How you diddling?
I'm well pissed off with my back probs today as the pain from yesterday is worse if anything - took 4 attempts to sit down at the table earlier.... grrrrr. I can walk slowly in straight lines but have to stop to turn and I have to do it carefully or get agonising pain.
Tis a bummer. Worried that I may have torn something open inside.... but probably not, probably just the nerves being bastards as they mend - at least I hope thats what they are up to.
Interesting the Buddhist concept of mind and body being entirely one and not separate as we tend to think of them. Makes much more sense realising how the false sensations induced by my nerves can cause hallucinatory effects - I guess its cos they are wired into the brain, not the right parts but probably close enough.
The sensation of boiling water pouring down my leg and of open flames being applied brings tiny mental "dreams" of events that might really be associated with that happening.... easy to see how extreme pain might well drive some people mad.
Its just pissing me off - its not one of those things to go with and "pace" - I think thats running after a ball thats rolling down hill.
That all sounds a bit grim, sorry. Jolly at heart - I feel fine/well inside and I think thats part of the problem. If I actually felt ill then I'd be happy to sit about resting.... but I want to get out and to bounce about.
Take care, work like the devil, take no shit and take no prisoners!!!! Love and a sound kick.
Showing posts with label neural connections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neural connections. Show all posts
Friday, May 8, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Neural connections
Hi some thought and experiences generated by a friends very vivid memory and by their saying "no, I think he is describing a journey" when I struggled to describe thought/visualisation.
The experience I have - that I just touch on - as my thoughts become more visual (also auditory, tactile and whatever the fancy word is smelling - NLP, cant keep it in my head ) is actually like that in a trip, more LSD than a day at the sea. Its also like what I think is called wakeful dreaming - a state just before sleep or just before waking when my conscious mind is able to influence the very vivid thoughts that are present in my dream state. Influence... well slightly and to a greater extent than I could with practise .... too much will and I snap out of it, too little and I slip back fully into sleep.
Anyway - they said, about the image, something about where we have images within us ( I suppose others might think from without us ) that are brought together to form something so vivid and beautiful.
A perception I have from wakeful dreaming and other experiences is that we have a phenomenal supply of images. Laid down as we experience new and repeated experiences - praps linked to the creation or maintenance of neural connections.
In some way the images may form some sort of library stock - being brought together to help generate perceptions of what might be - in the future or in terms of how we think about alternatives options.
Thought - in "words" - may be a short cut to the whole image (remember, including sound, touch, smell etc.). Its easier to use this sort of short cut most of the time - it does not take as much computing time and, like words themselves, thoughts can be taken to equate to symbols. Like symbols they can be arranged in linear orders to form greater meaning and sentences.... communication. Something it took me longer than most to do as a child - I never understood the point of words when "reality", (at least) 4 dimensional, and in glorious technicolour, was so much more useful... but then I spent more time looking at trees and clouds than communication.
I wonder whether we "learn" (acquire perhaps) the tendency to replace raw image with worded thought and then become less able to access that raw information - except perhaps in dream or, perhaps, in other states of mind.
An experience of taking LSD is that it stops the filtering of information for relevance. For eg. normally we don't notice the carpet beneath our feet. With acid you see the carpet (with hallucinations too to entertain and baffle) but at the same time every thought/knowledge/etc that has ever been associated with carpet is accessed in true colour, sight, smell and sound.
I wonder (I do a fair bit of that) whether, in meditation, there is something in the way that we allow thought and experience to enter and play around in the mind that tends too to allow access to the more vivid, deeper, true (non-symbolic), store of mind.
Praps in conditions like altzimers where there is damage to the neural connections access to information stored as symbols/thoughts is restricted - as the words or thoughts fail to come the context ceases to have meaning. I think its a common experience for people to "find" a thought or memory at some other time - I wonder whether the brain continues to try to process unfinished searches for information and finds that the images that it wants for one process are still accessible attached to another memory and associates them together - sometimes the associations are very accurate and others are more bizarre.
