All is One

Her eyes become the room and glow

and we drink the golden dust

of our Shepherd’s Footsteps

sate our thirst with the pull

of her warm oceanic palms

we cling to her, our northern star.

Single file, we follow.

Pilgrims,

we vie for a last means of

hiding-protection, Yet We walk

deep into the walnut woods, drunk

off the breath that waters the earth, We seek

the quiet counsel of the cave of our souls, the mother of our woods

who speaks her wisdom in constant gurgling streams.

Woods, you’ve felt high-ceilinged

in my confusion, large with my guilt, joyous

with my joy, inverted

in my despair

We lost her in your midst, and pawed

at your silent trees,

dangling hearts pleading for their northern guide

and in congruent form, you Loved

by raining chanting puddles at our feet

In which I glimpsed us: Star-lights bowing!

Oh, Woods, you wetted my ear with dew kisses

and breathed on me with

warm whispers

of Velvet nights that will unfurl

Star-Lights in streams of endless days

How long ago were our love chords bound,

How long ago did our star-eyes meet, collide, make a pact of eternal love?

And the stars in our souls are veined together as ever,

My heart is as warm as ever

We are Glowing orange coals-no different than the other

- I want to hold in my mouth.

Single file we all walk to the gurgling stream

Splash our faces and arms with its light, strangely natural water

sometimes we even take the plunge

year after year we walk, single file we descend

and the stream keeps on flowing

Cave in the woods of my heart

Listen, pilgrim

Did you see that leaf falling?

Did you hear that engine revving up?

Do you hear the clock?

Ta Ta For Now

Hello lovelies,

I am really sad I couldn't make it to class last night because of the holiday. But I am super hopeful about all of us keeping in touch. I will be here over the summer (pretty much the whole time), and think we should set up a meditation group.

Who else will be here? I am very available and flexible, basically available all weekdays after 4 pm and weekends. We can also do fun stuff together like Tai Chi and going to services at Siddha or the Zen Buddhist Temple. I'd love to keep up the tradition :)

Thoughts? Also, out of curiosity, who else will be taking Psych 418 in the fall? I can't wait!

Roxy

A Confused, Lucid Dream

So I guess it was inevitable that after all that dream-talk yesterday, I had my first lucid dream in a really long time. I recognize that it is a very small step, but exciting nonetheless!

Essentially, in my dream I received a voicemail from a business school classmate who was in my advertising competition group (although is not in reality), complaining that I hadn't been to a meeting in 5 weeks and that I was responsible for explaining my ideas to her and telling her what to say when she does her presentation. At the time of the call, I think I had been drinking in my dream and had gotten back from a party with my boyfriend. I was talking to him about the voicemail and started to question reality, saying, "I don't have to go to this meeting, this isn't even reality. This is just a dream. I don't have to go." After saying that, I found myself laying in bed (in the dream), wondering if I was really in a dream within a dream, and whether or not THAT moment was reality. I got really confused, and then I woke up....with a neck cramp (in real life).

Nothing special really happened, but I thought it was really cool that after talking about dreams I started to experience a fragment of lucid dreaming for a moment last night. I'm wondering if the more I bring lucid dreaming into my consciousness during the day, if I will continue to question it while dreaming. Maybe next time I can learn to break dance in my sleep.

Happy Finals Season!

Karen

Yoga Event Sunday

Thank you all so much for posting some wonderful entries of late. What a pleasure to come back to this spot after a brief absence and be greeted with so many ideas!

I wanted to mention that this Sunday (4/17) my student group is hosting another free yoga event. This one is at the Center for Yoga's other Ann Arbor location at 2450 W. Stadium Blvd. This Hot Vinyasa class will be taught by one of my favorite instructor, Kelli Harrington. Class starts at 12:45pm, but get there early if you want a spot ;)

Hope to see some of you there. If not, have a wonderful weekend all the same.

Eve

Ann Arbor Free Skool

Find out more about it here. The Monday Tai Chi class that I referred to below is put on by them.

http://annarborfreeskool.blogspot.com/p/classesevents.html

Check it out now (the funk soul brother).

