Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

Well we did not have another X-Class solar flare overnight, so I am going to try to wrap this up for now. However, don't be surprised if one pops up.

The solar influx (sunshine) each day on the quiet sun changes the self, but gradually. We never notice it. Intense solar change, like we get with these recent strong solar flares injects change into our mindstream in quantum leaps that cannot easily be assimilated. We tend to notice this level of change, but we may not have identified it properly. Some of your comments tell me that you are still looking for change outside yourself, when I keep pointing out that with solar flares it is our own self that is changing. And who is there to monitor that, Me, Myself, and I?

I have repeatedly pointed out, and this should tell you something, that with huge events like solar flares we all experience them at the same moment in time. They are not spread out or happening in this country and not in that. The entire Earth takes it all at once. If we blink, we all blink together. Perhaps like the ostrich, everyone sticks their heads in the sand at the same time. We close our eyes, wait out the shock wave of change, and then, all together, we open back up again. I have seen this happen.

One thing is certain. There is very little acknowledgment of all that which we share in common, and much more interest in how each of us is distinct, preferably unique. That is our "self" interest. The symphony of life is conducted and articulated by solar change, with long adagios on days with a quiet sun, but with prestissimo during times of intense solar bursts.

In a way, our self is like those lovely sea anemones, moving slowly in time to the currents of the ocean, but also when disturbed in-folding their tentacles all the way inside and hiding, and then opening back out again, gradually extending their tentacles fully as things calm down. And it would seem by necessity that we all do this together, in harmony, wide-eyed creatures that we are, winking and blinking in the night of time. Our collective 'selves' is the secret garden of consensus, dictated by convention, and pruned by experience. I could go on into this theme, but it might be more useful to focus on how the self changes us in real time.

With the quiet sun, and left to our own devices, each of us will do what we want, including indulge our self and all of the hopes and dreams we stuff away in there. We build sand castles in the air and polish the patina of our appearance until it shines and glows. All is right with our world, hopefully.

Then comes a time (like this one) of intense solar change. Despite our best attempts at self control, what we know and call our self undergoes sudden change that is almost impossible to ignore. Now, I am not talking about crashing glass and shifting mountains. That would be external change. Instead, here we need to look at internal change, and that means change in the shrine of our self, and that may be a little harder to see or we may just ignore it.

We look for changes in our self, but at the same time that is just what is changing, especially who it is that is doing the looking. So there is at least some recursion here, and most likely the makings of a full Catch-22, the chicken and the egg. Looking at the self looking at the self, etc., we are approaching a logical impossibility, and therefore perhaps moving beyond time and credulity, our own. Of course, this may be the best moment for insight and breakthroughs as to the nature of the mind.

My point here is that intense solar change disrupts our orderly self and all the horses it rode in on. It takes the shine and polish off whatever we have been polishing, and rearranges the deck chairs of the self despite any attempts to prevent it. It reshuffles our deck and lays down a new deal. How can we know this?

For one, check how you feel. Do you feel like doing what you were just recently doing, like yesterday? We have to do our homework. The self always seeks to regroup, but when major change intervenes something is inevitably lost. Our actual talents will always reappear, just like perennials come up each spring, but our pipe dreams (and wishful thinking) tend to be aborted and lost to us. We wake up without the usual inspiration to pursue certain of our directions. They are dead in the water, while others are still with us, and then new ones appear. We don't quite know who we are for a time. Our self has changed, simply reorganized itself.

So we don't look outside ourselves, and we don't look intellectually at our carefully manicured spiritual concoctions. Instead, we simply rest and see how we feel and what we feel like doing. Perhaps we take an inventory of projects and find that we no longer feel like doing some of them. And the smart money is on just dropping those directions that have dropped themselves, and instead checking to see what we really feel like doing. What we truly want to do will always be in there somewhere, if we can just wait and let the water clear.

As mentioned, the self is changeable, and solar flares bring change and the rearrangement of priorities. I have (more or less) learned not to cry and moan when some desired direction I was building suddenly comes up empty, void. I don't endlessly force myself to start it up again as I used to, but now I just say, "Oh well.." and turn to those things that I do feel like doing. You could say that I am on call by change, and not ashamed of it. How easy is this?

Well, not always that easy. I have learned to have patience with sorting out the self after it rearranges itself when change comes. To make it clear, remember in your life when something really catastrophic happened to you, like the death of someone close to you. What happened to your self then? Did you find that you suddenly lost your appetite for certain things, enjoyed being alone more than usual, took long walks all by yourself, looked out the window at nothing at all? Get the idea? Those are signs of more extreme change.

When the self is vacated (and just goes empty), that fact is the proof that the self is really nothing all that important. We can drop whole avenues of interest in a moment. Gone. We just don't feel like that anymore. We are on vacation (vacated), like it or not. This is a measure of change.

With that in mind, turn your attention to what happens to you during an intense solar experience. Check your priorities. See what you feel like doing and not doing. What has changed? Inventory that and then do what you feel like and don't push what you no longer feel like, no matter how important it once seemed. I guess the old adage is "go with the flow." At least, this is what I do.

I am doing my best to put this into words. More than that I cannot do.

[Photo courtesy of NASA]