
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Tasting a Tangerine

Monday, February 1, 2010
Teach Me
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Emotional Freedom Technique - Tapping
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Waking Up: Liberation from Ego
only one thing, and that is liberation from the confines of your ego,
thereby letting yourself be more fully yourself and more responsible for
your personal experience of the reality game. Waking up does not
mean developing paranormal powers or anything mystical or
mystifying at all. It simply means liberating yourself from your ego
and thereby living a happier and more satisfying life. It doesn’t mean
you’ll be able to “manifest” anything you want, or “create your own
reality,” as are popular beliefs among New Age aficionados. Nor does
it mean developing psychic powers as Buddhism and Hinduism claim.
And it especially does not mean developing an ability to travel in astral
realms or visit alien civilizations or any such fantastical nonsense.
Waking up is simply about being fully present and authentic with your
energy at all times and is best described as being energetically open.
When you can do that, your ego will no longer have a hold on you.
When your ego no longer has a hold on you, you won’t be taken in by
fantasy and ego-projection. You won’t engage with others’ self-created
dramas and power-plays and you’ll understand how to avoid making
ones of your own. You will be happier and you will feel supreme love
for yourself and for God (which are one and the same). You will be at
peace."
Martin Ball, from Being Human
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Venus's Orbit and Its Harmonic Relation to Earth
"Venus rotates extremely slowly on her own axis in the opposite direction to most rotations in the solar system. Her day is precisely two-thirds of an Earth year, a musical fifth. This exactly harmonizes. . . so that every time Venus and Earth kiss, Venus does so with the same face looking at the Earth." Eight Earth years equals, exactly, thirteen Venus years, the five kisses between them crafting a perfect pentagon, carved out of space. The numbers 5, 8, and 13 belong to the Fibonacci sequence, defining Phi.
Every 243 years, Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun twice in eight years-- a pair of "Venus transits," visible to the naked eye. In our own time, an initial transit occurred on June 8, 2004, to be matched by a second on June 6, 2012. The Venus transits also reflect the harmonic relation between the two orbits--in those 243 Earth years, exactly 365 Venus days will have passed.
-- From 2012 by Daniel Pinchbeck
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The Weather Underground
A great documentary on the Weather Underground -- This really was an interesting watch for me after reading Dave Pollard's recent posts on serious resistance to the destruction of the Alberta Tar Sands combined with my hopes for an (r)evolution in consciousness.
From the clip above:
"I still have hope. I don't think we're going to have a revolution in 5 years like I did in 1970 but I definitely think that people never stop struggling and never stop waiting for the moment when they can change the things that make their lives unlivable."
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Amit Goswami, Quantum Physics & Consciousness
The Roots of Consciousness
Can't wait to read more - the section on Consciousness and the New Physics is very thorough.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Understanding Being
--Eckhart Tolle, Power of Now, 88
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Isolated and Broken
-- Bruce E. Levine
From Alternet.org "Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression"
Thanks Dave for the link
Thursday, December 17, 2009
How to do all things:
[...]
In general, mankind almost always acts with attachment; that is to say, with fear and desire. Desire for a certain result and fear that the result will not be obtained. Attached action binds us to the world of appearances; to the continual doing of more action. But there is another way of performing action, and that is without fear and without desire.
[...]
People often confuse non-attachment with fatalism, when in fact, they are opposites. The fatalist simply does not care. He will get what is coming to him. Why make the effort? But the doer of non-attached action is the most conscientious of men. Freed from fear and desire, he offers everything he does as a sacrament of devotion to his duty. All work because equally and vitally important. It is only to the results of work - success or failure - that he remains indifferent. When action is done in this spirit, Krishna teaches, it will lead us to the knowledge of what is behind all action, behind all life: the ultimate Reality. And, with the growth of this knowledge, the need for further action will gradually fall away from us. We shall realize our true nature, which is God.
Appendix II, The Gita and War
Bhagavad-Gita: The Song of God
translated and appendix presumably written by: Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood
"My God, give me the grace to perform this action with You, and through love for You. In advance I offer to you all the good that I may do, and accept all the difficulty I may meet therein."
The Direction of Intention
St. Franis DeSales
Going to Salesianum (House of DeSales) High School, I had to say this at the start of every day and every class. Simple and profound, and highly compatible with the above sentiments.
Who's Crazy Here?
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?—Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, 42–3
If what is at issue is not truth but happiness and freedom, why must philosophy have the last word? Why should not faith and myth have equal rights? Formerly philosophers sought peace of mind while pretending to seek the truth. Perhaps we should set ourselves a different aim: to discover which illusions we can give up, and which we will never shake off. We will still be seekers after truth, more so than in the past; but we will renounce the hope of a life without illusion. Henceforth our aim will be to identify our invincible illusions. Which untruths might we be rid of, and which can we not do without? -- that is the question, that is the experiment."
—John Gray, Straw Dogs, 83
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Meditation Notes from the Writings of Ken Wilber
- "I have a body, but I am not my body. I can see and feel my body, and what can be seen and felt is not the true Seer. My body may be tired or excited, sick or healthy, heavy or light, but that has nothing to do with my inward I. I have a body, but I am not my body."
- "I have desires, but I am not my desires. I can know my desires, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Desires come and go, floating through my awareness, but they do not affect my inward I. I have desires, but I am not desires."
- "I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can feel and sense my emotions, and what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler. Emotions pass through me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have emotions, but I am not emotions."
