Monthly Archives: March 2015

Just Your Average Superhero

Posted on by kgoodman

Superhero Couple

What would the world be like if we could all fly and leap tall buildings with a single bound?

How would it change your world, if you found that everyone you knew could shoot lasers from their eyes and lift heavy objects?

What would the world be like if everyone had superpowers?

 

The answer might intrigue you, cause the truth is, not that different.

 

The world would look the same to you, pretty much, as it does today.

Except we’d be flying everywhere instead of driving, and we’d be shooting lasers from our eyes.

 

I’ve thought about this before.

 

What if you had superhuman strength and could hit a wall with your fist and punch a hole in that wall?

What would the real world response to this be?

Well for starters people wouldn’t invite you over to their houses as often, repair bills would be astronomical.

But for your own home you would build it from stronger materials. You’d use materials that could deal with a little wear and tear. For example you’d want door frames that didn’t collapse the first time you ran into them. You’d use materials that were appropriate for the environment, to deal with your strength and weight and hold up for longer than 5 minutes.

 

Now imagine if everyone was that way. The whole world would have adapted to and been building with stronger materials. Engineering specifications would take into account the requirements of buildings with better materials. The world around you would be built to cope with this higher level of being, strong, faster, etc… The bottom line would be that the world around you would be created to account for the people that lived in it. Everything in the world around you would look normal and average, and you would find the world held up pretty much to your expectations. Except everyone had superpowers… Which in essence would mean that they were all average.

 

Still following my line of thinking here?

So I’m saying if everyone in the world had super powers, then the world would look like it was supposed to, because everyone was average. So the world would seem to us, just like it does today, normal.

 

So considering that everyone around you is average.

And everything, in general, around us looks pretty normal.

Why do you believe you don’t have superpowers?

You’re more powerful than you think.

Now go be extraordinary.

 

Namaste,

Kevin

Superhero Couple

 

Looking For The S.E.P. Field

Posted on by kgoodman

Crop Of Young Man's Face Looking At Empty Space..

One of my favorite parts to the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy series was the description of the S.E.P. field. Arthur and Ford (two of the main characters) are searching for a way to get back home and Ford spots a spaceship, but Arthur can’t see it. Ford is pointing straight at it, but Arthur just sees an empty field. Ford goes on to explain that the spaceship has an S.E.P. field around it. “S.E.P. ?” Arthur asks, not understanding. “Somebody Else’s Problem field, it’s a field that hides things from people because they don’t think they have to worry them.” explains Ford.

I’ve always loved this idea. Whenever I run into problem at work I explain we just need to put an S.E.P. field around it and we won’t have to worry about it any more. I laugh and the people around me stair blankly wondering what’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with me is a topic for another, probably much longer, post. But for this one, let’s stick to the concept of the S.E.P. field.

Our minds are incredible focus engines. We can drill down on a specific problem and think the heck out of it. It’s an evolutionary adaptation that enables us to survive by focusing specifically on the thing that’s preventing us from continuing to exist. Whether that be a search for food, or the search for a way to avoid becoming food. We can focus down to the specific problem at hand and work on it till our neurons bleed, making sure we’ve solved it.

This can become very problematic when we live in a super complex world that’s constantly presenting us with unsolvable problems. Or at the very least problems that lend to misdirection and slight of hand. Problems that appear to be one thing, but are in fact another. In other words when someone says, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”, it may be a good time to pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

I’m not saying we have to seek out more problems than we already have. In fact we may want to lose focus on the problems we’re already drilling down into. It’s quite possible that the main thing that has your knickers in a twist, is in fact not a problem you even need to worry about. It’s possible if you shift your focus to the corner of your eye and look for the metaphorical spaceship hiding behind the SEP field, that you’ll find your problem is already solved and you neednt’ have worried at all.

It’s also useful to look for the hidden aspects of our universe, because we tend to be the ones that hide things from ourselves. Meaning that as we learn about how we think the world works, we make assumptions about what that means and start to exclude possibilities. In effect we decide by inference how the world doesn’t work.

I heard this quote recently, “The opposite of a lie is a profound truth. But the opposite of a profound truth, may in fact be another profound truth.” (Manhattan the TV Series). This can be taken to mean that just because you’ve found an aspect of truth, that doesn’t imply that everything else is a lie. You need to keep your eyes and your mind open for the next profound truth.

If you have found a truth you are not at the end, only the beginning.

If  you can’t see the path forward, you may need to look at it sideways.

The solution may just be hidden in an S.E.P field.

Namaste,

Kevin

Light Into Darkness

Posted on by kgoodman

boring-wall-blog

It’s all about contrast and focus.

 

Do you notice the walls in your house?

Mentally you’re used to avoiding running into them. (Though I still have trouble with door frames every now and then.)

They break up the spaces of your home.

Give you privacy and separation.

They hold the roof up.

But in general they can pretty much go unnoticed and unremarked.

 

Now shift your attention to the wall. Find a bare patch of the dull boring wall and stare at it.

Not so dull and boring is it?

Well okay, maybe it is kind of dull and boring. But, the closer you look at the wall the more nuance starts to appear.

 

The walls are not really flat and nondescript. They can be kind of bumpy, or slightly irregular. Maybe they’re patched up like mine with a little putty.

Then there are the shadows playing across them. Light filters in and the color shifts in your mind’s eye as the underlaying true color remains the same as it ever was.

 

Then you look away again and your mind begins to edit them out. They’re just boring white walls again, no attention needed, nothing of interest.

 

The detail is always there, the depth is there, but most of the time you don’t notice.

You notice contrast where you give focus.

Where you put your attention the contrast deepens.

Where you focus, your mind begins to highlight differences.

 

Suddenly a simple wall becomes a battlefield of lightness and darkness. Shadows mixing with light in a contrast of image. You look away and it’s all gone.

 

Attention is in fact deceptive.

Inattention is equally deceptive.

 

If you don’t pay attention to something it will blend to all look the same.

If you pay too much attention to something the contrast will make you think it’s an ocean of malcontent and cacophony.

 

Seek balance between attention and inattention.

Find the placed where you can see the contrast, but know that we’re all the same.

Seek for the place where you are not deceiving yourself in either direction.

The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle.

 

The mind is a contrast engine. Contrast creates drama. Contrast draws attention to the light.

 

A good photographer knows how to work with the light, drawing attention to their intended focus. Using darkness to draw attention away from what they don’t want you to see.

 

The images you are seeing are a lie.

 

Sometimes it is another lying to you. Sometimes it is you lying to yourself. They are images generated by the mind and constructed through a particular focus. Whatever they want you to see… Or whatever you are looking for. Drawing attention away from what remains hidden in darkness. Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

 

Generate your own light. Illuminate the corners of the world that often remain hidden.

 

Light is a tool. So is darkness.

 

Become the light where light is needed. Become the darkness where dark is needed.

 

Seek balance.

 

Namaste,

Kevin

 

boring-wall-blog