Reclusland

In the interest of reviving the whole idea of what I am coming to call quantum metaphysics, I was going through my older posts, and found this comment by speedbird:

“Information is the shit left over after the soup has been digested.”

And I realized that this points to exactly the same thing as my last post.  Our mind moves through a soup of possibilities, digesting data-bits as we go along, in search of the best possible meaning/truth.   Which we currently seem to be able to do best in a linear, time-line fashion.

Now thinking of information as the shit left over after digesting can be taken a couple of different, and I think, equally valid ways:

1) We absorb certain data giving rise to feelings.  What is left, that is, the data which we don’t absorb, is simply information.

2) We absorb data from the soup as impressions, and once the impressions are absorbed, the information is all we are left with.

(and really, both of these might be seen as the same thing, because the information that’s left after we digest the data from the sea just goes back out and mixes into that sea once again, there is no real boundary between the two)

Also, speedbird also says: “That pre-existing stuff, the quantum soup from which measurements coalesce like dumplings… that pre-existent stuff is /much better/ than data”.

This, I think, is a pretty good description of the “Prima materia“.

And the quantum soup is richer than the data pulled from it.  But the data only exists as separate from that soup/sea because our consciousness pulls it out.  Otherwise it’s all just undifferentiated possibility.  This, I think, is why (in the Buddhist tradition) enlightenment is possible only in the human realm, and not necessarily in the deva realm.  It is in the creation of data out of the sea of quantum possibility, and through our conscious struggle with that data, that our consciousness becomes stronger, our awareness greater.  Only here.  Only now.

And this means that meaning and truth are nothing in themselves.  The realization of an insight is simply a sign that our consciousness/awareness has grown stronger (or, if you prefer, less weak).

I think (or at least hope) that all this is pointing toward a new type of “graven image” of this sea-of-possibilities that we can hold in our awareness, in order to better interact with those possibilities and pull data from them.   A bigger hole for the possibilities to flow through, or a bigger may-pole around which to wrap it’s strings of data.

The morning of the 23rd, I was checking my bloglines, and found a new post by Rob over at the 10 Dimensions, explaining why (according to his system of intuitively visualizing the dimensions) time should properly be considered a space through which the third dimension moves, not a different kind of dimension (temporal) separate from other (spatial) dimensions.

Mainly to help get my head wrapped around the idea, I responded with a comment about how the 4th dimension might be thought of as a time plane through which our 3 dimensional space-point moves (similar to a 1 dimensional point moving in a line through a 2 dimensional plane), and like that one dimensional point, our movement through the (4D) time plane would seem to us to be a straight line, no matter how twisted that movement was through that plane (or a higher, 5D time-sphere).

I also added a thought about how holding our hand in one place, moving it away and then back to the same place might be though of as a way of traveling back in “time”, and how it’s just in our memory that the two spacial/temporal localities are different.  I’ve since rethought that, and will explain how my thinking has changed a bit later*.

The point, though, is that I checked Tim Boucher’s site immediately thereafter, and found basically a description of the same process:
The system, with over a hundred billion neurons, processed the information from input to output in just half a second. All your knowledge was evaluated. Walter Freeman, the famous neurobiologist, defined this amazing ability. “The cognitive guys think it’s just impossible to keep throwing everything you’ve got into the computation every time. But, that is exactly what the brain does. Consciousness is about bringing your entire history to bear on your next step, your next breath, your next moment.” The mind was holistic. It evaluated all its knowledge for the next activity. How could so much information be processed so quickly? Where could such knowledge be stored?”

“bringing your entire history to bear on your next step, your next breath, your next moment” is a perfect description of the process involved in making a straight line out of our twisting (and, I would guess, many-branched) travels through the time-space-information-sphere.   To think that the brain is somehow actually processing and storing an endless stream of information and then reprocessing it again every moment, in response to various stimuli is, in my opinion, like looking up a horses’ ass to find out whether it’s wearing a bit and harness.

Going about things from the wrong end, so to speak…

All that information is always there, floating around us, and it’s just our mind that moves through that information in a meaningful manner.  That is, nothing is moving except the mind, and time (as a line) is an illusion!  A linear sense of time just seems to be the best that we pull off, as of yet.  In the very least, our manner of moving through this information-sphere should be adjustable, if we could just figure out a way to convince our sense-of-having-a-self that it can come a long for the ride without being obliterated.

