It has been said that “when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you.” But the unpleasant truth is that sometimes, they don’t.

It needs to be understood that all things are relative, and none absolute. There is no pure light, because without shadow, there is no vision—and no perfect darkness because even the dimmest eye emits a light of its own. Therefore if you want to experience the best of your fellows, you’re going to encounter some opposition along the way.

We’ve all been there. We’re in to it. We’re stoked. We’re in the zone. We’re groovin’. And someone in the crowd or across the desk in the open plan office space doesn’t like it. You see it in their expression, and feel it in their criticism. In the world of competitive pop culture, these are called “Haters.” This can be derailing–though it would be better to move forward.

How do you move ahead of it? How do you overcome the nay-sayers when they are often the key choosers and decision makers? How can you get them to share your vision when their eyes seem shut to your enthusiasm?

Look beyond the objections for evidence you’re on the right path.

When you’re on to something good, and know humans are in a sure competition for success, a bit of resistance means you’re moving in the right direction. There is a game called push-pull. You push a little, and when you stop pushing you create a sort of pull by removing resistance. You don’t want to push too hard or you can more easily be pulled by surprise. And if you stop pushing, you get pushed. The resistance we feel from others might be a sign that we are a something of a threat, and that’s not a bad thing. It means you’re contending for something worthwhile.

Meeting with resistance is not the time to quit.

Sometimes we get pushed and we want to let go. We don’t like being resisted. But maybe the secret is pushing back a little and “keep on smiling” through it. It’s a game. Games are competitive but they can be fun. I’m not talking shoot-stab here; that’s not a good game. It’s push-pull. Nobody gets hurt but everybody gets stronger.

Maybe you’ve read what I’ve said here so far and thought that my ideas are fanciful or strange. And that may be valid because of the terms I’m using: dimensions, realms, alter-reality, and such. I can clarify that the phenomenon that I’m referring to isn’t as inaccesible as it may sound. In fact, we’re all doing it all the time. Simple actions like walking to a different room, playing a particular piece of music, fasting, eating, or meditating can alter the frequency we are attuned to.

These activities may seem commonplace, but they are accomplishing exactly what I mean. The common way to say it may be that you’re changing the ‘mood’ or the ‘vibe’ and those are fine ways to convey what we’re experiencing. But the more accurate choice, I think, is the ‘vibe.’ Our cohort of human beings is becoming more aware together through scientific and personal observation that matter is energy in motion, including our bodies. That our attitudes and actions can affect they way the world interacts back with us. The things we do and say bounce back in our direction. I’m reminded of the classic song by Frank Sinatra:

When you’re smilin’,
when you’re smilin’
The whole world smiles with you
When you’re laughin’,
when you’re laughin’
The sun comes shinin’ through

But when you’re cryin’,
you bring on the rain
So stop that cryin’,
be happy again
Keep on smilin’,
’cause when you’re smilin’
The whole world smiles with you

This is a realization that musicians often make. The vibrations the audience hears sets the mood, and that mood spreads to everyone in the room. We see it in other places like the dinner table, the office, the classroom; vibrations are infectious. Sing a sad song, and the one who hears you may cry, and so on. It’s the words we speak, our tone of voice, the special key, or the combination of note intervals we use that can, as they used to say in Frank Sinatra’s time, “send you.”

So, consider what vibrations you are exposed to each day. Do you engage with pundits who like to beat the war drum? Or do you prefer the sweet birdsong outside the window? They exist together, but you have the ability to focus on one or the other. You can attune to one of them and it’s your choice.

Something about vibrations is that they seek harmony. Frequencies of the same wavelength, or that are divisible by the same wavelength align with and re-enforce eachother, and the ripple could become a great wave. Which wave do you want to ride?

Have you ever passed a group of people, within feet or inches that seemed a thousand miles away? Some indistinguishible barrier is between you and them. As though they are in a different world completely, yet, they’re right there? We’ve all experienced it, I think. We encounter people that seem different in some unexplainable way. What’s going on there? They are on a different frequency. Not better or worse. Just a different wavelength. Have a conversation with them, and obvious truths might come into question. Definite observations come under scrutiny. We can’t believe that they see things that way. Disagreement. Unpleasant.