Tai Chi

Today I practiced Tai Chi with a friend who is very knowledgeable and experienced and also just an awesome person. He said that one of the main points of the practice was to remind us that we are creatures between heaven and earth. In introducing the different positions, he encouraged me keep the top of my body light, the legs firmly grounded in the earth, and always with a focus on the breath as emanating from the abdomen. This was something new to me - I'd never thought about the fact that it's our diaphragms opening and closing that starts our breath. Nick also explained that it's our center of balance, as well as the place within us where life originated (or at least that the fuel which would fuel life first entered into our body..).

The session was by no means easy - my legs were shaking towards the end. But with practice this will become better. It's nice because it's a slow, graceful movement that you're doing, and it's easy (and important) to line up your breath with your actions. I want to reflect more on this experience and learn more about the practice, but I also want to just continue doing it! So tomorrow night at 8:30 there's a Tai Chi session that takes place at the ICC Education Center, which is located between and behind the Luther Co-op(s) near "The Rock" @ 1510 and 1520 Hill street. As far as I know, it's free and open to all, and I plan on attending. I'd encourage you all to think about coming as well!

Happiness.

Today's conversation was great. There are only two more classes left, but I hope even once this class is over we can all meet up to talk, maybe even some group meditation? In any case, feel free to friend me on Facebook so we can all stay in touch! I won't think you're creepy for finding me too.

On the topic of happiness: one of my favorite poems I've posted below for you all to read. I'm a sucker for good poetry, and this one has really stuck with me. Enjoy.

The Plum Trees
Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into

the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment

rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don't

succumb, there's nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy

is a taste before
it's anything else, and the body

can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,

the only way
to temp happiness into your mind is by taking it

into the body first, like small
wild plums

-Mary Oliver



Peace,
Ryan John

Synesthesia & The Arts

Also, here's a link to an article about synesthesia and art -

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/002409499552957

Choice Overload

Hey all, here's the article that I mentioned today in class - a.k.a. the jam example:

http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/whenchoice.html

Secret spots

Does anybody have any good places they like to go to meditate that around the campus area? In the Michigan League there's a "Reflection Room" on the third floor that I'll go into sometimes. I like it because I go in and close the door and it becomes my own private space. Anybody else have any good spots to share? Maybe if we spot each other meditating we can spontaneously stop and tune in together! Sometimes it really helps to do something that requires focus with other people who are focusing in the same kind of way.

Can't wait until it gets warm out and so many more nice spaces to meditate will reveal themselves!

The Veil

Hey guys. Just thought I'd post this in its original form; hope you enjoy the experience of this idea as much as I am.

The Veil

Silence is pregnant with countless truths, yet unknown. I feel the Great Unmanifest, a humming field of light, churning, swelling, breathing toward me. She is the Tao, the Mother the Everything, and she cloaks herself from our minds' hungry eyes. All we think we see is but this veil that separates us from her skin, which we long to feel soft and naked under our fingers.

There is a veil, yet I know her presence still; I feel her lovely round shape, and her warm breath surrounding me. I hear her deep calm, resonating my heart. I feel her reaching inside me, insisting that I too, am the Unknown. I feel myself disappearing inside her, and at least for a moment, the veil is gone.

mind-body healing

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/03/ep.seidler.cancer.mind.body/index.html

Interesting story from CNN! Check it out.

Also, I'm currently writing a paper on dreams for another psychology class. I will definitely post it on here when it's finished because it has much to do with conscious experiences.

See you all tomorrow.

cool website.

http://www.highexistence.com/

check it out yo.

The universe is alive.

I'm still in the process of writing a post on my experiences with spirituality. In the meantime, I thought it very appropriate to share my new epiphany with all of you.

Yesterday I was talking with my house mates about what 'awareness' is--is a chair aware that it's a chair?, does a spoon carrying information?, do you need a brain to observe?, etc.

I said something near the end of this conversation that surprised me: "The universe is alive."

