Palyne

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.

PJ
.

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.

PJ
.

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!

I’m a bred consumer. I have this on good authority, from my ex-husband who grew up in Czech under the communists. I admit it. I was raised with wanting-stuff indoctrinated into my tiny little brain. I know this must be so, because when my life goes completely wrong, my plans to dig myself out of that hole invariably include some shiny toy or appliance that will help me change my life.

I could use dumbells and cinderblocks, but I’d rather dream of Soloflex. You get the idea. I see those commercials with pumping big-drama music as sweat and shadows play on someone’s perfect and tanned muscles and little stars enter my eyes like a disney cartoon character. It’s a good thing I don’t have TV anymore. I’d be even more broke than I already am.

It reminds me of the time my little girl saw a pair of high heeled all-lucite shoes. They looked like some kind of shiny princess shoe from a fairy tale. She tried to use my visa to buy it online. Fortunately I found this out as she’d mucked up the effort — too young to know how, and the company understood. I wanted to be mad at her, but when I saw them, I just couldn’t help but understood how this had probably affected her brain.

So on the endless list of ridiculous toys that I totally don’t need but decided to spend my precious money on anyway, this month we had: the hamburger patty press and papers.

Yes, it’s true. I spent money on a piece of plastic that probably cost 4 cents in china to manufacture, all so that I could make something by hand with a tool rather than making it by hand with my hands.

But oddly enough, it inspired me a little more than doing it by hand seems to.

And it packs them densely so they are easier to handle in storing and cooking.

And I can spice the burger in a big bowl first so they taste better.

And it’s a lot faster and way less messy when making burger than doing it on the spot.

And it stores more easily due to consistent size.

And since they’re consistent the cooking time is always the same.

And they’re a nice size for dropping a slice of cheese over the top.

And I know exactly how many burgers I’ll get out a given package of burger.

The burger doesn’t stick to the press (as I worried). The papers are a few bucks for 1000, more than I might ever use. It’s easy to wash.

I’m on a new wave of effort to EAT MEAT. While I realize burger is possibly the worst on the list, it’s what I can afford and I’m just going to start sucking down fish oil to work on those Omega-3s. Being able to quickly cook something to eat gives a much higher probability I will eat at all.

**

I’ve had a lousy week for some reason. More emotional than anything, although I think that doing a few highcarb days just as I’d hit ketosis and then dropping back to LC did not help AT ALL (my poor body). I’m so glad the week is over!!

This weekend I hope to do lots of ‘oopsie roll’ experiments, savory and sweet. Then maybe we could have hamburgers ON something.

June is usually a buggy month.

The cats go out till Oct-Nov because otherwise the flea situation KILLS ME.

And a ton of things start “bugging me” about my life that didn’t before, probably because there is finally enough consistent light outside that I drag my sorry butt out of its D3-deprived state and start caring more about my life again.

As you know, I love plans. Making them… watching them crash and burn… looking back on them sorrowfully… that’s me!

I’m a few days early this year, but it’s June Bug time: time to take a serious look at my summer plans and “the rest of the year”. And it’s time for my summer BIG PLAN!

I’ve come to a few conclusions recently about my eating plan. Such as:

1. It is more important to develop a healthy habit, than to do anything perfectly according to any numbered plan.

2. It is more important to do something consistently, than to do something perfectly sometimes, and terribly other times.

3. It is more important to better-establish a healthy lifestyle, than to lose any specific number of pounds.

Because if those three things are worked on, stuff like “losing fat” and “becoming more active” are inexorably inevitable.

I have a list of goals to meet between now and the end of the year:

1. Eat vegetables regularly.
2. Take supplements.
3. Drink more water.
4. Exercise more.

The only thing that has a specific goal-measure on it is this one:

5. Lose 30#

That is less than 1 lb a week. Which at my weight certainly ought to be do-able.

I’ve lost a whole lot of weight fast in the past when I bothered really trying for any consistent period. It’s combining the ‘intensity’ with the ‘longevity’ of an eating plan that gets difficult for me. I’m a sprinter, not a cross-country sort. I can do most anything briefly — and the more extreme, the better — but sane balanced approaches, even in the short term let alone the long term, are hard work for me.

The last year I’ve been “off and on” lowcarb, to the degree that I weigh about the same as I did in 1/07 (maybe 20# lighter) — but then, I haven’t gained anything, so that’s good! I guess I’ve been ‘on’ again just enough to balance the ‘off’ agains.

