It was the ancient ones who first recognized the nature of cycles,  passing down the knowledge, gifted in written text and oral traditions to the chosen of each generation to keep records of what was meant. The task for them was to create an atmosphere where harmony exists without interfering with choice.

The ancient ones were aware that cosmic forces are immense and subtle, remaining invisible until sensitivity to them is developed much as knowledge is often hidden among the clutter of pointless facts noticed before a truth is revealed.  On the other hand they contended that “nothing is useless as long as its appropriately prioritized.” An approach no different than subjecting students to a multiple choice test who are given more information then they need to choose the correct answer, a way of encouraging the development of  knowledge by also sharpening the ability to use a sound process of elimination (guessing).

Who the ancient ones were is less important than what they said about the universe describing it as “a lot of space with ‘things’ suspended within, in constant motion  as everything moves in relation to their previous position and/or mutual gravitational effects on each other.” They were aware of the closest and farthest currents although they attracted less attention by being silent and occasionally leaving inspiring hints along the way, sometimes misinterpreted, becoming the basis for cults.

According to them, the universe could be interpreted as a conduit for the cosmic pulse, while the veil is defined as “anything that is not known,” frequently misunderstood as a symbol for whatever prevents revelation, neglecting to consider its dual purpose as a protection from the knowledge one is not ready to receive. They indicated, “the ability to verify existence or calculate cycles is not necessary to understand the imperceptible.”  Only a rudimentary comprehension of mathematics is important as one silently listens to the cosmic breadth and reads the poetry of light, sound and motion.

Fragments of fable and myth  have been passed down revealing some things about the first ancient one, said to have been born in a small town in the Himalayan Mountains.  Originally the youth, like the other men of the village, was a peaceful farmer. However, an elder villager held in great respect somehow gained certain  knowledge which he shared with the one who later became the first of the ancients. Both began exploring the secrets of the universe learning how to harness cosmic energy for their own uses, although their motives were quite different. While the elder focused on  building a vast empire, the youth wished to use it for the benefit of his fellow villagers. A great struggle ensued between the two, symbolic of the battle between selfishness and selflessness, as  the legacy of the ancient ones remains a contemporary theme about power.

Another reminder of cycles are found in  remnants of The Mayan civilization, which constructed the most mathematically accurate calender ever devised, informed with future astronomical events which influenced their culture along with paganism and human sacrifice. Survival they realized depended on planting crops at the right time and understanding the forces that effected their growth much of which involved cycles of climatic regularity and change. They found ways to ensure a continuation of their society until they vanished, leaving only mystery and myth for scientists to fathom, although their calender and some written hieroglyphs remain.

The Mayan calender calculates the end of one cycle and the beginning of another at 11:11 am GMT on December 21, 2012.  All they contended was that the transformation from one to another would be characterized by “great changes,” as the Sun and its planets approach the center of the galaxy, an event that occurs once in twenty eight thousand years.

What happens after this date is unwritten suggesting that it must be left to those who are now alive to determine the shape and intensity of the change.

Suppose it were possible to make scrambled eggs without beating them first - perhaps a trivial concern - but when was the last time you cracked an egg without paying attention to what you were doing? It doesn’t really matter where the egg is struck, as long as it contains no shell.

Every now and then a double yolk appears and those become unusual events, especially when children are looking on, eagerly absorbing everything with awe struck attentiveness. To them it’s a magical event and how they interpret what they see can shape their personality and define the approach they will take to life. This may sound like a hefty claim, but each time an egg is successfully transformed into an omelet, it builds confidence, a celebration when it enhances the ability to focus, especially for children and multi-taskers who revel in cracking two, in both hands at the same time.

Creating a batter in a bowl is a rote expenditure of energy. Another approach would be to open the eggs directly into the heated pan, then using a fork, mixing the yolks and the whites together when they are in the process of solidifying, creating a unique variation of color and texture, as a small amount of milk or cream for the aristocrats is added with salt and pepper. This encourages risk-taking, an absorbing adventure each and every time the task is undertaken. Most important is not having to scrape them from the pan. An assurance of an experienced knowing hand, especially when one of the kids asks: “Why are some eggs white, and some brown?” Then a learner-ed parent can respond with a smile, “They can also be green.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_shells

In Hinduism, Avatar is a  Sanskrit word referring to the conscious descent of a deity from heaven to earth often translated into English as “incarnation,” but a  more appropriate term is “manifestation.” Its meaning is the basis of James Cameron’s visual epic that took fourteen years to complete depicting native life of Pandora, a planet that takes several years to reach in suspended animation. The film is an artistically stunning adventure in 3D worth seeing  even if the story, written in two weeks, is a bit derivative with a  screenplay that borrows heavily from some of the directors previous work and brings to mind too many similarities to Dances With Wolves.

