I have a background on my computer desktop of the aeons I’ve talked about on this blog, and a few others. I thought maybe I should post it for general reference and talk a little about how it came about.
I’ve had the feeling I want something to physically represent them around me. As if I feel the need to “bring them into my reality” more physically. I am still thinking about it. Talismans? Wind Chimes? No idea. But while thinking about it I decided to do an ‘image’-based version of a little chart I was keeping with ‘where they appeared around me’.
This is the group I originally called ‘The Consortium’. A group of some multiple of 4 that was ‘a layer out’ of “me” — out from the Four. Not long ago I was wondering why IG had not introduced me, nor had I spontaneously met, any new Consortium members in quite a long time. I had the feeling Nero was suggesting they were complete. I went to my list and realized that made 12. I had guessed at 12 or 16 being the final number.
I went looking for a picture to represent Nero. I thought to myself that I would just enter google terms to match his general visage, then go through pics and see what I felt best about. What I found the instant I started was that he was present and had an opinion of his own. When he saw what he felt was best for me to choose, it had nothing to do with the fact that the man had much darker hair, was younger, had no strong roman nose, and so was rather different to me physically. Something about how *I* felt about the picture — more a sort of ‘my relationship to it and how it made me feel about the person’ — is what matched.
Bolehren was similar. The pic she chose was darker than she, and in my view didn’t look a lot like her aside from female with brown hair, but she loved how I felt about the picture (the woman is adorable) and felt that was perfect.
Taan chose a picture that wasn’t even a person but I find endearing and funny every time I see it. It matches his sense of humor and the ongoing innate joy he has.
Ray is short and strong but disliked all my dwarf googling (with some disgust) and chose something more like a strong man.
L’Anna was easy because she had appeared in the guise of a TV character to begin with, saying my attention to that character in the previous days was partly coming from her, to make our introduction easier.
Nedlund I have only seen eyes so far. Not close enough or integrated I guess. I’m still waiting to see more of him so I can find something to better match.
Hot ___ I still haven’t got his second half of name yet. And he is not as egyptian looking as his pic, or maybe he is moreso but just not that exact thing, but where else is there a pic of something like that, I ask you.
Marcus also chose a pic for himself darker than he really is to me, and I couldn’t remember where I’d seen that real person before until I remembered: a TV character I liked very well once who actually went by the name Marcus in the show (Babylon 5). That seemed a little funny, and makes it more iffy where imagination bleeds into this archetypal game of identifying with internal aspects, doesn’t it.
Mei Lee matches a painting of a woman I cannot find. Hers is temporary until I stumble on something else that matches better. She is blonde with hair pulled back, an intelligent but lovely face, a bit elegant in look.
Ithikah is only the ’shape’ he gave me of himself, and rolled out inside me. Nothing comes close to that except that actual shape.
Jared the roman centurion and El Nino his black stallion came out ok. I have been talking with Jared and El Nino off and on lately. Trying to warm Jared up to me. I feel drawn to him but he still acts as if he is separate and slightly resentful of me.
Calmé liked that pic we found. She is darling internally as well.
The four elementals-of-soul in the middle, with IG at top. It is a nice reminder for me. At IG’s suggestion I sometimes visualize hugging or holding hands with each of them. Having a sort of visual, no matter how silly it kind of must be to others, does help me establish a thought form place for them inside me.
It’s on an otherwise black desktop screen. So fairly dark and decent for meditating.
The irony to all this is that at one time I reacted so badly to any of them. I felt almost hysterical and angry or afraid. And now I feel like I love them and need them and I often feel great gratitude for them, and wonder how it was I could go so long without knowing and feeling them as part of me.
Recently in a half-daydream some woman tried to introduce herself to me as an aeon from a different grouping. I told her to get lost. So apparently the resistance hasn’t passed, only to this particular group. They are all so awesome.
I have wondered, is it coincidence that Ithikah is very tall and Hot __ is hugely tall, and they are front and back? Is it coincidence that the two to each side are fair women and both something to do with healing and more, I sense? My impression of their positioning (which they allowed me to put in a circle but had their opinions on how that should work) was always that, as one of them once said, it did matter a little, but not much. It was just mildly representative of our relationship.
I’ve had a few more conversations about ‘awareness’ with them. I still don’t have much of it. Mostly Nero, when it does come through.
Ever notice that most music isn’t really happy? It’s like humans are more prone to write music when it’s a cathartic venting. Here’s one of my playlists from grooveshark of some music that takes me back to the mid-70s when I was a kid. Yes, I love the Beach Boys, I admit it!
I had a startling realization recently, looking around my bedroom: I live in a box.
Then I thought: come to think of it, we all live in boxes.
We make boxes to connect our boxes, hallways and more, so we’re in a bigger box nearly all the time, and in no danger of being boxless or even temporarily un-boxed.
We get in a box with wheels to go to our bigger multi-box box to work.
Sometimes we all go out to dinner in the same box.
Aliens must think human psychology is weird and fascinating.
This probably won’t be the last time I do a body med and have no idea what the heck it is, hence my adding a number to the title. That used to always be the case, that I didn’t know.
For years I could not hear my guides. I could see their lips moving, isn’t that hilarious, but I could not hear them. Now they won’t shut up. (Just kidding. Sort of.) Today when I asked Tek what this was he tried to tell me. I could feel that I was blocking him.
It SO bugs me because I don’t know why. I mean seriously, who cares? I had already DONE the meditation, it was over, so why not know what it was? Why would my psychology block that? God only knows. Anyway so today it was a mystery.
I was sitting in my rocking chair again, waiting for the slab bacon to finish baking, since I had already finished the marinade for dinner’s Pork Loin Rotisserie. (Apparently today is eat-a-pig day. I’m sorry, pig.) I had no idea how much longer the bacon was going to require cooking because I was cooking twice as much as usual at a lower temp than usual.
Me: Self, how much longer till the bacon will be done?
Self: About 8 minutes.
(Me to myself: why did I never before think of just asking myself such things??)
Me: Tek, I have 8 minutes. Do you have a med that can fit in there?
Tek: Yep. (He instantly starts putting stuff in front of me.)
I’m sitting at a table with him standing near me, and in front of me on the table to the left is a small soft object. I can’t decide if it’s irregularly shaped or the vaguest bit rounded-triangular in 3D. It looks like it is covered with greasy grime of some kind. But at least nothing is growing on it. So the disgust level is not too bad but it’s not super pleasant, either.
To the right on the table is what looks like a silver hair pick, the kind with about 8 tines in a row. In school the kids with afros used to just stick them in their hair and leave them there (which I found hilarious. I wondered what would happen if I went to school with a hairbrush stuck in my hair one day. I didn’t think anybody would get it. Or they’d kick my ass if they did).
Me: Tek, surely you cannot mean for me to spear this little thing with that tool but I can’t think of any other way to use it on it.
Tek: The tool is for later.
So I started to pick up the little mucky thing and then stopped.
Me: I’m going to add gloves and so on here…
Tek: No. You need to touch this.
Me: You’re kidding! Aren’t you the guy who once forced me to wear a hazmat suit during one of these?!
Tek: That was something different. You need more of a connection to this.
Me: Oh brother. Ok fine. I’ll have one hand that has no gloves. Maybe just the fingers. Maybe — oh hell {on sensing “that look” from him}, FINE THEN.
So I pick it up in my hands and visualized that I’m holding it gently over a sink running the cleansing water of life and I work on rinsing it off. It takes a bit and I have to gently rub it all over to get the stuff off. Finally it’s clean.
Me: What do I do with it?
He takes it from my hands and then he and I are someplace else. He hands me the silver tool and points upward. I look straight up, craning my neck back in a way, and I see there is this long … damn. Shapes are hard to describe. Imagine something about four inches wide that is just like some kind of layer of something and it’s slightly irregular but long in shape, like 4 inches by a few feet.
(You understand my perspective is all over in these. It could be microscopic, really.)
Tek: You need to break up the surface covering that area first.
So I took the tool and did tiny little pokes, very completely across it, and I brushed all the junk off that I’d broken up. Then I imagined some forced air cleaning it off really well.
Tek: There are actually tiny little tubes of a sort, in just the shape of your tool, that go into this. You can’t see them well because they are clogged. You need to gently push the tool all the way into those holes to help clear them out inside.
I felt around. I could feel them more than see them. I set a tool-guide visual that when my tool was precisely in the right place it would ding and light up, and then I would gently push it all the way in and pull it out again. These things were maybe half an inch apart and it took awhile to go through the whole length of that region. Then I did another forced-air and then a water of life pressure wash to make sure everything was clear. I went through all the junk and made sure it was fine-particle size, imagined lightning frying it all into “inert” chemically, then dumped it in a waste bin.
The thing above me now was more dark fleshy pink colored than it had been and seemed like it would be sort of … exuding something from the other side of it to this side, like a long flat-tube-ish area just dripping something into the area where I was standing from tiny little pretty regularly-spaced holes.
Me: So what’s the little thing I washed got to do with that area up there?
Tek: It deals with what comes in from up there.
Me: What is that thing, and this area?
Tek: {I see his lips moving but can’t get the concept or word. Damn!}
Body: Eight minutes are up! Your bacon is done.
I leap up and walk to the kitchen and open the oven. It’s perfectly cooked. Way to go.
Apparently this is what happens if you just ignore archetype meditations altogether for awhile. The mountain comes to Mohammed.
*
I was relaxed but not at all asleep when Tek showed up. Tek is a ‘body-archetype’ I guess. Times when I drop into this “white lab area” to work on stuff related to my body, he’s the technician. But it’s usually a matter of me going there and there he is. Never have I seen him anywhere else — let alone in my awareness when I am not meditating at all. But there he was.
And suddenly we were together somewhere ‘else’. In the ‘else’-place, there was what I thought was a big wall, but then realized it was a big object of some kind, I was just seeing a part of it. The wall was lightly covered in places, and super densely in others especially nearer the top, with these darkest-brown “nodules”. They felt like spherical barnacles.
I had the feeling that whatever they had begun as, attached in a tiny piece but added to it and grown, it had been “alive”. Not alive like a full life form, but like… like molecules and cells felt a bit more alive than they normally do to me, and they were as much alive as anything else at that level.
He pointed and I followed his focus. A wave of nausea passed through me, which is pretty common for body-cleaning areas he focuses me on. I could tell that the surface of this wall/object was normally firm but soft/flexible. But where the nodule/barnacle/sphere-things were present, it seemed to be firmer (most of it), and where they were denser especially around the top, it got stiffer until in the areas where they were super dense, the entire area just seemed really thick, rock-hard and encrusted.
That didn’t seem like a good thing at all.
Tek handed me some kind of tool. It looked like a kitchen implement but nothing I’ve seen before. It was silver and was a group of strong straight wire-like things with blunt ends, bundled together at one side with a handle, with the middle one sticking out more than the others. I had the feeling I was supposed to do something with this, like use it on the nodules. Maybe to pry them off, I thought, though it wasn’t clear how that shape would apply to such a thing.
“I’m falling asleep,” I observed, in some apology to him because that meant my awareness would be checking out any time now. He just stepped back as if to leave, and then said as he vanished, as if oh-by-the-way: “That’s your liver.”
I was so interested in that I knew, blessedly, I would remember it. Then I fell asleep.
I forgot about all this until this evening. I was sitting in the rocking chair holding my cat Lina, relaxing while my rotisserie cooked a few chicken breasts. I couldn’t think of anything I felt less like doing than concentrating on disgusting things in my head, at that moment, but I didn’t have any good excuse for NOT doing the med as I sat there doing nothing else of value.
So I dropped back into the ‘place’ I’d been with Tek. Called The Angelics, the ‘archetypes’ of Angels, who showed up and both placed one hand on a shoulder blade behind me. They don’t give energy but they ’share guidance’ is the best way to put it.
I called Inner Guide (IG) and asked for whatever archs she thought needed, and I brought in Sun (and held him tight for awhile) and Responsibility as my standards. She brought in Venus and Mars, although I was baffled at what they would have to do with this kind of thing.
I didn’t know where to begin though, and finally had the presence of mind to ask IG for whatever archetype could best help me work through this meditation. Then I wondered why I never thought to ask for that kind of archetype before. Too obvious, maybe? It was an ordinary guy who I was super comfortable with.
*
He thought maybe I should start in what seemed like a corner sorta. It wasn’t, it was just the positioning of the object (which was about 3x as big as me in that perspective), but it was at the very top, the hardest area, that made sense. I took the tool, turned it this way and that and said, “This is just not really made for this.” I imagined a short sword, then worried about hurting the organ itself, so I changed the blade to something like my very thick, tough silicone spatula that I use for everything in the kitchen — as a turner, a scraper, a stirrer, sometimes even a knife for soft things.
I started trying to slide the blade under the heavy crusted nodules but they seemed literally attached. I mean like some part of them… bit into or attached to actual cells of the organ. Like how barnacles I think can slightly soften the rock or something (I could be wrong about that). He said, “No reason not to try the standard archetype process.” So I imagined the water of love and chemical of love and special-barnacle-peeling-gel-of-love hahaha. Then I had the idea for lightning and I psych’d myself up for it, and then imaged a flood of lightning flashing through me and specifically electrifying all this junk and ’separating’ it in a flash from the organ.
Then I went with the short-soft-sword all around the organ. I pried off all this stuff, and it wasn’t that hard to pry it off as I thought it would be. Just a lot of it was all. I got the entire object done except one small spot on the other side that had some kind of problem and I had to say I’d come back to it; it felt like in that area, there was actually an erosion, an eating-away-spot gouging out a small area.
I had intentionally imagined a ‘catching’ area for all the massive crap I was hacking off. Looking down, it was like one of those rooms full of balls that kids jump in, except everything was in varying shades of brown and yucky. Tek suddenly showed up at my right.
“That’s what the tool is for,” he said, motioning to all the stuff. “You need to break it up into tiny pieces. We don’t want to release this like it is into the body.”
So I went through first and ’stabbed’ all of the nodules so everything was broken up into chunks. Then I went through, imagining it moving impossibly fast, and broke everything up like a whisk of sorts, until everything was a fine-granuled particle. Then I visualized dumping it all into a big sealing trashcan that would take it straight to ‘waste disposal’.
*
I almost forgot, then I went back to the spot that had some kind of problem. Up close, it looked like something had been ‘eating away’ at this tiny spot. I finally, with the arch’s guidance, decided to disassemble the cells all around and inside that area, a bit like cutting out the rotting flesh in a way but gentler, and got that made inert and broken up and in the waste. Then I poured energy into the ‘healing’ of that area from inside and out. In the end it was still vulnerable and I imagined some kind of good-cells that would cover it like a bandaid patch while it totally healed and got its natural shape back again.
*
Tek said that went just fine and he has more I could do if I were willing. I said ok then. Sure why not. I’m really working on supplements and reading on biology and more lately, so it’s sensible I’d be tuning into body-stuff.
In hypnosis, an ‘abreaction’ is what I was taught to call the spontaneous muscle spasm jerks that the subject (person being hypnotized) sometimes would display — these can be anywhere in the body, but usually occur solar plexus or lower. The idea is that when this happened, it was a subconscious “rejection” of the information that was being processed at that moment. You’ve heard the slang phrase “a knee-jerk reaction” — yes. Basically that sums it up.
In psychology official, abreaction is “the release of emotional tension achieved through recalling a repressed traumatic experience.” Its definition indirectly or directly implies that this recall is via ‘words, behavior, or imagination’. Nowhere does it suggest that “spontaneous muscle spasms” qualify for the term, though I suppose they do. For whatever reason, the MDs and PhDs that ran one of the places where I studied hypnosis used that term for that effect.
Abreactions were not uncommon, in fact they were pretty much the norm. Where, how often, how extreme, etc. they might be depended not just on the person but on the subject matter, and I assumed, the degree of belief system issues they were having with absorbing suggestions directly. If one line of suggestion was meeting regular abreactions, the result wasn’t likely to be good; best to take a different tact.
At one point, I started studying people around me whom I was not hypnotizing, and came to the interesting conclusion that perhaps many people abreact quite a lot in fact. But it’s such a small thing, few of us even notice it. We haven’t been trained to do so, to pay attention to that kind of thing, to have any idea it might mean something. So in a way, our body is constantly talking to us, we just don’t hear it.
Of course, muscle spasms do also happen for musculature reasons that are not necessarily related to any deep psychological meaning. Sometimes a muscle is just a muscle, you might say.
Just to be clear, I am NOT talking about major, charley-horse type spasms. Those issues can be caused by low magnesium/potassium/calcium. This is something I know too much about, as every time you shift suddenly to low-carb eating, you drop all the artificial ‘bloating’ your body holds in order to process carbs. The sudden drop in water/glycol bloat washes out a lot of those minerals temporarily and if you are not supplementing with them, ‘charley horse’ spasms in legs/feet for a short time are not uncommon. That is not the kind of muscle spasm I am talking about.
The kind I’m talking about range from barely perceptible even when you’re looking for them, to a major “jerk” of the whole body. They range from a ‘twitch’ you don’t notice to such a wild spasm that you forget literally everything in your head at that moment.
o0o
In archetype meditations I have often run into abreactions. The most difficult meditations I’ve ever done have always been accompanied by plenty of abreactions — often instantly when a certain idea, image or concept comes up. Here’s a few quotes from old blog posts here to give some real examples of how this comes about. I admit I don’t usually make a note of it except in the more extreme cases, but it’s not an uncommon thing in more minor degree.
Adjustment, Take II The moment I arrived and took IG’s hands–already my mind trying to escape–and begged her to help hold my attention there, I began abreacting. Muscle spasms went crazy. [...] Every few seconds I would abreact somewhere. It is very obvious I have a severe problem with this archetype but I can’t really figure out why. [...] My mind wandered. I held my mind fiercely and my body spasmed so intensely I forgot who the hell I was for a moment. But I began again. And again. And again. And…
A Heavy Issue, Take I I looked over at the playing cards moving around in the air beside us. I tried to ’see’ one clearly. I had a flash of something.. Me: Wands. My right leg spasmed violently. I closed my eyes and waited, like in RV, for the next data point. Me: Red. Feet? Seems like feet or print of feet, but also red. Both of my legs spasmed more violently. Me: Horse? I think. My entire body spasmed wildly. Me: For godssakes! And won’t THAT meditation be fun I bet…
A Heavy Issue, Take I I thought that sudden memory was IG giving me an answer. So I said, “OK, I want to meditate on “my problem with extra bodyfat” now.” I sneezed violently. I said dryly to IG, “Well that’s gonna be quite the meditation I bet.” IG seemed amused, in a good way, the first time I’ve got that sense from her.
Knock Knock, Neo I’m having a lot of abreactions still. And I’m starting to forget stuff almost immediately after doing it, which makes blogging it even more important I guess. I must be working on stuff heavier duty than I realize. [...] I said to him, “I’m having constant abreactions but only in my right leg. The calf, the knee and thigh. None anywhere else. Why is it that I am reacting here to you?” And the arch said, “Why don’t you do a meditation on the archetype of your right leg.” I was dumbfounded. I never thought of meditating on a body part. And yet if our body is manifest energy, and a core part of us, and our memory and so on is throughout our body, then surely every part of the body is a primal part of us. Surely every part of our body has a great deal of symbolic and literal meaning.
Most interesting to me, as it is not the only time this has happened to me — is this one:
Arch-Dreams and Chaos I started abreacting. I would have a thought or start an arch-dream and my body would jerk violently in one place or another, mostly lower body. I could literally feel it this time, as if energy-which-is-also-information were trying to run through my nervous system, but blocks were “shunting it off” with muscle spams. It got more severe. At one point, I found myself in this arch-dream and I went, “Hey! Hey, I remember this now! This is where I was last night! This–” and an abreaction so severe that my entire body spasmed wildly hit me. I forgot everything except that last thought. But at least it made me realize that I didn’t just pass out in the middle of a thought last night; I was doing “something”, I just don’t remember what.
So I re-read that last clip above not long ago and I thought, Hey wait a minute. That’s a big neon sign, isn’t it?! This is exactly what I should be meditating on — ask IG for “whatever that is”. If it is so severe that it knocks you unconscious when you’re meditating yet wide awake, that it later gives you such severe abreaction you forget everything in your head related to it instantly, then this is definitely something that needs attention.
