addendum 2:  I don't know if there's any connection between my dreams and efforts to generate compassion, but in a strange turn-around I had a full night sleep with positive feel-good dreams. That's strange because this is insomnia recovery sleep, which should be dead sleep with no dream recollection.

The two dreams I remembered were love related, both involved women I can't identify and were probably just archetypes; one or both may have been K-pop idols as the archetypes.

One was in a college dorm room-like setting, clean (in contrast to recent dream patterns) and there were other people there. I was lying in a bed when a woman crawled in basically saying she had gotten hints that I had feelings for her and she knew what her feelings were for me and she wanted to make things clear. That's it.

The other dream was like a date in an urban setting, a feel like Philadelphia, and the feelings were more ambiguous. We were on a date, buying tickets for something but she insisting on going dutch and not allowing me to cover, so there was no feeling of commitment or that she even liked me. It's just that it was a date.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I have no desire for love or to have or pursue any "love interest". Dreams involving love I think are more a product of a basic human desire to be loved. I imagine on a basic level there is not a human being, however self-hating or cynical but without psychopathic pathologies, that doesn't mind being loved.

And I'm not that self-hating or cynical. It's just that on a practical level, it's not something I desire nor something I'd pursue or succumb to as an attachment. I accept and don't reject that love is a very important and powerful human component, including on spiritual and psychological levels.

So if there's a subconscious, psychological battle going on regarding compassion and manifesting in my dreams, I'd say my mind is fairly equivocal and flexible. Dreams can be hostile or they can be pleasant; either can manifest from trying to engage compassion. And considering my psychology, that makes perfect sense.

About cultivating compassion, the only interaction I have with other people is when I'm out and about in public. The only direct contact I have with people is when ordering food or buying something at a convenient store.

I don't have friends, I don't work, I only know one person in Taipei with whom I meet about three or four times per year for coffee or a hike. I don't have to deal with any interpersonal conflicts at all.

Virtually all my interactions with other people are indirect and abstract. When I'm out and about in public, I'm always listening to music (I turn it off when I interact directly with people). It is with these people that I gauge my ability to cultivate compassion.

What does it mean to cultivate compassion? First of all, it doesn't come naturally for me. I'm quick to judge (which is bad) and quick to be critical (which is bad). Since it's not natural, it's not visceral but more intellectual.

But that's not even right. When I say it doesn't come naturally for me, that's the result of current situation and experience and the cynicism that comes with experience. I look at my behavior and attitudes when I was younger, and I think it's fair to say I had a natural compassion towards people. I even used to consider myself a romantic, just to emphasize how much I've changed.

In my current situation, cultivating compassion is to look inside myself and locate and examine the energies of how I feel towards other people, and bending them towards the positive. To not be hostile, to want non-harm towards other people; to not be an agent of negativity in other people's interactions.

I've found that cultivating compassion is also key towards loosening my grip on my own ego and sense of the importance of myself. It's kind of embarrassing noting that this is something I struggle with when for many people it's natural and obvious.

Very important to the cultivation of compassion is recognizing emotions as energies within our bodies. That's also part of mindfulness training. When you feel an emotion, locate and identify it as an internal energy that is just as real as heartbeats, blood flowing and breathing in and out.

Once you do that, you can put a rein on emotions and not let them control behavior. It's no longer a matter of feeling anger or any emotion and accepting the emotion for what it feels like and reacting no matter how irrationally.

When you recognize it as energy, you can think of it as E. As in the equivalent of mass times the speed of light squared. How emotions fit in with Einstein's equation may make no sense, and that's fine. It kinda doesn't. But if you can visualize emotions as energy and abstractly consider it against E=mc², then you can start processing it as a physical property of the universe, as something controllable and not so mysterious.

According to the equation, a small amount of mass transferred into energy yields a huge amount of energy. So thinking of emotions as energy, that can be looked upon as a huge amount of energy. None of this to be taken literally, just to think about.

I went down to Kaohsiung on Monday to visit my cousin Audrey.

I was aware even before this visit that I've been understating her. Our relationship while I've been in Taiwan has been muted at best. But when I was trying to figure out what happened at the beginning of October, I did note that phone call to her, right before she left for the U.S.

I think she might be just as important in regard to what happened as what I mentioned in the previous post. I think what I experienced may be closely tied with what Audrey just went through. I don't think I did or can convey what a big deal she has been going through with her husband and deciding to leave the country.

When we met for dinner at the end of October, just after she came back from three weeks in the States, I held back mentioning this to her, but finally decided it was OK and told her that if it were three weeks earlier, I probably wouldn't have wanted to meet.

I told her about the food thing and my general just not wanting to do anything. I had noticed that she only told me about the ordeal after it was over, so maybe she didn't want me to have anything to do with it and so I probably would have weighed that against any request to meet up.

But when I mentioned that we probably couldn't have that meeting three weeks earlier, she also said she probably couldn't have met 3-4 weeks earlier. The point at which she called me to tell me what was happening was really just right after she had an awakening, before which she was something of a nervous wreck and had been for months.

I'm not suggesting anything directly relational happened between us metaphysically. It's more what I mentioned before about being "entangled", and it's more like the concept of entangled particles in quantum physics; a "spooky", seemingly impossible concept that science has accepted as factually real in the quantum realm.

My very basic understanding is that particles that are "entangled" simultaneously exhibit corresponding properties no matter where they are. They can be across the universe from each other, but when a certain property is exhibited in one particle, a certain (other) corresponding property is simultaneously exhibited or known about the other particle.

This flies in the face of classical physics because it suggests information is traveling faster than the speed of light. Despite this paradox, entanglement is an accepted property of quantum mechanics.

It's not like we have some deep meaningful connection. But like entangled particles, we affect each other across space, like what she said, "when I learn, you learn".

I still don't want to make a big deal about it. The distance between us has grown proportionally with any closeness.

We don't want or need anything from each other. But the big change that happened in early October I might call a little bit of a big thing. If so, Audrey should be mentioned. I can never rule out that she's relevant to my journey.

