Look to the Horizon

Merkaba

bscanlon — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:38:07 GMT

text forthcoming, Sebastian was right, it's time for a new post!

Into the Black Hole

bscanlon — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:24:30 GMT

Into the Black Hole This phrase occurred to me 2 years ago (was it only 2 years ago? wow) when we were wrapping everything up and moving to New Zealand. It’s like, in a science fiction movie, when the shit hits the fan and they have to do something radical to save their asses—it’s a moment where everyone straps into their seats, and everything shakes a lot. It’s a make or break moment, a moment of ultimate tension, and, except maybe for some steam coming out of pipes and the view on the screen going shakey-shakey and some flashing lights and maybe some people getting thrown out of their chairs, and a great big rumbley noise, well, that’s mostly what happens… …but then, just when you think it is going to be OK, if maybe a rough ride, THE CREW STARTS A MUTINY! In the movies, and in my life, thank sweet baby jesus, after a lot more shaking then they are through and its easy smooth sailing after that. The mystics call this Chapel Perilous, FWIW. =The=only=way=out=is=through= There’s something about this time of year, I swear to astrological jesus. 2 years ago it was the move to New Zealand. Last year it was getting ready for Kiwiburn, which in so many ways almost didn't happen. This time last year I was doing a test build on my eliptical dome, which ended up only 80% successful. And my still wasn’t working yet, waiting on a part from the states which was maybe, maybe going to do the job, who knows? Well, we moved to NZ. And the dome didn’t work, but I went and bought a carport. And the still worked—I was distilling on the day before we left and managed to end up bringing a case of absinthe to kiwiburn. And the Green Fairy was brilliant. This year? Once more into the breach. First, there’s kiwiburn. Going much more smoothly this year overall, but I am building the centrepiece of the temple, which involves a structure of a type I have never really built before, and an orgone generator. Which is something that most "rational" people would say is impossible. And somehow making this all user friendly and cool looking. Second, we decided to sell our house in Christchurch and just move out to our Wainui property. So we have to get the house from kiwburn-prep condition to saleable condition before we go. That’s a bit involved, as you may know if you have seen my room <grin>. And of course, among other things, people freak about the bees. "I am allergic to bees." May I say here, folks, that everyone is allergic to bees? See the bees need to scare you all off, because it's a little kamikaze run for every one of them that stings you, and are you going to die? Probably not. There are maybe one or two out of a hundred of you that will go into anaphylactic shock at a bee sting, and your life might be threatened. Twice as many people in the USA die from =walking=and=falling=down= than they do from =all= insect stings every year. Yes, it does appear that many americans are allergic to walking, but that's another post. Bee stings make you swell up and they hurt, but most of you who think you are "allergic to bees" are not. So anyway, I have to move the bees. Third, our country place? We want to build a house there, but that’s against the rules. You know, government regulations. I had been thinking for about the past week that I had the feeling that we were descending into the black hole again. I felt good, cocky, confident, like, it was going to be easy. Gee, I guess I get used to this. Well, sometimes it feels easy, but it is always DIFFERENT. Yesterday (Wednesday) started and I thought I just had little bit of work to do to get my Merkaba (aforementioned new kind of structure) ready for a test build on Friday. Plugged away but it wasn’t happening. Painstakingly measured and marked 12 struts and then they were all off. Didn’t know why. A bit of a nonsleeping nap late in the afternoon finally showed me the answer, but I felt attracted to working on further enhancements to the orgone generator, so I just went with the flow, feeling kind of tweaked and wired and a bit broken, but good work done there. Had dinner, and I swear only by the grace of updated orgone generator jesus, which was humming away in the work shed was I able to manage to get the rest of the Merkaba pieces cut. So I thought I was still OK. Today we received in the mail a big package. 2 weeks ago, I said, honey, what do you think, I want to have a blank book or something for people to write in at the temple. Record their thoughts, or whatever. It would be, you know, interactive. Honey says, how much do you want to spend? Those things are expensive. Pshaw, I said, I will go onto trade me. Where I saw this item. Which arrived in the mail today. Honey wanted to be there for the opening of the package. With good reason. We opened it, and it’s something. This is not just something, this is a high mana item. I do not say that lightly. It’s a very large ledger book, it’s very old, mostly blank. All sorts of feelings went through me—feelings of accomplishment and pride, feelings of smallness and humility that I am involved in something much bigger than me, feelings that maybe we shouldn’t even desecrate this thing which is probably from the 1800s with our little scribblings at our little party. It is a beautiful item, and it deserves respect, which is another way of saying, more work before we leave. Then I went on a Mitre 10 (NZ home depot equivalent) run and brought home a bunch of shit, and I was like, I have a bunch of shit that I am bringing into this house which I do love and yet I am leaving, and there needs to be far less shit here. Hmmmmm. And of course processing this shit into something cool and functional is yet more work. Then we went to see the planning consultant for our non-permissible desire to build a new house on the property we bought and are in the act of committing whole-heartedly to. And it was a good meeting, but it was like, lots of time, lots of money, the rules for this area are under review by the environmental court, and what sort of needle can you thread to get what you want, which is totally unpermissible? Well, I have been in these places before, it’s been my job, in a sense, but fuck, it’s hard. So it’s always time and money and work and you DON”T KNOW IF IT WILL SUCCEED or not. You just gotta do it. So that took a lot of wind out of my sails, even though it went well. It went well means we walk out of the office with another action plan to somehow lay over all the other action plans. And this one is the I haven’t even really been thinking about, trying to get other stuff done, but I think this could perhaps be the one that more than anything else really matters? Shit, I dunno. Back to the house after that, after running some more errands and buying more things, and there is too much stuff in this house!!! Quick nap, talk to the lawn guy, who is going to put roundup (no, really, it’s a totally harmless herbicide! So low impact! Monsanto is your friend!) on all the weeds, use a leaf blower (I HATE fucking leaf blowers) to blow all the unsightly (but very nutritious to the plants) leaves we have so slovenly allowed to accumulate on the ground away, and cover it with wood chips, and bring in a line trimmer, and mow the lawn a bit, an shape the hedges, and it’s gonna cost you, mate! I dunno. And then like, putting stuff away. The test build for the Merkaba is tomorrow. Will it work? It better work, because I am building the temple Thank you, everyone. For your confidence, faith, guts, chutzpa. I’m descending into the black hole. The only way out is through. The man burns in 23 days, they say. But to anyone who has been a part of this thing, you know. The man is burning, was burning, will be burning for I don’t know how long. The pace keeps picking up. Thank dungeons and dragons jesus that I played role playing games when I was young, or would I even know how to deal with this? I’m just making it up as I go along, looking for the people around me to tell me whether I am doing OK or not, but half the time they are like, NO, that’s crazy, you can’t do that! But I really think I can, and sometimes I actually do, so who do I trust? Not myself either, because sometimes I don’t and I can’t. The new life I am in is beautiful and glorious and thank prometheus jesus for giving me the fire, but sometimes it seems like such a fragile mental construction, and attitude of will, just plain attitude to keep it all running. There isn’t any choice, though. I’ve burned my bridges. No going back. This is not my beautiful house. The last one was in San Francisco, and we sold it. We are somewhere in between... I’ve reprogrammed by sensorium into an interpreter of events such that they all seem worthwhile and good. This makes everything seem worthwhile and good, which is of course worthwhile and good, but sometimes I feel just a bit incredulous about it all. My excess of good fortune. My experience of having this all work out just through, is it faith? So thanks, I guess, for the black hole, because I guess chapel perilous is part of it. Margaret, the soul design jeweler (see Kathy’s post, what colour is your soul at her site, www.kathysgetaways.com) was like, “people think it can all be happy and wonderful and benevolent ascended master be my guide kimosabe. They don’t realize YOU’VE GOT TO BURN.” Frankly, I want it to be all warm and fuzzy, and would prefer not to burn. Is this burning, now? Well, it is hot, ouchy, even. But I have to say it could certainly be worse. After all, look around. What’s going on? Just some steam. Flashing lights. The seats are shaking. Oh look, there’s someone on the floor! Sounds like a party to me :-) But I hope you don’t mind if I sit down, have a drink of water, and catch my breath now and then. Tomorrow, test build. One of the biggest make or breaks in the next couple of weeks. Maybe, looking at all this, you think, well Bruce, that's the least of your worries. So what if it doesn't work? Surely selling your old house and getting consent for your new house is more important? Strangely, it doesn't seem that way to me.

