40th Float.

I started today off with a float before my night shift and was lucky enough to end my shift with my 40th Float at Float House and I experienced another intensely 'present' audio float.


It started off as I went through my mental clutter and as each thought emerged I fed it into the flame of a candle, which is a technique called The Flame and the Void that I learned while reading Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series and have found to be extremely using when meditating and within the tank.

Then I let go of my body and it was highly emotive to start off and I was overcome with waves of what I can only describe as bliss and compassion flowed around and through me as I listened to Time and Space. I could feel the music in my body and each note swept through me and caused a feeling similar to chills going down my spine and into my extremities through my nerves but instead of that creepy chills it was accompanied  with a strong positive emotion.

I Noticed that I was able to create waves of yellowish red energy of enclosing patterns by slowly closing and opening my eyes. 
This proceeded to then morph into a white and black pattern similar to the swirling designs seen often in porcelain.Then silence occurred and I became aware again of my breathing and started to practice the breathwork technique of in through my right nostril and out through the left.

Then Surface of the Sun came on it was an exhilarating sensation as I focused on the subtleties of the background sound effects of his heart beat and breath underneath the building piano and orchestra. Again, waves of bliss surged through me along with the notes and surges of the music.




When Pangaea started I began to reflect on how during all of the above emotional sensations that I just went through, I had very faint and sporadic visuals that didn't really focus upon my visual cortex. I tried using my gaze manipulation tricks with little result. I do feel that when I float after having taken my Concerta it does inhibit the visual and dream states that I do have when I float before my meds. But yet, this float was more emotionally focused. Is there a connection? Or is this just another variety of float? More must be read and experienced to find out.


It is these kind of differences that I have been noticing to be occurring within my own cognitive processes and consciousness while using the float tank and I am become more and more interested in trying to find out the relation to my own neurochemistry and endocrinology is definitely something I would lobe to pursue for a masters thesis.


When pink Floyd came on I could barely hear it so I just got out. 50 minute float felt like 2 hours of hiking my Mindscape and I as I exited the tank with laughter and a massive smile on my face.

Seriously. This can't be good for anyone...

So I just posted this an hour ago on r/vancouver in hopes of getting my stolen iPhone 4 back.

http://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/zn194/debt_ridden_student_had_iphone_stolen_while/

Then while commenting back and listening to new music I have become obsessed with.

I decided to check my bank accounts.


WTF is THAT!
Talk about bad luck. Thank the Great Magnet for having friends and loved ones that can do a loaner! 

Choking: A love/hate relationship for fans.

After catching the last 10 minutes of the Canuks vs, Bruins. I thought these notes from a paper on choking, the yips, and panicking might help sooth things over.


Clark, T.P., Tofler, I. R., & Lardon, M.T. (2005) The sport psychiatrist and golf. Clinics in Sports Medicine. 24(4), 959-971.

Purpose: The authors review pre-performance routine and methods for optimizing focus, and discuss the science behind being "in the zone." The authors also discuss how acute performance failure, or "choking," is best understood as being three separate disorders.
Method: Golf is like “mental chess,” and that the mental component is possibly the toughest part of playing golf. The mental chess of golf is the challenge of how well a player focuses on the shot at hand, rather than being taken off-task by thoughts, emotions, or poorly controlled physiological arousal.
1. Neuroelectric measures, such as EEG and ERP techniques, have findings that suggest that the same attentional mechanisms are affected by hypnosis and dissociation.
2. EEG showing hemispheric operational control in professional golfers.
Results: Golf is uniquely challenging for excessive down time leads to obsessive thinking and distraction, as well as amplification of pre-existing negative self perceptions, performance anxiety, panic, and affective over arousal.
3. Sport psychiatrist can help the athlete interrupt ironic processes by first recognizing when they occur, and then developing strategies to lessen cognitive and emotional overload. Prompt and effective management allows the golfer to attend to the task of preparing to hit his next shot.
4. Researchers at UCSD  and Scripps Research Institute hypothesized that the zone state may be a manifestation of an adaptive dissociation, and that similarities exist between the zone, hypnosis, and dissociation. They characterized the athletic zone as having four essential components: (1) enhanced attentional focus, (2) time slowing, (3) sense of detachment, and (4) super-normal performance.
5. Three distinct forms of performance failure:

• Panicking; when the mind goes blank, and the player relies on instinctive behaviors and loses the ability to think about what steps are needed to attain the goal/objective.
• Chocking; not about reversion to instinct but rather about the loss of instinct or the loss of previously mastered motor programs. Explicit monitoring interrupts the implicit motor execution programs.
• The "yips"; the yips is often referred to as a focal dystonia. Dystonia is characterized as a paroxysmal movement disorder in which an unwanted muscle contraction, or twitch, leads to an involuntary movement. Symptoms of the yips, such as jerks during execution of shots, often result in miss-hits.

Importance: Athletic zone states may be a subset of flow phenomena and might be understood by looking at models of dissociation and hypnosis. Authors also gave a brief summary of treatments for performance failure. 

Aztec Unconscious and Synchronicity Explored

I came across the following doodle amongst my notes as I cleared out a drawer. It was done by a friend and it took me a moment to recollect when exactly he had drawn it. I soon realized it was done during a cram session for a previous course on the Aztec and we were watching the documentary (which, I have learned within the Peep Diaries that a Canadian made the 1st documentary and another fellow Canuck coined the term) Blood and Flowers - In Search of the Aztecs.

What struck me about it was the interesting idea that I read this morning by Jung on defining the features of synchronicity. His definition is as follows, "Synchronicity designates the parallelism of time and meaning between psychic and psychological physical events, which scientific knowledge so far has been unable to reduce to a common principle."  He admits how his term explain nothing, but this now allows for the idea that those chance happenings we experience are real and the enticement of them dwells within the waiting for the other shoe to hit. The when of the matter is what creates that aura of the unknown and mystical. Coincidences that I have perceived across time baffle me the most.  When it's the day after day similar theme within those chance happenings.

Getting back to the drawing. It was the collective imagery of the face within a face and the specific animals that he choose to use, which obviously was highly influenced by the documentary and his mood. The affective state is where I am curious as these are the inclinations that Jung was getting at in his discourse. By mentioning the JB Rhine psi experiments on predicting cards and such he points out how the affective state was correlated to the mood of the subjects. "An initial mood of faith and optimism makes for good results. Skepticism and resistance the opposite effect, that is, they create an unfavorable disposition."

That statement is at the heart of all paranormal research, hypnosis, altered states of consciousness, and even conventional therapy treatments.  Set and setting are the vitals keys to varying the viewpoint of one's own and others reality tunnel. Prehistoric shamans did this very often and many religions and nationalists today use these features to aid in  persuasion.  It is why all sides of the ideological landscape use the same, or similar, methods but for opposite goals, the tools that work are always utilized.

Some quick examples that come to mind on the influence of set and setting during emotional interactions are; Khalid Abdul Muhammad holding a political debate on the site of the Amadou Diallo shooting, the scarab beetles appearance during one of Jung's therapy sessions, rituals of isolation like the Temptation of Christ or the Xhosa peoples custom of male circumcision, the use of "Plant Teachers" as Cognitive Tools, and even maybe the glitzed up magic antics of Criss Angel.

Jung groups such synchronistic phenomena into three categories:

1. The coincidence of a psychic state in the observer with a simultaneous, objective, external event that corresponds to the psychic state or content (e.g., the scarab), where there is no evidence of a causal connection between the psychic state and the external event, and where, considering the psychic relativity of space and time, such a connection is not even conceivable.
2. The coincidence of a psychic state with a corresponding (more or less simultaneous) external event taking place outside the observer's field of perception, i.e., at a distance, and only verifiable afterward (e.g., the Stockholm fire).
3. The coincidence of a psychic state with a corresponding, not yet existent future event that is distant in time and can likewise only be verified afterward.