Einstein was skeptical about quantum mechanics to his death. He didn't refute it or describe it as bad physics; the mathematics were meticulous and experimentally proven accurate. But he felt they were incomplete.

Quantum mechanics was very good at what it was describing, but it was limited. Its results were so bizarre and counter-intuitive that something must have been missing in its description of reality. On the other hand, Einstein must have realized that leveling such a description of quantum mechanics opened up his theories of relativity to the same accusation.

If he couldn't refute quantum mechanics, then his theories of relativity were also incomplete and did not truly or fully describe reality. And that, I suppose, is why he pursued a theory of everything, merging quantum mechanics and relativity to his death.

My thinking and my bias is that even if a theory of everything is reached, perhaps the ultimate triumph of scientific process and theory, I still look at science with Einstein's own suspicious eye. It's very good at what it's describing, but it is successful because it limits itself.

Quantum mechanics works fine in the atomic realm, and as long as it limits itself to the realm of the very small, it's primo. Same with relativity; as long as it limits itself to the realm of the very large, the science is irrefutable.

But to me, I wonder if this explaining the realm of the very small and the realm of the very large, even if explained in a unified theory, explains the whole of reality. It might still do what it does very well because it limits itself. Physics describes the physical world, but it assumes the physical world is all there is.

And there's plenty of stuff in the basic existential human experience to suggest that assuming the physical world is all there is is fundamentally delusional, incomplete and arguably unsatisfying.

I think I've already enumerated all the things I've lost interest in, things that used to comprise my identity. Music is gone, photography is gone, physical activities all gone.

While trying to find my way to my next attempt, things that interest me now reveal themselves in what I find interesting to read in the bookstores or libraries. And things that interest me to watch on TV.

I still have base, gross, human attachments, indicated by an ongoing appreciation of listening to my music collection. It's an attachment in that it's something hard to let go of. It's hard to just stop doing it.

I used to be a coffee drinker, a caffeine addict, but when I decided I just wanted to stop doing it, I did. I'm sure it would be the same for alcohol if I ever needed to make that decision. Stopping listening to music is just not an option.

Another attachment I have is towards food, indicated by my attraction to food programs on the Travel & Living Channel. But I think I can give up that attachment pretty easily. It's really simple desire. I can drool, drool, drool, but if I can't have the food, I have no problem with that.

I still waste a lot of time watching superficial South Korean entertainment media. I am a master of wasting time. All my life I've been good at occupying myself doing mindless, repetitive shit. I would probably be happy as a clam working on some assembly line that my mind might take as some kind of meditative environment.

I guess another ongoing interest is human mortality. I'm attracted to books and TV programs that deal with the human life cycle, death, and any investigations involving death. Even criminal investigations are a meditation on life, mortality and extreme human behavior.

I mentioned before getting wrapped up in people climbing the world's highest peaks. To me, that's a habitually suicidal activity. If you do it, no matter what the reason, there's a high risk that you either might die, or face a life or death experience.

You can't climb the world's highest peaks assuming you'll make it down alive. All the stories of people who've died on the peaks attest to that as fact. No one goes up assuming they will die, but no one can go up and assume they won't.

I'm still interested in Buddhist teachings, which is closely related to death, since the ultimate teachings of Buddhism regard death as the ultimate meditation on life. There are a lot of feel-good teachings of Buddhism on living that are propagated because that's all what most people can handle.

But a real challenge of Buddhism, I find, is the facing of mortality and contemplating what it is, or what one believes it is. Tibetan Buddhism outlines what past practitioners have discovered about it, but none if it is provable, so it's a matter of what makes sense to any one of us.

At least Tibetan Buddhism takes a good, hard challenge of the experience and what it is. It's not just some fairy tale of some mythic heaven or hell which seem an awful lot like human psychological projection. Human psychology = not ultimate reality. It's a created reality.

Also related to Buddhism, I'm still interested in cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics. Any ultimate spirituality must take the entire universe into account (most organized religions aren't universal, they are "us vs. them and we're right, they're wrong"), so any valid spirituality must investigate scientific findings on the universe, or be open to such an investigation somewhere down the line.

I don't mean blindly accepting scientific findings in the realm of spirituality. Science is by its own design unqualified to deal with spiritual questions. But as science limits its scope, it does what it does very well, and spiritual seekers would do themselves well by looking into those findings.

There's a lot that's scientifically unprovable in cosmological theory, but it's interesting how there's a lot of crossover with Buddhist conceptual thought. Likewise, it's interesting how concepts that have been taught in Buddhism for centuries match descriptions of reality by quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics and astrophysics have been finding there's a lot of real fucking strange shit when dealing with reality. Buddhism has been describing reality as some real fucking strange shit for quite a while.

On DVD I have Columbia University physicist Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe which dealt with string theory. National Geographic in Taiwan has recently started airing what seems to be another Brian Greene series called Beyond the Cosmos, which I think might be a TV presentation of his book The Fabric of the Cosmos.

When I was at Deer Park monastery, one of the monks was reading The Fabric of the Cosmos, but I wasn't able to get some of the esoteric concepts he was trying to explain. With this TV presentation, I think I'm starting to get it, and so I'm giving the book a shot at the library.

It's pretty mind-blowing stuff. It's interesting how Buddhist descriptions of reality are affirmed by scientific cosmology, but scientific cosmology is also on shaky ground as it's ever-evolving and can't rely on the scientific method to prove itself.

It's interesting how findings in quantum mechanics are no surprise to Buddhist cosmology. Buddhism has been saying those things for centuries but had no way to prove them. And quantum mechanics prove them.

In the end, the ultimate thesis is that the universe and reality are a pretty bizarre place, and that counteracts our daily conception of living and reality that it's . . . just normal.

I finished the book that my cousin lent me, Initiation.

There were aspects of the book I found astounding, and some aspects I found annoying and had me skipping whole sections, if not chapters.

My cousin also bought a copy for her husband, but he stopped reading it not far into it (he's an open-minded rationalistic agnostic, and tolerates many of my cousin's nutty out-there (even for me) ideas and wanderings. But not this book.). After I got further through the book, I recommended that he could start reading it again, but start at chapter 25, almost halfway into the book. That's when ideas start coming up that I found interesting, and thought he could appreciate in an intellectual way.

