Reclusland

I thanked him for what he had said and added that I was sorry that I had not done my work in the garden and that I would do it properly in the future.

He brushed aside my thanks and said that it was useless to be sorry. “Is too late for that now, and is also too late to do good work in the garden. In life never have second chance, only have one chance. You had one time to do good work in garden, for self; you not do, so now even if you work all your life, in this garden, cannot be same thing for you. But also important not be ’sorry’ about this; can waste all life feeling sorry. There is valuable thing sometimes, thing you call remorse. If man have real remorse for something he do that is not good, this can be valuable; but if only sorry and say will do same thing better in future is waste of time. This time is already gone forever, this part of your life is finished, you cannot live over again. Not important if you do good work in garden now, because will do for wrong reasons—to try to repair damage which cannot be repaired ever. This serious thing. But also very serious not to waste time feeling sorry or feeling regret, this only waste even more time. Must learn in life, not to make such mistakes, and must understand that once make mistake is made forever.”

(again, from “My Journey With A Mystic”)

Further, he said that history had already proven to us that such tools as politics, religion, and any other organized movements which treated man “in the mass” and not as individual beings, were failures. That they would always be failures and that the separate, distinct growth of each individual in the world was the only possible solution.

(from Fritz Peters’ memoir “My Journey With A Mystic”)

This morning, I read the latest post up at Ann Seeker’s blog, where she’s been summarizing her experience of reading David Appelbaum’s book The Stop.  I bookmarked the article for later reading because I thought it was interesting.  In it, she says:

He is talking about an awareness of a “movement of energy” that takes place before our “our inner activities” take form. These activities or functions are our thoughts, desires, judgments, self-will, etc. These are functions that take on forms and we perceive them. But prior to the taking of form, there is a movement of energy and this can be perceived as well. He says, “This is the Life of our life, that which is a source for particular undertakings of functional life. Perception thus takes note of how percipient energy enters life on our ordinary level, how it animates forms of life, and how it remains distinct from these forms.”

The idea that there is an action of energy already in motion that our conscious mind responds too, which we experience as making a decision ties in with some of the early stages of Buddhist Vipassana meditation, as outlined in Practical Insight Meditation by Mahasi Sayadaw:

With further progress in meditation, the conscious state of an intention is evident before a bodily movement occurs.  The meditator  first notices that intention.  Though also at the start of his practice, he does notice “intending, intending” (for instance, to bend an arm), he cannot notice that state of consciousness directly.  Now, at this more advanced stage, he clearly notices the consciousness consisting of the intention to bend.  So he notices first the conscious state of an intention to make a bodily movement; then he notices the particular bodily movement.

Which to me is basically saying that though we think the body is moving because we are thinking about moving and moving the body, there is a subtle mistake here in that first the intention to move arises on its own, in response to conditions, and then our body moves accordingly.  I’m slowly reading through this book, though not very quickly as I’m trying to assimilate each stage before moving on to the next one.  As my meditation practice lately has been slacking, I can’t say I’ve made much progress.  Plus, the Burmese Vipassana seems to be at odds with my Zazen, so I’m still working out how to proceed there.  But the book does come highly recommended, so if anyone is interested in starting a meditation practice, I’d offer it as a clear and easy-to-read guide to Vipassana.

Anyway, the really interesting thing happened when Max posted a comment today linking back to an old post at Tim Boucher’s blog, where Tim discusses Aldous Huxley’s take on the brain as behaving as a sort of reductive-valve:

Henri Bergson has suggested that one of the main functions of the brain and nervous system is to eliminate activity and awareness, rather than produce it.

(tie that in with my last post on Dr Dan Siegal’s definition of mind…)  Tim goes on to say:

Huxley explains that our mind has powers of perception and concentration that we cannot even begin to imagine. But our main business is to survive at all costs. To make survival possible, all of our mind’s capabilities must be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain.

Some researchers are studying this effect. They believe that this reducing-valve effect may be very similar to the jamming equipment used to block out offensive radio broadcasts. The brain constantly produces a kind of static, cutting down our perception and reducing our mental activity.

