week#14

TO LIVE IS TO KNOW?

I think of this in many ways. I learn things by experience. Hands on. You can tell me how to transplant a sappling, but until I do it on my own and feel its roots, feel the soil, understand the sunshines effect, etc, I really don't know. Some people can grasp things without having to do it with their hands and sometimes I can almost..... but when I get it in my hands, is when I say I know it.

But to ask is to live to know? There are so many directions of that. As I live I know. But as I know more, the only thing I really know is that I know so little. Many people think that since they have lived it, they know, but in truth they may only know for themselves. We are so complex. And maybe they don't really know. Perhaps I know how to transplant a baby tree, but I have really only done that in michigan and california, so do I know how to transplant trees in africa?

I think to live is to be open to understanding. To at least know that there is no one way. But if we don't at least try one way we are so much further from knowing anything in the first place. I guess I know that I can't really stand people that think they know everything.

MEMORY AND MAGIC

A touch of irony that we just read this article as my housemate and I just relaxed to a blockbuster movie about magic called the illusionist. It was not great, but it did prompt a conversation about how come people are so facinated by magic. It makes sense that the great magicians had such insight to peoples psyches as they seem to all factor in how the common brain would react to a situation and alter it. We talked about how we are creatures of habit, and when someone comes in front of us to show us such a divergence from this habit, it is full of so much awe. The irony of the article it that the magic is using our habit of memory to trick us. And then we are amazed. In short, we are so backwards.

week#13

CELL BIOLOGY AND TCM STUDIES

Alas, you asked the question just when I decided that this weeks material would suit me for my final paper. I guess I'll give away some hints to what I was thinking about. What is this energy medicine? Perhaps it is linked to what is happening in each one of our cells. They are focused on producing energy for the entire body. Like Qi, this energy is not visible through a microscope, but it is accepted that the cells are making ATP to provide a usable energy. TCM shows this energy to flow in a more direct pathway (the meridians) much like biology shows the blood to travel through certain pathways. I believe that our needles and our herbs work with the ATP, boost the production of ATP and help guide it to the place in most need of healing.

HOW CELLS DIVIDE: Mitosis vs. Meiosis

I suppose in a battle of mitosis vs. meiosis, mitosis would win as it is producing a fully formed new cell while meiosis is making a zygote which requires another sex cell to reproduce with it. But I know this is not what you were getting at. For some reason, I really liked biology in high school and remember many things from it. I think I mentioned this in other blogs, but it was in this class (in a religious high school no less) that I first started thinking about my spiritual path. I was so amazed by the tiny details that made up living things and started to believe that this was all too genius just by chance. But that is not what you were asking about as well. In short, I am amazed by cell division. I am amazed that with each level of meiosis we come closer to the chance to form something totally unique when that cell finds its match. I am thankful for mitosis as my cells replacing themselves with new, healthy ones..... what could be better?