The book is supposedly autobiographical and vaguely outlines her spiritual journey in Europe in the early part of the 20th century, although context is never fully established. I didn't like her writing style and I didn't think she is a good storyteller. It felt very egotistical to me and aside from the astounding spiritual insights and ideas, I never got drawn in.

This (dead link) write up covers a lot of the book's faults and handles them more intelligently than I ever could (the book was intriguing enough for me to go looking things up about it). I think that website also helped me establish some context that made things make more sense, namely that she was in Germany during WWII, so when she talks about the "enemy", she means . . . us, the Allies, the winners, the people who weren't gassing Jews in death camps. And the post-war part, she is in what soon became East Germany, a-ha! It makes much more sense now!

Everything about geometrical shapes, astrology and "history" and races – Sons of Man and Sons of God – I thought was total, blood-boiling crap.

The bulk of the second half of the book is set in Egypt thousands of years ago, where ostensibly the author remembers in minute detail her previous life as the queen of a pharaoh and a spiritual "initiate". That's where a lot of the interesting stuff lies.

I think I might skim through the book again and pick out the bits that were particularly interesting. It may make a good summing up of my own thoughts and ideas.

But really, little of it was new to me. Most of the resonance was affirmation, rather than breakthrough. "Oh cool, she found that, too", "Well, duh!". Maybe if I read this 20 years ago, it may have made a much bigger impact. As it is, Richard Bach's Illusions, given to me by a woman named Darcy as a first year in college, was one of the first books that started opening doors for me, and I've given a copy of it to someone as late as this year.

There were a couple of new things that I got out of it, although different from how she experienced it.

I won't paraphrase her inspiration because it was completely different from what it inspired in me. But my idea was to visualize that it's not me that is breathing air that sustains my life, with an emphasis on me as the actor of living. But that I'm just a manifestation that formed out of the basic fabric of the universe, and that when I inhale, it's really the universe that is the actor that is exhaling a life force into me.

And the idea of just being a manifestation formed out of the basic fabric of the universe is analogized or symbolized by star formation or galaxy formation. The basic stuff of the universe is there, and when conditions are right, stars are formed. When enough stars are formed, conditions are right for them to interact to create a galaxy.

I don't know what the basic stuff is of what we are, but whatever that energy is, and no matter how it got married to physical forms, that's just the way it is, it is a part of the universe, whether in a manifested state or not. The physical form thing is just how the manifestation of the universe's energy occurred on this planet. It came from it, it goes back to it, and when the human species goes extinct, as the dinosaurs did, c'est la vie.

One last point of particular interest to me about the book was the chapter of the queen's actual initiation in ancient Egypt and how aspects of her description sounded to me very much like aspects of the death bardos as described in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I wonder if anyone has thought of that.

FRIDAY, JULY 16, 5:31 p.m.

Gah, what a confusing, wonderful mess my life has become. It's going nowhere, but it came from nowhere, so that's perfect. I just want to smear my life along a wall like graffiti, or like a mental patient smearing shit on a wall.

I'm trying to get things to come to an end, I'm driving things towards coming to an end, and in doing so I feel like a sprinter getting ready in the starting blocks. Nothing makes sense anymore, and that's just perfect, wonderful. Enlightened?

Enlightenment is nothing. A sure sign of not attaining enlightenment is thinking enlightenment is an accomplishment, that it is something. But what is enlightenment? What was the enlightenment of the Buddha?

I think I already covered this. My opinion is that the Buddha's enlightenment was that he touched on the primordial essence and energy of the universe, the actual ground of being. Existence is but shit smeared on a wall, a medium that we call the universe.

The truth of the matter is that everything that manifests is illusion, it arises from the energy for no other reason than it is a random natural course of arbitrary being. Enlightenment is getting back to that fundamental being. But then what is the meaning of enlightenment?

Enlightenment has no meaning unless being is manifest. But enlightenment can't be reached until the lack of meaning of existence is attained. It's a pair of ducks. It's totally awesome!

However, enlightenment does have its manifestation in existence, embodied in a certain lifestyle and attitude. The attitude is more important than the lifestyle. Both are a matter of understanding and compassion. But that's just a manifestation. Understanding and compassion also have no meaning, otherwise they are further attachment to the illusion of reality. That's just awesome.

I'm going slightly mad, haha!

What was I thinking? Big bang. Scientists describe it as literally as possible so that non-astrophysicists can understand, can relate. Some describe it as literally as possible so that they themselves can understand, can relate. But I think there are some who realize how inadequate the convenient description is. What actually happened is far more abstract, far more fragile, intangible than our minds can fathom.

It goes at one point in time, the more advance thinking goes, at one point in "time", since the concept time was also created at the same moment as the big bang, all matter in the universe was situated in an infinitesimally small, atom-sized space, and "something" happened to trigger this thing to explode in a massive eruption that created time and space, and thus the universe was born.

As I write it out, I'm unconvinced. Make it so linear, and it's too arbitrary to be scientific. After all, as Freud once said, it's just a theory.

I think some scientists know it's not that linear or concrete or even conceivable. To conceive something, we think we should be able to describe it, to visualize it, but one current cosmological theory of the beginning of the universe acknowledges that there was a span of time between the big bang and the existence of light. How do you visualize something without light?

After the big bang, the nature of what existed wasn't visible, and it was after some time when conditions in this unseen, primordial, molecular soup changed that finally the process that would become the shedding of light would occur. Finally the conditions were that a photon of light wasn't immediately absorbed or dissipated and it shot forth and suddenly the universe became visible. It shone, gases were revealed.

But that uncertainty of what was going on in that period, that murkiness, I think, brings question to that concrete idea of "everything in the universe within a tiny space suddenly banging and creating the universe". Maybe that's just a convenient, concrete description. As humans, maybe we're too arrogant, or maybe it's just our natures to resist the idea that there is some phenomena that we can't explain. Or maybe it's just coping with that inability.

