i feel so accomplished now that after a mere 37 years of existence that i've finally realized what one of my major coping mechanisms are. going back to the previous post that blended tradition with technology, one of the mechanisms i use to dissipate excess stress energy/entropy is that i become phenominally tired and just want to sleep. i believe it is my mind's way of trying to shut down so that i don't have to deal with the incomming stressors. this then forms the basis of my caffeine cravings.
i think it's funny that the effects of caffeine on my can be so varied that it sometimes seems that i am not injesting the same substance. there are occassions where one half-cup of regular coffee keeps me up all day; and then there are days when i am still so drowsy even after 3 espresso shots, two soy lattes, a soy mocha, and tea. actually, 'funny' isn't the right term. 'irritating-as-shit' comes closer to encapsulating my feelings on the matter.
however, i am fortunate that there is a place relativly close to where i live where i can satisfy my caffeine cravings, fuel cafe.
i was a bit intrigued by the idea of the place, a 'motorcycle and espresso cafe'. after all, i don't have a motorcycle (nor do i see myself having one in the near future), and i have more than a few negative connotations attached to motorcycle riders. but i was so desperate to find a cafe that actually could extract a proper espresso, that i was willing to try it out. (the swill they serve at starbucks is so underextracted that they do everything they can to hide it in a cloak of fat and sugar, and they take no pride in trying to properly foam their milk; utter excrement).
upon entering, i was surprised at the rather mod decor; remarkably swank for this geriatric part of the country. and i was quite surprised to find another asian here in this homogenous town. dex owns the place and was remarkably pleasant to me. being the coffee elitist that i am, i immediately put him to my 'single shot pulled short' espresso test. he did better than i expected; not the best shot i've ever had, but good enough to come back for future reference. and the free wifi is always a nice touch, plus they have regular soy milk (why do all these other "cafes" insist upon using flavored soy milk? is everyone addicted to processed sugar?).
as i started to spend more and more time there, i got to know dex. he definitely makes the place interesting. raised in thailand, did a bit of modeling, became a professional ballet dancer, and then a professional motorcycle racer, and then a cafe owner because he burnt out on dancing (although his wife still is still with a professional ballet company). now, he basically is the heart of the tiny cycle-riding subculture around here. fascinating guy. that's rare to find around here.
there is also a rather odd blend of people that patronize the place. most of them, i don't care too much for, but they leave me alone to work so i don't mind them. they did pretty much smash my stereotypes of a biker though. many of them are just nerds, but nerds for bikes. and, unfortunately, only a scant few are even remotely attractive (easily enumerated by the first few prime numbers); oh well, i go there primarily to read and write anyway.
when i replace my camera, i'll post a few pictures of the place. it's actually quite nice.
so enough about the cafe, i need to learn how to use this knowledge of this particular coping mechanism to my benefit, which will take a lot longer to figure out. oh the burden...
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
morphing tradition with technology
i have to admit that when i first heard of the movie, the secret, i was fairly apathetic. it was while i was still at massage therapy school, and massage therapy school seems to attract more than its fair share of new-agey, pseudo-spiritual, lost kids. i really didn't give it too much thought, as i tended to be a rationalist deeply immersed in western scientific tradition. to paraphrase karl popper (philosopher of science):
a hypothesis, proposition, or theory is scientific only if it is falsifiable.
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability for a succinct explanation. but beware, if you are anything close to the level of geekiness i am, you will spend hours and hours exploring the various facets of the history and philosophy of science, oh, and have your last.fm library playing in the background. you were warned, earth-larvae.)
so i have tended to be fairly left-brain dominant. however, i have also been involved in traditional chinese martial arts and meditation since the early 1990's. many of the explanations and paradigms in taijiquan and qigong don't exactly fall in the parameters of the western scientific method (good luck trying to quantify "chi"). i embody contrasting paradigms that don't always mesh well together, resulting in a fair amount of cognitive dissonance which tends towards a fair amount of "wtf" moments, emotional instability, and general existential angst.
i also operated under the false premise that i knew myself fairly well and i had things under control.
