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Is America Ready for Legalized Shrooms?
This Psychologist Made of Bees Says “Yes”
Full article - https://thehardtimes.net/hardstyle/...UgtOJYtjOokTnDwJubSgJoMhMy_zsRKenGIQGphTLL1Os
This Psychologist Made of Bees Says “Yes”
Full article - https://thehardtimes.net/hardstyle/...UgtOJYtjOokTnDwJubSgJoMhMy_zsRKenGIQGphTLL1Os
Very cool “discovery"!
Enjoy!
'Magnetoreception' is the new human superpower we've always had
Scientists have new evidence of an ancient sense of geomagnetism that we know little about.
New research suggests humans have a hidden ancient superpower -- or at least an unconscious sensory perception that we've yet to figure out how to use.
A number of animals, including migratory birds and sea turtles, have a geomagnetic sense that allows them navigate by tuning into the Earth's magnetic field. Now scientists from Caltech and the University of Tokyo have experimental evidence that humans also harbor a similar sense of magnetoreception.
"Aristotle described the five basic senses as including vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch," explained Caltech geoscientist Joseph Kirschvink, in a release. "However, he did not consider gravity, temperature, pain, balance and several other internal stimuli ... geomagnetic field sensors should also be there representing not the sixth sense but perhaps the 10th or 11th human sense to be discovered."
Kirschvink and his colleagues built a special chamber designed to be isolated from radio frequencies, sounds, light and all other potential sensory stimuli. Participants in the experiment sat in silence in the dark for an hour while researchers measured their brain waves as the artificial magnetic field around the chamber was shifted.
The 34 study subjects consciously experienced nothing more than sitting in the dark.
But the brain waves of many of them showed a different story, responding to the magnetic stimulation the same way brain waves respond to sights, sounds or touch.
"The fact that we see it in response to simple magnetic rotations like we experience when turning or shaking our head is powerful evidence for human magnetoreception," said study co-author Shin Shimojo, a Caltech neuroscientist.
The researchers found that the brain appears to not only detect geomagnetism, it also seems to have a pretty "smart" sense of the Earth's geomagnetic fields.
The experimental data showed that the brain seems to be actively processing the magnetic information from our environment and rejecting input that seems obviously wrong.
When the researchers made the vertical component of the magnetic field point upward, which is the opposite of how we experience the Earth's magnetic field in the Northern Hemisphere, there was no corresponding change in brain waves.
Basically, the brain appears to have self-filtered out information that it considers to be obviously in error.
Repeating the experiment in reverse in the Southern Hemisphere could confirm this phenomenon.
A study detailing the results of the experiments is being published in the journal eNeuro on Monday.
The team believes that a likely explanation for how human magnetoreception works might involve a naturally magnetic mineral called magnetite, which has been found in small amounts in human brain tissue.
"As for the next step, we ought to try bringing this into conscious awareness," Shimojo said.
And just like that, Marvel's Magneto now has a more plausible origin story.
Paging Professor Charles Xavier...
Enjoy!
'Magnetoreception' is the new human superpower we've always had
Scientists have new evidence of an ancient sense of geomagnetism that we know little about.
New research suggests humans have a hidden ancient superpower -- or at least an unconscious sensory perception that we've yet to figure out how to use.
A number of animals, including migratory birds and sea turtles, have a geomagnetic sense that allows them navigate by tuning into the Earth's magnetic field. Now scientists from Caltech and the University of Tokyo have experimental evidence that humans also harbor a similar sense of magnetoreception.
"Aristotle described the five basic senses as including vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch," explained Caltech geoscientist Joseph Kirschvink, in a release. "However, he did not consider gravity, temperature, pain, balance and several other internal stimuli ... geomagnetic field sensors should also be there representing not the sixth sense but perhaps the 10th or 11th human sense to be discovered."
Kirschvink and his colleagues built a special chamber designed to be isolated from radio frequencies, sounds, light and all other potential sensory stimuli. Participants in the experiment sat in silence in the dark for an hour while researchers measured their brain waves as the artificial magnetic field around the chamber was shifted.
The 34 study subjects consciously experienced nothing more than sitting in the dark.
But the brain waves of many of them showed a different story, responding to the magnetic stimulation the same way brain waves respond to sights, sounds or touch.
"The fact that we see it in response to simple magnetic rotations like we experience when turning or shaking our head is powerful evidence for human magnetoreception," said study co-author Shin Shimojo, a Caltech neuroscientist.
The researchers found that the brain appears to not only detect geomagnetism, it also seems to have a pretty "smart" sense of the Earth's geomagnetic fields.
The experimental data showed that the brain seems to be actively processing the magnetic information from our environment and rejecting input that seems obviously wrong.
When the researchers made the vertical component of the magnetic field point upward, which is the opposite of how we experience the Earth's magnetic field in the Northern Hemisphere, there was no corresponding change in brain waves.
Basically, the brain appears to have self-filtered out information that it considers to be obviously in error.
Repeating the experiment in reverse in the Southern Hemisphere could confirm this phenomenon.
A study detailing the results of the experiments is being published in the journal eNeuro on Monday.
The team believes that a likely explanation for how human magnetoreception works might involve a naturally magnetic mineral called magnetite, which has been found in small amounts in human brain tissue.
"As for the next step, we ought to try bringing this into conscious awareness," Shimojo said.
And just like that, Marvel's Magneto now has a more plausible origin story.
Paging Professor Charles Xavier...
Great article!
Just a quick fyi regarding Human Design. It's believed that the G-center or Magnetic Monopole is the center of the Self, not in mind or thinking terms persea, but body talk--our magnetic receptor/reflector. It's also believed that we expierence the effects of solar storms it is in this area.
Thanks!Great article!
Just a quick fyi regarding Human Design. It's believed that the G-center or Magnetic Monopole is the center of the Self, not in mind or thinking terms persea, but body talk--our magnetic receptor/reflector. It's also believed that we expierence the effects of solar storms it is in this area.
That could very well be....it could be in our very cells and atoms for all we know!
Or...perhaps it is not a place they can find because it isn’t physical in nature but more etheric as you suggest?
At least in our measurable sense.
Just the fact that they are acknowledging that we have reactions to magnetic fields and can sense them gives much more credence to things like the full moon impacting how people behave.
Working on the ambulance and in the ER you always knew it was going to be a busy night!
Maybe that was just coincidental sometimes, but this article suggests that everyones’ intuition was right perhaps.
It only makes sense...at least to me...our very being has been shaped and molded under the pull of gravity.
But, it gives a more concrete answer for people to make into a jumping off point or inquiry - which is always positive!
Much love Sandie!
I hope you are well!?
Some cutesy shit...
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
Kate Allan
And another cool number!!
Post number 8888!
Holy crap.
Post number 8888!
Holy crap.
When they say “dark” matter...it only means we cannot see, detect, or measure it yet...much less find it....but we know it’s there.
Pretty cool to think about!
Enjoy!
In the original Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror," the crew of the Enterprise are accidentally transported to a parallel universe.
Dubbed the Mirror Universe, its denizens are evil doppelgangers of the crew, complete with garish uniforms, Nazi-like salutes, and full, robust goatees.
Like many concepts first imagined in science fiction, the mirror universe may actually exist, albeit in a far less melodramatic form.
As reported by New Scientist, physicists are busy speculating about our universal reflection, and two experiments are currently underway to search out the empirical evidence.
If proof of a mirror universe is found, it may help solve many of physics most intractable questions.
The first experiment profiled by New Scientist comes courtesy of physicist Leah Broussard and her team at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
They have devised a simple method for detecting a mirror universe.
An apparatus will fire a beam of neutrons at a wall with varying magnetic fields on both sides.
These neutrons can't penetrate the wall, yet the researchers have placed a device behind it that will scan the area for these very subatomic particles.
Why?
If any neutrons manage to appear behind the wall, it will be strong evidence that they oscillated into mirror neutrons, skipped right on pass the wall because it existed in a different part of the universe, and then oscillated back in time to hit the detection device.
"Only the [neutrons] that can oscillate and then come back into our universe can be detected," Broussard told New Scientist. "When passing through a magnetic field, the oscillation probability increases."
Broussard and her team are looking at neutrons because of a quirk in their decay.
Inside a nucleus, neutrons are perfectly stable, but outside, they decay into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino of the electron type.
Here's the quirk: all free neutrons should decay at the same rate, but that rate changes depending on how scientists measure it.
The first way to measure the lifetime of free neutrons is to isolate them in a "bottle trap" and then count how many remain after a certain amount of time. The second way is to count the protons emerging from a neutron beam generated by a nuclear reactor.
Yet, scientists get different rates of decay for each — 14 minutes 39 seconds for the former, 14 minutes 48 seconds for the latter.
A possible explanation for this discrepancy is a mirror universe.
Neutrons may have dual citizenship in both universes.
When they summer in our neighboring universe, any protons they emit are not detected and therefore not counted in our measurements.
This could explain why we see less decay activity in the neutron beam.
Signals in magnetic fields
The second experiment profiled by New Scientist was developed by Klaus Kirch and his team at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. This team applied magnetic fields of varying strengths to neutrons in a bottle trap.
The goal is to find the telltale signals of mirror magnetic fields.
These would suggest neutrons oscillating between universes, potentially supporting any evidence found by Broussard and her team.
"The experimentalist's view is, if it doesn't look completely crazy, can it be tested?" Kirch told New Scientist.
"I don't really believe the signals are there, and we have designed an experiment that can disprove them, and we'll see what comes out of it."
Kirch and his team have completed their experiment and are currently analyzing the data.
A mirror darkly
As Yuri Kamyshkov, a mirror matter researcher at the University of Tennessee and a collaborator with Broussard, noted: "The probability of finding anything is low, but it's a simple and inexpensive experiment.”
Despite the odds, he adds, a positive result would usher in a physics revolution.
A mirror universe could explain many of physics' unsolved mysterious, among them the question of dark matter.
As Michio Kaku told Big Think in an interview:
"Dark matter is massive, it has gravity, but it's invisible. It has no interactions with light or the electromagnetic force. So, there is a theory that says that perhaps dark matter is nothing but matter, ordinary matter, in another dimension hovering right above us."
Of course, Kaku points out, this is one of many different theories about dark matter.
String theorists think dark matter may be a higher octave of string vibration.
One reason the mirror universe idea is so appealing is the math.
Some models suggest a mirror universe would have to have been much cooler than our own during its early evolution.
This difference would have made it easier for particles to cross over, resulting in five mirror particles for every regular one.
That's roughly the ratio of dark to normal matter.
Scientific models, in the end, must be backed by empirical evidence.
We'll have to wait for the results of these and other experiments before determining the probability that a mirror universe exists — let alone if its beard game can match our own.
Pretty cool to think about!
Enjoy!
Are scientists on the brink of discovering a mirror universe?
New experiments look to the interplay between
neutrons and magnetic fields to observe our universal reflection.
New experiments look to the interplay between
neutrons and magnetic fields to observe our universal reflection.
Science fiction has long speculated about parallel universes and what they may be like.
Researchers have devised new experiments to look for how a mirror universe may be influencing our own.
If such evidence is found,
it could bring to light many of the universe's mysteries, such as the nature of dark matter.