This static can actually be seen. When you close your eyes, you see all sorts of random pictures flashing through your mind. It is impossible to concentrate on any one of them for more than an instant, and each image is obscured by a host of others superimposed over it.

That static is what is toned down through meditation.  See Kenneth Folk’s handy little flash graphic here.

and then Tim goes on to say:

Aldous Huxley in “The Doors of Perception” talks about a “reducing” valve in the brain that limits the amount of sensory stimulus that brain allows to be processed. This reducing value, in part, may be the thalamus. In schizophrenia, that reducing valve is more open than it should be; thus a person with schizophrenia receives too much stimulus and their brain has a hard time interpreting the inputted sensory stimulus. This may result in the positive symptoms (hallucinations and psychoses) we see in schizophrenia. When sensory overload occurs, some brain functions may shut down resulting in the negative symptoms (poverty of speech, withdrawl).

So if anything, following this breadcrumb trail of information that seems to have been thrown my way today, it seems that the experience of schizophrenia might be fairly likened to being enlightened too early, to having the connection to Mind-At-Large opened before we’re ready to handle the loads on information that pours at/through us.   I can see this creating a sort of feedback loop, where the mental program of consciousness, our sense of self determination that somehow seems to float above what’s actually going on inside our brain (as shown by the Mahasi Sayadaw quote above) is pushed away from the center of existence where it usually rests, resulting both in the positive and negative symptoms mentioned above.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m getting at here, but it all seems to point to something.  I do know one thing though: it’s not really about schizophrenia.

One other thing this brings to mind is this short little movie (which won a shit-ton of awards).  Watch it, it’s heartwrenchingly beautiful:

Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.

I’d originally found this film over at Imagining the 10th Dimension, where Rob had posted it a few weeks after he made his own post about schizophrenia and the effect of time on the brain (except remember, this isn’t actually about schizophrenia).  From Rob’s post, where he is quoting a New Scientist magazine article:

Schizophrenia certainly seems to affect people’s perception of time. If someone with schizophrenia is shown a flash of light and a sound separated by 1/10th of a second, they typically have trouble discerning which came first. Such people also estimate the passing of time less accurately than most others. Now a flurry of studies has shown that if you upset the internal clocks of healthy people, you can create some of the symptoms and delusions associated with schizophrenia.

In one experiment, healthy volunteers learned to play a video game in which they had to steer a plane around obstacles. Once people became used to the game, the researchers modified it to insert a 0.2-second delay in the plane’s response to volunteers moving the computer mouse. After the modification, the players’ performance initially worsened; but in time their brains compensated for the delay, to the extent that they actually perceived the movement of the mouse and the movement of the aircraft to take place simultaneously.

But the subjects’ strangest experience occurred then the experimenters removed the delay and set the timing back to normal. Suddenly, the players were perceiving the plane to be moving before they consciously steered it with the mouse (Psychological Science, vol 12, p 532). That’s uncannily similar to how people with schizophrenia describe feelings that they are somehow being controlled by another being.

Rob goes on to explain his opinion on the subject:

Fascinating! I found this particularly interesting to think about within the context of recent studies that show people can form their decisions to do one thing or another well before they are consciously aware of their decision: in Is Creativity a Quantum Process we briefly looked at some articles (like this one from the Wall Street Journal) discussing the recently published work of psychologist Joydeep Bhattacharya of London’s Goldsmith College. Amazingly, Dr. Bhattacharya’s brainwave monitoring experiments revealed evidence that people can have arrived at a solution to a problem as much as 8 seconds before their conscious minds become aware of it!

There have been arguments proposing that results such as these demonstrate that our free will is an illusion, because the neuro-chemical activity that forms our decisions may be some inevitable “behind the scenes” process which we interpret as our free will by the time we consciously feel ourselves choosing (and persons familiar with this project will know that I strongly disagree with any conclusions that free will doesn’t exist).

I tend to agree with Rob on this, that just because our free will might not be quick and immediate as we think it is, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.  Its just that our consciousness is not exactly in touch with the core process at work in our being.  Becoming aware of these process, it seems would both destroy the feeling that we were somehow separate from them, but also give our free will a better, more holistic expression.

