Techgnosis

If its true that the universe is a positive form building system (no energy lost) then negation in our own minds is useless. Focus on what you want instead of what you don’t want because both will produce results. Negative, or “no” states are as much an action as anything. Our movement through time is still forward. The essence of Akido is the redirection of momentum. This is a great model for all of our actions. If we see events as moving, dynamic processes we are less likely to get emotionally caught in the repetitive cycle of negation as a means of escape. Instead, if we can learn to think of ourselves in a stream of moments and our actions as the redirection of moment-um we can take the next step in a positive direction. I feel that negation may be a script to retire as I attempt to work in more harmonious ways with my environment. I can’t change the things that I know are not good for us but I can avoid producing more of those things. Peacefulness is an action.

This video is a wonderful example of the process of enlightenment in action. It shows in slow motion a transformation from one state to another. The process of emergence is whats interesting. The popped state always existed in the kernel as metadata but it took specific environmental circumstances to bring about the new form. Contained within those circumstances are the things that had been overcome, things taken for granted. (dryness of the air) Plus the energy that needed to be put into the kernel (heat). Its conditions plus energy that bring about the radical change of form. This is true for us humans as well. I call it getting out of our own way. Setting the conditions. Tuning your perceptions. Simply living in a state of awareness. If our common end point is that transformation, its in our interests to create the conditions that would allow it to manifest. The only thing that keeps us from achieving the enlightened transformation is the noise of the karmic process that living eventually overcomes. I have said it before, our actions feed back and create who we are. We must live through actions that produce the conditions needed to bring about enlightenment. The energy is in the universe around us but its up to us to focus on creating the pathways for that energy. Hence the innate stress that wrong action brings. We are like compasses with our direction built into our structure. Learning how to read your own personal compass is a life time lesson.

This topic is for me one of the most difficult thoughts to put into words. To begin simply, I have noticed that “fun” is not related to money and consequently the value of the experience engaged in is dissociated from the “price of admission”. I know this seems obvious. However, I think it is an excellent entrance into the critique of value in culture and an illustrative point highlighting the glossy sheen of mediation that mentally separates us from direct experience.

In the post, “peacefulness is the dark matter of the mind” I learned that states of being exist whether we perceive them or not. In the water of the pond all states exist from stillness through wave form all the way into gaseous atomization. The states manifest in relation to the amount of energy put into the system. Although not visible at all times the potential for manifestation does exist. Its as though the information of how to behave is stored in the very structure of the water itself. Then, in reaction to the environmental conditions (energy) those states appear. What is important are the three variables, stored information (potential characteristics), environmental influence (energy put into the system) and the reception/perception of the viewer (for which we need to consider as an affecter).

The classification of experience is like the continuum of states that the water moves through. Experiences are quantifiable using the three parameters outlined above. The characteristics of the given experience, its verbness. ie eating, playing, swimming, listening, conversing etc… is what guides our engagement through time. How we perceive those characteristics determines the amount of energy we put into the experience and again the amount that we receive as it accelerates through its states of being, like the water. This then feeds back into us and is a natural amplifier moving us through our states of being in the process of living. If you engage experiences that have limited range of manifestation you can only amplify them and yourself to a limited state of being. Seeking the most fulfilling experiences is a universal quest that makes embodiment more pleasurable. The food you eat, the friends you have all feedback into your verbness, who you are. “Find the best, except the rest”. Is the neopostmodernist adage.

Its looking like the best might be the simplest as we emerge through the arse of postmodern devolution. Bread not baked by the corporations but by your friend has less stuff in it but has more value because of the energy put into the process of changing the states of flour yeast and water. See the Japanese ritual culture for other examples. What we used to think was primitive, in the future will be seen as advanced because we will have gone through, tested and found to be in error what we believed were advances. The residual “Space aged” ingredients baked into our culture will be illuminated and seen as the garbage they are, unnecessary waste. And so with our experiences…we need to connect ourselves as agents in the manifesting of accelerated consciousness. The End…result of our lives spent in effort of what? If not improving our relative situation and ourselves within it.
Which brings me to the quality of experience. I think Christopher Alexander is on the right track. Most philosophical architects recognize that space is more about the quality of the human experience in relation to the container than the container of space itself (most times the container is simply the expression of ego) Valuing money is like valuing the container and an ego gratification of the builder/owner/holder. Energy in that example flows in one way. Creating the illusion of power for the owner. The error in assigning value to money and money to experience is that the money becomes the value filter and the experience comes second. If this gets repeated enough it becomes a glossy illusion that keeps us pursuing the value of money instead of valuable experiences. Its like our focus is off by one click. Your own internal “fun” barometer is a great way to begin separating valuable experiences from their cost. One word..”PLAY”.

