We cannot dip twice in the same stream

It is my birthday tomorrow, and as I will be on a boat, days away from access to the internet, I have decided to do my annual birthday introspection a day early.
For some reason I have a stored association of the age of 30 with the show Full House. the brain retains novel information and creates random associations, but I know this fact, that one of, if no the first episode, featured Bob Sagat freaking out over turning 30. Of course at this point he had already had 3 kids, lost a wife and had his best friend and brother-in-law move into the house, that I assume he owned. I am not in a freak out mood though. Even though Bob Sagat had lived a more adult life by 30 than I have, I know that to measure my life accomplishments against Danny Tanner, or anyone else for that matter, is an exercise in futility.
I had my big freakout at 20, and I think it lasted in some form until about 27. Though the nature of this wasnt one of, oh fuck what have I done with my life, more than it was a futile exercise in escaping the inevitability of time. Though at 30 I find myself riddled with anxieties about how I am going to enact and actualize the dreams and goals I have set for myself, at 20 it was the mourning of the illusion immortality. Although, now as I am a little older and wiser, I realize immortality may hold a different meaning and reality for me all together.
The ancient greeks have an interesting mythology around this.
Chronos was the father of all the recognizable pantheon of Greek Gods. As the god of time, he was depicted with a scythe as he harvested everything born within him. Because everything born within time, was fated to die. So modern images of the Grim Reaper are derived from Chronos, or the inevitability of time. But then an interesting thing happened. Zeus, was born and, through a deception enacted by his mother involving a swaddled stone, was not eaten by Chronos. And thus created the first instance of immortality, of the ability to exist outside of time. Zeus being the king of the gods, the ruler of lighting or inspiration and the liberator of all the other gods holds a key to our own ability to evade Chronos. If we can look at the pantheon of Mount Olympus as reflections of the internal gifts inherent in humans, I think there lays the mechanism for unlocking an immortal element within each of us. That element of course is our imagination.
Our thought sense perception. It kind of goes unchecked or unexamined that what we perceive as reality, is in effect an interpretation of our nerve senses by our brain. Meaning that although there are real and measurable nerve impulses that are being constantly collected through our senses, the interpretation of those impulses is entirely non-physical. This means that phenomena such as memories or dreams, may have just as much impact on our reality as does the phenomena we have interpreted through our nerve senses. And in fact, science supports this claim, with evidence that identical regions of the brain are activated when experiencing an event and when engaged in a vivid memory of an event. It has identical relations to downstream physiological effects and I believe it is valid to say that the physical event is almost inconsequential to the actual experience of the event. This is, of course a simplified explanation of what I am trying to say, but I think it will work for today.
This is important though because if the physical events significance can be downplayed, by the same token, the intangible or etheric element is deemed to be of greater importance. And what I mean to say is, the landscape of the mind is not bound to the physical world, and holds more value to our relationship with reality, than do the physical nerve sense impressions which we interpret into a reality.
Symbols, archetypes – language of a non-physical reality. Fluid significance, non fixed interpretations. This speaks to a top down understanding of reality. That there exist non-physical concepts from which we construct our reality and use to interpret our nerve sense impulses. This of course means these concepts have always existed, and a part of a world removed from time.
The popular scientific understanding, however, has it that nerve sense impulses coagulate in the brain and lead to specific patterns of depolarization of higher functioning cerebral tissue. That the complexity of these patterns is what accounts for the richness of human experience. But to this I can only restate the title of this post, we cannot dip twice in the same river. This saying speaks of the idea of concept over pieces. The river is constant, always before you, always a real and complete river. But the more closely you get to it, the more closely you investigate, it is billions of water molecules moving at a certain rate of motion, never will the exact makeup be the same. And yet we do not constantly redefine the river, the river is constant. And even if we were aware of the rate of motion, number and location of every water molecule passing us by, does this make a river?
