On the Day the Wall Came Down

Too stupid to be lucid!
And now I got this song by Pink Floyd in my head all the time, because that's what happened, the wall came down, but not in a good way!

So I was walking along a corridor on the way to my "living quarters", seeing two of my neighbors talking to each other there, but it was more like all of the building was one huge community apartment. Everyone had their quarters behind a door they could close, but in a way more like at a hotel, with shared living space outside with furniture and all. It dawned on me that something about this wasn't quite right as I walked into my own space, and I looked at my Master's image on the wall and said to him that I thought I might be dreaming but just wasn't quite sure about it. So I tried to test it by flying upward in the room, but the first time it didn't work and it became just a normal jump. With some grim determination I insisted that "I can do this," and then I floated upward. But before I could enjoy the discovery of my dream state I got interrupted by a loud cracking noise from the bathroom. I got back down to the floor and ran over there to investigate and found that the wall had cracked open above this metal bar above the tub, as if the bar was too heavy for the wall. There were some clothes and/or towels on the bar, and I removed a wet towel that was still stuffed on top - but still all this stuff couldn't be that heavy?! Then I noticed there was already another large crack that had opened along the ceiling too. I went to grab my camera to document the damage for the landlady.

My Master was personally present in the living room now and was just silently watching me, but my annoying grandma (who died years ago) was also there and bugging me with some irrelevancies as usual, plus there were two critters running around that seemed to be half rats and half cats, and I didn't want these critters in my apartment and tried shoving them out the window, all the while the grandma kept pestering me while I kept trying to make clear I had no time now because I had to photograph the damaged walls and ceiling. And my Master just stood watching my idiocy.
I apologized to him later - after waking, that is - because I felt so stupid.

But well... I know this is exactly where I have to persist now. It's like when I started running the treadmill at McFit two years ago, and running a treadmill for my first time since my old gym hadn't had any, and in the start I cranked the treadmill up to an unbelievable 13 kph and felt I was running so fast, for a whole minute! (It's about 8 mph, it's ridiculous. It's an ok speed for a constant 30 minutes, yet anything but a sprint speed!)
Then I discovered the profiles which change speeds automatically - a profile has 20 segments, the length of which depends on the total length of the session you program,which can be 10, 20, 30, 40 minutes... so at 10 minutes, one segment is 30 seconds. Whenever the fastest segment at 19 kph (~11.5 mph) came I had to shift back down because I couldn't hold that speed for 30 seconds - until one day I made it. Then I kept working on doing the fastest segment at the next level, where it's 21 kph (~13 mph). By now I can do the 30 seconds at the highest level (10 of 10) where it's 23 kph, and the 21 kph I can hold for a minute.
Last year I could run at 14 kph for 12 minutes and at 15 kph for 5 minutes. By now I can run 15 kph for 12 and 16 kph for 5 minutes. How did I achieve this? By persistently trying again and again. And that's the same thing I'll have to do with my awareness now.
My Master knows this, and of course he didn't do anything but just watched me. What should he have done? It would have been like, you're trying to run a marathon and someone gives you a bicycle. Riding the marathon on the bike will be easy, and you'll probably be the first one to finish! But of course, you'll be disqualified. :)

Food for Thought on a Rainy Weekend

It's been a rainy, rainy day, I still managed to haul in some groceries in the morning and ever since noon it's been raining. My day off from workout. So what have I been doing? Beadwork... finished some items earlier which will be offered at Art of Dark, a Gothic store in Cologne, once I get to ride there once more and bring them along (for sure not a rainy day like this one as it's a 2 hour bike ride, & 2 hours back as well).

I'm currently reading Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming and have been looking through my dream journal to highlight some dream signs.
I also bought myself a sleep mask since nightfall comes very late this time of the year here at 51° North, and it's much better than laying a towel over my eyes as I had done so far.

(I think Bela Jaws is laughing at me though, and he thinks I can't see it with the mask but now we got photographic evidence, don't we?!.) LOL

I usually wake up at least once in the night anyway, so I can take the mask off then and still be woken by the dawn.

Some days ago I finished reading Journeys Out of the Body by Robert A. Monroe. It's quite fascinating but in the start also kind of weird to read, and not because of the experiences he relates in it. In fact, what is most bizarre to me is how in the start he introduces the subject of the book with the utmost caution.
It must be stated that this is an old book, first published in 1971, thereby far older than myself, and the story of his out-of-body travels, which happened to him accidentally in the start, began about 3 decades before I was even born, in 1958, so those were different times and I can't (and prefer not to) imagine how I might have ended up had I lived in those times! (Not exactly burnt at the stake anymore, but probably not a lot better than that!)
Well, I'm aware than a lot of people probably, tragically, still think in similar categories nowadays. Myself I've been an outcast pretty much from the start, and many would probably like to burn me at the stake if they could, or at least have me locked up in an institution or something - which in fact was done to me during my early teenage although I've never been mentally ill. So the fear of the possibility of mental illness, such as Monroe experienced it, has never been an issue to me, as I've already been through with all that. And I've always known for sure I could never ever want a "normal life", to be a part of human society, to work in a normal job and/or in the end to even become someone's wife and have my body abused to produce offspring - all these things were,and are, to me the most nightmarish idea in the universe (especially the part about mating and offspring)! So I've skipped the whole trying-to-fit-in, since it was never a viable option. Some people told me I was courageous but it simply never was a viable option, I don't feel I had any choice (other than suicide), and if it's not a choice it probably isn't courageous... whatever.

