Tips for surviving Capitalism & Quarantines

My 'what I learnt thread' is an attempt to wrestle with the moral lessons I've learned in life (and see if I have learned anything worth keeping). This will  a thread on the weird tricks and tips I've learnt from 'new age', religious and occult practices.

Body and Mind

The body and mind are not naturally split, we spend much of childhood trapped in a body-mind fusion, so splitting them is a major achievement and both parts seem OK with the artificial arrangement at first. Eventually if becomes clear that the split is neither real nor safe: the body undermines the mind by leaking, failing and dragging us back to reality and death; the mind twists and distorts the body and its natural impulses it a million ways. Part of maturity is trying to restore the 'body-mind', or as Ken Wilber mythological dubs it, the 'centaur'.  

Here are some hacks for keeping the body and mind happy and uniting them back together. All of these have helped me...

Timers

The only gear you need for this is a timer that can be easily set and has a pleasant alarm. A timer is absolutely vital because doing a exercise until you 'feel' like quitting leads to willpower battles and internal debates. Avoid these! Set a timer and slave yourself to it - until it rings you will not look at it or stop the exercise. This is the freedom of voluntary slavery. You'll either be a slave to the timer you set or you'll be a slave to your internal struggles.  Get a timer or app and use it.  

Body

Brother Mule: St.Francis used to refer to his body as his faithful 'Brother Mule' carrying his mind around and he through it deserved the compassion that all animals did. This is a clearly split body and mind but its compassionate, thankful attitude toward the flesh has helped me. Take the time to thank different body parts and organs, praise their faithful service and apologize you the wear and tear you put them through. Many people love their appearance in a mirror but still hate their flesh, this is the opposite. Skip the vanity and appreciate the real thing instead.

Inner Smile: The Daoist take this a step further and practice the "inner smile" by giving a open smile to their body parts and organs. Take a second to send a smile at your long suffering feet, 'Hey feet, thanks for all the hard burden you take   'Hey liver, how are things, thanks for all that de-toxicifcation! It may seem child-like but don't let that stop you from trying it. The more biological knowledge you have the better (the Daoist are all about medicine), smile at your alveoli if you know what they are.

Colour your Insides: Feel your brain, know imagine it glowing bright pink, keep increasing the vividness of the colour. Repeat with whatever bodypart and whatever colour. The body just seems to enjoy the attention and bright colours.

Baby Breath: There are many different types of breathing worth exploring. The basic one is learning to take a full breath by pulling the air down to the stomach (bottom of the lungs) and letting the chest naturally expand as the lungs fill. Don't hold the air in, exhale when the lungs are full and start the cycle anew. Remove any belts and open any tight waists, your stomach will initially expand as your pull the air in. Set a timer for 10 minutes, and just breath.

The key point to remember is that your mind often clenches your chest and lung, so if you took a blow to the head and went unconscious, your breathing would be freer. This is the concept to 'baby breathing', to remove all the chest-clenching fear and return to the soft, easy breathing of (healthy) babies.

Sighing exhale: Most sighing is an emotion tic and doesn't really help anything, but there another type of sighing. Take a deep breath and let all the air out of your lungs with an audible, relaxing sigh. The first thing you will learn is that you are clenching your throat and that your sigh is strangulated. So try again with a less clenched larynx, if you can relax into the sigh you'll make a natural 'uhhhhhhhhhh' that is different than saying 'ahhhhhh'

Mind

The Inner Realm: Spend time in your mind. This culture makes us into consumers of other people's externalized fantasies (media) to the point that we abandon control of our inner realm. And so get swallowed up by our own untended minds. Go inside yourself and talk to the people there, question the images and impulses that arise, track down that voice that bullies you and tell it start acting more civilized or it will be removed. This sounds like madness to extroverts but there is no substitute to putting some of your conscious energy back into examining your own inner world.

Put on a timer for 10 minutes and close your eyes, a cavalcade of worries, memories and power/revenge fantasies will arise - sort it out, do some cleaning, see what needs repair.

Sublimation: Take the unacceptable greed/lust/rage impulses and transform them into art and passion. This is the Freudian solution and I vouch for it because it is what I unconsciously did in my teenage years, I drew dozens of pictures of torn skin instead of cutting or harming my own. If you are in emotional pain, then you have the energy to do art, start a new project or go for a long hike.

