Goodby everybody, or whoever is left out there that still 'tunes in' every now and then.
It's been a lot of fun, but you can't live in the past, can you?
My interests lie elsewhere, and I have limited time now anyhow.
It's been a good run. I love you all.
Brian.
I'll probably troll you a few times on your Salvia blog, and maybe participate.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the discussions, disagreements, and silliness.
Judge you ;)
Fare thee well! B.
ReplyDeleteGracias, Amigos!
ReplyDeleteDrop by anytime and troll.... it would always be good to hear from you.
http://salviaspace.blogspot.com/
Not 'gotcha' Brian, that really happened.
ReplyDeleteOh well, I sure can't complain, I petered out on my blog many Moons ago.
I can't for the life of me think of anything more positive to say about your coincidences than, "Wow, isn't THAT weird!?", or words to that effect, so I told you my silly experience, which was SUPPOSED to be funny, or at least, "Wow, isn't THAT weird!!?".
Your blog is dead, long live your blog, Brian!
No problems, pboy. It wasn't that. Just getting tired of the place. I only associate it with being pissed off at christians. I need more positive things in my life.
ReplyDeleteThe tea party christian thing really gets to me, and I don't like how it makes me feel. I used to think it could be fought, but it really can't be. So best to think of other things.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm very interested in my experiences with salvia and meditation. When you're really interested in something it becomes hard not to talk about it. And this blog is not the place for that.
ReplyDeleteWell, another one bites the dust. I'll miss your musings!
ReplyDeleteHere's a 'WOW, isn't that weird!' of that kind.
ReplyDeleteI was browsing this site full of pics with the T.V. on in the background, a show called Body of Proof(I think), when one of the detectives(I'm assuming) said, "FENCE", I had just expanded this:-
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/09/mystery-bug-builds-fence-around-egg-tower/
I'm glad I found you again, even if only for a short time. Good luck with everything, Brian. And to everyone else a fond goodbye, too. I'm glad for the chance to have been here with you all. Love, Jude
ReplyDeleteDon't worry Jude, you can just chat to me.☺☺☺
ReplyDelete:-) Thanks, pboy!
ReplyDeleteSpill your guts! LOL
ReplyDeleteSpill the beans!
I will carefully consider it before saying, "Wrong again, HERETIC!!!"
You're not a true Atheist Plusser! Bet you don't even read our LORD Pharyngula!
http://www.cracked.com/article_20705_5-ways-u.s.-democracy-more-rigged-than-you-think.html?wa_user1=3&wa_user2=History&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=feature_module
ReplyDeleteNo-one has anything interesting to say? Wonder whatever happened to Dinesh D'Souza?
ReplyDeleteTristan Vick is doing some nice reviews, chapter by chapter on his blog, of Randal Rauser's book.
The upshot of that is that Rauser is a career Christian and his hands are tied, he pretty much has to say what he says to keep his job and to keep the checks rolling in.
I was reading through some I.Ders stuff a couple of days ago. He, backed up by several like-minded cronies who wrote articles on this subject, such as it is, was putting forward the idea that since DNA is a code and the only codes we know are designed by intelligent beings, then the existence of genetic code implies, or infers the existence of a mysterious intelligence, designer of all life.
ReplyDeletePeople had a hard time dealing with him.
I think they have a hard time dealing with the latest version of this argument, well honestly because they design the argument to be hard to deal with.
The argument was originally simple, straightforward, and is fairly popular.
God created/designed the Universe, we're here in the universe, therefore God must exist.
A fancier version of this is the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
Fancier still, don't mention God, call God, 'The Intelligent Designer', could be anything, could be aliens or, you know, God, but keep it as vague as possible.
Bring science into it. Fine tuning physical constants has made the universe 'just so', just for us as most of us would like it to be.(much easier to lay it on a super-intelligent being, don't really know how HE did it, it's out of my hands, Thank Goodness!)
Now we have this coding thing. Nothing wrong with the other arguments as far as theists are concerned, this is just the next layer.
As I see it, starting from what we do, how do we learn about the World around us at all?, Well we look for and find patterns. We learn language patterns to communicate and so on and so forth, it's what we do.
But we conjure gods from patterns because we make patterns too, and a man-made pattern we see, had a pattern-maker.
This works no matter what you want to call the pattern, whether it be design, fine-tuning, creation, information or code.
Sticking to patterns, we notice that we create patterns, clothes, houses, tools and so on, therefore when we see natural patterns like weather, seasons, the movement of the 'heavens', it's natural for us to wonder WHO created, designed, this system.
And who could blame them really?
But I think you see where I'm going with this, our intelligence depends on our ability to recognize patterns. The smarter we are the more patterns we can absorb. There are many languages to be learned, many computer languages, chemistry, physics, math, astronomy and biology, all patterns.
But do any of these imply or infer a supernatural pattern-maker?
You can if you want to but I think you'd be wrong since our ability to notice order in this universe depends on there being an orderly universe in the first place, otherwise we wouldn't be here to notice. There's no good reason to believe that if the World around us were chaotic, we'd be here to notice that chaos.
Is there a simpler defeater of the design/designer, fine-tuning/fine-tuner, creation/creator, code/coder argument, since it's all really just the one argument?
His argument is just fucking stupid. He's wrong. Patterns are all over nature. Crystal structures for instance. Fibonacci sequences in leaves and shells and every fucking thing.
ReplyDeleteI have the correct response for him: Just fucking die already, you stupid piece of dogshit whose mother should have strangled in the cradle.
You think that might get through to him?
I love how we are trying to think up ARGUMENTS against their idiocy. Why do we do that again? What good does *that* ever do? That's what they want. They feed off that. They have their own set of "facts" and you can't argue with someone that doesn't recognize the same fucking reality as you do. It's masturbation to argue with them.
ReplyDeleteReally, they win every fucking time. They've set it up that way. You can't defeat them unless you're willing to literally kill them. And if you do that, hell, they'l even use that against us.
They win. It's really that simple.
All my stupid fucking life I have heard how good always triumphs over evil. It took me a hell of a long time to realize that even that is one of their fucking lies. Good is handicapped over evil because fucking evil is always willing to do the things that good will never do, and indeed cannot do or it will no longer be good in the first place. Evil has the easy win, every time. They've lulled decent people into not even seeing what they're doing. They are like a hive of fire ants, always working to advance their fucking evil no matter what. You beat them in one battle and they fucking LIKE it, because they know that they're fighting a thousand such battles at once and it's set up so that we get to feel like we've won one every now and then, and that keeps us distracted from the big picture in which they're fucking EATING US ALIVE.
Can you see now why I have problems with this blog?
Like even the saying "Good always triumphs over Evil" is a scam.
ReplyDeleteWho is deciding what "Good" is? Why, the God-Annointed arbiters of all things, Christians of course.
And they're right in that sense. The thing that they call "Good" always wins over what they call "Evil.'
Problem is of course, what they call "Good" are things like taking everything away from the poor so they fucking die like they should, and giving it to the rich, and hating people that 'look funny' and being an egotistical racist bigoted self-aggrandizing hater asshole for God.... and what they call "Evil" are people like you and me.
I wish I had known that a long time ago.
I mean, how do you *do* it, Ian? How do you still find satisfaction in being logical and finding the *correct* argument that utterly destroys their pseudologic? How does that still make you feel good? It's not like it's ever hard, is it? Do you ever have to struggle to defeat one of their positions? Of course not, they're fucking children who have no idea how stupid they are; hell, they revel in being stupid. It's part of their religion to remain fucking stupid and to spread that mental virus around like pneumonic plague. There is no satisfaction in 'defeating' one of them. There is no point in even trying. It drains us, and they feed off our life force like the parasites they are.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I start to do that now, start to see the flaws in their position (and it's not like you can miss them!) and start to formulate an argument, it all gets clouded... all that happens now, is RAGE. I feel RAGE. Because they've got us right where they want us, and they fucking know it. They're so fucking stupid that they shouldn't be alive, but they are a disease of stupidity that spreads itself so fucking well that you can't ever weed it out.
I remember arguing with Observant and actually thinking on many occasions that I'd gotten through to him. What a fucking fool I was. I know better now. There's no getting through to them. It's like arguing with Ebola.
You wanna know where Dinesh D'Souza is now?
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you where. He's a happy fuck in a happy place, because he's a parasite on an artery, feeding off the life force of good people and loving every fucking minute of it. Wherever he is, he's happy and loving it.
We all crowded to his website, arguing with his idiocy, "proving" him wrong twenty times a day, and you know where it got us? Nowhere. Know where it got him? Making hate movies about the president and raking in the money, and we fucking HELPED HIM to get there. We were there every day, and so were a zillion christian fucks who saw him "demolish" us (in their reality with their set of false facts, but that doesn't matter one whit) and also saw us as EXAMPLES of the very "evil" that psychs them up to fight harder, vote more often, and makes them hate us even more... and they love to hate... it makes them feel alive.... they're nothing without hatred, and all our best efforts can ever possibly do, is to just feed into that hatred and make it stronger, which makes them stronger.
There is no win here. No path to any kind of victory for us.
I think that there are the silent readers who look for patterns and see the same as we do, I really do.
ReplyDeleteThat Facebooker posted his simple deduction.(I'm not looking for it, can't be bothered), on a page called Naturalism, something like that)
1. DNA is Genetic Code
2. The only code we ever see has been invented by an intelligent being
3. Therefore Genetic Code was invented by an intelligent being
I wasn't a 'member' of that page so I couldn't comment. But this guy was taking the piss, and(and I hate him for this, but) he was doing a good job.
Thing is if he is making members of that page THINK that he has a case, it needs a response.
I wrote that comment above as my response, and it doesn't say that there's no God, it's just pointing out that the Intelligent Designer/coder Argument doesn't cut it, for me.
There's word-play in there, A design demands a designer, and now a code demands a coder. But as you say, nature is filled with patterns, it has to be before we could make head-or-tails of it.
All they're saying is that because we can understand nature, some intelligence must have made it to be understandable. This is just wrong. But it's easy to deceive ourselves and others and it is hard to make a simple explanation that refutes it.
Things cannot be all bad for us Brian, look at Sweden. We must be doing something right. The more we DO do right, the more they'll scream, because we're hurting them.
Don't give up the struggle. THAT way they win, for sure.
Plus I liked the battle between me and Eric, he was here to teach us and I learned enough about philosophy to know that it's mostly bullshit. Scholastic Philosophers aren't using arcane meanings for nothing, they know that they're just memorizing historical arguments, and through most of history, GOD was a given.
ReplyDeleteI noticed how he loved to use the nuclear argument(we can't know anything at all really) when blocking YOUR argument, but you're not supposed to notice and block any of HIS argument with the nuclear argument.
I like evidentialism as explained on youtube by the guy Evidence(something like that).
He explains that 'a priori' is bullshit, and he explains why. The idea of a priori 'things' like the number 2 being objectively 'out there' gives ideas like 'god' an 'in'.
Things like that. Eric made his case, played his wordgames, insisted on his superior intellect, yet I feel I won, not against him, but against his arguments, I saw through him and so did you.
Imagine someone learning some philosophy and thinking that scholastic philosophy was the only thing there was and that the 'elders' of that philosophy ought to be venerated. Why wouldn't they if there isn't another POV out there?
They think it anyhow. Eric was never fazed by anything we said, not for one second.
ReplyDeleteYou say "I feel I won" and you did win, but all you got out of it was a feeling that you won, against his certainty that you did not. He was not in any way weakened.
I guess I got to the point where "I feel I won" means nothing to me but a massage to my ego, and if my ego needs massaging then I'm a small person myself.
I did learn a lot from Eric. All of it intensely depressing.
ReplyDeleteand it is hard to make a simple explanation that refutes it.
ReplyDelete----------------
See, even here, they've won. Why on earth should we need to make a simple explanation for every complex real-world thing that they argue over?
