tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17045317943612346052024-03-04T21:29:02.063-08:00The Bright SpiralAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-3286451002114780152015-03-13T05:41:00.001-07:002015-03-13T05:41:31.168-07:00Interesting and punishing progressI've been staring into the black stone and invoking HGA every day for a while now. The heart symptoms have abated, but new physical ones keep cropping up. For now, my life is being directed, and I'm twisting like a leaf in the wind.<br />
<br />
At the beginning of this working 'I' or 'i' or 'it' decided I'd do two books this year and after a series of interesting visions in the stone I set to work on the second about 2.5 months ago by my reckoning (which isn't too reliable these days). The art stands complete and now the writing of the thing, the culling together of fragments I wrote down in situ into some meaningful coherence, or rather something that may have meaning to someone other than me.<br />
<br />
The words still burn when I look at them and hopefully my rewrites don't water it down too much.<br />
<br />
I'm writing each page by hand, which is terrifying, but its nice to see my lettering finally getting better, even if the entirety is in the same style.<br />
<br />
I decided it would be best to separate myself from this work, so I've wrapped it in fiction and set it in this world that I keep seeing.<br />
<br />
I'm about 1/3 through writing it, and I think it might be ready to prep for print in a couple of weeks.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-72947486346681756602015-01-24T12:54:00.000-08:002015-01-24T12:54:02.551-08:00HGA 2015Jan:<br />
<br />
A palpable falling sensation, a little thrilling. Like a warning? Or a truth? What do you call that?<br />
<br />
Some sensation of a lost connection, like something that watched over me doesn't anymore.<br />
<br />
Probably all of last year? <br />
<br />
I started the working again in January. The usual way. Mantra and stillness, nothing external<br />
<br />
seems to work, and I tend to want my eyes closed. Knees have yet to act up from the lotus, I sit until<br />
<br />
my feet fall asleep. Trying seems important, so I try really hard.<br />
<br />
Previous experience granted me the sound of a name and an image to work with. I should draw a<br />
<br />
new one but as of this writing the newest I still have I drew in 2004 (?) I think, which ages the last<br />
<br />
time I did a working of this nature. I cut 12 pieces of illo this week, so maybe I'll do that many<br />
<br />
drawings. <br />
<br />
For the last week, serious changes. I find the operation of my lookout vastly simpler and easier. <br />
<br />
However, still developing the new ritual, HGA gets out different every time I do it. Comes out<br />
<br />
and takes a lot of repetition to complete itself. It likes to complete itself, not for me to complete it.<br />
<br />
Still quite nascent and new.<br />
<br />
2 days ago, I experienced a new sensation of arrhythmia. Last it occurred was Christmas day and<br />
<br />
none before that. Strange signpost, anxety inducing. Mind immediately leaps to the natural habitat<br />
<br />
of the work I do in the world. How long can I do that job and live? Did I miss<br />
<br />
some horrible accident that might have been? With no way of knowing the answer to either of these<br />
<br />
questions with any certainty until they. If I worked hard enough I could probably develop visions<br />
<br />
that could 'prove' any number of things. <br />
<br />
I woke up from what I think was a deep sleep with an intensely anxious feeling. My heart beat<br />
<br />
felt rapid and way higher up than usual, not as high as my throat. The edges of the world became a<br />
<br />
tunnel that got smaller and smaller. I made no accurate measure but what felt like a very long<br />
<br />
minute passed like this and then my heart returned to normal and the world stopped seeming to close<br />
<br />
in but I felt very heavy.<br />
<br />
I wanted to get up and have a look at myself in the mirror, but I had to wait. I looked okay, not<br />
<br />
sweaty, no sudden dark bags, no noticeable dizziness. I went back to bed. It happened 3 more times<br />
<br />
that night, the final time around 2:47 am.<br />
<br />
I had chest pain in the morning that persists to now. Got over a coughing something last week<br />
<br />
though, also work with my hands.<br />
<br />
Doctor says probably just benign arrhythmia. I agree for now. I can find things that will increase<br />
<br />
chances for survival. If something causes more arrhythmia I can consider it harmful if I choose,<br />
<br />
and then white it out or replace it with something else that I attach to my survival. If I decide to live<br />
<br />
than anything that I connect to that basal level becomes compulsory and part of this constant ritual<br />
<br />
I'm still working up to. <br />
<br />
I tend to have a high capacity for inertia, but all I've ever decided to do is live.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-89556727126291502502015-01-08T09:41:00.003-08:002015-01-08T09:41:53.074-08:00birthBirth. A powerful threshold experience resulting in a deep and profound impression. Seems even deeper considering the relative dearth of other impressions at that moment.<br />
<br />
That first scream, the result of millions of completely alien signals shredding the nervous system to pieces and then rapidly reassembling it.<br />
<br />
How much do we 'know' prior to birth?<br />
<br />
Have we already cut pain or pleasure or some other deep canal into our brains by then? It's hard to imagine any other first binary. Perhaps our birth itself creates the binary and in that moment the first hard chiselling is made.<br />
<br />
Run towards this, run away from that, stay in the middle.<br />
<br />
Doomed to walk in that first deep wound forever, any way. <br />
<br />
Can an impression this deep ever truly wear off or wear out or grow out? <br />
<br />
What happens when this impression does wear off or wear out or grow out or when we manage to transcend it? Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-36297280499261802112014-12-18T01:54:00.001-08:002014-12-18T01:54:36.220-08:00Stone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJeOLuoWWg2CpiQCD8s6xAJvj8LslqkCAEgQtc2FKmu8tSplhK93UzieZDZRoutPdeDw4hHUw5Khegp8QT7yjeEdMYc7abUKCnmyc-yDv3sPyCyEbJdYJXBXUgwd0zddD2cSpoR7l_/s1600/IMG_8712.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJeOLuoWWg2CpiQCD8s6xAJvj8LslqkCAEgQtc2FKmu8tSplhK93UzieZDZRoutPdeDw4hHUw5Khegp8QT7yjeEdMYc7abUKCnmyc-yDv3sPyCyEbJdYJXBXUgwd0zddD2cSpoR7l_/s1600/IMG_8712.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-12200576703824142492014-11-30T08:49:00.002-08:002015-01-08T09:26:03.165-08:00Ghoraji, in a nutshellThe Magician's daughter.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Man falls in love with black magician's daughter. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Man then finds himself in the body of a jackal, "eating only the dead for all of his days". The same mind in a different prison.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Continues to practice.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-18089362468150247422014-09-10T07:35:00.003-07:002014-09-10T07:36:06.706-07:00SangaSpandana 1Karma-yoga.<br />
<br />
This term tends to limit itself to a specific set of experiences (experience converts to free awareness in direct proportion relative to the Temperature of the operator). The common placement of the term "Karma-Yoga" within the form of this era's popular methods of Yoga-As-Philosophy or Yoga-As-Occult-Science indicates either service (often people live in a purifying place and do free service involved in the upkeep or promotion of the place and/or guru-leadership ) or "works" (in the sense of good deeds performed in the expectation of some salvational reward). These then receive further taxonomy into service or works performed with a doomed attitude, or an ecstatic attitude. <br />