I think this is getting a bit long so in closing, Your living breathing self is an amplifier for the environment around you and your environment is the potential characteristics to be amplified by you. Find good environments that give you good experiences as measured by your internal fun meter. The process of living is the dynamic integration of yourself within your environment. Begin recognizing the experiences that make you feel more alive and be aware of consistencies between them. Then practice “Finding the best and excepting the rest” Yes I spelled excepting that way on purpose. D

After learning a good deal about patience in the last month, I was given my reward. A breakthrough understanding about the nature of peacefulness. For a long time I have been very skeptical about the concept of peace. I have seen so many people hiding behind the shield of inaction and claiming to be at peace when I could feel that they were far from it. It is as though circumstances had become so out of control in their lives that claiming peace was the surrender that afforded protection from the dynamic environment. This never sat well with me. Should I be at peace even while the situation in the world was deteriorating. If so what was the point of any action? And so in a series of dynamic restructuring events in my life I found myself forced into patience. Unable to take any action while going through the movements of occurrence. Its a weird space to see everything in complete upheaval, knowing it to be in my best interest yet unable to steer. Much like being in a natural disaster. Probing for the path here and there and not finding it. Then when you do find it it is fresher than you remember and made of the stuff of the universe. Not being able to step foot on it yet until the past is in order, this is where the patience lies. Seeing the obstacle and flowing around it without it affecting you. This is patience. The mechanism that water uses to erode solid rock over time is patience.

While sitting patiently waiting for the path to open up I start looking into the science of dark matter. I find out that 23 percent of the universe is dark matter and 72 percent is dark energy. You will have to do your own research to find out how they get these numbers. Hint, it has to do with gravity. They call it dark because it can’t be seen. Okay youre telling me that the visible world is only 5 percent of the universe! Uh….Wow thats great. So I start thinking about my question of peace and action. It goes like this.

Action is measured as movement from one state to another through time. If the the universe is only 5 percent visible then visible action can only be 5 percent of the universe. What is an action doing the other 95 percent of the time? Sitting patiently in its own potential for change. This correlates with much of the learning I have done through out my life. But if my rational mind (visible) is only working a measurable 5 percent of the time, where am I the rest of time? 95 percent of me resides in potentiality (yet to manifest/measure). This has huge implications about how we see ourselves. Another example is the classic seed metaphor. What is a seed doing before it becomes a plant? Waiting patiently for the right conditions. Waiting is an action even though it is not visible. Gandhi, as he sat in peacefulness harnessed the 95 percent of the universe unseen to the British who were focused on achieving, at most 5 percent changes in the physical world. Our government is also focused on a 5 percent ineffective scheme to bring change to the world. Oops. So peaceful action has the ability to gather great sums of energy beyond what we can imagine. Is this how miracles work?

Another example is the rock dropped in the pond that creates ripples. The ripples are only 5 percent of the reality observable to us humans. The ripples are only one potential state manifested by the water. There an infinite series of states available to the system, water. Where are they hiding? I think they exist in that 95 percent non visible space. Waiting for conditions to allow them to manifest. Our biology limits us to a specific set of frequencies that are recorded by our organism. Evolution towards enlightenment becomes not a fancy idea but a practical endeavor allowing us to engage our environment with more resolution to our understanding. In the same way that we have always adapted to changing conditions. I want to see the multiple states of all actions. I want to escape my binary logic gates. I will explore through peacefulness the unseen universe with love as the guiding frequency. Thank you.

Who we are is relative to the environment we construct. When we wake up in the morning it is the things that surround us that guide our memories to the basin of attraction that we consider personality. As our brains wake up, the firing of neurons complete connections that set up the loops that we run that guide us into our interaction with the world. We can transmute the loops of residual self image from one “is” to another “is” by putting ourselves in a state of superposition and architecting intention upon re emergence. Media works by allowing us to abstract or test in a virtual like space, the changes we might like to produce in ourselves. Unfortunately our current media structures reinforce changes that might not be benefiting us now. How can we change this to reflect who we would like to see ourselves to be in the future? Who were we before our history was hijacked by technology? Were there ways of being that have been forgotten that would aid us in the future? For example Meister Eckhart believed in a residual self image that could only be seen in the reflection of God and spent his life building an environment from his abstraction of perfection. Religion has been a persistent media that functions very similarly to the current media structures. The spiritual world operates using the same type of abstraction as media with a different set of programs running on its surface. All with the intent of creating recursive behavioral loops within us. Value can be read as repetition in this system. Repeating values set up reinforcing resonance that builds into amplitude capable of doing work, making changes. The changes are of equal importance to the repetition and must be built into the new system. Dynamic equalibrium can only function in a dynamic environment. Allow for your own changes to be made while moving from loop to loop. This is what creates real power outside of our current conceptions of the word.

