what does it mean to be human?

Artificial intelligence and technology are weaving themselves into our lives to the point where we don't even realize how dominated we already are by it.  Already much of our lives happen in or behind the computer or smart phone screen.  Already most of our work is software based or supported.  Already much of our leisure time activities are brought to us through Facebook groups, apps such as Meet-up, and online event calendars.  Even the yoga class get's scheduled and paid through an app, and you can make the restaurant reservation through another one.  People's cellphone home screens look like a stamp collection.

 Most corn, soybeans and cotton in the US is genetically modified, a technological process that allows the introduction of genetic features from a different species, even animal, in order to force certain features on the organism, such as insect or drought resistance.  Animals can be genetically modified as well and supposedly GMO salmon will soon enter the market.

 In utero testing during pregnancy allows verification of the existence of genetic diseases, with the option to abort.  Last year, a Chinese scientist was rebuked by the international scientific community for going a step further.  With the help of the gene editing technique Crispr he altered a gene in two Chinese twin embryos before implanting them in utero with the goal of making the girls resistant to HIV infection.  

 This of course raises the question where we're going with this, a question Yuval Noah Harari eloquently explores in his books, 21 Questions for the 21st Century and Homo Deus.  Is the next step the manipulation of human genetic material, not to safeguard us from hereditary genetic diseases, but simply to make us better, super humans of sorts? Are we then not approaching what we so condemned about the Nazi regime?  Will this create a super human class for and of those who can afford such interventions with the rest of us left behind in servitude?  

 Perhaps the question is bigger yet.  What makes us human?  Is it our flaws and foibles, our complete individuality, even our mortality?  If so do we have to accept the good with the ugly? Will we become less human if we seek technologically manipulated superiority?  Will we seek immortality?  Is immortality on the physical level even achievable?  What role does consciousness play in the definition of humanness?   

Will we ultimately have to realize that the answer to our humanness cannot be found on the physical plane, in technology and artificial intelligence, and that immortality already exists, albeit on the spiritual plane?  How far will we take this experiment to find out our true humanity?

a healthy dose of skepticism

It's not because most do it that it's right, or worthwhile repeating, or adopting without questions.  Living with intention means asking questions and doing what you do with awareness - so knowing why you do, what you do, the way you do it.  When you don't question you conform.  You don't stick out, but you may not have made an informed decision either.    

 Over here people who eat meat mostly eat steaks, chops and roasts.  In other parts of the world all parts of the animal are used, and offal or innards are eaten so no part of the animal gets wasted.  Over here we pay an awful lot for college.  In other parts of the world college is free.  Over here we pay lots and lots for medical care.  In other parts of the world medical care is free or inexpensive. Many boys over here believe most colors are for girls, especially pink and purple.  Hence they wear drab blacks and greys and blues and browns.  

Do you feel more comfortable conforming?  Or do you prefer to dig deeper because you wonder why?  Going against the grain is bit like swimming upstream and it forms character because you have to defend your other way of doing or thinking.  It doesn't matter what it's about, but it matters whether or not you've thought about it before making a decision.

we need hope

What would life be without hope?  The teaser weather out there, 60F/17C with a sunny sky, is delicious and totally un-February like and feels so good.  At lunchtime I let the sunshine soak my face to catch up on some wintry vitamin D deprivation, and revel in the illusion that spring might be right around the corner. The breeze felt so balmy and I opened the windows to let the air in.  After three months of cold and dark and gray this unexpected weather intermission is so welcome and bright.  

Sometimes it's hard to wait, whether for spring or for something else. But what would life be without hope?  Hope keeps us going, whether we yearn for spring or for something else.

"to know is not enough"

Watching a cooking show does not make you a chef or even a home cook, you have to actually chop some vegetables and get behind the stove.  Learning about birds in a lecture hall without going out into nature and observing them, does not make you an ornithologist.  A travel agent who hasn't travelled cannot be effective and helpful, and a male ob/gyn is unable to relate to birthing in the same way a female ob/gyn can. I know quite a few coaches and holistic healers who overcame big time health or life challenges, and have turned those experiences into teachable material.  They are effective and convincing coaches and healers because "they've been there, done that."   

Often we wonder "Why me?" Why do we have to go through a particular memorable  or haunting experience?  Without experiences life is flat, and our personality remains flat.  Experiences "put hair on your chest," as my husband would say. Hence we have to feel it, live it, be it, wade through it, struggle with it, until we come out the other end.  Going through a hero's journey makes us a different person, a more complex, compassionate and understanding person.  "Non satis scire," or "To know is not enough," is Hampshire College's motto.  The essence of learning is experience. “ Experiences as soul work” is an earlier related post.

a gratefulness journal

This scintillating splendor wouldn't be possible without the icy rain we had the other day and the ensuing arctic cold. Yet, we have a habit of complaining about the cold, about staying indoors, about the road conditions and what not.

 Last year I began a gratefulness journal.  “Bad is five times more powerful than good,” explains Paul Dieppe of Exeter University and a voice for the advancement of energy and spiritual healing.  Our brain is wired that way, hence reprogramming takes time.  Every night I enter at least three experiences from the day I am grateful for, thus training my focus to the positive.

You can focus on the bad road conditions or enjoy the breathtaking and magical beauty of nature during this time of year.  Your choice.

smiling by myself

Do you ever catch yourself smiling spontaneously?  I don't mean in a social setting with people, but spontaneously, all by yourself?   