The Principle of Positive Feedback, or, Don't Worry, Be Happy!

bscanlon — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:56:02 GMT

The Principle of Positive Feedback , or, Don’t Worry, Be Happy! OK, in my post about the Meaning of Life, I said that the idea was to =make things happen= in your life. Make it a good story. Next question: What Sorts of Things Should I Make Happen? Simple answer: Things that make you feel good. Why? What? Huh? When I told a friend about this a while back, he said, chuckling, “uh… NOT! That’s a bad thing, you don’t want to go there man.” This friend was a nice friendly happy fellow at a positive place in his life and has continued to do well (by his own estimation, which is the only one that matters, though I agree). What he was talking about was, he really would have liked to have been doing cocaine all the time, which he had at one point in his life, but now he thought it was better that he didn’t. That’s OK, man! See, the point it, you do what feels good to you at wherever you are in the space time continuum. Sometimes it is good (for him, I don’t dig it myself) to do a lot of coke, and sometimes it is better to stop doing what FORMERLY was great for you, and MOVE ON TO OTHER THINGS. Remember the Meaning of Life, doing the same thing forever makes a bad story, it is anti-narrative, it is life-negative. This is because things change, we change, and what makes us happiest in the widest sense of the word, however you grasp it at the time, changes. Let me repeat that, because this is the core of the whole thing: However YOU grasp it at the time. It is all about what each individual person feels makes THEMSELVES happiest. Not me telling you, not you telling me, but each of us deciding in each moment what makes us happiest within the context of our lives as we grasp it. I am very happy right now, but it is not so useful for me to tell you what particular actions to take to be happy, because, last time I checked, YOU ARE NOT ME. I’m happy to hang out and tell you my story, and to hear your story, and get inspired or awed or disgusted (but I’ll try to avoid that, I promise) or whatever, but we are different people and I cannot tell you how to live your life. Now, it is true that I will decide who to spend time with and how to act around them based on whether being around whichever people acting whatever way makes ME happy or not, and I expect everyone else to do the same, and so in this way we can give everyone else feedback on their behavior, and they can try to change it if they think that it is really worth it to them so that they can hang out with me (bad example) or achieve some goal that they suspect might make them happier than they are now (good example). OK, with me so far? That last bit was important, too. Let me summarize. 1) Ask yourself if you are happy. 2) If you are happy in the widest sense that you care to contemplate at that moment, then keep doing what you’re doing. 3) If you suspect you might be HAPPIER if you did something different, TRY DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT. 4) After you have tried doing something different, go back to step one. ASK YOURSELF IF YOU ARE HAPPY. If you aren’t, try something else, or try again with what you did, maybe you will do it better next time, or whatever. Just keep going. I call this, as you may have guessed, the process of positive feedback. Why does this work? Very simple. We all have within us a very good sense of whether we are happy or not. It’s standard equipment. It might get a little rusty, but start using it and it will perk up and be as good as new. In fact, it gets better the more you use it. You have your own personal inbuilt guidance system that tells you everything you need to know to live the best possible life you can. Yay! We do NOT have inbuilt guidance systems that evaluate whether we are being good citizens, serving God, being a good person, being patriotic, or whatever, so we are subject to doubts, excessive outside influence and all sorts of destabilizing and non-happiness making phenomena when we pursue such goals. If is OK to purse such goals within the greater context of being happy, but please, keep them within that context. It is OK with me if you want to dedicate your life to serving God, or fighting the evil empire, or whatever, as long as you ask yourself every once in a while if it is making you happy, and if it isn’t, just my humble suggestion, please try something different. I can’t guarantee that you will serve God better, but I think it very likely that you will become happier, and you know, I think happy people are better citizens, the evil empire is best defeated by people becoming happier, and God wants you to be happy, really. That’s the end, mostly. You can stop here if you like :-) So you see, this is the brilliance, and the nuts and bolts of why they work, of systems like The Secret and Esther Hicks/The Teachings of Abraham. They are quite explicit in saying that you need to use your own internal guidance system and then make changes in your life, or inside your head, which amounts to the same thing, in order to bring the things that you want to you. I personally enjoy all the disembodied consciousness mumbo jumbo, but you don’t need all that to make the system work. Because the system is part of your total human package, and all you need to do is START PAYING ATTENTION to how you feel, and DO SOMETHING and then see if it makes you feel BETTER.

This is not my beautiful house, part III

bscanlon — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:58:30 GMT

This is not my beautiful house, part III I was writing a few words the other day for a new zealand curious friend of a friend, and as I went over to tribe to look for a relevant blog post that summed up some key points of my experiences moving here, I noticed that I had written not one, but two earlier posts entitled, This Is Not My Beautiful House. I found this quite funny, since I had managed to submerge myself into the flow of living on Clyde Rd in Christchurch, appreciating its virtues and dealing with its faults, planning on keeping the building forever, redeveloping it and making it a model oasis of urban permaculture, driving at will from there to our new property in the country. Ha! How amusing that I had lost touch with my earlier wisdom on the topic. Because I was walking the path all along, at times poking my head up and looking into the distance, but mostly watching each footstep. So maybe that’s why this latest bit of plan/life change/emotional whiplash is going so smoothly. First, we began to realize that a permaculture oasis requires an active human presence, and we wondered about our ability to split our time between the city and the country. At first we thought we might find a friend to be the anchor person and help us manage the city property. A very productive talk with friend Amba led us to start thinking of other options, including flatmates if only as a transitional step. That opened up further speculation, and we considered just renting the house out to a family and perhaps developing the back workshed into a cottage. In the meantime we continued to spend more and more time at the country property in Wainui. The quiet, the beauty, the je ne se quois of the place continued to work on us, and we also saw that the projects there could easily consume all of our energy. One night at Wainui we developed a matrix weighing all of our options in terms of ongoing time management costs, flexibility, and cash flow, very important since we spent more than we really wanted to on the purchase, we need capital to continue developing Wainui and also to generate a continuing income stream. Added into the mix of options was the idea of throwing some money in with friends Tobi and Alex, who are looking for a house, so they might partner with us and buy something with an in-law flat for our city adventures. Interestingly, all of the different options, despite their different initial effort and follow up admin levels all penciled out the same financially, except for the option of just plain selling our house in the city and moving whole hog out to Wainui. And of course that’s going to be the easiest option as well. This pretty big major change of plans idea rolled around our heads for a bit, then slowly settled in and made itself home. Of course we thought that we could make a nice leisurely move of it. We certainly couldn’t move before the bazillion pumpkins we are growing at Clyde Rd. were harvested! And we’re so busy with Kiwiburn and trips and visitors at least to June… A few discussions with friend and agent Maggie about the reality of the current real estate market upset these comfy notions. December/January are really the best time to market a house in our neighborhood. Nor will it show well the winter (June here, for you folks above the equator). And the whole real estate market is slowing down, beset by high interest rates, low affordability at current prices, and the evident slowdown in the United States. It felt really good, as we loaded up the van for a 10 day stint at Wainui over Christmas and New Years not worry about bringing “too much” out—we were moving there! And then during hours of great conversations with Dennis, Tobi, Alex, Maggie and Roelf, somehow by Boxing Day we found ourselves agreeing that it made sense to show the property while we were away at Kiwiburn for two weeks at the beginning of February! After that who knows? If the property sells fast we’ll count our lucky stars and move wholesale into the charming but cold-as rennovated 1900s farmhouse at Wainui until we get our new house built out there. Pretty tame compared to what a lot of homesteaders go through, actually, since we have wall heaters in every room, a fireplace and a wood burning stove. It’s just a matter of gritting our teeth and paying the power bills, and of dealing with cold in the proper Kiwi fashion, which is to go outside, get some sun, and do some work. Amazing how that warms one up! So here we are, new year, new property, new plan. It seems crazy and ambitious, but despite our new projects and the continuation of the old ones (me, building the centrepiece of the Kiwiburn 08 temple with orgone generator, Kathy, Kiwiburn Kostume Korner, us, the Green Fairy) I think it’s doable. Given that I was distilling until the day before we left for Kiwiburn last year and it all worked out fabulously, I think our new plan is equally doable. I take two lessons from this. One is that if you stay in touch with your feelings and keep your eyes for the most part on what you are doing in shorter time scales, you will stay on your strategic path. The other comes from my recent increase in reading in astrology and other similar interpretive systems. When troubles come up, you can brace yourself and fight to hold your place, or you can use the chaotic energy to propel you forward towards your goals faster than you thought possible. So I count myself very lucky to be able to say, it’s time to hold on to our hats and get ready for a wild ride! Because the bucking bronco we’re riding is heading toward paradise and the fulfillment of our dreams.

