Healing

“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here”. – Max Ehrmann
Whisper.pdf

Centering involves more than emotional balance, it requires a harmony between mind, body, soul, environment and emotion. All elements must be addressed simultaneously. Toxicity must be removed. Health problems, in and of themselves cause emotional problems. Medication to treat them cause more problems.

You cannot aspire to emotional serenity while your health is keeping you mired in the mud. There is no quick fix, it requires resolve.”I’m going to do this thing”. Recognize gluttony for what it is. If you are overweight, lose it. Skip the scales, use the panty drop test, if your panties hit the floor, you’re heading in the right direction. Skip the diets, it’s not nice to fool mother nature. If it tastes good don’t eat it. Go hungry, your stomach will shrink to reflect the new reality. Check with the doctor to ensure proper nutrition. You’ll get your payback when you have to buy new panties.

Recognize sloth for what it is, take walks in the park and enjoy the beauty of nature. Recognize insecurity for what it is. Surround yourself with people who make you feel good. Recognize medication for what it is, usually a way to resolve symptoms that allow you to continue an unhealthy lifestyle in an unhealthy environment. Check with your doctor for non-medical solutions. Else, accept it. Recognize shame for what it is, we have been brainwashed into thinking pride is a sin.

The universe is incomplete without you. And above all, do not allow someone else to occupy rent free space in your mind. Do not allow anyone to hijack your goal of becoming who you are supposed to be, they are trying to pollute your mind.

Learn to bypass the canned answers you got in school and seek your own truth.

Love hard, laugh hearty and sleep well. Pursue a purpose greater than yourself. Be more than you can be. Accept yourself as you are.

Log on to Sid Here for more resources. Sid Here Website

You can do this thing.

 

Keep in mind that the mind is a system within a system. Picture rubber bands attached to all of the elements of this system. If you move one element and release the pressure, it will snap back. Thus if you live in a toxic environment and try to become centered, you will keep snapping back to where you were. You must cut this rubber band to succeed.
You have been given a gift. Enjoy unwrapping it.

TheBankAccount WatersOfMarch Desiderata Centering1 Centerin2 Centering3 Centering4 MoralCompass Religion Yin/Yang SelfWorth ManagingMania DeepListening TheOnlyChoice Wicca Desiderata daVinci Meditation Theosophy WOW IChing Oblique Strategies Sex UnhappyMind Chrysalis Anger RighteousAnger Bipolar CoreBeliefs Dot2Dot M&M’s Kabbalah SacredSpace Connectness Update Imprinting JoyDance OCD SKR Sajid Mule Ethics Mindsight TheRose DanceOfLife DoOver DanceOfDeath StaceysGift Way2Go

Downloads

Elle Whisper da Vinci MindSight NeuralBuddists Audience Shambhala Desiderata

 

The Rose

Yet another attempt to explain what’s happening in the minds. Left mind speacializing in top down thinking. Right mind specializing in bottom up thinking.

I know this is squishy, the words do not exist for how the minds work. View the left mind as a rose based system and the right mind as a root based system.

In the left mind above the surface is the rose, the shortcut, the set point, the bottom line. If the input matches the rose, the input is confirmed. “it’s a rose” (1/2 second) But let’s say it’s not a rose, then the left algorithm is searched (dendrites) for a match. If no match is made the right algorithm is searched for consistancies, if no match is made the “best answer to date” right “maybe flower?” if this anwer does not suffice the right mind may A) muse (search for non inconsistincies) or B) blow it off (dunno)

Emotional problems up to and including a mental breakdown occurs when there is a top down logic fail (it’s a tarantula) and the dendrites get ripped out by the roots. The left algorithm has a “blind spot”. depending on how bad this blind spot is the person may go to plan B, operating in bottom up mode. This is called psychosis by a psychologist. The concept that got demolished must grow new roots in the left mind based on an inverted right mind root system. Gotta find a new home. They’re looking for a home

The way to go

Listening to NPR (no I’m not a long hair, communist, pinko, non-coagulating bleeding heart liberal) but this was good nonetheless. The story was of a woman who’s father was in a hospice care facility. He had been languishing for months. Reading the paper to him, she mentioned a jazz concert being held that night. His eyes lit up. He loved jazz, particularly this group. “Do you want to go?” popped out. “Yes!” She dressed him, put makeup on to hide his palor, she wheeled him out of the hospice, past the protests of the attendents who said it would kill him. At the concert hall it was sold out. She banged on the door till someone came, explained the situation and they wheeled him backstage where he got to meet the band. It was the first time she had seen him happy in months. He died somewhere towards the end of the show. He was smiling. Like dying on your feet rather than living on your knees. Good on ya, gal, good on ya.

reincarnation

Do Over

“A scientist challenges God to a creation-of-life competition and then, like God, picks up some dirt to start his work. “Oh no,” says God. “Go get your own dirt.”

Reincarnation at it’s most basic level, is a scientific fact. The stars coalesce out of the primordial dust to form stars which collapse after their fuel is exausted to either explode spreading more primordial dust or turn into black holes which remanifest themselves as white holes (stars) somewhere else in the universe unfolding more dust from which we are made. This dust is God’s dirt, from which all is made. We are literally “star people” Every atom in our bodies comes from the interior of a star. So the idea of reincarnation is far from meta-physical bullshit. If the recursive and fractal (same thing, two different perspectives) nature of the universe, and everything for that matter, is taken into account, it is not inconsistent that at different scales this same cycling occurs. If we took a sidereal view of the universe we would see a flux of unfolding and refolding wave concentrations. Hmm! Not only could be, but probably true.

There are so many sites, and so well done that I can’t expand on them. So here’s a few

Souldipper LifeBlog Reincarnation ManyOne

Dance of life

“Anomie is the enemy”

So you’ve got this dance of life happening as the the mind surfs the turbulent sea of life. No, that’s not a typo, Freud was a fraud. feel free to substitute whatever words you feel comfortable with, the word is not the concept. tao’s a good model as is plato’s. It doesn’t matter, the right mind can’t speak english so it doesn’t really care one way or the other. So the id (sub-conscious, bottom up, yin, mythos whatever) just keeps on collating data for non-inconsistincies, the ego (conscious, top down, yang, logos whatever) just keeps on analyzing the non-inconsistencies and the super ego (caretaker, ANN, supervisor, tao, me whatever) just keeps on evaluating the results of the ego and the id for practicality. Life happens, no matter what words we use or what plans we make. The ANN must deal with reality, not what we think reality is. Mobiles NittyGritty

The Id, Ego and Super-ego keep balancing to keep us ahead of the wave. Dealing with war, love, hate, disease, disappointment, fear, triumph, despair, castastrophe, ideology etc and last but not least, trying to figure out what the hell el Loco Gringo’s talking about.

el Loco Gringo is talking about ideologies, whether societal imprinting, religion, education et al which attach an anchor to the surfboard so we are no longer riding the wave but the wave is riding us. Society becomes psychotic and we go insane trying to deal with it. (insane, not crazy, insane) Barring physiological problems that’s what psychosis is. We can’t keep ahead of the wave with that anchor on the surfboard.

That’s what I’m talking about.

The Lattice – Block on constructivist thinking. Imposed by education to force conformist thinking.

The Taboo – on pride. Imposed by religion and upbringing. Imposes subservience.

Centering – has been disrupted by the efforts of others to control us

Misogyny – Discourages “woman think”

If you want to cut this anchor loose go here> Mr Sid or click the home button.

 

Dancing with death

“I’m a dying old man, and I’m afraid of the dark” – John Wayne, The Shootist

Dancing with death

My observations when the asshole PA triggered a HOCM attack was a feeling of viewing the events in the third person and anger bordering on rage. My consciousness (ANN) pulled back, making an objective, objective (not a repeat) evaluation of the situation. (the caretaker referred to in MPD?) JBT reported the same thing. The ever curious eLG becomes hungry. Tentatively, the reticulator is an intensity amplifier, the aggregate and accumulate weighting applied to the cognitive process. Simply put, when the oxygen level in my brain decreased the reticulator cranked up the amplitude, “whatever is happening, this shit is serious, do something NOW.” I did. Viewed in this context my actions, calling the PA an asshole and storming out, were perfectly rational. I did the right thing and probably saved my life. The anger was essential to saving my life, impelling me to do “whatever it took” to get me out of a hazardous situation. eLG exploded, overiding societal constraints. The ANN stands. Not a crazy reaction but a sane reaction to a crazy situation.
A good definition of anger would be “you are being screwed”, directed inwards. Depression as “you have allowed yourself to be screwed” or as Jung stated “depression is anger without the enthusiasm”
Oddly, I ran across Dr. Dart again in my research. (AspertaSupra) He’s Romanian, not italian. In view of my previous hits, he (she?) evidently is writing papers concerning the reticulator and epigenetics. Possibly the reticulator is the activating mechanism???? I’ve got to get a translation of his papers or get it translated. eLG continues to feed. The following are preliminary entry points, although I’ll have to wade through a bunch of meta-physical bullshit to find out what’s happening.
Or I could be full of shit, I am crazy, don’t you know?
Near-death experiences
Main article: Near-death experience
Another form of spontaneous OBE is the near death experience (NDE). Some subjects report having had an OBE at times of severe physical trauma such as near-drownings or major surgery. In the case of motor vehicle accidents, they are able to recall the accident as if observing it from a location outside the vehicle. – Wikipedia
Reticulator Activator
Have you ever even heard of your Reticulator Activator?
If you haven’t – you’re not alone, but – you DO KNOW what it is.
Its the part of the brain that heightens awareness of certain things at certain times – that’s what your Reticulator Activator is.

Stacey Kramer’s Gift

Gift

I’m not gonna talk about this, It speaks for itself. Stacey’s Gift

 

Balance

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Ecclesiastes

What? eLG quoting the bible? Well, yes, the council of Nicea didn’t manage to redact all wisdom. Maybe they figured that with the mind crippled the unwashed masses would be unable to know when to turn
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Diane Benscoter has an interesting take on centering. She views memes as a viral self replicating mental infection which will spread to people whose self confidence immune system has failed.
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The yin/yang symbol is a metaphor for the constant dance between the masculine and feminine energies within each one of us. Taiji is the balance of these forces. Balance allows this dance to take place. The taboo prevents it
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Yin is the feminine energy, the intuitive, receptive, nurturing side of ourselves that is in connection with the Divine. Yin is the energy that yields to the forces around it, flowing, and smooth — the force that allows a seed to germinate in winter and makes water flow smoothly around a stone in the creek.
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Yang is the masculine energy — the strong, action-oriented, forceful side of ourselves that gets things accomplished. Yang is the force that makes a seed sprout in the spring and makes strong flowing water move or sculpt the stones in a creek.

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So the council of Nicea has turned the yin/yang minds God gave us into a yang/yang mind preventing us from experiencing god for ourselves. It also prevents physcists from seeing that the universe is of a wave nature.
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<< Ecclesiastes 3 >>

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1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
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2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
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3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
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4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
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5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
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6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
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7 a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
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8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

Stinky Thinky

Here’s a link to the article on Oprah’s web site.

Clutter

Peter walsh’s latest book, Enough Already! Clearing Mental Clutter to Become the Best You, he makes the link between a disorganized home and the untidy thoughts that can muddle our relationships and well-being. He was recently on the Oprah show touting his new book.

O: And the term “clutter” is all-encompassing.

