Quantum Dating
What the Bleep Do We Know About Dating?
Adventures in Quantum Consciousness:
QUANTUM THEORIES OF RELATIONSHIP
Or,
‘What the %$$$#&^( )*~*@! Do We Know’ About Dating???
By Iona Miller, (c)6-04
ionamiller2008.iwarp.com
iona_m@yahoo.com
Discoveries in physics cannot in themselves, so I believe, have the authority of forcing us to put an end to the habit of picturing the physical world as a reality. ~Erwin Schroedinger
We must be life all the way down, all the way out, and the I only an index into life, an image of the self cast into an instant; I, the constant truth that controls our innermost loop. The massless I, dilating at dreamspeed, grows coextensive with more and more selves. ~ Greg Keith
Abstract: What the BLEEP do we know about dating? A quick look at the title above offers a clue, “What the %$$$#&^( )*~*@!”: the percentages are important, as is cash, and lots of it. Likewise pounds often come into play, as does the occasional conjunction. Sometimes we mistake an ever-dangling carat for the real thing. But if we aren’t careful, it could lead to parent-heses. When we are starry-eyed it’s hard to assess where we are at. But we always know clearly if we are digging it, or not, and are generally willing to exclaim it loudly, either way. Hence, the question, “Would you like a little whine with that cheese?”
Keywords: resonance, vectors, orbits, force, gravity, polarity, potential, vibration, magnetism, chemistry, wavelength, hard bodies, quantum foam, uncertainty, charge, spin, symmetry, color, superpositions, black holes, irreversibility, fuzzy attributes, sensitivity, complexity, randomness, unpredictability, catastrophe, bifurcation, degrees of freedom, decision theory, the hard problem, the strong and the weak, grand unification, infinities.
Introduction:
“How far do you want to go down the rabbit hole?” Like all problems in physics, the dynamics of dating boil down to the relationships of momentum, mass, energy, attraction/repulsion, and many bodies problems. The shared lexicon of quantum mechanics (QM) and dating includes electromagnetism, chemistry, pair bonding, existential dilemma, unobservables, role boundedness, paradox, fuzzy quantum possibilities. Science tells us, the nonmanifest has virtually infinite creative potential - Yeah, “in an ideal world,” which isn’t very tangible.
The totally quantum world is one of pure possibility. Nothing ever really happens there. Everything just hesitates forever on the brink of actuality. Compared to the actual world - ”the old fashioned, definite “yes or no”, go/no go world of classical physics - ”the quantum world resembles a fairy-tale land built solely of ambiguous “maybes.” It is rationally and intuitively incomprehensible. Thus the saying, “you’re never gonna get it.” The same may be true in the vaguaries of quantum dating as well; it all depends.
Each person we interact with brings out a different version of ourselves, sometimes sailing the relation-ship toward mutual annihilation. There is a big difference between being multifaceted and schizoid. Check their astrology chart for compatibility and wormholes to dimensions you never want to visit. This will help reduce Futureshock.
Once the trajectory is set in motion by initial conditions (first impressions) the vector is nearly unalterable. Some we mesh with irresistibly while others repel us at or near the speed of light. This produces the sensation of “going nowhere fast.” Atoms split; why shouldn’t you? In fact, atoms are mostly empty rather than solid, so many in their attempt to split will claim, “I just need more space.” Show them you can make them feel like Neil Armstrong. They can have all the space want, but they’d better not take up yours. Gravity is always in play, so bring your Airbag or Wingman.
In quantum dating, the uncertainty principle prevails: you can never know both the exact position and momentum of your lover at any given moment, especially if they are workaholic or have a personality disorder. They can pop in and out of your reality and are subject to the magnetic pull of other Strange Attractors who appear seemingly out of nowhere, and sometimes disconcertingly even pop up on your doorstep.
Dating like quantum reality is an apparently random process, an unpredictable suspension within the uncertainty of superposed positions in pure potential. Like the quantum potential, quantum dating is riddled with vaguaries. You never know who you’re going to meet and where you might run into them. The less a-parent you are, the better your chances. Otherwise you may be “expiration dating.”
Statistical probabilities are against you, especially if you are a mature female, but deeper laws govern it. Einstein spoke of “spooky action at a distance.” In the Holographic Paradigm, synchronicities and “hidden variables” abound since all is One, and the whole is contained in the part. In this view, therefore, each date is a mini-representation encapsulating the whole relationship -- especially the very first date. Consider yourself forewarned!
But not all relationships, like all quantum theories, actually match reality. One of the newest theories has to do with “many sheets”, and should probably be changed frequently. The rectangular worldsheet is interior to the 26-dimensional string and is what gets you to the next exterior location - generally, the bathroom or kitchen. Be careful not to trip on it. The size of worldsheets (double, queen, or California king)is related to the probability of where a worldsheet path will take you to in the future. Therefore, stay away from waterbeds. That leads nowhere. This is not the wave motion you seek. Start looking for the nearest quantum wormhole to ease out.
Though all these theories are compatible with the same quantum facts, all the theories can’t be right - so in quantum dating there will be some winners, and statistically way more Losers, which shall be represented by a large ‘L’ in our equations. But we’ll start slow, since if you are reading this, there is a good chance you can’t put together 1 and 1, much less 2 + 2, or conquer Clifford algebra and noneuclidean geometry. Perhaps you’ve already had some traumatic experience with Trigonometry however, as the third leg of a triad or triangle.
Our relationships are conditioned by the unseen world of our beliefs, presuppositions, our paradigms or worldviews, our life trajectories, hidden variables, and our own observer bias (psychosensory filters). Despite evidence to the contrary, we all wind up believing the version of our relationships that we want - our own theories, our own vision, our own subjective reality. That seems to skew physics and the rest of science, if no one can be objective. But it has been objectively proven that objectivity is impossible.
No two of us ever see things quite the same way. This is known as “inhabiting your own planet”, “living worlds apart,” “living in your own little world,”or “being from a different universe.” The Little Prince had nothing on your date. Saying your date is from Mars or Venus is not nearly enough representational distance for this analogy. What appears in the beginning as paradox (opposites attract) later may be interpreted as “irreconcilable differences,” or disgust and disdain.
Since science has proven there isn’t really any concrete physicality anyway, it doesn’t really seem to “matter.” Like The Vedas and the Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us, it’s all an illusion; all Maya. Well, illusion my ass! Most dates rate lower than the Tao Jones average. But so what, since quantum mechanics assures us that ‘Nothing Matters’. You intuitively knew your lovelife lacks substance already.
Quantum theory, like dating, works, but we are at a loss to explain its success. It defies explanation. The bottom line is nobody agrees about what is going on, which parts to take seriously and which to ignore. God may as well be off playing dice, because S/He sure isn’t needed here. S/He can just “phone it in.” What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
If you dare to think about it (you're not really supposed to), you have to believe one of the following things:
· Your consciousness affects the behavior of subatomic particles and/or your date or lover, (narcissism; magical thinking; fantasy; participation mystique; codependence; not signs of psychological health, except to Jungians).
· Particles (and your dates/lovelife) move backwards as well as forwards in time and appear in all possible places at once (obsession; flashbacks; nostalgia; grief; stalking; regrets; agendas, conditioning).
· The universe and your lovelife is splitting continuously into billions of parallel worlds - and, a) you are not in most of them, b) not alive, anyway, c) or, you wish you were dead, d) or, they wish you were dead, or v.v..
· The universe (and your lover) is interconnected with faster-than-light transfers of information (deny everything to the grave; play dumb; fight/flight; the price of admission may exceed the value of the ride as in the Pasadena Paradox).
Schrodinger Dating (CI): This Scandanavian form of dating, perhaps most applicable in Copenhagen, Denmark, is also known as the theory of “That Darn Cat” (see Schrodinger’s Cat Paradox). After a while your lovelife collapses down to one very real Bohr-ing relationship. If they are more interested in the cat than you, get rid of them. The relationship is already dead whether you know it or not. Take my word for it. Been There; Observed That.
This is a measurement-dependent theory, which can either maximize or minimize the slippery, shifting uncertainty of conjugate attributes. We like to say, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” or conversely, “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” Your lover must be kept under observation. It is a mistake to assume anyone is at a certain location or traveling in a particular direction unless you actually see them doing so. When it happens late at night, it is known as a “booty call.”
In the entire experimental situation, measurement has been linked to unavoidable disturbances. So keep your options open. Unless you make the measurements yourself, do not presume that the person actually possesses this attribute. Wheeler concludes the essence of a measurement is the making of a record, though breaking your personal best can be fun, too.
Sometimes film or video is competent to act as the objective observer. Others assert the need for conscious observation, which can be difficult to find on a Saturday night, though volunteers may be numerous. Until conscious observers come into the scene, the universe exists in an indefinite, indecisive state. This is the premise of the “gentleman’s club.” Once cash begins to flow things become much more obvious. Look as closely as you feel you need to.
This argument (need for observation) may be used by others (exhibitionists) to validate themselves and to induce you toward voyeurism, a possible first step toward the worldsheets (which are best at The Four Seasons). Dynamic attributes include position and momentum, which lead to style. Color, charm and quirkiness may also be important. Then there is spin. We’ll just let the imagination wander.
The endless procession of measuring devices measuring one another is called “von Neumann’s paradox of infinite regress.” It reminds us just how “backwards” we are. This regression leads to baby talk in extreme examples -- even feeding one another. Don’t ask for “tossed salad” unless you really want it. One parameter to check during feeding is whether or not your date can tie a cherry stem in a knot with their tongue.
Von Neumann tells us such devices cannot really be special, but QM dating assigns them a privileged role, describing them in terms of definite actualities, while every other entity is represented by super-positions of possibilities. This is considered a conceptual weakness. This view can explain the exact behavior of atoms, but can’t cope with the attributes of cats, much less your lovers’ endowments.
Bohr’s notion of relational reality explains why an attribute’s uncertainty depends on the type of measurement performed; (measure the width of your palms and digits before the date and add them together). It can be affected by non-disturbing measurement such as Renminger’s “no-show” techniques. “No-show” can be a big problem! It means no chance for a relational reality check. Such attributes only change when the context changes. Always we are asking, “Well, is it alive or is it dead?” One can change the attribute by changing the device. You can find many online.
This observer-dependent reality depends strictly on how you look at it. Maybe it is the source of love at first sight. That’s how it begins: gazing, mirroring, the ubiquitous hair-flip, innuendo, bawdy language. More subtle signs include pupil dilation and skin flushing. In a second version of CI, your reality is created by your observation. But you must look at it in order for it to actually exist. But when you do, don’t ever ask what it means. You may break the spell.
It also depends on how you look at a date or affair - as a simple wave or concrete reality. We have the ability to intervene in reality by freely electing what attribute we want to look at. This is the role of desire in relation to object of desire. We have the freedom to choose our proxy, providing we can risk rejection. If you look for a particular attribute, the other will seem to possess it. This is also known as projection, and when mutual or reciprocal, folie a deux.
And the ‘two-slit’ experiment? Well, we won’t even go into that, but it has something to do with onlookers, the splits, as well as smoke and mirrors! After all, it’s an “experimental arrangement.” Nor will we discuss black holes at length, presuming we all are familiar with the concept, having several of them.
The nature of unobservables virtually proves why “love is blind.” Isolated entities are mere abstractions who are only observable or definable in interaction with others. This is suspiciously close to the notion of co-dependence. Hence the comment, “You can dress him/her up, but you can’t take them out.” Ask their mothers for old report cards to see if they “play well with others.” Ask her if there is a clinical diagnosis.
Thus, we have Wheeler’s recommendation of the ‘delayed choice experiment,” which depends on things (dysfunctionality) that existed long before the experiment was conceived (crappy childhoods). It demonstrates that the past is not “fixed” (maybe you hoped it was), but subject to present decisions and interference (impedance matching). You can still encourage them to “get fixed.” But remember, if you make them over, you won’t be in love with them anymore. Give up the Pygmalion Project. Dating “do-overs,” known in science as repeatability, require continued experimentation. Try serial dating. Try, try again.
Our ability to change the past is limited to one path or two paths, or falling into an interference pattern. All are “quantum random” and completely beyond our ability to control or predict. So don’t even try! Your love will not heal them. If alcohol or drugs are involved, they -- not you -- will win. This is perhaps the only universal constant.
In Schrodinger dating, all potential waves (suitors and paramours) or ‘super positions’ eventually collapse down into one corporeal relationship, distinguished by the feeling, “What’s the point?” We are never quite sure if it is dead or alive, because we wisely refuse to look at it too closely. (Maybe the cat knows!)
If you try looking closer, you may fall into limbo, a black hole, a gravity well from which there is no return - or endless expensive therapy. Be sure to keep your baggage with you; don’t let go of it no matter what. You may get spit out the other side of a white hole as a singularity. Watch out for the event horizon that signals the point of no return.
The state vector collapses into repetitious monogonotony. There goes the momentum! Predictability seems to increase substantially from this point onward. The uncertainty principle (irreducible fuzziness) limits human abilities to probe either you or the Cosmos. Conjugate attributes are maximally uncertain. The collapse of the wave function increases the uncertainty of the conjugate attribute, and can lead to depression, ennui, or chronic fatigue.
Conformal symmetry mixes past and future; at higher energies conformal symmetry breaks and you get more general mixing. At the highest energy, each point/person is connected to every point and you have the ultimate mixing (simplex physics). Too much mixing can lead to Herpes Simplex. At first considered radical, this now virtually obsolete Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) model has dominated most of human dating and mating practice historically.
Many Worlds Dating: Ever feel like you are living in several parallel worlds at once? Yes, compartmentalized thinking. Also known as the Player’s Universe, this model is the source of the saying, “So many dates; so little spacetime.” Can you say “Sex Addict”? This is what is meant by “turn up the volume.” Victimizers may be former victims of Einstinean dating where “it’s all relative.” High maintenance inhabitants of this dating universe include rap and rock stars, movie stars, and celebutantes. Or, those who are legends in their own minds.
Many Worlds is a realm of infinite possibilities (anything on two legs -ok, even amputees! Sorry, Paul), likely probabilities (scoring), lots of uncertainty (rejection; being kicked to the curb; dissed) with many futures (criminal charges, undesirable pregnancy; STDs) depending from each thread. This universe requires lots of protection. You can get it at the drugstore or a handy public bathroom. Also be sure to always carry a toothbrush.
