redcairo

The Dao Bums
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    3,061

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    36

Posts posted by redcairo

  1. Posted · Edited by redcairo

    As a side commentary, in my experience Westerners, or modern people in general, tend to want to take ancient writings or terms and concepts in the areas of self cultivation and related and try to make them fit into our 'modern' way of thinking

     
    Surely so, since people can only interpret things by their own models if they get it intellectually. This is part of the problem with getting things intellectually, though. When information comes through internal experience, it may often be bewildering (story of my life) but it eventually can roll out models that the brain has to fight to wrap itself around even gradually, and probably never would have managed at all had it come from the outside.
     

    For example, when people start to talk in absolutes about locations and descriptions of 'energy centers' in relation to the body

     
    Well, chakras for me are something a bit different. There are 'the Powers' (infamously known in some writings) which as energy combine with {never mind this detail} and literally manifest what we know as the body. The "interface" between the Powers and {other} is what I call a chakra and, properly developed (and the person so) this is an identity, not a thing. (A pronoun, not a noun.) A fundamental part of oneself energetically, spiritually, physically. Does have a 'focus' area (and the center of the focus area is the route to the larger Power which is its own god-little-g identity).
     
    Of course at the new/oblivious level, it's just-a-thang I guess. Like many things, "what" something is depends on the individual as much as the thing. So to speak.
     
    On the crown chakra, all those 'layers' are essentially sub-identities of the Crown so it's really only one, until some ways up.
     

    by using such dualistic conceptual language you are painting a false picture, but the understanding should be that this false picture is only meant as a guide to 'point to something' which may be completely beyond the grasp and analysis of the 'worldly' conceptual mind, if that makes any sense. I think such a consideration is relevant to any study of 'esoteric systems'.

     
    Relevant but humorously pointless in a way though, since "understanding that you cannot possibly really understand, and that what someone is telling you cannot possibly really be right," is not too helpful. Though it might be a bit helpful toward helping people not get stuck on dogma I suppose. :-)
    • Like 2

  2. Posted

    I don't have any formal doctrines and my only information is what I get from experience, both spontaneous and within imaginal work. So I can't say such things are true for anybody but me.

     

    But I have a little on the crown chakra, though mostly a mention of the one above it (which initially I thought was about a foot above but later found was about eight inches or so above. But there is more above that -- it's quite complex going upward actually). The summary of various info the crown chakra gave me over time is here: http://www.palyne.com/blog.psiche/crown-chakra-review/ 

     

    A follow up which had more detail on a 'three level' area just up from crown which I call RCA is the first part of this post (ignore the rest): http://www.palyne.com/blog.psiche/more-from-crown-chakra-the-three-layers-detail/ 

     

    *

     

    I was interested in a quoted-quote earlier on the thread where someone said: "I was also meditating on a point high above my head called the Golden Ring by some." My reason for interest is a meditation I had (that has really F'd me up a bit actually, more cognitive dissonance than usual from it) that sounds oddly like that. An excerpt from my journals. ('Mark' is my inner guide, who is my early version {what I'm able to perceive} of HGA. I know, what a mundane name for it, right.)

     

     

    ... He worked on something, and then put it about seven feet above my head. I looked up at it, perplexed. It was a thin ring about an inch or two in thickness, that seemed made of a combination of ‘metal and light,’ and was about the circumference of my head.

     
    Should that be a torus, like the Queen’s form? I asked.
     
    No, he said. It is more innate to your energy than to hers.
     
    It looked like a halo way too high, hanging up there in the air.
     
    I feel weird with it up there, I said. Too “aware” of it. Like it was not actually… english’s words suck here, it’s not that it was wrong, but that it didn’t feel like its “comfortable and familiar place” was that it be that far from me. Like “something hanging over my head” was slightly invoked by it like that.
     
    I said, Can we set it on or “into” my head instead?
     
    That will create a much stronger… interaction with the energy, he said, almost hesitantly, as if he didn’t think this would be something I’d want.
     
    Mark, I said, what does this mean?
     
    You have ambivalence and dissonance in the way of full integration with this energy, he explained. It will be brought forward much more strongly in your life if you pull the energy into you like that.
     
    Does this energy support my True Self, my True Will, and further my integration with you? I said, feeling stubborn by this time.
     
    Yes.
     
    Then I want that. This is what I want in my life. Can we do a med after this to help deal with that integration issue? I asked.
     
    Yes.
     
    This is what I want, then, I said to the archetype, and he brought the energy down and it sort of “absorbed into” my head in the ring shape around the edges.

     

    I always assume my meditations are just symbolic individual things, so I find it interesting every time I run into something that has a parallel with them. I am always finding out that things I ran into spontaneously turn out to have a whole history and labels and doctrines and more.
     
    On the crown chakra, there are other layers even in the head area but outside in the 'fountain of crown' energy flow. I think that must be why some of those old statuettes of buddha-ish deities have all those different things on points at the top of their heads. Probably each thing represents some layer that does or is something.
    • Like 5

  4. Posted · Edited by redcairo

    Perhaps, thanks.

     

    There can be no flow of energy without polarity. 

