Floating

                                                        Floating

Our natural state for the first 9 months of our life is one of floating. We are composed of mostly water, so the state of floating is something that effects our mind/body organism. Dolphins, whales, otters, seals, etc. are mammals that have maintained a lifestyle and environment that is mostly composed of floating. As bipedal creatures, we are very far from coming to terms with the effects of gravity, and there is some kind of innate yearning for us to return to an environment that is free from the constraints and damage that gravity does to our mind and body. Even in our language we use "floating on a cloud" to denote ecstatic states verses "weighed down" to denote feeling heavy and burdened. One way to get a feel for the effects of zero gravity is the experience of floating in a highly salinated tank that distributes gravity equally throughout the body, so there is as close to zero gravity as you can have on earth. This article recounts one of my many experiences of floating on mind and body.

 

Coming out of a float I sit in front of a fish tank. It is a perfect bridge from floating, because I have been a fish floating in my own psyche.The rhythmic undulations of tropical neon are exactly what my mind/body wants and needs to see. This fish tank visual movie is what I have just experienced viscerally, so there’s not much distance or separation between me watching and being in the tank with the fish. Remember, the observer effects, and is effected by the observed.

I feel what the fish feel, wavering and weaving in their watery environment. It reminds me of swimming with dolphins and my awe at how one they are with being a mammal and living in water.

The sea anemones and psychedelic plants extend their tentacles; sensing, touching, in perfect harmony with their environment.

Natural State-Flowing/Floating

Our natural state is a flowing/floating wave like dynamic. Flowing and Floating are close cousins. We can translate flowing and floating in many ways such as a resilient, open, honest and willing attitude. Physically, we can stretch, get massage, practice Flow Yoga, Tai Chi, swimming, and of course floating.

Socially, to practice flowing and floating we can give and receive feedback. This is a hallmark of any healthy balanced system. We can practice ways to process emotion, to minimize resentments, reach out for help, spend time in contemplative practices such as meditation and prayer, and get lots of support so we don’t get bogged down.

Psychologically, “Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, this positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields (see his groundbreaking book “Flow”).”

After floating, sitting in front of a beautiful aquarium is a physical and sensory reflection of what I’ve just experienced for an hour or more. Like astronauts that need decompression support from being in 0 gravity, a floater needs to decompress and slowly come back into gravitational, upright orientation.

The left hemisphere of the brain begins to come back on line because the right hemisphere concerned with spatial, creative flow has been dominant while floating.

Falling Vs. Floating

Floating is very different from falling. This may seem an obvious fact, but the two states are often confused. All the orbiting planets, moons, stars, and satellites are falling, but it seems like our moon is gently floating in the night sky, and that the sun actually rises up from the ocean. So it is counter-intuitive to realize the moon is actually falling, as is the earth.

Walking is another example of falling vs. floating. One of the reasons it’s quite a feat for toddlers to learn to walk is that in order to take a step, they must fall into it. it takes a lot of trust, confidence and coordination to take a step, and then another. We have the phrase “falling down drunk” for a good reason. When one is intoxicated, one losses their ability to ‘fall’’ gracefully.

On the floating side of things, running moves us, biomechanically, towards a floating type of experience. Also dance can be seen as a movement toward experientially practicing floating. Just watch a video of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or Martha Graham to see floating in action. Or Michael “Air” Jordan floating from the tip of the key, suspended as if from cables until he stuffs the basket ball. Or the Russian ballerina Baryshnikov, taking flight in one of his magnificent leaps.

We wouldn’t necessarily expect ourselves to stuff a basketball like M.J., after being in a float tank, but we can expect to embody a level of floating that, if we intentionally practice, will transfer and translate into parts of our life. It could be the way we drive, the tone of our voice, and our level of fluidity and flexibility in all of our transactions.

Man Is Not A Machine!

                                                  Man Is Not A Machine!

 

                

 

                     “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.”  

                                                  Mary Shelley- Frankenstein

Human beings are organisms, not machines. Western science has pushed the idea of reality being purely material and mechanistic to a very dangerous and damaging extreme. Yes, there are mechanical aspects to being human, yes, humans can act like unconscious, pre-programed robots, but to reduce us to nothing but a machine is absurd and dehumanizing. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries “scientists” perpetrated vivisection on animals and attributed their cries as nothing but mechanical responses, much like the squeaking of a rusted wheel, this is because animals where thought not to have souls or emotions. They also formulated the idea that the universe is a giant clock like automaton that is designed, wound, and set into motion by a supremely intelligent God. This is the legacy that we are subject to in our culture, but prior to the mechanistic fundamentalism, there was a time in which soul, psyche, and spirit was incorporated into a “natural philosophy” of science. This is a science of nature as a living, vital, organism and is what Darwin made famous in his formulation of evolution, for he studied the organic organization and process of living systems and the processes in which organisms adapted to continuous change in order to survive and pass on better chances of survival to their offspring.

