On Saturday afternoon while picking up a prescription, the pharmacist told me that my doctor had asked to be called for a follow up. Before leaving I decided to check my blood pressure on the automatic machine, only to find the reading stratospheric and scary.

I walked around the store sorting it out, and realized that I had let the machine read the pressure through my sweatshirt. Surely that explained the high reading since I’d been normal for some time.

A close friend of mine with whom I often talk about esoteric subjects once commented on how I get to positions that require leaps of faith. He said I work from a place of rationality first, and go as far as I can with scientific or factual notions, and then I extrapolate inside to a place that cannot necessarily be validated scientifically, but which grows within me truth.

This morning I briefly insinuated myself into a Twitter discussion between Marsha Collier and Chris Brogan, co-author with Julien Smith of the best seller about social media, “Trust Agents.”

In my blog on Social Media as a Woman’s World, I mentioned the shift from considering social media as a standard marketing and self promotion platform to making a commitment to active participation and building relationships.

Like many of you, I read John Hazlehurst’s article “Liar, Liar” as well visiting the cyberdating expert’s site – Julie Spira – who is a member here.

I’ve been thinking lately of the amazing effect Michael Jackson’s death has had on so many people, and while the sheer volume of media attention has surely contributed to the phenomenon, other factors are clearly at work.

Since 9-11 it is often asserted that fundamentalist Muslims have “hijacked” their religion from presumably more reasonable and mainstream believers in their faith.

Anyone who has followed the news in science recently might say exactly the same thing about the concept of Intelligent Design, and once again the culprits are fundamentalists who have co-opted a set of beliefs, in this case scientific findings, to virulently promote their own narrow interpretation.

Particularly in the fields of quantum physics and genetics, there is an increasing awareness on the part of scientists that natural phenomena cannot be explained or predicted without taking into account the presence of an underlying mental component. Heisenberg and even Einstein first introduced these concepts in physics; in genetics the implications are more subtle.

We are increasingly told about the genetic code; the genome (which is the code underlying an individual or species) has been sequenced (interpreted as a series of alphabetic letters) and at the TED conference in Monterey last year, geneticist Juan Enriquez described the apple as “an application.” When it receives enough energy from the sun the apple “executes” its code (just like a computer program) and falls from a tree.

If you’ve ever worked with computers you’ve had an experience that points to what this means (and I acknowledge that scientists are uncomfortable with the notion of meaning). You’re working on a new computer program or application, or even installing a peripheral, and it doesn’t work. You reread the manual or maybe even call a help desk, and the problem gets solved – and here’s what happens: You realize that the computer was right.

What you then realize is the device or the program functioned exactly as it was supposed to, but you misunderstood something in the instructions. The malfunction was not some random event – when you understand it from a higher perspective it makes total sense from the vantage point of your new understanding. When you can align yourself with the system that conceived the program or device, suddenly everything about the incident becomes clear – it is no longer seemingly random – it is the obvious result of comprehensible intelligence.

This is precisely the current predicament of science. As it tries to decipher nature its findings are incomplete, but in every nook and cranny they point to something unmistakable – previously the province of mystics and pantheistic religions – there is an unmistakable order, a plan and symmetry at work in nature.

But when they venture forth with these findings the results are not pretty.

Ben Stein is addressing this issue in an upcoming film, “Expelled the Movie”, in which he asserts that scientists who question some of the theories of Darwin are being expelled from universities and ostracized by their peers for being religious kooks. This is of course a frightening prospect; if findings can be empirically verified they should be allowed into science and if alternatives to Darwin’s theories are rational they should be taught.

But it’s a false conundrum. The problem isn’t Darwinism or even Evolution – it’s the issue of what originally started the ball rolling. Strict scientists believe that random acts like lightening could have triggered evolution and hence life is a random event with no meaning or mental component at work. Mystery solved.

But is it? Some geneticists claim they are years away from creating life in a test tube – but have they? It seems so far they have only created one life form from another.

If their scientific colleagues who are brushing up against the evidence of paradox in the form of a mental or intelligent component at work in nature are being unfairly banished from their positions as scientists, that is an absurdity that results from only one thing – the fact that this concept which is entirely legitimate for scientific exploration has been hijacked by fundamentalists in this country.

They want Intelligent Design taught in schools as a theory of the existence of God – essentially an anthropomorphic construct with obvious problems. We do not know anything about the existence of a God, much less which God is the right one, or what His or Her motives may be.

But we cannot allow earnest scientific investigation into a mental component of nature to be torpedoed by such a fundamentalist interpretation when it may yield immense breakthroughs in the area of medicine, space exploration and fields as yet unforeseen.

The finite human mind seems incapable of accepting an effect without a cause, and yet science is coming up against that paradox inside the atom and at the edge of the known universe. Scientists like Mani Bhaumik, inventor of Lasik and author of “Code Name God” have already begun to compare and even reconcile findings in their fields with ancient religious theories – but totally within the context of accepted scientific discovery. But such scientists do not necessarily contend, and in fact Bhaumik would surely not believe, that locating the presence of intelligence in nature proves that the earth was created in less than a week, or that a puppet master was pulling the strings in the universe or directing the lives of individuals on this planet.

