Rearrangement of my blogs | Alan Lightman’s “Change Is the Only Constant” |

I have maintained two blogs since 2006, uh hum, for which I gain no income. Despite objections and conciliatory accusations that ‘you can’t make money on a blog’, in the shared consensus that one’s worth and place in society is based on ‘the capacity to earn money’ and ‘monetize’, I continue, to write my blogs.

Not to rebel, but merely in Joseph Campbell‘s words, to ‘follow your bliss’. In my case that involves feeding my curiosity.

Follow Your Bliss and doors will open for you, which were formerly walls.

To bring a little more clarity to readers, I’m rearranging a few things, in attempts to define each blog more clearly. Simply plucking a few topics, to place in their forthcoming homes. Yes, I’m somewhat ‘writing out loud’. Ultimately, at times the edges blur as topics from one bleed over into the other. However, I’ll start with this.

The carolkeiter blog will post along with hitchabouts, human interest stories, arts and entertainment, that have a more emotional appeal…Interestingly, clicks googling i guess, ‘naked men’, have brought many to my san francisco hitchabout blog, in which one photograph is named just that. hmmm, yes, sex sells. Perhaps I’ll have to monetize that theme!

The digesthis blog will maintain the themes of consciousness, political, environmental, and science with a leaning towards theoretical physics. Not because I’m a scientist or mathematician, but because my fascination lies there – and ironically it comes back full circle to consciousness.

So I’ll be reposting as I make this shift.

The gravity of the Electric Universe Theory | 99.99% is Plasma |

The Universe | a Multiverse of | Parallel Universes |

graphic of a wormhole

the missing dimension | Quantum Consciousness |

TED talk James Hansen | Tax on Fossil Fuel Companies < reduce CO2 to 350 ppm | WWF The 3% Solution

3 % Solution – Driving Profits Through Carbon Reduction

UTNE Reader‘s reprint of Alan Lightman’s article in the Tin House
September/October 2012 Change Is the Only Constant

Alan Lightman is a novelist, essayist, and physicist, with a PhD in theoretical physics from Harvard University.

Excerpted from his article:

We search for human immortality and eternal youth, and pray to everlasting gods, but in the universe as in life, change is the only constant.

Change Is the Only Constant

“Oblivious to our human yearnings for permanence, the universe is relentlessly wearing down, falling apart, driving itself toward a condition of maximum disorder.” Sandra Dieckmann

I don’t know why we long so for permanence, why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs. With futility, we cling to the old wallet long after it has fallen apart. We visit and revisit the old neighborhood where we grew up, searching for the remembered grove of trees and the little fence. We clutch our old photographs. In our churches and synagogues and mosques, we pray to the everlasting and eternal. Yet, in every nook and cranny, nature screams at the top of her lungs that nothing lasts, that it is all passing away.

Consider the world of living things. Why can’t we live forever? The life cycles of amoebas and humans are, as everyone knows, controlled by the genes in each cell. While the raison d’être of the majority of genes is to pass on the instructions for how to build a new amoeba or human being, an important fraction of genes concerns itself with supervising cellular operations and replacing worn-out parts.

In fact, most of our body cells are constantly being sloughed off, rebuilt, and replaced to postpone the inevitable.

Over its 4.5-billion-year history, our own planet has gone through continuous upheavals and change. The primitive earth had no oxygen in its atmosphere. Huge landmasses splintered and glided about on deep tectonic plates. Then plants and photosynthesis leaked oxygen into the atmosphere.

Buddhists have long been aware of the evanescent nature of the world. Annica, or impermanence, they call it. But even Buddhists believe in something akin to immortality. It is called Nirvana. A person reaches Nirvana after he or she has managed to leave behind all attachments and cravings, endured countless trials and reincarnations, and finally achieved total enlightenment.

Although there is much that we do not understand about nature, the possibility that it is hiding a condition or substance so magnificent and utterly unlike everything else seems too preposterous for me to believe.

Perhaps with the proper training of my unruly mind and emotions, I could refrain from wanting things that cannot be.

Perhaps I could accept the fact that in a few short years, my atoms will be scattered in wind and soil, my mind and thoughts gone, my pleasures and joys vanished, I-ness dissolved in an infinite cavern of nothingness. But I cannot accept that fate, even though I believe it to be true. I cannot force my mind to go to that dark place.

Suppose I ask a different kind of question: if against our wishes and hopes, we are stuck with mortality, does mortality grant a beauty and grandeur all its own? Even though we struggle and howl against the brief flash of our lives, might we find something majestic in that brevity? Could there be a preciousness and value to existence stemming from the very fact of its temporary duration?

—.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Keep your thoughts positive, because they become your words.
Keep your words positive, because they become your behavior.
Keep your behavior positive, because it becomes your habits.
Keep your habits positive, because they become your values.
Keep your values positive, because they become your destiny.
Mahatma Ghandi

The sneak peak of legs framing the top of the digesthis blog, are actually those of myself and an acquaintance running barefoot in the snow. It was a couchsurfing community invite, a dare which beckoned. And since I like adventure and trying something new, I was all over it !-) It’s for sure less dangerous than walking on burning coals – which I have yet to try – to test one’s mind.