Threes

Vic2rsBlog: The Spiritual Trinity
First, Buddha-Dharma-Sanga, simply translated: Inspiration-Process-Community, or Example-Guidelines-Empowerment. Well, it seems to me this ‘trinity’ must be some sort of basic spiritual truth because it can be seen everywhere. How many ways can the same ‘trinity’ be expressed? How about: Goal-Plan-Action, or even more basic Love-Wisdom-Power.

It is true that we see trinities everywhere and we certainly find them in many religious or spiritual teachings. But, could it be that the trinity is simply a basic reality of the brain? That this way of looking at our world might be influenced by the basic structure of our brain? This is an item on MIT News from two years ago:

While computers process information using a binary system of zeros and ones, the neuron, Liu discovered, communicates its electrical signals in trinary – utilizing not only zeros and ones, but also minus ones. This allows additional interactions to occur during processing. For instance, two signals can add together or cancel each other out, or different pieces of information can link up or try to override one another.

On the other hand – we might say that our reality, the world, is simply constructed with threes at its root and of course our brain had to be structured in the same way… Let’s chew on that for a few days.

Manufacturing

Let’s make our own – or – bridging the gap!

We are selling more CDs than we are selling downloads and our ListeningLounge is ahead of the curve. That is not surprising. On the other hand we will be ready when the curve approaches! I get very excited when I see downloads purchased from exotic locations around the globe and have no doubt that this is the way we will buy all music in the not-so-distant future.

The other day we had a request for 25 CDs from a company and I started thinking. What if we could offer a couple of CD compilations using my own, Jon’s and Steve Stephen’s music from the ListeningLounge? What if we could manufacture any of these CDs overnight? What if we acquire a simple CD duplication/printing system that allows us to manufacture small runs of 50-100 CDs ourselves? You have a celebration and want every one of your guests to go home with a CD commemorating the event: we manufacture 100 CDs and ship them to you the next day…

Then I thought that this might be the perfect bridging-the-gap between CDs and downloads solution: we could manufacture Jon’s upcoming Transit2 and my next album ourselves in small batches…

We might have to come up with a “unique” packaging idea – something that makes our product stand out a little more and something that travels/ships better than the damned jewel case…

I imagine the little machine would run for several days in a row to manufacture all of the CDs for a tour – or we could burn CDs while we are on the road, even… We could manufacture CDs imprinted with the date, venue and city of the next concert – the perfect take-home memorabilia.

Believing preceeds Knowing

Some thoughts regarding the book The End of Faith by Sam Harris, which I already mentioned HERE and HERE.

I am still not quite finished with the book. Either I am a slow reader or I am reading too many books at the same time. Probably a little bit of both. Well, overall I am very glad that I read the book because it gave me a lot of food for thought, but I find the author’s writing a little smug and even angry. There is a lot of data and more than just a little of it seems presented with an emotionally charge, which is understandable given the subject, but not necessarily useful. However, I still highly recommend the book. In fact it should be used as reading material in school/college.

I think there are two elements to Faith. For one faith/believing is a basic default action of the brain. Faith and belief and pre-judice are all part of the same action that creates a perceived order in the brain. Order feels good to the brain and releases feel-good hormones… This default action of he brain is not a bad thing as it can save time, but it is one that needs to be questioned. Example: you walk down a street and in the distance you see a man who seems to be drunk as he is not walking in a straight line. Your brain might “believe” that the person could be a potential threat and at the very least would waste our time and suggests that we cross the street. On the other hand you could ignore that suggestion and encounter the man, and find out that he is a poet and a great guy. You might even help him call a taxi.

Simply put, believing is faster then knowing. Knowing anything takes time. Believing is like falling in love – we know nothing about a person and yet we are hopelessly in love… knowing somebody means that we have put in time. We hear a certain instrument and fall in love with it, believing that we want to learn more. Knowledge and mastery of that instrument comes from countless hours of confronting that instrument and ourselves in relation to it – years of practicing and playing.

Believing is at the beginning of the journey, not the end. From believing grows determination and practice. From practice grows mastery and knowledge. From mastery and knowledge grows understanding and compassion.

It seems to me that the problem is that too many people are happy to believe and don’t move on through practice. Believing is easy. Practice is hard. As Victor pointed out in his comment, at the beginning of any practice is the belief that the practice will improve one’s life – but therein lies the difference: can you make the shift from believing that a certain practice will improve your life to actually practice for years? Not an easy shift to make in our culture.

I am still working on these ideas and my mind is going a mile a minute connecting dots…

Mediaburn

The Mediaburn Radio Weblog
TRANSIT by Jazz / World Composer Jon Gagan
Jon Gagan’s Transit is a synthesis of timeless jazz and world sounds. Jon’s artistry as a bassist and composer really shines on this cool voyage through 13 tunes.