     

    My crown chakra once showed me something where (to drastically reduce things here) if we were ever truly balanced with 'Truth' our spin would be absolutely straight up and down -- still in place -- and to the body that actually meant death. That it was the being slightly out of balance with 'Truth' that was the reason we were here, that actually kept our tall torus spinning and moving around. 

     

    But: the detail that there must be polarity doesn't necessarily mean there has to be a LOT of it, of course. I think it would be possible for a small offset to allow a lovely culture. ...in theory.

     

    any one-sidedness will eventually lead to reversal

     

    The dynamic of 10 of wands (oppression in thoth tarot) was interesting I thought -- and I think it actually comes in here, when we consider that in order to favor any one energy above another we must basically oppress/suppress/repress the other. A little excerpt from the middle of my med on that one;

     

    I closed my eyes, and I saw this thing like a board break. Then another thing broke. “The breaking,” I said. “The dynamic, not the forms.” The world around me erupted into a thousand kinds of things-breaking. I leaped into the sky, froze everything below [...] 

    “Why breaking?” I say out loud to the arch. “The card is oppression.”

    “The end-result,” I heard. “Something or someone always breaks, eventually.” I had in my head ‘examples’. It could be someone’s will. It could be the reverse — a people’s patience — causing a backlash. It could be the ability of a ‘system’ (e.g. totalitarianism) to uphold without collapsing in on itself.

    Everywhere I looked I got these “conceptual understandings” that almost seemed to come with a sense of space and time as well, of how oppression “if unobstructed” would as a natural end-result, break something. Sometimes the thing that broke destroyed the oppression, sometimes it made it stronger.

     

    Maybe the only real answer is a sort of yin-yang "rolling trade" of what energy is dominant.

    • Like 2

  5. Posted

    The thing I loved about Andromeda was the idea that solar bodies had avatars associated with them. What a cool concept.

     

    What does that mean? Sounds right on! Wish I'd seen that! 

     

    My favorite SF show barely had a chance to get started. It had the horrible title "Space: Above and Beyond."

  6. Posted · Edited by redcairo

    Oh -- can I just add to that last line --

     

    That this is beautifully summed up by that movie "Chocolat"

     

    And Alfred Molina was not only fabulous in that but is a hilarious analogy to a lot of the energy I see around this forum, too. So sincere! Trying so very hard to reign it in and do what is good and right! So utterly doomed as a result LOL!

  7. Posted · Edited by redcairo

     

    all the chiseled carvings of his character return to an unhewn blockishness

     

    I like that line a lot.
     
    When I was young (a teen) and had a very... um, challenging life as I'm sure many have, I once wrote that most people seemed faceted to me. Like a crystal or gem. You might see the facets they grew with, lovely but very specific and often chipped, broken and dirty. Or you might see the facets that their adaptations to reality had given them, cut and sanded to match the form society expects, and you can tell by the "shift" in them when their perspective, locked inside that crystal, has shifted to a different facet suddenly. The light falls differently for them now and they see themselves and everything else in a variant way.
     
    I said that I believed that I was more rounded, like a river rock made smooth. That I was still everything inside but I could be anything I chose to be, without the planes of pressure having made me into one thing or another. This was wrong; I thought far too much of myself, ha, I am still nowhere near there. But what I was trying to think through was simply the concept of "living intentionally." Being aware enough of who you are that when you have other people go past you, you can truly feel who they are, because your own shape is not in the way.
     
    In meditative work, when dealing with the symbol of energy in people, you first have to separate "the primary from the secondary" as my 3rd of 4 calls it, which to them means the energy that is inherent to the focus of that-identity, vs. the energy that they are "carrying" -- usually for me, if I am meditating on them. In visualization it usually comes through like I am separating a shadowy ghost of sorts and the 'them' remaining is the solar body (I mean that clear white-light soft nearly-angelic-ish thing, they wear humans like suits. They are their own level of Being/entity) and that is what I work with; the rest I clean up and suck back up into my solar plexus chakra as it is mine. That's just a meditative model though. There is really no way to see anybody as they are, of course. Humans are dynamics. We're all verbs. We experience the "energetic interaction between" our dynamics and that is what we "see" as "them" and their behavior. So we change ourselves, we change them, because we're half the equation. Of course it's easier to accept that when someone is not incredibly irritating.

     

    and will often work from a cafe, with people walking past me all the time. [...] I frequently feel a tug, as though if am a magnet and another magnet is moving past me

     

    When very young (about 18) I temporarily had a 3rd job working in a fairly nice movie theatre. I would stand at the podium between where the paths split off, taking people's tickets and directing them. After a while I realized that I had developed a curious form of both-genders gaydar. It was especially strong with men, perhaps because I have always been very attuned to men.
     
    (I actually suspect there is a small and pervasive degree of stockholm syndrome wound into this, culturally not just for me, and because it's a positive feeling or result this is overlooked as the source, but that is an entirely separate subject.)
     
    Basically I would feel in my lowest chakras the impact of them -- perhaps their maleness as my body perceived it -- and then a turning. As if our bodies encountered each other, sampled each others' energy, and then their body went, "Ew yuck, a girl!" and I felt the shift in them. The only thing this insight ever got me was disappointed at how many good looking guys are gay, ha. This happened sometimes when I had my side or back turned and had not even had a chance to see them yet, so I came to think it was the body's "bio-electric" field, not other subtle physical tells one might get visually.
     