This little bit of synchronicity lead to a rather large bubbling up of other associated links (on what might or might not be considered the same topic), which was all captured on Tim’s site.  A great time was had by all.  Check here for the relative posts.

As for the possibility of an AI (or an AN) reaching this level of {no mind}, I’ll discuss my thoughts on that eventually as well.  Just not here.  That would take a much longer post…

**I later realized that moving my hand from one spot and then moving it away and back again to the same spot should not really be considered “traveling back in time”, since to think of it that way is to think of time as being only linear (which in my opinion is a mistake, or at least an over-simplification).

As everything changes together, merely repeating that one variable is not “going back in time”.  The hand itself does not really move through time at all, because that hand of two seconds ago is not the same as this hand of two seconds later.  Well, you might be able to consider it to be the same hand, depending on how you define “this hand” and “that hand”. And yet, on the other hand…

It is really only our awareness/consciousness that moves through information-space/time in such a way that we perceive our movement through time to be linear.  Our hand, as well as our body, is just a vehicle-form in which consciousness takes refuge, something inhabited and then discarded after a time.  And I guess what we all want to know is, “am I that consciousness, or am I just the body?”

Well, that depends of your definition of “I”.

I left California at 6:15 pm, and got home to Brooklyn at just about 8:15 am, less than 12 hours if you take the time difference into account.  The fact that I can travel across a continent so quickly, from door to door, will never cease to amaze me.  Whatever happens globally in the near future, this level of interconnection will not be something that we will be able to allow ourselves to let fade into the dusk of history.   It allows for too much for it to ever be completely gone, and this makes me very happy.

The vacation was good, and much needed.  I spent a lot of time both in nature and in cars, both of which are very foreign to my existence here in New York.   And coming back really makes me notice just how dirty a place this city can be, no matter how much I love the multitude of possibilities present here.  That’s how it ever is, I suppose.

Anyway, I think things here will be picking up rather slowly.  Given how brain-dead I felt whenever I was on a computer for more than a hour, I may have overextended myself a bit prior to Christmas.  I will have to wait and see if I can build up momentum to that same pitch without gathering so much tension along the way.

But in the meantime, I do want to throw together a joyful little info cloud for you:

“Subjects in this test performed exactly as if their brains were subconsciously gathering information before reaching a confidence threshold, which was then reported to the conscious mind as a definite, sure answer. The subjects, however, were never aware of the complex computations going on, instead they simply “realized” suddenly that the dots were moving in one direction or another. The characteristics of the underlying computation fit with Pouget’s extensive earlier work that suggested the human brain is wired naturally to perform calculations of this kind.”

“During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

“Emptiness makes everything possible. If it were not for emptiness, nothing would be possible because everything would be fixed, solid. If everything is solid and fixed, then nothing can change, nothing will happen, nothing will improve, nothing will get worse.

“For your wider understanding of this particular “psychic state”, it is necessary to tell you further that even up to now they arise with every kind of data for acquiring genuine being-Reason, and at their arising, there are not yet in their presences any “logicnestarian-growths” from which there is later localized, and from which there is acquired the isolated functioning in them of the said “false consciousness.”  But only later, during their development and their preparation to become responsible beings, either by themselves or by the intentional directing of their as they call them ‘parents’ or ‘teachers’ – that is to say, responsible beings who undertake the responsibility of the preparation of the given beings for responsible existence – they begin, as I said, to help intentionally in taking in and fixing only those impressions which later are the data for the impulses corresponding to surrounding abnormally abnormally established conditions; and only then, being gradually formed, there just begins to be predominant in their common presence this said artificially formed ‘consciousness’ of theirs.” – Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson (p. 567)

Odin took the horn in both his hands and drank and drank. And as he drank all the future became clear to him. He saw all the sorrows and troubles that would fall upon Men and Gods. But he saw, too, why the sorrows and troubles had to fall, and he saw how they might be borne so that Gods and Men, by being noble in the days of sorrow and trouble, would leave in the world a force that one day, a day that was far off indeed, would destroy the evil that brought terror and sorrow and despair into the world.

The third chamber is where the Holy Spirit and the Christ Logos guide and influence us. Here we enjoy our Holy Spiritual super-conscious awareness, a type of instinctual awareness. We all marvel at the fact that we can drive a two ton automobile for miles and miles and not recall a single detail of the drive, as all along we were lost deep in thought. Other examples include our ability to act most swiftly and wisely when emergency situations arise. Moreover, it is from this holy chamber that each one of us knows intuitively the value of goodness and has the ability to discriminate between right and wrong. And should we transgress, from here spring the stings of conscience which move us to correct our thoughts and actions. We speak here of the Holy Spiritual and Logoic influences in our higher centers, yet here too, in the subconscious we are well guided in our development.

