I got upstairs to discover a copy of Avatar and Mad Men: Season 3, Disc 4.  Seeing as how the new season of Mad Men had started up – I was excited to catch-up.  The only problem was I couldn’t remember what in the world had happened on Disc 3, or even 2 for that matter.  “When was the last time I watched Mad Men?” I thought – as I recalled having a rather solid video-rental routine at one point.

I logged onto netflix.com – and checked my order history to find out.  It turned out the two videos I’d just sent back had originally arrived the first week of May.  A week later, my dear friend Kendra passed away.

Sometimes you don’t realize what you’re doing and what is happening until you recognize something is very out of place.  It appears my habits took a radical change that second week in May. I seem to recall that I was going to the gym every morning for five months prior.  I have been there four times since. The company was on a major up-swing in productivity and sales.  I’ve been apologizing WAY too much lately.

Weight loss… gone.
Financial stability… gone.
Structured life… very gone.

Now of course, it hasn’t been all bad.  In fact, it’s been quite good.  I can’t say I’m depressed – I got to go to Ireland with my Dad for two weeks on one of the great trips of my life.  But when you know the type of life you want to be living, and you suddenly discover you aren’t currently living it – it’s a jarring moment.  It’s not as if I’ve been laying on the couch growing a beard in the dark – quite the opposite.  This is probably a main reason I hadn’t realized just how far from the target I was. I was living in between – going through the motions and just sort of half existing.  Responsibilities seemingly lost meaning, and excuses seemed plentiful.  Never did I associate a starting point with any of this – the moment simply seemed as it was – that this is how I lived.

However – the first step is always the realization of what is occurring.  The Netflix incident opened my eyes and provided a moment of clarity – a glaring “this isn’t right” that made me wonder, how long has it been wrong? Suddenly other hints are starting to shine as I try to account for the past couple months.  Knowing the starting point helps clarify the mis-steps – but doesn’t always define a root cause. And certainly Kendra wouldn’t cut me much slack for a three month pity party – so no excuses there! There is some major clean-up ahead. However, the pathway back to where I want to be isn’t hard to find.  Occasionally tough to walk – and it’s understandable if personal tragedy slows down the pace. But time will not wait, and neither can I.

I miss you Kendra!

Last week I had two occurrences which made me contemplate the information revolution and how it might effect our lives in some unique ways.  Sometimes the technology comes at us so fast we forget that it hasn’t been with us for very long.  I can hardly imagine myself without a cell phone – but less than a decade ago I had never held one – let alone an iPhone on which I check my email while taking the Max into work.  So it’s equally challenging sometimes to imagine how radically different our lives will be a mere decade from now.

On Tuesday I was sitting in the corner of the Green Dragon pub having a pint with a friend when I decided to get up to use the restroom.  While heading to the men’s room, I happened to bump into an old colleague of mine who I hadn’t seen in probably four years.  We chatted for a few minutes, exchanged business cards and agreed to meet up for coffee soon. It was a great coincidence that our paths had crossed.

I’ve always been fascinated by the “bump-in”.  Not so much by the folks I bump into on occasion, but moreso by all the countless folks who must have been close – but I never noticed.  On any given day – how many friends are only a block away?  How often am I at an event in which someone I’d enjoy seeing is there – but I just never happen to realize it.

It seems to reason that in the near future – those sort of situations will be greatly assisted by software.  There are already sites like FourSquare where people check-in at various locations. Of course, there are also sites like Please Rob Me that take that data and use it against you (albeit in a funny manner).

While I don’t think I would be comfortable posting my whereabouts to everyone – I can certainly see myself allowing a select group of folks to know my location at certain times.  It could be useful in an office so co-workers know where you’re at in the building. Useful at concerts to find friends (expected or unexpected).  Suddenly you have a whole new insight at networking events – you can see the entire crowd indexed by your contact list.

As smartphones with GPS become more the standard – all types of information about WHERE you do, what you do will become available – and entirely new types of software will be developed to make use of all that data.  Just as police might now investigate phone records when a crime has been committed – in the near future I wouldn’t be surprised if GPS data of where a defendant was will become standard evidence in a trial.  By looking at entire collections of data – irrespective of the individuals – we will be able to learn volumes about how folks migrate around a city or community.  This information could greatly assist city planners, event organizers, or even transportation officials.

