We Dance With The Angels, We Waltz Through The Cosmos

We are born. We acquire a working model for getting on in this strange and different world. We go on to use what we have learned to acquire more and to use what we have acquired.

We do this all automatically. Too often it is not until the third and last phase of our life that we start evaluating our process and what we have done with it. Up until this point we are generally oblivious of the working of the process. All our time is necessarily taken up accumulating knowledge for living then executing that knowledge.

In this third stage we begin to understand the nature of what we have learned and why we have learned it. We begin to see its reason. It is this new process we start seeing what heretofore was not seen.

In the post that accompanies this essay, written and posted by me some time ago, re-written and posted in my Archive for this essay, the title of which is To Dance with the Angels. Click on the title to go there and read it.

In this re-post I look at how we acquire knowledge, what of it is retained as we learn it, how we store it by shortcutting it, all of which we do automatically without plan. We simply do it. So imbedded is this process in us I am drawn to concluding this has purpose beyond this life.  

It is in how we execute all we have learned, how we let go all we don’t need, that we dance with the angels, waltz through the cosmos. We start on our own learning the steps, learning them quite automatically without aforethought. To dance with the angels, to waltz through the cosmos, we need to know the steps. It is this life process that teaches those steps.

The awesome part of this is we have no present knowledge of what we are doing while we are doing it. In fact we get so intensely involved in the learning then the acquiring that we delude ourselves into believing that is all there is.

It comes as a shock to realize the reason for this process was not the process itself. The process was no more than the means to the end. The end is the evaluation and reflection we do when the process is completed and no longer necessary in our lives. If we are lucky enough in our reflection given  we see the process has taught us how to dance.

Dancing with the angels, waltzing in the cosmos, is our transcendent purpose being in this life. My characterization is of course metaphor. To dance, to waltz, is in fact to touch the cosmos, to begin to know God. It is that and all the collateral benefit that accompanies the contact with the ethereal that is included.

The collateral benefit is the enhancement of who we are as a consciousness or perhaps what we are. This is the purpose of being part of this life. It is the reward of having done it. It harkens back to the adage about the difference between man and beast. We are all beast but for one attribute. We can know God. More so we are in this life a beast in most ways to use yet able to rise above our nature and attain that nature that resembles the angels. When we die we leave the beast here and go on to embrace our higher selves.

The transcendent connection we are able to evoke living this life is the earmark of what this life is about. It is the wonder, the awesomeness of being alive. The limitations we have in this life are so contrary to what is essentially us. We are a beast who has become able to think, to make choices, to express beauty, to feel. These stark differences require a meaning a purpose in our acquiring then experiencing them.

That is another quality essential to us “That is More than Meets the Eye.” We have the capability to actualize this attribute. It is this that transforms the curse of our limitations into blessings to be used in living this life.

It is this that gives value to my having Dementia. Like all that preceded dementia in my life, the pit I floundered in paying the dues, earning my qualification to enter the AA program, was as necessary to my life as the recovery and sobriety that followed it. The gift of what I learned in AA and applied in my life, the many successes and failures I went through leading to Dementia, were no more that training sessions for what I would ultimately face with Dementia.

It is with Dementia that I finally learned my purpose for living. It was Dementia that forced me finally out of the material struggle I learned and applied in the first two stages of my life. It was the horror of Dementia that forced me into applying what I had already learned in dealing with catastrophe in life.

I turned it over to my higher power, I concentrated on coping with Dementia in the same way that I did with alcoholism. Accordingly, applying another old adage, I transformed this pig’s ear into a silk purse.

My silk purse has been found in giving myself to others. Trite as this may seem, something so basic we need to do, like all the demands of living, it is difficult to put others before yourself. Up to the time this force actuates the change it is part of our nature to concentrate on what we have learned and on what we are applying from what we have learned. Doing this we seem driven to concentrate on ourselves.

Continuing this concentration on ourselves at that stage where it is no longer required by our material consequence becomes counterproductive to our life. This is time of our lives that we are given the opportunity to reap its rewards. It is but another unseen attribute that is ours, that makes is who, what we are in this life, and where we go after this life.

LIFE: THIS FINITE WONDERFUL PLACE IN TIME!

There is a design to our lives. It is our Plan that manages us through the design for our life. What is that design. It is best described in my Blog post Working To the Endpoint and its companion post Our Way, No Other! both of which can be accessed by clicking on their titles.

Plan as referred to in the above posts is different than Design in this respect: The Plan actuates the Design. It is the software that the plan, metaphorically as the computer or CPU, uses to carry out the purpose of the Plan.

In an essay posted some time ago, and posted again in my archive to accompany this post, entitled: LIFE:THIS FINITE WONDERFUL PLACE IN TIME Click on it to go there to read it; I close that essay with this conclusion as it pertains to Plan and Design:

It is a process, a process through which we are enlightened. Our enlightenment comes when we look beyond our material consequence and try to see what might be more. It is at this time, in this way, that we transcend our material consequence. The design of our lives is intended to get us to this point and to work on it, even before we leave our material consequence.

It is at the Endpoint that we can touch the Cosmos, touch God, or whatever lies ahead for us. It is putting the frosting on the cake. This is why my heart soars as I see myself completing my life here in this finite world. I can touch on its purpose and its result all of which I can carry out of this life as I leave it and go to whatever is beyond.

What is that result? It is transcending our materiality, transcending the limitations generic to our material life. It becomes evident that our life is a formula available to us with which we can improve our existence in that conscious part of us that precedes, supersedes and succeeds our life. In that respect I describe our lives, our reality here as we believe it to be, as an Algorithm among Algorithms. Algorithm defined is: A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that begins with an input value and yields an output value in a finite number of steps

Taking purpose out of our life makes it a sham, why bother with the joy and the heartbreak that life entails. As up needs down, light needs dark, suffice it to say the logic of Yin needing Yang in our world directs us to the purpose of this world, to us in this world, to the course we follow in it and the end we reach.

