A Walk About In My Mind

A Walk About In My Mind by Harold Stearley

Who, then, is “animate” and who “inanimate”? Within the assembly of the Lotus, all are present without division. In the case of grass, trees and the soil . . . whether they merely lift their feet or energetically traverse the long path, they will all reach Nirvana.

— Zhanran the Sixth Patriarch of Tendai Buddhism (1711-82)

*****

As I was walking along the creek’s bank, my head was in a swirl.  So much internal noise, while the outside world remained placid.  Utterly calm and quiet.  The only noises came from the trickling, crystal-clear, emerald water.  The hum of seventeen-year cicadas.  The occasional bee, wearing a cloak of pollen and having a belly full of sweet nectar, barely able to carry its own weight on its flight path back to the hive.  And from the trees swaying, or rather dancing, in time with the Chief Western Wind. 

A Black Swallowtail fritters past, in complete silence.  Not a care in the world.

But, oh so much internal clatter.  An orchestra of out-of-tune instruments each playing a different symphony.  Does this tumult of turbulence comprise what we’ve come to call our Consciousness?  Does all of this internal noise make us “Aware?”  And “Aware” of what exactly?

>>>>><<<<< 

Moving On – The Medicine of the Deer

Moving On – The Medicine of the Deer by Harold Stearley

I was unlacing my boots at the end of a long day.  As I zig-zagged the laces in reverse to free them from their hooks down towards my ankles, I could feel the heat escaping, the pressure lifting. 

Loosening the remaining half of the laces that extended through the half dozen grommets to the boot’s toe, I then lifted them, one at a time, off my feet and let them drop to the floor with an oh-so familiar thud. 

My right ankle throbbed. 

Ten hours on the road wasn’t that bad because I love being in motion, but I was in Bear country now.  Absolutely everything had to be emptied out of my car and carried to my room.  And I had packed for four months.  More than I needed on a daily basis, but I was prepared.  As were the Bears.

Bears are smart. 

They’ll tear up a car trying to get to a cooler, even if it’s empty.  Nothing that emits an odor can be left behind.  Leave a tube of sunscreen in the glove compartment and you’ll awaken to one ugly mess of an automobile.

Reconfiguring My Blog . . . And My Reality?

Reconfiguring My Blog . . . And My Reality?

By Harold Stearley at Earthwalking

So, I took a short break from writing after my most recent experience in having my words ripped off.  That sounds funny, almost literal, as though the page I had written upon had been torn from my journal and pasted into another’s.  I suppose that’s as literal a vision as it gets here in this digital world.  One of mysterious computer languages.  Encrypted hieroglyphics.  Translated.  Captured.

And Manipulated.

As of the day of this writing, I had actually begun working on another travel story but my mind was pulled in multiple different directions. 

Cyberworld Etiquette And Kleptoparasitism

By Harold Stearley at Earthwalking

Kleptoparasitism. I really love this word. And in the world of the written word, I will equate it with misappropriation and copyright infringement.

I started out writing a long and intricate post about this topic, a problem for my legal mind, and I decided that it was way too much. So I boiled it all down to this:

It is not proper, courteous, or lawful to “borrow” someone else’s work unless you have permission and provide a proper attribution. Without those, the “borrowing” becomes an illegal theft. And even if someone has our permission, if our materials are used in a manner to create a “false light” appearance of ourselves, then that too is prohibited.

Not surprisingly, I have written about this subject before. See my post Lighthouses and Kleptoparasitism .

Below are some links offering suggestions for how to protect your work.

Copyright Infringement – What to Do

How I Dealt With the Theft of My Intellectual Property

What to do When Your Content is Stolen

Prevent Content Theft

Perspectives on Watermarks

This last link, below, appears to be fake. I could be wrong, but it is full of typos, bad grammar, poor usage – highly suspicious – I don’t recommend using it.  It seems to me to be a mimic that looks like a real WP product.

Beware! 

WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click

And please feel free to share your experiences or insights on this topic.

In Metta

Photo: An Indian Paintbrush (the plant), with a bit of editing fun, and then my giant logo superimposed upon it. Is this what we need to do to protect our work from theft?

Kelptoparasitism, is simply where one animal steals another animal’s food or prey after that animal caught, collected, prepared, or stored that food source in some fashion. It’s a common trait, even exercised by this country’s national symbol – the Eagle.

You can see the analogy here. We writers capture words, collect them, prepare them by arranging them and putting our heart into them, and then store them on paper or digitalize them on electronic media to share with others. And then the scavengers show up.

Shuffling the Deck

By Harold Stearley at https://earthwalkingworld.wordpress.com

It is time to change the layout a bit. 

I can rotate the stories I “post” to the top of my page with “post-it notes.”  And from time to time, I feel like it is time to change it up a bit.  Give the cover a different look so to speak.