    I never had any feelings like this bother me though. I mean I've never felt threatened or even overly moved by it. Whenever things have felt strong for me physically in some 'esoteric' way I just imagine that I am like color and wind just blows through me, or that I am like a thin jellyfish and everything else is water that just washes through me without bothering me. Anytime I have tried to 'block' sensations from others it's been a disaster, as if the very concept of my being solid and blocking something itself sets up predestined failure.

     

    From this it sounds like you have a strong grasp over exchanging energy with your environment. But you said the following, so I think I am misunderstanding something.

     

    Well, I guess there must be a lot more to the full development of a person than ability to exchange energy with the environment. I've had a long term problem, still working on it in meditative ways, of accepting or allowing love, vulnerability (that's the word my internal identities use), and so on. I feel it and see it, I'm shown it constantly by a whole inner world of characters trying to save my ass, but so far I just don't know how to fix it.
     
    A long time ago when I was only about 16, in one of my songs I wrote this line:
     
    It will be clear someday
    Why the price gets higher every time you pay
     
    And for some reason that line has always had a lot of ineffable meaning to me. It seems to be really proving itself out at this point in my life. Like there is a sort of development curve, and the farther along you get, the higher the penalty for issues unresolved, for integrity unmet, for denial unavoided. Of course many of these things by their very nature seem vague. They're probably not vague -- everything is clear really -- it's more likely that they're so overwhelmingly obvious that I can't see them because they've completely taken over my field of vision. But the end result is the same.
     
    It is basically a crux of decision related to HGA. It isn't just a simple and gradual thing, at least not for me. It's been filled with massive cognitive dissonance, and a point where clearly one has to let go and allow -- I suspect it is recognizing that it is not part of me but rather, I am part of that. Intellectually it's easy. In practice it's another story.

     

    (It's kind of a positive-not-negative version of a portion of experience I once had that occultist friends, on reading it, later told me was 'The Abyss.')

     

    nothing clear or simple enough to write about

     

    I love that the world is so straightforward for some people. I think I miss that!

     

    "for the Major the weak spot is to be found in the most sensitive, often the finest people - and moreover, in their finest feelings. It is there that India seeks them out and pulls them over into what the Major called the other dimension."

     

    What I like best is the subtle irony of what went unrecognized in all this. That the reason she (India) tempted the finest elements in the finest people is because the culture they were from had nutritionally starved them of these energies.
    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    Humor: I actually just had a memory that I probably blocked out LOL --

     

    Many many eons ago, I was hired by a CEO as a troubleshooter in a small incredibly complex R&D business. The VP was an attorney who had spent 8 years making everything as obfuscated and dependent on him as possible, so that is mostly what I was dealing with; he was a rich boy schooled overseas. He was also a massive cultist in the Maharishi movement, and everything filtered through that.

     

    Because he was about as organized as a three year old in some ways (confusingly, given the man had a law degree), I spent some of my time doing work I certainly didn't have to, setting up for him a large convenient filing system he could swivel his chair back to for ease. His messy work indirectly impacted mine so I figured it was worth it. What I failed to consider was that because I had been willing to do what in his eyes was secretarial work, and worse, "for him," at that point in his eyes I became "his secretary." But I hadn't got the psychic memo about my new demotion to existing solely to be his servant, which was sure to become a problem...

     

    So I walk back into his office one day later -- 1 day! -- with some reports in my hand, which I have just noticed he literally made up off the top of his head and gave the accountants, to ask him about this. And I nearly trip and fall because there are folders, contents spilling everywhere, all over the floor of his office, as if he was a toddler and had literally thrown them everywhere, rather than put a single one back in a file drawer, or even stack them somewhere. As I I look around me in horror he says flippantly, "Oh... file those."

     

    I stood there with my mouth open in utter awe at his chutzpah, on several levels actually, when he turns back and sees the look on my face and taking a cue from his favorite cult and its philosophies, says to me -- I can't believe I didn't kill him -- "Really, you should understand that as a woman, it should be an HONOR to serve."

     

    Now, it's not that a good chunk of effort in martial arts and more had not made me able to reduce him to the whimpering pile of bones he deserved to be at that moment. It's that I grew up in mid-southern coastal California and I honest to god had never met someone so arrogant in my life and my brain was having a genuinely hard time wrapping around it AT ALL. I just stood there staring at him in agog silence, until I turned around quietly and went back to my office. It was actually so offensive there was just not a single thing I could say or do that was appropriately matched to it that wouldn't send me to jail.

     

    The punch line comes about a week later, when our primary investor, a brilliant self-made insanely rich man, takes out the CEO and VP to dinner. The CEO is griping because of things I have showed him, and the VP is defending himself mostly by dissing me. Thinking that he is going to make a friend of the "manly-man" who is this WWII fighter-pilot now-rich guy (this is circa 1991), the VP tells the whole story of the above. This leads to utter agog silence on the part of the CEO and investor, both of whom reacted exactly like I did to it, followed by the investor telling him that had he been me, he would have beat the shit out of him and then got a new job. LOL! It didn't win him any points at all, and eventually the guy was fired.