Maybe the dot wasn't quite so small. Maybe there wasn't a nothingness of a void before then. Maybe it was an event that involved a previously existing universe. I'm just trying to cope.

And I've been thinking about the idea in physics of conservation of energy, or maybe my version of it since I'm no physicist. I think I heard somewhere the idea that the amount of energy in the universe is not only finite, but is quantitatively conserved. No energy is ever lost, it can only be converted to another state.

Aren't my thoughts energy? Aren't my memories energy? My consciousness? How much of my life do I not remember? I think it's easy to state that the vast majority of my life, I don't remember. Where is that energy? Why do we forget? Why don't we remember absolutely everything, especially since it is said that we only use about 10% of our brain's capacity? Hmm.

Yea, that can go several ways. I can't help tying it in with karma. These things are the energy of karma, karma exists because we do, because our consciousnesses do. The energy is not lost just because the memory can't be recalled. The energy is imprinted, converted into an energy called karma. And that karma converts back into manifestations of future personality, a continuity of energy, of being. A soul, maybe.

I'm losing the thought. I mentioned that I'm having insomnia these days, right? Well, I am. I can't get more than a couple hours of sleep without waking up fully alert. Even with sleeping pills I wake up – they just helped me get back into an unsettled sleep because I'd be too groggy to find the bottle of Jack Daniels.

Extended hiccups make me want to kill myself, insomnia also makes the option attractive. I know I won't, but I wonder about these things and why my afflictions just happen to be of this nature. It's in my mind, I know. If I had eczema, or if I still had asthma, I'd think the same thing. At least it's not a tumor.

And I still think the fundamental nature of our consciousnesses has something to do with dark energy.

on a night too hot to sleep, I lay in bed fading but not sinking. but enough to dream. dream consciousness. i became aware of consciousness that is attached to, contingent upon a biological being. because of my biology, this consciousness occurs.

but somewhere in there was an awareness of a consciousness that is not attached to biology. and from there it's not a far stretch to think that this has something to do with the "pristine cognition" in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This has something to do with the subtle mental body. luminous awareness.

something to do with, not it itself. Because i was thinking about it, or perceiving it, or thinking of perceiving it, it was a function of my biological being. it was glancing glance at it. like when you can't see a star when you look directly at where you think it is, but if you look off-axis, then it's there.

this is something new to add to my 'consciousness as something akin to dark energy' theory. not saying that consciousness has something to do with dark energy that astrophysicists are theorizing, but that the idea of a mysterious energy that pervades the universe and comprises about 75% of it, and about which we know next to nothing, is an inspiration for what may be the ground of human or life consciousness.

that consciousness has a naturally occurring basis in the universe. it's based on some fundamental energy that has taken concrete form in cooperation with biological life, not unlike how molecules and atoms coalesce to form matter.

wait, so what's my thesis now? am I saying consciousness is a function of biology or not, or both? Both, I guess. Or that fundamentally it's not a function of biology, but biology makes it something, makes something out of it. Shocks it into being something, and by doing so it becomes something particular to biological life on this particular planet.

I'm never done trailing this out...

I'm rebelling against these allergies. I decided today to not take any precautions against them; turned off the air filter, left off the mask, didn't take any allergy pills. I'm still suspecting these allergies are psychological.

I was trying to hammer it into my subconscious yesterday that even if my allergies clear up, I will move. I'm thinking my subconscious either wants me to go back to the U.S. or move. Me and my subconscious need a better way of communicating.

I slept nine hours without a mask, after going out last night to a music club for the first time since coming to Taipei almost a year ago. It was a benefit show for a local musician who lost everything in a fire. He's a Stevie Ray Vaughan fanatic and even goes by the moniker, "Stevie Ray".

Stevie Ray Vaughan, of course, is one of my guitar heroes, and I don't even consider myself a guitarist. Anyone besmirching Stevie Ray Vaughan's legend by co-opting his name and/or image would usually get a besmirk from me. But I felt it's been too long since I did something for someone else.

Anyway, I woke up about noon and my allergies were clear. That is, until I decided to sweep. I'm wondering if constantly sweeping is keeping the allergens airborne.

I had one of those days today when everyone seems to get in my way, it's like I'm not there. Some people even seemingly inching into my path as I got closer.

I thought about molecules. These are molecules interacting. Who knows the history of my molecules and their molecules? Who knows how they're reacting on a quantum level that leads to my bizarre subjective appraisal of what's happening? People intentionally getting in my way?

Is that really a stupid thought? My molecules, your molecules. Do they interact in ways we have no idea? I dunno, that may be too way out there even for me.

My suggested theory of consciousness, with absolutely no grounding or backing, so it is arbitrary, is inspired by this mysterious thing scientists in the astronomical field call "dark energy". They postulate it comprises about 75% of what the universe is made up of. How they came up with this and why they think this is scientific theory is unadulterated human arrogance. In 500 years, science will have progressed to believe this is all wrong.

But I digress.

It's not really a theory, it's just a loose concept inspired by this energy pervading the universe that we have no idea about, but is so powerful that it is not only the cause of the universe's expansion, but also the acceleration of that expansion. That acceleration is based on scientific observation, but theories stemming from scientific astronomical observation have also been known to be wrong.

Maybe the observations are right, maybe they are faulty. Maybe they are jumping to conclusions based on those observations. Maybe they're dead-on right. But not even our truths stay the same is what I'm saying.

The idea I'm playing with is that our consciousness on earth, those of all metabolizing sentient beings on earth, not just human, is the materialized form of something naturally occuring in nature, something like this dark energy.

Our physical lives and the evolution of life on earth can be traced back through a progression of circumstances, organic compounds, and chemical reactions, etc. That's physical life.

Through it all, there was the building blocks of something else, something intangible, but completely interrelated, interbeing, with the evolution of physical life. It likewise evolved into consciousness. Our consciousness is formed by dark energy or something like it the same way our bodies are formed by organic compounds, molecules, atoms.