Because they insist on it. They refuse to be able to follow any argument that isn't child-simple, and when you take something like biology and have to dumb it down for these fucking mouthbreather, it becomes defeatable. They refuse to see details and complexity so we are constrained to argue at kindergarten level for them. They win! Dumb wins the day yet again!
I can't flesh out the idea of say, natural selection for them in such a way as to make it as simple as a Barney episode, so why am I the one that has to?
They define the terms. So they've won already.
So let's have another go at it, huh? Let's try to win another argument in which we've been hobbled to the point where we've got to explain calculus using only a set of wooden blocks, or let's try to get some besotted fool to understand quantum physics by only quoting from My Little Pony episodes. Sure. Why not?
I can't explain science to a rabid chihuahua. All I can do is call Atticus Finch and have him"take care" of the chihuahua. And he's not around for some reason.
Here's my take Brian. If I cannot explain it to a 6 year old, then I don't really understand it myself.
ReplyDeleteNot saying that 6 year olds all have the attention span to bother listening, but giving such an explanation, where I feel I have explained it well enough, to me gives me a better understanding of it myself.
As I was learning calculus, I used to go over to a friend of mine who was baby-sitting his nephew for a few bucks. As I explained to him what I was learning, I understood what I had learned better, myself.
If I argue with a Christian, and I understand my POV better for it, I'm happy.
Ego, it seems to me is the opposite of that, that feeling that I understand it, screw them if they don't want to.
I think you give these people who argue badly more credit than they're due, a lot of them don't know there's an option.
But there are wolves in sheep clothing, that DO know that they're just being deceitful. Their jobs or livelihood(book sales) are likely on the line.
These people can never be convinced, they've invested too much into it.
Yea, and Chuck got excited about it too, since I had a TI 55, which did iterations that you could see, you could see the calculator doing each iteration and zeroing in oh the answer or taking off to infinity.
ReplyDeleteHe thought this was so cool, he bought it from me for what I paid for it. Later he showed a physics teacher who was also impressed by the calculator and Chuck's ability to program it to find answers by letting it zoom in on the limit.
Here's my take Brian. If I cannot explain it to a 6 year old, then I don't really understand it myself.
ReplyDelete-----------------
See, you caught me in a mistake. You're right. I actually can explain natural selection to a six year old. One with natural curiosity and that innate 'child logic,' sure I can. One that will *believe* me and not be preconditioned to think of me as evil and dishonest because I use big words.
So calling them children is wrong.
Rodents?
Dunno.
I mean, I can see Dinesh D'Souza and Bobby Jindal lurking behind a false wall and chewing on some electrical wires easily enough, but does that mean it's the right simile?
ReplyDeleteRodents just don't seem loathsome enough.
Zombie rodents maybe?
I'm venting a lot here. I know you didn't notice 'cause of how eerily subtle I've been.
ReplyDeleteI do see your point about how arguing with them (or a child) makes us know the things better ourselves. I did learn a lot here over the years. I just find that, oddly enough, knowing more about me and knowing more about them only makes me more depressed about them. The clearer I see the world, the more heartbreaking it is.
Well, the Hell with them, don't expect them to be learning anything but getting better at arguing against us, 'cos that's what the one's who write books and need to believe because of their jobs, do.
ReplyDeleteMy mom had a pastor at her church at the end of the street, The Church of the Nazarene. She had a kind of naive aura about her, if you catch my drift, but she was a canny Scot. When that pastor just decided to come right out with it and TELL her that she HAD to put more money into this because he needed to take his family to a retreat every second month, and btw, her input was neither needed nor wanted, that was the end of that.
This is the kind of 'professionals' we're dealing with here. Guys who imagine their club owes them paid-for holidays 1/2 the year. Guys who imagine that they're 'due' this, off the backs of little old ladies.
What a joke they are, but the old ladies can't see it, most of the time.
Since it works with the flock, why wouldn't they imagine it should work on everyone who isn't in on it?
As far as they are concerned you should be sitting in their pews with your wallet at the ready! Who the fuck are you to not, basically, worship them, not God, them.
Yeah dude, I get it. That's the problem. In our society they're considered the sane ones and we're "fringe" because we give a shit about someone other than our fat selves.
ReplyDeleteHey, I gotta tell you, you guys have a real winner in Rob Ford though, eh? Him and his brother Doug.... Bob and Doug are real now. Cool. Why is it though that for some reason he seems so harmless compared to our sociopaths in congress?
Brian:
ReplyDeleteIt is abundantly clear that you have become, perhaps, a little too personally invested in "winning" any of these discussions. These are not true debates. However, in this blog format, there are often "judges", who must decide for themselves which side of any of these arguments is closer to the truth. Not only do some of these silent lurkers (like myself most of the time) learn from your interactions with Observant and Eric, but we often do so in the only viable setting wherein one can do so at leisure (no admission fees or attendence at a lecture) and anonymously (which may be very useful to someone struggling with his/her church affiliation or family setting). If you succeed, as you usually do, in laying bare the falsehoods underlying someone like DeSousa's point of view, even though it has no effect upon him, it seems to me that many others benefit from the opportunity to tune in.
Clearly, you do so at some expense to your own emotional comfort, but, as it says in the Talmud, the highest form of charity is when neither the giver nor the receiver are known to each other. I am sure that GOD will bless you for your efforts in the hereafter!
Brian:
DeleteIt is abundantly clear that you have become, perhaps, a little too personally invested in "winning" any of these discussions.
------------------------------
Well then, you are wrong. It's not the winning, but the result of NOBODY being EVER able to win. It's not that I need to win, it's that it is not possible for anybody to ever win, in the sense of proving them wrong to themselves so that they CHANGE.
Hah, Rob Ford, he and Toronto might as well be on another planet for all the difference it makes to us. He is a great example of a libertarian blowhard who has convinced his followers that governing exactly equals not spending money, except maybe to give himself a raise that is.
ReplyDeleteWho cares about him, I hope the voters 'get it' now.
I hear Al jezeera had a piece recommending devaluing the U.S. Dollar. This, they say, would create jobs.
I call bullshit, this would double the cost of everything, or put another way, half the spending power of everyone's salary/wages.
Instead of spending money on overseas projects like the war in Afghaniland, they should be spending that money on huge infrastructure projects here in North America. Even if they use the U.S.Army to do it.
Bullet trains could be deemed essential to logistics and the construction begins.
Better that than a stupid fence along the border, no?
Ian, genetic code is a metaphor, period. Molecular biologists use the metaphor because it helps non molecular biologists understand some basic concepts. Unfortunately like all metaphors it can be misused. Unfortunately the deliberately ignorant (IDers for example) can use the simple metaphor but actually discussing why it's an imperfect metaphor requires a great deal more basic knowledge of the biochemistry.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pnas.org/content/103/28/10696.full
ReplyDeleteNot a bad overview of some of the limitations of the code metaphor.
The Obamacare website is still not working.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts?
It takes a lot of people to get such a website up and running.
How many of those are sympathetic to the republicans?
Yes, that's right. I'm thinking that there are people on the inside of this project that are moles for the republicans.
Think of the motivation on the republican side. How much money they'd offer someone to throw monkey wrenches into the works of that site.
Just my opinion. I've learned that where republicans are concerned, whenever you think "They wouldn't do anything that scurrilous" you've just made a fool out of yourself.
I'm starting to think that this blog is a zombie blog. I can't ever seem to kill it for some reason.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem with all these healthcare reform websites is that they were managed as workforce development projects rather than as an enterprise software purchase. In Oregon for example they have spent $300 Million dollars on a site that doesn't work yet. They've had to hire 400 people to manually enter the data. Put into perspective that's enough money to pay for about 10 million Dip/Tet vaccines at commercial rates.
ReplyDeleteWhat would have made sense was to hire Amazon, Orbitz, e-surrance, Travelocity, etc. to simply modify an existing product to provide the services for a fraction of the cost.
It figures, you fucking brilliant man you.
ReplyDeleteWhat fools they were... all they had to do was to ask a polymath with a Zappa fetish.
If there's anything resembling 'The Big Brain Theory', I mean anything that is a metaphor for it, it's a blog, isn't it? Where a few individual entities keep it going, invent it as it's going along, kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteHow is Walter and Mary both doing?
And the rest of your animals?
Do you think of them as having your last name? As family?
Ahem, didn't mean to make it 'sound' as if I were calling your wife an animal. Dont mean to make it sound as if she isn't.
ReplyDeleteHope she's not a vegetable or mineral.. maybe I should stop digging now that I'm in a hole here...
... and, don't forget what it's all about..
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK0M0v-j4-c
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-double-standards-were-all-guilty-of/?fb_action_ids=947310566369&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B10150278483641777%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.likes%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D
ReplyDeleteMy unreal grandson John(because he's not really MY grandson, he IS Emma's) surprised me today. He's three, we were outside with the dog(John loves the dog and to be outside) and he's picking frost off the car hood and eating it.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I saw a plane way up in the sky and pointed at it. "Look, a plane!"
He says, "It's a f**king jet."
I said, "Did you say it's a f**king jet?"
"Yep!"
So I said, "I don't care if you f**king swear, doesn't bother me. Why don't you go tell grandma that you f**king love her?"
He goes, "Noooo."
LOL
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gun-fails-second-amendment-rights-gone-wrong_n_2490579.html
ReplyDeleteLong live the blog...sorry Brian, you just can't kill it. Thought you would all enjoy this....I laughed.
Yep, his mom IS going to kill him.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alternet.org/belief/atheists-are-winning-wrong-war-against-christian-right?page=0%2C0
ReplyDeleteSee, pboy? This is what I mean.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/one-mind_b_4158463.html
ReplyDelete7 Billion Minds, Or One?
Jude, thank you for that video. My four-year-old son Connor thanks you. He's autistic so he's only a bit verbal at this point (but coming along well) and he LOVED it so much that he kept hitting 'replay' and even put it into the 'favorites' bar at the top of the screen. I've never heard him laugh so much... belly laughs where he was losing his breath! (He apparently has a sick, slapstick sense of humor)
ReplyDeletePS: I loved it too, of course, especially the kid at the end trying to be a tough "gangsta" and then worrying about what mommy will say.... too funny!
Pboy (and whoever) I just wanted to tell you that I had a salvia meditation night before last where I set up an experiment where, at 4 AM with the wife soundly asleep, I would try to awaken her intentionally. (The other times were unplanned and spontaneous, so I couldn't be certain that they weren't some kind of coincidence)
ReplyDeleteSo I did this long meditation where I was visualizing light, which seems key to all the times such things have happened before, and I did it really well, too, felt like the inside of my head was glowing, and then at the culmination of it all I slammed it all into her, and at that PRECISE instant she woke up like she'd been slapped. She started awake, instantly, and dramatically. And I mean wide awake... we had a conversation about it at the time. This was a very controlled situation. I planned it out in such a way that if it worked, it would be hard to be skeptical about.
I am now certain that there's something real happening here. I can no longer doubt this. All the other times were indicative, but this, this is impossible to ignore.
I mean, I spent a half hour preparing to do it, likely more. All that buildup, and then I did it and she not only woke up, but woke up as if I'd doused her with water. There was no lag time. I "sent the energy" or whatever you'd like to call it, and when it "hit her" she awakened instantly.
ReplyDeleteI understand the the Christian Right and the Corporations are turning your country fascist, but I completely disagree that atheists are out there making sure no-one says Merry Christmas and the crap that same Christian Right accuses us of.
ReplyDeleteWTF are we supposed to do if we cannot vote the bastards out? What?
Have we been discussing the drivel that that writer is claiming we discuss? I don't think so.
In fact after he/she is done telling us what a bunch of silly babies we are talking about trivial nonsense, he goes on to tell us what we should be discussing, what we ACTUALLY have been discussing, so I'm not impressed with that article at all.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the difference is some local atheist group puts up a billboard? It's their money. Atheism is just that, not a left wing or left of center political party.
The Christian Right has actually become a political party, and we were there, being horrified by it, but what exactly could we, as individuals or as a group, done.
The second that the Supreme Court was allowed to decide who was going to be President, THAT is when your country started going to shit.
