As a creative (puzzle designer) with a now-distant background in engineering, I recognize all of these techniques. So at the very least, you can count this as +1 on your validation scale.
Fascinating! In Zen they tell us to just let go of makyō rather than pursuing it, but it sounds like you’ve found an interesting balance point of paying attention to it without getting absorbed in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maky%C5%8D
Thanks for the reference! I've actually been looking for a good book on zazen lately, and it's not the sort of thing I trust Amazon to give good guidance on. I'll check it out.
I have taught this stuff, in rudimentary form, to high schoolers and college students. They are shocked at what a guided meditation (or a light hypnotic trance) does to their supposedly terrible visualization skills. The frustrating part is that even after direct personal experience, most of them think of it as a trick, not as a technique worth following up on and training.
Oh, cool! You must understand, I never told people about this self-training, because I never met anybody else who had done it AS training. I understand guided meditation and have done it, but thought of that as something different.
I think all these things sort of shade into each other. In THE HEAD TRIP, Jeff Warren uses a couple of metaphors: 1) the Wheel of Consciousness, which describes the most common daily progression through different states, and 2) a Consciousness Mixing Board, with sliders that raise / lower the volume on all the different brain circuits to create more unusual states. https://jeffwarren.org/everythingelse/illustrations/the-consciousness-mixing-board/
Great metaphor. From that point of view, the younger me played the dials like Grimes, while the current version tends to stick with the presets. There's also a lot more noise in the system these days and the whole deck is a bit glitchy.
Artangels is her masterpiece, in my opinion (although she's still maturing as an artist). This album is still experimental in a lot of ways and constantly balances on the edge of madness, but there's incredibly fine control there. It's an album for people who are in love with sound--who would listen to John Cage and who enjoy the musicality of a passing subway train. The piece "Artangels" is my standard test track for new headphones because the soundscape is so rich.
As a creative (puzzle designer) with a now-distant background in engineering, I recognize all of these techniques. So at the very least, you can count this as +1 on your validation scale.
Thank you for writing this up, Karl. I enjoyed the diversity of influences. from Crowley to futurists.
Fascinating! In Zen they tell us to just let go of makyō rather than pursuing it, but it sounds like you’ve found an interesting balance point of paying attention to it without getting absorbed in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maky%C5%8D
You might find Daniel Ingram’s book on meditation interesting. https://www.integrateddaniel.info/book
Thanks for the reference! I've actually been looking for a good book on zazen lately, and it's not the sort of thing I trust Amazon to give good guidance on. I'll check it out.
I have taught this stuff, in rudimentary form, to high schoolers and college students. They are shocked at what a guided meditation (or a light hypnotic trance) does to their supposedly terrible visualization skills. The frustrating part is that even after direct personal experience, most of them think of it as a trick, not as a technique worth following up on and training.
Oh, cool! You must understand, I never told people about this self-training, because I never met anybody else who had done it AS training. I understand guided meditation and have done it, but thought of that as something different.
I think all these things sort of shade into each other. In THE HEAD TRIP, Jeff Warren uses a couple of metaphors: 1) the Wheel of Consciousness, which describes the most common daily progression through different states, and 2) a Consciousness Mixing Board, with sliders that raise / lower the volume on all the different brain circuits to create more unusual states. https://jeffwarren.org/everythingelse/illustrations/the-consciousness-mixing-board/
Great metaphor. From that point of view, the younger me played the dials like Grimes, while the current version tends to stick with the presets. There's also a lot more noise in the system these days and the whole deck is a bit glitchy.
My only experience with Grimes is the theme song to Hilda.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80115346
Do you have recommendations?
Artangels is her masterpiece, in my opinion (although she's still maturing as an artist). This album is still experimental in a lot of ways and constantly balances on the edge of madness, but there's incredibly fine control there. It's an album for people who are in love with sound--who would listen to John Cage and who enjoy the musicality of a passing subway train. The piece "Artangels" is my standard test track for new headphones because the soundscape is so rich.