesn't want more possibilities and choices in the their lives? So go ahead and create some deliberate chaos in your day to day affairs. Break you routines and being willing to tolerate some uncertainty everyday. It's bound to create new possibilities.

ESP-Extrasensory or Extended Sensory Perception?

The common view of paranormal or psychic powers is that there is something special and 'out of the ordinary" about them: they are "extra sensory." Ingo Swann, in his book Reality Boxes (available from Irva.org), encourages us to take another view point. On page 72 he mentions several innate abilities in all humans. These include intuitive engineering, intuitive mathematics, intuitive biology, spatial sense, and many others. The existence of these natural abilities supports that idea we have inherent systems for being aware of very subtle types of energy and information. We have a lot more sensory ability than science is currently aware of. In this sense, psychic functioning may be seen as an extension of our biological capabilities rather than something that is "extra."