the_silent_pulse tender square even after we realize that we live in a universe of ever-expanding possibilities, it’s sometimes hard to see how “mere” intentionality can affect the ponderous realm of matter and break the chains of history. how much easier it is to take refuge in our essential helplessness than to take responsibility for our godlike powers! here, too, our picture of reality shapes our attitude and actions. when we see the body as a structure of heavy, intractable meat and bones, all we can do is cut it or drug it or otherwise manipulate it from the outside. but let us create a different picture and see the body as rhythm and emptiness, as elegant, ethereal fields of waves joined in innumerable feedback loops to maintain a relatively stable structure. thoughts and feelings can set off sympathetic vibrations in this structure; the deeper the vibration that i have called intentionality can produce transformations in days, hours, sometimes minutes. no longer are we concerned with questions of “inside” or “outside,” for these limiting categories do not exist in the realm of pulsing waves. each body completes the universe and is involved in the universal evolution. in the same way, we can picture history, not in terms of chains, but rather in terms of cascading waves unfolding in time, producing new information, new options—“miracles,” if you wish. this new information, whether it be a novel arrangement in the dna molecule to produce a new species or a novel arrangement of language to produce a new idea, is what ultimately rules. meat and bones, cathedrals, species, the tread of mighty armies, all are subsumed in rhythm, and a rearrangement of vocal sounds or pen scratches on paper can bring an empire down. in such a universe, how can we think of ourselves as helpless? —george leonard, p. 164 211005 what's it to you? who go blather from