Walsh: It means anything that stands between you and the vision you have for your best life. It could be a pile of inherited furniture or a jumble of kids’ toys all over the living room. But it could also be the constant self-doubt that creeps into your decision-making, anger about how you’re treated at work, shame about your weight or looks, or a tendency to respond defensively and critically when your spouse challenges you. Whatever the case, you have to ask yourself, “Does this item or thought or response move me closer to my vision for my best life?” If it does, great. If it doesn’t, what is it doing in your life?

From Publishers Weekly

Walsh (Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat) skillfully diagnoses and proposes a cure for overburdened people with a six-part plan that systematically addresses relationships, career, family, money, health and spiritual well-being with practical prescriptions and an emotional focus. The relationship section urges readers to become the person you want to come home to and to conduct a personal inventory. Complete with useful clutter-assessment quizzes, this book provides a compelling and comprehensive remedy to the chaos.

Product Description

Does it seem like everything is moving so fast these days you can barely keep up? Do you sometimes feel that your life is spinning out of control? Most of us are so overwhelmed by the stuff in our daily lives — work, bills, family commitments, demands from our kids’ schools — that we rush from person to person and place to place. For many of us, life feels completely out of balance because we give one area of our lives too much attention and the other areas nowhere near enough. This crazy imbalance and the resulting stress and unhappiness you feel are the clutter that Peter Walsh wants to help you tackle in Enough Already!: Clearing Mental Clutter to Become the Best You.

Peter examines the six key areas of your life — Family, Relationships, Work, Health, Money, and Spirituality — and shows how these unique parts of your life are so interrelated that if just one is cluttered, that clutter will creep into the other areas and throw your life off balance. He then offers a step-by-step plan that helps you acknowledge and address the emotional and mental clutter that holds you back from living the richly fulfilling life you deserve.

Peter knows that freeing up a cluttered life (and mind) can sometimes take even greater work and commitment than clearing out a cluttered home, but he is determined to help you change. With his wry humor, his constant encouragement, and the specific tips and practical advice he offers, Peter helps you prioritize what matters in your life. Then his straightforward approach shows you how to let go of the stress and clutter and regain your balance, focus, energy, and purpose. By following his simple plan you will begin to view your life and how you spend your time and energy in a completely new way. You will finally be able to live a stress-free life of balance and fulfillment — the life that’s been buried under all your emotional clutter for years and the one you’ve always imagined.

Sailin’

There are actually four logic paths to consider. (Our bipolar (Aristotelian) view of the world limits us to two). They are left (top down), right (bottom up) neither or both. The occidental world is predominately left, the oriental right, the Mideast neither. And there are separately derived logic trees (springing from a separate seed) fractal (African) and circular (meso-American) Which I really can’t speak to. I’m sure there are others. In other words, all we are talking about here is one family of logic trees. The left/right, male/female, yin/yang, scientific method/yoga, top down/bottom up family. I can’t speak to the others.

“The time has come,
Dreamweaver said,
To speak of many things,
Of whereness and whenness,
And gravity wells,
Of white holes, lifts and strings”

Are you aware that our world view is mirrored in the orient? IE they have oriental idiots who are all right and no left? They use yoga not to gain nirvana but to gain direction? (top down) They have no problem with whereness and whenness but the scientific method eludes them. The inscrutable Chinese think the occidental is inscrutable. What is so complicated? With some synergy it becomes simple. Why are people dumb? The mind is incredible, and it has been mutilated. Evolution (or god or destiny, it doesn’t matter) has given a gift to man and he threw away the gift and is playing with the pretty paper and ribbons. I’m getting frustrated again (a silent scream). I’ll do a paper on logic. May be able to get a page out of it if I pad it with graphics.

Whoa Pardner!
El Loco Gringo is going to step in here. The basic idea here is going with the flow and pissing into the wind. The point of all this yin/yang stuff, is not a or b but synergy between the two (balance power with finesse). One should always maintain the option of pissing with the wind. There’s yoga for you in three sentences.

Picture yourself on a featureless ocean, in a sailboat with auxiliary motor. As long as the weather’s clear the sails are fine, you’re just drifting but you’ve got nowhere to go. Now the weather kicks up. Face the front of the boat and piss. If it hits you in the face, turn the rudder, crank up that auxiliary and haul ass. As the erudite philosopher said in Alice “If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter much which you go” – Cheshire Cat. But now you’ve a direction to go, somewhere else.

HSP

The characteristic of being HSP (Highly Sensative Person) is found in 15-20% of the population. Yup!  They are non-idiots

You are more aware than others of subtleties. This is mainly because your brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply. So even if you wear glasses, for example, you see more than others by noticing more. Yup! their minds haven’t been hijacked.

I’ve been reading through the browsings on the web, and conclude that the HSP fits comfortably within my view of normal.  HSP is is a post by Jutta on Mali Musings.   I can’t improve on that so I’ll just change the perspective a tad.  I feel that HSP (or normal) is the way man was created/evolved/unfolded to be.  They are normal, not the norm, but normal.  On the other hand people who are not HSP are sub-normal.  Not living to their full potential.  So we have this odd situation where 80-85% of the population is dysfunctional.  (the norm)  Neither view is superior, but merely personal preference.  If it floats your boat, set sail.  It is not you that is the problem, it’s everyone else.  Let’s put the fun back in dysfunctional.  You have been given a gift, enjoy unwrapping it.  Here’s the main website Elaine Aron

The Big Chill

The big chill

“The world in terms of spatial relational dynamics is never-ending so why rush? if you happen to step in there one day and really chill out you may never come back and reclaim your historical story-line. ” – Mr Ted

Hmm!  Yes, this was my fear, someday to step into this place and not come back.  Society is psychotic, maximized for the greed of the hyper-males.  Society is a trainwreck of miasma’s of hipostatized belief systems. 

In Greek mythology, a miasma is a contagious power that has an independent life of its own. Until purged by the sacrificial death of the wrongdoer, society would be chronically infected by catastrophe.
An example is Atreus who invited his brother Thyestes to a delicious stew containing the bodies of his own sons. A miasma contaminated the entire family of Atreus, where one violent crime led to another, providing fodder for many of the Greek heroic tales. – wikipedia

With responsibility should come authority.  But it doesn’t. The individual has the responsibility, society has the authority.  Can’t anyone see how insane this is?  Society is maximized for the profit of the few and the anomie must be borne be the many.  No wonder so many people go postal.  The individual must bear the burden of the sins of society.  And society is a pressure cooker that keeps applying more pressure as society spins more out of control.  A positive feedback loop.

This type of social structure worked in the paleolithic.  We no longer live in the paleolithic, but we act as if we do.  People think of  “progress” as a gradual upward trend.  But it’s not.  It’s a sawtooth as societies gradually rise, then collapse as they spin out of control.  Always have, is now, and I fear always will.  This is the power ego mode of thinking we inherited.   In the paleolithic if the alpha male got to be too much of an asshole, no problemo, just kill him and let someone else take over, someone to whom this alphacide is in a time framework he can understand.  Despite the common belief, in primates it is usually the females who gang up on the alpha male.  But the hyper-males discovered civilization, a social structure that short-circuited the individuals ability to think for himself.

So it’s nice to chill out to relieve the pressure.

Just remember to come back

Chi

Chi The life force power of the universe. There are jillions  of cults, procedures, techniques. myths, legends etc. alluding to tapping into the power of the universe. Even the bible mentions it.It is telling that I consider this somewhat mundane.  I picked Reiki only because it has a cool graphic.  Here’s some links if you’re interested ReikiPage Laying on of hands ReikiFAQ

Pissing with the wind rather than into it.  If the plane’s flying backwards, reverse the pitch of the prop.  Mr Sid’s going with the flow.  Pulling up the anchor on Mr. Ted’s much beloved sailboat.  I view it as not so much increasing power, but reducing drag,  Removing impediments,  Getting the mind back to the state it was created/evolved/unfolded in.  Using both sides of the brain.  Or Mr M’s getting in the zone. Try to see the big picture.

Get down to the real nitty gritty.  You can’t take the dancer out of the dance.  The dancer and the dance are interactive, but there is more happening here.  More than choreography.  More than music. More than lighting.  If you take this apart, the resulting parts are trite.  Trivial. Meaningless.  In the WHOLE is more than all that.  It is what we used to call a happening.  It is a synergy of all the parts, from the individual molecules of the dancers to the universe which supplies the parts when stars explode. We are star people.  Understand the magnificence of what is going on.  The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  Embrace the wonder of it all.  Have a happening

Removing Lattices and  Taboos.  Seeing the world in its interactive whole.  In short being normal.  Just recognizing that there are other ripples out there.  And acting accordingly.  The water’s fine. Jump in.  Unwrap your gift and enjoy.

The one I can relate most easily to, however in Mr Ted’s Hurricane.  Get the hell out of the way.  The same thing happened in 1968 with hurricane Bessie, and I got out of the way.  Went to Florida in fact.  I really don’t like hurricanes.  

 

Religion

The Center of  Centering

Picture yourself as Charlie Chimp on the plains of Africa and you hear a rustle in the grass. Is it a lion or just the wind? If you assume it is a lion and it is just the wind, you have made a False Positive error, but to no harm. But if you believe the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a lion, there’s a good chance you’ll be lunch and thereby removed from your species’ gene pool. Thus, there would have been a natural selection for those hominids who tended to believe that all patterns are real and potentially dangerous.

“Historically, religions have unquestionably served the same purpose as art: they have helped to satisfy the universal human yearning for immortality. …when these beliefs become dogmas that prevent individuals from accepting scientific knowledge that might also relieve their existential anxiety, then these beliefs become problematic…..It seems to be only a matter of degree that separates the mind control imposed by cults from the dogma imposed by institutionalized religions. In both cases, a privileged minority uses mental manipulation to keep as many people as possible in a state of dependency by depriving them of their ability to think critically. ….it has always had a dark side as well: the manipulation of the masses by a privileged few.” – The Brain

People are religious because we are social and we need to get along. The moral sentiments in humans and moral principles in human groups evolved primarily through the force of natural selection operating on individuals, and secondarily through the force of group selection operating on populations. The moral sense (the feeling of doing “good” in the form of positive emotions such as righteousness and pride) evolved out of behaviors that were selected because they were good either for the individual or for the group. An immoral sense, the feeling of doing “bad” in the form of negative emotions such as guilt and shame evolved out of behaviors that were selected because they were bad either for the individual or for the group. While cultures may differ on what behaviors are defined as good or bad, the moral sense of feeling good or feeling bad about behavior X (whatever X may be) is an evolved human universal. The codification of moral principles evolved as a form of social control to ensure the survival of individuals within groups and the survival of human groups themselves. Religion was the first social institution to canonize moral principles. This is the basis for the belief in souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspiracy theorists and all manner of invisible agents intending to harm us or help us. It must be kept in mind that religion and god are mutually exclusive concepts.

“Thus, the major premise of religion, requires that this god believe in the tenets of the religion we have cast him in, which begs the question “If god must adhere to our beliefs, is he god?” Or have we “Created god in our own image? ” A person who believes that there is no god is just as guilty of this false positive error as the one who believes there is. They are just two different belief systems of an unresolved issue. They are both crazy. We didn’t evolve a false negative detector. While there is no evidence that there is a god, there is no evidence that there isn’t. Which god we believe in is completely a matter of chance. The question is the methodology used. Saying “just because” doesn’t address the issue in any meaningful terms. If couched in different terms the question may be resolvable. This is the classic “dead cat” question. Until we look in the box, we won’t know. We must ask a reasonable question if we expect a reasonable answer – el Loco Gringo

This then, would appear to be the center of centering. A centered person recognizes and accepts the ambiguous nature of the issue. As is the tone through out this paper, “Do not allow anyone to occupy rent free space in your mind.” If you choose a religion, make sure that it is between you and God. Do not allow another person in the loop. Anytime people get involved in something, they screw it up. Remember that the preacher is not God, he is not the representative of God. Religion is between you and God only.

