Month: July 2013

In my meditation the other day I saw clearly that the important part of sex is the emotional.  Feelings have an almost concrete reality, and when two people approach one another, they do it first emotionally, if they are going to connect.

Now, this is obvious, of course, but I really do think our culture feeds the idea that the act itself is what brings the pleasure.  In my considered view, masturbation is more pleasurable than sex with a woman with whom I am not prepared to also be emotionally intimate.  And in my view, many, many men are like that: they masturbating with a partner.

You can’t be fully emotionally present with another person unless you can get to the point where you can relax fully, and be intimate with your own being, your own reality.  I would take the affective states I reach in meditation over even the best sex 100 times out of 100.  Emotionally detached sex makes me sad.  I’ve had quite a bit of it, so I know.

On a related note, I got to thinking about the contrasting roles of the Parasympathetic and Sympathetic nervous systems.  The first is what generates sexual arousal, but it’s the second which is involved in orgasms and ejaculation.

It seems to me that in a healthy human the Parasympathetic dominates most of the time, as characterized, among other physiological markers, by a high Heart Rate Variability (you can look it up: the Heartmath website is a good place to start).  This means that sex is easy to enter, and arousal is easy.

I think there is a profound difference between the sexes, though, when it comes to this.  I think a high activation of the Parasympathetic nervous system is very important, and I think in our world most women, like most men are 1) beset with constant stress; 2) often feeling disconnected emotionally from their men, and quite possibly from their own feelings.

Men like to chase women.  Sexual activation for us is pretty easy.  But women have to be relaxed and happy.  This is of course something only an idiot would feel the need to say, but there it is.

Which makes me wonder about the phenomenal success of “50 Shades of Grey”.  The success of that book really does call for an explanation.  I have offered several, of course.  The whole essence of BDSM is assault and dominance by one party or the other.  Being tied up could only activate the Sympathetic nervous system, I would think. Or do they only feel the ability to relax when someone else is in control?  That may be getting closer.  Does it represent a more or less mechanical operation of the necessary nervous systems?

But it seems to me that however we interpret it, it is very hard to see it as emotionally healthy.

I will add a third point.  I was listening on the radio today to “Me and Mrs. Jones”, and wondering about fidelity, and relationships.

My old fashioned view is that marriage is a good thing, and should be for life.  For obvious reasons, I don’t think sex should be an end in itself.  I think the relationship, the friendship, should be an end in itself, with sex a means of deepening emotional intimacy and sense of connection.  Again, anything other than that and you are masturbating with a partner.

But so many people are restless.  So many men, in particular, don’t want to feel “trapped”.  And I am divorced, so I understand this feeling fully.  But would it not be USEFUL if we as a culture started, in large numbers, to adopt patterns of healthy emotionality?  Specifically, if more and more people would learn and use effective personal growth platforms like Kum Nye and Holotropic Breathwork and Autogenics?

In my view, all our problems would fall away–rather, we would both not create the problems in the first place, and what troubles remained would be more easily managed with sang froid and even enjoyment.

The Globalists, the bastards, think that humanity has to be pushed into a hole and fed bread and water for it to survive.  No, all we need to learn to do is be happy with less, and there are technologies for doing that.

But think what a marvelous tool for health sex is, within a happy, committed relationship.  You operate your nervous system from one end to the other.

Few thoughts.  Oh yes, of course I need to be somewhere, which is why I’m sitting here typing!!!

I think my practice of defining “culture” as persisting solutions to the problems of meaning, truth, structure of power, and economics is useful.  It is a heuristic, but one which I think covers the fundamental tasks of life. 

We all have to have a means of transmuting pain into something positive.  Work that is “meaningless” is unenjoyable.  Work that is “meaningful” is rewarding.

We need some sense of place or direction.  This is in part a function of meaning, but we also need a means of navigating our physical world.  Historically, truth has been passed down parent to child, in terms of how to eke out a living, what to believe, how the world is structured, what their role is, etc.

You have to have a system for dealing with disagreement, such that they are not resolved through violence.  As libertarians like to point out, quite often the solution winds up being on-going structural violence, but some system of rules needs to be in place and someone needs to enforce them.  In an optimal society, the rules are internalized and enforced with wisdom and diligence by each individual.