The meaning of life

bscanlon — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:20:38 GMT

Kathy recently mentioned to me that a good friend was still trying to figure out "the meaning of life." This post is for you, good friend :-) When we look at the phrase, "meaning of life" what do we see? http://www.thefreedictionary.com/meaning “3. An interpreted goal, intent, or end” Ah hah, here is the trick. Where does that interpretation come from? From you dear reader! It is the act=of=interpretation that results in meaning. When you interpret something, you create meaning. The meaning of life is the creation of meaning. Human beings are meaning creators. It’s what we do. We receive and filter sense data and form it into stories. We tell these stories to ourselves, we tell these stories to other people. The stories are often judged not so much on whether they are “true” or not, as to whether they are good stories. What are the elements of a good story? Conflict. Resolution. Pay careful attention to this pair of words: Conflict. Resolution. Have a problem? Great. You are halfway there. Good job. Conflict! But what about resolution? If you are not moving the story along, it is a boring story. It lacks meaning. In fact, the MEANING that stories that do not move the plot along convey is that there is NO MEANING. They are counter to the meaning of life, which is the creation of meaning. They are ANTI-LIFE. So. Let us say you are looking for the meaning of life: Conflict! What is the answer you come up with ? Resolution! This right here is the meaning of life. Mmmmmm, delicious fulfillment of the meaning of life! If you are spending a lot of time sitting around doing nothing but trying to come up with the meaning of life, you are NOT creating meaning. You are not fulfilling the meaning of life. You by your lack of action are creating an interpretation of life that says that life is meaningless. It’s OK not to come up with a meaning, but for God’s sake make the quest for the meaning an interesting story: “I sat at my desk at work, at my desk at home, and at my desk at the bar for 5 years thinking about the meaning of life. But I haven’t figured it out yet.” AWFUL STORY. NO MEANING CREATED. ANTI-LIFE. “I went to Tibet and climbed a mountain to go talk to a yogi….” GREAT STORY SO FAR. LIFE-AFFIRMING. …AND WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? What did the Yogi say? What did you do after that? The act of creation of meaning is the creation of action. Keep the story moving. What comes next? GO FOR IT!

firewalking

bscanlon — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:32:12 GMT

Last weekend we went to the Little River Fire Festival. http://www.littleriver.co.nz About an hour drive from our house at slow van speeds. Maybe 400 people at the festival? Very nice, friendly, fun. Maybe this is the south island regional burn already arriving in completed form, and I can ease up on that goal? That's happening anyway, as my whole universe orients around the new property and my ambitions there. Kiwiburn is also rapidly approaching on the horizon, and stepped up activity around the committee and my projects take all of my burning man time. And it's spring! We're working hard to get in a new garden bed and some extra boxes for the bees so they can make us some honey :-) I went firewalking at the festival. Overall I give it a thumbs up, but I am now nursing burnt feet (I know 2 other people who also got burnt, I think it was common). I knew it was going to be there and I was very interested in doing it, but wanted to make sure I was in the right frame of mind. When the moment came I felt this sort of droning buzz compulsion to do it. I walked away from the crowd, took off my boots and 2 layers of socks, rolled up my 3 layers of leg coverings, walked through the crowd to the coal filled trench, and walked across. My memory was that maybe 2/3 of the way across (5 steps total?) my feet started feeling hot and I started sort of goosestepping. Looking at this photo for the first time, I see that my feet were probably already burning at the first step. They definitely felt scorched when I had gotten across, but not that bad. I but my socks and boots on again. As we watched many more people walk across, they started hurting more, then they started to feel better. I guess that was the blisters filling with fluid. I spent an hour or two mostly trying to sit down, but what ended up feeling much better was getting up and dancing! That was Saturday night, now it's Thursday and my feet are getting better each day. One blister popped which was a bit painful for a couple of days, but my feet are healing nicely. I did and still do have a very good feeling about doing it. I'm glad I did. Still, it would have been nice if the mystical not getting my feet burnt thing happened. But hey, I walked across 10 feet or so of hot coals!

self portrait at a very special quiet ecstatic moment

bscanlon — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 05:26:06 GMT

Those are the keys to the new property in my hand! It wasn't until today that I really started to feel excited. Peacefully happy, but the keyring is really giving me a powerful good joyful vibration. Today we really own it. Upper right: my merkabah. Much happier than when it was sitting in the box, and the stone hanging from it rather than inside of it seems much better. The piece has a tension now that really seems good, like the stretching of it is activating it? I put it up a week after I returned to NZ in a higher self trance and shortly thereafter the real estate listing search for the property came through on the computer. The symbol on the keychain is practically identical to the symbol on my pounamu (aka new zealand greenstone aka jade) necklace. The little bits of paper stuck to my computer monitor are not visible in this photo, but one of them is a quote from Seth Speaks: You have been given perhaps the most awesome gift of all: the ability to project your thoughts outward into physical form. Things are going really well :-)

Things I did in the US of A

bscanlon — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:06:33 GMT

Put on 8 pounds (3.6 KG) Drove over 4,000 miles (6,400 KM) Resolved to become enlightened in this lifetime 0kesmayed 0tpay pretty much every day Spent too much money on lunch Saw SF without the veil of love that fell over my eyes my first visit to the city Failed to see everyone I wanted to Allowed my Nei Gung practice to dwindle despite being able to see my instructor; guiltily avoided classes I had paid for (but I was busy!) Purchased 65 pounds (30 KG) of books Shaved off my beard (and only 2 people even noticed!) Gave away a storage unit full of burning man gear Stopped paying for storage of burning man gear for the first time in 5 years Was viscerally reminded why I moved out of the country Was impressed with the progress pretty much all my friends are making in their lives Had some good magical experiences including climbing a random hill in the desert that beckoned to me and communed with the nature thereon, had a prophetic dream about ordering pizza. Slept in a different place than the night before 17 times. Wished I was back in NZ, though not because the company wasn’t absolutely beloved. Relearned that it was good to go on solo adventures Rebonded with my truck Did not suffer from toe eczema Sat outdoors at lunch for an hour and a half in the middle of summer without sunscreen or hat and did not get sunburned Helped run and got up in front of the crowd at two weddings Sang a song I wrote at my sister in law’s wedding Failed to visit even once my favorite bar in San Francisco Ate breakfast twice at my favorite breakfast place in San Francisco Saw at separate times 3 people (besides Kathy) that I had hung out with in New Zealand Was told by a high school friend details about how his father abused him All of which (and more) has resulted in a radically different state of mind than when I left New Zealand. The new space is good! I like it!