And happy holidays…

It’s been busy here lately, but admittedly I’ve put down the quantum (meta)physics stuff.  Still thinking about it though, and will hopefully get back at it next week.  I’ll be back in NYC by Sunday, but things will be pretty silent until then.

Stay warm!

This time at home has really given me a creative burst. Here’s some new pieces (mostly) created in the past few days.



God as Blood and Hair (detail)

Fall on the River (detail)

Green Sun Blue (detail)

Snake River Spirit (detail)

Magnet, and the 10,000 Things (detail)

Just a little follow up to this.

The first quake struck the area at 9:35 a.m. followed by a 3.7-magnitude quake at 12:09 p.m.

With that second quake, it puts my prayer to the mountains pretty much right in the middle between the two.  I was leaving Starbucks at about 11:15, and the prayer would have been a little less than half an hour before that, so about 10:50.  Placing the earthquakes almost exactly 1 hour and fifteen minutes on either side.

Weirder and weirder…

A series of three pictures from my museum trip that I was unable to combine into one large one.  I wanted to include these anyway though, as I’m a big fan of Ganesh (if you hadn’t noticed).

I have been wanting to visit the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art for a few years now, but the first two attempts I made only got me into the lounge, never up to the actual artwork.  Extenuating circumstances and all that…

Now though, I think it was that something was looking out for me, or I just wasn’t ready before, because when I finally made it in to the exhibits a little while back, I happy to find that I could truly appreciate the art, and was able to almost interact with it, on a psychologicla, spiritual level.  It was here that I first had an understanding of the term Yab-Yum, and how the masculine and feminine principles relate to compassion and wisdom, respectively.  This later lead to an experience of the manifest/unmanifest energies within me, that give rise to this essay.

I was also happy to find out that they allow photography in their main exhibition halls.  Here are the best of my photos from the visit.

Video was here:  http://revver.com/video/522811/rob-bryanton-talks-to-special-guest-gevin-giorbran/

It may be gone now though….

The weirdest shit happened to me today, and given this, I thought it best to make an official notation of it here.  Add my fuel to the fire, so to speak.

I’m home visiting the family for Christmas, and this morning, after meditation, go for a walk to the local Starbucks (about 45 minutes away by foot).   Growing up, I never used to walk around my town; everyone drove everywhere, and it just seemed strange to be the only one walking alongside a busy street.  But almost 10 years of living in New York makes gives you an immunity to both traffic and to being thought of as strange, so now I’m happy to walk anywhere.  After 6 hours on a plane, I could use the exercise anyway.

So I’m walking alongside a highway, and I come upon a little plaque placed next to a small lake (a man-made lake, created after I left town).  It talks about the watershed of the area, and how three rivers come down out of the Gabilan mountains and conjoin (mere minutes from my house) to flow down a man-made watercourse called “Reclamation Ditch” and out to the ocean.  Reclamation Ditch runs through an agricultural field which used to be one of the areas “10 ancient lakes”.  When I was a kid, the field would flood in the winter and we would go out rafting.

After reading the small plaque, I look up to the mountains and commune with them briefly, thanking them for watching over my town, and for the water which they send down to irrigate the many fields of Salinas (agriculture is pretty much the only business in town).  Feeling good for being a sort of spiritual caretaker for my community, I walk off along a bike path next to the river to Starbucks (somehow, I always seem to know how to get where I’m going, even if I’ve never gone that way before).

The rest of the day is uneventful, for the most part, until I call up a friend from high school.  He says “did you feel the earthquake this morning?”  I say I had no idea, but he tells me that apparently there’d been a earthquake sometime shortly after I’d finished my mediation in the morning.  And where was the Earthquake?  “The epicenter of the 4.1 quake, which the USGS reported at 36.676°N, 121.301°W, lies in the Gabilan mountains directly east of Salinas. “ The very same mountains I would be praying to later!

Now, it’d be pretty awesome if I could make out like the earthquake happened as a response to my prayers, but it didn’t, and that would be a bit of a stretch anyway, even if the timing of the events had worked out that way.  Still, maybe something in me noticed the earthquake, and brought it to my attention as I was out walking.