<br />
These practices serve a transformational-exo-esoteric purpose by creating the habit of service and work meant to be performed either with no reward (in the case of the most dignified aspect of the doomed attitude) or with some extremely delayed gratification either in the next life, afterlife, or after many more lives (in the case of the most dignified aspect of the ecstatic attitude). This, with a more combined lifestyle effort including daily zero-time (dhyana or "meditation" techniques without mantra) and daily focus-time (dharana or concentrative techniques including mantra or image (yantra), eventually redirects the feel-goods, detaching them from expectation and instead connecting them to the absence of expectation. Used with good result to defeat guilt.<br />
<br />
What else can Karma-yoga mean?<br />
<br />
Taking Karma to mean "action" and Yoga to mean "union" it can mean union with action. Martial arts approaches this by the numbers. Get better at punching and kicking, learn to respond instead of react, but quickly, efficiently, effectively. Empty the mind of all thought and everything comes naturally, but only with continual training. Continual discipline, usually performed alone for salvation, delayed gratification but additionally to achieve some type of harmony with the environment and the internal self, a unification of opposites that automatically supposes a third party that observes the union. At higher levels these practices, which begin with the body, mirror most forms of traditional tantric hatha yoga. Eventually leading to stillness either as the operator begins a still seated practice naturally, or when the operator dies (which appears unmistakably still at least in terms of neuronal transmission (which is really the only movement (let's face it))). These still seated practices also contain elements of focus (Dharana) and/or emptiness (Dhyana). Used with good result to defeat shame.<br />
<br />
Ishvara pranidhana- self surrender or surrender to the personal god (little g god).<br />
This path requires its participant to develop a devotion to personal divinity and sublimate the mind through constant concentration. All of life's decisions made by this source, in the absence of mind. Anxiety depletes and this unconscious decision maker feeds and grows larger and more capable of making decisions as a sculptor. Ultimately the practitioner seeks union with this internal ideal and sculpts the ideal through concentration (normally focus on a particular image). This procedure gets pushed below the conscious level after some time, and the results of this procedure then steer the activity of the user. Decision making sublimated. Used with good result to defeat the demon of trust.<br />
<br />
Sanga Spandana- a confluence of vibration or throbbing or a community vibration or throbbing. If we possess some type of essential vibration unique to either a group or "ourselves", then perhaps the number of completely distinct "essential vibrations" in the wild exceeds no great number whatsoever. Then does everything not vibrate with some "essential vibration?"<br />
<br />
Practicing a mantra slowly alters this "essential" vibration, attracting or repelling other sounds depending on the operators deep need for harmony or discord. Language grasps at trying to project these deep internal sounds, and (under these specific auspices) finding common ground with someone indicates some shared resonance. Idiosyncracy, internal dictionaries, body language, all muddy the effectiveness of this communication. But without mind, the operator can quickly learn the internally consistent language of another through awareness rather than observation, and even achieve some semblance of ability to speak back to the interlocutor. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-85972976598645094612014-07-09T07:55:00.005-07:002014-07-09T07:55:53.322-07:00Liber XV, Ch. I, Class A, OWW<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
~~</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Oath of the Zelator Atrophamus</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That I dwell w'er shades</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
H'r no one find</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
secret kept</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To sw'l'w sp'r't of h'rm</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To sw'l'w poison</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To sw'l'w pain</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To burn them out</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That I give my fl'm</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Not snuff it out</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Th' close</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So thee sp'r't cease</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Notes:</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-12129736622795861762014-04-25T13:50:00.000-07:002014-04-25T13:50:18.290-07:00What we conceive of, and perceive as, reality constantly changes because of human neuronal tendency-as-unto-compulsion, to error correct.
The Real tends toward construction by conversation rather than by jackhammer.
Information enters the nervous system and immediately plunges through the storehouse of past sensory impression in emotional centers, memory centers, etc.(!) grabbing countless pieces of data to amend the incoming transmission.
Deeply seated impressions in 'memory' grow stronger with every new connection. This data then feeds an adaptive mechanical process that produces a sense of stable cognition.
When this machinery gets clogged with data we freak out.
Sense impressions that can find no attachment to articles in the hall of memory or impression can cause all kinds of strange things to happen. Anger, disgust, hatred, elation, ekstasis, samadhi.
To stop having this conversation, though, what would remain of 'life'?
Give no power to the White Worm.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2jUQrWpbgVQ9bzBoJXjjqg7X-zNOvu6n6bVyNrzl8eW-9WVUFsqI3tpKisFcJh1hyIXwGyUu7cFoF-dlY9IA4HkGpTOrmTVYBOKJgTbR0d7FTL3vwSRpJq9b1gL0oRrspGkWYA0D1/s1600/vultures.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2jUQrWpbgVQ9bzBoJXjjqg7X-zNOvu6n6bVyNrzl8eW-9WVUFsqI3tpKisFcJh1hyIXwGyUu7cFoF-dlY9IA4HkGpTOrmTVYBOKJgTbR0d7FTL3vwSRpJq9b1gL0oRrspGkWYA0D1/s320/vultures.png" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-88071453164662632912013-12-10T13:25:00.003-08:002013-12-10T14:11:50.576-08:00page 9, book 2If I get stuck on a page, the most effective means I know of to get through that wall is to sit still and go for Dharana.
It snowed today, and so I decided not to drive all the way to baltimore to the cabinet shop to make $160. Instead I stayed in and have been working on page 9 of the second issue.
I had a slow start this morning. Yesterday I lifted and moved cabinets long distances for most of the day.
I had most of the page sketched out already, just loose layouts I had been gradually tightening up. This page has been incredibly difficult to get out of my head AND the holidays have given me less uninterrupted time so it's been slower going then usual. This tends to eventually aggravate some old dwindling demons. So this day off was a blessing.
From the semi tight sketched I got about 7/8 of the page pencilled tightly. But the last little bit required that I draw "walking". Ohmnath is moving through space, so a map with his walking route, and a panel between the before and after Brahmari Babas to show that he has walked.
I showed the rougher pencils to Pauline last night and asked her what she thought. In this panel I had two hastily sketched legs and feet shown from the side that were in the middle of walking.
"You should put something more iconic there, like what you did in the last book."
Still couldn't get it out today, went through a dozen thumbnails. Today I finished my tight pencils and breathed deeply seven times.
Then I crawled downstairs and sat in Padmasana and went for Dharana.