Freeing ourselves from the constraints of this dichotomy, between limiting the scope of scientific inquiry or accepting beliefs based only on faith, is very likely a key to the next great quantum (pardon the pun) leaps in both science and health and we must grant our greatest minds the freedom to explore nature in its fullness, even if it leads to the conclusion that far greater minds exist.

I recall reading that Einstein himself was very mystical, and would tap into an intuitive source when working on his theories.  You might think that scientists are all left brain, but it turns out (as Ken Wilber wrote in “Quantum Questions”) that many of the quantum physicists were mystics in private.

Ironically I stopped reading the book, because I was so disappointed that Wilber says that these scientists refused to make a connection between their mystical feelings and their theories; since their feelings led to the unknown, they refused to speculate on the connection of consciousness with their findings.  That has been left to “New Age” thinkers like Gary Zukav and producers of “What the Bleep”, and it’s usually oversimplified.

For me the connection is apparent in the discovery of how Epigenetics (the environment) triggers both mental and physical reactions according to the programmed intentions of our DNA, just as a computer acts according to the programmed intentions of its software, and neither one would exist without a higher mind to have somehow conceived their workings and actualized them materially.

(My own speculation -- where this is different from an argument for Creationism is that I believe that beyond our ability to “understand” creative forces are at work according to strict mathematical principles (higher mind) and that when one is in alignment with such forces they may act through you and leave your logical mind (ego) aside.

Unfortunately there also appear to be counter evolutionary (devolutionary) forces at work resisting the growth of higher intelligence.  These are unconscious forces that we sometimes call evil.  The reconciliation of these two forces is the One source, which some of us worship as a monotheistic entity called God.  Whatever it is it is ultimately unknowable and I suggest more about it below.)

It is Eckhart Tolle who has suggested that it is the ego (left brain) that humans have identified with falsely as the self, which causes so much suffering because it is separate from a higher source or intelligence which can be connected to as intuition and fights to justify its positions.

According to Tolle and others, those that "awakened" from the trap of the ego were the early masters, Buddha, Jesus and others who are not as well known.

And as Ray mentioned, the problem with accessing this source or dimension is that it is difficult to do deliberately (although maybe BT and his brother figured it out) and in many cases it does lead to letting things remain a mystery – there are no finite comfortable answers and this leads to a sense of loss of control (again, BT’s test results aside).

Bruce Lipton puts forth an amazing theory that just as individual cells eventually organized into lower and then intelligent organisms (us) to support higher intelligence (creative force at work), so too are we as a species in the process of having individual organisms wake up and connect to each other into a higher planetary organism that supports higher intelligence – and perhaps forge a deeper connection to the higher intelligence or consciousness that we (on this blog) sense is “out there” or “in here.”

Of course there is a lot of egoic resistance to this impulse.  We are programmed by our culture for individuality, and self (egoic) fulfillment.  We have trouble trusting others and we have seen collective experiments result in a lot of misery. 

In my view technology serves us potentially on two levels in this evolutionary effort – first as a metaphor for how life works and through the genome and neuroscience, and second through the new human nervous system that has evolved as the Internet.

It’s amazing to see how Iran is “waking up” using Twitter.  It takes enormous courage to fight the forces of control and I hope obviously that they succeed.  What may emerge is, again, unknown.

We’ve had a similar upheaval here in our financial crisis.  Suddenly our foundation of safety has been shaken and we’ve been forced to reexamine our priorities and many have found a new connection to other people and their families.

This brings me to what I believe is the ultimate leap—the realization that compassion and love are a real force in the universe and the main guiding principle of existence itself, and the need to accept it deep in our heart and not intellectually.  That is a leap I am still hoping to achieve and by breaking down the barriers I have personally erected to “protect” myself from others and a perceived hostile world, I hope to get there.  Thanks to all of you for your energy and encouragement.

Yesterday I was at the market and a chance comment sparked a conversation with another guy in the salad area.  He seemed like the kind of neurotic, Jewish guy I usually relate to, and he was probably in his fifties.  He mentioned to me that he was in his first true long term relationship and that the woman had just told him that he was the first guy who didn’t bore her.

“You’d better dump her,” I said sardonically, “You definitely don’t want to be with anyone who really appreciates you.”

He laughed knowingly as we both intuitively understood our respective natures, in which our perennial voice in the head judges every person or situation--and we don’t know whether we can find a level of comfort with another human actually invading that persistently pervasive and negative, yet comfortable (in the sense of knowing nothing else) space.

Then he asked me if I minded if he did some networking, and whether I ever needed some help with my PC.  I told him I write articles and books on Windows and Office software and basically earn my living by solving the many irregularities and annoyances that the software presents.

We exchanged cards and since older neurotic Jewish guys are a dying breed, we kept talking and he mentioned an interest in neuroscience.  I ventured my interest in the work of Candace Pert and Bruce Lipton, which I've mentioned here before, who suggest that a higher intelligence is at work in our brains and in our cells—a force which has also quite likely shaped evolution.

He shook his head and said something like that there are always "isolated scientists and theories like that, but in general there is no real evidence for that sort of thing."

I said I was intrigued because of my interest in computers, and I asked him how he could imagine computer software existing without (human) consciousness to create it (and implying if genetic software is similar, where else did it come from?).

He said that he believe that computers would evolve consciousness through artificial intelligence in the foreseeable future—a common assumption among technologists.  I shook my head, because based on my internal experience I sense what consciousness is, and it lives through organic life and tissue, not through computer chips and silicon.  It’s beyond code—it’s what created code.

