Category: human condition

Happy Star Trek Day – How Has Star Trek Positively Shaped Your Life?

TODAY’S QUESTION: WHAT POSITIVE IMPACT HAS STAR TREK HAD ON YOUR LIFE?

So, I know this question won’t resonate with everyone in the group. For those that it does resonate with, and you know who you are, what positive impact has Star Trek had on your life?

MY STAR TREK STORY

My story with Star Trek goes back to my earliest days back in the 1960s. I vaguely remember watching the last couple of seasons in the TOS original run. Then, fortunately, it went into reruns in Kansas City almost immediately on our UHF station.

That ran on late Saturday afternoons and I would stop what I was doing to go inside and watch Star Trek.

When Next Generation came along in the late 80s, it became and remains my all-time favorite television series. I hung on through DS9 & Voyager and then life intervened.

It was only years later that I doubled back and realized what a great series Enterprise actually was and have since consumed the newer series in real time.

For me, Star Trek has always been about Gene Roddenberry’s positive vision for humanity.

1) That there will be a time when humanity will set aside the worst in us and aspire to the highest in us.
2) That there will come a time, beyond our current economic models, where technology will abolish human need.
3) That there will come a time when humanity joins the family of advanced spacefaring cultures that likely populate the galaxy around us.

Roddenberry’s vision came about only after humanity self-destructed and rose again from those ashes. It has always been an remains my hope that we can reach these lofty goals without suffering through that fate.

More than anything, Star Trek taught me, from a very early age, to dream big both for myself and for our species. That vision has and continues to profoundly shape my world view. It has many times girded me against the impulse to turn cynical, give up on humanity.

We are a species with amazing potential and Star Trek is always there to remind us of that.

Happy Star Trek Day!

Ray

We Are Family

It’s rare that I draw a hard ideological line on this blog. Generally, I’m here working to build you and me up with positive messages. Despite what I’m about say, I think this remains in that vein.

One of the criticisms of positive thinking is that it tries to gloss over challenges and problems in the world. I would argue that’s a misreading. Positive thinking is way to fight back and take control of your thinking against the wave of negativity, mean-spiritedness, and anger that pervades our popular culture.

There is much inequity and injustice on our planet. It’s easy to see how people can get dragged down these negative holes.

This opens the door for demagogic leaders and ideologies to take root and flourish. We see this happening right before our eyes around the planet. That’s further fed by a media that tells half-truths tilted toward the prejudices and idiocies of its target audience. These half truths are then repeated and argued over social media, widening divides to the point that people can’t even talk to each other any more. Lifelong friends are unfriended for daring to question our version of the half truth.

It’s as insidious as it is ridiculous. It drives wedges in families, tears the social fabric of nations, and pushes major powers to the brink of crazy confrontations even the most ardent cold warriors averted.

If we are really in the fight for light and for wisdom and for an advancing and evolving humanity taking its rightful place among the galactic community we rightly imagine lies beyond our world; we must immunize ourselves and, to the extent we’re able, immunize those around us against these divisive and destructive mindsets.

The question might come up, “How do we know what the truth is and who to believe?”

Regardless of your personal spiritual belief system, Jesus and Buddha are widely recognized as two humanity’s greatest teachers. I think their words help provide us a kind of truth “Geiger counter” for those of us who seek and peaceful advanced human civilization and seek it soon.

Jesus was talking about false teachers in Matthew. He concluded his discussion of them with a simple test, “Therefore, by their fruits will you them.”

Five hundred years and a thousand miles away, Buddha gave us a similar test when he was pressed about who we should believe and put our trust in.

He said the following.

When you yourselves know directly something is unskillful, unwholesome, blameworthy, rejected by the wise, harmful to yourselves or others, leads to poverty or unhappiness of both yourself and others, you should give it up.

When you yourselves know directly that something is skilled, wholesome, blameless, praised by the wise, and leads to well-being, prosperity, and happiness of both yourself and others, you should accept it and practice it.

If your end game is an advanced human civilization, maximizing its potential, and respecting and allowing each person to reach for their highest aspirations; then these are two great measures to put leaders or ideologies up against.

We are family. It’s a simple fact of cosmology. Our fates are tied together on this tiny blue ball tumbling through the darkness of the cosmos.

It’s also non-negotiable. Leaders and ideologies that don’t bear fruits that 1) Accept that reality and 2) Embrace it and seek to maximize it; should be utterly rejected at this late date in favor of leaders and ideologies that demonstrate the enlightenment required for this civilization to live long and prosper.

Wherever you are on your journey today, you are awesome!

Ray

Mind IS Over Matter

I agree with Gandhi here. There’s a transcendent force that goes beyond the physical and beyond the senses that challenges our conception of the universe.

For more than 30 years, I’ve been studying the human mind, consciousness, and spiritual, scientific, and alternative explanations for them.

I’ve come to believe one thing quite firmly. Our current scientific consensus on the composition of the universe is upside down. That consensus contends that the universe is made of matter and that mind/consciousness is what’s called an “emergent property” of matter.

The idea is that, given enough time, the physical properties of the universe become organized enough to birth biological life and the intelligence that comes with. Eventually, you wind up with an intelligence as complex as a human being.

Here’s my contention and it’s the baseline all the affirmations, positive quotes, and inspiring messages here. Mind/consciousness is not an emergent property of matter. Matter is an emergent property of mind, consciousness, and their output – thought.

