A New Beginning

On April 5 2024 I was in a bicycle crash while commuting to work. I sustained catastrophic injuries causing paralysis below my shoulders. I was only able to survive due to spinal cord surgery. Given the sudden and extreme disruption to every facet of my life, there have been times when I wished the surgery never happened. However, over time I’ve accepted my fate and have become more driven to survive by those I love.

After months of healing and rehabilitation (and with the help of adaptive technology) I feel ready to blog again. My intention is to use this platform to process my thoughts on the trauma I’ve lived through and still-unreal situation I continue to experience. Though my personal struggles are of little significance compared to geopolitical developments such as the Gaza genocide, Ukraine proxy war, multiple nations on the verge of economic collapse, and the most demoralizing and dysfunctional US presidential campaign season (so far), there are connections which I plan to elaborate on in future posts. In the meantime, you can read more details about what I went through on my fundraising site here: https://helphopelive.org/campaign/24110/

Thoughts About Mind, Consciousness, & Humanity’s Origin

Can understanding the nature of Mind, consciousness and the ET phenomenon lead us to an expanded understanding of our origins?

By Tom Bunzel

Source: The Pulse

As a fan of Eckhart Tolle I’ve always liked his description of Consciousness (or ‘Being’ which seems his preference) as “No Thing.”

This separates “Being” from the world of form, and puts it into the area of what Tesla called “nonmaterial reality.”

I’ve generally thought of this reality as (an) Infinite Mind (again as opposed to “God”) to take out the anthropomorphic bias which seems to permeate organized religion. Political Christianity and some other groups seem to relish an angry and vengeful God to keep the parishioners paying. But when you step away from beliefs that are easily debunked you are still left with a fact.

We seem to be thinking.

Of course, it was Descartes who famously equated thought with Being, which has led to all sorts of issues that Eckhart Tolle describes well in his work.  When we identify with only our thoughts, we have narrowed our focus and reduced reality to labels. 

But the reality of thought persists.  What is it?

Is Thought Electricity in the Brain?

Neuroscientists seem to have identified the presence of thoughts in the brain through various instruments that can pick up electrical signals in parts of the brain and between synapses.

But so far, I don’t believe they can “download” these signals and decode them.

When we observe our thoughts, we can see that they seem to be comprised of “words”.  In fact, I’ve had the experience of thinking in languages other than English (my native language is German) and of course, the thoughts come as words – sometimes in cogent sentences or perhaps just one word. 

So, I was musing, what about ancient humans? Did they need to form a sentence in their brains to warn them that a lion might be in the bushes?

If you’ve ever experienced trauma, you know the answer – our limbic system activates, putting us in “fight or flight” well before any thought ever happens. 

I would suggest that a primal, lower frequency of Mind operates in our limbic system, before thought and language.

So, when did we start thinking in “words”?

According to my AI friend,

“scholars believe it [language] originated at least 100,000 years ago during the Middle Stone Age. The development of language is linked to the increased complexity of human culture and cognition.”

Maybe a tribe of hunter-gatherers developed a sound for “lion” and it became a warning cry.  Then perhaps “big” lion or “many lions”.

We know that our ancients memorialized beasts in petroglyphs of various kinds to communicate but the next big breakthrough was when the words, sentences and thus concepts were able to be preserved.

Writing Was the Big Game Changer

AI tells us that

“Writing systems were invented independently by different civilizations thousands of years ago as a means of recording information. The earliest writing emerged around 3,500-3,000 BCE in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Chinese writing developed around 1,200 BCE.”

So now I will do what they do on Ancient Aliens, which is take a speculative leap based on the foregoing.

It intrigues me that the cultures that seemed to “create” writing all have a version of the Prometheus myth – crediting the “Gods” with giving them the gift of higher knowledge.

To connect this to the beginning of writing seems to make sense, as we have precisely these myths in Mesopotamia (Annunaki) and Egypt. 

And it seems clear that with the onset of the written word (and mathematical notations) great leaps in human progress came almost in quantum intervals.  We got the printing press and eventually our modern technology.

We might speculate that it is likely that Mind has been with us forever, but that thought evolved and expanded dramatically with the beginning of writing – and that writing could easily be seen as a gift that transformed human civilization.   

There May Have Been Consequences for Teaching Humanity

It is also very plausible that any entity that conveyed such a gift to humanity may well have angered other entities that wanted to keep humans in check. 

Cuneiform tablets from the Sumerians describe how one “God” Enki created humans in the image of the Annunaki and gave them knowledge – but most of the humans were wiped out by his rival Enil in the great flood.  We now have evidence in the geological record that such a flood happened about 12,000 years ago.