- "I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. I can know and intuit my thoughts, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Thoughts come to me and thoughts leave me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts."
- "I am what remains, a pure center of awareness, an unmoved witness of all these thoughts, emotions, feelings, and desires."
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Jams and Jellies - Jefferson General Store Jefferson, Texas
A commercial I made for Jefferson General Store
Friday, December 11, 2009
What on Earth Could That Be?

Click here for article with a crazy video of this event
**An ominously beautiful spectacle, created by a failed Russian missile launch.
Thanks to Jesse for the link
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
K. Wilbs
- "There is nothing spooky or occult about this. We have already seen identity shift from matter to body to mind, each of which involved a decentering or dis-identifying with the lesser dimension... consciousness is simply continuing this process and dis-identifying with the mind itself, which is precisely why it can witness the mind, see the mind, experience the mind. The mind is no longer a subject, it is starting to become an object [in the perception of] the observing self. And so the mystical, contemplative and yogic traditions pick up where the mind leaves off... with the observing self as it begins to transcend the mind."
- "The contemplative traditions are based upon a series of experiments in awareness: what if you pursue this Witness to its source? What if you inquire within, pushing deeper and deeper into the source of awareness itself? What do you find? As a repeatable, reproducible experiment in awareness? One of the most famous answers to that question begins: There is a subtle essence that pervades all reality. It is the reality of all that is, and the foundation of all that is. That essence is all. That essence is the real. And thou, thou art that. In other words, the observing self eventually discloses its own source, which is Spirit itself, Emptiness itself... and the stages of transpersonal growth and development are basically the stages of following this observing self to its ultimate abode."
- Q: "How do you know these phenomena actually exist?
- A: "As the observing self begins to transcend... deeper or higher dimensions of consciousness come into focus. All of the items on that list are objects that can be directly perceived in that worldspace. Those items are as real in [that] worldspace as rocks are in the sensorimotor worldspace and concepts are in the mental worldspace. If cognition awakens or develops to this level, you simply perceive these new objects as simply as you would perceive rocks in the sensory world or images in the mental world. They are simply given to awareness, they simply present themselves, and you don't have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out if they're real or not."
- "Of course, if you haven't awakened to [this] cognition, then you will see none of this, just as a rock cannot see mental images. And you will probably have unpleasant things to say about people who do see them".[10]
Monday, December 7, 2009
For Argh Moments, Like The Current One
To be against happiness is to embrace ecstasy. Incompleteness is a call to life. Fragmentation is freedom. The exhilaration of never knowing anything fully is that you can perpetually imagine sublimities beyond reason. On the margins of the known is the agile edge of existence. This is the rapture, burning slow, of finishing a book that can never be completed, a flawed and conflicted text, vexed as twilight.
-Eric G. Wilson
Trading Meaning for Explanation
-Pinchbeck, 2001, p134
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Needing a Return to the Feminine
Know the male,
yet keep to the female:
receive the world in your arms.
If you receive the world,
the Tao will never leave you
and you will be like a little child.
"Our one-sided fixation on mechanized progress is the result of our civilization's ingrained habit of prioritizing the "rightness" of masculine rationality, seeking to dominate nature, over the "leftness" of feminine intuition, preferring to surrender to it. Edinger writes: "Everything 'feminine' (earth, nature, body, matter) underwent a profound depreciation with the onset of our aeon.... The fact is that the 'depreciation of the feminine' is one of the ways by which the Western psyche has evolved; and we can only assume that it was necessary for the required sequence of events." The "depreciation of the feminine" includes, not only women, but the intuitive and shamanic forms of thought denigrated by our rigidly masculine rationality, as well as nature itself, which is treated as the soulless object of the scientist's alienated gaze. This domineering attitude continues to underlie--and belie-- our mechanistic progress." -- Daniel Pinchbeck, p114 of 2012
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Our Psyche
It seems to me that the evil of the world is headed for a major downturn. The most innovative and popular technologies -- the Googles, Firefoxes, Twitters & Youtubes -- are projecting a much different psyche than the one described above. I'm confident that the psyche of my generation will be much different than the old-man psyche that gave birth to the destructive culture we currently live in. The fact is, the world we want is a much different world than the one we have, and I fully expect (in a very moral sense) for future technologies and business practices to reflect that.
**I realize this is an optimistic view, but it seems to me that an optimistic psyche has a better chance of success than a pessimistic one.
Mandelbulbs - Three Dimensional Mandelbrot Fractals

More images at http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html#renders
Thanks to Martin for the link
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Belief Salad
We certainly believe in the things we perceive physically, and those which seem “obviously true/commonsensical” to us, mostly based on experience and tradition and consensual reality.
How are beliefs about the afterlife/lack thereof any different than those that characterize regional and ethnic struggles, those obvious struggles in which it is obvious to the outsider that neither side is “right”?
I have found belief in a great, vast, mysterious world outside our own limited, consensual reality because I have no choice but to believe. Fortunately, this vast world offers ample room for all competing ideas - where there is paradox, there is a greater system by which the opposing parts are assumed into a greater whole.
Ideas from every culture and every belief system have begun to fit nicely into my newly constructed framework: Christianity (the wisdom of Jesus, unlimited compassion, “being a child of God”, end-of-time ideas), Islam (submission to ‘God’), Buddhism (wisdom, reincarnation, karma, simple living), Hinduism (creative and destructive forces, the third eye), shamanism (connection to Earth, levels of consciousness, spirit realms), new age (healing, prophecy, universal consciousness), astrology, science, etc. Anything earnestly believed may reside in “true” reality without negating the others. At the very least all must at least be considered, no matter what your current beliefs (which tend to fall into a “this is it” type of assertion). Be careful though: much belief is human invention. It is important to find the kernels.
