Science Meditations

Every object in the universe pulls at every other object in the universe. This behaviour is known as gravity.

The force of gravity increases as the size (really mass) of an object increases. The force of gravity also increases as the distance between two objects decreases. In other words, massive objects exert strong gravitational forces and close objects exert strong gravitational forces.

Gravity Binds Us to the Earth

Human beings are tiny in comparison to the Earth and that’s why the Earth’s gravitational force is strong enough to ensure we don’t slowly float off into outer space. The Earth is tiny in comparison to the Sun and that’s why the Sun’s gravitational force is strong enough to ensure the Earth doesn’t slowly float off across the universe.

Releasing Ourselves from Earth’s Gravity

What if we wanted to float off into outer space? How would we counteract the Earth’s pull? We would use powerful rockets that burn millions of kilograms of fuel to push us upwards and counteract the Earth’s mighty gravitational force. The tremendous thrust these rockets generate would send us skyward and once we were far enough away, the Earth’s gravitational pull would be negligible. At this point we could let go of the rocket thrusters. We wouldn’t need them anymore.

How far is far enough away to not need rocket thrusters? What is the point where we don’t need tons of fuel to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull? It’s a trick question because we’re not actually seeking a point where escape is easy but a speed. This speed is known as escape velocity.

The escape velocity from Earth is 40,320 km/h (25,054 m/h). Once we achieve that we don’t need any more fuel to fly away from Earth’s pull. However, at that speed we’re not going far because once we’re away from the Earth we’ll still be stuck in the Sun’s gravitational pull.  Or, depending on what direction we’re going in, we might get stuck in the Moon’s gravitational pull. Which is okay if we were already planning to go to the Moon like Apollo 11 did but not so good if we wanted to go elsewhere.

For simplicity we say it’s the Earth that we are trying to pull away from. But what is the “Earth” really?  It’s a bunch of stuff big and small. The Earth’s big stuff is an inner core, an outer core, a mantle, a crust, oceans, mountains, and the CN Tower.  The small stuff is clocks, hamsters, Cindy at work, bacteria, clothes and chocolate. Pretty much everything on Earth and all of it pulling back at anything trying to escape.

Getting away from everything on Earth and achieving a velocity of thousands of kilometers per hour poses many complications. Complications like the possibility of burning to a crisp or being torn apart. Also, it requires a lot of energy. Even the space shuttles with their tons of fuel didn’t escape the Earth, they merely went into orbit around it.

Mental Escape Velocity

The concept of escape velocity serves as a good metaphor for the meditation process. The weight of our thoughts holds us to earthly concerns. Our thoughts pull our minds back to mundane matters stopping us from floating in the emptiness and silence of meditative space. We want to float away but the gravity of our thoughts keeps bringing us back.

It’s those damn thoughts.

Thoughts of money, relationships, physical health, oceans, mountains, the CN Tower, clocks, Cindy at work, bacteria, clothes and chocolate. You get the idea, thoughts of pretty much everything but especially the chocolate.

How to Achieve Mental Escape Velocity

Meditation techniques are the rocket thrusters we use to yank our minds away from worldly thoughts. Chanting, breath work, non-judging observation, body movement and epigrams that befuddle the mind are common techniques used by meditation traditions. They all aim to create distance from everyday thoughts and allow immersion into silence and stillness.

As with gravitational escape velocity so too with mental escape velocity a lot of energy expenditure is involved. Luckily for us, the purpose of meditation is not to escape thoughts, but merely to go into mental orbit around them.  Just as the space shuttles went into orbit around the Earth.

We’re not really trying to escape our thoughts we’re just trying to distance ourselves from them for a while. We want to be immersed in quiet and stillness until we’re ready to return to earthly matters.

Rewards of Pushing to Mental Orbit

The more practiced we become at meditation, the faster we get to mental orbit. Meditation is a practice and with practice we get better. As we deepen our meditation, we start further away from our thoughts and we require less effort to distance ourselves from them. This is the reward of pushing through to orbit each time. It gets easier.

If we never break free of our thoughts, if we are forever bound to them without any reprieve whatsoever then meditation is no fun. It’s just a continuous struggle without a payoff. And no none of us really want that.

Luckily for the mind elevater the struggle is not continuous and there is a payoff. With practice we can achieve mental orbit and experience the stillness of meditative space.

Tensile strength is the measure of how much stress a material can withstand without breaking. The amount of stress, in the form of pulling and stretching, a material can handle before it breaks is its tensile strength.

The Strong and The Weak

Paper, because it rips easily, has  low tensile strength.  A sheet of metal, which is hard to rip apart, has high tensile strength. An iron girder, used to brace buildings, has tensile strength that’s higher still.

How to Increase Tensile Strength

One way to increase the tensile strength of an object is to change the material the object is made from. Cars are made from sheets of metal instead of sheets of paper because a paper car is not going to last very long.

Another way of increasing tensile strength is to stack or weave multiple strands of the same material together.  It’s easy to rip one piece of paper but much harder to rip a thick stack of papers bound together in a book. Multiple sheets put together create higher tensile strength which leads to a better ability to handle stress. It’s true, there is tensile strength in numbers.

Parachute Cord

Parachute cord requires high tensile strength because it’s holding something extremely important: your body thousands of feet above the earth. But parachute cord needs to be relatively light and flexible too. It has to go up in a plane, be folded into a backpack and when the parachute is deployed the cord must withstand the upward force of air pushing against the inside of the parachute. A heavy steel chain would be strong enough to handle the weight of a human being but it wouldn’t fulfill the other needs of parachuters, mainly floating safely to the ground.

Parachute cord is a marvel of lightness and strength. The strength, which for us means tensile strength, is produced by weaving multiple strands of thin cord into one thick cord. The individual strands are themselves composed of hair thin strands woven together. This double weaving of strands creates a super strong cord.

Building Our Tensile Strength

Sometimes it’s easy to believe that all it takes is ONE action to help us remain strong. We want to believe just one change is needed for us to better handle stress and adversity.  It’s tempting to think that if we just changed jobs or took a Pilates class or ditched a boyfriend or stopped eating junk food or moved to another city our life would be much better and we could handle our remaining stress better. Although this might be true in some cases, for most of us we need to weave together all the strands of our life to increase our tensile strength.

Are we enjoying our work? Are we exercising regularly? Are we in a fulfilling relationship? Do we eat healthy food?  Do we have a supportive, joyous community we are a part of? Do we get enough sleep?

When all of these together lean towards the positive we are able to handle much more stress in our lives without breaking. We bend but we don’t break. We mind elevaters can jump out of an airplane, which is our aspirations, and land safely on the ground to a realization of our dreams.