It is that reason I say “There is more than meets the eye!” We tend to be all taken up with this world in which we operate, so much so we do not have any time to look further. But at the endpoint if not before the process forces us to look beyond this life. We penetrate the sparkling curtain, the sparkle of which clouds our view of looking through the transparency this sparkling curtain in fact is. We see beyond once we recognize its transparency.

We see the wonder that is beyond. Retrospectively we realize the wonder the awesome thing the life that carried us to this point in fact has been. Seen in this life every event that preceded the impact of seeing through the curtain, seeing where we have been we realize: What seemed to be a series of chaotic events finds its order and reveals its purpose. The purpose revealed is found beyond this life based on the supposition that we will go there and take the purpose and the performance with us. It supposes this “where which is beyond” is transcendent to the finite world in which we have sojourned.

Is this pie in the sky, the product of wishful thinking? We need only look at the process of life as we know it. We are born into it, we live and learn in it, we follow a course to which our learning directed us; we complete that course recognizing the previous two stages are done and the last stage we find ourselves is filled with time and with an introspective need to determine what it has been all about.

Not everyone does this, viz. faces a introspective urge. Many keep on with what they have done in their middle years. They may not need to but have difficulty giving up the apparent joy of what they have done in those middle years, or they are simply afraid to let go what has worked for them in the material world. There are many other reasons, but the material return or the need to stay sheltered in routine are the primary two.

It is the lucky ones that can let go, can step out, and seek out what more could there material existence entail. It is in this looking that we all of a sudden see God, see our purpose, see our before and after which is reflected in the Cosmos.

There are others of us not so lucky as to voluntarily step out and look about. We are the ones that are forced to do this for extraneous reasons.

In my case my force was Dementia, the need to cope with the onset and the progress of it, the direction I took based on all the training my life had given me. My 30 years with recovery from Alcoholism told me how to deal with Dementia.

The doing of that, using the same tools, those tools mainly comprised of “Turning it Over” stepping out of the way, letting the Plan as insisting on My Way, delivered me to what appears to be the final plateau of my life.

It is from the standpoint on this last plateau that I am able to put birth, life, death together. This period of time has been so awesome, purposeful and magical in what it has done with and for my consciousness.

It is another of the unseen things we apprehend being in this world. In my case Dementia brought me to my knees to a level I could see "What it has been all about!" This has been the unseen ultimate effect of the curse I have been given that has metamorphisised into a gift.

Our Way, No Other!

We like to do things: “Our way and no other.” Although this seems true much of the time, it is nonetheless not our plan. Whether we like it or not we live according to a plan that seems laid out for us to follow or not follow. Our way or the plan’s way is the measure of failure or success in the events of our life.

In the process of our lives as we work this plan we can end up blessed by it to the extent we submitted and worked through the events that make it up. Accordingly we are dealt the opposite, namely conflicted, to the extent that we fight the plan and choose our own way.

It is at the end point of the plan, the end of our early years and our middle years, that we are able to add up the benefits and must deduct the deficits in having dealt with the plan. We can’t determine what is plus and what is minus, the best we can do is observe the result and evaluate our lives using the plus/minus of plan results in determining the quality we have obtained with our lives.

This of course is done in our senior years most often but can be done at any time in our lives.

I go more into Working to the Endpoint! in an essay I posted some time ago and have posted it again in my Archive. Click on the title to go there to read it.

There is a Plan that seems to dominate us. It is not our plan, it is something that keeps monitoring us and carrying us through what appears to be unrelated chaos of events in our lives, one after another, each requiring our strictest attention to work it out.

Our lives seem to jump from event to event, too often the event being something we would never have chosen to do, but faced with it, we tend to see it through, and do what it requires to resolve all there is to it.

We prefer to live our way, create our own plan, but time and again in our lives we find this comes to no good nor does it deliver any benefit. It just seems to complicate our lives more. In my case, and I use it as my example of this, I did not see the plan until I was at the senior point doing an evaluation and assessment. It was while I was writing a memoir of my life.

The memoir was not purposeful in evaluating my life. I only realized its poignancy when I finished. My purpose of writing a memoir was part of a family genealogy project I had worked on for many years. It was written for my descendants, to give them a record of my life and times, should they have an interest. As I got into it I found I was plumbing deeper. I was asking “What has it been all about?”

I didn’t expect an answer. I nevertheless received one. It was in this I learned of a supervening plan operating in my life. In the memoir I wrote of this describing my conclusion as follows:

I believe that things happen according to a plan. Whose plan? I do not know. My plan set in this lifetime it is not! Whether it is mine devised somewhere else, the plan of my higher power, or what, I have no idea. It is a plan followed by me in spite of me, taking me often into places and directions I would rather not be.  Much of it has been painful. As I learned with my Alcoholism, learned before recovery and learned after recovery, I am the better person for having experienced where I have been taken. It all turned out as it ought to have. 

All of the events have tied together in a definite pattern. I can see this now, realizing it retrospectively. It is seen in the serenity of my senior years which have been one of the best things about growing old. I no longer have challenges to meet, I have met them and my serenity is the result.

Taking all of what had seemed to be a chaotic series of unrelated events in my life, I started seeing an order to it. More than that I saw its purpose, why I went through these events kicking and screaming most of the way through.

Where they got me was this: Looking at the results I would not trade these for anything I initially had sought or wished to achieve. In spite of the anguish involved in confronting each event, its end product was worth what I went through. I could write pages of instances but this would bore the reader to death.

The one instance I will give is as I wrote in my book From AA to AD, a Wistful Travelogue. 

The book is obtainable at Amazon, simply click on the title.

