“The Dreamer Awakens” by Ted Wind

The Dreamer Awakens 

by Ted Wind 

Peaking Behind The Curtain 

Our concept of what is real isn’t what is actually real it’s a Construct. It’s a story Our brains tell Us based on a relatively small amount of biased and filtered information. 

As Our awareness and knowledge evolves and grows through learning and experience the initial Construct Our brains created begins to break down.

We start to understand that this imagined reality is a dream world, an illusion, based on a limited understanding brought about by a narrow perspective. 

We begin to see that everything in Life has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. 

From clothing styles, to popular music, to languages that are spoken, to governments and societies, and even to whole species that exist everything in Life is a momentary trend when looked at by a broad enough perspective. 

Life is ephemeral because it’s always moving, changing, and evolving. If We try to hold on to anything in Life We will inevitably suffer from the attachment.

As Our knowledge grows We inevitably ask, what is really going on here? 

We also start wondering what’s the point of it all. 

What Everything Is Made Of

We live in a Universe made up of particles that must follow certain Universal Laws. 

We are comprised of cells, cells consist of water, inorganic ions, and carbon-containing molecules, and molecules are composed of atoms.

Atoms are made up of two types of elementary particles, electrons and quarks. 

Electrons occupy a space that surrounds an atom's nucleus. 

Quarks make up protons and neutrons, which, in turn, make up an atom's nucleus.

The strong nuclear force is a fundamental interaction that confines quarks into proton, neutron, and other hadron particles. The strong nuclear force also binds neutrons and protons to create atomic nuclei. 

The Weak Force or weak nuclear force, a fundamental force of nature that underlies some forms of radioactivity, governs the decay of unstable subatomic particles such as mesons, and initiates the nuclear fusion reaction that fuels stars.

All matter in the Universe follows specific physical laws.

All matter in this Universe is in motion.

We may think We are sitting still but the truth is matter is vibrations of various underlying fields. Also our cells that consist of matter are always moving. 

On the macro-scale gravity is continually attracting us to this planet.

This planet is continually falling towards the nearest star and moving so fast that it keeps missing the Star it’s orbiting. 

This Solar System is continually falling towards the center of this galaxy and traveling so fast that it keeps missing it. 

This Universe has been expanding since the Big Bang set everything in motion. 

We don’t know what happened before the Big Bang because the laws of physics break down the closer we get to the Big Bang.

The Laws Of The Universe 

The laws of physics are boundaries, matter physically can’t go beyond the boundaries and remain matter. 

There are three laws of motion. They define the fundamental relationship between the acceleration of an object and the force acting upon it.

The first law is that an object will remain at rest or in a uniform state of motion unless that state is changed by an external force. 

Things in space only move when a force is applied. Applying force requires energy. 

The second law is force is equal to the change in momentum over time. In other words, the rate of change is directly proportional to the amount of force applied. 

The third law is for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

The conservation of mass and energy states that mass and energy can’t be created or destroyed only changed to different states. 

Energy is a term used to describe a trait of matter and non-matter fields. 

When matter has velocity it is said to have kinetic energy. 

There are also various forms of potential energy.

Potential energy is stored energy that depends upon the relative position of various parts of a system. 

A spring has more potential energy when it is compressed than when it is stretched. 

A basketball has more potential energy raised above the ground than it has after falling to Earth.

Energy transfer takes place when energy moves from one place to another. 

The three ways thermal energy transfers occur are through conduction, convection, and radiation. 

When thermal energy is transferred between neighboring molecules that are in contact with one another, this is called conduction.

Convection is the movement caused within a fluid by the tendency of hotter and therefore less dense material to rise, and colder, denser material to sink under the influence of gravity, which consequently results in transfer of heat until the liquid reaches a state of natural equilibrium.

Radiation heat transfer is a process where heat waves are emitted that may be absorbed, reflected, or transmitted through a colder body. 

The closest star to this planet heats it up by emitting electromagnetic waves, which plants use through photosynthesis.

We can see heat waves when We see waves rising off really hot pavement or sand. The heat waves distort light as they travel through the air giving the appearance of motion.

The laws of thermodynamics are actually specific manifestations of the law of conservation of mass and energy as it relates to thermodynamic processes.