What could better describe the world of quantum dating than these parallel possibilities? Swinging? Fetish? Austin Powers, Bayyyby? In the bountiful multiverse, everything that can happen, even the improbable (cybernetic devices; virtual sex), does happen. Actually, the forbidden is mandatory. Kinky. Once two systems interact, their possibility waves become entangled, so changes in one instantly change the other (voodoo; mood swing; phone sex).
MWI (Many Worlds Interpretation) strips measurement of its privilege and achieves democracy of interaction, which prevails in nature. In this universe there is someone for everybody; someone will boff anybody. Too bad for us we are not aware of our parallel partners, the inhabitants of separate universes. Hence the saying, “in your dreams!”
We don’t know why human perception is limited to only one universe but it seems to be an unavoidable fact, unless you are Jet Li. Still, our world is conditioned by alternate worlds, even if we “can’t go there.” Try getting rid of your Puritanical streak, or that grossly misplaced stick. Maintain the MWI option of plausible deniability. Blame your doppelgangers.
Too bad we live in mere reality where only one thing happens at a time, except perhaps at the Playboy Mansion, Vegas, Cancun, or South Beach. When we get correlated we begin to realize our mutual possibilities. Strictly speaking, there are no measurements, only correlations. It’s relative; the fit of the other is relative to yourself. Everett’s moral is if you don’t want to split, stop looking at other attribute-laden systems! Or at least invest in some wrap-around sunglasses so you don’t get caught in the act.
Everett’s super reality is a non-collapsing world (no-fault state) which continually proliferates a jungle of conflicting possibilities (cravings; attractions), each isolated inside its own universe. Different universes can very quickly branch apart (“splitting the sheets”), so that there is very little relationship between them after a tiny fraction of a second. Then you hear, “I don’t know who you are, anymore,” or “I never really knew you,” or “I wish I never met you.”
Unfortunately, it means that billions of you are splitting off every fraction of a second into discrete universes and it implies that everything possible exists in one universe or another. You may reason that if you are cheating in many universes already, why not this one, too, since somewhere you are being falsely accused, anyway. In MWI, everybody wants everybody else. Yeah, in an ideal world! In this one, perhaps only your mother winds up wanting you, and she may be ambivalent.
In this observer-independent model, dating (or maybe a shotgun wedding) is like pointing a loaded gun at your head and pulling the trigger. Of course, you will only survive in those universes where the gun/date, for whatever reason, fails to go off. If you get a misfire every time, you can satisfy yourself (no one else will) -- with an arbitrarily high level of confidence -- that MWI is true. Many people (known as survivors) will testify to this.
Once in a while the subject of “Harry Potter universes” (magical universes) in which the laws of physics don’t seem to work and 'magic' happens crops up. It brings with it the concept and specter of potentially ‘forbidden’ universes (S&M, bondage, sex magick, naked trios, try-sexuals, genderbenders, Thailand).
Every time you run this program, there is a certain probability equal to p < 1 that it will fail; if you run it enough times the probability it will fail all times rapidly gets very small. Hence the saying (usually from wives), “Not in this universe.” If you want a magic kingdom, go to Disneyworld.
So the parts of the multiverse where it fails (home) have very low probability compared to other parts of the multiverse (virtually anywhere else). Failure in these regions means output (also known as “putting out”) is not depending on input, so information (and your lovelife) isn’t really flowing and a void is created. This creates the desire for you to “go where no one has gone before,” and/or the saying, “I’m outta here.”
Implicate Order Dating: Beyond the visible, tangible world there lies a deeper implicate order. Reality is an undivided wholeness (“glued at the hip”). Yeah, right! It's there, honestly. You just can’t perceive it! We share the same consciousness (or lack of it). Despite obvious separations, your world is a seamless whole -since panty hose were invented. The secret of the universe is that “It’s Alive!” But we’re still not sure about that cat in the box.
If dating in the holodeck, er, holomovement isn’t for you, maybe Scotty can beam you back up. The cat, on the other hand, will remain in quanantine. Maybe quantum inseparability is just too much Oneness for you. John Lennon was the first to speak of it in modern times: “I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.” Best you return to MWI dating, unless you are an eggman or walrus.
Schrodinger alleged that once two quantum systems have intertwined they become empathically entangled. [If you are a Betazed, be particularly cautious.] It’s a form of “contagious magic,” or voodoo, according to Nick Herbert. Bell’s discovery and Aspect’s experiments prove it exists as an actual influence in the real world.
Once our atoms have interacted, they remain really connected - entangled. So be really careful who you sleep with as you remain hooked up for life, in the quantum sense. Also, remember, “you are what you eat.”
The quantum potential pervades all space and provides direct connections between quantum systems/us. It is called, curiously, phase entanglement, especially in teenagers, i.e., “its just a phase”. Later. entanglement may lead either to “feeling stuck”, or to engagement. Or, polyamory. All wonderful things are blissfully possible. Be careful you don’t get “tied up in knots”; or maybe you like that! (also see String Dating).
Time together is best represented as the merging of pulsating waves -“ hopefully simultaneously and often. This theory introduces the “hard problem,” a highly subjective state of affairs. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, or some of its parts, anyway. Hence the truism, “You have to look at the whole package.” Check it out. This is what we mean when we say a date “has potential.”
Interference effects in one person will instantaneously affect the disposition of the other no matter how far removed in spacetime. But such a tight connection between those separated is a mere formalism and there is no guarantee that such a connection exists in reality -“ i.e., offline. Seemingly quantum connectedness may be fictitious, giving rise to the coined term, ‘satisfiction.’ Despite the fact ‘something’ seems to be linking you instantly, it does not permit exchange of messages along the link – so, do not discard your cell phone, prematurely.
Wave function collapse is not an actual physical event but only happens when we become aware of a measurement. The collapse comes if we self-referentially begin to wonder how we measure up. It may be precipitated by the comment, “You’ve got to be kidding,” and/or uncontrollable laughter. In certain situations it becomes clear that “nothing happened,” or “it ain’t happenin,” increasing our knowledge with no accompanying physical change.
You must face it: no real link exists between you. Love is a chemical addiction generated in your own body, so realize this and apply the tried and true principle of DIY. Phase connections don’t exist in the real world, so don’t take them seriously. Yet Bell’s theorem shows that to account for the behavior of certain systems, extremely drastic models of reality must be invoked (resort to magick, spells; escort services). They necessitate the real existence of a pervasive and powerful long-range connectedness.
Other entities seem to exist but are not part of the real world (fantasies; wishful thinking; 900 numbers), or at least your world. Virtual images appear which seem real, but in fact are not (supermodels, hallucinations), unless you can get through the looking glass or screen.
Collapse represents a change in your knowledge (duh!) not a real physical event. That’s your story; stick to it. Just focus on your partner for a while, and wait for the next wave. Knowledge of the system is not attained by passive inspection but only by active intervention on your part. If systems failure is due to drugs and you fail to do it, your family may stage the intervention.
In this model, subatomic particles such as electrons are not simple, structureless particles, but highly complex, dynamic entities like your partners (complicated; troubled; carrying baggage). We reject the view that their motion is fundamentally uncertain or ambiguous (denial). They follow a precise path, but one which is determined not only by conventional physical forces (libido, lust) but also by a more subtle force which we call the quantum potential (trance/delusion/projection).
Polar opposite of the potential is the Reality Check. The quantum potential guides the motion by providing "active information" about the whole environment -- the Big Picture. This is the rather mystical form of dating with hidden variables (such as family members and hostile friends) and pilot waves (wingmen) that telegraph from the future what is going to happen if only we could decode it. At the implicate level, you are essentially soulmates, but then aren’t we all?
It all begins with a normal wave, but a second wave determines a precise position for the tryst at any particular time. In this theory, it is the 'hidden variable' (competition/ex-lovers/future in-laws/unmentioned spouses, kids, grandkids) that determines the precise position of the couple. Bohm's theory was that the second wave was indeed faster than light, and moreover it did not get weaker with distance but instantly permeated the entire universe, acting as a guide for the movement of the photon, er, your date.
Vacuum Fluctuation Dating: In this holographic paradigm, all is One. Long ago there was nothing but the self-contained primal state -- a vacuum fluctuation, what we call a Singularity, which led to the Big Bang. A whole new universe came into being. This is the zero-point of dating energy, an ocean of pure untapped potential -- too pure! In this rather mystical form of dating nature abhors a vacuum and unpredictably spews out free energy like wet dreams. The notion of quantum foam and continuous creation put an end to that.
The Zero-Point field (the lowest energy state) is a term used to describe what is sometimes called the “vacuum fluctuation - particles and anti-particles created and destroyed over immeasurably small time scales. It is also known as the vacuum potential, which sounds far more enticing. Opposites may initially attract, but later can act like the Anti-Christ, and have you screaming, “Get thee behind me.”
The side effects of accessing this energy ranges from gravitational “shield” effects (reduction in weight if not mass/inches) to some kind of torsion energy that bends space-time sufficiently to allow reasonable speculation about time effects (dilation: “Yawn, this is taking forever”; reversal: “I coulda, shoulda, woulda”). Also known as a mind-warp.
On the plus side is negentropic dating where you actually gain “free energy” from the Cosmos and/or your lover. Dirac called it the ocean of potential [Dirac Sea]; in the Al Pacino movie, it was called The Sea of Love. Tapping this energy is the basis of Sex Magick, where the thought that occurs at the moment of orgasm happens. You can consciously create your own reality and enlist the universe to help you, for you are That. Good luck with it; may the Farce be with you.
String Theory Dating: What is the key to unifying the mysterious forces of nature, yin and yang, Venus and Mars? String!!! Get a big ball of it. The string is the fundamental element of Grand Unification. In the absence of string, you may substitute Saran Wrap.
While there are many theories of string, we know for sure there are always strings on everything; who doesn’t know that? Maybe even Superstrings! And do I really have to describe how in this theory lovers are kept dangling at the end of a string always yearning for the unified field?
Resonance is the key to String dating; the couple that vibrates together, stays together. But be careful, because the string could oscillate wildly, morphing into a M-embrane or just a Brane -- a total head-trip. Anyway, it’s only an unprovable theory. Haven’t we all had at least one lover who had a big TOE, a Theory of Everything? At least you didn’t need an encyclopedia.
All string theories are only different aspects of M-theory. The M might stand for Mother of all theories or Mystery or Magic (physicists won’t commit), but represents the unexplored Field. The key to string theories are extra dimensions (6, 10, 11 or maybe as many as 26 of them), cozily curled up in their own domains where they best remain.
Strings produce vibrations analogous to music; hence the saying, “playing the Field.” Also, a physical model for relationships between one-dimensional extended objects (dweebs; geeks/strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (Zeros; losers/particles).
Transactional Dating: Time-reversal. You don’t date, you rotate. Instead of recycling your dates, they are “precycled.” The end is (acausally) in the beginning. Dates/particles perform a kind of 'handshake' in the course of interacting. Nonlocality means that in quantum mechanical systems, relationships or correlations not normally possible are somehow being enforced faster-than-light across space and time. Or, over the Internet.
Is a handshake better than a quantum kiss? This model (complex conjugation) describes any quantum (dating) event as a “handshake” executed through an exchange of advanced and retarded waves. They wave; you wave back, and maybe wink. Both advanced and retarded waves are valid solutions of the electromagnetic wave equation (Mars loves Venus = Venus loves Mars). In dating, it really doesn’t matter what your I.Q. is. Just b sure to check which “hand” is extended.
However, in conventional electrodynamics (QED; psychosexual attractions) the advanced solutions are conventionally rejected as unphysical or acausal (“not happening”). Wheeler and Feynman used a subtler boundary condition mechanism to eliminate the non-causal effects of the advanced solutions. I use restraining orders, shunning, and banishment to set boundaries.
In the ‘Fine Man theory’, the interaction of two particles/lovers is related to the exchange of a third party/particle. Time reversibility can be known as interaction happening both backward and forward in time, or a “do-over,” or perhaps “relapse,” or “rebound.” If you are a Hollywood or rock star, don’t worry -- it won’t last long. Soon you will return to your MWI world (watch out for the Great Attractor, J-Lo).
An electron (or lover), on its way from point A to point B, can bump into a photon (ex-lover). This also sends it backwards not just in space, but also in time. Then it bumps into another photon (another prospect), which sends it forward in time again, but in a different direction in space. In this way, it can be in two places at once. Many boy/girlfriends will attempt to use this excuse, er, rationale.
Wheeler-Feynman says when the retarded wave is absorbed at some time in the future (reconciliation), a process is initiated by which canceling advanced waves from the absorbers erase all traces of advanced waves (denial) and their “advanced” effects (anxiety), thereby preserving causality. A (clueless) observer not privy to these inner mechanisms of nature would perceive only that a retarded wave had gone from the emitter (pitcher) to the absorber (catcher). Between those of the same sex, this is sometimes known as “being on the down-low.”
This advanced-retarded handshake is the basis for a two-way contract between the future and the past for the purpose of transferring energy, momentum, etc, while observing all of the conservation laws and quantization conditions imposed at the emitter/absorber terminating ``boundaries'' of the transaction. Another way of saying transcendent mind numbing SEX. “Let’s do the time-warp, again.”
The transaction is explicitly nonlocal (out of town) because the future is, in a limited way, affecting the past (at the level of enforcing correlations -- i.e., current spouse). It also alters the way in which we must look at physical phenomena - i.e., “lowered expectations.”
Quantum Chaos Dating: Chaos Theory (CT) is the third revolution in science after relativity and quantum theory. It describes determinism, change and stability, creativity, freewill, and the underlying nature of spacetime. It is not hard to imagine how they apply to relationships. Everyone is intitially sensitive. Bifurcation (splitting) reflects the dynamics of third-party love affairs and breakups. Butterfly effects blow everything out of proportion.
Free will is related to goal seeking behaviors. Chaos reflects the wildness and irregularity in nature and ourselves. It models catastrophic change. CT eliminates the need for you to imagine you are the cause of any problems. It’s way more complex than that! Be sure your date knows this; it is critical.
The dictionary definition of chaos is turmoil, turbulence, primordial abyss, and undesired randomness, but scientists will tell you that chaos is something extremely sensitive to initial conditions. Chaos also refers to the question of whether or not it is possible to make good long-term predictions about how a system will act. A chaotic system can actually develop in a way that appears very smooth and ordered.
