Millennium Paradigm
Saturday, January 17, 2004
"MILLENNIUM PARADIGM"
Chapter 3: A World Full of Creators
The latest thinking in quantum physics implies that each of us creates our own reality. Let's take a look at what that means and then we'll examine the implications and the possibilities which that concept affords us. Now don't let the term quantum physics throw you. We're not going to get into the mathematical intricacies of the subject. We'll leave that to the physicists. What we want to do is take what all of the math means and see if it has any practical applications where our everyday lives are concerned.
An example of what I'm talking about here happened back in the 30's when my friend Bucky Fuller was about to publish his first book, "Nine Chains To The Moon." The publisher called Bucky in and told him that they could not publish the book. It seems that he had a chapter entitled "E = mc2 = Mrs. Murphy's Horsepower." The chapter had to do with the practical applications of Albert Einstein's famous Theory of Relativity. Bucky was told that only certain people were qualified to speak on Dr. Einstein's formula and that Bucky's name wasn't on the list. Bucky's reply was to suggest that they ask Dr. Einstein what he thought. Well, the publisher decided to do precisely that.
Dr. Einstein asked to "meet this young man." And so Bucky and the famous father of modern physics found themselves alone together in a room where Dr. Einstein said, "I'm intrigued by what you've written, young man. I had no idea that there were any practical applications to my theory."
Now I'm no physicist. Although math was a fairly easy topic for me in school, it's not one that really interested me in its more abstract applications. I have a friend who says he took over 60 hours of college math before it finally began to make sense to him. I don't think that I would have that kind of patience where all the formulas are concerned. My forte instead is in understanding the overall picture and in making it easily explainable to others. So don't let the topic of physics throw you a curve ball. I've got a fast ball that will put it all in practical perspective.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
"MILLENNIUM PARADIGM"
Chapter 2: The Holocaust Comes Home
I want to ask a favor of you. Snap your fingers, right now. If you can't snap your fingers, just do something with your hands that makes a crack or popping sound, like tapping on the table or clapping your hands together. Now, I want you to count off two and a quarter seconds. You can roughly estimate that if you will say, "one, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three." When you say it, say it out loud. You don't need to shout it; whispering will be fine. But audibly verbalizing it keeps you from "saying" it too fast. Once you've counted out the two and one quarter seconds, snap, clap, or tap again.
Now do it over and over several times until you've got the feel of the flow, of the rhythm. SNAP! "One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three." SNAP! "One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three." SNAP! "One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three." SNAP! "One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three." SNAP! "One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three." SNAP! "One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three." SNAP!
Now, keep on snapping or tapping or clapping, but instead of saying, "one, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three," I want you to say, "Now another child just died." SNAP! "Now another child just died." SNAP! "Now another child just died." SNAP! "Now another child just died."
SNAP! Yes, here we are in the final moments of the century, the final moments of the second millennium on the Christian calendar, and a child under the age of 12 is dying every two and one quarter seconds on this planet. Dying from what? Dying from starvation or as a result of malnutrition.
SNAP! Have you ever seen someone starve to death? What a horrible way to have one's life end. And even more horrible is having it happen to a child. And malnutrition isn't much better as a grim reaper, for it opens one's body to an endless string of maladies, any one of which eventually becomes the final trigger, ending a life before it hardly got started.
SNAP! With a child dying from starvation or malnutrition every two and one quarter seconds on our planet , that means that 1600 children are dying every hour, over 38,000 are dying every single day, over a million are dying every month, and total of 14 million will reportedly die this year. During 1999, between the first of the year and the end of the millennium on December 31, 1999, 14 million children under the age of 12 will die from starvation or malnutrition, never having the opportunity to see or take advantage of all that the new millennium allegedly has to offer. This is not a statistic which is unique to today. Children have been dying for these reasons, from these causes, at this rate on our planet, for many years now.