37 years ago I realized I could not control my daily drinking and the drinking was ruining my life. Worse than that it was ruining the life of my wife and 3 children. I entered Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and there found my epiphany. I learned to become sober I had to take my drinking and turn it over to my higher power and only that would bring me abstinence and sobriety.

I did, it did, and I have remained sober every day since that time. The gift was my sobriety. There was more than this one gift and that is where my epiphany showed itself the most. I found a way of life that was superior to anything I had ever dreamed of.

To quit drinking and to live life more appropriately I had to give up “My Way” and turn the Way over to my higher power to set the path. As I learned in so many events of my life ever since was this: The extent that I “Turned it over to my higher power,” gave it up myself, any task I faced worked out so much better. To turn it over and keep turning it over became a new Way for me to live, and live successfully doing it.

31 years after starting a sober life I encountered another epiphany, my second. The doctor told me I have Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). To have this disease devastated me. It did and then as quickly my AA tools kicked in and I started to process this turning it over to my higher power. This made AD tolerable to the point that I could see having it as the same type of gift as having Alcoholism. The devastating circumstance of the intrusion of both diseases into my life gave me options I would not have had without them.

Very quickly in turning it over I came to the decision to do everything in my power to help others by having this disease. With a blessing my cognition was preserved enough allowing me to read, analyze and to write about my experience. I was uniquely positioned with the upheaval my life had dealt with because of Alcoholism learning to cope with it using the tools of AA.

I had these tools to apply to coping with AD. More than the tools to cope I retained the insight to understand what this was all about. I suffered through the years of Alcoholism to know the Way to deal with AD. When AD came into my life like a run-a-way truck, I knew what to do with it and how to cope with it.

I used it to do some good, making up for all the good deeds I did not have sufficient time to do in the past. Writing and helping folks understand what this disease is all about and how to deal with the finality of it, which is a slow and tedious in its finality. I hope this has been helpful to at least one person who has suffered as I have.

For me the return is magnificent. Throughout my life with all its pitfalls, failures, with all of its successes which were many, many beyond my wildest dreams, I never found satisfaction from them. Always this void existed. All that I had never relieved this void.

It never relieved until after my diagnosis of AD on June 29^th 2006. I finally found what I was to do with my life. I was to use all that I had learned following this Way the Plan forced on me to share my experience with others to help them. Discovering my purpose in life, embracing it and acting on it I found a portal to something beyond this life transcendent to it.

This seemed to join my material life to the ethereal life that I believe is me that transcends the bounds of time and space, giving meaning to this time in space and all the limitations I have had to deal with.

For all the other good I have tried to do the ultimate good deed of it all was given me. It was the key that lead me to what I was born to do, viz. have this horrid disease and make the best of it.

The subject of this series of essays has been “There Is More Than Meets the Eye in This Life.” The intrusion of a Plan in our lives which foists itself on us is another such thing that affects us deeply and leads us to transcending this life in the end.

HAPPINESS IS YOURS, YOURS TO FIND, YOURS TO RELISH

I proceed from my last post discussing the composition of reality to an analysis of Happiness. This post is about how Happiness fits into our Reality.

What is Happiness? Of what importance to us is it? Where do we find it? Where does it fit into this series on the mind and Dementia?

In the last post I discussed the subject of cognition. Cognition is that penchant we have to think and learn from that. It is an inherent part of us. I introduced the topic as follows:

We come into this world with a body primed to get along in this unique environment of time and space. This environment defined by Time and Space is altogether different than any other part of Creation or Cosmos. We somehow spontaneously become here by way of conception and birth.

What we seem to be as we come into this world as an individual person is this” We are a body needing to grow and adapt to living in this space/time environment to sustain itself; to gain physical skills and grow to become self-sufficient which we are not at the Get-go. As such we live in a progression of time and occupy space. Everything about us is dynamic, on the move. We grow over time; we acquire, we communicate with this environment we find. We do all of this to fit in.

Along with thinking we find another penchant about us. This is our disposition to seek happiness. We are driven through the stages of learning, then in the second stage executing what we have learned, This brings us to the third stage where we are given to reviewing it all. If we do not get stuck in one of the earlier stages it is in this last stage we appraise it all seeking out its meaning. How does the pursuit of happiness fit into this?

I try to answer this question in the essay I wrote some time ago entitled: HAPPINESS IS YOURS, YOURSTO FIND, YOURS TO RELISH. Click on this title to go there to read it and also follow the links presented there in hypertext.

In this essay I state two propositions. We seek happiness, which is part of being alive. Happiness is attainable; it is the product of living the life we are in and following what we are motivated to do in the stages of life we pass through. Most often we find Happiness at the end of our rainbow, when we have parsed out all of those efforts that led to futility. The ultimate sense of futility is inherent in the material nature of that from which we hoped for happiness but never quite found it.  

It is not until we position ourselves to look beyond the things of this world, look further and above this world, do we come into a beautiful realization that all of this that seemed futile was worthwhile in getting us to the goal of seeking a higher purpose.

In the first two of the three stages of our life, namely, initially learning our way, then applying what we have learned, we finally come to the last stage. We enter the last stage when we are no longer driven to learn, nor driven to apply any of what we have learned. It is in this stage we have time and are given to evaluating what and how we have done with the first two stages.

It is this time we look elsewhere for a source of happiness not of this world. If we are lucky enough to have reached this seed of insight we then often start assessing our existence, if any, beyond this life. This can lead us to transcendence above, beyond and after this life. A sense of relationship between our lifetime and a transcendent existence can unfold accompanied by a corresponding sense of purpose.

The purpose appears to be improving our transcendent experience by the time and effort we have expended in this life time. It starts unfolding as the reason for which we have lived. This sense is accompanied by a real sense of satisfaction which becomes a lasting happiness. This happiness is real, almost feels tangible, and it lasts unlike our experience of seeking happiness through any material source.