I had never put it into such exact words before, but I realized this is how I've always felt. It's the only way I can describe God. It's the only thing that allows me to carefully reject nihilism, or the apathy and pessimism I often feel. The universe is alive.

I was thinking about it obsessively at 2am--I referred to the Google search engine to read other people's thoughts and came across the photograph above.

It would take 300 million light years to travel from one end of this photograph/simulation to the other. The man who posted this picture in his blog mentioned it looked like tissue--a network of cells.

It looks like the nervous system, doesn't it?

This may be a stretch, but it got me thinking: the universe is constantly expanding, and as it does dark energy and dark matter fills the void.

Meditation is known to increase the grey matter in our brain...how is the universe any different in this sense?

It makes me feel very small, but it also makes everything feel so meaningful too.

satisfaction

My meditation experience this morning left me so happy. I'd like to share with you what I ecstatically wrote in my journal right after it:

I NEED NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT IS CONTAINED IN THIS MOMENT TO BE SATISFIED. I HAVE MANY BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN MY LIFE BUT I NEED NOT COUNT THEM, THIS JOY COMES NOT FROM THEM. I FEEL A PROFOUND AND COMPLETE SATISFACTION WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EXTERNAL - SATISFACTION IS A CHOICE IN ITSELF, A PURELY MENTAL PLACE.

EVERYTHING HAS TURNED INSIDE-OUT, WITH EMPTINESS NOW FEELING LIKE ABUNDANCE, AND ALL THOSE THINGS I ONCE DESIRED SEEMING HOLLOW AND INSUBSTANTIAL. I WAS ALMOST AFRAID TO SAY IT: I NEED... NOTHING... MORE... THAN THIS... NOTHING MORE THAN THIS! THEN I SAID IT OVER AND OVER, JOYOUSLY, RECKLESSLY, LIKE A ROMPING CHILD - I NEED NOTHING MORE! - ALL THE WHILE STOMPING PLAYFULLY ON THOSE OLD DESIRES LIKE THEY WERE CRAWLING BUGS ON THE SIDEWALK.

I don't know why I wrote it in all caps, that's how I did in my journal.

Hey all,

I just want to say thank you for creating such a beautiful, one-ness energy during chanting today. I am really happy that we're all discovering the experience of chanting together, and giving our all. In class I said how comfortable I felt with your voices, but I kind of want to expand on that feeling...

I was getting a lot of imagery. One person mentioned forests, and I totally felt that too. But I also felt this awesome "lifting" feeling whenever we became in unison, as if our voices were pulling us high into this other realm, somewhere great. I kept picturing our voices as these dazzling, yellow zig-zag's beaming from our throats, and creating a giant ball of energy.

I think sitting in a circle made a huge difference. While I had a peaceful, meditative experience at the Siddha center with chanting, I was not influenced as much by everyone else's voices. Something about encircling ourselves, making that everlasting shape, really affected me. I also remember wanting to hold hands, if just to make the experience even more "kumbaya" or powerful.

Anyway, during the chant I told myself that if I get upset, to think about the One voice we can create, and to rest in it. I hope this can be useful to you too! I would also love to hear any further thoughts on chanting :D

Law IV

This is from a sheet handed to me in an esoteric healing class from two years ago. It is "The Fourth Law of Esoteric Healing":

Disease, both physical and psychological, has its roots in the good, the beautiful and the true. It is but a distorted reflection of divine possibilities. The thwarted soul, seeking full expression of some divine characteristic or inner spiritual reality, produces - within the substance of its sheaths - a point of friction. Upon this point the eyes of the personality are focused, and this leads to disease. The art of the healer is concerned with the lifting of the downward focused eyes unto the soul, the true Healer within the form. The spiritual or third eye then directs the healing force, and all is well.

I think it's from Alice Bailey's books on Esoteric Healing.

"has its roots in the good, the beautiful and the true" - I like this view of disease :)

Thoughts on student life

Lately, I’ve been struggling with my personal journey of spiritual growth. It has largely been my belief (at least lately) that one should be able to carry out every act in life in a mindful, meaningful, and loving, manner. In terms of my academics, last semester, this was more effortless. I was passionate about what I was focusing on in each course and I found the learning environments invigorating. This semester, however, I have not had the same luck. It has been difficult for me to make a good portion of my coursework personally meaningful, I’ve struggled with disempowering classroom environments, and some of my grades have been reflecting my consequential attitudes, which only works to exacerbate the problem.