You have to have a means of feeding, housing, and clothing yourself.  Obviously, economic systems can range from autarkic subsistence to our current, highly complex system in which buyers, sellers, and manufacturers can each be on different continents.

The point I want to make here is that culture is a means for the creation and DISTRIBUTION of meaning, truth, power and wealth, and that in a free system the higher the quality of each, the greater the distribution.

As an example, Leftism is a cultural artifact of the 19th century, when it seemed likely that everything boiled down to atoms, and that life was meaningless.  As a reaction to this belief, it denigrated the previously assumed capacity for individual human moral thought and action in favor of a new oligarchic system based on the lie that the architects of such systems intended for themselves anything but on-going and complete power.

As a meaning system, it works for a certain number of people, but only those who are implementing and pushing the policies, not the people on whose behalf they are supposedly working.

As an example, Nancy Pelosi, although quite willing to cash the checks that come to her as a result of the power she has gained as a result of her politics, can also be assumed to have a certain sincerity in her belief that what she does helps the world rather than hurting it.  It provides a meaning and structure to her life.

But if one were to go to Hunter’s Point, in San Francisco, or East Palo Alto, what one would find would be masses not just of economic poverty, but of moral poverty, of meaning poverty.  Her meaning system has not been distributed, because it is based upon lies.

In an information-controlled country, which is much of America (since the complicit media have a large audience and are in a position both to kill stories they don’t like, and to spin the ones they can’t ignore), truth is not distributed.  It is hoarded by a small elite.

Power is hoarded with socialists.  Wealth is hoarded by socialists.

Hell, my brain is tired, for a variety of reasons.  I had not intended this as another attack on the most pervasive evil in our world.  The point was the distribution.  Do with these thoughts what you will.

Some of the ideas I’ve gotten from Kelly Starrett, particularly the use of lacrosse balls to smash open tissues, have been extremely helpful.  It has been an enormous support to my meditative and overall personal mental and emotional fitness work.

It occurred to me that just as all tissues in a body, when healthy, move with freedom, so too all the elements of our “personality” ought to as well.

It is an interesting thought that in large measure who we “are” is defined by our dysfunctions.  I would say that it might be a complete definition if we add “passions”.  We are what we chase, and what we fear. We are what we run to and what we run from.

Certainly, genetics plays a role, but just as all people can be taught to play basketball, even if most of them will never become relatively good, so too all people can feel all emotions, and experience all personality elements, even if some more naturally exhibit certain emotions like joy or sadness.

Unlike with basketball, though, I think through effective personal practice, substantially all the positive emotions can be opened up, and all the negative ones either silenced, or made manageable through an increase in digestive capacity.

In important respects, all psychological and spiritual work are are personality mobilizations through perceptual mobilizations; and following which are behavioral mobilizations.

As I look at my world through refreshing eyes, it seems to me our task is to embrace fully the anxiety, nausea, confusion, lust, anger, sadness and every other emotion that comes with living in a world in which we are confronted with an uncertain future.  Embrace it.  Find it, go into it, expand it, accept it.  This is the path of courage and of wisdom.  I feel that strongly.

What occurs to me, though, is that the need to find any sort of stable, unchanging structure or form is in principle a disengagement with experience.  It is a tacit recognition of an inability to digest change and confusion.

One of my many little sort of side projects was to address the most recent expression of an old need for control, John Gray’s book “Silence of the Animals”.  In it, he posits an ontology:

In a strictly naturalistic view — one in which the world is taken on
its own terms, without reference to a creator or any spiritual realm —
there is no hierarchy of value with humans somewhere near the top. There
are simply multifarious animals, each with its own needs. Human
uniqueness is a myth inherited from religion, which humanists have
recycled into science.(excerpted from here)

Has he not used the word “is” with regard to human experience, understood as an object?  Has he not made a foundational truth claim–a claim he generalizes to all of life, here and on other worlds–based upon his OPINION?  How can one speak objectively when one is not an object, when one is a subject?  And how can one speak at all AS an object?  We participate in our experience, both psychologically, and if we trust von Neuman’s logical extrapolation from quantum theory, quite literally.  We interact with the universe directly.

The Buddha posited Four Noble Truths, all of which related to what is IN HERE, in our experience.  The solecism of Western science has been to speak of truths OUT THERE, which can be brought IN HERE.  We can be thought of as machines, and treated as machines, but we are not machines.  Life is different than death.