The military look of the film is so reminiscent of  Aliens that it distracted me from  becoming immersed in the film. Aliens is the 1986 classic that Cameron directed about the bugs that gestate in the chest of its living host and have acid for blood. As in Aliens, the company or corporation features prominently as the prime antagonist of evil instigating  the invasion force that plans to drain Pandora’s natural resources for the benefit of Earth. Our planet is now an ecologically depleted waste land, a victim of economic greed that Weavers character, Dr. Grace Augustine, a Bio-Anthropologist opposes as passionately as she did as Ellen Ripley in Aliens.

The feel of the film’s technology including a cargo loader machine similar to the one Ripley uses to defeat the queen bug at the end of Aliens is featured in facsimile in a major battle scene at the end of Avatar. This similarity is an annoying element of this new film which was written, directed and produced by Cameron with a running time of 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Although the 3D nature of the films construction is groundbreaking, the plot is predictable and the characters are too two dimensional drawing  heavily from other science fiction/ fantasy films. The premise that all living things emanate a common energy also known as “the force”  fills everything in the universe is perhaps a reference to the  Star Wars universe , not that there is anything wrong with imitation, but even the forests of Pandora,  a magical place  with luminescent creatures and large revered trees  evokes the image of Lothlorien the mystical home  of the elves of Middle Earth. Add to all this the notion of cloning a personal avatar and a neural link, then  Alien Resurrection and The Matrix comes  to mind. But despite all its flaws, Avatar is worth seeing if only to make one realize that Star Trek (2009) is a much better film.

Promises are commitments that are frequently made before the full range of possibilities are known, especially when the ‘minds eye’, is distracted by anxiety.  External pressures lead to some movement, hopefully unaffected by subjective fear, encouraging a path that does not include procrastination.

Moral judgements can affect the type of alternatives  perceived and the extent of those that remain invisible, since many options will not be noticed until the psyche allows,  just another reason to cultivate  sharp observation for what exists in the surroundings. Adding more information can increase the odds for making better choices by clarifying  existing blind spots.

Right or wrong has little to do with good or bad, effected more by interpretation based on learned upbringing and cultural backround influenced by emotion. Ethics requires credible logic with diligent  reasoning, a more important factor when defining the position taken while  faced with a moral dilemma.

Ideally, marriage for example, was originally conceived as a religious institution based on a pledge intended for the duration of life, based on  how one feels at the time its proposed. A commitment binding one to another until death. However somewhere along the line, divorce and annulment became  a political tool to deal with a change of feelings that occurs over time.

In the past, social constraints on women have stressed the need for marriage because for them, options were limited and inhibitions were placed on their citizenship that influenced personal opportunities in favor of men. However, as barriers fall and changing circumstances alter conditions by balancing the playing field, perhaps women will become less willing to bind themselves to perpetual unalterable commitments, relegating reproduction as lower on the list of priorities to justify marriage.

Although biology has defined physical differences between men and women, culture and society have varying expectations of husbands and wife’s, assuming we are talking about heterosexual marriage. Even then, the question arises, is social maturity defined by whether one is prepared to commit to a future shaped by events that is not possible to know, or feelings that will motivate judgment in the future differently?

When secular governments point to the equality of partners as fundamental proof of equal citizenship, they cannot then create a legal imbalance in favor of one group over the other by using  religious doctrine to justify it, since the purpose of a secular government is to eliminate favoring one faith over the other  by finding the balance between ethics and universal religious principles that are inclusive,  especially when faced with the issue of same sexed marriage.

Since the US Constitution makes no mention of committed unions, it’s irrelevant to citizenship and cannot then be used by government to justify restricting the benefits of equal citizens  based on  a majority plebicite influenced by the religious right,  such as in Proposition 8 in California.

Although committed unions are for example not mentioned in the Federal constitution, the economic benefits afforded married citizens  are glaring, nor can any democratic  government justify denying some groups from those same advantages while acknowledging them to others.

Perhaps secular societies should eliminate the term marriage altogether and replace it with civil partnership, affording everyone equal rights and make all the divorce lawyers happy. Religions can do what they want as long as they make no attempts to infringe of the rights created by secular society.

The notion that existence is a series of  multiple lifetimes filled with experiences connected by individuality, moving spirally in overlapping cycles, can be a threatening thought. If people only live once, then they need not waste time thinking about what was done in a past life, especially when the range may include some reprehensible acts.

Clues of the inner struggle of good and evil are often revealed by dreams, fantasies and thoughts, although it is difficult to listen to their hidden message without editing the meaning if they are strictly measured by The Ten Commandments - the foundation of ethical conduct that transcends any one religion. No one wants to acknowledge the evil within themselves or the harmful actions they may have committed, even when confronted, often rationalizing them as unexpected occurrences or misunderstandings, initiated by the highest of motives and not their fault.

