How do miracles happen?

Hi Jim,

Recently a friend told me a personal story, how he and his wife went upstream to find the source of the Elbe river. He said he'd started out in Hamburg, Germany, where the Elbe is a large river floating through town. Then they went further upstream, into another country, until they were at a small stream. And even there they could go further up the stream to the source of this large river Elbe.

My friend said they ended up at a place where the stream was so small, only one foot wide.

I asked him if he tried stepping into this one-foot wide Elbe. He said no. I then asked if he thought that his step into the source of the Elbe would somehow run this large Elbe river dry, further downstream in this city called Hamburg. Again he said no he thought this would not happen.

I consider this a miracle. When we think of a source, we think of something larger than the outcome / the produce. But reality is different.

I wonder if your question makes sense when we assume that the flow of our thought is naturally towards downstream, with our body sensing towards source which is upstream.

Perhaps miracles are miracles only when we look downstream?

Our body contains the brains, and yet these same brains tell us that we can imagine our body. Which one is larger?

The acheology of the word miracle shows the latin word for "to wonder at".

My suggestion would be to wonder at the direction of thought, and whether this direction is upstream or downstream direction.

Hope this helps.
Best regards, and thanks much for your endorsement,
Your buddy Ron

ATTN: Back to my roots

(response to a heartfelt message from Martin Dewhurst, founder of Team Penny On)


Yes, going home is going where the food is.
Food we need as a part of the creation cycle.

Food is physical food, food is love, food is order.
That's what we need.
It is the first part of the tide of love and attention.
From our viewpoint, the search for food is the search to alter matter into energy.

Then there is creation.

Creation is altering energy into matter.
It is the apparently opposite part of the tide of love and attention.

From the viewpoint of those who gave us the food, it is quantum leap, the dark side of the moon.
They don't know what the food they gave will do , what effect it will have an onto whom.
It is the daybreak situation ; the wave no longer coming ashore, and not yet returning to source.

Nigel Risner often says : when you are in the room , BE in the room.

I hope this compass helps you Martin to be in the room all the time.
To really see that you are in the room all the time, is to see that there is no room.

PG: How a little girl showed the path to freedom

This weekend i was offered free attendance to a millonaire mind's weekend.

On saturday, it became clear to me that my next question would be : "how do i let go of my freedom?"

On sunday morning, i waited for the bus, studying clouds, wondering why my attention is always at the other side of the river, when a little girl and her father approached. She was waving hands at me and yelling 'hello!" from her side-wheeled bicyle, as if she was saying to me "help is on its way".

Indeed they sat right behind me, and i paid attention as to how she would show me the way. What happened next was, she got to sit at the window seat, and while the bus was driving, she exclaimed 'Look, daddy, i am looking out the window! " I could sense her joy that the act of looking itself gave her, sense it with all my senses.

So there and then i understood that freedom is gone as soon as i am free. All the way from the bus stop to the venue, i laughed out loud of sheer joy.

Simplicity rulez !!!
Best regards, Ron

ATTN: Wat is aandacht?

(Dit artikel verscheen eerder in de Mensa Berichten van september 2006)

TITEL: Wat is aandacht?
AUTEUR: Ronald Wopereis (3183)

Nu al weer bijna twee jaar geleden was ik intensief bezig met een project, waaraan ik dacht de rest van mijn leven te zullen besteden: Pay on Demand, een kwantum theorie van de economie. Tijdens een eerder bezoek aan het toenmalige hoofd van de afdeling New Business Development van een van 's-Neerlands grootste banken, kreeg ik te horen dat mijn idee briljant was, maar helaas onuitvoerbaar omdat geen bedrijf ter wereld groot genoeg was om de benodigde infrastructuur te kunnen bekostigen. Bovendien zou dan het bankwezen failliet gaan. Nu was dat voor mijn gesprekspartner niet direct iets om zich ongerust over te maken; zijn afdeling was immers opgericht om te bedenken hoe de bank juist in zulk soort situaties zich nuttig zou kunnen maken en aldus blijven voortbestaan.