The truth is we know very little.  If one looks at the outliers of science–biophons, NDE’s inexplicable by neuroscience, apparitions, the measurement of psi–then it is clear that if we are ever to do a strong ontology, it will need wait a LONG time, until all actually measurable human experience has been brought within normative scientific practice; until people calling themselves scientists allow all data which contradicts their cherished paradigms to enter their labs.

People who need to find a final conclusion are to the realm of possible experience what the Final Solution was to the Jews in Europe.  It is a crime against humanity, in my view.

This, to my mind, is the liberating aspect of the skepticism and emotional detachment that is supposed to characterize the scientific method.

But clearly we need a cultural and psychological complement to this mindset.  We need either somewhere to rest, or better ways of moving.  To my mind, the obvious answer is to rest in direct experience, which is what meditative practices like Kum Nye teach.  Rest in work.  Rest in the love of others.

Minds like John Gray are made mediocre by a lifetime of cultural insularity.  They are twisted by fear.  None of this is necessary.

Do we live in an age of partial affection?  I see so many married couples, so many committed relationships, so many friendships where the depth of feeling is absent.  We merely coexist, in too many cases, and props like social media, and for the younger texting, help spare us the full burden of this truth.

And in any event, what can most of us do about it?  We live in a superficial world, characterized by ubiquitous shiny little lives on our TV’s that are mostly lies.

Do you understand that the obsession the United States has with work and efficiency and progress is also the result of a type of propaganda?  The French, most of whom take off the month of August, view us as delusional.  In some respects I think they are right.

Are we more advanced than, say, a Plains Indian nation in the 1600’s, which lived in peace within their own communities, waged war rarely, and within which everyone felt ennested, welcome, a part of the whole?  In which traditions gave structure and purpose to the days, and the full reign of emotion–affection and anger–was possible?

It seems likely that certain globalists, certain narcissistic power elites, want to try to recreate something like a tribe on the global scale.  They can see it in their slimy little minds, but fundamentally, in the end, they are discussing and contemplating the fates of OTHERS.  They do not intend to descend to the roles the rest of us are to play.

I am being a bit–I don’t know what the word is–but I am in an odd mood.  Happy Sun-day.  Tomorrow will be Moon-Day.  And as a reminder, we are in the month named for Julius Caesar.  Next month it will be Augustus, and then the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months, in what is a quite odd arrangement, if one thinks about it.

How can one fully track all the relics of the past?  To do so, I suppose, one would have to be fully present now.

But given no debt it would be a boon of enormous power.

I’ve seen a few promising pieces from black writers, but nothing statesmanlike, so I’m going to try and create the speech I would like to see, from the ghost of MLK, Jr.  Good or bad, it puts out there some ideas that keep running through my head.

Elders of our community, brothers and sisters, blessed children: a fond welcome to you all.  Thank you for coming.  Thank you for listening.  Thank you for being who you are.

I must confess at the outset that my heart is heavy, and I can’t say with certainty why.  I think we all knew this day would come, that the killer of that beautiful young man would walk free, and that the memories of a thousand small blows–cuts in our psyches, in our pride, in our determination–would come flowing back freely.

We live in a river that sometimes rejects us, do we not?  We sometimes drink tainted water.  We live in a world where we sometimes feel unwelcome.  We catch the side glances.  We feel things white people do not feel when a police car is behind us.  We feel both pride and shame in our ancestry, do we not?  The blessings of the Lord flow freely to all, but does it not sometimes feel they flow differently to us?

You all know whereof I speak.  You have all lived on this jagged Earth long enough to know how it works.  You have wisdom.  You have knowledge.  And you have freedom.

Therefore, what I would like to talk about tonight is possibility. I do not want to talk about young Trayvon or the man acquitted of killing him.  I want to talk about where we have been, where we are, and where we may yet go, Lord willing.  I want to speak of glorious dreams that have not been, but may yet be.  I want you to hope.  I want you to dream with me.  But first we need to risk seeing where we have been, and are yet.