But as you know, it’s still depressing to look back on a long period of time and think, “How much healthier would I be right now if I’d actually got off my butt and been proactive about this?!”

THE VEGGIE DILEMMA

Eating veggies has turned out to be harder than I thought. Aside from bell peppers (and those, more ‘in’ things than on their own), it turns out most the things I like aren’t veggies! Onions and mushrooms are alliums and fungi. Peas are starchy, but even if I take the carb hit, they’re legumes. I didn’t eat veggies growing up and have little taste for them. I sometimes like broccoli in stir-fry. Tomatoes in small dose. I don’t like salad unless it’s buried in blue cheese dressing, although I can tolerate greek salad (which is tossed with feta cheese).

So eating “3 cups a day of veggies” as Regina recommended (you may recall I’m following the eating goals she outlined for me–or I should be, anyway!) turned out to be a real pain in the butt for me. She suggests, ever the sensible one, that eating whatever I can veggie-wise is better than giving up on it entirely. Still. I didn’t expect it to be such work!

Humor: the USDA’s “food pyramid” website — not that this isn’t the most moronic contribution to diet in history since cult koolaid anyway — can’t even get straight what is a fruit, vegetable, legume, etc. It’s just embarrassing.

I’m falling behind in the required physical work of my life: near-constant lawn mowing, the backyard is a jungle needing several things before mowing can happen, the garden apparently had 2.7 billion weed seeds in the soil as the minute it started raining, the weeds were so high and thick I’m sure my seedlings are dying of shade, I still haven’t finished shoveling potting soil from the dumptruck, and so on. I haven’t been getting enough protein which I’m sure is part of not feeling “up to” more than I have lately, but that is changing.

SO I WENT SHOPPING.

I bought meat, meat, meat, and meat. While there I also bought a little bit of cheese and some fairly LC jarred sauces. I didn’t have room at the time but am going back tonight or tomorrow to buy produce, soon as I figure out what to do with it.

I also bought the 5000 IU capsules of Vitamin D from the proteinpower.com website where, interestingly enough, I went LAST, but I could hardly find any elsewhere and they cost more when I did. I’m going to use that the rest of the year and see if I feel any difference as a result. I’m light-olive complexion (the hint of cherokee in my ~14 nationalities) and grew up in a beach city so I suspect I’m probably chronically low on D3.

DA KIDDO!

The kid is on this eating plan with me! She’ll be 12 in August. This is a pic of her wearing my vastly oversized- on- her sweatshirt at the walking park a few weeks ago.

Well that’s all I have to report for now. I’m a day late posting on my exercise blog, gotta do that tomorrow with my initial measures and counts of what I can lift and do for exercise. I’ll be doing chair-based half-squats until I am finally light enough that my knees can stand full squats.

LOWCARB SOCIAL LIFE

I recommend folks who want friends to learn with or hang with others, seek out the social forums for lowcarb, such as lowcarber.org, lowcarbfriends.com, etc. I don’t know what I’d do without my journal buddies, who put up with all my kvetching about everything in life, all my Mad Scientist plans and experiments, etc.

Hope y’all are having a good early summer! And marshmallow, wherever you are, I lost your forum address, if you’d be so kind as to resend!

Well! Good thing I wasn’t in a hurry to get all fit and trim or anything, since I’ve not been working all that hard on it the last week! But I’m slowly shifting my stance and focus here, so I think it’s going to be fine. Probably another couple weeks will slide me fully into something worth talking about.

Things I DID do:

1 – Mowed the front lawn again. Sheesh, it grows like crazy.
2 – A very minor amount of weight lifting from a rocking chair.
Geez, that sums it up.

Things I DIDN’T do:

1 – finish shoveling the soil into containers (maybe today)
2 – plant everything in the containers
3 – rake the backyard (a huge job, zillions of tiny twigs and long grass)
4 – mow the backyard

So hopefully the next few days will see me finally catching up.

Each month, at the turn of month, my kid and I have what she calls ‘awesome day’. We go to the olive garden for lunch, then we spend all day in the bookstore, drinking mocha frappes and reading. Sometimes we go somewhere else and she can buy something, like a shirt or shoes or something. Sometimes if we aren’t stuffed we’ll go somewhere for a late dinner (like 9pm) or just dessert (like outback). The date has to match when I get my paycheck so it’s seldom exactly at the first/last day of the month. This month it is this Saturday the 24th.