MindSight

is the ability of the mind to see itself

Here you go children.  If you don’t feel like spending years in a Tibetian monastery going Oooom! or you think yoga is effete and your therapist is an idiot.  or mindfullness doesn’t work.  This may be for you.  Remember there is no RIGHT “one size fits all answer'”  You are unique and what is RIGHT is what is right for you.  If it feels comfortable, go for it.  Maharishi emeritus el Loco Gringo gives an absolute unequivocal guarantee that this may work for some people.

For many therapists, what Siegel has done is to show just how, from the moment we’re born, our most important relationships fire into being the neural circuits of the brain that allow us to understand and empathize with others and feel their feelings. But beyond that, he’s gone on to link his interest in both science and the nuance of relationship with the almost unfathomable complexities of neuroscience to generate a field he calls “interpersonal neurobiology,” which has brought the latest findings of brain science directly into the therapist’s consulting room. As much as any figure in the mental health field, he’s taken on, as both a professional challenge and a personal quest, the task of showing his clinician colleagues how the objective, physical matter of the brain-its lobes, modules, folds, lumps, tubes, and fibers-creates the possibilities for the subjective life of the mind, heart, soul, and spirit that is the glory of our species.

These are some links to the webpage, (red) and some downloadable pdf files (yellow).  If it doesn’t work, you get a full refund.

Dan SiegelElle MindSight NeuralBuddists Audience Shambhala

Sajid

Sajid Kahn

‘You can if you think you can’ is essential for success but not enough to succeed. One needs to learn the ropes of life to succeed.

Current conventional wisdom would have us believe that we operate in a vacuum.  Society doesn’t exist and the sub-conscious is psychotic.  There is no room for the self.  By our current mind model our understanding of our self is incomplete. Psychology is only dealing with one part of a three part phenomenon.  This creates its own enormous problems. As we cannot fully describe the self how can we know, understand and become our true sell? All universities know that the holy grail of education is self mastery yet they stay away from even researching it let alone teach it. This is because under the present mind model it is impossible to define the self within the paradigm of science. As a result mainstream education stays away from teaching the super mature mind level as the super mature mind level involves teaching about the self. Ignoring the premature and super mature mind stages has resulted in the current mess in the world. This ignorance affects/effects everything. Let’s see how it shows up in America that has the most advanced cutting edge education in the world. We brain wash our kids into believing that they are the best instead of building up their real confidence by making them learn the ropes. As a result our kids grow up feeling more confident than what they are capable of. We set them up for depression and constant running for more and more. We teach our kids ‘You can if you think you can’. ‘You can if you think you can’ is essential but not enough to succeed. Learned confidence is the only real confidence.

True, true, true. That’s why psychology is silly

complete-mind-model

 

Solitude

The need to be alone

Solitude

Sometimes it’s just nice to be alone.  To be alone without being lonely.  To get away from the crazys.   To have no goal, no agenda, nothing pressing.  We live in a crazy world and sometimes I need to back off and just wonder at the insanity.

“My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude…”

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy:am I or are the others crazy ?” ~ Albert Einstein

“I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.” – Jill Bolte

“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe (right mind perception ) … We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness.(left mind interpretation )

“Reality is an illusion…albeit a persistent one”…Albert Einstein

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.~Beatrix Potter

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.~Edwin Land

Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.~Niels Bohr

Sir Ken Robinson

Letter to Sir Ken

Dear Sir Ken,

I ran across your talk on Stumble and was blown away. I went to the TED site and had my mind boggled, ( and I have a high boggle threshold). I was like the dancer you spoke of walking into the dance class and finding “a room full of people like me”. I am cursed with exceptional cognitive ability so debilitating that I went into seclusion 30 years ago to avoid having to deal with idiots. (99+% of the population). Non-idiots are few and far between, particularly among “experts”. I am unaware of any experts who are not idiots. I am not more intelligent, I just have greater cognitive ability.
To your talk, the problem is much deeper and more pervasive than just deemphasizing art in school. The educational system has destroyed creativity, particularly in the soft sciences. Reductionist thinking has been imprinted on the right hemisphere, thus negating the natural synergistic ability of the mind. It is more than the emphasis on art, the method of teaching must be changed so as to not cripple this innate synergistic ability.
This despite the numerous studies that show students learn chemistry better when taught by a chemist, or physics by a physicist, or history by a historian. Instead they use “professional” teachers which are trained to crush creativity. This is not just stupidity (although there is that too) on the part of the educators, there is a conscious effort to demolish the intuitive ability of the mind by idiots who feel that constructionist thinking has no place in academia. It’s backwards. They have destroyed the ability of the students to use creativity in their thinking, even in the hard sciences. They leave school knowing something that “ain’t so”.
Physics has gone off the deep end since Einstein. All physics since has been based on two flawed experiments. I’ve got the particle decay problem figured out, and I’m working on the two slot experiment. I hope to be done before I die, but then, who would I tell?
It also extends beyond education into social, religious, financial, philosophical, psychological domains. There are so many ways to be dumb, and only one way to be smart.
In a peculiar serendipity, I ran across a non-idiot psychologist. It’s like sticking my hand in my pocket and pulling out a live purple rhinoceros with yellow polka dots. I didn’t know such a thing could exist. She is helping me put my concepts, which are quite simple in my mind, into words which explode into meaningless irrelevancies using reductionist thinking.
What would the world look like with 1000 Leonardo da Vinci’s, or a million, or a billion? How many are spending their lives in menial occupations, or are institutionalized, or in seclusion? Idiots will be idiots, that’s what they’re best at. Why can’t they just leave the mind alone?
I’ve been to Stratford on Avon, it was bucolic when I was there, probably strip malls, parking lots and McMansions now.

Truth is simple and beautiful, Deceit is devious and ugly

Sir Ken Robinson

Obsessive/Compulsive

letter to DrB

Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder

A group can only deal with the symptoms, not the problem.

I do have some thoughts I’d like to share on the problem itself. After all, sometimes I’m a pretty fart smeller. It could be a healthy mind performing abnormally, or an unhealthy mind. (of course that’s true of everyone you encounter, isn’t it) If you’re talking an unhealthy mind, it’s dopazene time and they can go to the group to learn to deal with the side-effects. (that was easy, wasn’t it?)

First we’ll look at a healthy mind behaving normally as I see it. Pick someone at random that we both know, say, Dr. B. (yes, I checked you out, I’m not going to entrust my mind to an idiot. I may be crazy but I’m not dumb) Centered, Check; FIFO flushes (Hippocampus) check, dominant algorithm Dr. B, sub-dominant Teresa, stimuli pass through sub-dominant and are fielded by dominant, check (amylgada test 1); laterals seamlessly check (amylgada test 2) Yup, she’ll work.

I did some research on obsessive compulsive behavior. Just the definition, past that the discussion turned to bullshit. As I understand (it in my terms) stimuli are being fielded by both algorithms (kind of the reverse of multiple personality disorder) unlikely though but possible dopazene time

The second shows promise for a QD Fix. It may be that the dominant algorithm is fielding the stimuli and instead of dealing with it is sending it to the sub-dominant algorithm which then exhibits inappropriate behavior. If I am correct in my understanding of the problem, this would mean that there are two points of attack. The inappropriate lateral from the dominant to the sub-dominant, and the inappropriate behavior of the sub-dominant.

Bear in mind you listening to a crazy person, whose mind is not as sharp as it used to be, has no experience and only an amateurs interest in psychology.

If I am correct so far (a big if), and if by talking to this person I could confirm this. I might want to consider modifying the sub-dominant decision point. For instance, change 20 iterations to 10.  IF that works, the door is open and you need to do some SERIOUS thinking about what to do next.

Obsessive compulsive

Ethics

 

“ethics is not cheating at solitare” – el Loco Gringo

It’s doing the right thing when no one is watching.   This is different than honesty, which is doing the right thing when someone is watching. Or maybe because someone is watching.

Religion’s monopoly in the field of ethics has made it extremely difficult to communicate the emotional meaning and connotations of a rational view of life. Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. “Exaltation” is usually taken to mean an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. “Worship” means the emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man. “Reverence” means the emotion of a sacred respect, to be experienced on one’s knees. “Sacred” means superior to and not-to-be-touched-by any concerns of man or of this earth. Etc. “yet these words can be very accurate if one strips away the religious overtones, Walt”

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature–and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning–and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls. (the un-locked Walt)

“To me–it’s being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who’s had some disease that’s eaten his brain out. You’d have nothing then but your voice–your voice and your thought. You’d scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you’d have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you’d become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you’d see living eyes watching you and you’d know that the thing can’t hear you, that it can’t be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it’s breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That’s horror. Well, that’s what’s hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. I don’t think I’m a coward, but I’m afraid of it. And that’s all I know–only that it exists. I don’t know its purpose, I don’t know its nature.” (I do “Taboo” Walt)

“Now you see how difficult it is to discuss these things when our entire language is the language of individualism, with all its terms and superstitions. identity’–it’s an illusion, you know. But you can’t build a new house out of crumbling old bricks. You can’t expect to understand me completely through the medium of present-day conceptions. We are poisoned by the superstition of the ego. We cannot know what will be right or wrong in a selfless society, nor what we’ll feel, nor in what manner. ”

“Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue…when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed” (Rand, 2002).

Alice in wonderland

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (I am asking people to believe the impossible, Walt)

Nietzsche

“It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank–to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning,–it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.–The noble soul has reverence for itself.–” (Friedrich
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.)

“There are two types of people in the world. Centered and un-Centered. The centered have substance, a belief system that is central to who they are. It may be self esteem, it may be religion, it may be an innate sense of good and evil. They have an internal compass to show them a direction in life. They have goals, aspirations and dreams. They are a joy to be around.

el Loco Gringo

The un-centered frighten me, I don’t know where they are coming from. Instead of a center, There is an abyss, a hole in the soul, if you will. No matter what arguments you use, no matter the facts, logic, morality etc. All attempts at communication fall into the abyss. They pretend to be human. They are the living un-dead. They are zombies. A walking caricature of a human that wants to eat my brain.

There are two types of zombies, assholes and idiots. They form a symbiotic relationship in which the assholes beat the shit out of the idiots, and the idiots allow themselves to get the shit beat out of them. It is an obscene perversion of humanity”

Using the 80/20 rule out of a sample of 100
There is one un-locked and centered (- taboo)
19 centered (locked)
20 assholes (locked)
60 idiots (locked)

That’s what troubles me about dealing with idiots.  Their actions are situational.  It depend on what they estimate their chances of being caught are.   A centered, in contrast, can always be depended on to do the right thing, to not steal and to cheat on their taxes (which I consider to be the moral obligation of all Americans)

Update

 

Wetware 1.0 to 1.1

This is a major patch to wetware version 1.0 bringing it up to date (wetware 1.1). It provides protection against a major security hole. As the mind has no defense against spinout, this patch should be applied as soon as possible, to prevent suicides, going postal, depression and other problems.

