Integral Troubleshooting

I think I’ll do a blog about Integral Troubleshooting before the one about the Essential Ingredient. It’ll help lay the foundation for it better and give me more practice in communicating with the camera.

Maybe it would help to write out some of the ideas I want to talk about first so I can focus better in front of the camera. If even talented people like Marina or Christine have to have multiple takes for their videos then I shouldn’t beat myself up if I can’t get it all out without any preparation.

The first thing is trying to improve my communication skills because they are so poor at actually telling someone the ideas and points that I’m trying to get across. I figure if I practice getting over being subconscious in front of a camera that it might help with my self-image problem. If I get comfortable expressing myself to the camera then it’ll be easier to do in front of other people.



The next thing is that part about uneven development and that having a shadow that is a repressed part of your ego holding you back is going to hamper your chances of growth because you’re leaving parts of yourself behind since they are hidden from you.

From what I’ve been hearing from Ken Wilber most psychotherapy techniques involve talking to uncover the subjective stuff like in dreams and focus on them to make them objects in your awareness so you no longer identify solely with them. Talking about it to the camera should be at least a start and that way I would have them ready to be seen by a therapist to give me their interpretation of them if I decide that’s necessary. It might not be if I can troubleshoot the problems on my own once they are out in the open and that way I wouldn’t have to take the chance of messing up my disability while I’m still dependent on it.




Another thing I can talk about is what I was telling mom about the amount of stress I used to be able to handle is a whole lot more than I can now. I was thinking after I wrote about that in an email to her, the last time I was able to cope with a large amount of stress was when I was making that 12 hour round trip from Fremont to Berkeley and still able to keep that job at BRC while suffering from a diseased gall bladder before I had to have it taken out. Then after Creator died I seemed to have lost the ability to deal with stress and never got it back. I guess that means that I never fully recovered the blow to my ego and I’m probably still repressing parts that I need to uncover.

Excellent Adventures in Floating

From reading a lot of Ken Wilber's books I've been getting the idea that it's not enough just to read about these concepts, that you have to practice them. Because just reading about them only gives legitimacy to your beliefs and only is translative to supporting whatever stage your ego is in. But in order to gain authenticity and transform your ego to a more inclusive stage of development, you have to put them into practice.

"... in today's America, this is much more disturbing because this vast majority of horizontal spiritual adherents often claim to be representing the leading edge of spiritual transformation, the 'new paradigm' that will change the world, the 'great transformation' of which they are the vanguard. But more often than not, they are not deeply transformative at all; they are merely agressively translative. They don not offer effective means to utterly dismantle the self, but merely new ways for the self to think think differently. Not ways to transform but merely new ways to translate. In fact, what most of them offer is not a practice or series of practices like yoga. What most of them offer is a simple the suggestion to 'read my book on the new paradigm.' This is deeply disturbed and deeply disturbing...

...Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth carries a terrible burden: Thiose who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain. You were allowed to see the truth under the agreement that you would commincate it to others (that is the ultimate meaning of the Bodhisattva Vow)..."

When I first read about Isolation Tanks that were developed by John C. Lily about 15 years ago, I thought it was a good idea. Since I haven't been feeling up to doing any projects and just watching a lot of TV and DVD's I figured it would be a good idea to try it.

In newer tanks, epsom salt is added to the water in the tank to raise the density of the water above the density of the human body, so that the subject floats with his or her face above the water. However, since the ears are submerged when the subject is in a relaxed position, hearing is greatly reduced, particularly when ear-plugs are also used. When the arms float to the side, skin sensation is greatly reduced because the air and water are the same temperature as the skin, and the feeling of a body boundary fades. The sense of smell is also greatly reduced, especially if the water has not been treated with chlorine.