We live in 2013.  Who would have thought we would endure to see this day?  150 years ago, most of our ancestors were enslaved, but a great war was being fought which would in the end bring an end to their legal servitude.  But this war did not bring peace.  It brought devastation to all in the South.  It blighted white and black alike, but as always our people suffered the most.  The law of the land stated that we were free, that we could not be held hostage, but economic realities belied that meager promise.  We were treated, still, like cattle for many many years.  We were terrorized.  Our women had no safety.  Our men had no safety.

I will remind you that the memory of the Civil War–the great division in our nation caused by the refusal of the South to grant us basic human dignity, and the strong ties between the South and the Democrat Party–was so strong in our nation that from 1860 until 1912 only one Democrat–Grover Cleveland–held our nations highest office, and that Woodrow Wilson was only elected in 1912 because the Republican Party was split.  After Wilson, Republicans ruled for another 12 years, until the devastation of the Great Depression caused a split in our nations political soul that continues to this day.

As you know, I myself have been a lifetime Republican, because I cannot stomach an alliance with a Party whose entire history is filled with animosity for my race.  If anyone should doubt this, read the high praise that was heaped on former Klan leader Robert Byrd when he passed away.

Let us forward to 1913, fifty years later.  Woodrow Wilson explicitly refused to allow the hiring of black men and women by his Administration.  He refused to pursue those responsible for lynchings in the South.  He considered our race inferior, and said that bringing segregation–Jim Crow–to the north was for OUR OWN GOOD!!!  Our own good.  We have been blessed, have we not, to have so had so many defenders over the years?  Our slave-masters claimed as much for their attempts to conquer our souls.

But we never lost the lust for freedom, did we?  1963: you remember, do you not?  I have a dream.  I have many dreams.  I continue to have many dreams.  We gathered, did we not?  We spoke, did we not?  We DEMANDED what was our just lot, our fair share: our piece of the American Dream.

There was a time when the Klan could march in large numbers down the streets of nearly any American street and be accepted, even cheered.  All those days are over.  Lynchings are over.  Open discrimination is over.  Racism is not publicly acceptable any more  BUT–and this is the point I have been wanting to make–ONLY for white people.  Black Americans practice it every day.

What was the ugly underbelly of the 1960’s?  Was it not the riots, in Watts, Detroit, and elsewhere?  Did we not turn ON OURSELVES, ON OUR PROPERTY, OUR HOMES, OUR BUSINESSES, OUR COMMUNITIES?  Did we not frighten for a generation anyone not from those places from taking up residence there?

And what have we learned?  Where are we in 2013?  When I marched in Birmingham–when I was jailed in Birmingham–I wanted better for my people.  At that time we could not swim in the pools, drink from the water fountains, sit in the same restaurants as white people.  We ended that, which of course was a tremendous accomplishment, for which many are to be praised.

We have streets in nearly every city named after me, Rosa Parks and other people whom I admire greatly.  We study black history in many schools, and celebrate black holidays.

But in the end have we not reached a state of begging for scraps from someone else’s table?  How many of you think I marched to beg from ANYONE?  Do you think my goal in life was to support people’s aim of accepting welfare from people who think them inferior for needing it?

Do you think my goal was to support YOU in feeling inferior, in feeling the black race NEEDS help, needs sustenance, needs guidance from white people?  Why would anyone think this?  HOW could anyone think this?

My friends, please forgive me my anger.  I speak from the heart, and from a deep and abiding love for all of you, and particularly your children.  I want them to live freely, in peace, and in plenty.  I want them to walk the streets of their towns with dignity, with pride, with an earned self respect.  God blesses those he favors with the ability and opportunity to do productive and useful work. 

But do you know this?  In the entire history of the Klan they murdered less than 5,000 negroes.  This, over a period of more than half a century.  Do you know that in this nation of plenty, this world we fought for, and died for, that many are killed each and EVERY YEAR?  And that their killers are usually also black?

You say, the KKK ruled through terror.  They did do that.  They burned many crosses, did they not, and issued many threats.  Local officials made it impossible for men and women of color to own firearms, lest they be used for self defense.

Do you not see, though, that our youth–our pride, our future–is living in terror too?  Do you not think they feel fear walking their own streets, going to the store?  The tragedy of Trayvon Martin is not just that he was shot while returning home, but that dozens of black children are killed in the same way every year.  The media says nothing.  We say nothing.  This is a horror: an unmitigated horror.

