Yesterday was a good day albeit I didn't get as much writing done as I'd liked... guess what? You're right - work!
8.30-9.30, 1h Meditation
9.30-11.30, 2h Wandering Mind Meditation Post, Short Story Submission
11.30-23.30, 12h Demo and Work
23.30-00.30, 1h Food!
A straighforward schedule isn't it?!
Meditation has been floaty at best even though there have been some really good moments of concentration. But, like a friend said yesterday, the important thing is simply to sit and be there. Well, at least that I'm doing...
;)
Afterwards I managed to revise the Is Meditation Difficult post and publish it online. Because I still had some time before I left the house I submitted The Running Man one more time. I also received my very first "not interested" reply.
Guess that accounts for some sort of triumph... it's getting out there!
I went to a small demo in Brixton about the ongoing public service job cuts situation before going to work...
Work was good. We showed The Dhamma Brothers today. A film about the introduction of Vipassana Meditation in a maximum security prison in the USA (Alabama of all places...). It's a powerfully moving account of the human ability for personal transformation. Even though it was the second time I saw it, it was as at least as moving as the first time. If you can, watch it. It's the real thing.
After work I had a couple of ideas whilst biking on the way home. (in fact I think I remembered a couple of ideas I had whilst going to the demo and had another one).
Of these I only remember one now. One which I will endeavour to write straight after this post.
But I'm hoping I'll remember the others - they were related to the stuff I want to do this year for NaNoWriMo (which I want to start typing coming midnight tonight...)
I was really knackered when I got home and so it was simply time for some food, for a few pages of Gene Wolfe's The Wizard Knight (I didn't even manage to finish the chapter!) and sleep - lights on and everything - not all my lying posture meditations worked exactly the way I'd like...
But, today, is another day!
Writing rules!
Peace!
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Integral Replies and the Difficulties of Meditation
Friday was a more compressed day than I'd wished... sometimes you're just carrying a good momentum and... well, you just wanna keep at it, ain't it?!
Here's the schedule:
9-10, 1h Meditation
10-11, 1h Food + Emails
11-12, 1h Blog posts
12-14, 2h Reply to Ken Wilber's
The Meaning Of Enlightenment Part I: Past, Present and Future
14-00, 10h Work
00-01, 1h Wandering Mind blog post. Is Meditation Difficult?
This a good day even if I didn't have that much time for writing as much as I wished. Particularly I did manage to write out most of the stuff I wanted to say about Ken Wilber's video. The stuff he has to say is quite interesting but, from my perspective, also substantially incorrect.
And I think the reason for that stems simply from a fact he himself mentions, that he is a Pandit, a theoretical teacher rather than a guru, one who practices. This is why he gets so caught up in the ideas, the reasons, the logic, the reasoning, the intellectual debate. It is very refreshing to hear him but I fear people might take it as being the truth, which it isn't, not by a long shot, on a practical way. My attempt is to correct that as best I can - albeit it being from a theoretical point of view also...
Because it concerns so directly with meditation I will post this on the Wandering Mind, Wondering Soul blog.
On my way from work I had this idea for another post for this blog and so that's what I did when I arrived home...
And then it was time for sleep...
Peace!
Here's the schedule:
9-10, 1h Meditation
10-11, 1h Food + Emails
11-12, 1h Blog posts
12-14, 2h Reply to Ken Wilber's
The Meaning Of Enlightenment Part I: Past, Present and Future14-00, 10h Work
00-01, 1h Wandering Mind blog post. Is Meditation Difficult?
This a good day even if I didn't have that much time for writing as much as I wished. Particularly I did manage to write out most of the stuff I wanted to say about Ken Wilber's video. The stuff he has to say is quite interesting but, from my perspective, also substantially incorrect.
And I think the reason for that stems simply from a fact he himself mentions, that he is a Pandit, a theoretical teacher rather than a guru, one who practices. This is why he gets so caught up in the ideas, the reasons, the logic, the reasoning, the intellectual debate. It is very refreshing to hear him but I fear people might take it as being the truth, which it isn't, not by a long shot, on a practical way. My attempt is to correct that as best I can - albeit it being from a theoretical point of view also...
Because it concerns so directly with meditation I will post this on the Wandering Mind, Wondering Soul blog.
On my way from work I had this idea for another post for this blog and so that's what I did when I arrived home...
And then it was time for sleep...
Peace!
Monday, 9 February 2009
Back From Old Burma
Yes, well, all things must change and thus, here I am, finding myself in a strangely familiar situation.
The myanmar meditation retreat was excellent. As always. Lots of ups and downs and remembering things I had forgotten, re-learning things that I still remembered and finding new things altogether.
So much so that a part of me wants to type up the journey and publish it online.
Perhaps even adding stuff from my previous retreat.