The expression of our consciousness through our material creations leads me to conclude, that consciousness functions as one continuous mobius like sphere that extends outward and inward weaving together the finite with the infinite. Separation is an illusion in the mind of the universe. To separate is an egoic trick that developed from some past evolutionary necessity that needs to be re evaluated. We can see in the newfound mass awareness of global warming that while the effects are examined the overall process remains elusive. The reasons even more so. What I mean is that by focusing on the details exclusively (separating from the whole) we miss the overall expression of this global event. The environment is our greatest unifying factor. Its a closed loop system that does give us feedback. Regardless of the boundaries of nationality or land mass, the environment of this earth contains us all. When climate change is seen around the world it puts us all back into the same space and forces communication. Another example would be if there were no power companies to fix your electricity when it goes out on your block. It now becomes a group problem with each person communicating and reasoning and testing, all working together to fix the problem themselves. The cells in our body all work together to form one whole. The system of unification is built into this place. It is simply our desire to gain perceptual power through individual ego expression that moves us away from unity. This does not mean unifying under one belief or one anything. It is not something we have seen on this planet before. Its the next step forward. As unique individuals empowered as free agents with the necessary resources to begin to express a set of ideas contained within our conception of the highest good we will move forward.

But it starts locally. As locally as you can get, within your own body. Science has given us the data we need to keep ourselves healthy. Eat simple foods and exercise. If you feel good inside you have one point of reference to compare the other things around you. Do they make you feel good or not. You will start to find that the things you need become easier to obtain. Your signal to noise filter gets tuned to your frequency. The effects begin to propagate and amplify. At some point there is such a deep connection between your consciousness and your environment that the two merge and you realize that they were never separate. Like a simple answer to what appears to be a complex riddle. Slowly this expands to embody all of the things you see around you. With your agency intact, you will feel compelled to shape your man made environment into an image of this feeling. So it appears in the same form that the ego manifestation does but the process and outcome are vastly different. The seat of creation has shifted into the next twist of the spiral upwards. You become a partner in the process of co creation. The points where your consciousness ends and the environment and the people and their creations begin starts to become harder to differentiate. Fun

We have become so alienated from our lives through the mediation of information that the balance between direct experience and the simulated experience provided by the Spectacle has become unweighted. The term, signal to noise ratio is an excellent metaphor to describe our situation. For example if your e mail account is 50 percent spam and 50 percent messages you care about, your signal to noise ratio is 50/50. At 50/50 the value in having the account in the first place should be questioned. Look around us at our mediated environment and separate what is valuable and what is not, or “spam”. You get the idea. The line has blurred. What no one considers is the effect this process has on us as people. It would take many a lifetime to scientifically explain the thing we all feel within us; that our manufactured culture does not have our best interests in mind. The market does not give a splat about us nor our government. Logic has betrayed us. The thing that has made sense no longer does. Logic pulled us out of the darkness, thank you, but now it has put us into a very matrix like set of scenarios and its using our life energy for the perpetuation of systems that no longer benefit us.

Machines are predictable. The one thing we have going for us is creative dissent. And if we are to survive we are going to have to step out of the machine world and do the unexpected. Direct experiences, however we define this are always chaotic. The first bite of an organic tomato cannot be told to you but must be experienced. Love cannot be sold to you. Things like this are “real” although often we have forgotten them in the chatter of our evaluation of the information coming from our environment. Subjective experiences have been devalued by our objective systems. Feelings are considered less valuable because they are intangible. This comes with the assumption that all feelings are subjective and lacking in logical proof. Yet we find much agreement when things are beautiful. We do not need objectivity to tell us what tastes good or feels good. By only focusing on the objective, as our society has trained us to do we lose a huge portion of meaning in our lives. We need to find value in the subjective again. Even if we could bridge the gap between subjective and objective it would be a start. It wouldn’t matter if the institutions disappeared if we knew that our lives were good even without them. By keeping us entertained the current system keeps us jailed within it because we couldn’t imagine ourselves without it.