And who do we blame?  Who do we blame when a young black man “hits the streets” as they say, dumb, uneducated, lacking character, lacking discipline?  When he lacks a plan for life, a direction, a sense of self, a sense of pride?  Are you going to tell that is the WHITE MAN’S FAULT?  How?  Because somebody didn’t give you money to love your child enough to teach him right from wrong?  Because nobody wrote a pamphlet informing you that school matters, and that your job is to teach him to value education?

This is a lie.  You KNOW this is a lie.  YOU KNOW IT.  Look me in the eye and tell me that as a people, as a community, we are not failing our children.  Of course we are failing them.  It may be that the child is the father of the man, but we are the fathers and mothers of those children.  They do not ask to come into the world: we bring them.

No one wants to say this, but teaching a child is infinitely easier when two parents are in the home.  Virtually every deficiency in the black community could be solved if we simply stopped having children on whims, as mistakes, as cute little playthings, or as added paychecks.

The situation is simple: if you respect yourself, you will respect the lives, hopes and futures of your children.  If you do not respect yourself, well, you will do exactly what you have been doing.

Again, I beg your forgiveness.  I have read much of the Old Testament and found much inspiration and strength there.  As it says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time and place for everything under heaven.

What I want to leave with is an understanding that you can change your worlds for the better.  You just have to decide to.  In my own way–skillfully or not, blessed with wisdom, or dampened by vanity–I am trying to encourage you do this.  I believe we create the future first and foremost by what we believe is POSSIBLE.  I want to show you a better possible.  I want you to understand that what has come to be over the last fifty years can pass away over the next fifty, and that all the doubt and despair can give way to cheerfulness, optimism, green, safe parks, clean air, and prosperity.

We have much work to do.  Winston Churchill once promised nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat.  What I would submit to you is that we are paying NOW in blood.  We are paying NOW in toil and sweat.  And how many tears were shed over Trayvon, who seems never to have had a chance?

Some things we cannot control.  Our financial system is fundamentally unjust.

But what we can control is vastly greater than any of you conceive.  The beauty that we can build in the stone canyons of our largest cities is beyond anything any of us can dream.  And those beauties will be built, in time, if we simply feed our children peace, cheerfulness, a solid work ethic, and determination.

May God bless all of you and all those you love.  May he bless this nation, and all the nations of the world.  May peace come to reign, and may God inspire all of us to work together to build God’s kingdom on Earth.  May the majesties which the human race has within it come to full fruition.

Be well, and good night.

My Kum Nye practice has included a lot of breathwork lately.  What I have noticed is that I hold a lot of fear in my upper chest.  As I release it, it has been causing me confusion, in that I am almost needing to relearn how to breath.  I keep reminding myself that breathing is controlled by the brain, so it’s going to happen whether I am doing it right or not.  It is still an exceedingly odd feeling, but one that in the end will be liberating for me. I’m already seeing a marked decrease in negative emotions.

My intent is to be efficient.  I have a strong will, and have always had the ability to accomplish difficult things.  But I have always done so in a state of constant tension.  Tension is good.  It is needed sometimes.  But imagine trying to walk without ever relaxing either leg.  Make that emotional motion, and that has been my lifelong problem.

As I probe deeper, I am touching experiences from very early childhood, roughly 1-3 years old, that have very definitely been affecting me my entire life.  Now, as I see it, the trick is not to verbalize these things, and I’m not going to describe anything, but will simply say that I view my task as finding–as surgically as possible–the worst things that have ever been done to me, and reconnecting fully with that emotion as an adult with other options.  I looking for pain to make it go away.

I stated some time ago that courage is what fills the gap between confidence and necessity.  My goal is to never need courage, to have such control of my emotional world that I can muster whatever confidence I need whenever I need it.  Will power is what you need when you exceed previous limits.  It is best saved for those cases.  You can make it a lot farther without needing will power with a well organized mind and personality; one devoid of the need to avoid anything; one with consistently straight paths from A to Z.

In my time, I have met quite a few special operations types, and was struck in particular by some of the SEAL’s I met in San Diego.  A number of them seemed almost effeminate to me.  What I eventually decided is that they were simply very, very relaxed.  Swimmers in general are like that.  Endurance comes from not working more than necessary.