***

Bonus weirdness:  I decided to look up the feng shui significance of three rivers joining, and the first page I come across is this one:

“Located in Sichuan Province at the confluence of the Min, Qingyi and Dadu Rivers, construction of this gargantuan monument commenced in 713 (during the Tang Dynasty) and finished 90 years later, in 803.  It was the tempestuous waters that raged at this Buddha’s feet that prompted the monk, Hai Tong, to erect this statue of Maitreya (a Boddhisattva) to `appease’ the water spirit that was thought to be responsible for the numerous accidents that occurred on that spot.  Interestingly enough, with the completion of the Le Shan Buddha, the usual flooding – and deaths – stopped…and the City of Le Shan became safe and prosperous!”

Wait, which “boddhisattva”?  Maitreya? Shit…

Not bad for only being at this for a few months, eh?  Looks like Wordpress has really worked out for me like I was hoping!

I open my eyes to find that I am blindfolded, a gun in my hand.  Not knowing what else to do, I fire out into the unknown, hoping to hit something, provoke a response.  Perhaps hoping to be stopped.

Shots echo around me and fade back into silence.  Nothing.

I pull the blindfold off of my eyes and let it drop around my neck, but there is only silence and darkness.  I squint out into the darkness and wonder about the existence of the gun, when clearly there is nothing for me to shoot.  Discomforted by the darkness and the purposelessness, I yell out for light.

And there is light.  Bright whiteness all around me; again I am blinded.

Objects fade slowly into existence around me, only vaguely geometric.  Pyramidal, rectangular, spherical, but having no distinct qualities.  They sit in a grid-like pattern around me, fading away into the distance.  I turn, object to object, rotating slowly in place.

Given the fact of the gun’s existence, I feel the only option I have is to make use of it.  And all the objects are valid targets, I suppose, but at which should I aim?  Except for the varieties of shape, there is little to tell them apart.  Undecided, I begin to fire at random again.  When hit, the objects disappear in a shower of bright sparks.

“Bang!”

“Crash!”

The “oomph” of air rushing to fill the newly voided space.

But as the objects disappear, more are revealed behind them, and these slide silently forward to fill the newly voided spaces.  I watch the objects move towards me as I continue to destroy them, one by one.  Over time, I become aware of a pattern to their movement, a direction from which the new objects seem to be coming.

I walk towards what appears to be their source, creating a path by destroying the objects in front of me.  Yet the further I move from my original position, the faster and faster the new objects appear.  After only a few minutes of walking, I am overwhelmed and pushed back.

I give up any attempt to find the source, nearly retreating back to where I began.  But I stand a bit away from the center, to allow for a slow trickle of objects in my direction.  I sit down and shoot them one by one as they move up to me.  I am still.  I wait.  I think.

I appear to have worked in tandem with some undiscoverable source to build a system in which objects are created and then destroyed.  I give these objects a purpose for coming into being: to be destroyed.

And they, in turn, give my gun (and I) a reason for being: to destroy the objects.

So the objects, my gun, and I, are all interdependent, each creating a purpose for the others.

And yet, this system seems so empty.  Objects come into existence only so they can be destroyed.   My gun exists only to destroy.  It leads to nothing, creates nothing, and depends entirely on a source I know nothing about for the constant replenishment of objects to be destroyed.  The only motivation to continue in this way is to avoid growing bored.

As I ponder this state of affairs, continuing to destroy new objects as they appear, I notice that the objects are beginning to take on more distinct shapes. In some way these shapes seem to reflect the patterns of my thoughts, although I can’t predict or control their appearance in any way.

Occasionally an object will appear that I decide not to destroy, if only because I find it interesting.  These objects pile up around me. My aim with the gun becomes necessarily better, as I have to shoot around them.