The second occurrence that struck me as funny occurred while riding the #70 bus in the morning.  I looked over at the passenger sitting across from me and noticed he had a name-tag hanging from his waist.  Anytime I see a name tag I’m immediately brought back to my mom’s teaching about kidnappers (whom to my young mind were all about – and ready to pounce at any moment).  Anytime I had a name-tag on, she cautioned – be extra careful that you know an individual, if they say your name. A solid lesson in fear – but wise words none the less.

And indeed, at one time, I suppose an unscrupulous type could approach an unsuspecting person and could possibly con them into believing they were an acquaintance – but for how long?  Today, however, a name can get me a lot further.  As I have no desire to lay out a full stalking of an unsuspecting fellow Tri-Met rider, I will reverse the cards and look up “Greg Spies, Portland” in Google.

Well hello.  Looks like I have some info.  In fact I have:

• My company name, what my business does and most of my clients
• My bio and entire resume from LinkedIn
• Names of fellow past co-workers from LinkedIn
• The college I attended and degree from LinkedIn
• All my Twitter posts, discussing numerous aspects of my job and life.
• Some of my friends and the groups/pages I’m a fan of on Facebook

And that’s just in the first 4 links.  With some effort I’m sure there is more (no, seriously, I’m sure there is more – I Google myself regularly… I admit it).

Now how long could someone keep a conversation going with me?  It’s a bit scary. However it’s also pretty interesting. Information is neutral – it’s what we do with it that counts.

Social media is going to expand beyond just sitting at your computer reading Facebook posts.  It will continue to infiltrate smart phones – and then eventually iPads and all the touch-screen devices that will follow.  Now if I’m in a Group on Facebook – that Group can exist in the non-virtual world as well.  If there is someone else in the coffeeshop who thinks that poodle with tinfoil on it’s head can get more fans than Glen Beck – the two of you could opt to chat about it over a latte.

I already choose as many do, to show that I’m online with Facebook.  I occasionally mention I’m going to an event or a bar.  It’s not a far leap for me to add a bit of GPS data from time to time to pinpoint my location when I’m out and about.  I would certainly GPS my photos so folks could see where they were taken.  I think as we begin to dip our toes into the hot waters of the information age, we will get used to sharing what at one time seemed personal.  Much of what folks share on Facebook and Twitter were moments we would have considered private a mere decade ago.  I have witnessed break-ups, engagements, babies, death and all the tiny details in between from hundreds of people who would be little more than strangers if we weren’t modern day friends of the information age.

Maybe privacy is the bi-product of a lonesome, isolated age – where a lack of communication forced us to suffer and celebrate in small, if not singular parties.  In this new age, we can be connected not only virtually with those around us as we are today – but also in person.  We can discover our old friend is only a few tables over – we can make a lunch decision by seeing where co-workers are at – and we can discover others nearby who share our interests.  Striking up a conversation with a stranger perhaps gets a bit easier when you have some topics to start with.

Or, as always, we can press the off switch and take a few hours to ourselves.  The key, as always, is moderation.

When I was a freshman in high school I began making a lot of observations and conjectures about what was actually going on here.  While most boys my age had girls on the mind – I became obsessed with the nature of reality. I had become a devout atheist in middle school, but being unsatisfied with silently disagreeing with those around me – I decided my time was better spent trying to figure out what was actually occurring – why I was here and why thing were the way they appeared.

A particular observation that haunted me occurred one evening at the little league field in my home town.  While I was a right-fielder in every sense of the sport when suited up – and thus have always disliked the game immensely – going to the little league field in Cornwall NY was just about the only fun thing in town – and many summer nights were spent at the complex walking between the various fields.  From certain spots you could witness multiple fields, and multiple games over the complex.  On one particular evening I began taking notice of the separation of time between seeing a batter make contact with the ball and the sound of the crack of the bat.  This was not a new phenomenon, and I knew that light traveled faster than sound. The only problem was that I had no idea what that meant – it was just an expression.  As I sat there, I realized that the time between the sight and the sound was different depending on which field I was looking at.  The further the baseball diamond, the greater the separation in sound.