Now I'm pouring over a book of yantras looking for feet I know that I saw.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-28852558801066642872013-11-26T15:23:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:10:19.126-08:00Moving rumination<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-32137642159515540132013-02-10T07:22:00.002-08:002014-12-28T05:10:08.415-08:00Phlegm<br />
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Just leaving the mucus thickened woods. Developed a reasonably severe viral bronchitis this week. Coughing fits lasted all day and all night for the first couple of days, painful, forceful and completely unproductive. What came out was the consistency of glue or thick spiderweb. Eventually down to 2 fits lasting several hours a day, more and more productive. Afraid I might cough myself into pure exhaustion and give up the ghost. As a child, when this would happen it would invariably develop into something worse and long lasting. The anxious connection not lost on me.<br />
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Deep breathing when impaired. I couldn't help but remember Bob, a student of mine from one of the retirement communities where I taught Qi-Gong in Maryland. Bob was 88, had chronic bronchitis, not emphysema, COPD. He was in the hospital for about 2 weeks during my tenure. I missed him and worried. I started every class with a slow and directed series of deep breaths, working their way up from the belly, through the ribs, then up to the chest and back out just as slow. During this part of class, Bob would often cough into a stained handkerchief that would appear and disappear into a pocket in his shirt. 2 weeks later Bob comes back to class. <br />
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"Before we start Chris, I have to tell you something. I used to think this breathing stuff we did was all bullshit. I was getting really bad, went into a tailspin at the hospital, then I started breathing slowly and deeply like you teach us, [tears in his eyes now] and I think it's what pulled me out of it. Thank you for this."<br />
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2 days into my illness I propped some pillows up and leaned back to open my chest and breathed as deeply and slowly as I could. The next morning my cough started producing. In my youth: Pneumonia. In my adulthood: deep breathing. Thanks, Bob!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-1059361486617990682013-02-03T07:06:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:10:00.846-08:00Boredom<center>
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I recall, as a child, occassionally encountering a strange sensation, usually the same peculiar sensation. Complicated, as if splitting in two directions at once, paralyzing in its choice. Allowing me to do nothing on the threshold of one or several things. This uncomfortable liminal space where the picture gets larger. Clearly there was nothing to do. All I could say was "I'm bored".<br />
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I hear it often at my job. We have a time set aside during the course of the day where kids can engage in a free choice inside. The structure of their school day melts away into our own fabrication into what do you want to do? We provide legos, blocks, board games, cards, drawing supplies, scissors, glue, paper, you name it. Sometimes one of us takes them next door and watches them run around a bit, to get that out. Invariably, even in the midst of all this choice a child approaches with that same song on his/her lips, "I'm bored, there's nothing to do."<br />
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Their boredom contains, at least, an implicit bifurcation of potential action. The emotions and feelings that generate as a result of this bifurcation can seem quite alien, strange and unusual even to an adult. Humans require novel stimulation to keep interested. Ideally this stimulation has an internal locus of generation. One path to this has its end in the realization that every moment has little to no connection to any other moment, keeping every individual moment novel in its experience. In this way one can do anything and enjoy it permanently so long as one follows a steady plan for the maintenance of its practice. Along the way this practice begins to cultivate detail seeking behaviors, making it ideal for those with artistic and prosean leanings, I have encountered few limits in details, they seem always to lead to something smaller and something smaller, or something softer and something softer.<br />
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Getting there requires tremendous effort. Working through this feeling time and again begins to beat the wrinkle back. But the practice requires lots of heat and determination. I recall, during my early experiments with discipline, the last youthful tears of boredom leaving my eyes, the last kvetching "I don't wanna's" leaving my brain. This happened, happens, repeatedly. I still have far to go. The emotional body holds great power over all the other patterns we find ourself interacting with. Still: disciplining oneself to keep interested seems a noble preoccupation to me. By allowing the flow of emotion a proper and concentrated outlet, over time, clarity develops. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-38870600250000589302013-01-27T06:09:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:09:53.217-08:00Winter's Pattern<center>
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Summer rushes through fall, long after it should retire. It's bones and sinews older, ragged, kept awake at night by rheumatism and indigestion, powering through the day on a steady drip of adrenaline. Hits winter's wall: Slow down! Winter cracks its whip, ice where once was blood. Movement becomes impossible, the body wants hibernation. To go underground until spring, exploring caves in darkness where the temperature stays the same. Wiping chalk and blood on the wall, leaving a lasting human legacy like garbage, like plastic, forever. The sun spit back out again, and the sleepers wake, leave the cave. <br />
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At 11 below 0 farenheit, the first breath I take in the morning hurts. Nose hairs and snot freeze immediately. The ache that takes 20 minutes in 20 degree weather sets in within 20 seconds. 3 minutes later frost begins to form on my mustache. Having lived in the south for most of my life, I have yet to adapt to this experience. Cold infiltrates. Drills to the marrow, can feel it all day. Even after I've sequestered myself back in the warmth of my cave for a few hours. <br />
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The fascicular spiral, wound tightly round bone in summer has less torque, less potential with frozen tissue. Warming up seems to take more time, I have yet to master tummo, but still grasp at stoking cellar heat. I won't give up. In winter I feel my age, or older. Aches and pains don't disappear and remain for days before abating. The heat of practice stills them somewhat, but distracting my neurons seems more effective in most cases. <br />
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In the absence of movement I can watch for transmissions issuing forth from the hole in my brain. Make something out of nothing. The active brain searches, watches. The tired brain interprets. Winter questions survival, brings out the death trance, very peaceful, very visionary. I write everything down now. I draw it all into a story. Winter provides the opportunity to get work done without the distraction of the out of doors. I can stay in my warm, modern, cave: drawing and dreaming until the harsh season's secret explodes into spring. <br />
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12 more pages by September. I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-47187944092445022002013-01-20T08:30:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:09:43.912-08:00<center>
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Do you remember the first time you saw something that changed your life completely and immediately imprinted some new possibility for reality that you would never have otherwise considered? <br />
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The first time I can remember this happening, I was about 5 years old. My father read a lot, a lot a lot, the house of my childhood had walls lined with shelves full of dusty books. The living room in particular had 2 large bookcases all full of various articles of classical literature and thought: works by Homer, Chaucer, Aristotle, Erasmus, Keirkegaard, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Huxley, etc. All great magicians in their own right. On the lower shelves were books with wonderful pictures of dinosaurs, sea monsters, aliens. A small space on the bottom of the lefthand bookshelf held my father's small comic book collection. His mother disposed of the collections of his youth (except for a few vital items) when he left for college. Sometimes, very wisely, he would read to us from this small collection letting our eyes linger on the pictures while he did the voices for the each of the Avengers or for Spider-Man. I remember having an affinity for "The Vision", but only vaguely. <br />
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No, what really stuck, and changed me, happened on one fateful day while I was home sick with strep throat, or walking pneumonia. My father stayed home to take care of me and I asked him to read a comic to me, so I could follow along. On this day he pulled three oversized comics off the shelf. These 3 were reprints of Tales from the Crypt, the Vault of Horror, and the Haunt of Fear, respectively. For the next couple of hours my father good lord, -choked- his way through every story, pausing after each to survey my wide-eyed, fearful, face to ask if I'd had enough. "More" was my answer. On this day I was reborn. My brain permanently changed. Bernie Wrightson, my new hero.<br />
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Art and magic have an inextricable link. Change in accordance with personal will broadly defines the goal of magic. What change? Environmental changes, physical changes, internal changes, really any change as long as the will accomplishes it. These changes come much easier when a practitioner learns to communicate with whatever they wish to change, by learning the language either through careful study or intuition. Change occurs first in the mind, as an idea takes root and begins to prune away long-seated opposition with nimble and dextrous fingers. As the process continues it works its way through the body, altering motor units to produce, ultimately, some manifestation, some pattern for others to follow. <br />
