changing conciousness

(Source)

Looking on my computer I can gaze into distant galaxies, explore cosmic phenomenon I can dimly comprehend, I can't even understand why so much of it is puzzling because I don't have the knowledge base of an astrophysicist. I can zoom into particles, see things to such a small level that years ago we could only dimly comprehend.

I can glimpse rare animal species, from all the environments of the world, from the deepest oceans, to rare fragile rain-forests. I can glimpse birds that are hard to capture, I can glimpse at all kinds of lions, tigers, pumas, panthers, majestic creatures. Strange new species are discovered, and you can look endlessly at pictures of amazing jellyfish.

I can see beautiful nature shots that calm my soul, rare phenomena that years ago only a few people would see. I can see lightning frozen, strange cloud formations, sunsets.

I can see artists which you'd have to travel all over the world to see. I have access to all sorts of art criticism to help me comprehend why a certain artist is brilliant within the artworld.

I can see intimate photography of the human body, or even just frozen expressions or postures that show us so much. They watch babies to the microseconds, we now study facial expressions that could have predicted Clinton's downfall, his expression of "I'm a naughty boy with my hand caught in the cookie jar, and you're going to like me anyway". There are exhibits of sliced up bodies that have rubberized, we can see into the human form.

There are blogs of every kind, all the mental disorders, spiritual, artistic, and thus we can enter subjectively into all kinds of experience that was hitherto remote.

Because of the flow of information, we can watch people eat all kinds of bizarre things, and in New York City anyway, you can sample much of the world's cuisine. You can get recipes for all the world's cuisine, spices not associated with certain continents, are now available there.

I can break down game film of any major sport. I can get all kinds of analysis of politics, history, literary history. I can read all kinds of generas of writing. I can watch a million movies, listen to 95% of the available music in the history of music. I can trace current memes. I can look at the most popular photo of the day on the internet. I can read all kinds of evolving questions.

It's not everything. There is stuff that's not there, questions that are not answers. I still have to live my life, makes sense of it all, determine my own vectors, make my own values and goals, though society suggests and influences many. I have years of conditioning by teachers, parents, relatives, authors and friends. It helps me to make sense of this expanding consciousness.

There's a kind of excess of information and knowledge. There are too many choices, too many ideas, too much to learn, process and assimilate. We develop filters, and attention has become the prime commodity. The big question is how are we going to direct our consciousness?

Buddhism has finally spread to the west recently. When you don't try to conquer people with ideas, the ideas spread slower. That is why Buddhism has taken it's time to come to the new world, to the west, even to the old world. In the old days you probably had only one sect to choose from, but now we have rather extensive knowledge about all the sects of all the religions. Now there is open source Buddhism, an Occupy Buddhism movement. I'm a Buddhist, but the same can be said for every religion.

In this wilderness of preferences, taste, personality, this is also no authority beyond what somehow influences us. This can be studied, and there are many manipulators, twisters, tail waggers, influence peddlers, taste makers.

All the basic plots to stories have been mapped out. As we see this bombardment of information, media and games, we develop the savvy of critics. You can be a food critic on Yelp. You can review movies and books, you can review anything. There are farms where people write sponsored reviews for products, in the hopes that people's opinions can be swayed, manipulated.

It is all leading to a new kind of consciousness, one we've never seen before. This will inevitably lead to growing pains, mistakes, and drifting into the dark side, or the arena of the unwell. As with the yin and yang of good and bad, there will also be greatness.