fast forward to approximately 2006. i was in massage therapy school. i was working at a gym as a certified personal trainer. i had become fairly adept at the a.i. stretching modality. i was living with someone who pretty much became the center of my life. then things started to unravel. without going through the details, he decided to leave and never come back. and that's when i realized what a hollow shell of a human being i had become.
during the course of our relationship, i had learned that i have abandonment issues and am rather codependent. and all this time i had though of myself as a fairly independent person. wow. it is amazing how easy it is to lie to yourself and not even realize it. and i've been doing it for years. well, the veneer peeled off, and all the internal desolation was exposed.
i realized that i devoted so much of my energy to this one relationship in my life, that it eclipsed everything else about my life. when it was gone, everything that it hid behind it was exposed, and i realized that i didn't know who i was anymore. i didn't know what i liked to do and what was important. it was a very dark and ugly time for me. my confusion was rampant and suicidal tendencies were waxing. i looked at the other aspects of me that i allowed to atrophy, and was amazed at how insubstantial i felt. i was lost. lost. lost.
it was during the ending of this relationship that i remembered the secret movie, so i borrowed it from a friend and began obsessively watching it. it did ameliorate my emotions to a certain degree. there was one presenter in that movie that stood out to me, and that was bill harris. while i was still trying to wrap my mind around this whole 'law of attraction' concept (admittedly quite difficult as my mental acuity was anything but), he was the only presenter that referred to an online course he offered, as well as indirectly referring to a physical product he made. as i was far too irrational to understand the law of attraction as presented in the movie, i made a point to look bill harris up online. i needed supplemental information. i needed to make my pain go away and i needed it now. it was the best decision i've ever made.
looking up bill harris lead me to his company, centerpointe. and centerpointe has a product line called holosync. it is an audio program that works with binaural beats (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats for an explanation of binaural beats). now i can understand the theory behind the holosync program, but bear in mind that i am NOT a rigorously trained scientist. although i have studied the history and philosophy of science to a considerable degree and i am fairly well-versed on a variety of scientific topics, i am not a published or experienced researcher. so i cannot truly peer review available experimental data and conduct properly documented experiments (one of my shortcomings, i'm afraid to say). i would like to think, however, that i'm at least smarter than the average bear.
well, as i started exploring the centerpointe site, i had a very intuitive feeling that this holosync product was exactly what i was searching for at the time. i couldn't really explain it then, but it really called out to me on a visceral level, and there was enough of a scientific explanation behind the holosync technology that the very logical-dominant side of my brain was satisfied. i bit the bullet and shelled out the funds for the awakening prologue program. they offer a free sample cd on the site, but i knew that i was going to commit to the program anyway. i saw no point n trying to tease myself any more than necessary. i have suffered enough as is.
whatever doubts i may have had in ordering the program were brushed aside when the program arrived. there was so much supplemental information and even a few supplemental programs that i was amazed. on top of that, the support letters that bill harris sent on a periodic basis were remarkable, and he included a book that he wrote, thresholds of the mind, that is amazing. i still re-read that book and learn something new each time. bill harris truly believes in giving you more than you pay for.
the book, thresholds of the mind, begins with a brief history of bill harris and how he came across the ideas that would eventually become holosync. apparently, his life use to be a colossal fucking mess, and he didn't start to get clue until he was 35 (this was a great comfort to me personally, since at this writing i'm 37, and only now am i starting to get a clue). from his book (p.13):
" before i began working with what later became holosync, i spent most of my life very dissatisfied--with myself, with the world, and with other people. everything was a strain, a crisis, a drama. even my successes were unfulfilling because regardless of how good they were, they were never enough. i worried constantly. because i was deathly afraid someone might find out i have needs, i was unwilling to open up and be vulnerable...
...i was often hostile and angry, and i succeeded in driving many good people from my life. anger was the background of all my interactions, including those with myself...
