Mind's laboratory

..is where it is still safe to play out thoughts and examine things and put two and two together in all quirky ways and see what happens. It is not so much like in the presence of an intelligence as much as in the space where such activity could be done and be ok without bouncing off an opinion or judgment - that will be there later, but before that a space to figure things out, to let imagination have its playtime.

On trust and truth

Im addicted to analysis..and to asking questions. Why, what, how, where, when.. why mostly. I want to get to the depth of things. The truth of the matter. Whats at the bottomline. Whats the undercurrent..all to be discovered by questioning. I need to get to that which is not apparent to be able to trust - trust people, situations, systems. To trust myself to take action from knowing that it is based on getting to the heart of the matter. The urge to know that truth at the core of it all is so important to me. Wonder if it is a universal thing (dont want to end up thinking im That unique). Maybe people really want to know the truth of things. Maybe people are cynical and mistrustful of what they see around them and of what they sense with their limited sensing hardware (read 5 senses) and need to see beyond the apparent into the very heart of the matter. Or is it just me?..and i dont think theres anythng wrong with wanting to get to the bottomline. Thats just the way I am, and I like me for being me.

Body music

Heart sang again today. At some level, I let the music come out…or maybe the music was just of such intensity that it nudged against my resistance enough to have it ease up enough to let it through. 

The amoeba in me

..is carving a niche in everyman's (and everywoman's) land. In the jostle for space and recognition, is tippy-toed'ly yet with a bravado that only someone who has not dared be seen for who they are can have once in a while, like an amoeba venturing out its pseudopods before rolling into its next step well aware of its vulnerable position and yet also its need to move. For reasons of its own and also larger than its own. Because it is alive.

Tonsured! (like the sound of the movie title, Tangled!..just the opposite)

Getting civilized. Scary. To me it means conforming to the masses - to their views of 'normalcy,' loose ends neatly tucked into place, straight jacketed with a face to put on every time you walk out of your personal space to face the world. After a thrilling, eye-opening, freshen-my-worldview tonsure experience, I have hair growing that needs to be trimmed and made to look 'acceptable.' Gone is the wash-wipe-readytogo ease. In comes mirrors, comb, oilcontrolling shampoo and barbers, and 'the style that best suits me with the hair I have.' Civil-ization. Now I have a hairclip to deal with the elongated hair which I could just as easily snip off with my home scissors to my fancy to make it be manageable, if not for the fear of 'looking' mousy. I could so easily tonsure again. I am this close to doing it.

It has been 9 months since I did it but it is so fresh in my memory. How was it when tonsured? Nude. I thought it was me feeling vulnerable and naked, a free target for any one and everyone to stare and think aloud and be shocked at, but not surprisingly it is the onlookers who were naked. Unguarded in facing unfamiliarity, not understanding 'why' and perhaps faced with their own fears of being exposed mirrored in my 'exposure.' It did feel like I was skinned, leaving my flesh beneath exposed for the unvoiced questions but naked expressions in their eyes. Everything came into the expression in their eyes, differed from person to person but the range is not the everyday questions, or perhaps it was just so deeper that they took on a quality new of their own. Gender. Nationality. Belief. Purpose. Sexuality. Friendship. Fellow human being. Belongingness. Human. Commercial value. Worthy of association. The separatedness/aloneness in being human was pretty stark in their alone, vulnerable, scared, confused looks when they thought no one was looking but me - the unfamiliar entity with whom they could unwittingly drop their guards and be their vulnerable self for just that little while. I felt sad that my hair was growing in fast and yet wished for it to grow fast for fear of becoming a permanent outsider. The pull to 'belong,' to not be the 'odd one out' and thus become 'visible' is scary and hence seek the comfort of being 'invisible' in the crowd, in belonging, and then again to be 'unique' and to 'stand out in the crowd' and be 'famous.' guess the difference is in 'acceptable' fame, enviable fame, shining star, not vulnerable and exposed. It perhaps scratched them where they dint want to but I would do it again for it peeled away a layer of deadness (dead skin?) and freshened something more important, more essential at my core than any training could have accomplished. I could see the condition of being human from the underbelly and hence a tiny peek into what it means to be human.

I am going to do it again. I just want to get 'civilized' again enough to get the kick out of tonsuring again, so now it is clips and comb ...and perhaps I will get some red streaks for a change!