But I felt fear the moment that concept hit me. I could feel it in my torso, from my solar plexus down to my groin, like a meta-physical “ghost-feeling” energy of sorts. Which tells me that yes — definitely I need to meditate on this. But more importantly it also tells me that this — this fear, this passing out — I see it as a symptom ‘related to’ the severe bodily-abreaction. Which sort of corresponds with what I have “intuitively felt” when having abreactions before, many times in fact — that it is a “shunting off”, from the nervous system I believe, of the ‘energy’, basically “not allowing” it to be processed through the body — and, I have a couple of times ’sensed’, that it is literally traveling through the body and up to (or returni
ng to) the ‘brain’ area but it’s never making it that far; the body is kicking it off the path before it can get there. So the mind cannot ‘think’ about it because ‘the thought never reaches you’ you might say. You could call it denial but this is happening at a body/subconscious level before that energy/info ever has the chance to even make it into your processing mind.
To a vastly lesser degree — but still worth noting — I sometimes abreact in Remote Viewing sessions as well. I seem to do it more when dehydrated. I seem to do a lot more when there is a great deal of trauma in the target, in fact, if I’m doing a target and abreacting all over the place I know it’s going to be a ‘mass trauma’ target (eg a photo of the immediate aftermath of — while still pulling survivors and bloody victims out of rubble — some massive disaster, e.g. a major earthquake). When people are dead already, or when it’s just something explosive, or when it’s long after or before the disaster or not with a focus on humans, I don’t get it so much. But when there is a mass number of humans in great drama/trauma/death all at once in a target, I am likely to either bluescreen the entire negative or have a terrible problem with abreactions (and getting data at all, as a result, since my body is throwing most of it off the line!) during session.
I know this is boring (my readers are already snoring) but I think this is important.
It’s important to RV because if abreacting does indicate a rejection of energy/information, it would matter to figure out how to work on that after or during the experience, to try and clear that out.
It’s important to meditation because if we learn to notice such things about our bodies, we learn more about ourselves. This ties into a recent thing too. Not long ago I blogged:
Body Talk …during the meditation I had a sudden ‘twinge’ in my left foot. Of course when you meditate you get all kinds of distracting body sensations, little pains, etc. But because I was at that moment pouring energy into an archetype (to no particular effect), without thinking much about it, I shifted and for a few moments, was pouring the same kind of energy-intent into my foot where it had the painful little twinge. And I got a *major* rush, body-wide. I was astonished. It made me realize that when we are meditating on something, body stuff isn’t just a ‘distraction’ — it’s energy acting-out, it’s communication or at least warning sparks — and THAT is exactly where to focus. I mean, that’s what pain is about: saying, “pay attention to me!” And all this time I’ve been taking this no-mind meditation approach toward it — rather than the active-meditation format I actually use — I’d been working to ignore that kind of thing. Once I realized that my body could talk to me and that energy with my body was as much a part of the meditation as the other things, that seemed to come and go for awhile, as if my body was as delighted as I was that I had learned a few simple words of its language.
It isn’t just abreactions. It’s any ‘body response’. It’s like we are meditating and we want to talk with our subconscious, and our body IS our subconscious in manifest form, and every time it says something to us we go, “Shut up. I’m ignoring you because I’m meditating to talk to my subconscious.” Sheesh!
I guess it just seems to me that paying more attention to things like abreactions and sudden pains etc., may be a great deal more important than I have previously considered. Maybe when I get a serious abreaction I should actually meditate ON the abreaction.
Previously when talking with IG about remote viewing and inaccurate data, she suggested that I work directly with the problem data (after feedback) to clear/straighten out that energy in myself. We shared a kind of visualization of these vertically suspended ’strings of energy’ that had bends, stiffness, knots, frays, etc. (this representing, literally or figuratively, energy-issues with certain data) and basically rejuvenating all those strings so they would be clean, supple, strong strings of light. And then that this could be done pretty quickly, en-masse, and I imagined them all together in a group over a star-trek style transporter pad, and the energy just going through them at the quantum level and reorganizing them cleanly according to their true pattern and getting rid of interference etc. I’ve wondered if one could do this before feedback or even before the session–if we can psychically know the target, why could we not know what data points we’re going to have issues with?–and if that might help as a process ritual to ‘clear out’ energetic problems ahead of time.
Well along the same lines, maybe I should be doing that kind of “reality med” — what I call very brief shape-visualization-based meditations — on every serious abreaction, pain, itch, etc. that I might get during meditation or remote viewing.
If nothing else I am going to make a point to pay a lot more attention to this now, and to ‘allow’ my body to use this as a kind of communication. Maybe ‘itch on my left foot’ is like a task number, a ‘directive’ to pay attention to that energy (whatever it might be) at least for a moment. Maybe abreactions are just a big arrow to what we resist, refuse, etc. and great strides could be made by specifically meditating on the parts of our body that abreact, hurt, etc.
I feel like I’m just a drifter lately. Not focused. Relaxing, half asleep, floating on the current of life. Not proactive, not even reactive, just sprawled out in weightlessness, freed from the gravity of my normal life. I have so many self-created ‘obligations’ to helping other people, doing free projects online, etc. that for years it has felt like I literally am ‘working’ (paid or not) every minute of the day, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was feeling guilty about not doing it. Lately I haven’t been feeling much of anything about anything. Which sounds depressive, but really it’s just a relief.
I’ve taken up watching shows on hulu.com. I loved the Dresden files. And Firefly. And a variety of other things. I’m generally a SCIFI/FAN/ACTION sort, if that’s a clue to taste. I used to think that no decently intelligent TV shows got made for the most part. It turns out, they do get made. They just don’t last for more than 6-13 episodes is all and I never saw them. Hulu has rescued a lot of great shows from obscurity, leaving fans like me grieving that it was over before we ever even ran into it.
I did a meditation the other night. OK nearly a week ago. IG brought Ray back. It’s a male human guide. (I was thinking maybe the name might be like ray-of-light and might be something unusual, but I guess not.) Of course, despite a meditation and then a dream with Ray, I remember approximately nothing about him. This hardly seems like coincidence, given how effectively he fell out of my head the first time. Oh brother.
I used my Procyon again the other day. I haven’t used this very often and want to get back to that. It’s a light-sound machine that pulses sound and colored LED’s at beat-intervals designed to create a frequency following response in the brain that puts you in a given state of mind. I’ve had some insomnia issues and putting on some delta does seem pretty effective at knocking me out. Although in fairness if I am sleepy at all even an alpha program will do that.
The guy who runs the company I bought my unit from worked for some time on Vista 64 drivers so I could do the custom programming for it. I haven’t tried them yet (just got them a couple weeks ago) but want to try that. I like the idea of combining a verbal walk-through of say, an archetype meditation, with the cool music stuff I got (’looping’ synth tracks), with custom beat patterns both sonic and photic, to see the end result. Although it seems like this is the kind of thing you could get into and still be experimenting 60 years later. Knowing me I won’t be happy until my brain is jello.
I’ve been experimenting a little now and then with a tantric redirection of sexual energy toward the aeons around me (the guides), sort of putting energy into them/our connection. It’s a hard temptation (as the most pleasure is letting it spill out at random of course) but seems to work, insofar as directing the energy to them seems to vaporize it — which I assume means the ‘re-routing’ is effective. Have only tried it a few times and haven’t yet done it while “in” a meditation (normally I’ve done this as part of an advanced archetype meditation and a rather highly ‘personal’ relationship with the arch) so I’m not sure yet of any real result.
Temporarily (I hope) I’ve completely lost traction on my 14 year remote viewing obsession. I mean at the moment it’s like the whole topic could evaporate and I wouldn’t even care. I assume it’s just burnout on a variety of related things and that will pass. Always seems to. It feels like a good thing though. Like I had too much ‘attachment’ to it, in the Eastern sense, and I am releasing that, and letting it be-what-it-is-for-me without a lot of other conditions.
I tried my pressure cooker for the first time the other day. It did manage to turn stew meat, that would normally take a solid 6-8 hours in the crockpot to get soft, into the same texture and good taste in 15 minutes. (And 20 minutes of gradual depressurizing.) I’m going to have to start using that more and experimenting. Since I eat lowcarb (mostly meat) and cheaper cuts taste good but are tougher, anything that speeds up cooking time/trouble dramatically is a good thing. I think my next experiment in it might be pork carnitas.
I’m hoping to do a little meditating this weekend, if I can pull myself away from Hulu that is. I’m turning into a couch–well, laptop–potato. But I’m running out of shows I like well enough to sit through, bummer! Anyway I’m planning to do a brief alpha session with the procyon and then do some Tower/IG/Arch/Guide work. Hope to have something useful enough to post on before it’s over.
I’ve mentioned a few times that one reason I blog my experiences, and as soon as possible, is because I forget them otherwise. No, let me be more precise; I forget them either way. But this way, I can re-read my blog and be reminded of them. I often have to read this stuff half a dozen times before it stops “falling out of my head” and I can easily remember it.
I actually think this is a serious issue in shamanistic-type paths that is seldom addressed. (Maybe people forget to address it. Haha. Or maybe it’s just embarrassing.) Our reality is defined by what we accept and pay attention to. Obviously, the things which most challenge the definition of our reality, and of our identity, are the most difficult to deal with, and will have the most denial and evasion present.
For me, the Aeons (guides) (yes I still think the ‘aeons’ term as a noun for those identities is a bizarre one, but it returned so often when wondering how to define them I’ve decided to go with it and trust that a better understanding of ‘why’ will eventually arrive. Although in case I didn’t mention it, part of the info was that they are not just a span of energy but a span of both space and time as well. It’s really very weird.), and archetypes, they threaten my current “sense of identity” and “belief system” constantly.
Some things, by their nature, will not stay. The Private Oracle stuff, that literally fell out of my brain within 20 seconds, although he did explain why, and what I had to do to prevent that. I simply must do that kind of communication while sitting at my computer so I can record it on the fly. Most things, though, are ok at the time — but I need to record it within a day or I lose a large % of it, and if I don’t get it recorded within a few days it’s gone.
Today I opened up this ‘meditation google spreadsheet’ I have which lists the various stuff I would like to meditate upon. I realized that in my blog here, I had met a guide (the tall statue like guy whose name was haute-some-thing) and forgot to put him in the little diagram that shows ‘where’ they appear around me. He is behind me, behind Jared and El Nino.
But when I pulled it up, in the top right corner position, it had one I don’t remember: it said: RAY.
Somewhere between April 26 when I first made that chart, and a couple months ago, I apparently met an aeon/guide named ‘Ray’ and he was in that position so I recorded him there. Or her. Or it. But I didn’t write it down, at least, I can’t find any trace of it in this blog, or in my email.
So it’s gone to me. I will ask IG to bring Ray back and introduce me again and perhaps I will remember something, who knows. All I know for now is that once again (it’s happened before) I have done a meditation or had some spontaneous experience, failed to write it down promptly, and it fell out of my mind as if it had never even happened.
That’s weird don’t you think.
You know this reminds me of something from years ago. I was walking through a street faire in the city I grew up in (Ventura CA). I hate crowded events and was pushing my way through the crowd, not really thinking about anything. I happened to come right up face to face with a woman in the process who gasped out loud on seeing me, jaw dropping, and exclaimed in a half-whisper, “You’re a walk-in!” as if that was something amazing. I had no idea what she was talking about. The only place I’d even heard that term was when you don’t make an appointment at a hair salon. I decided she couldn’t possibly be talking to me (no matter that she seemed to be) because it just didn’t really make sense to me and by the time I was recovering from the surprise of it we had already passed each other in the crowd.
Some time later, probably a few years I’m not sure, I was in a big inside shopping Mall in Oxnard CA. I was walking down the tiles toward a store when I happened to see a very well-dressed woman (maybe late 30s) in a business-like suit on the other side of the aisleway, walking the other direction, toward me. I wouldn’t have noticed her except that she looked at me and then did a sort of double-take, and then totally detoured across the mall toward me. It was obvious she was going to say something to me long before she got there, and we both stopped when she reached me. She said quietly to me, “Do you know that you’re a walk-in?” and I just looked at her blankly. I knew a meaning for the term then. I’d read this book by Lobsang Rampa my step-grandma had given me and talked with her about it, it was this far-out thing where allegedly someone’s soul, rather than dying, jumps hosts (bodies) and lets someone else die but takes their body so they can stay in this timeline. At that moment, I couldn’t even imagine what on earth such a thing could have to do with me. But the oddity is the weird way I reacted. I just walked away. I mean, it was rude of me, and I should have said something, or asked what she meant or why she would say that, wouldn’t you think. But I didn’t. I walked away and I kid you not, within a few steps I could completely forgotten it EVER happened.
I remembered years later, when I ‘woke up’ and realized I didn’t start in this body — a truly horrible realization, akin to BladeRunner’s girl discovering her whole childhood was a lie and she didn’t really have parents, she was really just AI not human. Then, I suddenly remembered both of those events which had fallen completely out of my brain until that moment, and I observed how odd my reaction was, especially to the second event. It seemed clear to me that I was simply not ready to know that, to deal with that, and so was in complete denial about it, so I couldn’t hold the memory.
I had a ton of experiences that were ‘anomalies’ over the years, things some would consider related to ‘aliens and entities’, though different people might class them differently (in UFOlogy or Spiritual Warfare or Mind Control or god-only-knows what else). Many times, I had a certain genre of experience repeatedly, but it always just fell out of my head. Then eventually when I was able to consciously focus on and ‘accept’ a given thing that made it ok and possible to me, it was like a ‘tag/label update’ on all the database entries that related to that, and all the sudden I had a whole group of memories that I had never been able to recall before and never “correlated together” before. What this meant in practice was that I would have an experience that seemed novel, but once I fully ‘integrated’ it, I would realize that I’d had many such experiences for years.
It had the disconcerting effect of making me feel like I really didn’t know a damn thing about myself OR my life, that so much of it had been “under the radar” for me.
Me, the logical, rational one, the skeptical one. And it turns out there was nothing logical or rational about me, only an impressive ability to ignore half my experiential universe so I could believe that I was logical and rational. Given the degree of fear (even panic) that I perceive on the part of many so-called skeptics (it wouldn’t be such evangelism otherwise. They are ’scoffers’ or ‘pseudo-skeptics’. Real skeptics don’t behave like that), I think this may be more common that we (as a culture) realize.
I’ve been working on making my life just a little bit more normal. I don’t mean “no longer a flaming weirdo” normal — how could that possibly happen? — I mean “allows more than 3 hours of sleep a night, doesn’t work on something every waking instant, actually takes a little time for herself” kind of normal. I have managed this approximately two days in a row. This would be two days more than the last ten years or so, which means it must be a big deal to me.
As part of this, I instituted Martial Law in my household: also known as “lights-out bedtime”. 10pm for the kid (who turns 13 tomorrow), 11pm for me. Ideally I’m in bed at 10 too but meditating or something… but worst-case, I must be by 10:30pm. If something is not done that should be done — the story of my life! — it is just going to have to wait until morning.
So the night before last I decided to do an archetype meditation on my job, certain aspects of it. That went ok. Not real exciting though at the end I did get a small rush. What was more interesting was that later, I was still awake but starting to doze, and I was going through a sort of chaotic spontaneous visualization sequence. At one point I found myself in the air above and out from something on a cliff wall, I wasn’t sure what but it looked like a sort of balcony had been built into the cliff wall and there were people, maybe asians, standing on it. I zoomed down there in interest and flew over there and into the darkness of the cliff opening and the minute I went in, I had this HUGE body-rush, like a really good archmed. I’ve never had that happen from spontaneous stuff vs. meditating before.
Last night I decided to do an archetype meditation on today — on getting various things worked out I needed to for Ry’s birthday. I needed to renew my license; it took eons to get my certified birth certificate from another state so I could do so. 22 years ago I changed my name and I don’t have any certified document for it which I figured they’d want, dang it. I was borrowing a car I’d never driven, a van no less, for the driving test. And they didn’t even HAVE the book to study for the written test, how dumb is that (”we’re almost always out of them” – the DMV!). I needed more time than my dad probably had in order to get to walmart and order her cake and get a few things… and I needed to work out the car rental and was so worried about money, wanting it to be ok, since I loaned some to my bleeping ex (kids’ dad) who still has not repaid me two weeks after the promised time. Not sure how I could do it, it’ll be like $100/day and paypal refuses to let me promptly transfer money from my bank to them (though they will let me promptly transfer it to anybody else. Go figure!) and I don’t have enough in paypal for the car and they won’t let you use a visa-debit, only a visa. So all in all I just wanted things to go well.
This morning, I remembered what Nero has shown me about believing with faith, about suspension of disbelief, about a specific WAY of thinking about things that actually assumes and accepts that there IS an answer/solution, and that it’s nearly tip of the tongue, and it’s totally obvious, and any-second-now it is going to become clear. It isn’t merely that you are allowing for it; you’re actually forcing the space for it and pressing on it to manifest, but not by wishing, not by hoping, not by fear, but by ‘expectation’.
The archetype was Jayne. This is a character on the science fiction show “Firefly”. He’s actually a funny character; completely untrustworthy, oblivious and sexist and more, yet he is a mercenary and ridiculously tough and good with weapons, and often funny (usually by accident) and sometimes a little touching (like many men-boys are, even the worst ones). But the thing that got me is, I have NEVER had an archetype be anything, anybody, any character, that I knew! Never! I didn’t even know that COULD happen, although once I pondered it I couldn’t come up with any good reason why not.
I said, “Why would YOU be my arch??” and he said, something like (I don’t remember exactly now) it had to do with the ‘untrustworthy’ element more than anything (me not trusting how the day would go) and I had just watched an episode of the show earlier so it was a good ’symbol’. Anyway, I was ridiculously unfocused, it took like 90 minutes to do what I should have done in like 8, and the merge at the end was very small.
But today, the DMV lady actually remembered me from 11 months ago, accepted my daughter’s birth cert I happened to have in my wallet (for other reasons) as a secondary form of ID, solving that problem entirely. Then it turned out I did not have to do the driving test which solved the van problem. Then it turned out I did not have to do the written test, which solved that problem. Then because of those two points we had a lot more time, so I was able to go to walmart and order her cake and get some stuff, solving that problem. Then, the guy at the car rental place tells me it’s way cheaper online and so I do that and it turns out they only have to charge the car against the visa, I called him and he said we could charge the insurance against my debit card, whew, perfect.
As if that isn’t enough, on the way to do all this I was looking in my old (not used anymore) purse to see if I could find our social security cards, and I found a $500 check from a client from the end of April that I had never deposited! And it didn’t have a 90 day expiration on it. I couldn’t believe it! (He will git me for waiting this long, but oh well!)
I was just stunned at how well everything went. I can’t prove the meditation helped, but it certainly didn’t do any harm.
I have been meaning to outline a series of archmeds on body parts. I don’t mean like my elbow, I mean like my liver, thyroid, amygdala gland, the nervous system, fat cells, etc. I’ve been reading endlessly on health stuff and I think it would be interesting to do a series like that.
Now that I am “normalizing” my schedule to allow at least one little meditation time per night, I think I might get back to more of it.
I am not actually into tarot as a divinatory art. However I have some limited experience with using Tarot as ‘archetypes’ in active meditations. So far it’s been ass-kickingly powerful. So I am feeling more fond of the subject than I used to be.
I found this link today that I think those of you who like the subject might like: http://www.letarot.it/Links_lnk_lk6_eng.aspx
Everything from ancient stuff to modern artists, although not quite as many pictures online (though there are many) as I was hoping for.
Another link of interest is: http://www.tarot.com/tarot/decks/index.php I do notice that their scans are so poorly colored it makes the cards I know look completely different.
My favorite Tarot is the Thoth deck by Crowley and Harris (see ‘The Universe’ at left).
Archeon Tarot High Priestess
I also thought this tarot was interesting, the Archeon Tarot with the second lovely High Priestess at right.
I think there’s a lot to be said for tarot that is both ‘meaningful’ and ‘beautiful’.
On the subject of remote viewing, I once did a session in a TKR Mission that was on a Tarot card. It was on this tarot by Dali, specifically the MOON card.
Dali Tarot The Moon
Now the irony is that as far as describing the surface of the card I didn’t. However, I have a long history of “anomalous experiences” — somewhat in the “interdimensional-alien-anomaly” category — which in my perception do tie into the moon in odd ways. And sometimes very dark ways. If looked at it like an archetype — from genetics, blood and ‘overlords’ and more — the session was what I would have expected from myself. If looked at like a surface task, well, it sucked. So objectively it was a miss but subjectively, weirdly enough, it all kind of made sense to me. Which is more than I can say for some of my sessions on far more ordinary things, come to think of it.
It’s been interesting to see that as I’d never really seen Tarot done in a double-blind remote viewing protocol before. It had always been mixed in with the woo-woo in-person stuff that psychic readings are often done within, and being a bit skeptical I hadn’t taken it very seriously as a result. Aside from which, I guess it IS ‘free response’ but being based on a prop seems less-so than ordinary viewing.
In any case, seeing some good sessions done using tarot as a “Witness” (term used in the dowsing sense) is interesting and demonstrates that this approach can work in RV as well. Who knew.