CT is characterized by phase space (life passages), strange attractors (temptations), exquisite sensitivity (mental complexes), complex feedback loops (69; daisy chains; Fifi and Fido), intermittancy (on again, off again). It suggests we evolve at the “edge of chaos.” Let suitors know right away that you know the difference between being nonlinear and beating around the bush.
Chaos is a confusing choice of words for this behavior. Chaos usually means disordered, without form. Here "chaos" means a simple, nonlinear system that is highly ordered, a deterministic dynamical system. Yet, in the long run, the values of the chaotic variables cannot be computed from their values a long time ago. You have no idea what forces are in motion, where it is going and how it will end up.
We can never start two experiments/dates exactly the same. If we start two experiments almost the same we expect the results will be the same. For chaotic systems the time series is not an invariant. It doesn’t matter how long you keep at it; nothing will change. Each experiment will be completely different. Only the attractor can give us the "right" explanation of what happened in the experiment. You may perceive this affectionately as the two of you living in your own little world.
The most important progress in science involves changes in the basic way we see the world. These changes are the simplest things that we thought so obvious they required no assumptions at all. Yet, it turns out that we realize that these simplest things do depend on assumptions, and that those assumptions (expectations) can be false.
The fractal dimension describes the relative number of smaller values compared to larger values in the data. The closer your values the better the date. Historically, we thought that most data must have a normal distribution and therefore that the mean is meaningful. Another word for the mean is mediocrity or average. Who wants to be average? With the perfect vision of hindsight, we realize much of the world around us is not normal anyway, but chaotic.
The point is not that we have been so wrong for so long. It is so difficult to see the simplest things as they really are. So don’t blame yourself! We become so used to our assumptions that we can no longer see them or evidence against them (denial). Instead of challenging our assumptions we spend our time in studying the details, when they are essentially meaningless. The fact is, they just aren’t that into you.
Science is hard because it is hardest to see what is most obvious. Chaos is the prime source of unpredictability in the macrocosmic world and the human scale, formerly described only by clockworkl Newtonian physics. Nonlinear self-defeating and self-destructive behavior are good for ratcheting up chaos levels. It isn’t long before criticality is reached and catastrophe looms. Once the split or bifurcation occurs, there is no going back.
Yes and No do not mean the same things in this world, nor do a wide variety of other empty promises or vague threats. They are subject to revision without prior notice, more so if you partner has Borderline Personality Disorder. Learn the phrase, “BPD strikes again,” or alternately, “PBD” - permanent brain damage. You can recognize it when you find yourself “walking on eggshells,” or your words are never taken at face value yet chaos abounds.
Chaos and complexity is nature's own way of organizing systems and creating structure. Your brain is chaotic, but then you knew that. All systems, including your love life, emerge from and eventually dissolve back into chaos. You viscerally and intuitively know this to be true, also. No amount of drugs will make you forget. Just face it.
Walter Freeman believes that perception begins with an internally generated neural process that prepares the organism to seek future stimuli in the outside world (duh!). Invariant stimulus from the environment arrives as information in sensory space and finally proceeds to cerebral space as meaningful input (duh! again). Meaning is a function of the level of arousal at which it is experienced (do I have to say it?). Integration depends on the level of arousal.
Chaotic relationships are seemingly random yet deterministic (hidden agendas; mental illness). Strange Attractors draw reiterations of the same character to themselves into their orbits, over and over, based on their sensitivity to initial conditions (complexes; psychopathologies; first impressions). You date the same type, over and over.
Complex systems with many bodies are more stable and self-correcting. If “thrown off course”, they soon adjust to “fill in the gap.” Most dynamics in nature, ranging from the orbits of planets to our behavioral adjustments in life are essentially chaotic. Changing the activity of just one element (wild card; 3rd wheel; phone call) can unleash an avalanche of changes in the patterns that might have otherwise occurred (“butterfly effect”). A structural perturbation is like a permanent mutation for any network or your love life. It blows up.
Chaos theory shows us we actually need to cooperate with chaotic dynamics, to enter a less-rigid process of flow, submitting outworn aspects of the ego to dissolution. Also known as “ego-death,” or “go with the flow.” This helps us evolve. Sure. At supercritical junctions we either break down (emergency) or increase adaptation (emergence) with more creative solutions. If you are chaos theory dating, keep your therapist’s number handy, and read up on self-esteem.
Chaotic systems exhibit holistic behavior. Holism sees the world in all its diversity as connected by complex feedback loops. Through the chaotic process of emergence, order appears spontaneously or even instantly within a system. Maybe this is the root of love at first sight or star-crossed lovers. Everything suddenly falls into place. When we are in love, we feel whole. Or, insane.
This holistic scientific paradigm helps us describe the psyche the way nature and our nature works. Chaos comes into our lives as an endless variety of crises and decision points -crossroads. Now is the time to make your deal with the Devil. We all intuitively recognize how chaos punctuates our so-called equilibrium, diverting our most carefully crafted plans and detouring our agendas. Sometimes chaos hits us broadside, literally as accidents.
Unpredictability is part of our emotional "weather," and we are generally trying to adjust to it. Watch out for brainstorms, hair-brained schemes, and spontaneous roadtrips. Chaos is different than the uncertainty principle; you can be sure of that. Unpredictability is actually predetermined, but you will will never know who, what, when where, how or why. It’s too complicated to explain. Watch out for dark energy and even more for dark matter.
Sometimes we spontaneously use science metaphors such as "black holes," "nuclear melt downs," or "quantum leaps," to describe feelings, relationships, or personal dynamics. The leap of faith comes into play, particularly when contemplating marriage. Carefully consider the number of melt downs that preceed it in courtship.
Sensitive dependence means all wounds are created equal, especially if they are yours. This sensitivity never goes away. It can only get worse. The causes and effects of the events that a complex system experiences are not proportional to each other. The different parts of complex systems are linked and affect one another in a synergistic manner. There is positive and negative feedback in a complex system.
The level of complexity depends on the character of the system, its environment, and the nature of the interactions between them. Complexity can also be called the "edge of chaos". When a complex dynamical chaotic system because unstable, an attractor draws the stress and the system splits. This is called bifurication.
Bifurcation into a particular state or chaotic attractor may generate a unique anticipatory choice. The transition from chaos thus models the sudden moment of insight - “Eureka”, deductive cognition, or sensory recognition (See Part II, “No Expectations”, on decision theory). Often we think, “I’ve found it” or “Aha, this is it; go for it” Bifurcation can also model orgasm, according to Lubricatus (1999):
“Female sexual response is subject to a plethora of subjective (internal) and objective (external) inputs (i.e., stimuli), and is therefore part of a dynamical system. And dynamic systems are ruled by sudden, disjunctive switches in state, known as bifurcations. The point of no-return for these bifurcations are known as catastrophes. One must remember in using this terminology that the so-called catastrophe is catastrophic only in terms of being able to predict future outcomes of the system based on input data. In real life, these bifurcation triggers may be something such as a sneeze, or the ringing of the telephone.”
Chaotic excitability is a universal sense organ. Subtle fluctuations in this creative ground state may be pumped up by the ‘butterfly effect’ into perceivable effects, even more so, by the “Venus Butterfly” effect (see Appendix I). The human neurosystem may be responsive to fluctuations at the level of a single quantum. Shaking the system a little (threats; competition; flowers; compliments; active listening) can jolt a sub-optimal state into a better solution. Or give you a chance to do so.
Discussion:
Relationships are more than chemistry; it’s deeper and way more complex than that. Love is not enough. The Copenhagen Interpretation alleges that the unobserved world that sustains this one is not ordinary but spooky and counterintuitive (“weird science”). It is scary when scientists don’t even understand their own field. We know from dating that substance is connected to perception. But don’t mistake it for solidity or reality.
Make no mistake; there is no consensus in physics at this time. All acts of observation drastically modify the strange substratum, changing it at every moment into the everyday world. Paul McCartney was therefore right when he said, “The love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Heisenberg claimed this substratum is made of tendencies or possibilities, rather than actualities. Also, there can be hidden variables (drugs, alcohol, proclivities). Chaos Theory reminds us to watch out for the not so random element, especially Strange Attractors. Others will try to pull you into their periodic, cyclic, or whacky orbits.
Quantum wholeness adds that our “parts” are linked intimately and holographically at the most fundamental level. Now, there’s a picture! The best relationships are electric and magnetic. Von Neumann claims measurement only happens in some mind, which somehow constructs the phenomenal world. It probably isn’t blonde.
Mind is as elemental in this view as consciousness is for others. Criteria for consciousness and quantum dating include mind links (rapport, empathy, ESP), mind maps (love maps; map to your house), mind reach (scope, imagination, Siddhas, superpowers), quality and quantity of mind, attention mechanisms, sense of self, personality, free will, evolution, and surprise, surprise -- novelty. In an ideal world I.Q. and E.Q. (emotional quotient) are equally important. If their brain chemistry is off, it will drive you crazy. Be sure to ask about prior brain trauma.
Likewise, these can be good qualities for a lover. Let them know about your creative edge and any cyberotica or devices you have for purely experimental purposes. Tell them when you are ready for quantum observation and measurement.
Resonance is important for keeping others on your wavelength; share a vibration. You know from plugging in your electronics that polarity matching is a must. Wave motion gave life its original direction and is built into each of our cells. Thus, we have “catch the wave,” “long may it wave,” and “Wave On!”
Many-worlds says our human experience is part of a larger experience enjoyed by similar beings our other selves in similar universes nearby. Watch out for pods under your bed. Tell the multiverse in no uncertain terms, your clone sleeps alone, even though it does have fuzzy attributes. Quantum foam does not make a good spermicide. And do not confuse hard bodies with the “hard problem.” It’s all subjective. Maintain your degrees of freedom. While we somewhat understand the dynamics of the strong and the weak, we continue to yearn with cosmologists for the mystery of Grand Unification.
Everything’s fine as long as you stay in your own orbit. Never, ever go too far down a black hole. Remember, once you cross the Event Horizon, it’s all over -- a done deal. Make your reality up to be however you want, but don’t forget to read the small print. It is called Karma, natural consequences. You remember Karma, don’t you? Your mind creates the factual world from the unrealized possibilities for existence. If you think this makes you sound like God, so be it; you always secretly thought so anyway, didn’t you?
Conclusions:
We realize some possibilities at the expense of others. You can’t have everything! You know this from dating; there is an inverse rule between quantity and quality. You have realized the expense. There is no free lunch. There are always strings on everything. The wise say, “Ah, relationships: those who are out want in, and those who are in want out.” The relation-ship has sailed.
And what happens to the damned Cat? Again, you're not supposed to ask but between you and I, God is busy playing dice for who gets custody. There are an infinite number of possibilities out there, so get more cats. The mystery is not what's in the puzzle box; it's the puzzle box itself. There's no greater level of reality possible within the puzzle box than outside it (in or out of relationship). What's within the box is just as much a surface appearance within the presentation environment as the containing box.
Oscar Wilde claimed, “Uncertainty is the very essence of romance.” And the Uncertainty will never go away, and it will always be weird, and you can never “get it” no matter how hard you try.
But that’s O.K. That’s the way it is.
(Maybe)
* * *
APPENDIX I
(excerpt from Lubricatus, 1999)
In light of the catastrophic dynamical nature of the function of female orgasm the question becomes, can one predict in advance what sort of experience a particular resolution of a function will hold? Any hope of this lies within Thom's Classification of smooth functions. Thanks to the Splitting Lemma, which allows us to split non-Morse functions into two parts, we are left with a simple chart (depicted below) which describes all the regular shapes a three dimensional region can be deformed into.
Table 1 - The Thom classification of smooth functions
Function Name
y³ Fold
y4 Cusp
y5 Swallowtail
y6 Butterfly
y³ - 3yy² Elliptic umbilic
y³ + y³ Hyperbolic umbilic
y²y + y4 Parabolic umbilic
If we define this three dimensional space as the possibility of female orgasm, then we can assign both internal and external inputs to each of the seven elementary catastrophes. Working with limited N.I.H. funding and volunteer participants at Johns Hopkins, I wish to present the present, highly preliminary studies. Additional field tests of anorgasmic, non-orgasmic and orgasmic experiences are required, as are additional hours of computer time, also requiring more funding, to analyze the results.
Table 2 -- Preliminary Findings Correlating the Shape of Probability Space and the Occurrence of Female Orgasm from Rene Thom's Classification of Catastrophes
Catastrophe Internal Input Factors External Input Factors
Fold anorgasmic anorgasmic
Cusp orgasmic non-orgasmic
Swallowtail non-orgasmic non-orgasmic
Butterfly orgasmic orgasmic
Hyperbolic umbilic non-orgasmic anorgasmic
Elliptic umbilic orgasmic non-orgasmic
Parabolic umbilic anorgasmic orgasmic
Based on this extremely tentative data the results to date do look promising. There is clearly only one recognizable configuration of probability space, f(y6 + a1y4 + a2y³ + a3y² + a4y), the Butterfly within which a woman can be certain to avoid frustration. In addition, this small sample indicates the most common function, the Fold, y³ + a1y, predicts the domain of the anorgasmic space, a configuration that, while it might not bring ecstasy, at least doesn't presage despair.
REFERENCES:
Deutsch, David (2000). The Fabric of Reality.
Herbert, Nick (1993). Elemental Mind: Human Consciousness and the New Physics. New York: Plume.
Herbert, Nick (1985). Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics. New York:Random House.
Lubricatus, Maria (1999). “The Bifurcated Catastrophe Theory of the Female Orgasm”, Third Annual Women in Projective Geometry Conference, held in Baltimore, Maryland, August 18 - 25, 1999.
Miller, Iona (1993). Chaosophy 1993. Wilderville, Oregon: Asklepia Publications.
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Transdisciplinarian, Iona Miller is a writer, hypnotherapist and multimedia artist, living in Southern Oregon, USA. She has developed extensive groundbreaking work on the relationship of chaos theory and negentropy to emergent paradigm shift or worldviews in philosophy, cosmology, biophysics, medicine, experiential psychotherapy, creativity, art, and society.
QUANTUM THEORIES OF RELATIONSHIP
Or,
‘What the %$$$#&^( )*~*@! Do We Know’ About Dating???
