+ and – Pt. Two

Presence
Presence is something that is with us at all times, in the foreground or in the background (usually); it is moment to moment; differently engaged. It is reminding of a tight-rope walker. A tight-rope walker knows of the rope (the Presence in this analogy) but has to balance his or herself in different directions (could be thought of as Negative or Positive) and this is something that we basically doing all the time. There is a concept that I have, that addresses the mental states that people engage in, in our day to day lives; these are: Awake, Asleep, Contemplative, and Meditative. Most people engage in the first three states, but many do not practice the last one (this is true primarily in the Western world, because frankly, it isn’t profitable to have others induce and therefore not propagated). This last state- the Meditative state, is the closest state to Presence. I am not going to go into the reasons on why to meditate; you can see where I am going with this and perhaps in a future entry I’ll go in depth (probably will).
The Aspects
These Aspects are basically a rip-off of Sir Francis Bacon’s ‘Idols’ (When I was finding a way to explain these aspects, I quickly noticed their relation to Bacon’s ‘Idols’ and furthermore decided to implement theme in this idea. I’m going to translate them (roughly) into a more practical way for the purpose of future referencing.

The aspects:

Idols of the Tribe translated to- Incalculable Perception:
The inability of the human mind to make unbiased calculations.
Idols of the Cave translated to- Emotional Perception: Ideas that are fueled by our temperance or identity.
Idols of the Marketplacetranslated to- Logistic Perception: The fallacious usage of human semantics.
Idols of the Theater translated to- Accepted Perception: Accepted theories no matter the medium (Religious, Science, or Historical etc.) that we do not question in which skews our thought.

All the Aspects play a part in whether we perceive negatively or positively. I will give brief explanations of how each aspect affects us negatively (Antithetically they can be applied).

In Calculable Perception, we may fail to conceive of other peoples own perspectives reducing our outlook to a very self-centered negative scope.

In Emotional Perception, we have a situation where some mental state already present can in turn skew our outlook.

In Logistic Perception, not only can we skew what we mean, semantically, (either for our benefit or detriment) to express an idea to someone (either derogatorily or euphemistically) but, to ourselves more importantly thus creating negativity or positivity, respectfully. Lawyers are good at manipulating this.

In Accepted Perception, we begin to hate ourselves, simply, out of the fact that we believe things to be true, because others believe them to be so. Nietzsche’s ‘Herd Mentality’ comes to mind.

Recapitulated- we can conclude that sentiment is the force that affects ourselves; also true is the thin line between these aspects, as they can all serve as adjuncts; forming a mesh or vacillating.

Positive and Negative is either True or False
When we become Positive or Negative, it is a by product of our intent.
Instincts are very hard to pinpoint sometimes because the intellect intervenes. In True Positivity, we have a situation where a person becomes Positive naturally from the mere joy of an experience. A False Positivity is a Positivity which is clouded by the intellect; such as a situation where someone’s heart tells them that they need to do something, but rationality steps in and suggests to do otherwise. It was a Positive realization in a sense; that the person was proactive, but the outcome was not desirable. True Negativity can simply be a grievance, while False Negativity may be the NEED to grieve, but this thought only arises out of falseness. Our intent is somehow dubious in most situations, when we can’t get a grip on what it is, and a lot of the time it is selfish in a sense that it is born out of negativity.

Lucid Dreaming – Entry 2

This requires heavy editing, but for now, I wanted to post it up the way i ran through it.

This dream is actually a four-part dream. It all occurred during one nights sleep. Lucid Dreaming isn’t so clear-cut and there are many forms of it. Some may say that Lucid Dreaming occurs soley when one knows that they are dreaming. Well, I use the term a little loosely to define any dream state in which there is at least some doubt that the sleeper is dreaming. These four dreams have there own unique overlay.

The first dream was very short and not even really worth mentioning, but it was the first dream that I could recall the evening that I had intense Lucid Dreaming. Simply, I was playing with what appeared to be two Lion-like beasts; grabbing their fangs with my hands and rough-housing with them like you would a dog. I remember being very afraid that they would turn on me at any moment, but I continued to play with them for some time. This dream was short.

The second dream took place inside a house that I cannot ever being in while in awake state. It appeared to be Halloween and there were many people in the house, mainly teens or young adults. I left the house and walked off the porch and turned to my right. I saw a woman that I found attractive. I asked her if she thought I was sexy and she replied that she did not find me so. I then asked her, “Do you find me not Punk enough?” and I don’t know what she said, or maybe she outright told me I wasn’t “Punk Enough”. The dream shifted, to where I was in the sky kinda floating around, as if I was on some kind of invisible Chariot moving in a motion that reminds me of one of those, you know, Disney Teacup rides that you sit in while they rotate and revolve? Anyways, I was ascended above the roof, and I peered into what seemd to be a second floor or penthouse-like level. I remember admiring the glasswork while rising higher and higher….This dream stopped around this time, and I vaguely remembering much but there could of been other “fliers” in the sky sharing the space.

