Reclusland

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 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.

Found these can’t-remember-where, but they are awesome.  All these and more available at this site.

Imagine that’s your consciousness,
raditating outwards
from the top of your head
to the bottom of your spine.

Putting aside my previous (and to be honest, ongoing)
obsession with magnetic fields as a metaphor,
I still feel there’s something important
about the two relationships depicted here.

And this is probably the more beautiful images I’ve seen recently.
It’s a depiction of a photon sphere,
which is essentially light from a star orbiting a black hole.

These makes me feel like those pictures of saints and angels must have made people feel in the “dark” ages…

We must learn how to “thing” without becoming “a thing” ourselves.

I am all of these things, yet they are not me…

Read an article on Futurismic that quoted a question from another article that really got me thinking.  I figured I’d throw it out to my readers here:

Why are we as a species so driven to find a definition for God?

The more I ask myself the question, the more I realize I can’t find an answer.  It’s kind of tripping me out.

Maybe this whole “Zen” thing is having more of an effect than I think…  ;)

Feel free to expound at whatever length you wish.  Any and all answers are welcome.

(links to larger version)

Krishnamurti starts off putting Chogyam to the test, essentially asking him “Why bother meditating?” I love it.  Krishnamurti’s having a great time; he’s almost smirking. And Chogyam, I have to admit, looks a bit nervous (at least until he finally gets to start talking halfway through the second video).

Just for reference, this takes place in San Diego, California, on 15th Feb. 1972.  Over 40 years after Krishnamurti broke with the The Order of the Star, and 5 years after Chogyam Trungpa had opened the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West.

(part 1)

(part 2)

(part 3)

(part 4)

(part 5)

That’s it for me, until after the 25th.  The holidays are a busy time, and when I’m not busy, I will be taking the opportunity to relax away from the computer for a bit.

But I want to leave you with something good, so check out the last two posts, and the one about the past crystalizing out of the future as well.

And ponder this: What is it to know yourself as the point where both the quantumly uncertain future and the classically physical past exist simultaneously, where the analogue and the digital meet?

“Judging, making up our minds what to think, is something for which we are, in principle, responsible – something we freely do, as opposed to something that merely happens in our lives. Of course, a belief is not always, or even typically, a result of our exercising this freedom to decide what to think. But even when a belief is not freely adopted, it is an actualisation of capacities of a kind, the conceptual, whose paradigmatic mode of actualisation is in the exercise of freedom that judging is. This freedom, exemplified in responsible acts of judging, is essentially a matter of being answerable to criticism in the light of rationally relevant considerations.”

- John McDowell: ‘Having the World in View: Lecture One’ (via fuckyeahphilosophy)

Free will or no free will?  Fuck that polarity.  Worry about the things you can consciously choose, choose them well, and the rest is not your concern.

When Cami Walker of Los Angeles learned three years ago that she had multiple sclerosis, her health and her spirits plummeted — until she got an unusual prescription from a holistic health educator.  Ms. Walker gave a gift a day for 29 days — things like making supportive phone calls or saving a piece of chocolate cake for her husband. The giving didn’t cure her multiple sclerosis, of course. But it seems to have had a startling effect on her ability to cope with it. She is more mobile and less dependent on pain medication. The flare-ups that routinely sent her to the emergency room have stopped, and scans show that her disease has stopped progressing.

“My first reaction was that I thought it was an insane idea,” Ms. Walker said. “But it has given me a more positive outlook on life. It’s about stepping outside of your own story long enough to make a connection with someone else.”

And science appears to back her up.

(from the NYTimes)

This is not the law of attraction, this is not about visualizing yourself into wealth and beauty.  This is about making conscious decisions to be a positive effect in the world.  The other's joy and happiness feeds you in a way that your own never would.  All it requires that you pay attention enough to choose, as best you can, what will actually be of help to someone.

The difference between the right word & the almost right word is the difference between lightning & the lightning bug. - Mark Twain

This made me laugh enough to want to share it with you all.  Sometimes, the oracles speak loud and clear.  :)

Q: Should I, in any direction, be pushing myself harder than I am?

A: The situation described here is that of one who, finding himself in an influential position in a time of progress, remains gentle and reserved. He might reproach himself for lack of energy in making the most of the propitiousness of the time and obtaining all possible advantage. However, this regret passes away. He must not take either loss or gain to heart; they are minor considerations. What matters much more is the fact that in this way he has assured himself of opportunities for successful and beneficent influence.

(changing 5th line)

(a little recommended reading for your Fridays/weekends)

Nearly 100 new species described by California Academy of Sciences in 2009

Wild chimps have near human understanding of fire, study says

Octopus snatches coconut and runs

Chimp’s stone throwing at zoo visitors was ‘premeditated’

What’s the secret to surviving during times of environmental change? Evolve…quickly.