I had heard of the theraputic benefits of them and I hoped it might help with breaking out the the blocks of creativity and lack of being able to focus on doing anything lately

A therapeutic session in a flotation tank typically lasts an hour. For the first forty minutes, it is reportedly possible to experience itching in various parts of the body (a phenomenon also reported to be common during the early stages of meditation). The last twenty minutes often end with a transition from beta or alpha brainwaves to theta, which typically occurs briefly before sleep and again at waking. In a float tank, the theta state can last for several minutes without the subject losing consciousness. Many use the extended theta state as a tool for enhanced creativity and problem-solving or for superlearning.

They have been gaining in popularity in recent yearsand I found this news story about them on YouTube.



So I looked them up on the search engine to find if any were close by. There was a web page called FloatFinder.com that showed a few in the Bay Area with the closet one called The Float Center in Oakland. They were kind of expensive $70 an hour and they had a package deal of an hour of floating and a massage for $140. Then it was $62 for a round trip Greyhound bus ticket with the 7 day advance purchase.

I saved up some money from my birthday and got the ticket. It said on the web page that if you want to get a massage that you have to get an appointment ahead of time so I got one of those debit cards that you can preload with cash and use like a credit card to be able to pay for it online. The trouble was that I only put the exact amount on that card and apparently there were some transaction fees so it was declined and I only had enough to get the hour of floating not the massage.

Since I had been looking for a chance to make another vlog, I decided to take some footage with my camcorder to document the trip.



The best thing I can say about it is that at least it was something different to try and it's another video to add to the amount that I have to use as response on YouTube. It definitely shows how much more practice I need at it and that I'm a long way from being competent at it. It does point out the importance of storyboards and a plan to make something worthwhile.

It started out pretty good, the first leg of the trip to Sacramento went by fairly fast while I watched "Back to the Future" on my portable DVD player. When I got to the Sacramento bus station it was almost a 3 hour wait until the bus to Oakland so I tried to charge the DVD player so it would last the trip. I did some more footage for the video while I was waiting.

While it was charging, I went to get a coke from the vending machine and when I came back it was gone. It was a shame to lose it but it was my fault for letting it out of my sight. I knew better than to trust anyone that was around in such a public place. But it was no use beating myself up about it and crying over spilt milk. So I let it go and fell back on reading my books, listening to my MP3 player and playing the games on my cell phone.

When I got to Oakland, I tried to get a taxi to take me to the Float Center, I asked one of the clerks that sold the bus tickets to call me one, but apparently she only called one of her friends that wanted make some money since the guy who showed up drove a car that didn't look much like a taxi. I had printed out the directions from Google Maps so he didn't have much trouble finding the place. He wanted to charge me $20 for only a 3.5 mile trip though. I had figured it would be a lot less for that short a ride. I spend most of my money on the debit card so I only had $12 left and I talked him into just taking that.

The lady the ran the Float Center was very nice, she explained all the rules and procedures like showering before and after to keep the tank from getting fungus growing in it and getting the salt off your skin. I'm not sure if I had too hot of a shower since when I got in the tank it was a tiny bit cold and it was supposed to be the exact temperature as your body.

I liked the feeling of floating with no gravity pressing on your muscles and it relieved the strain I'd been having from the mattress I've had to sleep on. I did my deep breathing to shut my internal dialogue and it gave me a big pain in my neck. So I did the OM mantra to let the vibrations dissolve the pain in my neck. It did help since the pain eased but apparently the stress was still there and I couldn't let go even with nothing to distract me.

After I got out of the shower and dressed the gal that ran the place made me some green tea and we talked for a while about floating and the art gallery she had at the place. I showed her the designs I did for The Writer's Nightmare DVD ans she seemed to like them.

I told her about the problem I had about not being able to afford the taxi back since I spent the rest of my cash. While I was in the tank I had the idea of using the money left of the debit card and transfering it to her through my PayPal account and then she could let me have the cash. But it wasn't necessary since when I brought the subject up she just said she would give me a ride back to the Greyhound Bus station. It was a bit harder to get back to the bus than it was to get there since she went a different way and we got lost a couple times but we found it after a while. I thought it was nice of her to go out of her way to help me.