Suddenly I imagined myself on an endless field.  I put the action of the batter a certain distance away and in my mind recreated the scenario I was witnessing at the complex – filling in the rough data I had regarding distance and the perceived difference in time.  I then began pushing the batter further and further away – to extreme distances not possible in the park – and began to discover larger gaps in time between action and sound.

I had just explored what is often referred to as a “thought experiment”. A famous example being Sir Issaac Newton’s thought experiment in which he imagined a cannon placed on the highest mountain on Earth.  If it shot a cannon ball at a certain speed it would go such a distance and then fall.  Faster speed, further distance.  At what speed would it have to reach to never fall?  Our modern day satellites fly at that speed – Newton was a bit ahead of his time.

In my mind I stood there on the endless plain – with the player still moving further and further away – the time between visual and auditory contact growing further and further apart. Suddenly I began racing away in the opposite direction.  I was now speeding away from the batter just as he was departing from me.  At first both the visual and sound could reach me – but the duration between seeing the swing and hearing it just grew longer and longer.  But as I reached greater speeds I eventually surpassed the speed the sound was traveling at, yet not quite the speed of the visual.  Now here my mind had to consider a few options.  Would all sound cease… as certainly the crack of the bat hitting the ball would now never reach me.  Was it possible I would begin to hear the previous swing?

As I continued to speed up I began to wonder how much faster were the visuals than the sound?  Could I accelerate to the speed of the visual – and if so what would happen?  And if I went beyond? That was about all my mind could ponder at that point – but it kept in the back of my mind for years.

In college I would discover that I hadn’t been pondering these thoughts alone – that others had come before me – and some of the questions I had been asking were answered. It turns out sound travels at a rather leisurely 1,125 feet/second.  What I could only think of as the visuals was actually light – and light travels at an outrageous speed of approximately 983,000,000 feet/second.  So it turns out the light was going about 874,000 times faster than the sound.  No wonder I could notice the change in such a short passage of time at the park.

I learned in college that Albert Einstein had discovered in 1905 that the visuals – light – and the speed at which they approach us as the observer, is the only true constant.  That time was relative.  That one’s experience is relative – and that the duration of the time between two events can be different for two separate observers. Your experience is different from mine.

While this of course took a few weeks to fully settle in – what was even more astounding than Einstein’s theory of special relativity and all the consequences it lay forth – was that this amazing realization was less than 100 year old.  That for all of human history man had lived on this Earth, unaware of such an amazing truth.  That most people still walk around unaware of this amazing fact.

What we label as science, is in fact, the truth.  What is so terrifying about that statement is that we know so little.  The big secret is that we have no idea why we are here, or what is going on.  For most of human history we have made measurements and observations of the world around us – only to discover as time went on that those observations were biased because we are not the focal point – we are not the scientist looking through the telescope – we are not outside the Petri dish.  We are part of the experiment – no matter how much we’d rather play observer. And for all the thousands of years humans have walked on this planet – the millions of minds that have had the capacity to think – we’ve hardly scratched the surface. We have had to fill the void of knowledge with an endless array of stories and myths and faiths, because a believable lie provides more comfort than the fear of the unknown.

But the unknown is a curious thing.  There is room to ponder…  And while deep reflection on complex thoughts might hurt the brain at first, that’s just the warming up of brain cells yet untouched.  There are wonderous things to contemplate.

How small or large can things be? I say infinitely.  At one point it was Atoms – then we found Proton and Neutrons.  Then “whoops” there are some quarks inside of there.  Now scientists postulate a concept called “String Theory” that takes us even smaller.  Wouldn’t it make more sense that you could go infinitely small and infinitely large – or perhaps even better, it loops at some point. Think about it.

Everything Repeats. I would argue that one’s capacity to notice variety is directly related to one’s scale in relation to the object. So things on my scale – people, dogs, buildings, trees – I can tell the difference between them.  Looking at the tree from afar I might think all the leaves are the same.  Upon closer observation I would find they are all unique – but obviously the plant cells are the same.  Under the microscope… no.  If this is the case – and the plant cells replicate with variation, and humans replicate with variation – and clearly planets replicate with variation – at what point would this replication with variation stop?  Why would it suddenly stop?  Would it not make as much sense to have multiple universes with variation?  Or multiple microscopic elements smaller than a quark with variation? Attempts to find a solid state – a final solution provide no real answers.  So you bring me to the big bang…. big deal – I’ll just ask you what was going on shortly before it.