The next generation will know very little about racism and bigotry. The walls of separation are falling everyday. In their dust we should see the false beliefs that held them up and turn away from our errors. Unity is coming without regard for the control systems currently in place. The solution will be to embrace our similarities and nurture our differences so that the bonds between humans become stronger than any falsity created by men who attempt to control the masses. Anything that stands in the way of our next step in evolution will only slow us down but never stop us. We are nature. We will move freely as the wind through your imposed borders. We will no longer recognize your authority because we answer to our hearts and the laws of the natural world. We are no longer animals to be herded like cattle. Our evolved minds are not interested in destroying each other. We proclaim that war is over. We want our victory over the last phase of existence to be rewarded with freedom. Freedom from the man made systems enslaving us to mechanisms of thought that use us for their own benefit. We want to navigate within our world using our senses as guides rather than the oppressive regimes of the past. Your creations will crumble from disuse under these desires. Once we find ourselves we will no longer need the negative reenforcement of the totems that have shaped how we see ourselves. Our future will be built on the foundations of information you had not even considered. The acceleration into time and its ever moving spiral upward will bring us back around to where we have been with new understandings and tools and we will build anew the structures that lift us even farther into ourselves and the future. The future you offer us is unacceptable. We will not be complacent components supporting your power. We are self realized individuals with the agency to create the world that we want to live in. Your future is continued embattlement and war and separation and destruction and oppression. These clothes no longer fit us, they were hand me downs from generations of the failed past. If we must we will make our own clothes in the image of our highest selves. Everything around us will be the reflection of our best and we will do this out of the love of our existence and thankfulness for the ability to create as in all of us. So it is now.

Decentralized networks of empowered individuals create strong bonds that knit together groups of people who see their advantage within their diversity. There doesn’t have to be density in these groups to create strength. Putting human interaction in its rightful position means encouraging autonomous agents to recognize their power in unity. This is what constitutes a good relationship. A decentralized network is a parallel processing bundle who’s sum is more than its parts. The details within the individual components are secondary to the unique way those are expressed within the group. The potentiality for overcoming challenges is exponentially multiplied by the number of freethinking individuals involved in solving the problem. If the challenge is seen as a limitation to the expression of the individuals participating in it then becomes everyones interest to overcome the limitation. This is a complex unity which should be dynamic in nature. In fact nature has already written the operations manual for this complex dynamic unity.

The lone wolf, rugged individualist ideal actually fails in nature. The past belief was that if you could hit the hardest you were the strongest. Unity was employed as another conceptual trick to try to get groups of people to stay separated from other groups of people outside of the first groups definition of “unity” The idea being that more people hitting would hit harder. The fact that the definition was ambiguous enough to be flexed showed that the real power was not in the amassing of like minded individuals but the control of the information surrounding the definition. This is where we are at today. We have the power together to flex those definitions into something new. The individual who rigidly believes his own definitions finds himself on a very lonely disempowered island driving their military inspired SUV while wrestling in his mind with justifications like, “its a free country I can do what I want”. But this is actually a very sad condition. The isolation that starts deep in someones mind may have come from their past in an environment that took away their individual agency and spawned a lifetime of searching for their power in the material world. The real power today is in adhesives.

The things that bind us together, the intangibles of helping individuals off of their islands will be the currency of the future. The value of the content we create not for the advertisers but for each other should define our occupational worth. Our success will be measured by the amount of individual, creative problem solving power that we bring to the group. What we say to each other should be evaluated by the amount that it heals the whole. Separation is dead. Long live communication. Long live the network.

Techgnosis as a process is easy to see in the arts. In every artistic endeavor, the intention of the creator to express a non tangible idea through some physical medium is what creates its value. The medium is the technology. Paints, instruments, light, fabric, cameras, ect… nature didn’t make these things we did. Why would we develop the technology to express ourselves if it didn’t in some way feedback into the whole of society. This is where technology can be seen to steer the creation process. What we create is an expression of ourselves but a projection of the technology. This is easy to understand in an art like painting. It appears to be more abstract in manufacturing an automobile for example but it is not. The conceptual cognitive processes are the same for both. In fact I believe that the creation process is probably similar across all fields. It is the intention of the creator that differs.

Things are created out of a perceptual lacking. We believe we are missing something. Out of what came before us we work to fill that void within. Which is why so much undeveloped art is focused on the expression of pain. Artists, just starting out with art as a technology to express themselves tend to produce very raw interpretations of the easiest thing to express, their pain. This type of creation although personal is very selfish. The viewer is asked to engage in a misery that is not their own. Not something you would want to put on your wall. Here we can already start to see the connection between technology, intention, content creation, projection, viewer, and communication. The technology is the medium; so while you might not want to hang a sad painting on your wall you would like to see two cars crash into a giant flaming heart in the middle of a downtown intersection as an expression. The good artists are the ones who understand the harmony of all of the above mentioned connections. They also create new technologies if one doesn’t already exist through which they can express themselves.

