Category: perception

Breathwork and Attunement Practices

The Sufi tradition practices a personalized method of aspiring to study the alchemical arts.  Raised as a member of a Methodist church as a youngster, I became disillusioned with organized religions during my teenage years.  Studying physical/medical anthropological at university, I came to realize that the practice of Academia faculty seemed quite similar to religious institutions.  I grew disillusioned seeing how much more interest professors appeared to put towards their own research. Perhaps, these are burdens imposed on them by the administration. PhD candidates and grad students served as substitute teachers and ghostwriters.

Coming from the Dirty South, the debate between religion and science gets a little extra hairy.  Scientists were speaking with the same pomp and pretense and puffery as those they were accusing of being ignorant.  University professors preoccupied with needing to make tenure. University professors who made tenure and should have retired long ago.  I then investigated the esoteric, hermetic groups and loved their texts and mythos, but I do not like secrets.

Sometimes the appearance of a secret is more alarming than the content of the secret itself.

I came across several wonderful texts by Sufi writers over the last three years.  What resounded most for me was the simplicity of the practices recommended.  There is no dogma to be institutionalized, no one forces their thoughts on others, but neither do they fear engaging in a lively discussion.  These practices are so wildly simple. They made such a substantial difference in my life over the last year that I wanted to share some broad strokes.

BREATHWORK

Four fundamental models of breathing correspond to four fundamental alchemical processes.

Consider each mode of breath as a re-attunement to the world around you.

Perform each mode of breath three to five times before moving to the next breath.

Each mode of breath begins on the exhalation.

The rhythm of breathing must be natural. No retention of breath.

(i) Filtering: exhale through your nose/inhale through your nose. EARTH. Yellow Square. Taurus sigil. North.

(ii) Liquifying: exhale through your mouth/inhale through your nose. WATER. Silver Crescent. Scorpio sigil. West.

(iii) Burnishing: exhale through nose/inhale through your mouth. FIRE. Red Triangle. Leo sigil. South.

(iv) Distilling: exhale through your mouth/inhale through your mouth. AIR. Blue circle. Aquarius sigil. East.

On breathing, think to yourself: I am turning within; withdrawing from any external environment and into myself.  I am drawing the environment into myself to convert and transmute it.

Between inhalations and exhalations, suspend any thoughts other than preparing to resume your breath. Note that there will be a rest, a tacet/tacit pause in between the inhalation and exhalation & again between the exhalation and the inhalation. Feel that slight pause and think only of preparing to change the direction of your breath.

“Sense the emergence in yourself of something new–not the way you ingest the environment–but something that lay in wait within you and that emerges when catalyzed by its counterpart in the environment.  We are recurrently reborn” (p40).

