Living in the present is like peering in to the long-dead past.

[Isaac Sauvage]

today, after waking up from a nap, as i was strolling through the square to get to the market (a SUPER market one might say) in order to restock the larder, i had this feeling for the first time ever that i was directly living a previous life, gazing through the eyes of a long-dead lifeform to soak in the workings of a perished but fascinating culture.

oh man, what a relief! :D

instead of reading the shitty news of the day and trying to understand, interpret and react as a responsible adult in non-shitty way... instead of being bombarded by random noise from people around me who seem to have no cultural conception of keeping a civil voice... instead of listening to the unceasing hum of my bitchy body, poorly-socialised and basically childish nature... instead of trying to shrug off my wreck of a failed career... instead of trying to avoid thinking about my complete non-starter as a family man in order to keep myself going for one more day... for reasons that tend to vaporise when gazed upon directly... um, anyway... instead, instead, instead.

INSTEAD, for that short moment in time, it occurred to me to just let that all go and feel a more distanced, perhaps cosmic, POV.

i mean, in terms of cognition, i've considered for some time now that we current humans are the real atlanteans of legend. we reached incredible, unprecedented heights in earth history, then by the fault of no one individual of group or individuals, the healthy-function of critical mechanisms that sustained said global civilisation fell apart from a million directions at once. of course, nothing like we're seeing now. :)

anyway, point is... for me to instinctively FEEL anything close to what i've mentally worked out the last decade or so? it was like left brain meeting the right for a memorable moment in time. priceless!*



*to borrow an ad campaign from a bunch of long-dead hominids whose main purpose in their lives was to aggrandise personal assets... an obsession that didn't help them too much when nature came a callin' in the end.

 

[sleepy]

You transcended the pressures of those around you and you let yourself drift by letting go of it all?
And if so, was it like They were the wall drifting away from you and evaporating when you experienced this?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

yes and no. there was the release of which you speak, but also the sense that i was a million miles and eons distant looking back (and across) at the situation.

i think being in that after-nap haze was key to the situation... like being in that sometimes place at night when you're half awake and half asleep, have control of neither, but maintain a foot in both worlds.

 

[sleepy]

Sometimes place sounds like Hypnogogic Sleep, but when it occurs on waking, they call it hypnopompic sleep. Since this is a Wikipedia page dealing with Parapsychology, maybe I can find a better page on the subject?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

 

[faralos]

I call it being high or hung over!
actually it sounds like most of my High School Years
walking around in a daze half the time
the other half I was sound asleep on my desk!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

"write drunk, edit sober" as ernest hemingway said.

but seriously, just being back on a small dose of zoloft for the first time in years has boosted my concentration and creativity a bit, recently.

re: hypnagogia,
none of the primary states mentioned are really a good fit for what happened to me, but "loosening of ego boundaries ... openness, sensitivity, internalization-subjectification of the physical and mental environment (empathy) and diffuse-absorbed attention" describe the situation well, i think. (from WP)

if you look at what happens when a brain 'wakes up', the highest functions are probably the last to come online. my guess would be that the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus-related function, and grey cell networks in general would be prime candidates.

there's also the fact that training becomes a kind of instinct over time, and instinct doesn't require the same high-level brain process to function. that also suits my experience very well, i think.

in other words, take my relationship with the troubles of civilisation: it's something i've spent a lot of time thinking about since my teenage years, and at this point have crystallised many of my viewpoints on the matter. crystallised them to the extent that i don't fret as much about man's crazy world as much as i did in prior years. this allows me to enjoy the moment more but also opens me to more abstract perspectives on life. so when i was walking through the square yesterday, i think my self-training through the years kind of kicked in and allowed me to disengage and meditate more easily. without needing so much higher brain function. not sure how much sense that makes, but there you go. :)

 

[Shockman]

Without getting into the mysticism, what it sounds like to me is pineal gland stimulation, perhaps from the zoloft, perhaps from attitude.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

funny, there was actually a 3rd eye / pineal exercise i was trying about half a year ago. it involved thwacking yourself with your index or middle fingers on the back of the head. Rx was something like 60 thwacks a day.

 

[StevOz]

New research I read about today, interesting stuff. Not sure what applications this could possibly have, still it proves we are far from knowing our own selves.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/252835.php

 

[Shockman]

Interesting stuff indeed 'Oz.

I wonder if they think now that the existing model was wrong, as it seems they are suggesting. I would not make that assumption. What I'm suggesting is a point that has been eluded to many times in the type of reading that I like, that they both are probably true, that it couldn't be done before but it can be now. I don't want to go David Wilcock on us here, I think he goes out over the edge, but ...