Why is it that we associate tension with masculinity?  I was watching a fat middle aged man with a cowboy hat on his dashboard get into a big Hummer the other day, and thinking that he probably acted tough all day, and is now going home to a slew of strong drinks.

Or John Wayne.  He is a host of movement dysfunctions.  He held an enormous amount of tension all over his body.  Now, I grew up watching John Wayne.  He was a hero, and I’m not running him down.  Nor am I criticizing those who do difficult things and carry what might be termed “movement scars” on their bodies.

What I AM suggesting is that we need a better model of toughness.  What I am suggesting is that part of being a complete human being is the ability to meditate deeply, to breath with complete openness and hope, and to purge oneself of all foolish vanities, all unnecessary struggles, and to be open completely to all the beauties of life.

In Yoga, the Proud Warrior pose opens the chest.  This cannot be an accident.  Do wars start in the muscles surrounding the clavicle?  It’s an odd, but perhaps pertinent question.

A small thing done well is usually more valuable than a large thing done poorly.

In the one case, the cause of order has been advanced.  In the latter case, the world has almost always been made worse.  One step forward beats a hundred miles of rapid retrogression.

That’s a promising tagline, eh?  Despair, depression and guilt.  Negativity: down, down, down.

Actually I feel quite good.  I am making progress.  I have found an absurdly simple means of processing anxiety, at least for me (more on that in a bit), and more importantly have reached (or perhaps re-reached, given my penchant both for meandering and forgetting) some important realization.

1. Fear is the portal both to anger and sadness.  Anger is an overreaction to fear–the fear of being hurt, of being disrespected, of being attacked; and sadness is a reaction of helplessness to fear: fear of change (the unknown), of being hurt.

Think about the process of mourning.  This is really a quite important point.  Mourning is a process not of leaving something behind–it is gone.  Rather, it is a process of recreating yourself in a positive way, given changed circumstances.  We feel sadness because we don’t know how to do this, if we can do this.

Consider losing someone you love.  Where that person consoled you, now you have to console yourself. 
Where that person gave you wisdom, or a shoulder to cry on, or encouragement, now you have to provide all that yourself.

There is no LOGICAL reason why you need other people at all.  But we are social animals.  We are filled with instincts and affections.  If we have not trained ourselves to be self sufficient emotionally–and I do believe this can be done–then we are afraid of what the future holds when something is changed in our lives.

Or take anger.  Anger gives you energy and a feeling of power.  But it is reckless.  Angry, are you stronger than you could be if you had learned to marshal all your physical power?  Faster?  No.   You have simply created a swell of energy that is so strong that it overwhelms your fear.  Angry people are fearful people.  This is the conclusion I have reached, and this after losing my temper repeatedly yesterday for stupid reasons. I just watched myself, and realized I was seeing my father’s cowardice in me, which is an emergent perception that was quite important.

2. If you are going to rebuild yourself, you must accept that there are times you won’t exist.  Does personality “exist”?  No: who I am varies in subtle but real ways constantly, throughout every day.  I have a body to tie it all together, but even that body is in a state of constant flux, and the material in every cell of the body is replaced periodically.

To go through a process of change, you cannot fully manage it.  Faith must be present, that the energies you have liberated will act in intelligent ways.  This is the so Internal Healer posited in Autogenics, Holotropic Breathwork, and presumably other disciplines.

My new system:

Do this thoracic mobilization: http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_30_second_mobility_cure

Then lay down on the ground, link your hands behind your neck, and stretch out your upper back.  If this is a place where you carry tension–and this is certainly not going to be true for all people, but I suspect will hold for quite a number, particularly those who self-identify as troubled–you will feel a shower of anxiety. Now, obviously don’t overstretch.  This is a stretch where you could hurt yourself, so be gentle.  Lean into this anxiety.  Realize it won’t kill you.  Hug your dog or S.O. if you need to afterwards.

Then (and you may want to wait until you have one, if you are going to follow my advice), pull out your EmWave2 and stick with it on the Medium level until you have 80-90% coherence.

You should spend some time on their website, and read some of their research.  It is quite interesting.  I am realizing how my heart really IS a separate “mind” from my brain.  It is a much more congenial place to locate my consciousness.

I am up to a number of other things I won’t get into here, but this seems like a good system. 

Need to run.  I hope this is useful for someone.