The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing: A Manual of Meditation
Book by Inayat Khan
Try to prolong the exhalation further and further on each breath.
When exhaling, first contract the abdomen, then the chest.
When inhaling, first dilate the abdomen, then the chest.
Imagine that you are nothing but energy/life fields coalescing and cascading. 
(i) static magnetic field
(ii) electromagnetic field that derives from the dynamic nature of of body functions (like mitosis)
(iii) gravitational field you might feel in an elevator in motion
(iv) chi force: experienced when shifting one’s concentration from chakra to chakra.
(v) etheric body that pulses with your breath
               Per, Oxford English Concise (OED), ETHER: DIETHYL ETHER, for example*.
(vi) the aura (bioluminecense)
(vii) celestial body
              Per, the OED: positioned in or relating to sky/outer space.
Consider the arrow of time (horizontal vector) and the transcendental dimension.
Consider the way we extrapolate between two vantage points–confess further dimensionality on our consciousness.
Consider your personal vantage point and the antipodal divine point of view.
Sufi’s endeavor to bring the divine viewpoint to light by Experience rather than Conception.
“Divinity is human perfection and humanity is divine limitation,” Hazrat Inayat Khan
Our breath reflects the ebb and flow of the divine breath.
Sufism validates what is gained in the existential state, the dervishes endeavor to explore the manner in which this timeless state flows into the process of becoming (p57). Note that on page 30, “process of becoming” is used to describe the first of two dimensions we consider in time–the arrow of time and its vectors.
Imagine a Pendulum 
When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position. When released, the restoring force acting on the pendulum’s mass causes it to oscillate about the equilibrium position, swinging back and forth.
The time for one complete cycle, a left swing and a right swing, is called a period. The period depends on the length of the pendulum and also a slight degree on the amplitude, the width of the pendulum’s swing.
“What seems to be coming and going is really the result of becoming and manifesting. When the owner of ‘waqt’ (instant of time) comes into possession of hal (that is: it becomes a permanent state) he is no more subject to change, and is made steadfast in his state.”  p58 Abu’l – Hasan al-Hujwiri
*I was unfamiliar with what ‘ether’ meant, so I figured I’d include it here: 1. a pleasant smelling, volatile, highly flammable liquid used as an anesthetic and as a solvent 2. Chemistry any organic compound with an oxygen atom linking two alkyl groups 3. (also aether) Chiefly literary the clear sky; the upper regions of air beyond the clouds. 4. (also aether) Physics, historical a substance formerly postulated to permeate all space and to transmit light.
ORIGIN ME: from OFr., or via L. from Gk aithêr ‘upper air’, from the base of aithein ‘burn, shine’.
ethereal: 1. extremely delicate and light, in a way that seems not to be of this world 2. chemistry (of a solution) having diethyl ether as a solvent.

Disambiguation…

The line is not: You pay for what you get.

The steganographia is not the encryption is not the transcryption,

Nor is it the ostensible coding.

Encoding=scribing.

The poison is the dose.

The doz>s>e is the poison.

The map is not the region.

“Here I do have a theory: Perhaps we got across because we sailed on the ocean and not on a map.”

THE RA EXPEDITIONS

Thor Heyerdahl

DOUBLEDAY publishing

Page (ostensibly) 341 aka M(42)

Imagine that ( x ) = x in subSCRIPT

Here you find (sub)SCrypçione

The lyric is: you get what you pay for.

An honest question from an ignorant me.

Empiricism is the imperialistic prerogative…at least as my mind marks it, and, it does so pseudo-empirically.

But, my concern is: if the observation of an object of inquiry actually changes the behavior of the object itself, what can be said for the metaphysical methodological underpinnings of ‘social science’?

The most basic of examples may be found in the early writings of Margaret Mead. The locals sang a different tune to her than the true song by which they lived.

Up-Focus from TrainScotting

Í speak in harmonies scaling octavial heights.

Centurians guard my air. Í breathe angels. Í exhale fire. Í burnish with every breath.

Breathless, noiseless despite despots.

The rows planted in keystone symmetry; puzzling eyes ampersand I’s in motion,

Like two horses dying of thirst beside a fresh water stream. The query of the quarry destroyed their shodden hooves. Chipping like fingernails opening soda tab tops.

Lone pylons.

Radio and cellular towers feigned as trees and the refrain repeated from which none refrained.

A bridge over dry dirt.

Í let the bonsai tree grow over one hundred feet. Held fast, bent and hobbled by wire wrapping extended limbs like the necks of Nubian queens. Clutching with cruel vigor the extension as though the feet of geishas.

Incidentally, í never cared for hearing anecdotal evidence, yet í sure evidence anecdotes as offerings to others.

To live and die in the service industry: this is the new Dixieland. Bereft of prejudice.

Barely. The meek shall inherit your tips.

A gnarled bonsai branch slaps me in the forehead as if to say, “oh dear, how could you not remember?”

We watched the weather change three times in ten minutes. He seemed unsurprised. This surprised me.

The rapeseed fields burned yellow like a terranean sun. My eyes nedded shielding, but í looked on and stared at the faux-star. Í beat a path by following the doppleganger affected bleating of sheep. Little lambs of woolen and warm like cherubs. They whispered, “If you jump the stone fence on the horizon, you will freefall forever.”