During World War II, we're all familiar with the fact that Hitler's vicious rule resulted in the deaths of over six million Jews in Europe. The European Jewish population was decimated. But that horrible tragedy of Holocaust only starts there with 6 million Jews needlessly slaughtered, senselessly murdered. In addition, another six million people were also murdered by the Nazi death machine. These victims were Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents, the elderly, the sick and retarded, and on and on. People who were reduced to labels and then exterminated. Over twelve million people murdered by the insanity of Nazi, Aryan nationalism. And it doesn't stop there. Over twelve million Russians died of starvation defending places like St. Petersburg (then known as Leningrad).
Twelve million murdered, another twelve million starved to death. If we look at those who were murdered as a result of "ethnic cleansing," during the first half of this century, the question comes to mind, "how long did it take the Nazis to murder those twelve million people?" The answer will surprise most of you. The first Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, was opened in February of 1933. That was eight years before the United States became militarily involved in stopping the Nazi war machine. It was over twelve years before the final concentration camp prisoner was liberated in April, 1945, at Auschwitz. During those twelve years, over twelve million people were murdered because they didn't live up to someone else's idea of what a human being should be. And although most of us know that the true lack of humanity in that situation rested in those who systematically murdered all of those twelve million people, the tragic responsibility does not stop there.
Wantonly taking another's life is a crime. Legally it is a crime. Morally it is a crime. Intellectually it is a crime. Realistically it is a crime. It has long been my belief, however, that an additional crime of great magnitude was committed as a part of the horror of the Holocaust. That crime was in the silence and inaction of those who knew what was going on, who knew of the senseless, deliberate, orchestrated murdering rampage and who refused to openly acknowledge the situation, much less to condemn it, even further less to propose or take steps to bring the insanity to a halt.
Yes, turning our backs when our fellow human beings are being wantonly slaughtered is almost as disgusting as committing the murderous act itself. In the world of legalese it qualifies as complicity. In the psychology of dysfunctionality it would be termed "enabling." In other words, those who are aware that a crime is being committed, and who protect that commission through their silence and inaction, become accomplices to the crime.
Twelve million men, women, and children murdered in twelve years. Another twelve million men, women, and children starved to death defending their country. And now it's 1999, and this year alone, 14 million children will starve to death or die as a result of malnutrition. This is a crime, for it is unnecessary. It does not have to happen. These children are not starving because there is no food to feed them. They are starving because people value their misguided perceptions of reality above life itself and they will sacrifice whatever life necessary, even that of a helpless child, in order to protect their view, their definition, of reality. And, just as during the Holocaust, these "criminals" are not alone. They, too, have accomplices. If you didn't know about this tragedy before now, then I have just made you an unwilling accomplice by telling you about the horror that is happening during our every waking moment. SNAP! And it continues on through the night as we seek the peace of sleep. SNAP!
I have related this information here because as we continue in our pursuit of understanding the nature of the Millennium Paradigm, from time to time old guard ego is going to grab its protective tools of battle and deny some of the perceptions which I will be sharing with you. When that happens, I'm going to very simply, SNAP!, remind you that one of the results of protecting the current system as we know it, is that 14 million children will die of starvation this year. SNAP! One more child dying every two and one quarter seconds. SNAP! And if we choose to protect "the system," then we become "willing" accomplices to the crime. SNAP! Harsh? You bet. The starvation death of a child is harsh. If what I have shared with you is a new experience and it makes you feel uncomfortable, consider yourself lucky. At least you will eat today, no matter how destitute your life may appear to be.
My purpose here, however, is not to make pleas for mounting programs to feed starving children. There are people who feel called to do that, and I bless every one of them, even those whose reasons may appear to be less than pure. If they save just one child's life and offer that child the opportunities which are being denied to 14 million of their young brothers and sisters, then who am I to criticize their motivations or their actions.
If you feel moved to take action to immediately relieve some of this needless suffering and death, I applaud you. And what can you do? Oh, dear friend, what can't you do? Personally, I feel that the standard for what can be achieved by a single individual to help alleviate this problem was set on July 13, 1985. If you don't recall, that was the day of "Live Aid," a worldwide effort that raised over $70 million dollars in one day to feed these starving children. The event was the first live benefit concert held simultaneously in London at Wembley Stadium and in Philadelphia, and transmitted around the world via satellite to over 100 countries.
