Take Care OF Home First.

The only way out is the way in: why colonizing another planet is not the solution Who created the mess on this planet which causes us to consider interstellar travel and leaving the planet? The short and shocking answer is, humans did. It would certainly be tempting to just leave the earth behind and populate another planet somewhere else in this universe. Considering the fact that getting out of a relationship or a job once one experiences some problems is so easy, one could think the same about leaving the planet in order to escape this mess. But this is a fallacy. It might not be comfortable to hear, but the problem on this planet is neither the planet itself, nor any of the current issues, but it is us humans and our perception. Leaving the planet as a solution would be a futile attempt to flee from ourselves. Or it would be like putting a band aid onto an infected wound. Eventually the patient will die of sepsis. Let me explain this in more detail. From quantum physics we know that the conscious observer determines the outcome (observer effect). So, who is the conscious observer? It is us! We humans are self-aware beings and the conscious observers of our reality. This also means we are determining the outcome. We are creating our reality in every moment of our lives. Every decision and choice we are making has an impact on ourselves, our environment and ultimately creates not only our individual cir***stances, but the world we live in. How so? We have free will and are given the freedom to make literally any choice and decision we would like to. I am aware that brain research does not exactly agree with me in terms of free will, but that is only because we do not understand the proper function and purpose of the brain yet. Every choice we are making equals an action which calls – according to Newton’s third law – for a reaction. In philosophy and spirituality it is called the law of Karma – the law of cause and effect. "Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.†(Hermetic Philosophy) If we make a choice or a decision with pure intentions, the reaction or effect would be just as pure and neither our personal lives nor the planet as a whole experienced lack, pain, negativity and suffering. We would be at ease with ourselves and our decisions. Dis-ease (literally and figuratively) starts when our choices stem from impure intentions. The reason for having impure intentions lies in our specific perception of the outer situation. Having impure intentions is like putting on colored glasses, once we see the world through that filter, we will think the world/reality is colored and every decision will be colored by that particular color of our glasses. And since energy follows attention and we are the conscious observers, every “colored†decision or choice we make will lead to an outcome which does not resemble reality, but is just a mental image of reality – a box created by the power of our own mind. “Preceded by perception are mental states, for them is perception supreme. If with perception polluted one speaks or acts, suffering follows.†(Dhammapada) The colored glasses represent a mental state – something in our subconscious mind. Let’s take director Nolan as an example. He claims to be a pessimist. This means he is in a particular mental state. This mental state (pessimism) is NOT created by any external condition. It is a MENTAL state, and it is created by how he PERCEIVES external conditions. It is his perception that has created the mental state. Of course, perception does not mean sensory perception but how you mentally and emotionally respond to our cir***stances in life. The important point is that once our mind is inside a mental state that is created by perception, our mind cannot see that the perception that created the mental state is NOT the only possible way to perceive the situation. For a particular mental state, the form of perception that created the mental state is supreme, meaning that as long as our mind is identified with the mental state, we are not able to question or see beyond your perception. As long as Nolan is identified with a negative outlook on life, he will think this is reality, this is how the world really is. This perception will affect his decisions and choices which will reinforce the very problem he perceives and re-create it over and over again. There is a colloquial saying: “What goes around comes around†which brings this pretty much to the point. Using Newton’s 3rd law of action and reaction one could say, every action (thought, word, behavior) will create an equal reaction. Once we get the reaction to our action, we perceive it in a certain way and react yet again to the reaction created by our own action – ad infinitum. In simpler words: we and only we are solely responsible for what happens in our life. And humankind is collectively responsible for what happens on this planet. Now we can start to see why leaving the planet and populating another one will NOT be a solution! We created this mess with the power of our own minds, so how could leaving the earth with the same (state of) mind possibly be a way out? “The problem is not the problem, but your attitude about the problem is the problem!†(attributed to Jack Sparrow) As we know now, perception (or attitude) is directly linked to our mental states which make up our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind can be pictured like our attic where we store all our negative mental states. In order to understand why these states are in our subconscious mind, we need to make a detour to Einstein’s famous equation e=mc2. Everything is energy. Or if you like Tesla better: “If you want to think about the universe you have to think in energy, vibration and frequencyâ€. Or in case you are a philosophy lover, here your equivalent from the Kybalion: “The differences between different manifestations of Matter, Energy, Mind, and even Spirit, result largely from varying rates of Vibrations, the higher the vibration, the higher the position in the scale.