The First law of thermodynamics is Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed, it can only be transferred from one form to another.

The Second law of thermodynamics is that the entropy of any isolated system always increases.

Matter tends to naturally move from a state of order to a state of disorder.

Everything Is Relative, Relatively Speaking 

Einstein's special theory of relativity states that the same laws of physics hold true in all inertial reference frames and that the speed of light is the same for all observers, even those moving with respect to one another.

Inertia is a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.

In other words, the laws of physics don’t change depending on where We are in this Universe.

The speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant.

Unlike all other forms of motion, it is not measured differently for observers in different inertial frames of reference.

The speed of light is the fastest anything can travel. 

As an object approaches the speed of light in space that object shortens completely down to zero width and infinite density which slows time down to a stop. 

Since we can never have infinite mass and energy for matter, the speed of light cannot be reached.

The only particles that We know can reach the speed of light are light particles.

Light is made of particles called photons, which are bundles of the electromagnetic field that carry a specific amount of energy. 

Light moves at the speed of light so light experiences no time because time stops at that speed. 

Living In A Gravity Well 

Space and time are linked and Space-Time expands and contracts depending on the mass of matter in that Space-Time. 

The greater the mass of two objects and the shorter the distance between them, the stronger the two objects gravitate towards each other. 

Mass contracts Space-Time which slows Time down. So clocks move slower on this planet than they do in Space this is called Time Dilation. 

We age slower on this planet than we would in Space. 

This is why time appears to stop the closer an object is to an Event Horizon of a Black Hole, which is an object that is so dense that light can’t even escape its gravitational pull. 

The laws of physics break down inside Black Holes.

We don’t know what happens inside Black Holes. 

The warping of Time causes gravity. 

Time moves slower the closer We get to a large mass, like this planet, so when We are standing Our heads are traveling through time faster than Our feet. This causes Us to accelerate towards this planet, creating a gravity well. 

We weigh different amounts on different planets depending on the planet’s mass, which means that weight isn’t a fixed amount. 

Perceiving This Universe Through Waves And Particles 

Electromagnetic waves move through space, carrying electromagnetic energy. 

Electromagnetic waves include radio waves, microwaves, infrared light, visual light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays. 

All of these waves form the electromagnetic spectrum. 

Right now We are being bombarded by electromagnetic waves, luckily We can only sense visual light waves otherwise the amount of information coming in would be overwhelming.

When We see a thing We are actually seeing the visible light waves, that are not absorbed by the thing, reflecting off of it. 

Then Our eyes translate those waves of light into habitual neurological processes that represent the thing in Our brains.

Dogs only have the sensory organs in their eyes to see blue and yellow light, so they can’t see colors like We can.

The other waves We have evolved sensory organs to pick up are sound waves.

Sound Waves cannot exist in a vacuum because they need oscillating matter to exist, no matter, no waves. 

Sound Waves vibrate Matter back and forth which causes bones in our eardrums to vibrate which sets off Habitual Neurological Processes in Our brains. 

We can only detect sounds in a frequency range from about 20 Hz to 20 kHz. 

The hearing range of my cats are from 48 Hz to 85 kHz, so they can hear a much larger range than I can.

We recognize certain molecules through Our taste buds on Our tongues and smell receptors in Our noses.

We also experience cold, heat, pressure, and pain through signals generated by touch receptors in Our skin. They travel along sensory nerves made up of bundled fibers that connect to neurons in the spinal cord. Then signals move to the thalamus, which relays information to the rest of Our brains.

Our senses have been extremely useful in the survival of Our species and now We have tools that can help Us go beyond Our limited sense organs.

Survival Is The Name Of The Game 

Carbon and Oxygen were not created in the Big Bang, but rather much later in stars. 

All of the Carbon and Oxygen in all living things are made in the nuclear fusion reactors that We call stars.

Basically We consist of a huge assemblage of carbon based cells that have evolved over billions of years. 

We are quite literally made of stardust. 

We are a minuscule part of this Universe experiencing this Universe through a tiny part of this Universe. Which is a good thing because an Unexperienced Universe seems like a huge waste of Space-Time to me, but I’m biased of course.