How did this event come about? It resulted from the undaunted efforts of Bob Geldolf, lead singer for British rock group called The Boomtown Rats, whose main claim to fame was the hit song "I Hate Mondays." Bob had gone to Africa where he saw, firsthand, children die from starvation. He was so moved by the experience that he decided to do something about it. In his own words, this is how he explains the process of what happened: "There's a problem. What is it? People are dying. Dying of what? Starvation. How do you prevent that? You give them food. How do you get food? You get them money. How do you get the money? You come up with an idea for it." That idea resulted in Live Aid. Everywhere Bob went, everyone told him that it couldn't be done. Even up into the final weeks major players were claiming that it couldn't be done. Yet he persisted. And it happened. And it set new standards in multiple areas. But we shouldn't let the results cloud the beauty of the origin: "You come up with an idea for it." And then you persist, inspite of the obstacles."
The starvation of these millions of children, tragic though it is, is merely a symptom of deeper problems in the world. My place is not to deal with the symptoms, but rather to seek out and identify the causes and then to plant seeds for creating new viewpoints and modes of perception which will afford us the awareness and the motivation to achieve the worldwide shift in consciousness which I have named the "Millennium Paradigm."
"MILLENNIUM PARADIGM"
Chapter 1: Planting Seeds
During the past decade, the word paradigm has crept out of the shadows of the intellectual obscurity to which most words in the English language are assigned, and it has gained a popularity of usage that has resulted in the word developing a life of its own. By definition, the word paradigm means, "a list of all the inflectional forms of a word taken as an illustrative example of the conjugation or declension to which it belongs," and "any example or model." Well, we can throw out the first definition and write it off as an example of what keeps so many words out of the stream of common usage. The second definition, however, is what we have left to work with. "Any example or model." Pretty general. So when people speak of paradigm shifts, what they are actually saying is a shift or change in examples or in models.
Turning to a Thesaurus reveals the synonyms: example, exemplar, ideal, mirror, model, pattern, phenomenon, and standard. So we can think of this as a shift in perception, or as a shift of example, or exemplar, or ideal, or mirror, or pattern, or phenomenon, or standard. Nowhere does our definitive search imply that paradigm deals with realities, but rather that it deals with ideas, viewpoints, perspectives. So a paradigm shift comes to mean a different way of thinking. And that's what we want to deal with here.
The term "paradigm shift" has become quite popular. Like almost anything else in our society which achieves mass acceptance of usage, it has infiltrated all aspects of the social fabric. We find paradigm shifts being elucidated in science, in religion, in social structure, in world politics, and in individual existence. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see an advertisement announcing a "paradigm sale." That's how ingrained the word has become in our everyday consciousness.
Another term that has gained even more prominence in these closing days of the twentieth century is "millennium." It not only refers to a span of 1,000 years, but also is grounded by the book of Revelation in Christian theology as a period when the Devil is imprisoned for a thousand years while Christ reigns. And, as happened a thousand years ago, as we approach the beginning of the third millennium since Jesus preached his ministry on this planet, many in the Christian world apply obscure theological significance to the calendar. We'll discuss this later in more detail. For now, suffice it to say that the millennium, in common usage, refers to "a hoped-for period" of a thousand years of "joy, serenity, prosperity, and justice." (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, New College Edition, 1981) Note that it is not defined as "an actual period," but as "a hoped-for period."
For such a period to exist would require an incredible shift in our perception of reality, of our model of perception, of our paradigm. And that is what we are going to be examining here: The Millennium Paradigm. This is a paradigm shift light years beyond most of the paradigm shifts which are being ballyhooed as the advent of a new or golden age. Our purpose here is not only to outline that reality that is the "hope" of millennium thinking, but to describe how and why this shift in consciousness can and will take place. We will outline specific steps and techniques and procedures for altering one's own consciousness so as to become a part of this Millennium Paradigm, this unprecedented thousand year shift in consciousness.