Researchers have devised new experiments to look for how a mirror universe may be influencing our own.
If such evidence is found,
it could bring to light many of the universe's mysteries, such as the nature of dark matter.
In the original Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror," the crew of the Enterprise are accidentally transported to a parallel universe.
Dubbed the Mirror Universe, its denizens are evil doppelgangers of the crew, complete with garish uniforms, Nazi-like salutes, and full, robust goatees.
Like many concepts first imagined in science fiction, the mirror universe may actually exist, albeit in a far less melodramatic form.
As reported by New Scientist, physicists are busy speculating about our universal reflection, and two experiments are currently underway to search out the empirical evidence.
If proof of a mirror universe is found, it may help solve many of physics most intractable questions.
The first experiment profiled by New Scientist comes courtesy of physicist Leah Broussard and her team at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
They have devised a simple method for detecting a mirror universe.
An apparatus will fire a beam of neutrons at a wall with varying magnetic fields on both sides.
These neutrons can't penetrate the wall, yet the researchers have placed a device behind it that will scan the area for these very subatomic particles.
Why?
If any neutrons manage to appear behind the wall, it will be strong evidence that they oscillated into mirror neutrons, skipped right on pass the wall because it existed in a different part of the universe, and then oscillated back in time to hit the detection device.
"Only the [neutrons] that can oscillate and then come back into our universe can be detected," Broussard told New Scientist. "When passing through a magnetic field, the oscillation probability increases."
Broussard and her team are looking at neutrons because of a quirk in their decay.
Inside a nucleus, neutrons are perfectly stable, but outside, they decay into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino of the electron type.
Here's the quirk: all free neutrons should decay at the same rate, but that rate changes depending on how scientists measure it.
The first way to measure the lifetime of free neutrons is to isolate them in a "bottle trap" and then count how many remain after a certain amount of time. The second way is to count the protons emerging from a neutron beam generated by a nuclear reactor.
Yet, scientists get different rates of decay for each — 14 minutes 39 seconds for the former, 14 minutes 48 seconds for the latter.
A possible explanation for this discrepancy is a mirror universe.
Neutrons may have dual citizenship in both universes.
When they summer in our neighboring universe, any protons they emit are not detected and therefore not counted in our measurements.
This could explain why we see less decay activity in the neutron beam.
Signals in magnetic fields
The second experiment profiled by New Scientist was developed by Klaus Kirch and his team at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. This team applied magnetic fields of varying strengths to neutrons in a bottle trap.
The goal is to find the telltale signals of mirror magnetic fields.
These would suggest neutrons oscillating between universes, potentially supporting any evidence found by Broussard and her team.
"The experimentalist's view is, if it doesn't look completely crazy, can it be tested?" Kirch told New Scientist.
"I don't really believe the signals are there, and we have designed an experiment that can disprove them, and we'll see what comes out of it."
Kirch and his team have completed their experiment and are currently analyzing the data.
A mirror darkly
As Yuri Kamyshkov, a mirror matter researcher at the University of Tennessee and a collaborator with Broussard, noted: "The probability of finding anything is low, but it's a simple and inexpensive experiment.”
Despite the odds, he adds, a positive result would usher in a physics revolution.
A mirror universe could explain many of physics' unsolved mysterious, among them the question of dark matter.
As Michio Kaku told Big Think in an interview:
"Dark matter is massive, it has gravity, but it's invisible. It has no interactions with light or the electromagnetic force. So, there is a theory that says that perhaps dark matter is nothing but matter, ordinary matter, in another dimension hovering right above us."
Of course, Kaku points out, this is one of many different theories about dark matter.
String theorists think dark matter may be a higher octave of string vibration.
One reason the mirror universe idea is so appealing is the math.
Some models suggest a mirror universe would have to have been much cooler than our own during its early evolution.
This difference would have made it easier for particles to cross over, resulting in five mirror particles for every regular one.
That's roughly the ratio of dark to normal matter.
Scientific models, in the end, must be backed by empirical evidence.
We'll have to wait for the results of these and other experiments before determining the probability that a mirror universe exists — let alone if its beard game can match our own.
DNA, it's in our DNA and cell structure. This is some of the "science" behind the HDS. That theory that we can change our DNA at a cellular level has some meat to it, however, for someone like me, I can only use it to be healthy daily, not undo irrepairable damage already done.
I can't argue with this
Things are ups & downs here. My stress level flowing in a similar pattern. Assisting with Dad and his end of life issues is a huge challenge, but I'm hanging in there. Much of my stress is his arguing his internal markers of reconcilliation. He's giving me much material for my book tho. Seems the universe has provided me with a first account of how humans really do have to move through "the Dark Night" in solitude. And, if not attended to in early life it is forced later in life. Meaning we have to reconcile our own Soul accounts, no one can do it for us. I try to remind myself of this when the arguements come. He made the comment to me the other day that I've exceeded his and mom's expectations of my intelligence. I smiled, and said that I believe he needs to trust my judgements going forward then. He still doesn't get it.
He spouts that he is king of this castle and his law remains, to which I chuckle and reply, we'll see, we'll see. LOL It was wonderful to read who your mystery guests were
I imagine that was a joyful meeting of the minds! Hoping you and the family are enjoying summer. We've had more rain than sunshine here and Washington state is prolly drier
take care
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Is America Ready for Legalized Shrooms?
This Psychologist Made of Bees Says “Yes”
Full article - https://thehardtimes.net/hardstyle/...UgtOJYtjOokTnDwJubSgJoMhMy_zsRKenGIQGphTLL1Os
lmfao
He believes his own lies that dribble forth from his own lips at a steady pace...
Yet, with proof tangible enough that the President be briefed...it’s too much to fathom.
Hmmmmmm?
Lol
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump doesn't seem to be a believer of aliens or UFOs flying through Earth's atmosphere, although he has been briefed on them.
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, in a wide-ranging interview, asked Trump about recent news reports about Navy pilots spotting flying objects and what he made of the apparent UFO sightings.
"I want them to think whatever they think," Trump said, raising his eyebrows and slightly grinning before adding that he did have "one really brief meeting on it."
"People are saying they're seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly," he added.
Stephanopoulos followed up, asking the president whether he thought he'd actually know if the U.S. had any proof of extraterrestrials — a question Trump didn't appear to actually answer directly.
"I think our great pilots would know and some of them really see things that are a little bit different than in the past, so we're gonna see, but we'll watch it," Trump said, following his answer with a promise that Stephanopoulos would "be the first to know" if there was alien life.
Trump's comments followed a number of reports chronicling how the government has examined UFO sightings and a report in the New York Times about Navy pilots reporting bizarre flying objects, including one that looked like a "spinning top" and another with no visible engine that could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
The Times report includes a number of videos filmed by Navy pilots showing the aircraft and the curiosity of the pilots who couldn't figure out what the objects were and how they were so quick, even when they were flying against the wind.
But the report makes clear that the Defense Department doesn't believe the objects are from beyond Earth and that an explanation can almost always be found for incidents like these.
Unexplained flying objects have been seen by pilots for decades.
In 2017, the Department of Defense released footage from 2004 showing Navy Pilots coming into contact with an unidentified flying object off the San Diego coast.
In an interview with the Times, one of the pilots, David Fravor, said mysterious aircraft were being investigated after appearing on radar at 80,000 feet, dropping suddenly to 20,000 feet then hovering there before dropping out of radar or shooting back up in the sky.
Fravor said he went to investigate one of the aircraft, saw it moving erratically then hovering just above the Pacific Ocean.
As he got closer to the object, it zipped off.
"It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen," he told the Times, adding the incident, which was never explained, left him feeling "pretty weirded out.”
Yet, with proof tangible enough that the President be briefed...it’s too much to fathom.
Hmmmmmm?
Lol
Trump got a briefing on UFOs,
although he doesn't 'particularly' believe in them
although he doesn't 'particularly' believe in them
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump doesn't seem to be a believer of aliens or UFOs flying through Earth's atmosphere, although he has been briefed on them.
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, in a wide-ranging interview, asked Trump about recent news reports about Navy pilots spotting flying objects and what he made of the apparent UFO sightings.
"I want them to think whatever they think," Trump said, raising his eyebrows and slightly grinning before adding that he did have "one really brief meeting on it."
"People are saying they're seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly," he added.
Stephanopoulos followed up, asking the president whether he thought he'd actually know if the U.S. had any proof of extraterrestrials — a question Trump didn't appear to actually answer directly.
"I think our great pilots would know and some of them really see things that are a little bit different than in the past, so we're gonna see, but we'll watch it," Trump said, following his answer with a promise that Stephanopoulos would "be the first to know" if there was alien life.
Trump's comments followed a number of reports chronicling how the government has examined UFO sightings and a report in the New York Times about Navy pilots reporting bizarre flying objects, including one that looked like a "spinning top" and another with no visible engine that could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
The Times report includes a number of videos filmed by Navy pilots showing the aircraft and the curiosity of the pilots who couldn't figure out what the objects were and how they were so quick, even when they were flying against the wind.
But the report makes clear that the Defense Department doesn't believe the objects are from beyond Earth and that an explanation can almost always be found for incidents like these.
Unexplained flying objects have been seen by pilots for decades.
In 2017, the Department of Defense released footage from 2004 showing Navy Pilots coming into contact with an unidentified flying object off the San Diego coast.
In an interview with the Times, one of the pilots, David Fravor, said mysterious aircraft were being investigated after appearing on radar at 80,000 feet, dropping suddenly to 20,000 feet then hovering there before dropping out of radar or shooting back up in the sky.
Fravor said he went to investigate one of the aircraft, saw it moving erratically then hovering just above the Pacific Ocean.
As he got closer to the object, it zipped off.
"It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen," he told the Times, adding the incident, which was never explained, left him feeling "pretty weirded out.”
DNA, it's in our DNA and cell structure. This is some of the "science" behind the HDS. That theory that we can change our DNA at a cellular level has some meat to it, however, for someone like me, I can only use it to be healthy daily, not undo irrepairable damage already done.
Sorry to hear of the extra stressors and things going on.I can't argue with this
Things are ups & downs here. My stress level flowing in a similar pattern. Assisting with Dad and his end of life issues is a huge challenge, but I'm hanging in there. Much of my stress is his arguing his internal markers of reconcilliation. He's giving me much material for my book tho. Seems the universe has provided me with a first account of how humans really do have to move through "the Dark Night" in solitude. And, if not attended to in early life it is forced later in life. Meaning we have to reconcile our own Soul accounts, no one can do it for us. I try to remind myself of this when the arguements come. He made the comment to me the other day that I've exceeded his and mom's expectations of my intelligence. I smiled, and said that I believe he needs to trust my judgements going forward then. He still doesn't get it.
It was wonderful to read who your mystery guests were
Hoping you and the family are enjoying summer. We've had more rain than sunshine here and Washington state is prolly drier
take care
Your Dad is correct and should feel proud in regards to bringing you up...you’re absolutely one of the smartest folk around!
I know you will hang in there, but let me know if you want to vent or talk.!
I can see the sense of that DNA quandary.