I gestured around the store and suggested a wider frame of reference and asked him if he ever thought about where all of this (existence) came from, and if it’s just “random.”

He shook his head and just said, there’s no way of knowing and it’s probably too complex for us to understand.

I nodded and said that we’d probably never agree on this anyway, but it was nice meeting him.  We exchanged a few emails later that day and maybe our paths will cross again.  Nice guy.

I have long since given up trying to convince anyone else of the possibility of higher intelligence or any other things that I muse about but that can’t be proven as “facts.”

Later on that day I visited Clara Berta’s art studio and of course, she’s an artist, and a female, and she understood my own propensity for being “in my head” and yet realizing the limitations of such a perspective.

Her home is like a little museum and we chatted as she gave me a tour and sat down later over tea.

Having read some of the works of Eckhart Tolle, Clara has done some work on getting out of her head, as have I, in terms of connecting with the body, heart and whatever else is in there or out there through mediation.

While I didn’t happen to mention my friend at the market, I admitted that my own method of trying to “figure things out” is left brain first; my epiphany regarding the possibility and in fact the likelihood of higher intelligence came when I watched geneticist Juan Enriquez explain how the genetic code is not like computer code – but works exactly the same way.

(So where did it come from, I wondered).

Apparently its implications did not cause Enriquez any second thoughts either—he just calmly explains the economic and scientific consequences of genetic engineering, but skips any discussion of the meaning because, presumably, “it’s just too complicated” and cannot be factually ascertained.

So that’s the split—between a belief system that suggests that whatever is not scientifically knowable “factually” (left brain) is not relevant to our lives, and should be ignored, and another belief system that can accept the “unknowableness” (mystery) of higher intelligence but posit its existence based on what the left brain has already found—that life itself works in a way that implies the existence of consciousness.

To beat a dead horse—could Microsoft Word exist without consciousness (i.e., an intentional mental effort to create a specific utilitarian, systematic set of code) and if not, how could life (which we have found works exactly the same way) be any different?

Right-brained beings—artists, women and others who have no trouble “trusting their feelings” have no problem embracing such ideas.

But as Tolle says, our civilization is run by left-brained (egoic) analytical beings who trust only their thoughts—so unless their thoughts can shift and suggest to them that something else (higher) is out there and accessible and ultimately significant, they will continue to dodge the big questions and see existence as largely random.

I was there too, until I saw Enriquez’s video; Bruce Lipton describes a similar experience when he discovered individual cells are intelligent and intentional.  (A key experiment showed two bacterial cultures with identical genetic code behaving differently and even mutating differently under different environmental conditions—suggesting to him that there was “intelligence” or “consciousness” at work on some level directing their activities).

So how can this split be resolved?

Well the left-brain beings can continue to build more crap until civilization crumbles or we blow ourselves up, and then it can begin all over again (as Lipton believes it has already happened six times in earth’s history), thereby decreasing the influence of our thinking brain to basic survival matters and putting the rest of the organism back in touch with our natural environment and the source of our being.

 Or, more and more people can figure out the fallacy of relying exclusively on our thoughts and identifying with the egoic mind, and experiment with another point of view and experience the results.

I can tell you from my own experience that going against what the ego is yacking at you is not easy and it can lead to issues, not the least of which is feeling a bit isolated from more “normal” people.

(But there are more crazies waking up all the time).

The thing that happens is that when you observe the internal chatter and disengage from it, you feel better for first short bursts (which you distrust) and then longer and longer.

Whether to experience the discomfort of the split and continue or stay in your head is personal choice; one which my friends at the market and many others like him have already made.

I make no judgment about it.  He may be right; existence might be a bunch or random molecules doing things that can’t be understood so let’s just make a pile of money and drive big cars.

But as my friend Freeman Michaels, a spiritual psychologist asks, “How is that working for you?”

For many people, it has stopped working.  For many, it took the economic rug being pulled out from under them to recognize that their love, fulfillment and their families are more important than their incomes—a lesson that the Dalia Lama suggests is the reason and the lesson of our current financial turmoil.

The random theory wasn’t working for me.  I saw no meaning in anything before my left brain suggested something else might be going on, and I was pretty unhappy and spending my time either trying to earn enough to feel fulfilled and safe, or spending it on things and experiences that never satisfied me.

I was operating largely on automatic, subject to a set of beliefs and assumptions about the world and other people that I had never examined or questioned, and which I began to see were a big part of my unhappiness.

I can’t say that beginning to experience a shift has been a panacea and my life is beautiful and perfect; it doesn’t seem to work that way.

Connecting to your heart and emotions is a big shock at first, and you tend to interpret the sensations as things being “wrong.”  It’s scary and those sensations can’t be controlled—they need to be accepted.

But ultimately once you get a sense that higher intelligence must exist, there sometimes grows a need to connect to it, even in a fragmented, mysterious and uncontrollable way, because if the universe isn’t random, connecting to its source and meaning is probably the only real game worth playing.

Experience suggests that there are a different set of rules at work than those that your analytical brain has concocted for you to follow—and they don’t make logical sense—but little glimmers of experience and how you sometimes feel inside suggest that coming from compassion and forgiveness (the right-brain/heart perspective) is what Freeman calls “a better bargain”, and worth a shot.