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You can never know what lies inside of another person beyond their anatomy. The information they spit out through their various signals has a high degree of noise, as does a person's ability to receive it. Through constant meditation and practice, people seem the same, oneness steps forward, the clay all mashed together, all brown and grey. Then because sensitivity to certain things inside creates a type of knowledge through its experience, this can apply itself meaningfully to others. Thus begins compassion and empathy. Learning the language of people. <br />
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I draw to communicate. The tandem paradox of spoken words both abstracting and specifying renders them mostly meaningless. In order to understand someone by speaking to them, so many words have to come out of both people, this vocal torrent constantly checking and editing itself on the fly to ensure the other party understands. With a drawing or painting, the effect occurs almost immediately, and the viewer can linger in silence. The imprint can happen immediately. Art allows the inside to come out, so people have the opportunity to acknowledge internal processes, and sympathize, or empathize with them. It causes long lasting or permanent change in others as well as in the creator AND it manifests some critical internal idea. <br />
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I started writing and drawing a comic in July after a lengthy daily practice and meditation with a singular goal in mind: to reconnect myself to my will (HGA). What emerged was the germ of an idea I had carried with me from childhood to know, that has taken many shapes and had many false starts. All signs said "THE TIME HAS ARRIVED". The Crowelyan true will. My will's flow interrupted by life, work, sloth, etc. But I always come back to work on it. Getting faster every time I sit down. Working hard at communicating clearly. Sometimes I have second thoughts. The trickster universe throws so much in front of what I feel I need to accomplish. Crowley would say that means I've found the right track. Slowly but surely, all blame on my father for instilling me with a love of comic books as a child.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-56343622785188307282013-01-13T07:42:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:09:32.206-08:00Illumination's hooks<center>
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Self-Discipline, at first, can provide a critical foothold in the war against whatever habit (physical, emotional, mental, systemic) no longer serves. Gradual synaptic change requires this humble strength, won through willful masochism. The patterns of life largely find their creation in chemical reaction and the firing of neural pathways, the ensuing combination of neurotransmitter and hormone cascading into subtle, hidden sensation, floats upwards into the system of habitual process. The impressions left in the matrix from moments and events become all the deeper when they seem to repeat, even if only in spirit. Life resembles chaos, and the events often only have meaningful connection here in the broadest strokes. External patterns provide security from either their predictable structures or from their simple beauty (essentially the same thing). <br />
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While appealing to this broader perspective provides a certain sense of calm and a feeling of rising above whatever discomfort the experience engenders, the habit of objective participation must first develop. While some possibility must somewhere exist that accidental lifestyle and habitus themselves provide this critical habit, most of us require hard work. This work all the harder because the work will not feel natural at first. Eventually it gets better and larger more intricate patterns emerge from what seemed the aether, but now tangible connection. As the altitude inclines the tendency towards uprooting and dispersal steadily increases. Looking down provides practical solutions, but without great care the gaze moves up towards something wholly different. Upon looking back down, the seeming mirage of details sweats away, lost in beauty all grounding vanishes. This insipid dispersal has far reaching, hazardous implications first for punctuality (because time is not divine unless measured in days!). As more awareness withdrawals from the body and pumps itself upwards into this newfound archon colds, flus, simple illnesses begin to occur more regularly, nothing terribly pernicious, but providing an oscillation of subtle and abrasive incapacitation. All this while maintaining self-discipline. Now the head expands, and the imagery and revery that fills where only emptiness provides liberation, seem more important than eyes-opened. And when eyes-opened, an overlay of ever-increasing complexity falsely imposes itself over the most basic of events. Two extremes either lost in the detail, or the largesse.<br />
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Attachment to a set of actions eventually renders their ritual fruitless. Mistaking discipline for the specific actions undertaken in its name occurs with great regularity. A special type of staleness sets in, removed from normal resistance to change it will increase steadily with time. Moderation in moderation. The ability to recognize this only comes with prolonged exposure to and participation in attempts at self-discipline. Once the actions are removed, discipline reduces quite simply: the ability to direct the entire capacity towards one particular thing repeatedly. AND the ability to change this one particular thing with a minimum of concentrative dispersal.<br />
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The best practitioners maintain a defensible position by transmitting no sakki. Preparation for events can only occur as they happen due to our constant inclusion and communication with the process of reality.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-75423971541629320792013-01-06T07:04:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:09:22.828-08:00The second dragon<br />
<pre><div style="text-align: left;">
<pre>"Tell me...
At what precise moment...
...does an individual stop being who he thinks he is?
You know, I don't like complications.
Cut off my arm. I say, "Me and my arm."
You cut off my other arm. I say, "Me and my two arms."
You...take out...
...take out my stomach, my kidneys,
assuming that were possible...
And I say, "Me and my intestines."
Follow me?
And now, if you cut off my head...
...would I say, "Me and my head" or "Me and my body"?
What right has my head to call itself me?
What right?"</pre>
<pre></pre>
<pre>~<i>The Tenant, </i>Polanski, Brach, Topor 1976</pre>
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Old challenges rise up. The same complex interactions that allow for habit and breaking habit, the firing of neuronal sequence, can, sometimes, push old connections and patterns to the surface. The game seems stacked against having a body in the first place. What with its two brains. Old habits die especially hard with a greater number of champions, lying in wait.<br />
<br />
If you look at an image of the human intestine, particularly the small intestine, it bears a striking similarity with its winding, labyrinthine convolutions to the gyri and sulci of the brain. It comes as no surprise then that this part of the body contains its own, partially separate nervous system. Although it still receives a great deal of enervation from the CNS it contains its own patterns of learning and development, habit. These habits and mostly private impulses direct everything from peristaltic rate (through Basal Electrical Rhythm), to secretion of intestinal and stomach juices. Having a nervous stomach. Even when the brain's bravery waits manifest. Seems like a cruel joke.<br />
<br />
Clearing out the brain's, and even the body's, habits of nervousness and tension may not be enough if there are deeply engrained patterns of illness and violence lurking somewhere beneath the abdomen's surface. The gut has a delicate sensitivity, too much of one secretion or too little of another and you get to know the feeling of cool porcelain on cold/hot sweats. If a body habitually vomits due to some pathogen for a long enough period of time, it will continue to vomit long after the destruction or removal of the violator unless some other intervention occurs. <br />
<br />
The sneak in your head, you do well for years and years, then the smell of hospitals or roses triggers some long dormant pattern of neuronal chaos and you find yourself back where you began or even worse off than you started. Most of the time, with your brain, its relatively simple to determine what caused the downfall. Who uses the gut as the primary center of consciousness? <br />
<br />
What factors contribute to the firing of old habit in the gut? The factors from the CNS can be mitigated consciously and easily enough, but what internal factors contribute? Textures? Chemicals? Without concise consciousness in this vital center this may never be known. While some say "open this chakral center" that phrase has no real meaning. Directing awareness in this place seems a simple solution for experiment. Awareness will accrete where the breath directs, does a sentient sensation follow or does the mind, as usual, play tricks? <br />
<br />
The vagus nerve, so called due to its wandering, like a vagabond, down from the brain to the heart and to the gut. Due to its location and structure it contributes signals to heart rate and the perstaltic, digestive, movements of the gut, all this from the brain. The vagus nerve passes through the diaphragm, the primary muscle of respiration. Ideally, and with training, breathing occurs almost solely through this mighty pump. As this muscle rises and expands laterally, sensory portions of the vagus nerve receive stimulation. When this stimulation reaches threshold, the nerve sends information about respiration rate to the brain. Slow and deep, and the brain begins to turn on the parasympathetic circuits eventually triggering a rest and relax response, slowing heart rate (remember the vagus nerve enervates the heart?) and easing peristalsis.<br />
<br />
While this may not cure a closed system gut freak out, remember that in this battle, you have powerful allies within your own body.<br />
<br />
<br />
Counting from the first, this post IS post #39. How appropriate.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-61792347252636794382012-12-31T06:32:00.001-08:002012-12-31T06:32:48.233-08:00New Year's means the day off.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-11546634913532142502012-12-23T12:40:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:08:49.754-08:00Umbilical Specter<center>
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The strandentwining cable of all flesh. Omphalon. Childhood memory.