†Since everything is energy, our thoughts, actions, decisions and choices are obviously likewise energy patterns which vibrate in a certain frequency spectrum. The lower the frequency the more solid something appears, the higher the frequency the more non-material it gets. Every decision/choice we make is an energy pattern vibrating in a certain frequency. Energies qualified with low vibrations cannot flow anywhere and will subsequently be stored in our energy field or subconscious mind (some teachings call this misqualified energy Karma). That is how we fill our “attic†with mental states which in turn influence every decision and every choice we are making – individually and collectively. So, how do we get out of this mess? Well, obviously, an easy way out would be to just jump ship by jumping onto a spaceship. This is a very nice idea, but running away from the problem has never solved a problem. (and try to run away from yourself!) The only way out is to face the problem, understand how we created it, uncover all those faulty mental states which sabotage our creations and make better decisions in the future. There is no other way out than to take full responsibility for our own state of mind and realize that our own actions led to the reactions (problems) we experience. Because we keep reacting to the reactions of our own actions- which is like chasing our own tail - we create a closed system on this planet. We are trying to get out of this box, but without being willing to look at or outside the box, instead we are trying to move around the objects inside the box. The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that in closed systems entropy or disorder increases. That is what we currently experience - individually and collectively– and Hollywood is making profits out of the fear this creates by serving us innumerous apocalypse, end of the world or humanity extinct movies. We can try to run away from the problem, but since we ARE the problem this will be a never ending quest. Even if we managed to go somewhere or find another outer solution, it will lead to the same result. Or as Einstein put it: “We cannot solve the problem with the same level of thinking that created them!†In other words, without changing our mindset, our perception and taking off our colored glasses we will never solve the problem, but simply reinforce and recreate it. And that would be like “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result which would be insane†- at least according to Einstein. Fixing the planet is no utopia. However, humans have to let go of their “blame game†and the “easy and quick fix†mentality. The problem is never outside ourselves and can therefore never be solved with a solution on the outside - be it with something as simple as a pill or something complex like interstellar travel. Changing outer things will not solve anything – changing inner things will solve everything! Interestingly, putting this theory into the context of Christopher Nolan’s movies – not the details, but the bigger picture - gives us a nice allegory for the spiritual underpinnings and the reality of our life. In the essence our current reality is that of the character in Memento. We are lost, we have forgotten who we are, why we are here, what the purpose of life is and what led to the difficult state we are in right now. Just like in the movie there are people who try to figure it out, and who become more aware of the spiritual side of life and the reality itself. But a lot of people still have to use “sticky notes†(figuratively speaking) to get through live - too large is the burden of being limited powerless human beings who are here to simply fill the gap between birth and death with something. Most of the time it is something which others have told, taught, indoctrinated and brainwashed us to think is meaningful. We are Following. Following the crowd, a religious leader, the media, scientific materialism, or the numerous implicit and explicit social rules we have created. We are not willing to think for ourselves, we don’t dare to follow our own hearts. We have given up our lives in order to follow each other hoping others might know where the right path is. It is an escape from taking responsibility, a futile try to control our lives, to create certainty out of uncertainty. It makes life seemingly easier, but the price is high. We are not only sleepwalking through life, we are literally brainwashed and indoctrinated by our upbringing, including media, advertisement, books, movies, which are more than happy to tell us what “normal†is, what to do and have in life. The shoulds and should nots of our existence, setting up a life standard which degrades us to uniform programmed robots. Followers. Sheep. This is inception in action. Every experience of our lives throughout every day will touch our subconscious mind, influence our perception and mental states. If our subconscious mind (attic) is filled, we will not be able to elude being manipulated, and unlike in the movie Inception we do not need to be asleep for it. The subconscious mind is not conscious even if we are awake so we will not know if someone incepts us – unless we clean up our subconscious mind which requires us to make the unconscious conscious. Most of us are exposed to these manipulations, yet unaware of them. We think what we perceive is reality and what science is telling us is truth. An illusion. Science is conducted by the very same people who still wear colored glasses. They perceive a reality, nota bene with our five - rather limited - senses, describe it and call it truth. If science told us truth, the earth would still be flat. In reality we are like Cobb in Inception, not knowing whether we are still in a dream or already in reality. Due to this ignorance we think that taking a spaceship to go somewhere else will be a way out, but it is really only the equivalent of moving to another dream level – a dream within a dream. Some of us might already be in limbo. The only way to wake up from the dream is to question every thing including- or particularly - our own state of mind. So, how do we know that we are back in reality? Let me appease you, we don’t need a totem. We will know as soon as the question disappears. As long as we have the question whether this is reality or