     

    But, and this kinda brings the story back to yin/yang and the real world:

     

    I am, in fact, 'service.' Whether it is in the workplace or the home or in various hobbies and projecs I'm involved with, service is generally my primary underlying drive. I in fact *do* consider it an honor to serve and despite that I've had to be independent and competent my entire life, usually in any situation where a man is present I happily let him lead, talk, whatever, not out of demure shyness or subservience, simply because I don't feel compelled to do otherwise.

     

    I adore men, I mean adore them completely beyond what is even rational I'm pretty sure, so I tend to find their stepping forward to be the decisive ones, strong ones, problem solvers, a charming thing I appreciate watching, probably the same way men appreciate watching a pretty woman walk past. 

     

    I think there is an element of yang that amounts to charisma, the kind that makes yin WANT to be yin and WANT to be support and service and that sort of thing. I think there are deficiencies in yang energy which will cause the opposite effect. This should not be projected upon the yin, as if for example a woman who is greatly yang behavior is just lost -- I am highly yang in great part because I've had to be, but put me around good yang in men and I am suddenly the absolute opposite.

    • Like 2

  9. Posted

    I'd like to remove all the divorce laws immediately and a lot of other laws which favor women overwhelmingly. Then husbands will have more power and ease of mind.

     

    Just don't marry. Easily solved.

     

    Power over what?

     

    Peace of mind over what?

     

    Nothing can protect you if you ever eat or sleep. :-) 

     

    Patriarchy, by the way, is what favors marriage. Which becomes self-evident why, when you look at -- hmmn, I think it might have been your own response on another thread to a kundalini yoga teacher who said five men for her sounded like a good balance. OMG greatest post ever, the hysterical response made me laugh like crazy, usually you have to throw a big spider on someone to have them freak out like that! I'd have said something but the thread is locked now. Ah well...

     

    You sound very young. Probably you still have time to just avoid marriage altogether, until you've had significant internal changes anyway.

     

    No way you can be feminist and 'empower' women if you're the least bit spiritual. 

     

    Your definitions of 'feminist' and 'empowerment' and 'spiritual' are all rather critical to that sentence having any meaning. Lots of definitions I can think of, would cause it to make no sense.

     

    The obvious nature of women slips by you. I'd say you're very ignorant who promote females in place of power.

     

    I'm not sure who "you" is (someone on this thread, or the generalization). Guess I'd need to know definitions for the 'obvious nature of women' and 'places of power' for that to make sense as well.

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    Daeluin,

     

    I had a meditative experience that your words brought to mind. You were talking about the yin opening up, and would yang cloud or pollute it (I really, really dislike that latter concept) for example.

     

    In the med I had met this guy who was all these funky colors that were constantly shifting - striped, dotted, and so on. Later I was more thoughtful and focused with him. He had said at one point that he was "integration."

     

    Me: But if you’re integration, shouldn’t you be like… white or black or brown, some blend-result?  My guide suggested this is actually something I fundamentally misunderstood, and that affected my own 'allowing vulnerability.' 

     

    True integration does not change the nature of energy in that way, he says. If it did, it would be removing the one energy and replacing it with another. True integration merely provides all the energy. You can then distribute this throughout your experience however you choose.

     

    I think if yang were to so-called pollute yin it would not be that the yang was the problem, it would be that the yin had insufficient integrity to hold its own through the integration.

     

    *

     

    I don't know anything official about the Tao. I only have my own experiences and thoughts over the years to go on. But I don't care to think about yin as if it is passive to the point of nearly dead the way it seems like, in writing at least, some do. In fact, quite the opposite. Water is not passive at all, just because it is the opposite of fire. Cold is not passive at all, just because it is the opposite of hot.

     

    There is a difference between something which has calm stillness -- even a stoic ever-waiting-ness -- versus something which is "nearly inert." I think the definition of yin has to some degree been messed up by yang minds defining it. Of course I can only go on the brief mentions I see in passing in forums like this as I don't study these topics formally.

     

    My problem is I only speak English and I don't think we have words for how I feel about it. All our words tend to be action words, and things-negated words. 

     

    I think of yin in myself and things around me at least as "silently inviting" -- there IS an actual force and power there, and it's equal to the yang. It is simply that it almost defines by its nature the truth of the interworlds which is, "Don't force it; seduce it." The force is on the outside. The seduction is a pulling from the inside, but the pulling is not 'manifest,' it's more the zero-point-energy you might say, infinite potential in every mote. it's more like an inherently tempting, innately inspiring thing.

     

    I have as much power to pull yang into me, as yang has to push into me, the difference being that when yang does, he's going to think it's his own idea. :-)  Isn't that how it works in real life, too.

    • Like 3

  12. Posted

    Oh now you've done it. I'll be searching for images again...

     

    Glutton for punishment ?    :)     I actually understood what you wrote.

     

    I didn't meant to imply anybody wouldn't understand it.

    Only that they might have to be awoken several times to get through it LOL.

     

    very interesting especially the part where first the woman wrestles...

     

    Just a little vision. That particular vision is where I first met 2nd of 4 (the metallic-golden eagle), which is what had meaning to me about it. The first time I saw the 'Lust' card in Thoth Tarot (much later) I burst out laughing. Yeah that was pretty obvious.

