FIBO photos, and some bad news too

So the month is nearly out & I still haven't posted about the FIBO - the annual Fitness & Bodybuilding expo I attended with two friends on 4-11th.

I've been busy lately, also had a bunch of doctors' appointments, and not exactly happy about the lingering freezing weather.
This morning I spent at another medical office where I'd been transferred for x-rays, and I was in for a surprise, not having expected the cause of my ailment to be shown this suddenly and clearly, and my personal doctor thought it was probably just tense muscles.

After the x-rays had been taken I had to wait another while and then was asked to meet the doctor who had examined them. He first asked me once more what my complaints were, and I told him it's pain in the lower back, toward the left hip. He said that was no wonder and explained that the x-rays showed obvious damage to a disk!
I was quite a bit shocked; I hadn't expected this at all.
He said my personal doctor will have the x-rays by Monday, and I would discuss any further treatment with her then. I told him I'm an athlete and if he could tell how severe this diagnosis really is in this context. His reply was of great comfort to me - he said that without sports it would certainly get much worse, and that it was important to do sports. Thank you, good doctor, that's the best thing I could have hoped to hear!

After leaving the office I quickly calmed myself over the initial shock: Nothing has changed, Diane, you've been living with this for many years now, except you didn't know it. The pain came and went, it used to be to the right side of the lower back the past 2 or 3 times, this time it's on the left. It's not continual. It's not really caused by the cold weather, it's just that cold temperatures make any pain much worse.

As I was already downtown I then went to a drugstore and found they offered a 20% discount on all sports nutrition supplements by their home brand, so I bought 2 cans of protein powder and a whole bunch of protein bars. I'll keep running faster than ever in my life, yep, and lifting heavier too. This is what I do!

 

 

Thanks again to my friend who took the photos - you did an amazing job! :)

Quantum mysticism, but watch your step

No, you're not allowed to collapse my wave function. I prefer to be somewhere out there, unobserved, so my position and momentum remain unknown. I'm both here and not here.
Some random positions are shown below though.

My bike, observed at rest. ;)

Vast fields.

Climbed on top of some wooden thingy.

I loooove these flowers! All over the forest ground,
but only for 1 or 2 weeks each spring.

These were taken about a week ago, on the first and so far only day that went significantly over 70 F, so I had to finally be back out there again!

The next day was FIBO, I still meant to post about that too but I'm really behind with stuff. At least my chemistry MOOC (online course) is finished now, I did the final exam the other day. Only 76%... but well, it's not as if I studied terribly hard for it, all I did was the minimum requirements as I had a lot else going on.

Then there was also that competition for Lucid Dreaming Day, I really felt a need to get creative for that - and I won the 3rd prize!! With this picture:

Shark Breach in Amsterdam

I won access to an online course offered by World of Lucid Dreaming (there's a lot of free info too, check it out). This prize is awesome as I couldn't have otherwise afforded it, it's 50 $. The downside though: the author identifies as a "skeptic". She sees dreams as "fantasy", as "produced by the brain", as "not real". It really puzzles me how someone with this kind of view can have lucid dreams, or how someone with frequent lucid dreams can still hold such a view... either way.
On the other hand, right in the first lesson she mentions, "The French philosopher, Rene Descartes, found his lucid dreams so vivid that he concluded the waking senses are illusory and not to be trusted."
I can totally relate to Monsieur Descartes there!!

As frequently mentioned earlier, it's not easy to walk the line and I again and again find myself in between all the fronts. I'm still reading Science and the Near-Death Experience although I was very put-off by the foreword. It was written by one Neal Grossman and it starts out perfectly fine. His foreword covers eight pages, and I was 100% on his side in everything he said until on page 7 of 8 (paperback version) he starts about a "message" being hidden in all this research, and "the message is universal love." I cringed!!!

You can go to the link above and click on the book to "look inside" and read the entire foreword in the free preview. I didn't fully read it before ordering, otherwise I probably wouldn't have ordered the book. It's just the foreword and the author of the book itself, Chris Carter, still brings up a lot of valuable facts and viewpoints, even going  into quantum mechanics. Still it makes me apprehensive that he approved of having this bullshit in the foreword. And generally - no wonder the divide is this deep, and no wonder the materialists make fun of proponents of a wider view of existence - when the latter more often than not come up with such silly, childish, and entirely unscientific bullshit!