The meme “Regroup” should be introduced into the curriculum at the earliest opportunity. A good point would be History. The concept “regroup” means gather resources, fall back and establish a defensive perimeter. Once the meme is firmly implanted, it can be activated in a session or lecture, such as “When you start to become overwhelmed, you need to regroup, and consider your options.” Even if the person doesn’t self-regroup, a counselor or therapist can use it as a “back door” to relieve the tension.  QD Fix

This patch provides a defended area of the mind for sanity to occur. Once established, it can be used as a bridgehead to address the underlying issues.

This whole thing raises severe ethical and security questions.

Imprinting

Back to healing

 

The Ghost in your Genes

I have made frequent references to imprinting.

Lattice – Block on constructivist thinking. Imposed by education to force conformist thinking.

Taboo – on pride. Imposed by religion and upbringing. Imposes subservience.

Centering – has been disrupted by the efforts of others to control us

Misogyny – Discourages “woman think”

Brain Fart – Combination of the above

Now I’ll discuss what I think is happening.  Please note, I could be wrong and am certainly incomplete. There is a critical period in a childs development when any input is accepted as truth, permanently.  This forms what I refer to as a Neuron Trellis that bypasses the thought process in emergency situations. It also forms a framework for social skills, language, mores etc. Once the critical period is past, a “prune and trim” operation is begun which reduces the number of brain cells from 300,000,000 in a child to around 100,000,000 in an adult.  (use ’em or loose  ’em)  So the neural pathways become “hard wired”  A concept which does not fit within this framework is impossible.  IE if we haven’t been imprinted with the language framework the concept of language is impossible to comprehend.  Or a spider will ALWAYS elicit a reflex.  Makes sense from an evolutionary point of view.  Anyone who didn’t have an uncontrolable urge to “be somewhere else quickly” would be removed from the gene pool if attacked by a lion.   A  pretty universal  imprint is the incest tabooA really good culprit in this would appear to be epigenitics, where decreased levels of cortisol trigger genetic changes which can be passed from generation to generation.  Also new research from Israel seems to indicate that injections of cortisol may be able to break the link.  The doctors at the VA are unaware of this. (start with part 4 where 1 year old kids are described with PTSD)

The Ghost in your Genes Part 1 2 3 4 5 Epigenetics – The new biology DNA is not destiny DNA Dimmer Short version; It may be possible to “fix” PTSD Gotta be careful what we tell our kids, it is forever. Psychological ramifications see here> Trauma Transformation Veterans

Joy Dance

Back to Healing

This post is a response to Jutta Hi Jutta, I would be very interested in knowing where, precisely, these studies can be found. my neurons are hungry and must be fed. <Recent brain science has discovered how our right-brains communicate with each other.> I would also be interested in your thoughts on the QD Fix https://keytoann.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/qd-fix/ The joy dance, “thrive” exercise and attachment dance also seem to share characteristics with the lakota learning circle and the qd fix. most of this seems rather obvious (to me anyway) I’d just use different words, re-establishing connectedness with (whatever) in the case of the example with another individual or, in your case, since you are of a spiritual bent, god. Orientals would call this feng shui, the maximization of qi. An occidental insight, and I call it awareness. but the word is not the concept but only a word. the vedic’s? perhaps have it nailed best, they see “no difference between the universe and the divine” a position it’s real hard to argue with no matter what words one uses. Or………..I could be full of shit. I’m crazy, you’re odd and the world is insane.

Mr Jutta> “I would recommend reading books by Daniel J. Siegel (e.g. The developing mind) and Daniel G. Amen (e.g. Healing the hardware of the soul). I believe that a lot what I learned from Jim Wilder is based on their research.”

.. or follow the links in the different post on the Life Model http://malianta.wordpress.com/category/life-model/

Moral Compass



 

Return to Healing

Many e-acolytes implore me; “Show me the way, sublime and serene celestial sailor, nebulous navigator of the netherworld” Show you the way? Hell, I don’t even know where you’re at*. Go to Mapquest and punch in the zip code. Once you’ve done an emotional enema to clear the crap out of your mind, come back here and read on.

Look around, decide where YOU want to go, not where someone else wants you to go. A good rule of thumb is “If someone claims they can show you the way, they can’t” Avoid them they are only trying to fill their own abyss, they are assholes. This is your mind, evolved/created for you and you alone. Do not allow anyone else to occupy rent free space in your mind. Remember the immortal words of the great mentalist Dan Quayle “A mind is a terrible thing to lose”

Do I have any suggestions? Only one, a kernel that can be nurtured ;

“You are a child of the universe, no less that the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.”

Past that, you’re on your own, take control of your life, do not be a slave to others. Take your time, Choose carefully. Be gentle with yourself. It has been a long time since you could think for yourself. It will take awhile to relearn. It would be immoral of me to try to influence your thinking. I would just be another asshole then wouldn’t I?

Seek the “key of ANN”

*someone complained about my using a preposition at the end of the sentence. Append asshole at the above star if you are offended.

 

 

 

 

 

Centering 3

Centering Redux

Return to Healing

Centering 4

So, you want to channel all of the data on centering into a central thread. Not really easy, as centering has more to do with what it ain’t. Consider this video>

BacteriaChase

It is clear that the bacteria, which is being chased by a T-cell is centered. Can’t be too difficult then, a bacteria doesn’t even have any neurons. The concept is centered about the “me”. I am me, I like me, I want to stay me would sum it up. You’d say it was egocentric if it had an ego or a center for that matter. So we skip forward to a baby. It is also centered and egocentric. But something happens. Societal, social, religious, cultural, educational imprinting encodes a decision tree on this basic me, a neuron trellis to provide a path for neurons to grow on (or not). With the brain operating under the “use it or loose it” principle, unused neurons are pruned and used neurons bloom. With the mechanism outlined in the “Asperta Supra” by Rodrick Wallace. (epigenetics) This then, is the core belief upon which all subsequent learning is attached. To the individual the core belief system is real and any attempt at communication must be in a format to be consistent with it, else it is tagged as “unreal” and discarded. So, while a persons top down and bottom up processes may be not inconsistent internally they may be inconsistent with society, specifically, THIS society.

Coupl’a three of ways to approach this;

1. change the environment, become involved in a band of like minded persons. Seek affinity.
2. change the encoding, the breakdown breakthrough does that, epigenitics shows great promise
3. bypass the encoding, whole bunch of possibilities here, probably something like secular meditation (mindfulness) or bio-feedback would be appropriate as it bypasses most of the taboos. If the individual chooses to go the “mystical” route. so be it.

Perhaps a broad spectrum smorgasbord of possibilities could be presented, a kitchen sink approach that lets the patient choose. (it is, after all, his mind) Sidhere would be good for that.

“Nobody ever learned to play a piano from a book”. A mirror is required who can see the problem from the inside. Unfortunately, there are few in the mental health profession capable of such insight, in fact the concept that psychology is a profession is a counterfeit concept. It is pseudo science as it exists, and too many people have vested interests in keeping it that way. A paradigm shift is needed in the mental health profession if it is to be effective, the fourth wave. It should be taught as an art, much like music. Mindfulness training should be required. A psychologist should be a professional friend.

Human mental disorders are not well understood. Official classifications as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – fourth edition,(DSM-IV,1994), the standard descriptive nosology in the US, have even been characterized as prescientic by P. Gilbert(2001) and others.

Johnson-Laird et al.(2006) claim that current knowledge about psychological illnesses is comparable to the medical understanding of epidemics in the early19th century.

Psychiatrists have narrowly focused on the biological underpinnings of mental disorders while discounting the importance of such `soft’ variables as culture and socioeconomic status. – Rodrick Wallace

Time to shuffle the deck

It is the insight that counts, not the knowledge.

 

 

Bipolar Manic/Depression

About Me

Manic/Depression Disorder or Genius?

I may be crazy, but everyone else is insane” – el Loco Gringo

Bipolar is a counterfeit concept.  It is a word used by idiots to describe something they don’t understand giving them the delusional belief that they understand what is going on.  They do not.  The idea that one can reverse engineer the mind to understand the root causes of behavior strikes me as idiocy, bordering on insanity.

“I’ve always been crazy” – Waylon Jennings

“One question that has always driven me hazy, am I crazy or is everyone else?” – Albert Einstein

This is directed to the mental health profession.  You’re idiots.  As a certifiable bipolar manic/depressionist. (I haven’t been caught yet) I’d like to give my take on the subject from the inside.

First of all, I’m in good company. Note the image of my personal hero Big Al.   A partial list in alphabetical order are; Ludwig Van Beethoven, Ludwig Boltzmann, Lord Byron, Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Richard Dryfuss, Patti Duke, Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Carrie Fisher, F Scott Fitzgerald, Alexander Hamilton, Ernest Hemingway, Kay Redfield Jamison*, John Keats, Vivian Leigh, Isaac Newton, Florence Nightingale, Jane Pauley, Edgar Alan Poe, Mark Twain, Vincent van Goth, Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf. (I didn’t realize that bipolar was an available condition that long ago.) Since idiot psychologists have no problem with with ex-post facto diagnosis, I’ll add a few more to the list. Socrates, Homer Simson, Plato, Copernicus, Pliny, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci. Goober, Mary Sommerville, Ayn Rand, Francois Mandelbrot. There are many contemporary bipolar/genius’. Since I don’t want to be responsible for them getting a net thrown over them and shot up with dopazine*, I’ll leave them un-named. In fact every great thinker who has avoided beheading, burning at the stake or being shot up with dopazine was and is bipolar. This does not preclude them having emotional problems like every one else. (which they are especially prone to because they have to live in a world full of idiots). Or as Waylon said above; they may be crazy, but that doesn’t mean they’re insane. As to Einstein’s quote. Yes, Big Al, every one else really is crazy.

Let’s look at the words;

Disorder – First it is not a disorder, nor a disease, nor are they possessed by demons, nor are they heretics. Nor are they metaphysical, nor mystic. “The devil did not make them do it”. They are not defective, although they can be convinced they are with enough idiot therapy.  They are not insane although they are certainly crazy in the sense that they do not think like the norm (idiots). In fact, one could say it is pathological to be well adjusted in this society. What they are capable of is viewing life from a different, more complete perspective.

Bipolar – I can certainly understand the mood swings from the elation of discovering a concept to depression at being unable to communicate this concept to idiots.

Manic – A state of heightened awareness, nirvana, whole-brain thinking, bottom up thinking. No assumptions are made and ALL possibilities are considered.

Depression – It’s not depression so much as incredibly extreme frustration at being unable to communicate with idiots.  They have “spun out” trying desperately to find a way to communicate.

“Symptoms” (It’s not a disease)

Cannot stay on topic, flits from subject to subject with no apparent connection or goal. – This is the bottom up thinking process in action. Musing, as opposed to thinking. This is how the right hemisphere works. It is necessary to communicate with another to gather the facts for the associations to be made in the right hemisphere for the left hemisphere to process. Only by communicating with another do the concepts become “real” IE necessary for interfacing with others. Remember, there are NO preconceived assumptions. ALL is considered. I’ve heard it described as rambling and incoherent.

Paranoid – That’s certainly true. Sometimes they are not paranoid enough and they get burned at the stake, beheaded or shot up with dopazine.

Attaches an exaggerated sense of importance to their concepts – Saving humanity from going extinct isn’t important? Who’s crazy now?

Often creates entire disciplines to support their delusional ideas – Well, whatcha gonna do when the “experts” are clueless?

Has their own lexicon – Yup, when there are no words available to express their concepts. There is a school of philosophy which posits that “having a concept for which a word does not exist is, in and of itself, insanity.” Who’s crazy now?