Don't you think it's total crap that companies are allowed to take their factories to China, cause an economic crisis, the banks continue the assault, then they want everyone to despise China for it, not them.
American Corporations are the unAmericans that everyone seems to be looking for and they're having a good laugh at everyone pointing the finger at everyone else but them.
It's shite, that's what it is, but right-wing politics has ALWAYS been like that, it's not a new thing. The right want's to shove as many of the boogeymen they create in prison, just like they always have, and that is why you guys have millions behind bars.
But things were no better in Victorian times, they were no better for the immigrants who came here to work in mill towns and mining towns to slave for the robber barons.
Those cozy deep red zones will change regardless of what we say or do, Brian, because they won't be able to ignore millions of homeless. I don't care how right-wing you think you are, I don't think that anyone wants a Freejack dystopia.
The secret of a successful blog....announce that it's over. :-) Pliny's observation of the ACA website debacle is so simply brilliant, what a difference it would have made to do it his way! Hard to believe this didn't come up in the planning, and even harder to believe that the response was "eh, no....lets make it as difficult as possible..."
ReplyDeleteI agree with Harvey, too that the discussions themselves are a benefit. I learn a lot, even if a hard core believer never gets it. The frustration is the price of admittance to be a part of it for me.
Ian, that article started off reinforcing my own observation that as atheists we are the growing group, but then ended up shaking my head in wonder at the assertion that we spend our time taking god off money or out of christmas. I have never wasted one minute of my time directing energies towards any of the things mentioned, like you, I vote.
Brian...glad Connor liked the video! LOL Also, intriqued by your story. My question is....is the mental telepathy you are experiencing dependent upon Salvia? Do you think that it could be used/developed/experienced by meditation alone? If I did all the steps you did minus the Salvia, do you think I would be able to have the results you did? When it comes to religion, I'm atheist....when it comes to what's possible in the whole of the universe, I'm agnostic. LOL Where a 7 year old girl finds the strength to lift a car off her dad, some people see god. I see untapped, unexplained abilities that we just don't know we have, or most often don't know how to get to. Maybe.
I guess it may be possible without the salvia, but it would take a lifetime of meditation. The salvia is a huge shortcut. For instance, if you want to do "zazen" meditation, empty the mind.... you know how hard it is to think of nothing, right? I mean, it's not easy, takes practice, right? On salvia it's so easy it's pathetic. You can just do shit. It seems to provide the energy to do anything, or to do nothing at all. Hard to describe, but it leaves me in control of my mind, so much control.... I could imagine after maybe 20 years of constant meditation, onecould get there... but the salvia is like bam, instant yogi.
ReplyDeleteHard to describe... on my salvia blog I have four pages of meditations that I do all the time... if you browse through them, I suspect that a lot of them would seem rather hard, if not impossible.... well, it's not like I made up those meditations that then forced myself to have the discipline to do them, no, instead it was that with the salvia, I'd just fool around and find myself doing one of them, with no particular effort involved on my part... they're easy, in other words. Salvia makes all of them easy, child's play.
I mean, for example, take this one:
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“Traveling Focus”
Move your awareness throughout your body
Sit in a relaxed position; calm your thoughts.
Concentrate on the skin on the back of one hand. A patch of skin approximately the size of your palm. Meditate on it for a time until you sense it keenly. Now slowly, move that palm-sized ‘patch’ of focus up your arm. It is most important here to not lose focus on the patch of skin, even though it is not the same skin. The patch of focus is what is important. Continue to move the palm-sized patch of focus up your arm, and then proceed again across your back to the other arm and down to the back of the other hand, never losing the focus. Clasp hands and move it across from one hand to the other. Proceed again up your arm. This time when you get to your back, proceed downwards at a diagonal to the opposite side of your body under the opposite arm. Then move across your chest, to the other side of your body. Continue to spiral downwards toward your feet. When you get to your feet, continue to spiral around your body, moving the point of focus upwards this time. Continue to practice this, moving that palm-sized patch of focus in spirals around your body, faster and faster. It is amazing how fast this can get. Eventually it feels like *you* are traveling in spirals around your body, as if your entire consciousness is moving in spirals around your body.
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I get that spot of focus, intense focus mind you, spinning around my body, up and down, very fast. From head to feet and back again in about a second, and then again and again, and I never lose the focus. I can feel hair follicles!
Okay, maybe two seconds. I'm trying to be accurate.
DeleteHere's another good example:
ReplyDelete------------------------------------------
"Inner Rocking"
Experience your “Energy Body”
Sit in a relaxed position, either cross-legged or in a straight chair (no armrests).
Close your eyes and concentrate on your mental image of your body, using the techniques explained in Full Body Visualization as described previously.
Begin rocking your physical body from side to side slightly, about one inch in either direction. Continue the rocking motion, to the left, and back to the right, and so on. Attempt to see your body rocking as a dark, body-shaped field of energy, rocking from side-to-side. See it from within and without.
When you have achieved this, when you can visualize your “energy body” rocking with your physical body, begin to lessen the rocking motion of your physical body. Slowly lessen the side-to-side rocking of your physical body to the point where you are barely moving. Focus on your inner visualization of your “energy body” rocking back and forth. Continue to lessen the actual physical rocking motion to the point where you are barely moving at all, and remain at that point for a while. Continue to visualize your “energy body” as a dark field of energy in the shape of your actual body moving side-to-side. Concentrate on your inner “energy body” rocking side-to-side. Attempt to increase this motion, while still lessening the actual motion of your physical body. Then, cease all outer movement, and maintain only the rocking of your visualized “energy body.”
(It may help to also focus first on the skin of one side of head, and then the other side, back and forth, while still rocking and as you stop, as described in previous "Traveling Focus" exercise)
Increase the side-to-side movement of your inner body while remaining physically still. Continue this for as long as possible. The goal is to feel your 'Inner body' rocking outside of the physical restrictions of your actual body. It's actually a "slight O.B.E."
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How long do you think it would take to be able to do this meditation, with no salvia, no substances, and be able to do it every time, and easily, with no chance of failure? Like, as easy as tying your shoes?
...and really feel it, of course. When I do this, I feel that dark shadow of an 'inner body' as well as I do the real one, and then as it progresses, even better. It's me. It's my body. It feels like my actual body, and yet, here I am sitting still and it's still rocking, moving slightly (couple of inches to either side) out of the physical boundaries of my actual body as it does.
DeleteWhen it comes to religion, I'm atheist....when it comes to what's possible in the whole of the universe, I'm agnostic.
ReplyDelete--------------------
See, to me, that's the only intelligent attitude to have. There is no god, not like people think of a god, because it's as small and silly an idea as humans are small and silly...
But, is there *something?* *Something* inexplicable, some mystery that is not what we are expecting? Now, that's a whole different question, and to answer that one with a definite "no" is in my honest opinion, an act of sheer hubris.
I mean, with salvia I can even split the mind and focus on two things at once. Try learning how to do *that* by just sitting there in zazen with nothing to aid you.
ReplyDeleteOr hey, try to accurately visualize a space inside your mind, a three-dimensional space like you normally would visualize, and then see it expand into about eight more dimensions. As in, length, width, depth, ____, ____, ____, and so on... (we have no names for these other dimensions)
ReplyDeleteNow, I can't do this on demand *yet,* but it did happen once while I was meditating. I could clearly see in extra dimensions. Blew my widdle mind.
Note that I didn't try to do that. I mean, it wouldn't occur to me to try to do that. It just happened, it just kinda *presented itself* to me.
DeleteI can state unequivocally that literally all of the most amazing moments of my 52+ years of life have happened while on salvia. I mean, not things like love of course, those stand out still, but amazing as in standing on the lip of the Grand Canyon amazing.
ReplyDeleteBah! What's a hole in the ground compared to what I've seen? Nothing.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=677_1354418535#zJqpCkddjGLLQkc2.01
ReplyDeleteThere are more of these orphan drugs out there.
Who says that there isn't a conspiracy between legislators and government to squash these?
Reqest govt. for funding to test these drugs, lobbyists from big Pharma come in and buy the votes to squash it.
And THAT is free-market?
That is fascism. That is retro. That's so conservative(we like to keep things the way they are), it's neandertal.
Now, when I see the story of some guy getting killed to squash his breakthrough, I'm still skeptical, but at some point, what they really do must influence your thoughts on how far they are willing to go to prevent change, maybe murder, for sure let people die from lack of a possible cure, for the sake of profit.
The lobbying system is, 'He who has the gold makes the rules.', nothing less, and damn possible breakthroughs to Hell if it's going to interfere with their profit margin.
Sorry, that should read legislators and corporations.
ReplyDeleteIan, I used to think it was a bit paranoid and "conspiracy theory-ish" to think those things. Now I don't so easily dismiss what at first might sound like unbelievable claims. I really think that there are horrendous treacheries that go on all the time that would blow our minds if we really "knew" it. People are capable of perpetuating all manor of crimes on others, most we can't even imagine.
ReplyDeleteBrian, wow.. a lot to think about. I read the link you posted, and looked into a little more on it, too. Fascinating. You don't give me much hope of success, but I'm interested in taking a shot anyway. It will be a meager attempt, I'm not the type to dedicate the time you indicate might be needed, but any glimmer of success might inspire more. I am cynical on a lot of things, but having experiences (deja vu, voices, "knowing" something for no reason, etc.) that I can't explain keeps my mind open.
ReplyDeleteThis is going to be long, but kinda gives you an idea of answers I'm seeking, and why I'm so interested in theories of different dimensions and mental gymnastics. :-)
An event that changed me, and my life/beliefs. Bear with me...
I saw a UFO, honest to pete (not god) no question about it, don't care if anyone ever believes it or not, I KNOW it.... UFO. I was 30 years old and pregnant with my 2nd. My older son was at karate class, and I was going to pick him up, dark at 8:30 pm, March, 1988. I was driving back roads that led to where his class was. I turned into the long unpaved driveway that went straight up a hill to the "Bocce Club" where his class was. I could see 5 white lights at the top of the hill, it looked like a huge boomerang. My initial thought was "why are those planes flying in formation, and they are too low, they're going to crash." I raced up the hill, keeping my eyes on the lights all the way, flew into the parking lot and jumped out of the car, looking up. It was not a boomerang, standing directly underneath it I could see against the night sky that it was a massive dull black triangle with lights only along 2 sides of it...that's why it looked like a boomerang at first. The "corners" were round, it was equalateral. It was hoving...complete standstill. It was silent, not a single sound heard. The good news is...I was not alone in that parking lot. I was so in awe of what I was seeing, I didn't know the other mother was there until she said "you see it, too, right?" OMG, I ran over to her and we stood there looking up, describing to each other what we were seeing, not hearing, etc., assuring each other we weren't crazy. It stayed over our heads approx. 3 min, then very very slowly, it moved horizontally away and slowly up at the same time, we thought we'd watch it go for a long time, but just suddenly it was gone. It was as high up as "fluffy clouds" that look like you can touch them on a summer day, and it was as large as a football field.
There is nothing in our military then or now that in any way could be an explanation for this. There are people that think I'm "mistaken", drunk, fanciful, eyes playing tricks, saw a balloon, anything but believing me. I feel privileged in some sense to be in on the biggest cosmic knowledge out there, but on the other hand.....it feels like a burden. Everyone should know what I know, and the world should be prepared for "whatever"....but it remains a kook subject, ridiculed and dismissed and debunked all the time, and I feel a worry that no one takes it seriously. Sometimes I feel like I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop, something will happen that will make the world take notice. I thought that the Phoenix lights would be that moment, but unbelievably it too was dismissed in spite of 1000's of witnesses, photos, radar. It should have woken everyone up but didn't. I know I sound zealous about this, but I carry it with me every single day. Is it aliens? Is it us from the future? Is it parallel universes? Other dimensions? I really want to know before I die.
You don't give me much hope of success, but I'm interested in taking a shot anyway.