     

    I was thinking the fold division might be similar to the kabbalistic  'parts' of the soul, but you only mentioned 1  kabbalistic part.

     

    I don't know much about the Kabbalah, or QBLH as I usually call it. I mean I've seen the tree and nearly all my experiences, someone later tells me are nearly textbook right out of that development cycle, but for me they're coming spontaneously. So I'm not even sure what the 1 part is.

     

    The blog commenter mentioned in that article brought up the Yod-Heh-Vau-Heh reference. I don't know if it relates to that or not.

     

    A passing Egyptian phase, that had little interest?

     

    Yeah, not really my thing. I guess this might be the thing about experience being spontaneous rather than pursued in many cases. You just get what you get, and think, "Uh, ok, sure, thanks I guess." I'm kind of on the practical side. Do I care about the stuff I can't actually use for something either in meditation or to pay rent? Not really, no. I realize I'm kind of the clueless idiot of the metaphysical world because of this, but it's probably also the reason I'm not off the side of the road selling crystals or something too, so I accept this in myself.

     

    one in the 'pre-Egyptian' as well

     

    2nd of 4. Her presenting species is a people I am pretty sure the oldest Egyptians were trying to be like. Might have been ever so slightly related to in the early generations.

     

    your little tables of 4 -  I have worked on a much longer one

     

    No kidding! I've never really pursued that, but it's very interesting. There is some other stuff not in there that I am not sure how to track, partly because it reminds me of the "correspondences" -- like that black, deep red, and rectangle are all senior's energy (1st of 4). I mean literally anywhere in our world these are present, it is his energy. Round, golden, and torus/toroid are all queen's energy (2nd of 4). My twin/mate (3rd of 4) so far seems to correlate to sky-blue and white but I'm less clear on that, and not too clear at all on 4th of 4 (of which I'm an Aeon). I don't see this reflected in Thoth Tarot (except perhaps red in Wands) so I'm not sure if I'm perceiving it correctly or might be talking of something else.

     

    the first three form the fourth

     

    To me the first three are a trinity of their own. Then yeah, in a separate realm that is more like mine, is the 4th of 4, but it's more like... cell division as I perceive it. That 1st is just 1. 2nd makes 2. 3rd is borne of the 1 and 2. But 4th is basically both divided-from and replicated-from 3rd (who being composed of 1 and 2, of course means 4th is 'composed of' 1,2,3). Fourth is... smaller though, not sure why, perhaps the nature of the substrate energy it's created within in this other realm, but 3rd "contains it." 3rd is basically the-containing-soul. But, 3rd is very affected by 4th which is not quite half of him in that perspective.

     

    a title of the first triad series { I - III } of initiations in the OTO

     

    Malkuth/man of earth was the commenter mention not mine. I wouldn't know much about the Order stuff. My exposure to the group was limited. That happened in the early to mid 90s for me only thanks to some very heavy-duty dreams. I should have learned from the symbolism given me at the time but it took me a while to figure it out. Finally I just said Aleister live your own damn life, you had your chance, this is mine not yours, and went on my way. I still have dreams with both him and Israel from time to time, as if the three of us are profound friends on some other level, and occasionally associate something in an experience to a line in Liber al vel Legis (usually followed by someone internal going no, it doesn't mean that, it means this instead, lol), but I don't consider the occult part of my current life. Perhaps someday I'll change my mind, I am always learning and changing. 

     

    within the 4 forces of physics, the first 3 can be 'unified'   but not the 4th ,Gravity, hence no 'Unified Field Theory'

     

    I don't believe in gravity. :-)  I'm a plasma-physics not red-shift fan.

     

    a whole range of things I have and was dropping hints to me

     

    That's awesome! It's very rare I meet people I have a lot in common with, since my stuff is independent. I mean it clearly overlaps with lots of traditional studies, but as I lack the actual "study" -- it's spontaneous experience for the most part -- usually that's where I lose everyone.

     

    Much of the stuff on that blog is truly mind-numbingly dull -- I wasn't kidding, I do it as a discipline -- but the few main pages and the categories might narrow down a search.

     

    And now I have to find pictures for the picture thread. And hopefully make it not offtopic although I expect there's some flex on that. Hang on...

     

    Alright. One my favorite artists, Michael Parkes, has a pic I love of the 'Lion' (3rd of 4 exalted is the lion).

     

    Entry1_1029_Large_Fullsize.jpg

     

     

    One of my favorite comics ever

     

    then-a-miracle-happens.gif

     

     

    And just so we have something beautiful

     

    snap_01845.jpg

    • Like 4

  13. Posted

    The man who was most influential on me during my teenage years:

     

    "The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together."

     

    "The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket."

     

    "I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

     

    "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

     

    -- Robert Heinlein

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    Yueya, I found your first page of posts really interesting.

     

    I think in part because in analogy, it mirrors a fairly massive problem I've had all my life. I suspect the issue with "allowing oneself vulnerability" -- allowing yin, for me -- might be more common in our culture than we realize.  It has certainly been the greatest challenge in my life, and has been cyclical for me -- generally causing great angst followed by utter disaster in failure and then the cycle starts over again. I'm pretty much at the death-if-I-fail level now so getting a handle on this would sure be a good thing, and any suggestions are welcome.