...because i was so unhappy, i was desperate to break that pattern, and went through many years of trying anything and everything that seemed like it might make a difference."
this was my exact story too. even reading his words made me feel less alone. perhaps it is just part of a well-engineered marketing ploy, but it spoke to the deepest parts of me. i felt that i met a kindred spirit.
after this, he begins to speak about the concepts of open systems, entropy dissipation, and the human mind. this is where things start to get really interesting. it seems many self-help and therapy type books are concerned with "freeing" yourself from past hurts, or "purging out" all of your negative shit. bill harris suggests that you raise the threshold of your tolerance higher; increase the size of the vessel so that the considerable shit that had happened to you cannot overwhelm your threshold levels for dealing with your shit. what happened to you has happened to you; you aren't going to change those events. no amount of "purging" is even going to change the fact that you were molested as a kid, or raped, or otherwise severely traumatized. however, if you can raise your threshold for dealing with this "chaos energy"; if your system can organize itself into a higher and more complex system that is better capable of dealing with these inputs, then your shit cannot overwhelm you any longer. you become more capable of dealing with your life without denying any part of your life.
how fucking brilliant is that?!
and that's what the holosync program does. it changes the way your mind is wired on a physiologic level so your mind becomes more integrated and better able to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. holosync is like weight lifting for the mind. bill harris details a fair amount of the science involved in this book and it truly is a brilliant read.
however, i will say, i didn't really find enough documented scientific studies on holosync and its effects on the mind. but as i'm not a proper scientist anyway, i would not be able to verify these experiments (it's not like i have a lab in my basement; i don't even have a basement). i only know what i believe i've experienced, and it seems to be good enough for me. i figured that a major portion of my life has been devoted to the study of taijiquan, and it's not like i can verify a lot of taijiquan principles scientifically anyway. it does prove to be a torn in my need-to-have-things-falsifiable-in-order-to-be-scientific side, but i guess i'm okay with the cognitive dissonance.
among the supplemental products are two additional holosync track for 1. making change easy and 2. super longevity. the making change easy track has embedded in it a series of affirmations dedicated to facilitating change and its acceptance; after all, how many of us struggle with trying to keep things the same? i admit, this track was initially VERY uncomfortable for me to listen to. i felt i was developing headaches and found it rather unpleasant; i accepted that this resistance i was feeling was an indication of how much i really needed to use this track. as time progressed, it became easier to use.
the super longevity contains affirmations that can affect cortisol and DHEA levels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHEA to understand what these substances are). in both cases, the brain is artificially brought to and held at a theta brain wave state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_waves).
one of the most impressive additional materials bill harris sends along with the initial holosync level is an audio copy of the 2003 spring retreat where he discuses in great detail the holosync technology and a series of philosophic principles to use as guidelines for living peacefully, harmoniously and successfully. he refers to these as the nine principles for conscious living, and he discusses them in great detail, along with audience questions. this audio set is AWESOME; i found myself arguing with a few things he discussed and engaging this material in a very active way. there is also a certain comfort in hearing the voices of other who have also been traveling this path of seeking enlightenment. bill harris himself is a very well-versed and compassionate teacher. i look forward to meeting him in person someday.
anyway, the nine principles he details are (in no particular order):
1. let whatever happens be okay.
2. the concept of threshold.
3. chaos and reorganization.
4. the map is not the territory.
5. responsibility as empowerment.
6. conscious change.
7. witnessing.
8. good and bad generalizations.
9. the neutral universe.
it would take me far too long to detail these concepts in this blog, and i fear i wouldn't do them justice anyway. i'm just not that articulate.
in any case, i have been on the holosync program for a little more than 2 years now. while i can't really point out day to day changes in my thinking, i can definitely see a great deal of progress from the co-dependent, suicidal wreck i was after my relationship ended. would i have progressed this far in my evolution without using holosync? possibly, but i seriously doubt it. as of this writing, i am on awakening level 3. am i still insecure and full of doubt? you bet, but it doesn't last as long as it used to. is there still room for improvement? fuck yeah, and i'm looking forward to continued use of the program all the way to the end (nine more levels to go, which should take a couple of years).
although i can't really quantify my experience with holosync, i can qualify it. i'm feeling better about myself more now. depression and darker thoughts still cross my mind from time to time, but i'm much better at letting this thoughts go and not ruminate on them for weeks or months at a time. but some of those low points can get very intense as my mind releases this energy and reorganizes (to the point where the good points seem fucking cheap and i wonder why i bother).
a hypothesis, proposition, or theory is scientific only if it is falsifiable.