It makes sense then to keep laying down images - to notice life in a mindful way. Praps this is the way we see/perceive new events - they make an impression, create new connections or support existing ones. If, as it seems so many of us tend to do, we do few things mindfully then praps we are not making new neural connections - we feed what we see into the existing script and do not notice anything new... like the fact that its a new day, song, smile, touch etc.
So, being, seeing, touching, mindfully - its a way of feeding our raw data, the splendid soup.
That was a long one. And, needles to say, a fairly manic one.
On identifying triggers for depressive states - its far easier to do for manic states. The examples people give some times seem too broad; as if they were not really accessing, or getting the need to, the tipping points - the little things that make all the difference.
Take care, Px
The experience I have - that I just touch on - as my thoughts become more visual (also auditory, tactile and whatever the fancy word is smelling - NLP, cant keep it in my head ) is actually like that in a trip, more LSD than a day at the sea. Its also like what I think is called wakeful dreaming - a state just before sleep or just before waking when my conscious mind is able to influence the very vivid thoughts that are present in my dream state. Influence... well slightly and to a greater extent than I could with practise .... too much will and I snap out of it, too little and I slip back fully into sleep.
Anyway - they said, about the image, something about where we have images within us ( I suppose others might think from without us ) that are brought together to form something so vivid and beautiful.
A perception I have from wakeful dreaming and other experiences is that we have a phenomenal supply of images. Laid down as we experience new and repeated experiences - praps linked to the creation or maintenance of neural connections.
In some way the images may form some sort of library stock - being brought together to help generate perceptions of what might be - in the future or in terms of how we think about alternatives options.
Thought - in "words" - may be a short cut to the whole image (remember, including sound, touch, smell etc.). Its easier to use this sort of short cut most of the time - it does not take as much computing time and, like words themselves, thoughts can be taken to equate to symbols. Like symbols they can be arranged in linear orders to form greater meaning and sentences.... communication. Something it took me longer than most to do as a child - I never understood the point of words when "reality", (at least) 4 dimensional, and in glorious technicolour, was so much more useful... but then I spent more time looking at trees and clouds than communication.
I wonder whether we "learn" (acquire perhaps) the tendency to replace raw image with worded thought and then become less able to access that raw information - except perhaps in dream or, perhaps, in other states of mind.
An experience of taking LSD is that it stops the filtering of information for relevance. For eg. normally we don't notice the carpet beneath our feet. With acid you see the carpet (with hallucinations too to entertain and baffle) but at the same time every thought/knowledge/etc that has ever been associated with carpet is accessed in true colour, sight, smell and sound.
I wonder (I do a fair bit of that) whether, in meditation, there is something in the way that we allow thought and experience to enter and play around in the mind that tends too to allow access to the more vivid, deeper, true (non-symbolic), store of mind.
Praps in conditions like altzimers where there is damage to the neural connections access to information stored as symbols/thoughts is restricted - as the words or thoughts fail to come the context ceases to have meaning. I think its a common experience for people to "find" a thought or memory at some other time - I wonder whether the brain continues to try to process unfinished searches for information and finds that the images that it wants for one process are still accessible attached to another memory and associates them together - sometimes the associations are very accurate and others are more bizarre.
It makes sense then to keep laying down images - to notice life in a mindful way. Praps this is the way we see/perceive new events - they make an impression, create new connections or support existing ones. If, as it seems so many of us tend to do, we do few things mindfully then praps we are not making new neural connections - we feed what we see into the existing script and do not notice anything new... like the fact that its a new day, song, smile, touch etc.
So, being, seeing, touching, mindfully - its a way of feeding our raw data, the splendid soup.
That was a long one. And, needles to say, a fairly manic one.
On identifying triggers for depressive states - its far easier to do for manic states. The examples people give some times seem too broad; as if they were not really accessing, or getting the need to, the tipping points - the little things that make all the difference.
Take care, Px
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