Enlightenment: Goal and Path

bscanlon — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:36:47 GMT

While I have held the goal of enlightenment for a while, and felt like I was making progress towards it, it seemed quite distant. However, one of the things I did on my recent trip to the US was to decide that I would become enlightened in this lifetime. I have mentioned this to a few people already, and I have discovered that enlightenment means a lot of different things to different people. This comes from Spiritual Growth: being your higher self, by Sanaya Roman: "Enlightenment is being very skilled at holding and radiating light. Enlightenment is not a place where you stop growing and are perfect. No matter how high you go there are higher and higher levels you can reach. Being enlightened means that you have tools and resources to handle all the energies about you in such a way that you add clarity, harmony, and light to everything around you. Energy is ever changing and, as far as I and others in my dimension can tell, there is no limit to the growth that is possible." I like this process based definition of enlightenment quite a bit. It's not some perfect end point. Any kind of state of ending or perfection is of course going to seem quite difficult to achieve. Here we have a goal that is major, but it is not an endpoint, it's just further along on a continuing path. A path I am already on. So that by continuing to walk this path, in a way I am already achieving my goal. I'm not there yet, where I am always on the path with whatever else I do, or wait, maybe I already am, and it is merely my perception that has to change? Anyway, what's really powerful here is that the process of achieving enlightenment is the same as having achieved it. This makes it a very powerful self reinforcing path. Am I making sense? Yes, the quote comes from another "dimension." This is one of the "channeled" books that I have been reading and finding so inspirational. There are lots of exercises in this book, and I have gotten great results from doing them. If this seems at all interesting to you I strongly recommend this book. It's on Amazon used for about a buck! http://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Growth-Being-Higher-Sanaya/dp/091581112X/ref=sr_1_1/103-8252399-8692608?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187167456&sr=8-1 ...and every single one of the 21 reviews on Amazon are all 5 stars. Not often you see that for any book! It's good stuff. Anyway, this is part of a major shift in thinking I am undergoing, where I am finally dropping my wish that there is no afterlife, that this life ends in oblivion. Not that I thought that was the case, but the prospect of endless existence did not seem so great to me. Now I feel much more that continued existence in whatever form can be full of joy. And really what this is all about, isn't it, is how I feel and act right now? Good friend Andrew, I think, said that Neurolinguistic Programming teaches that you do not choose beliefs because they are "true," but because of the results you get from having those beliefs. And so if the trappings of any of this content is displeasing to you because of =your= belief system, you may consider simply that I am sharing with you a personal attitude shift that has led me to feelings of increased happiness in the here and now, and I hope you can share my joy with me. Yay!

Progress on the path; There is a season...

bscanlon — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 12:05:34 GMT

This was an excellent day. The awesome Lucy organised a gathering at Castle Rock (less than 1.5 hours outside Christchurch, west towards the Southern Alps) for her 30th Birthday/Matariki. Matariki is part of the Maori New Year Celebration cycle. Thus, a few weeks ago, when I asked for feast days to satisfy my seasonal hunger, this is the culmination. I have been very well satisfied with friendly feasty get togethers, many thanks to all of you out there who have been part of that. Matariki is the Maori name for what europeans call the Pleiades. It was an important constellation for timing harvests and planting when the Polynesians were living closer to the equator, and when the Maori got to cooler New Zealand they continued to use the constellation as a time marker, but moved the significant time up to now, the new year, the solstice. So it is a new zealand day of ritual that brings the year to a close, in continuity with old maps but affirmatively placed in this new land. One interpretation of the way Maori did things goes, there would be a time of mourning or sadness between now and the first full moon. That full moon would be a big feast/party and the start of the new year. What has happened with me is that I had a lot of sadness these last couple of weeks. A lot of it has been tied up with my upcoming trip to the US, and sorting through affairs still left unsettled there. My burning man gear, still in storage, my burning man tickets, must decide not to use and then sell, my truck, must sell, my outstanding business obligations, must continue to bring those through the process of closure. Must renew and update and find new ways to be with old friends. Must continue to create new things here to take the place of the old, which I have been mourning. Or I said at one point I was mourning the absence of the new, feeling the place it will fill that is not quite occupied yet. It has been hard in this time of (seasonal) darkness. This ties in quite nicely with the Matariki mythology, I think. We committed to go with a sort of deep knowledge that we should, it was a good idea, but not really a lot of anticipation or overt excitement. The last few days I finally got my focus back and started making a lot of things happen. Lots of stuff around the trip finally cyrstalizing and getting done. Then last night and today, an absolutely amazing time. About 20 people, new and some familiar faces. So much interest about burning man and kiwi burn. So many people saying, "South Island burn? I want to be a part of helping to organise that!" It's incredible, really. It's building momentum. It has community support. It's going to happen. Wow. It has now passed the Kathy test, where she no longer considers it part of my always large amorphous cloud of really cool things that I am excited to do, "but when are you going to make the time to do that and all the other things you want to do, honey?" Now she is excited about it too. It is real. We woke up about 5:45AM in the dark, no moon, 3/4 overcast, got into cars and drove 5 min to the site. We walked up to a circle of stones and had a small circle ceremonial thing. Enough to say we are all here and together, one toke of the ritual spliff and then everyone dispersed and started walking around at random in the dark amongst the stones. It was like, all of the sudden, oh! Yeah! This is great! This is what I like to do! I am so glad to be here! How brilliant! Lots and lots of metaphysical energy stone communication experiences. Good times as Lucy led 4 of us; we climbed to the top of a distant hill, slowly making our way, speaking to the stones as we went, to the grandmother stone at the top. Or maybe it was a male stone, according to Pete, and the female stone was nearby with all the plants... I received a lot of communication, the one I most remember is, that our property will have a stream. (So that property in Okuti valley, while quite desireable in many ways, is not quite the right one.) I also had a sense of the merkabah I built as a sort of energy anchor, like I was close to it and it was there regardless of the physical distance. That the way I had wound the corners, tensegrity style, made it an energy projector, or beacon? Good for the hand size model, and perhaps winding them the other way would bring energy in...? Maybe good for the get inside of it sized model to come. Tonight we are home, because I need to get ready for the trip to the US. Up at Castle Rock they are roasting a wild pig, cranking up the jams, and partying all night. It's all good. I had been looking for a steadying New Zealand anchoring connection ritual experience for before I left, and this has more than filled the request. Thank you, universe. There will be many more parties in the future. As my focus continues to attune to this place, I will be there.

Continuous grace

bscanlon — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:37:34 GMT

Amba is right-- the state of grace continues without palpable sense of inspiration. Property update: the vendor wanted a LOT more money than we were willing to spend, so even though she came down quite a bit over a few days negotiation, at the end of the week she was still over our limit. Kathy called an end to the whole thing, for now. It has been a really good experience. We are that much better educated about some of the financial nuances of buying a big piece of land in NZ. All the folks who said, if it is the right property you will get it, if not, you won't, don't worry, were right. Quite a switch to my way of thinking, which is to commit to a particular purchase and do whatever it takes to get it, but I can't argue with success. The intense focus and then release has really highlighted some other important areas for me, too, that might have gotten neglected had we ended up with a property this early, namely, taking care of oneself by, in this case, responding to the seasonal imperative of taking it easy, spending time with friends, having feast days. Also the continuing process of helping organise kiwiburn, the upcoming canterbury kiwiburn, and the charitable trust I am working on. So I am letting things slide a bit, and it feels right, good, and grounded. Happy midwinter :-)

inspiration + action = grace?