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Sorry... just trying to be realistic. To me it feels like my mind is too weak to produce results like I get on salvia. Salvia feels like jet fuel for the mind. Amps it up like ten notches. However, I have learned that I'm not typical in this... most people don't get any results, or very little. They tend to say that the salvia is too powerful, the effect too strong, to be able to concentrate enough to do anything but sit there in wonder. I have just done it so many times, and moderated the dosage, and learned to resist it when I need to and give into it when I need to and so on. It's a complicated thing, really.
My "inner light" meditation is a key to something, I think. That light inside my head is always present when strange shit happens. I can *just barely* see it sometimes when I'm not on salvia, but then again, I've sort-of seen it on and off since my childhood hallucinations that I had... they were pretty much identical to my salvia trips today, even in color. It's kinda like I was marked for this early on.
I gave it my first try yesterday....yowie it's hard! I could only move the "patch" 2-3 times before my mind wandered. I'd start over, same thing would happen. Now it's a challenge to see if I can get a whole arm done. LOL Wait.... inner light in your head? What's that? I don't remember you mentioning that earlier. What do you see when strange shit happens? Like premonitions? Psychic ability?
DeleteAnd as if I haven't yammered on enough...just like to say, I get the skepticism I face. I know it's a "seeing is believing" phenomenon. I would never have believed in UFO's just because someone told me they saw one, and I didn't believe they existed before seeing it myself. And....if someone could actually give a real explanation that fits what I saw, that would be great. But they can't, no one can, and that is the part that's hard to explain. I'm also fascinated with Ancient Alien Theory, it could explain a lot....since I know there are UFO's I'm not inclined to dismiss that they haven't been here always. It could explain "gods", the missing link,
ReplyDeleteand a host of other things. If I need a defense against "prone to hallucinations" or fanciful... I only saw the one, never any since then. But believe me, I look up all the time, not a day goes by that I don't scan the skies whenever I'm out. It's had a profound impact on everything I thought I knew about the world, I know more but at the same time less. Phew, ok, I'm really done. Once started, it's hard to shake.
Actually I'm not sure that we need an explanation for the missing link, but I get your point. ;-)
DeleteLike when I get started talking about salvia. Really incredible experiences that you can't deny are like that.
ReplyDeleteOkay, when I was 15 or so, maybe a couple years older, I was looking out my parent's bedroom window at night. We have a lake nearby, a couple miles away. I saw three lights, of three different sizes, up in the sky. Now, I can't say that they were definitely UFO's but even at that age I noticed that they weren't moving like any aircraft or helicopters that I'd ever heard of. They all moved like the stylus of an Etch-A-Sketch. By that I mean that they moved in perfect horizontals and verticals, no diagonals, and fairly slowly, stopping at the end of each move. They kept moving in those perfect square motions, never moving at any angles, and interacted with each other, moving straight up, then full stop, then straight to one side, then full stop, then straight down, then full stop, then straight to the other side, then full stop, and so on, never a diagonal move, all three moving at once. I've always wondered about them. What moves like that? They were not reflections of any kind, I thought of that but they were too constant in brightness, they were emitting light and not reflecting it. They were at least two miles away from me, and clearly visible.
Nothing like what you saw, though. That was pretty undeniable. You got a much better look at whatever you saw.
DeleteThanks for listening, not scoffing, and sharing your own experience. It really does sound unusual...and yes, getting a sustained look at an actual craft as opposed to lights doesn't give me wiggle room to comfortably say maybe, maybe not. There is every chance your lights were something remarkable, they sure sound like it....but you still get to consider that lights COULD have a plausible explanation other than otherworldly. (Though I don't know what that would be, your description is wild...would have liked to have seen them, too!)
DeleteA popular thing for liberal skeptics to scoff at is the idea that Bush and his administration were responsible for the two towers falling. Or for 9/11 at any rate.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe they were, but I certainly wouldn't scoff at the idea. They were certainly evil enough to do it. It's credible. Maybe not that likely, but still credible. Bill Maher gets pissed at any audience member that shouts it out to him whenever he's talking about it, really pissed, but I just don't see it.
It's not too incredible to believe that Bush and Cheney might have concocted a plan to push events in the direction it went.
ReplyDeleteThe airforce was stood-down, very strange coincidence, and by whose orders? In the military there is always someone to blame, who got the blame?
Or, the airforce wasn't stood down, that was just a story.
If it was, it's not too far a stretch to imagine that some 'high up' in the process understood that there was something very dramatic going to happen, and they could 'help the process along' by standing down the airforce that day.
This, what I'm thinking about here is something akin to knowing that a crazy man(equivalent to he hijackers) was about to go ballistic and kill someone(the Towers), and not only not calling the police(military) but hobbling police efforts, say by having them attend another emergency at the time. (forest fire or somesuch, since no-one can just 'stand down' the cops)
Perhaps they weren't diabolical enough to arrange it all, but they were diabolical enough to just let it happen and maybe even smooth the way a bit.
Suddenly Bush was telling everyone in his country-bumpkin idiom, "I'm a WAR President.", meaning, at least, that this is the kind of thing he was hoping for, this is where he could SHINE!.
Sure took you guys' minds off the economy tanking because guys like Romney were wrecking corporations to lay off people and steal their pensions, then setting up the factories in China, didn't it?
Yep.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if conspiracy theories are somehow more comforting than the probable reality? The reality of the Sep 11, 2001 attacks is lack of imagination, lack of coordination, and a failure to recognize the threat, but most importantly, the utter futility of trying to prevent black swan events.
ReplyDeleteNot sure "comforting" is the word :-) IMO Bush/Cheney were responsible only by incompetence - ignoring what they were being told, already had their minds set that they had everything under control, anything like 911 didn't fit in their agenda, and yes, failure to recognize. Hubris big time. Then responsible by opportunism...once it happened I think they loved it for the reasons Ian stated. A war president, with license to do anything he wanted in the guise of national security, a free pass of being scrutinized too closely from everyone being in shock, and of course not wanting to be called unpatriotic. They didn't plan it, but used it to the hilt when it happened.
ReplyDeleteIt was their Reichstag fire, only they (probably) didn't start it.
ReplyDeleteI think that conspiracy theories are born out of distrust and suspicion. Unfortunately it's a rare disaster that doesn't have certain parties that benefit from it, and therefore look guilty to those who are on the other side of that distrust.
ReplyDeleteThey're likely the most natural thing in the world to us. "The milk is sour, burn the crone up the street at the stake, she's been complaining that the kids have been teasing her, and she has a cat, and a broom!"
ReplyDelete"A cat and a broom, you say? Burn the witch!"
"I always try to keep that in mind when I reach that point in a debate where my opponent is clearly intentionally misunderstanding me. If you’ve taken part in any of these debates, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the point where you actually see the wall come down and that fearful glaze appears and quickly disappears in their eyes and they mentally erase the point you just made and come back with, “But Jesus said Jesus Jesus!”
ReplyDeleteThis reaction leads a lot of atheists to believe that there’s just no point in arguing with Christians. You never win, right? Well, if by “win” you mean that you actually get to watch them lose their faith in god and and admit that they were wrong, yeah, you never win. But if you define “winning” as forcing them into the “Jesus said Jesus Jesus” phase of the argument, you never lose." - The Scathing Atheist podcast.
Just out of curiosity, how is that a win, in any way?
ReplyDeleteIt's not a win if they can't see that they're wrong. And that's permanently impossible. Feeling like I won an argument because they resorted to 'jesus jesus' is no win at all, it's me massaging my own ego. I don't need that. What I need is for them to CUT THE SHIT. And you can't prove them wrong, to them. They have their own facts. Hell, they have their own reality.
We even had eric admit that you needed a tiny amount of faith for his arguments to work, but that didn't even slow him down.
ahh, whatever....
The piece goes on to explain when some speaker asked if anyone had been persuaded to abandon their faith by atheist argument and half the people put their hands up.
ReplyDeleteThe explanation, we hear, is that people are not prone to 'seeing the light' of atheism mid-argument, the seed of doubt is planted.
And that should be enough, that's all we can really expect.
Well, that's good I suppose. Still, with the really radical fundies, the only answer remains Felis Leo.
ReplyDeleteThe more I think about Eric and how he admitted that you need 'that spark of faith' for his (or Aquinas') arguments to work, the more I can't believe that he could actually say that seriously. For someone that on the surface seemed brilliant, he was pretty damn stupid. I mean, seriously? You've just destroyed the integrity of your whole worldview and can't seem to see it.
ReplyDeletePlanting seeds of doubt....I like it, Ian! :-) The most annoying thing about religious zealotry is the absolute confidence in their special brand of magic, and the mandate they feel it gives them to decide life for the rest of us. If they kept it out of politics and policy, and behind their closed doors, I wouldn't care what they believed....but since they insist on making all the rules for the rest of us, then let the seeding begin. :-) Sounds like it won't make much difference to the Eric you speak of, but it will get to some who allow themselves to ponder.
ReplyDeleteBrian, I made the mistake of replying to your replies 2 days ago.....scroll up, please. I asked you a question about the light in your head, really curious for the answer. The "dead blog" is so active, you probably didn't see it. LOL!
Wait.... inner light in your head? What's that? I don't remember you mentioning that earlier. What do you see when strange shit happens? Like premonitions? Psychic ability?
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This is actually easy to describe but I'm not sure if other people get this even on salvia. Imagine a strong light bluish-greenish LED situated at the back of your head, shining forward out of your eyes, or on your closed eyelids if they're closed.
Trouble is, I'm not sure if it's something everybody gets on salvia or if it's because of my hallucinations as a child, because I get this light even without salvia whenever I think about looking for it, and have since those hallucinations when I was 7 or 8. On salvia it's like ten times stronger though. A real, palpable glow. I describe my "inner light" meditation in part 4 of my meditations. But I have no way to produce the light if a person doesn't have it at least a little bit, because I didn't need to develop one.
Yeah, that traveling focus thing is hard, isn't it? When I'm not using salvia I try it from time to time and fuck, I can barely do it up the arm like you said.
It's like a real light. I mean, I can see it very clearly. A glow.
DeleteIt reminds me of what occultists call 'the astral light.' I never knew what that was before. I see it every time something funny happens like waking the wife.
Oh, and if you don't have the address, my salvia blog is here:
Deletehttp://salviaspace.blogspot.com/
The meditations are the last four posts. Quite a few of them. I basically spent a few days thinking about all the ones I do and wrote them down.
OK, a little clarification. The light must have a reason, do you know what it is? Is the light just an indicator thing verifying that something is happening at that moment? Or does it actually "show" you something to explain what is happening? Or come on to warn you before hand so that you pay attention to things about to come? I've never heard anyone describe a light in their head before (obviously I have nothing in my head, ahhhh...you know what I mean), and it seems it must mean something for you to have it, especially since you state that you have it on or off salvia. If it was only on Salvia I would logically think it was drug induced, but that doesn't seem the case for you.
ReplyDelete(obviously I have nothing in my head, ahhhh...you know what I mean)
ReplyDeleteLOL, you funny.
One night when I was 7 or 8 and was sleeping at my aunt's house overnight, I awakened in the middle of the night to a room full of giant insects. No, really. (I was a bug nerd even at that age) Giant aphids. Huge wasps. A huge dragonfly that even at that age I knew as meganeura monyii. The giant carboniferous dragonfly. That one even flew under the sheets to find me when I hid! (Flew through the sheets, more accurately)
ReplyDeleteThey did not go away.
What I mean is, over like a YEAR, the larger hallucinations faded, so no more insects, but there were still shapes and spots and a whole bunch of stuff that lasted for several additional YEARS.
Anytime I was in darkness, it was full of STUFF. (Still is...)
Things like complex piles of chains, and some kind of ships (something like an ocean vessel in shape) and a few other things. Always floating in my vision. Even in sunlight, I'd still see slight images. But in the dark, well, the dark was alive for me. Always. I
Now, on that first night, I was fucking TERRIFIED. So of course I went to my parents, and they *did not believe me.* They never believed me, even over years of telling them. So eventually I stopped telling them. (Many years later in my thirties I told my mom about it, and how she and dad never believed me, and you know what? She didn't even remember me ever telling her about them) (My parents were simple fools, basically. I am adopted, and I learned to FEEL adopted over the years, with many things like this always happening) (Pboy, think "Soap Cherubs!)