I kinda liked this random self-survey some friends are passing around in the LC world so I thought I’d fill it out too.
Kissed any one of your Facebook friends? — my BF is on my FB friends
Been arrested? — nope
Kissed someone you didn’t like? — not that I recall but then it wouldn’t have been memorable would it
Slept in until 5 PM? — lol yes
Fallen asleep at work/school? — regularly in high school. sudafed also knocks me unconscious for some reason
Held a snake? — yes, love reptiles of all kinds
Ran a red light? — only by accident
Been suspended from school? — no but graduated via alternative means
Experienced love at first sight? — no
Totaled your car in an accident? — yes
Been fired from a job? — no
Fired somebody? — yes
Sang karaoke? — not if I can help it
Pointed a gun at someone? — no
Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t? — regularly
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? — alas
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? — sure
Kissed in the rain? — probably
Had a close brush with death (your own)? — several times
Seen someone die? — yes, not pleasant
Played spin-the-bottle? — sure
Sang in the shower? — sure
Smoked a cigar? — yuck no
Sat on a rooftop? — fave thing when young enough to climb onto them lol
Smuggled something into another country? — yes but minor
Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes? — yes, and jumped other times
Broken a bone? — no, very strong bones. once fractured a toe as an adult
Skipped school? — far too often at one point in life
Lied to avoid a ticket? — never but seldom if ever get them anyway
Ridden in a helicopter? — no
Shaved your head? — not unless a long marine cut circa age 19 counts
Blacked out from drinking? — no but puked and prayed plenty when young
Played a prank on someone? — yes
Hit a home run? — quite a few actually
Felt like killing someone? — hell yeah
Cross-dressed? — not really possible for women
Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry? — inevitable it seems
Eaten snake? — no
Marched/Protested? — not that type of personality, must ‘do’ something more specific or ‘let it go’
Puked on an amusement ride? — no
Seriously & intentionally boycotted something? — Nestle’ corp for a long time
Been in a band? — yes
Knitted? — rather badly
Been on TV? — no
Shot a gun? — yes
Gave someone stitches? — possibly
Eaten a whole habanero pepper? — not that one but love hot peppers
Ridden a surfboard? — no but bodyboard & sailboard lots
Had surgery? — yes when 8 for adenoids
Streaked? — no
Taken by ambulance to hospital? —no
Passed out when not drinking? — no
Donated Blood? — gallons at this point
Grabbed electric fence? — no
Eaten alligator meat? — yeah, tastes like chicken lol
Eaten your kids’ Halloween candy? — heh, yes
Killed an animal when not hunting? — only with my car :-(
Peed your pants in public? — sorta once when 8.5 months pregnant
Snuck into a movie without paying? — regularly when young
Written graffiti? — no
Ever loved someone you shouldn’t? — lifetime habit, sigh
Believe in love? — totally
Sleep on a certain side of the bed? — yes but it changes
Been in handcuffs? — never
Think about the future? — occasionally. I try to live in the present!
Had some time this evening. First time that I have not been profoundly sleep deprived, and had at least an hour to myself, in longer than I can even remember.
I decided to do some meditating.
First I roll out my world as usual and am reminded–I’d forgotten–that for some reason, a staunch tree grew on my plateau near where I appear. This plateau is super high, nothing but rock and wind, but there it is. It is amazing to me that despite I’d consciously forgotten about this, it’s like the thought form has its own coherence. I couldn’t remember what/why it was there, if I ever knew. I finally decided a tree wouldn’t be a bad thing after all; I mean symbolically it seems ok; so I poured some energy visualization into the overall setting to make it nice for me and IG to meet there. I thought since I meet her under a tree — albeit some distance away, and through a cave, and out into a subworld — that maybe this was a sign I should just do the work here instead.
So I meet IG and after some rapport tell her just whatever she likes, everything I most need to work on, let’s do it.
The first archetype med had me opening my eyes and I was floating in space. This is rather different. Ahead of me is what looks like some kind of gas-cloud constellation, as well as tons of fragments of stuff that looks like everything from asteroids to some distant planets and some moons and even space junk of some kind. The territory this spans is just VAST, and I stare at it and ‘feel’ it in some awe.
I think for awhile about what I can do, how I can share energy with anything this vast, how to work with this as an archetype. I finally decide that I just have to relax and allow myself to ‘fill’ that entire space and my energy to permeate through every object and the space itself, and I imagine myself becoming vast and one with all of that and I get lots of ‘rushing’ energy feeling so that seemed ok. Tons of spontaneous yawning, I get that when doing energy stuff like this at times.
I ask her for something else when that’s done, whatever she wants. I wasn’t even surprised that she gave me another guide and I think I had the feeling that was going to happen before I even asked. This one wasn’t human. It was one of those 50 foot tall egyptian-like statue-entities. Except I didn’t have much egyptian overlay, that’s just the only model I have for those entities in previous experience. Go figure. He tried to tell me his name but I couldn’t quite get it. In the end I had something like two words, like Hot (pronounced haute or hote) and something else with a few syllables. None of it ever worked out fully so I finally shrugged and dropped it. No idea what he deals with. He took up position behind Jared & El Nino who are right behind me. Had some energy in that one as well.
Then I remembered the binding meditation and I went to the room where we’d imprisoned that part of me and just totally absorbed her and allowed her to absorb me and focused on sending energy through the heart chakra and feeling love and oneness and that we would work it out, whatever her issues might be. That was some nice energy too and seemed to work.
Then I dropped into the ground and went down, while a part of my mind played this tiny video like a map that showed how as I went down into the earth I was moving down my brainstem in literal focus somehow. (Don’t ask me to explain that, I don’t know what it means, unless it’s the obvious.) I called for Tek though the room was a bit different, and the angelics who came and put a hand on each shoulder blade behind me, and asked to deal with whatever body thing needed it. The entire room was promptly utterly covered with brown to black thick runny yuck stuck to every millimeter of floor, walls and ceiling. Really gross and pretty archetypal I guess. I’ve had something akin to that before though not that scope of it.
I first imagined that the whole floor was a grate and under it was the body’s waste disposal system. Then I visualized a vertical wide-spread hose sprayer that got from roof to wall to floor and in several feet and then imagined I was gradually spraying all the way around the room. It was taking so LONG. I reminded myself how I’ve been told the ’sense of how long it takes’ depends on me and my acceptance of it mostly. I worked on believing that it could happen much vaster and still be effective and finally got the entire room cleaned out.
Then I went to see the four and hugged my mate really tight repeatedly, and presented to the royalty of The Senior and The Queen, and then we merged.
Then I hugged/shook hands with various guides around me and tried to merge with a few of them.
I told IG I’d be willing to do a dreamlets series but it didn’t come. Then I ended up spacing out a little.
It’s the first meditation of any kind I’ve done for quite awhile. I miss me. I miss meditating. I must return to that.
That’s a smaller low-res youtube version above. Link below has a quality version and a high-res version and screenshots. Tell the motion graphics maker what you think, there’s a thread on the RV forum, or a comment function at youtube.
LD was playing in this little ‘5 second video’ contest they run on Vimeo. The theme last night was ‘old video games’. The 9 pages of entries I saw so far were mostly just recreated screens of games for a few seconds. LD’s was actually partly that, part ‘concept’ and ‘pun’ — hilarious!
As a child, I lucid dreamed chronically. And at will. I could drop myself into a ‘day’-dream if I chose. And through early teen years, I would constantly just find myself ’somewhere’, know I was dreaming, and wait to see where I was and what was going on.
As my teen years progressed, my lucid dreaming (and what I later understood were called “out of body” experiences) were still chronic but the “invoke at will “capacity seemed to fade.
When I was 18, I read a book about both lucid dreaming and out of body experiences. It was a disaster. It might have been reverse psychology; the authors spent so much effort telling everybody how it was possible it had almost the reverse effect; it was clear they did not truly expect people to believe that, fundamentally.
It might be that it moved it from something I never thought about — “a given” I thought was normal to everybody — to something kind of “woo woo”. I was something of an official skeptic, left-brain snotty intellectual around that era of life, and it threw it into “that side” of my mental models which it had never faced before.
It might be that it invoked some hidden fears I didn’t know I had. For example, all my life, I could sleep in any position except my right side. No idea why. Just couldn’t do it. The day I read the OBE book, it mentioned something like that this was less common if people were sleeping on their right. I was unable to sleep in any position but on my right side for years after that point!
After that time, I still had lucid dreams and out of body experiences — I was glad to have names for these experiences — but they were more ‘common-occasional’ than chronic. As I got older, they became more occasional than chronic. And gradually they started getting fairly rare.
By now, at age 43, it’s something unusual when I actually have either one.
Remote Viewing when sleep deprived brought on a spate of “nested” lucid dreams a couple years ago. I had a crazy number of sessions I never even begun. I would sit down with my lab book to view and the minute I relaxed, I’d be deeply asleep. I’d wake up the next morning in the exact position I went to sleep in — sitting up with the light on and my lab book in my lap. I wanted to view desperately, but I also wanted to accomplish something online. I worked more than full time and I had a full time job worth of hours for ‘online RV hobby projects’ (programming, communicating, design), and I have a pre-teen who wants pretty much every minute I am willing to give her. If I wanted to do even a tiny fraction of the programming work I had to deduct those hours out of my sleep. Then when I’d finally pull off the miracle of making time to view, I couldn’t do it.
I started feeling like a poser just talking about RV. The number of unfinished and usually unstarted sessions built up until I had nearly a few hundred, over the course of over a year when I tried almost daily and sometimes more than once. I’d cry about it in frustration sometimes when I woke up. I realized that I had simply trained myself to sit down with a lab book and go to sleep, eventually. It was probably my angst about this and my wish to stay awake despite my body’s demands that brought them on.
I would sit down to view, and do a whole session. It felt good. I couldn’t wait to see feedback. So I start opening the envelope — and wake up. And realize I dreamed all of it — session included. But a session inside a lucid dream might still work. So I decided I would write it all down. I didn’t remember it quite as well of course, but still pretty good. So I would write down everything that I recalled, including that it was a lucid dream, and then I would open feedback. Or try. Then I would wake up again, and realize that, too, had been in another layer of dream.
By now I would remember maybe half of the data. And be a little upset because it had all seemed so real. It makes you question reality, frankly. But grim and annoyed, I would determine to capture as much of that data as possible and write it down THIS time, now that I was finally awake. So I would write it down, frustrated that I couldn’t recall it all, and in some sad disappointment, go to open feedback — and wake up. Was it real?
Was this life, or Memorex? I would have no idea. It didn’t feel any more or less real than any of the others. What about the session? I didn’t remember any of the data at all. I’d be seriously pissed off about that, and very weirded out by the “layers of reality” experience. That went on for a few months, until I realized it was probably a side effect of my so adamantly wanting to view that I was dragging it into the sleep that was happening whether I wanted it to or not. I decided I would not do that anymore and it stopped.
I haven’t had a lucid dream since, probably for a year, I think the longest time in my life I’ve ever gone without lucid dreaming. Usually a “degree” of it is often present even when full blown lucidity isn’t, but not the last year.
Today I fell asleep in the daytime. I was sleep deprived and had a blood sugar crash (knew I shouldn’t have eaten that chicken pot-pie!) and there I went. I woke up in the normal position — sitting up with my laptop computer and the light on.
But I had lucid dreamed. The novelty of it was great. I wonder if the brain-stim stuff has something to do with this? I’m embarrassed to admit it wasn’t even a great dream. Usually when I’m lucid it has some feeling you might call ‘grander’ than a normal dream.
This was as proletarian as they come. I was in a dream and this woman was being a total bitch to me for some reason I can’t recall. Real snotty. She’d done something bad like kill someone and was implying she was going to blame it on me. (My pathological artificial guilt complex, if it doesn’t have enough complete BS to project it on, will drag it into dreams. It’s a childhood blame/shame side-effect I’ve learned to recognize.) I grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911 — but messed up the dialing.
Focus!, I told myself sternly. Go slow, get it right. I was very careful, and I got it right, but when I looked at the number on the cell phone screen, it was all messed up again — not even all numbers.
I’m dreaming!, I realized out loud. Well, that seemed to solve everything. I put my cellphone in my pocket and walked toward her, said, “Hey!” and when she turned around, I punched her in the head as hard as I could. Then I just punched her repeatedly until she wasn’t getting up again soon.
I turned around and stomped over to find the person she had allegedly killed, but I didn’t find any body. I went outside and some guy started harrassing me about how I couldn’t go outside. “But I’m dreaming!,” I explained to him so reasonably, and then punched him in the head.
And here most people think lucid dreaming is some kind of spiritual evolution. LOL.
That’s all I remember! After a whole life of LD I don’t think I ever remember using getting lucid as an excuse to beat people up. That’s kind of novel!
Anyway, I wondered if going to sleep with these delta programs that have all the lights on the eyes could be resulting in these. I’m an exceptional hypnotic subject and I have a high tendency to lucidity even when in impossibly deep trance or sleep — I had years of problems once I attribute now to some kind of “delta activity while waking” (among other things) — maybe light that seems to keep me awake a bit and sound that helps put me asleep contributed. I had listened to that last night — but not this afternoon when I fell asleep spontaneously about 40 minutes after eating.
Ever since a bunch of me pounced on, tied up and incarcerated that other part of me that was being such a pain in the ass and causing some serious passive/aggressive, inner-turbulent rebellion in my life, things have been better.
I actually feel slightly freed. As if maybe this was an energy that was messing with me for a long time in several ways but I didn’t know it until I finally muffled it enough to “feel the difference”.
I was going to meditate on her problem but realized that I have a bigger problem: I don’t care. Really. I just don’t give a damn. I’m ticked off that something threatened me from the inside and I really just want that aspect to go away and leave me alone. I know this is not do-able; she normally has a ‘dominant’ role so it’s a pretty big deal to exclude her. I can feel that.
Still, I feel as if “parts of me that have not had freedom to express in a long time are suddenly out to play.” I feel SO much less emotionally angry-flatlined. I feel more interested in creative things. And I feel like “a younger me” — like, a me that I used to know — is “more present” now than before.
This stuff is difficult to explain without sounding like an idiot.
Anyway, so she is staying imprisoned for awhile apparently.
I did my first ‘neuroprogrammer’-sourced session this evening. OK, I only did a small part of one, but enough to get some idea of it.
To make this happen I opened NP2 software and listed the preset sessions. I plugged the cord (1/16 jack) from my computer headphone port into the auxilliary port of the Procyon, then plugged in the headphones and goggles. I changed the mode on the Procyon to “AS” (audiostrobe, as that is what is encoded in the NP2 file(s)). And then I pressed play on my computer, for that NP2 session.
The sound is certainly better. It’s my understanding that MindPlace’s “Proteus” unit, which was released prior to the Procyon, is actually way better with sound, just not as advanced with light. One assumes their next product will combine the best of those worlds. In the meantime that is why I got NP2 software, so I could handle the sound in great detail.
The light is only red and green (no blue) because that is what the AudioStrobe format (which NP2 is putting out so that the Procyon can read it for the goggles) defaults to. Maybe AS will upgrade their own options at some point but for now that’s the tradeoff. It was ok. I mean the colors were not as interesting but the sound was better. I would say it was equal as a result.
I was using the NP2 present “Hypnotic Relax Example” because I had begun by looking at the session file, considering when I’ll have time to begin building one of my own to start experimenting. I did not expect any preset to be all that great frankly so I did not intend to do a whole session, just to maybe sit through 10 minutes of something, anything, and see what the difference was between using this as a session-source vs. the Procyon’s stuff.
I noticed at one point that I had just suddenly shifted into serious trance and felt good. I interrupted myself to pull off my goggles and lift up my laptop screen so I could see what the session was doing at that point.
It was just at a change point, just before-during-after that point somewhere, about two (2) minutes in. All the various things going on are at 12 Hz and 10 Hz; the 12 had finished a cycle of coming down from 14 Hz and the 10 had finished a cycle of coming up from 8 Hz. On the other side of the point they had shifted the other way, the 8 starting a ramp toward 12 and the twelve starting a ramp toward 9.
I stopped the session at that point as I was interrupted by “the real world”, which apparently is filled with people who think me sitting around in the dark with headphones and matrix-like reflective shades flashing colored lights is kind of odd.
(What I really need is a black light Crowley poster just to freak everybody out.) (Just kidding.) (I’m really not 16 anymore, I swear.)
I actually wondered why I would respond so well to this compared to the sessions I’ve done with the Procyon presets. I hypothesize that my being more geared to sound as a primary sensory, and perhaps that this multi-track session had only two tones but more cross-confirmation of those tones between the various track options, maybe that made some difference.
(On the left: frequencies are up the left side, timing is across the bottom.)
Next topic: Thought-Sounds:
I got a chance to look this over. Interesting approach they took here. Basically, they provide you all these nice sounds but they are only 6 minutes long each! They provide you software to help you loop them. (I will see if Audacity will let me loop it also.)
I haven’t yet listened to any of them, but if the descriptions are any clue, I may need some Nag Champa incense, Ingo Swann paintings, and maybe some feathers and crystals when I do. Heh. I think it’ll be cool though.
OK this is the last of the named-dailies. Yesterday and today I’ve used the presets on the Procyon for a couple sessions a day. #5 and #2 for alertness. The sudden abrupt shifts in light/sound in those programs startle me but the ‘alert’ sessions do seem to result in more alertness.
They don’t have the slightest effect on making the body more alert though which really is odd. I mean normally when anything makes you ‘feel more alert’ in some fashion, your body is going there too (like with caffeine). It’s just “odd” to have the mind increase alertness when the body doesn’t change at all. I feel some lack of “sync” between body and mind in this area at those time.
I missed a couple nights this week but I’ve tried to go to sleep while listening to some delta program, lying on my back. When I have done this, I have to admit that I seem to feel better after 3-4 hours sleep than I would have at that little sleep without the tech. On the other hand, falling asleep with anything but delta, such as an alpha-theta, seems to result in me feeling more groggy the next morning or day.
Actually, listening to that stuff seems to result in my feeling a little groggy after the session no matter what. Not right after, but awhile after. I think most people are expected to feel “relaxed and peaceful” or something. I just feel woozy. But maybe this is because I am sleep deprived or something.
I received my “thought-sounds” product from Transparent Corp. (Humor: so you know that mind control is infamously linked to all forms of ‘braintech’, right. Well, the ultimate black ops groups are out in the open working in what is called, in the intelligence industry, a ‘transparent corporation’. Funny naming on that one.) The TS is a collection of audio files designed to be seamless, loop-able, quality soundtracks for use in anything from videos to hypnosis sessions. They have a variety of different ‘kinds’ (spacey, naturey, ethnic, etc.), plus ‘variations’ on them, and some software that helps loop them seamlessly if your session is longer than the clip.
So I think I have everything I need now. My intent was to create sessions that combined:
1 – Audio track using various tone-pulse-technologies for brainstim at certain frequencies 2 – The above would be intermittant, with periods of hypnosis spoken script 3 – At beginning, end, and during the speaking portions, there would be some nice subtle background music (to go with binaural beats which I wouldn’t use for the main stim parts but could use along with the spoken parts) 4 – There might actually be scripted parts for using the glasses — literally on and off depending on the session — in any case, the RGB photic is planned to be a big part of it, but not the only part.
I’m going to start simple, with some short sessions, perhaps some kind of generic ones. When I was doing major self hypnosis for years, using pretty deep trance and self-made cassette tapes (this was the 80s), I found it interesting that some of the most influential tapes seemed to be the ones where I just said nice things to myself, vs. the ones where I outlined some specific thing. I’d like to do another chakra exercise script since if I’m going to meditate I may as well do something useful during it, and one or two shamanic-archetype meditation and prayer scripts just to encourage myself to do more of these and do it in deep trance without falling asleep. Brief stuff. After that I’ll consider longer more complex stuff.
I hope to have time this weekend — despite I am totally swamped with stuff for a project having a July party — to design at least one simple brief custom session in Neuroprogrammer, and one photic session in the Procyon, designed to be used at the same time. The presets are ok but the sound is kinda thin, and I’d like to have something I could use without the goggles sometimes.
I used #37 Preset Procyon again today. I was very sleepy and it seemed to result in my being even more spacey and sleepy for hours — the opposite of what I wanted, dang it.
I think this is a lesson in that what you choose to listen to also depends on your state of being at that moment. Had I been super beta, it would have left me relaxed and alert. Because I was theta, it just kept me still in the alpha-theta range apparently.
And it’s also I think a lesson about entrainment. It’s not always going to happen for every change that goes on in your session. I think my brain happily picked up the lower frequencies but didn’t get anywhere remotely near the 22 Hz the program says it ends at, probably would have needed a program that just gradually ramped up to that and stayed there longer.