Negative ionic pulsing gentle, virgin, dandruff. Each delicate, lacy hexagram containing
a chant of exorcism: inscribed transformation into the library hours. A bubble of time, contained, complete,
perfect. Ekstasis. The tip of every tongue breathes life into each embedded
incantation, an alchemical metamorphosis:
heavenly host, now water.
The land covered in a soft white blanket, under the burning glow of
street lamps, clear night’s stars as witness, just for me. An unknown sun rises,
stretching its arms through a seeming adiaphane, the grey sky obscuring the
horizon, grinding itself into the grey ground. A bubble of time.
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sleep would come like a struggle. Some nights more than others. Forcing my eyelids open made them close. In the dark hypnogogia the bright
figure in the corner turns to sinister shadow, approaching. Pull the covers over my head. Hot breath on my face. Like a crack, floor boards forced open.
The sinister messenger grasping
with both hands, pulling me down down down. Never exploring too deeply, always keeping the exit in
sight, silver cord dangling in the wind.
Omphalon. Fear in my youth.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This messenger would visit when it pleased, leaving a
burning mark, indelible wernicke.
Only pulling me as far as the cord grew taught, plucking a low
vibration, then a high note, far enough: turn back. The brand in my brain diffusing heat, pushing blood down my
arm, to my hand. The hand moves
itself, the paper fills itself.
Like opening an artery, it must bleed out, then what? Wait, he’ll come back one of these
days. Not so scary any more. Dependant.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The click-clack-gnosis of the train underneath, projected
into the exhaustion of a travel’s terminus. After the bricks stacked and set, who can say what hands
touched them? 40 days and 40
nights in the desert without food or water. A severe privation stretching thin the diaphane. What do I build? With these hands, these eyes, this
blood? What comes of it? Half dead on a hospital bed. That smell. A crimson swatch cutting a doorway to somewhere else, traced
with my finger. 11 years
later, I find myself walking through into unknown territory the cord finally
cut. </div>
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A new country.
New gods, new devils, new good, new evil? The urge to create linked closely to pain. My age betrayed through swollen joints,
through gritted teeth. If only I…started
earlier…have so much done by now….want to finish…before I die…this story. Exploring this place. Before I die, I want to finish
exploring this place. My own
little world, intricately detailed, a place to run in misery. Everything in its place, where I put
it. As a child, my revery. As an adult, my message.<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-63010294840609709662012-12-16T09:01:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:08:39.463-08:00Commutative tension<center>
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Driving on a highway, somewhere. The small specter warm on my nostrils then cool, lungs slowly fill and empty in soothing rhythm. The slower it goes: sleep may pull down already heavy eyelids, or pull awareness so far back into that open-eyed white velvety darkness. "A darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend". An opening for an overlap: smashing metal, scraping skin, slow-motion cartwheels, shattering glass, a sharp blow, sleep. These things I know. <br />
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Bright lights batter, I don't like them. Under my hands, the steering wheel sheds epidermal layers. Sweat, white knuckles, this despite deep breathing. Strands of overworked muscle hook higher up the chain, my shoulder hurts at the end of the week and I can't figure out why, even though I watch it build up. Energy used for tension. <br />
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On a cushion, pull my legs into an unusual shape for this side of the world. Lately my legs fall asleep only a little after half an hour. I consider this progress, at least in so far as it keeps things interesting. Back takes a long time to fatigue now, not sitting on my 1st lumbar vertebrae anymore. All is vanity. <br />
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Eyelids light, like they want to open. Body tall, like a radio antennae. Toes hold the lower pentagram's tendons. Knees stay loose, but regular and organized. Sinking bones, expanding breath. Tongue tip back two front teeth. What will I do after I sit? Remember... Sinking bones, expanding breath. Bottoms of the thighs are pushing the right side of the pelvis, relax. This story should really...I think I see something. Sinking bones, expanding breath. A ball, rolling up and down the ghost ladder. Cut body lines. Energy used for awareness.<br />
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A blank white space. Needs some order? Based off the last one? If a ruler keeps a line straight, why can't I draw a straight line with it? This one will fill one blank white space. Get out of my way. Out of the whale? yes. Then he will walk in the woods? Yes! Maybe he sees three paths? Which one will he take? His brain, his process, the place where the process stands to grip the lever. Clear sight after years of preparation. The world behind the tree will begin its slow creep in no matter which one he picks, as he digs deeper and deeper. The path of the priestess through Daath. Will he pass through and discard knowledge? Breaking through the rough soil of the underearth. Yes. Pencil to paper. Maybe like this. Like this. Just like this. Up for air, did I breathe? Energy used for work.<br />
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Spine bent uncomfortably for 8 hours? 10 hours? 3 hours? Hand gripping the pencil, body curling up like a drying leaf, crumpling. Gripping, this energy whips through, fire extinguishing fire. So many physical signals demanding attention. Some of work's energy, misappropriated. Tiny screams all over.<br />
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Hot water loosens up my hands. Devoting awareness to work: Sit up taller, breath softer, less tension. How can I hold a pencil or a pen, making marks without hurting my hand? This way? Yes...no. This way? Yes...much better. <br />
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Shoulder shrugs, fist gripping, legs taught, tension. Take a deep breath, grip with a muscle in tandem, stronger grip: deeper breath. Open up and say ahh. deflate and relax. That sighing ahh, drops the weight of the world. The weight of the car keys. Tension to energy.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-36639931544621750432012-12-09T09:36:00.002-08:002014-12-28T05:08:30.508-08:00St. Catherine of Alexandria's Demon<center>
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The myth of individuality must see defeat. The ego, constantly confronted begins its steady recoil, its steady death. It becomes a puppet. What speaks through this puppet? Anything but 'you'. The pretentious baptismal blasphemy of identification. The wretched flagellate fights, devoting the sinful body and thus the will with constant blood. Sleep comes in a barrel of wine. The pain means distance, separation, hierarchy, definition. This too, must end.<br />
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The passing hebdomad: a swollen knee, a bent shoulder, some additional tension. Must not have trusted the inside all the way, applied too much outside, too much me. A jagged yellow rises up the middle column, devastation pays tribute to king 'I'. Eventually this passes, and the teacher begins learning again. Practice with them, with 'no-mind' and eventually practice-itself, with those people, develops sentience. <br />
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We receive billions of signals from the environment in every moment, most don't make it past the receptors, not strong enough to create action potential and reach the brain. Of these, thousands remain. I contemplate them, stumbling to figure out who they apply to, what they mean, how to use them, a stasis of recursive interpretation. Listen with the whole body and don't stop. <br />
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Instead of doing what you can do, or doing what you think others should do, or doing what you prepared for these specific people. Every resistance in front of you, every groan and grunt, every eye rolling, every hard face, every blank eye scrutinized, the yellow streak never ends. Armoring the inside against discomfort dulls the connection, makes a mind of no-mind. Breathing through doubt, paranoia, guilt, shame, fear transform their tension into time. Every decision in the space of 7 deep breaths. Practice with them. Observe closely and learn, let go. Stop thinking.<br />