I’ve loved tennis all of my life.  As a kid I went to Forest Hills with my pals and my mom to watch the matches in an intimate setting, and I took lessons when I got older to the point where I could compete, teach and appreciate the game.

At one point I had a party for my closest friends and looked at the people gathered there and realized that with but a few exceptions, I had met all of them through tennis.

In recent years I watched with some dismay as the game grew in lockstep to mass media requirements, and champions like McEnroe and Connors were idolized for their “emotion” on the court, which I saw mainly as a vulgar spectacle in which they whipped a bloodthirsty crowd into a frenzy.

While I admired their artistry, I particularly loved to watch players like Borg and then Sampras who competed powerfully but were not sucked into the egomaniacal requirements of puffing themselves up to “show emotion.”

But my favorite player in this regard is Roger Federer.  As a corporate conglomerate in his own right, he has come to recognize the expectations and requirements of the mass media, but when he pumps his fist after winning a point it seems to be almost an apologetic gesture – like “I don’t need this, I have inner resolve, but if this is what you want, knock yourselves out.”

His combination of excellence and gentility have made him immensely popular, but at a steep price.

This past week, having already won an amazing 13 Grand Slam titles and appeared in a record 20 consecutive Grand Slam semifinals, he was presented with an incredible opportunity to win one more, matching the great Pete Sampras, and also winning the French Open, giving him a “career Grand Slam.”

(The career Grand Slam consists of winning all of the four major championships, an achievement that was glamorized by the media when Andre Agassi won the French Open.)

Federer’s arch rival Rafael Nadal, who had denied him the French Open on three occasions and also beaten him at Wimbledon and in Australia, was upset in the quarter finals of the French this year.

Suddenly the pressure on Federer grew to unbelievable proportions, as he had “fallen short” so often recently, almost eclipsing his many accomplishments by his “failure” to win another championship.

To me it was almost painful to watch him play, his joy for the sport completely overwhelmed by the disproportionate egoic expectations of the fans, the media, and most important, himself.

This great person and champion suddenly found himself terrorized by the task so many had set for him as a benchmark for success—he struggled to win two matches in which in any other situation he would have probably prevailed quite easily, against opponents who seldom gave him any trouble.

Finally, within reach of the championship in the final match, somehow he remained in the moment, but even in the final game, you could see the anguish on his face.  This was something he had to do because of his own and the world’s unbelievable expectations—not because it was natural or exhilarating as sport or self expression.

I had watched with horror as Federer, who had just lost a final to Nadal in Australia, broke down and cried in frustration and anguish after failing to tie Sampras’ record, and sensing that he might actually “fail” to deliver on a destiny that so many had set before him as a birthright.

How had this happened, I wondered?

How had such an accomplished individual been allowed to feel that unless he achieved this one additional feat, all of his past records would be rendered almost meaningless?

How had the imaginary benchmarks of millions who had never even played a professional match managed to dwarf this great champion’s personal qualities of humility and generosity?

And how had the media circus, corporate hierarchy, conventional wisdom and collective consciousness managed to create for this one humble man such an overreaching burden and set of expectations?

I pondered these questions as I thought about my own feelings of failure for expectations I had not managed to achieve in my lifetime—how my own ego and the internalized expectations of others has set a series of hurdles for me that I needed to clear and never could in order to feel fulfilled.

My heart fell when Federer lost the first point of the final game.  And then the situation, the crowd, the weather and his own overwhelming skill took him home.

It was clearly an achievement of incredible will and mindfulness that let Federer finally slay his own demons and win the last point.  Having tried and often failed to serve out a match where all that was at stake were bragging rights at Rancho Park, I could not even imagine how difficult it must have been to put the crowd and situation out of his mind and let his body perform.

I was happy as Federer was embraced by Agassi, applauded by past champion Borg, and praised by McEnroe, and graciously accepted the accolades of the crowd, addressing them flawlessly in both French and English.

And I could understand his tears.  They were the tears of immense relief that in the court of public consciousness he had achieved what was expected, and now he could have peace.

Then I wondered – what if Nadal had won again?  Would this great man stand here broken, after all that he has done in and out of the sport?

If he had lost, would his friend Tiger Woods, think any less of him, and call him less frequently?

Would his marriage and impending fatherhood be threatened by his own self doubts, after all he’d done?

Fortunately this one man was strong enough not to have to face these challenges. Now all he needs to do is win Wimbledon, so he can surpass Pete Sampras… 

But in my life I haven’t “won” what I thought I would and should—and I still manage to beat myself up for the many things I felt I should have accomplished and never have, and I try each day to quiet the mental gymnastics that emerge to remind me of my supposed failures.

I think about a story Bruce Willis told of getting the job on Moonlighting and seeing the other actors and bartenders in the waiting room as he left, wondering what would have happened if one of them had been anointed by the producer to star opposite Cybil Shepherd.

I wonder how much whoever came in second to Willis (and might still be a bartender) might have spent on therapy.

Finally I wonder whether these mythic expectations of Herculean achievement are the basis of a life force within us, or its curse.

My recent reading of the works of Eckhart Tolle leads me to attempt to observe the workings of my mind -- and hopefully come to terms with such egoic fantasies and expectations in order to be in the moment -- and finally drop those unbearable burdens that have haunted me throughout my life.