So anyhow, over years and years, all the larger stuff went away. But all the smaller stuff, never, ever did. I still see them all the time. I'm seeing them now, not as clear because the light is on, but there they are nonetheless.
Before I ever tried salvia, anytime that I closed my eyes, or looked around in the darkness, my field of view was alive with motion. Spinning 'star fields,' like a view from a telescope of space, spinning in both directions at once, one from my left eye and one from my right. Billions of stars. Some larger clusters, and gaps and such, but fields of stars.
And a light in my head. In absolute darkness, all my life, fields of stars and a nightlight inside my head.
Incidentally, the hallucinations happened right after I'd spent a few years having childhood seizures. Epileptiform seizures. So I guess I had a 'brain incident' of some sort, and the hallucinations proceeded from that.
I looked them up in later years, learned that kids sometimes have these hallucinations, usually at a young age. Hypnagogic hallucinations, they were called.
(Pboy and others here have heard this story before)
So all my life, when I close my eyes, or when they're open but the light is low, I see the starfields, and this "inner light." Like a very light slightly bluish green light, like a small
(continued next reply)
DeleteLED at the back of my head.
ReplyDeleteOh, and one more thing. I only really noticed it in recent years but they've been around, they're just harder to see.
If I look at a BRIGHT light, like the sun, and look near it (not at it, for obvious reasons) I also see something really weird. Like......... how to describe them... like small protozoans of some sort, little oval shapes *made of light* that move around my field of vision *very fast,* far too fast to be any real protozoans. They leave little trails of light, like wakes. They move about as if they are alive. They certainly seem alive. Little ovals, teeny really, moving around at high speed, in all directions.
So that's my lifetime of hallucinations.
Now enter salvia divinorum. WHOA!
The starfields are SO clear. I can even direct their movement. And the little light iin my head is now a LOT brighter, and when I'm really "in vision," when I'm out there in the Hubble Deep Field (so to speak), I see that light get brighter and brighter. I can (with effort!) direct it around. The other night I intentionally woke my wife with a pseudopod of it. That's what happened. It hurts a little to intensify and direct that light, like when you cross your eyes HARD. But maybe it will get easier. I think it will, because it seems to be doing so, just a little at a time.
Now, something else: I recently noticed, about a year ago or less, that my salvia visions are virtually identical to my childhood hallucinations (when they were big shapes in the beginning).
The color, the degree of translucency of the forms, and the sensation of greenish illumination, are the same. The more I have them, the more I realize, they're the same deal.
So that's my "inner light." I have heard that some other people, not all, but some, experience a sensation of a moving glow of light on salvia, so maybe it's not unique to me. I hope that it isn't. But no way for me to know.
I do know that other people don't get starfields and glowing light in "normal mind" when not under any psychotropic influence. Floaters, yes, they're normal.... but nothing like what I get.
Here's something else that I've noticed since I've been on salvia.
ReplyDeleteWhen I'm totally straight, and look at a flame, it looks digitalized. weird, huh?
is the light just an indicator thing verifying that something is happening at that moment? Or does it actually "show" you something to explain what is happening?
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In that light, I see visions. It is the illumination that reveals the visions.
Have you ever heard the term "astral light?"
It seems to be something very much like the descriptions of that supposed phenomenon.
Weird, huh?
(I only noticed that recently, btw)(that it is like the description of the 'astral light' that occultists speak of)
DeleteUm, also... the light never goes off. It's always on. Always has been, along with the spinning starfields. My constant companion night light.
DeleteHe, just remembered!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid lying in bed, I'd play a game. I also would see a reddish light along with the greenish one. (Still do if I try, but I've always concentrated on the green for some reason)
I'd try to maximize the green, to eliminate the red. I felt for some reason, as a kid, that the red one was not good. I have no idea why. The color red maybe? Dunno. I rarely think about the reddish light anymore, but it's still there if I want to see it.
Complimentary color, maybe? I think so. Bluish green > Reddish (Opposites)
DeleteIt used to be very hard to maximize the green... that red seemed determined to cancel it out all the time.
Delete"Hey," and not "He." Typo.
DeleteOh, and I'm remembering more now that I'm concentrating on it...
ReplyDeleteI could (and still can) "travel" through the starfields. By focusing on a point far away and then bringing my visual focus in as if I were tracking an approaching object, the starfields come closer and closer till they're all around me and it looks a lot like I'm traveling through interstellar space.
So basically, I'm one fucking strange dude. Not my fault though. I didn't ask for hallucinations that made night terrors come alive during the day. I was soooo terrified tht first night, it's engraved on my memory like it was yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI still resent how my parents pooh-poohed it as my 'imagination.'
Nicely done, parents! Way to go!
Planting seeds of doubt....I like it, Ian! :-)
ReplyDelete-----------------------
Johnny Sanityseed?
B your Zombie blog still gets more visits than any of mine ;)
ReplyDeleteProbably not, if you subtract my visits. I'm a loquacious motherfucker.
DeleteYeah, I can't kill it if I want to. Funny, huh?
ReplyDeleteI guess i get discouraged here sometimes because I used to be a more classically "rational" person, what with me not doing salvia and having visions and waking the wife and dog a lot. Now that I have these things going on in my life, I yearn to discuss them, and summary dismissal isn't what I'm looking for. I mean, I'm not looking for *belief* here either. I don't expect it. Why should you? In your shoes, I certainly wouldn't. But I want a discussion *of these events* with my skeptical friends, and not just talk about brain chemistry and how I should not be taking salvia in the first place. I already know that part, and what I'm wanting is to get beyond that, beyond the dire warnings, and discuss the particulars of what is happening to me and not how I might be deluding myself. I know that part. I'm warned already.
ReplyDeleteI've said this before, but I'll say it again. ALL (as in, ALL) of my most amazing and interesting moments of my entire life have happened in the last four years while on salvia. ALL of them. Excluding things like love and such, because that is very important stuff to me. So I'm not about to stop. My only health effects have been POSITIVE. For real. No more IBS. I've had IBS since I was 24 years old, and the last day that I suffered from it was my first day that I tried salvia. So basically, I'm good, thanks, and let's move on. I'm not saying this in anger btw, just telling my friends that I've known for so many years how I feel about this stuff, and how I want to talk about it with them, and how I don't.
No hard feelings anybody, please. I just needed to define myself here.
You guys can look at it this way: We used to have christian fundies and apologists visit here all the time. Lotsa flakes. Now, no more.
ReplyDeleteThis blog needed a 'believer' of come kind, someone not as traditionally 'rational' as you are. So here I am.
When christians were here, you didn't just tell them that they had a psychosis and then refuse to argue with them or have a discussion with them beyond that. Maybe tell them to seek professional help. No, instead we all argued *on their home turf,* with long, detailed discussions of things like how silly Bible stories are and such.
I ask no more than that. On your home turf, I'm dismissed. I get it. Done.
So what's left? My home turf. Let's 'go there' together. Hypothetically, in your cases. That's enough for me. I'm not asking any of you to break character and believe in shit. I like it when you argue with me about it. It's good for me.
Or not. I mean, if you all hate it, it won't happen. So I hope it's not horribly boring for all of you to humor me.
We can still talk about how incredibly ridiculous the christians are. I mean, that's a given.
An interesting coincidence. Not like my synchronicities, but very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI have a lifelong friend, Stanley Krippner. When I was a kid in a gifted program, he tested me. Psychologist.
Lost track of him for decades, then when I was getting the synchronicities I found him on the web (not hard, that!) and got in touch, since I had learned that he had gone on to do research in parapsychology.
So the funny thing is, now that I do the salvia, I've found out that he did research with Terrence McKenna and Timothy Leary on psychoactives. Hell, he's done ayahuasca in the jungles of south america. He goes all over the world.
So by coincidence, one of the worlds leading authorities on psychoactives and trance states and all of that, is my pen pal.
We don't talk a lot though. He wants me to write a book. all I wanna do now is to discuss it, not write a book about it. Although I'm considering on publishing a short book about my meditation techniques. I think they'd lend themselves well to other psychoactive substances, so there'd be a market out there.
DeleteFunny, one of the things that I found out that Stanley said about me back then, was 'His parents are going to destroy that kid.'
DeleteA perceptive man, that Stanley.
Okay, enough of that for now.
ReplyDeleteHey, I heard there's this website that explains in detail all of the good things about conservatism and the republican party.
But here's the deal: The website has a lot of problems. A lot of glitches. So obviously, conservatism and the republican party SUCK.
Happy Thanksgiving to all....now get outta my way, the stores are open! HA! kidding. I hate black Friday with a passion and have never stepped foot outside my door to shop on that day, no way I'm pitching a tent in front of Best Buy on TG.
ReplyDeleteTo this line:
" I yearn to discuss them, and summary dismissal isn't what I'm looking for. I mean, I'm not looking for *belief* here either. I don't expect it. Why should you? In your shoes, I certainly wouldn't. But I want a discussion......."
Yes....I hear ya. Confess that on the UFO stuff I was almost afraid to "go there." I have been pretty open about it over the last 25 years because it had such a profound impact on me, not that I would expect anyone here to be nasty or mean about it, but my usual response over the years is from people who didn't see what I saw tell me what I saw, insisting that something else is the explanation. It's frustrating. If you read my response to you, it was "thanks for not scoffing." So apparently we are on the same page there. :-)
You wrote a lot, (loquacious MF :-) it led me in many different directions of reading, and stumbled on stuff that seems connected that we weren't even talking about. A little synchronicity going on here? I had to look up Astral light, no knowledge of it other than the basic concept. After reading it, I flipped on the TV and caught a show with an ex-military guy who spent 25 YEARS as a "remote viewer" for the government. Remote viewing? So I went there, found that our military was very heavily invested in using this....not an altogether stellar record of success, but enough that they stuck with it for such a long time. Which led me to a link about Telekinesis, and the info I read (more than one source) shows it to be a real human ability, demonstrably and reliably in people who develop it. They claim all people have it, just don't know it or use it, and it's all about electrical energy, not paranormal. The explanation of directing/focusing the electrical energy in your brain to affect objects outside it also sounded like what you did to your wife. Since Pliny got me thinking in terms of Venn diagrams, it now makes me wonder if it's all part of the same abilities/energies that would overlap in a diagram.
Hey, I switched up my patch trials, and started at toes rather than arms.....got from toes to knees! LOL
it led me in many different directions of reading, and stumbled on stuff that seems connected that we weren't even talking about. A little synchronicity going on here?
ReplyDelete-----------------
If you seek it, it will be revealed unto you.
If you deny it, it will confirm your denial.
What I mean is, if one is a skeptic and denies anything that disagrees with their concept of a reality based on random chance, then one will get confirmation of that sufficient to convince one that they are right. However such a person, upon seeing something like the objective results that I am getting on salvia, must necessarily deny them no matter how convincing they might be. So it puts them in the position of saying "well, that *sounds* very convincing but there's a real-world explanation for all of that." It puts them in the position of insisting on a coincidence with very high odds against it happening rather than believing that it's just the natural order of things to give you what you're expecting. However in reverse, the person that believes it to be possible that this is all a dreamlike world where you get what you expect, gets confirmation of *that* as well, however that latter kind of confirmation TRUMPS the confirmation that the first person gets, since it explains it as well.
ReplyDeleteIf I get positive results in waking my wife up with a thought a hundred times in a row, then the skeptic is forced to insist that it's all a *very fucking huuuuuuge* coincidence, but if the skeptic cites scientific evidence that it just can't be a dreamlike reality, or cites scientific evidence that it can't be, such as say quantum decoherence wherein particle waveforms are collapsed not by an observer but by collisions with other particles, then I can say "of course you think that, of course you found evidence of that, since that is what you are insisting that reality is and must be."
