Because we live in a chaotic world with a chaotic brain, we need something to align ourselves with to dampen that effect, a sort of attractor.

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A useful insight into the possibilities here can be gained by considering the concept of basins of attraction. Let us start by thinking of a bowl containing a ball bearing. This will move around the bowl until eventually it comes to rest at the lowest point. We can say that it is 'attracted' to that point, so each part of the bowl can be regarded as leading to that stationary point, and the whole bowl is what we call the basin of attraction of that system. If we place the ball bearing outside the bowl then it will have a tendency to go somewhere else, so we can see that an attractor is only effective within a certain area of space, and we can have many different attractors adjoining each other.

If we look at our lives (particularly if we aren't satisfied with them) we might see that, despite our seemingly best efforts, we stay in much the same place. We can try to change our attitudes about being in that place, and this can indeed help, but the deep desire is to escape this place and this desire may not simply signify wanting to escape one's self, per se, but escaping what we commonly refer to as a "rut", and perhaps with good reason is it called a rut.

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Navigating Attractors
Let us now take a golf putting green. Imagine a player trying to get the ball in the hole. The hole is an attractor too. But it will only work as such if the ball gets close enough to the rim. Before we get there we have to negotiate the surface between the player and the hole and that has many other local attractors and barriers (little holes, ridges etc.).
Each ridge is a point of decision, the ball can fall to one side or the other, which path it takes is extremely dependant on initial conditions. A very minor change can switch the path from one attractor - the hole, to a nearby one - missed ! Once this bifurcation point has been passed it may take a very large perturbation (a hidden stone say) to switch attractors again, we say the system has become 'locked' into a particular attractor.

Perhaps its no wonder we are "pestered" by internal dialogue and by the many strange and screwy things we find ourselves doing. We later may scratch our head and think "I can't believe I did that! That was so unlike me." And yet we may have some deep sense that our lives, much like a game of pinball, needs to be jarred just a bit, "tilted", to get that ball rolling on the right track. One wonders why this works sometimes but not other times (or rarely at all). Should we just follow our "attractor" to its natural conclusion? Do we have to before a new path opens to us? Is this what we call hitting "rock bottom", the bottom of our attractor basin?

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Attractor Landscapes
Can we apply these ideas to people issues ? Indeed we can, we are all familiar with decisions that once made are difficult to reverse, and also perhaps with the feeling that we are being drawn into a situation against our will. Consider life then as a complex landscape full of hills and valleys. We try to navigate from attractor to attractor, using energy to climb to the top of a nearby hill - changing state, so that we can reach a better valley, a new (hopefully more rewarding) steady state - or attractor. There seems to be only one problem. We can see neither the hills nor the valleys and don't know if we are getting higher or lower on our personal quest. So how is this landscape structured?

Indeed? How is the landscape structured? Is it a Trinitarian universe? A Taoist one? Buddhist? Islamic? Jewish? Atheist? We surely may go from one to the other (or borrow ideas from them) in search of some landscape that helps us find those hills and valleys so that we can naviagate our lives. We somehow sense that just randomly plucking away at it doesn't work, although it is surely healthy to go through periods where we try many things, many new ideas, to try to get a sense of reality, a sense of where our lives should go. Thus it might be quite natural and healthy for someone raised in whatever ideology or religion to leave that ideology or religion, if only for a time, in order to gain some perspective and to be able to leave any unhealthy ruts. The Baptist Church might, say, be perfect for one type of individual but nor for another. We often thing (correctly) that a change of job is just what the doctor ordered�sometimes even a change of spouse. Other times these type of changes are only superficial and do not set us on some better course and out of old ruts.

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If our computer has, say, a tendency to make the screen go blank then every trajectory will eventually end up at the same point, that single state space point corresponding to a totally blank screen, in other words a 'Point' attractor. If instead the screen cycles between several states in a regular fashion we will have a loop in state space - a 'Periodic' attractor, and if a random pattern appears we may have more exotic trajectories in state space - perhaps 'Strange' or 'Ergodic' attractors. We can have order in state space even if normal space appears chaotic.

Interesting. If one views one's life on a sort of larger scale (five year increments?), one might notice cycles of change, stagnation, change, etc. We feel like we're moving and making real progress but it's just the same old cycle, in a new skin.