Í said, “You cannot see the ocean below for your clouds.”

Í stood on the slanting stone stele before slipping into a slide, my leg [em]purpled on impact like the time í slipped on the hotel’s hardwood. Í had had to leave an entire continent to find a bit of breathing space. But, í do breathe more deeply than many.

Vapor fume whisps from my nose with each burnished breath.

Í am the dragon called serpent-bearer. He stays my hand, wrapped around my forearm. He hisses, hides, and hides me. Protectors and protectorates in one. We laugh together in snarling tangles. He hangs like a tentacle. He hangs me upside down by my ankle, correcting the orientation of my perspective.

We appear cruel to the uncruel.

We are cruel to the cruel. Humiliating them unmercifully through unwarranted kindness. Adoration melting cruelty.

My eyes go hard.

My lips narrow and purse while my kindness cuts ampersand maims.

The behemoth bonsai bursts into flames. I howl in feral pleasure.

Mine is water; fire, the serpent’s.

Diabolical excellence arouses

Making ire irie.

The awareness to insert [i] pro/e/duces accordingly.

Sleep Paralysis: The man who photographs his nightmares

The man who photographs his nightmares.

http://flip.it/2h5QOj

Grey scale.

Not one but two.

The Brothers not The Lovers.

Breathe.

Watch “Abstract Orchestra ‘ Fancy Clown'” on YouTube

Ayup. Uh huh.

No rights; homage

Watch “MAD Dragon Sessions: Fly Golden Eagle “Horse’s Mouth”” on YouTube

Effing love this jam, album, and band.

And when nobody’s there to write it, I am gonna show you everything.

And i can feel it in the silence

Silence comes in willingly.

(Lyrics as my ears hear them. It has been brought to my attention that I often don’t get it right. I say rock n rollers can better enunciate if that is a problem.)

Giggle.

Hair of the Hare

A puppet suspended by pulleys, held fast and taught.

Taut over the sieved river.

The Ingpen hare paused, shook his fuzzy head, and picked his itch,

“Monkeys, huh. Too smart.”

Beginning to turn his croak,

He saw the red ball on the bound.

“Thank goodness, I found it again.”

The Third Install: Parçiful

Hello, Alice here. You may recall me if you have been following this tangled loop of a story. We have Parçiful, Effie, and myself. Effie, who will give up no more than the name Parçiful, is her younger sister. The gurls like to travel with me from time-too-time. And, Æ became familiar with them by dint of their fiery aunt. Please do not mention to her that we mentioned this to you. We heard you say: mention something/mention anything.

Æ serve as third party, omniscent narrator. Recall the point-of-views that narrators may take? Well, think of me as a dream sandman. Effie and our anti-hero tolerate me, when they realize Æ am around that is. Parçiful and Æ go way back. We met In-dreams. So, Æ like, from time-too-time, to read her. She is more written than real. Quite unjustly. Improper handling by the Knights-to-Nowhere. She is not a shy one. She was a frightened one. Her Tribe kindly asked her to split. Beat It. She is a Southern gal and so, delightfully obliging, thus: she obliged. Not anymore though. So, I feel sharing some excerts from her handwritten tale. Context. Although, all Æ will give up is what was observable. Lord knows what really happened. Her Tribe and Æ’s Tribe. Just as Æ never gave up everything to her, Æ must assume she never gave up everything to me.

Effie here. Hi.

ASIDE: his final sentence above is an assumption. No one must assume anything. One assumes for want of reassurance. For if she had actually given-everything up to begin with, it would be a hard cross forvÆ to bear. Idiots feel beholden, just as Parçiful did after accepting her at-the-time boyfriend’s plastic proposal. Thank god he left her. Well, left is not the right word. He dumped her and then continued to avail himself of her resources.

[Undated]

In elementary school years, petting myself to sleep at night, while wondering how the Sunday-school heaven could be fun & forever. I imagined a life of growing up to be destitute. Homeless. Well, at least how easily it seemingly could happen to anybody.

