Early, early this morning, when I first began my work, I opened my email. Among many other things was a message from one of my sisters. She sent her love, and a link to a YouTube video — a musical performance of one of our old favorite groups. The song, The Hammond Song, was the highlight.
I will admit to you here. I almost didn’t take the time to listen. I’d heard the song a thousand times before, and my busy brain could only see the thirty-something email messages to contend with before I could even begin my morning writing.
But instead, I poured a cup of coffee, sat back, and watched the performance. I was transformed. My heart was suddenly full, and I was moved to a completely different level. I listened, not once, but three more times. That music put me in an entirely changed place, and space, and time. Just like that.
It gave me a fresh energy. It gave me a feeling of having a brand new set of ears and eyes. And I was thankful.
All of this brings me back to one of our Universal scientific laws. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It merely transitions from one thing to the next.
Once I got around to sorting through my email, the very first item I read was this:
In the year 1593, the State of Holland granted a patent on a windmill with a crankshaft.
The parallel struck me. Windmills take the energy of the wind and turn that energy into mechanical energy. Neither created nor destroyed, the energy is shifted.
As a sidebar, the history of windmills is quite interesting. Their first appearances came about a long time ago, all the way back to 2 BC. That is when the Babylonian ruler — a guy named Hammurabi — supposedly had great big ideas to convert the power of the wind into an irrigation system for his lands. He planned on using a network of windmills that would provide water to the land. All of this, so early. Historians found those plans, obviously. But they never found concrete proof that he was successful in this.
Jumping ahead about 1,500 years to Greece. A Greek engineer — this guy called Heron of Alexandria — harnessed the power of the wind using a windmill. Not for irrigation, though. It was part of one of the earliest musical instruments we now call an organ. At the same time, around the other side of the world in Tibet and China, windmills were also in use. These appeared on a much smaller scale in the form of prayer wheels.
The modern windmills we know today came centuries later. First in Asia, in the 8th and 9th centuries, then on to Europe. As I’ve learned today, there are many different kinds of windmills. The first “modern” ones, the Post Mills, were invented around the 9th century. The more advanced models came later. Those are called Tower Windmills and Stock windmills. Of course, we associate windmills with the Netherlands. They, and England are the two countries with the most.
But yes, the transformation of energy is an amazing thing. It happens all the time. Gasoline for our cars, coal for our electricity, sun for our heat, and Snickers bars for our bodies. Most of these examples turn chemical energy into kinetic energy. But there are all sorts of different energies changing into other energies.
That is what makes us living beings so incredible. We have a way of channeling energies, not only physically, but mentally — and most incredibly — emotionally or spiritually. We are given fuels throughout every moment of our lives, and we transfer those fuels into something else. Every moment. It can be good, and sometimes it can be bad. Many times, the final outcome of that transition is entirely up to us. As our awareness heightens, so increases the number of transformations.
This morning, my sisters sent me a link to a song. And a chain reaction ensued.
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“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
― Nikola Tesla
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“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
― Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle
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“You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 X 10^18 joules of potential energy—enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
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It started with a song in the wind.