By Iona Miller, (c)6-04
ionamiller2008.iwarp.com
iona_m@yahoo.com
Discoveries in physics cannot in themselves, so I believe, have the authority of forcing us to put an end to the habit of picturing the physical world as a reality. ~Erwin Schroedinger
We must be life all the way down, all the way out, and the I only an index into life, an image of the self cast into an instant; I, the constant truth that controls our innermost loop. The massless I, dilating at dreamspeed, grows coextensive with more and more selves. ~ Greg Keith
Abstract: What the BLEEP do we know about dating? A quick look at the title above offers a clue, “What the %$$$#&^( )*~*@!”: the percentages are important, as is cash, and lots of it. Likewise pounds often come into play, as does the occasional conjunction. Sometimes we mistake an ever-dangling carat for the real thing. But if we aren’t careful, it could lead to parent-heses. When we are starry-eyed it’s hard to assess where we are at. But we always know clearly if we are digging it, or not, and are generally willing to exclaim it loudly, either way. Hence, the question, “Would you like a little whine with that cheese?”
Keywords: resonance, vectors, orbits, force, gravity, polarity, potential, vibration, magnetism, chemistry, wavelength, hard bodies, quantum foam, uncertainty, charge, spin, symmetry, color, superpositions, black holes, irreversibility, fuzzy attributes, sensitivity, complexity, randomness, unpredictability, catastrophe, bifurcation, degrees of freedom, decision theory, the hard problem, the strong and the weak, grand unification, infinities.
Introduction:
“How far do you want to go down the rabbit hole?” Like all problems in physics, the dynamics of dating boil down to the relationships of momentum, mass, energy, attraction/repulsion, and many bodies problems. The shared lexicon of quantum mechanics (QM) and dating includes electromagnetism, chemistry, pair bonding, existential dilemma, unobservables, role boundedness, paradox, fuzzy quantum possibilities. Science tells us, the nonmanifest has virtually infinite creative potential - Yeah, “in an ideal world,” which isn’t very tangible.
The totally quantum world is one of pure possibility. Nothing ever really happens there. Everything just hesitates forever on the brink of actuality. Compared to the actual world - ”the old fashioned, definite “yes or no”, go/no go world of classical physics - ”the quantum world resembles a fairy-tale land built solely of ambiguous “maybes.” It is rationally and intuitively incomprehensible. Thus the saying, “you’re never gonna get it.” The same may be true in the vaguaries of quantum dating as well; it all depends.
Each person we interact with brings out a different version of ourselves, sometimes sailing the relation-ship toward mutual annihilation. There is a big difference between being multifaceted and schizoid. Check their astrology chart for compatibility and wormholes to dimensions you never want to visit. This will help reduce Futureshock.
Once the trajectory is set in motion by initial conditions (first impressions) the vector is nearly unalterable. Some we mesh with irresistibly while others repel us at or near the speed of light. This produces the sensation of “going nowhere fast.” Atoms split; why shouldn’t you? In fact, atoms are mostly empty rather than solid, so many in their attempt to split will claim, “I just need more space.” Show them you can make them feel like Neil Armstrong. They can have all the space want, but they’d better not take up yours. Gravity is always in play, so bring your Airbag or Wingman.
In quantum dating, the uncertainty principle prevails: you can never know both the exact position and momentum of your lover at any given moment, especially if they are workaholic or have a personality disorder. They can pop in and out of your reality and are subject to the magnetic pull of other Strange Attractors who appear seemingly out of nowhere, and sometimes disconcertingly even pop up on your doorstep.
Dating like quantum reality is an apparently random process, an unpredictable suspension within the uncertainty of superposed positions in pure potential. Like the quantum potential, quantum dating is riddled with vaguaries. You never know who you’re going to meet and where you might run into them. The less a-parent you are, the better your chances. Otherwise you may be “expiration dating.”
Statistical probabilities are against you, especially if you are a mature female, but deeper laws govern it. Einstein spoke of “spooky action at a distance.” In the Holographic Paradigm, synchronicities and “hidden variables” abound since all is One, and the whole is contained in the part. In this view, therefore, each date is a mini-representation encapsulating the whole relationship -- especially the very first date. Consider yourself forewarned!
But not all relationships, like all quantum theories, actually match reality. One of the newest theories has to do with “many sheets”, and should probably be changed frequently. The rectangular worldsheet is interior to the 26-dimensional string and is what gets you to the next exterior location - generally, the bathroom or kitchen. Be careful not to trip on it. The size of worldsheets (double, queen, or California king)is related to the probability of where a worldsheet path will take you to in the future. Therefore, stay away from waterbeds. That leads nowhere. This is not the wave motion you seek. Start looking for the nearest quantum wormhole to ease out.
Though all these theories are compatible with the same quantum facts, all the theories can’t be right - so in quantum dating there will be some winners, and statistically way more Losers, which shall be represented by a large ‘L’ in our equations. But we’ll start slow, since if you are reading this, there is a good chance you can’t put together 1 and 1, much less 2 + 2, or conquer Clifford algebra and noneuclidean geometry. Perhaps you’ve already had some traumatic experience with Trigonometry however, as the third leg of a triad or triangle.
Our relationships are conditioned by the unseen world of our beliefs, presuppositions, our paradigms or worldviews, our life trajectories, hidden variables, and our own observer bias (psychosensory filters). Despite evidence to the contrary, we all wind up believing the version of our relationships that we want - our own theories, our own vision, our own subjective reality. That seems to skew physics and the rest of science, if no one can be objective. But it has been objectively proven that objectivity is impossible.
No two of us ever see things quite the same way. This is known as “inhabiting your own planet”, “living worlds apart,” “living in your own little world,”or “being from a different universe.” The Little Prince had nothing on your date. Saying your date is from Mars or Venus is not nearly enough representational distance for this analogy. What appears in the beginning as paradox (opposites attract) later may be interpreted as “irreconcilable differences,” or disgust and disdain.
Since science has proven there isn’t really any concrete physicality anyway, it doesn’t really seem to “matter.” Like The Vedas and the Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us, it’s all an illusion; all Maya. Well, illusion my ass! Most dates rate lower than the Tao Jones average. But so what, since quantum mechanics assures us that ‘Nothing Matters’. You intuitively knew your lovelife lacks substance already.
Quantum theory, like dating, works, but we are at a loss to explain its success. It defies explanation. The bottom line is nobody agrees about what is going on, which parts to take seriously and which to ignore. God may as well be off playing dice, because S/He sure isn’t needed here. S/He can just “phone it in.” What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
If you dare to think about it (you're not really supposed to), you have to believe one of the following things:
· Your consciousness affects the behavior of subatomic particles and/or your date or lover, (narcissism; magical thinking; fantasy; participation mystique; codependence; not signs of psychological health, except to Jungians).
· Particles (and your dates/lovelife) move backwards as well as forwards in time and appear in all possible places at once (obsession; flashbacks; nostalgia; grief; stalking; regrets; agendas, conditioning).
· The universe and your lovelife is splitting continuously into billions of parallel worlds - and, a) you are not in most of them, b) not alive, anyway, c) or, you wish you were dead, d) or, they wish you were dead, or v.v..
· The universe (and your lover) is interconnected with faster-than-light transfers of information (deny everything to the grave; play dumb; fight/flight; the price of admission may exceed the value of the ride as in the Pasadena Paradox).
Schrodinger Dating (CI): This Scandanavian form of dating, perhaps most applicable in Copenhagen, Denmark, is also known as the theory of “That Darn Cat” (see Schrodinger’s Cat Paradox). After a while your lovelife collapses down to one very real Bohr-ing relationship. If they are more interested in the cat than you, get rid of them. The relationship is already dead whether you know it or not. Take my word for it. Been There; Observed That.
This is a measurement-dependent theory, which can either maximize or minimize the slippery, shifting uncertainty of conjugate attributes. We like to say, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” or conversely, “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” Your lover must be kept under observation. It is a mistake to assume anyone is at a certain location or traveling in a particular direction unless you actually see them doing so. When it happens late at night, it is known as a “booty call.”
In the entire experimental situation, measurement has been linked to unavoidable disturbances. So keep your options open. Unless you make the measurements yourself, do not presume that the person actually possesses this attribute. Wheeler concludes the essence of a measurement is the making of a record, though breaking your personal best can be fun, too.
Sometimes film or video is competent to act as the objective observer. Others assert the need for conscious observation, which can be difficult to find on a Saturday night, though volunteers may be numerous. Until conscious observers come into the scene, the universe exists in an indefinite, indecisive state. This is the premise of the “gentleman’s club.” Once cash begins to flow things become much more obvious. Look as closely as you feel you need to.
This argument (need for observation) may be used by others (exhibitionists) to validate themselves and to induce you toward voyeurism, a possible first step toward the worldsheets (which are best at The Four Seasons). Dynamic attributes include position and momentum, which lead to style. Color, charm and quirkiness may also be important. Then there is spin. We’ll just let the imagination wander.
The endless procession of measuring devices measuring one another is called “von Neumann’s paradox of infinite regress.” It reminds us just how “backwards” we are. This regression leads to baby talk in extreme examples -- even feeding one another. Don’t ask for “tossed salad” unless you really want it. One parameter to check during feeding is whether or not your date can tie a cherry stem in a knot with their tongue.
Von Neumann tells us such devices cannot really be special, but QM dating assigns them a privileged role, describing them in terms of definite actualities, while every other entity is represented by super-positions of possibilities. This is considered a conceptual weakness. This view can explain the exact behavior of atoms, but can’t cope with the attributes of cats, much less your lovers’ endowments.
Bohr’s notion of relational reality explains why an attribute’s uncertainty depends on the type of measurement performed; (measure the width of your palms and digits before the date and add them together). It can be affected by non-disturbing measurement such as Renminger’s “no-show” techniques. “No-show” can be a big problem! It means no chance for a relational reality check. Such attributes only change when the context changes. Always we are asking, “Well, is it alive or is it dead?” One can change the attribute by changing the device. You can find many online.
This observer-dependent reality depends strictly on how you look at it. Maybe it is the source of love at first sight. That’s how it begins: gazing, mirroring, the ubiquitous hair-flip, innuendo, bawdy language. More subtle signs include pupil dilation and skin flushing. In a second version of CI, your reality is created by your observation. But you must look at it in order for it to actually exist. But when you do, don’t ever ask what it means. You may break the spell.
It also depends on how you look at a date or affair - as a simple wave or concrete reality. We have the ability to intervene in reality by freely electing what attribute we want to look at. This is the role of desire in relation to object of desire. We have the freedom to choose our proxy, providing we can risk rejection. If you look for a particular attribute, the other will seem to possess it. This is also known as projection, and when mutual or reciprocal, folie a deux.
And the ‘two-slit’ experiment? Well, we won’t even go into that, but it has something to do with onlookers, the splits, as well as smoke and mirrors! After all, it’s an “experimental arrangement.” Nor will we discuss black holes at length, presuming we all are familiar with the concept, having several of them.
The nature of unobservables virtually proves why “love is blind.” Isolated entities are mere abstractions who are only observable or definable in interaction with others. This is suspiciously close to the notion of co-dependence. Hence the comment, “You can dress him/her up, but you can’t take them out.” Ask their mothers for old report cards to see if they “play well with others.” Ask her if there is a clinical diagnosis.
Thus, we have Wheeler’s recommendation of the ‘delayed choice experiment,” which depends on things (dysfunctionality) that existed long before the experiment was conceived (crappy childhoods). It demonstrates that the past is not “fixed” (maybe you hoped it was), but subject to present decisions and interference (impedance matching). You can still encourage them to “get fixed.” But remember, if you make them over, you won’t be in love with them anymore. Give up the Pygmalion Project. Dating “do-overs,” known in science as repeatability, require continued experimentation. Try serial dating. Try, try again.
Our ability to change the past is limited to one path or two paths, or falling into an interference pattern. All are “quantum random” and completely beyond our ability to control or predict. So don’t even try! Your love will not heal them. If alcohol or drugs are involved, they -- not you -- will win. This is perhaps the only universal constant.
In Schrodinger dating, all potential waves (suitors and paramours) or ‘super positions’ eventually collapse down into one corporeal relationship, distinguished by the feeling, “What’s the point?” We are never quite sure if it is dead or alive, because we wisely refuse to look at it too closely. (Maybe the cat knows!)
If you try looking closer, you may fall into limbo, a black hole, a gravity well from which there is no return - or endless expensive therapy. Be sure to keep your baggage with you; don’t let go of it no matter what. You may get spit out the other side of a white hole as a singularity. Watch out for the event horizon that signals the point of no return.
The state vector collapses into repetitious monogonotony. There goes the momentum! Predictability seems to increase substantially from this point onward. The uncertainty principle (irreducible fuzziness) limits human abilities to probe either you or the Cosmos. Conjugate attributes are maximally uncertain. The collapse of the wave function increases the uncertainty of the conjugate attribute, and can lead to depression, ennui, or chronic fatigue.
Conformal symmetry mixes past and future; at higher energies conformal symmetry breaks and you get more general mixing. At the highest energy, each point/person is connected to every point and you have the ultimate mixing (simplex physics). Too much mixing can lead to Herpes Simplex. At first considered radical, this now virtually obsolete Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) model has dominated most of human dating and mating practice historically.
Many Worlds Dating: Ever feel like you are living in several parallel worlds at once? Yes, compartmentalized thinking. Also known as the Player’s Universe, this model is the source of the saying, “So many dates; so little spacetime.” Can you say “Sex Addict”? This is what is meant by “turn up the volume.” Victimizers may be former victims of Einstinean dating where “it’s all relative.” High maintenance inhabitants of this dating universe include rap and rock stars, movie stars, and celebutantes. Or, those who are legends in their own minds.
Many Worlds is a realm of infinite possibilities (anything on two legs -ok, even amputees! Sorry, Paul), likely probabilities (scoring), lots of uncertainty (rejection; being kicked to the curb; dissed) with many futures (criminal charges, undesirable pregnancy; STDs) depending from each thread. This universe requires lots of protection. You can get it at the drugstore or a handy public bathroom. Also be sure to always carry a toothbrush.
What could better describe the world of quantum dating than these parallel possibilities? Swinging? Fetish? Austin Powers, Bayyyby? In the bountiful multiverse, everything that can happen, even the improbable (cybernetic devices; virtual sex), does happen. Actually, the forbidden is mandatory. Kinky. Once two systems interact, their possibility waves become entangled, so changes in one instantly change the other (voodoo; mood swing; phone sex).