…3 golden lamps surround a curled up fire hose.  The fire hose, both the tube and the nozzle, is blindingly white.  It is impossible to make out the material from which it is made…

…A metallic owl with lifelike eyes that emits a horrible machine-like screech.  Every time it does so, its eyes fill with hatred.  It sits on the branch of a dead tree.  Around the tree, poppies grow…

…A pile of shattered glass. Inside each piece of glass, a wisp of smoke can be seen slowly curling around itself.  Extending from the top of the pile is a sparking wire, which jumps around rapidly.  As the wire touches the shards, they fuse back together and a face appears briefly in the smoke, contorted by laughter…

…Icicles on a cliff overhanging a small fire.  They are at the very edge of the fire’s heat, and they melt very slowly, drops of water slowly coalescing at their tips.  The longest icicle, closest to the fire melts faster than the others, and a drop falls from it.  The fire fizzles low for a moment, and in that moment, the drops on the other icicles re-freeze. Then the fire rises again, and new drops begin to form…

As more and more complex things appear, I begin to arrange them around me in a pattern.  As I place them behind me, and the objects behind me move outwards and away, making space for their new, more complex cousins.  I am proud of the objects I have brought into being, and I find that the more I keep, the fewer I want to destroy.  The source seems to be learning from  my choices and adjusting it’s output accordingly.

Eventually, I am surrounded by these unique objects, and once again, I decide to try approaching the source.  My objects move with me, forming a pattern around me and carrying me (or am I carrying them?) towards the source. And this time, as the objects come faster and faster, each new object is immediately integrated into my pattern as it appears.

They swirl around me faster and faster, and the pattern grows larger and larger.  I place my now useless gun on the ground, and it is swept away by the tide of objects, itself becoming part of the pattern.  I move with the objects, dance within the pattern.

Objects surround me on all sides.    I am engulfed in them, lost in them.

I become a part of the pattern.

I become one with the source.

And all becomes still.

My question to you:

Was it important to stop destroying objects, before I could begin moving toward the source?

Or…

Where did the gun come from?  It was the only other thing to have existed prior to the appearance of the objects…

No answers?  Then I will tell you a secret instead:
There was never any gun at all…

A bit more of an explanation of this is due, I think.

That which we are made to seek is really just a direction in which to move, a current.  The good, true, and beautiful are indefinable simply because there can be no fixed meaning for them.  They are forces pulling us toward God, however God is manifesting at the current moment, as gravity pulls us toward the earth.

Manifestation by itself is incomplete; only the unmanifest can truly contain all things.  To identify wholly with manifest existence is to be separated from the completeness of the unmanifest.  But as individual, manifest beings, we can never truly experience the unmanifest while still an individual.  However, to get stuck in this duality is caused by false thinking, as neither the manifest nor the unmanifest can ever be truly separated from the other.

As in the yin-yang symbol, the unmanifest is in the manifest, and the manifest in the unmanifest.  They are the same.  Think of it as a gradient from no-thing to all things.  There is no line to be drawn there, we only draw the line because we cannot see that underneath, around, and within the forms is the formlessness.  Yab-Yum.  Beautiful…

The good, true, and beautiful are a force created by this union, a force which pulls us in the direction we are meant to go, just as gravity acts upon a pendulum.   Imagine a pendulum, which touches the ground when it is fully extended, that is raised until it is five feet above the ground to the east. Gravity will attract it to the west.

It is only the stupidity of the pendulum that thinks that gravity is always to be found by traveling westwards.  In the end, gravity will have retreated to the east, behind the pendulum, and it will have to swing in the opposite direction.  In just this way does continually trying to find happiness in one thing only lead to sadness.  Only by being sensitive to the force of gravity, and not being overly concerned with the direction that gravity is pulling it, can the pendulum finally return to its lowest point.

If we take the path of the pendulum, and reach the lowest point toward which the gravity of the good, true, and beautiful God is pulling us, then at that lowest point, we also become a conductor of energy.

Here we can add the metaphor of the compass into the mix, for we are attracted to God like a compass needle is attracted to a magnet.  When we reach that low, still point at the bottom of the pendulum swing, we touch the magnet, and we become charged with the magnetic power.   But for us, this power is love, the power is life.  Ki, chi, energy, whatever you want to call it.

The directions on the compass mean nothing on their own.  We can turn the compass in whichever way we want.  It is only when we allow the pull of earth’s magnetic field to define which way is true north that the other symbols on the compass are of any use to us.  For us, that magnetic force is the joy of being alive.

But not happiness.  Joy.  Aliveness.  Because taking care of yourself is not masturbation, and sometimes, the compass can lead us through some bad areas.  Such is the way, when the way is such.

It seems that these ideas and theories have been simmering in the back of my head for a while now.  This summer at the beach, for example, the sand and the sea gave me an insight into the nature of awareness.

As anyone who has spent time watching the ocean knows,  the sand along the tide line is warn flat by the constant washing of the tide water over  it.   With just the water and the sand together, they naturally create a perfect equilibrium: smooth, flat, densely packed sand, with water flowing back and forth across the top of it.