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability for a succinct explanation. but beware, if you are anything close to the level of geekiness i am, you will spend hours and hours exploring the various facets of the history and philosophy of science, oh, and have your last.fm library playing in the background. you were warned, earth-larvae.)
so i have tended to be fairly left-brain dominant. however, i have also been involved in traditional chinese martial arts and meditation since the early 1990's. many of the explanations and paradigms in taijiquan and qigong don't exactly fall in the parameters of the western scientific method (good luck trying to quantify "chi"). i embody contrasting paradigms that don't always mesh well together, resulting in a fair amount of cognitive dissonance which tends towards a fair amount of "wtf" moments, emotional instability, and general existential angst.
i also operated under the false premise that i knew myself fairly well and i had things under control.
fast forward to approximately 2006. i was in massage therapy school. i was working at a gym as a certified personal trainer. i had become fairly adept at the a.i. stretching modality. i was living with someone who pretty much became the center of my life. then things started to unravel. without going through the details, he decided to leave and never come back. and that's when i realized what a hollow shell of a human being i had become.
during the course of our relationship, i had learned that i have abandonment issues and am rather codependent. and all this time i had though of myself as a fairly independent person. wow. it is amazing how easy it is to lie to yourself and not even realize it. and i've been doing it for years. well, the veneer peeled off, and all the internal desolation was exposed.
i realized that i devoted so much of my energy to this one relationship in my life, that it eclipsed everything else about my life. when it was gone, everything that it hid behind it was exposed, and i realized that i didn't know who i was anymore. i didn't know what i liked to do and what was important. it was a very dark and ugly time for me. my confusion was rampant and suicidal tendencies were waxing. i looked at the other aspects of me that i allowed to atrophy, and was amazed at how insubstantial i felt. i was lost. lost. lost.
it was during the ending of this relationship that i remembered the secret movie, so i borrowed it from a friend and began obsessively watching it. it did ameliorate my emotions to a certain degree. there was one presenter in that movie that stood out to me, and that was bill harris. while i was still trying to wrap my mind around this whole 'law of attraction' concept (admittedly quite difficult as my mental acuity was anything but), he was the only presenter that referred to an online course he offered, as well as indirectly referring to a physical product he made. as i was far too irrational to understand the law of attraction as presented in the movie, i made a point to look bill harris up online. i needed supplemental information. i needed to make my pain go away and i needed it now. it was the best decision i've ever made.
looking up bill harris lead me to his company, centerpointe. and centerpointe has a product line called holosync. it is an audio program that works with binaural beats (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats for an explanation of binaural beats). now i can understand the theory behind the holosync program, but bear in mind that i am NOT a rigorously trained scientist. although i have studied the history and philosophy of science to a considerable degree and i am fairly well-versed on a variety of scientific topics, i am not a published or experienced researcher. so i cannot truly peer review available experimental data and conduct properly documented experiments (one of my shortcomings, i'm afraid to say). i would like to think, however, that i'm at least smarter than the average bear.
well, as i started exploring the centerpointe site, i had a very intuitive feeling that this holosync product was exactly what i was searching for at the time. i couldn't really explain it then, but it really called out to me on a visceral level, and there was enough of a scientific explanation behind the holosync technology that the very logical-dominant side of my brain was satisfied. i bit the bullet and shelled out the funds for the awakening prologue program. they offer a free sample cd on the site, but i knew that i was going to commit to the program anyway. i saw no point n trying to tease myself any more than necessary. i have suffered enough as is.
whatever doubts i may have had in ordering the program were brushed aside when the program arrived. there was so much supplemental information and even a few supplemental programs that i was amazed. on top of that, the support letters that bill harris sent on a periodic basis were remarkable, and he included a book that he wrote, thresholds of the mind, that is amazing. i still re-read that book and learn something new each time. bill harris truly believes in giving you more than you pay for.
the book, thresholds of the mind, begins with a brief history of bill harris and how he came across the ideas that would eventually become holosync. apparently, his life use to be a colossal fucking mess, and he didn't start to get clue until he was 35 (this was a great comfort to me personally, since at this writing i'm 37, and only now am i starting to get a clue). from his book (p.13):
" before i began working with what later became holosync, i spent most of my life very dissatisfied--with myself, with the world, and with other people. everything was a strain, a crisis, a drama. even my successes were unfulfilling because regardless of how good they were, they were never enough. i worried constantly. because i was deathly afraid someone might find out i have needs, i was unwilling to open up and be vulnerable...