NOTE: As I finished typing this, the television playing Blue's Clues for my son in the other room is showing a cartoon character singing "Life Is But A Dream."
I mean, it's playing it now... it started as I finished typing the above.
Really, it is playing "Life Is But A Dream" right fucking NOW.
So when this happens to me all the time, how can I deny what reality is telling me? Hell, the television is playing "Life Is But A Dream" right fucking now.
The song is of course, "Row, row, row your boat." The lyric about life being a dream was played just as I was finishing the last sentence of my post above.
DeleteAlso for the sake of being thorough, I must state that I did not hear that song starting to play, and had no idea that it was playing. Why would I be paying attention to Blue's Clues? It was the lyric "life is but a dream" that caught my attention, when it was sung. Plus it's such a short song that even if I had heard it start, I was already almost finished talking about reality being a dream when it must have started.
DeleteThe lyric "Life is but a dream" played *precisely* as I was finishing up that last sentence ending with "since that is what you are insisting that reality is and must be."
DeleteI got a rush, it was so eerily perfect.
God, I've got goosebumps. I'm not making this shit up. How can I deny it when the television just told me, in no uncertain terms, to not fucking do that?
ReplyDeleteWhat are the odds now, Pboy? What are the odds that the television would play that song now as I type about just such a thing? Now add in the odds that all the times I awaken my wife or my dog, they all just happened to stir at the precise moments that I thought that they would? How high do the odds have to get before the skeptic thinks twice, I wonder? Or like believers in a religion, do they just get to a point where the odds are so high that they can't explain them and just begin to deny them with no real reason?
ReplyDeletePlus of course add in the odds that all my synchronicities over the years were also just wild coincidences with no meaning. We're like in the 'millions-to-one' category here. But even that is acceptable, rather than to concede that there just might be something to this, that there might be something strange going on... never that, oh no, never that.
DeleteThey way I see it, the skeptic, upon reading what I just wrote, is forced to either believe that it's all huge coincidences strung in a row, or must necessarily believe that I'm bullshitting all of you and have been for years now.
ReplyDeleteI can't overcome that; if that's how they must deal with this, nothing I can say can affect that denial.
However, it begs a question:
If all of this IS true, if everything that I say DID happen to me.... if all of this had happened to you instead, including what just happened with the television in the other room, could you still deny it to yourself?
Oh, and btw, Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
ReplyDeleteI'm thankful for that nice synchronicity there, for one thing.
Jesus, we were not only talking about reality possibly being a dream, but Jude started it off by talking about synchronicities.
ReplyDeleteWay cool.
Which led me to a link about Telekinesis, and the info I read (more than one source) shows it to be a real human ability, demonstrably and reliably in people who develop it. They claim all people have it, just don't know it or use it, and it's all about electrical energy, not paranormal.
ReplyDelete--------------------------------
In the light of what I just said about reality giving us our expectations, would a team of scientists ever say that it was paranormal? Or would they instead see some kind of 'evidence' that, *for them,* was a proof that it wasn't?
It's paranormal, in the precise definition of that word. It really is. The mechanism is not what people generally think of as paranormal, but the results are. It's just that very few serious thinkers will even "go there" in their minds, seeking instead a 'rational explanation' and of course, finding it, at least enough of it to convince them if not others.
I usually don't even bother to mention things that happen during my salvia meditations that I can dismiss with random chance. I only hit the highlights. However the above made me think of one thing that happened a few days ago.
ReplyDeleteI was sitting up, my mind in that 'other mode' of thought that salvia induces, but aware of my surroundings. I would have been able to respond to questions coherently. I could see and hear the room around me.
The air conditioner started to whine loudly. It had been doing that for a day or two every now and then. It was a very disturbing noise.
I considered the noise, and it seemed in my 'altered state,' that the noise was not external to me, but was inside my mind much like everything else is.
So I raised my hand and formed a tight fist, feeling the tension as energy, using the tension to concentrate my mind on the noise. I willed it to stop. It immediately started to fade, and the fact that it was fading made me doubt myself for a split second. It immediately got louder again. So I really 'clamped down' on my doubts, made the fist tighter, and again willed it to stop, and it immediately did, and did not come back.
I never wrote of it, because it was too nebulous, too possibly a coincidence. But your talk of telekinesis made me think of it, so I thought I'd share it here now.
Still could easily be a coincidence of course, but I'm more prepared to believe that it wasn't, in the light of what the fucking television just told me. (lol)
In the case of the air conditioner being quieted, that would probably be the same as the argument that causes the god thing. Total in house deal. Now the air conditioner, not having anybody willing to hear it, ceased to make noise. :-) Hey dude, sounds like you are doing alright. Hope so.
ReplyDeletewould a team of scientists ever say that it was paranormal? Or would they instead see some kind of 'evidence' that, *for them,* was a proof that it wasn't?
ReplyDelete------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have trouble with that, too. I think it comes down to definitions....they say "not paranormal" because research can demonstrate A. the electrical impulses and B. the pencil rolling on the table. They get physical results they can measure. To me, though, even though they can measure those things, it is STILL outside the normal functioning, and they do not even attempt to address the questions of how absolutely strange it is that human beings can do this, and how it might be connected to some of the "unmeasureable" mind things that you are capable of, and the unusual things that happen to you repeatedly. In the same breath that they would tell you "yes, your mind can roll that pencil" they will say "but, no....the other things are not real." That doesn't make sense to me. That they wouldn't be able to quantify what you do only says they don't know how to, and possibly never will. "They" also seem to think telekenisis is weak, rolling a pencil is extremely hard, and the most power anyone can get out of it. I'm wondering if someone like you, with a supercharged brain would skew those results. LOL I guess I'm just saying that if a brain alone can roll a pencil, then we have NO idea what else it can do. Well, YOU know, but I am sadly bereft of any such inner lights. :-/ I know I freak myself out when I get "glimmers" (such as hearing my name called, or a deja vu) but it doesn't happen often enough for me to get a handle on it.
While out shoveling manure :-) I kept thinking about it, and it fits an analogy. A scientist is given a gallon of ocean water, it's teaming with bacterial life, perhaps a small fish and a shrimp, it's got salt and other compounds. The conclusion is, isn't this great, we can scientifically proof everything that is in this water. There really isn't anything else in that ocean water that we can know.
ReplyDeleteThe telekinesis thing strikes me the same way.....they only have a gallon to look at, and they may very well run into a whale someday. :-) It really feels like there is more behind it, or along with it. They get a glimpse of the edges, but haven't started reaching into the middle of it.
Well yes, I take your point. It wasn't what I meant, though, although looking back I can see that the way I said it was open to more than one interpretation.
ReplyDeleteAll I meant was that, due to the way that I think this reality might work, giving us what we expect, then if a group of scientists *were open enough to the idea that the telekinesis was real,* as these scientists apparently were, then they might see the phenomena happen and get results that seemed to prove it real, and being scientists, they would look for a physical-world reason for it, and FIND ONE, even if there were none originally. Reality would be obliged to provide one. Moreover, if and when they then try to prove it to other scientists that do not and can not believe that the telekinesis can conceivably be real, it would be quite possible for them to suddenly not be able to replicate their experiments. The larger gestalt belief of the majority of people who do the research, would win. And nobody would be the wiser. The original scientists would be flummoxed, having no idea why suddenly they couldn't produce the same results, and so forth.
I remember reading an article a long time ago (can't find it now anywhere, but I remember it) about some Japanese scientist that tried to prove some kind of paranormal event, and finally got his experiment to work and the results were conclusive (over 100 replications in the lab) that the event was real, and then as soon as he published the experiment and the results, nobody could replicate it, *including the original scientist.* That's how I meant it.
He commented in the article that "such is the power of belief" so he was tuned in enough to know what must have happened.
Certainly food for thought. I am a huge science believer (as opposed to religious, as you know) but keep that corner of what science doesn't know, can't know, doesn't want to know open! LOL OK, when I just came back now it was to see if this "counts." For what, I don't know. All this stuff we're talking about...for me, it is here only. The husband and I have not been discussing this in any way. So....I was putzing around the kitchen, he was out walking the dogs in the woods. (This happened 20 min. ago.) He came in and said, "Did you put coffee on?" I said NO.
ReplyDeleteHe said "I was thinking about a good cup of coffee while I was walking, and was sending you mental messages to start a pot. Guess you have no ability to get my messages." WOW! I'm now thinking of it as my "brian moment." So is that weird or what?
One thing that I've noticed over the years. Whenever I know someone for a while and we talk about this stuff a lot, they start to get the coincidences, too. My wife gets them all the time now.
DeleteWhat I'm saying is, since the theory here is that "it's all in the mind" and the mind that I'm referring to is the subconscious mind and not the conscious one, that talking a lot about this stuff produces "echoes" in reality, or coincidences. The more you talk about it and think about it, the more that you will have. Or that's how it certainly seems to work.
Incidentally, I want to make a point for a moment.
ReplyDeleteDid I stop the air conditioner from making that noise?
I do not know, but it's not one of the things that has happened to me that I'd ever call conclusive in any way. The timing was perfect, but that proves exactly nothing, not even to me.
It was random chaos. What I mean is, the AC was making a noise, no way to know why, nobody's noticing it but me, the only disbelief that I have to overcome is my own. It's a tree falling in a forest, in a way.
If one can affect reality with thought, then it follows that it is easiest to affect reality when nobody else is affecting it, and in such a way that any result *could have happened anyhow* by random chance. So one does not even try to affect something that is known to many people, or even just believed by many people. One instead tries to affect things that are random and chaotic and not being paid attention to by others, and things that one can themself believe are possible.
If (and it's a HUGE if!) I did affect my reality in such a way that the AC stopped whining, I only did so because in that mental state, I could force myself to BELIEVE that I could, just for a moment. That, and perhaps I think, a more-than-usual level of focus. It's not hard to believe that a noise that has a history of starting and then stopping eventually would just happen to stop when I was willing it to. So, chaos!
How would that have gone if what I was trying to do was move a pencil on a desk?
Now, that would require me to believe that I could do a lot more than stop a random mechanical noise. That would be much harder.
If "magic" (good enough generic name for affecting reality with the mind) works, it works best in the shadows, where nobody can doubt it. It works best on things that nobody can look at later on and say conclusively that anything happened except random chance. So moving objects would be orders of magnitude more difficult. The level of disbelief that I myself would have to overcome is astronomical. Then to prove it to anybody else, would be orders of magnitude harder than that.
The general concept here, what I have come to think is likely (in spite of how hard it is to believe) is that we all share a single consciousness, and believe that we do not. So you know that part of you that is just your consciousness of yourself as a being? That tiny part of you that says "I AM" but nothing more than that, not "I AM Brian" or "I AM Jude," but just the identity part, the "I AM?" My thesis (And I'm far from alone on this one) is that there is only one of those in existence, and we all share it, but it's so basic that we do not realize that we do. So we're all in the same mind, including my air conditioner. Including Alpha Centauri, for that matter. So something that I may be able to prove in private, might be infinitely harder to prove to the world at large, because they believe that they already know that it's impossible. In one case I have to overcome my own disbelief; in the other I have to overcome the disbelief of the entire world.
Moving a pencil wold also require me believing in something happening that I know would not happen by random chance. Unless we were on a ship at sea, perhaps. :-)
ReplyDeleteCan some people do it? Dunno, but who am I to deny it? If they can, it's only because they naturally have an insane level of belief that they can, and the ability to ignore the fact that it would not ever happen by chance anyhow. It would be tantamount to levitating.
And if they can do it, it is likely that a sufficient level of skepticism in the observers, whoever they are, would screw it up for them.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I do not consider stopping a noise in my AC to be telekinesis.
ReplyDeleteThe noise woud have stopped anyhow at some point. So all I had to do was believe that that random stopping, would happen when I wanted it to. That's not moving matter. That's affecting the dream of matter. It's altering my expectations so that reality gives me an "echo," much like a coincidence. It's a synchronicity that I induced. Of course, if synchronicities are real as I think that they are, I was inducing them all along in the first place just by believing that they are real and expecting more of them at a deep level.
