Pictured above: guest blog author, J. Myztico Campo

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This is a “Guest Blog” and when I invite someone to be a guest blogger at The Gravaton it’s because I hold that person in esteem as well as for the fact my gut tells me that the person in question is an all around “good egg” based on my own personal dealings with them.

Guest bloggers have free reign to write about whatever they wish without censor and all guest blogs are presented without endorsement or rebuke of any kind. Any input from me as editor has already been incorporated into the article with the authors consent.

Guest blogs, as originaly submitted, remain the intellectual property of their authors. Now on to

Coded in our DNA, prepared to be awakened crucial moments in human history, at crucial points on the individuals journey, always at the front of the collective and individual sub-conscious, the spark of artistic expression exists.

From the primitive cave art found throughout Europe to the high art of ancient Egypt (with it’s often sacred geometry) to the vast variety of consecrated art that the Sumerians, Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs, Native American and a host of other extinct civilizations have left us, it is what the artists leave behind that serves as the true spiritual legacy (and often informs how we interpret the intellectual legacy) of our progenitor civilizations.

In many of humankinds previous civilizations, art was meant to help provide and celebrate the exalted state of being to the beholder, to generate contemplation and reverence of that which can not be named or explained. Much modern day art however has become for the most part, another consumable commodity.  Eye candy hanging on shallow walls, meant to match the color of the furniture with no true purpose other than just to cover a bare wall.

The shamanic artist perceptions of the inter-dimensional world

The vistas, dreamtime terrains and “profound” visions that artists who engage in meditative and entheogenic journeys experience will always (in certain ways) be presented with a "surrealistic" point of view that to the un-initiated eye, may seem  difficult to comprehend or appreciate… but these "visionary experiences" whether they are being “translated” onto canvas, sonically, in dance choreography or within literature or poetry, can help awaken the spirit within the mass (often) slumbering public consciousness, can shake off the cobwebs of a dormant once childlike, imaginatively hopeful spirit! They can be seen as an urgent wake up call; the essence of who’s message is that we are ALL part of the energy source that imbues our Earth and all it contains. that our true nature IS spirit energy, that we exist in **a matrix that is web of all consciousness and reality (**Ren’s note: here’s some hard science to back this up).

As some artists enter their psychic caves in search of otherworldly realms knowledge and / or creative inspiration and emerge with "visions" that are then "translated" via their chosen art forms into works they can share with others… they are bringing forward the messages (if you will) they’ve gleaned from their “journeying”. After these experiences are "filtered" through the individual artists perception gates… the expressive arc of any visionary surrealist spans the universal balance / struggle between the "light and dark" that is manifest at all levels of reality and within the artist themselves so… the end results can enlightening, inspiring, humorous or even dark and disturbing… all dependent as much on what the artist brought to the "journeying" and creative process as it is on what the beholder brings to the art at the moment of experiencing it.

As artists retrieve imagery from their “vision quests” to present to a public forum, the work itself can help provide deeper insights as well as healing energies to the beholder. Since the arts speak in a universal language, the effect can break down international, linguistic and perceptive boundaries in ways that prose or speeches may find more difficult to communicate.

In today’s reality, a new work of art can be instantly uploaded online and be seen by hundreds if not thousands within a matter of a few days. This is the magic age of instant communication, a true turning point in human history, where the visionary can reflect back to society what the possibilities can be if we all take our moments to reflect upon our roles as spirits connected to far more then just our individual material selves.

Shamanism is perhaps the oldest spiritual ritual known to human kind and it’s recent resurgence into the public subconscious might have happened because many people, have become skeptical of organized religions, that have, as they became more organized, stripped away the true power of their message and have often served to block people from seeking communion with our divine creator in intuitive and natural ways.

The “Visionary Shamanic Artists” are here to proclaim it’s time: for a major change in perception… to consult with our spirit allies… to co-exist, in peace with our international family of brothers and sisters… to encounter our “power animals” and to allow their guidance to help us become more in tune with our mother planet and help nurture her instead of plundering her for short term gain… to achieve self empowerment and sustain a long term positive, actualized vision for life on a planet that will be inherited by future generations.

Although our 5 senses limit most of us to consider material existence as our only reality, the “artist (as) shaman”, is on a quest to delve deeper into the source of all creation.  We take on a(n often) very lonely (and sometimes dangerous) journey of exploration. We do it (and we risk it) because we are compelled to and we give birth to our art both to understand as well as proclaim the "discoveries" we made on those other planes of existence. This is what I attempt to do when I paint inspired by imagery from my dreams or vision quests. Some of that imagery has punctuated this article and I hope it helped to illustrate what the article tried to put fourth in words.