Maybe the judgement about program is a ‘balance/compensation’ thing. If you’re very sleepy, maybe you choose the highest beta, not because you want to be at that highest beta, but because in the compromise formula between where you are + where it offers = where it ends up, it would just be a more alert state than choosing a low beta or high alpha that might seem more ideal, but would actually result in a slightly lower end-point, who knows. It seems logical that maybe the brain entrains better or more quickly to frequencies nearer where it is when the process begins. Not sure if that’s true though.
Just a quick note as I’m already supposed to be asleep.
For the last few weeks I’ve had a problem. It’s like there is this significant, even dominant part of myself, that is completely at war with the others. She feels just furiously stubborn, the real dig your heels in NO! This has affected my work in a way unprecedented and it’s just been horrifying. It’s like being possessed in a way. By someone who is angry and doesn’t want to deal with anything or anybody and flatly refuses to do anything inconvenient. Like cook real food. Or work well. Or whatever. There’s quite a list actually.
I’ve been doing brain-stim stuff the last couple days though I can’t say that relates at all. But this morning I was relaxed and thinking about work and my fear and frustration and that sort of went off into a meditation/daydream of sorts. There was a bunch of people, a small crowd, and they were all me. There was one girl/woman who was a leader of sorts, anyway, normally the person in charge. She was causing all of this though. It was her emotional problem. The problem is, losing my job would profoundly screw up every imaginable aspect of my life, so this is a life and death situation really. I wanted to work. She wanted to refuse. I wanted to work. She refused. We did the normal morning fight about it, and then I must have been slipping into a deeper state of mind as things seemed to get more dreamlike and autonomous then.
We all mutinied against her (although again… I feel she is ‘me’ just as much). We dogpile tackled her literally! Then tied her up and dragged her into this small room like an elevator cart, then made it completely thick metal and impermeably sealed, then released her and made sure there was air and ‘living comfortable’ inside — but she is completely bound inside and isolated from decision making. We decided she could stay imprisoned until we dig out of the horrible work situation she created for us and then I would work on meditating about whatever her stupid problem is.
I’ve felt “at war with myself” before but it’s usually more traumatic and temporary than flat and long term. The amazing thing is that after this, for the first time in weeks I was able to make myself do my normal degree of focus/intensity work to start trying to shore up the damage.
I’ve never in all my years of meditating had something like imprisoning part of myself ON PURPOSE. That’s just odd. Hopefully July will arrive and I can meditate on whatever is up with her.
So I went to bed way too late. Went to sleep with some program I cannot recall, delta hopefully, my intent to be to sleep deeply more quickly than normal. Woke up this morning understandably sleepy, but feeling better than I would have otherwise.
Decided before work to try an upper-session so I used Procyon Preset #5, a 10 minute session called ‘Quick Alertness’, description: 7-28 Hz, concentration of Alpha/SMR (7 to 16 Hz), Bb 7-16 Hz. That was ok. The changes were fairly abrupt in light and sound and startled me several times, I didn’t like that part much. The result reminded me of that funny quip about how drinking coffee does not sober you up, it just makes for a wide-awake drunk. I did not feel even slightly less tired in body after this but did feel alert.
Later when I had a brief break at work I decided to try Procyon Preset #13, an 18 minute session called ‘Performance Intensive’, description: 16-30 Hz, Bb2, Focus 16 Hz. That was fine, nearly fell asleep a couple times in that but felt fine when it was over. Once I got off work I thought about the ‘rumor’ that ‘half an hour of a delta session equates to 3 hours of sleep’ (I guess because the serious part of sleep is the delta), but I couldn’t find a delta session of interest as there only seems a few, mostly the same just different lengths, and I’d done those. So I put on Procyon Preset #39, a 60 minute session called ‘Middle Mind Centering’, description: 9-24 Hz, Bb 1-2, Segs:22-14, 14-9, 9,10,11,12,13,13-9,9,9-14,14-24, Focus 9Hz. I liked that fine but ended up falling asleep in the middle.
I woke up late for something I was supposed to be to at 8:30pm darn it. After that, the kid and I watched “Troy”. Basically that’s a movie where you spend about 2 hours and 45 minutes learning to love and respect and admire the city of Troy and its royal family so that the last 20 minutes you can watch them all get slaughtered. I was pissed. Not my kind of movie. Yes, I prefer happy endings or at least not horrible endings. (The recent movie ‘Knowing’ was like that. I know people who really liked the ending. In the ending, the ENTIRE PLANET was annihilated. Who likes this kind of ending? Isn’t that psychologically akin to liking slasher movies where your own species gets butchered? I mean come on! That’s just sick!) So it made us a bit grouchy.
After the boyfriend call it’s now nearly 4am and I have to get up in 3.5 hours yet again. I hate this schedule. I’m going to choose an hour delta and put that on lying on my pillow on my back and just fall asleep to it and hope it helps.
I do have to say that the alert ones don’t make me feel as strongly “affected” as some of the others. In self-hypnosis I learned that it was really important to do it a LOT and to bring yourself deep down and then out again so you became able to radically shift states at will. It did more for keeping me out of natural hypnosis than putting me into it which really kinda saved me. I think for now, until I have time to focus on custom programs, I’m going to focus on doing some low theta or delta before sleep, some energy in the morning, some relaxation but upbeat in midday, and maybe a meditational in the late afternoon. In theory I’d like it if my brain kept that schedule anyway just for the sake of me getting things done and feeling good about it.
Last night was Summer Solstice (12:36AM my time Sunday). I wanted to be meditating positively during that moment and I wanted to try my normal meditation style using the Procyon and see how the visual element might affect it.
I tried Procyon preset #22 ‘Deep Tranquility’, a 60 minute session with the description: An hour’s visit to the land of Hypnogogia — mostly slow, deeply peaceful frequencies interspersed with unflickering baths of color.
In my first visualization, the photic visual did seem sort of interruptive. Then again if it felt hard to connect, I have to consider that (a) I’d only just begun the session and (b) I have not meditated with that approach for awhile so it likely would be a mild effect no matter what. Then I went to a different more common active meditation area. I was somewhere in the midst of requesting the positive things I wanted when I passed out. I had wanted to stay alert. However, since I was sleepy, and I was lying down, it’s not surprising I fell asleep. I should have been sitting up.
And although you’re supposed to be awake enough to ‘perceive’ whatever is going on for it to do you any good, the fact is I slept soundly for about 8.5 hours. This is a big deal. I have not sleep for that amount of time without waking in longer than I can even remember. It was so shocking that I was disoriented about time when I woke up; normally if I fell asleep around midnight I would be awake between 2 and 5 at the latest.
I consider that a good thing. If I had to boil down all my problems in life I think the #1 issue would be that I don’t hardly sleep. The thing is, maybe most people would lie in bed trying and so they would say they were insomnic. Me, if I’m more than half awake, I’m DOing something and I’m happy to be alert enough to “get something accomplished.” So I don’t perceive profound and chronic insomnia as a problem, I perceive it as “I get a lot accomplished but I have to sacrifice sleep for it.” However when I am objective and I look at my health and more, I see that this lack of sleep has got to be the cornerstone of a lot of not-good stuff. If AV-stim results in me actually sleeping like a normal human being, that alone will probably have been worth the money. Even though that is not actually my goal with it at all.
About an hour after waking I realized I had to do a remote viewing session for a deadline so I decided I would try my first AV-stim-as-remote-viewing-prep experiment. I wasn’t worried about falling asleep given all the sleep I’d just had and that I was wide awake.
I used Procyon Preset #24 ‘Night Voyage’, a 25-minute session with the description: A decent into slow washes of color, with emphasis on blues and greens; a somewhat longer version of the #23 with slower changes.
I liked this one, experientially. I like the slower beats. At one point there was a real low tone which I liked the feel of and I remember recently reading that some people respond badly to very low tones–no detail, just like some people maybe it frightens them or something else, will have to look into that. My body did reach the stage of feeling verrry relaxed to the point of being very still and my limbs feeling mostly asleep. I did have more interrupt than most people likely do because I am apnic — even when awake I breathe too shallowly and too high — so I several times had to force myself to take a deep low breath, and I expect that sort of thing interrupts the body falling asleep part. Anyway I had no real issue with my mind staying alert despite all that.
The session ended abruptly, as did the other sessions I have done on preset. Perhaps they are really ramping but still at the end of the ramp it seems abrupt. So far I’ve had the very very mild — almost a ’sense of’ rather than a feel of — nausea after these waking sessions and I’m wondering if it’s a somnatic shock thing and why they don’t make those a lot more gradual.
There was some white noise (not session just the Procyon itself) still in the headphones a little plus I have a fan on next to me so I sat happily for a short time. That is around the levels where in hypnosis for example a subject could just sit there entranced with no desire to do anything. I used to drop to those levels so fast I always had to use taped instructions because I lost all volition very fast.
Then I did the session. My bleeping computer had shut down so going directly into it didn’t work, took awhile a lot of light flashes and beta effort which was annoying and felt like it defeated some of the purpose of that as warmup. Anyway, the results were odd. I wasn’t sure there would be any difference whatever, but I hope ‘altered state’ might actually help. I didn’t feel very AS actually, once I got to the session.
But I did feel different. The only way I can describe this — excuse me if it sounds retarded but we lack shared vocabulary here — is that apparently, normally, I feel sort of “varied and variable and large and loose”. Like my overall head and effort is a large very loose mass of soft tangled threads. I have never felt that; I only felt that this time, compared to previous times, that is how I must have felt ‘comparatively’. But this time I felt “smaller and more condensed and more uniform.” Since I have never felt that way before, I recorded it as session data as sometimes it comes through as a personal feeling, but I expect that to be wrong and this probably just to be an AV-stim effect.
The session experience didn’t go well. I didn’t really feel I could collect much of any data at all and nothing felt decent and even if everything I got was right it was still trivially irrelevant probably. I don’t think that particular program worked well for the RV so next time I’ll try something more theta and less delta. Feedback is in a couple hours but I don’t have much hope.
Am planning to try another pre-set session later if I have time.
I feel this is making my eyes very tired. I have eye drops, when I had LASIK my doctor told me he felt the “GenTeal” brand especially the ‘mild’ was best for eyedrops (they certainly cost enough). I am going to keep a bottle of eyedrops with my Procyon and use these a few minutes before, and after, each session. LASIK really made me understand how profoundly the eyes are impacted by dehydration (it worsens that greatly) and I’ve already lost a lot of vision quality by not keeping my eyes and body hydrated enough, don’t want to make that worse.
Updated 8pm: had a period today where it seemed like my body sort of fell asleep. My mind wasn’t really but my body was slouching and I finally realized it was heavy and/or not-there in the same way as when it starts seriously falling asleep but you’re still alert. I am not tired at all in my head but it’s like it’s trying to pull me down to that. I wonder if this is a side-effect.
OK so let’s say that yesterday and my first experiment constitutes Day 1. Since a lot of the alleged effects of brain stimulation are gradual and ongoing, not just at the moment of stim, I guess I should have a sort of journal, of sorts. I’ll make a journal category for these. Oh wait I forgot the free blogs here at blogger don’t have that option, only tags! OK fine a tag then.
Day 2
I barely slept last night, woke up and stayed up for an appointment early today. I finally went to do my night-sleeping, in the early afternoon. I wanted to do another session with the Procyon but I felt interestingly different as if I were in such a deep brain-state (not just tiredness) already I didn’t even have the will to reach over and get it to put on. So I just fell asleep.
I had a terrible nightmare. Set in real life though maybe the past. Let’s just say maybe increased blood flow was making me see blood haha. I woke up abruptly in it because my lawn guy was outside the window with the weedeater, so super loud. I was at a point in sleep where I’d expect to be in delta though, not REM, but I guess not.
I woke up with a headache. I almost never get them. It literally felt as if this tiny little spherical area inside the front middle of my brain was “slightly shrinking from dryness”. Since they clearly SAY that it increases blood flow (etc.) which increases dehydration noticeably and you should drink water (I did!), maybe I just imagined that, expected it or something. But frankly I don’t often imagine I can ‘feel’ my brain AT ALL, let alone some certain shape in some certain place inside it! I went and got more water to keep next to me.
Hoping tonight to do the ‘deepest’ one, I guess it’s Delta stuff. I’d like to try and stay alert for that even if it keeps me out of much entrainment, but I used to be able to maintain lucidity even in the deepest states and I’m kind of interested to see if I can recreate that ability.
So there is this audio program called Audacity. I had a copy of it years ago. Thought it had been shareware but apparently it was free, or at least is now, as open-source. Adobe bought it, changed it into Adobe Audition, and it now costs $200. It figures!
Except apparently Audacity is still alive as an open source project. Not sure how that worked out… maybe Adobe just bought rights to it to ‘build on it’ so they weren’t recreating the wheel up to a certain point? Not sure. Anyway you can get the program free here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ It allows you to work with wave forms, filters, cut-clip-paste-stretch (etc.) wave forms together, and so on.
When I had used it previously, I had used some binaurals from BrainSync (’deep meditation’) mixed with a combined progressive relaxation and intense chakra exercise (verbal hypnosis) which was also intentionally sexy. I promptly had a dream that night that I found this man whose head collapsed into dusty-ash when I touched him, because he had burned it from energy coming up through him, like spontaneous human combustion or something, except it wasn’t apparent until I touched him, and I sensed on waking he clearly represented me (I often perceive myself as a blonde nordic-like man in dreams, though I’m a brunette light-olive toned female, probably because in some esoteric/spiritual areas “a part of me” looks like that). Then I dreamed about backed up and clogged yucky plumbing just ON and ON. I concluded from this that I was not ‘clear’ enough, and that the major energy I was running in that sexy chakra exercise had some burn-damaging effects or threat, so I did not use the file again. PS Thanks to this paragraph now you all know how weird and woo-woo I really am. I promise when I talk about science and measuring things I’m not as undiscriminating. :-)
But, the program was useful for recording and combining a verbal hypnosis/visualization track with someone else’s binaural audio for a good end result.
It turns out that some brainwave technologies need a certain “header” (information at the very front of the file) in the audio file. For example, the Procyon’s light-sound goggles in order to synchronize with separate audio, need a ‘header’ that sets some time point flags and so on. It’s a little complicated and I’ll go over it separately after I’ve done it a time or two.
Suffice to say that Audacity can do it free so you don’t really need a program like Audition. The latter is now more advanced though, so I hear/suspect, so perhaps if the real goal is extensive options for vocal work (singing/speaking) there might some advantages to it.
I got my Procyon! I decided I would use a couple of the pre-set sessions for fun.
It figures, given this is me we are talking about, that I skipped the first 45 useful, targeted, therapeutic options and started with the ‘experimental’ section. First I chose #48, “Kaleidascopic Mind”, a 20 minute ‘Mind-Art’ session. The description reads: Complex imagery, with an emphasis on Mandalas, vortexes, and spin-spaces.
The first thing I realized is something I knew already but the experience brought home: the only audio that the Procyon does on its own is a simple ‘tone’ that can be programmed for its Hz level. This level can change, will automatically ramp, can be synchronized with the lights, can be simply set to be controlled by one of the light channels for synchronization and ease. But it’s just a single simple tone.
If you want rich complex audio, music, noise, etc. you need to either feed your audio file into the your computer and using what they call SynchroMuse, combine this with Procyon visual settings, then download to your hand-held unit. That’s a little complicated and I’ll cover it in a separate post. Or, run the include patch-cord from your MP3 player to your Procyon.
The second thing, which took about 10 seconds if that, was realizing what an odd effect the video had on my mind. This continued through the whole session although it was constantly changing with the lights.
It’s like the visual part of my brain was creating “a real-time half-memory-in-the-present not-visual visual-impression,” Not a real memory and not a real visual image but some bizarre place between them.
For example, even though visually, through my eyelids I could ’see’ that it was just flashing color X or something, in my brain, I perceived a variety of pictures drawn that moved a bit — like rotoscoping.
That’s the name of a tech that is sketch-over-video animation. It was featured famously in that 80’s video ‘Take On Me’ by Aha, but way more infamously by a satire-spoof in 2008 by Dustin McLean, which I wish I could link to but the bitchy record company forced it off youtube for copyright. (He’d replaced the vocals with a very literal description of what was going on in the kind of abstract video, which is so “mad stupid” in the words of one reviewer it was just can’t-breathe-funny.)
The initial visuals and once-in-awhile visuals reminded me of some kind of mental rotoscoping. Entire settings and landscapes and visual situations, things that I couldn’t figure out any memory related to or any reason for not-seeing, not-remembering, but something-halfway-between-those. For example, a man and woman are taking something like groceries out of the back of a car in the driveway in a suburban neighborhood. My perspective is about 10′ above them to their left from about 10 feet away. Shift to some completely different scene which may or may not involve one or more of the first conceptual or visual elements. Shift again.
Some of them may move dynamically (fluidly), or move with visual slow staccato like a low-frame time-lapse-video effect, or are just like comic book ’stills’, multiple related squared pictures where some movement/change has occurred between them, or they get larger or more focused as one element in them changes. When I first got it, it was the comic book fashion, that yielded to the slow visual staccato effect, finally into dynamic, but all with the sort of ’sketch-effect’, which is what made me associate the experience to that video which is very much the same thing in the same sequence.
Except, just to make this really confusing, I really didn’t see anything like that at all; I didn’t “see” anything except some color flashing. And none of it was ‘clear’. It was a lot like a lot of remote viewing (psychic) data, especially when I’ve not viewed in eons and am rather disconnected: some kind of super-intangible internal-impression that ‘translates to’ a visual impression inside me if I had to use words or categorize it, except not-quite. Humans don’t even have a word anywhere near describing this, it’s not a shared-experience we talk about.
That was just one initial and occasional form. More often through the session I got something I suspect was related to that but a bit different in effect. Imagine there is some sketch over photo (animated in some cases, like the above variations) and you’ve run it through some graphics filters so the only thing you actually ’see’ of it are these teeeeeeeeny tiny ’sparks’ of color (all the same color), like a barely-there short-stroke crosshatching effect on a high contrast mostly white image, except each of the tiny strokes is brighter at one side than the other, that creates a sort of “impressionist-almost-outline” which is set against something so ’subtle’ you could call it not-white-on-not-white, which has an ineffable sense of slight-variable-depth, so that this combined with the limited micro-sparky color visuals, almost make sense, and seem to reveal (or barely not quite reveal, depending on how you look at it) the visual detail.
The reason I find this fascinating is because I thought I was going to see colors that then turned themselves into mandalas and geometry.
I haven’t got a freaking clue why 3 LEDs would instead create–no matter how subtly, abstractedly, ineffably–quite detailed pictures, video-style scenes, and more. Well they didn’t create that. It’s more like something inside me “almost” created that but not quite — almost like a “tip of the tongue can’t quite remember” experience but just slightly more.
Philosophically just a little as I experienced it, it felt a tad like “I” as a larger entity, had this entire kaleidascope of combined lives/realities/etc., and the photic flashing was… almost-illuminating something inside-me, from that huge conglomerate of geometric physics-energy potential, and I was seeing just the traces of it with ‘hints of context’, reflected outside me, like the shadows on Plato’s cave walls.
OK, and the rest of it was just neat-o colors and shapes and stuff. Heh.
I did work to relax first, and drink some water first, but when I was done I was kind of tired. Of course I was really sleep deprived so that made sense. But it felt like the tech had something to do with that too though. I wondered if it could cause eye strain. Or if changes in neural blood flow could matter. But I thought I should choose a session that was brief and would leave me feeling more mentally attentive.
So I chose preset #8, ‘Attention Booster’, a 20 minute session with the description: Alternates between 12 and 18 Hz, with pauses between each. Good for mental activation applications.
I would like to tell you what that experience was like, but apparently about 20 seconds into it I passed out. I woke up hours later. My impression is that I had some “tolerance threshold” that is not so much a gradual thing and I blew past it way too hard and fast. That combined with serious need for sleep, anyway.
I’ll try another couple tonight when I’m off work.
A few links to science papers/links: http://www.northwest-neurofeedback.com/articles.html
I was minding my own business when my buddy Steph sent me a ref to this woman who is into Paleo eating (in short: lowsugar wholefoods) AND neurofeedback. What a great find! How many of us can there be? Except she knows what she’s talking about and I don’t, but let’s not be picky. I’m learning. (And I’m just not bringing up the recent pesto pasta-breakdown ok.)
I have finished reading everything on the Transparent Corp public site, private members site, and their NP2 documentation (which is considerable), as well as everything I can find on the MindPlace public site, and the Procyon documentation. Excuse me while I rinse off my brain now, that is too much too fast. Unfortunately nearly all of this is “proprietary” documentation. It’s even put into files you cannot copy from just to make it even more complicated to take notes in a text file. So it’s not easy for me to condense what I am learning into my blog for my friends since I didn’t even have a way to summarize it for myself as I went along. Grrr.