However, as anyone who has spent time in the ocean can also tell you, when you  stand just inside the tide line and let the waves wash over your feet, the weight of your presence causes the retreating waves to carve valleys out of the sand beneath your feet, soon leaving you buried up to your  ankles in a mix of sandy water.  This is same way that quicksand works, just not as quick.

Such does the consciousness of an observer act upon reality.  With your very awareness, you bring the world around you into being out of the tide of information signals flowing through your nervous system.  You create the dips and valleys in the sands of reality, that would otherwise be pressed flat by waves.

Also, Einstein suggested that we think of gravity as a “bending” in space time; massive bodies having the same kind effect on the space-time continuum…

But how does this tie into my recent series insights? (continued from here)

Nice of you to ask…  =)

What this all boils down to is the realization that the best way to prepare for future problems is to practice being as aware of the present moment as possible.  It is only in the present moment that any “true” anxiety/fear/suffering arises, and it’s only in dealing with this “true” suffering that we can ever hope to find its roots, detach them, and begin emptying our “glass”.

But if creating illusory experiences with the mind is not helpful, is the mind good for anything?  Should we just go back to being animals?

No.  I’m not saying imagination/memory is a bad thing, just that it needs to be repurposed.  We haven’t yet been able to successfully integrate our mind with our other sensory apparatus.

The mind is meant to be used to become aware of the potentials around us. When we are fully in touch with the information streaming at us from our present reality, the mind falls into the background and keeps track of the pathway-possibilities that arise outwards through time-space, away from the matrix of information that makes up our here-and-now reality.

When we are fully present, the mind is freed to track the potential quantum possibility waves around us (which exit in the 5th dimension outside of the linear 4th dimensional time-line) and we can more accurately guide our awareness-vehicle through time-space toward ever improving possibilities.

It is a continual cultivation of potential that, when properly used, builds a wave which lifts us (and everyone we’re involved with) in the direction of God/truth/goodness/beauty, all of which, I maintain, can best thought thought of as a direction within the higher dimensions, and that the movement in this direction is what fulfills the task for which all of creation was brought into existence (whatever that might actually be).

To be prepared is to be aware.  Nothing else matters as much as that.

So, a personal example… (continued from here)

A few days after listening to Dr Hyatt’s lecture, I was walking out of the office to lunch, thinking about his glass-nearly-full metaphor.  That is, in what ways do I unknowingly carry around anxiety and tension within me?

I began having a sort of mental conversation with myself, where I debated different potential examples and the various positions one could take on them:  “Oh, I am anxious because I am worried that I am wasting my life in an office job,” yet on the other hand, “it pays well and doesn’t require that you take work home”.   Or: “oh, I am anxious because of bad relationships in my past“, but “you have handled them to the best of your abilities at the time, and it’s not worth beating yourself up over it”…

It’s a favorite game of mine for exploring ideas and situations, but as I watched myself doing it in regards to my anxiety levels, I realized that, really, it’s something I do all the time in pretty much any situation.

I noticed that I spend most of my time imagining different potential fear/anxiety/discomfort producing scenarios that could possibly arise at any given time, whether that’s imagining the outcome of talking to someone at a party, or hearing footsteps coming up behind me when I’m walking home late at night

That is, I’m using my memory/imagination (there’s not much difference, in my opinion, but more on that some other time) to create illusory scenarios where I confront anxiety/fear/suffering, and I do so in order to develop a skill-set for dealing with these things in the future.  The problem is, it doesn’t work.  And the reason is two-fold.

First, and more obvious, is that imagination never lives up to reality, especially when it comes to our emotional responses. We can never react to an imagined scenario as well as we would to a real one, because we simply have too much control over the variables.  Our subconscious will generally take over and steer the scene to a quick resolution, usually one that ends in our favor.

It’s hard enough to maintain fully conscious decision making in a stressful situation in real life. In the imagination, once fight-or-flight potentiality kicks in, your subconscious will easily find a way to change the scenario to your advantage.  It’s basically mental masturbation, and in the end, it’s about as satisfying. We can still work ourselves into a state of anxiousness, but it is response to no real cues, only ones we’ve created based on our own desires at the time.

