I think there is really only one spiritual practice: To take life seriously. The rest is details and will be revealed as necessary.
(By "serious" I don't mean joyless. More like sincere, earnest, honest, real. Living as if it matters.)
I can't think of anyone who has taken life seriously and remained shallow.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Sunday, August 05, 2007
I aspire to be a river?
Sometimes, I have visuals that seem to play inside my eyes, although of course it is in the brain. If I close my eyes, I can focus on the activity that plays there: It is always movement. And this nearly always happens when I have been acquiring a new skill. In my younger years, after I started volleyball training, I would see balls flying back and forth in the typical volleyball trajectories. While learning touch typing, I would see the movements of the typewriter. (This was before the age of personal computers.) And so on... when acquiring a new skill, the signature movements of that activity would play out on the back of my eyes, as it seemed. Even with my eyes open I would be able to watch it, as if by shifting my focus, but more clearly with my eyes closed.
It very much fits the description of "intrusive memories" but was not trauma related. Though the experience itself was kinda disturbing. I am glad I was not driving while these things happened. Evidently this is the brain's way of acquiring a new skill at accelerated speed, by studying it even while it is not happening. So far, so good.
However, I get the same experience after seeing water move sand and pebbles. Since childhood, probably, certainly in my teens, I would go to the large stream on our farm when the weather was right, and disturb the water. I might place a stone in the stream, diverting the force of the water. Then I would just stand and watch the water shape its new course, moving sand and pebbles, undermining stones and moving them out of the way. It fascinated me. It still does, in my 40es. On a rainy day I watched an impromptu stream work its way through a sandy slope, moving the sand in its chaotic and yet strangely purposeful way. Afterwards, the image kept playing on my retina for hours. That's when it struck me that this was the same way my mind reacted when learning a skill. Does this mean that I was learning the skill of moving sand? Perhaps I secretly aspire to being a river?
Primitive peoples sometimes considered rivers to be small gods. I wouldn't go that far, but I can see them being similar to us on a very abstract level. Like us, the river is both a process and an object. It is continually in motion and yet tightly bound to its form. It needs to be replenished continually. It grows as it moves, and no matter the length of its course, it always comes to an end. It is obvious that we humans live on the very borderline between order and chaos. But so does the river. Perhaps my subconscious noticed these similarities before I did?
It very much fits the description of "intrusive memories" but was not trauma related. Though the experience itself was kinda disturbing. I am glad I was not driving while these things happened. Evidently this is the brain's way of acquiring a new skill at accelerated speed, by studying it even while it is not happening. So far, so good.
However, I get the same experience after seeing water move sand and pebbles. Since childhood, probably, certainly in my teens, I would go to the large stream on our farm when the weather was right, and disturb the water. I might place a stone in the stream, diverting the force of the water. Then I would just stand and watch the water shape its new course, moving sand and pebbles, undermining stones and moving them out of the way. It fascinated me. It still does, in my 40es. On a rainy day I watched an impromptu stream work its way through a sandy slope, moving the sand in its chaotic and yet strangely purposeful way. Afterwards, the image kept playing on my retina for hours. That's when it struck me that this was the same way my mind reacted when learning a skill. Does this mean that I was learning the skill of moving sand? Perhaps I secretly aspire to being a river?
Primitive peoples sometimes considered rivers to be small gods. I wouldn't go that far, but I can see them being similar to us on a very abstract level. Like us, the river is both a process and an object. It is continually in motion and yet tightly bound to its form. It needs to be replenished continually. It grows as it moves, and no matter the length of its course, it always comes to an end. It is obvious that we humans live on the very borderline between order and chaos. But so does the river. Perhaps my subconscious noticed these similarities before I did?
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
I invented the RPG
I believe the year was 1964, when I was 5 years old. This was 10 years before the first commercially available fantasy Role Playing Game, Dungeons and Dragons, was published. Furthermore I lived on a remote and isolated farm, with no TV and only the socialist state-controlled national broadcasting on the FM radio. I had just barely learned to read and write, and not begun perusing our large home library of classic literature; the local newspaper mainly contained local political debate and ads for groceries and agricultural tools, and the ever popular obituaries. In short, I had no other inspiration for this than the Norwegian fairy tales, frequently including huge trolls and creative ways to dispose of them. And of course the voices in my head...
While playing outside one day, I was gripped by a very vivid daydream. In this, I was fighting trolls. But unlike the fairy tales, where this is a once-in-a-lifetime event and quickly rewarded with princesses and such, my troll hunting was an ongoing event. And most curiously, I seemed to absorb the strength of the trolls I slew: Certainly I did grow stronger over time, and took on progressively larger and stronger trolls (with more heads... I think I was up to 9 at the end). The daydream was rather long and ended only when my mother called me to meal. At this point I started crying, because I realized that I had grown so much that I would never again be able to enter my family's house.
All this came to pass, of course, albeit in a different realm than the physical.
Only today did I learn that the role playing game as we know it was not yet invented at the time. Did my revelation radiate outward to the rest of the world, causing D&D and the rest? Or did the planet pass through a telepathic ray between two older, more mature civilizations where this concept was discussed, and psychics around the world just picked it up? Was it a memory from my future? Or could it be that every child knows, deep down, that growing by slaying monsters is what life is about?
While playing outside one day, I was gripped by a very vivid daydream. In this, I was fighting trolls. But unlike the fairy tales, where this is a once-in-a-lifetime event and quickly rewarded with princesses and such, my troll hunting was an ongoing event. And most curiously, I seemed to absorb the strength of the trolls I slew: Certainly I did grow stronger over time, and took on progressively larger and stronger trolls (with more heads... I think I was up to 9 at the end). The daydream was rather long and ended only when my mother called me to meal. At this point I started crying, because I realized that I had grown so much that I would never again be able to enter my family's house.
All this came to pass, of course, albeit in a different realm than the physical.
Only today did I learn that the role playing game as we know it was not yet invented at the time. Did my revelation radiate outward to the rest of the world, causing D&D and the rest? Or did the planet pass through a telepathic ray between two older, more mature civilizations where this concept was discussed, and psychics around the world just picked it up? Was it a memory from my future? Or could it be that every child knows, deep down, that growing by slaying monsters is what life is about?
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