Our brain is a perfectly reflecting gem, and its always perfectly reflecting.  We just have to clear out the conscious static (caused by our mind’s very real and correct desire to survive) so as to get in touch with that place inside our self where the truth of what is, is focused.  Zap, moon in a dew drop indeed.

“A core aspect of the mind can be defined as an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information.”

(full transcript here)

One thing to note is that this definition means we must separate “mind” from “awareness”…

Just found out about this guy.  Amazing.

He did engravings for the Divine Comedy, The Bible, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and a bunch of other stuff.  The best site I could find on him is here.  Wikipedia here…

Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.   If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.   The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His willfulness may only be ego.

from Sentences on Conceptual Art
thanks Max!

Seems being home sick during the week makes for a productive weekend.

Also, I have discovered that anything done to this music is beautiful.  I could happily watch paint dry for hours, as long as this was the soundtrack.  Do yourself a favor and go download it.

Sorry I’ve been incommunicado the past few days (what’s that you say, a whole week?)  Yeah, I came down with what I can only assume is the flu.  Tuesday was spent entirely asleep, and then nothing but movie watching in bed for the rest of the week.  Made it through the entire Cowboy Bebop series and movie.  Fun times.  Oh, and my internet was out until yesterday.  4 whole days of completely passive vegetation mode.  Not something I’d recommend as a lifestyle option, but good for an occasional reminder that tension is not a necessary state of affairs.

But as you can see all is now well and good.  My cough is subsiding and I feel like my system’s rebooted itself, which gives the whole thing a sort of rosy glow.  Not sure when I’ll get to posting again, but keep you RSS readers tuned in!

And I see I’ve got some comments to read through as well…

Just a little aside today.  I don’t really like talking about the day job on here, but I got an email from one of my colleges in China.  I’d asked about his trip back home during last week’s Chinese New Year holiday, and he mentioned that the trains were absolutely packed.  Imagine 1.3 billion people all taking the train back to their hometown (some of them taking 36 hours to get home).  LA road rage ain’t got nothing on that.  Here’s a business tip for you MBA types out there: intra-China air flights for cheap.  Find a way to make it happen and you’ve got money in the bank…

Anyway, this colleague of mine used the phrase “Oh my Lady Gaga!” as a stand-in for “Oh my God”.  Certainly worth a laugh and a bit strange as well.  I then found out from another co-worker that this came from a Chinese pop-starlet using the phrase on television.  I googled it out of curiosity and found out that it actually came from an episode of Ugly Betty.

This was the first I’d heard of it, but seriously, to have this small bit of American pop-culture reference coming to me via China, well, it sent me for a loop.  So I thought I’d post a little run-down of the story, along with an image of a globe with a face on it exploding.  Something to imply both the global aspect and the head-exploding aspect. Something kind of like this:

mixed with this:

Not the most original idea, I know, but that’s why this category’s called “ramblings“.  Anyway, the funny thing was, I couldn’t find any image like that.  Plenty of each option, but nothing with them combined.  However, a few pages deep into google image search for explode head globe, I can across this image:

And I decided I had best stop there.  More evidence of that endlessly echoing rabbit hole that is the internet…

“The problem is not enjoyment; the problem is attachment.”

“Logical. You’re just giving me a regular, intelligent answer,” Teddy said. “I was trying to help you. You asked me how I get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don’t use logic when I do it. Logic’s the first thing you have to get rid of.”

“You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?” he asked. “You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So—this is my point—what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are.”

“The trouble is,” Teddy said, “most people don’t want to see things the way they are. They don’t even want to stop getting born and dying all the time. They just want new bodies all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God, where it’s really nice.” He reflected, “I never saw such a bunch of apple-eaters,” he said. He shook his head.

(from “Teddy”)

“Anything you do for the sake of enlightenment takes you nearer. Anything you do without remembering enlightenment puts you off. But why complicate? Just know that you are above and beyond all things and thoughts. What you want to be, you are it already. Just keep it in mind.”

Go here to watch the whole thing.

(You’ve got a few hours, right?)

I saved this one for today, because though photography is an art, it’s not the kind of art is was posting last week.  However, I do have another set of pictures of lights together, so I’m posting it today as a kind of bonus round/easter egg for art week.  Enjoy!