I had over 3 hours to wait for the bus to Sacramento and it was a lot harder to pass the time without the DVD player but more because the seats in the bus station were very uncomforable, I kept having to sit on the floor and then stand up to stand the strain. I guess they had some trouble with the schedule between Reno, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Portland because all the northbound buses with delayed and full even at 3am. I had to wait 4 hours for the bus to Oroville to leave and even then it was an hour late.

I finally got back home around 10am so it was it was around a 22 hour trip. I'm leaning toward it not being worth all the money, the float itself was pretty good, but it certainly didn't have as many benefits as I had hope and any it did have were erased by having to take the bus there and back. I'm glad I had the experience so I know what it was like after all this time but it wasn't worth losing my DVD player and all the hassles of the bus travel. Maybe it would've been better if I had the massage also, if I ever go again I might try it that way.

I took a nap for a couple hours after I got back and woke up at 2pm because I had to go to Chico for a MRI that the neurologist had set up. When he set up the test, they arranged for a taxi to take me to Chico which I thought would help because the B-Line buses take at least 4 hours to get there and back.

The taxi was supposed to be there at 2:30, when it was late I called the office where I was supposed to have the test and they said the taxi was on the way. Since they were the ones arranging it, they were the ones responsible if I was late or not. When they were an hour late I got a call from the taxi company saying they were on the wrong side of the trailer park looking for me. I finally got to the office and it's good thing I never tried to take a taxi from Chico in an emergency because the meter read $55.

I didn't have to wait that long before they took me to where they had the MRI machine. I thought it was a bit odd that it was in a trailer on the other side of the parking lot from the office, but maybe they have to keep it that far away because of the intense magnetic fields it generates and it could mess up other stuff around it.

I put in some earplugs that the guy running the tests gave me a lay on the table. The things he put on each side of my head were uncomfortable, but the pad he put under my knees helped. They slid me into the machine and the enclosed space didn't bother me at all, it was just the very loud noices of all kinds that were fairly annoying. Even the earplugs only helped somewhat. I did a lot of deep breathing and it went on for almost 30 mins for the whole thing until they slid me out.

The receptionist called for the taxi to take me back, but apparently they had brand new dispatchers at the company they used and they didn't know what they were doing so they had more problems bring me back as they did getting me there. One taxi showed up but the driver said he was the wrong guy so I had to wait for another one. The next one showed up about 10 mins later and the receptionist siad the driver had to go inside to get some paperwork and I told the driver that but she didn't listen, it wasn't my problem since I wasn't handling that part, I figured the place that did the tests was going to bill Medicare for it. I told her how to get to my place so we didn't have any more trouble on the way.

Let's hope networking will help with Current TV

I've been commenting a lot more on the news stories since they revamped the system on Current TV. I've been able to get one of them used on TV PC vs.Mac which was a start of getting noticed


Then I was able to get a story I posted about Yahoo rejecting Microsoft's offer which was pretty cool


Even though I don't get paid for those stories since they are just expressing opinions and copying articles from other news web sites, it does get me more known and people that might agree with my opinions. I've gotten several new connections there and my statistics are improving.



Now that Current TV has raised the amount that they are paying for commercials from $1000 to $2500 I might have a better chance of getting one on TV without more support through networking the people that post on the web page

They have a new assignment to make a VCAM for Wachovia Bank that I can try to do. Since the Poser animations haven't been very good response I think I'll put more live footage in this one since I got that video camera now.

The commercial they showed as an example isn't very good and I think I can do a lot better with the theme they want of using Wachovia to save for your dreams. I was thinking of doing several ads this time to increase my chances of getting one on TV. One about the dream of owning a houseboat or a yacht to live on and I can take some footage at Lake Oroville to show the boats there. Also the dream of living on a golf course and I can shoot some footage of Dad's house at Kelly Ridge.

I saw a story with an inspiring new twist

From the news on Current TV there an interview of this author that was trying an idea for an interactive book that had clues to a quest for a dagger hidden in Las Vegas.