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For every person a complaint. A desire. An expectation. These things separate them. If you spend more than 20 hours practicing with someone recovering from shoulder surgery without developing a certain specific tightness and pain in the shoulder pay closer attention to them. If you spend the next ten hours without every idle moment apart resulting in a constant fidget in an attempt to dispel that affliction, pay closer attention to your body. Yog means "yoke" or union. Learn patience, to teach patience. <br />
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Knowledge has no use. Fold knowledge into the body, wring knowledge out of the body. Daath's crown shines in the thick dark. Wearing it, become king of the dark, blind but the length of one foot. Forget knowledge, sentience means listening. Just listen, practice listening. Hold the singing bowl up to your chin after dragging the stick across the lip. Listen, how long until the reverberation passes completely? You can do better than that.<br />
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The nether vertex of a descending hexagram plunges into the heart of a rising pentacle, piercing through Tipareth and filling the hollow with the flood. A yantra steered by padmasana. I saw the subtle body in this shape. "The best teaching: Practice with someone." Stop teaching.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-90006071406730916292012-12-02T09:02:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:08:20.670-08:00Chess (pages 4 and 5)"Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions."<br />
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~ Herman Hesse
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Often, conjectured history achieves a sort of sentience and a will of its own. Like a virus it infects and propagates replacing what needs experience to verify with "well everyone knows that". What identities compose this "everyone"? I have yet to meet one. History has a high degree of indeterminacy, this keeps it interesting, and keeps historical writers in business. Each discreet event can have thousands of possible interpretations, in many cases each just as "true" as the last. What really happened no one will ever know. This keeps the past just as plastic and changeable as the future. <br />
<br />
Many esoteric orders decided to keep many of their initiatory practices and their 'secret teachings' hidden (or occult if-you-will). This for a variety of reasons. Many secrets were slowly leaked to members as they climbed the initiatory ladder. Each rung on the ladder confronted the candidate with programming that required assimilation before the next rung could be tried. This not only allowed the order greater control over the life and mind of the candidate, but could also (perhaps conveniently) frame itself as 'knowledge descending only when the initiate is ready'. The vessel must prove its worth for higher 'truth'. Another prominent reason for secrecy involved societal taboos. Many techniques and ideas involving this 'higher truth' ran contrary to publicly and governmentally instituted notions of normality in times when resistance in such a capacity usually resulted in lengthy torture and death. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Before I was enlightened a mountain was just a mountain.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When I was enlightened, a mountain wasn't a mountain anymore.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
After I was enlightened, a mountain's just a mountain again."</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
~Unattributed mangling of a Zen adage</div>
<br />
These teachings were often embedded in a combination of pictorial symbolism and simple to sophisticated coding so they could hide in plain sight. Interestingly many orders utilized great economy with their use of symbols: as the candidate climbs the rungs the symbols gradually change in their meaning as they accrue further attribution and shed now unnecessary intellectual disguise. One of my favorites of this conflux of code and symbol comes from the Freemasons who have a small book of passphrases with dashes in place of every third letter or so. The letters filled in, and thus the passphrases spoken, change depending on the grade you hold in the order, but the booklet remains the same. Some evidence (though not much) indicates that the tarot functioned in a similar manner both in ancient Egypt (where it allegedly, and dubiously hails from) and in medeval Europe.<br />
<br />
Unlike the Masons, attempting to suss out wether a common game intentionally housed a depth of initiatory symbolism or later had it applied to its pieces degenerates into something quite similar to attempting to determine if a chicken laid the first egg, or if the first egg simply appeared. Historically tarot cards were used to play various card games. Some evidence indicates that different games were played by commoners than were played by the ruling elite. Were the games different during intiation? Historical evidence also indicates that these games predated tarot's use as a divinatory instrument as did folk magic involving various cardsI admit to feeling some romance at the thought of a sophisticated initiatory entity hiding in plain sight at every tavern and pub in medeval Italy. I will write about the sordid history of tarot at a later date, or possibly dates considering how much information exists.<br />
<br />
Chess has existed in some form or another (although quite close to its modern variation) for many centuries. Its simple pieces and complex interactions on a constrained, almost claustrophobic, field of play have come to symbolize many things. Inner alchemical transformation and trial by fire, success after the first emergency. Occult glosses in the shapes a piece makes as it crosses, or does not cross, the board. The unification of duality in its alternating black and white struggle. The sheer forces of nature, and human deception. Most importantly though each game tells a story not only about how our brain interacts with the brain of our opponent, but through the risks we take and the gambits we utilize it also tell much about the way we live. With some reflection each piece can symbolize some part of our internal processes. <br />
<br />
Some dubious scholarship indicates that chess comes from the old (5000 BCE (?) old) Persian game Asha which, in legend, was created by Zarathustra for a king who had suffered aristocratic ennui having won wars, acquired riches, etc. The game bears little resemblance to the chess of today having pieces that represent the primal elements and some occult virtues. Zarathustra taught the game to the king and in its teaching, initiated the king into the knowledge of the secrets of the universe. The king, pleased, told Zarathustra he could fulfill anyone's desires and "what would you want?" Zarathustra asked for one grain of wheat on the first chess sqaure, 2 on the second, this squared on the 3rd and so on. The king was shocked that he could not fulfill this and thus learned humility. Asha was allegedly used as an initiatory game in Zoroastrian magic ever since. Do you believe this?<br />
<br />
More, reliable, scholarship indicates that the game evolved from the Indian game Chaturanga. In Sanskrit, Chaturanga can refer to the English '4'. If each competitor in modern chess has a 'hand' of pieces they play with, then Chaturanga consisted of 4 such hands. Each hand had a rook (elephant rider), bishop, king, queen, and 4 pawns. Dice were also used indicating the game had a much higher degree of chance than today. Little evidence exists suggesting that Chaturanga was used in any initiatory capacity. The game bounced back and forth between the middle east, india and europe for several hundred years, evolving slowly into the game we know today. Do you believe this?<br />
<br />