Aangezien het onmogelijk was om de infrastructuur te bouwen, en desondanks dit idee op de een of andere manier in mijn hoofd terecht was gekomen, besloot ik dat het dus niet anders kon of de infrastructuur was er al lang. Aldus gewapend met een nieuw perspectief bezag ik de wereld. Ik ging mijzelf en ook andere mensen vragen stellen. Wat lost een oplossing op? Wie ben ik als ik mezelf niet ben? en zo meer van die interessante weetjes, om tenslotte terecht te komen bij vragen als Wat is aandacht? en Wat is een keuze?

Inmiddels heb ik het eerste deel van mijn avonturen op schrift gesteld. Op Internet blijk je namelijk te kunnen "self-publishen", oftewel je kan een boek uitgeven zonder dat het je geld kost. Mijn boek "Bilocality and the inner world of attention" heb ik uitgebracht via www.lulu.com. Voor de schrijvers-in-spé onder jullie wellicht een aanrader. Voor 35 dollar krijg je zelfs een heus ISBN nummer en komt je boek een jaar lang op Amazon in de catalogus, evenals in "Books in Print". Maar dat terzijde.

Eind dit jaar wil ik deel twee van mijn reis te boek gaan stellen. Momenteel verzamel ik links en rechts wat materiaal. Ook op mijn website www.maakjegeenzorgen.nl staat een berg aantekeningen. Kortom een rommeltje, mijn studie is nog niet afgelopen.

Wat is aandacht? Zoals je je wellicht kunt voorstellen, verandert het antwoord met het inzicht. Zoals de zaken er nu voorstaan, zie ik aandacht als de tegenstroom van liefde. Visualiseer met me mee als je wilt, en zie dan de twee polen van het geheel en de delen. Het geheel kan geen delen onderscheiden; en de delen kunnen het geheel niet waarnemen. Arthur Koestler noemt zo'n entiteit een holon, iets wat een geheel is van delen en zelf ook weer deel van een geheel. In mijn eerste boek heb ik de term "bilocality" geintroduceerd. Onze eigen filosoof Spinoza heeft in zijn boekje "Ethics" daar prachtig over geschreven, hij zei zoiets van mind en body zijn twee perspectieven op een en hetzelfde gebied. Dus het geheel is hetzelfde gebied als het gebied van de delen.

Zie dus het geheel als de ene pool, en de delen als de andere pool. Het geheel, dus dat wat geen delen kent. En de delen, die geen geheel kennen. En misschien kun je iets zien van een beweging, energie of iets dergelijks, die van het geheel naar de delen gaat, en van de delen naar het geheel. Het ging om de vraag "wat is aandacht?". Stel je nou eens voor dat je die stroom "liefde" noemt, wanneer je kijkt vanuit het geheel, in de richting van de delen. En stel je dan misschien ook voor, hoe je vanuit de delen weliswaar dan niet het geheel kan zien, maar daar misschien wel een "gevoel" bij zou kunnen hebben. Dat tweede perspectief, dus vanuit de delen kijkend naar het geheel, dat noem ik aandacht.

Ik geef nu enkele voorbeelden waarmee je met dit perspectief een beetje kan spelen. Je best doen dat heeft geen enkele zin. Het is een spel waarbij je speelt met de spelregels in plaats van volgens de spelregels. Zoals Krishnamurti ooit zei : "Zeg niet ja of nee, want dan zit je vast. Onderzoek het!" en ook nog zoiets van "Truth is a pathless land." Ok hier komen de voorbeelden. Veel speelplezier !