The fact is, we’ll never know everything – but we live in a time where we know far more than ever before – and the more minds focused on answering bigger questions – the better. Never forget this is actually occurring – and that we don’t know why. Religion is a simple way out, but what fun is that? Science isn’t the job of scientists – it’s the truth about the nature of reality – and every intelligent person should have an interest in that. Last year for my birthday I purchased a gyroscope after watching a lecture regarding some of their unique properties.  The questions that bizarre device has provided me have been endless – but so has the fun in discovery. While friends that stopped by probably thought I was crazy – some things are too interesting to just let the “scientists” play with them.

Don’t just memorize the facts – contemplate the unknowns. Wonder why things are they way they appear – find out if your observations are even correct in the first place. When was the last time you did some science? Life is more fun when you realize it’s happening.

Be curious.

This week Apple announced their highly anticipated iPad – a revolutionary new device that creates an entirely new category someplace between the laptop and smart-phone. While the media and pundits may have been more focused on the name – my mind has been on fire the past three days thinking of nothing but the potential. I have never been more convinced that The Interactive Dept. and it’s partners of creative designers and developers – as well as photographers, videographers and writers, have a long and exciting career ahead of them. I have also never been more convinced that now is the time to work for yourself or with a small collective of creative types – because the publishing revolution has begun!

The title of this blog post comes from the title of a book by Bill Gates, written in 1995. I was a senior in high school at the time – and Bill Gates was the richest man in the world. It seemed unlikely that a dork such as this would be the richest man in the world, so a dork such as I was quite fascinated, and ran out to purchase this book the moment it hit the shelves. In it, Bill Gates explained his vision of the content revolution – of an internet that everyone participated in – video cameras and interactive touch-screens allowing for instant access to knowledge from anywhere and instantly.

“For more than 500 years, the bulk of human knowledge and information has been stored as paper documents. On the information highway, rich electronic documents will be able to do things no piece of paper can. The highway’s powerful database technology will allow them to be indexed and retrieved using interactive exploration. It will be extremely cheap and easy to distribute them. In short, these new digital documents will replace many printed paper ones because they will be able to help us in new ways.”

While a statement like this seems trite today – one has to remember that 15 years ago, the declaration that paper documents would be replaced was almost ridiculous.  Let’s recap technology for just a second:

1995 I use my parents IBM Aptiva Desktop with a 386processor, a 4800-baud modem and a dot-matrix printer and I go online for the first time with 5-hours of overpriced internet via AOL.
1996 I go to college and get a Gateway Desktop with a ginormous monitor, a bubble-jet color printer and a T-1 line
1997 I buy my first scanner – a giant flat-bed that takes up my whole desk.
1998 I buy my first digital camera.  Under 3-megapixel and a battery life of about 5 minutes it seemed.
2000 I purchase my first cell phone that just makes calls, sometimes…
2002 I get my first laptop – where I can take my computer with me. A giant, heavy Dell.
2007 I get my first smart-phone, the iPhone.
2008 I replace my broken iPhone with a new iPhone.

When Bill Gates declared I wouldn’t need paper anymore – if I had wanted to bring a map with directions on a drive, I had to go down to the basement of my house, fire up the Aptiva – connect via the phone line to Poughkeepsie ($0.35/minute at the time) – wait for Webcrawler to load up – find a mapping service via the search engine – and then try to print the map on my crappy dot-matrix printer. Today I would simply turn on my iPhone, pull up the map, and have it find me or any other location in the world and easily map the route. No need to print it either, as I can simply bookmark it and take it with me.  I haven’t had a printer setup in my apartment in 5 years. Bill was correct.

Along the way Bill obviously got side-tracked, because Microsoft certainly hasn’t been on the cutting edge of this revolution.  I like to think Bill’s philanthropic desires overshadowed his otherwise prophetic business mind – but regardless, it has been Apple that has carried the torch of this great evolution in information to our current moment.