Unlearning-Learning-relearning

Habituation. An action -> an experience -> a result, over and over until the experience gets familiar and then is no more an experience but something that has settled down as 'real' - an 'is'- like a fact. Automation in the nervous system. Sudden changes in a habit causes confusion and disorientation at the level of predictibility and confidence/assuredness - an uncomfortable space of 'not knowing,' which is a blessing for it allows for something new to happen and a curse for then 'known' knowledge is insufficient and introduces doubt and fear until some semblance of familiarity ('knowing') gets established, reinforcing predictability and confidence. A new habit.

To catch the bull by its horns.

A way of being that has a willingness more than fear, an ‘iv had enough’ more than ‘what next,’ energy more than patience, action more than thought, here and now more than ‘consequences.’

Listening to the body..allowing for its movement

In this part of my journey, slow almost meditative movements calms, opens space, and has it be easy for the mind and body to come to a kind of truce for the while instead of the almost constant different directions and speeds that both want to go in. If not for this pace, it is much like managing children/people with different temperaments.

Movement

Deal with completion, not incompletion. If considered that anything that moves is possibility and all else is concerns/reactions/effects and more reactions, and they are all valid no matter how bizarre they may seem, then wonder if only dealing with the completion would be all that is required. The shortest distance to cover the gap and most economical.

Freedom to be is when..

The ultimate inaduthenticity is that there is any innate significance to me or to life. It is when the ultimate inauthenticity is accepted and owned that any freedom to be becomes possible.

Nobody

Anonymity beguiles. Be one in the crowd, invisible. Sense and experience the happenings with people, around them, within them, inside their head and because of that inside the head. Be with the expressions and the experience that gives the expressions. To savor the words uttered. Feel the tone and cadence.  Linger on the fleeting lines on the face as emotions flicker across them. Follow the gaze and picture the image forming in the brain layered, interpreted and juxtaposed by others already available in the memory database from past experiences. Invisibility beguiles hence. A name, a face, an identity, a persona. All needs maintenance and right now they are kinda annoying distractions from the wealth available to explore by being anonymous and invisible and a nobody.

Words - limit and liberation

The pull towards the whirlpool of confusion and directionlessness thereof, as in a sense of being lost, is the sometimes limiting need to put things in words. Once distinguished, the apt words opens up pathways and shears through confusions and dilemmas while when undistinguished, words lead to confusion and directionlessness, the latter of which is perhaps the reason for my earlier aversion to words and for thinking of them to be necessary evil.


If so, what determines the readiness to use words that opens pathways vs otherwise? Guess written and thought words have their own pace to discern which is which, just as the person has a pace at which learning when to do what is discerned, and it may perhaps be on a kind of universal developmental scale of learning. And the scale may have an in vs out, expressed vs unexpressed, giving vs receiving, action vs inaction, noise vs silence, distinguishing vs retrospection, etc, parameters to determine who is at what level.

Gift of speech..

Wording defines, crystalizes, and allows for sequencing a line of thought. Medium of expression similarly 'freezes' a feeling/thought/sensation/experience, wherever be it in within the +/-0-10+/- range of the 5-sense system of receptiveness.

Freedom of choice..

I just love ranges.... 0 to 10, least to max, base pitch to octaves, minus to extreme positive. They are dualities too, but they are ranges to be experienced, not quite understandable conceptually or gotten intellectually..needs to be experienced..i guess.

Stuck in rules and expectations (meet them...trying to meet them...or rebeling and so not meeting them, but nevertheless playing within the gammut of expectations and rules). Im stuck in them. Cant paint my own stuff, play whatever i may want to think of as music, write whatever i want, do whatever i want..without bumping against some preset/preconditioned expectations. It is like a default encoded something that just keeps going on and on, and if im not present to it, i could go on for days on end like a machine (no thought, no nothing)..like a machine..eat at a particyular time, sleep at a particular time, brush in morning, .everything has a preset time and slot....no need to think..it is so automaton-like. HAVE to wash up after eating, have to brush, have to ...everything. Unless i know what it is not to, and how it feels not to, it is not my choice at all, just a mechanical rut ingrained into me by upbringing (because someone asked me to do, but have no real clue except as a concept..and intellectualized..as to why i should. Not because i FEEL dirty and so, or because i am hungry,... not much is my choice but a handed down set of 'dos'). ....so the point is, i dont really know the range of things in an experiential domain. This may sound pretty dumb, but it seems like i dont really know how to be free.

Acceptance..

Everyone, each and everyone, is a minority in themselves. Alone, unique in his/her own way and wanting (searching??) for more of the same kind, to feel a bond of acceptance, comradeship, of not having to fight to be oneself, to be cool doing the things accepted (even if by just one other person). Once that kernel of approval comes through, then it is a matter of time before the same action/expression is repeated and developed and overtime allowed to blossom into whatever it could possibly become (maybe larger than oneself, have a life of its own, and have a following with mimicers/critics/students, the whole works).