But how would civilization fare if we all did that?  Would mindfulness allow us greater freedom, personal expression and happiness?  Or would it come at a price we would not want to pay – of less achievement, personal comfort, technology and God forbid, no professional sports?

To use sports vernacular, it’s a tough call.  But at this point in my life I am happy for Federer that he will be spared any personal self doubt at his current age or when he reaches mine.

For me I want to finally achieve a sense of personal worth and fulfillment that doesn’t require external measurement, but only inward knowledge of having been the best I could be when I finally woke up.

by Tom Bunzel (web site link)

If you’re reading this blog you use computers, so I suspect that perhaps you’ve had this experience:

You’ve downloaded or installed a new program and you’re too headstrong to open the manual, so you plunge in and begin to do some cool stuff until you get stuck.  Some button is grayed out or some dialog box doesn’t pop up as you expect and for the life of you, you can’t figure it out.

Then, after hours of fiddling, you open the manual, click Help or consult an online resource, and the problem is explained—you have an “ah ha” moment and the process which led to the stuck point is completely clear and you get it.

Not only that, suddenly the logic behind the program makes sense, and your own prior assumptions and way of thinking are revealed as flawed.

So what just happened?

You were able to connect to the logic of the programmer(s) as opposed to your own and an entirely new set of goals and means of attaining them was exposed to you as equally valid—or in fact even more valid than your own previous perspective.

I believe that this is what happens when you meditate:  you distance yourself from your own assumptions about how life and universe should be, and open yourself up to a different set of possibilities and influences.

Just as you ultimately have to accept a program’s logic over your own preferences (or uninstall it), at some point you also need to accept what life is offering rather than continue to think that your conceptions of how things ought to be must unfold.

This latter misconception is sometimes called ego and leads to much suffering.

Literature is filled with stories of kings and warriors who learned this the hard way (often running afoul of the Gods which basically mirrored their own arrogance back at them), and you’ve probably experienced a more mundane version of the same reality, perhaps at the bank, market or the dry cleaners.

On a planetary level our species is also learning this lesson, and hopefully it will sink in before it’s too late.

In Jacob Needleman’s “A Sense of the Cosmos”, he describes attending a medical lecture where a doctor claimed that in some aspect of human bodily function, “nature had made a mistake.”

Oh really?

That’s sort of like geneticists saying blithely that because they haven’t yet discovered its meaning, that a large part of our genetic code is “junk DNA.”

Oh really?

There is a field emerging in biology and life sciences called biomimicry that goes in the opposite direction, and embraces and models the designs in nature to create more successful products—for example, I think that a bullet train in Japan is based on the aerodynamic beak of a hummingbird (or something like that).

But of course most of what we are doing (mainly as governments and multinational corporations) is trying to bend nature to how we think it ought to behave.   In our hubris, we are not reading the manual, not giving due respect to the obvious intentions of the designer or master programmer, and ultimately we may find that we are the odd humanity out of a system that expels us.

We’d better get with the program and realize that we are a part of nature, and that our ideas and beliefs are hopelessly flawed when compared to the big “What Is.”

Meditation, I think, is a great start.  Reading the manual for humanity, like our genetic code, might enlighten our species some, but only if we recognize that before we start tinkering, we need to understand its ultimate objective, rather than our own (like patenting genes)—and consider whether comprehending such higher truth is even remotely possiblef or a limited organism and brain like ours .

But the best way to start is to observe ourselves closely and recognize the common fallacy of assuming we know better in any specific instance.  Because if you’ve ever upgraded any software, you know that “the way you always did something” may no longer be valid, and that someone, somewhere, has a different idea of how things ought to be—and they may be running the show—not your monkey mind.

Wisdom of Your Cells

by Tom Bunzel (link to web site)

Dr. Bruce Lipton is the author of “The Biology of Belief” and narrates an audio book titled:  “The Wisdom of Your Cells.”  He was teaching medical school when he realized that the “dogma” he was forcing on his students was wrong:  DNA does not control life—genes have no ability to turn themselves on or off or “self-actualize”—instead genes are a blueprint for life.

He based this conclusion on several experiments.  First, when a cell is enucleated (the DNA is removed along with the rest of the nucleus), it continue to live until it needs to manufacture more proteins (which requires a blueprint for production) or it needs to reproduce (which again requires the chromosomes containing the DNA).

He also found that when identical stem cells were placed in different solutions, they behaved differently despite having identical genetic material.  This alerted Lipton to the reality that the environment is a heavy influence on how cells and organisms behave and live.

(Lipton will be on PBS with Wayne Dwyer this coming Monday June 1 at 8 pm)

So then, DNA is only a blueprint for the cells’ behavior and activity.

Furthermore, the effects of environment are not only chemical but also energetic, and energetic influences that are only now being understood, and apparently these energetic influences are more powerful effects, and are often their cause through the intervention of the cell membrane.

By way of example Lipton says, of DNA being falsely recognized as the command and control of cells, if that were true of a blueprint (which is all that DNA apparently is), then you could drive by a housing site and throw the blueprint into the foundation and return a while later and find a completed house.  But the reality is that you need a contractor (and a host of other intelligent life forms) to complete the project.

So , Lipton asks, “then who is the architect?”

First, again, the influences of the environment affect the cell, but they apparently do so through (the intelligent) processing capability of the cell membrane, which had previously been considered to be an inert container of the cellular material.