Living organisms have emergent properties that are creative and nested in ecosystems of interpenetrating relationship. But really everything in the universe is interpenetrating relational systems, from electrons and quarks all the way up to solar systems and galaxies, there is nothing that is purely isolated constituent parts that don't co-exist with other more complex parts and systems.

Let’s examine the difference between machines and organisms; a machine is something that is designed, built, and managed by an intelligent being for a purpose, a chimp forming twigs to fit neatly into ant holes is designing, crafting and using a machine or a tool toward a specific purpose, or a software engineer envisions a program that will help you keep track of your caloric intake and expenditure, so we can see a machine is an apparatus consisting of interrelated parts with separate functions, used in the performance of some kind of work.

Organisms, on the other hand, are capable of some degree of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development as well as homeostasis. The Greek and Latin derivation of words having org in them are related in meaning to “serving as instruments”, or “parts that make up an integral whole.” So, an organism is something that is alive, and made of constituent parts that work instrumentally toward wholeness, in biology, we would say survival, or the continuity of life. Other org words would include; organ, organic, and organized. An organism is self-organized, whereas a machine is organized by something or someone else, it does what it is told…usually.

Why is this distinction important? It is because we live in a culture that has become incredibly mechanistic to the point that we are reducing human beings, and human interaction to machine like components, digital bits of information that streams across our radar 24/7. We stay on information/communication overload and are exposed to a vast array of mechanical frequencies that entrain our brain toward mechanical responses. Think of the coke and popcorn, hyper- sensuous commercial at the movie theater and tell me we're not all salivating Pavlovian dogs! All this has the tendency to induce mechanical, automatic responses verses organic, creative and critically intelligent expressions of ourselves as living, vital beings connected in the web of life.

At the beach recently, I had my second ecstatic experience of swimming with dolphins. These beings are incredibly intelligent and at one with their watery environment, they are in a continuous spontaneous delight with themselves and others in proximity to them, they just love to play! Their joy, playfulness, mischievousness and communion with their environment is contagious, one cannot help but feel REALLY good around them! In addition to their sonar abilities to perceive their environment through emitted and received frequencies, they are also able to transmit energetic frequencies of love and happiness through their high pitched language. It is truly a close encounter of the extraordinary kind!

At the beach, I had an epiphany that nature is life, it’s not like life it IS life. So when I’m walking on the beach and I reach a place where I’m sinking into the water due to a sand bank created by the rapidly rising tide, this is my life right now, me and sand and water and sinking, it’s not an analogy or an abstraction, it is a moment in contact with nature in which I have to take action and choose wisely or else my life will be threatened. This is one of 100’s of examples of why man is an organism embedded in nature and not a machine separate from nature. Other examples include the fact that a human organism is made up of about 10 trillion cells, but only 1 in 10 is actually, well, human. The other cells are bacteria, viruses, and other types of microbes that we have co-evolved with and must now co-exist. Another example of organismic functioning is the fact that every 7 years every cell in our body dies and is recreated, everything from our liver, heart, brain... everything! How is this possible? It is a mystery, but I assure you it is not mechanical! I believe it has to do with consciousness itself, but that's another story...

I am making a commute for a new job in which I drive 6 miles down a curving mountain with the sun in its early rise. The light is a radiant golden hue that suffuses all my senses with a thick and palpable life energy, I weave through a curve in which the sun dissipates and then reappears through the fall cathedral of colored leaves and the colors are psychedelic, I understand clearly why people have worshiped the Sun as the life giving and sustaining orb that must be revered and seduced into rising every day for life to continue. All this is a celebration of ourselves as living, breathing, thinking, loving, and creative beings….not machines!

The Wasteland-Part II

                                                          The Wasteland-Part II

 

      

 

 

                                                              "Resistance is futile."

 

 

                        "That awkward moment when you realize you have no plans for where you're going in life, yet you know exactly what you are going to do in a Zombie apocalypse."

The direction of this writing is the opposite of apocalyptic, which is intentional, proactive, and democratic empowerment. That's why my blog is called Rude Awakening, it is a call to rise from our stuporous, slumbering, trance and take charge of our lives. In order to be freed from prison one must first recognize that one is enslaved, and of course, the easiest way to imprison people is to make them think they are free.

Recent events with the NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden revealed that our government, in cooperation with other governments, collects virtually all transmissions of ANY kind by ANY means. This means that every email, facebook post, google search, tweet, skype, cell phone call, purchase with credit card, or transportation by any means of transit, is captured and is subject to “review/analysis” at any time now or in the future, for pretty much any reason or lack of reason, by the powers that be, which include our government and/or corporate entities. Julian Assange, the publicist of Wiki-leaks, is another whistle blower, who published documents of our governments nefarious deeds, and like Snowden, is charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, which should tell you how up to date and applicable these charges are.