It was Apple that changed the music industry forever – by allowing me to put every song I could have ever wanted to hear in a device I can carry along anywhere.  While Sony Executives were bragging about the endless bounds of their CD-Discman’s Skip-Protection capacity (”We’re up to two whole minutes of shaking!“) – Apple realized folks might wish to carry more than a single CD’s worth of music with them.  Oh – and while we’re at it – why not create a marketplace that makes the purchasing of music a gazillion times easier. I can now listen to music from bands who have never stepped into a corporate recording studio, whom I have never seen live.  The transaction, if any, can be conducted between us.

It was Apple that changed the telephone forever – by creating an entirely new interface and experience with a phone that for the first-time ever made having a cell phone truly useful. I could now listen (or not) to voice messages in the order I wanted to, with actual useful controls that didn’t require me to remember bizarre number combinations.  They created a phone that could be used for all the things you never imagined a phone could be used for.  And again they created a marketplace where I could easily purchase or download thousands and thousands of applications to make my life easier or more fun.

With the iPad – I truly believe Apple has created a device that will change the way we interact with tons of things we take for granted today – especially all those documents that still require paper.  For example, I still bring a notepad and pen into meetings. I don’t like the sound of typing or looking at my screen when I’m trying to discuss a project with my client so the laptop doesn’t work for me.  I would however take digital notes, or even record the audio of the meeting with a device like the iPad.   It would result in less scraps of paper around the office – I could immediately sync it with the clients files – and the ability to pull up samples of work or other websites right there in the meeting would be huge.

At home – I can finally see myself using an eReader.

I’m sorry Kindle fans, but when I look at one compared to the iPad, I think “how 90s.” I’m psyched that Amazon has had so much success, but the market for a solid eReader was WIDE-OPEN, and I think Apple has just taken over. Not only does the color screen allow for supplementary photography, video and audio – but once again they have created a solid marketplace for purchasing and downloading books from the comfort of your bed – and I’m particularly interested to see what happens to the publishing industry, as lessons from the music industry are learned, and new under-discovered writing talents begin creating their own marketplaces for selling their writings directly to the public. There is no art-form that requires so little to produce, but so much to share, as writing – and a solid eReader has been the last hurdle for unleashing the full potential of the publishing revolution.

Imagine students no longer having to lug around text-books. Think of a world where you can search for thoughts or ideas through endless epochs of written word, find something of interest, and begin reading it in its entirety – all while sitting on the train during the morning commute. Imagine a world where our need for paper is diminished, and our forests flourish.

The way scientists perform research, students study, academics write papers or even simply how a child writes a book report is going to change gradually but profoundly. Upon completion of a book, rather then a written page of “other books by the author” – those will be links – and those links will have links – and a new type of dewey-decimal system will develop of its own design based on our informational needs as knowledge is reorganized and rediscovered.

I look forward to playing video games in my hands – watching movies from my bed – and showing large and gorgeous photos and home movies to my parents.  I look forward to the next round of devices that will expand upon what Apple delivers.  I anticipate shared touch-screen applications in all sorts of places and locations we don’t experience them now. I look forward to seeing the ways we replace old technologies and concepts with touch-screen applications.

In this new world, a screen on the wall could be my light-switch, my music remote, my phone, my weather, my recipe, my security, my door bell or my art work. Apple has made the first step, with an earnest attempt to remove the keyboard and mouse. How will we develop products and interfaces that have no bounds?  That first digital camera I bought in 1998 looked like it still had film inside of it. They wanted it to feel like a camera still.  Now most digital cameras are slim and have redefined how a camera should look and work.  With the iPhone – the camera took on a whole new shape.  So many other devices still cling to their industrial heritage – but as the iPad begins to acquire their tasks, new applications and interfaces will be devised to create efficiencies that were impossible in a physical world.

Steve Jobs said in his speech this week that there will be a new gold-rush.  While I agree that there will be plenty to be made producing applications and tools for these devices – I disagree with the terminology of a Gold Rush.  Yes, there will be some wave of success at first – but this isn’t some new patch of territory that is going to be quickly discovered, claimed and cleared.  Rather – this is a new economic era.  For thousands of years, man has traded goods and services.  These primarily have been tactile items – foods, clothes, tools, etc.  Over time, things like education and knowledge became prized.  The arts flourished, and someone could be paid for their creativity.  However, there could only be so many books published, so many painting painted, so many students taught.  With the publishing revolution – that changes.  Suddenly there is an endless supply of a whole new world of products never before imagined.  I can design and build a game of my own imagination – produce it myself – sell it on the App Store – and make a full-time living having never left my home or created anything tactile.  The more our money chases virtual products of the imagination – the quicker our economy will have to evolve.