In the past 7 months I have taught 11 children to play chess. Of those 11, 4 have taught others. I just finished running a 4 week chess tournament which I designed to reward playing almost as much as winning games. At the end the top two children had played almost 40 games each, both of them only attending the program 4 days a week. Several of them got their parents to buy chess sets so they can practice at home. One even held a family tournament with the same structure as the one I set up. If you try to tell a child that the bishop's movement represents the primordial fiery triangle and the primordial watery triangle, immediately their eyes will glaze over. If you ask them why they like chess, many say that they "just do" or "I don't know." Ask any adult "Is chess good for kids?" (demon is) and they will say "Yes." ask them why and you get an incomplete answer about it helping their brains, or teaching thinking skills. Many games go without a winner. Yet they continue to play day after day. <br />
<br />
It takes a long time to get good at chess. The way you play the game today should in no way resemble the way you play it next year or the year after. The game initiates the candidate by altering their neural pathways, sharpening their critical and combinatronic thinking. The simplicity of the figures and board mean that no additional symbols need application for resonance. I conjecture that the relationship between the game and any change to the internal process happens mostly unconsciously and automatically. If everything appears the same after enlightenment anyway, why conflate something so simply elegant when you can just relax and let it wash over you?<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-11558338413738106132012-11-25T07:53:00.001-08:002014-12-28T05:08:04.930-08:00A dream<center>
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********
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</center>
I broke my seated practice due to work obligations and the requirement of rest from work this past week. <br />
<br />
I had a dream last night. In the dream I found a secluded forest clearing, late at night, drew a circle, lit candles. My heart beat faster and my eyes widened in the dark. I recited an incantation from a book that had been unopened for a thousand years. I spit and screamed into the moving black, the woods rustled around me. The night had a thousand eyes, the shadows spiraled around me and enveloped me. They took me from that place, behind the mesh. <br />
<br />
Something led me down a glowing strand of spiderweb, pulling up my feet as they stuck, keeping me moving. The strand would swell, a glowing boil would pass all the way down, intersecting with some other strand, passing, continuing on its way to I could see not where. The web seemed infinite with no horizon in sight. I saw, however, places where the strands ended. Like looking through an overlay, the strands ended each into the top of a human head. From each head a steady stream of glowing ichor caused the strand to swell as it moved across the web seeking the center.<br />
<br />
It got darker as we moved, like the light was running away, we moved towards the center. Faster and faster, like leaping boulder to boulder, mountain to mountain. I gradually became aware of a towering figure in the center, a figure we were speeding towards. <br />
<br />
Tall and towering, made of thousands of human bones that shifted and shuffled at strange angles, growing and shrinking, breaking and building, like watching a thousand lifetimes begin, grow and end. Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. All sinister in one ever changing form. Its head, composed of millions of mutating, moving human skulls, mouth open, each strand entered here. This awful behemoth swallowed every swollen drop.<br />
<br />
I understood that as children some retain the ability to see that all time occurs simultaneously. That past actions, future actions and present actions all mingle on the surface of the object of time. Agents of this archon get most of us prior to birth, installing a horrible pranic parasite. This brain worm draws vital awareness, limiting our perception and aiding our belief in linear causal time while feeding this awful entity. It was beyond dream-me to figure out if there was any other function than feeding occurring here. There were other webs, I knew, somehow 5th dimensionally orthogonal to the one I was standing on. Maybe I stood here because my fight was with this parasite, but then what went on above and below?<br />
<br />
I woke up with a sore on my lip and a dry and scratchy throat.<br />
<br />
This dream somehow comforts me. Reminds me not to dread the end of a Sunday for the oncoming Monday. That what I engage in, this moment, has more importance than what my brain speculates, or what it laments. My battleground, currently, lies here. Slowly, I draw the line.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-46609224354259255552012-11-18T09:23:00.002-08:002014-12-28T05:07:40.476-08:00Stop the brain<center>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The brain interprets incoming sensation (I hesitate to say
all sensation). For this gross
understatement to contain functional truth neuroscience tells us that although
we have the very vast majority of our 10 billion + neurons on board by the time
we are born we constantly alter their connections to each other. Each of our sensations ends in the
halls of memory and prior sensation. These connect, almost stochastically, to
complete the experience of sensing which then gets stored in order that it may
be recalled and connected to in the future, by incoming sensation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most developed systems of meditative practice have similar
aims. To still these processes of
neural phenomenological interpretation so that only the process of processing
remains. In other words the brain
experiences itself in its natural state, without interpreting incoming sensory
information. To this end various
death postures and corpse postures build the habit of pratyahara or withdrawal
of the senses. Turn the senses in
on themselves and send them back to their source. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
It could be argued that while our interpretation of sensory
information has many flaws due to its being processed through memory and
emotion, the information we receive from the outside world via our receptors
has its root in some type of objective truth, or objective reality. Any of our sensory perceptions enter
the body, they pass through a complex relay mechanism en route the brain. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Vision: </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In order for visual information to have a neural
interpretation a visual stimulus must first pass through the cornea, and lens
and into the retina. Here it works
its way through the photoreceptive cells (rods and cones). Each individual rod
and cone can be connected laterally as they connect to their bipolar cells
allowing for a large variety of ‘choice’ (or noise) at this early stage. Next the signal generally passes
through bipolar cells, ganglion cells, photosensitive ganglion cells and
finally to the optic nerve for transmission to the brain.<br />
<br />
This transmission
doesn’t have a dependency on generating a threshold of current called an action
potential to transmit information to the brain, there is a constant flow of
electricity through this set up to the brain, but the current has gradation,
more stimulus=more current. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The signal passes through the optic nerve into the optic
chiasm. Here fully half of the
information received is passed to the contra lateral portion of the brain from its site of reception. From
here it passes up the optic tract and into the lateral geniculate body, where
it finally gets passed to the visual cortex in the occiptal lobe for
processing. Whew. Even here the information gets divided
between the primary and secondary visual cortex depending on whether it
requires clear interpretation or can be classified in terms of movement, shape,
position, etc with the result sent to the cerebrum so action can initiate from
the motor control areas. A
phenomenally long trip from eye to interpretation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Hearing: </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This much shorter trip starts with the outside of the ear or
‘pinna’ which funnels vibration to the middle ear where the maleus, incus and stapes vibrate causing the ear drum to vibrate and transmit
to the inner ear. In the inner ear
the information travels through the cochlea, vibrating the organ of corti
(which lives inside the cochlea).
In the organ of corti the vibration then causes the movement of tiny
hair cells. This movement initiates
an action potential which then travels up the auditory nerve, which joins the
vesibular nerve, which joins the vestibulocochlear which connects to the
cochlear nucleus in the brain stem.