Lately I have been working with techniques for mental pain issues and applying them to my chronic pain issues with some slight changes to some of the concepts.
So far it seems to have some benefit, and just by using meditative and other more mental techniques I was able to release some knots in my neck that had been there for almost a month - mostly by asking them to leave.
Which I have done before...but for whatever reason, something clicked into place and my body has started to respond to some of my requests instead of feeling like it was always out of control.
It has been pretty dry and warm...especially last week...it was nearly 100 for a couple days, which rarely happens here.
Yes...it was a very cool get-together!
Very much as if we all were old friends!
Take care of yourself - you know where to find me!
Get back with you all soon!
Gotta catch up on some sleep.
I will leave you with some things to ponder and laugh at!
Talk to you all more soon!
Gotta catch up on some sleep.
I will leave you with some things to ponder and laugh at!
Talk to you all more soon!
Wow!!!
A team of researchers from Jülich in cooperation with the University of Magdeburg has developed a new method to measure the electric potentials of a sample at atomic accuracy. Using conventional methods, it was virtually impossible until now to quantitatively record the electric potentials that occur in the immediate vicinity of individual molecules or atoms. The new scanning quantum dot microscopy method, which was recently presented in the journal Nature Materials by scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich together with partners from two other institutions, could open up new opportunities for chip manufacture or the characterization of biomolecules such as DNA.
The positive atomic nuclei and negative electrons of which all matter consists produce electric potential fields that superpose and compensate each other, even over very short distances. Conventional methods do not permit quantitative measurements of these small-area fields, which are responsible for many material properties and functions on the nanoscale. Almost all established methods capable of imaging such potentials are based on the measurement of forces that are caused by electric charges. Yet these forces are difficult to distinguish from other forces that occur on the nanoscale, which prevents quantitative measurements.
Four years ago, however, scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich discovered a method based on a completely different principle. Scanning quantum dot microscopy involves attaching a single organic molecule—the quantum dot—to the tip of an atomic force microscope. This molecule then serves as a probe. "The molecule is so small that we can attach individual electrons from the tip of the atomic force microscope to the molecule in a controlled manner," explains Dr. Christian Wagner, head of the Controlled Mechanical Manipulation of Molecules group at Jülich's Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-3).
The researchers immediately recognized how promising the method was and filed a patent application. However, practical application was still a long way off. "Initially, it was simply a surprising effect that was limited in its applicability. That has all changed now. Not only can we visualize the electric fields of individual atoms and molecules, we can also quantify them precisely," explains Wagner. "This was confirmed by a comparison with theoretical calculations conducted by our collaborators from Luxembourg. In addition, we can image large areas of a sample and thus show a variety of nanostructures at once. And we only need one hour for a detailed image."
The Jülich researchers spent years investigating the method and finally developed a coherent theory. The reason for the very sharp images is an effect that permits the microscope tip to remain at a relatively large distance from the sample, roughly two to three nanometres—unimaginable for a normal atomic force microscope.
Dr. Christian Wagner with a model of the PTCDA molecule, which serves as a quantum dot.
In this context, it is important to know that all elements of a sample generate electric fields that influences the quantum dot and can therefore be measured. The microscope tip acts as a protective shield that dampens the disruptive fields from areas of the sample that are further away. "The influence of the shielded electric fields thus decreases exponentially, and the quantum dot only detects the immediate surrounding area," explains Wagner. "Our resolution is thus much sharper than could be expected from even an ideal point probe.”
The Jülich researchers owe the speed at which the complete sample surface can be measured to their partners from Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. Engineers there developed a controller that helped to automate the complex, repeated sequence of scanning the sample. "An atomic force microscope works a bit like a record player," says Wagner. "The tip moves across the sample and pieces together a complete image of the surface. In previous scanning quantum dot microscopy work, however, we had to move to an individual site on the sample, measure a spectrum, move to the next site, measure another spectrum, and so on, in order to combine these measurements into a single image. With the Magdeburg engineers' controller, we can now simply scan the whole surface, just like using a normal atomic force microscope. While it used to take us 5-6 hours for a single molecule, we can now image sample areas with hundreds of molecules in just one hour."
There are some disadvantages as well, however. Preparing the measurements takes a lot of time and effort. The molecule serving as the quantum dot for the measurement has to be attached to the tip beforehand—and this is only possible in a vacuum at low temperatures. In contrast, normal atomic force microscopes also work at room temperature, with no need for a vacuum or complicated preparations.
And yet, Prof. Stefan Tautz, director at PGI-3, is optimistic: "This does not have to limit our options. Our method is still new, and we are excited for the first projects so we can show what it can really do."
There are many fields of application for quantum dot microscopy. Semiconductor electronics is pushing scale boundaries in areas where a single atom can make a difference for functionality. Electrostatic interaction also plays an important role in other functional materials, such as catalysts. The characterization of biomolecules is another avenue. Thanks to the comparatively large distance between the tip and the sample, the method is also suitable for rough surfaces—such as the surface of DNA molecules, with their characteristic 3-D structure.
New quantum dot microscope shows
electric potentials of individual atoms
Image from a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM, left) and a scanning quantum dot microscope (SQDM, right).
Using a scanning tunnelling microscope, the physical structure of a surface can be measured on the atomic level.
Quantum dot microscopy can visualize the electric potentials on the surface at a similar level of detail -- a perfect combination.
electric potentials of individual atoms
Image from a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM, left) and a scanning quantum dot microscope (SQDM, right).
Using a scanning tunnelling microscope, the physical structure of a surface can be measured on the atomic level.
Quantum dot microscopy can visualize the electric potentials on the surface at a similar level of detail -- a perfect combination.
A team of researchers from Jülich in cooperation with the University of Magdeburg has developed a new method to measure the electric potentials of a sample at atomic accuracy. Using conventional methods, it was virtually impossible until now to quantitatively record the electric potentials that occur in the immediate vicinity of individual molecules or atoms. The new scanning quantum dot microscopy method, which was recently presented in the journal Nature Materials by scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich together with partners from two other institutions, could open up new opportunities for chip manufacture or the characterization of biomolecules such as DNA.
The positive atomic nuclei and negative electrons of which all matter consists produce electric potential fields that superpose and compensate each other, even over very short distances. Conventional methods do not permit quantitative measurements of these small-area fields, which are responsible for many material properties and functions on the nanoscale. Almost all established methods capable of imaging such potentials are based on the measurement of forces that are caused by electric charges. Yet these forces are difficult to distinguish from other forces that occur on the nanoscale, which prevents quantitative measurements.
Four years ago, however, scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich discovered a method based on a completely different principle. Scanning quantum dot microscopy involves attaching a single organic molecule—the quantum dot—to the tip of an atomic force microscope. This molecule then serves as a probe. "The molecule is so small that we can attach individual electrons from the tip of the atomic force microscope to the molecule in a controlled manner," explains Dr. Christian Wagner, head of the Controlled Mechanical Manipulation of Molecules group at Jülich's Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-3).
The researchers immediately recognized how promising the method was and filed a patent application. However, practical application was still a long way off. "Initially, it was simply a surprising effect that was limited in its applicability. That has all changed now. Not only can we visualize the electric fields of individual atoms and molecules, we can also quantify them precisely," explains Wagner. "This was confirmed by a comparison with theoretical calculations conducted by our collaborators from Luxembourg. In addition, we can image large areas of a sample and thus show a variety of nanostructures at once. And we only need one hour for a detailed image."
The Jülich researchers spent years investigating the method and finally developed a coherent theory. The reason for the very sharp images is an effect that permits the microscope tip to remain at a relatively large distance from the sample, roughly two to three nanometres—unimaginable for a normal atomic force microscope.
Dr. Christian Wagner with a model of the PTCDA molecule, which serves as a quantum dot.
In this context, it is important to know that all elements of a sample generate electric fields that influences the quantum dot and can therefore be measured. The microscope tip acts as a protective shield that dampens the disruptive fields from areas of the sample that are further away. "The influence of the shielded electric fields thus decreases exponentially, and the quantum dot only detects the immediate surrounding area," explains Wagner. "Our resolution is thus much sharper than could be expected from even an ideal point probe.”
The Jülich researchers owe the speed at which the complete sample surface can be measured to their partners from Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. Engineers there developed a controller that helped to automate the complex, repeated sequence of scanning the sample. "An atomic force microscope works a bit like a record player," says Wagner. "The tip moves across the sample and pieces together a complete image of the surface. In previous scanning quantum dot microscopy work, however, we had to move to an individual site on the sample, measure a spectrum, move to the next site, measure another spectrum, and so on, in order to combine these measurements into a single image. With the Magdeburg engineers' controller, we can now simply scan the whole surface, just like using a normal atomic force microscope. While it used to take us 5-6 hours for a single molecule, we can now image sample areas with hundreds of molecules in just one hour."
There are some disadvantages as well, however. Preparing the measurements takes a lot of time and effort. The molecule serving as the quantum dot for the measurement has to be attached to the tip beforehand—and this is only possible in a vacuum at low temperatures. In contrast, normal atomic force microscopes also work at room temperature, with no need for a vacuum or complicated preparations.
And yet, Prof. Stefan Tautz, director at PGI-3, is optimistic: "This does not have to limit our options. Our method is still new, and we are excited for the first projects so we can show what it can really do."
There are many fields of application for quantum dot microscopy. Semiconductor electronics is pushing scale boundaries in areas where a single atom can make a difference for functionality. Electrostatic interaction also plays an important role in other functional materials, such as catalysts. The characterization of biomolecules is another avenue. Thanks to the comparatively large distance between the tip and the sample, the method is also suitable for rough surfaces—such as the surface of DNA molecules, with their characteristic 3-D structure.
More information: Christian Wagner et al, Quantitative imaging of electric surface potentials with single-atom sensitivity, Nature Materials (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-019-0382-8
(Someone let me know if this works??
)
Very good article!
Not sure about humans coming from Jupiter, but why the hell not?
Thoughts?
The story of Jacob’s Ladder is an ancient allegorical biblical tale, describing the alchemical process of reaching complete Gnosis, or what some may call Sainthood, Buddhahood or enlightenment.
A symbolic ladder that we all must climb if we wish to reach the spiritual heights of the divine in the heavens while we are encased in physical matter here on earth.
As we climb, we must purify ourselves, our thoughts, habits and actions, so that we may reach that seventh and final step of our ascent, in order to activate all of our seven senses and DNA.
Homer, the Greek author of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, who is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek epic poets had described Jacob’s Ladder as Jupiter’s chain reaching from heaven to earth, as it relates to the divine providence.
This description of Jupiter’s chain by Homer is the key to the mysteries surrounding Jacob’s Ladder, that I feel deserves much more investigation than it has received, and that needs to be expanded upon to truly grasp the reality of this ancient mystery, which I hope to accomplish below.
Albert Pike had written in Morals and Dogma: “The Ladder by which it reascends, has, according to Marsilius Ficinus, in his Commentary on the Ennead of Plotinus, seven degrees or steps; and in the Mysteries of Mithras carried to Rome under the Emperors, the ladder with its seven rounds was a symbol referring to this ascent through the spheres of the seven planets.”