bscanlon — Tue, 29 May 2007 10:12:51 GMT

Thus, I think I am not in a state of grace right now. Action is there, but inspiration is lacking. The way I feel is that there is no wind in my sails right now. I have set myself various courses of action when I was feeling inspired, but now I wonder about it all. Progress in some areas is good. My napping behaviour is getting better and better. I can fall asleep quite easily now, at a wider variety of times, I need less sleep in the nap phase, and less sleep at night as well. All good. Breaking the day up into two pieces makes each piece more productive, as I don't have that endless day stretching before me, but instead a much more perceptible deadline in which to accomplish something. I also feel like a can slack quite a bit in the evening and still have energy left for accomplishing things in the wee hours. We are making an offer on a property tomorrow. It's in the right price range, it has many positive things going for it, and the negative things seem like problems we can solve. http://www.bayleys.co.nz/52571 It's not an ideal property, but for what we can spend without putting ourselves into a lot of debt, leaving money left behind for developing our vision, it seems to be right there. Added bonuses-- just 60k from our house in Chch, and a property that seems to be genuinely warm. People used to the climate here call it hot, of course :-) But neither Kathy nor I are burning with that fire, that crazy need to have it, which is really really helpful in getting one through a real estate transaction. So like with everything else in our lives right now, we are going through the motions, taking one step after the other, doing what seems to make sense, but really, it's quite scary taking something like this on with only the occasional glimpse of that flame of inner conviction. We are not getting along so well right now, there seems to be a lot of that going around. As we feel more comfortable in NZ we are also feeling strangely at sea. "What are we doing here?" we ask ourselves, while we are in the process of doing it. I don't think there is anything I want to be doing anywhere else, I guess this feeling is part of the general lack of inspiration we are feeling right now. Seasonally, now is the time when we are used to the holiday season starting. Thanksgiving would have just passed, and there would be christmas parties enough in the next few weeks that there would seem too many, along with the big celebrations of Christmas and New Year's themselves. This weekend in NZ we do have Queen's Birthday, but that doesn't even come close to equating with the mega holiday season of the US. Maybe it is our task to start introducing some of that into our lives here, as we enjoy the stunningly San Francisco like autumn weather this year as the days get shorter and shorter. It seems like the ability to accomplish things comes from doing what one can to plug away at one's tasks when one is not afire. Good work gets done in these absences of inspiration. I made some progress this evening on the founding concepts around the charitable trust I am putting together here. But it is more like finding good pieces that I can assemble into a pile, let sit and germinate for a while, and come back to when the fire is with me again and whip into something magical. Until then, I am feeling reasonably good, mostly over my healing crisis/lower back spasms of a couple weeks ago, better in some ways but not quite healed in others, with a property acquisition process to move through to whatever end it holds (yes, that killer instinct to get it no matter what is not there, perhaps this is good, if it is not the right place?), in the 3 short weeks I have before I travel to the USA. Where it will be the start of summer! Will this be a balm? Or do I need to go through a winter, after having missed the last one?

Merkabah

bscanlon — Fri, 25 May 2007 11:31:23 GMT

A merkabah is a sort of three dimensional star of david. Two tetrahedrons, overlapping. A sacred geometry figure. Photo inset upper left. My first experience of one of these was at burning man 2000, when the folks in the camp next to us built a huge one. Photo inset upper right. There was a palpable energetic experience within the focus. Props to my main magic man Andrew, the model in the photo :-) Since I've been building geodesic domes, the subject of sacred geometry keeps coming up, and I never really know anything about it. I thought, maybe it is time to learn. Not a lot to go on really on the web, surprisingly. Turns out the merkabah is one of the only shapes, though of course when one starts using proportions of things to other things there is a whole world of possibility. So today I just finished building my first merkabah. I had started one last month but ran into a road block. Finishing up the merkabah was the clearest message I got from my (first, and mild) amanita muscaria trip earlier this week. Did it on a property we are thinking about buying, http://www.bayleys.co.nz/search/powersearch.aspx?q=52571&ln=en&psGo.x=0&psGo.y=0, but that is another story, or maybe it is this one, and you will see how later :-) What's with the al-you-min-ee-um foil, and copper wire, you ask? Well. So perhaps you have heard of Wilhelm Reich? He was a body therapy and human energy (orgone) guy who had the dubious distinction of getting his books and research burned by the US government. I've always been curious about the construction of orgone generators, and I finally found some plans, which are basically layers of steel wool and layers of cotton, interspersed. And then there is a discussion of energy devices in Urban Shaman, which Andrew first recommended to me, and Kathy spotted on witch friend Gen's bookshelf this week at our singing lessons. http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Shaman-Serge-Kahili-King/dp/0671683071/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/002-2683615-7325600?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180091546&sr=1-3 He suggests that energy devices just basically need to be a layer of electrical conductor and a layer of electrical resistor. This fits in with the design of the orgone devices. It also fits in with the stuff people talk about on this site http://educate-yourself.org/dc/orgonegenindex.shtml, where they make energy devices out of bits of metal in a matrix of fiberglass resin. Conductors and resistors mixed up. So I took some aluminium foil and plastic wrap, and rolled it over a wood dowel. I rolled the thin dowel across the whole width of the wrap, so there are many layers. The copper wire joins the ends of the wrapped dowels together and suspends one tetrahedron (smaller) inside the other. I used copper because they talked about the need for copper when working with people. Not that there are people in my small merkabah. What's hanging in there? Well, there was this property that we looked at last year that I was really excited about, but by the time we had gotten some clarity on that and gotten our money from the sale of the SF apartment, it was already in contract to some other folks. So that stone came from the front of the property, I thought of it as the gateway stone. People agreed, hefting it, it was a good stone. I had the idea (last month) that if I built the merkabah and put the stone in it in front of my time machine (Laffoley's geochronmechane) picture that we could once more have a chance at getting that property we had missed out on. Not that Kathy was 100% convinced about the property, mind you. Well, today I finally got it all together, and we met with the vendor of the property I linked to earlier in this post. Good meeting. She's a nice lady. We met her at Convergence over New Year's actually. So we are pursuing this property some more. Will go see it again on Monday and then perhaps make an offer, try to get it all wrapped up before we leave for San Francisco in 4.5 weeks. Those are some of the more unusual things I am up to, lately. So you see how it is hard to explain what I do all day when I am not at a job :-)

where I am active right now

bscanlon — Mon, 21 May 2007 12:32:37 GMT

Is on the moderated tribe started by Briar, sharer of at least some of our spirit guides :-) http://tribes.tribe.net/acafe?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5B93ce858c-fbe2-4767-986b-be9a80068a77%5D A conversation Amoung [sic] friends everywhere. If you would like to join, just drop me a note. Cheers, Bruce :-)

South Island Christchurch based Burn

bscanlon — Tue, 08 May 2007 15:52:26 GMT

Yes, it's 3:30AM. I just watched an unsuspected hour and a half of burning man footage I didn't know I had, courtesy of the wonderful Grant Kaye. This post is not about that, about how it tears (ripping and crying) me up to know that I will not be going this year. Eggregious content about my deep connections with the event deleted. This post is about one of the things burning man taught me, that there are beautiful things in the world, but there is no place for anything else unless they go away. This is the story of the phoenix, I think. The story sells the phoenix short, though. The new things that take their place are often even more beautiful. The phoenix gets better with each fiery death and rebirth. The Phoenix has burned: I am not going to burning man USA this year. And I think not next year. And... The Phoenix is reborn: Within 2 and a half years I will have organised a christchurch based burning man regional. It has already started. Easter weekend: Southern Cross? ANZAC: BurnZac? Queen's Birthday: Queen's Burn Day? Christ Burn? Church Burn? Questions, comments, suggestions, participation much appreciated :-) Love you all, Bruce :-)

Enlightenment, magic powers, and grace

bscanlon — Wed, 02 May 2007 09:46:33 GMT

Enlightenment, magic powers, and grace. Good friend and all around wise woman Briar responded to my last post suggesting I watch Fierce Grace as an interesting counterpoint to The Secret. Briar’s suggestions are almost always uncannily spot on, and as usual much good was gained by following it. Where The Secret seems (mostly) about wish fulfillment, how can I get what I want, Fierce Grace is more about accepting what happens to one’s self as part of the enlightenment process. The theme that is emerging from both, and from my re-reading of Seth Speaks after 27 years (thanks to another good friend and guide, Sebastian) still gets, I think, short shrift in Fierce Grace. Just really to be yourself, follow your own path. A lot of time in FG is spent talking about Ram Dass’s guru, known as Maharajji. The effect he had on people sitting around him, that they could love all things while in his presence. His ability to read people’s past, his ability to predict the future. A lot of metaphysical and self actualization exploration, especially towards the magic, NLP, martial arts, etc. side of the spectrum seems to me geared towards the development of unusual powers. Gain control over reality. See the future. Pick up chicks. Be a kick ass fighter. The Secret, especially at the beginning, seems to be all about making money. I pursued a lot of these things for a long time for just that reason—the lure of secret knowledge, of unusual powers. It’s not unreasonable when one feels relatively powerless, don’t get me wrong. And it’s good to learn, to be exposed to things. But I don’t think mastery of any of these techniques is necessarily the end point. And, perhaps it has escaped your notice, but here we are on the internet, technological trappings that provide us with instant communication at a distance and the ability to manifest anything we can imagine. Are we already where we need to be? Here Kathy and I are, reborn in New Zealand, financially secure, living the good life, manifesting our asses off. We were already doing all this stuff, in a more natural and perhaps effective way than the techniques discussed in The Secret. The room of intention we built around our search for our property is fun and all, but it isn’t the same feeling or the same process that has worked for me in the past. So, first realization, on attainment: I should be doing it my way. Second realization, on the path to enlightenment: Keep it real. Be myself. I was shocked the other week when I ran into an acquaintance to hear his doubting response to my assertion, “We get closer to enlightenment every day.” How can you live your life not believing that, if enlightenment is a goal for you? My second realization for today suggests that the end of the path to enlightenment does not have to always end in a christlike embodiment. Bummer if it does, ‘cause there’s not a lot of people like that; not too many of us making it right now. Instead, let’s go back to Maharajji’s advice to Ram Dass on how to achieve enlightenment: Serve People, Feed People. Reassuring—that is the path Kathy and I are on. We get closer every day. Ooops, about to post this and almost forgot grace. Sion says, “Grace is inspiration plus action.” Fits in to the previous, don’t you think?