I have a friend that is a professional magician. Not my kind. The other kind. Stage magic. Hes fantastic. Close-up magic and mentalism. Guessing your thoughts. It's all technique; no real telepathy takes place. It's amazing what you can guess when you know how to guess intelligently and know what cues to give a person. Just ask Pboy; he's spoken of this in the past.
ReplyDeleteSo one day I went over to visit after he just got back from a business trip. (He's also a sales manager for a multinational company; he makes a ton of money and goes all over the world)
He spoke of something that happened to him on the plane on the way home.
He was visibly shaken. That is because being a stage magician, he's an incredible skeptic of the actual supernatural.
He chatted up a woman on the plane, and showed her some coin tricks.
She was impressed (even though in my opinion it's no way to try to pick up a woman!) and according to him, said "I can do a trick, too."
So she opens up her tray table and asks him for random objects. She caveats the whole thing by telling him that it doesn't work all the time. (This would fit into my beliefs about how magic, real magic, works)
So he gives her a pen, and a few other things, a coin and so forth. She places them on the tray table and stares at them. They start to move around. A lot. All over the tray table.
This is a professional magician who prides himself on knowing how other people's 'tricks' work.
He could not figure it out. No magnets, random objects that he provided, and all the other stuff. According to him, it should not have been possible.
He was shaken by it, even telling me about it. He couldn't prove anything was going on, trick-wise. And he should know.
She said that it was just something that she'd always been able to do, and she had no idea how she was doing it.
I know him, so I believe it happened. Now, was she an AMAZING stage magician, world class, and happened to be the one that he approached? Possibly I suppose.
Still, food for thought. Maybe such people do exist.
Oh, and about that possibility of her being an amazing stage magician. My magician friend studies stage magic. He practices two hours a day (really!).
ReplyDeleteHe has a library of books on it. He has tapes of all the great performers. He's seen it all.
According to him, the way that she did it, while being simple in that it was not a complicated thing, was simply not possible. He said that if he could do what she did in front of an audience of magicians, they would all be mystified. Her hands did not move. There was no possibility of any thin monofilament lines (yes, those sneaky bastards use those all the time). There was no physical interaction between her and the objects. He went into detail with me about all the things that he ruled out. His problem was that, after he did that, there was nothing left in his mind that it could be.
Not just stage magic; he's a specialist in close-up magic.
DeleteIncidentally, my friend used to practice in front of me and then tell me how the trick worked.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is what I used to tell him. Stage magicians are the sneakiest, most deceptive people in the world. A lot of times a simple trick takes special trick props and lines and a bunch of things all put together that create the illusion of simplicity. It used to amaze me more when I found out how he did it. Simple looking things take hundreds of hours to perfect. Their hand control is astonishing... they practice and practice and practice, all the time.
For instance he can cut a card deck and spin one card out of it into the air above his head, spinning in the air, and then have it come down and catch it back in the deck.
All practice, no trick to it other than hundreds of hours of manual practice, over and over. Like juggling.
Now take that, and add in a plethora of specially made hollow coins and trick card decks and shit you'd never even think of.
All that to be a weirdo. Lol.
Some of it anybody could do. Like he takes your car key and "disappears" it in his hands. Where did it go? Well, he takes out a keychain from his back pocket. One of the old style ones that look like a small leather wallet with individual hooks on it for each key. He unsnaps it, and gee, your key is hanging in it on one of the hooks! Impossible!
ReplyDeleteLittle do we know that you can buy a key case like that which has one of it's hooks attached to a thin monofilament nylon line with a spring-loaded spool concealed in it. When he palms the key he has the hook in the palm of his hand already, with the fishing line going up his shirt sleeve, down his back, and into his pocket. Release the key, and it snaps up his arm and down his back and into his pocket and through a special gap in the key case, and then hangs there as if he'd opened the thing and clipped it on...
SNEAKY!
http://www.jaredmagic.com/
DeleteThis is my friend Jared.
Don't go to the Dark Side, Brian. These are not the droids you're looking for. Use the Force. All are welcome, go towards the light. I have been possessed by the Demon Rum.
ReplyDeleteOh Whah Ta-goo Siam.
And I'm the flake.
ReplyDeletelol
You're awesome.
Okay, one more thing. A minor synchronicity, barely qualifies.
ReplyDeleteJust was sitting with my son watching cartoons again. Haven't done that since yesterday. So we're watching this cartoon called "Olivia" about a girl pig in a dress... you get the idea...
So what song did they sing?
Hint: They were pretending to be in a life raft.
I bet you can guess.
lol.
Blues Clues, and now Olivia, all seem to think that life is but a dream.
ReplyDeleteEchoes. Aftershocks.
Or hey, just add one more appropriate coincidence to the list of the mounting odds, I guess.
They always increase when I talk about them to someone for a while.
ReplyDeleteThat's a Blues Clue!
I wonder... I wonder what you must be thinking, Pboy. I try to put myself in your place. I think I'd be forced to disbelieve me.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's what you're thinking. Or else it's still within reasonable odds to you (but not to me) that all of this happens.
I guess my question then would be, hypothetically, if you can extend me the favor of assuming that I'm not making any of this up, given that, isn't it at all weird to you? Doesn't it look strange at all?
Perhaps it's that I've addled myself with drugs? But no, that wouldn't explain the verifiable coincidences.
ReplyDeleteI looked up both cartoons and the term "row row row your boat" and one episode of each came up. The ones that I was watching. So that's real.
Not really as unlikely as I am seeing, perhaps?
Cognitive bias! That has to be it! A great catch-all, that one.
Dunno. But I do wonder.
Maybe I blew it with asking you things like this, since I stated that I wanted to have a discussion and be taken seriously, even hypothetically, but you might have taken it as I needed you to agree with me. That wasn't how I meant it.
Oh well.
Okay, I did warn you that I was drinking rum.
ReplyDeleteSo, I recommend St. John's Wort.
Or, rum, rum is good.
Is that a prescription? Or more like ingredients of a witches brew?
ReplyDeleteIt's supposed to be an antidepressant.
Good call.
This one goes out to Jude:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/28/north-devon-uk-picture_n_4357380.html
I just like this song:-
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BtbYHkKCsg
A question for Pliny, if he's around...
ReplyDeleteWhenever I post a new article to my other blog, I get a huge number of page hits within the next hour. On average, on days when I haven't posted a new article, I get about forty to fifty hits a day. But when I post an article, within that hour I get like two hundred hits.
My questions is, can those be 'bots? Because although people can subscribe to the blog by email, it seems to me that it's pretty suspicious for all of them to hit the page within an hour of getting the email notification.
Sometimes on the day I post a new article I get three hundred hits or more, mostly within the first couple of hours.
For comparison's sake I just checked this blog for November 12th, the day that I posted this "Goodbye" article.
DeleteNope. No spike in readers, at least not anything unusual. In fact, November 11th was bigger.
And I never put up a "Subscribe by Email" link here.
DeletePerhaps it's not 'bots after all? On the other blog, I mean...
Many of them are most likely bots. I believe there are ways to trigger notifications but I'm no expert of those feeds.
DeleteHEY!
ReplyDeleteI just checked the 'stats' on this blog, and I notice something I've not seen before.
Someone or some people are reading my old posts.
Like the ones I have posted on the side of the page, but others too. Some years old.
Interesting.
I have read all, get what you're saying, and what you're experiencing. I'm wondering if we seem at odds just in terminology...since I'm not very studied in all this, it's probably my fault. :-( You say that you can wake your wife, and that you believe our minds are one consciousness...so our minds can effect each others. Would you call it a telepathy then, rather than a telekenisis? That our minds can send energy to other brains but not affect physical aspects (ie a pencil, etc.)? I'm coming from a position of not having a position or enough experience with any of it to say this can happen, this cannot. I also come from the position of completely accepting that what you say happens to you happens to you. And my curiosity of it is not so much that it happens, but why and what does it mean, and does it lead to other fascinating mental capabilities. :-)
ReplyDeleteI have heard many different accounts of people with extraordinary talents that claim they have no idea where it comes from. Composers who said they didn't write their music, it just came to them and they write. An Indian mathematician who wrote down calculations that advanced string theory by years....who said he dreamed it. They will swear that it is something "outside" themselves, it is "other"..... and they can't quite explain it themselves. The more the boundaries are pushed, the more interested I am in what more it could mean.
You say that you can wake your wife, and that you believe our minds are one consciousness...so our minds can effect each others. Would you call it a telepathy then, rather than a telekenisis?
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I actually come at this from a completely different perspective than that. Those things assume a normal universe like that which science sees, only with some undiscovered phenomena that, if discovered and if researched, would still fit into that same paradigm of the world as we think that we know it. So researchers into telekinesis assume a subtle energy field or unknown force field, researchers into telepathy assume some communication effect not unlike radio where you transmit to a receiver, and so on. What I'm saying here is that all of those things are not true at all. There is no telekinesis, there is no telepathy, there is no psychism. What there is, is a communal DREAM. Now, in that dream, we are perhaps capable of doing those things and having them look like they are what the researchers say they might be. In that dream is seems possible to communicate with thought somehow. This is an illusion, or more accurately a mistaken assumption. The mistaken assumption that this world is real.
So let's re-define those terms in light of how I see the world then.
Telekinesis would be possible with some people that might be able to affect THE DREAM. Strong willed people that think very intuitively and can focus and can BELIEVE that they can move objects, *might* be able to affect their own dream of this reality (that interlocks with and intersects with other people's dreams) enough to make a pencil in their dream move. This would be a very hard thing to do, but I can't rule it out. So I focus and believe that the pencil will move and it moves in my dream of reality and my focus and WILL is enough that it does so in your dream of reality and everybody else's. Presto! Telekinesis.
I focus on my wife awakening, and she awakens. Telepathy? Not to me. I affected my DREAM of reality with my expectations that she would awaken, and manifested a future in which she did. I chose the next universe from all the possible ones, and I chose the one out of many in which she woke up.
How does the change affect everybody? How do others see what I dream, what I manifest, in this dream?
We're all dreaming it together. We are all one entity with one identity, which has splintered into the many. So we believe we're individuals, when we're only that on the surface. Go deep enough into the psyche and you reach a point where the person that is looking out of your eyes is the same person that is looking out of my eyes, and the same person that is looking out of my dog's eyes for that matter. That connection is why one person can affect change that others can see.
I should say that 'affecting the dream' and 'choosing one possible future path out of many' is the same thing to me in this context. So I have problems choosing one out of many possible futures in which the pencil just happens to move, because pencils not acted upon by outside forces tend not to ever move. However perhaps there is a very small number of possible futures in which the pencil does move spontaneously but they're so unlikely that they are almost impossible to manifest without a diamond-hard will and extreme focus and zero disbelief. That would explain the reason that so few people can do it.
DeleteIt's unsure how much of this is sheer belief. What I mean is, I doubt that I could ever believe that I can move a pencil. Believing that my wife might wake up is a different thing entirely. We affect probabilities, we do not emit physical forces that move things. However some scientists insist that it is theoretically possibly for a macro object like a pencil to move or even levitate spontaneously but the reason that we never see it is that the chances of it happening are beyond astronomical. So perhaps *enough* belief and focus might be able to manifest one of those "far off" universes or possible futures.
It occurs to me that this conversation might be more appropriate on my other blog. Doesn't matter to me, but I'm not sure how much others here feel like reading it.
If the number of possible futures is indeed infinite, then in that infinity somewhere, everything that CAN happen, happens. It's just that there are so few futures in which a pencil moving spontaneously happens that we rarely select any of them by random chance coupled with expectations.
DeleteThe chances of a pencil moving are traditionally considered equal to the chances of every single particle in the pencil just happening to all move at one time in the same direction.
DeleteSo basically, quadrillions to one, or more.
I tend to use 'universes' a lot. It's not really accurate though. "Dream" is better. "Alternate possible futures" is better than "alternate universes" when talking about these experiences, I think.