Random thoughts linked. Again, is random really so random? Maybe nothing is really 'nonsense.'

Can the moment be not savored in all its flavors, see the colors inherent, sense the depths, experience the width and space...savor the moment before choosing where to go next with peace right here and now and not to be sought at the end of it? Can it all not be gotten with velocity, the distance and the moments' fullness all as if in a flash, in toto...or the moment's fullness in toto in a flash even while speeding towards what needs be gotten to? If it is realms to be experienced to have access to the domain that creates realms, then velocity in the milestones, connections, and movements needs be consistent to do that which needs be done.

What if it all comes to that what needs be done is not out there but where i could get to? Would perfection that i resist then be gotten as an experience? what then? what lies beyond 'perfection'? Monotony is boring. is it then Jonathan's next world? Is it all gonna be experienced as an illusion? the limitation of the senses limiting what could be possible, creating the illusion of the limit? Will it all be experienced, as there being more than the senses? the - range of the senses and the whole range of unnamed/undiscovered senses? .. the things that brings everything together in a continous steam of consciousness? Would that be the other side of darkness ? (.)

On selfishness..

While everyone ultimately does things for their own benefit, and everything is for a very selfish reason, why is it difficult to admit that it is so? Why is being selfish defaulted into the 'bad' basket? Upbringing? indoctrination of presumed/imbibed morality? misplaced loyalty? misunderstood value system? kafkaisc existential confusion leading to seek guidance from sources external, and thereby external sources' own selfishness dictating/propagating that others (themselves) is more important than oneself (you)? a Darwinian survival tactic propagated by the dominant, creating a hierarchy that ensures survival of fittest propagator in that order? a reliance on sensory input sans insight in interpreting whatever happens in the world outside oneself? blind acceptance(reception) of things without awareness of that accepted?

Sensing..

There is much happening in non-verbal communication! It is a whole world in itself. Silence is not so silent, that of course I 'understood' from 'Silence speaks louder than words' but did not quite get the stratas, colors, sounds, ..and I suspect a horde of unnamed somethings that perhaps I dont have the vocabulary for or dont know to categorize into the 5-sense system (if at all sensing can be put into a range of +/- 0 to +/-10 where - is the silence range and + being the labeled sense range). I sometimes suspect there are more sense organs than just 5. Maybe the 6th sense is the 'antenna,' the intuitive sensing system. There may be more, just not labeled, I guess. (Medical professionals are still researching on the body and discovering, or maybe they have touched upon other senses but just not 'text-booked' them yet)..speculations!

in conscious action..

uncertainty. confusion. doubts. wary trust. right/wrong? good/bad? morality. smallness. little girl bewilderment. defensiveness. hidden 'knowing' with doubt of the knowing. muscle not built up to support that knowing in conscious action. weak will and strengthened disempowering convos. dump of charcoal on uncut carbon. dare not even to name with confidence. serious lack of muscles to support the core. None to blame. .afraid of damage caused/causing. games are bigger. untried. uncertain grounds. stakes are higher. steps have repercussions. willingness to deal with consequences, but the delicacy of matters, attention to the finest details, the delicate interconnections, irreparable damages any? doubt my own sensitiveness, best course of action?  list teh possible courses of action and gauge consequences. presumptions? unaware data? lack of training?   action and reaction. reaction guiding next action. swiftness. instincts. there is no right way. actions and actions.          whats the intention and what is getting created. whats the gap. actions. all else mere details. velocity? timeline. SMRs. My project(s). Willingness to jump out of skin.  this moment being better than the last. knowing the network that holds the knower and that which holds the IT. Inner outer world sync. too many things to remember. Gap. future in present. word actions. thought actions. actions. Gap. It is a lonesome journey. come alone go alone. whats in between? is it really alone? whatever is real does not look for reassurance. whatever isnt needs to know. what is real has elements in common. timeless. always at all times being watched, judged and evaluated. constantly. unrelentingly. inner and outer. mercilessly. no respite. There is no one out there watching over. No guardian angel. Totally exposed for everyone to see, in and out. Nothing belongs to u. u own nothing. u have zilch. Everything u do is magnified 100 times in impact and effect. the slightest movement has unmeasured magnitude.

Explore

Explore - whatever may be the ground conditions. Test - however may be the results apparent. Challenge the definitions - whatever may be the intricacies and connotations. Explore.