What about UFO encounters? These have recently moved from the realm of ridiculous to the realm of the sublimely possible (in my view).
Firstly, a simple reading on the subject indicates the the phenomenon has much more depth, breadth, and width than I would have previously imagined. Skeptics more stony-hearted than I have been converted by direct experiences or accumulated knowledge of mystery.
Something has happened to these people to inspire belief. They’re not all bumpkins; they’re not all freaks; they’re not all followers. Considering that the idea of “abduction” has been reported throughout times in terms related to culture and period, I’m curious as to whether there is a outside-normality explanation.
If you don’t want to belief anything but the few sparse facts science has unearthed, that is, of course, your prerogative. But try, if you can, the alternative: living mythically and mystically, seeing meaning where you see it, and keeping a very open mind. Not all people whose ideas are unbelievably different than yours are crazy [, NTs I know].
Fractals, Coincidence, Prophecy, New Agey Weirdness
A constituent element of a fractal is the ability for the part to mimic or represent the whole. Any arm in a spiral fractal can be found to contain spiral arms of itself which in turn contain their own identical spiral arms, and so on.
Is reality much the same?
For example: I see the like/dislike spectrum of human experience to be very associated with negative and positive charges inherent in atoms themselves. Even on the smallest level, matter divides itself into “attract/repel”, two opposites with no consciousness of their own, but which perceive, and act on perception.
Also, I sensed it while tripping. So did Jeff.
Similarly, you see this in studies by which humans instantaneously are attracted to or repelled by an object or concept, only after which are they able to find reasons for the attraction of repellence - a type of reverse causality in consciousness. Perception is the true king, with rational thought following nude and silly as the Emperor.
Matter knows matter. On what level? According to astronomy, gravity entails every particle affecting every other as space-time bends. According to quantum mechanics, particles become entangled and never part perception, despite distance or time - it is possible that the entire universe is one entangled mess on the sub-sub-sub-atomic level. We’re all connected by the forces that govern the universe. What forces and laws do we not yet know? And what implications may they have?
This, incidentally, makes prophecy theoretically possible, if you accept that reality is fractal, and that the fractals can be perceived (usually in altered states of consciousness). By being able to sense the greater pattern’s rhythm and form (which has to be done on an intuitive level, considering the greatness and complexity of existence on our one planet, much less the universe), it may be possible to see how the lowliest and most mundane phenomena can be related to the future and past events on a grander scale. Reading such signs... is most likely impossibly difficult without using a different form of consciousness. Dreams? That's where a lot seem to come from, and it's where all my deja vu has its genesis.
Other people’s beliefs in these phenomenon give me hope. I‘d rather not divide the world into “rationals” and “others”, considering how the definition of rational has changed throughout history. It is a short-sighted person indeed who believes that not only can all be known, but that reality can be extrapolated by the things we’ve figured out in the last couple hundred years.
I think I’ll put my faith in what has been figured out in the last couple thousands of years.
And finally, do coincidences have meaning? THE ANSWER!!!!: maybe.
Monday, November 23, 2009
First 7 Insights from the Celestine Prophecy
- The First Insight... A Critical Mass
A new spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture; an awakening brought about by a critical mass of individuals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding, a journey in which we are led forward by mysterious coincidences [aka the fractal nature of reality].
- The Second Insight... The Longer Now
This awakening represents the creation of a new, more complete worldview, which replaces a five-hundred-year-old preoccupation with secular survival and comfort. While this technological preoccupation was an important step, our awakening to life's coincidences [aka the fractal nature of reality] is opening us up to ... real human life on this planet, and the real nature of our Universe.
- The Third Insight... A Matter of Energy
We now experience that we live not in a material Universe, but in a Universe of dynamic energy. Everything extant is a field of sacred energy that we can sense and intuit. Moreover, we humans can project our energy by focusing our attention in the desired direction, in that where attention goes, energy flows, influencing other energy systems and increasing the pace of coincidences in our lives. It is possible to see this energy enveloping all living things.
- The Fourth Insight... The Struggle For Power
To gain energy, we tend to manipulate or force others to give us attention and thus energy. When we successfully dominate others in this way, we feel more powerful, but they are left weakened and often fight back. Competition for scarce human energy is the cause of all conflict between people.
- The Fifth Insight... The Message of the Mystics
Insecurity and violence ends when we experience an inner connection with divine energy within, a connection described by mystics of all traditions. A sense of lightness or buoyancy along with the constant sensation of love are measures of this connection. If these measures are present, the connection is real; if not, it is only pretended.
- The Sixth Insight... Clearing the Past
The more we stay connected, the more we are acutely aware of those times when we lose connection, usually when we are under stress. In these times, we can see our own particular way of stealing energy from others [or having our energy stolen by others]. Once our manipulations are brought to personal awareness, our connection becomes more constant and we can discover our own evolutionary path in life, and our spiritual mission, which is the personal way we can contribute to the World.
Here the four main "control dramas"—the Interrogator, the Intimidator, the Aloof and the Poor Me—are discussed.