MWI (Many Worlds Interpretation) strips measurement of its privilege and achieves democracy of interaction, which prevails in nature. In this universe there is someone for everybody; someone will boff anybody. Too bad for us we are not aware of our parallel partners, the inhabitants of separate universes. Hence the saying, “in your dreams!”
We don’t know why human perception is limited to only one universe but it seems to be an unavoidable fact, unless you are Jet Li. Still, our world is conditioned by alternate worlds, even if we “can’t go there.” Try getting rid of your Puritanical streak, or that grossly misplaced stick. Maintain the MWI option of plausible deniability. Blame your doppelgangers.
Too bad we live in mere reality where only one thing happens at a time, except perhaps at the Playboy Mansion, Vegas, Cancun, or South Beach. When we get correlated we begin to realize our mutual possibilities. Strictly speaking, there are no measurements, only correlations. It’s relative; the fit of the other is relative to yourself. Everett’s moral is if you don’t want to split, stop looking at other attribute-laden systems! Or at least invest in some wrap-around sunglasses so you don’t get caught in the act.
Everett’s super reality is a non-collapsing world (no-fault state) which continually proliferates a jungle of conflicting possibilities (cravings; attractions), each isolated inside its own universe. Different universes can very quickly branch apart (“splitting the sheets”), so that there is very little relationship between them after a tiny fraction of a second. Then you hear, “I don’t know who you are, anymore,” or “I never really knew you,” or “I wish I never met you.”
Unfortunately, it means that billions of you are splitting off every fraction of a second into discrete universes and it implies that everything possible exists in one universe or another. You may reason that if you are cheating in many universes already, why not this one, too, since somewhere you are being falsely accused, anyway. In MWI, everybody wants everybody else. Yeah, in an ideal world! In this one, perhaps only your mother winds up wanting you, and she may be ambivalent.
In this observer-independent model, dating (or maybe a shotgun wedding) is like pointing a loaded gun at your head and pulling the trigger. Of course, you will only survive in those universes where the gun/date, for whatever reason, fails to go off. If you get a misfire every time, you can satisfy yourself (no one else will) -- with an arbitrarily high level of confidence -- that MWI is true. Many people (known as survivors) will testify to this.
Once in a while the subject of “Harry Potter universes” (magical universes) in which the laws of physics don’t seem to work and 'magic' happens crops up. It brings with it the concept and specter of potentially ‘forbidden’ universes (S&M, bondage, sex magick, naked trios, try-sexuals, genderbenders, Thailand).
Every time you run this program, there is a certain probability equal to p < 1 that it will fail; if you run it enough times the probability it will fail all times rapidly gets very small. Hence the saying (usually from wives), “Not in this universe.” If you want a magic kingdom, go to Disneyworld.
So the parts of the multiverse where it fails (home) have very low probability compared to other parts of the multiverse (virtually anywhere else). Failure in these regions means output (also known as “putting out”) is not depending on input, so information (and your lovelife) isn’t really flowing and a void is created. This creates the desire for you to “go where no one has gone before,” and/or the saying, “I’m outta here.”
Implicate Order Dating: Beyond the visible, tangible world there lies a deeper implicate order. Reality is an undivided wholeness (“glued at the hip”). Yeah, right! It's there, honestly. You just can’t perceive it! We share the same consciousness (or lack of it). Despite obvious separations, your world is a seamless whole -since panty hose were invented. The secret of the universe is that “It’s Alive!” But we’re still not sure about that cat in the box.
If dating in the holodeck, er, holomovement isn’t for you, maybe Scotty can beam you back up. The cat, on the other hand, will remain in quanantine. Maybe quantum inseparability is just too much Oneness for you. John Lennon was the first to speak of it in modern times: “I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.” Best you return to MWI dating, unless you are an eggman or walrus.
Schrodinger alleged that once two quantum systems have intertwined they become empathically entangled. [If you are a Betazed, be particularly cautious.] It’s a form of “contagious magic,” or voodoo, according to Nick Herbert. Bell’s discovery and Aspect’s experiments prove it exists as an actual influence in the real world.
Once our atoms have interacted, they remain really connected - entangled. So be really careful who you sleep with as you remain hooked up for life, in the quantum sense. Also, remember, “you are what you eat.”
The quantum potential pervades all space and provides direct connections between quantum systems/us. It is called, curiously, phase entanglement, especially in teenagers, i.e., “its just a phase”. Later. entanglement may lead either to “feeling stuck”, or to engagement. Or, polyamory. All wonderful things are blissfully possible. Be careful you don’t get “tied up in knots”; or maybe you like that! (also see String Dating).
Time together is best represented as the merging of pulsating waves -“ hopefully simultaneously and often. This theory introduces the “hard problem,” a highly subjective state of affairs. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, or some of its parts, anyway. Hence the truism, “You have to look at the whole package.” Check it out. This is what we mean when we say a date “has potential.”
Interference effects in one person will instantaneously affect the disposition of the other no matter how far removed in spacetime. But such a tight connection between those separated is a mere formalism and there is no guarantee that such a connection exists in reality -“ i.e., offline. Seemingly quantum connectedness may be fictitious, giving rise to the coined term, ‘satisfiction.’ Despite the fact ‘something’ seems to be linking you instantly, it does not permit exchange of messages along the link – so, do not discard your cell phone, prematurely.
Wave function collapse is not an actual physical event but only happens when we become aware of a measurement. The collapse comes if we self-referentially begin to wonder how we measure up. It may be precipitated by the comment, “You’ve got to be kidding,” and/or uncontrollable laughter. In certain situations it becomes clear that “nothing happened,” or “it ain’t happenin,” increasing our knowledge with no accompanying physical change.
You must face it: no real link exists between you. Love is a chemical addiction generated in your own body, so realize this and apply the tried and true principle of DIY. Phase connections don’t exist in the real world, so don’t take them seriously. Yet Bell’s theorem shows that to account for the behavior of certain systems, extremely drastic models of reality must be invoked (resort to magick, spells; escort services). They necessitate the real existence of a pervasive and powerful long-range connectedness.
Other entities seem to exist but are not part of the real world (fantasies; wishful thinking; 900 numbers), or at least your world. Virtual images appear which seem real, but in fact are not (supermodels, hallucinations), unless you can get through the looking glass or screen.
Collapse represents a change in your knowledge (duh!) not a real physical event. That’s your story; stick to it. Just focus on your partner for a while, and wait for the next wave. Knowledge of the system is not attained by passive inspection but only by active intervention on your part. If systems failure is due to drugs and you fail to do it, your family may stage the intervention.
In this model, subatomic particles such as electrons are not simple, structureless particles, but highly complex, dynamic entities like your partners (complicated; troubled; carrying baggage). We reject the view that their motion is fundamentally uncertain or ambiguous (denial). They follow a precise path, but one which is determined not only by conventional physical forces (libido, lust) but also by a more subtle force which we call the quantum potential (trance/delusion/projection).
Polar opposite of the potential is the Reality Check. The quantum potential guides the motion by providing "active information" about the whole environment -- the Big Picture. This is the rather mystical form of dating with hidden variables (such as family members and hostile friends) and pilot waves (wingmen) that telegraph from the future what is going to happen if only we could decode it. At the implicate level, you are essentially soulmates, but then aren’t we all?
It all begins with a normal wave, but a second wave determines a precise position for the tryst at any particular time. In this theory, it is the 'hidden variable' (competition/ex-lovers/future in-laws/unmentioned spouses, kids, grandkids) that determines the precise position of the couple. Bohm's theory was that the second wave was indeed faster than light, and moreover it did not get weaker with distance but instantly permeated the entire universe, acting as a guide for the movement of the photon, er, your date.
Vacuum Fluctuation Dating: In this holographic paradigm, all is One. Long ago there was nothing but the self-contained primal state -- a vacuum fluctuation, what we call a Singularity, which led to the Big Bang. A whole new universe came into being. This is the zero-point of dating energy, an ocean of pure untapped potential -- too pure! In this rather mystical form of dating nature abhors a vacuum and unpredictably spews out free energy like wet dreams. The notion of quantum foam and continuous creation put an end to that.
The Zero-Point field (the lowest energy state) is a term used to describe what is sometimes called the “vacuum fluctuation - particles and anti-particles created and destroyed over immeasurably small time scales. It is also known as the vacuum potential, which sounds far more enticing. Opposites may initially attract, but later can act like the Anti-Christ, and have you screaming, “Get thee behind me.”
The side effects of accessing this energy ranges from gravitational “shield” effects (reduction in weight if not mass/inches) to some kind of torsion energy that bends space-time sufficiently to allow reasonable speculation about time effects (dilation: “Yawn, this is taking forever”; reversal: “I coulda, shoulda, woulda”). Also known as a mind-warp.
On the plus side is negentropic dating where you actually gain “free energy” from the Cosmos and/or your lover. Dirac called it the ocean of potential [Dirac Sea]; in the Al Pacino movie, it was called The Sea of Love. Tapping this energy is the basis of Sex Magick, where the thought that occurs at the moment of orgasm happens. You can consciously create your own reality and enlist the universe to help you, for you are That. Good luck with it; may the Farce be with you.
String Theory Dating: What is the key to unifying the mysterious forces of nature, yin and yang, Venus and Mars? String!!! Get a big ball of it. The string is the fundamental element of Grand Unification. In the absence of string, you may substitute Saran Wrap.
While there are many theories of string, we know for sure there are always strings on everything; who doesn’t know that? Maybe even Superstrings! And do I really have to describe how in this theory lovers are kept dangling at the end of a string always yearning for the unified field?
Resonance is the key to String dating; the couple that vibrates together, stays together. But be careful, because the string could oscillate wildly, morphing into a M-embrane or just a Brane -- a total head-trip. Anyway, it’s only an unprovable theory. Haven’t we all had at least one lover who had a big TOE, a Theory of Everything? At least you didn’t need an encyclopedia.
All string theories are only different aspects of M-theory. The M might stand for Mother of all theories or Mystery or Magic (physicists won’t commit), but represents the unexplored Field. The key to string theories are extra dimensions (6, 10, 11 or maybe as many as 26 of them), cozily curled up in their own domains where they best remain.
Strings produce vibrations analogous to music; hence the saying, “playing the Field.” Also, a physical model for relationships between one-dimensional extended objects (dweebs; geeks/strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (Zeros; losers/particles).
Transactional Dating: Time-reversal. You don’t date, you rotate. Instead of recycling your dates, they are “precycled.” The end is (acausally) in the beginning. Dates/particles perform a kind of 'handshake' in the course of interacting. Nonlocality means that in quantum mechanical systems, relationships or correlations not normally possible are somehow being enforced faster-than-light across space and time. Or, over the Internet.
Is a handshake better than a quantum kiss? This model (complex conjugation) describes any quantum (dating) event as a “handshake” executed through an exchange of advanced and retarded waves. They wave; you wave back, and maybe wink. Both advanced and retarded waves are valid solutions of the electromagnetic wave equation (Mars loves Venus = Venus loves Mars). In dating, it really doesn’t matter what your I.Q. is. Just b sure to check which “hand” is extended.
However, in conventional electrodynamics (QED; psychosexual attractions) the advanced solutions are conventionally rejected as unphysical or acausal (“not happening”). Wheeler and Feynman used a subtler boundary condition mechanism to eliminate the non-causal effects of the advanced solutions. I use restraining orders, shunning, and banishment to set boundaries.
In the ‘Fine Man theory’, the interaction of two particles/lovers is related to the exchange of a third party/particle. Time reversibility can be known as interaction happening both backward and forward in time, or a “do-over,” or perhaps “relapse,” or “rebound.” If you are a Hollywood or rock star, don’t worry -- it won’t last long. Soon you will return to your MWI world (watch out for the Great Attractor, J-Lo).
An electron (or lover), on its way from point A to point B, can bump into a photon (ex-lover). This also sends it backwards not just in space, but also in time. Then it bumps into another photon (another prospect), which sends it forward in time again, but in a different direction in space. In this way, it can be in two places at once. Many boy/girlfriends will attempt to use this excuse, er, rationale.
Wheeler-Feynman says when the retarded wave is absorbed at some time in the future (reconciliation), a process is initiated by which canceling advanced waves from the absorbers erase all traces of advanced waves (denial) and their “advanced” effects (anxiety), thereby preserving causality. A (clueless) observer not privy to these inner mechanisms of nature would perceive only that a retarded wave had gone from the emitter (pitcher) to the absorber (catcher). Between those of the same sex, this is sometimes known as “being on the down-low.”
This advanced-retarded handshake is the basis for a two-way contract between the future and the past for the purpose of transferring energy, momentum, etc, while observing all of the conservation laws and quantization conditions imposed at the emitter/absorber terminating ``boundaries'' of the transaction. Another way of saying transcendent mind numbing SEX. “Let’s do the time-warp, again.”
The transaction is explicitly nonlocal (out of town) because the future is, in a limited way, affecting the past (at the level of enforcing correlations -- i.e., current spouse). It also alters the way in which we must look at physical phenomena - i.e., “lowered expectations.”
Quantum Chaos Dating: Chaos Theory (CT) is the third revolution in science after relativity and quantum theory. It describes determinism, change and stability, creativity, freewill, and the underlying nature of spacetime. It is not hard to imagine how they apply to relationships. Everyone is intitially sensitive. Bifurcation (splitting) reflects the dynamics of third-party love affairs and breakups. Butterfly effects blow everything out of proportion.
Free will is related to goal seeking behaviors. Chaos reflects the wildness and irregularity in nature and ourselves. It models catastrophic change. CT eliminates the need for you to imagine you are the cause of any problems. It’s way more complex than that! Be sure your date knows this; it is critical.
The dictionary definition of chaos is turmoil, turbulence, primordial abyss, and undesired randomness, but scientists will tell you that chaos is something extremely sensitive to initial conditions. Chaos also refers to the question of whether or not it is possible to make good long-term predictions about how a system will act. A chaotic system can actually develop in a way that appears very smooth and ordered.
CT is characterized by phase space (life passages), strange attractors (temptations), exquisite sensitivity (mental complexes), complex feedback loops (69; daisy chains; Fifi and Fido), intermittancy (on again, off again). It suggests we evolve at the “edge of chaos.” Let suitors know right away that you know the difference between being nonlinear and beating around the bush.