Voorbeeld-1: vrouw en man.
De vrouw is het geheel, en de man is de delen van het geheel. De man geeft aandacht aan de vrouw, met een kwaliteit alsof hij haar voor de allereerste keer ziet en ongelooflijk nieuwsgierig is naar haar. De vrouw ontvangt deze energie als "aandacht". Zij opent zich voor deze aandacht, die maakt dat zij zich bewust wordt van iets in haar dat onmetelijk groot is. Het geheel kent namelijk geen delen, en dus ook geen definities, geen woorden, geen randen. Omdat er een beweging is van de delen naar het geheel, is er dus ook een tegenbeweging. Deze tegenbeweging nu, is "liefde". De man ontvangt deze liefde, en ook hij wordt zich bewust van iets in hem dat onmetelijk groot is: datzelfde geheel. En nu pas raakt hij écht geinteresseert. Hij probeert met zijn mind de omvang te peilen van dat wat hij bij haar heeft ontwaard. En dat wat in haar is, op de golven van zijn aandacht, wordt groter en groter. Beiden, zowel man als vrouw, zeggen "wow !". Het is een kettingreactie tot in het oneindige. Of liever gezegd, ik heb geen idee hoe groot die eigenlijk is.

Voorbeeld-2: kind en volwassene.
Het kind is het geheel, en later, als het volwassen is, is het de delen van het geheel. Misschien kunnen we even voor het gemak dit kind "innerlijk kind" noemen. Het innerlijk kind is het geheel, en de volwassene is de delen van het geheel. Nu kun je weer dezelfde namen gebruiken om de beweging van geheel en delen te volgen. Het geheel is altijd ontvangend, reagerend, kan uit zichzelf niet veranderen want het was al een geheel, is een geheel en zal ook altijd een geheel blijven. Dus de actie komt vanuit de delen, die dan op zoek zijn naar het geheel. In dit geval is het dus: de volwassene geeft aandacht aan haar of zijn innerlijk kind, met een kwaliteit die hiervoor is genoemd. Oordelen en waarnemen sluiten elkaar uit, het is van belang om dit even in de gaten te hebben. Dus zodra je oordeelt, sluit je je ogen voor datgene wat aandacht vraagt. Je zegt "ken ik al, dus kijken is niet nodig". Ok, dus de volwassene heeft aandacht, volledige aandacht, voor zijn of haar innelijk kind. Het kind ontvangt deze energie als aandacht, en de tegenbeweging is liefde.

Misschien op de valreep nog een derde voorbeeld. Stel dat de delen het niet kunnen opbrengen om aandacht te geven. Stel dat de delen zelf aandacht nodig hebben? Of dat het geheel niet in staat is zich te openen, en liefde te geven. In de relatie tussen man en vrouw gaan ze dan op elkaar zitten wachten. Let wel, ik heb het hier niet over de fysieke man en vrouw - dus ook in een hetero huwelijk kan de man het geheel zijn en de vrouw de delen, misschien spreken je de termen zender (man) en ontvanger (vrouw) aan, dat blijft toch cultuurgevoelig, let alsjeblieft niet op mijn woorden maar verzin die van jezelf. Wat ik wilde zeggen, in de vastzittende relatie wil de man aandacht in plaats van dat hij die aandacht geeft. En de vrouw die meedoet in zijn spel, zij wil liefde ontvangen in plaats van liefde geven. Liever gezegd, hij moet eerst. En dat is waar. Alleen, hij kan niet. En dat is ook waar. Soms blijkt dan waarom, bijvoorbeeld omdat er nog weer een andere dynamiek gaande is, namelijk de aandacht die door generaties heen vloeit. De man die met zijn moeder is getrouwd, de vrouw die haar moeder maar een slappe hap vindt. Wat kan zo iemand doen? Misschien vind je het leuk om te reageren, in de MB of in persoonlijke email.

Hartelijke groeten,
Ronald Wopereis
aandacht@maakjegeenzorgen.nl
06-29 584 582

ATTN: The art of un-knowing

The question of what is peace is really about seeking to understand, rather than to agree or disagree. We understand that all conflict arises from two or more claims on one and the same area; be this area the truth, a country, or any other right that excludes the claims from other people.