You’ve just read an entry in The Gravaton Blog. To read more you can always return here as well as visit The Gravaton Mini Blog which will contain different (though sometimes related) content. Go see for yourself.

"Looking at a rose does not tell you that it is a rose; the things you notice about the rose–its color, shape, fragrance, and beauty–were all created by the looker. These things are not qualities of the thing itself, but our own knowledge about the flower projecting itself, that’s all."-Krishnamurti

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This is a “Guest Blog” and when I invite someone to be a guest blogger at The Gravaton it’s because I hold that person in esteem for selfless qualities I’ve seen them demonstrate in their dealings with others, as well as for the fact my gut tells me that the person in question is an all around “good egg” based on my own personal dealings with them.

Guest bloggers have free reign to write about whatever they wish without censor and all guest blogs are presented without endorsement or rebuke of any kind. Any input from me as editor has already been incorporated into the article with the authors consent.

Guest blogs remain the intellectual property of their authors and are presented here on a nonexclusive basis with the permission of the author.

Now, Aaron Ableman’s

When I was 15, I first read William Blake under an oak tree… It was like visionary hip-hop on a Zen mountain top! Go figure. I was attending a rustic boarding school founded during the peak of the 1930’s depression teaching the experiential ethics of sustainable living from Thoreau to the Buddha. Situated on three thousand acres of wilderness, the philosophy deeply illumined the value of Nature in all of Her infinite relationships.

We aimed to live simply, with what we ‘needed’ and not what we ‘wanted’, a tough distinction in a world of never enough needless things. Nevertheless, the students made various attempts at understanding this inconvenient daily challenge by cleaning toilets, rewriting mathematical theorems, and ‘not’ taking too many ice-cream bars after supper. It was a community of punks and hip-hoppers, nerds and losers, sports players and wayward thespians.

But when I first picked up the aforementioned book by William Blake for some quiet reading under an ancient oak tree, something shifted in my observation of ’study’ (and more importantly, life in general). Now that’s not to say I didn’t already greatly appreciate the miracle of studying in such a unique high school environment.

Believe it or not, I actually loved writing essays depicting the impact of European disease on Native peoples in the tragic conquest of the America’s. I loved chasing girls through the wilderness after dark. I even loved chopping wood for hours in the December rain, just to make a few kids’ shower water hot.

In fact, I was one of the happier students in that strange place and…being a chameleon by nature, I’d always made my best
intents on adaptation to various climates, be they urban farms or third world war zones but…

On that one blessed day, when all my friends had left to play sports, and I labored over Blake’s proverbs, I realized that in so constantly seeking to challenge myself with external physical & academic stimuli, I had been ignoring the web of life all around and within me. I had lost my connection with nature; the nature of my mind in all of it’s awesome spirit. It was then that I turned the page to read:

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity…and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

My life (before reading the words above) had been slave to the endless thoughts of the who, what, where, when and why, but never… the "Wow"! I had sacrificed the real creative learning of openness and mystery and I’d missed the clichéd "forest for the tree’s".

The work of the nameless creator, makes light look like shadow until you read between the signs.

"There is a Secret One inside us; the planets in all the galaxies pass through his hands like beads. That is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes." -Kabir

Until my quiet epiphany in central California, I’d not realized how my boarding school was seeking in it’s ‘wild cultivation’ of young minds” to open the world of possibility to me. Since that day however, I’ve changed my entire approach to the "learning" process.

My opinion of rocks, for example, expanded into pure awe after participating in improvisational theater exercises next to a river for 11th grade extra-credit class.

Subsequent revelations abounded in such a newly re-perceived environment of study, work, and sillyness: even compost became sacred and poetry, exploded off the page in with a force most boom boxes can’t "bump". Seems I fell into this ‘minor enlightenment’ school by accident, “a wrong turn to the right road”…

It’s with this spirit of happy coincidence and magic that I now ascribe to live with. From impromptu street performances in downtown Bombay, India to making living flower mandalas with eight year olds. The more I see life as awesome the more AWE-some it becomes. The more love for the serendipitous truth of ‘what is’, the more I feel gratitude to this unexpected path.

Without presumption or ego, I am moved by a larger spirit these days. I have somehow found my own solar system, a microcosmic artist painting the macrocosm, awakened from the sleep induced illusions of commercial culture. In this sense, I hope that all beings of the world may discover their infinite potential which sits waiting at every moment.

