Note to self:  Wake up and put glasses on before making breakfast smoothie.  Chicken broth is not a substitute for soy milk and smoked paprika is not a substitute for cinnamon.  But hey, one swallow and I’m awake now.

I got a surprise this morning when I stopped to see a friend.  After I left, I remembered something and came back.  I honked as I pulled in the driveway and he met me at the door.  We stepped into the house to pick up the item I forgot, and I could hear he’d turned the radio on.  Fox News Radio blared.  Really loud.  I made a joke at the time but just now it percolated back into consciousness.  It never occurred to me that this person would listen to the news, much less Fox news, before work every day.  That that is part of his routine in preparing for the day.  Not that I’m judging what he wants to do, I’m just surprised is all.

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I just came in from the garden where I re-routed some giant pothos along the walkway. A bunch of tiny lizards ran frantically ahead of me but I wasn’t chasing them, I was just walking that way.  It made me wonder how often I’ve run away from something that was never chasing me to begin with, but was rather just trying to be alongside me on the Path.

My friend Everett is newly interested in altered states and how to achieve them naturally through meditation.  He takes a combination of prescribed medication that has taken away his sex drive the past many years, and he’s into unconventional sex with his wife i.e. BDSM, an erotic practice involving consensual use of restraint and  intense sensory stimulation.  He’d not yet been successful in achieving what he considered meditation, and he asked me how much I thought the medications he was taking affected that.  I told him that in my experience, anything that heightened or suppressed my brain activity might affect my ability to “get in the slot.”  That included the restraint and spankings he was so fond of.  I told him:  “We meditate to bring ourselves to a stillpoint several times a day, in order to refine our perception and enable us to grasp the more subtle nuances of sensory input via our neuro physical makeup.  The more we are able to bring ourselves to a place of detachment from external stimulation, the more subtly our nervous system will become attuned to respond to the nonphysical environment around us.  When you are in a habit of bombarding yourself with ever increasing modes of external stimulation, you are likely to lose the subtleties entirely and that could keep you from reaching certain altered states of consciousness.” Continue reading →

I hear people talking about everything causing the prolonged distress on the planet lately.  What prolongs the distress on the planet is everyone who thinks they are at the mercy of the government, the court system, or any fill-in-the-blanks.  I believe I’m at the mercy of God/the Universe, who wants for me what I want for me.  And S/He/It/They unfailingly send me more crap to worry about if I start looking at everything that’s wrong with the world.  So I just stop looking at it.  You can, too.

A friend said it feels like his old life is trying to box him in to prevent him from moving into the new life.  I told him “It’s good news when you begin to feel boxed in, that just means you’re beginning to occupy more space than you did before.  Like being nervous to leave junior high for high school, or high school for college.  The change makes you nervous and excited at the same time.  This anxiety is just the greater part of you getting you in position for expansion.”  And you want to be more expanded, to have a more expanded experience available to you, to perceive a wider range of choices.  That’s when the fun begins.

Andrea