Once you have become adept at listening to the harmony of the components and knowing how to communicate in subtler ways even more complex intentions then you have the ability to manifest the change you want through your art. Then you are creating mirrors and engaging Techgnosis. In the process of practice you will see yourself change through the creation of your ideas and your ideas will change the world around you. Essentially the reasons for creation change. There is a trinity of expression between yourself yourmedium and youraudience. When you are creating from that harmonic place you are imbuing your art with the spirituality that creates artifacts. Because of what they give to the world, artifacts have real value. What you become in the process of creating artifacts effects everyone you meet. Aside from your art you have become more valuable. This value is transposable. It then is not about the artifacts, it is about the expression of your highest potential at all times through all things. At this point the technology can fall away and the next round of creation begins.

Observe how the intentions change the outcome. If you are using your artistic ability to produce things with the intention being to sell those things at a specific price; your goal is the price not value. This goal feeds back into the technology used and the intention of the creation. What you get is a product that reflects its actual value. Realistically most consumable products then have a short usable lifespan and degrade as the perception of them shifts into refuse. This is a mistake. The people that have interacted with this product have not been encouraged to move in a natural direction towards their own success. The disposable culture reflects poorly on every one of us. It is time that we recognize our power as creators to affect the entire world and its people. There is value in creating artifacts not just economic value but the value within us that when shared uplifts all of humanity. It is our challenge to create only the things that better remind us of our opportunities to climb to the next rung of evolution. Everything else is just in the way. D

I wanted to clarify a bit of thought before going on with this project. Technology is a tool for examining our consciousness. Not an end of its own. The “why “of our ability to create what we do can be asked of technology. The placement of value in the world on certain instruments is what is interesting. Technology is a useful metaphor for spirituality because there is less dogma attached to it. There is less historical baggage consuming the study of the observation of spirituality through technology. People who identify personally with their beliefs are not likely to get offended when critical analysis is applied to their tech, (except Macintosh zealots :). Also at this point in history, technology is seen as lifeless. The perception is that its embodiment is that of a benevolent and inanimate set of objects; that the responsibility of its use is in the hands of its operators. I am tending to disagree. I feel that technology has an agenda, in the same way that the illuminati has an agenda. It is a shadow scene of decisions made in the dark reactionverse that opposes all actions.

Most of our thought is dedicated to the physical incarnation of our ideas as manifested through our creations. The “push” of action or the forward movement of life in time. Our days are spent working on the creation of our insight or that of our bosses. Each action we take creates swirls of reaction. The byproducts of our consciousness that form intentions of their own are the unseen forces that allow technology to become the double edged sword. When these unseen reactions collide it appears that there was some kind of intention at work. As the universe increases in complexity so to do these emanations of creation appear to become more cognizant. This is like an automaton that is constantly evolving to become more lifelike. Or in other words a developing artificial intelligence.

What we have is a mirror of ourselves developing and increasing in resolution. The byproduct of our technological innovations speaks volumes of our underlying subconscious. The tools we create reflect back into us our unintended expression of the frustration we feel towards our own embodiment. Techgnosis examines the space between creation and reflection and attempts to heal the separation through exposing the subconscious intentions within the things we create. It is a type of circular logic found in the symbol of the serpent biting its own tail. If technology can be seen as a metaphor for our spiritual movement we would be able to significantly locate ourselves within evolution and also have a point of feedback of our actions in relation to where we are going. Basically, the byproduct or spiritual essence of technology can be used as a compass that guides us into the future.

If we continue to build weapons technology it is a reflection of childish selfishness and anachronistic thinking of an era that no longer exists. The feedback is that we will destroy ourselves in the quest for separation. We can observe in the removal of the Berlin wall a system of technology losing is relevance that should be projected into other barrier belief manifestations. We are going to have to shift our awareness into fields that will help us all overcome the collapse. Technology for its own sake is dead. Technology for the benefit of thoughtful navigation throughout our progress into the future will become the real activity of the content creators. Its up to us to take control of technology’s course by getting control of ourselves and the reasons behind our creations.