I’ve felt myself bucking against some of my academics, asking myself that if the work is not meaningful or empowering, why should I be spending my energy on it, when I could be doing things that are so much more spiritually rewarding? Why do so many students have the notion drilled into their minds that these four (or more) years of their lives are supposed to be devoted to studying (whether it is meaningful or not) – as if during these four years they should be willing, in essence, to put their lives on hold while they complete this requirement of obtaining a college degree? I know that the implications in these questions are fairly reductive, but I feel that they should be asked nonetheless and know that many would do well to reflect on them. I find myself often asking questions like these after I realize that I’ve gone through a period of time on “autopilot” (if you know what I mean).

What do you think? What does this period of your life mean to you and how do you determine what to invest energy/time in (or how much); or have you simply found that you can go about your life, and complete all of your obligations in a mindful, loving way?

Remind Yourself

Since I have been very sick the past couple of days I have looked for something to remind myself that the illness doesn't have to have a complete hold on me. I have this passage from Dr. Wayne Dyer indefinitely posted above my desk in my apartment, so I thought I might share.

Remind yourself that you don't have to do anything. You don't have to be better than anyone else. You don't have to win. You don't have to be number one or number twenty-seven or any other number.

Give yourself permission to just be. Stop interfering with your unique natural being. Lighten the burden you carry to be productive, wealthy, and successful in the eyes of others and replace it with an inner assertion that allows you to access the Tao.

Affirm: I am centered in the Tao. I trust that I am able to straighten myself out, and so is the world. I retreat into silence knowing all is well.

So I will try to allow myself to just be. Despite the headache and side-effects of antibiotics that make me want to classify a new category of illness. All will be well again, soon enough.

Karen

Precognition Group Research Ideas

Hey Guys,

Last semester with Richard Mann I did some research on anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. During my studies, I came up with a few ideas a long the way for possible future research ideas. I’ve also included some things to keep in mind throughout the process. Below I’ve summarized some of my ideas.

Christen

Goal:

• Explore the possibility that consciousness may not only be limited to perceptible information in the sensory present and memory of the past, but also to that in the future.
• Examine and understand human evolution, the human mind, human perception and behavior, and the nature of our physical reality to a greater degree

What is psi?

• A sensible, normal, extremely efficient, and continuous aspect of the psychological functioning of all organisms
• Intrinsically unconscious, preconscious, devoid of any available sensory information, broadly active and important, and motivated by personal intentions and needs
• Operate outside of the physical body.

Possible Study Ideas:

1. Is there a statistically significant correlation between stimulus seeking and psi performance?
2. Are those who are ranked as high stimulus seekers more likely to attain a high effect size than those who are not?
3. Design an experiment that tested directly for the retroactive induction of boredom on non-arousing neural stimuli.
4. Do extraverts perform better on psi tasks than introverts? How does this relate to the course of evolution?
5. Test an individual’s ability to recall a set of words to determine the role that rehersal plays in the facility of this process
6. By practicing free recall tests of the sets of words shown to them, are participants able to recall more of the to-be-practiced words than the unpracticed words?
7. Explore the influence of unconscious physiological responses to future events through examining psi performance in one person in the same location, but at different times.
8. Is psi space-time equivalent? Does our consciousness have transtemporal aspects?
9. Do “calm” pictures produce little to no response, while a “extreme” picture would result in a rise in skin conductance, a drop in heart rate, and a drop in finger blood volume? Additionally, does the emotional arousal caused by seeing an extreme picture in the future cause an unconscious physiological “pre-action” in the present? Particularly, do the emotional targets show an orienting “pre-ponse” prior to the exposure of the target photos?