So we’ve pretty much reached the end of Art Week here at Reclusland, but I wanted to end it with something a little different.  So here you are.

This is something I started doing after reading a book called The Artists Way (which works, let me tell you). It just kind of popped into my head one day to start using tape to make geometric patterns around my room.   I started out with duct tape, but that wasn’t too kind to the paint, so I decided to switch over to black masking tape.  There’s something about these that I really like, but then, my mind always has been drawn to patterns…

It is the race, the species that must go staggering on. Mordeen, our ugly little species, weak and ugly, torn with insanities, violent and quarrelsome, sensing evil—the only species that knows evil and practices it—the only one that senses cleanness and is dirty, that knows about cruelty and is unbearably cruel.

Look down. Here he lies sleeping, to teach me. Our dear race, born without courage but very brave, born with a flickering intelligence and yet with beauty in its hands. What animal has made beauty, created it, save only we? With all our horrors and our faults, somewhere in us there is a shining. That is the most important of all facts. There is a shining.

Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself.  Stop it, and just DO!

Here’s the last of the abstract pieces.  All of ‘em started with a blank screen.  No variations this time either, just single pieces.  Although, seeing them together like this, this are certain commonalities.

Sorry for the slow posts today.  I was away from the computer most of the day. Tomorrow though, I’ve got something a bit different, a sort of surprise to round out arts week here at Reclusland.

Stay tuned.

“At the still point, there the dance is.”

As promised, I’m also posting some of the other art projects I’ve taken up recently.  My girlfriend does a lot of oil pastels and one day she asked if I’d be interested in doing some with her.  I figured it was a good chance to try taking my abstract tendencies off the computer screen, so I’ve since sat down and worked out a few pieces.  The results are as follows:

I am happy with how these turned out, though I don’t think they’re necessarily finished art pieces.  The last three were oil pastel over copper-colored acrylic, hence the shine in the backgrounds (I’m hoping my girlfriend will post some of her pieces from that series, I’ll keep you posted).

However, I did play around with a photograph of the last one and came up with a couple pieces that I am really happy with:

(looks awesome on a white background)

The Christian idea of the kingdom of God, of the new Jerusalem, of a Heaven on Earth that’s not available until after the Rapture (and yet is spread across the earth and men do not see it) is the same religious meme, unleashes the same program on the nervous system, as the Buddhist idea that we are already fully enlightened beings, that we fully posses Buddha-nature here and now, and that awakening is our true original nature…

Just the cultural responses to this program are different.  This is a fault of the culture, not the meme-program itself, simply different stage dressing to an otherwise identical script.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Post number two in my little cavalcade of the arts.  A little simpler than I’m used to, but as with the last post, it’s the variations that I find interesting.

And for those interested in fluctuations, I’ve made a (huge) animated gif for this one. It’s about 4MBs, so either “right-click-save-as”, or give it a little while to load and run all the way through, so that it loops smoothly.

Art week’s starting here at Reclusland.  A bit late perhaps (for which I can only blame the dead presidents of yesterday), and covered in snow (at least if you’re in New England), but it’s starting nonetheless.

First up, four variations on a theme:

I’ve tried to get out of the habit of stating in advance what’s going to be posted here, since my expectations usually end up diverging pretty widely from reality (in a way that almost seems intentional…). Best laid plans and all that.  But I have to admit, it’s been quiet lately in Reclusland, and, seeing as it’s a holiday weekend, this is a good chance to get some stuff together to put up.

I also recently realized that my latest art post was, sadly, in last June, and that’s something that needs to be remedied as well..  I haven’t stopped making it, I’ve just been lazy about posting it.  So my plan for the weekend was to get those up as scheduled posts throughout the week.

However, as part of a large parcel of (for) Valentine’s Day gifts, I helped my girlfriend setup a blog for her artwork (check it out, it’s awesome).  Doing so inspired me to not only post the abstract art and photography I usually post, but also a few of the other artistic type projects I’ve documented over the years.  Some involve black masking tape, some are oil pastels, and some are ink-pen-bored-at-the-office type affairs.  But they’re all awesome, and you’ll enjoy them.

It’s an “It’s art week here at Reclusland!” kind of thing.

Stay tuned…