When we're done with our bodies, it breaks down and goes back to a more basic form. Maybe so does our consciousness. It washes back to some intangible, naturally occuring energy in the universe. The energy exists throughout the universe, so in that form, "our consciousness" exists throughout the universe. It's one, it's totality, no separation.

It has nothing to do with gods or will or buddhas, those are just labels people put on insight into this. Even this can be considered a scientific sounding attempt at what is really just religious mumbo-jumbo.

But something about planets where life and consciousness develop. Our molecules recycle, but maybe so does the energy of our consciousness. Maybe it's the shock of consciousness that keeps the energy on the same planet, maybe it's the karmic habituation of consciousness, that once it materializes on one planet, it basically stays there because that's all it knows exists.

Once you turn on the light to the room and see the contents, you can't just turn the light off and go back to the state where you had no idea what was there and can imagine that anything is there. You now have a concrete idea what is there.

And that's why some metaphysical/spiritual orders speak of past lives and reincarnation.

Um, that's all.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Pristine cognition. My brother is getting rid of his old car which has been sitting in the driveway of my parents house for more than a year. Someone's gonna come and tow it away. What a great car. Lots of fun to drive, 16 years of service. How can there not be any sentimentality?

February 12, 2006, 9:55 a.m. - Sad Porsche 944

We do attach to material objects. We project our feelings and consciousness on objects. I have several too many guitars because I project feelings on them. I love my bikes. And I habitually thanked my cars after a long road trip.

And here I am, my consciousness, my view of the world from my eyes. And I view these objects around me, upon which I usually don't attribute any consciousness or sentience. Why not?

Their physical matter isn't inherently the objects they represent. Their physical matter is the way molecules are put together in a certain way. Rearrange the molecules of this object, and you'll have that object. We are stardust. Every physical thing we perceive in our solar system is the remnants of an explosion of some ancestor star.

And I think of the potential for consciousness or sentience in objects the same way. Their perceived lack of consciousness is just the way the ground of consciousness has been put together for that object.

It's my thesis, inspired by dark energy, that consciousness is naturally formed from something naturally occurring in the universe. There is a naturally occurring "ground" of consciousness, just like there is naturally occurring grounds of physical matter.

It's all continuum. Basically, I'm no different from the objects around me, physically or sentiently. I'm organic, they're not, I'm sentient, they're not, but the ground of our beings are the same – stardust. It's just the way we're put together.

And this is still not going to put food on my table.

One of the models of the universe that emerged out of M theory, which I think is the most updated version of String Theory, is that our universe is or is like a flat-ish membrane floating in a higher dimensional space along with other "branes" like slices of bread in a loaf. This is consistent with the latest "evidence" suggesting the "geometry" of our universe is "flat". The other branes may be other universes in an inconceivably large multi-verse or mega-verse (as if the size of our own universe is conceivable in our limited minds).

In sitting, my mind became a brane. Like a brane floating in a higher dimensional space with our entire universe in it. Like a strip of film with a movie on it. Information on a medium. My mind was the medium, what I call reality is the information. All the sights that I see, all the images in my mind, everything that has registered through my senses as perception are containable on this medium I call mind. They aren’t an inherent reality "out there".

In sitting, thoughts and images come and go. Past, present, future. Identity, ego, I, me, mine. But they are just information on a medium. Even my thinking they are just information on a medium is part of that information on a medium, and I watch my mind as it slips through various states of perceptions and conceptions of reality, which is just a brane, lacking inherent reality.

The recently published fourth translation of the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead is the first translation of the complete cycle of works that make it up. The first three translations popularized in the modern, liberal world have only been Chapter Eleven and a few stray sections. Chapter Four of the complete cycle is entitled "The Introduction to Awareness: Natural Liberation through Naked Perception". Naked perception.

Just meditating on those words and what they could possibly mean, while also envisioning my mind as a medium and reality just information on the medium. Naked perception, that’s what Chapter Four is cutting to. It’s easy to just blow by those words, thinking an intuitive idea of naked perception is enough, but it’s the heart of it, the point of meditation, the point of practice. Zen describes it as when mind and body fall away. Naked perception is when all perception of forms disappear, and all there is is perception. No mind, no observer, no meditator.

Or not.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Indian Song (Elastica)
2. Dumb Fun (Versus)
3. You Really Got Me (live) (The Kinks)
4. Stone the Crows ("Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat")
5. Spoon (Cibo Matto)
6. Fugue in G Minor "The Greater" (J.S. Bach)
7. Symphony No. 6, II. Andante molto mosso (Beethoven)
8. I'll Wait (Van Halen)
9. Mestra Tata (Charlie Hunter Quintet)
10. Play My Music (Exodus Steel Orchestra)

I think it is because of karma that money is not an issue for me in this lifetime. I think I've dealt with money as a life issue before in previous lifetimes, or will in future lifetimes. Whichever it is doesn't matter. In this life, I should be aware of it and always come back to gratitude for it, but it's just not an issue. I should appreciate it, but I shouldn't feel guilty about it or if I'm acting like I'm taking it for granted.

I play with the concept that we enter this life either having chosen the issues we want to deal with and try to overcome, or that our issues are brought upon us by our own past actions and habituations – our karma. The issues could be financial, psychological, spiritual, health-related, etc., etc., but once we're on the stage, we forget that we chose these issues to deal with and we're just swept along in the reality show of the lives we're born into.

Our spiritual memory of the ultimate reality is swept away when we're conceived or born, and replaced with a blank slate to be written upon by relative reality.

Personally, I think I've dealt with financial issues in past lifetimes because of the realization of a monastic ideal in this lifetime, i.e., ideal of poverty, even though monasticism is no longer my goal. I'm not worried about getting back to a monastery in this lifetime, but I do hope to attain some sort of hermit status, whether it be homelessness or merely humble, I don't know yet. Some sort of realization of "poverty" at some point. ("Hmmm", I think, working through issues.)

Even as my savings in unemployment are dwindling, I'm not concerned about money. If it became a dire circumstantial issue, completely out of my hands, it would be a no-brainer for me to enter a monastery. It is a luxury that I have that I am aware of that option and have the ability and aptitude to pursue it.