Chaos is a confusing choice of words for this behavior. Chaos usually means disordered, without form. Here "chaos" means a simple, nonlinear system that is highly ordered, a deterministic dynamical system. Yet, in the long run, the values of the chaotic variables cannot be computed from their values a long time ago. You have no idea what forces are in motion, where it is going and how it will end up.
We can never start two experiments/dates exactly the same. If we start two experiments almost the same we expect the results will be the same. For chaotic systems the time series is not an invariant. It doesn’t matter how long you keep at it; nothing will change. Each experiment will be completely different. Only the attractor can give us the "right" explanation of what happened in the experiment. You may perceive this affectionately as the two of you living in your own little world.
The most important progress in science involves changes in the basic way we see the world. These changes are the simplest things that we thought so obvious they required no assumptions at all. Yet, it turns out that we realize that these simplest things do depend on assumptions, and that those assumptions (expectations) can be false.
The fractal dimension describes the relative number of smaller values compared to larger values in the data. The closer your values the better the date. Historically, we thought that most data must have a normal distribution and therefore that the mean is meaningful. Another word for the mean is mediocrity or average. Who wants to be average? With the perfect vision of hindsight, we realize much of the world around us is not normal anyway, but chaotic.
The point is not that we have been so wrong for so long. It is so difficult to see the simplest things as they really are. So don’t blame yourself! We become so used to our assumptions that we can no longer see them or evidence against them (denial). Instead of challenging our assumptions we spend our time in studying the details, when they are essentially meaningless. The fact is, they just aren’t that into you.
Science is hard because it is hardest to see what is most obvious. Chaos is the prime source of unpredictability in the macrocosmic world and the human scale, formerly described only by clockworkl Newtonian physics. Nonlinear self-defeating and self-destructive behavior are good for ratcheting up chaos levels. It isn’t long before criticality is reached and catastrophe looms. Once the split or bifurcation occurs, there is no going back.
Yes and No do not mean the same things in this world, nor do a wide variety of other empty promises or vague threats. They are subject to revision without prior notice, more so if you partner has Borderline Personality Disorder. Learn the phrase, “BPD strikes again,” or alternately, “PBD” - permanent brain damage. You can recognize it when you find yourself “walking on eggshells,” or your words are never taken at face value yet chaos abounds.
Chaos and complexity is nature's own way of organizing systems and creating structure. Your brain is chaotic, but then you knew that. All systems, including your love life, emerge from and eventually dissolve back into chaos. You viscerally and intuitively know this to be true, also. No amount of drugs will make you forget. Just face it.
Walter Freeman believes that perception begins with an internally generated neural process that prepares the organism to seek future stimuli in the outside world (duh!). Invariant stimulus from the environment arrives as information in sensory space and finally proceeds to cerebral space as meaningful input (duh! again). Meaning is a function of the level of arousal at which it is experienced (do I have to say it?). Integration depends on the level of arousal.
Chaotic relationships are seemingly random yet deterministic (hidden agendas; mental illness). Strange Attractors draw reiterations of the same character to themselves into their orbits, over and over, based on their sensitivity to initial conditions (complexes; psychopathologies; first impressions). You date the same type, over and over.
Complex systems with many bodies are more stable and self-correcting. If “thrown off course”, they soon adjust to “fill in the gap.” Most dynamics in nature, ranging from the orbits of planets to our behavioral adjustments in life are essentially chaotic. Changing the activity of just one element (wild card; 3rd wheel; phone call) can unleash an avalanche of changes in the patterns that might have otherwise occurred (“butterfly effect”). A structural perturbation is like a permanent mutation for any network or your love life. It blows up.
Chaos theory shows us we actually need to cooperate with chaotic dynamics, to enter a less-rigid process of flow, submitting outworn aspects of the ego to dissolution. Also known as “ego-death,” or “go with the flow.” This helps us evolve. Sure. At supercritical junctions we either break down (emergency) or increase adaptation (emergence) with more creative solutions. If you are chaos theory dating, keep your therapist’s number handy, and read up on self-esteem.
Chaotic systems exhibit holistic behavior. Holism sees the world in all its diversity as connected by complex feedback loops. Through the chaotic process of emergence, order appears spontaneously or even instantly within a system. Maybe this is the root of love at first sight or star-crossed lovers. Everything suddenly falls into place. When we are in love, we feel whole. Or, insane.
This holistic scientific paradigm helps us describe the psyche the way nature and our nature works. Chaos comes into our lives as an endless variety of crises and decision points -crossroads. Now is the time to make your deal with the Devil. We all intuitively recognize how chaos punctuates our so-called equilibrium, diverting our most carefully crafted plans and detouring our agendas. Sometimes chaos hits us broadside, literally as accidents.
Unpredictability is part of our emotional "weather," and we are generally trying to adjust to it. Watch out for brainstorms, hair-brained schemes, and spontaneous roadtrips. Chaos is different than the uncertainty principle; you can be sure of that. Unpredictability is actually predetermined, but you will will never know who, what, when where, how or why. It’s too complicated to explain. Watch out for dark energy and even more for dark matter.
Sometimes we spontaneously use science metaphors such as "black holes," "nuclear melt downs," or "quantum leaps," to describe feelings, relationships, or personal dynamics. The leap of faith comes into play, particularly when contemplating marriage. Carefully consider the number of melt downs that preceed it in courtship.
Sensitive dependence means all wounds are created equal, especially if they are yours. This sensitivity never goes away. It can only get worse. The causes and effects of the events that a complex system experiences are not proportional to each other. The different parts of complex systems are linked and affect one another in a synergistic manner. There is positive and negative feedback in a complex system.
The level of complexity depends on the character of the system, its environment, and the nature of the interactions between them. Complexity can also be called the "edge of chaos". When a complex dynamical chaotic system because unstable, an attractor draws the stress and the system splits. This is called bifurication.
Bifurcation into a particular state or chaotic attractor may generate a unique anticipatory choice. The transition from chaos thus models the sudden moment of insight - “Eureka”, deductive cognition, or sensory recognition (See Part II, “No Expectations”, on decision theory). Often we think, “I’ve found it” or “Aha, this is it; go for it” Bifurcation can also model orgasm, according to Lubricatus (1999):
“Female sexual response is subject to a plethora of subjective (internal) and objective (external) inputs (i.e., stimuli), and is therefore part of a dynamical system. And dynamic systems are ruled by sudden, disjunctive switches in state, known as bifurcations. The point of no-return for these bifurcations are known as catastrophes. One must remember in using this terminology that the so-called catastrophe is catastrophic only in terms of being able to predict future outcomes of the system based on input data. In real life, these bifurcation triggers may be something such as a sneeze, or the ringing of the telephone.”
Chaotic excitability is a universal sense organ. Subtle fluctuations in this creative ground state may be pumped up by the ‘butterfly effect’ into perceivable effects, even more so, by the “Venus Butterfly” effect (see Appendix I). The human neurosystem may be responsive to fluctuations at the level of a single quantum. Shaking the system a little (threats; competition; flowers; compliments; active listening) can jolt a sub-optimal state into a better solution. Or give you a chance to do so.
Discussion:
Relationships are more than chemistry; it’s deeper and way more complex than that. Love is not enough. The Copenhagen Interpretation alleges that the unobserved world that sustains this one is not ordinary but spooky and counterintuitive (“weird science”). It is scary when scientists don’t even understand their own field. We know from dating that substance is connected to perception. But don’t mistake it for solidity or reality.
Make no mistake; there is no consensus in physics at this time. All acts of observation drastically modify the strange substratum, changing it at every moment into the everyday world. Paul McCartney was therefore right when he said, “The love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Heisenberg claimed this substratum is made of tendencies or possibilities, rather than actualities. Also, there can be hidden variables (drugs, alcohol, proclivities). Chaos Theory reminds us to watch out for the not so random element, especially Strange Attractors. Others will try to pull you into their periodic, cyclic, or whacky orbits.
Quantum wholeness adds that our “parts” are linked intimately and holographically at the most fundamental level. Now, there’s a picture! The best relationships are electric and magnetic. Von Neumann claims measurement only happens in some mind, which somehow constructs the phenomenal world. It probably isn’t blonde.
Mind is as elemental in this view as consciousness is for others. Criteria for consciousness and quantum dating include mind links (rapport, empathy, ESP), mind maps (love maps; map to your house), mind reach (scope, imagination, Siddhas, superpowers), quality and quantity of mind, attention mechanisms, sense of self, personality, free will, evolution, and surprise, surprise -- novelty. In an ideal world I.Q. and E.Q. (emotional quotient) are equally important. If their brain chemistry is off, it will drive you crazy. Be sure to ask about prior brain trauma.
Likewise, these can be good qualities for a lover. Let them know about your creative edge and any cyberotica or devices you have for purely experimental purposes. Tell them when you are ready for quantum observation and measurement.
Resonance is important for keeping others on your wavelength; share a vibration. You know from plugging in your electronics that polarity matching is a must. Wave motion gave life its original direction and is built into each of our cells. Thus, we have “catch the wave,” “long may it wave,” and “Wave On!”
Many-worlds says our human experience is part of a larger experience enjoyed by similar beings our other selves in similar universes nearby. Watch out for pods under your bed. Tell the multiverse in no uncertain terms, your clone sleeps alone, even though it does have fuzzy attributes. Quantum foam does not make a good spermicide. And do not confuse hard bodies with the “hard problem.” It’s all subjective. Maintain your degrees of freedom. While we somewhat understand the dynamics of the strong and the weak, we continue to yearn with cosmologists for the mystery of Grand Unification.
Everything’s fine as long as you stay in your own orbit. Never, ever go too far down a black hole. Remember, once you cross the Event Horizon, it’s all over -- a done deal. Make your reality up to be however you want, but don’t forget to read the small print. It is called Karma, natural consequences. You remember Karma, don’t you? Your mind creates the factual world from the unrealized possibilities for existence. If you think this makes you sound like God, so be it; you always secretly thought so anyway, didn’t you?
Conclusions:
We realize some possibilities at the expense of others. You can’t have everything! You know this from dating; there is an inverse rule between quantity and quality. You have realized the expense. There is no free lunch. There are always strings on everything. The wise say, “Ah, relationships: those who are out want in, and those who are in want out.” The relation-ship has sailed.
And what happens to the damned Cat? Again, you're not supposed to ask but between you and I, God is busy playing dice for who gets custody. There are an infinite number of possibilities out there, so get more cats. The mystery is not what's in the puzzle box; it's the puzzle box itself. There's no greater level of reality possible within the puzzle box than outside it (in or out of relationship). What's within the box is just as much a surface appearance within the presentation environment as the containing box.
Oscar Wilde claimed, “Uncertainty is the very essence of romance.” And the Uncertainty will never go away, and it will always be weird, and you can never “get it” no matter how hard you try.
But that’s O.K. That’s the way it is.
(Maybe)
* * *
APPENDIX I
(excerpt from Lubricatus, 1999)
In light of the catastrophic dynamical nature of the function of female orgasm the question becomes, can one predict in advance what sort of experience a particular resolution of a function will hold? Any hope of this lies within Thom's Classification of smooth functions. Thanks to the Splitting Lemma, which allows us to split non-Morse functions into two parts, we are left with a simple chart (depicted below) which describes all the regular shapes a three dimensional region can be deformed into.
Table 1 - The Thom classification of smooth functions
Function Name
y³ Fold
y4 Cusp
y5 Swallowtail
y6 Butterfly
y³ - 3yy² Elliptic umbilic
y³ + y³ Hyperbolic umbilic
y²y + y4 Parabolic umbilic
If we define this three dimensional space as the possibility of female orgasm, then we can assign both internal and external inputs to each of the seven elementary catastrophes. Working with limited N.I.H. funding and volunteer participants at Johns Hopkins, I wish to present the present, highly preliminary studies. Additional field tests of anorgasmic, non-orgasmic and orgasmic experiences are required, as are additional hours of computer time, also requiring more funding, to analyze the results.
Table 2 -- Preliminary Findings Correlating the Shape of Probability Space and the Occurrence of Female Orgasm from Rene Thom's Classification of Catastrophes
Catastrophe Internal Input Factors External Input Factors
Fold anorgasmic anorgasmic
Cusp orgasmic non-orgasmic
Swallowtail non-orgasmic non-orgasmic
Butterfly orgasmic orgasmic
Hyperbolic umbilic non-orgasmic anorgasmic
Elliptic umbilic orgasmic non-orgasmic
Parabolic umbilic anorgasmic orgasmic
Based on this extremely tentative data the results to date do look promising. There is clearly only one recognizable configuration of probability space, f(y6 + a1y4 + a2y³ + a3y² + a4y), the Butterfly within which a woman can be certain to avoid frustration. In addition, this small sample indicates the most common function, the Fold, y³ + a1y, predicts the domain of the anorgasmic space, a configuration that, while it might not bring ecstasy, at least doesn't presage despair.
REFERENCES:
Deutsch, David (2000). The Fabric of Reality.
Herbert, Nick (1993). Elemental Mind: Human Consciousness and the New Physics. New York: Plume.
Herbert, Nick (1985). Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics. New York:Random House.
Lubricatus, Maria (1999). “The Bifurcated Catastrophe Theory of the Female Orgasm”, Third Annual Women in Projective Geometry Conference, held in Baltimore, Maryland, August 18 - 25, 1999.
Miller, Iona (1993). Chaosophy 1993. Wilderville, Oregon: Asklepia Publications.
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Transdisciplinarian, Iona Miller is a writer, hypnotherapist and multimedia artist, living in Southern Oregon, USA. She has developed extensive groundbreaking work on the relationship of chaos theory and negentropy to emergent paradigm shift or worldviews in philosophy, cosmology, biophysics, medicine, experiential psychotherapy, creativity, art, and society.
THE VENUS BUTTERFLY EFFECT
Sexual Healing: A Review and Discussion
By Iona Miller, CHT 12/04
But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life.
~ Michel Foucault
The relationship between two people creates society; society is not independent of you and me; the mass is not by itself a separate entity but you and I in relationship to each other create the mass, the group, the society.--Krishnamurti
?For all the trappings of civilized society, and our attempts to restrain and civilize it, sex remains forever the chaotic vital force, eclipsing our hearts and capturing our minds, winging on the airwaves in the throbbing beat of rock and roll, ensnaring all, in love's enticements and torments, from our founding creation myths, to our greatest dramatic performances. Its mountains of spice span the great divide between divine comedy and stark tragedy.