The solution to unemployment isn’t getting the old jobs back – it’s awakening to the new economy.  It’s acknowledging the publishing revolution has begun.  It’s educating the next generation of children not simply how to memorize, but to learn. I was lucky that Bill showed me the Road Ahead when I was 17. It shaped my path through college, it gave me focus in my 20s as I bounced from various start-ups.  It gave me the confidence to start The Interactive Dept – and it fills me with overwhelming excitement when I see a product that will transform the way we communicate and share ideas.

I have seen the road ahead – and it is beyond exciting.

On Christmas morning I saw a Facebook post from my cousin regarding a video game called Braid. As it is rare to see any female make a post about a fun video game – I decided to check it out.  The write-up seemed interesting and the graphics beautiful – so I dropped the $10 and purchased it for the Mac.  For the next few days I played an absolutely brilliant game – that was like many classic games I had played – but yet completely different then anything I had ever seen before.

The game focuses on time.  The main character, Tim, has the unique ability to control time, forward or backwards.  I first discovered this on the second level when I accidentally fell into a pit and died.  Rather than the typical fade-out, and starting the board again – I simply pressed the SHIFT key, time began to rewind, and I was back alive as if nothing had ever happened.

However – something had happened.  I had a memory of an incident occurring that no other creatures in the game did.  I now knew what was about to happen, and nobody else did.  What a spectacular power!  But the brilliance of Braid is that as the game unfolds – you begin to look at time entirely different – and both the positive and negative consequences of your actions.

The main storyline follows Tim’s quest to reclaim his princess who was taken away by an evil knight.  There are 6 chapters – each with it’s own unique take on time.  At the start of each chapter there are a series of books that provide insight not only into Tim, but also the characteristics of the world you are about to enter.  As the boards progress, your interaction with time become more and more profound and required.  Some solutions can only occur in reverse, or when time is manipulated entirely.  By the final boards, the natural pace of time is in reverse – and you must anticipate how things began in order to move forward.

However, this post is not a game review – this is a discussion on time.

As humans, we are 3-dimensional creatures witnessing glimpses of our 4th dimensional-self.¹ We experience time as a linear path completely out of our control.  Whereas we have full control over the dimensions beneath us (I can walk forward/backwards, left/right, can go up and down) and have almost no observations of the dimensions above us (a topic for another blog post) – we remain trapped in the 3rd, aware of time (4th), but unable to move back and forth within it.

However – human beings have this amazing gift of being able to predict and conjure up scenarios in our brains.  No other species known to man can project plausible outcomes the way humans can.  Nor does any creature have the ability to reflect on the past and re-associate past experiences the way humans can.  You will never meet a dog with long-held regrets, or a fish with long-term goals. Our species alone has the capacity to explore beyond the moment. One has to begin to wonder – is it possible we have some mild control over this 4th dimension?  That time is not the master.  Or rather, that our minds can see the fringes of the 5th dimension where all those possible realities exist?

Regardless of your views on Quantum Physics, it is quite easy to see that one’s actions have consequences, positive or negative.  Two years ago, before I was getting ready to move to Spain for two months, I decided to sell my car.  The money would be helpful for the trip I felt, but more importantly, I began to believe it would have positive consequences for me in the future.  Sure enough – upon my return to the States, I began walking to work every day.  More amazing moments and coincidences have occurred during these walks to and from work then I could have ever experienced before.  I’ve discovered a grocery store I never would have stopped in while driving, that has changed my diet and the foods I cook.  Then there are the realities that never occurred that I might be unaware of.  Car accidents on the negative, perhaps unexplored road-trips on the positive.  Regardless, the trajectory of life was changed drastically, as it almost always is by our decisions and many of the positive elements that have occurred I was able to foresee before I sold the car. That realization that I can make sweeping changes for the future with simple actions in the present has become a major force in my life.

It is safe to infer then, that actions in the present will create new realities in the future.  Unfortunately though – the implication here is that everything that is occurring in your current moment, is the direct result of your past actions.  Most would prefer to think otherwise – that the moment is the moment – and the past is memories, the future unforeseen.  This is where I disagree entirely.  The future is quite foreseeable, the past quite easy to manipulate – and the current moment is nothing but an opportunity to explore time and create reality.

