anamnesis

Well, I warned you I would write about Pluto, and here it be. Each planet is a teacher. Deep in our psyche, archetypes of the planets work in mysterious ways, illuminating patterns and life lessons, and these are coded in stories and myths that reach back for generations. What science took from astrology was merely the physical surface, like strip miners gouging the earth for immediate profit, but it has never found "meaning" in the physical; to find meaning you have to know the stories. And some of our stories have greater meanings and insights into life than any single individual can assemble through haphazard experience or singular introspection. Pluto's stories aren't for the faint of heart, however. It's the planet of death, rebirth, transformation. The alchemy of desire. When Pluto teaches it does so by taking away whatever we think we need the most, whatever we feel defines us. We tumble into the Underworld like Inanna of Sumeria, who was stripped of an att...

Tao had a interesting post on our experience of time. Rather than fill up his comment space with something that may take it on a tangent, I thought I'd post some personal observations here. This is just an exploration. It seems time accelerates for two major reasons and there is one way to slow it down that most of us know but few of us practice. One reason it seems to accelerate may be that the relative ratio of any unit of time gets smaller as we get older. When we're 4, a summer is 1/16th of our entire life and goes on forever. By the time we hit 30, the same summer is only 1/120th of our life so far. A much smaller fraction. And since time seems to be more about our subjective experience than the wall clock, the context of this accumulated experience seems to carry greater and greater weight. But not just because of its quantity. Another factor, one more insidious, is our habits. The other day at a restaurant I watched two three year olds from different tables dashing arou...

Well, it's all quiet in bloggerville, and fall is almost upon us ---my favorite time of the year. I like the cool nights after a hot summer, the crisp air, the sounds of autumn insects; it's always seemed like a great time for new beginnings. Probably should have been born in Australia, I guess. But I got no complaints. Bright-eyes is off blogging in another language, the chilipeppers are back to their school routines and I'm slowly waking up from my summer hibernation and getting ready to tackle new projects. And this is where you come in, dear readers. I spent much of today crafting a special experience using brain entrainment frequencies. Patterns of sound that alter your state of mind. The experiment was to create a sequence that would sweep through ranges from the somnambulistic to the mystically ecstatic. It's designed to counteract ruts of thinking and stimulate a type of freshness and pleasure that revitalizes the mind, and I was pleased with the results. You ca...

I thought this list was pretty sagilicious, having my current vantage post. Just wish it was something our youngins could read and think about. Just because people are older doesn't necessarily mean they are any wiser, sometimes they just recycle the same experience over and over, piling on further justification for why they don't need to change. But without going all ancient mystic here, there are some things that one can only really notice in retrospect; and what an awesome advantage it would be to know this stuff in advance.

OK, this is way cool! Ever put something down and then, when you go to get it later, it is nowhere to be found? I used to tell people that the time-being takes this stuff. You know, when you set it down for the time being...well, sometimes it takes it. And sometimes it puts it back in the same place, a little while later. It's onery that way. But it happened to me (again) tonight and it was driving me nuts. I don't think it was the time-being and I knew it was probably staring me right in the face but I searched two rooms from corner to corner, over and over, and it was no where to be found. Argggg! But then I remembered (at least) my secret weapon, pictured on the left. And I'll show you something that may save your sanity in these cases. So I've got this fancy pendulum I bought in a rock shop on our trip to the Southwest (along with some cool little magnetic metal balls that you separate slightly in your hands and throw in the air and they'll clang together making...

Had a good weekend. Friday, Bright-Eyes and I went to an afternoon showing of Zoom. Silly fun. Had barbeque over at some olde friends on Saturday. But Sunday is when I got into trouble. After getting to bed relatively early Sunday night and setting my alarm for work today, I started reading Blue Girl. Big mistake; I couldn't stop. The pacing, story, and De Lint's impressive ability to stack multifaceted conflict and weave plot-lines sucked me in; I kept reading "just a little more" but had to force myself to quit around 4:30am or so. Missed my alarm. Forgot I had a 9:00am meeting this morning, which I discovered when I got an email at 10:30 asking if I was going to show up. Totally screwed, but completely non-repentant. I'd hate to be my boss. But I think I'm going to get an earlier start on it tonight. Meh. The protagonist's name is Imogene, a 17 year old that's moved from school to school and has some unique ways of looking at the world. Technical...

A man rowed a small boat upstream, heading toward home, when he felt another small boat, heading downstream, collide with his boat. Since he had the right of way, he felt angry. Turning, he yelled at the other boatman, "Watch where you're going! Be more careful!" The other man apologized, and passed by without further incident. But an hour later, as the man continued upstream, he felt another boat collide with his. Furious, he turned to yell at the reckless person. His anger vanished when he saw that they boat was empty---it must have come loose from its moorings. Calmly, he pushed it aside and continued on his journey. He never lost his temper again, because from then on, he treated everyone like an empty boat. In Don Miguel Ruiz's book, The Four Agreements, he speaks of the many agreements we have made with ourselves and others over the course of our lifes, the most important of which are those we have made with ourselves; the ones where we tell ourselves who we are...