Happiness then takes on a quality like cognition. It is part of the ability we have in this world to help us get out of and on with what is. It is this to which we take our consciousness with all the facets it has leaving our body to this world.

Said simply: Happiness joins the rank of things that are us, that make us different from anything else of this world. It is an essential part that makes up that portion of us that is in this world but not of this world.

How does seeking happiness at this stage fit into what the rest of us has been about, and what specifically having Dementia is all about?

At least as I have found it, my happiness comes from the purpose I see in the manner I have Dementia. This comes from the fact that in having it for the past nearly six years since diagnosis I have retained a great part of my cognition. It is from this I can still think, analyze, read and write. I both understand what is happening to me and I can write about my experience from the inside of Dementia. I can also help others to understand and cope with having it.

I seem driven to do this. I find loads of satisfaction writing about it.

In writing it is my hope I help some one person with what I have. From this comes my happiness, my serenity. I have found the purpose of everything I experienced striving to find purpose fell short of permanent happiness. It was transitory fading upon its acquisition. I now realize that all was important to train me to where I am right now, understanding and applying all that I have learned to writing before I leave this world.

For the first time in my life, after a successful experience in the life of education, marriage, parenthood and profession I finally feel complete. I was in fact a highly successful trial lawyer. Neither that nor anything else left me feeling full.

Having this horrible disease does now do that. I am about what I came here to do.

This fits this series of discussion in this way: Happiness is another facet of our consciousness. It is something we bring into this life with us, work on it while here and are able to take out with us as we leave.

It is the quality of happiness which spurs us on through life working for more of it, refining it with this life, to take out of this life as we leave it.

HOW DO I THINK, WHY DO I THINK, WHAT DO I THINK ABOUT?

In my last post entitled OUR REALITY According to QUANTUM PHYSICS I spoke of reality as it actually is and as we seem to be when looking at it through the prism of our space time dimension.

My purpose was to underscore: the part of us that thinks, that is cognitive, is not the brain. It is our mind which transcends time and space. The object was to underscore this: When we experience the losses that accompany Dementia that loss is to the body, that part of our body that is the brain, an organ in our body. We to not lose the power of cognition we lose the ability to translate our transmission of cognition from our mind, through our brain and into our world.

When dealing with the losses and limitations from Dementia doing damage to our brains, we should keep in mind our cognition remains free of that damage. One way to overcome the losses and limitations of our brain is to tap into the brain’s ability to replace pathways when one is lost and additionally to regenerate new brain tissue to replace that lost.

The first in this series of posts is entitled This is Brain Boggling. In this post Rudolph Tanzi a Harvard neurologist discusses a book he is writing with Deepak Chopra about the similarity of their views, one of a scientist, the other from a metaphysical point of view. Tanzi’s is the scientific point of view; Deepak’s the metaphysical point of view as understood by him from the eastern understanding of the cosmos. I will probably finish this run of posts coming back to the mutual view of the makeup of matter as seen both by science and cosmology

This current post refers to an essay I wrote about a year ago entitled: It's All in the Learning, that is Plus and Minus which I have posted in my archive. Click on the title to go there to read about.

This essay has significance to the subject matter being discussed by me in this series of posts for this reason:

We come into this world with a body primed to get along in this unique environment of time and space. This environment defined by Time and Space is altogether different than any other part of Creation or Cosmos. We somehow spontaneously became here by way of conception and birth.

What we seem to be as we come into this world is a individual person whose body needs to grow and adapt to living in this space/time environment to sustain itself; to gain physical skills and to grow to become self-sufficient which we are not at the Get-go. As such we live in a progression of time and occupy space. Everything about us is dynamic, on the move. We grow over time; we acquire, we communicate with this environment we find. We do all of this to fit in.

Our minds are in even worse shape than our body when it comes to survival in this environment. It has everything it needs to learn. It knows little if anything at the start. It is however equipped to use the cognitive power it recognizes to learn as it grows into self-sufficiency. It learns what it needs to get along in this world and hopefully to gain understanding of its purpose in this world.

It is this process of thinking that I discuss in this post and refer you also to second essay of this series I have posted: OUR REALITY According to QUANTUM PHYSICS.

We must grow into the use of our intellect, our cognition, by personal application of ourselves in learning and living here. In doing so we go through three major stages. In each of these stages we concentrate on a primary goal.

In the first stage our goal is to learn our way here. We learn to walk, talk, interrelate, and proceed with the acquisition and the ordering of data. It is the storing of data that we refine by categorizing, linking, and doing anything with regard to it to make it accessible and such as it can be easily accessed and applied it to any comparable data that we encounter.

From this data bank we start analyzing it, comparing it and in many different ways we massage it to expand what it means to us and how it as knowledge fits into this world we occupy. This is education.

As our body grows, becomes more sophisticated, operates for us in this world, exercises our senses, our minds prompt us to think of what we want to do in this world, what we want to be. It is this process that we call our so-called right brain into action. Our left brain is the data keeper. The right brain is the analyzer. It is that part that has cognition which is called by the dictionary: the power to create in one's mind. It is this side that creates, intuits, sees in concepts, recognizes art, beauty and the refinements of living.

With the right brain we imagine what it is we want for our future. It is that process that finishes us with our Education and Qualifies it to be whatever it is we become for the period of our middle years.

It is during the middle years that we work hard at what we have become. By that time we have become many different things. These things we have become each has a set standard we have learned that must be performed to become that which we work on. This can be any and many of what we have become, each one having a pattern leading to its fulfillment, each pattern that must be worked at to achieve. We become adults, spouses, parents, job holders, members of various groups each with its own pattern for becoming and for continuing to be that pattern.