To grasp the secret truths behind the hidden mystery of Jupiter’s chain, we first must study the description of Jacob’s ladder which appears in Genesis 28:10-19;
Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!
And behold, the Lord stood above it [or “beside him”] and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves.
Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” And he was afraid, and said, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
CLUES TO THE STONE DECODED IN DANTE:
The famous Italian poet of the Middle Ages, Dante leaves us more clues to Jacob’s Ladder in his allegorical description of sin in a Divine Comedy.
While Dante is a asleep, he dreams that he is in Troy when an eagle with golden feathers swoops down snatching him up as far as the fire, where he begins to burn.
As Dante slept, a character described as a “shining-eyed St Lucy” picks him up from the Valley.
On Dante’s awakening, Virgil explains that while Dante was asleep, Lucy (Inf. 2.97–102) had borne him from the Valley of the Princes to the steps of the Gate of Purgatory.
The eagle tells Dante that God’s justice is not man’s.
The damnation of those who never heard of Christ is just, the princes of the world though professed believers, may well be damned.
THE EAGLE IS THE PLANET JUPITER
Dante tells us, Jupiter is where rulers eminent for justice are disposed in the shape of an eagle representing earth’s noblest kings and potentates.
The eagle, since ancient times has been a symbol of the planet Jupiter.
The eagle with golden feathers swooping down to snatch up Dante is akin to the angels ascending down the ladder from Heaven to earth in the story of Jacob’s Ladder, and what Homer had described as Jupiter’s chain.
The eagle then takes Dante as far as the fire.
LUCY IS LUCIFER AND THE PHOSPHORUS IN OUR DNA
If the eagle is an angel or spirit representing the planet Jupiter, then this fire Dante sees or feels must come from or be in the realm of this giant gas planet, which then leads us to the shining-eyed St Lucy.
Lucy in Relation to Dante, is described by Virgil as the one who has borne him from the Valley of the Princes to the steps of the Gate of Purgatory.
The key words above are fire and St Lucy.
Lucy is very similar to “Lucifer”, which is just Latin for the Greek Φωσφόρος Phōsphoros, or Phosphorus; a name meaning “Light-Bringer”, is the Morning Star.
Lucy or Lucifer, the Morning Star is often associated with Venus, but NOT this Lucifer or Morning Star.
This Lucy is connected to the other Morning Star that is the planet Jupiter which contains; guess what element?
Yes, you guessed it, there is Phosphorus, or what we can call Lucifer on the planet Jupiter and its moons like Io.
It is a scientific fact that there is a Great Red Spot on the planet Jupiter caused by complex organic molecules, red phosphorus.
Phosphorus and H atoms to form PH3 have been observed in the stratosphere of Jupiter.
This same chemical energy is also the least abundant element cosmically relative to its presence in biology,” says Matthew Pasek of the University of South Florida.
I have written about Phosphorus and Lucifer before, where I have explained that Phosphorus is essential for life, and the phosphate is a component of DNA, RNA, ATP, and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes.
Simply put, without phosphorus we humans would simply not be human because our consciousness and our spiritual energy would not exist.
It is through our DNA which contains phosphorus, that we become conscious to the world and who we are in order to live in the light.
Hence, when Jacob lied down on the stone, or the fire that Dante sees that is called Lucy, and what Homer had said was Jupiter’s chain, is in fact just allegories to describe ‘Phosphorus’ which resides in our DNA.
JACOB’S PILLOW IS THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
Phosphorus is also the philosopher’s stone that is the central symbol of alchemy, symbolizing the light within our DNA and in nature.
Phosphorus is commonly found in inorganic phosphate rocks and is the body’s source of chemical energy.
The phosphorus atom is of the nitrogen family, but having that characteristic of firing.
Without phosphorus, there would be no thought or wisdom.
This is the atom that fires our blood to produce chemical energy, consciousness, creativity and life.
It is the Fiat Lux of all nature.
Hence, this is the fire Dante had saw in his dreams and is described as Lucy.
JUPITER’S CHAIN IS OUR DNA
When Homer had described Jupiter’s chain, he could not have been writing about an actual physical chain that connects from earth to Jupiter; this would be impossible since the giant gas planet is approximately 601 million miles (968 million km) away.
Therefor, Homer must have been giving us clues that this chain was something that is hidden or metaphysical, but that does relate to the planet Jupiter. The giant gas planet I have written about quite a few times on this blog with articles such as Jupiter: Father of Men & Lord of the Heavens and What is Nibiru?
The God of the sky called in mythology Nibiru by the Sumerians, Marduk by the Babylonians, Zeus by the Greeks, Yahweh and Adonai by the Israelites and Saint Peter by the Catholics.
When I look at DNA and what Watson called the “double helix”, it looks like a twisted ladder.
A ladder that reminds me of the story of Jacob’s Ladder in the bible, where in his dreams there was a ladder from earth that stretched to heaven where the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
Could it be that Homer was alluding to the fact, that the planet Jupiter may be where we humans originate from, and that this chain is our connection to the spirit in the Heavens via our DNA Double Helix that the ancients had concealed in the allegory of Jacob’s Ladder or Jupiter’s chain?
This may be exactly what Homer and the Fathers and Doctors of the Church were referring too in the allegorical tale of Jacob’s Ladder.
The ladder of DNA that contains the light of God, via the chemical energy river of past life memories that flows through our bodily organs such as our brain into our Ammon’s Horn, in order to access the inner Gnosis encoded in our very DNA Ladder.
A ladder that rests on your spinal column and pulsates through the faculties on the mind here on earth that extends its spirit to the heavens.
We must climb this ladder step by step to ascend to the light, and never miss a crucial rung of initiation on our path.
THE STEPS OF DNA ACTIVATION VIA JACOB’S LADDER WITH THE HELP OF MANLY P. HALL:
The first step of Jacob’s ladder is the personal purification of your body, mind and soul that is represented by the moon.
The second rung on the ladder is education intelligence managed by Mercury.
The third step is beauty represented by Venus.
The fourth rung is the sun, which is the life-giver.
The fifth is competition by mars to help us fight the good fight.
The fight against darkness with light.
Against lies with truth.
The sixth rung in the ladder is Jupiter which is the symbol of intellectual maturity and judgement.
The seventh and last step of the ladder is Saturn which represents the true sage, adept and master of Wisdom.
The perfect balance of spiritual and material laws.
All greatness is service and we must obey the laws of leadership.
JACOB’S LADDER FACTS:
Before the advent of Christianity, in Babylonia, Ishtar descends through the seven gates which led downward into the depths of the underworld.
It was the ladder of the Mithras, a common symbol in Mithraic art in which the candidate went through seven stages of initiation.
The Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher Philo Judaeus, born in Alexandria (d. ca. 50 CE), in the first book of his De somniis wrote; “The angels represent souls descending to and ascending from bodies’ (some consider this to be Philo’s clearest reference to the doctrine of reincarnation).
Saint Irenaeus, in the 2nd century describes the Christian Church as the “ladder of ascent to God”.
In the 3rd century, Origen explains that there are two ladders in the life of a Christian, the ascetic ladder that the soul climbs on the earth, by way of—and resulting in—an increase in virtue, and the soul’s travel after death, climbing up the heavens towards the light of God.
Not sure about humans coming from Jupiter, but why the hell not?
Thoughts?
Jacob’s Ladder Decoded
The story of Jacob’s Ladder is an ancient allegorical biblical tale, describing the alchemical process of reaching complete Gnosis, or what some may call Sainthood, Buddhahood or enlightenment.
A symbolic ladder that we all must climb if we wish to reach the spiritual heights of the divine in the heavens while we are encased in physical matter here on earth.
As we climb, we must purify ourselves, our thoughts, habits and actions, so that we may reach that seventh and final step of our ascent, in order to activate all of our seven senses and DNA.
Homer, the Greek author of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, who is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek epic poets had described Jacob’s Ladder as Jupiter’s chain reaching from heaven to earth, as it relates to the divine providence.
This description of Jupiter’s chain by Homer is the key to the mysteries surrounding Jacob’s Ladder, that I feel deserves much more investigation than it has received, and that needs to be expanded upon to truly grasp the reality of this ancient mystery, which I hope to accomplish below.
Albert Pike had written in Morals and Dogma: “The Ladder by which it reascends, has, according to Marsilius Ficinus, in his Commentary on the Ennead of Plotinus, seven degrees or steps; and in the Mysteries of Mithras carried to Rome under the Emperors, the ladder with its seven rounds was a symbol referring to this ascent through the spheres of the seven planets.”
To grasp the secret truths behind the hidden mystery of Jupiter’s chain, we first must study the description of Jacob’s ladder which appears in Genesis 28:10-19;
Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!
And behold, the Lord stood above it [or “beside him”] and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves.
Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” And he was afraid, and said, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
CLUES TO THE STONE DECODED IN DANTE:
The famous Italian poet of the Middle Ages, Dante leaves us more clues to Jacob’s Ladder in his allegorical description of sin in a Divine Comedy.
While Dante is a asleep, he dreams that he is in Troy when an eagle with golden feathers swoops down snatching him up as far as the fire, where he begins to burn.
As Dante slept, a character described as a “shining-eyed St Lucy” picks him up from the Valley.
On Dante’s awakening, Virgil explains that while Dante was asleep, Lucy (Inf. 2.97–102) had borne him from the Valley of the Princes to the steps of the Gate of Purgatory.
The eagle tells Dante that God’s justice is not man’s.
The damnation of those who never heard of Christ is just, the princes of the world though professed believers, may well be damned.
THE EAGLE IS THE PLANET JUPITER
Dante tells us, Jupiter is where rulers eminent for justice are disposed in the shape of an eagle representing earth’s noblest kings and potentates.
The eagle, since ancient times has been a symbol of the planet Jupiter.
The eagle with golden feathers swooping down to snatch up Dante is akin to the angels ascending down the ladder from Heaven to earth in the story of Jacob’s Ladder, and what Homer had described as Jupiter’s chain.
The eagle then takes Dante as far as the fire.
LUCY IS LUCIFER AND THE PHOSPHORUS IN OUR DNA
If the eagle is an angel or spirit representing the planet Jupiter, then this fire Dante sees or feels must come from or be in the realm of this giant gas planet, which then leads us to the shining-eyed St Lucy.
Lucy in Relation to Dante, is described by Virgil as the one who has borne him from the Valley of the Princes to the steps of the Gate of Purgatory.
The key words above are fire and St Lucy.
Lucy is very similar to “Lucifer”, which is just Latin for the Greek Φωσφόρος Phōsphoros, or Phosphorus; a name meaning “Light-Bringer”, is the Morning Star.
Lucy or Lucifer, the Morning Star is often associated with Venus, but NOT this Lucifer or Morning Star.
This Lucy is connected to the other Morning Star that is the planet Jupiter which contains; guess what element?
Yes, you guessed it, there is Phosphorus, or what we can call Lucifer on the planet Jupiter and its moons like Io.
It is a scientific fact that there is a Great Red Spot on the planet Jupiter caused by complex organic molecules, red phosphorus.
Phosphorus and H atoms to form PH3 have been observed in the stratosphere of Jupiter.
This same chemical energy is also the least abundant element cosmically relative to its presence in biology,” says Matthew Pasek of the University of South Florida.