Second, and more subtle, is that by creating these imaginary anxiety producing scenarios, we believe that we have confronted the problem and will be better able to deal with it in the future.  But, as I just explained, this is simply not true.  No matter how we imagine a scenario, our imagination is not going to match up to a real life encounter.  Because a large part of  anxiety in real life comes from NOT BEING IN CONTROL…

Therefore, whatever false confidence we feel is destroyed as soon as it comes into contact with actual anxiety producing situation, and this produces even more anxiety (the bigger they come, the harder they fall…).  Plus, until we’re aware of this negative feedback-loop, the destruction of our false confidence just leads us to create MORE anxiety-producing thoughts in order to make that false confidence stronger “next time”.

Since we’re gaining no actual confidence here, do we gain anything from all these thought experiments?

Yes.

We’re gaining more anxiety, the subjective experience of anxiety, repeated over and over and over!

By giving attention to it, by feeding it and making it real for a moment, we are also making it a part of the information contained in our history/memory. And THAT is the real source of the anxiety that we carry around with us.

We hold onto the memory of illusory anxiety in order to convince ourselves  that we can better deal with future, real anxiety. And then, when that real anxiety becomes present, our almost full-glass overflows…

So it seems that 90% of anxiety is pretty much an illusion based purely on the mis-use of thought.  And really, I bet we would find that the same is probably true of actual anxiety, once we take the opportunity of experiencing it in real life as a chance to examine its root cause.

I’ll try it out next time I’m at a party (or, the next time I get mugged!), and let you know how it goes. =)

(and an explanation of what this leads to follows here)

Recently, as you may know if you follow my research links site, I’ve been reading an online text that does a great job of breaking down Reichian-type body therapy (pun intended) for those new to the subject.  My only previous knowledge of Reich came from Zac’s experiments over at Alchemically Braindamaged (which, upon review, seems to be where I found that Reichian book to begin with…)

I like what I’ve been reading and (since I get pretty focused into whatever informational flow I am following) I’ve been much more conscious of the energy blocks in my body, now that I’m aware of what they can be and how I might visualize them.

In the interest of further exploration, I “found” disc 1 of a recording of Dr. Hyatt’s, called Shotgun Tantra.  And after listening to it, I have a much greater appreciation of the sarcasm evident in the comments regarding Hyatt in the AB post…

However, despite the heavily edited female “interviewer”, and Hyatt’s impressive ability to draw out a string of tangents until you think he’s made a point (i.e.: bullshit), there were a few good ideas in the mix.

The best one, in my opinion, was Hyatt’s critique of “stress/anxiety management”.  He compared trying to ‘manage’ your stress levels to trying to avoid overfilling a glass that is already 90% full of water.   Sure, you can try to avoid any “water” getting dumped on you, but miss even just a few drops and you’ll quickly spill over.  As Hyatt points out, it would be much better to start with an empty  glass, giving yourself the ability to “hold more water” as it arises.

And while I agree with Dr Hyatt’s diagnosis here, and I appreciate the other stuff I’ve been reading online, I’ve also noticed what seems to be a sort of blind-spot in the explanation of armoring and its function.  I don’t mean to imply that these people are unaware of this blind-spot, just that, for me, it should be one of the core components of any explanation of Reichian therapy, and I didn’t hear it explained as such in either source.

To whit: you have tightened your armor in order to block your awareness of the internal surging of emotional energy (aka: orgone) because (for whatever reason) you can’t accept it.  By loosening the armor you can once again let that energy flow, and become aware of what your body is telling you.

But this, I think, is only half the battle. Once the energy is flowing, if you don’t use your new-found emotional orgone/organ knowledge to modulate your behavior and “empty your glass”, so to speak, you’ll be stuck in a never ending (and draining) loop of misused energy. It similar to opening up the cupboard below your sink, noticing a puddle caused by a leaky drain, and only wiping up the puddle without fixing the drain because “water is supposed to flow”.

I understand that it’s hard to address this in a book or lecture, because any misuse of body energy always has a very personal and idiosyncratic cause. However, I just want to place a little more emphasis on the removal of armoring as a tool for understanding and mastering the self, rather than as an end in itself. The point is not to open up to the pain and hurt inside, but to open up and REMOVE it.

Perhaps I misunderstand Reichian therapy all together.  Feel free to tell me so in the comments.  However, I think we should keep in mind that Reich had a notoriously short fuse , and that he died of a heart attack in prison.   Hardly the description of a freely emotional energetic being, if you know what I mean…

(a personal story illustrating this comes next)

“One of humanity’s biggest problems is the belief that everything is done happening already. We announce the discovery of rules and laws, the way things are made to work,  as if these things are finished working, implying a set of rules that are true now and will remain true forever.  All this, when, at the same time, we are aware that things change, sometimes even in ways we cannot see…  Why do we seek to master change so?”

