First idea, which is a big one. Yesterday, I got up, did my stretching, did my lacrosse balls . . .
[I need to do another post on them–hell, I may not: get 3 lacrosse balls, duct tape two together, and the smallest soccer ball you can find. Use the single lacrosse ball on your traps, by leaning into the ball on a wall until it hurts. Hold until it gets soft. Repeat in another tight spot. Do it on your shoulders, lats, chest (theres a spot just under your collar bone that will be interesting), your feet, your hips. Then lay on it, with no weight at first, then after a few sessions whatever you can stand–I use a 40 lb. weight vest–and just find the tender spots, and stay with it till it gets soft. The double ball you put on your spine, starting in your lower back. Do a crunch of sorts, or whatever it takes to get weight on it. Do many positions, and work your way up your spine. Use the soccer ball for your hip flexors and upper thigh. Doing this work, you will likely notice many memories and images popping up spontaneously. I suspect that most people keep tension in some spots for years, even decades, and releasing it causes perhaps not accurate memories, but ones evocative of something long ago].
. . .then my Kum Nye exercises (I like to scent the room with rose essential oil. Yes, I am heterosexual, decidedly so. No, I do not have a satchel or a hairdresser.). I was going to do some pushups and pilates, but decided to lay down again. Some inner voice told me to. As I lay sleeping/dozing, it hit me that there is a part of our brains which cannot tell the difference between TV and reality, with the result that many of us treat the real world, unconsciously, as a somewhat inferior version of TV. This spot is right in the middle of our existence.
The importance of this, I realized, is that existence is interactive, whereas artificial reality is not. I realized this driving into a sunrise, and realized that for perhaps the first time ever I felt a PART of the scene in front of me. It was not external to me. The sun saw me even as I saw it, in some weird way. We were connected. I was a part of the context in a deep way of everything in front of me, in much the same way we are told Native Americans and other cultures looked at reality. Those trees, those clouds: they are not fully “out there”.
TV dulls this. Even books dull this. Both act as intermediaries to experience. Both give out, but do not return. And I think living in either kills or numbs some part of our spirit.
Second point: there is a violence in abstraction. I have said this before, but as I contemplate it, reason itself consists in removing oneself from “flows” like water. It consists in trying (I say “it”, and have in mind common sense–but in my view flawed–conceptions as iterated in modern scientism and socialism) to make all the currents of life stop, so they can be catalogued and analyzed. It is like drying the ocean to see what is in it.
This is the emotional reaction Scientistic apostles have to RESEARCH, concrete empirical data that suggest the primacy of connection. of flow, and the illusory nature of object-hood. It destroys their whole conceit.
It is sometimes logical to be illogical. Specifically, what I have in mind is the NEED for emotional release, to sometimes allow oneself to completely lose control in whatever promptings are suggested in an ecstatic trance. We have to balance the so-called Apollonian with the Dionysian. I have said the before, but never seen it so clearly. Quite literally, an overabundance of detachment leads to attachment. Releasing emotional barriers is CONDUCIVE to the effective use of reason, and not at all an impediment to it.
I have in mind, of course, AT LEAST Grof Holotropic Breathwork, which is a time and space delimited experience that facilitates the eruption of whatever is truly deeply on your mind. You can choose to attend. You can choose to start, choose to stop. You can attend once, or many times. It is up to you. But the experience is easy to induce, and should in my view become an integral part of any future global culture.
On that note, I did want to note that I have been searching for an alternative word to anarchy, since as all self proclaimed anarchists will tell you, they don’t want chaos. I am of course sympathetic to the aim, even if most of them have done something close to no thinking as to how to bring it about. To my mind, it is self evident that as the morality of a group or nation improves, the need for governance decreases. So the logical task is to prevent the fucking bastards in the Academy and Wall Street from ruining our planet, while working to build increased moral virtue across the land.
Then I realized I already have the word: Telearchy. That will work for a group of people of any size who have a shared goal, which I have repeatedly suggested ought to be qualitative joy, although eudaimonia would work well as well.
Finally, since I have drinking to do and just realized my brain is full, I wanted to comment on the importance of curiosity. As I realized yesterday, the HABIT of being interested is in itself something which will keep anyone, no matter their metaphysics or quality of their philosophy, moving forward. Curiosity is reaching out to the world, touching it, interacting with it. And as I noted several (some number) posts ago, when we reach out to the world through the sensations of interest and pleasure, we are reaching out to God through His creation.
If you eat a good meal and truly savor it with curiosity and attention, that is worship, in my view. And it doesn’t need to be a simple meal. Why not a great meal? But my point is that a truly curious person, someone truly interacting with the whole of their perceptual being with their world, would also be able to enjoy a simple meal too. I just want to note that I don’t think God has any desire to deny us pleasure on this earth, if we enjoy it with gratitude.
I will add as well that this whole concept of “mindfulness” works in concept, but it has never worked in reality for me. You know, the whole “wash the dishes mindfully, etc.” I can’t do it. What I CAN do is enjoy the work, and in particular enjoy doing the work well and efficiently. But there is nothing wrong with getting a broom that feels good in your hands, or selecting a very pleasant dish soap, or tableware you enjoy looking at, etc.
That is about half of what went on in my head today. I just can’t contemplate the rest right now. It will appear eventually, unless it doesn’t.
Whiskey BOUND!!! (but not hell-bent, if anyone was asking).