I have written about Phosphorus and Lucifer before, where I have explained that Phosphorus is essential for life, and the phosphate is a component of DNA, RNA, ATP, and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes.
Simply put, without phosphorus we humans would simply not be human because our consciousness and our spiritual energy would not exist.
It is through our DNA which contains phosphorus, that we become conscious to the world and who we are in order to live in the light.
Hence, when Jacob lied down on the stone, or the fire that Dante sees that is called Lucy, and what Homer had said was Jupiter’s chain, is in fact just allegories to describe ‘Phosphorus’ which resides in our DNA.
JACOB’S PILLOW IS THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
Phosphorus is also the philosopher’s stone that is the central symbol of alchemy, symbolizing the light within our DNA and in nature.
Phosphorus is commonly found in inorganic phosphate rocks and is the body’s source of chemical energy.
The phosphorus atom is of the nitrogen family, but having that characteristic of firing.
Without phosphorus, there would be no thought or wisdom.
This is the atom that fires our blood to produce chemical energy, consciousness, creativity and life.
It is the Fiat Lux of all nature.
Hence, this is the fire Dante had saw in his dreams and is described as Lucy.
JUPITER’S CHAIN IS OUR DNA
When Homer had described Jupiter’s chain, he could not have been writing about an actual physical chain that connects from earth to Jupiter; this would be impossible since the giant gas planet is approximately 601 million miles (968 million km) away.
Therefor, Homer must have been giving us clues that this chain was something that is hidden or metaphysical, but that does relate to the planet Jupiter. The giant gas planet I have written about quite a few times on this blog with articles such as Jupiter: Father of Men & Lord of the Heavens and What is Nibiru?
The God of the sky called in mythology Nibiru by the Sumerians, Marduk by the Babylonians, Zeus by the Greeks, Yahweh and Adonai by the Israelites and Saint Peter by the Catholics.
When I look at DNA and what Watson called the “double helix”, it looks like a twisted ladder.
A ladder that reminds me of the story of Jacob’s Ladder in the bible, where in his dreams there was a ladder from earth that stretched to heaven where the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
Could it be that Homer was alluding to the fact, that the planet Jupiter may be where we humans originate from, and that this chain is our connection to the spirit in the Heavens via our DNA Double Helix that the ancients had concealed in the allegory of Jacob’s Ladder or Jupiter’s chain?
This may be exactly what Homer and the Fathers and Doctors of the Church were referring too in the allegorical tale of Jacob’s Ladder.
The ladder of DNA that contains the light of God, via the chemical energy river of past life memories that flows through our bodily organs such as our brain into our Ammon’s Horn, in order to access the inner Gnosis encoded in our very DNA Ladder.
A ladder that rests on your spinal column and pulsates through the faculties on the mind here on earth that extends its spirit to the heavens.
We must climb this ladder step by step to ascend to the light, and never miss a crucial rung of initiation on our path.
THE STEPS OF DNA ACTIVATION VIA JACOB’S LADDER WITH THE HELP OF MANLY P. HALL:
The first step of Jacob’s ladder is the personal purification of your body, mind and soul that is represented by the moon.
The second rung on the ladder is education intelligence managed by Mercury.
The third step is beauty represented by Venus.
The fourth rung is the sun, which is the life-giver.
The fifth is competition by mars to help us fight the good fight.
The fight against darkness with light.
Against lies with truth.
The sixth rung in the ladder is Jupiter which is the symbol of intellectual maturity and judgement.
The seventh and last step of the ladder is Saturn which represents the true sage, adept and master of Wisdom.
The perfect balance of spiritual and material laws.
All greatness is service and we must obey the laws of leadership.
Before the advent of Christianity, in Babylonia, Ishtar descends through the seven gates which led downward into the depths of the underworld.
It was the ladder of the Mithras, a common symbol in Mithraic art in which the candidate went through seven stages of initiation.
The Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher Philo Judaeus, born in Alexandria (d. ca. 50 CE), in the first book of his De somniis wrote; “The angels represent souls descending to and ascending from bodies’ (some consider this to be Philo’s clearest reference to the doctrine of reincarnation).
Saint Irenaeus, in the 2nd century describes the Christian Church as the “ladder of ascent to God”.
In the 3rd century, Origen explains that there are two ladders in the life of a Christian, the ascetic ladder that the soul climbs on the earth, by way of—and resulting in—an increase in virtue, and the soul’s travel after death, climbing up the heavens towards the light of God.
This offers an very different perspective of mindfulness and the appropriation of the practice to make $$$$.
The article also reflects a lot of my own ideas of when and for whom mindfulness is even appropriate.
It is not a cure-all as many would have people believe these days...in fact some techniques can make certain conditions worse and be detrimental to certain individuals when wrongly applied.
This goes even deeper and into the perspective of society as the major contributor to our suffering and how that blame is misplaced on ourselves quite frequently.
Thoughts?
Enjoy!
Mindfulness has gone mainstream, with celebrity endorsement from Oprah Winfrey and Goldie Hawn. Meditation coaches, monks and neuroscientists went to Davos to impart the finer points to CEOs attending the World Economic Forum. The founders of the mindfulness movement have grown evangelical. Prophesying that its hybrid of science and meditative discipline “has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance”, the inventor of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress. Mindfulness, he proclaims, “may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years”.
So, what exactly is this magic panacea? In 2014, Time magazine put a youthful blonde woman on its cover, blissing out above the words: “The Mindful Revolution.” The accompanying feature described a signature scene from the standardised course teaching MBSR: eating a raisin very slowly. “The ability to focus for a few minutes on a single raisin isn’t silly if the skills it requires are the keys to surviving and succeeding in the 21st century,” the author explained.
But anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary – it just helps people cope. In fact, it could also be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, mindfulness says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live. And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world. It’s magical thinking on steroids.
There are certainly worthy dimensions to mindfulness practice. Tuning out mental rumination does help reduce stress, as well as chronic anxiety and many other maladies. Becoming more aware of automatic reactions can make people calmer and potentially kinder. Most of the promoters of mindfulness are nice, and having personally met many of them, including the leaders of the movement, I have no doubt that their hearts are in the right place. But that isn’t the issue here. The problem is the product they’re selling, and how it’s been packaged. Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training. Although derived from Buddhism, it’s been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings.
What remains is a tool of self-discipline, disguised as self-help. Instead of setting practitioners free, it helps them adjust to the very conditions that caused their problems. A truly revolutionary movement would seek to overturn this dysfunctional system, but mindfulness only serves to reinforce its destructive logic. The neoliberal order has imposed itself by stealth in the past few decades, widening inequality in pursuit of corporate wealth. People are expected to adapt to what this model demands of them. Stress has been pathologised and privatised, and the burden of managing it outsourced to individuals. Hence the pedlars of mindfulness step in to save the day.
But none of this means that mindfulness ought to be banned, or that anyone who finds it useful is deluded. Reducing suffering is a noble aim and it should be encouraged. But to do this effectively, teachers of mindfulness need to acknowledge that personal stress also has societal causes. By failing to address collective suffering, and systemic change that might remove it, they rob mindfulness of its real revolutionary potential, reducing it to something banal that keeps people focused on themselves.
The fundamental message of the mindfulness movement is that the underlying cause of dissatisfaction and distress is in our heads. By failing to pay attention to what actually happens in each moment, we get lost in regrets about the past and fears for the future, which make us unhappy. Kabat-Zinn, who is often labelled the father of modern mindfulness, calls this a “thinking disease”. Learning to focus turns down the volume on circular thought, so Kabat-Zinn’s diagnosis is that our “entire society is suffering from attention deficit disorder – big time”. Other sources of cultural malaise are not discussed. The only mention of the word “capitalist” in Kabat-Zinn’s book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness occurs in an anecdote about a stressed investor who says: “We all suffer a kind of ADD.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is often called the father of modern mindfulness.
Mindfulness advocates, perhaps unwittingly, are providing support for the status quo. Rather than discussing how attention is monetised and manipulated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple, they locate the crisis in our minds. It is not the nature of the capitalist system that is inherently problematic; rather, it is the failure of individuals to be mindful and resilient in a precarious and uncertain economy. Then they sell us solutions that make us contented, mindful capitalists.
By practising mindfulness, individual freedom is supposedly found within “pure awareness”, undistracted by external corrupting influences. All we need to do is close our eyes and watch our breath. And that’s the crux of the supposed revolution: the world is slowly changed, one mindful individual at a time. This political philosophy is oddly reminiscent of George W Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”. With the retreat to the private sphere, mindfulness becomes a religion of the self. The idea of a public sphere is being eroded, and any trickledown effect of compassion is by chance. As a result, notes the political theorist Wendy Brown, “the body politic ceases to be a body, but is, rather, a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers”.
Mindfulness, like positive psychology and the broader happiness industry, has depoliticised stress. If we are unhappy about being unemployed, losing our health insurance, and seeing our children incur massive debt through college loans, it is our responsibility to learn to be more mindful. Kabat-Zinn assures us that “happiness is an inside job” that simply requires us to attend to the present moment mindfully and purposely without judgment. Another vocal promoter of meditative practice, the neuroscientist Richard Davidson, contends that “wellbeing is a skill” that can be trained, like working out one’s biceps at the gym. The so-called mindfulness revolution meekly accepts the dictates of the marketplace. Guided by a therapeutic ethos aimed at enhancing the mental and emotional resilience of individuals, it endorses neoliberal assumptions that everyone is free to choose their responses, manage negative emotions, and “flourish” through various modes of self-care. Framing what they offer in this way, most teachers of mindfulness rule out a curriculum that critically engages with causes of suffering in the structures of power and economic systems of capitalist society.
The term “McMindfulness” was coined by Miles Neale, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, who described “a feeding frenzy of spiritual practices that provide immediate nutrition but no long-term sustenance”. The contemporary mindfulness fad is the entrepreneurial equal of McDonald’s. The founder of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, created the fast food industry. Very early on, when he was selling milkshakes, Kroc spotted the franchising potential of a restaurant chain in San Bernadino, California. He made a deal to serve as the franchising agent for the McDonald brothers. Soon afterwards, he bought them out, and grew the chain into a global empire. Kabat-Zinn, a dedicated meditator, had a vision in the midst of a retreat: he could adapt Buddhist teachings and practices to help hospital patients deal with physical pain, stress and anxiety. His masterstroke was the branding of mindfulness as a secular spirituality.
Kroc saw his chance to provide busy Americans with instant access to food that would be delivered consistently through automation, standardisation and discipline. Kabat-Zinn perceived the opportunity to give stressed-out Americans easy access to MBSR through an eight-week mindfulness course for stress reduction that would be taught consistently using a standardised curriculum. MBSR teachers would gain certification by attending programmes at Kabat-Zinn’s Center for Mindfulness in Worcester, Massachusetts. He continued to expand the reach of MBSR by identifying new markets such as corporations, schools, government and the military, and endorsing other forms of “mindfulness-based interventions” (MBIs).
Both men took measures to ensure that their products would not vary in quality or content across franchises. Burgers and fries at McDonald’s are the same whether one is eating them in Dubai or in Dubuque. Similarly, there is little variation in the content, structuring and curriculum of MBSR courses around the world.
