Today’s Karmic Workout – Contemplate The Complexity Of Your Shoes
Today’s Exercise: Contemplate Complexity Of Your Shoes
[Preparatory Note: for this exercise we are going to use a simple manufactured object made of materials with which we are familiar. An object like a shoe, for example, would be perfect for this exercise and because everyone has access to shoes, it will suffice. The other advantage of using your shoes for this exercise is that you almost always have them with you so you can do this exercise virtually anywhere. You might augment this exercise with some internet research to give it more depth.
We are going to study the karma of our shoes. In other words, we are going to look at what it took to have our shoes on our feet and all of the complex interconnects that had to come together to make this so. Far too often, we look at common objects in our reality as simple "things", but they are actually intensely complex "events". When you start to notice that the world around you is actually the manifestation of complexity and interrelationship, you start to realize that you do not live in a world of simple dead objects. As the say: "nothing is as simple as it seems."]
Find a quiet place to think and turn off your cellphone.
Establish your meditative breathing by taking slow, deep inhales and make equally long exhales. Repeat this process until you are relaxed and focused on your breathing.
Take off one of your shoes and look at it studying it in detail. You want to notice the different materials, how the materials are shaped, how the materials are joined together and the complexity of the different elements. A running shoe, for example, has several layers. Notice the precision of the manufacture of the shoe.
Now think of the machines that were used to make your shoe. There might be sewing machines, stamping machines to cut the material into shapes, shaping machines and mechanical cutting devices.
Now think about the people who had to design those machines and the tools that they had to have to be able to make the machines that made your shoes. Think about the engineering that had to go into the hundreds of devices that were used to make the machines that made the machines that made your shoes.
Think of the training that was required to train the engineers who designed the machines that made the machines that made your shoes. Think about the training that was needed to educate the various factory workers who made the machines that made your shoes.
Think of the processes and people that made the packaging that your shoes came in, that transported your shoes (most likely half-way around the world) and then provided the retail operations that were the point of sale of your shoes.
Now notice that your shoes are made of materials that were manufactured by similar processes. When all is accounted for, thousands of people had a part in making the very shoe that you are studying. Millions of dollars were spent on the machines to make these shoes and to make the machines that transported them to you. Notice how this is an enormous web of humanity and technology that is all directly related to you wearing shoes.
Now consider how much stuff you own and the millions of people that were involved making the objects in your reality.
You can augment your experience by researching videos and other materials that more fully describe the manufacture of your shoes.
Training Note:
The Myth of Me is a lie. You cannot even wear shoes by yourself. You are part of an enormous matrix of being that cooperates to make life possible. While it massive, this field of complexity connects one piece at a time. Each piece being rather simple to comprehend. It can get overwhelming for us to consider it all when we try to look at the whole system at once. This is the problem with complexity. It can be a lot to think about and it often makes us frustrated because it takes some effort to grasp. So what do we do about it? We stereotype and simplify our conceptual understanding — not because our brains cannot grasp the intricate interrelationships at play, but because it is emotionally more comfortable not to have to stretch ourselves.
We see the oversimplification of our world everywhere in the Information Age. We have apps on our phones that manage complex tasks in a single touch. In fact, we are so overwhelmed by complexity that we have become a demand for simplistic reduction. And yet, when we make things simple by use of machines, or by trying to lump our understanding in over-simplified concepts, we lose sight of what is really going on. We disengage from the matrix of human inter-connectivity to focus almost exclusively on fabricated simplicity that makes us functional, yet detached. There is no cellphone app that creates real relationship. All of this virtual technology creates proxies for real relationship. You cannot feel the warmth of a human hand through a Facebook post. We are filling our existence with post-it notes of information that are artifacts of connection, but not connection itself.
Karmic Benefits:
Your World Is Intensely Complex – Deal With It: our experience of information overload is making us nervous and then angry. When we believe that there are problems with our world, we look for a sound bite that sounds reasonable and our critical thinking stops. When then use the sound bite to direct blame without real understanding what is actually going on. Whole governments have been toppled with this kind of shallow-sightedness. It is the consciousness of angry mobs. Embracing complexity is the road to understanding and understanding is the road to real solutions in a complicated world.
There Is No Way To Accurately Simplify Complexity: when an newscaster or a pundit reduces something like global economy to a sentence or two, there is simply no way that you are getting the “truth”. In the world of modern media, attempts are made to reduce intensely complex subjects to bite-sized morsels of opinion. Opinion is not knowledge. This explains the media wars that have scarred our political landscape and left our population on the edge of civil war ready to fight over fraudulent explanations of complex problems. Understanding something as seemingly simple as your shoes actually takes quite a bit more than a sound bite. If we stop our consideration of an issue at a sound bite and do not think about it further, we are easily bamboozled.
Sound-bite Awareness Is A Harmful Addiction: in our busy lives as we try to make sense of things in the midst of a bombardment of information (not necessarily facts). We desperately want easy answers to latch on to so we can move on to the next thing. We get addicted to quick answers and rapid conceptual formations that are often far removed from fact and are far from helpful. Unfortunately for us, this type of “post-it note” thinking makes us feel better emotionally even though it has us vote for things that actually hurt us. It has us buy things that we do not need or really want. The largest part of the harm being done to the world and to our lives happens because we do not think things through.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon’s fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl’s transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
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