Dear Diary February 28, 2009 #6, #7

Dear Diary,
10:00 AM So, I've started meditating. Phil's influence. It seems as if from time to time, as I'm sitting, I slip into a space where I'm not aware of anything in particular, but aware of everything in general. Its delicious. It wasn't so at first, I was only aware of my body and its discomfort. But how did it get so ossified? Did my rigid mind make my body hard? Or was it my stiff body that produced an inflexible mind? Yoga, too has helped me expand and open.
I'm not powering my way through life anymore. I'm starting to get what I want, revelations come with a gentle asking. I'm more interested in what's going on.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, we would see everything as it is, infinite." -William Blake

6:00 PM As a Quantum Physicist, I've been preoccupied with studying the material world outside myself. Since my infancy, this has been my tendency. Strangely, though, and just recently, I feel this Rishi side of myself insisting on having more of a voice, wanting to explore the landscape inside myself and with fervent fascination. I'm having(participating in?) intuitive insights, experiencing interconnectedness, unity, creation, destruction, manifestation, on the inner. All things I have also observed, as a scientist, on the outer. I cannot ever underestimate the value of those rare and special friends in my life.

February 25, 2009 Dear Diary #5

Lunched with Phil again today. He laughed when I told him about me manifesting a freakishly long eyelash. It inspired him to tell me about an experiment in manifestation he did with blintzes, his favorite dessert. He told me there are certain ways we can get things into our lives that we desire. The first way is if we want something, we go out and get it. When he wanted blintzes, he went to the grocery store and bought some. The second way to bring something into our life, he explained, is to have someone go and get it for us. He would send his son to the store to buy him some blintzes. For the third way to bring blitzes into his life, he would close his eyes, focus on the blintzes, and then his wife, out of the blue, would offer to make them for him, or some other synchronicity like this would usually take place. The fourth way, and the way that he is fascinated with now is that he has the thought of a blintz, and it materializes instantaneously before him.* Is he kidding me or what? When I asked him how in the world he accomplished this, he said through meditation. He told me about his daily meditation practice where he plants the seeds of manifestation by participating with the infinite and having a sense of knowing, more specifically, a sense of knowing blintzes would show up in his life, and they always do. Is this black magic or something? Phil suggested I drop my obsession with the observer/observed question and focus on being a "participator" for insights of real value. Food for thought.

*inspired from a conversation between Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra

Dear Diary February 22, 2009 #3 and #4

10:00 am: Wondering whether I should watch the Oscars tonight or not. The only movie I saw of the bunch was the Werner Herzog documentary on Antarctica. Saw him on YouTube eat a leather boot. Ha. Read a quote by Heisenberg, "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." Thinking maybe even geometry faulty. Does it really find measurable forms in nature or does it make nature fit into its forms? And time just seeming more like a collective agreement by everyone in our society.
7:00 pm: Decided to watch the Oscars. But just to keep my math skills from getting rusty. Predicting the winners with algorithm analysis. Beginning to think that maybe poets are our best scientists?

February 21, 2009 Dear Diary #2

When I was little I envied my cousin and sister their lush fray of long, gorgeous eyelashes.
Well, about three months ago, I grew one very long lash. It was blond and curled upward. Finally! Thank you God! Note to self: be careful what you wish for. These wishes are fulfilled.
Anyway, last week, I couldn't sleep because something was irritating my eye and surprise! It was my long lash curled up under my upper lid. Trying to manhandle it, it fell out. There it was, between my fingers. I had grown it myself with my will, with my desire. Sure, it was blond and there was just one, but it gave me great joy to slather mascara on my left eyelashes and see my freakish blond lash turn black and tower double the height over the others. And darn it! I lost that lash! I dropped it. I wanted to save it.
Just how do desires organize the photons and subatomic particles around me? There are desires manifesting, materializing, all around me and as a quantum physicist shouldn't I be able to explain this? I must ask Phil what he thinks.

February 17, 2009 Dear Diary

I'm still breaking my time up into intervals: walking and writing. Still writing my thesis. Some of my best ideas have come while hiking around in the fresh air. I write best standing up or submerged up to my neck in hot bathwater.
Even though I'm already a respected quantum physicist, I need to get this PhD, get my credentials in order.
Meeting Phil, my colleague, often for lunch at the Club. We sit in our usual place by the window and receive excellent service. The schnapps at the end is always on the house. Phil and I meet as a reprieve from the world of study and hypothesizing, so we keep our talk to the simple things we see going on outside the Club window. The lovers chatting arm in arm, the nannies pushing strollers, the shiny-shoed business man are all relaxing diversions. Sometimes we go for a walk together afterwords, slowly ramble along, watching the squirrels.
This particular afternoon, I had to get something off my chest. I asked Phil about the 'Observed as Observer' question that's been on my mind. I asked him if he ever felt that whatever he's observing, he's really looking into a 360 degree mirror, seeing only reflections of himself? He told me to give him an example.
I told him about the woman scientist who discovered plants that have growing cycles outside the normal cycles we've established: biennials, annuals, etc. She found plants that had previously been overlooked because of their unusual growing patterns. (The plants emerge every other 9th year) This specie was completely outside of the scientists' radar because these men of science were stuck in old observation patterns. I told him that I felt that as I did my own research, I felt that I, too, locked myself into a box when I observe, limiting myself to my own experiences. Did he have any suggestions as to how I could break down my conceptual boundaries? Was he encountering the same difficulties as I? And if and when I break down my conceptual boundaries, what grand discoveries would await me?
But, Phil didn't have any input.
He lit his pipe and chuckled, pointing to some squirrels chasing each other up a tree.