Vague intuitions of how feeling entitled leads to your own stripping……

Open secret x: ‘we cannot depend on our lovers to prove to us that we are not broken because, in some way, we all are. Wounded anyway.’

Perhaps the best we may hope-for is to see each other grow and grow together and take care of one another as well as we can-to see each other and touch each other and try not to harm what we see and touch. Maybe that’s not such a small, silly thing. Maybe it’s one of the biggest tasks we face on this earth.

A breath tantra of connection. Sitting on the ground together.

We are embarking on that which we carried wood to see. Because we still want to see.

I lived in words, work, dreams, and a group of four close buds. I felt freer, moore solid, since the cursed engagement ended. Time flew. The world inside me was expansive. I enjoyed being alone, with my own company. I did for me. Took care of myself. Did not miss having a partner. Did not need someone else. And, I saw how poorly í’d allowed my spirit to be treated. Í saw how í had slowly let fires inside myself burn-out. Almost glad they were smothered and stoked. It had become easier to not have fire in my belly when I was working asat at some terminal for ten hours a day. Then to come home and be fussed at for it. Particularly as my job was all me and my at-the-time boyfriend. Do not worry for him. He tagged along on my move across the country. Managed to get a great job. We were in NMexico when found out he had been hired in a lucrative company. So, when he was done with me, he had finally seemed to hve found himself. A good thing. A talented fellow who is not nearly as clever or smart as he thinks he is. Not by half. A decent, upright fellow and good citizen, regardless.

We neglected each other. Lies of omission. “No, everything is fine.” Secret addiction.

[Fig. I.1. Certain entries that Æ read are best communicated by pictures. There is no way to convey content on such things viz a viz pics]

Convince versus Persuade (disambiguation)

Dinah’s Daughter [Psych⊙]Gnosis

Understand my sweet VVönderland, I cannot help but feel thusly for you, Augustus.

It was your mother’s wish.

I snuck in through their bathroom window.

Psst. Hi.

I pushed Olive off of you, but I threw an extra blanket on the pup’s pallette.

I shall not put her out in the cold. A little not-so SlightÖHand accomplishes this. I surprise myself and Olive never awoke. I am mysified and so.

Æ Marvel.

I want to be your little hot thing.

I wilt not waste (your) Time.

She asked, your mother did.

She wished this for you. That everyone will have to Lųve you.

And, this is the source of your discomfort, sweet thing.

We cannot help but lųve you.

Æ say í’m speçial: some sort of irregular pearl.

By my own admission to Eros, í am unable to discern any benefit any sooner than í can disprove the benefit of any other pearl.

Effie here. Hi. Yep, you get it. Gonna give the gist: if, in one-sitting, you are going to shovel as many mayonaise sandwiches into your mouth as you can, does it really matter if the thin white bread glued together varies in appearance? Only if you are a disgusting, fat piece of shit that really should go home and change outfits (to x, yeah you. You look great).

To anyone who asserts that there is an ideal pearl. Shut up. Firstly, you Mean-to say that you conceive of a paragon. Well, good for you. Congratulations, you are still a monkey. There is constant variation in phenotypic expressions of the genotype. The misperception owes to your perceptual limitations. Congratulations, you are still a monkey and what “you just discovered” was known by millions and millions Æons before you had cosmic existence, let alone a capacity for conscious cognition.

You are still aweful. Capricious.

Perfect. And, beautiful.

Keep breathing.

We resume the previous transcryption.

Who am í to tell you of beauty? í have but mine-own eyes.

[Í love yours, though].

Why í appear surprised everytime you ask me.

Í do not intend mean-to spook you.

Pleas that you believe. So, í write on canary yellow. Parchment. Part ampersand parcel to your pedal-stool.

It was not a (my) white-horse upon which í ærowed ( arode, aeroed, arrowed ).

To put you beside yourself. Be an aleph to your theta. Sync. Sigma. Fi semper. Anon, anon.

Let everyone do you their favor (s), tenderfoot.

