I learn new things all the time - mostly things that I have known for ages.
I know them, and they are wise. But I keep that wisdom in the back of my mind until just after the point when it would have been useful to have used it... I must remember that fact and try to use it in advance of its need...
Friendship, time keeping, love and lust, acute depression and indecision are all things that I have learnt things about these last few weeks.
They are all interconnected -obviously I would not seek to impose clarity by dealing with them one-by-one.
So, first one first - acute depression. I've had a bit of it recently; different to the chronic depression that slips in and out like dead bunny on a shit tide. More of a shit with nails in it storm. I remembered, as it was slipping away .. that I do have the capacity to mellow its effects - that is what all of this mindfulness stuff has taught me. When I remembered, then I saw it off far quicker than I otherwise might - there is power in not allowing myself go around and around in paranoia's wee garden.
I saw again too just how unattractive being an angrily depressed person is to others - friends slip out of the way of the flak - they have their own indulgences and don't need mine too. Thats the way it goes - punish people by, all of a sudden, not being what is expected and they slip away hurt and (some word I don't know to express selfishness thwarted).
Its unfortunate that I associate my own and other's depression as an indulgence, an unavoidable and totally unwanted one, but one nonetheless.
Friendship - well, some of what I have just said and some more. I don't have enough of the sort that I want and thats partly cos .... don't know .... I have crap boundaries. If I like people enough to lower my guard then I am exposed and, having been exposed I feel as bothered about what I say as I am bothered about being naked with my partner (not at all - in case thats not clear).
I want more than is probably reasonable. I fail to see that others maintain a boundary between friendship and lust - to me its all about fun and passion and intimacy. The only badness is the guilt that I feel (and this is only really over thoughts not actions - I am pretty damn well behaved in reality - sadly) in prediction of hurting people for things that I have not yet done.
I have precious few friends, precious friends. When I break one its like a cow loosing a leg... there is only so many legs a cow can loose before becoming something significantly less useful. I need to stop being a cow and start being a centipede - or perhaps a 25 legged cow. Mostly though the paranoia makes me think I have lost a leg - that my udders are going to drag in the mud - when actually I merely have a bit of a limp.
Where was I... think I've covered love and lust here too and failed to talk about friendship as I had intended. So, friendship. A friend (I hope - but I just never feel sure with this person) said to me about friends and texts - so many texts in times of need from people not heard from in ages. I didn't ask for more clarity at the time - I wonder now whether the point was along the lines of just how real are these friends who only pop up to participate in the highs and lows.
I wondered, self-indulgently (you should be so lucky!), how it was that more than 3 people should show any sign of giving a flying fuck! But really I do see the point even if I am certainly immune to the problem. Who needs dozens of well wishers who are only present by text?
Probably not me.... and thats brought me back again. Friends, if at all possible, they need to be together regularly otherwise the conversation and experience is not rejuvenating itself its just a collection of catching up on each others other (real) lives since last we met. I want to see my friends regularly - to hug them - kiss - laugh - argue etc.... be with the good and the bad but also the lame times too.
Indecision - well, that may have to wait for another day.
Pxxxx
Showing posts with label paranoia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paranoia. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 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
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The extraordinary paranoia of nothing
Having written something, and knowing how few people read what I write, I don't know why I should feel paranoid never to receive a reaction - I wonder why that is.
Pxxxxxxxx
Pxxxxxxxx
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