Possible Methods:

1. Use the IAPS: a set of 820 digitized photographs that had been rated on 9-point scales for valence and arousal by both male and female raters
2. Stimulus seeking scale: Participants respond to two different pictures on a scale, consisting of the following statements: “I am easily bored” and “I often enjoy seeking movies I’ve seen before” (reverse scored). All responses were then documented on 5-point scales that spanned from “very untrue” to “very true,” and averaged in a single score extending from 1 to 5.
3. Use strongly negative or erotic pictures
4. Use Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale (which contains a subscale of Boredom Susceptibility that is significantly correlated with overall extraversion) to determine a measure for erotic stimulus seeking
5. Record the heart rate, blood volume, and electrodermal activity of each participant before, during, and after presentation of each target photo to see whether the body unconsciously responds differentially to two types of future targets
6. Timing of when target photo is selected: directly prior to being displayed to participants or after.
7. Participants take a personality test prior to the experiment: The sensation seeking facet on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory
8. Use random number generators to limit the influence of the experimenter on the results (i.e. the internal PRNG, Marsaglia’s PRNG, and/or the Araneus Alea I RNG)
9. Administering a measure of creativity prior to the experiment
10. Study psi performance in various situations in which persons are engaging in “normal” activities and not striving to demonstrate a paranormal effect
11. Study psi functioning using implicit or behavioral methods (i.e projective techniques) as opposed to self-report measures (i.e. questionnaires) because the variables affecting it act on unconscious levels
12. Minimizing the role of the experimenter as much as possible, by reducing their interaction to that of greeter and debriefer, and leaving the instructions concerning the experiment and all other interactions with the participant up to the computer program

Things to keep in mind:

1. Statistical procedures that are as simple, transparent, and recognizable as possible (i.e. one sample t-tests
2. Individual difference variables that predict psi performance. Studies on psi have indicated that those who are open to experience, believe in the existence of psi, feel that they have experienced psi in their everyday life, and practice inward, mental discipline in which they develop insight into their own dream life (i.e. meditation, yoga, self-hypnosis, biofeedback, etc.) are more likely to demonstrate a psi performance effect than those who do not. Other beneficially characteristics include those with a stronger tendency toward dissociation and absorption; those who are more socially engaged, adventurous, and less anxious; those with motivations to succeed that are consistent at different levels of awareness and relatively invariant over time; those who have a general tendency to be successful across situations, those who are creative and have a capacity to delay cognitive closure; and those who are highly motivated and successful at performance effectively.
3. What is the emotional state of the individual at the time they encounter the material of the ESP task? Findings by Schmeidler and McConnell (1958) suggest that “the subject’s attitude is most important in determining the quality of his or her (extrasensory) perception.”
4. What are the environmental conditions that encourage and facilitate the performance of psi? Environments in which precognition, retroactive influence, and remote viewing are most likely are to occur include: 1) those in which participants engage in practices using anomalous cognition at least twice a week; 2) those that are peaceful; 3) those that are quiet (nothing on the walls, few pieces of furniture, bland); 4) those that promote the participant to be in a calm/meditative state; 5) those in which the participant has no prior knowledge of the target; and 6) those in which the “correct” target is determined by some external random event that it is not known to judges when they are making their evaluations (Brown, 2006, p. 29-31).
5. Other experimental criteria to keep in mind: 1) the participants should not know anything about the target when they conduct the session; 2) the monitor of the experimental session (if a monitor is used) should not know anything about the target; 3) the analyst of the session should not participate in other aspects of the experiment; 4) the tasker should not participate in the collection of information or any other aspect of the experiment; 5) a monitor (if a monitor is used) should not work with multiple participants within the same context of the same experiment; and 6) the participant must engage in the process alone and in an isolated environment.
6. Various confounding variables that could influence the findings of experiments: 1) the mere exposure effect; 2) liking for stimuli; 3) avoiding habituation; 4) using control sessions.
7. Factors that have been found to enhance the expression of the effect in both parapsychological and “perception without awareness” experiments: drawing responses rather than verbalizing them, sensory attenuation, hypnosis, free association, dream sleeping, relaxed reverie, and a positive, encouraging environment