Changing one's consciousness is not as easy as some might think, although its achievement is very simple. If it were easy, then we could just simply lay the reality of the Millennium Paradigm on you in a page and you would experience the shift. If we were to do that however, most people would read that page, utter a grunt or a sigh of disbelief, springing from their present state of consciousness, and go on about their business without ever even touching the edge of the shift, much less its full content. Because each of us has our own incredible construct of perceptual baggage which we carry with us, an array of isms, and filters, and prejudgments, and misunderstandings, and dashed hopes through which we view our reality, it is necessary to carefully lay out the particulars of the Millennium Paradigm in a way that will facilitate a reasonable pathway from where we are in consciousness to where we wish to be. And that is the purpose of this book.
Years ago, in my quest to better understand who I am and how I function, I discovered that we each come into this world, through the phenomenon of birth, as an incredible miracle in process. For reasons that are not completely understood, though very heavily speculated about, we are born with a very intricate, internal mix of drives, desires, and pattern potentials. We are born as comprehensivists. What I mean by that is that each of us is born with the innate ability to grow and develop in a variety of seemingly endless ways, and to do this in multiple areas simultaneously. Although we, as parents, and adults, often think of ourselves as the facilitators of the growth and development experienced by our children, the core fact of the matter is that we are but another of many influences, though an extremely important influence, to be sure.
As human beings, we appear to have been designed, or to have been created, with the ability to grow and develop largely on our own. Life itself offers us an unlimited number of opportunities and we automatically begin making choices from amongst those opportunities. Our choices then produce results that weave the fabric of the reality in which we individually live. It's important here for us to understand that each and every human being lives in a separate reality. The reality in which we each live is created by the multitudinous thoughts and perceptions that comprise this experience which we call life. Each of us is totally unique in the thoughts and experiences that mold the fabric of who we think we are.
As human beings, we have a number of avenues for sensing the activity and the processes around ourselves. We're most familiar with what we have come to call the "five physical senses" as channels for this collection of sensory information, but we are also aware that we have nonphysical feelings and emotional senses whose input to this flow of information is just as important as the physical. These sense receptions, or recordings, whether of physical or nonphysical origin, are processed through our brains in an ongoing, continual flow of analization, comparison, association, and storage. That operation of processing our receptive awareness results in the creation of an extension of itself as a growing, living, exquisite entity which we call consciousness. In other words, the consciousness that each of us "is," develops as a result of the processing of our experiences. Therefore we learn from experience.
Now that last statement is only true to a certain extent. Our mental processing apparatus is no fool, and when it detects a commonality in the data being fed to it from our experiences, it quickly loses interest, puts the receptors for processing that data on a sort of background autopilot, and then amuses itself, so to speak, with seeking other sources of data. If those other sources are not found externally, then it creates them by reprocessing the data and the perceptions already stored in consciousness. Another way of saying this is that when the experiences of our lives become repetitive and boring, our consciousness reinforces the importance of that which we have already learned by constantly rearranging the associations between the perceptions that it has already stored. We are most often aware of this continual mental process when we deliberately try to "still our minds," only to find that they are racing off in multiple directions at amazing speed. We can also understand the complexity of these reassociations if we consider the elaborate scenarios that occasional unfold in our dreams; dreams that are comprised of thoughts and ideas and even feelings that we might not otherwise have, were it not for the creativity of those dreams, driven by that which we call consciousness.
So it's not so much experience itself from which we learn, but rather "new" experience that is our teacher. When that awareness first sank into my consciousness several decades ago, I decided to direct my life into deliberately creating new, or alternative, experiences for myself and others which might then provide opportunities for new learning. I realized very early that if I was not yet intelligent enough to know what it was that I, myself, needed to know, then it would be extremely presumptuous of me to even begin to guess what someone else "needed" to learn. So my efforts at creating these new and alternative experiences have been conducted without the hidden agenda of what it is that one can or should learn from the experiences. Instead, my guiding judgment as to the types of experiences that I have created is that they should be designed in a way so as to be positive and constructive.
With a tremendous feeling of gratitude to one of my mentors, R. Buckminster Fuller, I have developed over the years an abiding faith in the ability of humanity, of each and every human being, to determine for themselves what they need to learn and, indeed, what they will, in fact, learn. From time to time that has created problems for me, for many people's view of reality is so structured and narrow that they resent, in fact in some cases are even offended by, those who do not think and feel and perceive as they do. With time, however, we figure out how to place others in labeled groups of generic views of reality that we can then deal with through elaborate social games that have evolved over the years and the centuries. The "us" verses "them" scenarios that are at the core of so much of humanity's social dysfunctionality, from individual relationships all the way up to wars.