This time around, I picked stories or poetry of mine that had the highest number of likes.  This is biased because some of my oldest stories really weren’t given much exposure because I didn’t have as many followers at the time they were posted.  Also, giving certain posts more exposure now at the top of the page necessarily fuels the bias.

Nevertheless, this is always fun.  I’ve noticed that readers seem to enjoy the posts that are really expressive, raw, full of emotion, personal, maybe even heart-wrenching, or conversely inspiring.  That makes sense because people have the desire to feel. 

They want to be touched.

I’ll be back with some new posts here pretty soon, but in the meantime, if you haven’t seen these six before, have a look. 😊

In Metta

Photos: These pics are from a dome-roofed structure on the grounds of the Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas. I was not staying there as a guest. I was merely touring the place. They have no relation to this post at all, except maybe in the context of seeing new things, and being fun 🙂

“And Once the Storm is Over . . .”

By Harold Stearley at https://earthwalkingworld.wordpress.com

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” ― Haruki Murakami

Photo: A desert sunset at the “Big Bend.”

Personal Freedom

Photo: Somewhere in SouthWest Texas. I’ll be writing about this place soon. 🙂

“Match your Nature with Nature”

I love this quote. Of course, I love talking about “Heartbeats” and about “Nature.” Our Heartbeats might be our internal representation of our Universal Clock. They keep us in tune with the Magic of Life.

They should never be wasted.

“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you’d better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you’ll never understand what it’s saying.” ― Sarah Dessen

An amazing insight from Ms. Dessen. Ponder that one for a bit and comment if it resonates with you.

***

Well, with yesterday’s post, I hit the 300 mark. That’s really not a true milestone because I’ve already passed it by over a hundred posts that I’ve already taken down, but I kind of like the sound of it. It’s a nice even number, and the odd number 3, the sum of those digits, represents creativity, birth and the mystical. And WP certainly provides us all a great forum to express that magical creativity. Creating images with words. Pouring feelings on to the pages.

Synchronizing Heartbeats.

Now I mention this because I’d like to take a moment to thank the blogging community here on WP. I’ve been absent for most of this past summer, yet you guys still stuck around, came back to read my latest posts.

And I’m grateful for that.

When you read one of my posts, you are spending your time, your Heartbeats, your most valuable possession, to share thoughts with me.

That is a tremendous gift!

At the moment, I am working on the next chapter of Ongtupqa, and I hope to post it soon. In the mean time, I’ve gone back and updated a couple of my posts by adding video clips.

I added one about the Chiricahua Mountains to the post “The Miracle Half Mile.” And I added one to Returning to the Spirits: Ongtupqa – The Mu*, showing a little more about our River rafting experience.

If you have a few Heartbeats to spare scroll down to the bottom of those posts and you’ll find the links. I think you’ll enjoy the beauty in those clips.

You can match your Nature with Nature.

In Metta

And the Evidence Shows . . .

There are two categories of blog postings of mine that I have not posted to very often. Law and politics. You can see them listed on the left-hand sidebar. 🙂

Although admittedly, I did post a piece on administrative law that gives you a peek into how executive agencies have the power to create legislation and how that power is exercised. See: Framers, Federalists, and the Reality of the Administrative State. And I did do a series on marriage and divorce.* There are a few other posts there as well.

I’ve intentionally avoided these categories during the past four years because politics, in my country anyway, has been a very contentious topic. To say the least. And when I’ve tried to explain the Constitution and statutes, well, let’s just say that people have notions about how the law is “supposed” to work that are largely based on TV shows and outright fantasy.

But today, I’m going to go ahead and post something, very brief, about evidentiary law. Which is relevant to all of the litigation currently swirling about the US election.

But first, a disclaimer. Whenever I write about the law, it should never be construed to be legal advice. I have no attorney-client relationship with any of my readers. If you are involved in a legal situation, I suggest you seek out the advice of competent legal counsel.

And finally, obviously, this is not supposed to be entire encapsulation of evidentiary law. What I’m presenting is a very boiled down summary of what constitutes evidence that attorneys spend their entire legal careers practicing and learning about the various nuances of how to present it. Moreover, the rules of evidence are different in different states and there are differences between the state and federal rules of evidence.

With that disclaimer in mind . . . read on. 🙂

Toxic Positivity – Really???

I know you’ve seen it.  It is as constant as the Northern Star. 

A continual onslaught. 

It is the branding, renaming, inventing, concocting, devising, fabricating, and excogitating of terminology and buzz words in an attempt to “newly” describe some concept or phenomenon that exists in the minds of the propagators.  It could be something that was non-existent until the label was contrived.  Or it may have existed forever, but someone attempts to claim credit by architecting a word or phrase to rebrand the old as new again.  And the definition of some of these terms can be counter-intuitive as they mean exactly the opposite of what you might think they mean. 