Unconsidered is the possibility that the reason the person making the diagnosis does not understand the BPD is that he/she is an idiot. I used to think that psychology was silly. I’ve upgraded that to barbaric. Instead of nurturing them, SOCIETY IS KILLING OFF THE GENIUS in the genius’s , the very people whose insight could enrich the life of mankind.  Dopazine in these cases only lowers the ability of the mind to that of the idiot who prescribes it.  In that sense, he becomes normal.  You’re not helping them, you’re making them dumb.  Psychology is a pseudo-science in the same class as Voodoo.  With the caveat that voodoo works better.  When a naked priestess dances around you, chanting and shaking her beads and rattles, it is definitely a mind altering experience.  I know, I’ve experienced both.

“This is my mind, and mine alone. I like it just as it is. It has guided and protected me through a turbulent life. It has shown me the beauty and the ugliness of the world in all it’s glory and depravity. I have marveled at the richness of the world and the people in it. It has given me a most rewarding journey. It is a fine mind indeed. And I am proud of it, so very proud. It has served me well.” – el Loco Gringo

HOW DARE AN IDIOT PASS JUDGEMENT?

It is not we who are crazy

it is YOU!

el Loco Gringo pulls back the curtain

Granted, there can be chemical or harmonal imbalances, injury, emotional distress etc. but basically this is the underlying problem.

The Doorman

“You’re not making them better, you’re making them dumb” – Rufus May

“I work with people who get defined as ‘mentally ill’. But I don’t see them as having faulty brains and in need of strong medication. I believe madness and distress is a result of having been on the receiving end of various forms of social injustice.” – Rufus May

Emergence Awakening The mad psychologist Bipolar A-Z Mind Freedom Rufus May TheRealCause

The person who professes to be a person concerned with the well being of troubled people can “deeply listen”.  If the psychologist thinks of him/herself as a friend, albeit a professional paid friend.  Usually they do not want the answer, what they want is a “mirror” so they can find their own answer.   There is no difference in results between a PHD and a plumber who volunteers to help on the weekends.  The patient is the expert on the patient, not the psychologist.  It is the connectedness that matters.  The patient is not defective. Usually, he is only confused (or hazy as Einstein put it).   Be careful on passing judgement.  I’ve just passed mine.

el Loco Gringo pulled back the curtain

*Dopazine – generic term for any psychotropic drug that turns the patient into a dope

*Smartacide – kills off your smarts

Please don’t help me, I’ve done nothing wrong!

SoulTeacher Susan Polgar Bipolar_Sid

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Core Beliefs

The Choice is yours

Return to> the minds

Response to comment  by Hambydamit – My comments highlighted and below the feathers

“Is it possible to find nirvana secularly? Not a Buddhist “deathless” nirvana, more like a Maslowian self-actualization nirvana.

Sam Harris made a pretty big deal about this in his speech at the conference. Personally, I think his ideas were fairly reasonable, and he just found the worst possible way to say them to a bunch of dyed in the wool atheists.

As others have pointed out, there’s nothing mystical about meditation. There’s also no guarantee that you’ll find anything that will make you happy through meditation. Daniel Dennett made a really good point when he noted that the vast majority of people who go into caves for three years to meditate don’t say anything useful or interesting when they come back.

I’m a big fan of cognitive therapy. I think you might want to give that a look. It’s not something you even need a therapist for if you’re truly honest with yourself and aren’t afraid to ask hard questions. Just buy a textbook from a college bookstore and learn how to do it yourself.

Here’s the basic overview:

* Humans develop “core ideas” that are more or less hard-wired into our brains when we are still quite young. Epigenitics again – walt ref “asperta supra”

* These core ideas help us form shortcuts so that we don’t have to reason through everything from the beginning. They’re like our own personal axioms — things that are self-evidently true, and don’t need to be evaluated further.

* The problem is that sometimes we form core ideas that are false. Nope they’re taught – walt

* False core ideas lead to lots of false beliefs that we may not even consciously know we have. The neurons don’t exist. An unknown known- walt

* Identifying false core beliefs leads to identifying self destructive behavior patterns.

* Identifying self destructive behavior patterns leads to identifying “triggers” that cause us to engage in those patterns.

* Once we identify the triggers, we can begin to reprogram ourselves. When a trigger happens, we consciously override it. Over time, our new behavior patterns replace the original ones, so that we now have true core beliefs and healthy behavior patterns. Burn new neural pathways – walt

In fact, I can’t think of any reason why you couldn’t meditate as a means to discovering false core beliefs. Why not have the best of both worlds? Anyway, check out cognitive therapy. Nothing can guarantee happiness, but I’ve got a lot of personal and anecdotal evidence that it can work.
He’s right on about the “core beliefs” which I would call imprinting. The false beliefs are learned beliefs that are consistent with the core beliefs. For instance the “core belief” of the aboriginal belief system is “man belongs to earth, earth doesn’t belong to man”. Without this core belief, the entire aboriginal world view collapses into meaningless babble. This central thread can be found in all American belief systems. Cherokee, Meso-american, Aztec, Mayan, Incan etc. The learned beliefs, which seem to set them apart are only superficial.

Still working on that channeling center you asked about – walt

Mindfulness Contemplation PDF

Stuffin it

Misery

If it is your aim in life to be unhappy, Here are 5 easy steps to achieve that goal. From a survival point of view it is more important that we are than that we are happy. So the mind is biased towards negativity.

Misery Anxiety Anger Depression

Depression

Blue funk – a state of nervous depression; “he was in a funk”

Depression – a mental state characterized by a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity

Depression, in the Taoist view, can be looked at in 4 levels of depth: Spiritual, mental, emotional and physical depression. At any level, depression is an inner conflict of an individual. Spiritual depression is not a health problem and medical science cannot deal with it. The other three types can be helped by various healing arts, because they are all connected to chemical and energetical imbalance.

In the simplest way of understanding, depression is an emotional conflict with the logical mind and physical/chemical balances of the body. If one can logically and completely solve his/her own conflict, or sometimes by spiritual understanding, emotional and/or chemical imbalance is at once normalized.

Using the ANN model the neurons are “locked” into a state of inactivity. Quite the opposite of anxiety, which is a whirlwind of activity. As negative feelings are much more powerful than “feel good” stuff, the state can be difficult to break. With anxiety the mind is frantically searching for an answer, with depression, it has given up. The times I have seen it, it required triggering the fight/flight mechanism.

Desiderata

Desiderata

You are a child of the universe

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle to yourself.

You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars and you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with the Universe, whatever you conceive that to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann

 

Sacred Space

………………………………………………………………………………..

That secret Sacred Space is within us all

Whether you call it God, great mysterious, nirvana, the zone, mother earth, Gaia, cosmic divine doesn’t matter. It’s all the same thing. No one can tell you where it is. There is no TRUTH, there is only truth. You must find it for yourself. It is your truth, unique and complete unto you. All other TRUTH’S are only partial. There is no “one size fits all”. It is your’s and your’s alone. No one can take it from you, you can only surrender it. It fills the “hole in the soul”. And it is secret, only you know where it is. You are that god you seek.

 

Normal

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“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” – Big Al Big Al Quotes

WALTER is now ready to address Big Al’s question. Those who follow me will know what when WALTER speaks, walt and el Loco Gringo have reached consensus. The “best answer to date” of the right algorithm has been set on the left algorithm as a shortcut.

Previously I have spoken of idiots and non-idiots. Idiots are simple, they have the Brain Fart, a debilitating mental condition that prevents them from using their whole brain. Idiots are the norm.

Non-idiots is a more complicated topic, or maybe not. They can always be insane, of course. Let’s pull them out of consideration, to be dealt with later. I am uncomfortable with defining something by what it is not. Non-idiots is cumbersome. Centered is better but it has spiritual overtones which may not be necessarily appropriate. In like manner whole brain thinking has sectarian overtones which also may not be necessarily appropriate. Balanced puts the whole discussion inside the skull, also inappropriate. Yoga puts it outside. The same can be said of all the words used to describe this condition, each being only a partial answer, and viewed as a deviation from the norm. Tao is close.

So this is the way the minds are supposed to work, balancing input to achieve optimal execution. It is not the non-idiot who is an aberration, but the idiot. A non-idiot is able to access his essense whatever that may be, unique for each individual. If you deal with life in the spiritual realm, it is being able to access that little bit of God that is within us all. If you deal with life in the secular realm, it is being able to access that little bit of the universe that is within us all. They are, after all, the same thing. So Big Al is normal.

And to Big Al, the others are crazy, you are Normal

Caniption Fit

I’ve heard the term Nervous Breakdown. I don’t like that, I prefer caniption fit. In general anger is a good healthy emotion. I like my anger, it impels me to action. It is a righteous anger. It is mine. I own it. I have to let it burn out to avoid spinning out. Extinguishing it would probably lead to a collapse. For now I must revel in it, enjoy it, marvel at it’s pervasive nature, be aware of how it permeates every corner of my psyche, rejoice in the intensity of the emotion, It is glorious.

But that is a controlled anger. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about a sudden outburst of anger in an inappropriate manner. In simple terms the slave implant in your right mind has malfunctioned. Your blowout preventer has failed. Your safety valve has popped. Your right mind has been shut down by the societal imprinting for so long that it rebels. Being the right mind it is your connectedness so it usually has something to do with injustice to others. It is not normally the outburst of anger that is the problem, but the psychotic society that provoked the anger. The right mind says “This is bullshit, somebody is getting fucked, and I’m going to do something about it myself” Pushes the left mind out of the way and takes over. And while the right mind is compassionate, it ain’t too bright. Many times a caniption fit is a righteous anger, reacting to an insane situation in a sane manner.

Your right mind has gone off the reservation. Your lawn jockey has caught the underground railroad. But the society and the law sees the problem as originating with the individual and may be at odds with justice and justice, above all, is something that should be an absolute right.

“Some things a mind just can’t run away from” – el Loco Gringo

Galloping Anger RighteousAnger

Centering 2

Counterfeit Concepts

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Centering 3

A counterfeit concept is a manifestation of the brain fart, our Aristotelian world view. It is our left mind’s block of the right mind which precludes creativity and insight. It is an idiot’s way of gaining control of a concept for which he is totally clueless. It is pixie dust he sprinkles over an unknown, giving him the illusion he understands. It is pre-renaissance thinking. It is thinking backwards. In the west, the Aristotelian brain fart has divorced us from our connectedness with the world and society. It is this connectedness that psychology discards treating the individual as if he/she existed in a vacuum.

So psychology ends up trying to fix only one element of what is in fact a three part balancing act. The right mind is treated as psychotic, the left mind is rigid and the external world doesn’t exist.

I am using the yin/yang model. It’s simpler than orientals make it out to be. But if you’re interested in the mysticism here’s a start> Feng Shui The more astute of you will notice that I do not strictly adhere to the tao model. I know, the mind doesn’t work exactly like orientals think it does. Do not assume I am down playing Tao, if it appeals to you, go for it. You could do lot’s worse. Plug in whatever words you prefer, call tao god if you want or the universe it doesn’t matter, it’s all the same thing depending entirely on wetware. The universe doesn’t really give a shit what words we use to describe it, and the mind works exactly the same way no matter what words we use.

Essentially the yin IS the right mind, what occidentals call the sub-conscious. The yang IS the left mind, the individual. Tao is the world. Feng Shui is balance. Tao is everything else. If the three are balanced, IE not inconsistent, the person is centered. Here’s another take on it if you’re interested Duality

But the real world isn’t static. We live in a turbulent society and this centering mobile is dancing all over the place. So flexibility would seem to be the key. Novel situations should be anticipated and not dreaded.

