Happy to be Alive this Day

Tuesday evening, November 4th, 2008 - I'm exceedingly pleased to see what is happening. A record number of Americans have turned out to reinvigorate the democratic process. I really feels like a new era in America.

The preceding difficult 8 years frankly lead me to question the intelligence of the American populace in twice electing Bush. Apparently, it took a disastrous war and an economic meltdown for people to wake up. But if this is what was necessary to make it possible for Barack Obama to be elected the first black president of the United States then these unfortunate events have served a purpose. The ramifications are so far reaching as to be hard to grasp at the moment. Significant for me is a restoration of respect for the US in the eyes of the world. There's no doubt that there are more difficulties ahead, and that the challenges we face won't be resolved overnight, but there is without a doubt a new optimism in the land, and that we have an extraordinary individual taking the reins of the U.S. government.

Why I'm a Vegetarian

Thirty-five years ago I took religious vows committing to vegetarianism (no meat, fish or eggs) and abstinence from alcohol and recreational drugs. Some idealists from that time have abandoned their vegetarian diets and there seems to be increasingly vocal camps claiming that vegetarianism is unhealthy. An impartial review of the peer-reviewed nutrition literature will reveal that the bulk of evidence indicates that vegetarianism confers many health benefits including increased longevity. But I've maintained my vows for more that health reasons. Moral and ethical concerns are crucial but foremost is my desire to live in the most elevated manner that I am capable of.

By "elevated" I mean spiritually attuned, aligned with a higher purpose, not unduly bound to the physical. Eating meat, in my opinion and experience, makes a person less capable of vibrating at a higher frequency, makes one more dense, more firmly bound to the physical. It seems self-evident to me that by consuming the flesh of a creature that has lead a miserable life and then died in terror one takes on not only karma but the heavy vibrational load that is stored in the cells as well.

It's essential that we, as creatures of this planet, feel connected to the Earth. But eventually we must all leave this Earth, and if your aspiration is to do so with joy instead of fear, then your life is best spent doing those things that allow you to function in this world without being overly bound to it. Selfless service, love, praising the One True Source of all, and sustaining our bodies in a manner that has a minimal impact on the planet all support this purpose.

The Tipping Point

There's a reason we're here. Events in our lives help us to grow, to evolve, to develop deeper levels of awareness and understanding. When life dishes out tough times, how does one decide whether the lesson is to stay positive and endure or the message is that change is needed? The answer is probably that both are needed, but what if you can't figure out the change part? It's been my experience that life will continue to hit you over the head with circumstances until you "get it." Still, there is much to be learned from enduring hard times and sometimes this really is the entire lesson.

Physics, spirituality and religion

Being both a physicist and a man of faith I get asked about how I reconcile the two. People ask for confirmation of, or insights into, the latest book popularizing quantum mechanics or some other esoteric physics theory. Then there are the neo-athesists, emboldened by the writings of militant materialists like Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), who find me, someone they think should know better, a ripe target for pointing out the error of my ways.

Well, first off, my appreciation of the marvels of the physical realm in no way subtracts from my appreciation of the transcendent realm. Both are equally real and beautiful. Furthermore, while it's abundantly evident that people's blind adherence to dogma has caused much suffering in the world, it's also obvious that religion fulfills a fundamental human longing to connect with something greater than the small self.

I began studying physics because I wanted to know all I could about the inner workings of the universe. But while physics amazes me, so does chemistry, biology and even mechanical engineering. It's all amazing. And I think it's great when people get inspired by quantum mechanics, which shows that we really are all connected. But physics can only hint at the inner truths. To be meaningful to the individual these truths have to be experienced directly. And that's what the materialists don't get. These fundamental truths of existence can be taught, which means they have an existence in the material world in the form of speech or the written word, but their undeniable reality is in the transcendent realm, and can only be experienced by leaving the mind and material world behind.

Neuroscientists are beginning to identify the unique patterns of brain activity associated with transcendent states. And transcendent states can be induced by drugs or direct stimulation of the brain. Does this make the soul a product of the brain? Hardly. What is identified as soul, or the part of us that experiences the transcendent through the body, is just a projection of the timeless, limitless true self onto the material realm. And just as a photograph of a place is not the place itself, the soul that can be probed and quantified is not the true soul.