Are humans evolving faster? Findings suggest we are becoming more different, not alike

Culture skews human evolution

Does evolution select for faster evolvers?

Plants evolve quickly in response to climate change

Sex In The Caribbean: Environmental Change Drives Evolutionary Change

DNA Is Dynamic And Has High Energy; Not Stiff Or Static As First Envisioned

Dynamic changes in DNA linked to human diabetes

WHAT, YOU THOUGHT THIS SHIT HAD STOPPED?

(links to source)

New Model of the Universe Says Past Crystallizes out of the Future

• The standard spacetime diagrams used in relativity accord no special status to the past, the present or the future. That’s because they assume that everything evolves from time-reversible local physics.

• it is possible represent such a universe using a kind of spacetime diagram in which space and time merge into a single entity. “The universe just is: a fixed spacetime block,”say Ellis and Rothman. In this view, no instant has any special status: “All past and future times are equally present, and the present “now” is just one of an infinite number.”

• Ellis and Rothman introduce a significant new type of block universe. They say the character of the block changes dramatically when quantum mechanics is thrown into the mix. All of a sudden, the past and the future take on entirely different characteristics. The future is dominated by the weird laws of quantum mechanics in which objects can exist in two places at the same time and particles can be so deeply linked that they share the same existence. By contrast, the past is dominated by the unflinching certainty of classical mechanics.

• What’s interesting is that the transition between these states takes place largely in the present. It’s almost as if the past crystallizes out of the future, in the instant we call the present.

• They point out, for example, that this crystallization process doesn’t take place entirely in the present. In quantum mechanics the past can sometimes be delayed, for example in delayed choice experiments. This means the structure of the transition from future to past is more complex than a cursory thought might suggest.

• Ellis and Rothman suggest that their model provides a straightforward solution to the problem of the origin of the arrow of time. “The arrow of time arises simply because the future does not yet exist,” they say.

Granted, the article ends with:  That’s a thought-provoking but ultimately unconvincing model in its current form. But it’ll be interesting to see whether Ellis and Rothman can conjure a little more substance from the idea. What it needs, of course, are some testable predictions, things that cosmologists usually spend little time worrying about. Don’t hold your breath.

So maybe nothing to get too excited about, but the picture that paints is beautiful.  Even if nothing else, this provides an excellent metaphor for how karma works, and of how the mind moves through time.

via ledgergermane

Found another, more in depth, article on that ribbon of energy in space which I mentioned last week, but what caught my attention was the accompanying animation.  Completely blew my mind:

Here’s some pictures (and links, when possible, to more detailed info), as an attempt to explain my ideas on this in exactly 10,000 words :

Did a tarot reading recently, asking for some advice, and I wanted to record/share the result here as a reminder to myself in the months/years to come.

The Twisting Path spread provides insight into the path ahead of you and the choices you must make. This is the spread for situations where more than one pitfall may lie ahead. The images of the Minchiate Tarot are drawn from a rare surviving 18th century deck of 97 cards – 19 more than the traditional Tarot. It is considered by many to be the single most powerful divination tool on the web, providing deep insight, rich in ancient symbolism, to any question you may pose.

The card at the lower left, represents the first decision along your path. Four of Wands (Completion): A chance to rest and rejoice, having successfully resolved a matter of great import. The initial success of a business venture or creative project. The blossoming of a friendship or romantic relationship. Conclusions drawn based on hard won experience. Spiritual, material, or emotional rewards for diligent effort. May suggest marriage, childbirth, or a victory celebration.

The card to the far left represents the first false path that may lead you astray. Libra: Refinement and sophistication, abundant in urbane charm. A gift for diplomacy and social interaction. A romantic, filled with idealism and love of peace. The ability to understand both sides of an argument.

The card in the middle represents the second decision along your path. Page of Coins: The essence of earth, such as a mountain: The surprising appearance of new prosperity and opportunities for advance in the physical world. One who delights in the pleasures of the body, material things, and nature. The embrace of hard work, realistic goals, and scholarly perseverance as a means to create solid achievement. Dependability, trust, and a studious nature. May portend a new job or promotion.

The card at the lower right represents the second false path that may lead you astray. Earth: The established order and pattern by which the world is defined. The substance of all things, stable and resolute, resting firmly on the foundations of reality. The basis of all transactions, and hence of all value. The medium of sensual experience.

The card at the top represents one possible mask of your true destination. Four of Swords (Truce), when reversed: Restlessness and mental disharmony. Deserting a struggle in progress. A temporary retreat from stress that turns into a permanent rout. A lack of vigilance that could lead to disaster.