    • Like 2

  16. Posted

    As a personal note, one thing that watching the more negative elements of daydreams has done for me, is make me realize when I am setting up the paths of decision to allow me to act out an energy without thinking. In this case, Karl I would say that you have a negative feeling about this topic in a large way, but you don't allow yourself to openly make this clear because it would make you sound a bit phobic and people might wonder why. (I hold no judgment. I have zero vested in how you feel. You have a right to feel anything you like.) But the negative feeling is still there. And you need some seemingly logical reason to have it and express it. So you come up with "what if" situations that don't even exist (there is no law saying one must hire transgenders for example), in order to create a "perceived threat" to yourself, and to all of fairness, and By God To the Very Good Of Our Nation (lol), because then you will feel there is only that one path of decision Against-The-Bad-Thing, and you are righteous for walking that path. I've done this plenty myself is the only reason I have learned to recognize this dynamic, it is human nature. It is useful to see into these dynamics though.

  17. Posted · Edited by redcairo

    You should read this. It agrees with what I have posted-what the author hasn't realised is why there are issues. I covered it. Trying to extract unearned values brings misery. http://www.sexchangeregret.com/research

     

    You have moved into a completely different topic though. Now we're all about politics. I will spare you time converting the choir here; I'm so conservative I'm a constructionist, I think George Will and I actually share a brain (which explains a lot of my life -- apparently he had it all that time...) -- there just isn't any more conservative to go after that, so I do not argue in favor of what amounts to variants on affirmative action and don't need to see the error of those ways.

     

    I have many far less conservative views (far less) but I have different ideas for their implementation.

     

    But you have twisted the direction of the topic into that politic of money and government interference, when the topic was actually about -- well I don't think anyone answered the given question, but I think it's fair to say it was about the more social and personal elements of alternative sexuality, including for (but not limited to) transgender.

     

    You began saying that it was to paraphrase, a sign of cultural devolution. Some alternative theories were put forth about that. Instead of addressing any of those, you went to the what if they're lying to people path, and then over into the and what if the government makes us support them economically path.

     

    I don't think politics is a focus that is likely to bring discussion about understanding human sexuality or ways of life any clarity... it usually makes things a big flaming mess.

    • Like 1

  18. Posted

    But Karl, you eventually devolved to the whole narrative of what-if-someone-transsexual-lied-about-it and then explored that and related points -- and while philosophically related, it reveals some degree of fear underneath your reasoning I think.

     

    What if my breasts are implants and I don't tell you? What if I once did {insert whatever you find most sexually horrifying, with multiple men of whatever kind you dislike most} and didn't tell you? How does TS or any other category of people become any 'more' subject to potential deceit than any other person in the world?

     

    In my esoteric world, I am constantly being told and shown that "there is no difference" between the physical and the psychological and the spiritual. That it's all energy and all reflective. It's odd my brain has such a hard time wrapping that up, because intellectually I totally believe that our people are lost with our weird ideas on psychology, as if it's all something that just hovers around our heads like a glowing orb or something -- when in fact everything in science only more-indicates our bodies ARE our psychologies and everything -- from lead to glandular outputs -- underlies behavior.

     

    If that is the case, though, then I have to see non-standard sexuality as reflective of a person's actual physical body -- as well as their spirit -- not just something "in the middle" in the psychology. In which case it doesn't matter whether that particular person happens to have been born all male chromosomes and not one of the gender variants -- if their actual physical body did not have something going on supporting this, they probably would have no impetus toward it {insert whatever IT is, here}.

     

    In which case how could there be judgment on the devolution of culture or whatever, that people are more free to act on what they feel now, than they were a century ago?

     

    I might add that I think profound lifetime malnourishment due to our pseudo-food supply is probably responsible for a great deal of twisted behavior across the spectrum and it's possible some of that includes sexuality-stuff. Still, it makes it physical at base.

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    Well it's not easy to fit in a sound bite I admit. You could go read the page 'Aeons of Light (the Four)' on my blog if you were really a glutton for punishment. But be warned I blog for me not others -- forgetfulness and denial are my issues, so document-till-I-wanna-puke is my way of combating that. So you'd think I got paid by the word or something, it's horrible. Pretty sure my few readers are actually working off karma there. 

     

    And this is a pics thread not text so lemme see if I can find something else so I won't be offtopic. Hang on...

     

    This'll do. This is a poster I made for my private practice and have in my room. This one was when I finished the Thoth Tarot Disks series -- the image above centers it -- there will be different ones for each of the other suits and the trumps. I've been dirking around so much with enough cognitive dissonance to kill that I still haven't finished them.

     

    (Please note that this is just a personal ref as my meditation tool: the OTO owns sole copyright to the Thoth Tarot images.) This is 1000px wide, not sure if that's too much for the forum.

     

    MyDisks72dpi1000x1500rez256RGB_forFramin

     

     

    Also,

    You can see I'm a Jung and Walter Russell fan I suppose

     

     

    • Like 4

  21. Posted

    Hmmn. I have a different perspective, if looking at it from the mystical side.

     

    What I observe in my own experience is that most things begin with "definitions" and they are fairly polarized.