Message from the universe?

bscanlon — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 06:36:15 GMT

OK, this is getting kind of weird. Also funny and really cool, but... The synchrony keeps piling on higher and higher. I wanted to go to a workshop by Sion, this channelling, spiritual sort of guy, and we end up hosting it at our house, a little intimate gathering of 7, which was great for Kathy and I, but a bit disappointing for him. I also get to enact the ambition I had to record one of his workshops. I'm editing the sound files now. Kathy wanted to go to a permaculture workshop by concept co-originator David Holmgren. He and his partner Sue end up staying at our house while in town. They just left this morning, after dispensing a bit of handy analysis about our situation. Not quite the direction I was heading, but I can see how it all makes sense, as I struggle with my attachment to my original plan. In the meantime, the planner we had over here talking about more conventional options seems to be unable to get a communication through to us. This morning, who picks up the Holmgrens to take them to Nelson? This guy starting an intentional community that we were planning on meeting the following weekend when we are up there visiting. Efforts that wouldn't have gotten us much in San Francisco are being rewarded ten fold here. We're in the right place, the right time. Where this all is going looks pretty cool, as long as we are willing to take up the role. The idea of the responsibility is sometimes a bit shocking, though! And sort of a loss of free will? Because, like, I had really been working on my intention, "The Secret" style, for living on the Banks Peninsula. And here we are with this little flag waiving for the Nelson area. We will go up there and see how it feels, of course. But just as I may be giving up my fond ideas for the path the house redo here in Chch will take, will I also be giving up my idea of settling on the Bank Peninsula? This is a new and weird way to live, really pumped up with positive energy and actually having it zap out and do things :-|

bman ticketS

bscanlon — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:45:06 GMT

Hello my good friends, I am definitely NOT going to burning man USA. I just spoke with Daniel, my 8 year partner in burning man mayhem, and he is not going either. So my tickets are definitely available. They are $225 tickets, but there are more fees piled on top of those that all ticket purchasers pay that I would like to recover, of course. Now then. Since everyone always makes excuses for the burning man organisation, I will not say how screwed up this is: the following set of hoops through which me, the ticket purchaser and you, the ticket buyer must jump, but here they are. My 2 tickets are will call tickets. They are will call tickets because last year when I was turned away from the gate from arriving too early I had my ticket in my hot little hand and it somehow disappeared between then and the next day, when we were allowed to enter and I had to cough up $300 for a ticket at the gate :-( So the deal with transferring will call tickets is that they have to be transferred to ONE name only. That means someone has to buy them both, and that the person in whose name they are in has to arrive first on the playa to pick them both up, and then somehow get the second person their ticket if they are travelling separately. Things get even crazier if the will call transfer is done near the event-- signed letters, copies of photo ID, etc. BUT WAIT! I do see that I can change my mind and get the tickets mailed to me. This will incur an additional usurious fee on top of the "will call pick up fee" <that's a good one, eh?> I already paid, but perhaps this is the best way to go. Hmmmm. This is the burning man web site info on transferring will call tickets: http://tickets2.burningman.com/faq.php#willcall

Somebody saved me

bscanlon — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:42:29 GMT

Enough time has gone by that there is too much to write about! So I keep writing nothing... Enough time has gone by that I should have accomplished much more than I have, but I keep doing nothing. The secret of Bruce is to appear to be doing nothing while accomplishing quite a lot, but the trick is that I don't spend much of my time doing what society "wants" me to do, which rarely gets anyone anywhere. The hazard of being Bruce is lapsing into long states of not actually doing much at all. I'm in an odd mood tonight. There is a Pete Townsend (of the Who) line in a song that goes Somebody Saved Me.From a Fate Worse Than Heaven... I think back on all the stuff that I could have done but didn't. I was on a really good track to become a computer programmer, but I made a snotty remark to the MIT recruiter. I ended up hating the Uni I did attend as a freshman, and after being accepted to another school for the following term, for some random computer glitch reason I was not scheduled for the programming class that every single other person in my program had to take. I've since done a wee bit of work database programming, but never had enough formal qualifications for anyone to offer me a job. Thank goodness! If I had a job as a computer programmer it might have been much easier to waste my time being more a part of the system. I might have ended up a Science Fiction writer. I did some writing, was on the waitlist for an national writers workshop from which many fine writers have emerged. I just read a really beautiful novel, Testing, by Charles Oberndorf. He attended Clarion the year before I almost attended. Thank goodness I say again, though it is a bit harder. As a writer I would have had to work hard for little money. Probably taken a job as an english teacher. I don't think I would have liked that. I could have been a teacher-- there was a spell of time where I was trying really hard to get into an alternative certification program. But I don't really like children that much, I'm too much of an introvert, I enjoy, a lot, teaching something =once=, then as the repetitions begin with the next class it drives me crazy and I become evil nasty teacher. I'm in that dry space between inspirations where I know there is work to be done but it's so hard to modify my behavior to be more productive. Especially since random unproductive noodling around has been so helpful in the past. And which social interactions are worthwhile and which not? More and more random wonderful things come from people that help me on my path now, so how can I not socialize? OK, one thing is going well. I am increasing the time I am doing my Nei Gung (Chi Gung) practice. I am making progress, getting better at it, getting better results, and it feels really good. Maybe this is what I am accomplishing, maybe it is enough? While all my other projects start to gather dust... Hmmm. Must isolate the feelings of goodness, must reassociate them to more positive ways I can reward myself. Must break patterns of feeling entitled to self sabotage when I don't really even desire it. But hey, I did my US taxes. A lot of work and stress. And I am getting straight about not going to burning man this year, moving towards finally getting all my remaining stuff in the US sorted. Anyone need a pair of tickets @ the $225 level? Deadlines are so easy to deal with, in comparison to freestyling the future. How fortunate that the dominant paradigm of activity is so unproductive, otherwise I'd be a total mess ;-)

Ask and you shall receive? And then what do you do if you actually get it?