The famous philosopher George Carlin used to say, “anyone who drives faster than you is crazy and anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot.” When you stand in a crowd and look at other people, what do you see? Crazies or idiots? Where does that leave you? Have you ever considered what the actual action of seeing really is? The mechanics, i’m sure are complex, but in its essence our eyes take in light. They absorb the light that carries data to our brain. Notice that I said “data” not information. Thats because in its raw state before it is processed it is nothing more than potentiality. If you were unable to process the light signal you would just see chaos or noise. The same thing would happen if you were in a white or black room. A very interesting set of things occur between reception and perception. First we know that light vibrates at different rates bringing color information to our eyes. In this case it is information because it has been preprocessed by whatever has absorbed and reflected, essentially filtered a portion of the spectrum. That object has its own frequency as well. When the light gets to our eyes more information is lost as our eyes shave the spectrum or filter again into what we call visible light. What was once a chaotic flood of light bouncing around the environment has now lost both data and information to become processable by our brain.

Crazies or idiots? That is a lot of information to lose. Things like, how old their car is, fuel consumption awareness, worn out tires, or German engineering and tons of traction all contribute. The point is that our generalizations have shed more information than they have gained. Information entropy occurs everywhere. Consider the information lost in a solid set of conservative values. What happens then at the point of perception? The tools we have created to manufacture generalizations and decrease the processing burden on our brain work like exactly so many other things around here, they filter. Filters separate and polarize the infinite into digestible bits.
Vision is a two part process. The act of seeing is as much about giving as receiving. Once the light has entered our eyes it gets processed by the brain. Somewhere in there the information bounces around connecting to memories and actions. This set of past experiences creates the perceptual filters of what we are observing. It is at this point that the information reverses direction and begins heading back out of our eyes carrying the processed information of our filters back into the environment. Windows of the soul they say. More like mirrors of our environment. In quantum physics this act of observation is what collapses superposition. We can see that perception does in fact create changes in the environment.

The best cameras in the world are known for their sharp optics. The clearer the lens the less distorted the image on the film. The more “real” we would say. Why would this be valued? The more accurate the reproduction the more valuable the lens. If a lens shaves off certain details the image is lacking “truth”. I think its the same for people. The more light/information you can receive without discoloration the more likely to be “true” or “real” your actions.
Techgnosis is about retaining as much information as possible and acting through direct experience with as unmediated of a perception as you can. I call this “the flow” Its a conversation with the world around you. Your ability to listen and articulate truth should represent your actual value. You can actually create filters within yourself that amplify the light back out. I call this “polishing you mirror” I will write about this next time.

The quote, “the only constant is change” applies when thinking in terms of the infinite. Infinity itself being a state of superposition. The constant change of state between being and not being looks very much like chaos. This chaos, from a techgnostic perspective, is opportunity for movement forward. Existing in the infinite chaos is like floating in space. Suddenly all that matters is navigation and moving forward. What you are moving towards can only be answered uniquely within each individual. The secret is that once we start sharing our direction with each other we find ourselves on similar trajectories. What becomes special is how we get there. Each person creates their own tunnel reality out of experiences and perceptions. Every expression is a manifest of individual understanding (ego). Every book, a single voice. Every movie, couch, table, anything made by man is a symbol of our likeness to the creator. Not by what it is but because it is. This is the great understanding of freewill. “You can create anything, What are you going to create?”

The television is a window into the minds of the masses. It takes huge numbers of people to create the spectacles and even more to absorb them. It is like a very sensitive consciousness measuring device. The feedback in the tool is the ratings system. The less attention given to a particular show the quicker it withers and dies. What makes a show “sticky“? Very low frequency, usually circuit1, biological and circuit2 territorial stimulus with brief spikes to circuit4 social/sexual. Explosions and material possessions, sexual interlude blah blah blah we’ve seen it. Why do we keep feeding this stuff to ourselves? We can create anything! Yet we stay locked on the same formula of crap. Its because we lack the development of the tools needed to perceive uniquely.

So lets tear into this. Popular culture is a huge bank of energy. A force that supersedes religion because it thrives on our biological embodiment and rarely engages the immune/defense system of our consciousness. Popular culture inspires passivity while religion asks you to participate. What happens if we attempt to become like the images we see? You would be thrown in jail. The cultural immune system would suppress you. You are not allowed to act out the things you see on the tv. A good thing for all of us. Examine the power structure for a moment. You have a huge amount of energy going into image creation that no one is allowed to achieve in their own lives. The pinnacle of success is dangled just out of reach enough to keep us locked in a cycle of striving but never really able to have. The proverbial “carrot on a string” trick. The hierarchical power structure loves it. We are so busy striving for something we cant have that we don’t notice we have lost ourselves in the process. If we don’t know who we are its easy to tell us anything. Here is the magic though. The power of content creation is finding its way back into our hands. We are slowly moving off the treadmill into ourselves as the creators that we are. The trick is going to be keeping people mindful of their creations.

