Everything is Everything
All of existence is connected in ways that can be verified through scientific inquiry.
Seriously –
everything is everything.
This is no longer some esoteric statement or wishful hope for the future of humanity.
Now, it’s an empirically provable statement about our reality.
Consciousness, life, nature, the universe…
All of it — is truly one being.
That one being?
Well — in my estimation…
…it’s God.
For some, this proves difficult to accept, and I get it.
It’s still tough for me to fully wrap my head around. But according to a smart guy by the name of Tom Chi, science is currently at a place where this should no longer be a statement of controversy.
In fact, in the TED Talk — now seen over two and a half million times — he points to evidence showing how there are accumulating sets of data pointing to this truth in a way that can no longer be dismissed as spiritual nonsense.
See, I follow Jesus Christ, and can be pretty unapologetic about it.
Thus, it’s all too easy for the outside world to write me off as some religious fanatic — but here’s the thing, I don’t follow religion at all.
Ask my ex pastor.
Real faith is not based in book knowledge. Nor is it rooted in some archaic rules-based mode of thinking. Real faith is experimental & experiential.
You probably have faith in the chair you’re sitting on, because you’ve sat in the chair before. And even if you haven’t, you’ve grown to adopt a set of expectations with all chairs you come across due to their collective stability.
I know God is real, because I’ve experienced His presence firsthand, and so it would take bit for me to deny this reality. The sensation was visceral, and I knew it couldn’t have been me — it’s a trip honestly.
So, I believed.
Sue me.
Because, how many chairs would have to break under you before you simply stopped sitting in them?
Probably a lot.
And so out of my experiences, both good and bad, came a state of yearning. — not denial of facts, but a desire to better understand how divinity has for some reason taken an interest in little old me.
It’s a relationship.
Now, I get that can be weird for some.
In fact you may not believe me in the slightest.
And, that’s okay.
Because frankly, I’m not here to convince you of anything.
Just to relay my perspectives.
Whatever you do with them is your business.
Question
But before we go ahead and proceed to examine this wild statement — that literally everything is connected — Let me ask you a quick question.
Because, what blows me is that people think I should just keep quiet…
As if I should keep all this great news to myself, in the spirit of “tolerance”.
(lol, come on)
So the question -
If you had the cure for cancer, would you keep it to yourself?
If you are a human being, then the answer is no.
What I believe to be true, based on my experiences, is a message of healing that has the potential to change the entire paradigm of our society.
Not just heal our physical bodies now, but our souls for eternity.
If I were to keep that to myself, I wouldn’t be human.
That — or I simply don’t believe in the message of hope I claim to posess.
Neither of those are the case here.
And so… I can’t ‘be quiet’. Sorry.
Besides, the God I claim to be in relationship with wouldn’t be too proud of me if I did that… matter of fact, I would be disobeying His direct orders to spread the message of His good news to everybody.
Not just those I like, or folks I go to church with on Sundays.
Everybody.
Alright?
Back to the thesis statement.
Tom Chi is an astrophysical researcher whose worked as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and has also helped develop varying hardware and software products — ranging from Yahoo Answers to Google Glass.
An incredibly smart guy, who managed to be a part of teams collaborating on studies with Harvard Smithsonian Observatory at the age of 15.
Now?
He wants to help humans become more so, by spearheading efforts across the fields of human development and offering his insights to social entrepreneurs around the world.
In this TED from 2016, he speaks to a reality that for a long time has been written off as something that cannot be ‘proven’, per se.
That reality being, all we perceive in this existence —
is really and truly connected.
And not in an abstract way, but in a direct way, that’s accessible.
Even to intellectual normies like myself.
He’s not the most polished speaker, but the gems he dropped in this talk are singularity inducing. So please, if you haven’t watched it — do that right now.
I won’t go over all the examples he does, and you can go ahead and watch it if you’d like. But I do want to touch on one specific story he references, specifically a story of the mind.
Collectively Conscious
When we think, we form neural pathways. This is basic stuff.
So, it goes to intuit that when we think in new ways, we can begin to form neural paths that hadn’t existed before.
Our brain is a beautiful and wonderfully complex system that we still don’t fully understand.
Though, from what we can gather, when begin building new skills — such as playing the piano — previously dormant or alternatively utilized areas of our brains begin to light up in novel ways.
The piano was invented around the year 1700.
So imagine, before this date there was no such thing as a ‘thinking in piano’. That part of your brain was probably used for tying your shoes, or playing with puppets.
But —
When humans got around to experimenting on this beautiful instrument, what started to happen was amazing.
We began to literally transform our brain chemistry as neurons adapted to facilitate this new ability.
Psychologists talk about this idea of neural change on a more individualized basis. Usually referred to as neuroplasticity, or brain elasticity, if means that when we lose a sense (like the ability to see), we gain more depth and nuance in other ways that were never possible before (like super hearing, or a heightened sense of smell).
Now, think of this in terms of a human collective.
We did not have access to the neural connections of a ‘piano player’ in the year 1600. Simply because there was nothing of the sort for these neurons to play with.
Like trying to upload new software, the hardware has to be in place, and capable of running the increasingly difficult programs.
Simple tasks require simple connections.
Complex tasks require complex connections.
So, as 1700 hit it’s midway point, humans took a cognitive leap of faith and began to create what we now know as classical music — a form of expression that has endured to this very day.
Thus, the romantic era began, and humankind began evolving at an accelerated pace. This era, capped with the arrival of one Ludwig Van Beethoven, catapulted the sounds of famed pianists into our collective memories forever.
So now, as we continue change our brains, what new and beautiful skills are being transposed?
Are they useful skills that will help us grow?
Or, mal adaptive habits that will cause us to regress?
We have the power to choose.
To mold future thought, simply by how we think and engage the world today.
To gift our posterity with the latest in neural fashion, leading to a future wave of geniuses — or, to devolve as a unit, leaving future generations wallowing in the collective regressions brought forth by our current indecision.
This is huge.
It means, that every new endeavor you undergo is truly purposeful.
If not for you, then maybe for them.
You’re no longer building new understanding only for yourself — but are in fact structuring a base of neural pathways that future generations will be able to stand on as we collectively develop into deeper and more complex beings.
Remember, complex tasks require complex connections.
And the future is looking increasingly complicated.
Maybe it’s time we get moving.
Conclusion
Playing piano was quite literally unthinkable during the 17th century. But now, we’ve grown host to a number of wonderfully talented individuals who have not only ‘thought’ of it in new ways, but have attained such a level of mastery that they can begin to invent and reinvent, further creating and reforming new areas of the brain.
From composers,
To musicians.
Areas of the psyche that may have been used to identify poisonous fruit 10,000 year ago, are now used to compose symphonies and build algorithms.
Chi calls this, ‘The Palate of Being’.
Patterns and structures of our thought processes have been influenced by those who came before us.
Here’s how he put it -
“All of us are born into this life having available to us the experiences of humanity that have come thus far, and we are typically only able to ‘paint’ with the ‘colors’ that have existed before us… now, we have the ability to go and make a unique painting with the colors of being that were around during the time of our birth, but also — we have the unique opportunity to create a new color”
- Tom Chi
So, you want to be a computer engineer?
Or a concert pianist?
A poet? An artist?
An inventor?
Well.
Go for it.
You play an integral part in this grand symphony of our collective evolution.
Our ‘mere’ existence is actually a beautiful gift.
So please, don’t waste your shot.
Do something new, and meaningful.
Today.