Art, in its own unique way of expression, is a way out of this dilemma. The dilemma is that our minds must be free, unique, without conflict or arguement; yet our intuition is one. The project about attention is to find out , how these two perspectives of mind and intuition can exist concurrently. Our translation of mind = HOW , the expression, the shaping. And the translation of intuition = WHAT , the content, the formless. Together they form a bilocality. There can not be content without form, no fruit without skin. And yet there can be no form without content; borders exist by the virtue of contrast.

The art of dialogue is then, to understand that HOW and WHAT, mind and intuition, affect one another. I use my attention to feel, and if i want to analyse my feeling with my mind, i use part of this feeling-attention for mind-attention. The result is that i have less attention less to feel. Then my mind tells me that i loose grip of my feelings. I try even harder, which means i take away even more feeling-attention and use it for my mind to work harder. And in this process, where feelings are gone and the mind is left with nothing to shape, to analyze... This is where you and i need to be a team. One is the mind, the other is the intuition. This game, this dance, is a never ending one, you and i can switch roles each and every millisecond. Most people don't realize that the game continues : that it is a quantum process, where the reality is different, depending on whether you observe , be aware , or whether you don't.

To see the process, this game, you and i need to step back. If you look into the world, thru a pair of red-coloured sunglasses, you see the world as red. But if you have had these pair of red-coloured sunglasses all of your life, then the world does not look red ; instead it looks NORMAL. So the question is : how do i know that i am wearing a pair of red-coloured sunglasses ? How do i start to wonder ? And so , within the dialogue , there is yet another level of collaboration, of being a team. This is the art of unknowing, of walking the path back from knowing to not-yet-knowing. You ask yourself : how do i know this for sure ? Where did this belief come from ? What is this feeling all about ? And instead of answering these and other question, thereby effectively shutting down the door to the world beyond the red colours, you start looking for your glasses. Nobody in the world has ever reminded you that you were carrying such a thing as red-coloured sunglasses. They thought it was YOU.

The art of dialogue is the ugly duck looking in the pond, seeing its mirror image. The art of unknowing is the ugly duck, asking itself if being different means being less equal. So where do we go from here? What is normal? What is frustration? And how can art help to build the bridge to a future, where each person is acknowledged for their uniqueness, and radically included in this one whole that is incomplete without the last person at their own unique place.

ATTN: Here's an exercise to experience the third dimension

Bilocality is two opposite perspectives on one and the same area.


The movements in Bilocality
Movement is that which has no beginning, no end. Jiddhu Krishnamurti.

• in zero dimensions, the movement looks like no movement. Oneness. No borders, no contrast, no movement.
  
• adding a first dimension, the movement looks like a swing. Back and forth. Contract and expand.
  
• adding a second dimension, the movement looks like a cycle. Breathing. Seasons. Daybreak is at the end of one swing ; nightbreak at the other end.
  
• adding a third dimension, the movement looks like a spiral. (*)
  
• adding a fourth dimension, the movement looks like this : the spiral contracts and expands. Like going from wide, into a narrow tunnel or mirror, to wide
  

(*) To understand the third dimension, here's an exercise i picked up from Hans Planje, astrology teacher with Aurinko in the Netherlands. From their website: Aurinko is Finnish language, means "Sun". The symbol for the Essence, symbol for thé source of creativity and self expression. Thé creative power of the human being is to create life by living it. Aurinko wants to participate by teaching you a means that shows you what life is.

---

Exercise to experience the third dimension
Find two other people, the three of you find a large enough space to experience spiral movement. The experience is that of the moon running circles around the earth, while the earth runs circles around the sun. You represent the moon; the second person represents the earth; the third person represents the sun. Afterwards you can change roles, so everyone gets a chance to see, or rather to feel, the differences in viewpoint.

Beginning position:
The sun stands in the middle of the room.
The earth stands at a distance to the sun, such that in 365 steps she makes a full circle around the sun.
The moon stands in between sun and earth, as close as possible to the earth. With every step the earth makes, the moon completes one full circle around the earth.

Direction of movement:
is reverse-clockwise at all times. So from north to west to south to east to north.