I’m having a frustration moment about a couple things. Minor trivia but still.
Procyon’s product document just throws in as a tiny note like oh-by-the-way that whatever audio it is playing is automatically ‘modulated by the video settings’. Well that set me back. What is the point of deliberately customizing audio and video–often to be pointedly different–if the video then tromps all over the audio? I want to do specific experimentation and hypnotic anchoring and controlling these things separately is important as a result. Maybe it isn’t always. Maybe it’s just if you do the audio there, not if you import it. I hope.
Update 6/19 ungodly hour AM: you can ‘patch through’ your own audio and it won’t affect that. It only affects (as you choose) tones you create yourself in the editor.
I have a ton of vastly more useful and specific info that I will work on dredging out of myself over the next week.
Something that separates Neurofeedback from Brainwave Entrainment (BWE) is that the latter is a stimulus given ‘to’ your brain (choose-a-frequency), and the former is simply information ‘about’ your brain (change yourself to make the information change). One is doing something to you and you are reacting, the other is you doing something and the other thing is reacting.
One problem with BWE is that since it does not have EEG biofeedback (BF) monitoring involved, you don’t actually know how your brain is responding to a given stimulus. I mean you might notice you feel more relaxed or more anxious but that is not specific enough in this case. This becomes a bigger issue when you understand that while humans are all pretty ’similar in general’ — alpha range frequencies are alpha for everybody “generally” — we are all pretty ‘unique in specific’ — some people will respond very clearly to 10 Hz and others to 9 Hz and some to 11.27 Hz. If one had BF info they could see what frequencies their brain responded to most notably or not at all.
Because BWE does not have BF you have to “guess in the dark”. Or experiment extensively, and hope the result is clear to you, and because frequencies appear to be affective/effective to the point of the second decimal, that means even a 2 Hz range could in theory be 200 optional degrees of possibility.
Effective BWE, contrary to the “using bineural and using lots of frequencies” commercial myth I’ve been previously marketed at to believe I guess, is best done with a single frequency (or if using 2, using different kinds of tones, or a different kind of stimulation such as light + sound). So you can see that if you are left to sheer experimentation, in a second decimal point step, in a range of base frequencies of 0 to (I don’t even know the top number but it’s in the thousands at least, although MOST entrainment is done between 3-50 it appears), that could take forever.
But it made me wonder about Biogram Theory, about muscle testing, even about the most simple biofeedback. It made me wonder about Richard Bandler’s NLP lectures related to mental tools and visualizations.
Why is it that one would be doing a session at X frequency for 20-30 minutes, and then the next day another and so on? Would it not be more constructive to get the mind suggestible, then tell the mind what you want to do, then go through the options so the mind can experience each of them briefly, and then just ASK the mind which is best? Now, if you have to speak, move, write something down, that will pull Beta into the mix I believe even if your eyes stay closed but hopefully at that point it’s less an issue. You could ask the mind to show you a certain kind of picture(s) to represent a given answer or status. You could ask for a 5-star rating display or a thermometer or a numbered dial, anything that would tell you something about each frequency point in response to whatever criteria you are asking it to measure or relate to.
So for example you’d make a session that verbally explained you would be walking through a given set of frequencies. You take off the ramp (the auto-setting that ‘graduates’ one frequency to the next) so that the shift from one to the next is more noticeable. You give a note keying off the attention when the change to the next happens. You tell your body that you want it to experience these and then tell you which of those is (check one): most healthy; or best for absorbing suggestions about topic XYZ; or best for the brain adapting a frequency following response; or whatever the desired outcome is.
In theory, you should be able to ‘map’ your mind’s opinion about all of it. Even for the higher frequencies you could do the suggestion part in lower frequency with a sort of post hypnotic command to show the visualization type responses during the later time.
Using a Biogram approach (finally, all my hypnosis-nlp-biofeedback-biogram work from years past is finding some use again!), you could design a mental tool that would be even more specific. For example you could create a scale from 0-100 and put the number of the frequency on it so it represents (for example) 8.00 to 8.99 Hz. You could add a little section off the side for ‘not applicable / not on this scale.’ Then you could simply ask your body to show you with a little dot or something, what frequencies would be best for dealing with _____. You could give it a gradient for example, use the color scale from red to violet with red the least and violet the most, or some other format like that. Using this approach you could get information on multiple points at once including variances in those points. Then you would know better what frequencies to use for your own unique brain for whatever.
Biogram also does a type of clearing. The only tech I know that addresses this same idea is Scientology although differently and I think with a lot less science approach (though I do think their palm-on-body, focus-attention-here is a very good technique). In Biogram you can scan your body using a biofeedback monitor, with instructions to your body to raise the tone or react when you reach a part of your body that ‘has repressed or stored biochemical related to subject X’. Or, you can simply tell it to react to how much the overall body has related to that concept or injury or whatever, and then in either case, you work on having the body release that biochemical and put it in the waste disposal systems of the body. So it occurs to me you could in theory if you have problems to work out ask your body to to show you the frequencies which you “most need” to work with in order to release anger/fear about ___ or increase positive feelings or strength in ___ or whatever.
I mean the thing is right now there is not so much research–sure, lots, but monumental amounts left to be done even on a lot of basics–plus each person is unique–plus there are multiple different areas of frequency that seem to work on the same stuff (might be harmonics of the same number for example, or…?).
So if there were a way to use the amazing ability of ‘mental tools’ and ‘visualization as biofeedback’ to essentially DESIGN biofeedback into the process of brainwave entrainment, I think one could accomplish a great deal. I have worked with this concept in the past without the benefit of braintech and it was very successful so I suspect that with braintech it could be even more successful.
The odd thing is out of everything I have read I have not seen a single note or mention that addresses this kind of thing. I wonder if it’s possible that my past work with biogram, which is a unique approach and distinct theory limited to the man I studied with for it, combined with my NLP background, has simply given me the idea which albeit kind of obvious just hasn’t occurred to anybody else.
(Seriously, I imagine this guy building sci-fi goggles in the basement and trying to explain it all to his wife… hilarious!)
It turns out that you can build your own braintech stuff. And you can buy some basic stuff and then build it. For example the NP2 (transparentcorp.com) is allegedly the best and most flexible audio+video program creator (and comes with lots of stuff and you can edit that stuff too) ($60 US).
You can build or buy LED or high-output LED goggles. (You don’t have to buy an expensive brain-mind machine.) You can use an MP3 player or computer for sound.
If you only want audio, BWGEN is shareware and programs that, google it.
There used to be this great audio freq tech program Audicity but Adobe bought it and renamed it Audition, and now it costs $200 instead of $30. Still a good program, but . . .
Audiostrobe (audiostrobe.com) is products and media and company name and technology name, also an industry standard plus used as a generality not just a brand (the way ‘bandaid’ and ‘jello’ tend to be) which makes it damn confusing when you’re new to the subject. That format basically means audio and video are encoded ‘together’ so that goggles will work as well as whatever headphone things are going on. They have a ‘decoder’ that will take regular music (say, the Beatles) and put photic (video pulsing) to it based on the audio. They sell LED goggles, various brain-mind machines, and custom MP3s with ‘audiostrobe sessions’ on them.
The word ’sessions’ is the primary one used to mean ‘a program you listen to’ which is a/v/a+v. Funny since Remote Viewing is my last 13 years of life where ’sessions’ is the primary word too.
Some output file formats such as from NP2, are simply done in WAV format you can convert to MP3 on your own. The audio effectiveness is not affected by this but video really depends on the quality so the highest encoding bitrate (320) should be used if you want to use it in an ‘audiostrobe fashion’ with goggles of some kind.
I have a new blog with my best buddy where I’m talking about what I’m learning. Getting real into the “brain wave technology” stuff lately. I was into this like 15 years ago but there was almost no research and we didn’t have the internet then. Now there is way better light/sound technology, 15 years of research, stuff on the web, people sharing stuff — very cool!
Here’s a few notes. I wanted to use the nifty brainwave spectrum or sine charts that transparentcorp had but I didn’t want to steal them. Even though a google search indicates about 500 other websites have done exactly that.
So in simple-speak, it’s a matter of hammer-impact. The greater the valley between top of waveform, middle and bottom of waveform in the sine wave cycle, the more ‘impact’ it has on the brain.
You can change the ’shape’ of the waveform. The smoother the cycle, the nicer it is to listen to. You can smooth or modify the waveform of isochronic tones by changing various aspects of them (such as varying-volume-per-beat as one example) which the various programs I’ve mentioned will help you do. That is sometimes called a ‘filter’ so a volume filter would be ‘one’ filter; if you applied a different effect as well you’d have two filters; and so on.
You can also change pitch. Understand the difference here, the waveform is the “beat pattern” which has nothing to do with the “pitch” — you could do the same beat pattern in a high A or middle C or a 3-octave-spanning combination of many notes for a C-minor-7th chord. Think of a drum; it may have a low sound or high sound depending on the drum, even if you are pounding it at the same beat.
You can also add and change noise. Such as white noise, surf sounds, the type of stuff you hear in relaxation tapes or ‘ambient alarms’ and so on. You can place pulses within that kind of thing. This is called ‘noise’ or ‘background’ or both (depending on how it is used) in this tech. Background can also be music or other ’sounds’.
And of course you can change the video (’photic’ is video, vs ’sonic’ for audio). Just like with the audio wave forms, the more abrupt and ‘largest differential’ beat pulses have the most effect on the brain.
This is affected, obviously, by the intensity of the light! — so high-output LED lights in your goggles might have more impact than the regular sort even with the same braintech program playing.
Details like varying waveforms in light intensity, color, etc. still need a lot of research. Actually EVERYTHING still needs a lot of research.
Most of this is up to ongoing experimentation for each person.
OK now on to the “separate hemisphere” stuff.
Binaural was my more modern intro to the mostly ‘entertainment’ aspect of brainwave entrainment. The idea here is that a pulse in left ear (right-brain) and right ear (left-brain) at the same time causes the center of the brain to create the “difference”. However what this means is that you are not actually affecting the separate hemispheres as you choose; rather, you are using both hemispheres to create a single effect in the middle.
You can also aim a given frequency at a specific hemisphere (rather than their combination), which is somewhat different. I need to learn more about this and will post on it when I do. (Some diff between isochronic/binaural here. Need more input! Give me time, I just got my first book in the mail today about it (”Getting Started with Neurofeedback” by John Demos).)
The effect of combining numbers is almost absurd. The brain essentially combines and subtracts EVERYTHING because frankly it’s like going into a drum and glass shop: you pound on this, you ding on that, and everything you touch sets off resonance in everything else, harmonics, etc.
You have what you put in; and what is created by what you put in. This is exponential. Now remember the point about the waveform ‘extremity’ — the more specific, sharp, stronger hammer-beat having the most effect.
Consider that every new waveform you create, is adding to that overall sine wave. It takes very little until that sine wave looks more like a tapestry with a few slightly loose threads; so by nature the more waves you have at varying levels, the more the overall sine smooths itself out greatly.
ONE beat is like I showed above; make it TWO beats and now you have: 1, 2, 2+1, 1+2, 2-1, 1-2. But the effects of what it creates interact also, so you have: 1+3, 3+1, 1-3, 3-1, 2+3, 3+2, 2-3, 3-2. Again, you have not only what you input, but what is created in the brain by that input, and all of these things interact together.
So in the above example, there are other numbers created (frequency wave forms) besides 1, 2, and 3; there is also: -1, 4, -2, 5, plus there are multiple iterations of all the various numbers depending on what adds/subtracts to what out of all that mess.
And following on those, even if they are at ‘lesser intensity’, you then have yet-further math-effects (harmonics) such as -3, 9, etc.
It starts to make me think of the “All numbers are infinite” line in Liber al vel Legis. (I’ve had a lot of esoteric realizations around that verse.) (Don’t read that book! :-))
It might be for this reason that one seemingly very informed fellow I’m corresponding with emphasized to me, “ONE TONE!” all in capitals, and said he believes nearly everything in the field and presets and especially ‘multilayer binaural’ are essentially crap for entrainment.
This doesn’t mean that it isn’t pleasant to listen to.
Some research showed that binaurals nicely relaxed you, they alpha’d the EEG–but then showed that they did so to about the exact extent that ‘white noise’ surf sound did! (Foster 1990, here). Also, Oster 1973 [Scientific American] showed the ‘evoked potential’ of binaural was very small compared to other techs. So I had previously mentioned that everyone referred to this without science ref but I’ve found a variety of science refs.
This reminds me of the research that showed that Transcendental Meditation was good for certain effects as claimed, but the “unique sound given to the trainer by God to give to you” — er, actually there’s only 4 at basic level, one each for men/women of adult/child age, but that is not commonly known (cult secret! damn that was SUCH a cult!) — could just as well be ‘roast beef, roast beef’ and get the same effect. (I have no ref for that sorry, it was in some book I read circa 1991 — after taking TM training and then meeting someone who’d been deeply involved in the cult in Iowa for years, who enlightened me.) The meditation style — basically a zen no-mind format [compared to say, shamanic active meditation formats], is nice for relaxing, and ’spacing out’ (aka ‘transcending’) and the resulting side effects on daily brainwave states, but frankly just way too passive for me. I’m told what they call the Siddhis (that word has meanings in the east as well), the ‘advanced’ form of TM, is more specific and proactive).
So to some degree it comes down to how much you really want to affect your br
ain; how much of the “frequency following response” it is important to you to create; how pleasant you want things to sound; and what you want to accomplish.
You can deal with insomnia, focus, learning, relaxation, meditation, most hypnosis, and things like that in pretty simple alpha-theta ranges which even subtle complex waveforms like the beautiful bineaural stuff is likely capable of getting you into.
I think for more specific effects, exploration, and the higher and lower (Delta, Gamma, etc.) stuff you’d probably need to stick to isochronic and photic stimulation.
I’ve finally found more useful introductory info and science references, though most of it came as a result of the Transparent Corp website, or the purchase of the NP2 product which gave me access to their member site. Over time I will distill / paraphrase some things here, plus link to stuff if publicly available. Here’s a few public pages, pretty simple and a nice introduction to this overall:
The Neuroprogrammer 2 product has what they call an “NLP Sensory Modality Test” that is a long series of multiple choice questions. Here is how mine came out:
I’m not surprised audio was the highest. I’m just slightly surprised that kinesthetic came out as high as it did. I suspect because in the test it is tied to emotions and not just body.
I have a new blog with my best buddy where I’m talking about what I’m learning. Getting real into the “brain wave technology” stuff lately. I was into this like 15 years ago but there was almost no research and we didn’t have the internet then. Now there is way better light/sound technology, 15 years of research, stuff on the web, people sharing stuff — very cool!
Really, there is not a ton of information about neuro-technology on the internet, it turns out.
There are several commercial companies making claims that either can’t be backed by science or are referring to a broad span of science ‘in general’ which may not apply to what someone does with their product or what they are advertising.
There are a variety of a surprisingly small number of people (given the sales of brain-tech items and that this has been going on since the early 1990s at least), most of whom do not have much experience with it and are asking questions.
Of those who do clearly have some experience with it, most of the answers are “there aren’t any answers” and most of the assertions they make, they provide zero actual reference to legitimate science. This isn’t entirely their fault. There may not be any legit science or it might never have been posted. They may have got the info from someone they took seriously or from their own experience (although the latter would be nice to have noted). But the end result is that someone new to the field has no idea what to take seriously.
Humorously when I do searching for information, I often find 3-10 pages with the identical phrasings on them, all with the same complete dearth of useful information.
I’m going to make a post I can update to include various rumors, assertions, and half-references I find, which need more information. One would think they were true the way they are tossed about with all the absolute faith of doctrinal details at a revival meeting, but I’m a bit skeptical since if they had something solid behind them, I would expect to stumble on it at some point. When I do, I’ll post on it and make a link to that from this post.
RUMORS, ASSERTIONS AND HALF-REFERENCES
[s]Isochronic tones are much more effective at ‘entrainment’ than monaural or binaural.[/s] see posts 6/17/09
Shaping the waveform of the isochronic tone not only makes the sound more pleasant (I don’t question this part) but creates less harmonics which may interfere with the overall intention to entrain.
Frequencies below the audible level cannot entrain.
There is no particular difference between the effectiveness of monaural vs. binaural tones.
Adding sonic stimulus to photic stimulus has no particular increase in effect.
Sonic stimulation is not particularly effective alone.
In 1942 ‘tactile stimulation’ was demonstrated to have an entrainment effect. (Cannot find this paper though I believe it exists.) Questions: What KIND of tactile stimulation specifically? Why is there no further info about a tactile approach? (Prior to the late 80s this would have been much easier to arrange than light/sound for mechanical/technical reasons I’d think so it makes me wonder.)
10 Hz entrains faster/easier than all other frequencies.
Entrainment is not when a targeted part of the brain (eg the part affected by the sensory(s) you are stimulating) has a frequency following response, but when other parts of the brain also then pick up that response.
Other notes
Apparently this field has its own definition of ‘meditation’ which is basically when one is fully in alpha-theta with no beta. I disagree with this because they are only referring to one type of meditation, the ‘no-mind’ sort that gets all the press in the West; there are other types of meditation such as shamanic meditation which tends to be theta-delta with a little high beta I suspect (haven’t measured it, only guessing), as one example. In a perfect world they would use a far more specific word than ‘meditation’ which encompasses a lot of things that are definitely not that frequency description (even intense prayer, held fast, is considered a form of meditation).
It was pointed out to me (by CraigT) that entrainment is kind of a mis-focus in any case; that there may be many reasons, applications, and benefits that really don’t have anything to do with entrainment or whether it is really happening. I don’t doubt this, and if anything it sounds reasonable and more interesting in a way, but I’d like more info. I suppose I’ll trip on it myself.
Gamma brainwave notes from a blog. I’m mostly posting ’succinct summary’ stuff here aside from later experiments so for more detail I’ll give links.
Paraphrased; condensed
Gamma — determined by the amount of synchronous gamma firing — has been positively associated with children’s language development, cognitive skills, behavior and impulse control, and found to be lower in children whose parents had history of language impairment. Previous research in adults & animals says Gamma heightens during the processing of linguistic information, during the formation of ideas and memories and during other abilities. It fires between 2 regions of the brain during associative learning, when a new concept is linked to one already known.
Low gamma coherence within different hemispheres is associated with ADD and learning disabilities. Children with non-verbal learning disabilities had less connectivity in the right hemisphere. Too much Gamma is associated with ADHD, positive associations in Schizophrenia (i.e. hallucinations) and epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease, and negative symptoms of Schizophrenia (i.e. blunt or flat affects).
Gamma training in children 6-16 with non-verbal learning disabilities had positive effects, enhancing various non-verbal cognitive abilities such as processing speed, freedom from distractibility, arithmetic and coding. (2x weekly, 35 minute BWE sessions, alternating between excitatory [14 Hz to 40 Hz ramp-up] and inhibitory [40 Hz to 14 Hz ramp-down].
This overall review of brainwave research suggests what I’d gathered:
Further studies are needed to compare the effects of auditory, photic, and AVE stimulation at the same frequencies for each outcome and to compare the clinical benefits of monaural, binaural, and isochronic beats and the use of white noise vs music as a background.
Apparently of the formal research done and reviewed, a few details were left out of the trials done so far. These things remain as questions. Which is… nearly everything it seems like!
Many practitioners and developers of BWE tools believe that repeated exposure to BWE will allow the user to enter the desired brain states unassisted. Indeed, the study by Patrick which found improvements in overall intelligence and behavior, gradually withdrew the stimulus until users could produce the targeted brainwave frequencies on their own. Most studies that examined long-term effects did not withdraw stimulus overa specified time period before testing, so the duration of the effects are unclear. Nor are there studies that compare the effects of duration or frequency of stimulation, so it is not known whether thereis a minimal length or frequency of entrainment required to achieve each positive outcome or if there is a limit to the intensity of symptom relief from BWE.
Low blood sugar while you sleep affects your brain waves apparently.
The aim of the project was to detect specific EEG patterns related to hypoglycemia. EEG analysis was performed using a probabilistic classifier and unsupervised learning for the construction of learning sets for the classifier. Unsupervised learning and additional tools were used in the search for EEG patterns occurring when the blood-glucose level was below the hypoglycemic threshold. The rate of these specific EEG patterns was below 5% in normal nights. In patients who were known to have no or a reduced glucagon response to hypoglycemia, the rate increased to 20-80%.
