Phoenix from the wasteland

At the beginning of most computer games you get the option of choosing the difficulty level on which you'd like to play the game. Something along the lines of easy, medium or hard. Everybody has different preferences as to how challenging they would like the game to be. As your skill level on a particular game increases the challenge decreases and so this might make you want to increase the difficulty level of the game. Another reason for selecting a high difficulty level is that you achieve more kudos and a greater sense of achievement on a high difficulty level compared to an easy difficulty level.

Assume, for sake of argument, that reincarnation is true. Maybe, before you are reborn you get the chance to choose your difficulty level. Challenges in your life would then be signs that you have previously chosen a high difficulty setting suggesting that your immortal soul had mastered the previous difficulty level and wanted a challenge.

Modern games increasingly give you the opportunity to change the difficulty setting at any point during the game. This is analogous to changing the way that you make decisions. If you courageously throw yourself into challenges with the attitude that they will make you stronger and will give you the chance to prove yourself then you are increasing the difficulty. If you shy away from challenges then you are turning the difficulty down. I'd hate to get to heaven and realise that I'd been playing on easy my whole life.

As an example: I used to bemoan the fact that my culture (Welsh) is chronically alcoholic. This makes it really hard to abstain from alcohol. Now I see it as a chance to improve my will power and a potential opportunity for me to triumph over my environment, upbringing and possibly even genetics.

Personally, I think that I have been playing on Easy too much and it's about time I ramped up the difficulty level of my life.

In your eyes does a black cat crossing your path bring you good luck or bad luck?

Synchronicity or the belief that everything that happens happens for a reason can be a wonderful thing. It can help you feel connected with the divine and inspire awe at the complexity and interconnectedness of it all. It can also provide the subconscious with an alternate means of breaking through your ego defences to confront you with parts of yourself that have been repressed. Integrating and dealing with these parts is called shadow working and is a key part of emotional growth. Unfortunately this process can go wrong..

Read more »

Around the time of Spinoza, Newton and Leibniz the emerging world view was that of a clock work universe. The idea was that the initial conditions were set at the beginning of time and then everything proceeded from that point according to set rules that could be determined by science. Since, we are part of this clockwork universe Spinoza argued that all of our actions are determined by preceding causes. Free will was just an illusion and the only freedom was that of God's when he set the starting conditions.

It has now been proven mathematically that at a quantum level the behaviour of sub-atomic particles is acausal. That means that it is fundamentally impossible to predict their behaviour. Their behaviour is essentially new information. Stephen Hawkings has said that this new information can be regarded as initial conditions of the universe.

The Newtonian clockwork view point of the universe assumed that time was at a right angle to the starting conditions. This lead to the view that as time proceeded the influence of the initial conditions decreased and the influence of the laws of physics increased. This lead to physicists looking to explain the current state of the universe solely in terms of the laws of physics whilst disregarding the initial conditions as non-consequential. This bias has reached such a level that some physicists seek to make the initial conditions dependent upon the laws themselves. This is a contradiction in terms since initial conditions are by definition dependent upon nothing.

In the new quantum view of the world, where the initial conditions are present at all times in all places, time is not at a right-angle to the initial conditions but an angle. The influence of the initial-conditions is maintained and can never be discounted.

It is debatable as to whether our minds are influenced by the behaviour of sub-atomic particles but I believe that they are. Steven Hameroff and Roger Penrose offer a compelling theory as to the mechanism through which quantum fluctuations are amplified by the structure of neurons.

What this would essentially mean is that there are parts of ourselves and our behaviour that are not determined by preceding events and that is fundamentally free. That these parts are initial conditions of the universe and so we are always directly connected with the creative act of the universe. So therfore, in a sense, there is a big bang inside of us all.