It sounded like a great idea to try and maybe I could do something like that to help promote my Writer's Nightmare DVD. I could make another DVD that has clues to where the a model of the gyrotwister is and people would have to find it and then it has clues to where the parts are to put it together.

That way I could have each clue not have to be so hard to figure out but still have the whole thing be a challenge and people would have the sense of progress along the way. I could have animated blueprints made in Illustrator, Flash, Photoshop and After Effects for the some of the clues of the parts, that would be cool.

Questions of the Higher Priority

One of the things I kept asking Krys when she was thinking about going home was "What do you think your priority is?" was it only what was best for herself alone or what was best for both of us? She never gave me a direct answer to my face only kept on saying she didn't know. The obvious one that shows from her actions was she was more concerned about her needs.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately since I've been wondering whether or not she thought that my priorities were different than what I thought they were. After we'd been married for a while we both realized that my trailer wasn't going to last very long with both of us living in it and we needed more room especially for all the stuff she was shipping from Georgia. So the problem was that we would have to get a lot more money than my disability would provide or she would have to get a job that would pay enough to pay for a better place to live.

So I started to focus on my graphic design career to try and genrate some better financial opportunities, but that meant I had to devote less time and attention exclusively to her, I thought at the time it was the priority that was best for both us, but was that a mistake? Did she understand what I was trying to do or did she think I was abandoning her to do something I liked better than her?

Maybe I should've made more time for her and tried to balance it better, especially since I'm still stuck in the trailer with no better place to live in sight. But on the other hand, maybe she should've pitched in more to help me get ahead more by contributing more to my career or by getting a better job since hers payed less than my disability.



I was talking to my mom about it and she thought I she thought I should let it go but it's hard to do that since if I don't learn from it then I won't know if it's worth it to try again or how to avoid the problem if I do try again. Plus I need to figure it out for the novels I was going to write about it as a sequel to Seeking Resonace. I wondering how much of our relationship was based on fantasies that couldn't stand up to living day to day. For example while she was still in Georgia, we talked about going to Feather Falls when she got here and making love under the waterfall.



But it was a fair hike to it. A lot less than I used to do when I was in the Boy Scouts or even trips to Big Sur but we never made it that far since it seemed it wasn't the priority to be worth it. We only made it as far as the fish hatchery that was less than a mile away. Was it because the fantasy of making love under the waterfall couldn't stand up to the reality in the hardship of the hike? The needs of her body to not be worn out by the trip up there seemed to take priority over the experience we could've shared together.



Another example is the first fantasy that we had when I found out she liked me, that of Red Sonja and Kalidor. She had this notion of being strong like a warrior and only loving someone that could defeat her in battle. I thought it was ironic since in the movie Kalidor proved to her that the point was that was a self-defeating strategy since if she was going to love someone, she wasn't going to want to defeat them in battle.

I'm wondering how many other things Krys had ironic and self-defeating fantasies about. We never did get to do our sword fight since I lost my fencing foil and she didn't have her katana anymore. But I did see that she wasn't as good at a lot of things as she claimed, she couldn't use the brake while riding a bike, she couldn't use the diving board or go very far in the deep end of a swimming pool and she couldn't use a bow very well. So how much of the lies she told herself about them were projected onto false expectations about our relationship?



I also had a lot of problems with pain bringing up a lot of shadow stuff to the point where I had so little energy that I could barely function much less respond to her and give her any kind of attention. I couldn't focus on much else except the day to day details of just getting from one day to the next so I couldn't even begin to find ways solving what was best for both of us.



The best quote from Strother Martin in movie Cool Hand Luke was definately "What we have here is a failure to communicate." With different priorities, fantasies and levels of developement, I suppose it's a wonder that we lasted as long as we did. It seems to be a lot more widespread problem than just us though. For one reason or another it looks like most couples that split up have some version or another of that problem.