From: Detection of EEG patterns related to nocturnal hypoglycemia. GADE J, ROSENFALCK A, BENDTSON I. Methods Inf Med 1994;33(1):153-6. Department of Medical Informatics and Image Analysis, Aalborg University, Denmark.
First that the initial cycle of entrainment attempt during sleep was less successful as if attempts later were moreso. If someone were going to be targeting frequency following response tech toward themselves while sleeping, a delay might be useful.
Second that the monaural was not any less successful at this than the binaural, suggesting that quiet speakers on a headboard or each side of the bed (or pillow speakers) might be just as useful as someone trying to sleep with earbuds on.
Our results indicate that delta EEG entrainment occurred as a result of the music being presented during sleep. The entrainment response was not stereophonic specific, it occurred with the monophonic and stereophonic music. Significant increases in the incidence of delta in the EEG were found only in the data recorded during the second presentation of the music. This increase in delta during the second music presentation was not confounded with the passage of time nor was it confounded with naturally occurring increases in delta associated with deep sleep; there were no differences between the incidences of delta during the monophonic and the stereophonic music. The lack of any significant differences in the data recorded during the first presentation of the music suggests that the EEG of the first transition from wakefulness to sleep is less malleable perhaps due to higher levels of cortical activity inhibiting relaxation.
From: A pilot study of EEG entrainment as a sleep aid MARQUARDT CJG, ORR LL, PERUGINI M, RADONJIC D Sleep Research 1997; 26: 267. Sleep Disorders Centre, Royal Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Remote Viewing is my other obsessive-vice. So I found this old reference interesting.
In the present study, the artist Ingo Swann, who helped develop the process of remote viewing (awareness of distant objects or places without employing normal senses), was exposed during a single setting of 30 min, to specific patterns of circumcerebral magnetic fields that significantly altered his subjective experiences. Several times during subsequent clays he was asked to sit in a quiet chamber and to sketch and to describe verbally distant stimuli (pictures or places) beyond his normal senses. The proportions of unusual 7-Hz spike and slow wave activity over the occipital lobes per trial were moderately correlated (rbo =.50) with the ratings of accuracy between these distal, hidden stimuli and his responses.
A neuropsychological assessment and Magnetic Resonance Imaging indicated a different structural and functional organization within the parieto-occipital region of the subject’s right hemisphere from organizations typically noted. The results suggest that this type of paranormal phenomenon, often dismissed as methodological artifact or accepted as proofs of spiritual existence, is correlated with neurophysiological processes and physical events. Remote viewing may be enhanced by complex experimentally generated magnetic fields designed to interact with the neuromagnetic “binding factor” of consciousness.
From: Remote viewing with the artist ingo Swann: Neuropsychological profile, electroencephalographic correlates, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and possible mechanisms PERSINGER M. A. ; ROLL W. G. ; TILLER S. G. ; KOREN S. A. ; COOK C. M. ; Perceptual and motor skills ISSN 0031-5125 CODEN PMOSAZ 2002, vol. 94 (1), no3, pp. 927-949 [23 page(s) (article)]
This seems like a big deal. You can’t get a white blend if your R of the RGB is massively stronger without affecting its intensity for example. I wonder why our eyes pass through red light and not the others? I mean what evolutionary thing could cause that? In any case I think this has real significance for people using photic stimulation (flashing lights particularly LEDs). It’s too bad they didn’t cover other colors and not just RGB.
Although it has been reported that light treatment during sleep can modify biological rhythms, the amount of light that is transmitted through the human eyelid has not been established. We evaluated eyelid transmission with a visual threshold response. Estimated light transmission through the eyelids was 0.3% for blue, 0.3% for green, and 5.6% for red light. The eyelid was an effective attenuator and acted as a red-pass filter. Illumination intensity and color balance after passing through the eyelid should be considered in evaluating the effects of light treatments during sleep.
from: Light attenuation by the human eyelid. ANDO K, KRIPKE DF. Biological Psychiatry 1996;39(1):22-5. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, USA
This Neuro-technology, Brainwave Entrainment subject needs a glossary, one that includes product names, technology names, technology format acronyms, and more, desperately. I’m only just beginning but I’m going to start building one gradually and adding to it maybe daily as I get more info. It’ll be disorganized at first. If the effort gets big enough I will database this eventually.
I am collecting and compiling this info from many sources, combining tables or references, rewording stuff, condensing, etc. Credits should be given to Wikipedia.com, the BWGEN Yahoo group, 4mind4life.com blog, the public web-forum archives of Transparent Corp and MindPlace, a variety of white papers, other websites & blogs, Google for helping me find stuff, and especially lunarsight.com.
ALPHA - Greek letter used in many scientific ways, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. This spans the range of 8 Hz to 12 Hz. This is usually generated either in the right brain hemisphere, or in a synchronized pattern between both hemispheres. This is considered the dominant brainwave state for an adult with their eyes closed, or a relaxed adult, or children and teens.
AMFR - acronym for Amplitude-Modulation Following Response. This phrase is sometimes used in research papers instead of ‘frequency following response’.
AMYGDALA – part of the limbic system which is part of the brain; relates to deep emotions and fear; associated with anxiety and depression.
ANS – Acronym for Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Has two divisions, sympathetic (activating) and parasympathetic (deactivating). (Such as speeding up or slowing down the beat of the heart.)
AUDIBLE THRESHOLD - the human ear is believed, on average, to be able to hear frequencies between 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz (or 20 kHz).
AUDIOSTROBE - this is actually a trade name for a technology, and a company that makes products based on that tech, but it is also used almost generically, which is a little confusing. Audiostrobe is basically ‘encoded signals for audio+LED-video’ that allow brainmind machines to play both sound AND light — or even, with their ‘decoder’, to take ordinary music CD input and just put visual ’strobe’ to it (depends on volume/gain/pulse of the music is my understanding so far). (When I say ‘brainmind machines’ I always also mean an MP3+homemade goggles as well, with a little less money involved.) This appears to be the industry standard, so when product X says it is ‘audiostrobe compatible’ that means that any other product (Y or Z) that can export or import to that format, can then be compatible with product X via that common format. You can have a dozen people talking about a dozen products with a dozen methods and all referring to ‘audiostrobe’ with none of them actually using an audiostrobe product; but most using their file format or even just something that equates to that.
AVOID - here’s a list of frequencies I’ve come across the various folks have said to avoid (or something akin to that). These are sometimes just ‘frequencies’ such as used with Rife/Abrams technology not necessarily sound/light! And probably ALL of this should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt (I mean mountain-sized). Much is from the lunarsight.com list. Consider all of these just hearsay. I just feel I ought to be recording this aspect of things just in case. [7.0 alleged to resonate & rupture organs at excessive intensity [TB];] [9.0, 11.0, 16.0 [bad] documented calcium ion migration (brain tissue) [SS] note there is disagreement on these, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bwgen/message/4592] [13.0 - Alleged sphincter resonance (mechanical)(not good) [TB];] [50-60 Hz - no specifics found but reference to 'documented negative effects too numerous to reproduce'. 55 associated with Kundalini. See entry for 'ELF'.] [Avoid 165-170 'and a bit to each side of that'. Product 'Awakening Mind II' allegedly will detail why.] [5000 Rife healing frequency but for short use only -- long exposures destroy red blood cells.] [388 MHZ - Alleged to cause damage/ disruption to humans [TB]]
BETA - Greek letter used in many scientific ways, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. There is some debate about this actual range and naming definitions. By consensus it begins at 12 Hz, but the other side of the span ranges from 24 Hz to 40 Hz depending on source. [Some feel 12.3-15.2 Hz is 'Sigma'. Some feel 25+ Hz is 'Gamma'. Date of publication seems to relate to this with newer writings having more uniquely-named spans.] Alleged increase in norepinephrine, serotonin (beta-endorphins) and an adrenal stimulant, with a decrease in melatonin. “High Beta” sometimes defined as 10 – 12 Hz. Beta is usually generated in the left-hemisphere of the brain. This is considered the dominant brainwave state for an adult with their eyes open.
BINAURAL (which I thought was ‘bineural’)- when two tones are presented together in order to cause the brain to ‘internally create’ a tone that is the mathematical difference between the two. Binaural tones are presented separately, with headphones, one to each hemisphere of the brain. Binaural tones are often used to enable the brain to create frequencies below the audible threshold and ‘entrain’ the brain but actually any of the tone-types can do that.
BRACING HABITS - also called dysponetic activity. This is when a person asked to relax instead tenses up more. Seen in people with muscle tension disorders such as TMJ. (Siever, Thomas 1988)
BRAIN STEM – part of the brain, contains the reticular activating system (RAS) which regulates sleep/waking.
BWE or BRAINWAVE ENTRAINMENT – Providing input to the senses which will cause a Frequency Following Response (FFR) of the brain. Commonly this is done through sound and light. Audio entrainment more strongly effects the temporal lobes where audio signals get processed. Visual entrainment more strongly effects the parietal and occipital lobes. The approach in Brainwave Entrainment (BWE) is to effect the whole brain, to shift the ‘dominant’ brainwave. This is (to vastly oversimplify) like saying the ‘loudest’ or ‘overall average’. It isn’t very specific; Neurofeedback technology (as opposed to brainwave entrainment technology) is used for specifics. However it is unreasonable in terms of price and complexity for most people so BWE, usually (eventually) with custom-made programs by the individual, is more common.
BWT – Acronym for ‘Brainwave Transform’ files. This is the file format created by products ‘Brain Sound Studio’ and ‘Neural Noise Synthesizer’ (Transparent Corp). They can be imported into their product NP2 (see NP2) but not edited there.
CER - Acronym for Cortical Evoked Response, which is a small electrical response to a stimulus. If the stimuli are strong enough, the evoked responses start to stack onto each other, producing a rhythm that the brain itself starts to follow (the FFR).
CEREBELLUM – part of the brain (located in the hindbrain) respons
ible for coordination, motor movements, and equilibrium.See also Cerebrum, Limbic System.
CBF – Acronym for Cerebral Blood Flow (see rCBF).Carries oxygen and glucose to the brain. The adult brain needs ~750 ml (nearly a quart) of oxygenated blood per minute for ‘normal’ activities. 20% of blood oxygen body-wide goes to the brain. Loss of blood to brain for 5-10 seconds can cause change in neuronal activity; interruption for 5-10 minutes can produce irreversible damage. Two pairs of arteries deliver blood to the brain. Underactive regions of the brain may have inadequate supplies of oxygenated blood; visible correlation between this in the brain and associated conditions such as OCD and ADHD exist, and for depression as well [left prefrontal regions for that instance]. Improving blood flow in that region (rCBF) is thought to enhance mental capacity.Blood flow decrease/increase is also referred to as an increase/decrease in brain ‘metabolism’. In the case where rCBF was low in the left prefrontal cortex area, the regional brain electrical activity was as well; this is believed to correlate with the decline in capacity for pleasure, interest, goal-directed motivation, etc. CHRONIC PAIN - indefinite (though intensity and ‘flare’ may vary) pain associated with some medical conditions. Examples would be fibromyalgia, lupus, arthritis, TMJ, or sometimes injuries such as from combat or car accidents. Both pain and depression have had significant reduction from ongoing BWE treatment in research (more is being done on this).
CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW - 80% of the oxygenated blood in the body is used for the brain. The blood carries oxygen and glucose {sugar/energy/food} to the brain. Electrical activity (neuro transmitter activity or ‘communication’) increases or reduces related to the flow. Some disorders have been correlated with reduced blood flow to a certain part of the brain (depression, OCD, ADHD). Brain stimulation (such as photic driving) has been shown to increase the blood flow to specific parts of the brain. Sappey-Mariner 1992 did this with 2 Hz photic, measuring with MRI, and noted that the glucose uptake increased much more in the brain than the oxygen uptake. They don’t know why, they just pointed it out. {I find this interesting because if you reduce the oxygen of a human say via sleep apnea, so they don’t have enough physical energy as a side effect, you would think they should be craving more-oxygen and breathing deeply but instead what they crave is carbohydrates (sugar: “energy-food”). Wonder if it’s related. pj} David Noton mid-1990s had some research where he concluded that BWE improvements in various disorders was more related to increase blood flow than increased electrical activity (brainwaves).
CEREBRAL CORTEX - Part of the brain. Brain waves are a by-product of the neurotransmitter communication signals moving up toward the cerebral cortex then back down toward the thalamus, repeatedly (see EPSP and IPSP). There are millions of these neuronal signals going on at once. The EEG measures a teeny part of that. See also Cerebrum.
CEREBRAL SPINAL FLUID (CSF) – the fluid that the brain floats within and is nourished and cushioned by; signals received by most neurofeedback methods must travel through this fluid.
CEREBRUM – Most prominent part of the brain, divided into left and right hemispheres. The outer layer is about 3mm thick and is called the cerebral cortex. It’s responsible for higher mental functions and is divided into four lobes in each hemisphere, named for the cranial bones above them and associated with specialized tasks. Underneath the cerebral cortex is the limbic system (see Limbic System).
CNS – Acronym for Central Nervous System. CNS is half of the ‘Nervous System’ and includes the brain and spinal cord (12 pairs of cranial nervous and 31 pairs of spinal nerves). See ‘PNS’ regarding the other half.
COLOR - visual perception differences in frequencies of light, based on which rods/cones in the eye are stimulated by the frequencies presenting. Much more research needs to be done here and there’s a whole lot of old research and Eastern cultural habits relating to color-light and healing for example, that in the layman’s world of BWE is forced into overlapping-ideas. So far about the only things known that I find in reading (including more scientific folks) are, curiously, almost-analogous to the assigned Chakra colors in the West; close enough it doesn’t seem coincidence Red, Orange and Yellow increase arousal; red can associate with anxiety; yellow is better for creativity; violet with ‘philosophical or contemplative’ thought processes; blue and green with relaxation.
CORPUS CALLOSUM - the major connection between the two lateral (left/right) hemispheres of the brain. Women’s tend to be up to 30% thicker with ‘connections’ between left and right brain. (I once read this was suspected to relate to testosterone in the developing fetus breaking this down.) See Lateralization.
CSF - Acronym for Cerebral Spinal Fluid
CYCLE TIME – how often a frequency repeats itself. It’s more comprehensible to just example this: 1 Hz = 1 cycle (in this case one cycle per second). 10 Hz = 10 cycles per second (that is 0.1 second per cycle, or every 100 milliseconds: it’s 1 divided by 10). See ‘Duty Cycle’.
DAS – Acronym for ‘digital audio synchrony’. Not sure if this is specific to the Procyon product or a general term yet. Might be. This ties into being able to access and play SynchroMuse sessions — SM is a brand,
DELTA - Greek letter used in many scientific ways, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. This spans the range of 0 Hz to 4 Hz, though there is disagreement about this, with alternatives ranging from 0.1 to 3.0 Hz instead (some put .5 and lower into ‘Epsilon’). These are usually generated in the right hemisphere of the brain. Believed to generate (HGH, DHEA, Melatonin) or reduce (Cortisol) certain biochemicals. This is the lowest known brainwave frequency range, the most relaxed, and are considered the dominant brainwave state for a person in the deepest stages (stages 3-4) of sleep, or for infants.
DENDRITE – the part of a neuron which accepts messages from neurotransmitters. See neurotransmitters. Also it is “speculated” (Russell, 1996) that with paralyzed people (such as from stroke/aneurism), “dendritic growth” may actually be happening as a result of BWE increasing blood flow etc. – this is a huge area for big-potential research but so far not too much has been done I think.
DEHYDRATION - Apparently brain-stim particularly photic (visual) is a bit dehydrating so a little more water intake should go on if doing much of this, including just before each session. (Multiple refs, no science ref found yet – pj)
DISASSOCIATIVE - a word for certain ’states of mind’. BWE can definitely bring on this easily even for healthy non-dissociative individuals {and I think in such a range we still need a century of research to figure it out – pj}, and BWE/NF can entrain or teach a person to control it (bring it on or vanish it at will).
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span style="font-weight:bold;">DISASSOCIATIVE DISORDER - when certain ’states of mind’ are so extreme and chronic that they are actually medical/psychological conditions. Five categories for this: amnesia; depersonalization; derealization; absorption; imaginative involvement.
DUTY CYCLE - how much of a given Cycle Time a stimulus is applied. Let us say you have 4 Hz (4 cycles per second) and your “on” pulse for your light is .25 seconds, every other cycle, so your duty cycle would be 50% and 0.50 seconds total (per 4 cycles, at this Hz frequency). Now let’s say you reduce that to one (1) 0.25 second “on” pulse and the rest of the second is off. Now your duty cycle is 25% (with 75% ‘off’) and now it is 0.25 seconds (with 0.75 seconds ‘off’). The “intensity” in photic or sonic tech is going to depend on not only the baseline brightness or loudness, but on how often/much that light/sound is on. Obviously, a light on 0.75 per 1.0 second is going to have a higher intensity than a light on 0.25 per 1.0 second. What this means is that the user may experience a brightening or dimming, or pitch raising and lowering, as this changes and that can affect the effect of the BWE (poorly, generally). A duty cycle too low or too high may not cause the desired BWE, by the way; this is entertwined with but a somewhat separate consideration from simple “hz” or “waveform”. Now: you can “fix in place” EITHER the pulse width or duration, OR the duty cycle. The example just prior was fixing the pulse width or duration. If you fix the duty-cycle in place it’s different. In that case you would be fixing “the percentage of the cycle that the pulse is ON”. If you were on 50% of the time (50% duty cycle), this would be the same whether the frequency was 4 Hz or 40 Hz. The times on and off would ’stretch or shrink’ as your raised or lowered the frequency. So the user would not be likely to perceive shifts in intensity of light or sound, since “comparatively” the ratio stays the same. Also it means you can aim for a duty cycle where you know BWE is most likely to happen.
DYSPONETIC ACTIVITY – see bracing habits.
DZIDRA GLASS - a tech product. 2 liquid crystals are used to block an external light source rythymically with shadow (instead of putting someone in the dark and flashing light at them, it puts someone in the light and flashes dark at them, is one way to think about it!). Glen Solomon in the 1980s published on this. They only went up to like 3 Hz in the study. All muscle tension headache subjects were totally cured but sinusitis & migraine subjects weren’t affected.
EDR - Acronym for Epidermal Response. See GSR.
EEG – Acronym for Electroencephalograph – measures neuronal activity in the cerebrum (part of the brain).
EMG – Acronym for Electromyograph – measures neuronal activity or NT in muscles in the body or head.
ELF - Acronym for Extremely Low Frequency. Much research in this area is considered to be classified by various governments since the 1960s, when ‘behavioral effects’ (eg mind-control) were first discovered, particularly in the 50-60 Hz range.
ENDOCRINE SYSTEM - secretes hormones that activate bodily glands. Works with the Nervous System. Communicates with the CNS and receives messages from the Hypothalamus. Endocrine glands are adrenal, thyroid, parathyroid, pancreas, testes, and ovearies. Those located in the brain are the pituitary and pineal.
ENTRAINMENT - This is Transparent Corp’s literal definition which I like better than what I had: “Entrainment is a principle of physics. It is defined as the synchronization of two or more rhythmic cycles. The principles of entrainment are universal, appearing in chemistry, neurology, biology, pharmacology, medicine, astronomy and more. While working on the design of the pendulum clock in 1656, Dutch scientist Christian Huygens found that if he placed two unsynchronized clocks side by side on a wall, they would slowly synchronize to each other. In fact, the synchronization was so precise not even mechanical intervention could calibrate them more accurately. A clock is a simple example of a system responding to entrainment, but the same rules apply to more complex systems such as the brain.” Also they say: “Entrainment increases blood flow and metabolism, which can make you thirsty mid-session” and suggest drinking a glass of water before. Turns out that different people entrain at different frequencies; or don’t; and this is correlated with a person’s natural/default “alpha baseline” and beta activity. 10 Hz is considered the easiest point to entrain. It supposedly takes 6 minutes for entrainment to occur at alpha (the easiest entrainment level). I can’t find any notes on how long for other states. I do find notes saying that as people adapt to BWE they can shift to a state much more quickly, and move through multiple changing or ramping Hz levels more quickly.
EPSILON - Greek letter used in many scientific ways, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. This spans the range of 0.5 and lower Hz. Many systems do not acknowlege this as a named span at all.