- The Seventh Insight... Engaging the Flow
Knowing our personal mission [can] further enhance [or enrich] the flow of mysterious coincidences [aka the fractal nature of reality] as we are guided toward our destinies. First we have a question; then dreams, daydreams, and intuitions lead us towards the answers, which [can be] synchronistically provided by the wisdom of another human being.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Striving for the Mundane
-Martin W. Ball from Being Human: An Entheological Guide to God, Evolution and the Fractal Energetic Nature of Reality, P38
Buy his book online here
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thoughts on a Blog / a Story
But I don't truly wish to argue. What I am going through right now is on a deeply personal level, and even if all the specifics are wrong, the quest of the thing opens up a new world of real possibilities [of life experience and knowledge].
Here is a brief story that holds all facets of the newfound quest:
During my trip, I perceived in my matter the greater universe, and suddenly all the religions, prophecies, science, mysteries, and philosophies I have ever mulled and dismissed unified into a coherent whole whereby the universe's structure and processes are both weirder and more complex than I could have ever imagined on my own. In my last post, I said no one knows The Truth, but what I really should have said is that the billions of Truths out there are all fragments of Totality.
So was I whacked out or what? In previous trips, I have made great personal discoveries, abandoned my fear of death, saw the Earth from space, etc... but I never ventured outwards. But this time, by the end of the night I started to believe in things that I never could before. A meaningful, full, complex universe full of unknown (but explorable) dimensions. The death of my parents at a young age eliminated all meaning besides perceivable, mechanical process. A purposeless universe made sense to me, because their deaths were very purposeless. Not to say there was no joy: at the very, very least I came from nothing to exist for awhile before the inevitable return to nothing. Joyful existensialism was what I called my philosophy (although it wasn't so joyful during my long and frequent bouts of despair and depression).
Anyway, this caused my a lot of anxiety in the following days. I was going to have to give up my sardonic irony and nihilism to embrace sincere, real beliefs. Were the mushrooms truly "mind-expanding" or was I just experiencing bizarre neurochemical interactions? Was the profound Truth I experienced during the trip real in any empirical way?
Reading Daniel Pinchbeck, Stanislaus Grof, and a couple other advocates for psychadelics made me take the idea seriously - these were people in similar situations who have compiled a large body of writing on the subject. The ideas matched up in very convincing ways - the spiraling, fractal nature of time, the approaching "new age" (bleh, too many connotations with that phrase, but close enough), the oneness of it all. Similarly, talking with Jeff about the experience made me realize even during that strange night, I was not alone in following impossible thoughts. But still... I wanted a sign. A real, unambiguous sign like I'd read about that if I opened my senses and consciousness, the universe would manifest to me.
I had a dream:
I was at a party thrown by the Christian God of the Old Testament (at my Godmother's house). Wild revelry, drunken spectacle, late into the night. Eventually the party wound down, and I made my way downstairs to the basement with a man and a woman.
The basement was filled with mutilated corpses. As we stood there, God came down the stairs and shot his arm T-1000-style into the chest of the man and ripped out his heart. I knew I was safe, and so did the woman, but all three of us (woman, God, and myself), knew that what he had done was wrong.
As we sat silently, suddenly my cellphone rang. I took it out of my pocket and looked at the caller ID. It said, bursting with "meaning":
DETECTIVE
217 - ..............
I could only make out the area code. I answered, and a voice told me he was coming for God. God glared at me with blazing eyes, and I knew in that moment that He wanted to kill me.
I woke up sweating. I rarely remember my dreams, but I had asked for a sign, and I had received a name and number. I wrote them down and fell back asleep, thinking that I would find 217.
Two days later, I lay in my girlfriend's bed, looking at her bookshelf. On it was a Bible, and I figured that it would be worth looking at, considering all the Christian imagery in the dream. I flipped to page 217, but there was nothing there - not that I was expecting there to be, page numbering was too arbitrary. My mind wandered to a conversation I had with my Grandmother the night before. I had never humored her borderline fundamentalist beliefs before, but before the call ended we had gotten into a conversation about Acts of the Apostles - she was going to Bible Study that night, and it was the book they were analyzing. If there was one book I should check (before I ran to the bus to get to work), it would be that one, my inner something said. I found Chapter 2, Verse 17 and an electric shock ran through me:
Acts of the Apostles 2:17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
There could not be a more meaningful or unambiguous passage to describe what I was going through.
The meaning of the dream became clear. I was the detective, and I must do what a detective does: search for truth.
It could be a coincidence. As I've said, none of us know. But... if it is a coincidence, it is the most profound of my life, right when I asked for it.
Now what?
Blogging, I guess.
Acting Mythologically
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Quoted in 2012 by Daniel Pinchbeck p50
Monday, November 16, 2009
Eric Has Landed (Somewhere)
Now...
I am tired of using my forebrain. It's still new (evolutionarily speaking), and the kinks have not yet been worked out. My emotions affect my reasoning, as does the weather, the people around me, my health, and my location. So do about a million other things, too varied and subtle to name. Cultural bias, yes, strongly. Genetic wiring of the thinking hardware, definitely. Hormones, color, music, stress, peer pressure. Context.
Value judgments. They are subjective, entirely. "Good" and "bad" are not empiric qualities. You feel first, rationalize second. You didn't like "Titanic"? A lot of people did. They're not wrong. You're not right. It simply is, and all value-laden adjectives are a projection of your own values and personality. It's a post-modern world out there, and no one has a clear view of it all (although everyone thinks that they do).