If you do something wrong, hold yourself accountable,

BUT, let know-one tell themselves that, my sweet’thing,

You are culpable.

You could pluck the flower of any garden without consequence.

Your adult eyes still remind Them of Youthful Summers.

⊙

TOP DEFINITION from urban dictionary

psych

Often believed, by those who don’t understand the term’s origin, to be spelt (or spelled, for the American audience) ‘sike’.

Deriving from the word psychology, psych is a term used to indicate that whatever the person speaking just said was done so purely to mess with the listener’s mind, to ‘psych’ them out, if you will.

by ThisB”) August 20, 2015

<i don’t know why this relevant but it is. i don’t know why j impulsively addended it adhoc.

But ThisB do.

Watch “R.E.M. – Full Concert – 10/18/98 – Shoreline Amphitheatre (OFFICIAL)” on YouTube

Gems.

Curtsy Ampersand Curt-Say: A Hue of Parciful.

DAY I: She looked odd.  Not quite ill.  Unwell.

DAY II: She got lost in her dreams.

DAY III: She acquired the knowledge that she got lost in her dreams.

DAY IV:

he had died;

he knew;

he saw his mom;

he took the professor as his

dad.

Together, they climbed the Mountain of Knowledge.

Together, they discovered their mistake;

ws_Sky_dream_1680x1050-1.jpg

Summit¹, 1. The highest part; the top; vertex. 2. The highest degree; maximum. [< L\f\. sum-mum, apex.]

– (_      << {[x ]} >>      _) –

acme ; apex ; cap ; climax ; crown ; height ; peak ; pinnacle ; top ; vertex

abyss ; base ; bottom ; chasm ; deep ; depth ; gorge ; gulf ; pit ; vale ; valley

—sum’mit-al, α.                                                                                                    –sum’-mit-less, α.

 

He finished his building of the edifice.

[Open-Secret x: he had long finished building his edifice.] 

[Lesser-known≈Open-secret F(x): he thought he knew this already.  he could and would finish when it was effing good and done. or whenever the hell he felt like it. this, as proven by dint-of diligence and curiosity, proved assumption.  Not knowledge.]

Structure now structuralized, materialism became the a priori axiom.  (The god’s honest truth, mister police osiffer!)   ‘Things exist!  We see them all about.’

“Do not be foolish, young man. The abstract is the weakness of man, our curse.  For pride. For our lack of discipline over our baser instincts.  Our physical body unfurled and made manifest this gift of life, permitted our superior brains to make-manifest.  And, then we perceived; and Lo, it is good.  This blessed perception affords our dominion over the land and the beast-

Effie here. Hi. Sorry to interrupt, but she gets flowery and the lyrical-ity requires editing. Mystæ, right?  Geez.  We are short on time right-exactly-now.  As her younger sister, I periodically jump in and get to the point.  She thinks empiricists are “as non-secular” as the religious or spiritualists. Her words there.  I think she means that Academia and the Western Medical Paradigm and the Scientifics and the Technophiles, that whole lot of ’em….

Excuse me, kindly; I would be much obliged if you refrained from all or nothing/either or language, Effie. Shall we call it “a predominate number”: (or at least the loudest voices currently) of this assemblage? Regardless, science’s day of reckoning is at hand.  Hear me, now and stop huffing up at that statement.  I speak allegorically and yeah, science hates imprecision.  I call horse-apples: science does precisely what religion does.  Both systems exist non-secularly and use the same devices to reach their conclusions.  Like the≈the two extremes of the trajectory of a weightless bob that is suspended by a massive (tech.) rod moving about a point.

Arabesques ’round pivotal arcs of pendulous sways.

The parable of the parabola is parabolic::The parabola of the parable is parabolic.

 

Non-secular science at one pole.

{_[__(.PIVOTAL.)__]_}

 

Non-secular religious and spiritualists at one pole.

SECULAR::SECULAR 

 

SECULAR

ЯA⅂UƆƎƧ

non-SECULAR::NON-secular

 

Watch “JJ DOOM – GUV’NOR” on YouTube

No rights, just homage and want for spreading his good jam around to all interested toast slices.