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Yes and no. We are assuming as yet that the peaks are fixed, that they never change. That is rarely the case for reasons we will discuss next, but nature has another solution here - sex ! Mating effectively shuffles the parameters, we are shifted across the landscape to a new point at random, a leap rather than a crawl. If a higher peak is nearby, this crossover (or recombination) can jump across the valley and establish a beachhead on the new hill. We can then 'hill climb' that peak subsequently towards a better future. We may of course land in the bottom of an even lower valley, most do and die out - failed experiments. Nature can be cruel...

Perhaps the attractions of sex are more than just feeling good, more than just an ego or self-esteem boost. I suspect this is so. I suspect on some deeper level we're trying to "climb a hill" or cross over to another one. That may explain any number of odd things that we do.

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor
and attended to with diligence." -- Abigail Adams, Letter to John Quincy Adams, May 8, 1780

Therefore to make significant changes in our lives we have to want to make significant changes in our lives. The will might be the one thing that allows us to chart a ew course. But the will might be different than simply acting out willfully. I don't know. But I suspect that we need to be very in touch with our true feelings and beliefs or else we're prone to simply fooling ourselves, apparently going through the motions of change in order to satisfy our sense of need, but not really implementing change which satisfies our fear of change. Our true will and desire is not what it should be. It's what it is. But once having found it there is then at least the chance of moving to the next stage which is the pursuit of knowledge. Learning would seem to be key to breaking into new states, new paradigm, to be put on the course toward new attractors and away from old ones, to achieve new, hopefully better, states of equilibrium.

A few random thoughts and questions: Is God the ultimate attractor? Are we trying to jump to different attractor basins via the use of drugs and alcohol (or other addiction)?

Might acceptance be a way to settle into our basins so that we can either complete that stage (while acknowledging that "complete" may be to stay in that stage) and thus enabling move onto the next? The expectations of other people can make change difficult because they help keep us in the "basin" we are in now.

Nutty peace activists could be said to be acting instinctively, trying to pull the world out of the "attractor" of war (although the inherent aggressiveness and violence in themselves and their tactics defeats this end).

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There is something obscure which is complete
before heaven and earth arose;
tranquil, quiet, standing alone without change,
moving around without peril.
It could be the Mother of everything, I don't know its name,
and call it Tao. -- Tao Te Ching

Are Zen and Taoist notions analogous to "quantum tunneling", getting out of traps that conventional methods could never surmount? Is that what prayer is as well?

The good news is that if nothing makes sense then we're all in pretty good shape. No use wasting mental energy on looking for purpose. Acceptance is easier because life becomes perhaps nothing more than having been dealt a bad hand. We don't generally get mad when a twig falls from a tree and hits us on the head. There is no one to blame. But if someone hits us over the head with a stick then we are surely to get angry because this is an event that could have and should have been avoided. Thus our lives, with a belief in God, are potentially made harder to resolve, not easier. Why would an all-loving being allow so many sticks to whack us in the head?

And yet our belief in purpose and meaning is more than just the desire to maintain some sort of psychological escape hatch for our lives, a way to maintain hope that our lives might improve so that we can at least endure the present. Surely that may not be an inconsequential factor at times in any life, and may be the overall orientation for some (maybe most), but existence itself begs an answer and it would be a convenient lie to oneself to deny the question simply because a scientific answer is not likely forthcoming. That simply the other side of the hope coin.

But it surely seems that things do makes sense in this world and this fact therefore can put enormous pressure on us. If there are problems then there must be answers. If things are going good we may be thankful, but if things are not going good then we can deduce how we may have fallen off-purpose or perhaps not yet found it. Or getting into the real nitty gritty of living, perhaps we will have to come to terms with some kind of purpose in which we are but near-powerless pawns seemingly created to suffer and not much more, although I tend to reject such an idea as futile if not outright defeatist. If we struggle at all it is because we have not accepted pointless suffering as a premise for our lives, even if we have yet to divine our purpose. But surely we suppose if there is purpose that, due to the presence of love (which is self-evidently higher and more desirable than many, if not most, other purposes or factors), when we are on-purpose in our own lives we will achieve a measure of gratification and peace.

Even if one divines that one's purpose is salvation and heaven, it's likely that there is still enough involved in day-to-day living that, perhaps except for saints, finding meaning for the various day-to-day events in our lives is a must. So we are left looking for codes, clues, and cues in the world around us as well as in our internal world of thoughts, feelings, and the mystical. And we will likely not stop looking until we find some kind of internal resonance with something. Parts of chaos theory resonate with me and it seems appropriate that it should because much of our world is organized in this way and it seems likely our brains are as well.