Instead, it turns out that this incredibly thin membrane is truly the “brain” of a cell—all cells have it and without it they would die—not only because their physical structure would collapse but equally important because their interactivity with the environment—their actual “life” processes—would no longer be controlled.

Lipton uses the example of a wafer (akin to a computer processor) to explain how the membrane allows for and controls the exchange of information with the environment – which he says constitutes life.

Life, according to Lipton, is movement, and without this exchange of information, there could be no life.

Many of us know that information is exchanged in the body chemically, but what Lipton’s research has shown is that it also happens on the quantum level—as energy.

So the question becomes, if this energy and information is coming from outside of us as well as inside, what are its origins and what does it mean?

For one thing it means that we are not living in a dead, random universe—there is intelligence manifest everywhere, not just in our craniums.

Perception controls Behavior – according to Lipton the information that comes into the organism through the cell membrane and is interpreted by the brain (in the case of humans), along with our pre-set subconscious scripts – influences and controls our behavior.

Mutation responds to environment and proceeds differently under stress.  John Cairns, a noted biologist and whose work inspired the new field of epigenetics, published an experiment that didn’t fit the established belief system and was almost not published, but for his reputation.  He found that organisms that were unable to digest lactose and were put into an environment with only lactose for sustenance, actually mutated to be able to digest the substance – seemingly intentionally.

This harkens back to the French biologist Lamarck, whose theories influenced Darwin, and who was ridiculed for first suggesting that evolution is intentional and based on a response to the environment – he was lambasted erroneously for a story in which fish looked at land at longingly until they evolved to grow legs and go ashore.

According to Lipton the human organism begins to process information from the environment before birth through the connection with the mother, and before the age of 6 there is no conscious mentation going on, only the “downloading” of information about the world, mainly through the observation of the attitudes and actions of the parents.

This forms the subconscious scripts by which most of us live 90% of the time automatically, and according to Lipton the subconscious processes a million times faster than the conscious mind, so that if we internalize feelings of inadequacy then no amount of conscious positive thinking will overcome them.

Instead these beliefs need to be “reprogrammed”, possibly through energy psychology, hypnosis or other methods.

The bottom line for me about Lipton is that he uses a biological and genetic approach to come to a similar conclusion or epiphany that I had when comparing genes to computer software—namely that the evolution and intentionality of these processes point to a higher level of intelligence and meaning than what we can attribute to ourselves through our own limited logic and understanding.

by Tom Bunzel (web site link)

Conscious Capitalism is a new buzz word for companies to incorporate into their mission statements; the link is to an Amazon list of books on that topic.

To me, this is a wonderful concept, except for the fact that most corporations, their mission statements aside, are built on the mantra competition and not cooperation.

While this is a trend that might be changing (at least according to Conscious Capitalist proponents) and it may also be reflected in the growth of social media, which is also based on cooperation, the sad reality of dealing with large institutions today is that any contact with them is invariably frustrating and stressful.

In the last day or so I have had three interactions with corporate or bureaucratic entities with which many of you will identify and relate:

1.       A credit card company that decided to change my number because of a “merchant breach”, causing me massive inconvenience in terms of checking my online statement and re-entering the information into my direct payment accounts.   They claim to have a commitment to customer service, but from my perspective true customer service would mean better security and no merchant breach, and a way of preserving my credit card number in the event of such an event.

2.       A government agency that I need to call to change an appointment I cannot keep, but the phone message says they don’t answer any more calls because they’re overwhelmed.

3.       A phone company web site that informs me I need a pin number to activate one of their services but whose customer service rep has a different story.  I need to go through a maze of voice prompts to miraculously get a human, when I finally just say “agent!” out of exasperation.

I also detailed a horrific experience with another technology company that “values customer service” in a March blog about Vonage and how their pride in customer service is truly manifest.

What do all of these incidents, which are unfortunately still the rule rather the exception, tell us about the complexity of corporations and institutions?

First, to call any of their efforts “customer service” is to indulge in Orwellian double-speak.  These companies are not committed to providing service – they are committed to avoiding service to contain costs.

For example, if you have ever heard the message, “due to unusually high call volume, there may be a delay in answering your call…” or “your call is very important to us”, the translation is “we won’t commit money to more personnel because we don’t give a crap.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about spending a morning struggling with my computer.   The main point was the consistent intervention by technology into a human endeavor—in that instance, writing—and how the problems were compounded by the software’s complexity at the cost of its functionality.

Why was it complex?  Without new features users wouldn’t see a need to upgrade.  The result of the upgrade?  Complexity and frustration.

The Apple genius bar aside, there is no real way to get help on a computer issue from a human resource; if you’ve called a help line recently you surely experienced something like the three scenarios above, with the added annoyance of answering a gazillion questions before the person says “Can I help you?”

Then there are a gazillion more questions and no substantive answers, until you want to scream, like John McEnroe, “just answer the question!  Can you please just answer my question (jerk)!”

So to follow up on the main issue raised by the conscious capitalists – what is the meaning of all this? (The presumed trend after all is that conscious corporations will focus on meaning rather than – profits)

Well one meaning may be that if cooperation at the expense of counting beans is actually practiced, lots of shareholders won’t be happy.

But perhaps there will be a new generation of conscious shareholders.

For now, however, the meaning is that any attempt to actually communicate with a large institution is at best stressful and at worst completely futile.