     

    As I learn and experience, eventually I exceed those; I realize the polarities are too small to hold that energy; then I realize the polarities are the same thing, oddly; then it all loses definition and I see it more like just a big "spectrum" and no matter where something is in that spectrum, it is all equal; it is all life; it is all exploration of life.

     

    And then, humorously, definition begins to come back -- not because the limits return, just the opposite; but because now that there is a greater understanding, the "choice" becomes truly conscious, truly based on awareness for the first time.

     

    I think I saw some quote on this forum the other day where some master said there used to be mountains and waters, and then there were none, and then there were mountains and waters again. This makes sense to me. It's all the same dynamic.

     

    In this model, our world has begun to exceed the default-unconscious-assumption-of-polarities of the male and female, the beliefs there are no other options or here-there-be-evil at such a thought. The world has begun to expand its understanding and exploration of the life, of the spectrum of this thing we call gender or sex but really we're talking about yin/yang energy right.

     

    And eventually I think when there is more awareness, and the choices people make are truly a choice from awareness, we'll probably return to the vast vast majority of sexuality at the male/female poles.

     

    In particular I think the shift will help men some. There is a great deal of yin/vulnerability that men do innately have that right now is either forced into total suppression or them having to go full bisexual to explore it, which is kind of ridiculous. (A sexually healthy wife would help explore that with him but a rather large percentage of people aren't married, so...) I think it tends to affect men emotionally in an unfortunate way sometimes.

  24. Posted

    Well, abuse in any form is tragic, and its victims deserve to know there is hope and caring and some place to go for help. If holidays help people realize that -- women in this case -- then good for them. Women have the built-in hostages of children often which just makes it harder. (On the other hand they also have the built-in hostages of children to hold against the father, too.)

     

    You have to raise people in an environment where people can agree to disagree, where people can argue without violence, where things can go wrong and it's not the end of the world, where there is the baseline assumption that everyone loves each other and no matter what is going on, eventually people are going to get over it and move on and we'll all be here at the dinner table tomorrow night. I think our culture has greatly lost that. 

     

    Even on the internet you see it, that so many people are unable to handle the smallest discord without running for weapons. People can disagree even politely, even by proxy, and someone just loses their hat because not everybody was in agreement. Sometimes it's in attack, sometimes it's in omg-I'm-a-victim-because-you-don't-agree-so-you-abuse-me. I've had some of the most hilarious conversations over the years. Fortunately I have the skin of a rhino. I like to allow that everyone including me has good intent and almost make it a contest to see how incredibly courteous I can be while essentially telling someone they are just so ridiculously wrong. It's sort of an art form if you look at it right.

    • Like 1

  25. Posted · Edited by redcairo

    This is an interesting way of actually getting 'around' speed reading. It's a different kind of speed reading I suppose. Far more limited. It actually requires a great deal more processing if you ask me, and more speed for the same result.

     

    Let me explain.

     

    So in this new approach, they set a center of vision, and then they emphasize that with a letter in that center in each line.

     

    And they modify the justification of every line of text so that it is 'centered' on that center-line.

     

    And you read one word (basically) at a time. Very very fast.

     

    So you are not learning anything new at all.

     

    You're just doing whatever you already did a whole lot faster.

     

    In traditional speed reading, it works slightly differently.

     

    In the older approach, the text is always justified that you are training with. That means both left and right sides are an even margin. Your eyes should never move. Initially you may train on a very narrow line like a word or three. The point is that you need to be able to look at a point in the middle and 'see' all of it. But it should be the same size so that there is no 'varying' in the focus of the eye.

     

    Then the line expands, and you learn to "expand your peripheral vision" to include that. So now there are 4, 7, 12 words on one line. Now it is the full length of the line of a book, whatever that is.

     

    Initially the machine you work with is like an automated slide projector that uses a roll of film that has a given reading selection, and a given width, set up. Each 'click' moves a line up into the view-window (your screen the projector shines on). You can adjust the speed of the increments. This, plus of course the width of the lines in the selections you choose, determine the reading speed someone is working at for practice.

     

    I had an advanced speed reading class for seniors when I was in 10th grade as a I was a TA for the teacher who taught it. I already read very fast, and had an excellent and not quite photographic memory, so I was already ahead in that area, but nothing like I became. I absolutely loved the machine and wish I had one now. I have off and on searched the internet for speedreading software and none of it works like this machine does which boggles my mind. Mostly, none of it JUSTIFIES the text which is utterly critical. The eyes can NOT move. If your eyes move the whole point of the exercise is lost. Even when I was reading books, generally my eyes did not move -- my head did!

     

    There are all these hilarious and fabulous alleged reasons why speed reading just cannot work or cannot be so fast or cannot allow comprehension. This is clearly idiocy from people who have either never tried it, or correctly, or competently.

     

    I don't recall what my speed eventually got to, because it increased a lot after I left the formal machine (which I maxxed out) and just took it to reading books. Something I am pretty sure many people would say is not possible. The reasons they give for this are funny. Things like:

     

    The eye surface.... is not large enough.... yes this is what keeps us from seeing the width of landscapes? Not a good reason.

