Star Full of Skies

Over a lifetime, every one develops a model of reality through which to interact with and make sense of the world.  If this is fragmented, then the world will seem to be divided into us and them, leading to the concept of the enemy and that which is alien and unknown.  Through nurture and shared language and experience, each group or tribe will have its own distinct perception of the reality that surrounds them, so that they will not be able to fully make sense of how the ‘other’ thinks and operates within the world, and may consider them strange and not quite rational.

Yet there are those wise ones who can step outside the framework that their society has constructed for them, and can detect and repair many of the fissures whilst pushing the envelope; breaking the boundaries and seeing a reality beyond, which can encompass and explain the truths of multiple societies as one coherent reality for all; containing many models successfully and harmoniously living and working together for the common good; many skies become one under the same sun.

 

Let Go of Everything

Material possessions can overwhelm, yet our physical presence is the tether which fastens us to reality, and it is how we use and develop those things that determines whether they feed our hearts or close our minds.

Man produces ever more faithful and diverse ways to capture fleeting moments; disseminating thoughts and feelings and meaning like a wave riding out into a sea of noise, if you listen you can hear the minds of others calling out to change the world.  Yet they are no longer messages in bottles, but an interwoven fabric of reality, steadfastly forming a better tomorrow.

Man is upon the edge of an era of recording and communication in which one can become so deeply immersed that suspension of disbelief merges into reality, with the mechanism immaterial and the medium myriad minds.  Yet suspended in this ocean one must also make time to go back to the real physical and cognitive space of right here right now, back in the room; but let’s go outside and breathe; take a deep breath…

Rebooting the Brain; and the Evolving Mind...

We all experience the world indirectly through a model of the world held within our minds (physically contained within the structure of our brain). This model thus forms our reality, and all that we experience flows through it.  As a consequence, we cannot consciously experience anything that is not contained within our personal world model or very close to its performance envelope.  The integration of new experiences over time leads to mental tiredness and, if combined with sleep deprivation, can result in severe headaches and then hallucinations (essentially dreaming whilst awake). 
 

In the ‘normal’ mode of brain operation, one’s world model, starting from a rudimentary form at birth, is continually updated when asleep (and unconscious*) as we integrate our life’s new experiences into it.  This normally occurs one day (night) at a time during the process of sleeping.
 

One’s world model is built up over life’s experiences, but is personal, dependent upon individual experiences, one’s perception of them, one’s actions in response to them, developed pattern of behaviour, etc., which may be maladaptive.  One’s world model will also contain important areas/crevasses within which lie traps when interacting with new or slightly different elements of the world, and the person is likely to completely fail to cope in these situations – becoming very stressed/angry; acting totally out of character; experiences lapses of consciousness following which they don’t remember what they did – or at least, in a most superficial and biased form. 
 

Now: this world model may be patched – providing one knows where to patch it, and the erroneous/maladaptive processes may be rerouted – again providing one knows where they are; but just as evolution has led to many ‘errors’ of inefficient replumbing/reallocation of resources, this would result in a sub-optimal and fragile world model.  A better solution would be to use one’s life experiences to drive a reprogramming/rebuilding process, and to augment them with further knowledge gained by the wisest in society over millennia combined with the latest knowledge that science affords us. 
 

However, whilst the mind can adjust rapidly, the brain has a physical structure which can be grown and trained over time so that, just as the body and brain can learn new skills, the brain is exercised appropriately day by day (well, night by night, actually – but we won’t get into that here) until the world model itself has been rebuilt from the ground up to support the most efficient and effective experience of life that the person can achieve.  In order to do this, the world model has to be placed in a state within which all its preconceptions (structures) are testable and malleable, and the person also needs to be conscious and in a safe environment, because the level of consciousness required is that of a new born baby, known more negatively in many instances as psychosis – which is one reason why a safe, comforting, well controlled environment is vital. 
 