bscanlon — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:02:25 GMT

I went to a really great festival over New Year's. www.convergenceonefamily.co.nz Like Kiwiburn is was a no commerce participant created festival, but where Kiwiburn was sort of a big party sex drugs and rock and roll kind of festival, convergence was a more spiritual healing sort of festival. Kiwiburn = yang, Convergence= yin. After Convergence, and then again after Kiwiburn, I had this inspiration to be a "publisher" of this really great alternative information and experience that was going on. I want to spread the word, get the information out there, let more people know. The burningman phenomenon is already getting good press, but more exposure never hurts, and it can be really helpful for people to see some of this stuff on the screen or whatever so they can see if they are interested. That’s how a lot of people got involved in burning man in the first place—they read about it in a newspaper or they saw a TV report and said, hey, that looks cool! At Convergence there were many great folks, but the person who inspired me most was Sion. His 2 hour workshop was chocka, like 3 workshops rolled into one. I had some really powerful experiences. I have been using some of the techniques he taught to go on spirit journeys. Great stuff. Since then I had been scheming to find a way to contact him and see if he would consent to having a future workshop recorded so that I could distribute the content out to the web, hand out CDs, I don’t know, I have a lot of ideas. At Kiwiburn I met someone who had his contact details, not with her but I got hers, though she was going to be on the road for a while. We passed through Wellington (really great city!!!) on our return home. On our last night there a friend told me that Sion was doing a workshop in Chch in March! We returned and I got in touch with the organizer and found out that they still needed a venue for the workshop. He hadn’t been able to find anything suitable. Time to go into overdrive! We are now hosting the workshop at our house, I have communicated with Sion, and he has given me the go ahead to do the recording. He seems quite keen, even! http://newzealand.tribe.net/event/Sion-workshop-in-Chch-Connecting-to-Ones-Enlightened-Self/fendalton-christchurch/d18cb811-e47e-4328-81b7-013ec2987178 So one week after our month long trip to the North Island, I was already embarking upon the new venture that had just been in the inspiration stage. My intention was over-realized, and Sion was going to be doing a 2 day workshop AT MY HOUSE, and I was going to be recording. The synchronicity and magic of all this is just unbelievable. This is my second experience working more closely with a very "magic" person. It's quite cool. Shit happens. Things get done. It all works out. You just have to roll with whatever comes at you and flow with it. Then we get back to more of a typical state of function and there are many problems to solve, a workshop happening in a short while to be marketed, lovely house guests to be entertained, a recording setup to be engineered from scratch with no real experience on my part. That’s where I am now. If you’ve read the flyer you know what an incredible experience merely being at the workshop will be. Let me tell you, Sion is the real deal. He is a great presenter. He makes it all easy and accessible. And I’m not just attending, I’m now part of it. Sion said when he read my email talking about my idea of publishing that the screen flashed white, that I was “part of the plan.” I am so psyched. But I also have feet of clay—I did a juice cleanse last week that, while it felt great, I think really benefitted my long term health, really put me into a slack low energy state that I am slowly emerging from. In the great adventure that is my future I am going to need to clean up my act a bit and perform at a higher level. There just isn’t any other way to experience all the fabulous things that life is presenting to me. That is my struggle. It’s a good problem to have, but when we talk about substantive behaviour change, and of course behaviour around substances, well, that’s just not always so easy. The pieces are there but I have to put them together. I have to start doing the right thing more often instead of just making the easy decision. Seems like it's going to be worth it, just have to do it. Bruce :-)

A brief future history of time

bscanlon — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 04:29:56 GMT

We are always in the present. Memory is not equivalent to the past, it is our experience of the past taking place in the present. People go on all the time about how they remember stuff but they don't know the future. I say it's just that people's present experience of the future is different from their present experience of the past (memory). One experience you can have of the future right here right now in the present is fear. Not a good choice. Other experiences you can have of the future are intuition (right brain) and prediction (left brain). Another experience you can have of the future is INTENTION. Your intention is something you have right now in the present, but it has a powerful effect on the future. If you are magical you know that intention is the heart of magic. If you are scientific you know, for example, that when skiing, if you keep looking at the tree you will hit the tree. Look where you want to go and your body will take you there. That's how we're built. People think a lot about how their past is bringing them to where they are now, maybe building a pyramid or climbing a ladder to this point, maybe giving them a lot of baggage that is keeping them from moving forward. I say why not think of the future instead. Think of the positive future pulling you forward into it, making things fall into place, shining sunnily on your face, easing the path in front of you, putting a good wind at your back. PS: if you know where a good tribe to post this sort of thing is, please let me know, as I'd like to have an audience of more than the five or so lovely people who read this blog. Cheers! Bruce :-)

Science vs. spirituality: the short version

bscanlon — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 08:20:16 GMT

I wrote a big long post trying to clarify my discussion of science and spirituality last week, but I’ve been crazy busy getting ready for kiwiburn and our month long North Island trip, so I didn’t have time to go back through it and do some necessary edits. UPDATE: I just went through and did some more editing on the second part of this post (4PM Sunday 4th Feb, which is 7PM Saturday 3rd Feb on the west coast of the USA) Fortunately, in the meantime Sebastian stopped in for two nights, and we had some very fruitful discussions on the topic. Also some good advice from Kathy. I think I can hone what I am trying to say into something very short and doable in a conversation with a hard core “I only believe in science” person. First: What I am trying to say is that science is a useful way of looking at the world, but it should not be the only way one has of looking at the world. Next: Science as it is currently practiced places a large value on other people in other place being able to repeat experiments to test whether you did a good experiment or not. Subjective human experience is devalued. But: All human experience is subjective experience. This includes all of everyone’s experience of science, scientific theory, scientific thinking, scientific everything. The high value placed on science tries to make subjective experience, the experience of being a living human being unimportant, but all of science is smaller than that— science is a game we play where we pretend not to be completely immersed in subjective experience all the time. That’s it, really. The whole shebang, in a pretty quick couple of concepts, I hope. Now, on to the (re)union of science and spirituality: This is about the union of scientific method and spirituality. The two do not meet within our current worldview, since spirituality involves subjective experience, and scientific method involves externally verifiable data. There is more going against the union of these two concepts within the current worldview. Scientific method and especially laypeople’s conception of science has come to rely on reductionist materialism, which is about separating things into pieces as small as possible, and spirituality is about the connection of things into a oneness. Note that science doesn’t have to be about separation—that’s just the way it has been done a lot and the common conception of what it is about. The solution to the union of these two apparently disparate things lies in the change of worldview that I believe is coming. This is the optimistic vision of the future I have to offer against the pessimistic vision of the future predicted by “if things go on the way they are…” Well, things aren’t going to go along the way they are. They are going to change. How they might change for the worse seems obvious, and how they might change for the better, within the current paradigm, seems unbelievable. This is why the paradigm must change. Within the current worldview science as religion-- the view of science as the only true belief, or way of looking at things, seems all powerful and spirituality pretty weak. No on can explain how spirituality happens. What are the pieces, how do they fit together, can you measure the results? But in fact the opposite is true. Science and the scientific method is weak. Spirituality is all powerful. In the early 1900’s there was work being done to start from the axioms of mathematics and produce the whole of mathematical understanding. The great work for which all the reductionist thinking of the last few centuries had been preparing. In 1931 Kurt Goedel proved this was impossible. He proved that you cannot produce all true mathematical statements from any beginning points. He also proved that any formal system of description cannot prove that it is consistent. Repeat: mathematics or any formal system cannot be proved consistent. And without consistency, mathematics and the mechanistic interpretation the universe that it has been used to support are a hollow empty shell. Also in the early decades of the 20th century physicists who had been gleefully reducing matter to smaller and smaller pieces looking to find the basic building blocks of existence also ran into a wall. Things kept being made of ever smaller things. And the limits of measurement were reached. They found that it was impossible to know both the position and the velocity of anything. If you know the exact position, you have no idea of the speed or direction of motion. Objective measurement had broken down. Why haven’t these rather old and time tested understandings been incorporated into our culture? Long overdue, I say. It's not so hard to believe that we might finally get over “believing in science,” or science as religion. Here are some of the limits of science. It is not all encompassing. Let me add that scientists presumably practicing the scientific method have reached conclusions that have later been determined to be false, conclusions adopted wholesale at the time by the greater body of mainstream practicing scientists and the culture at large. It is an easily observable pattern in science that discarding these ideas in favor of ones which better fit the observable data take a whole generation to resolve. The people thinking these ideas, many of them professional scientists, do not change their minds in favor of superior information, they die, and the next generation is able to embrace a different idea. This comes from a recent article in Time written by Steven Pinker, noted scientific expert on the functioning of the brain: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1580394,00.html Electrical stimulation of the brain during surgery can cause a person to have hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality, such as a song playing in the room or a childhood birthday party. Chemicals that affect the brain, from caffeine and alcohol to Prozac and LSD, can profoundly alter how people think, feel and see… In September, a team of Swiss neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily sensations converge. All observation of all information is processed through a very lossy compression scheme in your nervous system. All of the data impinging on your person is immeasurable. Of that, the part you can perceive with your senses is still huge, and is reduced again and again until it reaches your consciousness. Our understanding of the nervous system shows there is no objectively verifiable data. Pinker's work shows that our sensory experience can be very out of tune with the experience of others. There is no provable underlying base layer of reality. All we know is subjective experience. Scientific understanding is built upon a narrow bridge of assumptions which we know are =not= true but help us perceive the universe in some ways which have proven useful. Science can tell you where to stimulate the brain to have an out of body experience, but it cannot tell you what that experience is like. The having of an experience is something that cannot be taken away from you. It is, in fact, all we have. Here is where scientific method and spirituality meet. You can have spiritual experiences, you can make and test hypotheses about how to have them, but the substance of the experience is subjective, as in this recent Economist article which notes that “religious” people tended to have experiences which they=called=spiritual under the influence of psylocibin: http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/bib/doc/bf/2006_AUTHOR_211223_1.pdf The role of the scientist here is getting quite tenuous. Aren’t we capable ourselves of taking one substance or another and deciding how we feel about it? And then trying to repeat the experience? Scientific method can continue to develop understandings within inherently limited frameworks about the way things work, but it can never take away the subjective experience, because that is all we have. All we have is subjective experience, of science, of spirituality, of anything. Science and spirituality are Reunited, for they were not always separate, when we take responsibility for trusting our own experience of awe at the interconnectedness of the world, what it means, and trying to act reasonably within that framework. When we bring that understanding more and more into our lives. When we do science or formal religion or our jobs or any other pretend simplification of the rules of existence to accomplish some limited purpose. We are doing it already. More of us need to do it more. And then everything will change. Because everything about human existence is all just the sum of all of our behaviours. If we change the organising principle of our behaviors at the grass roots the world will change with it in amazing and powerful ways.