Judgment is better left to the cosmic forces however they are defined, since reincarnation - a difficult concept to accept - opens the doorway to the possibility that  everyone has done just about anything humanly possible during the sum total of their lives, including the misuse of power that perhaps has led to the death of others. How else would one learn responsibility but to have experienced leadership on some level and abused it by making really dumb choices, thus suffering the consequences. The problem is remembering those choices and carrying the lessons learned from one life to the next so mistakes are not repeated. Unfortunately, the difference between Good and Evil is rarely obvious and can be as subtle as moving from a room painted “off-white” to an adjacent one that is completely “white.” The difficulty is not knowing what “white” really looks like until there is something else, different, to compare it to.

In a cycle of birth, death and rebirth, one has to think about personal actions in a multidimensional way. How will actions done in this life play out in the next?

How has much of the fortune or misfortune currently experienced been determined by experiences in a previous life, especially if nothing is remembered?

The fear of  reincarnation is knowing who you really are by recollecting what you have done in your past lives, exploring all thoughts and motives evoked to a conscious level and accepting responsibility, regardless of what is discovered. But the thought of coming back over and over again is exhausting. It is much easier to think that when it’s all said and done, everything just stops or one goes to either eternal joy in Heaven or everlasting damnation in the fires of Hell - all of which is determined presumably by one’s life. At least then, one knows where they will spend the rest of eternity.

Once personal focus changes, finding an answer to whatever is sought loses its obsessiveness, frequently suggesting another path with additional questions that redefine the search. Where the quest leads, perhaps to an insight or a destination just out of reach, depends on how the concept of Infinity is interpreted.

Although physical laws are viewed as immutable, perhaps the folly of curiosity is entertaining the possibility of finding a solution for anything. The physics distinctively experienced have the potential for alteration, depending on where one is positioned in relation to everything else (perspective), a contradiction of sorts and a point often seen as a cliche, a meaning lost within the subtle difference between “a limitation” and “a boundary”.

The first is self-imposed, based on lost confidence from a forgotten dream, a consequence of habits’ causality, perpetuated by circular thinking. The latter contains a larger collective connotation such as the boundary of human comprehension, capable of being rethought as knowledge expands.

Consciousness and self-awareness, both dependent on the dynamics of the conditions perceived, exclude all else, a casualty suggesting that sentience is a milestone of growth that could be better associated relatively, a correlation rather than an exact construction. The problem is defining what it is all relative to. A dilemma without a scientific solution, divinely inspired by spiritual components, unrelated to religious rhetoric.

Contained within defined possibilities are those that stretch the imagination to reach beyond the gleaming stars, open to the very things that reason mocks, an inventive formula revealing “things” that exist hidden within and beyond the boundaries of the five senses.

Motivation and drive, the positive side of compulsion, compete with obsession for their place within the creative impulses, seen externally as pathological especially by those devoid of curiosity.

A reasonable approach might be to learn about surrounding levels of existence even if the connection remains unseen and held with uncertainty using a  sense that reveals the presence of something without necessarily knowing what its substance contains, a basis of intuition.

Although its green, nice to look at and fun to count, the US dollar has no intrinsic value. As an illustration of money, it’s just printed paper representing an IOU in lieu of some societal value. In fact, money everywhere has the same purpose, of easily providing purchasing power to whoever has it, while being a source of envy for those who don’t.

Most of history, and politics, issues of war, civil unrest and peace involve money somewhere in the mix as the causal factor of conflict even if no one is around to identify the transaction. Arguments often arise between nations when formulas are created to measure one countries’ currency in relation to another. Many cultures define success as the ability to get as much of it than is needed, while each generation passes down the misguided notion that “security” is synonymous with possessing it.

The idea that, suffering along the way to obtaining money will somehow teach the value of having it, has become more wishful thinking than a golden rule, since greed and temptation for an easy buck seems to be everywhere. What happened to the idea that self-confidence in one’s own ability to find a solution to whatever uncertainty presents is where the nature of true security lies.

People with “no money” usually fare better during economic downturns than those who have more than they know what to do with, as long as they have access to good education which translates into a level playing field. For them, ingenuity is the way of survival rather than spending their lives obsessing over how to generate more and discover ways to avoid losing it by inventing ways to keeping track of it.

Perhaps finding another way to engage goods and services is possible if money were totally abolished, as in the Star Trek Universe of the Twenty-Fourth Century, where society provides for all needs effortlessly allowing everyone to be creative and focus on higher pursuits. It sounds wonderful but removes incentives and the need for personal motivation, not necessarily a good thing for a balanced equation. Conservative Republicans might add their two cents, “It’s a bit too socialistic.”