All of our time in these middle years is taken up with working our patterns, holding on to what we have become, acquiring the things we are meant to acquire, then holding on to them, doing the duties required of each station our patterns have placed us in.

This takes so much time, so much effort; we have no time for anything else.

When we reach that point that we have completed this mid-life stage; when our accumulation of years take us into the final stage, the senior years, all of our responsibilities subside. We have more time than we need to fulfill what it was we had to do in mid-life. It is that time our minds, could, might, sometimes do, turn to wonder. We ask ourselves “What’s it all about?”

By this time we have gathered all we need to gather, acquired whatever it was that had the importance of striving after, become whatever we set out to do, fulfilled all of those future plans that spurred us through the middle years.

Then this happens if we are lucky. Others never quite get there, some of them holding on to work, profession, style of life or job of acquisition and never lift their head above the fray. Others get so caught up with the negative events that can accompany the senior years they have no time away from their lamentation.

The fortunate ones have the time to do their “Sums.” It is in this time, in response to the question asked: “What’s it all about” that we review the lifetime here and endeavor to see if it makes any sense to us. This is what is called acquiring Wisdom.

It is in the exercise of this wisdom that we start seeing what it is all about, seeing the transcendence of that part of us that is not really of this time/space dimension. It is in this realization that we start seeing the reality of Reality.

Dementia is the catalyst that brought me fully into the realization of Reality, into knowing why I have lived and what it added up to. As I write I am doing what was primarily intended of me. Taking the blessing that I can still analyze and write about it, I am sharing an otherwise horrid experience in my final time in this life with the hope it does someone some good! I have the satisfaction, the sense of fulfillment available in making this otherwise terrible time the most meaning event of my life.

OUR REALITY According to QUANTUM PHYSICS

The study of our reality as seen from the lens of Quantum Physics, particle science, string theory, Schrödinger Boxes and a raft of other disciplines ultimately fitting within the general term Science and Cosmology creates a different view of what we consider to be Reality.

A simple way to describe it would be it’s all a collection of Algorithms applied to the unique dimension of time and space that we are occupying.

What is an Algorithm? Wikipedia offers this simplified definition along with a raft of information defining and describing Algorithm: "A set of rules that precisely defines a sequence of operations” This says it. Using a computer’s operation as an empirical demonstration in the application of an Algorithm gives us a good example.

Much of the computer operations are managed by built in Algorithms. When their short-cut identifier or its macro is clicked the formula of the algorithm automatically inputs into the computer processer and this directs the computer to whatever program or function is actuated. This simplifies the process from those days where each formula would have to be entered anew to gain input to the function.

Looking at this procedure as a mirror action between God and the material world, or the Cosmos and our time/space dimension one can surmise: There is a specific formula that is inputted into the world which somehow triggers whatever it is that directs the particles, or the waves, or the photons, neutron, quarks or whatever, to pull together within an order by which they are caused to have qualities that can be sensed by us. We in turn have also been put in play by the same process of material creation by way of another Algorithm. Our Algorithm designed us with the ability to discern the results of the application of the second Algorithm. By virtue of this programming we can sense the after product that is produced by the second Algorithm, sensing its material size and makeup, its quality and properties, the place and passing of time of that product.

If the new object produced is not in itself hard, or fast, or hot, or any other quality we might attribute to it, we sense it to be hard, or fast, or hot and/or some other quality. Our design and the design of the material by the second Algorithm together instill the perception in us that it is of this quality.  It is in this that we produce the reality of the second object, we do so by our observation of it.  

Caveat! This is no more than the way I understand it. Scientifically it may be way off the mark.

Science theorizes, hypothesizes, and suggests all of reality is made up of different arrangements of matter at their minutest discernible or indiscernible level. What is lowest keeps changing. It started with particles that now seems to break down into photons, neutrons, quarks, waves any number of lower units and finally into movement as a wave. This movement is closely associated with the extent of our observation of it as the movement passes by within the purview of our observation. It depends on that observation for its consequence.

Is that consequence its reality? Is it limited to that momentary observation? Does it require continuous observation by someone to keep it existing in this reality? Whether or not it has further consequence starts getting way beyond my ability to understand. What has revealed itself in testing is the causal affect observation has on the movement and its involvement in reality.

Schrödinger’s Cat offers us good illustration of the foregoing as it relates to observation. Said simply, at least as I understand it: Schrödinger put his cat in a box. The box also contains a Geiger counter containing a small amount of Radioactivity. He places a blanket over the box. He knows the radioactive material will eventually dissipate. When it does it will kill the cat.

The cat is left in the box for a measurable amount of time, any measure, the extent of time is not important. What is important is the quality of radioactivity contained in the Geiger counter. The time that it dissipates and kills the cat is not known. That time is purely random.

When the cover is taken off the box, the cat is then observed. If dead as ascertained by the observation of it, it obviously stays dead. If alive it stays alive. From this it is determined by the scientists who cite it that it is the observation of the cat that keeps the cat dead or alive.

In my lay understanding of this I can say if it’s dead it stays dead unless a cat really has nine lives which I’m told is myth. The nature of dead is to stay that. If it is alive it stays alive. There has to be more to this that I do not understand because the constancy of dead is explained by the nature of death. In turn if it is alive, the cover is removed after which the radioactivity dissipates from the Geiger counter, the cat could be delivered from death if the radioactivity dissipated into the air outside of the box.

It may be the observation was through a lens through the closed and covered box where no air is allowed in or let out. The experiment could then have more meaning.

More meaning is not as important as the fact that the Schrödinger’s Cat was the first to validate the theory as it regards observation made of the separate minute part of so-called matter to give it existence. The scientists say until that time it merely is probability.