Mindfulness has been oversold and commodified, reduced to a technique for just about any instrumental purpose. It can give inner-city kids a calming time-out, or hedge-fund traders a mental edge, or reduce the stress of military drone pilots. Void of a moral compass or ethical commitments, unmoored from a vision of the social good, the commodification of mindfulness keeps it anchored in the ethos of the market.
This has come about partly because proponents of mindfulness believe that the practice is apolitical, and so the avoidance of moral inquiry and the reluctance to consider a vision of the social good are intertwined. It is simply assumed that ethical behaviour will arise “naturally” from practice and the teacher’s “embodiment” of soft-spoken niceness, or through the happenstance of self-discovery. However, the claim that major ethical changes will follow from “paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally” is patently flawed. The emphasis on “non-judgmental awareness” can just as easily disable one’s moral intelligence.
In Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion, Jeremy Carrette and Richard King argue that traditions of Asian wisdom have been subject to colonisation and commodification since the 18th century, producing a highly individualistic spirituality, perfectly accommodated to dominant cultural values and requiring no substantive change in lifestyle. Such an individualistic spirituality is clearly linked with the neoliberal agenda of privatisation, especially when masked by the ambiguous language used in mindfulness. Market forces are already exploiting the momentum of the mindfulness movement, reorienting its goals to a highly circumscribed individual realm.
Mindfulness is easily co-opted and reduced to merely “pacifying feelings of anxiety and disquiet at the individual level, rather than seeking to challenge the social, political and economic inequalities that cause such distress”, write Carrette and King. But a commitment to this kind of privatised and psychologised mindfulness is political – therapeutically optimising individuals to make them “mentally fit”, attentive and resilient, so they may keep functioning within the system. Such capitulation seems like the farthest thing from a revolution – more like a quietist surrender.
Mindfulness is positioned as a force that can help us cope with the noxious influences of capitalism. But because what it offers is so easily assimilated by the market, its potential for social and political transformation is neutered. Leaders in the mindfulness movement believe that capitalism and spirituality can be reconciled; they want to relieve the stress of individuals without having to look deeper and more broadly at its causes.
A truly revolutionary mindfulness would challenge the western sense of entitlement to happiness irrespective of ethical conduct. However, mindfulness programmes do not ask executives to examine how their managerial decisions and corporate policies have institutionalised greed, ill will and delusion. Instead, the practice is being sold to executives as a way to de-stress, improve productivity and focus, and bounce back from working 80-hour weeks. They may well be “meditating”, but it works like taking an aspirin for a headache. Once the pain goes away, it is business as usual. Even if individuals become nicer people, the corporate agenda of maximising profits does not change.
If mindfulness just helps people cope with the toxic conditions that make them stressed in the first place, then perhaps we could aim a bit higher. Should we celebrate the fact that this perversion is helping people to “auto-exploit” themselves? This is the core of the problem. The internalisation of focus for mindfulness practice also leads to other things being internalised, from corporate requirements to structures of dominance in society. Perhaps worst of all, this submissive position is framed as freedom. Indeed, mindfulness thrives on doublespeak about freedom, celebrating self-centered “freedoms” while paying no attention to civic responsibility, or the cultivation of a collective mindfulness that finds genuine freedom within a co-operative and just society.
Of course, reductions in stress and increases in personal happiness and wellbeing are much easier to sell than serious questions about injustice, inequity and environmental devastation. The latter involve a challenge to the social order, while the former play directly to mindfulness’s priorities – sharpening people’s focus, improving their performance at work and in exams, and even promising better sex lives. Not only has mindfulness been repackaged as a novel technique of psychotherapy, but its utility is commercially marketed as self-help. This branding reinforces the notion that spiritual practices are indeed an individual’s private concern. And once privatised, these practices are easily co-opted for social, economic and political control.
Rather than being used as a means to awaken individuals and organisations to the unwholesome roots of greed, ill will and delusion, mindfulness is more often refashioned into a banal, therapeutic, self-help technique that can actually reinforce those roots.
Mindfulness is said to be a $4bn industry. More than 60,000 books for sale on Amazon have a variant of “mindfulness” in their title, touting the benefits of Mindful Parenting, Mindful Eating, Mindful Teaching, Mindful Therapy, Mindful Leadership, Mindful Finance, a Mindful Nation, and Mindful Dog Owners, to name just a few. There is also The Mindfulness Colouring Book, part of a bestselling subgenre in itself. Besides books, there are workshops, online courses, glossy magazines, documentary films, smartphone apps, bells, cushions, bracelets, beauty products and other paraphernalia, as well as a lucrative and burgeoning conference circuit. Mindfulness programmes have made their way into schools, Wall Street and Silicon Valley corporations, law firms, and government agencies, including the US military.
The presentation of mindfulness as a market-friendly palliative explains its warm reception in popular culture. It slots so neatly into the mindset of the workplace that its only real threat to the status quo is to offer people ways to become more skilful at the rat race. Modern society’s neoliberal consensus argues that those who enjoy power and wealth should be given free rein to accumulate more. It’s perhaps no surprise that those mindfulness merchants who accept market logic are a hit with the CEOs in Davos, where Kabat-Zinn has no qualms about preaching the gospel of competitive advantage from meditative practice.
Over the past few decades, neoliberalism has outgrown its conservative roots. It has hijacked public discourse to the extent that even self-professed progressives, such as Kabat-Zinn, think in neoliberal terms. Market values have invaded every corner of human life, defining how most of us are forced to interpret and live in the world.
Perhaps the most straightforward definition of neoliberalism comes from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who calls it “a programme for destroying collective structures that may impede the pure market logic”. We are generally conditioned to think that a market-based society provides us with ample (if not equal) opportunities for increasing the value of our “human capital” and self-worth. And in order to fully actualise personal freedom and potential, we need to maximise our own welfare, freedom, and happiness by deftly managing internal resources.
Since competition is so central, neoliberal ideology holds that all decisions about how society is run should be left to the workings of the marketplace, the most efficient mechanism for allowing competitors to maximise their own good. Other social actors – including the state, voluntary associations, and the like – are just obstacles to the smooth operation of market logic.
For an actor in neoliberal society, mindfulness is a skill to be cultivated, or a resource to be put to use. When mastered, it helps you to navigate the capitalist ocean’s tricky currents, keeping your attention “present-centred and non-judgmental” to deal with the inevitable stress and anxiety from competition. Mindfulness helps you to maximise your personal wellbeing.
All of this may help you to sleep better at night. But the consequences for society are potentially dire. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has analysed this trend. As he sees it, mindfulness is “establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism”, by helping people “to fully participate in the capitalist dynamic while retaining the appearance of mental sanity”.
By deflecting attention from the social structures and material conditions in a capitalist culture, mindfulness is easily co-opted. Celebrity role models bless and endorse it, while Californian companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Zynga have embraced it as an adjunct to their brand. Google’s former in-house mindfulness tsar Chade-Meng Tan had the actual job title Jolly Good Fellow. “Search inside yourself,” he counselled colleagues and readers – for there, not in corporate culture – lies the source of your problems.
The rhetoric of “self-mastery”, “resilience” and “happiness” assumes wellbeing is simply a matter of developing a skill. Mindfulness cheerleaders are particularly fond of this trope, saying we can train our brains to be happy, like exercising muscles. Happiness, freedom and wellbeing become the products of individual effort. Such so-called “skills” can be developed without reliance on external factors, relationships or social conditions. Underneath its therapeutic discourse, mindfulness subtly reframes problems as the outcomes of choices. Personal troubles are never attributed to political or socioeconomic conditions, but are always psychological in nature and diagnosed as pathologies. Society therefore needs therapy, not radical change. This is perhaps why mindfulness initiatives have become so attractive to government policymakers. Societal problems rooted in inequality, racism, poverty, addiction and deteriorating mental health can be reframed in terms of individual psychology, requiring therapeutic help. Vulnerable subjects can even be told to provide this themselves.
Neoliberalism divides the world into winners and losers. It accomplishes this task through its ideological linchpin: the individualisation of all social phenomena. Since the autonomous (and free) individual is the primary focal point for society, social change is achieved not through political protest, organising and collective action, but via the free market and atomised actions of individuals. Any effort to change this through collective structures is generally troublesome to the neoliberal order. It is therefore discouraged.
An illustrative example is the practice of recycling. The real problem is the mass production of plastics by corporations, and their overuse in retail. However, consumers are led to believe that being personally wasteful is the underlying issue, which can be fixed if they change their habits. As a recent essay in Scientific American scoffs: “Recycling plastic is to saving the Earth what hammering a nail is to halting a falling skyscraper.” Yet the neoliberal doctrine of individual responsibility has performed its sleight-of-hand, distracting us from the real culprit. This is far from new. In the 1950s, the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign urged individuals to pick up their trash. The project was bankrolled by corporations such as Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Phillip Morris, in partnership with the public service announcement Ad Council, which coined the term “litterbug” to shame miscreants. Two decades later, a famous TV ad featured a Native American man weeping at the sight of a motorist dumping garbage. “People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It,” was the slogan. The essay in Scientific American, by Matt Wilkins, sees through such charades.
At face value, these efforts seem benevolent, but they obscure the real problem, which is the role that corporate polluters play in the plastic problem. This clever misdirection has led journalist and author Heather Rogers to describe Keep America Beautiful as the first corporate greenwashing front, as it has helped shift the public focus to consumer recycling behaviour and thwarted legislation that would increase extended producer responsibility for waste management.
We are repeatedly sold the same message: that individual action is the only real way to solve social problems, so we should take responsibility. We are trapped in a neoliberal trance by what the education scholar Henry Giroux calls a “disimagination machine”, because it stifles critical and radical thinking. We are admonished to look inward, and to manage ourselves. Disimagination impels us to abandon creative ideas about new possibilities. Instead of seeking to dismantle capitalism, or rein in its excesses, we should accept its demands and use self-discipline to be more effective in the market. To change the world, we are told to work on ourselves — to change our minds by being more mindful, nonjudgmental, and accepting of circumstances.
It is a fundamental tenet of neoliberal mindfulness, that the source of people’s problems is found in their heads. This has been accentuated by the pathologising and medicalisation of stress, which then requires a remedy and expert treatment – in the form of mindfulness interventions. The ideological message is that if you cannot alter the circumstances causing distress, you can change your reactions to your circumstances. In some ways, this can be helpful, since many things are not in our control. But to abandon all efforts to fix them seems excessive. Mindfulness practices do not permit critique or debate of what might be unjust, culturally toxic or environmentally destructive. Rather, the mindful imperative to “accept things as they are” while practising “nonjudgmental, present moment awareness” acts as a social anesthesia, preserving the status quo.
The mindfulness movement’s promise of “human flourishing” (which is also the rallying cry of positive psychology) is the closest it comes to defining a vision of social change. However, this vision remains individualised and depends on the personal choice to be more mindful. Mindfulness practitioners may of course have a very different political agenda to that of neoliberalism, but the risk is that they start to retreat into their own private worlds and particular identities — which is just where the neoliberal power structures want them.