Walking instructions:
The sun does not move because this is experience is limited to three dimensions.
The earth starts walking around the sun, paying attention ONLY to the sun.
The moon starts walking around the earth, paying attention ONLY to the earth.

Goal of the experience:
We want to let the moon experience something, so the earth should keep up the same speed at all times, paying attention ONLY to the sun. The pace is whatever the moon can handle.

Enjoy !

----
I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis

Author of "Bilocality and the inner world of attention".


Why change ?

ATTN: Pleading guilty

Think 1,000s of years
Think how the women were oppressed
and how, at the dawn of this millennium,
the women are asking the men to listen to her accusation
of violence
of suppression
of distance,
of resistence to she, who is his source and destiny.

Where are the men ,
who will not run away
when the women need to look him straight into the face
when they tell him of all their sufferings?

This is a story in small, within one family
it is a story of female versus male energy balance
it is the story of Kerry Santo and Modo Fac Central
of Nefertiti and Akhenaton
your story, my story
it's bigger than just you and me,
can't you see ?

The woman needs the man, more than ever,
to acknowledge what he did to her for centuries,
to say "yes we did", to plead guilty to the accusations of the women

The message needs to be heard
only then
it is possible for her to show her love
that which has never left her

There need not be a penalty
Nelson Mandela showed us how.
Just this acknowledge, this seeing of the suffering of the women
and that it should end.

ATTN: How i made friends with my ego

I experienced a shift in consciousness when i made friends with “my ego”.

Until that moment, i had always experienced my ego as an outside person, stronger than me, who would always prevent me from doing this or that, or persuade me to do such and so.

Then, one night, i was attending a lecture at the esoteric school that i joined. The teacher was speaking about the law of two, the law of apparently opposites. Black and white, thumb and fingers, red and white bloodcells. He instructed us to seek 1,000 examples of this law of two; and if you don't get it by then, he added, seek another 1,000 examples, until you do.

Further instruction included counting. He said our mind loves to count, so when you're on the road, count cars, lamp posts, trees, it really doesn't matter what you count.

So i was on my way to the south of the Netherlands. And i was counting. You know, my mind just LOVED it. I was having a great time. I thought.

And suddenly, there was this shift. Suddenly, i came to realize that my mind was no longer protecting me. While my mind was counting, i was seeking examples of the law of two. And all of a sudden, my mind came back to me from playing. “What are you doing?” it asked. And i had to confess that i was collecting samples of the law of two. My mind realized that it was inevitably going to be affected by this collecting of samples. And i got really sad. In fact i cried my eyes out.

It was then that i realized my mind had been my guard all along. Like Peter and the Wolf, little Peter with his wooden gun, guarding the house while i was away. Brave on the outside, but scared on the inside, longing for me to come home.

That is where i made friends with my ego, with my mind.

Best regards, Ron

ATTN: A new theory of attention - part one

Love and attention are the high and low tide of our energy system.

Love is the food, flowing from the whole to its parts.
Where there is a movement, there is also a countermovement.
Attention is the the existential emptiness, the flow backwards from the parts to their whole.

And then there is the holon, the whole for its parts and the part within the whole.

When we consider love and attention, whole and parts, there are several orders to be observed.

One is time, where the parent is born before the child. And so the parent is the whole.
The child pays attention to the parent, in order to receive the love from the parent. And the parent decides how and when they will give their love to their child. This is what brings about conditioning.

One is again time, where the person was a child before he became an adult. Let's name the person as a child the "inner child", then the adult pays attention to the inner child. This inner child then radiates love to the adult. Such love is often called passion, or pain, or creativity, depending on context.

In nature, love and attention are seldomly used. For love, the word food usually applies. And for attention, it seems there is no word. The mother bird flies to the nest with a wurm in her mouth. The young birds spread their mouth wide open. Love is the food. What are the wide open mouths? Do young birds pay attention to their mother?

The last example in this part one, is where the whole is the woman and the parts are the man. Use other words if you like. For the woman: female energy, the intuition. For the man: male energy, the mind. So the mind pays attention to the intuition. And the intuition radiates love to the mind.