Decided to look up the reversal of the 4 of swords for further info, and found this:

Seek advise from your higher self – pull back into solitude and consider the details of your situation calmly. Put your thoughts in order and determine your priorities – suspend action on all issues but “one”, ask your unconscious to work on this one issue and then sleep on it. Centering and meditation practices can help you create the objectivity required to see all sides of an issue and from this experience something useful and powerful will emerge. You will soon be back into action again – there will be good opportunities ahead. Always take the time to think things out carefully before you commit yourself to anything.

Those of you out there who read the tarot can make what you will of it.  For everyone else, we will have to wait over the next several months and see how this turns out…

“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”

If you haven’t already heard, Jung’s Red Book is being released.  My copy is due to ship Oct 23rd, and I’ve got tickets to see the editor give a lecture on the book at the Rubin Museum of Art tonight.  I have not been so excited about anything since I was in elementary school and the Super Nintendo came out.  Seriously.

More from the NY Times article:

In 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”  As a psychiatrist, and one with a decidedly maverick streak, he tried instead to tear down the wall between his rational self and his psyche. For about six years, Jung worked to prevent his conscious mind from blocking out what his unconscious mind wanted to show him.   Regarding the significance of what the book contained, however, Jung was unequivocal. “All my works, all my creative activity,” he would recall later, “has come from those initial fantasies and dreams.”

“Jung’s prominent disciple Marie-Louise von Franz gave her friend, Barbara Hannah, a vivid picture of being in analysis with Jung in the garden room of his house on the Lake of Zurich, when he was attentive to every natural event as comprising a synchronistic commentary on the analytic dialogue: “insects flying in, the lake lapping more audibly than usual, and so on” (Hannah, 1976: 202, n. k). He had come to the view that the psyche is not so much a factor locked inside our bodies but “more like an atmosphere in which we live” (Adler, 1973: 433). For one who has attained an on-going intuitive relationship with the self, events both inner and outer constitute the voice of the forest spirit or the snake.”

“More like an atmosphere in which we live”…

Words and forms act as simply carriers for information contained in that atmosphere.  They true meaning only within the realm of that specific atmosphere.  And there is never anything other than that atmosphere.  Only here, only this.  I don’t know if we can know it completely (either we already do or we can’t ever).  But to look for the REAL anywhere else is to fall into dream.

For “form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form.  Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form.  Sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness are likewise like this.”

Had a couple of posts in my twitter feed this week (from separate people) that I thought went really well together:

Dan Bartlett: All experience is a muddle, until we make a model to explain it. The model can clarify the muddles, but the model is never the muddle itself (which, as Dan explains, is a RAW quote)

integralmath: RT @ryanbiddulph: Purpose invests you with a power which ignores negativity.

For me, this points to a balance between experience-as-meaningless (muddle) and experience-as-meaningful (model),  with these meaning-full models being created in order to give ourselves a purpose.  Having created that purpose, we gain power over the negative aspects of the chaotic muddle (ie: it helps us push through hard times to get what we want).   This is a key aspect of growing up, learning how to step outside of our immediate sensory experience and needs in order to attain a more complete purpose.

But if we cling too tightly to our self-created purpose, we lose sight of the unknown muddle, out of which newer, higher purposes can come.  And if we don’t work on good, purposeful models, we get stuck wallowing in the muddle.  Hence the need for a balancing act.

On the other hand, this entire argument is based on the assumption that the only way to make sense of life is to create a model to act as a filter over the chaotic mess of signal, and then the purpose becomes to find better, more evolved filters to gain more and more power over the unknown muddle.  Implicit in this is that life is always a muddle that needs to be modeled.

I don’t know how much I agree with that, since it implies that there is no implicit model already within the muddle.  Is it possible to move beyond the need for filters, and become the muddles way of modeling itself?

The descending dove is the mind reuniting with body, two-as-one, realization of magnetic polar nature of the self.   The dove descends, clasps snake to it, forms the feathered serpent.

It brings with it the peace that passeth all understanding.

by way of esoteric Chinese Buddhism:

Another time, Fazang illustrated the Huayan teachings for Empress Wu by constructing a hall of mirrors, placing mirrors on the ceiling, floor, four walls, and four corners of a room. In the center he placed a Buddha image with a lamp next to it. Standing in this room, the empress could see that the reflection in any one mirror clearly reflected the reflections from all of the other mirrors, including the specific reflection of the Buddha image in each one. This fully demonstrated the unobstructed interpenetration of the particular and the totality, with each one contained in all, and with all contained in each one. Moreover, it showed the nonobstructed interpenetration of each particular mirror with each of the others.