Mindfulness practice is embedded in what Jennifer Silva calls the “mood economy”. In Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, Silva explains that, like the privatisation of risk, a mood economy makes “individuals solely responsible for their emotional fates”. In such a political economy of affect, emotions are regulated as a means to enhance one’s “emotional capital”. At Google’s Search Inside Yourself mindfulness programme, emotional intelligence (EI) figures prominently in the curriculum. The programme is marketed to Google engineers as instrumental to their career success — by engaging in mindfulness practice, managing emotions generates surplus economic value, equivalent to the acquisition of capital. The mood economy also demands the ability to bounce back from setbacks to stay productive in a precarious economic context. Like positive psychology, the mindfulness movement has merged with the “science of happiness”. Once packaged in this way, it can be sold as a technique for personal life-hacking optimisation, disembedding individuals from social worlds.
All the promises of mindfulness resonate with what the University of Chicago cultural theorist Lauren Berlant calls “cruel optimism”, a defining neoliberal characteristic. It is cruel in that one makes affective investments in what amount to fantasies. We are told that if we practice mindfulness, and get our individual lives in order, we can be happy and secure. It is therefore implied that stable employment, home ownership, social mobility, career success and equality will naturally follow. We are also promised that we can gain self-mastery, controlling our minds and emotions so we can thrive and flourish amid the vagaries of capitalism.As Joshua Eisen, the author of Mindful Calculations, puts it: “Like kale, acai berries, gym memberships, vitamin water, and other new year’s resolutions, mindfulness indexes a profound desire to change, but one premised on a fundamental reassertion of neoliberal fantasies of self-control and unfettered agency.” We just have to sit in silence, watching our breath, and wait. It is doubly cruel because these normative fantasies of the “good life” are already crumbling under neoliberalism, and we make it worse if we focus individually on our feelings. Neglecting shared vulnerabilities and interdependence, we disimagine the collective ways we might protect ourselves. And despite the emptiness of nurturing fantasies, we continue to cling to them.
Mindfulness isn’t cruel in and of itself. It’s only cruel when fetishised and attached to inflated promises. It is then, as Berlant points out, that “the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially”. The cruelty lies in supporting the status quo while using the language of transformation. This is how neoliberal mindfulness promotes an individualistic vision of human flourishing, enticing us to accept things as they are, mindfully enduring the ravages of capitalism.
The article also reflects a lot of my own ideas of when and for whom mindfulness is even appropriate.
It is not a cure-all as many would have people believe these days...in fact some techniques can make certain conditions worse and be detrimental to certain individuals when wrongly applied.
This goes even deeper and into the perspective of society as the major contributor to our suffering and how that blame is misplaced on ourselves quite frequently.
Thoughts?
Enjoy!
Mindfulness has gone mainstream, with celebrity endorsement from Oprah Winfrey and Goldie Hawn. Meditation coaches, monks and neuroscientists went to Davos to impart the finer points to CEOs attending the World Economic Forum. The founders of the mindfulness movement have grown evangelical. Prophesying that its hybrid of science and meditative discipline “has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance”, the inventor of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress. Mindfulness, he proclaims, “may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years”.
So, what exactly is this magic panacea? In 2014, Time magazine put a youthful blonde woman on its cover, blissing out above the words: “The Mindful Revolution.” The accompanying feature described a signature scene from the standardised course teaching MBSR: eating a raisin very slowly. “The ability to focus for a few minutes on a single raisin isn’t silly if the skills it requires are the keys to surviving and succeeding in the 21st century,” the author explained.
But anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary – it just helps people cope. In fact, it could also be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, mindfulness says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live. And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world. It’s magical thinking on steroids.
There are certainly worthy dimensions to mindfulness practice. Tuning out mental rumination does help reduce stress, as well as chronic anxiety and many other maladies. Becoming more aware of automatic reactions can make people calmer and potentially kinder. Most of the promoters of mindfulness are nice, and having personally met many of them, including the leaders of the movement, I have no doubt that their hearts are in the right place. But that isn’t the issue here. The problem is the product they’re selling, and how it’s been packaged. Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training. Although derived from Buddhism, it’s been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings.
What remains is a tool of self-discipline, disguised as self-help. Instead of setting practitioners free, it helps them adjust to the very conditions that caused their problems. A truly revolutionary movement would seek to overturn this dysfunctional system, but mindfulness only serves to reinforce its destructive logic. The neoliberal order has imposed itself by stealth in the past few decades, widening inequality in pursuit of corporate wealth. People are expected to adapt to what this model demands of them. Stress has been pathologised and privatised, and the burden of managing it outsourced to individuals. Hence the pedlars of mindfulness step in to save the day.
But none of this means that mindfulness ought to be banned, or that anyone who finds it useful is deluded. Reducing suffering is a noble aim and it should be encouraged. But to do this effectively, teachers of mindfulness need to acknowledge that personal stress also has societal causes. By failing to address collective suffering, and systemic change that might remove it, they rob mindfulness of its real revolutionary potential, reducing it to something banal that keeps people focused on themselves.
The fundamental message of the mindfulness movement is that the underlying cause of dissatisfaction and distress is in our heads. By failing to pay attention to what actually happens in each moment, we get lost in regrets about the past and fears for the future, which make us unhappy. Kabat-Zinn, who is often labelled the father of modern mindfulness, calls this a “thinking disease”. Learning to focus turns down the volume on circular thought, so Kabat-Zinn’s diagnosis is that our “entire society is suffering from attention deficit disorder – big time”. Other sources of cultural malaise are not discussed. The only mention of the word “capitalist” in Kabat-Zinn’s book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness occurs in an anecdote about a stressed investor who says: “We all suffer a kind of ADD.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is often called the father of modern mindfulness.
Mindfulness advocates, perhaps unwittingly, are providing support for the status quo. Rather than discussing how attention is monetised and manipulated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple, they locate the crisis in our minds. It is not the nature of the capitalist system that is inherently problematic; rather, it is the failure of individuals to be mindful and resilient in a precarious and uncertain economy. Then they sell us solutions that make us contented, mindful capitalists.
By practising mindfulness, individual freedom is supposedly found within “pure awareness”, undistracted by external corrupting influences. All we need to do is close our eyes and watch our breath. And that’s the crux of the supposed revolution: the world is slowly changed, one mindful individual at a time. This political philosophy is oddly reminiscent of George W Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”. With the retreat to the private sphere, mindfulness becomes a religion of the self. The idea of a public sphere is being eroded, and any trickledown effect of compassion is by chance. As a result, notes the political theorist Wendy Brown, “the body politic ceases to be a body, but is, rather, a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers”.
Mindfulness, like positive psychology and the broader happiness industry, has depoliticised stress. If we are unhappy about being unemployed, losing our health insurance, and seeing our children incur massive debt through college loans, it is our responsibility to learn to be more mindful. Kabat-Zinn assures us that “happiness is an inside job” that simply requires us to attend to the present moment mindfully and purposely without judgment. Another vocal promoter of meditative practice, the neuroscientist Richard Davidson, contends that “wellbeing is a skill” that can be trained, like working out one’s biceps at the gym. The so-called mindfulness revolution meekly accepts the dictates of the marketplace. Guided by a therapeutic ethos aimed at enhancing the mental and emotional resilience of individuals, it endorses neoliberal assumptions that everyone is free to choose their responses, manage negative emotions, and “flourish” through various modes of self-care. Framing what they offer in this way, most teachers of mindfulness rule out a curriculum that critically engages with causes of suffering in the structures of power and economic systems of capitalist society.
The term “McMindfulness” was coined by Miles Neale, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, who described “a feeding frenzy of spiritual practices that provide immediate nutrition but no long-term sustenance”. The contemporary mindfulness fad is the entrepreneurial equal of McDonald’s. The founder of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, created the fast food industry. Very early on, when he was selling milkshakes, Kroc spotted the franchising potential of a restaurant chain in San Bernadino, California. He made a deal to serve as the franchising agent for the McDonald brothers. Soon afterwards, he bought them out, and grew the chain into a global empire. Kabat-Zinn, a dedicated meditator, had a vision in the midst of a retreat: he could adapt Buddhist teachings and practices to help hospital patients deal with physical pain, stress and anxiety. His masterstroke was the branding of mindfulness as a secular spirituality.
Kroc saw his chance to provide busy Americans with instant access to food that would be delivered consistently through automation, standardisation and discipline. Kabat-Zinn perceived the opportunity to give stressed-out Americans easy access to MBSR through an eight-week mindfulness course for stress reduction that would be taught consistently using a standardised curriculum. MBSR teachers would gain certification by attending programmes at Kabat-Zinn’s Center for Mindfulness in Worcester, Massachusetts. He continued to expand the reach of MBSR by identifying new markets such as corporations, schools, government and the military, and endorsing other forms of “mindfulness-based interventions” (MBIs).
Both men took measures to ensure that their products would not vary in quality or content across franchises. Burgers and fries at McDonald’s are the same whether one is eating them in Dubai or in Dubuque. Similarly, there is little variation in the content, structuring and curriculum of MBSR courses around the world.
Mindfulness has been oversold and commodified, reduced to a technique for just about any instrumental purpose. It can give inner-city kids a calming time-out, or hedge-fund traders a mental edge, or reduce the stress of military drone pilots. Void of a moral compass or ethical commitments, unmoored from a vision of the social good, the commodification of mindfulness keeps it anchored in the ethos of the market.
This has come about partly because proponents of mindfulness believe that the practice is apolitical, and so the avoidance of moral inquiry and the reluctance to consider a vision of the social good are intertwined. It is simply assumed that ethical behaviour will arise “naturally” from practice and the teacher’s “embodiment” of soft-spoken niceness, or through the happenstance of self-discovery. However, the claim that major ethical changes will follow from “paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally” is patently flawed. The emphasis on “non-judgmental awareness” can just as easily disable one’s moral intelligence.
In Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion, Jeremy Carrette and Richard King argue that traditions of Asian wisdom have been subject to colonisation and commodification since the 18th century, producing a highly individualistic spirituality, perfectly accommodated to dominant cultural values and requiring no substantive change in lifestyle. Such an individualistic spirituality is clearly linked with the neoliberal agenda of privatisation, especially when masked by the ambiguous language used in mindfulness. Market forces are already exploiting the momentum of the mindfulness movement, reorienting its goals to a highly circumscribed individual realm.
Mindfulness is easily co-opted and reduced to merely “pacifying feelings of anxiety and disquiet at the individual level, rather than seeking to challenge the social, political and economic inequalities that cause such distress”, write Carrette and King. But a commitment to this kind of privatised and psychologised mindfulness is political – therapeutically optimising individuals to make them “mentally fit”, attentive and resilient, so they may keep functioning within the system. Such capitulation seems like the farthest thing from a revolution – more like a quietist surrender.
Mindfulness is positioned as a force that can help us cope with the noxious influences of capitalism. But because what it offers is so easily assimilated by the market, its potential for social and political transformation is neutered. Leaders in the mindfulness movement believe that capitalism and spirituality can be reconciled; they want to relieve the stress of individuals without having to look deeper and more broadly at its causes.
