Your Inner Valence
“The various tremors of lived experience — whether they come in the form of an epiphany at an outlet mall or an epic tragedy like the attack on the World Trade Center — shock us into attention, but what we wake to in those moments is a reality that’s always there.”
The above quote from a review in the New York Sun — Poetry and Our Age: Adam Kirsch’s Invasions (a good article, though this post is not about it), made me stop and think. If there is an unnoticed reality “that’s always there”, then in what reality was I before I noticed the unnoticed one?
I agree that there are many things that I do not know that nevertheless exist. I’m not questioning the existence of reality separate from myself. I am considering how many of them there are — and how one gets from one to the other.
Think of yourself as an electron in a system of quantum consciouness. Normally, you inhabit the lowest orbital shell of the atom in which you exist. But it is possible for you to become excited and pop to a higher, more energetic shell or orbit. A different reality. In these higher states, you become like a valence electron:
“Valence electrons are important in determining how an element reacts chemically with other elements: The fewer valence electrons an atom holds, the less stable it becomes and the more likely it is to react.The reverse is also true, the more full/complete the valence shell is with valence electrons, the more inert an atom is and the less likely it is to chemically react with other chemical elements or with chemical elements of its own type. This is because it takes more transfer of energy (photons) to lose or gain an electron from or into a shell when that shell is more complete/full.” — from Wikipedia
Note that to get from a lower shell to a higher valence shell — that excited state in which you can make fantastic photographs — you have to input energy. This requires some doing on your part. See, for example, The Online Photographer’s post, Oil Shots, in which he states: “I feel a certain resistance to raising the camera to my eye and taking that first shot.” Be sure to read the many concurring comments to his blog post on the difficulty of elevating the state of ones inner valence.
Don’t forget that with ones inner valence, as with all things to do with quantum physics, the move from one state to another is not continuous: you are either in one or in the other. There is no in-between. You are either in your every-day ho-hum reality or in your heightened photo-ninja state of fully oiled-ness.
Now, I must pop back to a lower shell — I have chores to do. Stand back for photon release as I become un-oiled.
-Julie