EPSP – Acronym for Excitatory Postsynaptic Potential. To simplify, when a neural chemical (neurotransmitter) gives a message to ‘excite’ the neuron next to it. This is half of the ‘cycle’ of the process of making brain waves. See also IPSP.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSE - A neuroendrocrine event (see Nervous System, Endocrine System, Limbic System) that occurs after the thalamus records a perceived threat. (Real or imagined.) Centered originally in Thalamus which sends out 2 messages. First to limbic system for instant analysis; amygdala and hippocampus communicate and and that ends at the hypothalamus; the combined hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal (endocrine glands) signal the endocrine system and sympathetic nervous system. These change muscle tension, breathing, brain wave frequency, blood pressure, heart rate, skin temporature, while the adrenals secrete corticoids (adrenaline, epinephrine, norepinephrine) and those inhibit digestion, immune system and tissue repair. The second message from thalamus goes to the frontal lobes (see Frontal Lobes) for assessment. This is a survival response and is very powerful, and a big part of understanding human function (and treatment). {Odd note to self for later. could bulemia, anorexia, and whatever the between-those syndrome is called, be based on an extended mild form of fight or flight response? pj}
FILE FORMATS - a list of file format acronyms that relate to this field or its techs. imports: MP1, MP2, MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, NPSND – sound files. NP2 imports these. product specific formats: BTW – data files for audio/video of some Transparent Corp products. PRb – Procyon (MindPlace) ‘album’ files. PRk – Procyon ‘archive’ files. PRw – Procyon ’session’ files. PR2 – code (software) updates for Procyon. PRL – Procyon log file. exports: WAV – sound file NP2 exports. Convert to MP3 with some freeware/shareware converter you can find online if desired. Audio effectiveness not affected. Video is affected by bit rate. To use the file as/with/for audiostrobe (visual+audio) use the highest bitrate (320).
FFR or FREQUENC
Y FOLLOWING RESPONSE - see entrainment. FFR is when entrainment happens to the brain. Acronym AMFR sometimes used in science.
FRONTAL LOBES - the decision making area of the cerebral cortex (part of the brain). The fight or flight response has a message sent here for decision once the other bodily processes are underway related to that. (If it chooses to shut down that response it can take up to 3 minutes to reverse all the bodily processes. If it does not reverse it, fight or flight will happen. If fight or flight cannot happen, powerful emotions, dissociation, numbness, immobilization can happen and all energy is is abruptly halted and ’shock’ sets in. At that point the parapsympathetic nervous sytem releases neurohormones (adrenaline, endorphins, etc.). Some people with anxiety problems are triggering the fight or flight response too often and any therapy thought to ’strengthen’ the prefrontal lobes may help.
GAMMA - Greek letter used in many scientific ways, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. This spans the range of 38 Hz – 70 Hz although some sources vary the start of this span. This is considered a state of ‘higher functioning’ not seen dominant or for long except in experienced meditators, although some of it is usually found throughout the brain.
GUARDIAN RESPONSE - When a person feels apprehensive about a situation they’re sitting in or preparing for. This can be brought on by new or uncomfortable experiences including dissociation which BWE can sometimes invoke.
GSR - Acronym for Galvanic Skin Response, also called EDR (Epidermal Response). This measure is one avenue used for biofeedback. It relates to the secretion of perspiration upon the surface of the skin and measures ‘arousal’.
HEG - Acronym for Hemoencephalography, a type of bio/neuro-feedback measuring Regional Cerebral Blood Flow (rCBF) activity.
HERTZ [Hz] - A unit of frequency (a measure of oscillation of vibration). One (1) hertz (Hz) is equal to one (1) complete cycle per second. In neurotech this is used to refer to radio & audio frequencies. Hz can be prefixed; commonly used multiples are kHz (kilohertz, 103 Hz), MHz (megahertz, 106 Hz), GHz (gigahertz, 109 Hz) and THz (terahertz, 1012 Hz). On the various scales used in neurotech, pretty much the official Greek naming of spans goes to around 60-70 Hz (120 Hz if you count ‘Lambda’) but actual frequencies recorded as used go past that, past THz. Above 120 Hz the majority of references I see are involving chakras, planets, or occasional human body parts.
HGH or HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE - a biochemical usually generated during the deepest stages of sleep. Time spent in some areas of Delta is considered to release this and other hormones normally released during that sleep stage (including DHEA and Melatonin) and to reduce others (such as Cortisol). Some of the seemingly more reputable list/references related to this says that 7.83 (official Schumann Resonance) is highly associated with output of this, as is 1.05 Hz (a lower frequency of SR) and 31.32 Hz (a harmonic of SR).
HIPPOCAMPUS – part of the limbic system which is part of the brain; relates to memory and emotions.
INTERNATIONAL 10-20 SYSTEM – The official ‘naming/locating’ table for parts of the brain. (EEG sensors are placed based on this. Odd numbers on left brain, even on right. A slash between two locations means between them; a dash means on the same path or both.) I will get the various images and table of data and add them here when I get time.
IPSP - Acronym for Inhibitory Postsynpatic Potential. To simplify, when a neural chemical (neurotransmitter) gives a message to ‘inhibit’ or ‘depolarize’ the neuron next to it. This is half of the ‘cycle’ of the process of making brain waves. See also EPSP.
ISOCHRONIC - a type of ‘tones’ which are evenly spaced from each other in an on/off pattern. Being ‘tones’ these are within the human hearing range. A strength of isochronic tones is that allegedly the brain ‘entrains/follows’ them more strongly or easily than the other types. [8 zillion web refs to this, not a single ref to legit research backing it up - pj. Also why does that help if these couldn't reach the levels that bineural could anyway I wonder. -pj] (Note that a simple light flashing on and off in a given pattern is a visual version of photic stimulation similar to the audio version of isochronic tones.)
LAMBDA - Greek letter used in many scientific ways, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. This spans the range of 60 Hz to 120 Hz (though some consider Gamma to go 70 Hz). Associated with the central nervous system, not much else known.
LATERALIZATION – the subject of the lateral (left/right) hemispheres of the brain and their specializations. Relates to symmetry and asymmetry of hemispheric functioning as well and is affected by the Corpus Callosum connections. See those and LH and RH. The left hemisphere is dominant in most humans. Some disorders appear to result from “too much equality” in the hemispheres in certain areas, including dyslexia and stuttering. Though it is popularly thought that left-hand-dominant individuals are right-brain dominant, actually only about 20% of them are; left handers have a higher incidence of language impairments, stuttering and dyslexia (so that might be related). Men and women (’in general’) have significant differences between which (and how much) hemisphere they use for various activities (corpus callosum also relates to this).
LH - Acronym for Left Hemisphere (of the brain). Responsible for activity on the right side of the body. This is the ‘dominant’ hemisphere for ‘most’ humans. Associated with logic, math, grammar, word recognition, problem-solving, details, verbal skills, memory, auditory abilities. (See Lateralization)
LIMBIC SYSTEM - A multi-part section of the brain located under the cerebral cortex. Center of the ‘fight-or-flight response’. It includes (among other things): amygdala (deep emotions and fear), hippocampus (memory and emotion), anterior thalamic nuclei (sensory processing), hypothalamus [just below the thalamus] (control center for autonomic nervous system and survival functions). (See Thalamus.)
LOBES - section of the cerebral cortex (of the brain); there are four outer lobes. These can also be divided into smaller units that may lie on the border separating the lobes.
MONAURAL - when two tones are presented together in order to cause the brain to ‘internally create’ a tone that is the mathematical difference between the two. Monaural tones are presented together such as with a speaker, or in mono. Monaural tones can also be generated ‘by accident or design’ as a ‘leftover’ result of other tonal interaction.
NERVOUS SYSTEM - the command center of the body. Sends messages between neurons in a chainlink fashion. See also ANS, CNS, Cerebrum.
NEUROPROGRAMMER - a commercial software product, see NP2
NEURON - the basic unit of the nervous system; cells which communicate in a linear series by passing biochemical (’neurotransmitters’) between them.
NEURO
TRANSMITTER - biochemicals which are ‘messages’ and which cause an excitatory or inhibitory response in the neuron they are communicating with (see EPSP, IPSP). Some of these are named serotonin, dopamine, GABA (that’s an acronym), epinephine. They are stored in little sacs called ‘vesicles’ within the axon terminal of the nerve. In simpler english: the “terminal button” (the blunt sending-side) of a nerve, stores the chemicals that get sent as messages and has ‘doorways’ for the neurotransmitters to go in and out. The area ‘between’ the nerves/neurons is called the ’synapse’ (the neurotransmitter travels ‘across that area’) and the part of the nerve-next-door that ‘takes in’ the message is the ‘dendrite’. When the message has been given, the neurotransmitter ‘cleans up’ any extra chemical (the “reuptake” process, this so that the chemical does not continue to keep-giving-more-signal and the communication is crisp and clear) and goes back in the door to its vesicle in the terminal button.
NP2 - acronym for NeuroProgrammer 2, a product designed to generate both light and sound ’sessions’ for brainwave entrainment (or even neurofeedback). Has a wide range of options both in the technical area (such as different kinds of wave forms, tones and beats, plus the ability to put these in noise, background sounds/music, etc.) and in the ‘associated’ areas (such as hypnotic scripting, recording, output etc.) and this can write to the common standard ‘audiostrobe’ file format that will be played by most any of the brainwave entrainment toys (eg Procyon), or even by LED glasses and headphones you can buy or create on your own. As of June 2009 the ‘pro’ version (not ‘home’ not ‘commercial’) is $60. It comes with a good deal of documentation both as product info and in a ‘members’ section and given the limited info on this subject available to the layman that alone has significant value I’d say.
NT – Acronym for Neuronal Transmission. The neuron is the basic unit of communication. NT is an electrochemical event, which can be measured. This is recorded in microvolts (amplitude) and cycles per second (frequency, Hz). The EEG is a visual measure of cerebrum activity, the EMG of activity in any muscles in body or head (see EEG and EMG).
PITCH - frequency which in the audible range translates to a musical note. The 12 notes of fixed frequency used in Western music currently are named from A to G, with “sharps” and “flats” (also called “incidentals”) in between. A “pitch” would be a given note, for example “A”. This pitch could be played in different “Octaves”. See ‘Musical Notes, Octaves and Frequencies’ in this list.
MUSICAL NOTES, OCTAVES AND FREQUENCIES (This applies to modern Western music)
The physical cause of music is vibration and those vibrations are measured in hertz (Hz). 1 Hz = 1 complete vibration per second. Twelve notes of fixed frequencies are used. These are mathematically related to each other. They are defined around the central note, A4 which is 440 Hz officially (varies in practice). For more reference see the tables below, “Octaves, General Frequency” and “1 Octave Chromatic Scale on C4″. [Thanks to wikipedia for much of this info, though I've combined multiple sources and tables.]
PHOTIC - visual; photic stimulation refers to the use of flashing lights (usually through closed eyelids, though not always) to achieve the same frequency following response (FFR) or ‘brain entrainment’ that can be achieved with audio approaches. The light ‘pulses’ can be be different colors or different waveforms, and can be presented together or separately [the visual version of bineural] to target different effects for different hemispheres of the brain. So far all the refs I find suggest that Photic is stronger than Sonic and that if both are present at the same time, Photic will dominate and/or be the frequency taken up. Note that the “photic convulsive response” can happen in people sensitive to this (like an epileptic seizure). It is most easily brought on by red-colored light at 15 Hz; this can be reduced by adding some blue light. [Takahashi, Tsukahara 1976]
PHOTIC DRIVING – using photic stimulation to entrain the brain. A ‘wide, uniform visual field’ produces the best photic driving. Using sinusoidal, white light and stimulating the entire visual field, it appears at least 200 lux intensity is necessary to create entrainment. Too much or too little light during this process is less effective. Stimuli with pulse widths of 20% to 60% is most effective.
PHOTIC RANGE – the visual range of a given tech product. For example in the Procyon the photic range is RGB (3 colors) and 0.1 to 80.0 Hz in 0.1 increments [as of Jun '09].
PNS – Acronym for Peripheral Nervous System, which has two divisions: somatic (voluntary) and autonomic (involuntary). See also ‘ANS’.
POSITION - two things here. 1) Position of EEG electrodes; see EEG and related topics. 2) Position of a user experiencing BWE. Don’t do it with someone standing. People can have mild seizures esp. from light and not even know, it might have even felt neat. Falling in the middle would be bad for several reasons.
PROCYON – a physical technology product commercially sold by MindPlace.com and its resellers. Includes audio tech for presenting any kind of tone (isochronic, monaural, or bineural), plus goggles with three LEDs each with 255RGB range (for a total of millions of colors). Has software that allows users to design custom programs, plus allows them to integrate the product with other popular tone/visual products in this genre.
RAS - Acronym for the Reticular Activating System, a part of the brain which regulates sleep/waking.
rCBF - Acronym for Regional Cerebral Blood Flow activity. This is measured using HEG biofeedback. This (vs. the ‘electrical activity’ measured via EEG) is a growing area of therapeutic interest.
RH - Acronym for Right Hemisphere (of the brain). Responsible for activity on the left side of the body. Associated with face recognition, spatial skills, music, auditory skills (as is LH), nonverbal expression, social encoding, emotional processing. Singing, swearing, humor, creativity, intuition, insight, empathy, are associated with this. (See Lateralization)
SBD - Acronym for Slow Brainwave Disorder. This is a group of health disorders that are associated with having too much of the lower-Hz brainwaves present or dominant. They include PMS [at clinical levels], ADD, CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome), and minor head injuries.
SCHUMANN RESONANCE – a standing wave in the Earth-ionosphere cavity with a wavelength equal to the circumference of the Earth. The higher resonance modes are spaced at approximately 6.5 Hz intervals, a characteristic attributed to the atmosphere’s spherical geometry. The eighth overtone lies at approximately 59.9 Hz. Greatly created by global lightning activity. The frequency can vary slightly. (In oversimplified English, this seems to be the default frequencies of planet earth, in some respects.) The principal background in the electromagnetic spectrum between 3–69 Hz, this appears as distinct peaks at extremely low frequencies around 7.83, 14.3, 20.8, 27.3 and 33.8 Hz.
SIGMA - Greek letter used in many scientific wa
ys, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. This spans the range of 12.3 Hz – 13.2 Hz (normally in the ‘beta’ span). Many systems do not acknowlege this as a named span at all.
SOMNATIC SHOCK – An effect (as-yet unexplained) that can happen if a person in a session (especially the deeper the brainwave state) is abruptly startled. This can happen if the session ends abruptly, which is why they should be designed to fade-out (over 30-90 seconds) instead. It is thought that the mind is not using ordinary filters at that point to deal with such experience. Disorientation and nausea are not uncommon. ‘Somatic Trauma’ is another term sometimes used. (See the ‘fight or flight response’ and ‘Thalamus’ entries. This may be a ‘lite’ effect of that from the sudden cessation of a bunch of energy/activity in the brain.)
ST - Acronym for Skin Temperature. This particular measure is one used in biofeedback. Not to be confused with GSR or EDR biofeedback which also are sensors on surface of skin.
STROBOSCOPE - An electronic machine that flashes light (strobe-light). Used in 1940’s research for example on photic stimulation response.
SYNCHRONIZATION - in this context, meaning the vibrating frequency of both lateral (left/right) hemispheres of the cerebral cortex (brain) take up the same or harmonic ‘dominant’ frequency. Nearly all forms of brainwave stimulation cause some degree of this including all tone types used with BWE (isochronic, monaural, binaural). The first ref I find to “brainwave synchronizer” product/term is Sidney Schneider “Brain Wave Synchronizer” 1959 (published about the effects with William Kroger). (The first goggles-with-bulbs 1972 Richard Townsend.)
TACTILE STIMULATION - tactile = touch; you can invoke FFR via repetitive stimulation of the body as well as of eyes or ears. Dempsey and Morison (1942) is the ref though I can’t find the paper. They used the sciatica nerve
THALAMUS - part of the brain and Limbic System (I think). Records ‘fight or flight response’ (see that entry). See also Cerebral Cortex for more related to Thalamus.
THETA - Greek letter used in many scientific ways, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. This spans the range of 4 Hz – 8 Hz, although there is debate, with named spans ranging from 3 to 8 (and some introducing a 3.0 – 5.5 Hz as ‘Theta I’ and 5.5 – 8 Hz as ‘Theta II’). These brainwaves are usually generated in the right hemisphere of the brain. This is considered the dominant brainwave state for a person in relaxed dream-state sleep.
THETA II - Greek letter used in many scientific ways, in thise case to represent a certain range of frequency of brainwaves. This spans the range of 5.5 Hz – 8 Hz. Many systems do not separate the Theta span.
TYPES OF BIOFEEDBACK – a collection of the acronyms of various common BF processes. See entries under them. EEG; EMG; EDR; GSR; HEG; ST; MRI or fMRI; PET; SPECT;
VISUAL CORTEX - part of the cortex, of the brain. Thought to consist of ~300 million neurons. This area can be measured via BF to determine the “natural Alpha range” of the individual — their default brainwaves. I’m not sure why, but the findings are that the wider the range of ‘natural’ alpha in this area, the narrower the range of ‘photic stimulation’ that person’s brain will actually entrain to, and vice-versa. Everyone seems to have a strong photic FFR response at their own natural frequency (as measured in the visual cortex) which is somewhere between 9 Hz and 11 Hz but is different for each person. Note that even though ‘entrainment’ may not be happening that doesn’t mean effects are not. For example a person might enter a deep trance at a certain Hz but not have BWE.
VOCAL RANGE - 70 Hz to ~9,000 Hz is considered the range of the human voice.
This is a collection of stuff. Gradual notes and clips from our mostly online (and some book) studies. Notes on experiences we have and experiments we do.
LD (in Maui Hawaii) will update this with a design, a real name he might like better, and we’ll make it a real blog, although knowing us, it’ll be more me posting (from Oklahoma Ozarks) than him.
At some point. Just not yet, till he has time. But I’m impatient as I’ll forget all this if I wait so I’m recording it now.
If there is any serious cosmic joke being played on me and my obsession with remote viewing, it’s that I may be the worst artist on the face of the earth. That’s right, the one skill most useful to RV, I’m not just bad at, I’m like a four year old.
Seriously. There are quadriplegics who draw with their teeth who do better than I can draw with my hands. My 12 year old used to laugh at my drawing. Now she’s nice, because feels so sorry for me. It’s just that bad.
I bought her a ‘how to draw’ kit a couple years ago. From this I did learn, sort of, how to draw a cube, a cone, and a sphere, the shading/shadowing to make something look like that. Sort of. Almost. That’s about all I learned unfortunately.
I can’t tell you the tragedy of this. As a child I was crazy about art. I had a genuine “art trauma” when I was 5 with my parents — never mind the gory details — and abruptly quit drawing altogether. When I was in high school, I could visualize so well, that I could just look at a person, look at a blank piece of paper, and visualize them ’sketched’ on it, every line of detail. But it was like there was some block between my hand and my brain. Bummer!
Today I splurged and spent some money I’ve barely got on art. The kid had some art books she wanted, as did I. And we need something other than extremely hard mechanical pencils that walmart sells. Shading is a nightmare with these things. I see no reason to torture myself… as if the situation isn’t bad enough already. So we got some books:
Keys To Drawing (Bert Dodson)
Drawing the Head and Figure (Jack Hamm)
Perspective Made Easy (Ernest Norling)
Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces (Carrie Parks)
Drawing Realistic Textures in Pencil (JD Hillberry)
How to Draw Cars (Mark Bergin)
The textures book is for me. The cars book is for her. I didn’t get an animal sketching book that she wanted, as I didn’t find one with good enough reviews. I got some of them used that were a lot cheaper. I also have ‘drawing on the right side of the brain’ – the new one I think – on the shelf somewhere, I will dig out again.
Then I went to an art supply shop online — since if Amazon is going to let vendors charge $6 s/h on a 99 cent product, I may as well go to an art supply with a vastly larger selection and pay shipping there all at once — and I got each of us a 12 art-pencil tin, kneadable eraser, blending stump and tortillion, sandpaper block and tri-eraser/refills. The other day we each got a little “tote”-thing with like 25 pockets and a place for sketch pads in the middle and whatever else one can imagine. It’s even got about 10 pencil/pen/etc. elastic bands across the inside of one of the outside side-pockets for ease. So I think we’re set.
This cost a lot more than the single mom budget actually is comfortable with, but damn if I am going to be incompetent at this for the rest of my life. I can’t tell you how it screws up my viewing that either I can’t begin to sketch what I perceive, or in the process of trying, I usually completely screw it up, and not only end up with something bearing almost zero resemblance to what I perceived, but literally give myself “sketch-AOL” that messes me up, to boot! (For example, once when I am sure I was attempting to sketch the elevated curved inner wall of a pool table corner pocket, and the path coming to it, it ended up looking like an arch something was moving through. Gah!) I know I should have been working on this for the last 13 years. There is no excuse! I must be in denial or something that it’s taken this long. But better late than never. I figure if I start now, in five years, I’ll — ok, I will probably still suck, but I’m sure I will be light years better than I am NOW, and that’s something!