A truly revolutionary mindfulness would challenge the western sense of entitlement to happiness irrespective of ethical conduct. However, mindfulness programmes do not ask executives to examine how their managerial decisions and corporate policies have institutionalised greed, ill will and delusion. Instead, the practice is being sold to executives as a way to de-stress, improve productivity and focus, and bounce back from working 80-hour weeks. They may well be “meditating”, but it works like taking an aspirin for a headache. Once the pain goes away, it is business as usual. Even if individuals become nicer people, the corporate agenda of maximising profits does not change.
If mindfulness just helps people cope with the toxic conditions that make them stressed in the first place, then perhaps we could aim a bit higher. Should we celebrate the fact that this perversion is helping people to “auto-exploit” themselves? This is the core of the problem. The internalisation of focus for mindfulness practice also leads to other things being internalised, from corporate requirements to structures of dominance in society. Perhaps worst of all, this submissive position is framed as freedom. Indeed, mindfulness thrives on doublespeak about freedom, celebrating self-centered “freedoms” while paying no attention to civic responsibility, or the cultivation of a collective mindfulness that finds genuine freedom within a co-operative and just society.
Of course, reductions in stress and increases in personal happiness and wellbeing are much easier to sell than serious questions about injustice, inequity and environmental devastation. The latter involve a challenge to the social order, while the former play directly to mindfulness’s priorities – sharpening people’s focus, improving their performance at work and in exams, and even promising better sex lives. Not only has mindfulness been repackaged as a novel technique of psychotherapy, but its utility is commercially marketed as self-help. This branding reinforces the notion that spiritual practices are indeed an individual’s private concern. And once privatised, these practices are easily co-opted for social, economic and political control.
Rather than being used as a means to awaken individuals and organisations to the unwholesome roots of greed, ill will and delusion, mindfulness is more often refashioned into a banal, therapeutic, self-help technique that can actually reinforce those roots.
Mindfulness is said to be a $4bn industry. More than 60,000 books for sale on Amazon have a variant of “mindfulness” in their title, touting the benefits of Mindful Parenting, Mindful Eating, Mindful Teaching, Mindful Therapy, Mindful Leadership, Mindful Finance, a Mindful Nation, and Mindful Dog Owners, to name just a few. There is also The Mindfulness Colouring Book, part of a bestselling subgenre in itself. Besides books, there are workshops, online courses, glossy magazines, documentary films, smartphone apps, bells, cushions, bracelets, beauty products and other paraphernalia, as well as a lucrative and burgeoning conference circuit. Mindfulness programmes have made their way into schools, Wall Street and Silicon Valley corporations, law firms, and government agencies, including the US military.
The presentation of mindfulness as a market-friendly palliative explains its warm reception in popular culture. It slots so neatly into the mindset of the workplace that its only real threat to the status quo is to offer people ways to become more skilful at the rat race. Modern society’s neoliberal consensus argues that those who enjoy power and wealth should be given free rein to accumulate more. It’s perhaps no surprise that those mindfulness merchants who accept market logic are a hit with the CEOs in Davos, where Kabat-Zinn has no qualms about preaching the gospel of competitive advantage from meditative practice.
Over the past few decades, neoliberalism has outgrown its conservative roots. It has hijacked public discourse to the extent that even self-professed progressives, such as Kabat-Zinn, think in neoliberal terms. Market values have invaded every corner of human life, defining how most of us are forced to interpret and live in the world.
Perhaps the most straightforward definition of neoliberalism comes from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who calls it “a programme for destroying collective structures that may impede the pure market logic”. We are generally conditioned to think that a market-based society provides us with ample (if not equal) opportunities for increasing the value of our “human capital” and self-worth. And in order to fully actualise personal freedom and potential, we need to maximise our own welfare, freedom, and happiness by deftly managing internal resources.
Since competition is so central, neoliberal ideology holds that all decisions about how society is run should be left to the workings of the marketplace, the most efficient mechanism for allowing competitors to maximise their own good. Other social actors – including the state, voluntary associations, and the like – are just obstacles to the smooth operation of market logic.
For an actor in neoliberal society, mindfulness is a skill to be cultivated, or a resource to be put to use. When mastered, it helps you to navigate the capitalist ocean’s tricky currents, keeping your attention “present-centred and non-judgmental” to deal with the inevitable stress and anxiety from competition. Mindfulness helps you to maximise your personal wellbeing.
All of this may help you to sleep better at night. But the consequences for society are potentially dire. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has analysed this trend. As he sees it, mindfulness is “establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism”, by helping people “to fully participate in the capitalist dynamic while retaining the appearance of mental sanity”.
By deflecting attention from the social structures and material conditions in a capitalist culture, mindfulness is easily co-opted. Celebrity role models bless and endorse it, while Californian companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Zynga have embraced it as an adjunct to their brand. Google’s former in-house mindfulness tsar Chade-Meng Tan had the actual job title Jolly Good Fellow. “Search inside yourself,” he counselled colleagues and readers – for there, not in corporate culture – lies the source of your problems.
The rhetoric of “self-mastery”, “resilience” and “happiness” assumes wellbeing is simply a matter of developing a skill. Mindfulness cheerleaders are particularly fond of this trope, saying we can train our brains to be happy, like exercising muscles. Happiness, freedom and wellbeing become the products of individual effort. Such so-called “skills” can be developed without reliance on external factors, relationships or social conditions. Underneath its therapeutic discourse, mindfulness subtly reframes problems as the outcomes of choices. Personal troubles are never attributed to political or socioeconomic conditions, but are always psychological in nature and diagnosed as pathologies. Society therefore needs therapy, not radical change. This is perhaps why mindfulness initiatives have become so attractive to government policymakers. Societal problems rooted in inequality, racism, poverty, addiction and deteriorating mental health can be reframed in terms of individual psychology, requiring therapeutic help. Vulnerable subjects can even be told to provide this themselves.
Neoliberalism divides the world into winners and losers. It accomplishes this task through its ideological linchpin: the individualisation of all social phenomena. Since the autonomous (and free) individual is the primary focal point for society, social change is achieved not through political protest, organising and collective action, but via the free market and atomised actions of individuals. Any effort to change this through collective structures is generally troublesome to the neoliberal order. It is therefore discouraged.
An illustrative example is the practice of recycling. The real problem is the mass production of plastics by corporations, and their overuse in retail. However, consumers are led to believe that being personally wasteful is the underlying issue, which can be fixed if they change their habits. As a recent essay in Scientific American scoffs: “Recycling plastic is to saving the Earth what hammering a nail is to halting a falling skyscraper.” Yet the neoliberal doctrine of individual responsibility has performed its sleight-of-hand, distracting us from the real culprit. This is far from new. In the 1950s, the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign urged individuals to pick up their trash. The project was bankrolled by corporations such as Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Phillip Morris, in partnership with the public service announcement Ad Council, which coined the term “litterbug” to shame miscreants. Two decades later, a famous TV ad featured a Native American man weeping at the sight of a motorist dumping garbage. “People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It,” was the slogan. The essay in Scientific American, by Matt Wilkins, sees through such charades.
At face value, these efforts seem benevolent, but they obscure the real problem, which is the role that corporate polluters play in the plastic problem. This clever misdirection has led journalist and author Heather Rogers to describe Keep America Beautiful as the first corporate greenwashing front, as it has helped shift the public focus to consumer recycling behaviour and thwarted legislation that would increase extended producer responsibility for waste management.
We are repeatedly sold the same message: that individual action is the only real way to solve social problems, so we should take responsibility. We are trapped in a neoliberal trance by what the education scholar Henry Giroux calls a “disimagination machine”, because it stifles critical and radical thinking. We are admonished to look inward, and to manage ourselves. Disimagination impels us to abandon creative ideas about new possibilities. Instead of seeking to dismantle capitalism, or rein in its excesses, we should accept its demands and use self-discipline to be more effective in the market. To change the world, we are told to work on ourselves — to change our minds by being more mindful, nonjudgmental, and accepting of circumstances.
It is a fundamental tenet of neoliberal mindfulness, that the source of people’s problems is found in their heads. This has been accentuated by the pathologising and medicalisation of stress, which then requires a remedy and expert treatment – in the form of mindfulness interventions. The ideological message is that if you cannot alter the circumstances causing distress, you can change your reactions to your circumstances. In some ways, this can be helpful, since many things are not in our control. But to abandon all efforts to fix them seems excessive. Mindfulness practices do not permit critique or debate of what might be unjust, culturally toxic or environmentally destructive. Rather, the mindful imperative to “accept things as they are” while practising “nonjudgmental, present moment awareness” acts as a social anesthesia, preserving the status quo.
The mindfulness movement’s promise of “human flourishing” (which is also the rallying cry of positive psychology) is the closest it comes to defining a vision of social change. However, this vision remains individualised and depends on the personal choice to be more mindful. Mindfulness practitioners may of course have a very different political agenda to that of neoliberalism, but the risk is that they start to retreat into their own private worlds and particular identities — which is just where the neoliberal power structures want them.
Mindfulness practice is embedded in what Jennifer Silva calls the “mood economy”. In Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, Silva explains that, like the privatisation of risk, a mood economy makes “individuals solely responsible for their emotional fates”. In such a political economy of affect, emotions are regulated as a means to enhance one’s “emotional capital”. At Google’s Search Inside Yourself mindfulness programme, emotional intelligence (EI) figures prominently in the curriculum. The programme is marketed to Google engineers as instrumental to their career success — by engaging in mindfulness practice, managing emotions generates surplus economic value, equivalent to the acquisition of capital. The mood economy also demands the ability to bounce back from setbacks to stay productive in a precarious economic context. Like positive psychology, the mindfulness movement has merged with the “science of happiness”. Once packaged in this way, it can be sold as a technique for personal life-hacking optimisation, disembedding individuals from social worlds.
All the promises of mindfulness resonate with what the University of Chicago cultural theorist Lauren Berlant calls “cruel optimism”, a defining neoliberal characteristic. It is cruel in that one makes affective investments in what amount to fantasies. We are told that if we practice mindfulness, and get our individual lives in order, we can be happy and secure. It is therefore implied that stable employment, home ownership, social mobility, career success and equality will naturally follow. We are also promised that we can gain self-mastery, controlling our minds and emotions so we can thrive and flourish amid the vagaries of capitalism.As Joshua Eisen, the author of Mindful Calculations, puts it: “Like kale, acai berries, gym memberships, vitamin water, and other new year’s resolutions, mindfulness indexes a profound desire to change, but one premised on a fundamental reassertion of neoliberal fantasies of self-control and unfettered agency.” We just have to sit in silence, watching our breath, and wait. It is doubly cruel because these normative fantasies of the “good life” are already crumbling under neoliberalism, and we make it worse if we focus individually on our feelings. Neglecting shared vulnerabilities and interdependence, we disimagine the collective ways we might protect ourselves. And despite the emptiness of nurturing fantasies, we continue to cling to them.
Mindfulness isn’t cruel in and of itself. It’s only cruel when fetishised and attached to inflated promises. It is then, as Berlant points out, that “the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially”. The cruelty lies in supporting the status quo while using the language of transformation. This is how neoliberal mindfulness promotes an individualistic vision of human flourishing, enticing us to accept things as they are, mindfully enduring the ravages of capitalism.