This was followed by many experiments and further speculation that at this minuscule level it is not clear that the existence of whatever it is being observed, whether it is a material object or is a material movement, its existence depends on an outside observer to give it reality.

Some time ago I wrote a series of essays one of which is the following. It is found in my Archive where I have posted it under the title: Is There More That We Might See? Click on it to go there.

What I speak of in that essay is all that is, we know it is, but we cannot reach the all of it with our material senses. We just know it to be. Gravity is an evident power in our space time universe. Does anyone deny it is there? This runs the gamut to Black Holes and Dark Matter. We don’t see it, we can’t measure it. We just know it is there, there substantially, as arrived at by calculation and reason.

There is much in our world not seen, accepted on facts validating the separate existence of it, the validation of which gives no clue to its material, immaterial, make up. An example of this is following a series of cairns up a mountain side, accepting the cairns give evidence of the existence of a path to follow to go up that mountain side. We know a cairn, a pile of rock placed in a semblance of order, did not happen at random, some hand must have intervened giving the rocks an evident order, the order of which is impossible at random.

This cairn has the significance of someone having to arrange its order, why? Perhaps one is not enough but a series of them winding up the mountain side would suggest the intention of someone building them there, serially separating them, placing them in elevation one after another, being done with purpose. We then speculate on “For what Purpose?” Concluding it marks a trail up the mountain side is a good conclusion.

I cite all of the examples and explanation to give credence to the proposition there is more to this world we are in than we can see and accept as valid and existing in it. I do this to tie in its significance when dealing with Dementia.

With Dementia we lose our power to think. That loss seems to be caused by the minute, slow, gradual course of our disease damaging our brains. It goes to the point where we become incompetent in intellect and an entire spectrum of things we once were able to do that was managed by the brain.

The brain, one of our body parts, loses its abilities. Do we lose these abilities? The answer seems to be universally “NO!” There is more than meets the eye, more than the brain is able to transmit into our own world. The mind, the spirit, the soul, our consciousness is not embedded in this dimension of space and time. Its existence transcends this dimension, most believe it continues after our material death, many believe it preexisted our life lived between birth and death here in this world.

What we need to realize and apply in dealing with our Dementia is this: We, the essential of what and who I am, isn’t changed by Dementia. The only change to occur is of our access to that thinking acting  part of us. The access is interrupted and impeded by the brain damage.

This opens the door to all the possibility of learning how to reclaim that access. It is this that makes some understanding of the foregoing so important.  

This is Brain Boggling

Having read this article I leap for joy! The article is entitled What's the Relationship Between the Brain and the Soul?  It can be accessed and read by clicking on the title or clicking on My Archive.

It is unique in what it reports. Written by a well know neurologist Rudy Tanzi it is about a book he has undertaken to write with Deepak Chopra entitled “Superbrain.” Introducing what they will be writing about Tanzi says:

We started talking about the brain, and we realized that me coming from the neuroscience side, thinking about cognition and nerve cells and synapses, and Deepak coming from the consciousness side… we agree on just about everything, but I think about it in terms of neurophysiology and neuronal processes and how synapses form, and Deepak is thinking of it in a metaphysical way in terms of consciousness, using Vedantic literature

Their thinking is about seeing Dementia as an illness of the body emanating from a disease in the body. The body affected is that part we know of as the brain. Dementia manifests deterioration of the brain arising from of a variety of causes which of course include Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) whatever that is and whatever the cause of it is.

The beauty of this article is it brings together the science of the organ we know as a brain and the function that is transmitted through the brain into our lives. It identifies that function as emanating from our consciousness; most of us identify that as mind, which is in no way our brain. It fits squarely in our Western Religious View of soul. It is the soul which survives our life and continues on in some fashion, separating from the limitations we face of time and space in this dimension of living, when we die.

Dementia does not affect our mind, it affects our brain. It inhibits the expression of our minds through the workings of our brain. In the limitations inherent in space and time we have become accustomed to our cognition expressing itself through our brain. We become so accustomed to it that many times we think the brain is our mind.

To relieve the effects of Dementia when it occurs we need to learn how to prompt our brain to grow around the fault produced in the process of Dementia and have it replace the expression of the mind that was interrupted by it. This is fundamental.

This is the direction needed to overcome the pernicious effects of Dementia. There probably is no magical pill that is going to do it. There are therapies that work with the effects of brain damage that prompt the brain to relearn lost abilities to transmit properties of our minds. The best example of this is Stroke Therapy.

If it is true as Tanzi says:

Now we know that new nerve cells are made exactly in the region of the brain where Alzheimer's hits. We also know from research in my lab and other labs that if you induce nerve cells to divide in the short-term memory part of the brain, you can improve the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in animal models." 

Why not direct some scientific exploration of this to overcoming the effects of Dementia?

In this technological age that is one of many periods following the Enlightenment some 500 years ago we have come to believe in“Our Way” to the exclusion of any “Other Way.” It is this discipline aptly named by Rene Descartes who expounded: “I think therefore I am.” Does this tell us anything or take us anywhere?

It has fed us a long time and brought us to the “Western View” that “Life to Death” is most if not all there is, the rest is too complicated for anyone’s general understanding. The best given us by our view is listen to our religion which says more often than not there is “life after death.” It then refers and defers to religion to define it. Religion places it into a context of Heaven and Hell and to some sects Purgatory as a way station before Heaven.

For those immersed in the Western View as right, there seems to be no place for the Eastern View. It is thought to be all wrong.

Deepak Chopra speaks from a foundation immersed in the Eastern View.  Should we take a step outside of the Western Religious View and look at our world, at the science of it that we do accept, a different view seeps in.

Consider this:

Organically the brain can regenerate to overcome loss produced by a stroke. Why shouldn’t it be possible to overcome the loss produced by Dementia in the way that it occurs following strokes? This regeneration capability with strokes underscores an important anomaly that should be considered by Western Analysis. If the brain regenerates, if it replaces something lost that is then found again, does that not have meaning? The answer is obvious, of course it does!