This is where the overwhelming decentralization of power that we see is leading us. Unfortunately we don’t have a solid infrastructure to catch and guide the newly found creators. All of our past systems were focused on getting us here. Now that we have made it, those systems seem so antiquated. I don’t believe we are the first people on this planet this close to freedom though. There have been past civilizations that have gotten here and failed. Buried by their own capacity and inability to manage their creations. We have to leapfrog the coming collapse.

The thing to be learned in the framework of popular culture is what success feels like. This is tricky so let me explain. When you are successful it leads you to perceive opportunities and create more success. Success becomes a headspace that you carry into new experiences. However success is just a headspace. It is not hiding in the material somewhere. When a successful headspace is stimulated by the material it is something that occurs inside you. Headspaces or perceptions are the software we carry around with us. The material reminds us of what our goal feels like. It stimulates those feelings. So within the framework of pop culture, take from its huge efforts the reminder of yourself as a successful creator. You can hold the frequency in your mind as you go into the world and take action. You will find happening more and more that you will be successful. With your new headspace you will find yourself asking, “How will what I am about to create help other people find success within themselves?”

Reality cannot not be televised.
The drawbridge to the spectacle opens upon those thoughts. Like a mystery school that doesn’t allow you entry until you deny its existence. You can not enter the spectacle until you find its nodes within yourself. Its entryway mobius strip could keep you busy for years. My attempt through the techgnostic institute is to bring you inside the spectacle. Once inside we can read its DNA. A dichotomy between two poles that carries the signal. One pole, reality or negative ground the other, content, positively accelerating increasing in mass. The screen surrounding us like a holographic tilt a whirl receptive to the projected images spraying out the top. An army of minds sitting at its base contributing its collective creativity to the production. We see all of the standard images throughout time, the classics the moderns. We see beautiful people and think to ourselves how not beautiful we are. Trying to maintain our selfhood while our beliefs erode. Feeling the pressure of the illusion bare down on us we feel our minds breaking into pieces, chasing after every spark of light. The words are now our words coming out of our mouths filling each others ears with made up truths. Ill perceptions of ourselves as workers and peasants keeping the electricity flowing. We made this place and forgot about the door. Surrounded by what we are not and in despair we think of a tree. What its doing today? The spectacle gets louder trying to drown out our thoughts. But we focus on that tree. And as the images pour into our minds they continue to get absorbed into that tree. We start to notice that the tree has become the ground in the machine and now we have become the the electricity between the two poles. Bridging the gap using ourselves as the conductor we complete the circuit. Movement becomes our priority. To carry within ourselves all of this information out into the universe.

Marshall McLuhan rightfully saw our technological advancements as extensions of our biological structure. The wheel as an extension of our foot, the page as an extension of our eye. Later he would describe the television as an extension of our nervous system. Mcluhan was interested in the effects of hardware changes upon society. In the techgnostic era we will become focused on the content of that hardware. Its operating systems. The software. The content is an expression of our collective unconscious. Using McLuhan ’s theory where do religions come from? Where do governments come from? Why have these things manifested? What part of us did they evolve from? In regard to media programmers that have studied our psychological code extensively, we will be able to study the patterns they employ and illuminate the walls of our content cell. Once we see the framework of the cage we can devise a strategy for escape.

If you know who you are not, you are closer to becoming who you are. Only in a deficit of self do you perceive yourself as lacking. This deficit is the cage we are in. An open door for external motivations to enter, insecurities. Products offered to fill that void. Beliefs offered, scripts written describing who you think you are. Always mediated to you through something else. What your friends think you should do. Like the tourist who spends his vacation seeing everything through the viewfinder only to validate his experience later on the screen. Separating the illusion of the spectacle from yourself is much like unplugging a toaster from the wall that shocks you every time you touch it. Or tearing your own face off, its had to do cause it hurts. You can start by stepping back and finding nature’s frame of reference or ground. This is where you’ll get your leverage from. Hang out outside and watch a tree grow. Pack a lunch and go find a tree. Ask yourself what its motivations are? Why does it get up every morning? What does it desire? Ask it any question you can think of. Play with it, trees love people. Its answers are from the natural world. If you can learn to hear and translate its answers you can apply those to yourself once you remember that you too are part of the natural world. Our problem is that we have lost our frame of reference for our placement on the earth. The spectacle of culture has made itself our only concern. The secret is that it does this through creating an unstable vacuum in us. However luckily for us, nature abhors a vacuum. Now that we have oriented ourselves to the ground lets take a look at that content again.

