Week One: The Meaning of Time

A. Answers to this week's quiz:

1. What attracts me to Chinese Medicine...

The basic premise that humans are part of the natural world--a premise I think is integral to Chinese Medicine--sits right with my inner compass. Curved lines, the cycles of the earth, wild wisdom, the pull of the full moon, the open sky, running in the wind, floating in the ocean, building a campfire, digging in the dirt, meeting eyes with a squirrel, a hummingbird, a harbor seal, a grizzly bear...well... I feel at peace with these experiences (the grizzly bear was behind a large fence!) more so than with cold tile floors, windows that won't open, sirens and alarms, perfect angles, wall to wall carpeting, and the belief in scientific absolutes. What does it mean to be well? What does it mean to be sick? I see a lot of people out there sleeping on the streets driven mad by our human-made structures and "order", and not getting well after ten minutes in a doctor's office and a lifetime of drugs...I see a lot of people dressed tightly in costume following the leader and dying of heart attacks, with a belief that they must squeeze themselves in to this mechanical order of contemporary "civilization"...There is hope with Chinese Medicine. And the practice has been around for thousands of years. I'm betting something wise has been learned in that time.

My attraction to the healing arts stems from an in-born passion to know the human body and mind. I want to transform my knack for identifying the location of someone else's pain into helping to heal that pain. In most cases the removal of their suffering will lead to a reduction in suffering for us all.

2. What do I honestly think of Physics, really?

Physics is one way of looking at the world. It is no more--or less--relevant than poetry. It's a lens, a path of investigation, and one that, like poetry, has yielded some fine stories. However, the rules that physicists have birthed can be used for large scale destruction. Come to think of it, though, poetry may have led to some bloody revolutions...so yes, physics is like poetry. Of all the sciences it seems to be the most poetic, the most willing to investigate the invisible, the most mystical. If I had to choose one branch of science to be my religion, it would be physics. Where the questions are bigger than the answers. I like that.

3. Now that I think about it, have I ever experienced time slowing down?

About six years ago, laying in a strange bed hundreds of miles from home, time stopped for me. It was like walking into the point between being asleep and being awake, though I was fully awake. It felt like "time" had become a sphere, as though I had entered into wormhole, and there around me was always. The past, present, future didn't exist, only there with me then was eternity. Now was forever. There was no yesterday, no tomorrow. Something with the air was different; it felt as if my lungs had never breathed before that moment. Everything hovered and buzzed in peace.

B. My reflections on this week's class: The Meaning of Time

This was a "timely" class for me. I've been thinking about clocks recently--wanting to get rid of them. Without clocks--and without being so caught up in time--the world would, I presume, become much more vibrant, animated, and real. Just like it does when I go on an Internet diet. You're forced to get your head out of the flattened two-dimensional world and then the eyes pop open, allowing greater richness, clarity, and dimension. Without time, the world becomes embodied. There is space.

Our westernized conception of time is kind of a bummer for me. I am often "late"; wanting to finish what I'm doing and resenting some pre-arranged agreement to be ready for something at a certain time. How the heck am I to know what's going to happen between now and then? How do I know how I'm going to feel when the time comes?

I think it's trippy, to use a very scientific word, that physicists are investigating things like what happened in the first milliseconds after the Big Bang occured. I like considering ideas like black holes and white holes because I think they are metaphors for the rest of life. As I said above, maybe not so plainly, I think the discoveries we find in physics is just God talking to us in another language that some people are inclined to speak. Similar lessons could be learned from the mundane experience of buying ice cream.

I would like to more deeply understand many of the concepts that were brought up in class so that my thinking about them is not so immature.

C. Impressions on the links about Quantum Mechanics:

I felt a little crazy after pursuing those links on Quantum Mechanics. I kept wanting to understand the content better which led me deeper and deeper into thought chaos. Coming out of it, with my mind swirling, I realized a few things:

Time = Change

The only constant is change--if you are looking for a constant to find comfort in, go for that one because it is the only constant there is.

Physics seems to be all about motion. I read on one of those web sites, "Nothing can ever be at rest." Whoa. Doesn't the universe ever get tired?

I shouldn't get my mind all wrapped up in physics theories and go out and try to use a screwgun. I got really mixed up by the real world all of a sudden. I think I need to integrate the theory and doing parts of my brain better...it made for a difficult morning trying to build some simple flower beds. I just kept thinking "What is light?" and "Time doesn't exist!" and "A time machine will never work because everything is happening all at once. Running time backwards assumes time is linear and that the changes never happened!" and finally, " "How many physicists have gone mad!?" Meanwhile, I had to fix a lot of crookedly screwed together pieces of wood...

This is an interesting link I found on scientific inventiveness and sanity... http://www.uh.edu/engines/ut-1.htm