Al the optimist
Veteran Member
Is the Camino the fifth dimension?
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Interesting question, Al. I suppose you're referring to some spiritual or metaphysical dimension; if so, my answer would be, "It depends." By that I mean it depends on one's intent for walking the Camino, on one's spiritual awareness, on one's openness to recognizing or acknowledging that there may be other forces acting in one's life along the Camino than simply an exercise of placing one foot in front of the other for a million times or more. Personally, I think of the Camino as a "thin place," a "place where the boundary between heaven and earth is especially thin. It’s a place where we can sense the divine more readily."Is the Camino the fifth dimension?
Is the Camino the fifth dimension?
A black hole is such a great metaphor. As someone reminded me, and I had forgotten, what started out as the initial thoughts I was having, to take a two part walk, over two years, quickly became the full journey in early March/winter. It is indeed a vortex. But a welcome vortex that one welcomes...without pre-conceptions. A panacea to the pressures of daily life. A time to reflect and think.I think it's a black hole where we are all drawn and once we are caught in it's pull, we can never escape!!!
Superstring theory is a possible unified theory of all fundamental forces, but superstring theory requires a 10 dimensional spacetime, or else bad quantum states called ghosts with unphysical negative probabilities become part of the spectrum.
Now this creates a problem in d=10 string theory: how to get the d=4 world as we know it out of the theory.
So far there are two main proposals:
1. Roll up the extra dimensions into some very tiny but nonetheless interesting space of their own. This is called Kaluza Klein compactification.
2. Make the extra dimensions really big, but constrain all the matter and gravity to propagate in a three dimensional subspace called the three brane. (For an analogy, your computer screen could be said to be a two brane of three dimensional space.) These types of theories are called braneworlds.
Thanks for posting that link, WineShoppe Guy. I think you know what I'm talking about. Here is another link, which explores "thin places" from more of a theological viewpoint: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdroberts/series/thin-places/; it is the source of the definition I quoted in my original post. The Roberts article is probably longer and more detailed than most people want to read, but perhaps the best simple definition, at least the way I see it, can be found near the end of the article under the heading Thin Places: Theological Reflections and Hesitations,where he says "'thin place' is a Celtic metaphor that describes physical locations in which God is especially present.""Thin Places". Here is a link
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/t...ut-of-old-ways-of-seeing-the-world.html?_r=1&