Meditation: Buddhist want to chain the 'monkey-mind' down so more compassionate behavior can arise. The monkey-mind leaps around endlessly, never sated, always teetering on chaos. There is one way to domesticate the money: set a time for 5 minute, get into a comfortable position, stare at a wall or ceiling, start the timer.... Now Get Your Brain to Shut Up! That's it. Whenever the internal dialogue emerges, tell it to be quiet just for the next 5 minutes and watch all hell break loose. The monkey-mind now becomes the ultimate seducer, getting you to re-start the talk in your head with a 1000 tricks!  Fears, memories, necessary tasks, great ideas, what time is it now?, itches, coughs, anger!

Learning how weak your ability to control your internal voice is a giant step.

Do this once a day, just 5 minutes. If you ever get the 5 minutes under general control (i.e you can get yourself to shut up for a few 30 second periods over the 5 minutes), increase it to 10, then 15 minutes. 15 minutes under general control  is considered the minimum to be 'meditating'.

If you stick at it, you can start meditating when you have a free moment during the day. When I was seriously meditating, I could stop my inner voice while just taking a moment to stare out the window at Laurentian and have a few moment of peace.

Empathy Practice: This one comes from Ken Wilber. Put on some somber but soulful music and find a comfortable position. Start imagining all you friends and picture what sort of stresses they are under. Just go through your social network and spend some time imagining their difficulties and heartarches. When you can feel some of what they feel, remove some of their pain by absorbing some of it into you. As Wilber states 'newage' people will freak at the thought of 'polluting' themselves with other people's pain, but more stable humans are not overly worried by thought-exercises. Self-centeredness is a massive plague in our society and makes people dissatisfied with themselves and others. Take the time to consciously open your heart.

Body-Mind

Bodily Sensation: Lie flat on the ground, take a moment to find a comfortable position you can hold. For the next 5-10 minutes starting at a little toe starting focusing your attention on that specific body-part. Try to feel that little toe! Then the other toes, then foot... Move your conscious up the leg, then up the next leg, then up each arm, and finally from the groin to the crown of the head. The route you take through the body is not important.

Lie as still as you can, a few re-adjustment are fine, but if you are 'fidgeting' you are failing. Let the gravity of the spinning planet pin you to the ground.

Pour as much focus as you can into each body part. What sensations come from that area? It is a simple but fascinating question to me. Your mind will start doing a 100 different tasks - keep dragging it back to the body.

There is no timer, you only stop when you have complete a full tour of the body. Take a second before standing up and feel the whole body.

Always Slower: This is the one rule of yoga. Always slower. If you want to burn off calories go exercise, yoga is about dragging the mind back into the body as it goes through a series of set motions.  Always slower.

Dog Shake: One of the lessons I learned from my beloved canine companion was that you can change your mood with a good full-bodied shake!  Dogs will literally 'shake-off' a negative mood in a what seems like a minor miracle, so I decided to try it and was surprised how well it worked. Humans cannot truly get the satisfying rolling tail-to-snout shake like a dog but it the model to aim for. Remember some of the happiness dogs have brought you over the years too.

I read this post after having just put a few songs on from a "new music" folder.  I found myself listening to Klaus Schulze's The Rhodes Violin (Shadowlands) for the first time while reading through it - and while writing this reply.  Some of what you wrote brought me back to the days of reading some "essential" Ken Wilber.  I'd like to re-visit that book.

When I reached the first 10 min timed exercise, I decided to stop reading further, set a ten minute timer on my phone, and let the music continue to play.  The time passed by far faster than I would have imagined!  In other words, that monkey you spoke of was jumping around for what seemed like two minutes, then the timer went off.  It was definitely non-stop bashing me with all it had.  Thoughts of work, the nearby dog, the kind of day I had, and of course, banal thoughts or tasks made it in as well.  I look forward to trying more exercises, chaining the monkey, and then increasing the time he's chained for!

Through some yoga classes, one meditation course and some experience with guided meditations, I've witnessed some interesting glimpses into clearing the mind, as well as the positive response of body parts who've had some attention paid to them.  Having been a long time smoker up until recently, I've also seen at least once, how a guided healing meditation brought heat to my throat (an irritated body part I chose to focus on).  Though I've never forgotten how cool it felt to transfer heat to my throat, but considering that my throat is still irritated to a similar extent even now, it's a wonder I've not taken out and played that CD in the last year, except once, when shaking with anxiety and needing ANY of the guided meditations on it to calm me.