In my life expression, however, I have attempted to defy being categorizable. I don't fit comfortably into any label. I have further enhanced this appearance by deliberately acting for periods within the confines of various labels and then changing appearance and actions in ways that defy the labeling. That has therefore made me appear to be an uncomfortable experience to the perception of some people since I can't be easily labeled or categorized. It's a sort of a chameleon type of existence that has afforded me opportunities and experiences which are often beyond the norm. That can often draw scorn or envy from others.
The upside has been that this dance of mine has afforded me the freedom to discover principles and their interconnectiveness and to ultimately result in my identifying and sharing them as the "Millennium Paradigm." But this is not my autobiography. That book is entitled, "Just Passin' Thru," and will be published after "Millennium Paradigm." Suffice it to say that part of my purpose for being on this planet at this time has been to create or facilitate experiences which will help myself and others to learn and grow in our awareness of who and what we are, and to do that in positive and constructive ways.
So, if new experience is one of our greatest teachers, what sort of new experiences can we draw from the current world circumstance? Well, because of the way the brain works, it's not as simple as just laying the data from them out on the table. During the course of our life experience on this planet, that consciousness which we spoke of earlier has evolved to the place where it thinks, --- Oh, my God. I just had a new experience. It was what my dear friend, Vrle Minto, would have called an "Aha!" A whole new view of reality has just this very moment revealed itself to me. I will share this with you before we reach the end of this book. But, in all honesty, it just now hit me, this very moment, mid-sentence. To paraphrase Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now!" it was like I was hit right between the eyes with a diamond bullet: clear, crystalline, perfect. I'm weeping with joy. --- Anyway, consciousness has evolved its own identity. It's what we call ego. And it thinks that it really exists, that it is. But, in reality, it exists only by the grace of the fact that we are. And the we that we are is the goal of our discovery here. Once we can identify who and what we truly are in ways that are profound and meaningful, we can then transcend the bondage that has been created by the ego.
The ego thinks that it runs things. In many ways that is true. It does run things, but only through our allowing it to do so. Remember that earlier I said that life is an unfolding of a multitude of opportunities and that we have the freedom to choose which opportunities we will pursue. One of those choices is whether we will be in control of our lives or if we will instead sit back and let the habitual ego run our lives. Many might complain here that this can't really be our choice since, for most of us, it was a choice which we made before we even realized that we have the power of choice. But ignorance is no excuse. And that complaint is merely a way of saying that we give up. And I don't believe that anyone truly wishes to give up. I believe that every one of us has a desire to continue to grow and to excel.
In order to protect itself and its domain, the ego has set up an elaborate array of defenses. A large part of psychology has to do with identifying these defense mechanisms and then developing techniques for changing them or changing our response to them. We're going to use a little different approach however. Its source is in a class that I taught years ago on the subject of the healing aspects of humor. I was actually just filling in for one night in an 8-week series that someone else was teaching. But in my research upon the subject of humor I discovered two interesting things about humor. One we will talk about later. The other was that humor is successful only if it can create a scenario that is plausible to our mental processes and then to add an element that doesn't fit into that view of reality. In other words, it catches the ego guard off guard. The resulting laughter is the ego's attempt to protect itself from this "attack" upon its perception of reality by scaring off the intruder.
Although many psychological techniques are directed at "reprogramming" our "tapes," or are designed to create new modes of response to that programming which is the fortress of the ego, we are going to take the tack of essentially walking right up to the gate. There we will engage the guard in harmless conversation. When the dialog is running along smoothly, we will insert an off-the-wall random element to distract the guard's attention. "Hey, are your shoelaces untied?" And before the watchdog can refocus it's attention, we will have slipped into the inner sanctuary, spreading seeds of "joy and revolution," as John Cage said.