Hypervigilance is a common feature in this state of consciousness, heightening experience of real and psychosomatic inputs, along with hyper-cognisance.  As a result, the person may experience various sensory responses, hallucinations and perceptual and cognitive distortions – such as feelings of intense heat, light, relief of pain, profound peace, calm, serenity, etc. and, having regressed to a ‘childlike’ state, speaking in tongues, etc..  Further features may include shaking, falling to the floor in an apparent fit, writhing on the floor and so on, as the brain is effectively being recalibrated and the normal paralysing response to sleep is not  available (otherwise similar things would happen when sleeping, of course).
 

Hence the much abused expression, to be ‘Born Again,’ and all the confusion about the existence or otherwise of G-d and so on.  Incidentally; I’m sure that you can also see how water could be turned into wine in this regard – as far as the behaviour of the Imbibers would be concerned...
 

*   Although during the first few years of life the world model is updated whilst awake also; as there is a great deal to learn, errors have to be corrected where possible in real-time through exploring - and time is of the essence...

 

Born Again?

In rebirth; the brain and mind and their subsystems are explored and they are pushed to the limits of their current abilities and experience in order to test the integrity of the world model upon which one’s reality rests, and to identify a safe mode for healing or coming to acceptance of any wounds from the past. 

That is: being born again is essentially restarting the brain and mind and redirecting it on a path towards wisdom, peace, compassion and personal fulfilment, encompassing all that has been learned thus far in the journey through life and, in entering a new state of consciousness, opening one’s mind to all that life has to give.  Only those who have personally experienced this can understand how deeply significant it is, as it is beyond words; beyond thoughts; beyond expression; beyond language; beyond faith: faith holds the key...

What should result is a combination of a well-developed world model being continually refined day by day, and all the awareness, vibrancy and immediacy of living life in the moment; as if every day, hour, minute and second could be your last, and the exquisite ecstasy and peace that this combined state brings.  In this, one achieves the highest level of consciousness that a human being can safely support over the longer term, based upon strong, continually improving foundations.

To summarise: being born again is about learning from, yet letting go of, any pain from the past, whilst finding or being guided to the way to happiness, fulfilment and becoming the best that you can be, and to knowing what you want to achieve with your life and striving with all your being to achieve it...

 

 

Speaking in Tongues

The human brain/mind can be viewed as a powerful pattern recognition system, designed to construct meaning in real time from situations using a semantic framework which is expressed as language.  In this context, language may be viewed as forming a conscious internal voice forming a sequential description of the situation. 

New born babies have no vocal language apart from primitive sounds which have their equivalent in many animals, but they do have a powerful propensity to learn from their environment, to make connections and, most importantly, to grasp the relationship between the symbols and structures of language and the world around them – developing an internal model of the world based upon the language(s) they are exposed to.

This forms their framework for thinking within the normal state of consciousness, although in fact one can only stray a little from the machine that is this semantic framework whilst in this state: through poetry, for example, capturing nuances that the language is not ‘designed’ to support, or through neologisms which build upon existing language to further express developing knowledge of the world...

In contrast, young children may be defined as psychotic for the first few years of life; thinking outside language and continuously developing their world models dynamically whilst both awake and asleep (the world model of a typical adult only varies when asleep or when placed under severe pressure to act in a different way from that which their life thus far has equipped them for.)

The techniques employed by religions to alter states of consciousness can place an adult in the same state of consciousness as a new born baby – hence the term ‘being reborn’*, and can allow access to sounds which have been suppressed since language was learnt.  However, unlike the new born baby, the adult does have a model for language and so, when in the right state of mind they are encouraged to babble and let their minds run free, their babbling will settle upon structures which contain many of the elements of language – a language which they are essentially making up ‘on the fly.’ 

Of course, it is likely that various elements of other languages to which they have been exposed but which they don’t understand will be included in this ‘speaking in tongues,’ but it is important that structures and phrases that they do understand are avoided at this time, because they will tend to push the speaker back out of this state of consciousness and into the conventional language-based level of consciousness of modern man...

*   Note that there are many other aspects to being reborn that will be discussed in later posts...