It's unclear why we so often (and with such ease) lose sight of something like the benefits of meditation, maybe for decades - despite the fact we've been moved by its power or insight.  Over the years, I have truly felt that (at least) some books, maybe this post of yours or your "Things I've learned..." megapost have come to me when I've needed or been ready for them.

The reason I chose to stop reading further, and try the 10 min timed exercise right away was that I all too often just read through something and don't stop to take it in or do anything with it, then move on to the next (apparent) distraction.  I even find I've often had to force myself to re-read a paragraph or sentence, because my mind was somewhere else entirely, despite its having just observed the words as they combined to convey some point.

Strange to come to this thread and read about Klaus Schulze when I just finished posting about him in the music thread!

It's unclear why we so often (and with such ease) lose sight of something like the benefits of meditation, maybe for decades

Very true. Part of the reason is that the unconsciousness is painful but the pain feels safe and familiar, the pain of being consciousness is different. There are also so many judgemental 'bullies' in our mental chatter (at least my own), while the inner voices encouraging our good sides are often so quiet.



Thanks for responding in such a honest manner.

In recent weeks, I've noticed more and more that I am craving more caffeine.  I'll have my usual two in the morning, then often grab one on the way home or make one shortly after getting home.  Even after that coffee's finished, I actually find myself either looking for the coffee cup to make sure I've had it all or often simply envision taking another sip.  A good friend mentioned he cannot have candy around at home, as he is a sugar addict.  With the amount of sugar I put in my coffee, I'm wondering to what extent the sugar is equally enticing/addictive to the caffeine, for me.

On a different note, in part related to using art as therapy that came up recently, I do find I really want to get creative in some way(s).  I long ago convinced myself I'm not much of an artist of any sort, yet I love the idea of carving or building something out of wood, painting something on a canvas, and definitely writing (music, lyrics/music, or just plain writing).  

I also like to say I've become addicted to landscaping. Often times I get creative with whatever landscape materials I can scrounge up, have collected or am willing to buy for a particular project.  Yesterday, I went to two of the businesses I deliver mail to, for pallets that were free for the taking.  I was able to fit 5 of them in my car.  I would take hundreds of them - despite the labour of breaking them down, removing their nails and the space required for storing them - for myriad uses.  I'd have the pieces organized for various lengths, thicknesses and type - ready for the moment I have a planned use and need x pieces of x length.  Admittedly, I'd LOVE a warehouse stacked to the rafters with all manner of things that could ONE DAY be used for SOMETHING!  (I realize this has less to do with my getting more creative than it does with my hoarding tendencies and my love of sharing that fact with everyone.)

Recycling, hoarding, woodworking seemed old-fashioned before covid, but they don't seem so strange anymore...

This week I'm going to spend 10 minutes doing the 'sighing exercise' per day and see how it goes. The #1 idea that Robert Anton Wilson taught me was to "experiment with your mind" because often just focusing on your inner realm can help in itself. I used to be able to make that 'sigh' sound but it has been a decade since I seriously tried it.

Hope that your sighing goes well! I have several times now just done the 10-min timed exercise, and feel I want to keep that up where I set the timer for at least stopping from doing things, closing my eyes and breathing. Thoughts can come and go as they please. I remember how during a yoga end-of-class savasana, we were instructed to let our thoughts become leaves that we simply let float away into the ether.

I take savasana to mean the dead man's pose for relaxation - lie flat on your back, your arms out a foot or so from your side, palms facing up. This position is the only position I've ever tried to relax the entire body, usually from the feet to the calves, knees, thighs, hips, belly and lower back, chest and upper back, shoulders, upper arms, forearms, hands, then head, if memory serves...

I've always been impressed with how people have turned junked or recycled goods into art - some of it kitsch, perhaps, but I like the idea of something having a longer life before it's disposed of. So in breaking wooden pallets into some decent boards, even the split pieces are kept separate for their use. In my mind, the tapered, sharper ends will go into the ground and strings are tied to them, for marking out and leveling purposes in landscaping. And when we can ever have fires again...some pieces will be happily burned!