This may be a Zen lesson on a global scale in accepting what is as opposed to what should be, but if corporations don’t evolve to a conscious state soon, the humans on the planet will go insane (if they haven’t already).

Eckhart Tolle talks about this in his book, “A New Earth”, in which he calls corporations “giant egoic entities” committed only to profit.  The problem of course that corporations generally don’t have the potential for evolution in that they do not have a conscious observer or sense of awareness (at least not yet).

How would a corporation meditate?  Perhaps if all of its employees did so together this would lead to a shift; there is a video on YouTube of Jon Kabat-Zinn teaching a group of Google employees meditation and mindfulness.   (Kabat-Zinn has appeared on Bill Moyers and many other programs as an expert in mind-body connection).

It’s been a while since I suggested the possibility that corporations are a new dominant life form, but it must be obvious to even the least conscious corporate entity that without humans to clean up the washrooms at night, they won’t last very long.

So why is it taking so long for companies to truly embrace what the experts are trying to teach them – that cooperation is a better long term strategy than bean counting competition?

So, why is customer service so nonexistent?  Why is there still such a disconnect between large corporations’ mission statements and their actual performance?

My guess is that it ultimately comes down to us, the humans, and until we evolve, the corporations we build and work in will continue to be a reflection of our human nature, which at this point is still competitive and largely unconscious.

Perhaps social media and a sense of cooperation can take root and sprout before it’s too late.

by Tom Bunzel (web site link)

I’ve always been intrigued by the depth and importance that women attribute to a man’s putting the toilet seat back down after finishing in the bathroom.

When I first encountered this mandate, it was explained to me that when a woman goes in the middle of the night, she doesn’t want to suddenly find herself trapped in an icky basin instead of perched on a comfortable seat.

But even when I’m not in a woman’s bathroom in the middle of the night, I still find that the imperative to maintain this discipline is no less powerful.

Being preoccupied with more weighty matters I have left a woman’s bathroom at various times recently in the middle of the day or evening, only to be reminded once again of this sacred obligation.

So what’s it all about?

Obviously it’s not solely about a woman finding herself with a wet and gross tush.

Most women I know will make the first request with a touch of humor and fairly low key, but I am well aware that if I continue to lapse the reminders will become more forceful and less humorous.

So the real issue here is about respect and being heard.  Women want access to your brain in terms of paying attention, and nowhere is the potential for lapsing into daydreaming as great as on the toilet.  Often the process is enhanced by needing a newspaper or magazine to take one’s mind off the task at hand.

So there is a two step process for leaving the toilet that lets a woman know that you are not completely self-absorbed and that her needs are equal to your own in your mind.

First she needs to hear water in the faucet so that she knows that you’re washing your hands.

Then she needs to know that between the time that you’ve washed your hands and left the bathroom, she has returned to your consciousness sufficiently to prompt you to remember to lower the toilet seat.

Think of this as an exercise in mindfulness.  You need to retain a portion of your attention on something other than yourself, the Lakers, or what you’re having for dinner/breakfast, and if you want to stay connected to a female, part of that attention will need to be on her.

It’s amazing how infrequently, during the course of the day, we consciously monitor our thoughts and become present.  So let the toilet seat be your new mantra, remind yourself by washing your hands, and your social life will be easier and much less stressful.

by Tom Bunzel (web site link)

My hopefully thought-provoking comparison of genetic code and computer software, and speculation as to its implications. This updated version conforms to the Ignite PowerPoint concept - less than five minutes.

by Tom Bunzel (web site link)

BlogHer, the women’s blog network, found that 42 million women in the United States (roughly 53% of the 79 million adult women in the United States who use the Internet) participate in social media at least weekly.   That doesn’t surprise me, because the more I become familiar with how social media works, the more I am reminded of conversations I’ve had with women and about women.

And I don’t say that critically—on the contrary.  It’s just a matter of evolving or adapting to a different mindset.

Let me explain—as a male my focus online has generally been goal-oriented—to get things done.

My main website is like most, a corporate brochure of who I am and what I can offer to clients, along with a  way to see what I’ve written and perhaps purchase a book or eBook.

Then when I got on Facebook, and eventually Twitter, I was disinterested at first by what I perceived to be mindless drivel, minutae and chit chat; if this sounds like something an honest male might say about having to listen to a lot of stuff about “a woman’s day” I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.

So as I continued to track the social media juggernaut and saw how it enabled many to thrive online, I began to realize what I was missing.  Where I had attempted to use my social networks and status updates in a traditional way—by simply promoting myself and asking people to buy or go to my site(s), I began to study the trend and noted that this was not the point.

Every social media commentary I have read, including the very excellent book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff , the J.A. Jones Blog, and the Mack Collier Blog - @mackcollier have led me to the realization that social media constitutes an evolutionary shift in consciousness in the online business world.

All of these books, and many more, stress the fact that if you are goal oriented in social media or heavy handed in your self-promotion, you are self defeating.  On the other hand, if you listen to the ideas and concerns of others, contribute to a community of ideas, and generally participate without looking only for self gratification, you will see significant rewards in all areas of your endeavors, particularly in self fulfillment, over time.

In other words, social media is not a one night stand—it’s a long term relationship.

Mack Collier, for example, makes it a point to inform his followers on Twitter and his blog that he will simply ignore pitches of any kind from those with whom he hasn’t communicated already; those who pitch him “on the first date” don’t qualify for his attention.