Alo Gov’nah!

The rain in seattle comes down as spit expelled from inane prattle.

My Time Serving, Waiting, & Pouring

I worked as a part-time waitress, from age 18 until age 18.  I performed terribly.  Back then, in Alabama, servers made $2.13 + tips.

One week my manager approached me, with pen and red binder.

“Sign here, to confirm for our tax records that you did, in fact, make at least the minimum wage. You did not declare enough of your cash tips.”

“Um, but I did not make at least minimum wage, I made less.”

“Yep, you are not good at this.”

He was correct.

Sometime later, after losing the urge to continue to pursue Academia, I worked full-time for a locally-owned, Tavern-style restaurant as a server and cocktail waitress.  Not fine dining, but cloth napkins, gas burning lanterns. Upscale. The owners also owned a popular bar in the swanky part of Southside, Birmingham (The Five Points area, to be specific) where I poured occasionally.  Note: Servers still only make $2.13 an hour + tips in Alabama (and many other American states).  They really do work for themselves and you.

I loved my work.  I took the time to learn the restaurant/service craft: Learning the menu, how to talk to people and make suggestions.  The art of booze and talking booze.  Maintaining equilibrium for the dinner rush / bar push for about three intense, crazy, physical hours, only to then slowly break down the establishment into a clean, organized place. The next morning, you would build it up, try to keep equillibrium, tear it down.

Taking your work home usually meant alcohol, delicious food, or another server.  There was no huge deadline for the FOH staff, just closing time and the clean up.

All humans should really spend at least three months of their life as a server/waiter.  Everyone. If you get hissy or huffy about the service you receive when dining out, consider the following.

Today, I pulled an old journal and found the remarks below. Enjoy

EDR = extended dining room

AOA = auditory order acknowledged

Alabama Medium = Medium Well

FOH = front of house (what and who you see as the diner)

86 = something the restaurant has on menu but does not have currently.

68 = when something that was 86’ed becomes available to diners again.

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Conversations Had On a Daily Basis

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Stuff Said to Me: That Pissed Me Off Enough To Scrawl

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Some Stuff I Thought Worth Telling the Good People

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Watch “Burnt Out Town” on YouTube

Why is it you look so down in the mouth?!

I told her:

This is a burnt out town/it’s fulla dirty looks.

Here i am stealing gas with a garden hose.

Yeah, take that, honey.

It’s outta their realm of reality

Its goin down but no one knows

When you know you have made it “Tom Petty – Breakdown (Live 1985)” on YouTube

Cracking me up.

I saw him with Tah Mahal opening in Tuscaloosa, AL.

I was in 6th grade.

Wildflowers tour.

My mom and i danced and sang like lively idiots too.

[Title Here]

Being bereft of aberration is abhorrent,

In itself.

I am the whence of a will.

Wilt do.

Wilted

Camællias suddenly come into ripe blossom

Bloom.

I danced in blue light at least an hour that night.

I stumbled between songs.

I slip but don’t fall.

Felled the tree before the hanged.

And a fool found herself upside down,

A head full of clouds and reservoirs of water.

Camel-ist.

Hiding eyes

Laughter.

In the dark, a cardinal dances on his branch.

Like a Stellar’s Jay.

Sleep Paralysis

A peek of disbelief.

Reach.

Awaking in a white, linen dress.

“Let your feet breath in the water through your soles.” The old man suggests.

I break the liquid’s surface tension with the flat of my feet.

A four footed bath tub foutain with animals.

The water turns and becomes red curls.

And i reawoke.

But it took a minute to trust it was so.

Big left toe: wiggle.

Wiggle now.

You are awake and will wiggle.

Sleep paralysis.

Once gone, is when more civilized monkeys brew tea.

I make a strong pot of blonde

Coffee.

I wiggle the left big toe.

I wiggle the right big toe.

The pot boils.

The aroma cannot be a dream?