If the software was a creation of our collective unconscious, what are we trying to tell ourselves? Sit with a television and ask it the same questions you asked the tree. What is your motivation? TVs are very tricky, don’t take their first answer. They don’t know what they are saying most of the time anyway so you have to listen carefully and change channels often. Come to your own conclusions. I don’t want to think I’m the only person that has to talk to the tv to find out what it wants. Jokes aside, after spending a lot of time with it you will find that it is not what is saying thats important but what its what it is omitting. All the people focused on the violence and sex imagery are simple minded. Those are the shinny that grab our attention. Through misdirection the content shows us what we are not. However if we can create a new way of watching we may see things never intended. This is what the techgnostic institute is about. Creating new ways of engaging content. Giving you the tools to actively perceive instead of being a vanishing point. Creatively re interpreting the environment.

The Post Modern era has come to an end. We content creators are the free agents in the kitchen of culture that season the meals for us on this planet. The real secret is that every person living is creating content. It is up to us to ask ourselves what is the quality of that content. If we let the market dictate what the content of our lives should be, we have moved deeper into the swamp. The market is a zero sum game of lowest common denominators. Is that the quality we want in our lives? While our government struggles to adapt, employing the dogmas of centuries past we see here on the ground that things are moving at the edge of control. Our ideas are no longer our handlers. Through the abundance of information at our fingertips we have the ability to design the content of our lives in the ways that best fit our highest conceptions of ourselves. We are a new postmodern. We have become Techgnostic.

Seeing the dinosaurs of our recent past struggle through the decentralized power structures of post modernism we can imagine that this is the same fate for the content of our current system. The ephemeral banality of popular culture siting on its alter in our living rooms mocking our thoughts, mocking our interactions, teaching us what activities to pursue and offering nothing of any real value to us as viewers. The media’s content creators want stickyness. The business of the state is to maintain control. Different words same outcomes. Control of our residual self image. History is a good example. If you control the information about where we’ve been you can define our perceptions of where we stand now. Really, show me nature’s walls, show me where my limitations are. I will show you that the less I use other peoples structures to define myself the more free I become. Information finds its life through my actions. What is the quality of my content?

The point of this website is to create that quality content. Within ourselves we must tune our media diets to resonate with the image of the unified whole that we hold in our minds which is our biological heritage. As well as reproduce the quality content we find within ourselves for the people around us. We are not alone in feeling that there is a new system coming. I think this system will be based on our content. Become the content you wish to see in the world.

Techgnosis is a state of becoming in which the inner mental environment is unified with the outer material environment. A state where the material environment is not seen as a separate entity from the internal. All experiences are unmediated through the mind and the body merges into its surroundings (I call it “the state of Becoming”). In Zen this is the “no mind” principal. I am not interested in literally becoming mindless. I am actually becoming fullminded. At the point of techgnosis a person becomes able to move freely through their environment. Unencumbered by processing you are in the state of Becoming. It is at this point that your individual agency can be manifested. This state of mind can be learned and practiced during activities in which you physically/mentally move through the dynamic environment at a high rate of speed. Fast enough that your rational mind can’t process decisions and you are functioning in a receptive state of being. In sports psychology this is called “being in the zone” but it happens in any artistic field. Science is also an art. So is programming. As information accelerates, we will find even our simple thinking is taking place in a high-speed environment. Through putting yourself in this headspace you will learn to relax into changes and trust in your ability to manage adverse conditions. Once you have practiced trusting yourself and holding this script in mind you can let go of fear and be successful in the most challenging endeavors. Outside of your dynamic activity the goal is to hold this mindstate going into your daily activities. Find techgnosis occurring in every area of your life. Techgnosis is the actual feeling of freedom, not just the political concept. Freedom from error, Freedom from messy drama nonsense headspaces that lead to conflict. Once you are free from the gravity of bad scripting you are free to become the divine agent of your innermost soul.

Some activities to try, Playing Music, Snowboarding, Skateboarding, Surfing, Auto racing, Mountain Biking, Kayaking, Biking through the city, Skiing, Motocross, Even meditation and thinking deeply ect. Watch your mind react to seeing yourself doing these things. If you feel resistance “that little script that says you couldn’t do those things”. Remember it when you actually do the activity and rewrite the script for next time, minimizing that resistance. Yes I know most of these sound like activities you would need to be healthy to do. Your natural state is health. In future posts I will examine the issue of health as it pertains to the creation of your manifested self. I am very excited to share this stuff with you. Its been a long time coming. D