Inflexiblity is probably caused by social/religious/educational imprinting. Which leads us back to the right mind being shut down. It is time to reconnect the wires that have been cut. IE turn the bullshit detector back on. This will enable the right mind to come back on-line and evaluate new situations. Two really good places to start are SecularMeditation as it bypasses religious taboos (it doesn’t require belief) and SidHere who has a cornucopia of right mind enhancing techniques. If someone claims to have your TRUTH, he doesn’t. If he did he would realize that truth is unique to each individual. There is only truth.

This all boils down to “refusing to allow someone else to occupy rent free space in your mind”

“truth is simple and beautiful, deceit is devious and ugly” – el Loco Gringo

Galloping

 

“Insanity doesn’t run in my family, it gallops”

I like my anger. It is power. It is what impels me to action. It is exilerating. For this short piece I’ll use Sigmund Fraud’s model of the psyche, id, ego and super-ego. But even a fraud can have insight. For instance he observed that all women have a penis envy. (it is after all, such a beautiful thing.)

I had the good fortune to grow up on a dairy and had to handle the cows on horseback. So I guess I really am a cowboy, albeit a pasture cowboy. I used to feel the same thrill when galloping as fast as I could go. The horse is doing what it loves to do, and I am doing what I love to do. I have all this power under my control. Being young and stupid, I tried it a couple of times sans tack (bareback). The thrill is gone, replaced by terror, a surreal sensation where everything is happening in slow motion. This happens to me when I get angry, everything slows down and I can see in great detail, kind of a third person perspective. I’ve dropped the reins and the horse is out of control.

In Germany they have what are called ghost riders, drivers who will get on the autobann with the intent of suicide going balls to the wall the wrong way. These accidents are horrific. I think they named them after this song. I can understand why.

So anger is the ego riding the id with the super-ego holding the reins.

Check this thread out. This will piss you off. People with integrity are getting weeded out of the system. He’s a fucking hero, at least my hero. No wonder the world’s so screwed up. Don Quixote

Don’t drop the reins.

 

Theosophy

Theosophy

Spiritual
Hierarchy

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A secular Religion

A doctrine of religious philosophy and metaphysics originating with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–91). In this context, theosophy holds that all religions are attempts by the “Spiritual Hierarchy” to help humanity in evolving to greater perfection, and that each religion therefore has a portion of the truth. Together with Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge, and others, Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875.

Another group that’s on the right track. Yet another valid perspective on life.

Shamans believe that disturbances can be treated in the luminous body or aura before they manifest in the body. The process provides techniques for assisting a client in shedding her/his past before those wounds manifest as illness. Some of this work is similar to Jungian analysis in that it works with archetypes and the mythical, but the effects are felt more quickly. Carol provides a short overview of depth psychology and describes how a shaman can intervene to remove negative patterns.

In the shamanic tradition the warrior who goes to battle loses that part of his persona that knows that killing is evil. When they return there is a disconnect between who they are and who they should be. This is known as PTSD. They have a yearning to be whole. A hole in the soul, if you will. It is the shaman’s duty to re-integrate the persona, to perform a “soul retrieval”

Shamanlinks Theosophical SouRetrival

Oblique Strategies

By Brian Eno

Gain a new perspective

No need to write a lot about this. Two excellent links are below. There are online versions, a yahoo widget and sometimes they can be found on eBay. There are at least 3 versions. This works very similar to “Whack Me” Kind of an updated version of I Ching.

“The reason why I wrote this script is because I like how the Oblique Strategies can give you a fresh outlook on old ideas. I think it’s a good stimulant for creativity, and I wanted to be able to use it once in a while and have quick access to it, as quick as a bookmark in my browser. I looked online for a good version for a while but I couldn’t find anything to my tastes.” – Greg Taylor Download OS widget Oblique Strategies Stratigraphy Webworker Rainbows

 

I Ching

I Ching
Retro Therapy

Return to Healing

This is another method for expanding your mind.

The book of changes

Such a deal. None of this years of study in a Tibetian Monistary. Just give the feng Shui coins a fling and ponder how the reading applies to your situation. It is a right mind enhancing technique. In simplified terms I Ching could be viewed as casting dice to determine passages in the bible to be pondered and applied to life. (without the religious overtones).

The text of the Book of Changes is a set of oracular statements represented by 64 sets of six lines each called hexagrams (卦 guà). Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻yáo), each line is either Yang (anunbroken, or solid line), orYin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 26 or 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.

The hexagram diagram is composed of two three-line arrangements calledtrigrams (卦 guà). There are
23, hence 8, possible trigrams. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining the two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Note also that these numerical sets greatly predate the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram system.[3]

Each hexagram represents a description of a state or process. When a hexagram is cast using one of the traditional processes of divination with I Ching, each of the yin or yang lines will be indicated as either moving (that is, changing), or fixed(that is, unchanging). Moving (also sometimes called “old”, or “unstable”) lines will change to their opposites, that is “young” lines of the other type—old yang becoming young yin, and old yin becoming young yang.

yin andyang) is used to describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. The concept lies at the heart of many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy, as well as being a primary guideline of traditional Chinese medicine,[1] and a central principle of different forms of Chinese martial arts and exercise, such as baguazhang, taijiquan, and qigong and of I Chingdivination. Many natural dualities — e.g. dark and light, female and male, low and high, cold and hot — are viewed in Chinese thought as manifestations of yin and yang (respectively).

A little clarification is in order. In the west yin and yang are viewed as the female and male relationship. But remember we are top down thinkers. In the east the causal agent is the yin and the male and female is the manifestation of the yin and yang. IE a sub-set. In the East Yoga is used to gain direction. The scientific method eludes them. They consider it “thinking backwards” IE starting with the answer and seeking the question. I agree.

I Ching Links

Here is an excellent downloadable I Ching Program.

Www.yellowemperor.org

Download a nice copy here>Yellow Emperor

Kaballah

“It helps to have a god to meditate on, it doesn’t matter which one” – Mr. Patel

Here is a worldview not inconsistent with my understanding of how the mind works. Short answer, should work. Please note that my interest is only in how, not why. I view this as a neuron trellis to establish a connectedness with the universe (or God, same thing). Superficially this appears to be a perfectly valid philosophy to hang your thoughts on to achieve awareness or enlightenment. I took yoga (ganesh) as a method to control my blood pressure. Worked too, even though imploring a pink elephant to sprinkle petals of tranquility over me seemed rather silly. An occidental zen? Actually I think the word yoga, in and of itself is rather effete. “a real man doesn’t do yoga, he does zen” – el Loco Gringo

 

WTF? Where has it been? There is talk of secrecy as an enlightened person would have an an advantage over an idiot. I’m sure there’s some of that. And there is talk of danger in that the knowledge of Kabbalah was too powerful to to entrust to everyone. Plato felt the same way about the dudecohedron. There’s some of that. But I think the most important thing is the threat Kabbalah posed to entrenched power, the last thing a ruler wants are enlightened subjects. They’d kick his ass out, or impale him or burn him at the stake, whatever was in vogue for the zeitgeist of the era.Kabbalah teaches its students to question everything and to never be forced to make decisions. One of the most important teachings of Kabbalah is that there is no coercion in spirituality.

The Kabbalah Center empowers others to take responsibility for their own lives. That is the example set by the leaders of The Kabbalah Center. ‘It’s about the teachings, not the teachers.’

The Kabbalah Center makes no promises. If people are willing to work hard to become actively sharing, caring, and tolerant human beings, Kabbalah teaches that they will then experience fulfillment and joy in a way previously unknown to them. That sense of fulfillment, however, comes gradually and is always the result of the student’s spiritual work.

Is Kabbalah a Universal Wisdom?
Historically, Kabbalah has been a secret teaching studied by only a select few in each generation. There has always been much controversy surrounding the teaching of this wisdom, especially when kabbalists tried to open it up to people. Over the past few thousand years, kabbalists have been persecuted for daring to teach these secrets to the masses.

Proposed by the biblical Abraham 4000 years ago as the path to wisdom.
Question everything = dismantle the lattice
I wonder why it was restricted?

Yet another example of the anarchistic view of psychology. Deja vu all over again, or is it Vuja de? All of the knowledge to empower mankind’s full potential already exists, it’s just in different baskets.
http://www.kabbalah.com/01.php

While there is much wisdom in kabbalah it is wrapped up in mysticism like other techniques

 

If you have a “hole in the soul” typical of this civilization you might want to check this out. There’s a good beginners thread at contoveros. And a couple of links to get you started. Also note that my graphics were chosen for color compatibility, not accuracy, except for the burning hand, turquoise flames don’t really look right. Maybe I could say “As part if the initiation ritual you dip your hand in boiling sulphur and set it on fire”. Nah! that might be a deal stopper for some people, and it looks like it’s worthwhile. I welome any corrections. There’s a pretty good beginners thread here> Contoveros

“To begin with you just have to learn the terminology used. It gives one such insight into Christianity itself. Take the word Amen for example. Most people know that it basically means “So be it.” It is also an alternative name for Keter. Amen is composed of three letters: Aleph-Mem-Nun. Aleph is the Fiery Intelligence, Radiant Holy Breath or Holy Spirit, and is said to represent Keter. Mem is water or the substance of consciousness/creation from which all things are formed, and is said to represent Hokmah. Nun is the energy-intelligence of the zodiacal sign of Scorpio, which is an occult or hidden power of fire drawn from within water, and is said to represent Binah. Thus, the word amen bears the full power of the Supernals: Keter-Hokmah-Binah, or more properly Hokmah-Binah-Da’at. It is akin to the mantric word Om in the Eastern Traditions, though in its intonement a distinction is made between the upper and lower worlds, or the World of Supernal Light and matrix of creation.Coupled with creative visualization the chant of amen is said to be a great manifesting power. Just try intoning it with full understanding of what it represents. You begin the with the Aa high and the nnn low.”

Sephiroth Being a study into, and graphical, isometrical, structural, physical and topological interpretation of the ancient Sefer Yetzirah (also called the Book of Formation or Creation) and the Sephirotic Tree of Life, with regard to the geometry of the circle, the equilateral triangle, the seed of life, the hexagon, isometric projection and the double cube.

SasphianCircle Tree of Life Kabbalah Learning Perceiving reality SasphianCircle

WOW

Wish Only Well

“What would mom say?”

 

WOW is living in your highest ideals and believing in yourself. It’s appreciating and respecting the diversity and magnificence of life, realizing that you are a link in the chain of life. The chain will be as weak or as strong as you.

Believe in the power of faith, hope and love. Contribute to life in your own special way and celebrate the renaissance of the human spirit!

Be a messenger of hope! Give WOW a new meaning: Wish Only Well.

When you realize that you are a part of this big beautiful picture of life, this golden chain of life, you awaken your soul’s wisdom. Once we know how vitally important each of us is in the chain of life, we have a duty to be strong not only for ourselves, but for all. Remember that you can’t be helpful to others if you can’t help yourself.

For now, let’s use what we know to help ourselves. Remember, our brain is recording even the things we think or say jokingly or with irony, sarcasm, etc. You may be kidding, but your brain records, like a VCR (video cassette recorder). And like a VCR, it doesn’t care if it’s recording a great film or a commercial, it just does its job.

The human spirit is awakening like never before.