...i was often hostile and angry, and i succeeded in driving many good people from my life. anger was the background of all my interactions, including those with myself...
...because i was so unhappy, i was desperate to break that pattern, and went through many years of trying anything and everything that seemed like it might make a difference."
this was my exact story too. even reading his words made me feel less alone. perhaps it is just part of a well-engineered marketing ploy, but it spoke to the deepest parts of me. i felt that i met a kindred spirit.
after this, he begins to speak about the concepts of open systems, entropy dissipation, and the human mind. this is where things start to get really interesting. it seems many self-help and therapy type books are concerned with "freeing" yourself from past hurts, or "purging out" all of your negative shit. bill harris suggests that you raise the threshold of your tolerance higher; increase the size of the vessel so that the considerable shit that had happened to you cannot overwhelm your threshold levels for dealing with your shit. what happened to you has happened to you; you aren't going to change those events. no amount of "purging" is even going to change the fact that you were molested as a kid, or raped, or otherwise severely traumatized. however, if you can raise your threshold for dealing with this "chaos energy"; if your system can organize itself into a higher and more complex system that is better capable of dealing with these inputs, then your shit cannot overwhelm you any longer. you become more capable of dealing with your life without denying any part of your life.
how fucking brilliant is that?!
and that's what the holosync program does. it changes the way your mind is wired on a physiologic level so your mind becomes more integrated and better able to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. holosync is like weight lifting for the mind. bill harris details a fair amount of the science involved in this book and it truly is a brilliant read.
however, i will say, i didn't really find enough documented scientific studies on holosync and its effects on the mind. but as i'm not a proper scientist anyway, i would not be able to verify these experiments (it's not like i have a lab in my basement; i don't even have a basement). i only know what i believe i've experienced, and it seems to be good enough for me. i figured that a major portion of my life has been devoted to the study of taijiquan, and it's not like i can verify a lot of taijiquan principles scientifically anyway. it does prove to be a torn in my need-to-have-things-falsifiable-in-order-to-be-scientific side, but i guess i'm okay with the cognitive dissonance.
among the supplemental products are two additional holosync track for 1. making change easy and 2. super longevity. the making change easy track has embedded in it a series of affirmations dedicated to facilitating change and its acceptance; after all, how many of us struggle with trying to keep things the same? i admit, this track was initially VERY uncomfortable for me to listen to. i felt i was developing headaches and found it rather unpleasant; i accepted that this resistance i was feeling was an indication of how much i really needed to use this track. as time progressed, it became easier to use.
the super longevity contains affirmations that can affect cortisol and DHEA levels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHEA to understand what these substances are). in both cases, the brain is artificially brought to and held at a theta brain wave state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_waves).
one of the most impressive additional materials bill harris sends along with the initial holosync level is an audio copy of the 2003 spring retreat where he discuses in great detail the holosync technology and a series of philosophic principles to use as guidelines for living peacefully, harmoniously and successfully. he refers to these as the nine principles for conscious living, and he discusses them in great detail, along with audience questions. this audio set is AWESOME; i found myself arguing with a few things he discussed and engaging this material in a very active way. there is also a certain comfort in hearing the voices of other who have also been traveling this path of seeking enlightenment. bill harris himself is a very well-versed and compassionate teacher. i look forward to meeting him in person someday.
anyway, the nine principles he details are (in no particular order):
1. let whatever happens be okay.
2. the concept of threshold.
3. chaos and reorganization.
4. the map is not the territory.
5. responsibility as empowerment.
6. conscious change.
7. witnessing.
8. good and bad generalizations.