So I have been thinking, which would be more satisfying, living alone to persue my own fantasies without having to compromise my selfish ego trips or trying it again with someone else when I don't even know that's not anymore of a fantasy that something more exists or could last? The trouble with that it's just giving up any foward motion towards evolution and just staying in stasis.

I did get some inspiration from Ken Wilber's book One Taste since it cleared up a lot of what his ideas about "witness" consciousness was actually supposed to be like and what I should do for the 3 books in the trilogy of my auto-biographies

Reading Ken Wilber’s One Taste has been giving me a lot more hope and inspiration that maybe I can still make the soul mate thing work out after all and it’s not as impossible as I put in my blog.

The thing that might make the 3rd book in the trilogy work is that idea I had 10/29/92 about training a soul mate with the Naked Angel Presentation. That way she would be able to get all the foundation and the background she would need to put it into practice and the training to make it last. It would certainly round out the themes of the trilogy if I were able make all the things from the other 2 books come to fruition in the 3rd.

It does give some shape to the overall thrust of the trilogy since the 1st is Seeking Resonance and describes my search for a soul mate, the death of Margie and my marriage to Krys. (Which is #7813 on the Universe Cube T=0 Tau=0 The=0.) The second would be the relationship we had what problems and how it failed, and the development of the Naked Angel Presentation. (Which is #7814 on the Universe Cube T=1 Tau=0 The=0.) The third would be how I used the Naked Angel Presentation to attract and train a more compatible soul mate and the steps along the way to realizing One Taste. (Which is #7815 on the Universe Cube T=2 Tau=0 The=0.) I still have to come up with titles for the other 2 something to do with balance, harmony and unity, like I did with the first since resonance is balance in electronics, I should follow that theme for the others. Something like Attempting Symmetry or Achieving Communion.



What would be good for the story would be if I was able to train a soul mate like Marina from Hot for words on You Tube. It helps that she's very smart so she can absorb the concepts and gain a higher comprehension of them. She's also very beautiful and a good actress that way she could play the part of Cyan with her connections to the people in Hollywood we could make videos and movies together. The odds against that are very high though, but how are they compared to Krys wanting to go through the training and returning? Both would be very good plots for the story, but how likely would they be for specific people as compared to anyone wanting to take the training at all?



On page 183 of One Taste in the 8/16 entry Ken lays out the possibilities “love for a specific person is when it arises in emptiness. It is still love, it is still intensely personal, it is still very specific; but it is a wave that arises from an ocean of infinity. It is as if a great sea of love brings forth a wave, and that wave carries the force and thrill of the entire sea in its every breaking crest. The sensation is like watching an early morning sunrise in the desert: a vast open clear blue spaciousness within there arises, on the horizon, an intense red-yellow fire. You are the infinite sky of love, in which a particular fire-ball of personal love arises.

One thing is certain infinite love and personal love are not mutually exclusive, the latter is just an individual wave of an infinite ocean. When I lie awake, next to her early in the morning doing meditation, nothing really changes in the contemplation except this; there is a whole-body bliss, paradoxically faint but intense, that edges my awareness. It is sexual energy reconnected to its source in the subtle regions of the body-mind. I will often touch her lightly as I meditate, it definitely completes an energy circuit and she can feel it too.

But that is what men and women can do for each other and that is the core of Tantra as well. In a very concrete and visceral way, the union of male and female is the union of Eros and Agape, Ascending and Descending, Emptiness and Form, Wisdom and Compassion. Not theoretically but concretely in the actual distribution of prana or energy currents in the body itself. And that is why, in the very highest Tantric teachings,the mere visualization of sexual congress with the divine consort is not enough for final enlightenment. Rather for ultimate enlightenment, one must take an actual partner and have real sex in order to complete the circuits conducive to recognizing the already enlightened mind."

It is definately something to shoot for that is a lot more worth while than just sitting around. I can do some videos for YouTube about The 1-2-3 of God with Mimic doing some of the soundtrack and then Poser scenes of some of the things described the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person perspectives, the states and stages of consciousness and the conveyor belt approach.