What to do? As I’ve been edging toward, you have a choice to make. A threefold choice. Each of these three options are valid and acceptable ways to deal with the dissonance of encounters with unfamiliar frequency. You can (1) tune to their frequency. Adopt their ways, accept their perspective, and choose to share it. A fine thing to do if it feels right. If it doesn’t feel right, that’s ok. You could also (2) disengage from them. In effect doing what I’ve been talking about. Leave the realm where you encountered these beings. There are ‘realms’ everywhere. They are rooms. They are courts. They are mountains. They are valleys. They are oceans, and planets. We have ways to close the door. We can do this physically, and there are others ways, using the supernatural ability that we all have to project ourselves into an infinite variety of psychic destinations, the portal itself sitting somewhere in the center of your head. More on that later maybe. There is a third option, that I don’t recommend. Let’s call it (3) “the clash” option. You have your frequency. They have theirs, maybe the vibes aren’t changing on either side, so we feel the dissonance. The pain of disagreement. The psychosis of competing realities. Both very real, but unaligned. You can lean in to that dissonant chord. It’s the most painful way to do deal with the things that seem ‘wrong’ but the option is there.

We don’t need to change them. We either align with them, or teleport. The clash brings the war. And, well, I know I don’t want that. Sometimes, I know, it appears that something must be done. We have to stop the bad vibes before they infect us all. That can happen too; I’m not naive to the fact that negative vibrations are just as infectious as the good ones. I’ve emitted some powerful negative vibes myself, eh? But the beauty of the truth is that we have the choice to change it at any time. Sometimes a big group gets into a negative harmony with one another. They may all end up going and jumping off a cliff together. Now that may be a beautiful way to end this dream, together with the others. But I want to encourage all to make this choice consciously, not just blindly, or shall we say, deafly, following the vibrations. If we want to choose life, and happiness, then “smile.”

And the whole world smiles with you.

To be continued.

Now that I’ve said you can change reality by conserving your attention, I’ve thought of a few challanges to that assertion which I will defend. Not only will I defend that the ability of the mind to teleport among various realms is a real one, but that it is ethical and right to make use of that ability.

I’ll make this simple. A popular opinion is that one must not hide from reality burying their head in sand like the complacent ostrich. Psychology has postulated and demonstrated a long list of ways we hide the truth from ourselves to our own detriment. Most of us have heard that it is the truth that sets us free.

Knowing and agreeing with these, why would I recommend altering reality, and in such a passive manner as simply not paying attention to it? Would that be irresponsible? I’ll answer.

The substrate of our existence is nothingness, in a similar way that beneath every painting is a blank surface of pure potential. Above every painted image lies the same potential for creation with the first step being an act of destruction.

I don’t think I’m taking a great risk by saying that most of us are seeing things in the world that we don’t like. I’m not going to enumerate them, you know what yours are. It’s a different mix for everyone but for each person, our complaints can be divided into two categories: those which we have the power to influence, and those we don’t. Here, I make a bold assertion, that for all of us, the things that we can easily influence in our lives are the most important. Daily habits, the way we choose to interact with others, how we direct our efforts. Local things that our awareness touches every day. We can make big improvements to our experience by focusing here and taking real action. And I’ll emphasize focusing the attention where it matters, not simply looking away from the disappointments. It is your focused awareness that puts you in touch with the interface you have to navigate to where you want to go inter-dimensionally.

The picture of our lives has been sketched, etched, inked, printed and bound in heavy volumes by others. If it was as simple as a painting it would be easy to make that first destructive brush stroke, changing the world. A better comparison would be to a library full of opinions, studies, theories, hypotheses, well respected and desperate attempts to articulate what is real–mostly contradictory. It’s impossible to sincerely contemplate it all. And that library of choas has formed the basis for our laws, our wars, our crimes, and thefts. They are not easily erased.

Did you notice I said “our” laws, wars, crimes, and thefts? That’s a problem and I did it to illustrate a point. There is a tendency among people to generalize human experience and action. We group entire planetary cohorts by segments of time and attribute the most major events and attitudes from those times to groups that could be loosely identified with some that exist today. This generates a lot of predetermination in the roles we play in society. While the zeitgeist gradually transforms, most people stay caught in pools of old thinking during their individual lives. The weight of all this history and philosophy forces us into lifestyles, attitudes, and potentials that are constraining. The guilt and victimhood, the blatant manipulation, the weight of this world, all would be rightly ignored by any of us. Because the people who created those worlds are dead. And though they’ve been erased, they worked hard to make their world seem very permanent. But they were no better or worse than us. They were identical. We are in the same empty universe they were in with the same potential.

We are constrained by the present thinking of others as well as the past. The people on TV that want your support, your votes, your minds, and your lives are already just as dead as the Pharaohs. They’re already gone. The war isn’t really real and neither is the government. If they are, it’s the belief in them that makes them so for the believer. We are all only imagining nations, races, jobs, and championship titles. Clocks, time zones, and saving daylight are pure fantasy. Every genus and species you’ve ever heard of is an abstraction with little actual relation to the beings they represent, because they focus on the body only, ignoring the mind.