That’s the reason saying and thinking positive or negatives things is creative in the world.

Again, the scientific consensus argues that mind cannot alter the objective reality of matter. However, there’s a paradox in that view. They’d readily agree that hands and feet can make things happen in the world. Hands and feet don’t invent things. They are physical extensions of mind. In that way, mind does alter reality using them as tools.

Can mind, though, alter reality directly? Is mind actually the source as the causative force underlying the physical world?

I think yes. That’s the evidence of 30 years of study and practice in my own life. That’s the conclusion of numerous great spiritual teachers. Even the science that scoffs at this idea is starting more and more to prove the truth behind this conception of the universe.

The reason it’s not glaringly obvious is that our ability to use this truth to our advantage is limited today. It’s limited, perhaps by the biology we’re working with, but I contend it’s limited more by thousands of years of human thinking that has mistaken the material world as the underlying reality.

We’re born into all this shine and sizzle constantly feeding our senses and we assume it’s the truest of true.

Many of us have begun to suspect that the blinders and the limits are about to come off humanity, opening a new reality and possibilities we’ve never before considered, even for a moment.

So, when we use affirmations and intention and prayer and meditation to bend matter, we should not be surprised it can. We should not be surprised that the more we practice, the better we get at it.

Perhaps, it’s a kind of homecoming for us. Focused and undistracted by the shiny things around us, we are reestablishing ourselves as the powerful creators we always were.

Just in case no one else has reminded you today, you awesome.

Ray

The Water, the Rock, and the Maginot Line

After World War I, France built a massive line of fixed fortified concrete bunkers and walls. It was called the Maginot Line and it’s gone down as one of history’s great blunders. The goal was to prevent future invasions by Germany like the one in 1914.

The problem was the French were fighting the previous war and the Germans were preparing themselves to fight the next one. In a World War I framework, an adversary would have been crazy to conduct a frontal assault against the Maginot Line.

By 1940, when the Germans quickly overran France, the Germans simply flew their planes over it and drove their tanks around it. The massive fortification did nothing to defend France and their reliance upon it caused them not to otherwise prepare.

The stark imagery of this example has gone down in history as a metaphor of stolid, dogmatic thinking in the face of change.

Wisdom is adaptation to the moment. Fixed thinking, like the Maginot Line, is not up to facing new challenges.

A similar metaphor is that of the a rock and water. A rock is solid, strong, immovable. Water is soft and pliant. It goes over and around the rock. Watched for a day or a week, the rock appears to be winning the battle. It’s holding its ground and standing firm. However, come back in a year or five or fifty. Over time, the water will wear the rock into nothing.

New challenges require us to be agile and adaptive. We live in a world, especially now, that is not only experiencing massive change in this moment, but is nearing the birth of a very different world where many old paradigms are going to be tested.

If we don’t adapt, we can look forward to the fate of the rock and the Maginot Line.

If we work to understand the difference between immutable principles and merely habitual thinking, a very important distinction, we will find ways to navigate and thrive in this new world.

Better days are ahead for humanity, if we’re smart, flexible, and principled.

My grandmother lived from 1904 to 1988. When she was five, her family got into a horse-drawn wagon and rode outside of town to observe the 1910 passing of Halley’s Comet. When she was 64, she witnessed a man walking on the moon.

Wagon thinking would never have gotten us to the moon in six decades. New thinking was required.

It’s very likely that in two or three decades our world will be more advanced and changed relative to today than 1969 was to 1910.

That kind of change holds both peril and opportunity. Who will we be? Will our technology run us or will we use our technology to benefit humanity in ways never before imagined? Will power and wealth be held in fewer a fewer hands or will we finally create an egalitarian society where our genius meets our basic needs and we have the freedom to explore our highest aspirations?

I don’t and I won’t let this moment get me down. We’re going through the growing pains of massive transformation. Whether it is to the benefit or detriment of most human beings is being decided, as tomorrow always is, by our thoughts, words, and actions today.

Stay safe. Stay well. Amazing things are on the way! Oh, and by the way, just in case no one else has reminded you today, you are awesome!


Ray

I Am Human – Day 297 of 365 Days to a Better You

I am human.

I have let anger boil when I should have let compassion rain down. I have felt afraid when the moment called for bravery. I have taken when I should have given. I have ignored the needs of others when those needs were right in front of me. I have wanted to be right more than I wanted to be good. I have failed to say thank you more times than I can count. I have lived a lesser version of me, when my greatness shined right in my eyes.

I am human.

I have been a hero in small ways and large. I have tipped more than the service called for. I have handed people money on the street rather than walking by. I have said yes when I really wanted to say no. I have put the good of others ahead of my own. I have succeeded when everything said I should have failed. I have stood against the odds, my fears, my selfishness, and all the negativity the world could throw at me. I have seen my greatness and that of those around me and reminded us all of it.

I am human.

Some moments I’m brilliant and some I am dumber than a rock. I wake up each day and I do the best I can as my awareness, experience, and circumstances allow me to see it. I will do better tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I will encourage others to do the same. Together we will create the world we are capable of having; a world better than today, and yesterday, and the day before that.

We are human!

If no one has reminded you today, you are AWESOME! Have a fantastic evening and I will talk to you again soon.

Ray

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