But I must be realistic and say - not for now! It's more important that I actually focus on that book about it rather than in creating more work. The important thing is the content and that book really has all the key things. My hope is that it will reflect not only my experiences - only important because they serve as examples for the practice - but also the deep relevance of the practice.
You'll be hearing about it soon...
Obviously, as I meditated I had a bunch of ideas...
Some of these are cartoons about the practice (which I have called Mindfull Versus Mindless) and are quite comical.
But some of the other stuff contains not only ideas for stories that I had already been working on but also a couple of new things. A series of one page comics called Life Inside Mind and yet another, more lenghtier series called either Rigor Mortis or Shunted Light... I still haven't got my head around it.
In any case I think I have learned a few valuable lessons this time. Part of me really wants to share them but I don't know if this is really the space. What I will do is write an email, both in english and in portuguese and send that out to some friends.
Maybe I'll post it here.
Maybe.
I had some new ideas for LAND OF FOG and so, now the book has two more chapters.
(3 or 4 pages more)
And there are also a couple of ideas for a couple of short stories that take place after the events in LAND OF FOG.
And they end up tying in with another book I started writing last year but that won't see the light of day anytime soon. This is probably the conceptually most daring thing I've ever considered doing and I want to be more mature in order to make it all that I think it can be. A deep exercise in creativity. I think it will write itself through the upcoming years.
So. I've been polishing a new draft for LAND OF FOG but also some letters that I wrote to friends while away. Also a series of comedy sketches in portuguese... and, of course, RIGOR MORTIS that simply just doesn't get out of my head. I'd like it to be a 60 or 70 page comic but I feel that the potential is really for an ongoing series. At the same time I think doing a series is just milking it a bit. It needs to be dense and powerdul. Actually it could also work as a feature film. Quite well I would say. The only problem is the ending. For the time being it's an open ending. There's really no punchline. Or, the punchline is, things are as they are: we merely choose when faced with them. And the journey is ongoing.
Things to do for the next few days;
Get back on track with A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN, finish LAND OF FOG and write up a first draft for MS, a children's book.
And a bit more on RIGOR MORTIS.
And finish those comedy sketches...
Hope you are all well!
peace
The myanmar meditation retreat was excellent. As always. Lots of ups and downs and remembering things I had forgotten, re-learning things that I still remembered and finding new things altogether.
So much so that a part of me wants to type up the journey and publish it online.
Perhaps even adding stuff from my previous retreat.
But I must be realistic and say - not for now! It's more important that I actually focus on that book about it rather than in creating more work. The important thing is the content and that book really has all the key things. My hope is that it will reflect not only my experiences - only important because they serve as examples for the practice - but also the deep relevance of the practice.
You'll be hearing about it soon...
Obviously, as I meditated I had a bunch of ideas...
Some of these are cartoons about the practice (which I have called Mindfull Versus Mindless) and are quite comical.
But some of the other stuff contains not only ideas for stories that I had already been working on but also a couple of new things. A series of one page comics called Life Inside Mind and yet another, more lenghtier series called either Rigor Mortis or Shunted Light... I still haven't got my head around it.
In any case I think I have learned a few valuable lessons this time. Part of me really wants to share them but I don't know if this is really the space. What I will do is write an email, both in english and in portuguese and send that out to some friends.
Maybe I'll post it here.
Maybe.
I had some new ideas for LAND OF FOG and so, now the book has two more chapters.
(3 or 4 pages more)
And there are also a couple of ideas for a couple of short stories that take place after the events in LAND OF FOG.
And they end up tying in with another book I started writing last year but that won't see the light of day anytime soon. This is probably the conceptually most daring thing I've ever considered doing and I want to be more mature in order to make it all that I think it can be. A deep exercise in creativity. I think it will write itself through the upcoming years.
So. I've been polishing a new draft for LAND OF FOG but also some letters that I wrote to friends while away. Also a series of comedy sketches in portuguese... and, of course, RIGOR MORTIS that simply just doesn't get out of my head. I'd like it to be a 60 or 70 page comic but I feel that the potential is really for an ongoing series. At the same time I think doing a series is just milking it a bit. It needs to be dense and powerdul. Actually it could also work as a feature film. Quite well I would say. The only problem is the ending. For the time being it's an open ending. There's really no punchline. Or, the punchline is, things are as they are: we merely choose when faced with them. And the journey is ongoing.
Things to do for the next few days;
Get back on track with A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN, finish LAND OF FOG and write up a first draft for MS, a children's book.
And a bit more on RIGOR MORTIS.
And finish those comedy sketches...
Hope you are all well!
peace
Friday, 5 September 2008
Sequential Brains, Parallel Minds
For a few days now I've been finding myself cycling about, showering, eating, even writing and talking on the phone or with other people, even talking to other people and thinking about this idea of how comics and brains (and minds) are closely related.