I yearn for the world beyond words and reason. The insane chaos of existence we try to keep at bay with technology, comfort, mind-numbing drugs, and sureness in our beliefs. Do you yearn, friend?
I do not know how many people intuit naturally. I suspect it is present in all to some degree. But how do you interface the truths that bubble out of your subconscious with that which your mind/history/psychology tells you is actual truth? The forebrain speaks in words. Your intuition has no need for such prisons of meanings - but it speaks nonetheless.
Recently, my life has changed. My intuition went into overdrive on the last trip I was on with Jeff, and I realized that I could/should no longer suppress my deepest feelings with culturally-biased mental-rationalism regarding the reality that was presenting itself to me. It is a reality that is not of myself (I hope), but of the Earth/universe working through me, a amalgam of ancient matter that can perceive and feel and perhaps understand itself on a global/universal level. I wish to transcend the realm of context, and know the all/one.
What this means both practically and spiritually... will be the subject of the next ten thousand blog posts.
Am I writing to anyone? For anyone, or against anyone? I do not yet know. I am simply writing for anyone who peers around the edges of modern "reason".
Evolving our Awareness
From Presence by Senge, Scharmer, Jaworksi & Flowers, p 202-203
Monday, November 9, 2009
A Trip, Some Conclusions
I posted this quote from Ernst Casserer, two posts ago:
"Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves, man is in a sense conversing with himself. He has so engulfed himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythic symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything without the interposition of an artificial medium"
David Abrams in The Spell of the Sensuous says that the big leap in man's symbolic activity occurred when man invented alphabetic language. Before the existence of alphabetic language, man would say a word and it would have a direct relation to the physical thing:
Word ---> Physical thing
After the invention of alphabetic language there was an artificial intermediary, the alphabetic word:
Word ---> The alphabetic word ---> Physical thing
At first this seems like a trivial difference, until you realize the profound consequences it has. Suddenly, the mind can stop short of the physical thing, and operate in a completely human realm -- it no longer needs the physical landscape from which all language sprang. Thus, "man is in a sense conversing with himself"
It is important at this point to note that the argument above isn't stating that once symbolic activity is invented, physical reality immediately disappears- but rather there is a proportional shift; as our use of symbols advances, physical reality recedes. The invention of alphabetic language is just one of the most notable historical occurrences of the advancement of symbolic activity.
When I recently took mushrooms, I noticed a causal (fractal) link between symbolic activities and deep feelings within me of stress and discomfort. When my mind strayed to things like advertisements, office jobs, fashion, pop-culture, or comedy bits, I would find myself in a deeply uncomfortable mindset; which, as I said previously, is just a heightened version of my normal reaction to these things. On our trip we walked to the lake; The walk there, along Belmont, was intense & stressful- but as soon as we arrived at the lake the stress and discomfort fell away from me. I was suddenly overcome with feelings of deep pleasure, comfort and belonging-- again, a heightened version of my normal reaction. While at the lake, my mind wasn't cluttered by any symbols and so I was able to clearly experience the moon appearing just above the horizon, I was able to smell the fallen leaves, to hear myself breathing, to feel the air on my skin, feel the ground beneath my feet-- i felt as if I was no longer chained by the world of symbols but free to be myself: a physical, sensuous being in a physical world.
At that moment it was abundantly clear to me that symbols have no real existence. When I give them power, they overwhelm me and pull me away from the world where I feel most at home. As such, I have lost all patience for people or institutions who force their symbols and subsequent stress & discomfort into my life. I just can't be a victim to a non-existence force-- so I'm taking the reigns to my life back. I'm going to be more forceful in the acquisition of the things I need to be happy and more discriminating in the activities I involve myself in.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Using Drugs to Find Your Authentic Self
I'm a little embarrassed with how much I find myself believing what this guy is saying.
**Update, I'm no longer embarrassed.
Friday, November 6, 2009
As Symbols Proliferate, Physical Reality Diminishes
Ernst Cassirer
quoted in Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
The Answer is in Physical Reality, not a Utopian Vision
David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, p 272
Example of Symbols
David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, P 265
"We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human"
David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, p. 22
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Analytic Knowing v. Primary Knowing
By Contrast, "primary knowing" arises by means of "interconnected wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of timeless, direct, presentation" rather than through stored "re-presentation." "Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself," said Rosch. Acting from such awareness is "spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making," and it is "compassionate... since it is based on wholes larger than the self."
As Rosch told Otto, all these attributes--timeless, direct, spontaneous, open, unconditional value, and compassionate--go together as one thing. That one thing is what some in Tibetan Buddhism call "the natural state" and what Taoism calls "the Source."
From Presence by Senge, Scharmer, Jaworksi & Flowers - Quoting Eleanor Rosch - p 98-99
Monday, July 6, 2009
Jim Henson
that I work very hard at it. Nor am I aware of any
conscious career decisions. I’ve always found that one
thing leads to another, and that I’ve moved from project to
project in a natural progression. Perhaps one thing
that has helped me in achieving my goals is that I
sincerely believe in what I do, and get great
pleasure from it. I feel very fortunate because I can do
what I love to do.”
-Jim Henson
Friday, May 22, 2009
"Giving in is so damn comforting
We know the truth but prefer lies
Lies are simple,
simple is bliss
Why go against tradition when we can admit defeat?
live in decline
Be the victim of our own design
The status quo, built on suspect
Why would anyone stick out their neck?"