Hence, our “summer of lowcarb” plans have been set for the 25th, after that. Not that it isn’t an always-thing, just that we really want to focus this summer. It’s a set-apart time because she’s out of school.

Except my body decided yesterday … to make my start date yesterday. I didn’t really want to. I had carby stuff I wanted to eat! But sometimes my body seems to have a mind of its own, and it flatly refused. So this means I’ll be going off LC just as I got into ketosis, on Saturday, then back on again. Gah. That is never a good idea, it’s hard to do (the going back on and staying there after eating megacarbs). But oh well… I will make it work. Even a few days not eating badly will make me feel more energetic I’m sure.

Having had about 10 carbs in the last 48 hours or so, after being at a normal carby diet (a few hundred a day) for quite awhile, I already feel like eating anything with carbs. Last night the kid asked me to make her oatmeal, but I had to admit that if I went near it, I’d eat it, so… NO. She’s been on LC with me before so she knows what it entails. I’m starting to get in that mode where I think vegetables sound good. This definitely indicates approaching ketosis, since they never sound good otherwise. By the time asparagus sounds orgasmic, I’ll be within 24 hours max of a hard Ketosis.

Tonight the kid has Karate which means I can’t do jack ’cause I’m busy driving her to it, waiting an hour, then back, and added to getting off work and dinner and getting her ready for bed, that’s my night. (Welcome to parenthood. “You will have a life again in approximately 18 years.”) But I talked with Ry and we’ve agreed to do a more regular stint at the walking park at least a few times a week, so I don’t lose the cardio fluency. I sort of dream of the day when I can rapidly walk the whole thing without it being all that hard.

Which reminds me, there is this thing I’d really like to get. It’s a vest (they have male and female forms) that holds small weights, usually 1 or 2 lb rods the vest is designed for. They call it a weighted vest. You start out wearing it around empty or with a pound or so, and then you gradually increase the weight, so it gives your whole body time to adapt. I was thinking it would be kind of cool if I were able to gradually add weight as I lost weight, so instead of losing that muscle I might get to keep it. Is this a crazy idea? It seemed kind of neat to me. I would already have bought one a year ago except my concern that it might not fit me. Hopefully if I can lose another 25# or so the extra large will.

I’m planning to take measurements again — as frightening as that is! — and my weight the day we ‘officially’ begin LC again (5/25), as well as do a fresh survey of what weight I can lift and whether/how many of various exercises I can do. I don’t yet have any specific goals for the summer or for the rest of the year except “better than I can do now.”

That’s all for this week. Hopefully next week I can say I’ve caught up on tons of garden stuff, shipping stuff, got a new weight training plan together, done some walking park, and been lowcarb for 8 days (minus 1). I should have all my starting numbers, weights and exercises as well.

I’m pretty excited about this summer and the rest of the year. I know it’ll be a lot of work, but I’m sure I can do it. It’s just a matter of focus and intent.

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 26 December 2007

After literally going longer without even *thinking* about Remote Viewing than I have in many eons, I woke up one morning recently with a radical attitude adjustment.

I realized, suddenly, that I don’t know anything about it.

I don’t mean the subject, the protocol, or 47 other aspects we could wax on about. I mean actually DOING IT. Sure, I can do it technically. I could teach a few formal methods, I’ve developed a couple fairly unique approaches myself, and there’s the 2.7 million variants on “just do it” as well.

What I mean is, I think that every thing I think about RV is a belief system.

A filter I’ve been too close to see.

An assumption I’ve been too close to question.

I think the mind automatically tries to backtrack from every observation and experience and come up with a ‘why’.

I suddenly felt that everything I THINK I know about performing remote viewing is, in fact, an albatross to the process of actually doing it.

I had the feeling, all the sudden, that viewing sometimes went well despite me, not because of me.

***

My goal for 2008 with viewing is to start over. To pretend I know zero about the doing-it-part, and just let every session be anything it wants to be, without models and structures.

To be as spontaneous as humanly possible.

To put no judgement on the process for now.

To let it be like an artistic movie: something I don’t have to understand or agree with. Something that is an art form and a mystery and all that matters is how I feel inside and what it means to me. Which can be different every session, every instant.

No labels. No conclusions. No theories!! Just experience. Just letting it happen however it will.

We’ll see what happens.