The basic premise (as it has been for a long while, since a good two month meditation retreat managed to surface - among many things) is that comics work as a kind of an aphorism to the way the brain and the mind operate.
Recently I saw a video clip on TedTalks that really had an impact on me. A good friend sent it to me and I'm now placing it here so that, if you want, you can check it out as well;
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
So, if we broadly say that the left hemisphere of the brain is more responsible for memory, action, decision making, prevision, the filtering of hypotheses, and that the right hemisphere is more connected to the "nowness", the being in the moment, the acute perception of what's happening, right now, the feeling, the intuition, we end up seeing the human brain as being two different processors working synergetically. On one hand we have a parallel computer. It's all about what's arriving now, what's flowing inside itself and coming in through our astouding sensory system. On the other hand we have a serial computer who, by relying on memory of past experiences is projecting consequences and possible courses of action in response to what's present.
So one half of our brain is worried about sequences. The other is just accessing what's there. So one is always looking for completion (doomed to never really reach it for change is always occurring) and the other is always complete (for all there is is simply all that's there). And if we look deep enough inside ourselves, we can see hints for this. Usual feelings of dissatisfaction easily mixing with the seemingly contradictory knowings of our shortcomings and hopes.
But what has all this to do with comics?
Well, on a first instance, comics are about words and images. Sequential art, remember? (thanks Will Eisner)
Now, with words we more or less take is a steak. Even if want to swallow it whole, we still need to chew and swallow it bit by bit. But images are somehow easier to enter. They take less time to be absorbed. In a fraction of a second we can read the image that contains the panels that will take us a few seconds to absorb.
Now this may seem a little bit strange because, in fact we intuitively know (or feel?...) that the image has more content than the words... more on this later.
So, in a way, what I'm trying to say is that images are more akin to the right brain and words to the left. It's like feelings and thoughts. You know how you feel instantly. But to say it in words might take a lifetime. Especially because the nuances of what we feel have seldom been described to us and are rarely used to getting on with life. One could almost say that the left brain is geared to get on with things and the right to appreciate whatever it is we're experiencing.
(in fact the right brain is where the experience is located - which kind of hints to me that the right brain kind of has priority over the left...)
Let's imagine that we're reading a comic.
We open the page and BOOOOM!! We have beautiful imagery flooding our right hemisphere. We still don't know what the heck is the comic about on that first page and our right brain is already immersed in the visuals of the page, the tactile sensations, the sounds around us and, of course, the left brain catching up to this fresh new torrent of information.
The left brain catches up. We move from the left upper corner of the page to the right, progressively making our way down the page, noticing captions and speech baloons, sound effects and other visuals that will help us recreate more fully the expected sensory experience for this page. The left brain is quickly catching up. It's seeing the words right now and making billiions of connections faster than we could possibly track. And yet we feel it all simply by recognising the words. At each word, at each set of words, the whole spectrum of our memory is scrutinised, trying to ascertain exactly what is the relevance of that word to ourselves and, within context. But in order to ascertain the context more precisely the left brain needs to connect with the right. It needs to return to the nowness, where all the raw information is contained and make new connections, select different aspects and filter them differently. Our eyes jump from panels to captions, speech balloons to images, we move through the gutters between panels, recreating the passing of time and a change of moment, we jump back and forth between words and images. The brain buzzes with activity. We find ourselves enjoying a good comic!
But what does this mean?
For me it means that through the process of reading comics, of going backwards and forth with words and images, naturally reinforces the communication between the two hemispheres. By placing two similar opposing experiences: one that is very much instantaneous and another which is establishing connections and filtering through a maze of probabilities.
It seems obvious that by engaging regularly on such an exercise (an exercise that is not merely of following a general sequence - like most literature or of relaxing into a state of being, of being guided through a set of predetermined experiences - like film) the way our brain interacts with itself becomes more fluid. Not only our ability to create patterns increases (to extract meaning from a particular experience) but we also become highly involved with the experience itself. The raw power of images.
So why the title?
The title hints at this idea that our brains are increasingly used to be sequential machines. We receive a particular set, an input, and we are asked for a solution, an output. But that is not the sole nature of our minds. Our minds are also fully functioning, fully rooted experiential machines. Contemplation is one of our given rights. In fact it is crucial for a sucessful survival. With accurate input of information, we cannot hope to sustain an efficient living state.
My feel is that comics somehow provide an easy and powerful insight into the nature of our being. Both metaphorically, both in terms of ideas and concepts wanting to be shared, but also, and perhaps most importantly by their very nature. A nature born of our own nature and perhaps closest to it than we might dare imagine.
---
From here on it would be interesting to analyse the differences between North American, European and Asian comics. Also the historical evolution of comics and language. And just what the heck is the role consciousness plays amidst all of this. After all consciousness is surely more than just the brain or the mind? Right? (or Left?!...)