From here to the superior olivary nucleus, then to the inferior
colliculus, the medial geniculate body and finally the auditory cortex in the
temporal lobe. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Importantly the location of the temporal lobe lies
distinctly closer to the anatomical position of the ear then the eyes do to the
occipital lobe (which lies in the back of the head). The trip from ear to primary neural interpretation site has
less length than does the trip from eye to primary neural interpretation site.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both of these examples oversimplify for the sake of brevity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Experiment:</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To empirically experience the difference in pathway length
between these two senses and their interpretation grab a ruler and have a
friend hold it at the one inch mark just above your thumb and forefinger which
should be ready to catch it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the first part: keep your eyes open and have your friend
drop the ruler, catch it as soon as you see it fall.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the second part: close your eyes and have your friend
say “go!” just as he or she drops the ruler.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Keep in mind how many 1/8s of an inch passed between the
visual initiation and your ability to catch the ruler and compare this with how
many passed between the auditory initiation and your ability to catch the
ruler.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even the best lip reader in the world has a non-zero rate of failure. Interesting things happen when these two senses get crossed and one tries to do the work of the other. When a person sees lips moving with no sound, these movements get interpreted through experience and 'best-guessing' within the brain, the result often has some internally created sound that often bears no resemblance to the sound those moving lips would make. Just as pronunciation conventions often change from country to country and each visual representation of phoneme can be interpreted in a variety of ways specifically in the untrained. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When both common audio and visual misinterpretations are exploited and combined we get the McGurk effect. If a video of lips mouthing one particular sound is combined with a different sound, the human interpretation will have a third new sound with no bearing in the reality of the actual sounds recorded in either the video or the audio. Just goes to show how little we can know from the outside world. These examples give some credence and importance to the theory that knowledge about actual reality beyond our brain's interpretation of phenomenon happens through quieting the senses.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-28202763458382033232012-11-11T08:14:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:07:26.002-08:00IX Personal Ruminations on the Hermit<center>
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As a child I spent an inordinate amount of time incapacitated by various illnesses. The walking variety of pneumonia a few times, mono in the fourth grade, strep throat at least once a year until the age of 17, at 7 a joint infection that kept me literally off my feet for several weeks (for fear it would go septic I assume). At 1, an intestinal parasite that certain evidence indicates may have persisted into adulthood. Or perhaps two bouts of the same parasite, one defeated at a young age, the other onset at 13. I have early, clearly amalgamated memories of dire illness, a feeling of wasting in bed, and of giving up hope for normalcy, sometimes life. I also have memories of playing outside and exploring the woods, forging friendships that persist to this very day. Somehow I managed to socialize well enough.<br />
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I spent much of my time in imaginative distraction. Solitude suited me. Sometimes. What began as another uncomfortable intractable illness would chain me to my bed and slowly close the shutters soothing me with fevered visions and dreams until I no longer knew the outside existed. My room was an 8' x 5' space crammed with a writing desk, a bed, a small cupboard and a television. A luxurious hermit's cell. I have several memories of laying in bed, looking out the shuttered windows and speaking to these bright yellow lights that talked back. Likely running a high fever. I went to catholic school for 9 years of my childhood, so it comes as no surprise that these lights identified themselves as angels.<br />
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At 13, I became so ill my death seemed certain. The onset was sudden and it became a long wasting illness that wouldn't be identified until much later. It wasn't as dire as cancer, but it hit pretty hard. I was unable to keep food down, then water, then a viscous dark green substance was coming up, then blood. A few weeks later I'd feel a little better, go to school for a couple days, then descend again. I dropped weight. By the middle of my eighth grade year I weighed 85 pounds and people in class would gasp and remark in a hushed whisper at how skinny I had become. Somehow I lived through months of this, praying for death constantly. I got close to that grim specter, lost my fear of it. <br />
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At 19 I developed pain so bad and so prevalent that everything burned like a great white light. The summation and culmination of all the evil spirits that attempted to destroy my body throughout the course of my life. I was prescribed heavy narcotics, and a cocktail of antidepressants. I went mad. I withdrew from life again. This time I fell deep into a dark abyss that threatened to consume me completely. And it did. One morning, a year later I began to spastically vomit and, after a couple days, landed in the hospital. I ran a very high fever, had wild visions and hallucinations, I refused all medication, except what they dripped into my arm. It was a lot like the movie Jacob's Ladder. I left, I think, a week later, reasonably recovered. The demon hiding, not slain.<br />
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At 23 the pain returned, but this time I was driven to defeat it squarely and root it out completely. I hung from a tree every day, practiced difficult and painful yoga practices and meditative visualizations. I directed all obsession (commonly encountered when confronting demons) to compulsively photographing everything and posting it on the internet every night. I worked by intuition. Somehow I got past the guardian of the door and into the abyss. For months I maintained very little contact with the outside world as my body and mind began to heal from not only this intensive bout and confrontation, but also from a lifetime's worth of illness, regret, depression, despair. By the beginning of my 24th year I only suffered the residual effects of such a terrible passage and began to build a life from the ashes. I maintained a strict, thrice daily, seated practice until the age of 25.<br />
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I still prefer to remain internal, and in solitude. I resemble the hermit in practice. Now I spend my days practicing the things that helped me gain life and vitality and banish nefarious internal processes. <br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00538531186966619461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1704531794361234605.post-68999139116246466292012-11-04T09:02:00.000-08:002014-12-28T05:06:55.092-08:00Memory Hopscotch<center>
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In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, during a specific stage of death, the psychopomp attempts to soothe the horror of the listener's departing entity when they visually encounter wrathful figures with 12 arms and 12 legs. These wrathful figures, the listener is reminded, are actually a virtue contained in themselves, a clear light. When I visualize these figures, I tend to relate them to the pathways of memory, winding, labyrinthine neural structures with arms that reach everywhere, irrevocably altering and effecting everything they contact. Memory ultimately fuels personality by way of indicating which habits have favorable results (lead to the release of pleasant chemical combinations, or produce states where unpleasant chemical combinations are no longer released). What we experience alters and changes our processes. Particularly during moments in time where an individual has a high sensitivity to imprinting. In fact, imprinting events tend to affect many classes of later formed habits and potential actions.<br />
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These synapses have a high vulnerability to alteration, but meaningfully and willfully altering them either takes some degree of fortunate or 'lucky' circumstance, or many years of regular and seemingly tedious practice. A fortunate circumstance would possess a critical mass of factors that either directly relate to, or are highly symbolic of, the same number of factors in the original circumstances surrounding the initial imprint or memory. Years of meditative practices, particularly those involving the objective observation of the process of mind and a heavy emphasis on visualization practices can bring mental pattering to a similar state. The former has fewer components of deliberate mindfulness and therefore a higher potential for a non-favorable outcome in the untrained. Quiet and deliberate practice in directing the mind leads to a more disciplined outcome in either case. <br />
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Theoretically, when, through many hours of mindful practice, these imprinting or habit-forming events that occurred on some date previous to the present can project lucidly and clearly into the infinite space behind the eyes, a very powerful sympathetic magic can occur. During this state the practitioner can play act within their own memory and alter not only their reaction to the event, but also change the way they participated in the event. If an invocation to imprint vulnerability, performed just previously to this strong visualization, showed measurable signs of success then the memory of this evoked event will permanently change to adhere to the freshly visualized alterations. If the preceding invocation did not achieve success, and continues to fail, then the end of altering the imprint requires many more subsequent successful visualizations. <br />
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Perhaps my work with children combines easily with my own memories of youth, but those memories, long buried, have crawled and clawed their way to the surface and into my field of vision with a reliable frequency. The one that showed up this week occurred in Kindergarten. The current version of the memory involves a young girl, a nun named Sister Julia, and me. When someone raised their hand in class and had difficulty spitting out a correct answer, this teacher would look around the room and say "Can anybody help him/her?" before calling on someone else who would then give the correct answer. We were each individually engaged in a math assignment, something having to do with circling groups of numbers in a specific pattern. A girl in class was having trouble and the teacher asked me to help her. I have no memory of how this came about, only that she specifically emphasized my helping her. I did what most humans at 5 years old, only possessing those two basic pieces of information, would do. I gave her the correct answers. Sister Julia came over while I was in the middle of giving the girl the last two correct answers. I remember circling a 5 and a 9 in some versions of the movie, and a 5 and a 3 in others. She was infuriated by what she saw, pulled me aside grabbed and gripped the tops of both ears between pointer finger and thumb. Then she pulled up hard.<br />
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In some versions of the memory my feet leave the ground, in others they don't. I buried this memory, but not in the conventional way. After I was about 15 I experienced no discofort talking about it, but I refused to re-experience it or reframe it. In this way I convinced myself that it had no effect on me. This, such a great conceit. It began to come up in my seated practice every once in a while in my mid twenties. When I experience the internal movie now I no longer experience the pain of the event and I no longer feel shame afterwards, just the wind at the top of the icy mountain.<br />
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Although, the we cannot change the things that occurred in our histories, the past has an equal flexibility and plasticity to the present, particularly through the lens of consistent practice.<br />
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