The Decline by NOFX
This song really spoke to me as a 17 year old & the part above still hits home.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Lucky the Dog
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2004/04/02.html#a685
"We are all, in a real sense, like Lucky. Most of us, all over the world, struggle every day, and put up with a huge amount of stress and unhappiness in our lives. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who lived for millions of years before modern civilization, we work much harder and longer to make a living, we face much more physical and psychological violence (in our neighbourhoods, in our workplaces, in our war-torn world, and sometimes even in our homes), we suffer from many more physical and psychological diseases and illnesses, we live in crowded, polluted, mostly run-down communities, in constant fear (of an infinite number of things, most notably not having enough), and we are oppressed with hierarchies, laws, rules and restrictions that would have driven our ancient ancestors quite mad.
Why do we put up with it? Because it's the only life we know." -Dave Pollard
Friday, May 1, 2009
Life Itself
http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/cavalier/80254/Nietzsche/W_P_2.html
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Jeff Vail - A Theory of Power
http://www.jeffvail.net/atheoryofpower.pdf
-- Free online book, 50 pages long, things everyone should understand about the world we live in
"With genes and memes manipulating us, using neurochemical releases and emotional states to ensure their survival, we find ourselves faced with difficult, penetrating questions about our identity. What does it mean to experience a feeling if we can rationally understand that the emotion stems from nothing more than a chemical response evolved to ensure that we act as efficient hosts and vectors to genes and memes? What of our hopes and goals? Do these hopes truly belong to us, or do they serve as nothing more than effective strategies to propagate bits of cultural code? Would we still love our children if the resulting nurturing didn’t increase the chance of our genes’ survival? What of our egos versus the reality of genetic and memetic power-relationships: do we exist as nothing more than vectors for power-complexes? Do we have free will and an individual identity, or should we see our individuality as merely a construct of how our genes and memes use us to propagate themselves through the unconscious mechanism of natural selection? These represent difficult questions. The scope of their impact on our lives serves as an indication that we stand to uncover fundamental relationships governing our existence. At this point the ego and rational understanding come into direct conflict—will we retreat back to a comfortable but now conscious delusion, or continue this exploration?7 Can our ego survive if it learns the form of its own inner workings? Inside the psychological maze of self-knowledge stands the unknown; the path out may lead to fulfillment or misery. We will come to appreciate the concept of blissful ignorance as we press our inquiry." p.14
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Mr. Furry Fur Fur and his friendly earth friends
buy their DVD:
http://www.friendlyearthfriends.com/
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Authentic Leadership
-- from the Authentic Leadership in Action Institute website
http://www.aliainstitute.org/institute/about.html
Thanks to Elliott for pointing me to it
Monday, March 2, 2009
What if your work achieves nothing?
What if your work achieves nothing? Thomas Merton, a great writer and contemplative in the Catholic tradition, said, "Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not, perhaps, results opposite to what you expect.
"As you get used to this idea of your work achieving nothing, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as, gradually, you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything."
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Creatures of Circumstance
Sogyal Rinpoche from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, (27)
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
I am filled with impatience, with fury, with a sense that my own fears are holding me back from this journey, from what comes next, what is meant for me. What underlies that fear is all the gunk that I have acquired over the years, gunk telling me what is the correct and incorrect way to behave, and live.
That gunk has a name: Culture. The very word, with its agri-roots, implies control, tending, keeping in line. Culture tells us what others have a right to expect of us, and what we must do to live up to those expectations. Culture tells us that the punishment for not doing these things is social ostracism -- loneliness, unacceptability, unpopularity, reproachment, exclusion, abandonment, rejection and punishment. You must be obedient, says our culture, or there will be dire consequences. Without us, says our culture, you cannot survive -- you will starve, freeze, wither away. You will be left alone.
...
The answer does not lie in activism, in counter-culture, in revolution. Despite Heath and Potter's wishful thinking, solutions "compulsory for the entire population" will only be forthcoming in a totalitarian state, and then not in the interests of that population. And certainly the answer does not lie in technology -- as John Gray has argued so eloquently, every new technology creates many more problems than it solves.
The answer lies not in salvos from, or experiments on, The Edge, but beyond it, over the edge, the precipice. And, horror of horrors, we have to go over it, plunge into the abyss, alone. We have to walk away, and start over. Give up on everything we believe, everything we fear, scrape off all the gunk that is sticking to us, holding us back. Inviting those we love to walk away with us, knowing that they will probably decline, because they are still addicted to the culture, still believe that counter-culture, elections, revolutions, activism, collective consciousness, education, faith or technology will somehow work, transform the culture in time or allow some tiny new culture to survive in its nuclear shadow."
Dave Pollard
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2009/02/04.html#a2324
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Bonobo Monkeys

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh Ted talk:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html
Susan Savage-Rumbaugh works with Bonobo monkeys. She calls them the happiest species.
Some interesting things about the Bonobo:
-- They are remarkably human & can even walk bipedally for long distances.
-- They are learning tasks from humans -- starting fires, writing, playing video games, playing music, cutting hide -- by watching (not by being taught/trained).
-- "Sexual behavior is not confined to one aspect of their life that they set aside. It permeates their entire life, it's used for communication and for conflict resolution."
What Susan Savage-Rumbaugh has learned from these monkeys:
"I think that as we look at culture we kind of come to understand how we got to where we (humans) are and I don't really think it's in our biology. I think we've attributed it to our biology but I don't really think it's there."
above image from: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1729362,00.html
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Neutral State Between Pleasure & Pain
I think the opposite, more pessimistic, view -- "The neutral state between pleasure & pain is pain"-- is more prevalent; especially in western culture.