9. the neutral universe.
it would take me far too long to detail these concepts in this blog, and i fear i wouldn't do them justice anyway. i'm just not that articulate.
in any case, i have been on the holosync program for a little more than 2 years now. while i can't really point out day to day changes in my thinking, i can definitely see a great deal of progress from the co-dependent, suicidal wreck i was after my relationship ended. would i have progressed this far in my evolution without using holosync? possibly, but i seriously doubt it. as of this writing, i am on awakening level 3. am i still insecure and full of doubt? you bet, but it doesn't last as long as it used to. is there still room for improvement? fuck yeah, and i'm looking forward to continued use of the program all the way to the end (nine more levels to go, which should take a couple of years).
although i can't really quantify my experience with holosync, i can qualify it. i'm feeling better about myself more now. depression and darker thoughts still cross my mind from time to time, but i'm much better at letting this thoughts go and not ruminate on them for weeks or months at a time. but some of those low points can get very intense as my mind releases this energy and reorganizes (to the point where the good points seem fucking cheap and i wonder why i bother).
i have also started to combine my taijiquan and qigong practice along with my holosync usage. this is my personal spin on the idea of morphing tradition with technology. i am very proud to have been learning a traditional chen-style taiji curriculum from my most recent teacher (i'll devote an entry or ten to my taiji practice later), and i began this experiment of combining holosync with my practice a few months ago. i personally think it's a good idea, but obviously i'm biased. it is my intention to see how each of these methods compliment and enhance each other for greater progress in both areas. if there are any martial arts out there who are reading this and want to try something similar, please let me know what your experiences are. here is a direct link to centerpointe so you can find out more and order for yourself, because i could write until my hands fall off and you still wouldn't be any closer to what using holosync would be like, so check it out HERE.
thanks for reading this far. if you choose to participate in the holosync program, please feel free to share your experiences with me. i enjoy speaking to fellow seekers. cheers.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
sometimes i wonder
i was really struggling with the idea of being as candid as i am on this blog. i am currently freely writing about the less-than-stellar aspects of my thoughts and personality. do i really want to risk exposing the absolutely shitty sides of my identity to the world? won't this make people even less inclined to want to get to know me? won't this just repel otherwise well-adapted human beings? won't that be counterproductive to my aims? particularly when i am at one of the lowest points in my life right now?
then i realized, i don't think people are really reading this anyway; at least, not now. but then i realized that i'm writing for me, actually. and if anyone wanted to really get to know me, they'd learn about these aspects of me in due time anyway; although it could be reasonably argued that with prolonged exposure to the beautiful mess that i am, people will be more inclined to be forgiving of my shortcommings, and more inclined to see me as i continue my evolution into whatever i am becomming. besides, what a phenominal true story this will all turn out to be when i make it past this darkness and achieve my portable empire ("i remember when i ate cold soup out of the can because i had no way to heat the soup, and it was all i had to eat for the day., that and several pints of tea made out of the same two teabags...").
then i realized, i don't think people are really reading this anyway; at least, not now. but then i realized that i'm writing for me, actually. and if anyone wanted to really get to know me, they'd learn about these aspects of me in due time anyway; although it could be reasonably argued that with prolonged exposure to the beautiful mess that i am, people will be more inclined to be forgiving of my shortcommings, and more inclined to see me as i continue my evolution into whatever i am becomming. besides, what a phenominal true story this will all turn out to be when i make it past this darkness and achieve my portable empire ("i remember when i ate cold soup out of the can because i had no way to heat the soup, and it was all i had to eat for the day., that and several pints of tea made out of the same two teabags...").
i came across a very relevant quote from marilyn monroe:
"I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I’m out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best."
from: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/quotes-by-marilyn-monroe.html
i feel vindicated and justified. i guess it's part of what all makes us human. it just seems odd that there are some people that are more human than others. whenever i start to doubt myself, i'll just meditate on these words. it's amazing where i not-so-randomly find teachers that teach me what i need at the time. the universe is truly abundant. thank you.
Monday, March 2, 2009
i cannot say enough good things about last.fm
i just love this site www.last.fm . i always have it playing in the background as i work on the computer, and some of the artists i have discovered from this site just boggles my mind. ah music, i would be so much more lonely and wretched without thee. liturature is great, but music can touch parts of the soul that writen script cannot. thank you. thank you. thank you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