The third dream took place outside some kinda building. There was a bench-like wooden architecture in which I was standing upon while a friend of mine sat nearby atop this structure as well. I soon realized that this was not real. I did not know if I was dreaming or not, but I did not believe what I was experiencing to be real, and I asked my friend along the lines of, “Do you believe this is real? Look I can prove to you that this is not”, and I proceeded to lean forward, statuesquely, with legs and body straightened, forwardly, until I was parallel with the ground. He seemed a little amazed at how I could balance myself in such an unordinary fashion. This dream came to an end.

The fourth dream I had, was probably the most poignant of the four. I found myself in a Hotel hallway pathway with Hotel employees surrounding me. They appeared, logically, upon recollection, to be kitchen workers and/or room service, or perhaps, simply maids. I stood encircled by them as they gazed at me in wonder. What I was doing was holding my hands out forward, whilst flailing them about, and thus, sparks of light shot out of my hands twirling around, bouncing off the ground; twisting. They asked me what I was doing, and I replied, “I’m making light out of imagination”. Then, one woman looked at me (This woman I met at the bar in real life with a group of friends, but that is another story) and she said, “You are so sexy!” and jumped into my bread-basket, wrapping her legs around my waist. I hoisted her up, held her there in place and began running through the Hotel. I was looking for “my room I got” but I could not find it. I was looking at room numbers but couldn’t find it. And you can guess why I was doing that (lol). The dream ended. And that is all for today!

I had a dream where I was outside of my place. To get to the backyard, you must go aound the side pathway; the path begins at my lawn, and there is little room in that space for anything but a residential trash can. In the dream, this part of my home somehow was a hybrid of itself and of an old house I used to live in when I was a teen, which had bigger space. So in this space, which appeared to be of my older home, but took place where I live now, contained a truck in it; a truck that one of my friends drive. I was nearby it, and there was some kind of structure in between the truck and the pathway. I heard people on the other side. I soon realized it was a group of my friends talking, including the owner of the truck and another friend of mine…I went around to see what they were doing. I could not make anything out of they were talking about but I concluded that it was meaningless; gibber-jabber. I told myself, “This must be a dream and I am going to find out if it is.” And I decided to levitate, and did, until I was able to see over the roof, which now as I recall, was my older houses roof. I realized this was a dream, and I awakened immediately.

“Wherever you go, there you are.”

The quote, “Wherever you go, there you are.” is attributed to a Religious Christian Monk and Author that has a name I do not know of. A name that I had copied on my Windows Clipboard but was lost because I decided to Cut and Paste my Password to my Blog; forgetting that I had copied this Contributor (Actually, with further researching, I have found it to be that it was more than likely Confucious that coined this phrase).

This quote invokes two ideas, and they are simple; the idea of where you are at physically, and the idea of where you are mentally. OBE’s aside, both of these ideas each reflect their counterparts when you look at them. Let’s assume you are focusing on the present. If you were to say that you are in a place physically, you would automatically assume that you are at that same point mentally, because it took your mental ability to recognize that you were actually there physically. It also works the other way around as well. For you to say that you are here mentally, you would have to be physically at the same point to realize this, because, well, your brain is in your body. Now let’s factor in time outside of the present. You are sitting at your kitchen table. You are anxious about a future event, say, a wedding was coming up soon, and you are having thoughts of worry. You have to play a role in this wedding, both traditionally- you are close family with the Bride or Groom, and socially- you have to represent yourself correctly amongst your peers. You take the quote “Wherever you go, there you are.” and you notice you are sitting at your kitchen table, physically. But mentally, you are somewhere else (an illusion). You have imagined a future that could possibly be a disaster. Now, this is simple differentiation, like we asserted previously but with the intent in imagining the future (this could also be done with the past, provoking anxiety in a different way- regret. Even if you are focusing on the past, you are anticipating the fallout of your previous behavior, which in turn creates this regret, arising thoughts of negativity). Of course this is all very obvious, so I have a greater point to this, and it is the relationship between this envisioning of the future, and actually being in this future.