The first category is what I believe would be most relevant to the rediscovery of the drawn image and my day's readings and assignments.  There still remains in my mind though as to whether or not it was not simply due to the affective state of my mind in the morning and the priming features of reading Jung's article. Either way I was happy with the events.

Article:

Jung, Carl Gustav

1973, Appendix: On Synchronicity. In Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, translated by R. F. C. Hull, pp. 104-115. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.

Peepers, Peepers, Where Did You Get Those Peepers?

I've started reading the book The Peep Diaries: How we're learning to love watching ourselves and our neighbors by Hal Niedzviecki and was taken aback by it and while reading it on the bus yesterday I could not help but realize that even though I was surround by people I was oblivious to them. My whole focus was reading about John Egly and Trading Spouse with the distorted presentational tactics that the TV producers use to make the show. The funniest thing during the ride was that I got a text from the Lady and made a comment about Trading Spouses. Later that night we chatted about how in the UK the whole concept of the average joe was more geared towards families of chavs and deadbeats moms.

The gripping part of the Peep Diaries that has grabbed my attention is that the book is full of subtle tips and tricks to use while creating and maintaining the online persona that is blogging, forums, social networks. These all form Peep Culture. I loved how he writes that the whole transition of the word peep has been transferred out of the negative connotations and becomes a regular form of pop culture.  Trolling craigslist personal ads are always great for a few minutes of laughs and WTF!'s.

That being said. I've got a new office setup at home and between school and work I'm going to attempt to transition the way in which I participate in this Peep Culture.

A Sunday Afternoon Chatting With Some Mormons.

Welcome to Mormon.org chat.

A representative will be with you shortly.

Me: Hello!?!

Agent [Alison] is ready to assist you.

Alison: hi

Alison: this is Alison and Stephanie

Alison: how are you today?

Agent [stephanie] has joined the chat.

Me: Ahoy ahoy. I'm not to shabby. How about yourselves?

stephanie: We are doing well thank you.

stephanie: What has prompted you to visit our site today?

Me: No worries. I had this long debating chat with one of your fellow members the other week on my front porch the other week and found him quite knowledge. Was just looking into further information.

Alison: what interested you in what was said?

Me: Ahh well, we started off with topics about the future of man and our souls.

Alison: were you able to learn about Joseph Smith?

Me: I'm currently a smart man and know my philosophy of worlded old dead bearded white guys, some other fellows as well. We did mention Old Joe, but I was interested the dichotomy between the Catholic Church's view of Jesus' (in which I was raised) and that of Joesph's.

Alison: I am not familiar with that word, sorry

Me: You could always just Google the word you didn't know. It

Me: is amazing what the vast net can do.

Me: What confused me the most about the Mormon viewpoint was the collectiveness of your communities. What word was that?

stephanie: congregations?

stephanie: wards?

Me: Wards.

Me: What are they?

stephanie: A ward designed geographically.

stephanie: Based on where you live you go at a certain time to a certain building.

Me: So wards are where the locale people meet up to praise the Lord? Does this happen on Sundays?

stephanie: Yes.

Me: Cool, cause Sundays work best for me.

Me: Do I have to sign any contracts for joining up?

Me: The guy (Mark) was a little shy about the involvement. Can I just show up and eat the waffer and be good and right with Jesus?

Alison: anyone is welcome to come to church on sunday

Alison: to become a member of the Church it is important to learn about the beliefs of the church and find out for ourselves if it is true

Me: Excellent! So what's the Pearl of Great Price all about?

stephanie: The Pearl of Great Price is ancient records translated by Jsoeph Smith.

Me: and it talks about what?

stephanie: It talks more about our purpose in life and the Plan that God created for us.

Alison: do you ever wonder what God's plan is for your life?

Me: Sorry for the delay.

Me: I do wonder that quite often.

Me: Where am I going?

Me: What am I here to do?

Me: How is it all connected?

Me: What's been up with Mel Gibson lately?