I must confess that I've never really understood chaos theory and don't know how much traction it has among physicists and metaphysicians, so relating the Christian message to chaos theory is not an area where I have much to offer.

However: A few random thoughts and questions: Is God the ultimate attractor? Are we trying to jump to different attractor basins via the use of drugs and alcohol (or other addiction)?

I would say "yes" and "yes."

However: Even if one divines that one's purpose is salvation and heaven, it's likely that there is still enough involved in day-to-day living that, perhaps except for saints, finding meaning for the various day-to-day events in our lives is a must. So we are left looking for codes, clues, and cues in the world around us as well as in our internal world of thoughts, feelings, and the mystical. And we will likely not stop looking until we find some kind of internal resonance with something.

That's true enough, but I don't think it's necessary to find meaning for the "various day-to-day events in our lives." A meta-value or paradigm automatically confers meaning on everything, so one doesn't need to search among the nitty-gritty to divine additional meaning. E.g., within the framework of parenting, one doesn't inquire if there's meaning in changing diapers and preparing meals; parenting children confers meaning on those tasks. Same sort of thing goes for those who have Christian faith and know themselves to be co-creators with God and co-redeemers with Christ. This meta-value sheds light on all that one does.

The need for a meta-value system of some kind does seem to be a desire all human beings have. That's how I see it, at least.

I like the sound of it, although identifying strange attactors within the family, to be effective (IMO) in psychotherapy, would have to include an interpersonal sense of that inner dynamic, which the language of physics doesn't need to utilize. You might take a look at Schwartz' weblink I posted on "Healing the False Self." His is just one model, of course, but it captures some of what you are describing here in this essay from a therapist's standpoint, where inner dynamics personify themselves as sub-personalities beyond mere anthropomorphic imaging.

w.c.

I found your first post particularly relevant to my own state of K. This desire for union is finding expression in creaturely bliss, ecstatic union with created energies, wonderful in the context of a married relationship but, at the moment, pretty well chaotic, apparently random and just downright wanton.

Yet there is a beauty in it which allows me to be gentle and gracious with myself despite the frustrations and unsuitability of it all. The drawing of the K towards this and that, her and her, are manifestations of my own brokenness; the mind knows so much but cannot consciously do anything about it but watch the energy pour out and wait for the grace of God and the overwhelming power of His Presence, His union.

Deep down I know this (God, Christ) is what I want, but I am so pulled, drawn, needy, yet not entirely blinded by these other attractions. If it were simple, if it were suitable, then good and well, but it seems so random and is so unsuitable. Perhaps there is the potential for great healing as the energy impacts upon my life and the life of those about me, I don't know. I've always found the K reaching for something, and sometimes it's found just what it needed to get me through a particular crisis.

Just like me to get all self-focused here, but it was the apparent randomness of the K's energies and the idea of an attractor that got me posting.

Stephen:

You seem to do pretty well trusting your own lights, in as much as this is possible for any of us. But one of the things I overlook is how differently these longings are experienced when another person has given their presence to that experience. There is a certain degree of fear, I find, in dealing with these energies without their being soothed by another who is allowed to know them, and so dealing with them alone is perhaps more uncomfortable because they really do need such empathetic support. This comes in the form of therapy for me, as I'm single. In a marriage, of course, there is more room for both this intimacy and the chaos that can ensue with the false self being more fully exposed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenetic_field

Sometimes yesterday's junk science is today's accepted and approved science. Chiropractic medicine
is one example. There are alot of attractive folk in here, including that chap who had the novel idea of starting this thread.

attraction_not_promotion.com

Sometimes yesterday's junk science is today's accepted and approved science.

Yeah! (Or pretend you just heard a Howard Dean-like �Heeeyaww!�). What you said is practically my motto, MM.. A �crank� is what I aim to be. That is someone who thinks of a new idea that is so outlandish as to paint the thinker as seemingly a fool. However, I do not wish to be known as a �crack pot.� Such a thinker may indeed share the same motivation, to pursue outlandish new ideas. It�s just that he or she never lets go of those ideas in the face of overwhelming evidence against.

Still, one or two crack pots held on long enough to see their ideas eventually supported by science.