So, when you take the phrase- “Wherever you go there you are.” and apply this duality, you find yourself, exactly, as you are- there, physically at some point in space; perhaps at your kitchen table again, thinking about a future event (the wedding), creating anxiety like before. This time, you observe the quote, and notice that you are not at that future juncture yet. You are not at the wedding yet. So this stress that you are facing is actually a manifestation of time and space, inasmuch as it is of the anticipation of things going to take place (and there are many things we could go into). You are unconsciously applying the idea that you WILL have to be in time at this place; a place that will contain a YOU. But, it contains nothing of the sort yet. This means that the anxiety of what COULD happen is being amplified by the fact that it WILL happen (in time) and SOMEWHERE (in space) and these properties are essentially compounding the problem, or essentially CREATING the problem.

Perhaps, you think about how the quote will apply to you, when you are actually at the wedding. You will find yourself there now, and in a much better shape, because you are present, and what you were anticipating before, was yourself in a different time and place. In thinking of yourself in a different time and place, previously, you gave yourself the pressure of thinking outside of time and space you are actually experiencing. And this makes things much more difficult because you are not in the moment; you are outside of the experience, and you are caught in an illusory experience fueled by anxiety and ultimately fear; which is good, in low doses, but with little attention to its implications, you magnify negative possibility.

It is very interesting to apply the concept of anxiety/worry over a future event to the quote, “Wherever you go, there you are.” because in itself, it is applying time- “go” and place- the “you”. You can only “go” in time and you can only be “you” at a place (or in space). Besides the application of an anxiety to a future event in relation to this quote, you can think about it even simpler, and this simpler relationship between where you are now, and where you are going to be, was the initial phenomena I found to be interesting. Whenever you anticipate a future event, you think of yourself somewhere else, and in a specific state of mind. This somehow seems to be real, but in all actuality, “Wherever you go, there you are”. So this relationship of where you are at presently, and where you are at mentally (thinking of being somewhere else) are a fraud because, you will never be anywhere but where you are, in reality. You can only imagine yourself being somewhere else thinking, and these thoughts that you think you will be thinking, are in actuality, not going to be the thoughts that you think you will think when you are actually at that point thinking them. So this imagining, forms a presence of some kind you behold as a future reality. But, in essence, you will not be at a future place, you can only be at a place that you are actually in. So, you have to contain the fact that you will not be anywhere, but here, and any vision of being somewhere else with ideas that contain only narrow possibilities (due to anxiety of them to be so) is an hallucination filled with assumption

+ and – Pt. One

Essence
Feelings are essentially placed into two types of groups- Positive and Negative. There are many aspects for each group. These aspects gain momentum to form a circle of experience. Depression and Ecstasy are circles. These circles are an accumulation of habits. We create habits because they identify us and we need identity to have a place in the world (or at least think it to be so).
Positive is greater than Negative
Positive is Good and Negative is Bad is not a proper assessment when understanding energy. For there is no Positive without the Negative, no Joy without Pain, and no Light without Dark. You may say this is a Blessing and a Curse, and that in itself embodies Positive and Negative. A better way to look at it, is that, Positive energy is Harmony and Negative energy is Disharmony. Positive energy will always be greater than Negative energy because of quantity. When there is something, it contains more substance than nothing. Since Negative energy is less than nothing, nothing is not negative (actually nothing gravitates more towards Harmony because it is not Negative). Negative energy pulls you away and Positive energy pulls you forward from nothing. And since most people do not want to identify with nothing, they would rather be Negative than silent.
Silence
The joy about Positive energy and Negative energy is that when neither exist, there is nothing and nothing is the center. The closest you are to the center, the more you are able to decide to be Positive or Negative; this gives you a choice; although You have to embrace silence in order to do this. Nothing is not non-existence, it is understanding of presence without momentum. You are always present, but you are not always conscious of it. The more you are aware of it, the more freedom you have. It is the push and pull that is unbalancing you.

In the second part, I will get into presence, “the aspects”, and True and False Positive and Negative, respectfully.

Labels

A Label
Easy to place
Let go we need not name
How can man place?
How can a pig know the sky?
How can a bird know the inside of a volcano?
He think of Heaven
We think of Hell
We only think of what we name
Pigs fly when the Phoenix Descends
Hard to know
These Labels

Lost in Perspective (Some History and ideas of God)

A lot of things we look at are skewed by a limited spectrum of perspective. We take things for granted because of this, and these things are not processed by our minds fully. I am a man of Science as well as Faith, and I was brought up Catholic as I lived with a New Mexican grandmother most of my childhood years, and as a young man. I never fully understood it, and did not accept it, but with her I attended church sometimes and prayed; recited Our Father’s and read scripture. Art and Music eclipsed belief structure, but when I became a teen, I started to become more interested in Philosophy and took beginning Philosophy and Religion in college. I completely rejected Catholicism and God soon after that when I entered my early twenties, but now, after sometime, I am now grateful and feel in my heart the positives of Catholicism and God in general. I do not study anymore, but I love my family who has passed on, and embrace their faith as individuals yearning for spirituality.