Celebrate! A better world is here because of you!

wowzone

Monkey see, monkey do? There may well be a “critical mass” required to shift a new behavior from being a fragile personal idiosyncrasy to being a well-established alternative, but creating a new alternative does not automatically displace older alternatives. It just provides more choices. It is possible that the washing alternative established by the monkeys on Koshima Island did create a morphogenetic field that made it easier for monkeys on other islands to “discover” the same technique, but the actual research neither supports nor denies that idea. It remains for other cultural experiments and experiences to illuminate this question.

Holding positive ideas (as important a step as this is) is not sufficient by itself to change the world. We still need direct communication between individuals, we need to translate our ideas into action, and we need to recognize the freedom of choice of those who choose alternatives different from our own.

Become the 100th monkey.

There definitely is something to this. The same phenomenon was observed in the Mogabi zoo, where chimps were observed washing cats prior to stuffing them down the garbage disposal, saving on plumbing bills. (Note picture above) The practice has since spread to all zoos.

 

Meditation

Yoga

Return to Healing

Medication, or… Meditation?……

“Yoga is the science of the east, science is the yoga of the west”

There would be a failure on my part if I did not mention various methods of expanding consciousness here. I have not included them because there are too many, and they have all been well done. While in Singapore I studied yoga as a method to lower my blood pressure as my prescribed medication was not available. And it works. However, once I got past Ganesh sprinkling pedals of tranquility over me, I found I could lower my blood pressure without the mysticism. (I can give a nurse fits checking my vital signs) Yoga, and I presume other meditative techniques, give the mind a framework to effect physiological and psychological changes. Once the neural connections are made, the mysticism is not necessary.

“it helps to have a god to meditate on, it doesn’t matter which one” – Patel
“A real man doesn’t do yoga, he does zen” – el Loco Gringo

Secular Meditation, get free e-book below The subject of this book is Vipassana meditation practice. Repeat, practice. This is a meditation manual, a nuts-and-bolts, step-by-step guide to Insight meditation. It is meant to be practical. It is meant for use. There are already many comprehensive books on Buddhism as a philosophy, and on the theoretical aspects of Buddhist meditation. ***Lord Ganesh***

If you are interested in that material we urge you to read those books. Many of them are excellent. This book is a ‘How to.’ It is written for those who actually want to meditate and especially for those who want to start now. There are very few qualified teachers of the Buddhist style of meditation in the United States of America. It is our intention to give you the basic data you need to get off to a flying start. Only those who follow the instructions given here can say whether we have succeeded or failed. Only those who actually meditate regularly and diligently can judge our effort. No book can possibly cover every problem that a meditator may run into. You will need to meet a qualified teacher eventually. In the mean time, however, these are the basic ground rules; a full understanding of these pages will take you a very long way. There are many styles of meditation. Every major religious tradition has some sort of procedure which they call meditation, and the word is often very loosely used. Please understand that this volume deals exclusively with the Vipassana style of meditation as taught and practiced in South and Southeast Asian Buddhism. It is often translated as Insight meditation, since the purpose of this system is to give the meditator insight into the nature of reality and accurate understanding of how everything works. Buddhism as a whole is quite different from the theological religions with which Westerners are most familiar. It is a direct entrance to a spiritual or divine realm without addressing deities or other ‘agents’. Its flavor is intensely clinical, much more akin to what we would call psychology than to what we would usually call religion. It is an ever-ongoing investigation of reality, a microscopic examination of the very process of perception. Its intention is to pick apart the screen of lies and delusions through which we normally view the world, and thus to reveal the face of ultimate reality. Vipassana meditation is an ancient and elegant technique for doing just that.

Here are some links. (a starting point only)

Mindfulness Promise nonduality sidhere.com WholeBrain Happiness

 

Da Vinci

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Gelb has condensed da Vinci’s teachings into seven principles:

 

1. Be curious. “An accurate description of da Vinci would be ‘the most curious person who ever lived,’” Gelb said. “He was so curious; one critic said he wouldn’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.” At a time when no one questioned anything, da Vinci questioned everything. As we speed into a networked information age, you’d be wise to do the same thing, Gelb advised.
2. Think for yourself. Da Vinci was not afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. Test knowledge through experience.
3. Sharpen your senses. “According to da Vinci, the five senses are the ministers of the soul,” Gelb said. “He trained his sensory awareness the same way Olympic athletes train their bodies. He warned against being locked and blocked by the same thought processes.”
4. Embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty. One of the most significant characteristics of highly creative people is their openness to the unknown and willingness to use their intuition. “As a leading thinker, da Vinci learned to translate imagination into a technical language,” Gelb stated. “Major breakthroughs are experienced through intuition. Einstein, for example, imagined what it would be like to surf out into the universe on a sunbeam.”
5. Balance art and science, logic, and imagination with intuition. “The approach da Vinci followed was based on the thinking that if you hope to innovate you’re going to have to cut loose from conventional grooves,” Gelb said. “The problem is people are either stuck in a right- or left-brained world. The techie of the new millennium will have to be a balanced thinker—creative, analytical, rigorous, playful, and imaginative.
6. Balance body and mind. In addition to being mentally sharp, da Vinci was a fitness freak who said, ”Avoid grievous moods and keep your mind cheerful.” He also insisted that attitude affects well being and stressed the importance of keeping mind and body lean and active. (And you thought your trainer was smart.)
7. Try to see how everything connects to everything else. “That’s systems thinking,” Gelb explained. “He said you have to see patterns, relationships, and processes and how they all fit together.”

The only choice

The Only Choice

Return to Healing

in re assholes and idiots, (actually there’s another type.pseudo-centered) The common tread in all types is an inability to think independently. They react to an ethical situation rather than respond depending on what ever dogma or ideology their mind has been polluted with. They have no moral center. They spend a great deal of mental effort rationalizing what the “right” thing to do is. On the other hand a centered person knows and understands and wastes no mental effort agonizing over decisions. As with the psychologist, it was just kinda “got it, lets move on”. It seems the centered thus have more time for self improvement, a kind of quiet passion about life. Exploring their passion, what ever it may be, is fascinating. They each have their own truth, have explored it thoroughly, and are unique and complete individuals, with a valid and comprehensive view of life. I tend to agree with all centered people. By talking to centered people I can gain a perspective I may never have thought of. For instance, one woman I was talking to on this same subject said that the un-centered were people whose self esteem immune system had broken down and they were infected with a viral ideological meme. (she was a doctor) What a neat perspective. She’s right, Of course, she is right whether I think so or not. That was her truth. Ayn viewed the un-centered as second hand people IE they depended on others for providing them with self esteem. Another guy I was talking to described them as hollow people. Another as superficial people. Dennett describes them as having a mental parasite, Robert Wilson as robots./. In closing this topic has breadth and depth.(and length ) and is hardly going to be resolved completely in a final TRUTH. Maybe a bunch of mini-truths. This video is very close to my take on the subject, except that I view them as zombies rather than wearing a contorted mask. It evens shows the wizard (of oz, behind the curtain) the viral infection or parasite controlling the actions of the asshole. (Pink Floyd’s right too) Addendum summary a centered person’s thoughts and emotions are governed by his “own” truth. An uncentered person’s thoughts and emotions are governed by “someone else’s” TRUTH. There is no TRUTH there is only truth.

Deep Listening

What is Deep Listening?

“Deep listening is not defensive, argumentative, or intrusive. It is not about struggling to analyze or interpret. It is a purely receptive state of mind. In a state of deep listening, we realize our oneness. We realize that we are not separate, but truly one spirit — we are connected.” – Joe Bailey

“I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with me about it. Can you just listen to me for a while till I get some clarity?”

This is what happens to me with the QD Fix. While what they say may be an outpouring of grief, what I hear is “I hurt, heal me”. I can’t of course. Trying to impart my truth to them would only make their situation worse. I wait for them to get their thoughts sorted out, then provide them with the means for them to heal themselves. They want the secret magic fix, the TRUTH, instead I provide them with a means to find their own truth. Usually “do not allow another to occupy rent free space in your mind”. That is, after all, what has happened when a person becomes un-centered. el Loco Gringo

“The goal of deep listening is to be touched by the other person and to hear the essence of what he or she is saying.” – Joe Bailey

Self Worth

Self-worth is how we view ourselves. It must be based on internalized values, a core belief system that is not influenced or degraded by another persons opinions. It is the “I” that we must guard against allowing outside forces to corrupt. It is what we need, not what we want. It means always doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. It requires a self discipline to maintain in a healthy state. It is a recognition that we are an integral part of the universe, family, church, country, universe and that the world would be impoverished to some degree if we weren’t in it. It is character. It means being honest with ourselves. It gives us courage in adversity. Confidence in trial. Solace in grief. Certainty in confusion. It must be protected and nurtured, allowed to grow and flourish.

If we allow this corruption, our self worth is diminished. Using skills, achievements, status, financial resources, or physical attributes as a basis engenders an arrogant attitude. The illusion of being successful and admired gives way to disillusionment as the possessions and achievements that feed our ego fail to satisfy our needs. Every individual experiences basic needs — hunger, thirst, fatigue, etc. We are conditioned to satisfy these needs by getting something — food, drink, or rest. Mistakenly we conclude that by getting, we will achieve an acceptable self-worth/esteem.

Guilt, regret, anger, shame and fear are devastating to our sense of self worth. Self aggrandizement only lessens our sense of self worth. Our motives must be pure.

Our identity can easily be over-inflated when our self-worth is miscalculated. It is healthy to remember, as we mature and circumstances change, that we are not bound by how other people evaluate us. Real self-worth is entirely internal. It’s realizing the true source of your usefulness and value.

Be wary of people who try to increase their own false sense of self worth at your expense.

It is like your checking account, try to keep it in the black, self worth doesn’t have a ready reserve.

“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here”

Consider the video below. The bacteria is centered. What else can you say? Why do you people make it so complicated? “I am me. I like me. I want to stay me. I don’t want to be anyone else.”

BacteriaChase

 

Lunatics

The Lunatics are running the asylum!!!

Religious or Spiritual Problem is a new diagnostic category (Code V62.89) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-Fourth Edition

Problem? Yeah, they have a problem. They have to deal with idiots.

They’re still trying to stuff people in baskets. Each individual is unique, complete in and of himself. As indeterminate as it is possible to get. Centering should be a goal to be striven for, not an anomaly that idiots see as odd. The only two baskets that have any validity are idiots and non-idiots. They know, but do not understand. Man has got to quit using top down thinking exclusively or he will go extinct. I have a fear that if I start talking like an idiot, I may start thinking like one. (stupid may be catching) el Loco Gringo jumps in whenever I get too professional. I have to stand back and view man from an anthropological point of view to avoid getting sucked into the “crazy”. What Grof describes is a potential only.

The only society I have seen that wasn’t pathological was in Singapore. This is probably because they have an oriental view on life (bottom up) and have been injected into the occidental view on life (top down) they consider themselves in the anglosphere, ie Britain, Canada, US, Australia. They be yining and yanging scientifically. Perhaps it is transitory. I hope not.