If we view our neutral state as a pain, we must continually strive to achieve happiness. This leads to the striving -- the need for continual improvement -- that is so ingrained & revered in our culture. (This way of thinking leads to sustainability issues & relates to Straw Dogs' myth-of-progress thesis.)
"Living The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness." - From the Tolle quote, previous post.
If we can achieve a baseline of pleasure, there's nothing else we need to do.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Living in the moment
"The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for. Everybody’s life really consists of small things. Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favorite fantasy of the ego. The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness. The present moment is always small in the sense that it is always simple, but concealed within it lies the greatest power. Like the atom, it is one of the smallest things yet contains enormous power. Only when you align yourself with the present moment do you have access to that power. Or it may be more true to say that it then has access to you and through you to this world."
– Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s PurposeQuote pulled from "Living in the Moment" by Brad Bollenbach
http://30sleeps.com/blog/2007/12/31/living-in-the-moment/
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Empathy
Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Pg 175
"We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how can I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?"
Sir Thomas More
Thursday, July 24, 2008
"You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence." - Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
"The art of living in this 'predicament' is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past and the known on the other . It consists in being completely sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive." - The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
All pulled from http://www.43folders.com/2006/04/07/mindfulness
found through Elliott http://del.icio.us/trent_napier
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Flow & Improv Comedy
The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt, pg 95-96
I was trying to figure out a common characteristic that great improvisational comedians have and I came up with the term 'angelic precision'. In my opinion great improvisers' choices appear angelic in that they are pure -- honest, not contrived, conceived spontaneously, in the moment. Their choices are also precise -- they have honed a craft and are able to consistently present something purposeful. It's the harmony between elephant and rider. If the rider tries too hard, choices seem contrived. If the rider is unaware of the implications of his choices then his performance will lack purpose and seem sloppy. When an improviser can make a pointed yet natural choice, it reveals our robotic nature; our elephant. And we have a neat mechanism for dealing with that revelation: laughter.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism)
Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism)
Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism
Dreams + Humor = Fantasy
Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom
Lin Yutang's self-labeled "psuedo-scientific" formulas: from The Importance of Living, pg 4.
I finished re-reading Straw Dogs and I've been noticing the prevalence of idealism in our culture -- People really are drawn to the idea that striving to be better is a virtue. Conversely, they see acceptance of imperfection to be laziness and a lack of strong distaste for imperfection to be apathy. I tend to side with John Grey & Lin Yutang who seem to hold living in the moment without large romantic ideals of progress as being better than constantly striving to make life as ideal as possible.
So I'm brought back to John Grey's description of the Taoist idea of the good life in Straw Dogs.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Rider on an elephant's back
In sum, the rider is an advisor or servant; not a king, president, or charioteer with a firm grip on the reins. The rider is Gazzaniga's interpreter module; it is conscious, controlled thought. The elephant includes the gut feelings, visceral reactions, emotions, and intuitions that comprise much of the automatic system. The elephant and the rider each have their own intelligence, and when they work together well they enable the unique brilliance of human beings."
Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, pg. 16-17
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The good life
"Seeing Clearly means not projecting our goals into the world; acting spontaneously means acting according to the needs of the situation. Western moralists will ask what is the purpose of such action, but for Taoists the good life has no purpose. It is like swimming in a whirlpool, responding to the currents as they come and go. 'I enter with the inflow, and emerge with the outflow, follow the Way of the water, and do not impose my selfishness upon it. This is how I stay afloat in it,' says the Chuang-Tzu. "
"For people in thrall to 'morality', the good life means perpetual striving. For Taoists it means living effortlessly, according to our natures. The freest human being is not one who acts on reasons he has chosen for himself, but one who never has to choose. Rather than agonising over alternatives he responds effortlessly to situations as they arise. He lives not as he chooses but as he must. Such a human being has the perfect freedom of a wild animal -- or a machine. As the Lieh-Tzu says: 'The highest man at rest is as though dead, in movement is like a machine. He knows neither why he is at rest nor why he is not, why he is in movement nor why he is not.'"
John Gray's, Straw Dogs, p.112-115
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Illusions
"If what is at issue is not truth but happiness and freedom, why must philosophy have the last word? Why should not faith and myth have equal rights? Formerly philosophers sought peace of mind while pretending to seek the truth. Perhaps we should set ourselves a different aim: to discover which illusions we can give up, and which we will never shake off. We will still be seekers after truth, more so than in the past; but we will renounce the hope of a life without illusion. Henceforth our aim will be to identify our invincible illusions. Which untruths might we be rid of, and which can we not do without? -- that is the question, that is the experiment."pg 83
John Gray, Straw Dogs
Monday, May 19, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Art, poetry, religion
The Importance of Living, Lin Yutang, p141
Sentimental nature
The Importance of Living, Lin Yutang, p.99
Monday, May 12, 2008
Never regret what you've done
4-15-08
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Comedy: an escape from illusions
~Bill Hicks
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Irony
But the moment comes when the avant-garde (the modern) can go no further; because it has produced a metalanguage that speaks of its impossible texts (conceptual art). The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently."
Umberto Eco, "'I Love You Madly,' He Said Self-consciously", The Truth About the Truth, Pg. 32
Monday, April 7, 2008
The addiction
So the next time you see a homeless person, or an addict, don't be frightened, angry, or filled with pathos. You are looking in the mirror. It is we who are homeless, and addicted. What will it take before we break the habit, walk away from The Man, and find our way home?
