Monday 20 August 2007

Pic of the day: Why do you want what the others picked, even though you picked differently? Why do you not change when you try to change? Why is only a small part of your reality flooded in light while most is in shadow?

Dark matter of the mind

Cosmologists these days suspect that the invisible dark matter of the universe plays a more active role than we thought. What it consists of, what it really is, nobody knows. The guesses range from brown dwarf stars to neutrinos with mass, but others say it may be something so alien that we will never have any way to suspect it. After all, it does not seem to interact with the rest of the universe except through gravity.

The current view is that the galaxies as we know them would not exist, or would have a different form, if not for the dark matter. This invisible stuff is thought to form a kind of sphere that includes the galaxy but extends beyond it. Itself it is only loosely bound by the gravity of the galaxy, it seems, but its own gravity may have been essential to shape them and keep them in their current shape. An invisible sphere around us that holds us in place? This reminds me of something completely different. Then again, you know my claim that all things are somehow connected. The connection here is bound to be very, very indirect though! I am talking about our mind.

Have you ever seriously tried to change? I mean not just for a day or a week, but for life. Have you tried to give up a deeply ingrained habit? Even more, have you tried to change a fundamental personality trait, like laziness or shyness or impulsivity? Then you have sure encountered the large, invisible sphere of dark matter that surrounds our life. Its size and density are unknown, but the gravitational pull cannot be mistaken. For every step you take forward, it seems to pull you one step back. But unlike the gravity in cosmos, this seems more like an elastic string connecting us to the "center of gravity". The faster and the further we run forward, the stronger the force that resists us, and that eventually tries to pull us back to our "rightful place".

Luckily this strange attractor also work for good. If we start to worsen, the same force pulls us toward the better state in which we used to be. Perhaps this is its purpose, to keep more people from going off the deep end. It is not just inside ourselves we find this resistance to change, after all. Friends and relatives will also do their best to nudge us back toward normal, whether they notice it or not. The more extreme our behavior, the more extreme their reactions. Strangely, this too seems to hold true when we try to change for the better. We become a bit more strangers to our friends and family, and we feel the pull back to what we were, even if we are not proud of what we were and would prefer to change. Or that is what we think we would prefer, at least. Evidently the dark matter of our souls thinks differently…

But as some people can attest, it is possible to change. It is just not easy. You need patience. It may feel like you are pulled back all the time, but if you keep going forward, gradually your center of gravity is inching forward as well. But it is slow going, as if you are embedded in a huge gelatinous sphere, invisible but so very heavy, that you have to drag forward along with you.

There are other things that can happen related to change, but they are not my main topic today. For instance, you may have built up a lot of potential for change that is just waiting to be realized. In fact, some people change for the better without having planned to. Criminals can be undermined by good in much the same way that the honest can be undermined by evil. Also spending time with people who have the properties you desire is helpful, and moving forward together with others who move forward. So it is certainly not hopeless.

But do not expect that you can just decide to change and then casually do it. For you are not quite that free. There is the "you" that you can see, but there is also the dark matter of the mind, your subconscious that you cannot see. Others may see parts of you that you don't, but even to them most of it is invisible and incomprehensible. I guess you could devote some of your time to study this hidden part, to make the subconscious conscious. But this is also hard work, and scary at times, and few can safely undertake it alone.

It is now commonly accepted among cosmologists that the known matter and energy make up less than 5% of the cosmos, the rest being dark matter and dark energy. As above, so below: The disturbing fact is that "we" are not really conscious. Only a limited part of us is. The ego, even in the wider sense of the word, makes up only a fragment of the total personality. But it is the most important fragment. You might just as well say that the head is conscious but the legs not: In the end it is the head that decides where the legs will go. But it is natural limitations and hard training that decide how far and how fast those legs can do. They don't run at the speed of thought.