From a great article on the Avatamsaka Sutra.

no separation. feel that with the body, with the nervous system.

any “thing” or “self” that comes out of a separation or a delay is false, simply a reaction to the memory of a hologram.  this is samsara, dust and sparks kicked up by the squeaky wheels of dukkha.  and samsara exists within nirvana.  the apparent is within the real.

self meets all things like two arrows in mid-air, that is, perfectly.  in truth all are one.  I do not act, it acts.  ask what it is, and it is given to you.

making this leap, thoughts become ghosts that hover around the ever present union (bliss), lights to guide its path, flowers unfolding in its footsteps.

More spam-bot fun.  Got one today with the following: “colorado gangster disciples <something about pills> willy sterling gangster disciples <something about porn> laws of gangster disciples <etc etc etc>”

I did a little googling and found out the Gangster Disciples were/are apparently a big gang out of Chicago, started in the 60’s.  The symbol attached to their wiki page is as follows:

Pretty trippy stuff.  I’ve noticed some similarly esoteric looking gang graffiti up in my neighborhood, and I’ve been curious how long gangs had been into occult symbology.  Apparently at least since the 60’s.  Ken Wilber likened warring gang cultures to tribal level “red meme” (or whatever), and  I’ve always wondered if that meant they had medicine men, shamans, or something of that sort.  I imagine there’s got to be something/one to fulfill that role, but I’m surprised to see it might be the occult.  More signs and symbols and things are viewable here.  Check the rest of that set, pages 4 through 12 at least…

And for all you Illuminati Eye in the Triangle Conspiracy Theory folks, this is from a PDF on docstoc called “book of knowledge gangster disciples”.  The whole thing makes an interesting read, although it seem to be a law enforcement document, and so the language is correspondingly dull:

You gotta love the “Conservative Vice Lords” held up as comparison to the “Insane Vice Lords”.  Wonder what our political landscape would look like if the Democrats were the “Insane” party, rather than the “Liberal” party.  (Which is in no way meant to be a political joke, so please no “I’d say they already are the insane party, hyuk, hyuk!” kind of comments…). Anyway, I guess for me it just goes to show that these things might be more representative of something built into all human consciousness, rather than that they’re somehow conspiratorially related just because the same things are used in different places.

New spambot:

8/2/09:  Sure!

8/2/09: Wonderful!

8/3/09: What’s the platform number?

8/4/09: In short…

8/5/09: Fortunately…

8/5/09: Is there a bus to the castle?

Saved because there is no bus to the castle.  A horse maybe, or else you have to walk, but no bus.   Just go down the road, bear left, and cross the drawbridge.

(as way of explanation, I just finished this.  Not really that good of a book, felt more like notes to a future talk, but a quick read and a simple/direct interpretation of the Fisher King / Grail myth)

Title taken from the West’s first (and possibly only) koan…

I’ve been thinking that the thing to do right now is to get out of debt and to stay that way. I’ve been working on it myself (credit cards are done and those lousy student loans are next).

But I also mean something a little deeper than that. There are other debts than monetary ones, and those are usually more important.  Guilt is a kind of debt, in that you feel owe someone something as payment for whatever “wrong” you did. So is anger, if you hold on to it. Blame, both of yourself and others, for past or future actions, keeps things at less than zero.

The reason being is, as I’m sure everyone is aware, change is happening faster and faster (or at least our awareness of it and desire to control it is increasing…) And debt, of whatever kind, brings with it a kind of lag time, a slow emotional inertia. As change happens, it’s best to be as light on your feet as possible, and debt weakens your ability to do so. It means you have to account for more things before you can take action, and that there are less actions available to you when you do.

Now, given the interdependent nature of the world, it’s impossible to live without relying on others, but reliance is not the same as debt. Sure, needing, or even just wanting, to have someone or a group of people around also gives you more to account for and less available choice, but ideally, if you’re staying focused and making friends according to your value system, the positive’s will way out weigh the negatives. That’s what we like to call an investment.

But debt? Debt is nothing but negatives…

Things are going to be quiet here for a while.  I got from the retreat Sunday night and have trying to re-collect my life, weeding through a lot of badness, keeping what’s good, trying to figure out how to throw out what’s not.  My garden’s gone to seed, it seems, from my own inability to care for it.  Hard to judge these things properly, but a large part of it is a streamlining of “stuff”.  Less sites to check daily, less books collecting dust on my shelf, less time spent doing nothing.  More inquiry into and focus on what’s important.  More cultivation of motivation.  Not sure what’s going to fit in and what’s not, but I am sure things will work out as they are meant to.  I have a lot more faith in life now, I will say that much…

I’ll be heading out to California this weekend and part of next week for the wedding of an old friend and some time with the family.  Probably won’t have time to put anything up here until I get back, but we’ll see how it goes.

Hope everyone out there is doing alright.  Be well everyone.