The dead-man pose after a yoga session was a favorite, just lie still and let the whole planet pin you there. Once you've experienced that type of relaxation, your body at least knows it is possible .

One discovery I made about myself from experimenting with 'breathwork' is that I find holding my breathe to be comforting... Once I have expelled all the air I find there is an impulse to delay re-taking a breath because I like the feeling of being between breaths. My theory is that as a shy child, my nervous system would get overwhelmed by social situations and would kick into 'fight, flight or freeze' mode. Since aggression and escape are social awkward choices, my nervous system got used to 'freezing'. The major thing I learnt at primary school was to subtly, unconsciously stop breathing.

I suspect that a large percentage of 'asthma' is a mixture of over-flooded childhood nervous systems and over-polluted childhood products and urban environments.

One of the biggest obstacles I faced in breathwork was (what I call) "tapping the brakes" where breathing becomes a series of smaller sips and exhales rather than one flowing cycle. I do this so much it can seem normal - but when I take a nice long continuous breath and naturally exhale and refill, I can see how weird it is.

One of the best parts about breathwork is that it is easier than forms of 'za-zen' (blank mind) mediation, focusing on the breath avoids a direct confrontation with the 'monkey mind'. First I'll calm the monkey down before I ask him to be completely still.

It is hard to slow down and do these exercises because any sort of mindfulness begins returning us back to our lives.
Who wants to return to broken lives that end in death? It is easier to live in the monkey-mind hoping from desires to desires ... until the rage and dissatisfaction grow too much.

Just a week or two of paying attention to my breathing and already I noticed my body will start deeper breathing when I'm 'idling'. And that's what so much of this work does, it effects your nervous system's 'idling' states. Now when I take a break from any activity, it is becoming a habit to take a deep breath and a de-stressing exhale.

Every humans has two 'robots' to take care of: their minds and their bodies. Exercise and meditation is how we can communicate/program these robots. There is no point about trying to 'will-power' these robots into submission, you have to learn their languages and take the time to talk to them.

My motivational reminder is that 'This Culture is Criminally Insane' - so if I'm not doing something 'weird' or 'unusual' than I'm just going along with the Criminal Insanity. Despite all the 'corporate mindfulness' junk, consciously taking 10 minutes to just breathe still has a subversive edge to it.

Getting back into this stuff I can begin to see what teaching did to me: it both inflated my ego and left it bleeding on the ground; it forced me to master the terror of public speaking which never helped lessen my social anxiety and left my nervous system a mess.

Like much of the work that occurs in this realm it is hard to describe, but I can 'see' or 'feel' the trauma left by teaching in a way I couldn't a few months ago. Those effects are now 'mine' in a way I didn't feel before. I knew that my job, like all jobs, had distorted my ego but I can sense how little that distortion actually healed underlying issues.

I thought being a 'successful teacher' automatically meant my nervous system was free of social anxiety, because how could you win over large crowds and still have social anxiety? It was a contradiction. Wasn't it?

By making an attempt to bring deep breathing, quietness and self-examination back into my life, I have found the ambiguous treasure it offers: the pain that was unconscious slowly edges out of the shadows, you get to sit with your trauma. Sitting with trauma is completely different from neurotic guilt, endless negative rumination, being a victim or lack of self-worth. The trauma still hurts, and finally seeing how you have been distorted and reacting to that trauma is embarrassing, but you mind feels freer and lighter. If you are sitting beside the trauma, you are no longer wearing it and gazing out through it.

I don't think it is a coincidence that I haven't done much on the bitternet internet today (outside of R2N and tracking down a piano song), I've have heard no news, not even a headline. When the global theme of 2020 seems to be 'asphyxiation', those of us how can take a deep breath should treasure that. Set aside 10 minutes to enjoy breathing is a easy "tip for surviving Capitalism & Quarantines"

I'd recently been thinking about how quickly I went from trying the 10-min exercise a few times to shelving it. In those weeks, there have certainly been some peaceful moments, journalling and stretching/yoga that have been practised, but not much in the way of slowing down of the monkey mind.

A few weeks ago I had a self-esteem building experience with a woman that's still building me up, but it's not escaped me that very quickly and easily my insecurities and anxieties can surface and overtake me. Maybe one day I too, can get to sit beside some of my trauma and see it from a different place.