Earlier I saw our resident red cardinal in the shrub with his wife - cardinals are lifelong companions - and the sight brought a spontaneous smile to my face.  On a New Year's walk a few days ago, several beautiful nature sights made me break out spontaneously into a smile.  Earlier I went outside and the winter sun shone on my face.  I felt myself smiling - no one around.  And of course the many absolutely adorable animal video clips that abound on social media are guaranteed to elicit a curling up of the corners of my mouth.

Sarah Stevenson writes in her guest blog in Psychology Today about the endorphin feedback loop that happens when we smile in reaction to someone else’s smile, “…when I smile, the world smiles back.” Well, nature and animals don’t smile. Yet, my subconscious or my soul picks up the unconditional love of animals, or the unconditional beauty of nature, and spontaneously releases endorphins and elicits a smile just like in a social setting with a person.

Stuff for thought.

an invitation

While New Year's resolutions usually don't stick - people have good intentions that they cannot sustain - it is nevertheless nice that we have divvied our time interpretation up into segments and get this feeling of closure at the end of each year, and with it the sense of a fresh start.  

 Not only has 2018 been a challenging year for me personally, for the world too it has been quite a perplexing one, making me sometimes wonder if we are retreating in our human consciousness evolution.  I thought we were doing quite nicely there, perhaps not as fast as I would like it from an environmental perspective, lagging in other areas too, but all in all improving the human condition generally and slowly it seemed.  

 I would like to end this year on a positive note, and set an optimistic tone for the next one. "To become more conscious is the greatest gift anyone can give to the world; moreover, in a ripple effect, the gift comes back to its source," David R. Hawkins, who I referred to elsewhere, wrote in his 1995 Power vs. Force: An Anatomy of Consciousness.  "And," he continues, "any individual increase also raises to some degree the consciousness of everyone on the planet."  It's not so much what others do and think (and getting upset over that), it's what you do and think.  "What matters is what calls you, and to do that," Charles Eisenstein said along the same line in June during the The Space Between Stories retreat I attended.  

 In that spirit I would like to invite you to be just a little bit more You this coming year, becoming more conscious of your emotional needs.  When your own emotional needs are more fulfilled and better met, you not only help yourself but everyone around you. It raises us all up a bit.  Happy New Year!

a little light

Our world in all of its myriad expressions, political, social, cultural, economic, and environmental, is in crisis and it is our own collective doing.  We are in it deeply.  But the bigger question is if, how, and when we can finally get around to doing something about it?  Can we surmount this hurdle collectively and initiate a turn for the better?  Can we as a species make it, and make it well?  Can we become more compassionate with each other, since we cannot exist in a vacuum, and with our planet Earth, without which we cannot not exist?

 While the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, hence the darkest time, it is also the turning point as we all know.  From here on in the days become longer, and light increases gradually. Nothing very particular, about that, it happens every year.  But this year is special because the solstice coincides with the full moon tomorrow.  On top of that it coincides with the annual Ursid meteor shower.  And, last but not least, Christmas, the festival of love and joy, is just a few days away.  

 I like to see it as a wonderfully symbolic and fantastic concurrence.  I also like the idea of seeing parallels or synchronicities, it inspires hope.  So this year the darkest day falls together with the brightest night and the festival of love and joy.  Perhaps the Talmudic observation that "a little light chases away a lot of darkness" is worth pondering.   

Wishing you all so much light and love!

wow experience

A Wow Experience is when you are completely in the moment, enthralled, getting a sense that you're connected to something bigger, and experience utter joy and meaning.    Wow Experiences go hand in hand with synchronicity and serendipity (see an earlier post on that).  We have probably all had at last one Wow Experience, and all we want is more Wow Experiences. May I please have another one of those?

A few weeks ago I had a Wow Day.  The people I met that day, our mutual missions, what we did, our synergies and conversations  - all seemed to be in complete alignment with the universe and with me.  The energy that day was just flowing, everything seemed easy and joyful, and as if things were exactly how they were meant to be. I was on Cloud 9.  

When you're at a certain energetic or frequency level you tend to have more Wow Experiences and Wow Days because you tap into a higher consciousness and energetic level. Better yet, once you’ve had some Wow Experiences you are able to look beyond yourself and create a Wow Experience for someone else, or perhaps offer an act of random kindness.  You have probably heard it said that people get more out of helping others than helping themselves.

Have you had a Wow Experience or Wow Day lately?   Would you like one?         

embeddedness

It somehow hit me this morning how our children embed us in the fabric of life, nature and the cosmos. It's as if my energy got suspended in mid-air if I passed without having had children, because there would be no biological link extending into the future. The energy of my existence extends back in time via my ancestors.    But through my children and grandchildren my beingness, my imprint, my legacy, weaves itself into the cloth of life forward as well.  It's as if I was a pearl on an endless string that extends into the past and the future.

This interwovenness with all of life and all the people I spend this lifetime with, and possibly those with whom I've spent other lifetimes with, gives me a sense of belonging and of grounding.  I feel a connectedness, and that I'm part of something bigger.  Certainly, I'm not an island - see an earlier post on that.  

Spiritually or cosmologically or energetically, is there a difference between biological family ties and emotional friendship or spousal ties, or is that only a physical perception and interpretation?  If you believe in reincarnation, we are part of a group of souls who reincarnate together again and again, switching roles and genders around for the sake of this game.   My son might have been a good friend in another life, my best friend might have been my husband or wife in another life and so on.   Of course, if you don't believe in reincarnation this is all rubbish.

What's your take?