What is love? A silly animal emotion, not more! Sure, I do love as well, I love sunshine, sharks, metal music. I love Bela Jaws (my plush shark). But I'm not saying there's anything special about this. I am an animal, just like everyone else. I love as much as I hate, I get tired and hungry and thirsty - and cold, most of all, much more often than I'd like to! I feel all these things like any animal does, any living organism who has consciousness, any human or dog or fish.

It is simply not rational to see in love anything more than that. From a spiritual perspective it may even be very dangerous, as I believe this is how the demiurge lures in souls to assimilate them. We do not know what exactly waits beyond the end of our bodies' lives, but for this trap I'll be on the lookout.
But spiritual matters aside, as I said, that universal love crap is not rational, but the book is about Science and the Near-Death Experience. And being not rational is exactly what the materialists usually accuse their opponents of, and sadly I must admit they all too often have a point there.

I'm still standing my ground. For the little we can know, I believe consciousness is primal. But no "universal love" bullshit. I'm standing my ground even if I have to stand alone.

Lucid Dreaming Day Competition!

I've been working since yesterday on my entries for the Lucid Dreaming Day competition; you can enter a written entry (a dream report) or a photo entry or both - ONE for each category, that is; if interested you can learn more at the above link to the competition page.

I haven't officially entered yet, there's still a few days left and I'd like to get some opinions first. My written entry stands, but I'm still struggling with the decision which photo to use, therefore I'm showing both of my creations here now before officially entering one of them.
Both are using the same photo of myself, and both also show the same bridge in Amsterdam, but from different perspectives. Since the competition is asking that you're doing a reality check in the photo I have tried to emphasize my watch which I'm checking to find it displaying a very weird time, "star date Y2K".
I have basically no option to take a new photo of myself doing a reality check since I have no one who could photograph me and the next time I'm meeting up with some friends who could snap a pic of me will be on Saturday for the FIBO, only one day before Lucid Dreaming Day, which would be too close and I don't want to have any unfinished business still waiting then, so I had to use an existing photo. But I think my somewhat wondering expression in it is quite fitting.

So, which one is better?

I also still have a more colored version of the second one, which is otherwise the same (except for that rainbow thingy). You can see the weird roller coaster shape of the bridge better in the 2nd option(s), and I took great care to include my hand-drawn shark. :)

What follows is my dream report. It's also an older dream from last year which I have already related elsewhere, but I edited and "de-cluttered" it so as to have it stand by itself.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

And Overhead the Crows Are Whirling

I was at home sorting through some old things from my past that I had forgotten I ever owned. I've always listened mainly to metal, and I found some old metal band shirts of mine. Some of them were moth-eaten and no good anymore but some others were surprisingly beautiful, with very intricate artwork on the front and back, of rare bands most of which I couldn't remember to ever have listened to. I was very curious about them and wanted to listen to them, so I took a pair of headphones. If I wrapped the t-shirt around the plug of the headphones, that should do the trick and enable me to listen to the band. Well, seriously?
I was about to try just this but then I figured this was too stupid to possibly work - even in a dream! Wait... in a dream? Oh right...

Having realized I was in a dream I went to the window and passed right through it, I went out flying through the closed window. I had no plans and still rather poor control... but  flying always comes naturally when I'm lucid - and sometimes also when I'm not; I've frequently been flying in dreams even back as a small child, long before I ever read books about dreaming and learned what lucid dreams are and that many people fly in them.

So I just went around the neighborhood and ended up in some backyard where I talked to another young woman until a rude man appeared who interrupted and annoyed me. I think that's when I first woke up and tried to switch on the LED spot by my bed which is set to red color (it's a light that can be set to different colors with a small remote control) because red light is the least disruptive when you hope to fall back asleep once more afterward, since I meant to write down my lucid dream. I switched the spot on and it did work but only very, very dimly (it's meant to be dim but not that extremely); when I tried to make it brighter via remote control it only got even dimmer and dimmer, then back up to the way it first was, and back down. There was only one button on the remote control where there ought to be two to control brightness (up & down). I looked at the wall next to my bed where there was a framed picture showing the portrait of my spirit guide, and told him my conclusion, "I'm still in a dream." In the framed portrait he nodded and said, "very good."

Then I went out, flying through the closed window once more in the same way as before. There were some festivities in the streets outside or a fair, streets were really very crowded. Being a very introvert and reclusive person, I tried gaining height and flying away since large crowds bother me but I still had poor control and couldn't get away somehow. The people kept looking up at me and their stares appeared to work like some weak "tractor beams" on me, I was struggling against their force, futilely trying to gain height and fly away.
Some nasty guys among the crowds started bothering me with stupid remarks and stuff. Since I could not get away I came flying at them instead to attack, I grabbed them by the back of the neck and crushed their faces against the wall, killing them. It was easy, as if their faces were masks with skulls of brittle plaster underneath. I think I killed three men in this way, then I started throwing lightning from my bare hands and killed a few more by striking them with the lightning bolts. But strangely it didn't impress the rest of the crowds very much, let alone cause anyone to run away in panic as one might expect.

