Encarta defines metaphysics as: philosophy of being: the branch of philosophy concerned with the study of the nature of being and beings, existence, time and space, and causality

Aristotle was one of the first thinkers to address this subject. I found his writing to be difficult to understand. It wasn't until I read some works from the nineteenth and twentieth century that I crafted my understanding of this deep subject. There is no question that there is more to life than the simple day to day activities we all perform. We all know we have more meaning than other animals. We think. We make choices. We create what has not existed before. Truly a fantastic and wondrous capability!

One of the first hurdles my mind had to clear was the existence of Truth. To admit that there is only one truth and that it is anchored in all natural laws is a must to proceed to a higher level of understanding. We use language to communicate as much of this truth as we can, but languages are faulty. Even if I were to use perfect words and sentences, their meaning is still subject to readers' or listeners' interpretations. We can only rely on action to find the truth. It is not what people say that demonstrates truth, but rather, what they do.

Thinking "outside the box" is a popular phrase these days. My question is: "Who created the box?" The only possible answer is our own human, physical mind. The size of the box is different in each of us, but the box surely exists. It is actually necessary for us in order to navigate in the so-called "physical" world we envision. Its existence came to mind during a talk by Zig Ziglar I attended.

He began narrating a story about flea circuses.

"Any of you know what a flea circus is?" he asked.

"In the old days, caravans of circus people would go from town to town and set up tents for the locals to visit. There may have been snake boys, bearded ladies, strong men and the like and many had a tent for a flea circus."

At each tent, a barker would entice the population to spend a dime or so for the privilege of seeing the attraction. Flea circuses were quite popular. When enough dimes were gathered, the flea trainer would enter the tent and start his show. He placed a white cloth on a table and dumped a bunch of fleas on it. The fleas would jump madly on the cloth, but stayed within the perimeter of the cloth. Zig then asks: "Do you know how the flea trainer trained his fleas?"

"The trainer would catch a number of fleas and place them in a large jar. In their efforts to get free, the fleas would bounce against the sides and the top until eventually, they would stop just short of the limitations of the jar. They may be fleas, but they're not stupid." Zig then asked: "Do you want to be a flea or a flea trainer?" My first thought was:"I want to smash jars."
Whether jar, envelope or box, we set our own limitations. Our universe is what we are able to think about.

We think. Such a powerful ability. How do we formulate a thought? The answer is between the left and right hemispheres of our brain.

"There belongs to every human being a higher self and a lower self-a self or mind of the spirit which has been growing for ages, and a self of the body, which is but a thing of yesterday. The higher self is full of prompting idea, suggestion and aspiration. This it receives of the Supreme Power. All this the lower or animal self regards as wild and visionary. The higher self argues possibilities and power for us greater than men and women now possess and enjoy. The lower self says we can only live and exist as men and women have lived and existed before us. The higher self craves freedom from the cumbrousness, the limitations, the pains and disabilities of the body. The lower self says that we are born to them, born to ill, born to suffer, and must suffer as have so many before us. The higher self wants a standard for right and wrong of its own. The lower self says we must accept a standard made for us by others-by general and long-held opinion, belief and prejudice." From Thoughts are Things.

Our brain is an antenna that receives vibratory thoughts and broadcasts its own thoughts. What we see is the reflection of our own thinking. Our material mind concerns itself with the body and is quite limited in its scope because of the limitations of the physical senses. There is much more life to examine beyond our physical sensory apparatus. There is Common Sense, or Spirit Sense. This sense permeates all life.

Can we really think we can continue on the path we're on? Doubling the population in the last fifty or so years is not making sense! Bucky Fuller knew that Gaea would shrug her shoulders on us. Mother Earth has a self-defense mechanism. If you think you have seen the last of natural disasters, just stay tuned. There's no anger like a woman scorned. Gaea will not be scorned.

The universe is constantly in motion. The only constant is change. Everything we behold is "Being" in the process of "Becoming." Our left hemisphere tunes in to Being and the right hemisphere is what allows us to come to be something more than what we think we are. When Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor had her left hemisphere blocked by her stroke, she was able to see "reality" only through her right hemisphere. There, she beheld life as totally connected. There's a great video on the Web, if you want to see her presentation.

My first post on this site was Ego. I wrote it in 2004 and live by the words. The material mind is a definite must to negotiate our daily affairs, but it can cause havoc for humanity. When it sets itself up as a judge, it fails miserably. All bias, prejudice, false beliefs and indoctrination live in this artificial structure. It is subject to suggestions as can be well evidenced by commercials. It tries to embellish its existence continually. Vanity, boasting, violence etc, are displays of its emotional makeup. We can return it to its proper place, though. It takes a dedicated effort.

When I learned COBOL in 1970, I found it to be very useful, not just as a programming language, but as a good way to process my own thoughts. The key command in this language is the IF statement. When encountering a transaction, we used IF/THEN logic to determine the proper handling. I loved to write "nested" IFs for complex decision-making. These would be written as "IF this and IF that, or IF these, etc. Using this logic to debug my own thoughts worked quite well. I would begin introspections by asking myself "If this is true, then this must also be true" in ever growing Trains of Thought. Of course, in the process I came across many thoughts that could not be true.

I was raised Catholic. It wasn't until my early twenties that I began to question the validity of doctrine. I didn't feel right about dumping my responsibility onto some imaginary creator. After all, do we not have choice? Anything we do is our own doing, isn't it? Why must I answer to a supernatural being for what I myself created? One truth I found is that there is nothing "super" natural, save in the Ego mind. The Universe is totally natural. For me, it represents Supreme Being as a verb, simply because it is always in motion. Verbs are action words.

My studies led me to the Special Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. This is where I really struggled to apply my IF/THEN logic. Modern-day physicists are trying to resolve the Grand Unification Theory (GUT) to explain our universe from microcosm through macrocosm. IF the wave particle theory is true, THEN we have duality of mind/body. IF the wave beholds the particle as a "thing," THEN we have the birthing of thought. IF we envision this scenario as true, THEN we create the idea of I/AM - Consciousness reflecting on its existence. IF the original thought is "Let There Be Light," THEN we can understand that the universe is constantly expanding with thoughts related to that original thought. That is Metaphysics.

Once I realized we create our environment by manipulating forms of thoughts, it was easy for me to see everything I behold as the face of God. Not as an anthropomorphized being, but simply as BEING. It's a great feeling. Using the brain's Corpus Callosum to equalize our existence is actually fun for me.