God now to me, is something much more special and the more ways of looking at reality make for a much richer perspective. We are all of God’s children and I believe we are he to further are intellectual and spiritual understanding of our consciousness. No matter your path, we are all on the same path and have the same tools.

When I look at God and veer more towards the idea of soul, I look at the universals. I am a “human” and you are a “human” and we place a lot of significance on our differences. We do this as to strengthen our own ego to make us feel more unique and righteous. But we are not just the ego, and we need to look at it intellectually so we know our true spirit and learn to be more open. These are mental tricks played on ourselves because we are creatures with an inherent fear and this fear is cultivated and nurtured through our culture, keeping us from blossoming into our real selves.

The soul inside us, to me, universally speaking is like the ocean of thought. This consciousness is all mind. When you think, you are actually “tapping” into the same pool. All people are using this same process and when you shed yourself of all limiting ideas, you are actually all and the same with all. It is all light and energy and we have the intellectual capacity to know of this.

Lucid Dreaming – Entry 1

This is the first entry to Lucid Dreaming. I heavily regret not starting this sooner as I have had more than a handful of them, and I previously only recorded one dream; but it was written in poetry form. I will look for it and post it at a later time. The dream I’m about to describe is an account that happened less than a weak ago and it is a short dream, but a very poignant dream for me. Oh, also, I am no expert; I’m just a novice looking to go deeper…..

*WARNING, THIS DREAM HAS SEXUAL CONTENT*
It started off in a room, in a building, with my back to the door. The room in this house was ambiguous and there were a couple friends in the room with me. I believe to have had some ill feelings towards them, and they felt my intent as well. I also felt as though I had power over them/the situation and they decided to remain neutral or they were convinced I had a reason to feel how I did. I then turned away towards the door and entered the hallway. I still at this time did not know I was dreaming or had any knowledge that this was “not real”. This home seemed to be a busy one with many doors and many activities; all separate and antonymous, and I proceeded to open one of these doors. I walked inside his room and a slender Hispanic, middle-aged female wearing a sweatsuit, with what seemed to consist of a light-blue top and beige bottoms. She was merely standing there looking away towards the wall with no intention whatsoever. I immediately then realized that I was not awake, but I don’t think that I knew I was dreaming yet; I simply realized it was “not real” or what have you. Side note: A lot of the time a Lucid Dreamer will realize that they are not in a stable reality and they make a couple “go-to” decisions when they know they can manipulate reality.

A) have sex

or

B) start to fly.

I decided I wanted to commit sodomy on this woman. Upon this thought I immediately turned around facing the door to activate something, like close the door. My intention was a little fuzzy, but perhaps I was looking to privatized the experience. What I actually did was adjust the light switch. Whilst doing this, I unintentionally begun to implement an Obsessive Compulsive episode; something that I do while awake. I can’t recall this ever happening before in a dream. And since it is a routine I do many times regularly everyday, it triggered my cognizance and I promptly new 100% that I was dreaming. This somehow derailed my natural neural machinery for a dream and it was very intense. Another side note: I have attempted OBE’s (Outer Body Experience) many times, but haven’t been able to completely leave my body. I seemed to have caused the beginning of an OBE; still dreaming and while still dreaming knew my exact position I was laying in on my couch. I tried to remain calm and kept my eyes closed. It felt as though my being was being sucked out of the top of my head and I could feel my presence levitating outwards ethereally and gaseously penetrating the window/wall architecture above my laying crown. I knew what was happening and continued to pass through (at this time I did not see anything). When I believed I was far enough out to see my backyard, I opened my eyes to find my self back in my body; on the couch where I originally fell asleep. Maybe next time……

Open

Open your mind up to anything.
You will then see that reality is impossible to conceive.
There will be many philosophies addressed to your mind now.
Many of them contradict each other.
Confusion begins till you have little choice but to stop.
It is easy to perceive many planes of reality.
They eventually cease.
What you are left with is the notion of joy.

All is one

All is one. When you contemplate the truth, you are part of all who participate in this. You exist as an expression of the whole. When distraction ceases, you are back to the essence. The essence is the space for creation, and all will for it. This will is the will of ones true nature, and it is the reason for all spirituality, philosophy and religion. Discard assumption and you contemplate the truth, which is unknown and known together.

The sky’s prejudice

Although our pain and suffering is exhibited on our visage, we can look to the sky; for the forest rain will always wash away the blood from a jungle prisoner’s battered eye.