Let’s cut right to the chase. My belief is that Consciousness is more “real” than “reality”. The idealist philosophy comes in many shapes and guises but essentially claims that all of this stuff that is so obviously real, right in front of our faces, is in fact, all an illusion. Even better, it appears to be a shared illusion. It seems that we are tiny pieces of a much larger consciousness.
This means, of course, that we are responsible for the mess the world is in today. It also means we are responsible for all of the joyful and wonderful experiences as well. And all of the beauty.
When I say “we” are responsible, the fun part is ruminating on just “who” is doing the collapsing of all those probability waves. Humans are by and large an arrogant lot and most people wouldn’t like to consider the fact that we share our reality creation with other forms of consciousness, but why not? For that matter, what is consciousness anyway? Is a tree conscious? Who can say definitively? You can measure a reaction from a plant if you tell it that you are going to cut off all of its leaves. Is it conscious?
Certainly the materialists will scoff and tell us that consciousness is mere epiphenomena of the brain. I don’t buy it. Take the plant for instance. It obviously doesn’t have a brain. Yet it plainly reacts to emotional input.
Of course, the conjecture gets more interesting when you start to allow for other life forms that may or may not exist, which might actually have a greater effect on consensus reality than we humans. There is certainly no lack of theories put forth by people in all walks of life about what exactly is holding all this together. ETs, benevolent and malevolent alike, “higher” selves, oversouls, faerie folk, disincarnated entities… and of course, who can forget McKenna’s “gnomes”?
One of my favorite theories was put forth by Don Juan of Carlos Castaneda fame. He described seven bands of emanations, only four of which humans could interact with. If you can switch the personal assemblage point at which these emanations intersected, you could in fact change your universe, including place where the “laws” of physics are drastically altered. As much as I love this theory for its practical explanation of an occult principal, I mainly like it for not supposing that we humans are truly at the top of the multiversal food chain.
So, I realized today that I’m living the perfect life. Not to say that the perfect life is not without it’s imperfections. Merely that, although there are still many ways in which I’d like my life to change, my actual quality of life, including the belief that I can reasonably expect to achieve my goals and improve that standard of living, is excellent. This realization struck me while staring at the lotus blossoms on a beautiful and somewhat hot day at Ritan Park, in the heart of Beijing and the center of my existence in China.
So, what’s so perfect about it? I can already hear my wife, Salomae queuing to fire off a litany of complaints, mostly involving cleanliness, hygiene (or lack thereof) and/or insidious noxious smells, all of which bespeak the unlikelihood of her drawing a similar conclusion but at the end of the day, or even in the middle of it, as was my case, life is moving at an enjoyable pace, has it’s share of challenges and appears poised to offer great rewards if I continue to do quality work and apply myself to the opportunities that arise. And after a couple of years, they are arising on a larger scale.
I suppose to really appreciate this state, one would have to backtrack a couple of years to West Jordan, Utah, where we were contemplating a move to Beijing. It had been a fun ride to middle class success and the replication of and, indeed, in some ways improvement to the standard in which I had been raised. We had two beautiful kids. Life was good. Except it wasn’t.
Salomae was not happy. A cosmopolitan city person will either love the peace and quiet of the Salt Lake suburbs, only broken occasionally by the sound of a garage door opening to allow an SUV or minivan entry or exit, or they will go crazy. She went the latter route. Granted two small children and a huge house in a constant state of disarray didn’t help matters much. Nor did the lack of any friends with whom she could relate. And me having to fly off to South Dakota one or two weeks out of the month didn’t help either. And then the post 9/11 US arrived. And thus we left.
Actually, they left. I stayed behind to sell the house. My neighbors felt compassion for me and three of them helped me clean and pack or I never would have gotten out. And then I made my big entrance to Beijing. Only to find that SARS has trumped my arrival. I fled with the family to Thailand for a couple months and then came back to Beijing to make it big. Or at least make it well.
Moving to Beijing brought about a major shift in the family structure as we were moving to her parents’ realm of influence. Salomae’s mom was general manager of Thai Airways in China during Salomae’s junior high school years, so she had lived in Beijing and picked up the language. Her German dad went back and forth between China and Germany and had just sold off his company for a sizable yet undsiclosed sum, some of which went to buy a couple of condos, one of which is now our current home. Two very successful people with a very low tolerance for nonsense (which I think is sometimes a substitute for fun.)
The kids, Blysse (8) and Ellie (5) have reacted favorable to the move although school is much harder here. I can’t believe how much time and effort goes into learning those characters, although I have a good idea because I’ve spent plenty of time studying them myself. Mostly, it’s good to have such close supervision from their grandma, or Oma, as they call her. Salomae, too, has prospered. She’s following in her mom’s footsteps and is now Deputy General Manger and Station Manager for PBAir in Beijing.
And I, too, have prospered, if not so much in terms of cashflow, certainly in terms of contacts and experience. I will go on in great detail about many of these experiences and the conclusions I draw from them.
Most of all, I’m enjoying myself. Life is exciting. Life is dynamic. Life is challenging. Life is rewarding.