Purple monkey wrenches, flung through the dawning air by red baboons.
They are done, working on the master’s cars.
Time travel and the pyramids fill their dreams.  Lost continents…

Whence Atlantis? And, Why Atlantis?
Too much! Already, the dryness comes.
Descend, oh seeker! Lower yourself into the watery depths.
Soak, become muddied. Deluded, diluted, disillusioned.

Bamboo forests of the mind, peppered with blind ninjas.
Thoughts crash and slash each other, when by random chance they meet.
Such a war of double speak. Can you contain multitudes?

More importantly, should you?

I feel the desert returning, the jungle people are getting tired.
The sea people are laughing as they ride the tides away.
The desert people sit, staring dully at the whispering sands around their feet.

This is to be the source? The chrysalis and the butterfly?
Perhaps we are better off without such dusty butterflies…

But if not this people, not here, not now…
Then whence?

It is not as if it can never happen. But will it ever happen?
To retain our relevance, we must grow within and out of.

Has anyone ever thought that birth is a bloody, horrible struggle?

Labour pains, and in the seventies, the water broke.
More blood, more struggle…
Now we push! And breathe!

Let them tell you it can’t be done. Let them tell you it is not worth the struggle.
Let them continue to stare at the dust, these desert people.
We will reclaim our jungle. And if it is not to be reclaimed, we will cultivate it.

The kingdom of heaven is inside us and all around us. Why do we will not-see-it?

An empty space.

A clock.  A ladder.

A glow from below, lighting the background.  Black to blue to white…

The mass of tangled webs arises; it is stopped by the mind.

Perhaps this is the right of the mind? But there is the intimation of a cramp,
some pain in the stomach that you must expel, but cannot.

Were you to throw up your insides, what would be left?

An emptiness…

Remove the clock.   Toss away the ladder.  Let the light be there.

Vomit up that web.  Take it un-part.

There is something in the psychic throat.  Allow it to remove.

I have heard (where I couldn’t tell you) that the fifth chakra (the throat chakra), is not only the creative chakra (as in speech) but is also the cleansing chakra (as in breath)…

A calorie-type rating for information, based on its personal usefulness or significance, and how much energy (motivation) we get from consuming that information.  Possible to have different ratings depending on the subjective situation in which the information is received.

Also, low quality information that makes us feel good but doesn’t give us much energy, would be comparable to the McDonalds of brainfood.  We have a lot of this kind of information flowing around us now, in a ‘as-below-so-above’ type of interaction between the noosphere and the biosphere.

A name is needed, I think, for what is being measured (not the unit of measurement, but the thing being measured by that unit).  Info-energy?  Moti-mation?  Insfiration?

As for the unit of measurement, I propose the reclus…  =)

Post-modernism’s relative plurality of viewpoint and value is really just the destruction of our previous mythic/cultural identities.   It’s the societal equivalent of a slow nervous breakdown carried out over about 50-100 years.  Think of the tower card, both a deconstruction and a falling away:

However, many people are begining to realize that this dissolution and deconstruction just end up making us feel depressed, or at least lost.  If every thing is of the same value, then progress is a lie and an impossibility.  We’re wandering along over a endless, featureless plain, or stuck in the doldrums as the sea washes around us.

At this point, I think we understand that a collapse is not the answer.  We built that tower for a reason, dammit, and it was a nice enough tower, for a while…

But the tower no longer serves it’s purpose, having become too rigid and unflexible.

The answer, then, seems to be the suspension of these falling stone pieces within our empty, energetic awareness, and to take this chance to readjust, realign, and reconnect them.  A slow, controlled dissolve, where we turn them back into the liquid information they were when we first absorbed them, no longer grasping onto the frozen “‘microstructure’ of exquisite complexity” that we just couldn’t let go of. (thanks for the phrasing, Speedbird)

And as we adjust these pieces, and break them down back into more basic flows of information, we are reminded why we held them in the first place, and we can again use them toward their true purpose: to tune into that radio station known as the good, the true, and the beautiful; sign posts pointing toward the direction that is God.  A liquid information flow that moves according to the whims of the great magnet…

Because all conditioned things will pass away; do not build your house upon them.