towards a discussion about science

bscanlon — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 10:31:12 GMT

My last two posts seem not to have communicated as well as I would have liked. I would really like to be able to make some sort of connection in regard to the topic of science, science as religion, the coming reunification of science and spirituality. That last one (maybe the last two) may be hard for some to swallow, but I write what I think and feel. Noted to myself this morning: Why science is like religion: Science claims that it is the =only= true belief. Science makes claims about the end of the world (which are later proven to be false): the Malthusian prediction about resource exhaustion, which he had to modify (retract) even within his own lifetime. A repeat of which we see nowadays, in the cloak of peak oil. And remember Y2K? A technological explanation of how civilization would come crashing down around our heads. Did anyone notice, anywhere in the world, a single broken fingernail as the result of Y2K (computers not handling the change of date properly)? Science's believers distinguish themselves from other religious believers by saying that they are the one true faith. OK, so don't get me wrong, I have a lot of esteem for science. It is a powerful and useful way of looking at the world. But first, don't go mistaking reductionist materialism, the idea that everything can be broken down into the smallest pieces and then the whole universe can be built back again from those pieces with a perfect understanding of how it all works, with science, which many church of science believers do, and second, don't go saying that science is the only true way of understanding the world, because folks, science when properly practised always includes within it the assumption that it is an imperfect understanding and that one can do better. That's all for now. A very rich vein of content we have here, though. I would really like to get to the point where I can conversationally break down to a science religionist an argument that might have some traction with them, but it's hard to be concise about overthrowing such entrenched world views.

Tearing up my membership card for the church of rational materialism

bscanlon — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 20:49:32 GMT

take note! From now on I am stating my intentions and worldviews clearly. No more will I waffle using conditional language in an apologistic fashion to the dominator paradigm. I am perfectly happy to talk to and hopefully communicate with materialists, but I am no longer going to pander. I say it and it is so.

continuing adventures in the Heart of Darkness.

bscanlon — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 10:21:54 GMT

(Didn’t read the book, did see the movie <g>) from http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/conrad.html : ======== Africa itself is reduced to a metaphor for that which white Europeans fear within themselves. The people of Africa and the land they live in remain inscrutably alien, other. The title, they argue, implies that Africa is the "heart of darkness," where whites who "go native" risk releasing the "savage" within themselves. ======== If I told you that, unprompted, I belted out the song “Pennies from Heaven” a few days ago at a rather rudderless workshop at an alternative no commerce participant created festival, I imagine you’d believe me, though might not be sure why I would do such a thing. If I told you that I just spent the last week without drugs and alcohol, that I spent New Year’s eve sober, if you know me well you might be a bit more surprised, but I hope not too incredulous. If I told you a learned an accessible and powerful bodywork technique developed here in New Zealand that did similar things to the body, but better, as the old foot shaking machine I used to have, I suppose you’d believe me, if you cared enough to have an opinion. If I told you that I had a powerful experience exploring the communicative power of nonsense words uttered with gestures and conviction I don’t think you’d doubt me, but if I told you that at that same workshop I experienced a guided visualisation of astral travel and communication with nature spirits that left me taking this model seriously, and intending to do more of it, maybe you’d think I was harmlessly deluded. What if I said that listening to a mind bending talk while focussing my attention on the physical sensations in my fingers for an hour and a half left me with a tingly feeling perceptive area around my hands that seemed to extend beyond my skin? Would you believe me? Let me formally declare that I don’t rely on the scientific paradigm as my only way of looking at the universe. Given that Goedel demonstrated 75 years ago that mathematics cannot prove its own consistency, cannot even generate all true statements within its own limited world view, this seems to be the only reasonable course of action. But according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_%28philosophy%29 science as it is conceptualized today still has a category of things to which it has attached the label “supernatural,” things which it won’t touch with a ten foot pole. But see here: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ Using the tools of science, Princeton scientists find a 98.4% probability that a global peace meditation was able to affect random number generation in separate devices scattered throughout the world. What if I told you that I listened to a meditation tape, two people placed their hands on my head, and I entered an incredibly blissed out state that lasted several hours and whose effects I can feel lingering even now? Power of suggestion, maybe? I imagine if I told you I stood naked with 70 other people of mixed gender, age, and attractiveness, was randomly assigned to a massage table with four of them, and took turns on the table being sensually (not sexually) team- touched by the other four you’d believe me, though you might not want to hear it. “Too much information” for you? OK, nothing else scary, I promise. For here we are, dead center in the heart of darkness. Communicating with nature spirits is easy compared to dealing with all the programming we have about bodies. While it was positive, mind expanding, a revelation, the idea of it also freaked me out considerably in a very physical visceral way before it started and I am still unsettled and still dealing with some issues it has raised. Isn’t it funny that the things that are readily scientifically believable are also more behaviorally unthinkable? There is a commonly shared perception among many people that I talk to that the world is heading for a big change real soon. Most people put together things like peak oil and climate change to arrive at a shit hits the fan end of the world prediction. This sort of thinking used a lot of my bandwidth for a good while of time and had a lot to do with my move to New Zealand. But now that I am here, with life opening out in front of me so fresh and wondrous and BIG this way of thinking is no longer attractive to me. I’m just not doing it much anymore, and when I talk with someone who is doing a lot of it, all of the sudden I find myself on the side of optimism instead. Lots of folks see a change coming. Viewed from the dominant, or perhaps I should say, dominator paradigm, the shit is going to hit the fan. Viewed from the paradigm within which I spent the last week, science and spirituality will be reunited to result in an earthwide flowering of healing wholeness. Which perspective is useful for you right now, to get you where you need to be to accomplish your goals in life? To get to the happy state I am in now, I needed to be negative in order to motivate me to emmigrate to this place where I am now happy. Is any of this world change stuff real at all, or is it just a reflection of my internal state of mind? I don’t know. But the actions I take in the world change it, because I am part of the world. The parts of the world I touch change for the better as well. As more people are influenced positively, the effect spreads. Who does a child of immigrants sound like, their parents or the locals? Information spreads sideways better than it does top down. The happy holistics are gonna get ya. If you find yourself in the heart of darkness, close your eyes and see the inner light.