It is the anomaly that suggests “proof of the pudding.” If loss is overcome by regeneration by the brain, whether it be by way of new pathways found in the brain or by regeneration of actual new brain tissue and the mind returns to the power of cognition it had lost, it tells us the power of cognition comes from somewhere else than the brain. Evident? You bet, it comes from the mind that is separate from our brain.

This is one of the unique truths to be found in the Eastern View. They separate the mind from the body. They recognize the body, the brain of which is part, to be finite, namely limited in existence to the dimension of time and space.

They view the mind differently. Although the West in its concept of soul sees some part of consciousness to the extent it is a property of soul, lasts into “AfterLife,” it is not quite as concrete as the East sees it. In the East we are identified as consciousness which existed before and will exist after this earthly life. The body is but a medium of expression of our mind, our consciousness, our soul while we are in our body and the body is subject to the finite limitations of this dimension.

From that view for me at least life starts making more sense. It also assists when coping with the adverse intrusion produced by Dementia. For this reason a view from the East is helpful in coping with the life change, the paradigm shift, produced by Dementia.

We have much we can learn from the East. Deepak Chopra familiar with western science and eastern cosmology blends both disciplines into understanding how it all works. The only real difference his view has from the view of the west is that the east has more to say about the cosmology of soul.

This allows for use of a simple scientific proposition. Considering the foregoing, considering that the mind’s ability to be processed can be reestablished with stroke therapy why not use the same skills applied to Dementia. It should work.

This becomes even more evident as we look at the mind, a function of consciousness, which expresses our intellect, our intuition, our emotions, our creativity, etc., it simply makes sense to overcome the damage causing the limitations of mind through some therapy, program or other way that can be used constructively to do so.

The Fix is In, err, I At Least hope it is Coming Soon!

OR: We're Hoodwinked Again!

As the pros keep arguing about the cause of, the care of, the cure of and everything else about  Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)? What is different about Dementia? Where is the coming epidemic? Will it be AD or Dementia, or some of both?

We know there are a lot of different kinds of Dementia. Is all AD the same? We know AD gathers similar symptoms of Dementia to classify as being of the “AD Kind.” Does more go into it than that. Does it need to contain significant memory loss to constitute AD?

What is it about memory loss? Will any memory loss apply, or must it be of the kind that results from damage and deterioration of the hippocampus, that part of the brain from which short term memory proceeds?

Is AD a bushel basket Diagnosis that covers all forms of Dementia not classified as something else such as “Frontal Lobe Dementia, Pick’s Disease, Vascular Insufficiency, Multi-Infarct Dementia, and many others which are said to be something else?

If not a bushel basket diagnosis are there some markers about AD that separate it out as AD and not Dementia?

The one key has been the Diagnostic Statistics Manual (DSM) insistence on Memory Loss being the one necessary finding along with others to make it AD:

First, multiple cognitive deficits must be present, one of which must be memory impairment. In addition to problems with memory, one or more of the following must be displayed:

·        Aphasia -- a deterioration of language abilities, which can manifest in several ways

·        Apraxia -- difficulty executing motor activities, even though movement, senses, and the ability to understand what is being asked are still intact

·        Agnosia -- an impaired ability to recognize or identify objects, even though sensory abilities are intact

·        Problems with executive functioning, such as planning tasks, organizing projects, or carrying out goals in the proper sequence

In order to meet the criteria for Alzheimer’s disease, the deficits must affect one’s ability to hold a job or volunteer position, fulfill domestic responsibilities, and/or maintain social relationships. The deficits must also represent a significant decline from the person’s previous level of functioning.  (DSM 4)

DSM 5 being proposed maintains much the same findings but then makes a split effectively separating out Early Stage AD calling it Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) removing it from a category of AD and saying it is a condition that could become AD but not necessarily so.

The symptom collage classifies AD as a condition where people have similar symptoms. For identification it points to damage in the hippocampus, the maker of short term memories. It includes other parts of the brain. It supports a diagnosis without objective proof, like C-Scan, MRI, or other test result. It needs only findings of the above criterion.

Removing MCI from the list, on first impression, is great. It removes the stigma of AD which is a blatantly exaggerated view of everyone who has it as totally incompetent.

The DSM that undertakes to makes AD and Dementia classification is a manual prepared by Psychiatrists and Psychologists to establish criteria for diagnosis of psychological abnormalities. How sound this is is described in an article I have posted on my archive entitled: The DSM 5 Follies, As Told in Its Own Words Click on the title to go and read it.

The article is detailed parts of it difficult to understand by the layman. It has a bottom line however. That bottom line is this:

·       It is recommended criteria for classifying and naming AD. It appears from what the article recites that these are recommended but untested. It says further the writers of the classifications looked forward to their being tested in practical application.

·       This literally puts the cart before the horse. The effect of what to call it has huge social, legal and legislative impact.

·       To take MCI out of Alzheimer’s disease nullifies any more help for it than say a person can get with frontal lobe dementia. AD remains a general classification of similarity of symptoms which is less expansive than Dementia.

·       Early Stage gets little or no help, with the change it will get less.

·       The justification is to assure that which is AD manifests horrid dementia that scares folks into contributing to eradicate just that and not all of the dementias.

I have posted two additional articles in my archive worth reading. They are:

1.     HowCould The New Alzheimer's Criteria Affect My Care And Access To Services?

2.     Can WePrevent Alzheimer's Disease? Both articles can be accessed by clicking on their titles.

3.     The content of the first How Could The New Alzheimer's Criteria Affect My Care And Access To Services? is best described by quoting it:

the classification changes, millions of Americans could lose out on critical care in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

….. Alzheimer’s disease costs $180 billion annually for medical and nursing home care.

