States

Ken Wilber describes the three states that every person has access to, at every stage of development, as the waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep states.

He also describes how those states manifest themsleves in the gross, subtle, and causal realms.

The gross body and the subtle body interest me the most in this area:

I think lucid dreaming gives a person the first access to a "subtle body". I always struggle trying to remember that fact during lucid dreams. It takes quite an effort to remember I don't need to try and walk up the stairs. I can float up, or even just "materialize" at the top of the stairs. But, I still have a very strong connection to my "gross realm" physical body, and my lucid dreams occur so infrequently that I don't get much subtle body practice.

Meditating Brainwaves

I’ve started dabbling with binaural beat technology, again. I had some old Hemi-sync cassettes, some Brainwave Suite tapes, and a few other tapes that I used a few years ago. I eventually captured them to .WAV and audio CD, and finally to MP3s (and recently onto my iPod). But I only used them once in a while, mostly as a relaxation aid in the afternoon after work.

A few months ago I purchased Holosync CDs and really saw an improvement in my meditation practice.










But, I like to customize things.

I don’t really like the music, Tibetan bells, rainforest sounds etc. mixed with the binaural beats, something all the commercial products seem to do.

So I used BrainWave Generator to create a few 10 minute segments at various brainwave frequencies without any other “added ingredients”.

I use a 40 hz tone that I can barely hear. Above 40 hz, it sounds too much like AC hum, and at higher frequencies the audible tone can get a bit annoying.


I use Goldwave to edit files and convert them to MP3 format. A 1/4 second sample of a regular song looks something like this:

A 1 second sample of the brainwave generator output looks like this:

For kicks I mixed a Sally Oldfield song, Flaming Star (I just discovered Sally's music a couple of weeks ago) with the one of the brainwave files:

Seven Things

Mushtaq tagged me with this.........

Seven things I will do before I die:

1. fight cancer (skin, colon, lung, or prostate)
2. evolve in three directions
3. chop wood, carry water
4. memorize the 99 most beautiful names
5. watch E.T. and Star Wars
6. Read Beezlebub's Tales to His Grandson at least once, preferrably twice, all the way through
7. die gracefully (or if possible, die before I die)

Seven things I can do:

1. play guitar
2. manage a DOD program that actually saves U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars each year
3. learn new things until the day I die
4. forgive people (exception: see #3 in next section)
5. start over
6. wait patiently
7. keep a secret

Seven things I can't do:

1. Speak another language fluently
2. defend myself
3. tolerate intolerance
4. cut off my pony tail
5. remember the one thing I must never forget
6. communicate as effectively as I would like to
7. always finish things that I start

Seven things I say most often:

1. d'oh!
2. I love you too
3. It's taco Thursday!
4. Crazy cat
5. Give me 5 more minutes
6. No wonder people hate us
7. Thank you

Seven people I would like to pass this on to:

1. zataod
2. nisabba
3. adastra
4. dan
5. ottmar
6. RGMB

i we it Connectivity

The inner lines of the enneagram intrigue me the most because they seem to indicate directions of "movement" between levels of an holarchy




I have still not figured out how to make practical use of that information

it we i Holarchy

I think of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful as a holarchy. At least in it's manisfestation in the human realm.

The Good can't exist without the True.

The Beautiful can't exist without the Good.

Dream Yoga Log

I mentioned that I haven't had much success praticing the Four Foundational Dream Yoga practices, much less the practices of the night. About a year ago I added a new section to my 10x log just for the night practice. Four check boxes, one for each practice. Basically each practice corresponds to 2 hours of the night (8 hours altogether.) I thought I would start simple. Orange meant that I had remembered in what part of the night I had awakened. Yellow, green, blue would represent varying degrees of success with the practice itself.

This month's log looks very much like every month for the past year:



Evidently I prefer sleeping to Working.

Exercise Shift

I started modifying my exercise routine a little bit late in 2004. Mushtaq had recommended Steve Barne's Five Minute Miracle for some beginning breathing exercises. I ended up working with that and also a DVD from Mushtaq's Sufi Order.





So instead of observing my breath, or how I breathed, I started "breathing my body" and doing the 5 Tibetans, and also what I later discovered drew from "Warrior Wellness"




A lot of the source material came from Scott Sonnon, and early in 2005 I finally got some of those excellent DVD's:

99 Name Flash Cards

I started creating flashcards last year that I mostly let run on my Palm when I have it in the cradle on my desk. A program called Splash Clock, does a random slideshow kind of thing.

Figuring

I started trying to figure out what "figure out" meant because I had never really thought about it before. The word "figure" has 12 different meanings according to dictionary.com including:

• - a list of figures, as in a book
• - don't forget to "figure in" xyz
• - having a nice figure (a body, or amount of money)

I think of "figuring it out" as a sort of "a-ha!" experience. It seems to involve a process:

I get bits of information as input.

That information simmers in me with things like repetition, practice, contemplation

Then it seems to, or has the potential to, suddenly "figure" (Ah Ha!)

But in a non-verbal, non-symbolic innner way that I can only make meager attempts at externally verbalizing or symbolizing to someone else.





Like with this blog entry.

Dream Yoga

I keep wanting to practice these four foundational practices, but the desire to sleep seems to kill my intent most of the time.