Each of us are intensely powerful in a way that doesn’t make it to the mainstream discussion very often. But, if you want the bad things to go away. The evil and it’s power. Look away. Even though you’ve been taught that you’re insignificant, and your ideas don’t matter. They do. You’ve been told that you’re guilty, that you must take responsibility for the past. I disagree. Look away. You can make it disappear by removing your attention.

I still didn’t get to the part about actually getting to the cool realms. But getting out of the dysfunctional one is so important so I’m going to publish this and follow up later.

Looking into the internet’s public spaces, I notice people expressing stress and anxiety about the government’s affairs: elections, court rulings, corruption–that are rightly given attention as we navigate a humble attempt at democracy. I’ve felt that the rapid rate that news comes in is overwhelming. Especially in situations where it seems justice is in order, but we have to wait. I think it’s the sense of justice denied that stresses us out the most, not the high volume of information or even the bias of its sources. It is our sense of fairness clashing with reality.

I want to jump off here on that word, reality. What is it? You have a perspetive. I have one. They’re definitely different except in those rare moments of alignment. Which perspective is the right one, and is the truth dependent on belief or observation? For an expiriment, let’s say that reality exists when one or more perspectives align. Two viewers seeing the same thing. There is agreement there that whatever they are both seeing is real.

We now have mass social media–with traditional big broadcasters and billions of individual contributors internetted together. And whatever is happening in that conversation pertaining to current affairs is going to have agreement in perspectives multiplied by those billions of internet users. Applying my assumption that agreeing perspectives creates reality, than you have a powerful set of beliefs that become the de facto REALITY. The main stream.

The gravity of this main perspective stream would be difficult to avoid but not impossible. The way to do it, if all of this were indeed the way it works, would be to direct attention away from the main stream of information. In our case it comes from the global network of electronic media, but it has taken other forms and contents thoughout history.

All of this suggests a potential releif from the stress and anxiety we experience by simply directing our attention away from the unwanted perspective. Changing perspective changes reality. when we give our attention to the main channel of war, politics, crime, and legal battles those things seem to hold weight as the real things happening, but looking away–at a cloud, a stream of water, a bird flying by, a friend speaking to you–you can uncover a completely different reality untouched by the heavy and often unfair news of the day. It can be done alone, but becomes stronger with more members joining the new perspective. The main stream of reality doesn’t disappear, you could easily find it again, but your viewpoint changes reality because your are the the receiver and the final perceiver of what is real. Your ability to shift your attention is actually the power to transform reality any moment. Try it!

Bad Cop from Phillip Yniguez on Vimeo.

“Bad Cop” is a mashup of two different films (48 Hrs, and Our Idiot Brother) cut together to create a new twist.

Waterkaleid from Phillip Yniguez on Vimeo.

Here is a project built recently using a mix of techniques including 3D animation in Blender using a .obj file provided by Kohler, as well as some aggressive video color editing. Audio track lifted from Com Truise. Enjoy!

Worthwhile topics are those that are in the public interest, and writing should inform, teach, and state opinions. It’s the opinions that can get divisive though, and sharing them can feel risky. Taking a side on a political or economic issue has the potential to alter a career or an entire life trajectory. Then why do it? In a society that is deeply ingrained in capitalism, it can seem easier to shut up, keep thoughts quiet, and preserve employment prospects.

A worker in the wage-for-labor model carefully guards their opinion, because we’ve attached agreement with employers and their customers to our otherwise purely economic transactions. In some cases a certain position becomes the widely accepted correct one that leaves individuals on both sides of the HR desk pretending to agree with that one, regardless what they really think. Because all the rewards that come from our work increasingly depend on the perception that we are with it, whatever it is.

In this way, freedom of thought and expression are hampered by Capital. The highest level executive keeps equally quiet on the topic of his own thoughts as their employee.

This is strikingly true in the case of the executive of the United States government, whose public stance on reproductive rights comes into conflict with his stated religion’s official doctrine—a very public example of the tension between personal belief, a politically expedient one, and the one that can be shared in public. As members of multiple groups, we all share in this tension.

It’s definitely true that a lot of our opinions are better off kept private, due to their personal nature. But some topics are so public that they do need to be addressed. It isn’t easy finding oneself in an idealogical minority and I think it’s important to be vocal in these cases, with the understanding that any of us can be wrong or right. A willingness to adjust can often remove the fear or shame of being wrong. I believe it’s important to keep discourse alive. It’s too simplistic to silence or ignore others when we discover disagreement. Peaceful dialogue can create a balance among people where many different viewpoints exist at once, but they are constantly kept from getting too extreme on any one side. Of course this is only possible with willing participants.

How do you show willingness to communicate in disagreement?