Me: Those types of things.

stephanie: We learn through the scriptures and a living prophet that God has a plan for us.

stephanie: A book that we read called the Book of Mormon helps us better understand really what our purpose is here.

Me: Tidy. Who's the living prophet?

Alison: that we have been given time on the earth to live and then prepare to meet God

Alison: our living prophet today is Thomas Monson

Alison: and he is God's mouthpiece on the earth today

Alison: have you read from the Book of Mormon before?

Me: Man that guy seems cool. The Boy Scouts gave him a Silver Buffalo! And he was friends with Ronald Regan. That dude was so awesome back in the day. Don't you think?

Me: I haven't read the Book of Mormon yet, it hasn't been on any of my course reading lists.

Me: Is it kinda like The Good Book 3.0?

Alison: it is another testament of Jesus Christ

Alison: recorded by prophets anciently for us to read today

Alison: we would love to be able to share more with you about the Book of Mormon at another time, over the phone

Alison: would you like to learn more?

Me: Steller! Must be like the Dead Sea Scrolls. I'd love to learn more too! I never liked Mark or Luke's take on the bearded one. They made him all sissy like. Don't you think? Like Jesus just lost his urges to be human.

stephanie: What time zone are you in?

Me: GMT -08:00

stephanie: What is a good number to reach you at?

Me: Well I am available to chat for lengths of time mostly between 17:30 to 03:00 at 604-681-9121 [The Church of Scientology Vancouver]. Should I read up on some Pearly Wisdom before you call so I am prepared to find out about your ideas and ways?

Alison: if we can get your email we can send you something to look at before we talk again?

Alison: what time is it right now for you?

Me: 17:28

Me: My email is gravitons_rule_my_world@hotmail.com

Me: I know it's a silly email but I've had it since high school.

stephanie: It is 6:32pm here. Does tomorrow at 7pm your time work?

Me: It might let me check my planner. One second please.

Alison: does that time work?

Me: Ok, 19:00 works for me. Just ask the Receptionist to forward you to ext. 187. Are you sure that by looking more into the Mormon Ideologies that I was be able to help friends, family and strangers in many situations and circumstances: questions or problems in relationships, anxiety, tutoring a child in his or her learning skills, teenage stress, self-esteem, helping a family member overcome drug or alcohol dependency, guiding a criminally inclined adolescent back on the road of self-respect and honesty, resolving a dispute at work or at home, helping a friend or associate better organize his life or handle signs of stress?

Alison: we believe that the gospel can help us in any circumstances that we go through

Alison: can we also ask how old you are?

Me: Wiked Cool Ally! That's just what I need to hear. My biological form is 26 but I feel that my celestial soul is 2.5 billion years old, my mammalian soul is quite young 1.2 million years old and as for my reptilian soul, I feel that it is so intertwined with the multiverse that it cannot be calculated. But mainly I'm 26 according to my driver's license.

Alison: okay Farlowe, we will send an email with something to look at and we look forward to speaking with you tomorr

Alison: tomorrow

Me: Tidy. Thanks again Alison and Stephanie. Stay gold until Sol implodes is a fiery flash of nuclear power and wipes the solar system clean.

stephanie: Thank you for your time Farlowe.

Me: No No. Really. Thank You Both.

Me: Thank you kindly, sweetly, and deeply.

Alison: of course

Me: Before I go could you help me out with one quick question?

Me: What's been up with Mel Gibson lately?

stephanie: Farlowe we are not sure.

stephanie: As missionaries we devote our time to sharing this unique message for 18 months.

Me: Understood. Was a tough question. Don't you still surf the net and shit? And I thought a year had only 12 months.

stephanie: We serve for a year and a half.

Me: Heavy. Okie dokie. I got to go, my buddies just arrived and we got some stoned Monopoly to play. I really like earning fancy colored bills in big piles. Must be a Canadian thing I Think.

stephanie: Thank you for allowing us to share this with you.

stephanie: Bye.

Agent [stephanie] has left the chat.

The chat session has ended.

Me: Farlowe Out!