But just this little thought experiment can vastly expand our sense of our place in the cosmos along with providing a much-needed dose of humility.

What if we did not simply “evolve” with natural selection but received assistance in an area we are now beginning to understand – genetics?  This would indicate a profound connection to the cosmos in a way that is disregarded by our current society.

It is also worth noting, as my AI explains,

“There is evidence that around 250,000-300,000 years ago there were some key genetic changes in early humans that contributed to increased brain size and advanced cognitive abilities compared to other primates.” 

Where these came from or how they came about is still a mystery.

And now that it seems apparent that some visitation by “entities” from the sky is not likely fiction but a reality, it may help to broaden our understanding of Nature and how we got here.

My AI friend makes another statement which I think is exactly backwards:

“Some key developments that enabled writing include the evolution of symbolic thought, the invention of systems of counting, and the emergence of urban civilization needing record-keeping.”

Clearly, it was first language, and then writing and math that led to this evolution of our brains, not the other way around.  Our original brains would have needed to expand to accommodate our first language which took us beyond the limbic system to labeling, and ultimately writing which led us to sharing ideas and thinking “symbolically” – using groups of letters as words and then sentences to convey increasingly complex concepts.

My own experience with neuroplasticity confirms that new uses for the brain expand its capacity, creating new pathways and neural networks. People who keep learning seem less susceptible to dementia.

Opening to the possibility that our evolution was “jump started” by extraterrestrials changes the narrative from chance and natural selection to a more profound connection to the universe in areas that our current science has mostly yet to penetrate. (Nonmaterial reality).

A Clue that Space Is Not Empty

But technology in particular seems to point us in the right direction – it was the offspring of the printing press – the computer – which eventually led us to a huge breakthrough in our awareness of the nonmaterial or seeming empty space as being potentially much much more.

When we developed WiFi suddenly the information encoded in words, thoughts and sentences could travel through space. So who knows what other information or Mind stuff has been around us all along?

Because Mind is everywhere and at the heart of Nature.

Saturday Matinee: Another Day of Life

Another Day of Life

Directed by Raúl de la Fuente, Damian Nenow

An animated documentary presenting a journalist’s poignant perspectives on the horrors of war.

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Source: Spirituality & Practice

You must save something if you can. Because people disappear without a trace. Completely and irretrievably. From the world, and then from our memory.
— Ryszard Kapuscinski

Another Day of Life is an intense, chilling, and convincing anti-war animated documentary about the civil war in Angola at the time of its independence in 1975. With the exit of the Portuguese colonizers, two factions fought with each other to determine who would rule and control the country’s thriving businesses and resources, especially diamonds and oil.

The film is based upon a book by acclaimed Polish war correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932 – 2007) in which he described the situation he witnessed with the Portuguese term confusão, “a state of absolute disorientation.” His story is told through animated recreations of his experiences during the war and filmed interviews with those he met and worked with.

Despite the advice of fellow journalists, Kapuscinski decides to travel from the relatively safe capital of Angola to the southern front in order to interview Farrusco, a military leader of the MPLA, the Soviet- and Cuba-backed People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Other militias were supported by other African interests as well as the United States and South Africa. By the time the war ended in 2002, nearly one million people were displaced and 5,000 were dead.

The film brings us along on Kapuscinski’s travels through dangerous situations and his encounters with memorable people. Since his words (voiced by Kerry Shale) are used for the narration, we empathize with his perspectives — the horror that he and his companion Artur (Daniel Flynn) feel upon coming across a road clogged with corpses, his fascination with a charismatic female freedom fighter named Carlotta (Lillie Flynn), the desire of the people to be photographed so people would know “this is the face I had when I was alive.” At a key moment, the journalist has to decide whether to maintain his objectivity or reveal information that could change the outcome of the conflict.

IndieWire has published a review of Another Day of Life that includes excerpts from interviews with the two directors. We were very impressed with the insights and respect for the substantive themes of this story as explained by director Raul de la Fuente:

“I was fascinated by this surrealistic diary, the desperate chronicle of a reporter at the limit of his strengths, fighting for survival and finding the truth in a chaotic and fuzzy war. This film is a hallucinatory trip into the heart of darkness, a Cold War tale with a thrilling spy mood, magnetic topics, and characters: decolonization, freedom fighters, boy soldiers, epic battles, and, above all, the surreal and poetic approach by Kapuscinski.”

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Watch Another Day of Life on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/movie/another-day-of-life-john-hollingsworth/12738084