Why is this all of any importance? Consider the human being a drop of water in the ocean of love and attention. Would a drop of water ever get tired? So why would a human being get tired? Of what?

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Additional comments from this same Ecademy blog :

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(1)
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yes absolutely
i think love and attention are the tides of our own psychic energy system.

in responding to your message, i wanted to use the word "chi" for psychic energy. i looked up the word in wikipedia and could not find it. then searched for energy and landed here :

Conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy (including potential energy) in a closed system remains constant. In other words, energy can be converted from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. In modern physics, all forms of energy exhibit mass and all mass is a form of energy.

I think love and attention also obey this rule. Paying attention is creating space. Quantum theory represents an object differently depending on whether it is being observed or not being observed. During the act of measurement, the mathematical description abruptly shifts--from a spread-out range of possible attributes (unmeasured object) to single-valued actual attributes (measured object).

The word "mass" reminds me of attention-related words. For instance, the word "important" has the element of the Latin "importare" = to carry in". Important=strongly affecting the course of events or the nature of things - so there again i see how attention "creates" reality.

For the word mass i currently use "fixed attention".

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(2)
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yes i have read the book by Gary Chapman.
What you are referring to , i had in mind to make this part two of a series.

Here's the imaginary situation :
the mother rejects the way in which her husband pays her attention. next, she will find herself inhibited to radiate love to him. And so her desire to have children grows. The child will be a boy. He will then become her husband. This body needs love, and his mother is prepared to give him love, provided that he judges his father and finds him incompetent to love his mother. Next the boy receives love, he takes his father's place and suddenly he feels a deep emptiness inside. This boy has gone away from his place as a child. No longer has he got a father, no longer can he be a child.

For the holon, the chain of events, the karma, it does not matter whether you follow the boy into his marriage, where you can easily predict what kind of a woman he will marry and how similar his marriage will be; or to follow his mother back into her childhood, where she could not be a child and now, as a mother, wants to share her deepest feeling in the only way possible : by having her son experience as a child exactly what she as a child went through.

As for God, here's a quote from Bert Hellinger that resonates with me, about human greatness - which is essentially what the word God means for me:

Some time ago, I was reading texts of Kungtse. When I read these texts, I understood something about human greatness. What I understood from his writings was: What is greatest in human beings is what makes them equal to everybody else. Everything else that deviates higher or lower from what is common to all human beings makes us less. If we know this, we can develop a deep respect for every human being.
-- Bert Hellinger

PG: Reasons to say NO when somebody offers to make you RICH

Should you need any help with cash flow, consider Dennis Barker. Dennis has been one of the first people on Ecademy who i associated my work with. He and i met on several occasions in London.

Let me share you something that happened to me today. I saw Dennis's ad where he said "if you would like to invest in personal growth, and you are faced with the situation that you have no funds, then this is something i can help you with".
What happened then? I felt anxious to phone Dennis and ask him for help ! That is ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, he and i are on the same path, we are best friends, and i won't let him touch my objections to retrieve the funds that would enable me to personally grow !

When i thought of what was going on, i came to realize that there exists in fact two or more opinions inside me. One is where i really want to further invest in personal growth. The Avatar Wizard course would cost 11k dollars, and that would be a great step forward for me. The other opinion is that i should not run out of objections to personal growth ; what if i had no more external reason that i could attribute my inability to grow to ? And then i wondered if this second opinion might actually have something to do with love. Deep inside me i can feel how i do not wish this second opinion to come out of the shadow and into the sunlight of my consciousness ; how deep down i know and acknowledge the fact that questioning my belief will alter them - and i fear the results. For one i might come to the conclusion that i spent all this energy prohibiting myself all these years, and that i would no longer be able to find any good reason why. And to the other i might now think that i am sacrificing something of me, to the better of the person i love in this act of keeping my low selfesteem; and that this other person, once i tell them about my act, would deny the importance of my act, or even tell me that it meant nothing to them.
I wonder if ever i could live with such a situation. And maybe this is why i refuse help.