But as it is, I'm not concerned about it because I was born into a family that is a financial safety net. Monasticism is a trump card, but I've been dealt a good hand.

Still, there are issues.

Even looking at monasticism as a "trump card", a last resort, is symptomatic of the issue. Having the family financial safety net can be interpreted to allow for not entering a monastery and continuing my spiritual/existential pursuit on the outside. But on the outside, there is always money, whether or not it's an "issue", it's still there. Calling monasticism my trump card is still working in that paradigm, since I'm saying financials could be a key to whether I enter monastery or not.

These thoughts are so useless.

Dude, whoa. I had this flash of a thought this morning equating consciousness, or the origin of consciousness, or maybe sentience, with dark energy, an as-of-yet unknown and mysterious force hypothesized to comprise almost 75% of the total universe. However, in the bright light of day, the idea is a bit too grandiose and far-fetched.

I must have been such a hippie in the 60's. Deep, man.

The way I figure it, my spiritual investigation into existence needs to delve into the origins of human consciousness. I don't believe in a "God" that is separate from ourselves that arbitrarily created us just to arbitrarily judge us in the end. That concept makes so little sense that I don't even know where to begin about how little sense it makes. It's so fraught with human projection that how it could possibly be regarded as "divine" is beyond me.

Delving into human consciousness in the grand scheme of things runs into the problem that human beings are bit players in the grand scheme of things. Spirituality tries to attach some meaning to our existence in the grand scheme of things, but if the history of the universe was placed on a 12 month calendar, humans occupy hardly a few seconds approaching midnight on December 31st.

There might be spiritual meaning to our existence, but it needs to take into consideration that our individual lives are just not that important.

So I try to trace back human consciousness to its beginning, to its source. Where did it come from? What is it in the grand scheme of things? How did the universe come from a place where human consciousness did not exist to get to a place where it did exist?

I think about how did this planet come from a place where life did not exist to get to a place where life did exist. The current theory is that all the naturally occuring elements required for organic life were present on this planet, as they are suspected of existing on numerous planets throughout the universe. The combination is not uncommon.

We had the "primordial soup", we had an atmosphere, and with all the conditions in place, energy, in the form of naturally occuring lightning, created the first amino acids, which became the building blocks for life. It's so simple and not uncommon that it is hypothesized that the universe is teeming with organic life.

Getting to sentience, much less human sentience and consciousness, is another matter. It may have been a long development of evolution for it to come into being, but what is its source? What is the ground out of which it was able to develop?

So I was just playing with the idea of how little we know. Almost 75% of the universe is completely unknown in what we're arbitrarily calling "dark energy" in affirmative pronouncement, as well as denial, of our ignorance.

Then I think of the theorized 4% of what comprises the observable universe, all we can detect, all that we know about. Much of it is known in various forms of electro-magnetic energy. 75% "dark energy". 4% known energy. My thought came out of thinking that dark energy isn't this one monolithic thing, that there are multiple, multiple, multiple types of "dark energy" as there are electro-magnetic energy, permeating the universe.

And as it may have been lightning that provided the energy to catalyze the formation of life on this arbitrary planet, I'm wondering if something similar might have happened to form sentience or consciousness, or human consciousness out of some refined form of what we're calling dark energy which permeates the universe. It's everywhere, it's here right now, we just can't detect it, just as we can't detect consciousness.

I'm seriously not proposing this at all seriously.

What I am proposing is that human consciousness is a form of something that is naturally formed by natural elements that exist in the universe, albeit exotic to our current scientific understanding. It may be rare. It may be unique in the specific form it has taken on this planet. But in the grand scheme of things it's not something uncommon or mystical.

Even in a spiritual interpretation, what we're deeming "spiritual" is something naturally occuring in the dark energy. Spirituality is the best scientific tool we have to investigate this natural phenomenon. That is what I think spirituality should be, not the garbage organized religions brainwash people to think and believe.

A spiritual investigation into the nature of the self, consciousness, and existence should not lead people to oppress, persecute, or denigrate other people. It should not try to teach people 'what is', implying that other beliefs are 'what is not'.

Now, for Buddhists, that ground of reality, consciousness, and existence is the ultimate reality, referred to as Buddha nature. It is the ultimate, the absolute – non-created, non-destroyed, non-dualistic, all things inextricably interconnected. The form Buddhism took on this planet, with its ideals of compassion and equanimity, was more or less a fabrication by living beings on this planet necessary to promote interest in these teachings of well-being and respect for other beings as a means of striving for enlightenment.

Is the essence of Buddhist teaching naturally formed? That's what I'm suggesting. But then there's a reason why Buddhism is so consonant with science, more so than God-based spiritualities. I'm not suggesting either way is right or wrong. Just what makes sense to me.

soundtrack:
1. Fireplace (REM)
2. The Smartest Monkeys (XTC)
3. Change It (live) (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
4. She (Suede)
5. (Just Like) Starting Over (John Lennon)
6. Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 7 & Edit Piece) (The Beatles)
7. I Can't Imagine the World Without Me (Echobelly)
8. Rudy (live) (Supertramp)
9. One More Day (The Neville Brothers)
10. Tell Him (Lauryn Hill)

I just want to be prepared for death.

Death is inevitable, it is something that is going to happen, it is definitely coming. We all go out in different ways, but we all go out. Five to one, baby, one in five, no one here gets out alive.

That's fine when people say sure, it's coming, but it isn't here now, so why be bothered by it now? Life is for living. That's valid. I'm not trying to be universal about this.

I don't know why it occurs to me to be bothered by being "unprepared for death". It has something to do with recognizing the impermanance of moments, and being unsettled by that impermanence. Youth passes, friends and acquaintances pass, events pass. Seasons pass, years pass, eras pass. Now passes, and the future will come to pass. And then we die. Our lives pass.

It unsettles me to treat life as permanent when it's not. It's not true, it's not real, and I'm striving for something true, something real. Something unaffected by death. Whatever it is, it's intangible, nothing physical or material stands up against death.