Maybe science could eventually invent the ‘Duplicator’ to make everything out of nothing, so no one has to worry about anything, creating another form of a classless society, eliminating the need for competition. But wait, this is not a credible option since matter, according to Physics, can neither be created nor destroyed. However, if one is able to think outside the box, other alternatives will make it possible one day to lose money happily with a smile.

There is nothing like a good trivia to distract the mind from reality. Curiosity, somewhere is tapped by its interest in a provoking thought. Perhaps that is why Jeopardy, the game show, has been hugely popular for so long, widely considered the most intelligent format of all the game shows.

Trivia isn’t necessarily synonymous with “unimportant”, just unlikely to be known by the average person. It is often specific and familiar only to experts in the field who spend a great deal of time studying details.

In school, exams usually test students on exceptions, assuming that the general principles are already known and the only way to measure thoroughness is by questions involving unlikely anomalies that might occur.

Medicine for example requires absorption of large quantities of facts. It also assumes that an understanding of normal physiological processes (homeostasis) helps in speculating patho-physiological results when imbalance occurs, always supported or refuted by the scientific method. Comprehending anything that might affect harmony is probably not trivial when what is thought to be inconsequential, as a matter of perspective, can effect the outcome.

Economics was never my strong point. In school, it acted on me like an hypnotic sleeping pill. What I do remember is that I learned more about it from Psychology: I have something you want (commodity, service), you have something I want, lets negotiate terms and everyone is happy. Mix into the cauldron of some motivated competition and you have a crude description of supply side theory. Hopefully, all involved are in a growth cycle, generating GNP (Gross National Product), just another way of describing everything that everyone produces at the same time, measured in a particular geographic location over a specified time period. Perhaps a bit over simplistic, but also an honest attempt to understand the current quagmire of macabre economics, by reducing it to some kind of intelligible formula and decipher how this will all filter down to “me” or “us”. Remembering in the end that, “Time Will Tell”, the phrase passed down by the eldest of the family, one generation to the next as the answer that will provide all insight if you wait long enough till the effects of all this are finally felt rather than anticipated.

Actually, it could have all worked, as long as the participants played by the same rules; another way of measuring the fairness necessary to create public trust. If some “structure” maintained oversight of the game, such as a parent monitoring their child, lovingly reinforcing the rules as their kid sway toward the right, or smacking them for not listening by thinking they were being slick when your head was turned. Otherwise, players, like children in a candy shop (perhaps Madonna’s) are left to their own devices to honor the rules though they owe accountability, not to the electorate or their mother, but to stockholders. Responsible self regulation is not possible without the public trust, defined by lessening the restrictions on growth, which doesn’t mean that mom stops observing what the kids are doing or that she ceases to worry that they won’t learn the lesson before the consequences become grave.

Anthropological evidence describes some form of selfishness or greed, in all cultures, as perspective that is limited and “self” becomes more defined. Assertiveness and self confidence is an appropriate response when it’s based on ego development, but the temptation to tilt the playing field (cheat) also exists as part of human nature and needs objective oversight.

The Private Sector is comprised of individuals with varying self interests who spend time hiring lawyers to test the rules and find loopholes. Republicans are “nuts” to think that the private sector could ever have regulated itself. Nor would any self respecting parent willingly leave their child on their own before they were sure they were capable of acting responsibly independently.

As Nana use to say in her broken English, “Everyone gotta be on the same page” and “you gotta have eyes behind your head”, but what would you do? I asked. “Gold and silver”, she responded gazing into the teacup, “even in ancient times that would be enough to ‘Greece’ up the market, especially when money ain’t worth the paper its printed on.” And then she added “Now keep your fingers outta the candy jar!” Good advice since no one seems to know how to clean up this mess.

Scholars of antiquity were often students of Alchemy, a controversial science steeped in Mysticism, ridiculed as an occult illusion with the grandiose notion of transmuting base metals into gold. Associated more with Astrology, Tarot Cards and divination, its credibility has suffered in modern times.

According to Wikipedia, many alchemists had profound impact on the scientific advancements of their time including ore testing and refining, metalworking, production of gunpowder, ink, dyes, paints, and cosmetics, to name a few. Certainly more kin to science than crystal ball gazing.

Gold is valuable because it’s a trace element, difficult to encounter, and soft enough to allow its artistic use in jewelry. It also has a nice shiny color. If a solution were found to transform anything into this economic prize, its commonality would detract from its perceived value.

Perhaps a natural evolution of viewing alchemy is also suggested in the intangible metaphysical notions of spiritual qualities expressed in metaphors throughout literature and poetry: the conscious ability to transform primal thoughts and feelings steeped with instinct and accumulated experience into the quest for discovery and perfection made possible by curiosity, the “Philosophers’ Stone“.