Spiritual Emergence has been defined as

“the movement of an individual to a more expanded way of being that involves enhanced emotional and psychosomatic health, greater freedom of personal choices, and a sense of deeper connection with other people, nature, and the cosmos. An important part of this development is an increasing awareness of the spiritual dimension in one’s life and in the universal scheme of things.” (Grof & Grof, 1990) http://www.spiritualemergence.org.au/

“If understood and supported appropriately, these experiences can be deeply transformative, offering the possibility of breakthrough rather than breakdown. Read more about what we understand as spiritual crisis.”

http://www.spiritualcrisisnetwork.org.uk/index.htm (I hurt, heal me?) el Loco Gringo\

Clinical Language
“Being given a diagnosis of schizophrenia was not helpful for me. It created a learned hopelessness in me and my family who resigned themselves to the established belief I would always be ill, unable to work and always need antipsychotic medication. There is a deeply held assumption that schizophrenia is a disease-like degenerative process. Thus the category of schizophrenia is associated with a failure to recover and a gradual deterioration in social functioning. It is more helpful to see each individual’s mental health as a unique and evolving story, which is importantly influenced by social and relational experiences. “ – Rufus May

http://spiritualrecoveries.blogspot.com/2006/07/dr-rufus-may-understanding-psychotic.html

Anxiety

Anxiety

Here we go with the psycho-babble again. PTSD, Phobias, Obsessive Compulsive and Panic (depression is usually included) are symptoms of the problem only. Yoga, Tao, I Chin, and other meditative techniques address the symptoms only, they do not address the underlying issue. It is analogous to a patient with an abscess going to the dentist and being given a pain killer. He needs an anti-biotic also. It is useful for establishing a bridgehead, a place for the mind to be sane in. It is a staging area for addressing the underlying issue.

A simpler method is using the term “regroup”. It carries an element of command, is to be obeyed instantly without discussion. It means to “gather your resources, fall back and form a defensive perimeter”.

The mind is a complex fluidic system, (chaotic in the math sense). I think of it in fluid terms, a stream, a river, a pool, an ocean with waves, ripples, undertows, currents. A pattern of patterns. A rock thrown into the stream will disrupt the natural flow, causing dysfunctional eddies. The rock must be removed. That’s about as far as we can go in understanding the mind. An analogy of an analogy. But, that’s far enough, as long as the ANN knows.

This “rock” always involves centering, the “me identity”. I am me, I like me, I am proud of me, I want to stay me, I don’t want to be someone else. We are all born centered. We have allowed someone else to control our psyche which is this “rock”.

It is interesting to note that there is something in our head that knows how to walk, while we are not consciously aware of it. It is sobering to recognize that there is something in our head that that understands chaotic theory in 13 dimensions, AND CAN MANIPULATE IT, real time.

“Spontaneity is the right hemisphere tossing out a suggestion, it is up to the left hemisphere to determine it’s practicality. “

Managing Mania

Right Mind Optimization

“To be more than you can be” – el Loco Gringo

As it is necessary for the right mind to be able to transfer a concept to another mind for it to become “real” and relevant to coping with the world, It must get past the doorman. As the input function of the right mind has been crippled in most people by the taboo, the lattice, and other imprints the mind becomes clogged, constipated if you will, with unresolved issues. (No I’m not implying that psycho-therapists are douche bags)

This requires a mirror, a person who can “deep listen” on the patients own terms. It is not necessary that you agree, indeed, a valid challange will demonstrate that the concept has indeed been transferred which is the important thing, not that it be validated. If you want to use computer terms, this is a clean and pack.

This is of particular importance to the professional, who has not only his/her unresolved issues to deal with but those of the patients. A support group would seem to be crucial for maintaining the balance.

“Lifes a bitch, then you die” – el Loco Gringo

“Bipolar manic/depression is just an idiot’s way of saying genius” – el Loco Gringo

It has already been discussed how depression is only the mind’s way of concentrating attention. So now I’ll put my 2 cent’s worth in on the mania part of this equation.

It must always be remembered that the mind is a chaotic system operating on the edge of instability. (see the chaotic mind) ”there is a thin line between genius and insanity” – Oscar Levant How very true. We’ll try to stay on the genius side of that line and avoid slipping into insanity.

There is no safeguard against spinout in the mind. Once someone has spunout, it will require a mirror to get him back. A sideslip with a regroup meme should do it. This will give him a space in his mind to be sane in. From this safe vantage, “deep listening” therapy (Rufus May) can be used to resolve the issues involved one by one. Once the whirlwind has been reduced to a dust devil, he can be instructed on how to use communication to resolve any remaining issues.

“What is a mirror?” you may ask. Thanks for the question. It goes to the crux of the problem. The left hemisphere operates as a serial processor, dealing with issues in a singular fashion. The right hemisphere however, operates as a parallel processor collating the input data into a form that the left hemisphere can quantify. (count) The associations in the right hemisphere do not become real until they become part of the survival strategy for dealing with the world. IE they have to be communicated to be considered as relevant to life and resolved. The person who has spun out has a whirlwind of concepts that he is unable to resolve without a mirror. That’s why god invented mom’s. They will listen to any seeming nonsense to help their son/daughter resolve THEIR issues. (unless mom is the issue of course) It must be remembered that these are THEIR issues and must be resolved by THEM in a manner that fits THEIR view of life. It is the act of communication alone that is solely responsible for giving them the ability to resolve their issues. Any input only adds another level of complexity to the problem. They are NOT seeking solutions. They are seeking a friend. But a friend will try help by injecting his truth into the conversation.

This then is the role of the psychologist. A professional friend. Someone who knows not to inject their truth into the session. Instead of “you should have… “ try “I would have been terrified, what did you do?”. You must pull, not push.

Spinout

I’m beginning to get a handle on what a psychologist would call anxiety and depression. Since these terms have been stripped of meaning by psychobabble, I will use my own spinout and lockup. These are just two levels of the same mental activity. The result of a seemingly unsolvable problem of the victim. It is what happens with a top down thinking fail. TRUTH cannot be found so the mind is frantically searching for p-truth. As I mentioned before, for these p-truths to be accepted as relevant to interfacing with the world by the left mind, a concept must be transferred through the the victims algorithms AND the therapists algorithms to become relevant to survival. The image I get is of an octopus grabbing ANY data which may be even remotely related to the problem at hand and presenting them to the ANN for acceptance (or rejection). But for acceptance to occur a concept must actually be transferred from one person’s mind to another’s, else resolution is not possible. (It is not relevant) Talking to an idiot doesn’t work, nor does talking to a coffee table. The person must be sentient, IE a non-idiot. Lockup occurs when these concepts cannot be resolved, and they won’t be resolved until the concept is communicated. Resolution may and usually does involve discarding the concept so another can be sought. Only then can the victim resume searching for a resolution. The victim must find his own solution, in his own terms to his own problem in a manner which fits in with his coping mechanisms. Replacing his truth with your TRUTH is like throwing a bolder into the stream to correct the turbulence caused by the original stone. I posit that in some cases, Idiot psychologists are driving patients into insanity, who are then shot up with dopazine* and institutionalized. Deep listening, mentioned by Rufus May, is something I intend to explore. A therapist should be a professional friend, someone capable of understanding the victim without injecting his/her own TRUTH. That’s why god invented moms. He/she should pull, not push.

*Dopazine – any of a broad spectrum of psychotropic drugs which turn the victim into a dope. Also available in generic form as smartacide

Core Concepts

You have a choice on how to achieve harmony in your life.

diminish or enhance

Is it possible to find nirvana secularly? Not a Buddhist “deathless” nirvana, more like a Maslowian self-actualization nirvana

Sam Harris made a pretty big deal about this in his speech at the conference. Personally, I think his ideas were fairly reasonable, and he just found the worst possible way to say them to a bunch of dyed in the wool atheists.

As others have pointed out, there’s nothing mystical about meditation. There’s also no guarantee that you’ll find anything that will make you happy through meditation. Daniel Dennett made a really good point when he noted that the vast majority of people who go into caves for three years to meditate don’t say anything useful or interesting when they come back.

I’m a big fan of cognitive therapy. I think you might want to give that a look. It’s not something you even need a therapist for if you’re truly honest with yourself and aren’t afraid to ask hard questions. Just buy a textbook from a college bookstore and learn how to do it yourself.

Here’s the basic overview:

* Humans develop “core ideas” that are more or less hard-wired into our brains when we are still quite young.Epigenitics again – walt ref “asperta supra”

* These core ideas help us form shortcuts so that we don’t have to reason through everything from the beginning. They’re like our own personal axioms — things that are self-evidently true, and don’t need to be evaluated further.

* The problem is that sometimes we form core ideas that are false. Nope they’re taught – walt

* False core ideas lead to lots of false beliefs that we may not even consciously know we have. The neurons don’t exist. An unknown known- walt

* Identifying false core beliefs leads to identifying self destructive behavior patterns.

* Identifying self destructive behavior patterns leads to identifying “triggers” that cause us to engage in those patterns.

* Once we identify the triggers, we can begin to reprogram ourselves. When a trigger happens, we consciously override it. Over time, our new behavior patterns replace the original ones, so that we now have true core beliefs and healthy behavior patterns. Burn new neural pathways – walt

In fact, I can’t think of any reason why you couldn’t meditate as a means to discovering false core beliefs. Why not have the best of both worlds? Anyway, check out cognitive therapy. Nothing can guarantee happiness, but I’ve got a lot of personal and anecdotal evidence that it can work.

He’s right on about the “core beliefs” which I would call imprinting. The false beliefs are learned beliefs that are consistent with the core beliefs. For instance the “core belief” of the aboriginal belief system is “man belongs to earth, earth doesn’t belong to man”. Without this core belief, the entire aboriginal world view collapses into meaningless babble. This central thread can be found in all American belief systems. Cherokee, Meso-american, Aztec, Mayan, Incan etc. The learned beliefs, which seem to set them apart are only superficial.

Still working on that channeling center you asked about – walt

Mindfulness Contemplation PDF

Anger

Not very deep inside of me lurks a beast. It really doesn’t take much to unleash it, and when it rears it’s ugly head, you’d better take cover.

What is anger? You have allowed yourself to get screwed. It’s OK to be angry, but anger is an emotion and must not be allowed to consume our mind in a manner which negatively impacts our quality of life. Stuffing it only allows it to simmer and poison our psyche. Like a forest fire it must be allowed to run it’s course cleaning out the underbrush. It must be contained, but not extinguished.

What about anger management techniques, Inner peace, yoga, inner child, meditation, harmony, trust in God. Crap!! When your kid breaks his arm, you don’t take him to church, you take him to the ER. That’s why people go postal, the anger goes unaddressed and turns to fury in frustration. The anger must be sated. It is a need, a living thing. You can’t cure hunger by going on a diet. You can’t cure fatigue with exercise. You cure hunger by eating. You cure fatigue with sleep. You cure anger by defending yourself.

Your mind is under attack. Not from the outside (the screwer), but from the inside, (the screwee). You are pissed at yourself. This is your psyche screaming “How DARE you let this happen to me, do something, NOW!!!” But you can’t think while your anger is yelling at you to “Do something!!!’, It is a mindless thing, like a child throwing a temper tantrum, it must be reassured and soothed.

Regroup means; gather your resources, fall back and form a defensive perimeter. It carries an element of command, it is to be obeyed instantly without discussion. This same concept can be used to provide a place in your mind to be sane in. Then you can watch the anger burn. It can be a cleansing experience.

While it is burning down, you can contemplate how to keep this from happening again. IE Defend yourself from untrustworthy people. Resolve to regroup if your mind becomes too “busy”. This anger is directed against yourself for allowing this to happen. This is why it is so frightening. You have violated the implied duty to protect your psyche. Once an effective defense mechanism is in place, the anger will be satisfied and dissipate. Now you can “Do Something”

Look at it as an opportunity to tune up your defense mechanism. Once the anger is sated you will feel a calm descend on you. You will be better for having experienced it.

Anger alleviation regimen Choice