~ Chris King, Sexual Paradox
Total union is not possible when the ego is afraid to give up, and where the ego is not firmly grounded in the instincts it dare not surrender to the transpersonal power. ~Marion Woodman, Addiction to Perfection
The philosophy presented in Paul Pearsall's 1994 book Sexual Healing is more pertinent than ever, as we seek new ways of healing ourselves, others, and our trouble-plagued world. Many people understand that this work begins at home, in 'cleaning up one's own backyard', but we can also come to understand that social outreach can be rooted in a healthy approach to our sexuality and wholeness.
In chaos theory's butterfly effect, small influences are pumped up into great change; in the "Venus butterfly effect" healing spreads from the sexual core of each of us into the environment. The seemingly inconsequential or unrelated affects outcomes in ways unpredicatable to modern humankind. We can certainly guess at many factors in our lives, but there are equally other things happening beyond our knowing that perturb our life paths into different choices. The same can happen on a greater scale, from molecular to global.
Sexual healing requires that we practice selflessness as often out of bed as we do in bed so that when we make love, we love like we live. Sexual healing suggests the universal principles of collective responsibility rather than individual right lead to better health for ourselves and our society. The focus to comply to avoid punishment must be replaced with intentionality.
The sexual and reproductive choices of each of us play a pivotal roll in the future of life and human culture. The multidimensional sexual relationship in its mingling of cooperative and competitive motifs, is a fundamental mystery of existence, out of which life, diversity and the richness of human culture spring - the condition of creative sexual paradox. (Fielder and King).
People connecting is the true act of healing. Sexual healing views the immune system as a sensual and sexual organ ? a liquefied nervous system. The primary purpose of sex as a psychophysical impulse is not to fulfill the individual but to promote more caring and intimacy everywhere and for everyone - family, society, and the world. Sexual healing is based on the sacredness and privacy of the two-person interaction. There are five levels of connection: with self, with another, with something more, with the present moment, and with the body of another person.
Intimacy/interdependence and immunity are inseparably linked, like mindbody and matter/energy. Our personal health is intimately related to our sexual and bonding styles, and reflects in the greater community at large. Our culture is rooted in our psychophysiology. Sexual healing is based on the assumption that the desire and ability to merge intensely with another person is crucial to health. Through it we connect with another person, the present moment, and open to the transpersonal, living in the moment not for the moment.
There are long-term health benefits in such unions. But healing love derives from caring acts, not spontaneous and romantic emotional reflexes and brain-chemistry which can be quite overwhelming and distressing. Pleasure heals. Sexual healing actively enhances relationship, feels good and fits well and constructively with the world and is good for your health. It is the physical expression of how we think, feel and believe about our healing partner. People either stress or nurture us, in general. We decide if we feel threatened or comforted, attracted or repulsed.
Psychoneurosexuality
Psychoneurosexuality suggests intimate relationships are not only choices of who and how we love but affect our health and that of our partner. Every act of love and intimacy is an act of immunity. We can protect and heal our bodies with healthy connections. Trust and security allow us to open to vulnerability.
In meaningful connected sexual intimacy our hormones are in erotic harmony that boosts immune function. Every sex act is potentially an anti-aging immune stimulation. Intimate relations are a way of stimulating, programming, balancing and strengthening the immune system.
Loving empathy is earned within an enduring, responsible, intimate exchange intentionally engaged in with another person. We feel love when we behave lovingly. Empathy means sensing and acknowledging another?s feelings, but sympathy validates them as authentic. Sexual healing combines both for mutual support. Our passions are prototypes for immune function and healing, and perhaps more foundational than fads in ?healthy living.? Those who pursue time-consuming health hobbies to the detriment of their relationships, take note.
Attachment Patterns
Adult romantic love can be viewed as a continuation of the attachment process. Love is an integration of three biologically based behavioral systems: attachment, caregiving, and sexuality. "Companionate love" includes attachment and caregiving but not necessarily sexuality, whereas "passionate love" emphasizes only sexual attraction. Attachment style is likely to exert a very pervasive influence on our relationships with others, because it reflects general views about the rewards and dangers of interpersonal relationships.
There are three typical attachment styles: secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent. There are similarities in the life-cycle of adult love (an attaching ?in-love? phase leads on to a secure attachment) and childhood attachment (strong maternal attachment leads to secure attachment style).
Characteristics of parent-child relationships are probable causes of differences in infant attachment styles and are also among the determinants of adult romantic attachment styles. Attachment dimensions are likely to influence who one chooses as a dating partner and may play an important role in organizing behaviors, perceptions and expectations within dating relationships.
Secure individuals have a more positive self-image than insecure types. They are more trusting in general and likely to believe in people?s altruism and capacity and willingness and to adapt and control the outcomes of their lives. Their views of love are more romantic and less practical. They tended to report warm relationships with caregivers.
Insecure people have lower self-worth and confidence. They believe human nature is complex and difficult to understand, consider others less altruistic and more likely to conform to social pressures. Love style is related to obsession/dependency. They tend to report cold or inconsistent caregiving. Differences in attachment are linked to differences in beliefs about self and others in ways that are consistent with attachment theory.
Secure individuals? parental representations are characterized by differentiation, elaboration, benevolence, and nonpunitiveness. Representations by dismissing people were characterized by less differentiation and more punitiveness and malevolence. Fearful individuals describe their parents as relatively punitive and malevolent, but their representations are well differentiated and conceptually complex. Anxious-ambivalent people describe their parents ambivalently as both punitive and benevolent.
Differences in adult attachment styles are found to be related to differences in (1) most significant love experiences, (2) mental models of self and relationships, (3) attachment-history (memories of childhood relationships with parents), (4) vulnerability to loneliness, and (5) feelings related to work, such as feelings towards relationships with coworkers and using work to avoid social contacts.
Bonding is a buffer against both delusional delight and crisis, the slings and arrows of life. We learn to be attracted to the intensity of interpersonal relationship rather than our own arousal states (psychochemical high). Infatuation causes us to assess our emotional, cognitive and sexual coping capacity to be intimate in a healthy and satisfying way. An individual`s own attachment style was a stronger predictor of perceived relationship quality than the partner`s attachment style.
Compared with secure and anxious-ambivalent persons, avoidant persons report lower levels of intimacy, enjoyment, promotive interaction, and positive emotions, and higher levels of negative emotions, primarily in opposite-sex interactions. Avoidant persons may structure social activities in ways that minimize closeness. Secure people differentiate more clearly than either insecure group between romantic and other opposite-sex partners.
1. Personal attachment style has a more significant effect on how relationships are experienced than partner`s style.
2. Males will report lower levels of interdependence, commitment and satisfaction when with anxious females.
3. Females will report lower levels of trust and satisfaction when with avoidant males.
Relationships can have an effect on attachment style, but attachment style is actually pretty robust and rarely affect another?s attachment style. Attachment style is related to attachment history, beliefs about relationships, personal love style, duration of romantic relationships, self-esteem, avoidance of intimacy, limerance and love addiction.
This suggests attachment style is likely to exert a very pervasive influence on the individual?s relationships with others, because it reflects general views about the rewards and dangers of interpersonal relationships. Attachment history has a decreasing effect on style of romantic relationship as individuals age.
Sexual Healing
We can be nurtured by someone without feeding on them. Sexual healing is based on sharing our life energy generated by a fully connected life. It is not possible when we draw from the core our partners? life energy or give energy from our own core. We can give altruistically without giving lives away to energy vampires. Sexual healing requires a new view of bonding and a concept of connective codependence as a cure -- a means of deploying one's loving erotic style to care for and with another no matter how severe the relationship crisis and challenges may be or how hurt and impaired the partner may become.
Sexual healing requires us to move beyond mindbody chemistry toward more growth-promoting, meaningful, stable, enduring, more demanding relationships, focusing on the other rather than our internal high. Sexual healing involves recognition of your own, your partner?s, and you relationship?s variations in sexual intimacy. It is a measured response to the true identity and essence of the other person. Bonding is based on connective codependence and interdependence and is the source of the most powerful sexual healing.
Pearsall helps us reclaim our psychosexual essential nature from the 'sexual syndicate' with its negative labels, mechanical technical proficiencies, ersatz taboo-breaking, and hypersexualized but relatively meaningless sexual context and content. Media arguably plays as big or larger of a role in the syndication of sex than the healing arts.
The net result is that we either manically try to 'measure up', or feel like failures, grow despondent, wrongly viewing ourselves as addicts or codependents. We import techniques from outside of ourselves to ?fix? the problems from self image and sexual compulsion to erotic anesthesia.
My own experience as a therapist with a specialty in sexual abuse throughout the 1980s and '90s showed me quite graphically that many of the principles being preached by the recovery movement and other social institutions lacked a certain fundamental insight.
They spoke of the four primary modes or dimensions of human connection: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, but often in a prescriptive not in a cohesive way. It seemed like a one-size-fits-all formulaic approach, with a dogma of ?dos? and ?don?ts?. The guiding principle of sexual healing is Oneness and connection, not power, control, or even personal autonomy.
Sometimes the enforcement of these models of life, sexuality, and recovery were toxic in and of themselves. In collusion with misplaced religious zeal, it spawned the poisonous cultural memes of Satanic Panic and False Memory Syndrome, which consumed many lives. Families were split apart by an imported delusion and faulty social model, children were manipulated and confused, enforcement agencies and courts were tied up, people were falsely accused and imprisoned, etc.
At best, rigid protocols and endless meetings were the 'only' way to become a more functional individual, lest one continuously repeat the dysfunctional cycle or pass it on to future generations. This distorted control over cookbook definitions of good sex has created a bondage of self-pleasure.
Sexual Shamanism
But wouldn't it be terrific if we could perturb society and mount the same kind of effect in a positive direction based on sexual healing, and permeating the fabric of life from the molecular to the transpersonal level? This would go a long way toward healing our mindbody splits, left over from the obsolete paradigm of the mechanistic age. It reminds of Lysistrata, and the more recent ?Women Who Slept with Men to Take the War Out of Them?.
Pearsall dared question some of these underlying recovery-based assumptions without attacking the system directly. Instead he simply offered a treatment philosophy he felt supported overall health more strongly. Some of these values are echoed in tradition while others are revolutionary in their simplicity. Sexual healing is an androgynous process that combines the strengths and counterbalances the vulnerabilities of gender roles. It might therefore be considered a creative movement toward gender reunion, or wholeness.
He suggested a type of sexual shamanism, that a sexual healer is a model of sexual health, not just one with an absence of sexual problems. He called this personality an Erotophilic ? a lover of the erotic, of Eros, of close intimate contact. In myth, Eros is wed to Psyche, the psychophysical imaginal faculty. The child Voluptas embodied their mutual joy. Giving, not just trying to get, makes us healthy and heals us. We partner in a kind of privileged miracle.
All shamans exhibit sensual activity and playful joy in living with others. A sexual healer is a ?care-sharer?. Stamina and desire emerge spontaneously from those who are energetic, erotic, tender, responsible, happy, confident, empathic, sympathetic, and fulfilled. Motivation follows the exchange of intentional caring acts. Why wouldn't it?
But Pearsall doesn't burden us with ?New Age guilt? or shame about our health or lack of it. He busts the myths of self-healing, illness, grief and guilt as enemies, positive thinking, codependence and the heroic medical model. In fact, he considers illness a learning experience that perturbs our emotional stagnation. Suffering sickness is an inspiration for healing and an ?evolutionarily necessary because it drives us toward reconnection and the maintenance of our connections.? No disease kills people faster than loneliness. Most depression is rooted in lack of meaningful connection, bonding.
Connection guarantees the continuation of our genetic identity and the survival of humanity and the world. ?Health isn?t strength, it?s balance. Sickness isn't failure, it?s a challenge.? He points out that health as a convenience allows us to continue to engage as effective individuals in too much work or busyness, neglect our loved ones in narcissistic pursuits, and focus on distractions from feeling love and loving. Total health includes loving intimacy with those around us not just solitary health fitness practices and choices. Suffering can set us back or draw us together; none of us are self-sufficient.
But rather than polyamory, a term usually applied to guilt-free licentiousness rather than omnidirectional capacity for intimacy, he suggests a pentamerous model of sexual healing, based in psychoneurosexualiy. Thoughts, feelings, caring, intimate touch, eroticism and healing can be united through meaningful sexual intimacy to promote wellness. Important factors include 1) self esteem; 2) intimacy; 3) coherence or rapport; 4) mindful celebration; and 5) sensual connection at the molecular level.
Sexual healing is a paradigm that transcends the mechanical tension-release model of the last 50 years. It looks for the healer between and maximizes the power of intimate connection between two people who choose to link their inner healers, to seek meaning in life together, and to express that connection physically.
The body is designed for connection. The body is an enchanted resonating musical instrument on which our minds play. We can use it as a means of celebrating and actualizing our connection with another person, an interactional synchrony. We can literally breath love and life into one another, particularly in times of illness or suffering.
When we make love, in a sense all of us have made love, since we all share the same genetic stuff. The sexual response model of sexual healing is based on the art of sex and the process of creating beauty and meaning together by merging not only our bodies but our most personal inner healers. Responsible intimacy leads directly toward world transformation.
We can heal ourselves, heal another, and help heal the world. Sexual healing is volitional, rational, socially responsible merging with our lover to find multidimensional meaning together: enhanced self esteem (self-actualization), increased sense of intimacy, shared sense of life coherence, mindfulness of the present moment, and sensual expression of loving caring. Sexual healing is thinking, behaving and responding sensuously with another person.
Meaningful sexual intimacy allows us to connect with the higher Self we all share, finding higher meaning and purpose in love. This helps with the manageability and comprehension of life?s seemingly endless chaos. Merging with someone we love makes us intensely aware of the present moment. It leads to an increased sense of purposeful, giving and caring life, constructive to society. Bonds don?t happen; they are made. Meaningful bonds are not the automatic and inevitable result of love, but result from loving behaviors and intimate caring acts.
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:
1. That Man has two real existing principles, Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of the Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Sexual Healing: A Review and Discussion
By Iona Miller, CHT 12/04
But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life.