     

    The mind... just cannot process things that fast. Yes this is why we do nearly more physics calculations than a computer can just to catch a ball but we can do that by age 4 or sooner? Not a good reason.

     

    The memory... just can't hold that much information 'waiting' to process it. Answer: your memory, dork, not mine, which works fine thankyouverymuch.

     

    It might be because I began with machine training, but when I'd be reading a book, there was a very subtle 'sense of click' that I would get as I moved down through the lines. And the thing is, my brain actually did have some degree of processing limit, however, that wasn't an issue, it was just a thing. If I was reading fast and my brain was slow that day, it meant the growing queue of what I had read but had not yet hit the brain yet got larger and larger.

     

    Basically, the "meaning" of the entire line of text -- eventually it was not always so much the text as the meaning, I recall starting to get philosophical about this and wondering if my brain was changing "how" it was handling it, as if maybe it was rewiring how it organized things at the very start, eventually, but I wasn't sure if I was imagining that and I don't remember ever following up on it -- would hit my brain all at once.

     

    Not gradually, not left to right, not in linear order. All at once. Metaphysically this often happens, that I will get multiple numbers, or multiple layers of experience and meaning and visuals, and everything literally "at once" -- my brain has to put them in a sequence to journalize them but they did not have any sequence when arriving, they were simultaneous. This is possible inside the brain, just not in our time-space-focus-reality and language.

     

    And each line just came that way. So when I really got going, if my brain wasn't keeping up with the 'input', a queue would build up of the lines remaining. I wasn't speed reading "around other people" much after I left high school so I'm limited to that era for memory here, but at the time I left HS I could hold about two pages of lines in queue. And I thought I probably could have done more but someone was always bugging me so I just didn't have time.

     

    But I had to process. I think I probably did have the option to "dump it off the line" but I never tried. So if someone bugged me and I had to stop reading, I'd have to put my hand up in the don't-bother-me-for-a-moment sign, keep my eye closed (ideal but not required), and let the queue process. And it would stay at the speed I'd just been at, so it would go click-click-click-click-click as each one "hit" my brain, until it was done. Which even if you read very fast can take awhile for two pages if someone is waiting on you to say something.

     

    I was not consciously remembering it. My brain just held it. It felt more like medium than short term memory, oddly. I used to use medium a lot, like when I was in warehousing, if I needed to remember something like a full phone number, usually the 7 digits is all my conscious mind would want. So I would associate something with the first three digits (like its place) and "accept" that as a "given" about the number, and then remember the 7 up top. There is just a sort of 'acceptance' (hard to describe) that shifts things from out of immediate memory for me, to something where it lasts longer and I don't consciously have to pay attention to it.

     

    Anyway. I actually really loved speed reading when I was upset. It was the ultimate in something that utterly arrests your attention -- you cannot do anything else during this with your brain! So it's the ultimate escapism, you might say, with the nice side-effect of pouring tons of information into yourself quickly, if that's what you want.

     

    It had some side-effects though, two that I didn't much like, and I started doing it less often as a result.

     

    1. If I was reading a book for pleasure, I wanted to be in the world of that book. I can get totally into books as worlds, I am easily altered state, and it took all the fun out of 'immersion' which disappeared entirely. Not all books have or need that but some do.

     

    2. Normally when you read a book you react to the content of it. Let us say something is tragic. Well, you react. I still reacted, but not at the time. Like, not when it was pinging against my brain. I would suddenly, 2.5 days later, realize that I felt deeply sad about that character's dying. Like my brain processed it all but it actually took quite some time for all the emotional part of it to "roll out inside me" afterward -- sometimes a few hours, sometimes a few days. I felt like I was oddly depriving myself of the "experience" of the reading, as a result.

     

    Still good for other kinds of materials though.

     

    I'm not sure why the 'new' approach to speed reading won't teach the expand-peripheral-vision requirement, and why all the SR software I find is so poorly designed and will not 'justify' the text lines which is not exactly rocket science.

     

    *

     

    Back in '95, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea for a foreign language tool. (I don't speak or read any.) You would basically write something so that on top was the reader's native language, with a word or three in a color/s, key words. Then below that would be a smaller, lighter line, the same sentence/s but rearranged properly in the other language, with a word or three matching those colors in that foreign language you wanted to teach them. The idea would be to NOT have them try to look at or read that at all. They are merely reading the stuff in english. But I theorized that if you did this with a machine -- so it forced them not to move their eyes and read the other but just to really open up the subconscious and 'allow' as part of the process -- that their mind would actually start learning key words, and some patterns of phrasing, just through this. It was only a theory.

     

    At the time I wanted to use Visual Basic to program it and I was brand new to it. MS manuals were written by the programmers back then I believe. Had I already known basic, I would have known that I should not be looking under file, open, read, or anything like that, I should be looking under fget, which is where they put it, without any reference whatever anywhere else to how to open or read a file. By the end of the first day I was literally ready to throw my computer out the window. I moved on to things that made me feel less homicidal LOL. I still think it's an idea with potential though. :-)

     

    I think if you had to speed read only that tiny width at a time as 'spritz' demonstrates, one could never do it more than about 1/4 as fast as the potential, maybe less, and the speed at which it moves actually is way higher than it'd need to be even for a much higher result using longer lines as well.