That's a good analogy of what I have been doing for several decades now: planting seeds. I have felt like a sort of psychological Johnny Appleseed, traveling across the fields of perception scattering seeds of new awareness at random. I don't have to stick around and farm these crops. Just as the forests grow by themselves, so do the seeds of truth. I just scatter the seeds, fertilize them with love, and move on.
So, to start with, let's look at something that we're all familiar with, the Holocaust, and discover its relationship to today's world situation and plant the seed of that awareness in such a way that this new awareness will forever be a part of our consciousness. Then, through a simple technique, we will create a way of instantly accessing this new perspective at any given moment that we choose for the rest of our lives. A bit much to claim? Just flow along with me and watch what happens.
Over the past decade, a number of different ideas that I have been developing began to coalesce in a cohesive pattern that implied the possibilty of a major alteration of reality in a short period of time through a dramatic change in global consciousness. The working title for this extraordinary perspective is "Millennium Paradigm" and is presented here in this Blog as it reveals itself in text format. When complete, it will be published in paper print. In the meantime, it is available here for the perusal of all as it evolves.
If you would like to support the evolution of these ideas, contributions may be made at paypal.com to revdeturk@earthlink.net. Give today. Don't delay. Help support making this a new shared reality.
HOW TO FIND ME ON THE WEB
Here’s a rundown on my presence on the web (CAPS are important with AOL):
WEBSITES:
TANSTAAFL City: http://members.aol.com/ZTANSTAAFL/
This is the general entry point and has some background stuff about this identity known as Charles DeTurk.
Practical Truth Ministry: http://members.aol.com/RevDeTurk/
This is my online ministry site. There are notes from classes and tapes for sale and some preliminary text from one of the books that I’m writing.
MajorDomo's World: http://members.aol.com/ZMajorDomo/
MajorDomo is a nom de plume that I began using about 30 years ago. I use it for my more “secular” thoughts and contributions. It contains a number of “perspectives” that one might find interesting.
Surf City: http://members.aol.com/ZTANSTAAFL/SurfCity.html/
Here I have over 7,000 links to other websites. A few links are no longer valid, but the overwhelming majority are still good, in spite of not being updated in 3 years.
Beading Adventures: http://members.aol.com/SherriSite/
I set this up with the idea of displaying some of the jewelry that my wife makes. Lack of adequate storage space limited that idea.
WEBLOGS:
Practical Truth: http://practicaltruth.blogspot.com/
This, of course, is my ministry. The notes for a series of classes that I taught entitled, “What We Believe That Makes Us Different” are here.
Still … After All These Years: http://zmajordomo.blogspot.com/
Here we have MajorDomo’s latest inputs on Metaphysics and Quantum Physics and whatever else is of interest to me.
Welcome To Web World: http://welcomewebworld.blogspot.com/
This is an extension of Surf City in that I highlight, with personal comments, various other sites of interest on the Net.
Millennium Paradigm: http://millenniumparadigm.blogspot.com/
This is the ongoing text of one of 3 books that I’m currently involved in writing. Of the three, this is the one that is most challenging, and the one, therefore, that I’m most excited about. I’m posting the content to this weblog as I create it.
Explorations In The Dynamics Of Consciousness: http://expdyncon.blogspot.com/
Fifteen years ago I began putting together a 24-hour seminar entitled “Explorations In The Dynamics Of Consciousness.” The original intention was that this would be a combination seminar and performance. This is that beginning.
What I Want To Know Is …..: http://whatiwanttoknowis.blogspot.com/
With thanks, apologies and baskets of kudus to Max Headroom and Edison Carter, this is where we share some of the things that we are curious about.
Sunday Morning Talk: http://sundaymorningtalk.blogspot.com/
This is a continuation of my previous weekly eletters where I shared a weekly 20-30 minute talk. This time, however, it will be posted on the Net rather than sent as an email. That places the responsibility for reading it on the reader and cuts out a tremendous amount of email
Various email addresses are found throughout these sites, though the primo ways to reach me are at: charlesdeturk@yahoo.com or revdeturk@yahoo.com (Note: I only check AOL, Earthlink, & Hotmail about once every 2 to 4 weeks).
