Gathering the total of yourself
Everything
The ugly bits and the beautiful

Pieces and shards of yourself
They fit together nicely
Often leaving small and barely perceptible holes

Missing pieces to an incomplete self
In order to answer that basic question
‘What do I want?’
You need only to look at
What is missing

I was told that 2009 is my Christ year.

I’m not totally clear as to whether a "Christ Year" is the year of your 33rd birthday or the 33rd year of your life (or the year you label yourself as being 33). It doesn’t really matter; I’m an atheist; don’t tell Jesus.

Whatever you call it, it is for me a significant point of change.

Change is never pretty. It can be disjointed; erratic. We either regress to where we started, or take hard earned control of our social mores and personal ideals, shaping and defining what we ought to be doing.

Many people I meet tend to regress, never questioning the basic social ontology they find themselves trapped within. They avert the crises by buying new cars, complaining about useless things, or otherwise distract themselves from the clear question of what they ought to be doing with their life.

I’m certainly not perfect in this regard. I’ve just spent the last year distracting myself with random girls, travel to exotic places, photography, and living the douche-bag life in La Jolla. It all seemed to work fine up until life’s little crises culminated into an emotional breakdown, as if life is reminding me to pay attention and answer the fucking question we’re all too scared to even ask. Strange way to end the year.

I don’t know what this year is going to be like. Change is funny that way– we’re never really sure what it’s going to be like, and even though things typically turn out for the best, we’re scared shitless until we figure that out.

The best advice I’ve gotten: go for a run, listen to music. I have to say, that totally helped. And it subsequently reminded me that I’m ridiculously out of shape. I ran along the coast, I was wheezing, desperately trying to catch my breath. It could have been the lack of oxygen to my brain, but I momentarily forgot about everything. A moment of clarity, an epiphany.

This my Christ year.

And I honestly don’t know what that means yet. I recognize that I need to replace those bad habits of mine with some good habits. I’ll need to clear my head, this means a break from the distractions. All of them. Or do I regress?

Encinitas, California
Near the towering golden lotus blossoms there is something quietly surreal as you walk through the meditation gardens

It is man and nature in harmony

Look deeper Odysseus
You have seen every move
And all end in tragedy

Go back
Undo your meticulous planning
And see the inverted path

There, you see now
Standing on the precipice
As she flies from your open arms

You, Odysseus, cannot fly
And cannot heal her

Others have caged her
And nearly killed her
You must shape the world
So that she may fly

Hold her with open palms
And let her mend her wings

Strong Odysseus, Shaper of worlds
Shape the world Odysseus
That she may fly

Give her a world to fly in
So that she may fly away

breaking down the doors of perception
the dizzying distractions and running thoughts
all melt effortlessly away

without the doubts and fears
you look out and see nothing the same

you see only the world as it is
simple awareness with no filters
endless appreciation for the
vast beauty in all things

it is calm, serene
with infinite potential

I was reading about Dual-coding Theory, which states that visual and verbal information is processed on distinct and different cognitive channels. The verbal cues refer to symbolic codes; in other words, arbitrary representations of something (such as reading or listening to a speech). The visual cues are perceptual, that is, a direct representation of what you are seeing.

Dual-coding refers to utilizing both visual and verbal, that is, symbolic as well as perceptual codes. Memory seems to favor the visual channel, and this is known as the picture superiority effect.

Think of watching the presidential debates. The information is symbolic (through words) as well as visual. What we remember tends to favor the visual, which can then act as a voluntary trigger to retrieve the words.

This is an interesting concept, and taken further leads to synesthesia– a rare phenomenon where one cognitive pathway triggers another involuntarily. For example, someone with synesthesia may see numbers in different colors; or see musical notes. And not a voluntary association, but a completely involuntary reaction. The advantages should be obvious, such as encoding symbolic information into long-term memory as easily as a visual information.

I wonder, if with the right training, we could develop in ourselves something like synesthesia; associating visual/perceptual codes to symbolic codes — allowing perceptual representations of abstract concepts.