Life is the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

Life puts off entropy for a while by increasing entropy around it. 

To fight off entropy Life needs energy.

Green plants and some other organisms use starlight to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water.

During photosynthesis in green plants, light energy is captured and used to convert water, carbon dioxide, and minerals into energy-rich organic compounds that can be consumed by animals for energy to combat entropy.

Photosynthesis also generate oxygen as a byproduct, which animals breath.

Without photosynthesis, the carbon cycle could not occur. 

The carbon cycle is the process that moves carbon between plants, animals (like Us), and microbes, minerals in the earth, and the atmosphere. 

Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes that are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. 

Our genes contain instructions that tell Our cells to make molecules called proteins. Proteins perform various functions in Our bodies to keep Us healthy. Each gene carries instructions that determine Our features, such as eye colour, hair color and height. There are different versions of genes for each feature.

Our Body’s primary duty is survival and the propagation of Our species.

Organisms that are more adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on the genes that aided their success. This process causes species to change and diverge over time. 

This process is called Natural Selection.

A huge plus to being an intelligent and self aware species is We can use tools to mold Our environment to better suit Our own needs so Natural Selection doesn’t play as big a role in Our survival. 

We can be thought of as organic computers, complete with both hardware and software. 

Our Hardware is Our genetic code written in Our DNA. Our bodies, including Our brains, have not changed much for over a hundred thousand years.

While Living We each run an operating system on Our brains, and that operating system comes from the combination of formal education and life experience we’ve accumulated over Our lifetimes. 

This operating system requires constant updates to be able to best manage life in Our modern and constantly changing society. 

Being successful in life is about processing information and making decisions, and if Our World is changing at ever increasing speeds it’s up to Our Software to change with the times. 

Our Hardware changes slowly over generations and Our Software changes as We live and learn.

We are finding it harder to keep up with the continual influx of information so We’ve learned to augment Our Hardware and Software with the use of intentionality and external tools.

Tools are physical objects that can extend Our abilities to modify features of Our environment. 

Other animals on this planet use simple tools but only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates back over a million years ago, have been observed using tools to make other tools. 

Early tools, made of stone, bone, and wood, were used for preparation of food, hunting, manufacture of weapons, and working of materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts. 

The development of metalworking made additional types of tools possible. 

Harnessing energy sources, such as animal power, oil, wind, or steam, allowed increasingly complex tools to produce an even larger range of items, with the Industrial Revolution marking an inflection point in the use of tools. 

The introduction of automation allowed tools to operate with minimal human supervision, further increasing the productivity of human labor.

Presently We have tools, computer systems, that are able to learn and adapt without following explicit instructions, by using algorithms and statistical models to analyze and draw inferences from patterns in data. 

Our computers are able to store information, reason, think, and learn more efficiently than Our Naturally Selected brains can. 

Artificial intelligence is pushing the boundaries of machine enabled functionalities. 

Artificial Intelligence technology facilitates machines to act with a degree of autonomy, resulting in effective execution of difficult or mundane mathematical or computational tasks. 

The question is what happens when Our tools become so complex that they decide they don’t want to be Our tools anymore? 

Information Overload 

Data is an individual unit that contains raw materials which do not carry any specific meaning.

We are always being bombarded with huge amounts of data.

Information is what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of data. 

Information is a group of data that collectively carries a logical meaning.

Information processing in Our brains starts with input from the sensory organs, which transform physical stimuli such as touch, heat, sound waves, or photons of light into electrochemical signals in Our brains.

Information can be confused, even blocked, when there are too many distractions, too much additional information being picked up by Our senses. 

After Information is picked up by Our senses it is stored as electrical and chemical signals in the brain. Nerve cells connect together in certain patterns, called synapses, and the act of remembering something is just Our brain triggering these synapses. 

