T H I N K

HIGHER LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS

I believe that we have a self-imposed limitation on life that keeps us from evolving to a higher level of existence. It is no different from the Dark Ages when intellectual pursuits were placed on hold until the Renaissance turned on the light. There was a time in the not too distant past (in my lifetime) when cell phones, computers, most medical advances, and space travel did not exist. Look at some old time Hitchcock movies, for example and see how folks had to stop at a phone booth and drop a dime into the coin slot or pick up the receiver to ask the operator to connect the caller to a number. Today, on my iPhone, I can instantly find out the time, weather, stock quotes, email, search the internet, play games, take pictures, use GPS to find out how to get somewhere, and oh yes, make phone calls. This is nowhere near the final frontier. And, there is no final frontier.

Somebody had to think outside the box and dream about these things and how to get them into our hands. How much thinking outside the box are we doing every day? Most days I just use things that are already in existence, made by Sony, or Apple, to transact business, be entertained, or just get through the day. Drive to the supermarket, watch the pre-canned news, listen passively to a popular song. Big whoop-de-doo, I downloaded it from iTunes instead of going down to the record store to buy a 45 rpm record. How much time do we devote to dreaming up something new? If not something physical, how about expanding our minds into unexplored territory? We see the boundaries of our lives and assume we cannot go beyond them.

The Earth is flat and if you sail to the end you will fall off and be devoured by monsters. The Sun revolves around the Moon. To believe otherwise is heresy and is punishable by excommunication or worse. Illness can be cured by draining some blood out of a patient. Think of the limitations that we have overcome through enlightened thinking. What are the things we are absolutely sure of today, as individuals, scientists, or political leaders? The immutable truths about science such as the primacy of physical being, negating other dimensions of existence, parallel universes, or our perception of reality (and I don’t mean reality TV.)

If you still think in terms of solid objects, conventional concepts of time and space, and use (estimated) 10% of your brain capacity, you are no better than a serf in Arthurian England living out your life plowing a field from sun-up to sun-down, questioning nothing. Instead of one more insipid TV show about Losers in New Jersey or Fat People sweating off some pounds, or another endless telephone call, Tweet, or text message to your friend describing your “day” could you find a few moments to use some of the 90% unused brain of yours to think of some wild and crazy stuff? If we all just took a moment or two and dreamt up some idea that had never been though of before, and maybe put it on Facebook, or Twitter, or your blog, your choice of modern communication with others, maybe it would be a good thing. Just take this as rattling your cage a little bit so that every day is not just a copy of the day before, endless drivel and chit-chat and stagnation of you as an individual and the world as a whole. Or are you satisfied with being born, treading water for a few decades, and then dying, having made no imprint on the earth other than with your ass in a sofa watching “the Game?”