People need external sources of self-esteem, it is BS when you are expected to be only effected by internal processes ('just think yourself happy' = new age BS). We need recognition, praise, hand-holding and friendship from other humans. So I hope you find external validation and positive human relationships.  But I'm learning how surprising little fulfilling desires actually heals, and worse, how much those external sources mask the trauma so you don't deal with it.

The question is not about anxieties 'surfacing' but recognizing they are already present and distorting our egos, behaviours, and desiring in unhealthy ways. We desire in distorted ways because we are wearing the trauma and seeing through it. Being a professor gave me a position of power, and public speaking gave me popularity, both built my Ego up (but in a volatile way), so I told myself  I was "fine" but my twenties were madness.  The craziness of the decade between 1995 and 2005 - that millennium madness - that saw me go between 20 and 30 was  

My lifetime trauma is very mild on a global average but it is still my own and I must do something with it.


The Buddhists look at humans going through life tumbling from desire to desire because we live in personal hells of hurt and confusion. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism are all about desire and suffering


You don't have to be a hardcore as the Buddhists ... but ... When I order books online I dont track them, get fast shipping or even think about them; but then COVID really delayed orders, books I wanted to read during the COVID quarantine. So I check tracking, I looked at long-blown arrival estimates, waited for the daily mail.                 I saw my old friend 'desire' and he was down in the muck with consumer products (the books were not from Amazon but they were pleasure reading).   I classify myself as a "North America" so this sort of ugly behaviour isn't usual.  If you spend enough time with the Buddhists, the emotion of 'desire' becomes more of a separate thing. If you spend enough time with the Darwinists, the emotion of 'desire' becomes dopamine.

Rich people don't have to deal with trauma if they choose not to, they can always buy something external and feel good for a few days, more addictively they get power, prestige and reputation. Poorer humans chase cheaper rushes at convenience stores, bars and Vegas. These days, the Middle Class desires discreetly online. Nobody want to avoid looking at trauma.

Culture offers a 1000000000000 options to keep desiring, but a good culture also offers a few opportunities for healing. I guess the era of 1995-2005 offered them both too - but in such radical doses. I still have trouble incorporating 2005-2015. Who know if I'll ever get to process 2015-2025    

Am I right in thinking a Darwinist would likely be into Hedonism, then?

Two weeks ago, I'm sitting down journalling in my garage. CBC2 is on. I love a particular song by The Decemberists, called June Hymn. The song gets introduced by Tom Power and I quickly run inside, grab my dad's harmonica and find the key of the song. I play along on the harmonica, sing, play along, sing... rising ever more with emotion. Want to cry my heart out. Wasn't aware of my thinking about anything in particular. Wonder how it is that music can so immediately and totally run us through the gamut of emotion. Is this part of my trauma coming out? Is it tears of joy?

It took me some good many months before I had a good cry about my dad's passing. I was sitting on bleachers in the back 40 of a horse farm I was renting an apartment from. Joker was with me. I sat down and faced the trees, which were swaying in the wind. Walkman in my ears. A moving song playing. I balled so loud I wondered if anyone back at the house would hear. Some days later I would have a similar experience to that of my recent June Hymn, only it was while driving due East very early one morning. I came up a rise in the road and a massive sun was beaming straight at me. Music playing. Green fields and flowers on either side of the highway. It was all too beautiful.

>> Darwinist would likely be into Hedonism<<
I think a Darwinist would value surviving to have as many kids as possible and giving them as much resources as possible. A Darwinist would have no essential problem with hedonism but survival and reproduction are the goals. The worry of many Christians is that Darwinism = Atheism = Hedonism, but

It is tricky to judge what is and isn't healthy emotions. My perspective is that life is too beautiful, and it is too painful and sometimes you must experience that intensity, but you cannot live at that intensity. Those powerful emotions seem disorientating but they actually give me perspective.

Music is a magic key to so many realms of the souls we rarely encounter in daily life: techno-utopian, sweet goth melancholy, folk heart-ache. To never feel those emotions would be as bad as trying to always feel them. I have no magic answers but sometimes it is nice to know there are others beside you on the road we're traveling.

Appreciate the Darwinist explanation and the music/gamut of emotion response. I've recently observed how huge highs can quickly be followed by similar lows. I'm going to try to keep an even keel, wherever and whenever I can, but try to remember to just be witness to it all - and NOT be absorbed by it.