Do you ever wonder what people are searching for online? And what you may be able to tell about them by what they're searching for? In a shining example of the respect companies have for our personal information , AOL just this week released the logs of all searches done by 658,000 of their users from March to May of this year. So, of course, several sites put this information online. It's entertaining to click the link above and click the Random User button and see what you can tell about the person. What do you suppose user 2708 may have been thinking, here are some of her(?) searches: revenge tactics the woman's book of revenge dirty tricks for chicks voice changer how to humiliate someone bill me pay later for cd's scams to play on people how to get revenge on an old lover i hate my ex boyfriend how to really make someone hurt for the pain they caused to someone else columbia house advice from women who have seeked revenge on old lovers makehimsuffer.com how to say ...

Back in my stint at Pizza Hut, late at night when I was closing shop, I used to turn off all the lights except the red lamps that made it look like a scene from mars, and tweak the hidden volume control on the jukebox to fill the entire space with this song. It was the perfect closing ritual :-)

Well Ms. K's family has been carting me around quite a bit this summer, the latest venture took us to South Dakota. On the agenda was a demonic tower, a motorcycle rally that drew crowds from across the nation, and a human maze with a vending machine in the middle instead of cheese. We headed out bright and early on Friday for a 5 hour drive to Devil's Tower . Nothing too notable on the way up, other than the possible extinction of bunnies gauging by the amount of roadkill I saw on the way. We arrived at the KoA pretty early in the day, and settled in after getting the tent set up (getting pretty good at it after all these times). After a quick rest we were off to conquer the mountain. The campsite is situated at the base of the trail, so at all times you had a clear view of the Tower. Prairie dogs squeaked on the way up and Golden Eagles circled at the top of the Tower. The trail that guides you around is actually paved, and only 1.3 miles long, so it was a relaxed trek. Ms. ...

I carry around in my head several stories that I consult from time to time. The sufi stories about the Mulla Nasrudin are some of my most prized possessions. What is interesting about these stories is that they are like onions. Over the years of thinking about them, they keep revealing layer after layer of meaning. Their first layer will pop to mind instantly. But if you keep thinking about them, you may be surprised how valuable they are in revealing more and more. Here's one of my favorites: A man was walking home late one night when he saw the Mulla Nasrudin searching under a street light on hands and knees for something on the ground. "Mulla, what have you lost?" he asked. "The key to my house," Nasrudin said. "I'll help you look," the man said. Soon, both men were down on their knees, looking for the key. After a number of minutes, the man asked, "Where exactly did you drop it?" Nasrudin waved his arm back toward ...

Had a strange dream last night. Perhaps it was sparked by a comment on ger-beans blog about the subject line, perhaps it was about certain experiments underway. But it gave me pause. In the dream I learned how to fly by a combination of small hops and rhythmic movements. I've had dreams where I already knew how to fly, but this was the first about learning the process itself. It wasn't a lucid dream, so I wasn't aware that I was dreaming, and things unfolded as they would likely happen in the "real world." First off I wanted to make sure I wasn't just hallucinating (happens from time to time) and showed it to some friends at a public place. Now you may imagine this would all be pretty exciting, and it was, but you may not imagine what came next. In a world, much like our own, where the paparazzi rip apart anyone's life whose story they can market to public interest, where lotto winners become beacons of hope and endless solicitations for those who believe ...

This may turn into one of those "tomes" a certain nephew gripes about, so bewarned. I started this about a week ago. It was triggered by a random impulse to explore how ADD may be an adaptive mechanism for coping with an increasingly complex and stimuli rich world. But I got distracted into researching more about ADD, couldn't get organized enough to finish it, put it off, then forgot about it for a while. Incidently, in Oklahoma City, the survey form they give family, friends and teachers to fill out to try to identify ADD looks for 5 indicators: Impulsive Distracted easily Lack of organization Procrastination Forgetfulness If you can't sit still, they throw an H in for Hyperactive, so you get ADHD. First a disclaimer: I ain't a professional psychologist. Even though at work it seems sometimes that's all I do. And I do have the 45 hours of all the requirements of undergraduate and graduate coursework for a masters in clinical psych, I just couldn...

Advertising is a billion dollar industry and I think they know something that most people don't. Most people think that advertising is about selling "things" or "services." But what they really sell are feelings. Or rather, the expectation of feelings. (And sometimes, the hope for avoidance of particular feelings, like guilt, shame, embarassment or fear.) Buy this product and you are smart, safe, cool, individual, etc. They've tapped into what really motivates people. Feelings. For example, our goals are not usually about the particular thing itself, whether it's an achievement, a possession, a certain financial mark, a promotion or whatever; it's really about what we think we're going to feel as a result of having this or that or doing x or y. Successful, secure, happy, loved, good look'in and admired: you name it, the feelings people are after are as unique as they are ---and the means they use to get them are often mistaken for the ends. A...

So Sonic said he had a good time with G&G and G&G; really seems to enjoy those folks and got to catch up with Uncles/Aunts, cousins and the miscellaneous wee ones and westie. Ms. K (we're getting alot of K's on this board!) survived the onslaught and Sonic said she felt right at home, even had an Uncle like M/G (the combination of which boggles my mind but, if true, would definitely prepare her for anything, lol) Sonic and Ms. K are headed up to South Dakota this weekend for the Sturgis Motorcyle Rally in the Black Hills (both her parents are bikers) and then hiking Devil's Tower and doing some human maze quest. I tasked Sonic with providing us a trip report afterwards. Been thinking about getting a motorcyle again off and on for a few years. Kind of miss them. Just wondering whether my Hamingja has enough reserves to cover me; I've made lots of withdrawals and can't see the balance. Mew has relocated to his new apartment, sans a little bit of furniture and ...