Opponents of the proposed diagnosis say that more than 90 percent of people would have their diagnosis downgraded. Some medical experts say that more effort should be done to help patients who have MCI to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. They hope that the proposed criteria will be modified and discussed more to help the aging population…

An appropriate diagnosis can help an aging individual and their loved ones plan for the future. Being proactive in the early stages can allow a person a chance to make long-term decisions about their care, living arrangements, finances, and legal concerns. This allows a person more opportunity to benefit from advanced medical care and support services so that the aging process and effects of the disease are managed better. To learn more about New York elder law or New York estate planning, visit http://www.elderlawnewyork.com.

The second article Can We Prevent Alzheimer's Disease? It starts out saying:

dementia is a chronic inflammatory disease… lifestyle is everything…  “A Mediterranean diet alone lowers the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease by 40%”

It goes on to point out that doing, eating right, exercise etc. will stave off Dementia. This will work in the Early Stages of Dementia.

I present this to show what will be lost by re-classifying MCI as its own thing and not part of AD. This is critical because it is AD that gets all the attention.

The last two articles:

1.     Obama to seek more Alzheimer's research money

2.     WeCan't Wait: Taking Action on Alzheimer's Disease

 

Describe the direction the new government funding under NAPA will take. It looks helpful to all programs for AD and Dementia but read closely and in detail it is the same old story.  Let’s buy are way out of this by financing research for the cure which they propose will be found by 2025.

What happens between now and then, namely the next 13 years? More of the same that Ain’t Much!

It is all best described as Major Hoodwink!

So When Do We Get Real? HUH!!!

There we were, creekside. The water was raging with spring run-off. We all ardently watched the water’s turmoil. No one watched the toddler with us. All of a sudden the little guy wasn’t there. We heard his scream. We looked and saw him foundering out in the swift moving water of the creek.

Oh My God we said, all of us in unison. Gary is gone, what should we do? I’ll dive in and save him said Darrel. Darlene his wife said no way you will be killed too. Matt said he would get his canoe off the car and save Gary with that. Charlie said no, there is no time to untie it, haul it down to the shore and get if. Gary will be blocks away by then if still alive.

I couldn’t believe this. More suggestions were made, discussion of these alternatives ensued. We were all engaged in the arguing none of us taking any action to save Gary. Certainly one of us could have jumped into the car, gone down to the foot bridge and waited for Gary and pulled him out there. We all knew the bridge was there very close to the water, low enough to reach down and snag Gary.

Did we do it? No we were too busy arguing about the right choice as Gary passed under the bridge and was found days later far from it lying on the creek bottom lodged by a large stone. He was hooked in the dragging done to find the little boy’s body.

How could we being so bright spend our time arguing how to save him, when doing it was so very simple?

The plague of Dementia which Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is one or more forms of dementia is in a cloud passing over us right now. And the cloud is dropping rain laced with the Dementia germ. It is spreading exponentially through our populace. It is growing in numbers who have it. It is reaching epidemic proportions and still growing.

It is the toddler who fell in the water and drowned as we argued how to save him. We are doing the exact same thing with the Epidemic of Dementia now quickly building soon to engulf us then bankrupt us. The numbers are there, they are real it would be redundant for me to repeat them.

This essay is about a recent article first appearing in My Health News Daily entitled New Alzheimer's Criteria Would Change Diagnosis for Millions. It is in my Archive, click on the title to go there and read it.

The article tells us this:

Almost everyone currently diagnosed with a mild form of Alzheimer's disease would be downgraded to not having the condition, if new proposed criteria for the diagnosis of cognitive problems were applied, a new study shows.

Instead, people diagnosed as having "very mild" and "mild" Alzheimer's disease would be reclassified as having mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which is currently recognized as an intermittent stage between the normal loss of mental function that comes with age and the development of dementia.

This can be argued as both good and bad but gets us nowhere, the toddler remains at risk with nothing being done to save him. If Early Stage is no longer AD, no longer Dementia, is rather a mild thinking impairment that could be part of the process of aging or part of the process of leading to Dementia, trust nothing will be done to help while a person is in that stage.

If anything this change in classification removes the horrific stereotype of a person who has AD!

I started this essay with the title: So When Do We Get Real? HUH!!!. Getting real is accepting the numbers for what they are and what they will do. Then it is doing something about them rather than arguing with each other about what to do. That is happening now.

·       Too many of the Pros say nothing can be done. Keep them safe, when you can no longer do that, put ‘em in the nursing home.

·       Something happened on the way to the nursing home, then filtered down to assisted living homes, home care and day care. 65-70% of the nursing homes are owned and run by for profit corporations. “For Profits” tend to be chains big box systems in which care is homogenized to one way fits all for whatever reason they are there. They are big, pretty and they pack lots of drugs to keep the inmates soporized (a new word that describes the after effects of soporifics aka high potency tranquilizing-doping drugs!)  

·       It is useful to use these statistics predicting the coming epidemic to scare the socks of folks to contribute to find the cure.

·       Taking the milder forms of AD, (The Early Stage of Dementia where we remain functional) out of the AD classification is perhaps politically motivated to excuse the absence of help for anyone but Fund Raisers and Drug Companies as it now is. When Dementia of any kind is let to go too far in its debilitating development it will take something like Magic to cure it.

The toddler is in the water, it is rushing downstream, soon to drown. It will drown if no one takes action to save it.

We need to quit arguing for priority and start dealing with reality. Something can be done short of magic and that is treatment, therapy and programs designed to keep the so called folks with Mild Cognitive Impairment (CMI) functioning and out of the orbit of need presented by the cost inflated services amalgamated by the sleight of hand of Banks, Wall Street and Big Government.