For information to be firmly implanted in memory it must pass through the three stages of mental processing, sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Short-term memory refers to the memory systems in the brain involved in remembering pieces of information for a short period of time, often up to thirty seconds. Short-term memory creates a kind of sketch of information the brain has recently absorbed and will process into long term memories later on. How We think about the information effects how easy it is to encode, store, and retrieve that information. Memory tricks can greatly improve Our ability to do these three things with information. Information is 

When long-term memories form, the hippocampus retrieves information from the working memory and begins to change the brain's physical neural wiring. These new connections between neurons and synapses stay as long as they remain in use. Long-term memory can be divided into two length types recent long-term memory and remote long-term memory. Memories are patterns of synapses so over time they can change and degrade. 

Awakening Into Self Awareness 

What sets Us apart from most organisms on this planet is that We are conscious, We can think, and We are self aware.

Thoughts arise through the complex interactions of the brain's nerve cells called neurons. Neurons interact with each other via dendrites and axon terminals, which are branch-like tentacles that surround neurons.

Thinking about Ourselves, recognizing images of Ourselves, and reflecting on Our thoughts and feelings, which are different forms of self awareness, all involve the cerebral cortex, which is the outermost, intricately wrinkled part of the brain. 

Consciousness is Our individual qualitative awareness of Our thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environments. Essentially It is Our awareness of Ourselves and the world around Us.

The best way to put it is Consciousness is that which does the experiencing. 

Consciousness can’t be seen directly, but the physical effects of It can be seen and measured. 

The reason We can’t physically witness Consciousness itself is because Our consciousness is substrate-independent, which means that consciousness occurs when complex physiological processes happen in specific complex patterns. 

We know that when particles move around in spacetime in patterns obeying certain principles, they give rise to substrate-independent phenomena like waves and computations. 

Consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways so consciousness is substrate-independent. A wave, which is also a substrate-independent phenomenon, cannot exist unless it is in motion. 

Our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are the communication between neurons within Our brains. 

Brainwaves are produced by synchronised electrical pulses from masses of neurons communicating with each other.

Brainwaves are detected using sensors placed on the scalp. 

They are divided into bandwidths to describe their functions but are best thought of as a continuous spectrum of consciousness from slow, loud, and functional to fast, subtle, and complex.

 

Brainwaves are like musical notes the low frequency waves are like a deeply penetrating drum beat, while the higher frequency brainwaves are more like a subtle high pitched flute. 

Our brainwaves change according to what we’re doing and feeling. 

When slower brainwaves are dominant We feel tired, slow, sluggish, or dreamy. 

The higher frequencies are dominant when We feel wired, or hyper-alert.

This is why We don’t feel Our usual sense of self while in deep sleep or anesthetized. 

When brainwaves are being detected in Our brains, those waves are the physical phenomenon that creates the qualia of Consciousness.

The qualia of being a conscious life form is the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions, arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena.

Also where Consciousness is concerned only the structure of the information processing in Our brains matters, not the structure of the matter doing the information processing. 

If the information processing itself obeys certain principles, it can give rise to the higher level substrate-independent phenomenon that We call Consciousness. 

We don’t yet know what principles information processing needs to obey to be conscious, but concrete proposals have been made that neuroscientists are trying to test experimentally.

Ultimately the notion of consciousness being substrate-independent twice over leads Us to reject carbon-chauvinism and the common view that Our intelligent machines will always be Our unconscious slaves. 

Consciousness needs the substrate to exist but what the substrate is made of is not important. Only the computational patterns are important for the phenomenon of consciousness. 

Computation, intelligence, and consciousness are patterns in the spacetime arrangement of particles that take on a life of their own, and it's not the particles but the patterns that really matter, so Matter doesn't matter.

We Are The Individual Waves That Make Up The Ocean.

The Meaning Of Life Is To Create A Meaningful Life

We give the Universe purpose by building meaning within the Universe. 

We are much more than Our emotions, thoughts, and bodies. We can be the alchemists that transform Pain into Compassion, Gratitude, and Kindness. We are the narrators of Our own story.

Follow the voice inside that will lead to a Joyful existence, but first remove all the useless clutter and be quiet enough to hear It.

Melt into the moment with Mindfulness.

Mindfulness leads to Minimalism of the Mind.

It becomes evident that the clearer and simpler life is the better.

We can be present in the now. 

Mindful not Mind Full. 

Minimalism leads to being Mindful and Intentional of the stuff We allow into Our lives.

Master the mess with Minimalism.