How can we break the habit when all of us are addicts, even The Man? When we have all forgotten what it's like to live without the monkey? When we have all become the hollow, empty, desperate shadows of men that the monkey leaves behind?
When I become too theoretical, when I ask with too much vehemence why people work jobs they hate, why so many earn their living by deforesting, or mining, or working other destructive jobs, my friend reminds me: "Sixty days", he says. "That’s how long it takes before people in the civilized world begin to die of starvation. Dave can’t quit his job because in sixty days his children will die. That's the primary reason most of us do not rebel. We have too much to lose". Ours is a politics, economics and religion of occupation, not of inhabitation, and as such the methods by which we are formed and governed have no legitimacy save that sprouting from the end of a cannon, from a can of pepper spray, from the rapist's penis, from the travesty of modern education, from the instilled dread of a distant hell and the false promise of a future techtopia, from the chains that bind children to beds and looms and from the everyday fear of starvation -- as well as an internalized notion of what constitutes social success or failure -- that binds us to wage slavery. The responsibility for holding destructive institutions, systems and culture accountable falls on each of us. We are the governors of this prison as well as the governed...
- Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words
There's no methadone for the stuff we're hooked on. And no one left to administer it even if there were."
Dave Pollard, How to Save The World, "He Can't Hear You Anymore"
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2004/12/20.html#a990
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The human mind: knowing where not to look
-Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Objectivity in America
But in the secondary America we've been through, of back roads, and Chinaman's ditches, and Appaloosa horses, and sweeping mountain ranges, and meditative thoughts, and kids with pinecones and bumblebees and open sky above us mile after mile after mile, all through that, what was real, what was around us dominated. And so there wasn't much feeling of loneliness. That's the way it must have been a hundred or two hundred years ago. Hardly any people and hardly any loneliness. I'm undoubtedly over-generalizing, but if the proper qualifications were introduced it would be true.
Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices...TV, jets, freeways and so on...but I hope it's been made plain that the real evil isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil. That's why I went to so much trouble to show how technology could be used to destroy the evil. A person who knows how to fix motorcycles...with Quality...is less likely to run short of friends than one who doesn't. And they aren't going to see him as some kind of object either. Quality destroys objectivity every time." [Pirsig, Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Part 4, Chapter 29, Paragraph 20-22]
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Non-human neighbors
David Abram The Spell of The Sensuous (p. 22)
Mystery of life
-David Abram The Spell of the Sensuous
Monday, January 14, 2008
Racism & benefiting from exploitation
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Pain, Learning a Lesson
...
The current assumption is that there should be no suffering, and that society is to blame for that which exists" [Herbert Spencer, The Coming Slavery, Pg. 81]
"the tragic wrongness of what those well-meaning people did, contrasted with what they thought they were doing, goes very deep. They had no scientific theory of morals. They did have a theory of morals and they tried to live by it (I should not have sneered at their motives), but their theory was wrong--half fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry. The more earnest they were, the farther it led them astray." [Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, Pg. 117]
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Community+Coversation+Love
"When there is love, conversation has purpose, context, engagement, trust (while, without love, conversation is sterile and selfish)."
"The best conversations are a form of 'making love' -- empathetic, collaborative, even erotic."
"The best conversations are also polyamorous (all participants love and trust each other) -- this provides safety from hurt and cruelty, and this safety encourages openness, honesty, courage, and true innovation." (1)
"In a completely generous and genuine natural community that is emotionally healthy, where everyone loves everyone else and love is abundant not scarce, love pervades everything and is demonstrated in cooperative work, in conversation, in art and science endeavours, in discovery and imagination, and in sensory and sexual exploration of others in the community. There are no exclusive pairings, because there is no need for them. Physical and sexual caresses may be frequent, but they are also fun, casual and pleasurable, and never possessive. They are just another way of saying 'I love you'." (2)
"I think the difference between a polyamorous community and a group of promiscuous people is an important one. Commitment to community should be a deep commitment, and if a member is unable to fulfill their desires for love within the community, that suggests either the member lacks commitment or the community lacks members with certain needed qualities that would allow the member to find what s/he loves within it." (3)
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Life of human invention
Monday, November 19, 2007
Learning from the Past?
Friday, November 9, 2007
Deviation from our Instincts
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Absence of independent existence
"If everything is impermanent, then everything is what we call 'empty,' which means lacking in any lasting, stable, and inherent existence; and all things, when seen and understood in their true relation, are not independent but interdependent with all other things. The Buddha compared the universe to a vast net woven of a countless variety of brilliant jewels, each with a countless number of facets. Each jewel reflects in itself every other jewel in the net and is, in fact, one with every other jewel."
"Nothing has any inherent existence of its own when you really look at it, and this absence of independent existence is what we call 'emptiness.' Think of a tree. When you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object; and on a certain level, like the wave, it is. But when you look more closely at the tree, you will see ultimately it has no independent existence. When you contemplate it, you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle net of relationships that stretches across the universe. The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it, all the seasons and the weather, moonlight and starlight and sunlight--all form part of this tree. As you begin to think about the tree more and more, you will discover that everything in the universe helps to make the tree what it is; that it cannot at any moment be isolated from anything else; and that at every moment its nature is subtly changing." [The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Soygal Rinpoche, pg. 37.]