~ Michel Foucault
The relationship between two people creates society; society is not independent of you and me; the mass is not by itself a separate entity but you and I in relationship to each other create the mass, the group, the society.--Krishnamurti
?For all the trappings of civilized society, and our attempts to restrain and civilize it, sex remains forever the chaotic vital force, eclipsing our hearts and capturing our minds, winging on the airwaves in the throbbing beat of rock and roll, ensnaring all, in love's enticements and torments, from our founding creation myths, to our greatest dramatic performances. Its mountains of spice span the great divide between divine comedy and stark tragedy.
~ Chris King, Sexual Paradox
Total union is not possible when the ego is afraid to give up, and where the ego is not firmly grounded in the instincts it dare not surrender to the transpersonal power. ~Marion Woodman, Addiction to Perfection
The philosophy presented in Paul Pearsall's 1994 book Sexual Healing is more pertinent than ever, as we seek new ways of healing ourselves, others, and our trouble-plagued world. Many people understand that this work begins at home, in 'cleaning up one's own backyard', but we can also come to understand that social outreach can be rooted in a healthy approach to our sexuality and wholeness.
In chaos theory's butterfly effect, small influences are pumped up into great change; in the "Venus butterfly effect" healing spreads from the sexual core of each of us into the environment. The seemingly inconsequential or unrelated affects outcomes in ways unpredicatable to modern humankind. We can certainly guess at many factors in our lives, but there are equally other things happening beyond our knowing that perturb our life paths into different choices. The same can happen on a greater scale, from molecular to global.
Sexual healing requires that we practice selflessness as often out of bed as we do in bed so that when we make love, we love like we live. Sexual healing suggests the universal principles of collective responsibility rather than individual right lead to better health for ourselves and our society. The focus to comply to avoid punishment must be replaced with intentionality.
The sexual and reproductive choices of each of us play a pivotal roll in the future of life and human culture. The multidimensional sexual relationship in its mingling of cooperative and competitive motifs, is a fundamental mystery of existence, out of which life, diversity and the richness of human culture spring - the condition of creative sexual paradox. (Fielder and King).
People connecting is the true act of healing. Sexual healing views the immune system as a sensual and sexual organ ? a liquefied nervous system. The primary purpose of sex as a psychophysical impulse is not to fulfill the individual but to promote more caring and intimacy everywhere and for everyone - family, society, and the world. Sexual healing is based on the sacredness and privacy of the two-person interaction. There are five levels of connection: with self, with another, with something more, with the present moment, and with the body of another person.
Intimacy/interdependence and immunity are inseparably linked, like mindbody and matter/energy. Our personal health is intimately related to our sexual and bonding styles, and reflects in the greater community at large. Our culture is rooted in our psychophysiology. Sexual healing is based on the assumption that the desire and ability to merge intensely with another person is crucial to health. Through it we connect with another person, the present moment, and open to the transpersonal, living in the moment not for the moment.
There are long-term health benefits in such unions. But healing love derives from caring acts, not spontaneous and romantic emotional reflexes and brain-chemistry which can be quite overwhelming and distressing. Pleasure heals. Sexual healing actively enhances relationship, feels good and fits well and constructively with the world and is good for your health. It is the physical expression of how we think, feel and believe about our healing partner. People either stress or nurture us, in general. We decide if we feel threatened or comforted, attracted or repulsed.
Psychoneurosexuality
Psychoneurosexuality suggests intimate relationships are not only choices of who and how we love but affect our health and that of our partner. Every act of love and intimacy is an act of immunity. We can protect and heal our bodies with healthy connections. Trust and security allow us to open to vulnerability.
In meaningful connected sexual intimacy our hormones are in erotic harmony that boosts immune function. Every sex act is potentially an anti-aging immune stimulation. Intimate relations are a way of stimulating, programming, balancing and strengthening the immune system.
Loving empathy is earned within an enduring, responsible, intimate exchange intentionally engaged in with another person. We feel love when we behave lovingly. Empathy means sensing and acknowledging another?s feelings, but sympathy validates them as authentic. Sexual healing combines both for mutual support. Our passions are prototypes for immune function and healing, and perhaps more foundational than fads in ?healthy living.? Those who pursue time-consuming health hobbies to the detriment of their relationships, take note.
Attachment Patterns
Adult romantic love can be viewed as a continuation of the attachment process. Love is an integration of three biologically based behavioral systems: attachment, caregiving, and sexuality. "Companionate love" includes attachment and caregiving but not necessarily sexuality, whereas "passionate love" emphasizes only sexual attraction. Attachment style is likely to exert a very pervasive influence on our relationships with others, because it reflects general views about the rewards and dangers of interpersonal relationships.
There are three typical attachment styles: secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent. There are similarities in the life-cycle of adult love (an attaching ?in-love? phase leads on to a secure attachment) and childhood attachment (strong maternal attachment leads to secure attachment style).
Characteristics of parent-child relationships are probable causes of differences in infant attachment styles and are also among the determinants of adult romantic attachment styles. Attachment dimensions are likely to influence who one chooses as a dating partner and may play an important role in organizing behaviors, perceptions and expectations within dating relationships.
Secure individuals have a more positive self-image than insecure types. They are more trusting in general and likely to believe in people?s altruism and capacity and willingness and to adapt and control the outcomes of their lives. Their views of love are more romantic and less practical. They tended to report warm relationships with caregivers.
Insecure people have lower self-worth and confidence. They believe human nature is complex and difficult to understand, consider others less altruistic and more likely to conform to social pressures. Love style is related to obsession/dependency. They tend to report cold or inconsistent caregiving. Differences in attachment are linked to differences in beliefs about self and others in ways that are consistent with attachment theory.
Secure individuals? parental representations are characterized by differentiation, elaboration, benevolence, and nonpunitiveness. Representations by dismissing people were characterized by less differentiation and more punitiveness and malevolence. Fearful individuals describe their parents as relatively punitive and malevolent, but their representations are well differentiated and conceptually complex. Anxious-ambivalent people describe their parents ambivalently as both punitive and benevolent.
Differences in adult attachment styles are found to be related to differences in (1) most significant love experiences, (2) mental models of self and relationships, (3) attachment-history (memories of childhood relationships with parents), (4) vulnerability to loneliness, and (5) feelings related to work, such as feelings towards relationships with coworkers and using work to avoid social contacts.
Bonding is a buffer against both delusional delight and crisis, the slings and arrows of life. We learn to be attracted to the intensity of interpersonal relationship rather than our own arousal states (psychochemical high). Infatuation causes us to assess our emotional, cognitive and sexual coping capacity to be intimate in a healthy and satisfying way. An individual`s own attachment style was a stronger predictor of perceived relationship quality than the partner`s attachment style.
Compared with secure and anxious-ambivalent persons, avoidant persons report lower levels of intimacy, enjoyment, promotive interaction, and positive emotions, and higher levels of negative emotions, primarily in opposite-sex interactions. Avoidant persons may structure social activities in ways that minimize closeness. Secure people differentiate more clearly than either insecure group between romantic and other opposite-sex partners.
1. Personal attachment style has a more significant effect on how relationships are experienced than partner`s style.
2. Males will report lower levels of interdependence, commitment and satisfaction when with anxious females.
3. Females will report lower levels of trust and satisfaction when with avoidant males.
Relationships can have an effect on attachment style, but attachment style is actually pretty robust and rarely affect another?s attachment style. Attachment style is related to attachment history, beliefs about relationships, personal love style, duration of romantic relationships, self-esteem, avoidance of intimacy, limerance and love addiction.
This suggests attachment style is likely to exert a very pervasive influence on the individual?s relationships with others, because it reflects general views about the rewards and dangers of interpersonal relationships. Attachment history has a decreasing effect on style of romantic relationship as individuals age.
Sexual Healing
We can be nurtured by someone without feeding on them. Sexual healing is based on sharing our life energy generated by a fully connected life. It is not possible when we draw from the core our partners? life energy or give energy from our own core. We can give altruistically without giving lives away to energy vampires. Sexual healing requires a new view of bonding and a concept of connective codependence as a cure -- a means of deploying one's loving erotic style to care for and with another no matter how severe the relationship crisis and challenges may be or how hurt and impaired the partner may become.
Sexual healing requires us to move beyond mindbody chemistry toward more growth-promoting, meaningful, stable, enduring, more demanding relationships, focusing on the other rather than our internal high. Sexual healing involves recognition of your own, your partner?s, and you relationship?s variations in sexual intimacy. It is a measured response to the true identity and essence of the other person. Bonding is based on connective codependence and interdependence and is the source of the most powerful sexual healing.
Pearsall helps us reclaim our psychosexual essential nature from the 'sexual syndicate' with its negative labels, mechanical technical proficiencies, ersatz taboo-breaking, and hypersexualized but relatively meaningless sexual context and content. Media arguably plays as big or larger of a role in the syndication of sex than the healing arts.
The net result is that we either manically try to 'measure up', or feel like failures, grow despondent, wrongly viewing ourselves as addicts or codependents. We import techniques from outside of ourselves to ?fix? the problems from self image and sexual compulsion to erotic anesthesia.
My own experience as a therapist with a specialty in sexual abuse throughout the 1980s and '90s showed me quite graphically that many of the principles being preached by the recovery movement and other social institutions lacked a certain fundamental insight.
They spoke of the four primary modes or dimensions of human connection: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, but often in a prescriptive not in a cohesive way. It seemed like a one-size-fits-all formulaic approach, with a dogma of ?dos? and ?don?ts?. The guiding principle of sexual healing is Oneness and connection, not power, control, or even personal autonomy.
Sometimes the enforcement of these models of life, sexuality, and recovery were toxic in and of themselves. In collusion with misplaced religious zeal, it spawned the poisonous cultural memes of Satanic Panic and False Memory Syndrome, which consumed many lives. Families were split apart by an imported delusion and faulty social model, children were manipulated and confused, enforcement agencies and courts were tied up, people were falsely accused and imprisoned, etc.
At best, rigid protocols and endless meetings were the 'only' way to become a more functional individual, lest one continuously repeat the dysfunctional cycle or pass it on to future generations. This distorted control over cookbook definitions of good sex has created a bondage of self-pleasure.
Sexual Shamanism
But wouldn't it be terrific if we could perturb society and mount the same kind of effect in a positive direction based on sexual healing, and permeating the fabric of life from the molecular to the transpersonal level? This would go a long way toward healing our mindbody splits, left over from the obsolete paradigm of the mechanistic age. It reminds of Lysistrata, and the more recent ?Women Who Slept with Men to Take the War Out of Them?.
Pearsall dared question some of these underlying recovery-based assumptions without attacking the system directly. Instead he simply offered a treatment philosophy he felt supported overall health more strongly. Some of these values are echoed in tradition while others are revolutionary in their simplicity. Sexual healing is an androgynous process that combines the strengths and counterbalances the vulnerabilities of gender roles. It might therefore be considered a creative movement toward gender reunion, or wholeness.
He suggested a type of sexual shamanism, that a sexual healer is a model of sexual health, not just one with an absence of sexual problems. He called this personality an Erotophilic ? a lover of the erotic, of Eros, of close intimate contact. In myth, Eros is wed to Psyche, the psychophysical imaginal faculty. The child Voluptas embodied their mutual joy. Giving, not just trying to get, makes us healthy and heals us. We partner in a kind of privileged miracle.
All shamans exhibit sensual activity and playful joy in living with others. A sexual healer is a ?care-sharer?. Stamina and desire emerge spontaneously from those who are energetic, erotic, tender, responsible, happy, confident, empathic, sympathetic, and fulfilled. Motivation follows the exchange of intentional caring acts. Why wouldn't it?
But Pearsall doesn't burden us with ?New Age guilt? or shame about our health or lack of it. He busts the myths of self-healing, illness, grief and guilt as enemies, positive thinking, codependence and the heroic medical model. In fact, he considers illness a learning experience that perturbs our emotional stagnation. Suffering sickness is an inspiration for healing and an ?evolutionarily necessary because it drives us toward reconnection and the maintenance of our connections.? No disease kills people faster than loneliness. Most depression is rooted in lack of meaningful connection, bonding.
Connection guarantees the continuation of our genetic identity and the survival of humanity and the world. ?Health isn?t strength, it?s balance. Sickness isn't failure, it?s a challenge.? He points out that health as a convenience allows us to continue to engage as effective individuals in too much work or busyness, neglect our loved ones in narcissistic pursuits, and focus on distractions from feeling love and loving. Total health includes loving intimacy with those around us not just solitary health fitness practices and choices. Suffering can set us back or draw us together; none of us are self-sufficient.
But rather than polyamory, a term usually applied to guilt-free licentiousness rather than omnidirectional capacity for intimacy, he suggests a pentamerous model of sexual healing, based in psychoneurosexualiy. Thoughts, feelings, caring, intimate touch, eroticism and healing can be united through meaningful sexual intimacy to promote wellness. Important factors include 1) self esteem; 2) intimacy; 3) coherence or rapport; 4) mindful celebration; and 5) sensual connection at the molecular level.
Sexual healing is a paradigm that transcends the mechanical tension-release model of the last 50 years. It looks for the healer between and maximizes the power of intimate connection between two people who choose to link their inner healers, to seek meaning in life together, and to express that connection physically.
The body is designed for connection. The body is an enchanted resonating musical instrument on which our minds play. We can use it as a means of celebrating and actualizing our connection with another person, an interactional synchrony. We can literally breath love and life into one another, particularly in times of illness or suffering.
When we make love, in a sense all of us have made love, since we all share the same genetic stuff. The sexual response model of sexual healing is based on the art of sex and the process of creating beauty and meaning together by merging not only our bodies but our most personal inner healers. Responsible intimacy leads directly toward world transformation.
We can heal ourselves, heal another, and help heal the world. Sexual healing is volitional, rational, socially responsible merging with our lover to find multidimensional meaning together: enhanced self esteem (self-actualization), increased sense of intimacy, shared sense of life coherence, mindfulness of the present moment, and sensual expression of loving caring. Sexual healing is thinking, behaving and responding sensuously with another person.
Meaningful sexual intimacy allows us to connect with the higher Self we all share, finding higher meaning and purpose in love. This helps with the manageability and comprehension of life?s seemingly endless chaos. Merging with someone we love makes us intensely aware of the present moment. It leads to an increased sense of purposeful, giving and caring life, constructive to society. Bonds don?t happen; they are made. Meaningful bonds are not the automatic and inevitable result of love, but result from loving behaviors and intimate caring acts.
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:
1. That Man has two real existing principles, Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of the Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