Often, the label comes first. 

Then there is a quest to find evidence to substantiate it. 

Magic Things . . .

Well, you can probably guess, this pic is from:

Ongtupqa (Hopi)

Wi:kaʼi:la (Yavapai)

Bidááʼ Haʼaztʼiʼ Tsékooh (Navaho)

Or, as we would call it,

the Grand Canyon.

A beautiful scene definitely full of magic. Considering the Canyon cuts through and reveals almost 2 Billion years of geologic history, yeah, pretty magic 🙂

Consciousness, Emotions, and EMFs

Yesterday’s post, which briefly touched on the symbolism of the Tower of Babylon, got me to thinking more about how humans seem to like to convey human attributes onto the Gods they believe govern their existence in the physical plain and the afterlife. (This statement, of course, presumes there is both a limited physical and eternal Spiritual existence for us.) And, this train of thought led me down the path of pondering just what are emotions, what are thoughts, and what is consciousness??? 

Three questions get three question marks. 😊

To add to this thought-wave pulsing through my brain, I remembered a response I received to a post I made on another social media platform recently.  The post was this well-known quote:

“Holding onto anger is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” – Author Unknown

The response I received was something along this line.  Anger is an emotion given to us by God, and therefore, it is supposed to be experienced and is not detrimental.  That’s my summation of the response anyway, and I may have actually given it more meaning than what the author intended, but that’s the way my brain interpreted it.  I can happily extrapolate further if you like by placing it in the context of current world events.  

Ok, maybe not.  😊

Now, I’ve heard many other claims of things or feelings or “rights” that are supposedly “God-given,” such as for possessing guns, but this comment on anger was a new spin for me. 

BTW, I really don’t think an omnipotent being thought up the idea of a right to gun ownership that then spontaneously worked its way into the American Constitution.   That type of “law” is man-made, as is the weapon itself.  But I digress . . .   

What this is all about, of course, is anthropomorphism. 

We are bestowing human characteristics upon other members of the animal kingdom or upon Gods or even upon other objects – animate or inanimate.  As a literary device, anthropomorphism may make sense because we usually need some descriptive or comparative form in order to carry on a conversion about some things – to visualize them.  It’s also fun.

But utilizing projections and metaphors and analogies is not necessarily the same, nor could it be, as capturing a clear, unfiltered, objective, tangible observation of something in space-time reality. I mean really, why would an all-powerful being be a slave to human infirmities, passions, and prejudices?

I guess that makes four questions. 😊

Now those of us who are not science-deniers, and who have even marginally read about the magnificent machine the human body is, know that a great deal, if not all, of the functions of the body are chemical-electrical in Nature.   If you prefer big words, these functions are neuroanatomical, neurochemical, neuralhormonal, and neurophysiological.

There is no dispute that messages in the brain are tossed about by electrically charged neurons, and as these messages jump from gap to gap between neurons an electromagnetic filed is created around those neurons holding the same information that is being transmitted.  This has been confirmed by electroencephalograms (EEGs) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) and has served as the basis for the theory of “CEMI” – the Conscious Electromagnetic Information Field.

Neuroscientists argue over what this exactly means in terms of consciousness.  And I got to tell you that reading through the scientific journals and news reports, this is some pretty tough shit to conceptualize.  But I’ll try to summarize this in a way we can understand it.

Traditionally, philosophers have argued that there is a mind-body dualism.  This philosophy is a step beyond materialism as it implies consciousness is occurring beyond the physical realm.  Free will is supposed to fit in here somewhere, although there are still debates as whether the mind and spirit are different, or the same, or if the entire “mind” concept should be discarded as being superfluous to a body-spirit duality.

Classic scientists advocate their own monotheism that consciousness is generated by the physical brain itself and its network of billions of neurons.  This is not to say automatically that they disbelieve in the Spirit, but rather that consciousness is distinguished from Spirit.

But the neurobiological dualistic theory being advanced most recently is that we have physical matter, our brain, and electromagnetic fields (EMFs) that compose our consciousness.  In other words, the difference in the dualistic theories of the philosophers and the neurobiologists is the distinction between matter and spirit versus matter and energy.  

Physically speaking, our brains have some “5 million organically-formed magnetite crystals per gram;” each with a north and south pole, “serving as in/out information channels, the basis for awareness,” forming a complex network to broadcast information at “a fraction of the speed of light, unifying conscious experience.”  Whereas the monistic physical model argues integrated information is physical, the dualistic model argues:

“ . . . that nearly all examples of so-called ‘integrated information’, including neuronal information processing and conventional computing, are only temporally integrated in the sense that outputs are correlated with multiple inputs: the information integration is implemented in time, rather than space, and thereby cannot correspond to physically integrated information. . . .