Me and the kid have been sitting down each evening and working on art. She sketches all the time, mostly fashion design and anime but she wants to learn to sketch cars, weaponry, and other things. (Funny, I couldn’t find a single book like “How to draw big mean guns.” haha! I did find one for anime tanks-etc. but couldn’t afford it. No problem, we’ll be busy for two years with the books we’ve already got I imagine. Like either of us want to draw a tank anyway.) I also did not find any book like “How to sketch half-naked chicks in faery-clothes, royalty-wear and combat bikinis” which constitutes much of the “fantasy art” that I like and that constitutes the WoW (World of Warcraft) universe that she is into. One assumes that we’ll just have to work this out on our own.
One exercise I tried for awhile some years ago was that when I finished an RV target and got feedback, I would then tell myself, “This is basically what would have been great to get as sketch info.” And then I would try to sketch the dominant, “most important” features or whatever, in the target. Except I couldn’t sketch, so I suspect this was not real helpful. As a means of gaining a little rapport with the target AFTER session, and “spending time with your feedback”, it’s a good practice though.
SMF (Simple Machines Forum) is great software. One of the mods called Simple Portal is equally cool (if less complex probably). Another mod called Custom Pages (even more simple but robust) is as well. The ‘custom pages’ and ‘portal blocks’ can be html, php, or a variety of pre-set forum-based options. Between this forum software and these two mods, a person can do just about anything needed for a website as complex as you want to make it. This also means that you can pretty much click a button and make a logo and change the entire visual theme, because custom themes are also available for SMF. Redesign in 20 minutes.
For me, the problem is I use Coldfusion, so my forum is on a Linux php server (.info) while all my dynamic software is over on an NT cfml server (.com). I would really like to have more integration between these two, but it requires more coding-learning-curve than I have time for to get the forum and/or dojo’s registration “integrated” in the two websites with different languages. I already spend hours I should be sleeping, working free for the cfml site. If anybody should know of something existing like this, I would trade money, sex or volunteer work for it. Maybe.
So I finally got the SMF+SP+CP combination set up, and the dilemma is:
How can I get my various cool-stuff ‘display-only’ from my coldfusion comserver, where all the action happens in my projects, to function or display “inside” my developing website in php on the infoserver?
Better yet, could it be possible to make it so people could browse my normally login-only coldfusion website from INSIDE the portal on the other server? Because I can control the permissions on that side, after all. They might get a nice “you need to register over here too” message if they want to add something but that would still make it way easier than having two completely separate worlds, which is the case right now.
These three php apps/mods (SMF+SP+CP) actually make this possible! Wow, the possibilities seem endless now!
For my first super-simple experiment, I made the index.cfm page on my coldfusion comserver work in both places. It sets a parameter called portal to default to 0 and uses IF. If someone arrives at the home domain there, they see some titles at the top, and a link to the forum at top right. Also the ‘home’ links are a bit different.
If they arrive at the portal home which is my PhP driven infoserver, they see that same included page but without the titles, icon, and different ‘home’ links, because the forum/portal already has a big title/nav. In my Simple Portal I created a block called ‘welcome’ which is Custom HTML, ignore permissions, show block on portal:
So what this proves to me is that I can make pages in coldfusion on one server, set them for certain parameters that will pull them directly into the framework in php on another server, and then control the access of those pages in the portal via permissions over there, so even if I normally would not want something to display outside the login, in this case if they’re logged in over-there-instead that’ll still work.
I think this will go a long way toward integration as well as to making more groovy stuff available to people who frequent the forum.
I found this quote from Seth (via Jane Roberts) which made me go “Hmmmn.” Last night.
The private Oracle: what does that mean? [...] The Private Oracle is the voice of the inner multidimensional self — the part of each person not fully contained in his or her personhood, the part of the unknown self-structure out of which personhood, with its physical alliance, springs. Basically that portion of the psyche is outside of space and time, while enabling you to operate in it. It deals intimately with probabilities — the source of all predictable action. Because of its position it has great powers of communication, both as a receiver and as a sender.
So this morning I was talking to IG when I said,
“So IG, is that the same as you? Can you introduce me to my Pr –”
“I’m your Private Oracle” said this major presence to my front right. No visual or even sense of a form at all, just ‘awareness’ at that location, but a whole ‘part of me that is powerful’. Sort of. I lack words to do this justice.
Definitely NOT the same as IG. I was assuming maybe they mostly overlapped. I asked IG to step into me so we’d be one for talking to him. It. Whatever. I call it him for some reason.
Me: Wow, just like that? I can totally get you?
PO: Yes. I am not difficult to communicate with. You merely have to ask.
Me: I feel like now that I have you I should be asking you something big and I don’t even know what. Um. Will I ever be thin?
PO: Most probably not. But you will most likely be thinner than you are now.
Me: Oh. …um, ok. Do you overlap with IG’s energy?
PO: A small amount.
Me: Will you please work with her directly to in some good way? She’s the awesomest.
PO: OK.
Me: If I pray toward you can you help me?
PO: All prayer should be to God. Yes, I can help if you ask. I help even when you don’t ask, most of the time, but I can be of more direct assistance if you consciously include me.
Me: Wait a minute. Why would some metaphysical aspect of self care if I’m talking to ‘God’, care about religion?
PO: We are all geared to God. God is not a separate identity or a religious creation of Man, it is all of us, everything. We have always been all-composed of it. We are all drawn forward to that.
Me: Oh. So… like when Archangel Michael picked up my attention praying to him and set it down “at the feet of God” was the feeling… I see.
(I tried various approaches to asking about Remote Viewing skill, finally realizing that what I wanted was kind of like, him to help me, proactively, right now, like how an archetype merges into me or something. It just didn’t seem to be working.)
Me: So you can’t… “help” me, physically or whatever. You’re really just… information. Powerful in that regard, but just info; not ‘effect’.
PO: …basically correct. But the power is always in you. Other things do not give you power. You accept power already yours that you perceive to have been separated from you, is all.
Me: I see. Sort of.
(I find that I’m spacing out and getting lost in major offbeat daydreams like between every exchange.)
(I also find that whatever he says to me, if I don’t write it down INSTANTLY, almost as-it-comes, I have forgotten it like 20 seconds later. Some of the above I was able to recapture but barely.)
Me: Why am I forgetting like that??
PO: I operate outside your linear space-time framework. In a way, you perceive me as an ‘event’, but not quite. So the information is –
My cat Rene crawled up on me and interrupted my attention. I looked at her and had the most bizarre impression. As if she were “a bundle of information” gathered up into what I perceived as “the shape and nature of a cat.” I almost had an overlay–more my own than anything from PO — of the movie ‘the matrix’ and bodies and structures being ‘composed of’ the computer code’ except this wasn’t computer in any way, but something vastly more fundamental. I had the feeling that PO perceived the cat through me, not directly, but perceived it entirely as an “energy-information construct” of which some happened to include the nature of what we perceive to be a cat. But her cat-ness, for lack of a better word (as well as her gender), was “a property of the information-collection.” Like… secondary to whatever she really IS.
Me: So can I just call on you?
PO: Of course.
(He says this before I’m 25% of the way done with my question. I feel slightly irked when that happens with identities I’m talking to.)
Me: Is there…… is there something I should… should be “doing” concerning you?
(I notice that he doesn’t answer until I’m done. I was thinking like, sharing energy, or whatever, a sense of trade or commitment like with archetypes.)
PO: No, not really.
Me: I think you were explaining why whatever you tell me falls out of my brain shortly after I ‘get it’ so I forget if I’m not communicating it right that moment.
(I suddenly in the last part of that sentence remember stuff I was reading the night previously from Win Wenger about the importance of saying data out loud to a tape recorder or another person, literally that it was important that it be not just objectified but sort of said so that “someone else hears it”. As I finished the sentence and association, PO said:)
PO: I am always part of that you know. Intuitive and psychic information. I am varying degrees of that information, depending on many factors. My nature is one reason it IS worthwhile to have it “reflected back to you” — in doing so, it is being created inside your reality construct. That gives it the space-time anchoring that is needed in order for it to remain clearly as something innate to your reality, and not vanish from you as soon as a sufficient few moments of perceived-time have moved your attention past where the information was present with you. Words don’t explain this very well.
(But I understood it in my head somehow, as if he was helping.)
Me: So in a way it’s like… um. Like, when you say something to me, it’s not that you are giving me that info, like it is becoming as you say innate to my reality. It is more like I am momentarily present ‘with’ you which is ‘not’ within my perceived sense of time, space and reality. So I get the info while I am momentarily ‘there’. But I can only hold that there-ness for a couple of moments before I naturally move on and then the information is gone. Like I was looking at it through an open doorway and then I moved onward.
PO: Yes.
Me: But if I communicate it while I’m looking through that doorway, the information is then in the room with me so to speak. In my world. So it doesn’t have to get lost. I created it.
PO. Good. Yes.
Me: But so why would my “being aware of it being heard” by another person or tape recorder (I know innately that if I were not aware and it was secretly heard this would not work at all, ‘awareness’ of it is the key), matter more than my just writing it down?
PO: The reflection is the important part. The awareness. You are remembering this more clearly because you are typing it in your blog and you have this ‘awareness’ that other people are going to ’see’ it. It is functioning the same for you.
Me: So I don’t have to say it out loud?
PO: Some people might. You do not. Your ‘awareness’ related to written communication and your sense of others’ perceiving it and reflecting that back is very strong.
Me: Like whe
n I’m typing and I get the ‘impression’ of the questions and arguments that people will make to what I’m writing so I adjust it for that. That is my ‘awareness of the reflection’.
PO: Yes. Good.
Me: Yeah but still, I don’t get it. Why is the ‘awareness’ important and not just the communication? If I write it down it’s real in my reality. So why does my sense of someone else perceiving what I write down, change something about it?
PO: Because information does not exist in a vaccuum. Reality, as you yourself have understood it at times, is not about individual things, like objects and properties. It is about relationships. {A subthought arrives AS he is saying this, and somehow I perceive them both simultaneously: “A single point in space-time has no inherent meaning; it is the relationship of that point to other points, which make it mass or emptiness, which make it a right-angle or the apex of a triangle, that give reality ‘meaning’ to you.”} This is like a circuit, like a loop. You must make the connection. The energy needs to flow through the circuit-loop and return to you.
Me: And then it is… “feedback”, literally — like a combination of physical feedback like a microphone screeching, and psychological or brain feedback, like when you can “see” in your reality the result of some action you have taken and learn from it. It’s like both combined, and a little more I’m not getting, but I sense I’m getting enough. It is not “fully vested in me” when it is merely going through me; it becomes so when I “move that energy through my reality” and it comes back to me sort-of from the outside–or my sense of from the outside, in a way.
PO: That is correct.
Me: I have the feeling this might actually relate some to the power of ritual or prayer in groups. That it’s not just that there is more than one person’s energy involved. It is that every person has awareness that every other person is perceiving them and that bounces back to them and that amplified awareness within each person becomes exponential sort of.
PO. Yes. Good.
Me: You don’t feel like The Narrator did to me really, but he was also an information source.
PO: Everything you can communicate with is an information source.
Me: Well yeah but I mean he gave whole lectures and so on. Are you part of him?
PO: He is part of me. And something different as well.
Me: Casteneda said it was like a symbiote inorganic or something like that. Like we were paying some price for the information maybe.
PO: All relationships are a trade.
Me: So… somehow, there is something that I am giving to you, that is the exchange for you giving me, this conversation.
PO: Yes. That is always the case, not just with me.
Me: Even with Inner Guide?
PO: I said always.
Me: But — well ok. So but maybe with IG she is part of me and so whatever I am giving her is good for her, but not bad for me, and –
PO: I did not imply that this is a negative trade or a payment that results in a loss. You are modeling this in the way your culture perceives money, as if it is a limited thing that, once shared, you are then deprived of. That is not part of it at all. You are unlimited. {At the same moment he said that I got a subthought reminder: “Every number is infinite.”}
Me: I just had the weirdest abstract ’sense’ of something. That I am as much shaped by what I share as by what I take in. Like in art, like if you erase some tiny part here, and add some tiny part there, you have changed the picture equally as much with both actions.
PO: Very good.
Me: That was from you??
PO: Yes.
Me: So these ’subthoughts’ and ‘overlays’ — they are you communicating with me too, not just my mind bouncing around on its own.
PO: Yes. But as an aside, your mind is never bouncing around on its own. It is always both giving and receiving information, at all times.
Me: So when I’m thinking about something, it –
PO: I said at all times. Whether you believe yourself to be thinking about something or not.
Me: But when my brainwaves are quiet, how –
PO: Your mind is much more than your brainwaves.
{I had several simultaneous overlays at that moment. Some related to the mind being capable of perceiving more than it can actually translate and bring into this ‘reality’ so to speak, this body, but still being able to ‘act upon’ such information, almost like saying the subconscious has its own subconscious. Some overlays related to the brain being ‘the entire body’ and particularly the whole nervous system, which I’d heard before, but to a lesser degree, literally the entire body, and then also other things that we don’t consider physically manifest but that are actually part of our body, just energies not physical in this … whatever it is. Dimension.}
Me: For some reason I’m suddenly thinking that the difference between what I call information channeling, vs. identity channeling, is really just information. That like how you perceived my cat. That the cat-ness and all parts of that were just information too. Like information that by its nature ‘packaged’ the information-bundle-of-cat.
PO: Yes. Identity is a type of information.
Me: So when I allow myself to get energy but — with exceptions — not identities…?
PO: You are filtering the information to exclude the information specific to the identity.
Me: Does this mean it is any less coming from an identity?
PO: No. It just means you do not perceive it that way. And that how the information is organized may be a little different for losing the identity which, in its own way, organizes information into a certain structure. This can cause some loss of the cohesive relationship of the information which means more work required on your part to translate it correctly within your reality model.
Me: Um. So… so maybe the information would be more… better in some way… if I allowed the identities?
PO: There is no better or worse involved. Just different.
{I fell asleep! I wasn’t remotely sleepy and I’ve been up for awhile. Awakening again…}
Me: Where was I. {Reading blog.} I see. OK but — I don’t want to channel, I want to remote view.
PO: They are different interpretive, experiential frameworks. They are both basically asking for information.
Me: Well yeah, but — but remote viewing ‘directly perceives’ and channeling is like… asking someone else for the info and them letting them possess you while you they explain it.
PO: Your psychic process is asking the information to come directly, and you translate through your body. Which is not in all cases adapted to or trained to all the information’s potential need — neurally mapped, as your readings {–from Ingo Swann} might have put it. Channeling information is asking the information to be translated and organized by parts of yourself not fully physical as you think of it, and then brought directly through to what you consider your mind. Channeling identities is like acquiring a translation and organization filter which is also serves as the… case, or skin, of the presentation.
Me: Weird. So like… I’m thinking of the other meaning of skin, like with computer software. So like, as an analogy… my viewing is like doing an http GET, stripping all the text and files from the code, logging them in my database, then feeding all those text and file inputs directly into my own browser window in the most simple html way possible. On one hand, the information is l
ocal, and more… er, literal or pure. On the other hand if it’s a flash file and I’m pulling it directly without a player or script it needs, if my own window/page has not got the “translator/player” setup for certain types of media, I wouldn’t be seeing it, or it might be garbled in some code cases. And while I might be getting things more literally into my database, I’m getting them without full context on my screen display and sometimes things are interfering with each other, so how I interpret them might be quite different. {In my head as I say this I see an “interference pattern” like technology.} And I can only really grok so much at once and for some reason I only have ‘the moment’ of its reception, so I’m using memory and constantly refreshing the page to re-experience it again to remember more.
PO: OK.
Me: Info channeling or ’streaming’ is like running a script that in the background, gets the information, then parses it into xml as best as it can, then presents that to me however the parser is written to do. Except maybe it’s like, presenting everything as print so I’m not getting the many facets of audio/video or whatever that is the raw source, so it may be more organized but it is less literal and more translated and missing some… “dimensions” of info including specifics one might get if looking directly. Identity channeling is like using a third party software application that spiders out its own version of the data, does its own xml translation, does a custom, proprietary format for presentation, still mostly in text but–um, annotated differently, unique to that software–and then shows it to me in a DRM format. (I crack myself up.)
PO: That {analogy} could work… mostly.
Me: I like feeling “in the center” when information is everywhere and I feel like I’m right in the middle of one of those cooshballs toys or whatever they are, made of rubber band strings, and a ‘line of information’ goes out from me in every possible direction. Jane Roberts referred to it like paths but for me it’s not quite so 2-D. I have a problem getting my conscious mind out of the way enough to not be shifting the flow as it happens though.
PO: Like in your viewing, you need to hold the focus on the target, not on the information you just received about the target, or you shift your point of focus.
Me: Accidentally retasking myself.
PO: Correct.
Me: Like if you were to focus on a bridge during session and say ‘metal’ and then by focusing on that, retask on ‘metal’ which is a totally different target.
PO: Correct.
Me: But I don’t understand how during info-channeling I can NOT be focusing on the data when I’m the one communicating it. I can’t help but find it interesting and have all kinds of thoughts and questions as it comes across.
PO: Attachment constantly modifies the process. When you are least attached to the information you are most willing to not only perceive it as it truly is {during this I had this flash-memory of a moment in ‘Anna and the King’ movie where she tells the child, ‘Most people do not see the world as it is; they see it as they are.’} but to allow the information itself to go where and how it chooses within you and through you.
Me. Huh. I guess that kind of fits with how the more you just ‘accept without judgement’ information in RV things tend to go better.
I thought for awhile, wondering, what should I be asking? I put on Avril music rather loud at the kid’s request, which was a little distracting. I also started installing Illustrator software on her machine over at the side, then returned to focus on my laptop where I’m blogging this and re-considered the Private Oracle. What information is most important to my world right now?
Me: What do I most need to do or change, for the sake of best improving my viewing skill?
PO: Let go. {I had a total flash-remembrance of something the Narrator told me in what, January 1994. It’s in Bewilderness or I wouldn’t remember it at all. He said: In many lives you have refused to eat; you have refused to “receive” in various ways; sometimes this has been your physical death; you have an unwillingness to allow yourself vulnerability, and this lack of faith in yourself has hindered you.}
Me: That’s it? What the Narrator was saying, about vulnerability, allowing to receive?
PO: Yes.
Me: Can you give some specific suggestions for things that would help me do this better?
PO: The process of “doing” gradually helps, so more consistency would help. For you, consistency is much more important than it might be for some other people. {I remember that Inner Guide (IG) told me that too, about meditating with her: ‘Consistency is more important than frequency.’}
Pink is yelling and the kid is singing with her, which keeps distracting me as I want to sing along. You know I bet most people don’t have to do metaphysics around a 12 year old and pop-rock.
Me: Are there any meditations or something that might help?
PO: The work you do with your guides as you call them, and your IG, is helping in ways that would contribute to your viewing — if you were doing more of it.
Me: More viewing, or more meditating?
PO: Both.
Me: What is my biggest problem in viewing?
PO: Failure, and your response — and pre-response — to that event or possibility.
Me: Why must failure be involved? Why can’t I just be consistently good at it?
PO: That answer is a bit complex for this conversation and setting. Suffice to say it is involved, so you need to learn to deal with it. Remember the attachment issue. Ego, attachment, and fear, are all tied together here. Reducing any of the three will help with the others.
I took a break for awhile to sing with Pink and the kid. Most girls want a man with the bling-bling, got my own thing got the ching-ching, I just want real love. Most girls want a man with the mean green. Don’t wanna dance if it can’t be everything that I dream of, a man that understands real love. OK nobody ever said our music is deep or anything, but it’s fun.
Then I wondered if I chose to take a break when the conversation got uncomfortable for me. Remote Viewing is pretty much the worst possible hobby for a control freak, since it requires the polar opposite state of mind. If it wasn’t for whatever the hell it is inside me that I feel like I’m in love with, have a huge crush on, that ‘feeds a part of me’ that has no other source, it’s hard to imagine I’d have been obsessed with RV from the moment I heard of it on Halloween day 1995.
I’ll come back to the Private Oracle another time. Weirdly enough, there is no weirdness about this for me. I mean unlike Guides which are… well it’s just an odd experience for me and I tend to have resistance… unlike IG, who is awesome and “always with me” but I am not always able to hear her… this ’source of information’ for lack of a better description, is fully clear, albeit of course it’s ‘inside me’ just like anything else internally communicating with me is.
My sense of “highly present to the front right” receded after a few minutes of conversation and now I don’t have any particular sense of presence.
The sound is certainly better. It’s my understanding that MindPlace’s “Proteus” unit, which was released prior to the Procyon, is actually way better with sound, just not as advanced with light. One assumes their next product will combine the best of those worlds. In the meantime that is why I got NP2 software, so I could handle the sound in great detail.
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