If this sounds an awful lot like the current trend in dating and relationships as “friends first”, preferred by so many women, it is.

As a supposed computer expert I was surprised when I first confronted this reality in discussions with a great friend who happens to be female.  At the time I had discovered Ning, and was writing an eBook which I intended to self publish.

I was concentrating hard on the nuts and bolts of Ning—how to upload content, construct the interface, and generally “get things done” when she told me the secret of Ning, or any social network.

“Make sure you welcome all of the new members,” she said, “and acknowledge their birthdays.  You need active moderators on the discussion forums to ensure that every post is given a sincere response.”

Wow, I thought to myself, I’ve been teaching her what I thought was technology, but she showed me what I had always prided myself on knowing – why this software is important.

In my tech writing about Microsoft products I had always tried to accentuate its practicality and how it was used, and if possible its human application (communicate visually with PowerPoint, for example).

But in trying to “master” this new phenomenon of Social Media, I had completely missed the point.  Either I had dismissed it as chit chat and drivel; or I had tried to force it into a role that it was not meant to fulfill.

While I try to resist wholesale generalizations, what I needed to do was listen to what social media was telling me, the same way I sometimes need to learn to listen, and not try to fix or control, women I know.

As a guy, I still tend to measure my success in quantity—like my followers on Twitter—with each new add I get a little, well, twitter.

But more and more my thrill comes from a sense of contribution.  I’ve begun to shift my focus, and while I still may pitch and promote I try to do so judiciously, and mainly with those with whom I’ve established a connection.

More important, when I see something of value, I try to put it out there and share it without trying to figure out how it’s going to get me something reciprocal right away.

What I’m getting is that Twitter, Facebook and other social media are really a giant pot luck or Tupperware party, and in order to get nourished you need to bring something to the table – preferably without too much concern with short term gain.

And again, this brings me back to how it resembles dating—if you’re always worried about who’s going to pick up the check, or how the evening is going to end, you’re missing the point.

I’m Still Single, Deal with It!

by Tom Bunzel (web site link)

In about a week it will be seven years since I published a column in the Jewish Journal called Why I’m Still Single.  At the time, I was active online and at various singles events, and invariably a conversation with a woman would come around to “you’ve never been married” (what’s wrong with you?)

What was ironic was that both women and men that I met at that time were particularly angry at their most recent husband, wife, lover, boyfriend etc. and would spend a lot of time letting me know just how bad their relationship(s) had been.

So in a fit of self examination, I wrote the article linked to above, and it was cathartic to humorously examine the various turns my life had taken, and also some of the defenses that had kept me from connecting; at the time, like many people, I was operating under the concept of finding “the one” (who would complete my life and make everything all right).  What that meant was that unwittingly I had bought into the same theory the women that cross-examined me were suggesting—something was fundamentally wrong with me.

That’s kind of why I’m intrigued by the concept of Singular and SingularCity.com.  Because through some work I’ve done recently I have come to recognize that operating from the basis of searching for someone is coming from a position of being less than okay.

From this position, inevitably you assume an inferior position (because you’re missing something) and that translates into negative energy that will ultimately allow you to successfully avoid relationship of any kind. 

When you date, as a guy your inferior position is increased by the assumption that it is up to you to show off and impress your new friend, mostly with external showy types of things—presumably because that testifies to your potential for being financially stable and supportive.

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, a lot of things have changed in seven years.

For one thing, many of the women you are likely to meet are self sufficient and like it that way.  They don’t necessarily like to be wined and dined if it’s an exercise in control, which from a person feeling less than it generally is. 

What they’re looking for, if I am right, is what we all need—real connection—and in many cases today’s singles have discovered that the trappings of a romantic relationship in the Hollywood sense are just that, a trap.

Both parties are set up to play roles that if successful they will need to maintain for the rest of their lives, and if you’re like me you’ve discovered that that’s just self defeating and completely exhausting. 

I cringe when I watch network television and see a domestic “comedy” which is all about fooling the other party with a false self in some contrived situation.  While we can all recognize ourselves in these roles, at this point in my life I just don’t want to participate anymore.

But what’s the alternative?

Society has rules and roles and in many ways if you don’t go along you either feel like an outcast or isolate yourself.  That’s a really losing position.

To me, it comes down to learning to accept that connection doesn’t necessarily come in just one pre-ordained type of package.  It doesn’t have to happen over dinner and movie (and become even more complicated by sex) and it can happen over dinner and movie with a friend of the opposite sex, or someone of the same sex (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

And you can connect with a group of people and you can have fun without setting a goal to meet that special someone.

When you go up against social conditioning like this, as you know, it’s not easy.  The pressure to find “true love” only gets more intense as you get older and the added stress only tends to increase the sense of lack or incompleteness.

If you can shift your perspective, however, you can see the dropping of these roles as a chance at defining yourself in new and exciting ways, and connecting with all kinds of people in a host of new and potentially exciting places—both externally (museums, restaurants, and so on) and internally (intellectually and emotionally). 

So seven years after I wrote Why I’m Still Single I am choosing not to see my single status as a failure or something that needs to be explained, but instead I view myself as having been a early adopter of a lifestyle that many people are learning to embrace today.

 (If you're interested in my ideas on other subjects, please take a look at my personal blog)