Someone who lives only in the material realm, who relies entirely on the analytical mind to tell them what's real and what is not real, has no qualifications to comment on the transcendent realm. These people are welcome to point out the shortcomings in how humans behave, but cannot possibly have anything meaningful to say about the human experience outside of the material realm, because it's territory they have never explored. I claim that the materialists must be in denial, because even if they ardently wish to believe that the physical realm is all there is, life will deal them transcendent experiences, which they must deny in order to maintain their worldview.

I choose to practice the Sikh religion. It speaks to me. It makes sense. It isn't dependent on dogma and encourages everyone to experience for themselves the transcendent. It recognizes a Creator as the source of everything and teaches that praising that One is the best use of this human life. The One is unknowable through the mind but can be experienced.

We must use the mind to manage day-to-day living, to advance human knowledge, and to appreciate the world around us. But to fully appreciate life and to make the most use of our time in this world, we must know how to set aside the mind and dwell in a higher awareness. Only then will the mysteries of the transcendent be accessible to us.

Sweat Lodge on Solstice

Doing a “sweat” is not the same as going to the sauna or steam room. Unlike those leisurely pursuits, the sweat that my wife, Jitka, and I did the evening of December 20^th was intense, prayerful and transformative. The invitation came from my wife’s teacher, Paul Bergner, and the sweat was led by a man named Ryan.

We began by making prayer ties, a meditative process meant to focus our intent and attune our spirits. Next we walked from Ryan’s house through the snow to the lodge, constructed from willow branches covered with blankets. Once we had gathered inside, stones from a large fire by the lodge were brought in and placed in a pit in the center. When the flap over the door was closed it became completely dark inside, save the faintly glowing stones. Ryan, who has been trained in traditional Lakota ways, poured water on the stones, creating an intense heat. He led prayers and chants and kept us focused, reminding us why we were there. Between the “rounds” the door flap was opened, and fresh hot stones were added, but we didn’t leave the lodge until the fourth round was completed.

The experience was intense, and despite my best efforts to stay focused during the sweat, my mind did wander and my prayers were somewhat muddled. Yet, while recovering in Ryan’s house, now well past midnight, I realized that the world had changed over the course of the past few hours. There was a tangible sense of being in a new year. Even now, five days later, I am still seeing things with fresh eyes. What an amazing gift it is, to leave old ways and stale perspectives behind. Thank you Ryan, and thanks to the Spirits that guided us that night.

Cape Town - (just sort of) Africa

At the end of November I traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, for meetings of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO). I was taken back by the beauty of the place. Really stunning scenery - not at all what I was expecting. It was spring and the air was sweet. Cape Town is a very modern city and the part of town I was staying, near the convention center and the upscale waterfront, made me think of San Francisco a little closer to the equator. But it had an unreal quality to it. One morning when I went running through some adjacent residential neighborhoods I noted every home was surrounded not by a fence but a wall. From my very limited time there I got the impression that the class dividing line was a chasm and the obvious prosperity of the place didn't benefit all peoples of that nation equally.

See my photo gallery, which focuses on the beauty of the place.

Why Fear Death?

I was consoling a dear friend this weekend, someone who was struggling with difficult, but non-life-threatening, issues. I pointed out that the mind likes to create anxiety around worldly affairs because this gives it power and justifies its claim as the true self. In actuality, the mind is simply a tool given to the true self to help carry out its purpose while here on earth. Of necessity, the mind/ego differentiates self from everything else, but when things aren't going well in life this sense of separation can cause desperation because we feel that we are the victims of fate in an uncaring universe. And if that isn't enough to make one feel depressed, toss in the fact that we're all gonna die (my friend also finds the thought of ceasing to exist extremely disturbing).

So, I said the thing to work on is getting past this feeling of separateness. Best is to have an experience, beyond the mind, where the boundaries between self and other dissolve. This, I would say, is the main motivator of spiritual practice. But you can also start by reasoning: all things in this universe emerged from a single point in space/time, so we're all made of the same stuff. It all came from One and will all go back to One. In the interim, everything is just temporary conglomerations of the same stuff. Yes, each person is a unique combination of stuff, but ultimately it's all the same stuff and separateness is an illusion. There are, or course, much more profound reasonings for why we're all connected, but you get the point.

My formula for happiness - apply your inner resources to the challenges that life presents, but don't follow the mind into getting overly absorbed in worldly problems. Remember that we all came from One and, when we die, we'll all dissolve back into One. Look around, everything will dissolve back into One. When we connect with that pure essence that runs through all things, the essence of beingness that animates this universe, there is no separation, no fear - only a longing to forever remove that which separates us from the source of our being.