I woke up again. It was morning and a female friend of mine who apparently lived with me was busy making breakfast. I was looking around - this wasn't right, this wasn't my kitchen nor hers, and we don't live together! "I'm still dreaming," I told my friend.
"Are you?" she mumbled just by the way, as if this was perfectly unremarkable, and continued making breakfast.

And out the window I went once more, this time even through the closed roller blind. It felt weird, for a brief moment I thought I was getting stuck halfway but then I passed through and was again flying through the air outside with my usual, swimming motions. Having regained my lucidity for the third time I decided now to try something I had wished to do for a long time: transforming into a shark! I even succeeded halfway - at least for a moment and for a first attempt it worked great, much easier than thought! But soon I got distracted again as the streets below were still crowded. Trying to avoid another confrontation with those people I slipped away more stealthily this time. For the time being I seemed to be just a disembodied observer of the scenery below me, unfolding like a movie. The sky was reddish, of vaguely apocalyptic semblance, with large flocks of crows flying, gathering, circling, to some ominous background music, a song that went on and on, "and overhead the crows are whirling..."

There were only some few people in the otherwise deserted, twilight street below, who were headed to a half decrepit sort of church or temple. They were Christians who, frightened by the looming Apocalypse, wished to speak to their priest. Entering the derelict, ancient building, they found the priest awaiting them inside. They were unaware of the fact that he was really "the enemy", but I immediately knew when I saw him. He was Satan's son, from the movie "Warlock: The Armageddon" (played by Julian Sands), he had probably killed the real priest and taken his place.

The small group of Christians were left troubled and without the comfort they had hoped for as their "priest" did nothing to alleviate their fear that the Apocalypse was at hand. I found myself standing inside the ominous temple with them, and now the priest's eyes met mine. The others still had no idea who he really was but I knew, and he knew that I knew and gave me a sinister smile. I would be his chosen accomplice in bringing the Apocalypse upon the world.

When I eventually woke up for real I still had this song of the whirling crows playing in my head, which I eventually spun into a little verse conveying pretty accurately the theme of this dream:

And overhead the crows are whirling,
Black stars that in white space are circling
Like an inverted galaxy;
Darkening the skies, unfurling,
In savage blood and netherworldly,
The blackest banner ever seen.


As a side note, I had this dream in January 2014 and was most delighted about it: I had already tried for years but had always had just the occasional, very brief lucid moment in a dream, every couple of months or weeks at best - now having "survived" multiple false awakenings, this finally had to be the breakthrough!
But I got disappointed. I'm still left wondering how I managed this feat then, or rather, how it simply happened to me. I must admit my lucidity had for the most part faded in the part with the whirling crows and the temple; still I had by far the longest streaks of lucidity I've ever had so far in this dream.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

A good Evil Friday

"Evil Friday" is being celebrated here!

Latest updates - as I said in the video, I cut off my hair again by at least 3'', added some slight layering in the front plus some bluish black dye underneath along the sides. All done by myself, of course, as I wouldn't entrust my hair to any other hand. I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome, except that there's still lots of split ends left, but nothing to be done about it; shoulder length is as short as I'd ever go, in fact even as short as I possibly can go without being condemned to permanently wearing some woolen hats in the freezing German climate.

This year it's particularly bad. We already had some few milder days in early/mid March, but lately it's been back to freezing & stormy winter weather.

Some friends at the gym told me this morning they had to scrape the ice from their windshields. Myself I don't have this problem fortunately, I only wear a "windshield" on my nose (AKA sun/sports glasses) when riding my bicycle - this kind of windshield was badly needed these past few days.

"Evil Friday" wine & meat (turkey).
Wrenches are unrelated; I had to
change a wheel yesterday. :D

New hair.

 

 

As for a couple of years now, here's my favorite song for this day - "The Curse of Headless Christ". :D

I also compiled a playlist containing this & a couple more songs, mostly more upbeat (for my standards at least) since it's a cheerful day among Satanists. Maybe I'll add a few more to it. Note: this is a very eclectic list containing a range of genres, I guess most people are unlikely to like all of the songs. :)