So how do you begin to control time?  First off, as almost every guru/preacher/life-coach/grandmother will tell you, you need plans.  You need to know what it is you want to do – how you want to live – where you want to be – with whom you want to be with – and all the other details of the life you desire.  There are plenty of other blog posts that can explain the importance of knowing yourself at the core, and the pitfalls of the unexamined life – hopefully you have already begun this process. If not, turn off Mad Men and begin exploring.

With a plan in mind – the next step is to truly envision that life.  Not in the abstract – not just the feeling – or some photos from a magazine – it needs to be as clear as the memories in your past.  You need to be able to call on it at any point, explore it, and connect it to other memories. Don’t just focus on the goal of that memory – look around.  Seriously, turn around and see what is on the wall behind you in this fantasy.  If you’re envisioning a person, what types of socks are they wearing?  Force your mind (especially if you’ve let it sleep most your life) to begin working its magic.  All the details are there.  Put down the iPhone – the greatest piece of technology you own is your mind.

Do you have it?  Can you feel it?  Your brain is touching the 5th dimension – and you are now moving within the 4th.  Here comes the tricky part – working your way backwards through time.  With a clear vision in mind, press the SHIFT key and rewind your life from this future point back to your present.  Go as slowly or fast as you need to, and as often as you need to.  Just make sure your mind is doing the work and the details are showing up.  Your mind will produce the details – and more of them the more often you review these future memories.  Take note of the actions, and patterns that exist in these conjured scenarios. You will have a less challenging time jumping the pits and dodging the fireballs of life when you know they are coming, and how you defeated them.

If there are conflicts prior to your current moment in the 4th dimension, do not be hesitant to go back in time and fix those issues.  While you will fully remember that they occurred, if you go back and fix them, you will find the rest of the world for the most part forgets that they ever occurred (okay, this is more like the game, but in reality nobody really cares that much about anything other than themselves, so if you truly do make amends for past issues, or just face up to problems that have been plaguing you – rather than just ignoring the past – you do change the current moment).

Most importantly – remember that life is occurring… always.  That just like in the game, we don’t know why we’re moving forward in the 4th – or where we are headed in the end – but if we are smart, clever and persistent with our efforts, we will have a wonderful experience.

“Know yourself; And urge yourself ceaselessly.”

SOURCES:

1. Imagining the Tenth Dimension
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA

These are things the elderly woman sitting beside me on my 3.5 hour flight from Houston (a stop-over on my flight from Philadelphia) told me. I won’t bother to detail which points I agree with or disagree with. The point of this exercise is that we are all bat-shit crazy, and should probably just learn to smile more and listen for the sake of the story.