I think it is similar with us. There is a constant within us, an observer that exists outside of time and physical form. Perhaps this identity is influenced by experience, or by reflection, but the character and color of this identify remains. Though I no longer believe the same things I did at 16, or at 11 the ME experiencing life is completely identifiable to myself. And this is important because if we were built from the bottom up, if our reality truly begins at the cellular level, then we would be constantly becoming new people. Cellular turnover happens at different rates depending on the tissue, but it is pretty accurate to state that every 7 years you are made up of completely new cells than you were 7 years past. Yet you are still the same person.
This identity or ego or soul is the immortal aspect of ourselves. It exists independently of our bodies, which is fixed in the world of Chronos.
And so it is the development of this non physical aspect of ourselves which is inevitably more important to our experience. And I dont think it can be disputed that no matter the physical circumstances, it is the character of the soul that determines one’s experience.
And further, is not the body itself, and physical life, just an illusion based in time. Meaning that the more microscopically we investigate the nature of being, the closer we get towards infinite. The cell breaks away to organelles, which break away to proteins, which break away to atomic elements, which are composed of a nucleus and electron clouds, which break away to protons and electrons and neutrons, which break away to quarks which are essentially charge particles, Subatomic, still characteristic of mater but just barely. The electron has been observed to behave both as a particle and as a wave form, the only determining variable being an observer. Matter itself has been defined as energy vibrations that have slowed to a point in which they coagulate, entangle and knot up into matter. So how much sway does our non physical identity hold over our physical existence is still a great question, one I actively look to help answer for myself.
I shouldn’t talk about physics, I really dont know that much, if I were a smarter person i would have gone into physics, but I never could fit my brain into the details, only the concepts. But I do know for sure that fire transforms matter. It takes a material substance and unknots it, releasing it as energy in the form of light and heat. For me the proof that all matter is essentially energy is right there. (I won’t deal with ash in this writing)

So whats the point of all this? Besides the obvious fact that I have spent a lot of time alone, and in deep thought, and that I read too much esoteric philosophy and should stick to fiction…
I guess the point is, for me at 30, I am trying to calm the voice within me that is racing against time. The voice that needs to get everything done, the voice that is measuring my accomplishments in life against other people and the age they were when their accomplishments had been reached. It is trying to outrun time that creates the anxiety. The illusion that if I can get X Y and Z complete, I will have beat the clock, and had a great life. But I think more and more, that there is no race, only the eternal moment, and in each moment of true reality we get to determine the quality of our immortal experience. The quality of who we are, and the less attached we are to what we are, the more we can live in the experience of who we are. Detached from the continual decay and rebirth of our physical form that inevitably reaches an end point, we can begin to focus on the rebirth of our immortal selves, outside the confines of time. I wish I could say that I have reached these conclusions from a place of deep internal wisdom, but they are mostly echoes of the words of people much wiser than me. I sit here at the cusp of 30 years old, fighting the constant battle of losing myself in a world of illusion, of valuing the temporal over the immortal, of looking for the instant gratification over the eternal reward. And so it is my intention for this year to work consistently at developing the eternal within me. Through experiences that reach that eternal place. This is the value of art, music, martial art, poetry and creativity in our worlds. Creative impulse transcends time and place, and can, though not always, bypass the clothing of the world around us, and speak directly with the part of us that exists out of form. And speaking from the eternal voice within me, stepping into a life diminished of the concerns of time’s influence over me, I look forward to stepping into a life focused on building, creating and loving the moment.
One of my best buds RRP or alternately Rikki P, Rahim the Dream or the classic Richard, reminded me of one of my favorite life lessons, with a piece of art he created and put up on facebook recently.
It is a Cherokee story, and the real short version is, within each of us is a two headed wolf. It represents the dual nature within us. To me, at this time, the dual nature speaks to the choices we make towards the eternal nature within us, and the temporal nature around us. Our power comes in the form of choice, and at every moment we have this choice, which head of the wolf do we feed?