Struggling to Find Meaning in Social Situations

Sometimes I feel like I struggle to find meaning in social situations. Even in one on one conversations, which are my forte. I wonder if this is more so because I am an introvert. I wonder if extroverts ever struggle to find meaning in their social time, and if so, how often? When I say I struggle to find meaning in conversations, I mean it in the sense of being able to relate to others in having thoughtful, insightful, explorations into the minds of each other, cutting through and past all the superficial small talk that's really just there to fill in the time that otherwise would be considered awkward if spent completely silent. I want to talk about things that really matter to me, which are my interests, intellectual ideas/theories of mine, along with the relationships I have with people, how I feel, and being open, honest, and emotionally intimate with other people. I feel like in my conversation today, I mostly struggled with that. I could not find or transition our conversation past the superficial BS and get into the meat of it. I guess in being emotionally open, honest, and intimate with others, this means telling others how I feel. Including what I feel right now as I write this. It means telling my friends, those that I do want to form deeper connections with, my goals, and what I hope for our friendship. I suppose that means to be straightforward and honest that I struggle to find meaning in social situations lots of times and my goal when meeting together is to have a fun time, but also to get to know each other better on a deeper level. I want us to be able to share whatever it is that inspires us, and are passionate about. I want us to talk about our goals, to feel the vigor of achieving the dream together- no homo intended. I want us to share our past experiences, things that we are not too proud of, things that we fear, things that hurt us, and in essence, things that make us human. I want us to share new, fun experiences together, along with also sharing our pasts. I also want them to know that there may be times when there is nothing to talk about and that I’d rather not say anything and just enjoy being in the moment being them, rather than having to bring up some superficial BS topic that I really don’t care about, just to avoid any social tension. Relationships of any kind do take time to cultivate, but I do really want to get better at this. It’s something I’m definitely going to work on in the future.     

Do I have the time to answer one power question in a week to stimulate interesting, deep conversation?

A Conversation I Did Not Expect

For the first time in a long, long time today, I have rekindled my interest in writing about my spiritual journey and development. Things just tend to happen spontaneously and I feel that choosing to skip out an experience negates any possible outcomes from that event while at the same time creating a whole new set of possible outcomes. What I am referring to is not a significant event from the eyes of an outsider, but for me, I will remember this day for a while. You see, my friend asked me if I wanted to play ball and shoot around today at 6. I initially told him probably not, but on a rather split-second reasoning and decision making, I decided to go have some fun rather than study for Friday's test which I feel I am more or less, relatively prepared already. So we talked some basic conversation, laughed around a bit, and proceeded to play a game of King of the Hill. After playing three rounds, due to the very rapidly fading September sun, we could not play anymore. Normally we get going our separate ways, but today we tacitly, felt our way through based off each other's body language as we talked to hang out longer. I wanted to get into a deeper level of conversation, where we could explore our minds and interests, and most importantly, move away from the small talk. Gradually I transitioned the conversation into talking about spiritual beliefs and the reasons I believe in the survival of a soul and consciousness outside the physical body. So as the night sky set in, I began to to recount a somewhat deep account of my gradual awakening into the sciences that are independently confirming the work of a past life regressionist, Dolores Cannon. I talked about Dolores Cannon's work, Dr. Eben Alexander's story of meeting his unknown sister on the "other side", quantum mechanics, the notion of how electrons in an atom are never in a definite place and how where they are in there orbits are a probability (the "electron cloud"), the double slit experiment, entanglement, and Dr. Stuart Hameroff's theory. There was so much more I wanted to talk about- the idea of how particles can be in more than one place at the same time, as well as something I hinted to this past summer while at Chabot Observatory, that being the holographic universe theory - even though I was already getting cold and was shaking a bit and rubbing my hands together to generate heat. I was actually able to talk about my journey and the basic understandings of quantum mechanics to my friend rather well actually. I did not expect myself to be able to do that since I have not delved into this topic in my mind for some time.

It felt really connecting to be able to talk to my friend who is a rather sports-only friend whom I have never really been able to talk to at this depth before. I could tell that he really was listening and was intrigued by what I was imparting. So from this discussion my desire to write about my journey into a greater spiritual awareness has been seriously rekindled. I guess there is just something about the night sky in a quiet, safe environment that really allows for these types of intimate discussions. Before we got into talking about spirituality, I was asking him about what his interests were exactly as I could not really put his into a definite few categories. Gauging his response of asking me back about my interests, I could tell that he didn't feel 100% safe getting into it so when he inquired about my interests I was happy to take the lead and begin to talk about my desire for adventure and my spiritual awareness. I do feel a great sense of gladness that I went to meet up with him today. If I stuck with my original decision to forgo this opportunity, this talk never would have happened. Would it have happened some other time? It's possible? But this type of talk requires certain criteria to be right for this type of conversation to happen, as I've written before here on this blog a long, long time ago - maybe a year or more ago!

I do want to re-catch up on my understandings of the sciences that have caught my attention and be able to discuss this further with my friend. I am excited to see where this goes.

Helping a Homeless Man and His Dog

I want to keep a note here that this past Monday, I gave a loaf of bread to a homeless man with a dog near San Francisco's Tenderloin district. I've seen this man and his dog before this semester. I feel bad for the dog. Besides the adorableness and innocent look of the dog, I wonder what goes through the pooches' mind when he sees a myriad of people, everyday, just walking by them, ignoring them, and unwilling to help. I wonder if the dog knows that they are somehow, inherently looked-down upon and less-worthy. I'd hate that for the dog. I just wish a better life for them. And the last time before I saw the two of them this Monday, I saw the man holding a sign while petting his dog's soft face saying, "We Need Help". As I walked down the street from across the intersection of where they were, I read that and felt horrible. So I bought an organic loaf of bread - not too expensive - and brought it with me to SF Monday to give to them. I guess my wanting to help them is also because of a commercial from Dignity Health that really touched me. It's a scene where a dog is trapped in a flooding canal. The dog is panic-stricken and as you look at the screen and feel terrified for the dog, a Coast Guard - I believe, not exactly sure- attached to a line on a rescue chopper comes to strap the dog in and airlift the pooch to safety. This commercial got to me. I actually imagined myself being in that positioning and becoming a Coast Guard so I could give back to the world in such a emotional time of need for help. So this Friday, I think I am going to give them some leftover dog stuff that Lucky did not use as her time with us right now expired. I want to give back and help others in a true time of need. Even if it means risking my life.

Stuart Hameroff on Singularity 1 on 1: Consciousness is More than Comput...

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