Anyway, I can say that I've found a way of life for myself and am happy with those choices I did take - but the journey goes on, of course, and I'm looking for answers and for ways to grow my awareness. To me, this life is not so much about being than it is about becoming. And so what puzzles me most about Monroe's introductory words in his book is how people will be afraid to change their views accordingly, with the evidence for vast worlds beyond this life - when once there will be undeniable evidence, that is,which everyone can only find for themselves - because it is an "uncomfortable and frightening" change.
Is it??
So I have arrived at this conundrum again that is utterly beyond my comprehension: What might be so uncomfortable and frightening about NOT simply ceasing to exist? How to possibly wish their ephemeral, enslaved existence is all there ever will be?!

Fortunately, trying to make sense of that mindset is not a thing I need to do. I can't even understand the desire to "fit in" and to have a "normal life". When I've always had the contrary desire, to break free!

Here's some food for thought I watched today. Some of the stuff this guy is talking about seems weird to me, like that part about aliens (I think that comes part 2, 3, or 4 - these ones I've watched so far),but as he mentions in one of the latter, you shouldn't throw out everything of it just because you disagree with part of it. Another thing I vehemently disagree with is whenever this love and compassion shit comes up - but I'm keeping an open mind and trying to learn and make myself my own picture of it all - one that a large, predatory fish can make sense of. So far I've had no personal experience of my (non-physical) Second Body, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it looked like this.

A Fascinating Big TOE

The toe in "Big TOE", of course, stands for "Theory of Everything". I was just browsing an online book store I had lately ordered from (a German one but selling English books, with free shipping inside Germany) and found Thomas Campbell's book   in the cosmology section, and in trying to find more info about it I came across his video lectures (here's part 1  ), which are quite fascinating. I can agree with much or even most of what he proposes, especially the assumption that consciousness is fundamental.

The one point though that I vehemently disagree on is, of course, that "love" thing. In this respect he definitely gets way too new-agey and overlooks the scientific fact that destructive behaviors are a huge driver of evolution, not only in the realm of biology in form of natural selection which is based on ruthless competition and predators and prey continually having to outsmart each other, but also in human technology. Nuclear power for instance was originally developed in WW2 in order to produce atomic bombs, but it is to this day indispensable for powering space probes and Mars rovers, and also rockets used for space travel are derived from missiles used in war.

Today I watched part two   of his lecture, which is also over 2 hours. I have felt for as long as I can think that physical "reality" is an illusion, so I can relate quite well to his virtual reality metaphor (although I'm not familiar with the particular computer games he mentions since I've always considered such games a waste of time - when there's so much to learn and to do in the "virtual reality" we're already in).
Being familiar with the concept of the Holographic Universe and thereby the proposal that spacetime might be pixelated, I remember such 3D pixels are called voxels. I think that was according to Leonard Susskind in his book The Black Hole War  , which I also own - voxels presumably being short for "volume pixels"? - a voxel would be one cubic Planck length in size (about 1^-35 m) and could hold one bit of information.

Again, my criticism of Tom Campbell's theory is only that it is way too anthropocentric. When he was talking about the well-known question of whether a falling tree in a forest makes a sound when there's nobody there to hear it I was already thinking, what about the other trees that are there?! Then he went on to mention squirrels as being conscious enough to count - sure, they are mammals, thereby pretty similar to humans. But trees don't have enough "decision space" to be considered conscious? He should definitely watch David Attenborough's "The Secret Life of Plants"!
I definitely consider a complex, multicellular life form such as a tree as conscious. You may argue that trees have no ears to hear - but then, what is sound actually? It's pressure waves in a medium (such as air) which causes our ear drums to vibrate,and that's what gives us the sensation of sound. Such vibrations can likewise be picked up by leaves or even by the trunk of a tree.
By the way, sharks (my totem & alter ego) have no externally visible ears either, but they do have inner ears and have excellent hearing.

Another point I disagree on is that we supposedly "de-evolve" through fear. To me, fear is just one of those challenges we have to tackle on our paths in order to grow. How could we possibly grow if everything was just loving and sweet and compassionate? (Sharks like me have very little use for such fluff.)

We are consciousness, and consciousness is fundamental. But we are definitely NOT "one"! We may once have been one, as we all have sprung from the same source, but in my opinion the whole purpose of the game is individuation. As I have laid out in an earlier post, we all have grown from the same substrate, but the goal is to separate and become more differentiated, just as the goal for a child is to become an independent individual, instead of "merging" back with her or his parents.

I'll still have to watch part 3 of the lecture.