. . .only energy fields are capable of integrating information in space.”

Ok then, if we can wrap our heads around this so-called measurable scientific standard, we not only have to contend with the concept of consciousness not being integrated in physical structures or physical space, but also with the concepts of sentience, awareness and emotion.  All of which can be considered part and parcel of consciousness. 

Maybe we just have too many words here trying to describe the same thing.  One could simply argue that the EMFs created in, or associated with, our brain are the equivalent of what many refer to as the Spirit. 

Energy fields, like Spirits, flow through space and are not bound to physical structures or to time.  

Now, sentience is defined as “the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively” and is distinguished from thought.  Awareness is having “knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists.”  And, emotion is defined as “a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as a strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.”

If the existence of EMFs equals consciousness, and consciousness embodies thoughts, sentience, awareness and emotion, then Mother Earth, with its magnetic field, is indeed a sentient living entity.  As are rocks, plants, and all other forms of life on the planet for that matter.  Maybe we just haven’t learned how to fully measure consciousness in other entities or bridged the communication gap. 

Ponder that for a bit . . .

That’s why I personally find Naturalistically-oriented Spiritual beliefs, such as the ones that First Nations Peoples have adopted, to make so much sense.  Everything is part and parcel of the Source.  “All My Relations” are alive and deserve my recognition and respect.

If we accept that energy fields compose our consciousness, and then add a bit of deductive reasoning, this may very well answer other questions for us and give us a scientific basis for understanding such things as extrasensory perception, telepathic communication, and even how artificial intelligence can transfer to sentience. 

Think of the future of robots.  

And we should also think of the consequences and effects on our own consciousness that creations of ours that emit EMFs may have.  They could be enhancing or very, very destructive. 

So, perhaps this is a scientific quantification of Spirit of sorts.  Science and Religion have always been compatible, so I’m unsure why some try to differentiate them. 

But, getting back to “anger” for a second.  I still believe this powerful emotion is detrimental to us both physically and mentally.   And if you wish to believe it is God-given, then perhaps the Source gives us this emotion as a challenge to discipline our brains and for controlling our thoughts.  After all, traditional dogma tells us that the Source challenges us in many ways to develop and live a spiritual existence free from judgment and the inferior human emotions.  

And no matter how much some people might wish their God was as racist and bigoted and judgmental as they are, I don’t think Gods work that way. 😊

In Metta

Photo: This is an actual image of my brain from an MRI I had. I darkened it a bit so you could see the contrast better of my blood vessels being lit up by the contrast die. Not to many abnormalities present – LOL! I used this image in a bit of prose of mine titled “Neural Roadmaps Revisited.”

Interesting enough, my very first on my blog was titled, “Consciousness.”

Disclaimer: I do not profess to be an expert in such matters as neurobiology, or theology for that matter. I am, however, reasonably educated and enjoy pondering complex questions about the nature of our existence. :-0 I am also open to any other insights or perspectives anyone else may have.

Remember also: the first law of thermodynamics, energy is neither created or destroyed, it merely changes form – thus, it’s eternal in Nature.

Past Blog Posts of Mine on Brain Stuff:

Move Your Body, Move Your Mind

Writing to Survive

Wired

Boring

If My Memory Serves Me

Brain Games

Sources and Further Readings:

Could Human Consciousness Just Be Brain’s Own Electro-Magnetic Field?

Neuroscience Researcher Todd Murphy Says: Consciousness is the Subjective Experience of the Brain’s Magnetic Fields

Controversial New Theory Says Human Consciousness Is … Electromagnetic?

The Experience of Emotion

Feeling Our Emotions

Integrating Information in the Brain’s EM Field: The CEMI Field Theory of Consciousness

Researcher Proposes New Theory of Consciousness

The Conscious Electromagnetic Information (CEMI) Field Theory: The Hard Problem Made Easy?

Fact or Fiction?: Energy Can Neither Be Created Nor Destroyed

A Jumble of Ideas

Wow!  Lately things have been a bit crazy for my mind.  Or maybe it’s like this all the time. 😊

All the cylinders are firing at once as I’ve been working on multiple things. 

New residence Ideas.  New ways to combat health issues.  New ideas for travel destinations.  A “Castle of Memories” and sorting through many of those memories in picture form.  Deep Introspection. 

So many things I want to write about.  It’s left me in a state of confusion, and a sort of passive paralysis. 

In the background of all this mental masturbation are the insane politics the US is going through, and the needless, self-generated, social unrest. 

You can empathically feel the tension.  The anger.  And it is all so unnecessary.  

And draining.

It’s just a little hard to concentrate right now.