Peace

Aaron Ezra Ableman

Welcome To The Gravaton.

You’ve just read an entry in The Gravaton Blog. To read more you can always return here as well as visit The Gravaton Mini Blog which will contain different (though sometimes related) content. Go see for yourself.

Pictured above: guest blog author, Pedro Carvajal

This is a “Guest Blog” and when I invite someone to be a guest blogger at The Gravaton it’s because I hold that person in esteem for selfless qualities I’ve seen them demonstrate in their dealings with others, as well as for the fact my gut tells me that the person in question is an all around “good egg” based on my own personal dealings with them.

Guest bloggers have free reign to write about whatever they wish without censor and all guest blogs are presented without endorsement or rebuke of any kind.

Guest blogs remain the intellectual property of their authors and are presented here on a nonexclusive basis with the permission of the author.

Lets continue with award winning documentary filmmaker Pedro Carvajal’s first appearance at The Gravaton Blog.

As a filmmaker, I first got involved in the art of “billboard banditry” as I was making a documentary about the now defunct art collective known as ARTFUX. I still remember with vivid clarity the first time members of ARTFUX and artist Ron English got together for the very first time in order to liberate five billboard that they created right in the heart of Manhattan. Entitled “ART PUSHES; ART PROVOKES; ARTFUX,” I produced this documentary when I was still in college. ArtFux disbanded in the mid-nineties with half becoming CICADA.

Being an outsider looking in through the lens of my camera, I could even feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins as I watched with awe members of ARTFUX and Ron English go up a seven-story building in order to culture jam a 40X60 foot billboard and replacing it with one they created with the image of a very confused UNCLE SAM and the message “CENSORSHIP IS GOOD BECAUSE ______ _______ _______! In my documentary “POPaganda: The Art & Crimes of Ron English” there is a small segment depicting that day (you can purchase the POPaganda DVD from Cinema Libre, or Netflix).

Art has always been a reflection of, and a reaction to, the times…in that, perhaps, ultimately all artists are activists, and all genuine lovers of art participants in a call for cultural transformation. In the case of Ron English and his “billboard banditry,” English hijacks corporate advertising challenging us (the audience) to change the sham of reality that advertisers have created for us and reminding us that free speech still lives. Ron English subverts traditional images and words into confrontational art meant to inspire and “activate” its viewers. He challenges the growing “culture of junk” and in his work asks us to demand integrity, truth and respect from corporations that chronically dumb us down to sell us up.

Peace

Pedro Carvajal

Welcome To The Gravaton.

You’ve just read an entry in The Gravaton Blog. To read more you can always return here as well as visit The Gravaton Mini Blog which will contain different (though sometimes related) content. Go see for yourself.

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There’s a new Gravaton Music Artists forum over at the Gravaton Fun Forums that’s been added in advance of the New Artists who’s work will be featured on the Gravaton Collective sites and sold through Gravaton Music as the spring and summer progresses (here in the northern hemisphere). The forums will have artist profiles, image galleries, live performance announcements and product announcements as well as serve as a place for the artists to communicate with fans and folks alike. Also keep an eye out for artists guest blogs making their appearance here at The Gravaton Blog.

Right then, and what about that dramatic picture up there at the start of this article? We‘ll get to it, read on.

Anger (like all other emotions) is an evolved response to certain types of external and/or internal stimuli… yeah, big DUH I know. But like I said, its EVOLVED and like anything evolved… (from our opposable thumbs to the tiny hairs that can grow in often the most unwanted places on our bodies)… it represents a (once) needed evolutionary response that was developed to help us survive and progress and like all such evolved traits its either on its way in, an established part of our being or on its way out (no longer needed…now vestigial like some of those tiny hairs I mentioned earlier).

We tend to get angry when we’re hurt in some way (or we think we’re about to get hurt) The hurt could be any combination of a physical, emotional or spiritual injury or… perceived injury… or just the (often merely perceived) threat of same but… the evolved, primal animal response is always the same; anger (which can then flower into all sorts of modern day nasty things like depression, aggression and hatred).

Anger has become a real problem for us modern “civilized” folk because we don’t really need it any more. In fact the types of situations for which we evolved the anger response are now mostly, no longer with us but anger is such an overwhelming biochemical response, so deeply rooted in our primitive animal nature that when it triggers… and does the job it was designed for… it overrules all the other intellectual and spiritual intelligence that we’ve evolved since the anger response was first developed in our species.

