Rumination (first cartoon)

"One dramatic example is the conviction of some subjects of hearing-seeing-feeling God, when "way out".  We project our expectations of God onto the white noise as if the noise were signals so that we hear the voice of God in the Noise.  With a little bit of proper programming under the right conditions, with the right dose, at the right time, we can program almost anything into the noise within our cognitive limits."  ~John Lilly, Programming the Human Biocomputer

Subtle change seems to be the rule with me.  I don’t notice these slight changes taking place at the time, lining up with some subconscious directive, but as more of them accumulate, they get harder to overlook.  The results from a summer’s worth of hard practice are beginning to show themselves, subtly, slightly. 

While the character of the changes themselves remains elusive, each sloughing, or subtle nervous system rearrangement has so far had an accompanying minor chasmic abyss.  As the nervous system performs its alterations, the ego becomes irritated, resulting in the sensation of sadness and difficulty. 

I encounter situations regularly that are similar and analogous to memory, considering my work with children, often these situations stretch back to my own childhood.  I used to experience the same emotion that I did in these memories, racing down the temporal-limbic highway, like wearing memory as a costume.  Lately I walk around the memory like looking at a sculpture instead.

I still have only the smallest of inkling as to where my ‘direction’ lies with practice.  The more I think about it, the more it seems that having a definite direction limits such things.  In one sense, I see my end in the ability to ‘twist like a leaf in the wind’, to have a relaxed fluidity, high energy, low to 0 tension. 

My practice has changed since summer.  I spend less time every day staring at a black rock without blinking and more time every day moving gently in tai-chi forms. The shift in climate between summer and fall has made this transition easier, but is not the reason for it.  I become very still during my evening practices these days, like my spine solidifies into some black rock as I walk up and down the ghost ladder breathing in and out.  

A cartoon, early, for valentine's day.