But it has to make sense to me, not just because someone said something about it however many hundreds of years ago. Even if it was the result of an exploration similar to mine. Even if it may have been my exploration way back when. In this lifetime, or these lifetimes, I need to explore it and experience it myself. Same as it ever was.

So I try to prepare for death without being obsessive about it. Meditations on death and the death process, visualizations using existing literature and intuition as a guide, meditations on life and existence, breaking it down to try to get a sense what it really is. Meditations on biology, human functions and feelings. Using falling asleep as a rehearsal for dying.

And even death passes. The cycling of life is what makes sense to me, because I see cycles all around me in nature, from water, to leaves on the trees, to seasons, to stars, to galaxies. Nothing dies into nothingness. Nothing dies into a dead end heaven.

I look around me and see things transform and recycle. Every molecule came from somewhere and was something else before. Every molecule will cease being what it looks like now and become something else. And along with the conservation of energy theory applied to all physical phenomena, I stretch it and apply it to spiritual energy, and allow it to follow the same cycles.

I've started noticing how song titles in these song lists sometimes match what I'm writing about. With over 9000 songs being shuffled, I'm not really reading anything into it aside from coincidence, but it amuses me.

current soundtrack:
1. Kecak (Sekaha Ganda Sari, Bona) Indonesian traditional.
2. When You Sleep (My Bloody Valentine)
3. Let It Be Me (Indigo Girls)
4. Circles (Chick Corea Akoustic Band)
5. Los Endos (Genesis) < --haha
6. Isolation (Joy Division)
7. Dusk (Duke Ellington)
8. We Work the Black Seam (live) (Sting)
9. Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel)
10. Guide Vocal (Genesis)

The practice at the monastery was big on the ancestral "continuation" thing. I didn't like how I felt they posited it as a universal truth, as if it was supposed to mean something to me. Mind you, I'm not big on universal truths.

Well, maybe they didn't intend it as a dogmatic universal truth, but just as a personal meditation. The idea being that we meditate upon our own beings as a continuation of our parents and grandparents, and so on and so on and so on.

There's probably something deep there, but not looking at it as meditation, the idea is a pretty big turn off. Thinking that I'm a continuation of my particular ancestors, and that my hypothetical descendents would also be a continuation of them makes me want to end the line right here. It's not something I want "continued".

Fortunately, or not, "spiritual genes" have little to nothing to do with accidents of biology. For those who believe in reincarnation, spiritual genes are what are carried over from lifetime to lifetime that shape our spiritual personalities, psychologies, and "aptitude".

They get right down to the very core of our being, our deepest habit patterns that make us what we truly are. We can get a glimpse of our spiritual genetics just by basic meditation and extending the introspection of meditation to our daily lives by being mindfully aware of ourselves throughout our days.

We watch our minds, our thoughts, our patterns, our feelings, and eventually we can notice what is hard-written into our personalities. Unlike biological genes, we can re-write them! For example, an easy one, my fear of spiders.

My theory, perhaps just as example, is that my fear is sourced in past lives, and whatever happened then had such an impact that the fear was written into my spiritual genes. Recognizing that, I've worked on re-writing the fear out of the code by facing it and seeing it as irrational.

The benefit of doing so is that in future lives, hundreds or thousands of spiders won't lose their lives. But that's a big "eh", since life is a crapshoot, there is no hard and fast objective good or bad in the loss or preservation of life. Everything flows, everything transforms, and everything biologically living will die.

A more definite benefit is in my mind. Whenever I kill a spider out of fear, that reinforces that negative spiritual gene and disrespect for life, whether or not it is a crapshoot. The focus is on the disrespect. As it happened, I feared a spider and I killed it. The next time I saw a spider, I killed it. And so on and so on.

For me, something started bothering me about it. Even if I didn't mind the killing, I did mind the fear and I wanted to know what that was about. What I hope is that I've re-written the gene so that it is not fear that I feel, but compassion, and that's what I'm practicing in this life. And actually, now I do mind the killing. I find it abhorrent for me to want to kill even an insect.

When I see a spider, I think compassion and I don't kill it. It has a right to live, it has a right to exist. Like all living beings, its instinct is to survive, it doesn't want to die. The benefit is what that is doing in my mind. It's watering a seed of compassion. Instead of fear and killing, it's tolerance and understanding. Successfully writing that into my spiritual genetics theoretically gets carried over into my next life, hopefully not just towards spiders.

And even if you don't believe in reincarnation, it certainly doesn't hurt to cultivate those things in one's life now.

Afterthought: So I'm not quite sure . . . alright, I'm no where near sure . . . what I was positing about the nature of enlightenment being different now from what it may have been before. Maybe it's just been attitudes about enlightenment changing. Maybe it's the absolute vs. the relative, and perhaps they both function simultaneously.

That is, perhaps there is an objective absolute, ultimate reality, God if I may, or G-d, that we shouldn't even be bothering with on a functional level because it's just so way beyond that it's ten thousand times more inconceivable than pointing towards a 4th spatial dimension.

puzzle: Point towards the Fourth Dimension now!

An ultimate, objective clarity. Which is fine, I'm totally fine with things that I can't go near. Once when I was trying to get a physics professor to consider "faster than the speed of light", he refused to do it, even hypothetically, it's just impossible, and I was just like, "OK, whatev".

(Imagination dictates that going faster than the speed of light is possible.)

But on the relative level, the realm of our reality, this physical manifestion, maybe enlightenment can and has changed, not just in conception or definition, but in actuality. Relative actuality. After all, our conception of reality changes, too. It's relative. What we thought was reality before Einstein is very different from what we think it is now.

Reality and world view before modern science is very different from after (or is it "world view after modern science is very different from before" – it's relative), and the differences are considered substantive, even though nothing changes the relative experience of reality.

So maybe the manifestation of enlightenment has also changed according to changes in perceived reality. Maybe how it's handled or perceived has changed, which arguably may change its substantive nature. Who knows? It's all relative anyway.

Or am I just complicating things? I wouldn't argue against anyone who says, "If it's relative, it's not enlightenment".