Now about that picture above (from the critically maligned film 10,000 B.C.). That picture is an illustration of why our primate brains evolved the anger response so lets weave a lil story around it.

“Ug” (that’s what I’ll call him) the caveman up there was on his way back home from a little hunting trip with his two buddies so he could put some food on the cave floor for Mrs. Ug and the lil Uglets. Now it so happens… that a large saber tooth had something similar in mind… and when Ug and the boys were all set to pounce on their prey, the big cat pounced on them.

Ug’s friends aren’t in the picture above because one of them is dead and the other is now running faster then any bipedal humanoid has ever run up to that point in human evolution…far far away from poor Ug and the cat up there. That leaves Ug. Now… at that point the can try slowly backing away from the beast but that doesn’t look like its going to work. Likewise… running like his nameless other friend wont work as the big cat is now firmly focused on him. Ug could also try cowering in fear… and hope the hungry cat will take pity on him but practically speaking, if Ug wants to have a chance at surviving he’s got to do just one thing, get mind clearing, fear dissolving, adrenalin pumping, aggression focusing ANGRY!… nothing else will do. In a situation like that, anger clears and sharpens the mind and body for the violent brutal task at hand.

That’s what anger was evolved for, to eliminate all distraction and prepare the body for single minded, explosive, aggressive action. Not the modern day idea of “fight or flight” where you experience the equivalent of a type of fear response nope… I’m talking… get ready to throw down cuz its on, right here and now, no retreat, no surrender and there’s only one thing on your mind and in your body, a will to overcome and annihilate that which threatens you.

Thing is… how often do you run into situations like the one above in modern society?

Problem is… That well evolved anger response still triggers in response to situations that no longer require (or permit) such a forceful response as anger was designed to enable us to enact.

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”

Marcus Aurelious

Result is… we get short circuited, mind / body schisms develop, heath problems develop and our more evolved minds try to cope with the bio-chemical onslaught (that we can’t, under most circumstances give into) by developing depression, emotional paralysis, unfocused latent aggression, hatred and self destructive behavior. All the aforementioned being a further “evolved response” to not being able to intercept that now rarely necessary primal anger response before it takes us over to prepare us for something that we (most likely) are not facing when we get angry to begin with.

On the positive side our evolving natures and spirits have also given us the notion of philosophy, art, spirituality and reasoning as other “evolved” responses to the internal and external suffering caused by the now vestigial (but still powerfully present) anger response.

Elizabeth Kenny

Now think about this. If I were part of a group that wanted to manipulate you… a sure fire way I could remove your ability to focus on something I don’t want you to see… is by making you angry. Really consider that the next time your sucking on the glass teat (TV or Internet screen). Think about how many times information is feed to you in a manner designed ONLY to raise your ire and almost never in a manner that’s designed to promote positive change or reasoning… or… from a more personal perspective, next time someone tries to push your buttons (so to speak), consider if you really want to let them have that type of control over you.

So to quote (and expand a bit on) James Thurber:

“Let us not (react in or) look back in anger… or forward in fear, but (rather) around in (serene) awareness”.

Welcome To The Gravaton.

Peace

Ren

The Dedication: To The Renegade Sufi, The hardest rockin Sitar player I know, A man who has confronted and overcome more personal demons in his (slightly younger then mine) life then I ever want to face in my entire lifetime. A man who tolerates my irreverence about things I shouldn’t be irreverent about and a man who I’ve personally witnessed extending his time and compassionate attention to others in need… and (shameless plug)… a man who’s work will soon be available through Gravaton Music. This one was for Dawoud Kringle

You’ve just read an entry in The Gravaton Blog. To read more you can always return here as well as visit The Gravaton Mini Blog which will contain different (though sometimes related) content. Go see for yourself.

Chickaloon Alaska,
where the Athabascan people will start the Northern part of this years journey,

At the meeting points they share their respective spiritual practices, culture, ideas and ideals with each other and dialog on the issue of peace and dignity for Indigenous Peoples.

Afterwards, while some return to their communities, others (along with new “runners” from the receiving community) move forward and carry those prayers and conversations to the next communities until both the North and South hemisphere runners meet up with the Kuna people in

The Kuna then host the celebration joining the spiritual energies that came from the North and South that symbolizes ALL Indigenous Peoples joining to manifest the prophecy of the Eagle and Condor.