We tend to do this naturally with metaphoric associations, such as an emotional reaction to an image or sound. I suspect we can take this much further, where we directly leverage perceptual codes to involuntarily trigger any number of symbolic/abstract information (whether emotional, or intellectual, or artistic)

I was thinking about the 20% of my efforts that have yielded 80% of my life; that is, the most important actions that led to who I am today. The list grew pretty long– and included friends, books, projects, art, travels, etc.

An interesting theme emerged– of all the friends, books, mentors, travels, etc., the ones that made the list tended to be those that challenged me to do something new. More importantly, “something new” that I was uncomfortable doing at first.

Perhaps we can define ourselves in terms of challenges overcome, and levels of comfort achieved… Comfort in the face of uncertainty and struggle.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
- William Blake

Taking notes during an altered state of consciousness:

I go deep. Voices point me towards what first appears as an abyss. Further down it opens up. Amazed at the overwhelming detail of what I am seeing, I wonder what I am not seeing. An infinite number of paths each with limitless depth — the experience reminded me of zooming in on a fractal.

Breaking through that glowing membrane … I go deeper … outside of my conscious mind. It is dark as there is no visual representation to adequately describe the experience. Like driving late at night only the road before me is illuminated yet the ever present feeling of the infinite abounds. And what can only be described as children were pointing me towards a glowing opening. As I thought “follow my happiness”, they seemed to agree, “yes, that way”.

At any point I could have stopped, any path, any where — all of them so rich in details and life — the focus of my attention seems to drive me forward. Details unfold as I go. Dark, but never empty and not frightening.

And so I went, onward through another layer, darkness at first and blinding light seemed to mix together. I came upon two distinct windows of blinding light, my eyes. I’m looking out through them but the feedback is recursive. They are connected to me through this path, this loop I have just created — I am seeing “me” from the other side but through my own eyes.

My body, I realize, is not a temple — it is merely a vehicle from which I am aware; finite awareness of an infinite space, like zooming in on the edges of a fractal.

I stand up. Assuming my experience is at an end — the world looks the same. Only it is not. I close my eyes and see… Strands of consciousness and thought, glowing fibers criss-crossing into infinity. I move from strand to strand.

I decide to exercise — meditate through tai chi. Simple stretches and moves. My eyes closed — everything seems to move with me, it is not me that is moving, it is the universe moving through me; I am only an awareness of the movement of the universe. It seems to dance and rearrange itself at my every whim. Conscious awareness of a finite piece of an infinite universe.

I was momentarily worried that I just tied my brain in a knot. I recognized that was just another filter, trying to map the experience into terms I can rationalize… like trying to imagine a hypercube in 3-dimensions. It seems to cross through itself in impossible ways, but once you realize what it is — it’s just your mind rationalizing it in 3-dimensions that makes it seem impossible.

I realize it is only our perception; the ultimate filter on the infinite. The epiphany was when I realized it all comes back to my awareness in life — that I am just this singular awareness of a finite perception of the infinite — and where in past meditation I did not see, I realized that the movement was the key. You can see and experience the boundless energy of the universe, but letting it move is amazing. Life becomes the movement of the universe through you — things you are thinking come and go into your life — exactly like zooming into the edges of a fractal.

Breaking through the membrane of conscious thought– we remove the
filters and experience the universe as it truly is… Finite awareness
of an infinite existence

**
All that scurrying about with various bouts of drama — all very exciting — and long after you’re gone the tide continues. Our impact seems simultaneously important and meaningless.

The concept of “importance”, seems relative to our own perceptions of reality; a circular train of reason that if removed leaves everything without explicit meaning, just that it exists. And by that logic, art, beauty, etc all fall into that same category: yet another perceptual filter. Beauty exists only in our minds, perhaps so that we may persist in a world whose meaningfulness may be of our own design.

And after you’re gone — perhaps the world is slightly shaped so that your perceptions may persist for others to experience

** and why does my iPhone take better pictures than my camera?