• She was born in Chicago, but moved to Missouri
• She was 1 of 11 children.
• She acquired the job of head editor for her high school newspaper because the girl who had received the position originally was lazy. When a famous riverboat performer came to do an assembly at the school and refused to give interviews because of limitations on her time, she had offered to help the woman pack up her stuff, and in the process recorded short notes. When the performer noticed this, she suggested that because the packing had gone so smooth, she now had time for an interview. With story in hand, she took the position right out from under that other lazy gal.
• She has 3 children. One lives in Portland, one lives in Honduras working as a missionary and the other lives in California.
• There are various types of fish oil vitamins on the market, but only one in the US that uses purely Salmon.
• Her favorite bible passage is Matthew 21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
• While she and her husband and two of the kids were stationed in West Germany in the 50s, they took a two week camping trip through 9 countries. They purchased a German VW which they eventually had shipped back to the states when they attempted to homestead in Alaska.
• Cell phone towers only exist in the US. Everywhere else people just use their cell phones and there are no towers. She knows it sounds a bit crazy, but she believes the towers are probably used to track us using those very cell phones.
• She sold the German VW several years later for $500. A local car salesman had offered her only $150, but she felt she could sell as good as him and proved that. She was offered $250… she was offered $400… but she held out till the morning and sure enough got what she wanted.
• When she and one of her sons went to attend her daughter’s wedding in Honduras she had him stay with this older couple and a young man. Unbeknown to her, the young man had a sister, who on the second day stopped by, and though she spoke no English, and apparently he no Spanish, by year’s end and after three trips down, they were engaged.
• She hiked the base of the grand canyon in two days. It was her 3rd attempt. The first time, her group was too large with 28 individuals, so she offered to stay behind. The second time, her knee began to hurt right before the hike, and had to pull-out. The third time was with her brother. He had done it before alone in a single day. She says if she had done it alone, she would still be there.
• As a child, she wrote to the head of the local dentistry school at the haste of her mother, and he was so moved by the letter he allowed her to get braces at the school at no cost, even though she needed stage 3 braces, which the school wasn’t totally qualified for. She couldn’t stand the delay, so when not in the presence of authority figures, she would tie as many as 8 rubber-bands on each of the braces. When the braces came off, the doctor told her to put on some lipstick. “No, more he said. A girl is told she has a nice smile, she starts thinking about her hair – she cares about her hair, suddenly she starts dressing nice. Boys start to pay attention. She went from being on the 5th rung (1st Rung: Popular kids, 2nd Rung: Athletic Kids, 3rd Rung: Kids with money, 4th Rung: Nerds and Bookwords, 5th Rung: Nobodies) to the 1st rung – a real popular girl.
• 98% of women who have abortions are later diagnosed with breast cancer
• Sales runs in the family apparently, because when she posted her truck for sale (now living south of Eugene Oregon) a farmer from outside Portland drove all the way down after talking to her son on the phone, unaware that the voice on the other end was that of a 11 year old. He had to wait around till she got home from work to close the deal.
• People with Vitamin B deficiencies have a long canal running down the middle of their tongue. Upon closer inspection, my tongue suggests I am VERY deficient in Vitamin B and while she’s not saying this about me in particular… people like me are often short-tempered, easily irritated, and while they might be super nice to an old lady they don’t know, such as herself, we can be super cruel to our own mothers and the people who love us. It’s easy to pretend to like a stranger, but when we, the vitamin B deficient, know someone loves us, we can afford to be quick with them and often quite mean, because we know they won’t abandon us.
• By the very fact that President Obama can not produce a birth certificate, he must be a foreigner and untrustworthy.
• She hadn’t been raised religious, that was more her husband’s thing. But he had been attending a church and they asked if they could come over after dinner a few times a week to chat with her about God and her faith. They explained that they wanted her to sign this card to pledge her devotion to God. She said she would probably never do that, but agreed to listen to them, and invited them into her house. The first evening, they chatted a bit about life and family and work, but they spoke a good deal about God. When the meeting concluded, they asked her what she had though – and she said she wished they’d done 80% real issues and 20% faith discussions, and not the other way around. But she agreed to meet again. They did this for three weeks, when she suddenly woke in the middle of the night and knew she had to sign that card. She didn’t know why – she just felt compelled by God to do so.
• In response to an article that downplayed the use of vitamins in curing certain kidney ailments, she wrote an editorial that was read by a deacon in her Church, who apparently was associated with a vitamin company and asked her to become a rep, a job she has till this day.
• Many of our health issues comes from aluminum something both the industry and the government has been suppressing for almost a century now.
• She sold encyclopedias for a brief time, but never had much luck. The crutch of the sales pitch was showing how important it was for children to be able to get information when they are inspired in the moment – a service your local library just can’t provide. She never had a sale, although her husband did sell one set to a co-worker for her, but she doesn’t feel that counts.
• On the prior flight from Honduras to Houston, the gentlemen beside her was an intern for a senator, who had sent him there to monitor the elections. Apparently he was not associated with ACORN.
• She was married to her husband for 27 years, then one day he said he just couldn’t stand to be tied down any more and asked for a divorce. Several years later he came back and admitted he had been foolish and asked her to take him back. She said if he could be faithful and a good husband for a year, she would agree to marry him again. He stayed for five months and then left again. She gets asked out for coffee from time to time by gentlemen, and that’s all well and good. But coffee leads to dinner, and multiple dinners lead to the bedroom, and she has no intention of going there. Sure, she can keep a conversation with a guy like myself, but I’m her youngest son’s age, so the pressure isn’t there (and I shouldn’t be offended by that). If it’s God’s plan for her husband to come back, she doesn’t want to be tied down to someone else when it happens.