Each of the Peace and Dignity Journeys has had its own theme as follows:

• 1992 Dedicated to the Children
• 1996 Dedicated to the Elders
• 2000 Dedicated to the Famlies
• 2004 Dedicated to honor Women

The 2008 Journey is dedicated to honor, preserve, and protect our Sacred Sites and with that in mind, routes are being planed to intersect with as many indigenous Sacred sites as possible across the approximate 8 routes of the North American Portion of the Journey. There are two main routes (over 3,000 miles long) and six tributary routes (with the tributary routes eventually feeding into the main routes):

Main Routes

The West Coast Route will begin out of Alaska. Runners will run throughout the West Coast until reaching Panama. The Plains Route will also begin from Alaska. However, these runners will head south-east through Canada and enter the U.S. somewhere in the Plains (North Dakota or Minnesota). Then the runners will make their way to Colorado and New Mexico. The Plains Route will connect with the West Coast Route in Mexico, where they will merge and run together to Panama.

——Tributary Routes—–

New York Route—– (A new route being added this year scheduled for a June 2008 start ) This route will probably begin in northern New York State in the Oneida Nation and the runners will make their way south and or west until connecting with the Plains route in a location TBA.

The New York Crew are in the early planning and fund raising stage and… being acquainted with the run through them, I’ll do my best to pass along updated information about their progress (probably via the Spiritual And Social Activism Forum at the Gravaton Fun Forums.

The Trail of Tears Route*—–

*Marks the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation in 1863.

Where this route will begin is still in the process of being organized. However, at this point it may begin in Tennessee and make its way to southern Illinois.

California Inland Route—–

This route will split form the West Coast Route and will head towards central California. From there it will head east into Arizona and will re-connect with the West Coast Route in Sonora, Mexico.

Tri-State Route—–

This route will also split form the West Coast Route in either Washington State or Oregon. These runners will run south east through Nevada and will run through northern Arizona and head south through eastern Arizona. This route will also re-connect with the West Coast route in Sonora, Mexico.

San Francisco Peaks Route——

There will be a group of runners that run from the San Francisco Peaks, Arizona and connect to the Tri-State Route.

There will be other tributary routes in the San Diego, California area and throughout Arizona.

All the above routes will link up and move on through Mexico and Central America towards spiritual fusion in Panama City approximately six months after the first runners started the Journey.

It should go without saying that an undertaking of this size can’t possibly come together without Money, Man/Woman power, Talent and Faith. The organization will accept any level of help offered and you can use the contact information below to find out how you can help.

webmaster@peaceanddignityjourneys.com.

I feel privileged to have been told about this beautiful project and doubly privileged to have been blessed with the resources to tell you all about it. It’s tilted my awareness in a new direction and left me with a desire to be of service to other worthwhile causes. That desire will find its expression via the new Spiritual and Social Activism Forum at the Gravaton Fun Forums.

As Always,

Welcome To The Gravaton.

Peace

Ren

You’ve just read an entry in The Gravaton Blog. To read more you can always return here as well as visit The Gravaton Mini Blog which will contain different (though sometimes related) content. Go see for yourself.

There are a new batch of Micro movie reviews (6 to be precise) at the Gravaton Fun Forums.

The Gravaton Art sites launch will be postponed until later 2008 in favor of getting the much delayed My Space page up and running. OK.. HERE WE GO

Gays In The Military & Women In Combat (The REAL well reasoned reason why they’re a bad idea).

First: This article does not speak to the inherent suitability of women or homosexuals for various military roles, that is not the point and (to grossly oversimplify things) they can pull a trigger as well as anyone else.

Second: I am not a misogynist or anti equal rights in any way.

Third: I am not “homophobic”. Aside from the fact that that word actually means to be afraid of ones own sex (not to be afraid of homosexuals) , I’m not anti gay (and I realize that there are two types of gay: born gay and made gay by childhood abuse. In both cases, if the person is happy with themselves and does no harm, I have the same respect for them that I would have for any straight person who is also happy and harmless to others)

Fourth: (make no mistake) the ONLY reason Women are allowed in or near combat now and gays are remotely tolerated in the military has nothing to do with any laws or presidential orders… It has to do with a massive straight manpower shortage in an all volunteer system. Believe me, even with the present laws, if the military command structure didn’t want to tolerate either situation they have ample “extralegal” ways of assuring they wouldn’t have to.

The ability to reason, has long since been programmed out of the political left and right so no modern day political “leader” or military general is able to publicly address the issues at the title of this Blog.

For the right it’s now a question of Sin, Immorality and erosion of “traditional” values.

For the left it’s a question of “equal rights”, “tolerance” and discrimination.