The basic premise (as it has been for a long while, since a good two month meditation retreat managed to surface - among many things) is that comics work as a kind of an aphorism to the way the brain and the mind operate.
Recently I saw a video clip on TedTalks that really had an impact on me. A good friend sent it to me and I'm now placing it here so that, if you want, you can check it out as well;
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
So, if we broadly say that the left hemisphere of the brain is more responsible for memory, action, decision making, prevision, the filtering of hypotheses, and that the right hemisphere is more connected to the "nowness", the being in the moment, the acute perception of what's happening, right now, the feeling, the intuition, we end up seeing the human brain as being two different processors working synergetically. On one hand we have a parallel computer. It's all about what's arriving now, what's flowing inside itself and coming in through our astouding sensory system. On the other hand we have a serial computer who, by relying on memory of past experiences is projecting consequences and possible courses of action in response to what's present.
So one half of our brain is worried about sequences. The other is just accessing what's there. So one is always looking for completion (doomed to never really reach it for change is always occurring) and the other is always complete (for all there is is simply all that's there). And if we look deep enough inside ourselves, we can see hints for this. Usual feelings of dissatisfaction easily mixing with the seemingly contradictory knowings of our shortcomings and hopes.
But what has all this to do with comics?
Well, on a first instance, comics are about words and images. Sequential art, remember? (thanks Will Eisner)
Now, with words we more or less take is a steak. Even if want to swallow it whole, we still need to chew and swallow it bit by bit. But images are somehow easier to enter. They take less time to be absorbed. In a fraction of a second we can read the image that contains the panels that will take us a few seconds to absorb.
Now this may seem a little bit strange because, in fact we intuitively know (or feel?...) that the image has more content than the words... more on this later.
So, in a way, what I'm trying to say is that images are more akin to the right brain and words to the left. It's like feelings and thoughts. You know how you feel instantly. But to say it in words might take a lifetime. Especially because the nuances of what we feel have seldom been described to us and are rarely used to getting on with life. One could almost say that the left brain is geared to get on with things and the right to appreciate whatever it is we're experiencing.
(in fact the right brain is where the experience is located - which kind of hints to me that the right brain kind of has priority over the left...)
Let's imagine that we're reading a comic.
We open the page and BOOOOM!! We have beautiful imagery flooding our right hemisphere. We still don't know what the heck is the comic about on that first page and our right brain is already immersed in the visuals of the page, the tactile sensations, the sounds around us and, of course, the left brain catching up to this fresh new torrent of information.
The left brain catches up. We move from the left upper corner of the page to the right, progressively making our way down the page, noticing captions and speech baloons, sound effects and other visuals that will help us recreate more fully the expected sensory experience for this page. The left brain is quickly catching up. It's seeing the words right now and making billiions of connections faster than we could possibly track. And yet we feel it all simply by recognising the words. At each word, at each set of words, the whole spectrum of our memory is scrutinised, trying to ascertain exactly what is the relevance of that word to ourselves and, within context. But in order to ascertain the context more precisely the left brain needs to connect with the right. It needs to return to the nowness, where all the raw information is contained and make new connections, select different aspects and filter them differently. Our eyes jump from panels to captions, speech balloons to images, we move through the gutters between panels, recreating the passing of time and a change of moment, we jump back and forth between words and images. The brain buzzes with activity. We find ourselves enjoying a good comic!
But what does this mean?
For me it means that through the process of reading comics, of going backwards and forth with words and images, naturally reinforces the communication between the two hemispheres. By placing two similar opposing experiences: one that is very much instantaneous and another which is establishing connections and filtering through a maze of probabilities.
It seems obvious that by engaging regularly on such an exercise (an exercise that is not merely of following a general sequence - like most literature or of relaxing into a state of being, of being guided through a set of predetermined experiences - like film) the way our brain interacts with itself becomes more fluid. Not only our ability to create patterns increases (to extract meaning from a particular experience) but we also become highly involved with the experience itself. The raw power of images.
So why the title?
The title hints at this idea that our brains are increasingly used to be sequential machines. We receive a particular set, an input, and we are asked for a solution, an output. But that is not the sole nature of our minds. Our minds are also fully functioning, fully rooted experiential machines. Contemplation is one of our given rights. In fact it is crucial for a sucessful survival. With accurate input of information, we cannot hope to sustain an efficient living state.
My feel is that comics somehow provide an easy and powerful insight into the nature of our being. Both metaphorically, both in terms of ideas and concepts wanting to be shared, but also, and perhaps most importantly by their very nature. A nature born of our own nature and perhaps closest to it than we might dare imagine.
---
From here on it would be interesting to analyse the differences between North American, European and Asian comics. Also the historical evolution of comics and language. And just what the heck is the role consciousness plays amidst all of this. After all consciousness is surely more than just the brain or the mind? Right? (or Left?!...)
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