DeleteThis excerpt from one of my posts on my salvia blog pertains here:
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As the first vision was fading away, I turned my thoughts to my wife sleeping behind me peacefully. I concentrated on her, not looking at her beyond an initial glance, as my back was turned to her. Suddenly I saw a 'grid' effect with her in it; in other words I saw and perceived many multiple images of her all at the same time arranged in a gridlike array in front of me. I should note that this was an 'eyes open' experience, and I was rather lucid during it's duration. While looking at the many versions of her, I thought of trying to 'mentally' awaken her, and then I noticed that one of the images of her in the grid was an image of her awakening. All the others were of her sleeping peacefully, but one image was of her in the act of waking up. Without even thinking about how, I 'pushed' my consciousness into that one panel, and it somehow merged with it, I could *feel* it merge with it, and at that precise moment, she awakened, fully conscious. Not only did she awaken, but her initial movements while waking up were precisely identical to the ones that I had seen a few seconds before in that panel of her waking up. It seems that I have experienced first-hand how the future manifests to us as multiple possibilities and we choose which one we will proceed along. Only this time I was completely aware of the process. Either that, or I chose between multiple universes. Either way, a very incredible experience that is still with me as if it had just happened.
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PS: What I forgot to mention above was that when I initially looked at the grid of multiple images of my wife, they were all the same. In none of them was she moving or waking up. Then I (somehow, not sure how) focused on the grid and I felt my focus *become* my will, in a way. I felt like a pseudopod of sheer focused intent came out of my head, and *pushed one of the frames of my wife aside,* revealing another one underneath it, in which she was waking up. (Note that these "frames" are not still pictures, but are more like video clips. They're dynamic and not static)
I just had another similar "multiuniversal" vision last night, btw. It's the first one on the other salvia blog.
ReplyDeletehttp://salviaspace.blogspot.com/
It's similar, but instead of frames or 'tiles' as some people call this vision (many salvia users get this one) it was.......... hard to describe, actually. Best to read it.
I have heard many different accounts of people with extraordinary talents that claim they have no idea where it comes from.
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The collective unconscious. Another word for the "I AM" that we're all made up of, the sum of all thoughts and experiences. Or perhaps a slightly less omnipresent smaller version of that which is just all of our personal selves, all the "Brians" out there living and dying in alternate universes or dreams, which share a core consciousness subsidiary to the larger ALL. That would be the Higher Self.
Entheogens (natural psychedelics) like salvia alter perceptions. Everyone knows that.
ReplyDeleteThe question for me is, is that alteration farther away from reality, or closer to it?
When I do salvia, I do not get the sense of a distortion of what is real. I instead get a very strong sense of a revelation of what is real. Instead of clouding the mind, it feels like it removes the clouds and shows us something closer to actual reality, but we balk at it due to how very different it is from common experience.
Ok I'm going to hate myself for posting this but I'm a moth to the flame. First a disclaimer. I do not personally think this is likely but I'll throw it at the wall just the same:
ReplyDeleteThis mind exercise requires one to consider the possibility that a hypnotic drug may do more than simply short circuit internal neuro-connections (At this time I have no experience with any literature that suggests that this is in any way true. )
But what if hypnotics did something like alter the brains filters to external stimuli? The brain might be flooded with a greater range of inputs than it was designed to process. These filters probably would have great evolutionary significance in that inputs contrary to reproductive success would be mitigated.
The inputs that might become accessible in the unfiltered state aren't gong to be metaphysical they are going to be natural but unfamiliar. (We already know the brain filters out millions of inputs each day)
If a hypnotic removed filters to external sensation how would the brain process these inputs? The same way as always. The conclusions drawn from these experiences are likely governed by the basic mind states of the particular individual and pre-existing heuristics. In other words the brain is going to create the best fit model to account for the foreign inputs. What that best fit entails is likely determined by the 'personality' of the individual.
Natural selection would have no doubt resulted in these filters for what was a good reason at the time. The opening here is the question of whether opening up these filters now is a good thing? Have conditions changed enough to warrant the risks? Who knows.
If a hypnotic removed filters to external sensation how would the brain process these inputs?
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I was not suggesting that it removed filters to external sensations of this reality, I was suggesting that, at least in my case, it removes filters that prevented me from seeing that this reality is essentially not real. No additional external stimuli are detected. What is detected is that all external stimuli are actually internal, not just in their perception, but in their actuality. It's a paradigm shift, my friend.
I'd like to know how my sensing more external stimuli might cause me to sense with great certainty that I am in more than one location at once?
Better still, tell me how that can awaken my wife over and over and over, right on cue?
How did the removal of filters caused me to see a multidimensional space when I could not even conceive of such a thing in my mind, and when I was most certainly not even thinking about such a bizarre thing. Hell, that thing hurt my head to even look at.
ReplyDeleteHow does it also cause me to feel my own body, including my weight pressing down on my posterior against the bed that I was sitting in, in many multiple locations?
I think that you, as a skeptic extraordinaire, are absolutely constrained to say what you are saying because you cannot possibly consider anything else being real. This is either your advantage over me, or your handicap. I of course lean toward the latter.
Incidentally, I'm not saying that I know you're wrong. It's possible that you are right. I acknowledge that. I am however proceeding on the assumption that you are wrong due to my admittedly *mostly* subjective sensory inputs while on salvia, and also my experiences with Jungian synchronicities before I ever tried the substance which continue to this day.
ReplyDeleteMy working theory is this: I'm right or I'm wrong, one of the two. If I allow myself to proceed under the assumption that I'm wrong, well, I won't be proceeding, will I? I'd be ceasing my investigations. There's no way to prove that I'm right or wrong from your side of the debate. So then I'd be done with it. What if I am right? I'd never know. In recent times I've been getting more and more dramatic results. Do I stop now while I'm 'ahead?' I used to awaken my wife as a side-effect of my salvia meditation, not on purpose. The last time I planned it out, did over a half hour of build-up to it, culminated the whole thing by mentally slamming her with my will, and she woke up right on cue, almost violently as if I'd doused her with water in her sleep. Pretty fucking dramatic, that. So do I just say to myself, "it's all a mirage, confirmation bias, coincidence, long strings of coincidences, no need to proceed further?" I think not.
Add in also the fact that if reality is what I'm thinking that it is, doubting in it, preventing myself from believing it at least a little, is precisely how to never, ever see it.
Very few people can alter their beliefs intentionally and temporarily in order to see if altering their beliefs changes anything. I can. So that's what I will continue to do, because I have nothing to lose by doing so, and everything to gain.
Still love your input. Please don't be put off by me not being swayed by it. This is the kind of discussion that I love to have.
I hope my flame didn't singe your moth. Please flutter by it again sometime.
ReplyDeleteYou've done it now! At MN tonight I'm posting a cartoon just for you B ;)
ReplyDeleteHAH!
ReplyDeleteI attain immortality this very night! All is according to plan!
Don't forget the halo...
Here ya go Ste B!
ReplyDeletehttp://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2013/12/humor-obscura-20-ste-b-edition.html
I like it! Your pictorial representation of LSD is very funny all by itself.
ReplyDeleteI like your pics, Pliny.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ian, stop over sometime if you like. Your perspective is always welcome
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alternet.org/belief/why-right-wing-evangelicals-claim-good-christians-cant-get-ptsd
ReplyDeleteHow nice.
I just looked up "Salvia Divinorum" on Google.
ReplyDeleteMy blog is the fourth result.
When you look up "Salvia Blog" it's number one. Also number one when you google "Salvia Divinorum Blog."
Cool.
Salvia divinorum means "Salvia of the ghosts", whereas Salvia divinatorum, the correct name, means "Salvia of the priests", But it is now in the botanical literature under the name Salvia divinorum. ~ Wiki
ReplyDeleteI looked up the biological stuff about it and, of course, it's too much for me. Too much organic stuff going on.
A κ-opioid agonist, look that up and..
The κ-opioid receptor is one of five related receptors that bind opium-like compounds in the brain.
binds the opioid peptide dynorphin as the primary endogenous ligand (substrate naturally occurring in the body).
And you can go down that rabbit hole, seemingly until you hit China, or whichever country is vertically down from here.
Nevertheless Brian, they seem to be quite sure that there is a LOT of understood chemistry going on which affects your streaming consciousness, as a lot of other chemicals do.
Not trying to be a downer but, since you smoke it, you really should spend a day or two mapping out how it's working, chemically, on your body.
The upshot seems to be that it might be good for getting rid of addictions.
Have you tried just not smoking, not 'trying to stop', just not bothering with smoking?
To go further with your etymology there, *salvia* originally comes down from salvation, but referring to one's health, as in savior of health, or medicine. Also translated as "sage" meaning 'wisdom.'
DeleteDivinorum means not 'priest' but 'diviner.'
Of course, deciphering a Latin designation for a native entheogen is a bit silly. It was named by people who had little knowledge of what it does.
DeleteI sometimes do not smoke it at night, so I sometimes skip a day, no cravings or anything whatsoever. It's not something that I can even see as possibly addictive. Hell, whenever I take it, there's always a small amount of *fear* before the first hit. It's serious stuff.
ReplyDeleteAlso, need I point out that if it's causing me to see the actual nature of reality, and thus reality gives us what we expect it to, how did you reading that stuff break that rule in any way? I already knew that there existed a biochemical REASON that it distorts the perception of reality. So what? Such distortion cannot awaken my wife and dog. Such a thing cannot give me coincidences, and moreover I had those before I ever tried it.
Such reasons are what we find when we look in this reality for a reason for anything. In this dream we always seek to prove that it's not a dream, and so we always get reasons why it isn't one. Now, when we instead seek to see if there's something more to it than that, why, we get results there too, don't we? Reality gives us reasons. It gives us what we're expecting it to. So while your biochemical reason there can't tell me anything about why it's allowing me to awaken my wife, or the dog, or about my synchronicities, it will definitely give *you* sufficient reason to *believe that you know* (note difference from just "knowing") that I am wrong.
If I'm really tired at night, I don't smoke it because it seems to require some energy to work well.
DeleteBesides, you discount the real possibility that when something is an agonizer to that particular kappa opioid receptor, that it actually causes the mind to perceive more of reality including it's gestalt consciousness nature ordinarily hidden from a mind not so affected. If a chemical affects the mind's perceptions of reality, how is "falsely" the logical implication?
ReplyDeleteTo simplify part of my argument above about the kappa opioid receptor stuff:
DeleteWhat if the part of the brain that salvia affects, is the part that censors out all the stuff that would cause us to see that reality is not what we think it is?
Of course, as I typed that last sentence, the guy on MSNBC playing in the background was saying the phrase "two separate realities."
DeleteProves nothing by itself, but when coupled with the fact that this is just what tends to happen all the time to me, it's an indication of something, at the very least.
You may liken my belief in such a thing, that reality is purely psychological in nature, to a religion. I'm sure that Pliny does. It's all "woo," right?
ReplyDeleteNo religion tells us the reason why others do not believe in it. This one does. I have my reasons for thinking it true, and also the reason that you would not be expected to.
Hey, here's a mystery for you. Salvia Divinorum is a cultigen. That means that it cannot reproduce on its own well enough to survive. It rarely produces seeds, and the only way it can reproduce without man helping it is sheer chance; if it breaks and the broken branch happens to hit fertile ground, it will take root. Other than that, it requires cultivation. It is conceded that if man did not help it along, it would not be here.
Now the mystery part is, in Oxaca, the natives all know it as 'ojas de la pastora,' or eyes of the shepherdess. That's Spanish.
What's the native word for it? You know, what did the natives call it before the Spanish occupation? The old native word for it?
There is none. If you ask any natives, they will tell you that their grandfathers and great grandfathers *were the first to ever find it and use it.*
So it was sitting there in the forest, for them to find and use, forever... but it was always a cultigen, requiring PEOPLE to grow it for it to survive.
Comment 199....
ReplyDeletesooooo
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