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Chris: Well, you know, the way I see it, if you're here for four more years or four more weeks, you're here right now. I think when you're somewhere, you ought to be there because it's not about how long you stay in a place, it's about what you do while you're there. And when you go, is that place any better for your having been there. Am I answering your question?
Joel: No, not really.

I gather that there is this subatomic world that is governed by uncertainty. Matter at the subatomic level doesn't really exist except as probabilities. These subatomic particles, the ethereal building blocks of matter, move at such unfathomable and frenetic speeds that they are undefinable in the way we define ordinary matter. Or something like that.

It's very poetic. Break matter down into its smallest constituent pieces and basically you have non-matter, you have fields. Fields of probability. I prefer fields of probably, but I'm no scientist, fortunately.

I don't know if this is a good analogy, but the way I manage it is to imagine our planet as an atom. And as long as I'm blowing up a single atom to that size, I might as well speed it up proportionately, too. Speed up our planet's life to the speed of such a huge atom, and we are the subatomic particles. The surface of the planet is the field of probably er, probability, and our lifetimes flashing by as sparks so minute that they are undetectable.

As soon as you try to point at one life, it's gone and billions of other lives are flashing in and out of existence each fraction of a second; so fleeting that they can't be said with any certainty that they happened, just that they probably happened; that they probably were there, mm? All our lifetimes become a blur until they all seem like one thing, only discernible by standing way off in the distance.

I don't really understand Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (rather esoteric stuff, understandable only by certain high priests and wizards we call 'physicists'). I just think it's hilarious for a sound principle of science to be called the "uncertainty" principle – the "well, we don't really know" principle. I mean there's a hell of a lot I'm uncertain about, but I'm not going to go make a principle about it.

It's kind of flaky even. How about having a religious uncertainty principle – having a belief in God governed by an uncertainty whether He or She really exists. Or an uncertainty principle regarding education (eh, I may or may not pass that class) or work (when your boss asks you to do something, ask her whether she's heard of the uncertainty principle in regard to getting it done). Logging onto gmail is obviously governed by some immutable uncertainty principle.

Fortunately, quantum mechanics is not nearly as important as employment, education, or, God forbid, God. It's just the study of the fabric of existence, something we can all take for granted unless the fabric of existence, space itself, starts breaking down and losing cohesion, and then it won't matter anyway (stranger things have happened, I'm sure). Them scientists can afford to be uncertain. Our lifetimes are just sparks anyway.

I knew I had written before what I wrote about in my previous post. Still not as in depth as it could be, but at least I'm consistent in my descriptions, I think.

I believe in God, but not in a being that is God, nor a higher power that is God. A lot of people might say right there that I, in fact, don't believe in God; I've just twisted and distorted my definition of God to encompass what might really be an agnostic or atheist position.

For me, God starts with us. Or me. Or Me. From there it spreads like a quantum wave encompassing every little, iddy biddy, tiny bit of the fabric of all existence, non-existence, all that can be known plus whatever amount of what can't be known.

In a way, I see cosmology as an ongoing scientific study of or search for God.

In fact, as soon as you say "God", you've already missed it by trying to grasp it, control it, own it, know it, unless your conception of God is such that when you hear the word "God" it blows up like a supernova, and you lose any attached conception of God, especially any "religious" conception of God. It's probably no coincidence that this is more or less the same as enlightenment in Buddhism.

But I digress. The important facet is that it starts with me. Or Me. And no religious doctrine, canon, principle, or belief should stop me from realizing that for everybody else, it starts with them. Or Them. Not that it does, since others have their own conception of God and probably don't want me imposing my conception of God on them.

But it means that no religious doctrine, canon, principle, or belief should ever be exalted over Them. Especially when dealing with Them. Face to face. That is all. And that's only where it starts.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Joel: Hello, O'Connell.
Maggie: What do you want?
Joel: I just wanna talk.
Maggie: So talk.
Joel: Could you put the ax down, please?

Oh, and gmail gets the big donkey shaft from me.

I've had one experience in my life that might be interpreted as "mystical" – actually a series of basically the same experience. The first time it happened was when I was 14 or 15, and the last time it happened was just a few months ago (it has become such that it isn't even worth mentioning when it happens). After all this time, I still don't know what to make of it.

A full description of the evolution of the experience would bore anyone to tears, but there are commonalities which make it obvious that it's the same thing. It always happens when I'm drifting off to sleep, and suddenly I'd be fully conscious but completely paralyzed, unable to move, speak, shout, or scream, unable to mentally "snap out of it".

The experience has evolved through the years. Needless to say, the first time was really scary, and involved blinding light, deafening noise, and pure, unadulterated panic. The panic abated over subsequent occurences when I became pretty confident that I would always come out of it. Eventually, even the "paralysis" changed from literal immobility to more of a sense; like it was a space or a different form of consciousness.

Now when it happens, like it did most recently, I can sense it coming on before it actually hits; like hearing a train getting louder through a long tunnel. I can avoid it by forcing myself awake, but I usually let it happen because it's still interesting. I just let it happen and I "explore" the experience/space, but nothing "mystical" ever comes out of it. No new knowledge or revelation. It just ends and I go to sleep and wake up the next morning none the different.

Actually, there is an excellent description of the exact experience in a book called "The Woman Warrior: A Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts" by Maxine Hong Kingston, only she describes the experience as being attacked by a ghost. I almost plotzed when I read that passage in the book. It's a great book anyway, go read it.

But I guess that's the whole point of this. I had this arbitrary, subjective experience which I can't recreate on demand or explain rationally, but which also can be interpreted any number of ways, depending on context. Having been raised in this modern, scientific, technological age, my impulse is to not interpret it mystically, but "rationally". Since I can't find any rational explanation, it has become an empty experience, one not even worth mentioning when it happens.

In another context, I might believe that I was being attacked by a ghost. In another context, I might believe that I was experiencing something divine or other-worldly and search for a message in the experience. I don't discount the possibilities, it's just that I was raised and educated in this particular context, and maybe I'm missing something because of it.

(sleep paralysis tag added retroactively -ed.)