I promise you , there has always been a sound well considered reason for experienced military leaders NOT wanting Gays in the military OR women anywhere near combat. If your either gay or a woman knowing that reason wouldn’t make it any less painful for you to be bared from combat (and thus from career advancement opportunities) or from serving (as openly gay) as the case may be but you’d be hard pressed to disagree with the real reason behind the military’s preference that you be subject to those restrictions. So… what’s the reason?

Having just wrapped covering the Digital Life Show for the Gravaton Fun Forums and having just finished attending the AES (Audio Engineering Society) show (also covering it for the Fun Forums), I was struck by how well both events went . — Considering the scores of vendors, thousands of attendees, food services, security, electrical/audio/computer cabling, even the things you take for granted like clean floors, stocked toilets, temperature control and no doubt a few dozen other things I can’t think of right now. — All those separate groups of people, with different (sometimes even competing) goals, all coming together to accomplish tasks that would yield a set of shared benefits for all those participating (at whatever level). Those benefits often overlapped across many groups and none of the resultant benefits would have been possible if there was not an overt (or at least implicit) understanding of the shared overall goal and a common sustained effort to achieve said goal(s).

This put me to considering some of the great accomplishments my country (the USA) has achieved for itself during its short history as a civilization, none of which would have been possible without the national will and (often close) co-operation of its citizens.

Mind you some of those “accomplishments” had their dark sides, and sometimes caused some form of suffering but the same can be said for any society/civilization so to be clear, I’m not unaware of the totality of my countries negative history but that history, like any countries history, runs concurrent with it’s positive history and this Gravaton Blog needs to reference the positive side of things (why that is, will be obvious as this article unfolds).

In that “Luddite” (old school) time before people even had TVs (let alone cable and internet), if you were bored or lonely, you had to go out/reach out for some kind of group activity or meeting place and there was always (in any sized community/neighborhood) some kind of hang out place (be it a barber shop, town square, dinner, church, whatever) where people meet, talked, argued and otherwise exchanged views and in so doing built a sense of community and social consensus. Now that’s VERY IMPORTANT because that community was in a nation of other communities (and saw itself as such, right down to the people level) and… to have bonded thus with it (when you went out to engage it)… also carried the benefit of (by extension) bonding with the country at large in a way that no amount of watching CNN or playing endless hours of - insert whatever massively multilayer online game is popular at the moment - could ever accomplish.. If you live in the suburbs as you read this, its a safe bet you barely know anyone who lives more then one house away from you and chances are, you’ve never even broken bread together with the ones you do “know”. That (increasing pre-programmed social isolation) is not the way countries can sustain themselves.

Its in our basic design to commune with one another

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]]> http://thegravatonblog.com/?feed=rss2&p=18 http://thegravatonblog.com/?p=17 http://thegravatonblog.com/?p=17#comments Sat, 15 Sep 2007 03:23:35 +0000 Ren Udae http://thegravatonblog.com/?p=17

First: A bit of Gravaton business:

The second set of tracks is up at the Gravaton Music Site and it concludes the first release, “The Message” which can be downloaded for just $7.99. Ok shameless plug out of the way.

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Now on to that hard science
Its all well and good to espouse warm fuzzy philosophies but you’re just expected to take all that talk on Faith. Since being compassionate, is way harder then it sounds its easy to brush all the lovey dovey-isms aside (especially if your not spiritual or religious by nature). So herewith, I’ll appeal to your secular, logical side. Lets take a bit of Cosmology (the study of the cosmos) and a dab of Quantum Mechanics (which includes the study of the very very small) and see if we cant find some concrete reasons why we all might want to ( in the words of the fictional Bill and Ted) “be excellent to one another”.

The Cosmological Constants

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First, know this: All the matter and energy in our universe is finite and constant… ALL.. of the everything… that was in the post Singularity Planck unit (reeeealy tiny) size of the expanding Big Bang (many billions of years ago) is all that there is today and… all… that there ever will be.

The energy that forms, animates (and propels) the matter that is you and everything you can (and can’t) perceive, is as old as time and is still fueling the ever accelerating cosmic expansion. When your done with your share of it, long after everything that moves around you has (as far as you might perceive) stopped moving, all that energy will still be there… transformed, relocated or dormant (locked away in matter) as potential energy, but still there (as it was in the beginning ), until the end of time (which is unlikely to ever come).

We (and our present state of space time) are just the latest localized coalescing of that constantly present, undying energy (the over all concept is known as “The Conservation Of Energy”).

So in the preceding context… what are you (and all those souls around you) and why should you bother to even be nice (let alone full on compassionate)? We’ll get there, read on.

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