not, it is not yet reality. We are not there yet, because once we are there, we realize that there is no there there. We have gnosis. We are awake! The first step out of the dream is setting up the “kickâ€. How do we do this? I would start with an honest and serious look in the mirror. If we don’t like the reflection – what life throws at us – we better clean up your subconscious mind, so that what ‘comes around’ is really what we want. Humans think life is a struggle and a fight for resources, but that is not so. The struggle arises by perceiving ourselves as separate from each other and therefore we have to fight against others to get what we think we are entitled to. We are investing all our lives in having or doing more things, albeit still being followers. Rarely do we make our own unique decisions which would give us a meaningful purposeful life. Take for example the desire and expectation of every woman to have a diamond ring. All of them walk around and display their diamond rings, thinking that they are unique and loved, but beside of being uniform and boring, it has evolved into a form of competition and a try to control the most sacred emotion there is: true love. Now, none of Nolan’s movies really talk about true love. They are strangely void of it, giving them a rather sterile touch. They are not holding back though when it comes to negative mental states. The Prestige is full of them. There are two unique magicians who both have their ideas, inspirations and passion, but instead of trusting that uniqueness and themselves, they endlessly, mindlessly compete with each other. It leads to pain, suffering, sacrifice and death. As long as we are following – each other, a leader or the implicit and explicit rules of society, we will have to deny our uniqueness and competing with each other will be inevitable. Obviously the reason why we have to compete is the perception of not having enough, the perception of lack, the desire to feel better, more superior or more recognized than others. This perception will ultimately lead to envy, jealousy and greed – the very mental states which led to the biggest issues on our planet. This is what the Prestige calls the Turn. We have turned ourselves from an initial purity into something else – unfortunately not extraordinary like the Turn in the movie demands, but rather into something uniform, controlled, mindless. This Turn makes us perceive and react to life’s experiences in a certain way. Just like young Bruce Wayne who reacts with anger and rage to his parent’s death– both, anger and rage are mental states which will lead to a particular perception followed by a reaction which reinforces and re-creates the problem. Whatever our reaction might be, it will set stage for our experiences and reality in our future. We literally precipitate everything which happens in our lives! The fact that bad things happen to good people (like a young Bruce Wayne) can now be explained. There are no coincidences, no randomness, however albeit being the conscious observers, the conscious mind makes up only about 10%, the much larger part is the subconscious which is why we might not remember anymore that it was us who have started the causality chain in the first place. If Bruce Wayne had changed his mental state, he would have resolved the issue without reinforcing it. But because he decided to fight, albeit for a seemingly good cause, he not only reinforced the problem, but the individual problem became a collective one! So, how can we get out of that mental box? Have someone challenge it! That someone could be the joker known from the second installment of the Batman trilogy. Admittedly, he is very violent, so let’s just ignore this fact for a moment. What is brilliant in the character of Nolan’s joker is his non-attached attitude to what the Batman does to him (remember the interrogation scene!). Non-attachment can only come about if there are no mental states creating a certain perception which call for a reaction. It will give a person true power. The joker uses this power to mercilessly expose human’s egos, their pseudo certainties, their weaknesses, and rules. We experience it as chaos, but he is really just challenging human’s boxes. He asks us to question things -our way of life, the things we accept, the things we give importance. He uncovers our mental states and makes us react. What did the Batman and the other protagonists do? Fight him. And the joker wins. What would be the solution? To realize that fighting things or people on the outside will not help to bring change, only changing ourselves can do that. The joker is brilliant because he holds up a mirror to humankind. If you look into a mirror what do you have to do in order to make it smile? Well, I guess you will have to smile at it first. What did the Batman do? He tried to destroy the mirror! Why so serious, Batman? If Nolan had seen the joker that way, he would have been able to give the third movie a true closure to the trilogy. But aside from the cave scene (which symbolizes the process of enlightenment), the mindset or mental state of TDKR was exactly the same like TDK. So no closure. The trilogy is from a spiritual perspective not complete yet. “Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.†Nolan’s new movie trailer seems to suggest leaving the planet or at least going somewhere else to find solutions is the way to fix our problems. It is yet again an outer solution. Quite frankly, with our current mindset, it is neither possible to develop an actual practical solution for interstellar travel, nor to create a sustainable solution somewhere else in this universe. Even if we were able to populate another planet, it would be tantamount to putting a cart before the horse as we will re-create the same conditions all over again. In other words, there is no other way out, but the way in. If you want the outer conditions to change, change the inner conditions first or as the Vedas and Hermeticism puts it: be as above so below. Once you are below as you are above, you have become who you truly are. To be or not to be will not be a question anymore, because you simply Are. And that act will be the Prestige.