If we extend modern technologic direction to it's obvious conclusions, we can envision, in a not so science fictiony way, that we will soon have “internal” technology that “co-operates” with our own brains, senses, and nervous system. We will literally be “plugged in” to a global neural net in which we will have access to everything, as well as everything and everyone having access to us. There will be one operating system that manages all transactions, be it social, business, informational, economic, personal, public or private. There will be no difference between private and public because; what's good for the individual, is good for the collective and vice verse. There will be an age of “transparency and accountability” unlike anything we've imagined, because there will be cameras embedded everywhere, above, below, surface level, and everything anyone says or does will be documented.

 

There will be a requirement to document and report everything you do under the guise that “secrets are lies,” and “sharing is caring.” Everyone will have an equal right to all knowledge, and if I try and deprive someone of knowing something, it will be seen as stealing. Any attempt of privacy will be seen as a kind of theft, because why would someone try to hide something if they were acting with integrity? All politicians will be videoed 24/7 so there will be no “behind closed door meetings” in which surreptitious agendas are transacted.

There will be sensors in our homes that will scan all our food, clothing, entertainment, etc. and automatically order what it deems we are wanting or running low on. All our medical information will be in the public domain, and there will be no laws of discrimination needed, because all access and use of people's medical history will be deemed necessary for specific, logistical hiring, firing, or moving people to get the care or the job that is appropriate based on their file. People will be pressured to act in the most healthy manner, because their every meal and move will be recorded and publicly posted to pressure them into making healthy choices.

Dating and mating will be fun and painless. Every preference, turn on, turn off, sexual fantasy/orientation, likes/dislikes of everyone will be known and public so matching will purely be a matter of algorithmic correlations of the perfect mate.

If this all sounds too good to be true, it is, it is a dystopic nightmare that is steadily being pulled over our heads like one being abducted to another planet, we are being subsumed and assimilated with or without our consent, into a great whale of technopoly that will digest and incorporate our bodies and minds into it's being not unlike the Borg!

 

                

The Wasteland-Part I

                                                  The Wasteland-Part I

 

 

 

                         

“There wasn't any limit, no boundary at all, to the future, and it would be so a man wouldn't have room to store his happiness.”

 

                                                                                  John Steinbeck (East Of Eden)

            We are living in a time of autoimmune self- consumption, that epitomizes the fall of civilizations, it is a time of hubris, of unrestrained indulgence, exploitation, density, and separation into “convenient,” compartmentalized fragmentation. Diseases such as AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, cancer, lupus, arthritis, etc. are diseases in which the body's own protective system turns on itself. Autoimmune diseases are among the number one leading causes of death among women in all age groups up to 65 years, these are one of many symptoms related to the degradation of Feminine values.

The correlate of autoimmune disease on a psychosocial level, is our addiction to information, stimulation, and technology. We are consuming ourselves with information overload, mindless/meaningless communication, and technologic systems, gadgets, fields, and storage that we have become enslaved to that must be fed, not unlike sacrifices to ancient Gods. We see the apocalyptic fears and visions played out constantly in art and film; Zombies, climate catastrophe, and last survivors at end of civilization scenarios are erupting from the collective consciousness screaming for our attention and care.

This is a state of culture and a state of mind Neil Postman calls Technopoly, and it can be seen as a breakdown in normal cultural defenses, which like the body's immunity, are in place to provide balance and protection, but when they become pathologic, actually attack what they are supposed to protect. Postman writes; “Technopoly flourishes when the defenses against information breakdown.”

Technology always increases information, which strains existing control mechanisms to cope with new information, the inability to control the supply, dissemination, storage and consumption of information results in a lose of meaning, beliefs, values, and all other social norms that constitute social order and culture in general. This is  cancer on a psychosocial level, and what we are doing is throwing more and more information and technologic “solutions” to try and deal with the problems created by techno-info glut.

Everyone has had the experience of TMI, too many emails, texts, facebook posts, instagrams, etc. We've all said at some point; “I need a break from news, social media, technology, cell phones, etc!!” But what we're not realizing on a broader sociologic level, is that no one needs the level of contact, communication, information, entertainment, socializing, and stimulation that we consume and transmit daily. All of this supposed “need” has been manufactured, engineered and induced into our individual and collective psyche by those whose job it is to keep us addicted. Just like our food, we are consuming empty calories of psychic salt, sugar, and fat that only keeps us wanting MORE!!

Just as consuming empty calories leaves us feeling empty and malnourished physically, so too are we feeling spiritually, soulfully, and psychologically empty, without meaning and purpose, wandering aimlessly to the next sound bite or facebook post, looking for something that will fill the void.

As T.S. Elliot prophesized in his post WWI work The Wasteland, which follows The Grail legend and the wounded Fisher King, modern and post-modern man has become a wandering, homeless nomad in search of meaning, healing, and balance. We will not cure our dis-eases by the same means which created them!